AN: So, this is the first of what I plan to be several inter-connected ficlets. It's a cross over with Kresley Cole's "Immortals After Dark" series, though knowledge of the books is not necessarily a requirement as most things IAD will be explained within the text. All you need to know is that Caroline is the daughter of Lothaire and Ellie Daciano, vampire royalty, and basically everything that's happened in the show has been an intricate show put on by her and Liz.

Lorean

Caroline Daciano had lived the majority of her eighteen years peacefully in Mystic Falls. Her mother had wanted her to have a mortal experience, despite the fact that she wasn't mortal, and so her father had manipulated Liz and Bill Forbes into playing the parents to his lovely daughter for the townfolk of their small Virginia town.

The play was about to come crashing down around all of their ears.

Caroline had been able to fake her humanity until now. Then she had faked being a new born vampire when Katherine had tried to smother her. Caroline still experienced the damn Carnie's memories in her dreams… and God had his life been tedious. Still, for the sake of secrecy she and Liz had played their roles flawlessly.

Now it was all going to come crashing down around them, because Tyler had decided to bite her. The bite hurt, and Caroline wasn't overly fond of pain. But still, he had bit her, and a wolf bite was meant to be fatal for a vampire. Only Caroline was no cursed-vampire, and a weak mortal wolf's bite wouldn't kill her.

"We could get some vampire blood," Liz said. "It heals."

"It heals mortals," Caroline snapped back, looking at the bite in her mirror and feeling woozy as she stared at it. "I'm a born vampire, Liz. Vampire blood just makes me want to throw up. It's like cannibalism. What I need is a witch. Or a sorceress. The Hag could heal me. Loa the Voodoo Priestess. Hell, Mariketa knows her healing mojo. Sadly, the first one is in Dacia, and the other two would probably do a fucking dance on my grave. Sometimes I hate being the daughter of the Enemy of Old."

"Lothaire is going to kill Tyler," Liz moaned. "He is going to slaughter him. Tyler will never see it coming, the poor boy."

"That poor boy is the reason I'm currently bleeding out," Caroline muttered, packing guaze against her neck and holding it down with medical tape. "I'm more worried about the questions that are going to be raised. This is supposed to kill me. Klaus will wonder why it didn't."

"Maybe you should leave?" Liz suggested tentatively. "We could fake your death."

"And how will you explain the lack of body?" Caroline demanded with rolled eyes. "And before you suggest it, no, I won't pretend to be a corpse. My father was buried alive and barely came out alive, and his sanity was shot. I'd rather not experience that."

Caroline neglected to mention that Lothaire had been buried for centuries while a tree fed on his blood; she didn't feel it would help her cause, and Caroline hated small spaces. She hesitated to say she was claustrophobic, because it was admitting a weakness, but she would admit to a dislike.

There was a knocking at the door downstairs and Caroline heard Matt, who had come to be with Caroline as she, supposedly, died, get up to answer it.

"Let me in, Matt," Caroline heard a familiar british accent say, and she swore under her breath.

"It's Klaus," she hissed in Liz' ear. "Distract him."

Liz swallowed nervously but gave a sharp nod, leaving the room. Caroline briefly considered hopping in the bed to pretend to be dying, but she looked too healthy for that. A little on the pale side, perhaps, but even without having transitioned into immortality yet, she could already feel her wound beginning to heal.

Well… if faced with an impossible situation, there's really only once choice. Avoid it.

Caroline made her getaway out the window.

LOREAN

"Where is she?" Klaus demanded as he entered Caroline's room. He could smell her blood, but the blond herself wasn't there, and Klaus felt a knot of worry begin to form. Had she gotten away when the sheriff left her side to see him? Wandered off, lost to the hallucinations werewolf venom caused. The window was open, the drapes blowing delicately in the breeze.

"I don't know," Liz admitted, stepping into the doorway behind him. "She was here just a few minutes ago."

"Is she hallucinating?" Matt asked. "Damon hallucinated, so did Rose. She'll attack someone if we don't find her."

"Maybe she just didn't want to see the mastermind behind her death," Liz replied, but there was a nervous energy to her now, as if she couldn't wait to get away from the two men she stood with. As if she were keeping some sort of secret.

"What did you do with her?" Klaus demanded. "Did you use this as an excuse to kill off the vampire daughter you never really wanted? I wanted her as leverage, but perhaps she won't actually work in the role."

"I didn't do anything!" Liz responded. "She is my daughter!"

But the sheriff didn't meet Klaus' eye as she said the words.

"Where is she?" he bellowed, all but shaking the woman. Pretty little Caroline wasn't meant to be hurt by this; not really.

"I don't know!" Liz replied, her voice cracking with fear, and Klaus muttered a curse, releasing her.

The woman was lying about something, but it wasn't this.

"I will find her," Klaus swore. "You'd best hope it's alive. I hate it when my plans fail."

Klaus left the house. As he did, he picked up Caroline's scent. He followed it from the house. He could smell blood and the poison from the bite, but he couldn't smell death. He should be able to; the poison should have started to work its magic, and the girl's scent should have been tainted by her imminent expiry.

That it wasn't was curious. It also meant that Caroline, a young baby vampire, wasn't dying.

His pursuit of the scent lead him to the alley behind the Grill. He could hear shuffling in the alley, and when he walked further, he saw Caroline's golden head bent over the neck of a young boy. The boy was moaning as the blonde drank from him, and Klaus could see, from the bulge in the young man's pants, that he was incredibly happy to be in his position.

"Well, isn't this interesting?" the Original drawled. "The perfect Miss Forbes feeding on the locals. And here I thought you were strictly about blood bags."

Caroline's head snapped up, and she licked her lips clean of blood.

"You. I guess Liz wasn't as good at distraction as I hoped she'd be. Oh well, you can make yourself useful and compel Chad here for me. My original plan was to drain him dry and dispose of the body, but death is so noticeable, don't you think."

Caroline released the boy, Chad, and moved away from him, motioning Klaus forward with a delicate hand wave. Klaus narrowed his eyes, but stepped forward, compelling the boy back into the safety of the bar.

"And why didn't you simply compel him yourself?" Klaus asked once the door had shut behind the boy.

"Because I didn't feel like it," Caroline replied airily. She pulled the white bandage away from her neck, and Klaus could see that the wound that should have been there was gone. Caroline pulled a mirror out of her purse and flipped it open, surveying her skin for herself. "Good as new."

"It shouldn't be. You should be begging me to end your suffering, to give you the cure for the bite," Klaus mused, and in a flash he had the young blonde pressed against the wall of the bar. "So here's a question… why aren't you?"

"I didn't feel like dying, but perhaps another day," she shot back, lifting her hands and using them to force his away from her neck. Klaus moved to wrap them around her neck once more, but in the brief break of contact, Caroline disappeared. "And choking a lady isn't polite."

Klaus whirled around, and there she stood in all her blonde glory, leaning against the wall behind him with crossed arms and a smug smirk.

"How did you do that?" he demanded in a growl.

"That growl thing? It's sort of hot," Caroline mused. "I bet you get all the girls with that. And I traced."

"Traced?" Klaus moved towards her, and Caroline straightened, her body becoming tense, as if she were prepared to move again.

"You guys can compel, I can trace. And manipulate. Oh, and I'm probably going to dream that bus boy's memories tonight. I'm sure his high school, lust-filled angst fest will prove to be most entertaining." Caroline shrugged her shoulders, still pretending to be calm though the tenseness didn't leave her muscles. "Ah well, I'll survive his seventeen years of mediocrity. The blood was worth it."

"Under normal circumstances, I would assume your prattling was simply the result of hallucinations. However, we both know otherwise… so what exactly are you, Caroline Forbes?" Klaus asked, coming to a halt and allowing Caroline to keep distance between them. He hadn't had much to do with the pretty blonde; really, until now she hadn't crossed his mind as much more than his Hybrid's girlfriend. But the girl standing in front of him now was very, very different from the cheerleader he had observed with Tyler. She held herself with a regal grace, confidence in all her movements. And there was a calculative glint in her eye, the type of look one got when they were looking to manipulate a situation.

Good girls like Caroline Forbes didn't get that look.

"I'm a vampire," she responded after a long while, her words slow, as if she were weighing each before speaking them. "I live off blood, I don't like sunlight. The only difference is that you were made this way with a spell, and I was born like this."

"Vampires can't have children," Klaus said immediately, the words a knee-jerk reaction to her statement.

"Your kind can't," Caroline agreed. "But mine? We're different, Klaus. And I'll tell you right now, that whatever games you're playing with Stefan and Elena and whoever else gets involved, you'll keep me out of them."

"And why would I do that?"

"Because, Klaus, I'm not just a vampire. I'm the princess of Dacia… and you can mess around with the rest of this town all you want, but mess with me? I will make it clear to everyone in my home realm that all I want for my birthday is your head." Caroline disappeared once more and reappeared right in front of Klaus, so close they were almost touching. "And they will give it to me. The people of that realm adore me. I've worked very hard to ensure that they adore me."

The change from preppy cheerleader to vicious blood thirsty was almost startling. Caroline's eyes went from clear blue to endless black, and her fangs lengthened. She pressed Klaus against the alley's wall with surprising strength, and it was clear to Klaus that she had in fact been holding back and lying to everyone, because the strength in that hold was far stronger than a new vampire of barely a year.

But it wasn't stronger than his thousand years of experience, and it was easy for him to turn the tables on her, and press her back into the wall, his arm across her throat.

Of course, the instant the move was completed there was unsettling prick at his neck, the blade of a sword held there with unwavering strength.

"Hey, Thad," Caroline said with a smile, looking over Klaus' shoulder at whoever it was holding the sword. "How's it hanging?"

"Someday, Care," replied a deep voice layered with southern drawl and charm. "Someday, we'll visit of coke and a burger rather than threats to your life."

"Oh, you know how it is," Caroline shot back cheekily. "I'm a chip off the old block. It wouldn't be a day in Daddy's life if it wasn't being threatened."

"You father also has millennia on you. Now, I'm going to have to ask you to back away from the princess very slowly, vampire. If you behave yourself, we can maybe come to an agreement where Lothaire doesn't have to know you were threatening his baby girl."

Klaus glared at Caroline as he held up his hands and backed away from her slowly as instructed. Once he was a foot away, he whirled quickly, intent on attacking his attacker.

He was blasted in the wall of the alley and skewered there with the sword.

"Ouch," Caroline murmured, wrinkling her nose and looking at him. "Klaus, this is Thaddeus. He's probably my dad's best friend. Except maybe Nix, but I can never keep track of whether there friends or enemies on any given day, so we'll say it's Thad. Thad, meet Klaus. He's a vampire-werewolf hybrid thing who's been tormenting Elena Gilbert, you know her? My sort of BFF when I don't hate her? Well, Klaus has been tormenting her for a few months now."

"I'm aware of that," Thad responded with a sigh. "I've been watching you on Lothaire's request ever since the Katherine Pierce debacle. Until now, I hadn't felt the need to step in."

Klaus growled at Thad, but he was wary now. The power the man had exhibited was fearsome, and he had acted as if he were doing no more than swatting an annoying gnat rather than a thousand year old vampire. The other man was tall and well built, looking to be in his early thirties with what Rebekah would call classic good looks. He looked down at Caroline with fondness, and the sentiment was clearly returned in the way she hugged his waist and grinned up at him.

"We need to get you home," Thad said to her. "Liz managed to convince your friend Matt that you wandered off and that he needed to get home for his own safety, but I'm pretty sure the quarterback was on the phone with that Damon fellow. So unless you want your cover blown, you need to get home. Say Klaus there found and healed you."

"And why would I play along with the charade?" Klaus drawled out, grasping the sword and pulling it out of his abdomen with a pained gasp.

"Because I just skewered you with no more difficulty than you would have with a vampire half your age. Do you really want to see if I can do worse?" Thad replied.

"You won't," Caroline said, patting Thad's shoulder and moving away. "Thad is super powerful, a phantom-vampire hybrid, which is pretty much unheard of. But he's a total pacifist. Hate's violence, which makes his relationship with my dad so weird. And with Regin… for someone who prefers peace, you really pick horrible friends, Thad. But you'll keep your silence on this matter, because if you don't I'll have to disappear."

"Your point?" Klaus responded with a raised brow, intrigued despite himself as Caroline sauntered towards him.

"My point is that you're too intrigued now. What am I? What is Thad? Exactly how powerful are we? If I poof, you'll never find out. It's simple animal instinct, Klaus. I'm in your head now, and until you know what makes me tick, you won't say a word."

"You're very confident in your appeal." Klaus looked at her with raised brows. "Perhaps I'll decide you're not worth the bother."

"Please, I'm the daughter of the King of Insight. I'm a chip off the old block, and I can read you like a book. So… keep this quiet and I'll let you plumb all my hidden depths."

Thad groaned and muttered under his breath at the comment, but Klaus found himself growing more interested in spite of all the reasons he shouldn't. But Caroline was the first person really willing to play this game with him, and it had been years since someone had done that. Oh, Stefan may hide his family, but he didn't really know how to play the game, wasn't really willing to. Klaus would have those coffins back in a matter of days, and then he would be bored once more.

Caroline could, perhaps, get rid of some of that boredom.

"Well the, Miss Forbes, I'll play along. For now. But if at any point I get bored, I will change the rules of your little game."

Caroline laughed and walked backwards until she reached Thad. She grasped the man's hand and turned her back, pulling him with her.

"You'll try," she called over her shoulder. "But it will only work if I let it."

Behind her, Klaus smirked.

AN: And it begins. Future ficlets will also be Klaroline, although there will likely be some that involve Caroline interacting with other members of the "Scooby Gang," or with her family.