Nightfall, Again!
RE Current Music: Oh, what?? It's a haunting theme!!
Anywho, here's some more Nightfall for you guys...plus an added bonus, courtesy of my bestest buddy in the whole world, Lauren! She drew a piccie!
See the hand? Guess who the hand belongs to? Hee...
Her other DiNozzo drawing that I posted can be found here.
Now, for Nightfall part 11...
It was much later when Kate finally got up again, hours later. She’d laid there on the ground crying until her eyes had gone dry. Then she’d just stayed there, shaking, struggling to breathe. She’d wanted to be sick. She’d wanted to scream. But in the end, all she could do was cry, sobbing and whimpering until her tears had finally run out. She’d have thought they would have run out over a year ago, that she would have had no more tears left for this. But she was wrong.
Some wounds bled even worse when they were reopened then they had the first time around.
Shaking, Kate eased herself so up so she was kneeling on the cobblestones, hugging her upper body with her arms wrapped tight. To her surprise, Tony was still there. She had thought he would have left hours ago, when he turned his back on her ad started to walk away. Maybe any other time, it would have bothered her that he had been there to witness her crying, but right now she was too numb to care. She felt like she had been through a natural disaster and come out the other side; she’d been destroyed, and there was no room left in her tangled emotions for her to give a damn who was there to witness it.
Tony had moved away from the koi pond and over to the edge of the courtyard, tucked away under the safety of the awning, where the night shadows were the thickest. He was sitting on the ground with his legs pulled up close in front of him, his arms wrapped tightly around his knees. His head was hanging down, hidden from view. Kate had an awful feeling that he might have been doing some crying of his own. She wasn’t really sure how likely a possibility that seemed anymore. She certainly never would have thought of a vampire crying.
She typically wouldn’t have thought of Tony crying either, but then there had been that one time his car had gotten totaled.
Kate just didn’t know what to think anymore. Part of her was still convinced that it was all just some sick game, that Tony was gone and all that remained was a withered husk driven solely by blood and scattered memories. Part of her knew he was a monster, a killer, something that could never be reconciled with the person she had once known. Part of her truly believed that he was damned, soulless, a creature condemned to Hell, and that that was all that mattered in the long run. But the rest of her…she didn’t know. She just didn’t know. And she honestly wasn’t sure what part of her it would be easier to side with.
If she had been a more devoutly religious person, she would have been able to comfort herself with the knowledge that this was just a test of her faith. She would have been able to firmly believe that it was all a trick of the Devil, an attempt to pull her from the path of righteousness. She could have found strength in her God and her beliefs, and she could have persevered. But Kate had never been only about her faith. She had lived life knowing that not everything boiled down to religion. Not everything was because of the Devil or God; some problems developed all on their own.
If only this hadn’t been one of them.
The stars were starting to fade from the heavens. The partial moon was setting, getting ever lower in the sky. The pitch-blackness of night had started to retreat in favor of a softer gray that was tinted at the very edges by the beginning shades of dawn. The sun would soon be rising; two hours, three tops.
“Cassidy has to be coming back soon, right?” Kate finally spoke, her voice coming out husky and weak.
“She would have been home by now, if she was coming back today,” Tony replied softly. “Either her business kept her late and she’s spending the day elsewhere, or she ran into trouble. And I really doubt it’s the second one.”
“Why?”
“This is old America,” Tony lifted his head to look at her. “It pretty much belongs to us. No one comes here looking to make trouble with a vampire, at least no one strong enough to give Cassidy any problems.” Dark circles were starting to form under his eyes. Where before the paleness of skin had made him look ethereal, now he just looked sick and wan. Every faint line that had had a chance to start forming on his face before he died looked especially deep. He was fading, his energy draining out of him in front of Kate’s eyes. She was willing to bet it was because of the closer-growing sunrise.
“You look like hell,” Kate said before she could stop herself.
“Bet I look like a million bucks compared to you,” Tony retorted, a very weak smile starting to tug at one corner of his mouth.
“Yeah right,” Kate snorted, not even sure where the hell her own faint grin was starting to come from. “We’ll have to get a mirror and compare.” Tony smile abruptly vanished, rapidly turning into the start of a frown.
“I’ll just take your word for it,” he said quietly, and Kate remembered far too late that he didn’t have a reflection anymore.
“I…” Kate started to speak, not sure what she was going to say. Was it going to be an apology, an “I’m sorry”? For what, exactly? Right now, she felt there were just too many things she could potentially offer an apology for.
“You’re bleeding,” Tony cut her off suddenly, like he’d known what she was going to say and couldn’t bear to hear it. Kate blinked slowly, and then looked down at her knees. He was right; blood was starting to trickle faintly from where she’d skinned her right knee. Her left knee and palms were scraped and stinging as well, but they weren’t bleeding. Yet.
It slowly dawned on Kate just how seriously bad it could be for her to be sitting there with an open wound, less than ten feet away from a vampire who looked to be in a state where his self-control was already being sorely tested.
“I should probably do something about this,” Kate stated, keeping her eyes on her knee because she didn’t dare to see what the expression on Tony’s face might look like.
“There’s a first-aid kit around here somewhere,” Tony muttered, and Kate finally looked up. He wasn’t looking at her knee, but he wasn’t meeting her eyes either. He appeared to be staring off into the general space that she was currently occupying. “I don’t know how good it’ll be for a little scrape, though. We only need it for the big stuff, and it’s not like we have to stock disinfectant…”
“I think Ducky usually carries a kit of his own with him,” Kate reminded him.
“Right,” Tony braced himself against the wall with one hand, pausing to partially brush himself off before coming towards her. Kate stiffened, her pulse rising again. She knew Tony was trying to help her (or at least it certainly seemed that way), but she couldn’t help the way she instinctively reacted with fear to having him that close to her. Tony seemed to be politely ignoring it, since he had already proven earlier that he could easily tell when she was scared. “Come on,” he bent slightly, offering her a hand. Kate tried to swallow her fear as she timidly took his hand, and he easily lifted her to her feet.
“The last I saw Ducky, he was in the dining room,” Kate told him as they made their way back inside and started walking through the house. Her heart refused to stop pounding, and she was having no success as she tried to ignore how Tony’s hand was icy cold in her grasp.
“I can find him,” Tony mumbled, and Kate looked over to see his eyes half-closed in concentration. “Sounds like he’s moved over to the main lobby. Sounds like everyone has, as a matter of fact.”
“You can hear them,” Kate didn’t so much ask as realize out loud.
“Uh huh,” Tony absently brushed a heavy set of drapes out of his way as he moved through the corridor, keeping Kate close to him. “There’s nothing quite as distinct as a heartbeat for tracking someone down.” He cocked his head slightly, listening. “Sounds like McGee’s is running a little fast. Abby’s is too, for that matter. Excitement does that. So does fear. Ducky’s is a little weak, but that’s probably just his age. Gibbs’ is…” Tony blinked. “Steady enough to set a watch by. Why am I not surprised?”
They passed by a small doorframe sided by white columns on either side, one that Kate couldn’t recall seeing before. The room beyond the doorframe was pitch-black, making it impossible to tell what was inside.
“What’s in there?” Kate asked, mainly looking for something to distract from the creepy knowledge that was Tony tracking down the others by the sound of their heartbeats.
“Portrait gallery,” Tony barely gave the room a flicker of a glance before looking away dismissively.
“Portrait gallery?” Kate repeated, startled. “Portraits of who?”
“Well, there are the ones of Cassidy herself, obviously. You know, a couple different ones, through the ages. There’s a few of Lord Saris, her sire, and there’s even one that has Macha, his sire. And there’s a bunch of my blood-siblings; Hildemere, Tyro, Ivana, Sophie, Gwendolyn…”
“And you?” Kate interjected softly.
“Yeah, there’s one of me,” Tony replied, his expression unreadable. Kate wanted to ask what he was thinking, but she doubted he would be willing to tell her. “Here we go,” Tony announced, and Kate realized that they had reached the large room with the hardwood floor and the black and white furniture. Sure enough, all the others were already there. Ducky was lying down on one of the sofas, Gibbs and McGee each had a chair, and Abby was sitting on the floor with her back against the steps.
“Kate,” McGee stood up and exclaimed, paling as soon as he realized who was next to her. Tony drifted off to one side, letting go of Kate’s hand and leaving her to not so much walk as stumble over to the others. Gibbs quickly got up and caught onto her.
“I could use a little help,” Kate tried to sound as casual as possible, pointing towards her knee. Ducky pulled his first-aid kit out of his jacket pocket and started rifling through it.
“What happened?” Gibbs demanded, staring intensely into her eyes.
“I…fell,” Kate’s voice faltered slightly, but she didn’t look away. It wasn’t quite a lie, after all.
“Or you were pushed,” Gibbs said darkly, and he looked away from her to stare very pointedly in Tony’s direction.
“Well, excuse me,” Tony responded coldly, giving Gibbs a venomous look he never would have managed back when he was still alive.
“Gibbs, he didn’t,” Kate told him frantically, tugging slightly at the front of her boss’ coat to get him to look at her. She glanced over at the others. McGee had sat back down, sinking in his chair like he was trying to disappear. Abby was giving Tony a wounded, cautious look, visibly stiffening against the steps. Ducky seemingly had his eyes glued to his kit, busying himself with a pack of band-aids and a tube of disinfectant.
“I’m going to bed,” Tony snapped, sounding heartily disgusted with them all. He walked through the hallway leading to the crypt steps and vanished, yanking the curtain closed behind him so violently that Kate could hear the cloth tear slightly. All was silent for a moment as they stared in the direction he’d gone.
“He didn’t do anything,” Kate insisted, looking at the floor. Gibbs didn’t say anything, maintaining a stoic silence as he helped her over to the couch and got her seated next to Ducky.
“This might sting a bit,” the coroner told her as he prepared to swab her injury with the disinfectant. Kate nodded stiffly, balling her hands into fists on the cushion to either side of her as Ducky patched her up.
“You don’t look so good, Kate,” Gibbs said pointedly, kneeling beside her and giving her the look she had hoped to never be on the receiving end of, the one he used on suspects in interrogation. She didn’t say anything, but she looked straight into his eyes evenly and didn’t blink.
“Tony wasn’t looking so hot either,” McGee observed nervously.
“It’s the sun,” Kate muttered, finally dropping her gaze into her lap. “He got weaker as it started getting closer to sunrise.” Things got quiet. Ducky closed his kit with a snap that seemed unnaturally loud in the silence.
“He didn’t do anything to you?” Gibbs finally spoke again, watching Kate carefully as he re-launched his line of questioning. “He didn’t hurt you? He didn’t try to…drink you?”
“No,” Kate stared at her hands, clenched tightly in her lap. “He scared me. He got mad at me. But he didn’t do anything else.” In her head, she was replaying Tony grabbing her and shoving her up against the wall. She was hearing his angry words echo in her brain over and over. But damned if she was going to tell Gibbs and the others about all of that. The things Tony had said to her…Kate didn’t think she could say them out loud even if she had wanted to. All his talk about what it was like being a vampire, what it had been like to die…
“How do we know he didn’t…make her say that?” McGee cleared his throat awkwardly. The others all turned to look at him. “I mean, Cassidy made us fall asleep…”
“I don’t think he can,” Kate protested. Gibbs looked at her, and this time she managed to keep steady with his gaze. “The whole time we were talking, he never tried to read my mind or anything. And he said something about how Cassidy can do things he can’t, because she’s older. Stronger.”
“So DiNozzo’s still a junior vampire,” Gibbs said thoughtfully. “Makes about as much sense as anything else does right now.”
“He actually talked to you?” Abby spoke up, looking at Kate. She was frowning, looking hurt.
“Yes…” Kate replied slowly, wondering what Abby’s deal was. “Why?”
“I ran into him earlier, and he wouldn’t talk to me,” Abby scowled. “He completely blew me off.”
“Be glad,” Kate told her, feeling another shiver coming on. “It wasn’t exactly a pleasant conversation.”
“He say anything else to you?” Gibbs pressed, all business as usual.
“Not really,” Kate fibbed. “Not unless you’re interested in knowing where the family portraits are kept.”
“Family portraits?” McGee gave her a disbelieving look.
“Apparently, Cassidy has quite the collection,” Kate expanded. “I guess there’re paintings of her, the vampire that made her, the vampires she’s made…”
“And you know where this is?” Gibbs asked. Kate nodded. “Well then,” Gibbs got to his feet, his facial expression sliding back into unreadable territory, “let’s go have ourselves a look.”
_________
Tony stood with his hands resting on top of his casket, eyes closed as he tried to pull himself together. Tomorrow night Cassidy would probably come back, already in a subtly bad mood from having been kept through the day by whoever she was talking to. And what was he going to have to offer her? He was no closer to getting the others to understand that they had to stay quiet about this than he had been before she’d left. He hadn’t had much of a conversation with Abby, and the one with Kate hadn’t gone so well. The others hadn’t even spoken to him, save for a brief accusation by Gibbs.
It didn’t matter that Cassidy might well not be expecting anything yet. There was always the chance that she had been, that his failure would disappoint her, among other things. And Cassidy was someone you actively endeavored not to disappoint. Better to give her something where nothing was expected, stay one step ahead of her. Sometimes, you got the rare reward of surprising her, impressing her. Impressing Cassidy was something Tony strove for, as hard a task as it was.
Not unlike how he’d actively strove to impress a certain other person in a position of authority over him, not long ago.
“Dammit,” Tony swore, curling one hand into a fist and pounding angrily on the lid of his coffin. It was just no use. With every passing second he tried to fight the pull into his typical daytime coma, he just got worse and worse. There was no way he was going to be able to stay awake and mentally with it long enough to try and do anything further to fix this fiasco, no matter how much he wanted to. The mind was willing, but the body was weak.
Shaking his head in disgust, Tony stood back and flipped the lid to his coffin open. Exhausted, he crawled inside, pulling it closed after him. He lay back, closed his eyes and tried to arrange himself comfortably. It wasn’t really that different from a bed, really, once you got past the whole “locked in a dark box” thing.
Of course, he recalled as he felt himself slipping over into the world of blissful sleep, he hadn’t always seen it that way…
_________
“No freaking way.”
Tony stared with wide eyes at the casket that he was told he was going to have to spend the day in, and he wondered once again tonight if there was a chance he had woken up in Hell.
“Such ungratefulness,” the female vampire scoffed lightly from where she sat on the table beside it, legs crossed. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get a casket of this quality, fit to order, in the space of one day? Consider yourself lucky that I’m not making you sleep in a packing crate.”
“I’m not doing it,” Tony insisted, taking a shaky step back and trying unsuccessfully to swallow the cold fear out of his throat. “You can’t make me.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t have much desire to argue that point if I were you,” the vampire chuckled softly, swinging her one foot back and forth absently.
“You can’t make me,” Tony repeated, gritting his teeth and trying to resist the urge to start sobbing in desperation. Why was this happening to him? What in God’s name had he ever done to earn himself this? “I won’t,” his voice trembled as he spoke, and he clutched his hands to the side of his face, trying to keep it together even as his life was deteriorating to shreds right in front of his eyes. “I won’t.”
“That’s not the first time you’ve said that tonight, Antony,” she reminded him flatly, eyes half-closed and a very cold expression on her face. “That’s what you said when I ordered you to feed, remember?”
“N-no…” Tony squeezed his eyes shut in pain as the all-too fresh memory resurged. The vampire had virtually dragged him all the way to what was most definitely the bad side of town, ignoring his cries the entire way as he told her again and again that she was wrong, she couldn’t make him do this, he would never do it, never…
Two thugs had been lying in wait at the edge of a shadowy alley, waiting for someone careless to walk by close enough to get jumped and mugged. Boy, were they surprised when the clearing of a throat alerted them to the fact that two people had just appeared behind them against the back wall of the alley. For a moment, the two thugs just stood there, gaping stupidly. Tony had wanted to yell at them to run, to get away, but he’d been just as frozen, if by a completely different set of fears. Finally, the two men had rushed towards them, knives out. The female vampire had gracefully stepped in front to intersect them.
She’d broken the first man’s arm as soon as he reached her, grabbing it and twisting it behind him in a single swift movement. He fell down to land face-first in the filth of the alley, screaming in pain as his arm remained bent behind him at a funny angle. The other man stopped dead, looked as if he was contemplating running, but it was far too late. The vampire grabbed him by the front of his shirt, pulling him towards her and slamming his back into the wall. She didn’t bother covering his mouth, letting him shriek as she sunk her fangs into his neck. Tony didn’t want to look, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the scene.
He watched as she restrained the man effortlessly, drinking his blood down in steady, thick gulps. The man kicked and thrashed, his head lolling to the side, but he couldn’t move her. Then, slowly, his movements diminished, his cries growing weaker, until at last he stopped moving all-together. His head hung to one side limply, his eyes frozen open in blind horror. The vampire pulled back, wiping off her mouth with a self-satisfied sound and licking the blood from her fingers. She let go of the man, leaving him to fall heavily to the ground like a sack of garbage.
“Your turn,” she announced with a ghost of a smile, looking at Tony.
“Never,” he hissed weakly, all the while trying to ignore the hunger that had been haunting him ever since he had woken up this night, the hunger that grew worse and worse by each passing second.
“I am in no mood to argue, child. If you do not feed you will only grow weaker, and the craving will grow worse. You will feed, eventually. Do not make this into any more of an ordeal that it has to be.”
“No,” Tony said as firmly as he could, backing up so that his back was pressed against the alley wall. He had nowhere to run. “No.” The vampire rolled her eyes heavenward, as if he was being difficult for no good reason.
“Fine,” she sighed. “Then we will do things the hard way.” She turned and made her way towards where the other would-be thief lay, still lying on his stomach in the mud with one arm twisted painfully over his head. As she approached, the man began screaming again, a high keening sound that seemed almost inhuman. The vampire knelt beside him, grabbing his head by the hair and pulling it back to expose the throat. She drew her nails across the exposed skin, slicing it expertly. It wasn’t a deep enough wound to kill, but it was certainly deep enough to draw blood.
Tony stared at the dark droplets running down the man’s skin. The hunger filled his throat, pounding in his veins. He could practically see the throb of the jugular vein beneath the skin of the bleeding man; see it pulse with the ebb and flow of sweet blood. The sound of the thug’s heartbeat filled his ears, pounding like a kettledrum. He could smell the fresh blood in the air, practically taste it…
His body moved quite without his consent, and the next thing Tony knew he was on the ground beside the man, grabbing onto him, pressing his fangs against his neck, piercing the delicate skin and veins until the blood ran thick and heavy down his throat. It poured into him, hot and sweet and full of rich, warm life. He drank greedily, slurping and swallowing, not even fully registering his victim’s screams. His ears were full of the sound of the man’s heart, pounding away faster and faster in fear until it seemed fit to burst. Images rushed through Tony’s head: thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations. With the blood of the man came also his life and he was drinking in one just as surely as he did the other. The images flashed through his mind; brief, almost undecipherable flashes, too quick to fully register. All Tony had thought to spare for anyway was the blood.
All too soon it ended, however, leaving him on his knees in the dirt with a cold, dead body in his arms.
Now, hours later, Tony stood there and tried to argue once more, even all the while knowing he would eventually give in to this command as he had the other. He could still taste the faint traces of blood in his mouth, a taste that made him sick even as he hungered for more. Everything around him was too intense; his eyes, his ears, his nose were exploding in sensation overload. The clothes he was wearing, jeans and a flannel shirt, the vampire had given to him with no explanation, no word on whether she had stolen or even killed to get them. There were fangs in his mouth that he felt every time he spoke. He was so cold, and every breath he struggled to draw whenever he remembered to do so was nothing but pointless air.
He was living a nightmare, and it didn’t look like he was going to be able to wake up.
“I’m not doing it,” Tony argued, whimpering. “I’m not sleeping in a coffin.”
“It will be most amusing to see what happens when you try to forgo one,” the vampire said bluntly. “The sun will turn you into ash within a matter of seconds.” She rested her hands neatly on top of her knee. “And I daresay it will hurt quite a bit.”
“No…” Tony took a few slow steps backward, away from her, shaking his head numbly. “No, no, no…”
“Antony, you are being ridiculous-”
“Stop calling me Antony!” Tony screamed, putting his hands over his head. “My name is not Antony!” His voice broke, lowering to trembling murmur that rapidly rose back up to another scream. “My name is Anthony DiNozzo. Everyone calls me Tony. No one. Has ever. Called me Antony!” There was a long and deathly pause. The vampire stared straight at him, her face mostly blank but something glinting dangerously bright in the back of her cold yellow eyes. Tony knew that look. It was the look Gibbs gave you when he was thinking about shooting your fool ass.
“You will learn to respect me with time, and you will learn that to disagree with me is a very dangerous thing indeed,” she told him softly. “For now, I’m willing to forgive you for the sake of your youth and ignorance. But my patience wears thin. Get in the coffin.”
“I won’t.”
“Must I hurt you to show who is in control here?” she snapped, anger spreading rapidly across the pale, elegant features of her face. Tony cringed, shrinking backward, but he still stubbornly held his ground. The vampire hissed audibly, gripping the table to either side of her as she leaned forward. Suddenly, she stopped, glancing over at where the sky was visible through the one tiny window of the cellar they were currently in. “Never mind,” she announced, emotion dissolving back into a perfect calm. “Your own nature will learn you soon enough.”
“Wh-what?” But even as he spoke, Tony could feel himself growing weaker. His energy was draining out of him by the second, leaving him launching a fight with waves of unconsciousness that was almost painful to maintain. His legs gave out, head swimming as he sunk to the floor on his hands and knees. “What’s happening to me? What did you do?”
“It’s not me,” the vampire informed him, something like a smirk forming on her face. “It’s the rising of the sun. It will be many a year yet before you can keep yourself awake during the day like I can. Soon you will sleep. After all your experiences tonight, you must be exhausted.”
“St-stop,” Tony gasped, struggling to get up and quickly discovering he couldn’t. “Make it stop…”
“I told you, I’m not doing anything,” the vampire leaned back slightly, relaxed, as she watched him flounder with traces of faint amusement. Unable to stand, Tony tried to crawl, desperate to put as much distance between himself and her as possible. He barely made it a few inches before even that became too much of an effort. He sunk heavily to the floor, desperately fighting a losing battle to do so much as keep his eyes open.
“I really should leave you there,” the vampire remarked after a few minutes of absolute silence. “Let you sleep on the ground, consumed by the fear that someone will come across your helpless body while you lie there. Let you take the chance that the sun will fall across you and burn you alive.” There was the faint sound of her feet hitting the floor as she stood, and then an even lighter series of clicks as she walked over to stand above him. “But I won’t.” She sighed faintly. “Maybe then you will give me some of the respect I deserve, or even some gratitude. Heaven forbid.” She turned that last statement into an ironic sneer.
The vampire bent down and picked him up, cradling him in her arms as effortlessly as if he was a little boy. Tony whimpered faintly at her touch, but couldn’t do anything. He was mere moments away from falling helplessly into sleep, and he knew it. She carried him over to the casket and gently laid him down inside it. He managed to pry his eyes open for the barest fraction of a second to see her standing over him, holding the cover open as she peered down at him coolly with half-lidded yellow eyes.
“And now I must go about the task as to how to get the two of us out of here,” she said curtly. “Things will be so much easier once we get you away from your mortal home and into some different territory.” There was a pause. “Besides, I hate this city.” The last thing Tony heard was her firmly closing the lid of the casket before his mind gave over entirely to the darkness of sleep, and the muffled sound of the vampire’s voice as she drifted away.
“Pleasant dreams.”
Anywho, here's some more Nightfall for you guys...plus an added bonus, courtesy of my bestest buddy in the whole world, Lauren! She drew a piccie!
See the hand? Guess who the hand belongs to? Hee...
Her other DiNozzo drawing that I posted can be found here.
Now, for Nightfall part 11...
It was much later when Kate finally got up again, hours later. She’d laid there on the ground crying until her eyes had gone dry. Then she’d just stayed there, shaking, struggling to breathe. She’d wanted to be sick. She’d wanted to scream. But in the end, all she could do was cry, sobbing and whimpering until her tears had finally run out. She’d have thought they would have run out over a year ago, that she would have had no more tears left for this. But she was wrong.
Some wounds bled even worse when they were reopened then they had the first time around.
Shaking, Kate eased herself so up so she was kneeling on the cobblestones, hugging her upper body with her arms wrapped tight. To her surprise, Tony was still there. She had thought he would have left hours ago, when he turned his back on her ad started to walk away. Maybe any other time, it would have bothered her that he had been there to witness her crying, but right now she was too numb to care. She felt like she had been through a natural disaster and come out the other side; she’d been destroyed, and there was no room left in her tangled emotions for her to give a damn who was there to witness it.
Tony had moved away from the koi pond and over to the edge of the courtyard, tucked away under the safety of the awning, where the night shadows were the thickest. He was sitting on the ground with his legs pulled up close in front of him, his arms wrapped tightly around his knees. His head was hanging down, hidden from view. Kate had an awful feeling that he might have been doing some crying of his own. She wasn’t really sure how likely a possibility that seemed anymore. She certainly never would have thought of a vampire crying.
She typically wouldn’t have thought of Tony crying either, but then there had been that one time his car had gotten totaled.
Kate just didn’t know what to think anymore. Part of her was still convinced that it was all just some sick game, that Tony was gone and all that remained was a withered husk driven solely by blood and scattered memories. Part of her knew he was a monster, a killer, something that could never be reconciled with the person she had once known. Part of her truly believed that he was damned, soulless, a creature condemned to Hell, and that that was all that mattered in the long run. But the rest of her…she didn’t know. She just didn’t know. And she honestly wasn’t sure what part of her it would be easier to side with.
If she had been a more devoutly religious person, she would have been able to comfort herself with the knowledge that this was just a test of her faith. She would have been able to firmly believe that it was all a trick of the Devil, an attempt to pull her from the path of righteousness. She could have found strength in her God and her beliefs, and she could have persevered. But Kate had never been only about her faith. She had lived life knowing that not everything boiled down to religion. Not everything was because of the Devil or God; some problems developed all on their own.
If only this hadn’t been one of them.
The stars were starting to fade from the heavens. The partial moon was setting, getting ever lower in the sky. The pitch-blackness of night had started to retreat in favor of a softer gray that was tinted at the very edges by the beginning shades of dawn. The sun would soon be rising; two hours, three tops.
“Cassidy has to be coming back soon, right?” Kate finally spoke, her voice coming out husky and weak.
“She would have been home by now, if she was coming back today,” Tony replied softly. “Either her business kept her late and she’s spending the day elsewhere, or she ran into trouble. And I really doubt it’s the second one.”
“Why?”
“This is old America,” Tony lifted his head to look at her. “It pretty much belongs to us. No one comes here looking to make trouble with a vampire, at least no one strong enough to give Cassidy any problems.” Dark circles were starting to form under his eyes. Where before the paleness of skin had made him look ethereal, now he just looked sick and wan. Every faint line that had had a chance to start forming on his face before he died looked especially deep. He was fading, his energy draining out of him in front of Kate’s eyes. She was willing to bet it was because of the closer-growing sunrise.
“You look like hell,” Kate said before she could stop herself.
“Bet I look like a million bucks compared to you,” Tony retorted, a very weak smile starting to tug at one corner of his mouth.
“Yeah right,” Kate snorted, not even sure where the hell her own faint grin was starting to come from. “We’ll have to get a mirror and compare.” Tony smile abruptly vanished, rapidly turning into the start of a frown.
“I’ll just take your word for it,” he said quietly, and Kate remembered far too late that he didn’t have a reflection anymore.
“I…” Kate started to speak, not sure what she was going to say. Was it going to be an apology, an “I’m sorry”? For what, exactly? Right now, she felt there were just too many things she could potentially offer an apology for.
“You’re bleeding,” Tony cut her off suddenly, like he’d known what she was going to say and couldn’t bear to hear it. Kate blinked slowly, and then looked down at her knees. He was right; blood was starting to trickle faintly from where she’d skinned her right knee. Her left knee and palms were scraped and stinging as well, but they weren’t bleeding. Yet.
It slowly dawned on Kate just how seriously bad it could be for her to be sitting there with an open wound, less than ten feet away from a vampire who looked to be in a state where his self-control was already being sorely tested.
“I should probably do something about this,” Kate stated, keeping her eyes on her knee because she didn’t dare to see what the expression on Tony’s face might look like.
“There’s a first-aid kit around here somewhere,” Tony muttered, and Kate finally looked up. He wasn’t looking at her knee, but he wasn’t meeting her eyes either. He appeared to be staring off into the general space that she was currently occupying. “I don’t know how good it’ll be for a little scrape, though. We only need it for the big stuff, and it’s not like we have to stock disinfectant…”
“I think Ducky usually carries a kit of his own with him,” Kate reminded him.
“Right,” Tony braced himself against the wall with one hand, pausing to partially brush himself off before coming towards her. Kate stiffened, her pulse rising again. She knew Tony was trying to help her (or at least it certainly seemed that way), but she couldn’t help the way she instinctively reacted with fear to having him that close to her. Tony seemed to be politely ignoring it, since he had already proven earlier that he could easily tell when she was scared. “Come on,” he bent slightly, offering her a hand. Kate tried to swallow her fear as she timidly took his hand, and he easily lifted her to her feet.
“The last I saw Ducky, he was in the dining room,” Kate told him as they made their way back inside and started walking through the house. Her heart refused to stop pounding, and she was having no success as she tried to ignore how Tony’s hand was icy cold in her grasp.
“I can find him,” Tony mumbled, and Kate looked over to see his eyes half-closed in concentration. “Sounds like he’s moved over to the main lobby. Sounds like everyone has, as a matter of fact.”
“You can hear them,” Kate didn’t so much ask as realize out loud.
“Uh huh,” Tony absently brushed a heavy set of drapes out of his way as he moved through the corridor, keeping Kate close to him. “There’s nothing quite as distinct as a heartbeat for tracking someone down.” He cocked his head slightly, listening. “Sounds like McGee’s is running a little fast. Abby’s is too, for that matter. Excitement does that. So does fear. Ducky’s is a little weak, but that’s probably just his age. Gibbs’ is…” Tony blinked. “Steady enough to set a watch by. Why am I not surprised?”
They passed by a small doorframe sided by white columns on either side, one that Kate couldn’t recall seeing before. The room beyond the doorframe was pitch-black, making it impossible to tell what was inside.
“What’s in there?” Kate asked, mainly looking for something to distract from the creepy knowledge that was Tony tracking down the others by the sound of their heartbeats.
“Portrait gallery,” Tony barely gave the room a flicker of a glance before looking away dismissively.
“Portrait gallery?” Kate repeated, startled. “Portraits of who?”
“Well, there are the ones of Cassidy herself, obviously. You know, a couple different ones, through the ages. There’s a few of Lord Saris, her sire, and there’s even one that has Macha, his sire. And there’s a bunch of my blood-siblings; Hildemere, Tyro, Ivana, Sophie, Gwendolyn…”
“And you?” Kate interjected softly.
“Yeah, there’s one of me,” Tony replied, his expression unreadable. Kate wanted to ask what he was thinking, but she doubted he would be willing to tell her. “Here we go,” Tony announced, and Kate realized that they had reached the large room with the hardwood floor and the black and white furniture. Sure enough, all the others were already there. Ducky was lying down on one of the sofas, Gibbs and McGee each had a chair, and Abby was sitting on the floor with her back against the steps.
“Kate,” McGee stood up and exclaimed, paling as soon as he realized who was next to her. Tony drifted off to one side, letting go of Kate’s hand and leaving her to not so much walk as stumble over to the others. Gibbs quickly got up and caught onto her.
“I could use a little help,” Kate tried to sound as casual as possible, pointing towards her knee. Ducky pulled his first-aid kit out of his jacket pocket and started rifling through it.
“What happened?” Gibbs demanded, staring intensely into her eyes.
“I…fell,” Kate’s voice faltered slightly, but she didn’t look away. It wasn’t quite a lie, after all.
“Or you were pushed,” Gibbs said darkly, and he looked away from her to stare very pointedly in Tony’s direction.
“Well, excuse me,” Tony responded coldly, giving Gibbs a venomous look he never would have managed back when he was still alive.
“Gibbs, he didn’t,” Kate told him frantically, tugging slightly at the front of her boss’ coat to get him to look at her. She glanced over at the others. McGee had sat back down, sinking in his chair like he was trying to disappear. Abby was giving Tony a wounded, cautious look, visibly stiffening against the steps. Ducky seemingly had his eyes glued to his kit, busying himself with a pack of band-aids and a tube of disinfectant.
“I’m going to bed,” Tony snapped, sounding heartily disgusted with them all. He walked through the hallway leading to the crypt steps and vanished, yanking the curtain closed behind him so violently that Kate could hear the cloth tear slightly. All was silent for a moment as they stared in the direction he’d gone.
“He didn’t do anything,” Kate insisted, looking at the floor. Gibbs didn’t say anything, maintaining a stoic silence as he helped her over to the couch and got her seated next to Ducky.
“This might sting a bit,” the coroner told her as he prepared to swab her injury with the disinfectant. Kate nodded stiffly, balling her hands into fists on the cushion to either side of her as Ducky patched her up.
“You don’t look so good, Kate,” Gibbs said pointedly, kneeling beside her and giving her the look she had hoped to never be on the receiving end of, the one he used on suspects in interrogation. She didn’t say anything, but she looked straight into his eyes evenly and didn’t blink.
“Tony wasn’t looking so hot either,” McGee observed nervously.
“It’s the sun,” Kate muttered, finally dropping her gaze into her lap. “He got weaker as it started getting closer to sunrise.” Things got quiet. Ducky closed his kit with a snap that seemed unnaturally loud in the silence.
“He didn’t do anything to you?” Gibbs finally spoke again, watching Kate carefully as he re-launched his line of questioning. “He didn’t hurt you? He didn’t try to…drink you?”
“No,” Kate stared at her hands, clenched tightly in her lap. “He scared me. He got mad at me. But he didn’t do anything else.” In her head, she was replaying Tony grabbing her and shoving her up against the wall. She was hearing his angry words echo in her brain over and over. But damned if she was going to tell Gibbs and the others about all of that. The things Tony had said to her…Kate didn’t think she could say them out loud even if she had wanted to. All his talk about what it was like being a vampire, what it had been like to die…
“How do we know he didn’t…make her say that?” McGee cleared his throat awkwardly. The others all turned to look at him. “I mean, Cassidy made us fall asleep…”
“I don’t think he can,” Kate protested. Gibbs looked at her, and this time she managed to keep steady with his gaze. “The whole time we were talking, he never tried to read my mind or anything. And he said something about how Cassidy can do things he can’t, because she’s older. Stronger.”
“So DiNozzo’s still a junior vampire,” Gibbs said thoughtfully. “Makes about as much sense as anything else does right now.”
“He actually talked to you?” Abby spoke up, looking at Kate. She was frowning, looking hurt.
“Yes…” Kate replied slowly, wondering what Abby’s deal was. “Why?”
“I ran into him earlier, and he wouldn’t talk to me,” Abby scowled. “He completely blew me off.”
“Be glad,” Kate told her, feeling another shiver coming on. “It wasn’t exactly a pleasant conversation.”
“He say anything else to you?” Gibbs pressed, all business as usual.
“Not really,” Kate fibbed. “Not unless you’re interested in knowing where the family portraits are kept.”
“Family portraits?” McGee gave her a disbelieving look.
“Apparently, Cassidy has quite the collection,” Kate expanded. “I guess there’re paintings of her, the vampire that made her, the vampires she’s made…”
“And you know where this is?” Gibbs asked. Kate nodded. “Well then,” Gibbs got to his feet, his facial expression sliding back into unreadable territory, “let’s go have ourselves a look.”
_________
Tony stood with his hands resting on top of his casket, eyes closed as he tried to pull himself together. Tomorrow night Cassidy would probably come back, already in a subtly bad mood from having been kept through the day by whoever she was talking to. And what was he going to have to offer her? He was no closer to getting the others to understand that they had to stay quiet about this than he had been before she’d left. He hadn’t had much of a conversation with Abby, and the one with Kate hadn’t gone so well. The others hadn’t even spoken to him, save for a brief accusation by Gibbs.
It didn’t matter that Cassidy might well not be expecting anything yet. There was always the chance that she had been, that his failure would disappoint her, among other things. And Cassidy was someone you actively endeavored not to disappoint. Better to give her something where nothing was expected, stay one step ahead of her. Sometimes, you got the rare reward of surprising her, impressing her. Impressing Cassidy was something Tony strove for, as hard a task as it was.
Not unlike how he’d actively strove to impress a certain other person in a position of authority over him, not long ago.
“Dammit,” Tony swore, curling one hand into a fist and pounding angrily on the lid of his coffin. It was just no use. With every passing second he tried to fight the pull into his typical daytime coma, he just got worse and worse. There was no way he was going to be able to stay awake and mentally with it long enough to try and do anything further to fix this fiasco, no matter how much he wanted to. The mind was willing, but the body was weak.
Shaking his head in disgust, Tony stood back and flipped the lid to his coffin open. Exhausted, he crawled inside, pulling it closed after him. He lay back, closed his eyes and tried to arrange himself comfortably. It wasn’t really that different from a bed, really, once you got past the whole “locked in a dark box” thing.
Of course, he recalled as he felt himself slipping over into the world of blissful sleep, he hadn’t always seen it that way…
_________
“No freaking way.”
Tony stared with wide eyes at the casket that he was told he was going to have to spend the day in, and he wondered once again tonight if there was a chance he had woken up in Hell.
“Such ungratefulness,” the female vampire scoffed lightly from where she sat on the table beside it, legs crossed. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get a casket of this quality, fit to order, in the space of one day? Consider yourself lucky that I’m not making you sleep in a packing crate.”
“I’m not doing it,” Tony insisted, taking a shaky step back and trying unsuccessfully to swallow the cold fear out of his throat. “You can’t make me.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t have much desire to argue that point if I were you,” the vampire chuckled softly, swinging her one foot back and forth absently.
“You can’t make me,” Tony repeated, gritting his teeth and trying to resist the urge to start sobbing in desperation. Why was this happening to him? What in God’s name had he ever done to earn himself this? “I won’t,” his voice trembled as he spoke, and he clutched his hands to the side of his face, trying to keep it together even as his life was deteriorating to shreds right in front of his eyes. “I won’t.”
“That’s not the first time you’ve said that tonight, Antony,” she reminded him flatly, eyes half-closed and a very cold expression on her face. “That’s what you said when I ordered you to feed, remember?”
“N-no…” Tony squeezed his eyes shut in pain as the all-too fresh memory resurged. The vampire had virtually dragged him all the way to what was most definitely the bad side of town, ignoring his cries the entire way as he told her again and again that she was wrong, she couldn’t make him do this, he would never do it, never…
Two thugs had been lying in wait at the edge of a shadowy alley, waiting for someone careless to walk by close enough to get jumped and mugged. Boy, were they surprised when the clearing of a throat alerted them to the fact that two people had just appeared behind them against the back wall of the alley. For a moment, the two thugs just stood there, gaping stupidly. Tony had wanted to yell at them to run, to get away, but he’d been just as frozen, if by a completely different set of fears. Finally, the two men had rushed towards them, knives out. The female vampire had gracefully stepped in front to intersect them.
She’d broken the first man’s arm as soon as he reached her, grabbing it and twisting it behind him in a single swift movement. He fell down to land face-first in the filth of the alley, screaming in pain as his arm remained bent behind him at a funny angle. The other man stopped dead, looked as if he was contemplating running, but it was far too late. The vampire grabbed him by the front of his shirt, pulling him towards her and slamming his back into the wall. She didn’t bother covering his mouth, letting him shriek as she sunk her fangs into his neck. Tony didn’t want to look, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the scene.
He watched as she restrained the man effortlessly, drinking his blood down in steady, thick gulps. The man kicked and thrashed, his head lolling to the side, but he couldn’t move her. Then, slowly, his movements diminished, his cries growing weaker, until at last he stopped moving all-together. His head hung to one side limply, his eyes frozen open in blind horror. The vampire pulled back, wiping off her mouth with a self-satisfied sound and licking the blood from her fingers. She let go of the man, leaving him to fall heavily to the ground like a sack of garbage.
“Your turn,” she announced with a ghost of a smile, looking at Tony.
“Never,” he hissed weakly, all the while trying to ignore the hunger that had been haunting him ever since he had woken up this night, the hunger that grew worse and worse by each passing second.
“I am in no mood to argue, child. If you do not feed you will only grow weaker, and the craving will grow worse. You will feed, eventually. Do not make this into any more of an ordeal that it has to be.”
“No,” Tony said as firmly as he could, backing up so that his back was pressed against the alley wall. He had nowhere to run. “No.” The vampire rolled her eyes heavenward, as if he was being difficult for no good reason.
“Fine,” she sighed. “Then we will do things the hard way.” She turned and made her way towards where the other would-be thief lay, still lying on his stomach in the mud with one arm twisted painfully over his head. As she approached, the man began screaming again, a high keening sound that seemed almost inhuman. The vampire knelt beside him, grabbing his head by the hair and pulling it back to expose the throat. She drew her nails across the exposed skin, slicing it expertly. It wasn’t a deep enough wound to kill, but it was certainly deep enough to draw blood.
Tony stared at the dark droplets running down the man’s skin. The hunger filled his throat, pounding in his veins. He could practically see the throb of the jugular vein beneath the skin of the bleeding man; see it pulse with the ebb and flow of sweet blood. The sound of the thug’s heartbeat filled his ears, pounding like a kettledrum. He could smell the fresh blood in the air, practically taste it…
His body moved quite without his consent, and the next thing Tony knew he was on the ground beside the man, grabbing onto him, pressing his fangs against his neck, piercing the delicate skin and veins until the blood ran thick and heavy down his throat. It poured into him, hot and sweet and full of rich, warm life. He drank greedily, slurping and swallowing, not even fully registering his victim’s screams. His ears were full of the sound of the man’s heart, pounding away faster and faster in fear until it seemed fit to burst. Images rushed through Tony’s head: thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations. With the blood of the man came also his life and he was drinking in one just as surely as he did the other. The images flashed through his mind; brief, almost undecipherable flashes, too quick to fully register. All Tony had thought to spare for anyway was the blood.
All too soon it ended, however, leaving him on his knees in the dirt with a cold, dead body in his arms.
Now, hours later, Tony stood there and tried to argue once more, even all the while knowing he would eventually give in to this command as he had the other. He could still taste the faint traces of blood in his mouth, a taste that made him sick even as he hungered for more. Everything around him was too intense; his eyes, his ears, his nose were exploding in sensation overload. The clothes he was wearing, jeans and a flannel shirt, the vampire had given to him with no explanation, no word on whether she had stolen or even killed to get them. There were fangs in his mouth that he felt every time he spoke. He was so cold, and every breath he struggled to draw whenever he remembered to do so was nothing but pointless air.
He was living a nightmare, and it didn’t look like he was going to be able to wake up.
“I’m not doing it,” Tony argued, whimpering. “I’m not sleeping in a coffin.”
“It will be most amusing to see what happens when you try to forgo one,” the vampire said bluntly. “The sun will turn you into ash within a matter of seconds.” She rested her hands neatly on top of her knee. “And I daresay it will hurt quite a bit.”
“No…” Tony took a few slow steps backward, away from her, shaking his head numbly. “No, no, no…”
“Antony, you are being ridiculous-”
“Stop calling me Antony!” Tony screamed, putting his hands over his head. “My name is not Antony!” His voice broke, lowering to trembling murmur that rapidly rose back up to another scream. “My name is Anthony DiNozzo. Everyone calls me Tony. No one. Has ever. Called me Antony!” There was a long and deathly pause. The vampire stared straight at him, her face mostly blank but something glinting dangerously bright in the back of her cold yellow eyes. Tony knew that look. It was the look Gibbs gave you when he was thinking about shooting your fool ass.
“You will learn to respect me with time, and you will learn that to disagree with me is a very dangerous thing indeed,” she told him softly. “For now, I’m willing to forgive you for the sake of your youth and ignorance. But my patience wears thin. Get in the coffin.”
“I won’t.”
“Must I hurt you to show who is in control here?” she snapped, anger spreading rapidly across the pale, elegant features of her face. Tony cringed, shrinking backward, but he still stubbornly held his ground. The vampire hissed audibly, gripping the table to either side of her as she leaned forward. Suddenly, she stopped, glancing over at where the sky was visible through the one tiny window of the cellar they were currently in. “Never mind,” she announced, emotion dissolving back into a perfect calm. “Your own nature will learn you soon enough.”
“Wh-what?” But even as he spoke, Tony could feel himself growing weaker. His energy was draining out of him by the second, leaving him launching a fight with waves of unconsciousness that was almost painful to maintain. His legs gave out, head swimming as he sunk to the floor on his hands and knees. “What’s happening to me? What did you do?”
“It’s not me,” the vampire informed him, something like a smirk forming on her face. “It’s the rising of the sun. It will be many a year yet before you can keep yourself awake during the day like I can. Soon you will sleep. After all your experiences tonight, you must be exhausted.”
“St-stop,” Tony gasped, struggling to get up and quickly discovering he couldn’t. “Make it stop…”
“I told you, I’m not doing anything,” the vampire leaned back slightly, relaxed, as she watched him flounder with traces of faint amusement. Unable to stand, Tony tried to crawl, desperate to put as much distance between himself and her as possible. He barely made it a few inches before even that became too much of an effort. He sunk heavily to the floor, desperately fighting a losing battle to do so much as keep his eyes open.
“I really should leave you there,” the vampire remarked after a few minutes of absolute silence. “Let you sleep on the ground, consumed by the fear that someone will come across your helpless body while you lie there. Let you take the chance that the sun will fall across you and burn you alive.” There was the faint sound of her feet hitting the floor as she stood, and then an even lighter series of clicks as she walked over to stand above him. “But I won’t.” She sighed faintly. “Maybe then you will give me some of the respect I deserve, or even some gratitude. Heaven forbid.” She turned that last statement into an ironic sneer.
The vampire bent down and picked him up, cradling him in her arms as effortlessly as if he was a little boy. Tony whimpered faintly at her touch, but couldn’t do anything. He was mere moments away from falling helplessly into sleep, and he knew it. She carried him over to the casket and gently laid him down inside it. He managed to pry his eyes open for the barest fraction of a second to see her standing over him, holding the cover open as she peered down at him coolly with half-lidded yellow eyes.
“And now I must go about the task as to how to get the two of us out of here,” she said curtly. “Things will be so much easier once we get you away from your mortal home and into some different territory.” There was a pause. “Besides, I hate this city.” The last thing Tony heard was her firmly closing the lid of the casket before his mind gave over entirely to the darkness of sleep, and the muffled sound of the vampire’s voice as she drifted away.
“Pleasant dreams.”