Eighth Thor/Being Human Crossover: Chapter Fifty-Seven

[coneycat_fic]

Notes: I've looked up schedules for the various relevant Underground lines, but for purposes of the story we're ignoring that. I'll take it up with the train driver's union at a later date.

Warnings: In case we need some.


Chapter Fifty-Seven

In the end it was Annie, Loki, and Scamp who travelled to Whitechapel by tube. Clint remembered the car at the last minute and the friends agreed they might need it again. Mitchell, who of course knew the city, accompanied Clint to act as navigator. George joined them, since he had no idea how to find the entrance to the vampires' bomb shelter and felt Annie and Loki (and Scamp) would travel more easily without him.

They briefly considered whether the whole group should go together by car, but the small possibility of being held up by traffic-- or ambush by vampires-- made them decide splitting up was in this case the best plan. If something happened to one group, the others could carry on.

Although he made sincere efforts to follow the laws and customs of his adopted home, in this instance Loki felt almost justified in his decision to apply a little judicious magic to the matter of getting onto the platform to catch the appropriate train. There was no Underground in Bristol and he found the whole business of tickets and turnstiles confusing. Besides in order to get the dog on the train it was necessary either for Annie to make use of her power of invisibility-- apparently owing to the strong connection between the two, Scamp's visibility was linked to Annie's-- or for Loki to place a glamour over all of them. They chose the second option.

At this hour the train was nearly deserted, as was the station when they arrived. Annie led the way from the platform to the station, where they proposed to wait for the others so that Mitchell could direct them to the entrance of the shelter.

This was the plan, which they fully intended to follow. However, as they emerged from the station, still wrapped in the glamour to wait outside for the others, Scamp pricked her ears and began to growl.

The little dog was uniformly friendly to humans, which was probably influenced in equal part by her own personality and by the fact that, as a Church Grim, she was bound to protect humans from supernatural threats. Loki was not blind to the irony of her state, since she had become a Grim in the first place as the result of an act of cruelty by human agents. Those humans and their superstitions had of course been dead for centuries, so by now the humans Scamp encountered were truly deserving of her protection. The point, of course, was that Scamp was not growling at a human. There had to be supernatural creatures nearby, and they must be up to no good.

Annie crouched to lay a hand on Scamp's back, which the dog fortunately seemed to take as both reassurance and restraint. The growling subsided and she did not change shape, though-- after a quick glance and wriggle toward Annie-- her ears and tail remained alert. Meanwhile, both Annie and Loki looked around to see who or what she was reacting to.

A man and woman were approaching the station, both of them dressed as if they were bound for their jobs in some office. Had it been some three hours later, they would have been inconspicuous commuters. However, at this time of night the only people abroad were likelier to be employed at cleaning or guarding those offices than… whatever mysterious functions men and women like Pepper Potts performed in the world of "business."

This would have been a minor anomaly, had it not been for Scamp's obvious hostility. Whatever the pair were, they were not human. Under the circumstances Loki felt justified in assuming they were vampires. He glanced at Annie, who stood up with Scamp in her arms, and both of them stepped back into the station as the man and woman entered.

There happened to be no one else in the station at this moment, but if there had been Loki suspected the man and woman would still have gone unremarked: he was aware of a sort of push from the two of them. It was an almost physical power, one whose general signature he recognized from his experience reviving Ivan and which seemed intended to direct the attention of passersby away from the vampires. Mitchell had never displayed or mentioned possessing such an ability, which surely by now he would have done. Therefore, tentatively, Loki concluded this might be one of the additional powers developed by Old Ones.

It was certainly impressive: had Loki not possessed considerable powers of his own, he would surely have walked right past the two without noticing them at all. It was an unnerving reminder both of the strength of this foe, and of the fact his own powers were still recovering from both his experiences in the other reality and also the Smaug incident.

Well, as the humans would say, there was nothing else for it, he must carry on. He glanced over at Annie, to see how she the vampires were affecting her. She looked anxious and curious, but not at all as though she was fighting off mind altering powers.

There was not time to stop and ponder that idea, and besides it took most of his concentration to maintain focus on the vampires. Annie crept forward, one hand firmly around Scamp's muzzle to emphasize the idea of remaining quiet, and Loki followed her. The vampires gave no sign of noticing them or the glamour, which was encouraging. In Loki's experience, Midgardian supernatural beings recognized one another, but only witches seemed able to recognize Loki as a sorcerer. He had worried the Old Ones' extra powers might include the ability to sense his magic.

The woman stepped forward and opened what Loki had assumed was the door to a storage closet. And indeed it was a door to a storage closet, but the woman pressed some hidden latch and a second door opened in the back wall. She passed through it, and the male vampire closed the outer door before, presumably, following.

Annie turned to Loki. "I'll go after them," she whispered. "You wait here for the others."

And then she was bundling Scamp into his arms and vanishing through the door of the storage closet.

~oOo~

One thing about vampires that you'd never know from living with Mitchell: even when they believed they were alone, they moved really bloody quietly. Annie thought of Mitchell clattering down the stairs of the pink house and wondered how much practice it had taken for him to learn to move so carelessly, as though at ease in their home.

The thought it might be an act, or at least had been one in the beginning, gave Annie a little twist of guilt in her heart. In the early days of the household they three had all been so busy coping with their own problems and anxieties and guilt and grief that they had very little energy left to consider each other's burdens, and their own had been mostly carried alone.

Which, she supposed, was ironic since the whole point of the house was so they wouldn't be alone, but in the early days togetherness had been more of an illusion than any of them wanted to admit. They had wanted the family, but hadn't really known how to go about creating it.

The illusion hadn't been perfect, but it had felt nice. And it had certainly fooled Loki, when he crashed into their dustbins. It occurred to Annie that everyone who lived in the pink house had been building toward some sort of crisis, which in Mitchell's-- and maybe George's-- case could have been catastrophic to a lot of innocent bystanders. Loki, when he arrived, had still been experiencing the aftermath of his own crisis (and the accompanying catastrophe to the innocent.) He'd lost everything, including his layers of protection-- Annie was very glad she hadn't seen the defensive shell until after she'd learned what he kept hidden behind it-- and had, for those first weeks, just been himself. Or at least whatever was left of himself just then.

It was probably the first time since Annie moved into the pink house that anyone who lived there had been completely honest about anything. Which was pretty ironic when you considered the whole God of Lies thing, but it seemed as if helping Loki deal with his… issues… had in some ways helped them all at least acknowledge their own. It was as if they'd needed for someone to go first.

None of which Annie normally thought about very much, but at the moment, creeping down the rusty iron stairwell in total darkness, she felt a sudden rush of gratitude that it wasn't Mitchell up there in front of her. That he had gotten away from the other vampires and found something else to… to really belong to.

And then, far down below in the darkness, she saw the glow of a tiny point of light. Annie froze on the stairs, automatically crouching down before remembering she was invisible. Really invisible, not just to humans the way she'd been in the early days: when she'd used this new power in Doom's castle, neither he nor Wyndham had been able to see her. Of course, even if these two spotted her it wasn't like they could do very much to her, not already dead as she was. But she didn't want to alert them to the fact someone was onto them. And she certainly didn't want them to mind-control her and make her use her poltergeist powers against her friends.

Carefully straightening, Annie put out an automatic hand for the guardrail and continued on her careful way down the stairwell. When she reached the bottom she found herself in a sort of entryway, where a steel door stood open, leading into the actual bomb shelter. Keeping close to the walls, Annie sidled through the open doorway and into the space beyond it, where the light was.

At first, all she could see was the point of light, far away to her right as she peered into the shelter. In common with her friends, Annie had excellent night vision, and before long her eyes adjusted. She found herself looking down a long tunnel, about the same size and shape as what was visible of an Underground tunnel when you stood on the platform. She supposed this made sense: if the other deep-level shelters were originally intended to be incorporated into express lines after the war, then they would have been built on the same plan as existing tunnels. The vampire bomb shelter had never been intended as anything except a bomb shelter for vampires, but it made sense that the builders had just done the same thing here.

Annie chose not to think too hard about exactly how this construction had been kept secret. It did cross her mind the rubble left behind after an air raid would have been an excellent place to conceal a few extra bodies.

As far as she could tell the bomb shelter/meeting room was a long and fairly narrow tunnel, like a giant pipe split lengthwise. As she looked along the pipe she could see chairs outlined against the glow from what looked to be a camping lantern, and a few metal-framed bunks. There were some other indeterminate shapes that might have been more furniture or cabinets, it was hard to tell. It was a particularly comfortable space, but she supposed the vampires didn't use this secret clubhouse very often. Still, it would be a handy thing to have when they really needed it.

There was the faintest of sounds from above, a tiny creak from the old metal staircase. Annie darted forward a few steps, then ducked down again between two of the old bunks, so she felt screened from both the vampires with the lantern and those coming to join them. Invisible or not, Annie couldn't overcome the instinct to hide from these creatures.

I'm already dead, I'm already dead, she chanted in her mind, holding onto the sensation of being invisible and fighting against the urge to rent-a-ghost back upstairs to Loki.

Annie had scarcely been able to hear the sound from the staircase, but the two vampires looked around sharply. Their sense of hearing was as sharp as their night vision. Or maybe, Annie thought uncomfortably, they could smell the other vampires. The woman stepped forward and was waiting when a small group came through the open steel door. Annie counted five of them, three men and two women, all of them dressed for a business meeting.

Which, she supposed, was exactly what they were planning to attend.

As they walked past her hiding place Annie looked hard for Seth, the only Bristol vampire she thought she would recognize and who she supposed would be part of the… welcoming committee. None of the men looked familiar to her.

It turned out Annie wasn't the only person wondering about that.

"Where are they?" demanded the woman who had been in the first pair to arrive.

"There's no sign of them," replied one of the newcomers, the oldest-looking of the men.

The woman cursed quietly and turned to her male companion. "Has Wyndham been in touch with you yet?"

The man reached into his pocket and drew out a mobile. Almost involuntarily, Annie leaned forward as he consulted it. "Nothing."

"Give him a little longer," counselled another of the newcomers, one of the women. There was some muttering, but the arrival of three more vampires distracted them.

Annie sat cross-legged in her hiding place, listening while the vampires talked. She had expected to gather intelligence about their plans, but now it seemed their plans were going wrong. Obviously she was pleased about that, but as long as she was the official spy for their group, she wanted to find out everything she could.

She also cast her eyes around the room, looking at the bunks and other furniture, as a plan began to form in her mind. Meanwhile another group of vampires came in, so there were about a dozen well-dressed vampires standing around waiting for something. Annie wondered what, but she didn't have to wonder for long.

"They're not coming," one of the male vampires said, glancing down at the mobile in his hand-- Annie couldn't tell if he was checking the time, or for messages. Probably the time, given his next words: "The tube stopped running fifteen minutes ago. If they were coming, they'd be here by now. Something's wrong."

"Either Wyndham's betrayed us or something's happened," one of the women spoke up.

"If something happened, Wyndham should have let one of us know," was the reply, almost in a growl, from another of the men. Annie was glad she was already dead, and even gladder she wasn't Wyndham. The mood in the shelter was getting uglier by the minute, a nasty combination of anger, hunger, and fear. The fear confused Annie a little-- what did vampires this powerful have to be afraid of?

"What are we going to tell Mr. Snow?" someone asked, in a tone that immediately explained the fear. Whoever Mr. Snow was, it seemed like a very good idea to make sure nobody told him anything.

Annie came to a decision and rent-a-ghosted back up to the pavement outside the station.

Loki's glamours didn't fool Annie at all-- apparently you needed to be alive, or maybe have a corporeal form, for the trick to work on you. Or maybe Loki was really specific about his spells and left a loophole for his friends. Or, well, Annie. Regardless, as she landed on the pavement she looked around for Loki and spotted him at once, standing back in a doorway with the boys, Scamp, and Clint. Annie dashed up to them, close enough to be inside whatever glamour surrounded them, and let go of her own invisibility.

And, okay, it was wrong of her, but she enjoyed the little jump of surprise that Clint couldn't quite suppress. Even so, she kept to the point:

"The Old Ones are down there and it looks like something's gone wrong with their plans. They expected someone-- the Bristol vampires, I guess, or anyway their leaders-- and Wyndham to be here by now, and they aren't."

"No," Mitchell agreed. "We've noticed that. I didn't recognize any of the vampires who went down the shelter."

"So they think he's double-crossed them," said Annie. "Wyndham. And they're afraid to tell Mr. Snow. So whoever Mr. Snow is, he must be the boss."

"Yes," Loki agreed. "I am sorry, Annie, he was discussed while you were in Latveria."

"Okay, so I think this is all the Old Ones who are coming, apart from Mr. Snow," Annie said rapidly, "and I have a plan to trap them. Loki, come with me."

"What are the chances I could take them down before they get out of the shelter?" Clint asked.

"Zero," Mitchell replied sharply. "I could mind-control you, remember? You might be able to take out one or two of them before they overpowered you but that's about all."

Clint looked unconvinced, and Loki spoke quickly:

"Truly, Clint, we cannot spare you. And besides, I believe human history is filled with crimes committed in the name of martyrs, and I do not speak of you: there may be other Old Ones, and it is nearly certain the rest of the vampires would avenge their fallen comrades, if only out of viciousness. Annie, what is your plan?"

"For you to come with me, now," Annie replied forcefully. There was no time to waste. Loki blinked in surprise, but obediently followed her, Scamp scurrying ahead of him to attach herself to Annie's side.

As they stepped through the door of the storage closet-- which should have been locked, but Annie wasn't surprised when the door immediately opened for Loki-- she said apologetically, "I'm sorry I spoke to you like that. We need to get down to the shelter fast, before they decide to go do something terrible."

"It is no matter," Loki assured her, his tone perfectly natural, and fortunately neither the slightly stiff nor elaborately casual ones that meant his feelings were hurt. Annie didn't want to hurt his feelings at any time, but just now they really didn't have time for a misunderstanding. "And then what shall we do?"

Annie grabbed his hand and led the way toward the stairs, talking as fast as she could.

~oOo~

There was scant need to place a glamour upon Annie, of course, since she could become invisible to the eyes of both vampires and Loki if she wished. This had always been an ability of her, however until just now she had little real control over it: in the past she had done it once or twice when in a panic, but now it had clearly become a genuine tactical skill.

At the moment, however, it seemed most useful for her to accompany him and explain her plan while they were in the stairwell. Her idea struck him as admirable in its simplicity, which he knew was not always a virtue of his own schemes.

They arrived at the bottom of the stairs to find the door still opened inward to the shelter. Infected by Annie's possibly-excessive caution, Loki edged around the doorjamb and peered inside.

At the far end of the shelter, the vampires were still murmuring among themselves, but Loki had the impression they were coming to a conclusion, and would soon wish to leave the shelter. Given the mood of anger and frustration he could sense in their voices, Loki shuddered to think what they might then do to relieve their feelings.

Between the cluster of vampires and the door, Loki could see outlined the furnishings described by Annie, the iron bunks and moldering chairs. Loki gathered the glamour more tightly around himself and Annie like a cloak of invisibility, and the two crept forward to investigate. Groping silently in the darkness Loki found the bunks, at least, appeared to be fastened to the floor by means of heavy bolts. These, however, were so rusted they seemed to be almost ready to crumble away entirely-- a determined human of ordinary strength probably could have broken them loose, though it would have taken some considerable effort to move them.

Annie's plan naturally had nothing to do with humans whether of ordinary strength or otherwise. He reached toward the furnishings with his magic-- and felt, alongside it, the brush of Annie's poltergeist power. It was a surprisingly intimate feeling, although this was hardly the time to think about that.

Loki felt his and Annie's powers wrap themselves around the heavy iron bedsteads, then the chairs-- he glanced at her, nodded once, and both of them--

--pulled.

At the corner of his vision he was briefly aware of the vampires' reactions of surprise and alarm as the furnishings rose in the air. Then he and Annie were mutually focused on the steel door slamming and the furniture piling in front of it. Annie's power retreated as Loki's fused the furnishings together and with the door, in a red-hot tangle that turned the surviving moldered cushions into a smoky mess. Loki, holding his breath, reminded himself the vampires did not need to breathe and so the fumes could do them little harm. Their businesswear would doubtless require the services of a dry cleaner to remove the smell, but this concerned him little.

"Mobiles," Annie was saying into his ear, and Loki let go of the furniture in favour of sending a bolt of magic through the vampires themselves. This did not especially harm the vampires, but it drew the charge from of the batteries in their mobile phones, rendering the devices useless.

Loki reached out and felt Annie catch hold of his hand. In the next moment, both of them were taking what felt like a giant step--

-- to emerge on the pavement beside their friends. This time Clint did a better job of suppressing his start when they appeared.

"What's happening?" he asked. Loki glanced at Annie, who explained,

"We've barricaded them inside the shelter. I expect they'll dig themselves out eventually, but for now they're one less thing to worry about."

Mitchell looked torn between skepticism and hope. Loki, who knew very well the feeling of being unable to trust in the news one most wished to hear, added,

"We have also disabled their mobiles, so they will be unable to call for assistance. We should therefore, I think, turn our attention to stopping the other vampires' next move."

"Based on the plans, that'll be Parliament," Clint noted. Loki felt his head go up and his shoulders square.

"Then that is where we will begin."

~0~

The Palace of Westminster was never completely dark or entirely deserted. A special branch of the Metropolitan Police was dedicated to its security, backed up when necessary by another, heavily-armed, force. This second force was of little concern to the vampires, since they didn't routinely carry stakes or guns loaded with wooden bullets.

The first one, though--

Well, to be honest, they were of more concern to Geoff than to most of the others, because in addition to closed-circuit television, the Palace was protected by foot patrols throughout the night. Seth, either showing unexpected common sense or under orders, had instructed the vampires not to kill the human guards. This was for strictly tactical reasons: the vampires wouldn't show up on CCTV, but corpses and blood trails would certainly be visible, and when the Members of Parliament arrived in the morning a scene of gory mayhem would certainly frighten them away before anyone could mind-control anybody.

Geoff certainly hoped the rest of the Bristol vampires had the common sense to obey orders. His own best chance of escaping with his life was by throwing in his lot with the Avengers, and protecting human lives was his best chance of convincing the Avengers to accept him as an ally. If he were smarter or more powerful he supposed he might try to work an angle to his own advantage after that, but Geoff was a realist, and just about smart enough to know his own limitations.

He was no Mitchell, sentimental about humans but strong and tough enough to command (reluctant) respect within the vampire community. Also unlike Mitchell he had no real desire to break with the rest of the vampires, so he was going to need to play this carefully, whatever role he chose.

A role suggested itself as the train pulled into Paddington Station: keeping watch over Cara, who'd spent most of the journey muttering rebelliously about Seth getting above himself. Geoff eventually gave up on reminding her their orders were from much higher up, or that, as soon as they had the humans securely under control, they'd surely be given the go-ahead to commit all the mayhem their black hearts desired. The only way to keep her under control was to stay at her elbow, and as little as he cared for the assignment, at least he could tell the Avengers he'd directly protected humans from her. Even if it didn't endear him to the superheroes, maybe Ivan would… well. Something.

As they stepped onto the platform at Paddington, Seth emerged from the shadows-- he was the kind of creepy bastard who could always find a shadow somewhere-- and walked toward them. Geoff resisted the urge to look around for the others, since obviously they weren't going to be gathering like kids on a school trip. He stood his ground as Seth oozed up to them.

"Change of plans," Seth announced, with one of his oily smiles. "We're not going to rendezvous with the Old Ones after all."

Being dead, Geoff didn't have much in the way of blood, but what he had ran cold. This sounded like double-crossing. The Old Ones. Double-crossing the Old Ones. His fear of the Avengers disappeared under a far more concentrated wave of fear of the Old Ones.

"What's happened?" Cara demanded, her eyes narrowing.

"Mr. Wyndham is taking direct control of this action," Seth explained. "There's no need of any other leadership. We'll simply report on our successes afterward."

So Wyndham can take all the credit, Geoff thought. Or all the blame, if it came to that, but this was how someone like Wyndham differed from someone like Geoff: Wyndham would think the risk worth it.

"So that means we're going directly to Parliament?" Geoff asked, trying to sound cool. Seth nodded, already looking up and down the platform for anyone else he might need to intercept.

"And where is Wyndham, then?" Cara demanded. Geoff experienced a flash of gratitude to her for asking the question so he didn't have to: from him, it might have sounded a bit suspicious, what with Geoff ordinarily being the sort who did what he was told. Cara questioned everything Seth ever did, of course she'd question this as well.

Seth glared at her, but it actually wasn't an unreasonable question, and Geoff decided to back her by looking curious as well.

"He'll meet us… after," Seth explained.

Cara snorted. Honestly, the mad cow was just asking for Seth to turn on her.

"Letting the rest of us take all the risks, is he?" she demanded.

Actually, now she said it…

Seth sneered. "No. He's making certain we secure the Prime Minister, so he's on his way to Downing Street personally."

It took an effort to keep his expression neutral. "The Prime Minister? I thought we were going to take him at Parliament, I didn't see the plans for Downing Street-- "

"Doesn't need them," Seth gloated. "He's been there before, and he knows his way around. Now, come on. We've no time to waste."

"I need the loo first," Geoff muttered. Seth glared, then looked at Cara.

"You two stay together," he ordered. Cara looked like arguing, but since she obviously didn't trust Geoff any more than her trusted her, she nodded.

"Scared?' she jeered.

Geoff ignored her, although in truth that was part of the reason for his detour.

That, and he thought this change of plan warranted a message to Ivan.