FIC: A Different Way of Thinking 9
What it Means to Be a Hero
Part 2: A Different Way of Thinking (9)
By adliren
Dick turned, putting his back against Gabby’s. He could feel the teen shaking, her fear and anxiety conveyed through the minute shivers.
“It’s okay, try to relax,” he spared a moment to murmur even as he eyed the approaching vampires. “Just pick your shots and be ready to move when I say. We’ll get through this, I promise.”
Gabby didn’t respond, but he felt her trembling ease somewhat. Seconds later, he didn’t have time to reassure her anymore, he was too busy trying to dodge the lightning fast strikes one of the vampires was throwing at his head. Distantly he recognized that if even one punch landed, it would all be over. At some point he thought he heard the snap of a bow string, but he couldn’t be sure.
He spun and snapped a side-kick into one monster’s stomach, sending it crashing into the wall. Without pausing he reached back and grabbed Gabby by the collar.
“Come on.”
Half running, half dragging the teen, he raced for the stairs. He had a vague thought of getting outside where they could regroup and give Gabby more room to fire her weapon, but mostly he just wanted to get out of the constraining rooms of the castle. He sent a quick thank you to his mentor for teaching him how to navigate in stressful situations when he turned unerringly for the front door at the bottom of the steps.
He could hear Gabby’s harsh breathing as they ran for the exit. Ten steps . . . nine . . . eight . . .
Suddenly, two vampires seemed to materialize out of the shadows on either side of the doorway. They made no move to attack the would-be rescuers, but took up positions guarding the door. It was obvious they had no intention of letting them through.
They were being herded, but to where and for what purpose?
He gently pushed the unresisting Gabby behind him. “I think we’ll find another exit.”
Backing up, never taking his eyes off the two grinning monsters, he led them into what looked like a sitting room. A large crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling. Cobwebs bridged the distance between the small prisms, giving it a ghostly, though strangely beautiful appearance.
The entire setting would have been more appealing, in Dick’s opinion, if they hadn’t been surrounded on all sides. The spacious room contained three doorways and in each at least one vampire watched them with glittering eyes. As they slowly backed away, Dick’s foot caught on a rug that had been shoved up against one of the draped chairs. Taking a quick look, he could see that the rug had been covering a trap door set into the wood floorboards.
Without taking time to re-consider, he grabbed the iron ring attached to the door and lifted, uncovering the first few stairs in the weak illumination. He couldn’t see or hear anything down the gaping hole, but he knew without a doubt that this was where the vampires wanted them to go.
He quickly weighed their options. They could stay here and fight. Between Gabby’s crossbow and his skills, they might even be able to take out two or three of the vampires before they were overwhelmed and torn to pieces. Or, they could go down the stairs where they might be able to create a bottleneck and pick off the vampires one by one. Of course, there was no telling what was in the cellar - it might be worse than what they were dealing with at the moment, though he couldn’t really imagine how.
Faced with certain death on one hand, and only very likely death on the other, Dick made his decision.
“Give me the crossbow, and then head down slowly.”
He watched out of the corner of his eye as Gabby turned to look at him in disbelief. “Are you serious? There is no way I’m going down into some creepy basement in a castle filled with vampires!”
“Gabby, you agreed to do what I said. Now I’m telling you to get down there.” He tried to soften his voice, though he never took his eyes off the vampires around them. “Please, trust me.”
Gabby hesitated, then reluctantly handed him the crossbow. Dick immediately aimed at the nearest vampire and resisted the urge to send a bolt into its heart. He couldn’t afford to give them a reason to attack, no matter how much he wanted to.
He could hear Gabby fumbling down the first steps behind him, but the sound quickly stopped. Her voice floated back up to him. “Nightwing, I can’t see anything. I think there are torches on the walls, but they’re not lit.”
Dick sighed. If the teen was going to be coming on missions, they were going to have to get her a utility belt.
Shaking his head, trying to dislodge the strange thought - why would Gabby be coming on any more missions? - Dick called back to her. “Check in my pouch. Second on the right, there should be a lighter.”
Dick felt small hands fumble at his belt, then the sharp snap of the lighter opening and igniting. Seconds later a bright light flared behind him, causing the vampires to shrink back. Not waiting for a better opportunity, he backed up, grabbed the ring and closed the trap door.
Looking at Gabby’s pale and frightened face in the flickering torchlight, he tried a reassuring smile. “I think we’re safe for a while.” When the teen just continued to look at him, he sighed. Turning away from the frankly skeptical look in her eyes, he tried to pierce the darkness below them.
He felt Gabby gently take the crossbow from his hands, and replace it with the torch before she took up a position behind him.
“After you.”
Dick sucked in a breath and started down the stairs.
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God, she hated that look.
Barbara was watching her with fear and pity warring in her gaze, like she didn’t know whether to run from Helena or wrap her up in her arms and hold on tight.
Helena wanted to tell her to run.
Instead, she looked over at the vampire, her master, waiting for instructions.
Some fundamental part of the brunette raged inside her chest. She had never, ever followed anyone’s orders, with the exception of Barbara, and then only when she felt like it. To be reduced to a puppet brought back agonizing memories of Quinn and her hypnosis. Of course, then, Helena hadn’t been aware of what she was doing, and she hadn’t remembered anything she had done once Barbara had used the de-hypnotizing device. Now, however, she was completely conscious of every action . . . she just couldn’t do anything about it.
‘Fuck!’ Helena tried to wiggle even one finger, but her hand remained still, hanging stiffly at her side.
Her entire body felt rigid and tense like she was standing at attention. She desperately wanted to shift her weight onto one hip and cross her arms in her normal cocky, sexy-as-hell posture, and it was starting to piss her off. She knew the Monk was deliberately forcing her to face Barbara’s inspection, but did he have to make her look like Frankenstein’s monster.
Well, maybe not Frankenstein’s, but she was definitely a monster. Helena Kyle was a vampire, there was no denying it. She could touch the sharp fangs that protruded slightly from her mouth, and just looking at Barbara she could literally *feel* the blood pumping through the other woman’s body - and it made her hungry.
It was the same hunger she had woken up to only hours before, right after the Monk had turned her.
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Helena slowly swam back into consciousness, resisting with all her might. Somehow she knew that as soon as she opened her eyes, the pain was going to start. A corner of her mind kept telling her that she had been in a car wreck and something about her wrist, insisting she really didn’t want to wake up, but Helena had always been stubborn. So it would hurt, that wasn’t anything new. She would rather face it with her eyes open.
Feeling her eyelids scrape against her dry eyes as she forced them up, she braced herself for the pain then blinked stupidly when there wasn’t a single twinge from her abused body.
Either she was on some serious pain medication, or something strange was going on.
With a kind of detached interest, she realized she was starving. Helena was used to dealing with her urges, however, and she forced it down. She could deal with it once she got the hell out of here.
Looking around, she realized she was in some type of cellar or basement, which kinda ruled out the drugs that nice doctors at hospitals gave out. That only left the “something strange” explanation, and in Helena’s experience that was usually not a good thing.
A soft moan from the other corner alerted the brunette to the fact that she wasn’t alone. Turning her head quickly, she felt a sting of pain in her neck, but completely forgot about it when her eyes registered Dinah chained to the wall.
“Dinah?” Her voice sounded funny. Scratchy like she hadn’t used it in a while, or like she had been screaming for a long period of time. Helena shook off that mental image and slowly got to her knees.
“He . . . Helena?”
Dinah didn’t sound so good either. Helena tried to force her body to move faster, but she was having trouble getting everything to function properly. It didn’t help that her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. Her thoughts were fuzzy and unfocused, but eventually she managed to stagger to her feet. Leaning on the wall to keep from falling, she made it to the blonde’s side.
“Dinah, you okay?” Helena reached out a shaking hand, intending to check the strength of the cuffs around the girl’s wrists, but Dinah shrank away from her with a small cry. “Shh, D. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.” A muted rage suffused her chest. She didn’t know how Dinah had ended up here, but she had obviously been mistreated. Someone was going to pay for that.
She held up her hands and tried to speak soothingly, just like Barbara did when her feral side took over. It seemed to work and after several minutes, Dinah was able to look her in the eye.
“Oh God, Helena. I thought you were dead.” Tears steamed down the teen’s face, and Helena wanted to wipe them away, but she wasn’t sure how Dinah would react. “The things he did to you - and I couldn’t do anything.” The last part of her sentence ended in a choked sob as she started to cry in earnest.
This time Helena didn’t hold back, and she wrapped the teen up in her arms as best she could considering the restraints. “It’s okay, D. It’ll be okay.”
Helena wasn’t sure what she was saying, only that she needed to say it . . . for both of them. What was Dinah talking about? Her head felt a little clearer, and the last thing she remembered was that asshole from the car wreck reaching through the window. Even in her present situation, the brunette spared a moment to consider Barbara’s reaction to the destruction of the Hummer. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.
Eventually Dinah’s tears stopped and became only the occasional sniffle. When she looked back at Helena, her eyes were still frightened, but they were also determined.
“Are you okay, Hel?”
Helena shrugged, she felt fine. “Yeah, I feel fine. Why?”
That seemed to have been the wrong thing to say, because Dinah was shrinking away from her again. “You . . . don’t remember?”
“Well obviously not!” Helena didn’t mean to snap, but the Kid was starting to scare her.
The teen’s features shifted, and Helena recognized her expression. It was the same look Dinah got whenever when she was about to tell the brunette that Barbara wasn’t sleeping and spending too many hours on the computer. The look that said there was something she had to tell Helena, but she wasn’t looking forward to it.
“Helena, um, when they brought you down here you were pretty messed up,” she began.
“Yeah, I was in a car wreck. The Hummer’s totaled.” Helena didn’t know why she was interrupting, but for some reason she *really* didn’t want to hear what Dinah was going to say next.”
“Oh right. That would explain it.” The Kids hand jerked against the chains, and Helena knew she had tried to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, one of her nervous gestures. “After a while, that guy came down. The one in the robe.”
“The Monk.”
“Okay, right, the Monk came down and, um, grabbed you and started saying he would get his revenge.”
“God dammit, Dinah get to the point!”
She didn’t want to shout at the Kid, but all the suspense was killing her.
“Thenhebityou.”
The words came out in a jumbled rush, and it took Helena a moment to figure out what the teen had said. Then he bit you.
Feeling sick to her stomach, she let her hand wander up to her throat were she had felt the pain earlier. She thought she might actually throw up when her fingers encountered the two swollen puncture marks on her neck.
Sinking to the ground, she looked up at Dinah with dazed eyes. “Why don’t I remember?”
“I’m not sure.” She hesitated. “I think it’s probably a good thing. You . . . you acted like it hurt a lot.”
Helena swallowed, feeling the ache in her throat once again. Lifting her hand up, she tried to massage away the pain and the knowledge of exactly why it hurt.
Her fingers stilled suddenly when it occurred to her which hand she had been using. Holding her arm in front of her she stared at it in disbelief.
Her wrist was completely healed. There wasn’t even a scar to show that it had ever been broken. Quickly Helena felt her head looking for the cut she remembered from the wreck. Her hair was sticky with blood, but there was no wound.
Terrified of what she would find, she lifted her shirt, exposing her ribs. There should have been a scar high on her rib cage from her first night as Huntress, but instead of the ugly mark she was expecting, there was only smooth pale skin.
Turning to look at Dinah, she pleaded with her eyes. “Dinah?”
“I don’t know. It happened right after he . . . All your injuries just seemed to heal instantly. It’s a good thing too, you weren’t looking so hot.”
Leave it to the Kid to look on the bright side and also tease Helena in their present situation.
She didn’t think she could deal with this. It was too much.
Helena was almost grateful when she heard a door above them open and the sound of footstep coming down the stairs.
“Ah, you’re awake.” The robed figure stopped at the foot of the stairs and regarded them. “I see you’ve had a chance for the family reunion. I hope Dinah has been able to fill you in on your condition.”
“What have you done to me, you bastard?” Helena tried to lunge at him, but found she couldn’t move.
“Now, now, there’s no need for that kind of attitude. You wouldn’t want to upset your new master.”
“What the hell?”
“Stand up.” The command seemed to wrap itself around her brain and squeeze. Before she knew what was happening, Helena found herself on her feet, watching the vampire expectantly.
The Monk smiled and somewhere in a part of herself that was still free, Helena shivered.
“Say goodbye to your friend. It’s finally night and I have plans to complete.”
And to Helena’s horror, she turned and followed him obediently up the stairs.
****************
Now looking at Barbara, Helena could feel the vampire preparing to tell her to attack. It would be like the Quinn incident all over again, although this time, Barbara didn’t know how to cure her.
Helena wanted to tell the other woman to run, but she didn’t have control of her own vocal cords - and it wouldn’t have done any good anyway. Helena was faster and stronger than she had ever been, and she hadn’t been a weakling before.
‘God Barbara, don’t let me do this.’
Helena prayed with everything she was that somehow, someone would intervene. She couldn’t kill the woman she loved. It wasn’t fair.
Then Helena was moving across the floor towards the redhead. As she screamed in her head, she watched her hands curl into claws.
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Dick’s boots hit packed earth instead of the stone step he was expecting. He did his best not to stumble at the abrupt change, the adrenaline from moments before racing through his veins, causing him to overcompensate. Reaching behind him, he gently guided Gabby to his side, almost having to peel the teen away from his back where she was huddled.
“We’re at the bottom.” Dick’s voice was a quiet whisper. He could tell from the echoes that they were in an enclosed space. Years of working in the Batcave gave him the confidence to say that it wasn’t very large.
“Yeah, but where are we?”
Dick didn’t answer. Instead, he held out the torch and started to move forward cautiously.
They needed to find a way out.
As much as he hated to acknowledge it, they had failed. There was no way for them to rescue Helena and Dinah now. They had gone in thinking they would surprise the vampires, but somehow they had been expected. Their only option now was to escape, regroup, and come back with a better plan; one that wouldn’t get them killed in a doomed effort to save their friends.
A rattling off to their right caused him to tense, expecting an attack at any moment. When the noise wasn’t repeated, he slowly let out a breath . . . and quickly drew it back in when he heard a soft moan from the same direction.
“C’mon.”
Gabby hesitated only briefly before following him into the dark. She really was a good kid, Dick allowed.
As they drew closer, the torchlight glinted off of something golden. For one wild moment Dick felt like Howard Carter at the opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb. The light illuminated Dinah hanging from chains set into the stone wall. The teen looked battered and dazed, but Dick couldn’t find any life-threatening injuries.
Before he could stop her, Gabby had shot around his body and was embracing her friend. Dinah seemed to rouse at the physical touch, and her eyes opened wide.
“Gabby?” The voice was soft and rasping, but filled with joy and relief. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh my God, Dinah, what did they do to you?!” Gabby began yanking ineffectually at the chains on crime fighter’s wrists. “How could you do this to me?! One minute we’re talking on the phone, and the next I have to listen while you get kidnapped! By vampires!”
Dick decided he should step in before things got out of hand. “Dinah, do you know if there’s another way out of here?”
Dinah responded without looking away from Gabby. “I don’t know. I woke up chained to the wall, and they used the stairs when they brought Helena down.”
“Helena’s here!”
Dick’s heart-rate sped up. If Helena was here, maybe between the four of them they could fight their way out. As much as he hated to admit it, Helena was actually a competent crime fighter, and she had experience, not to mention her meta-abilities.
Dinah shook her head, wincing at the pull of the chains. “No, that red guy, the Monk, took her away. He said something about it being night and having plans.”
Barbara! They had left Barbara alone in the clock tower! With a sick feeling, Dick *knew* that was where the Monk was headed, but why take Helena? Was he planning on using her as leverage with Barbara? What did he want?
“Um, Dick? There’s something you should know.” He tried to brace himself. Dinah’s tone said it wasn’t going to be good news. “Uh, the Monk bit Helena. I think she’s a vampire.”
For several seconds no one said anything. Then Gabby looked at Dinah, Dinah looked at Dick, and Dick decided he really couldn’t deal with this right now.
“Okay, we’ll just have to deal with that later. We need to find a way out of here and get back to the tower.” Dick took a look at the chains. “Um, Canary, why haven’t you TK blasted these yet?” The chains were sturdy, but Dick had seen how devastating the teen’s mental powers were firsthand.
Dinah looked vaguely embarrassed. “I tried. As soon as I woke up, the Monk was here and he did something weird with his eyes, kinda like Quinn. He was talking to me, but I don’t remember what he said. After he left, I tried, but I can’t seem to use my powers.”
Things just kept getting worse. He was trying to get the hang of working with a team again, but he hadn’t signed on to deal with two defenseless teenagers.
Without a word he fished in his belt and pulled out a set of lock picks and went to work on the shackles. Minutes later, as the last one fell off and Dinah began rubbing her wrists, trying to restore circulation; Dick was ready with a plan.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going . . .”
The sound of splintering wood filled the basement, followed by heavy footsteps on the stairs.
That was the problem with plans; they never seemed to go according to plan.
Positioning his body in front of the two teens, he prepared to protect them for as long as he was able.
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