Fic: Gods and Devils 10/14
This will be the last chapter for tonight, mostly because I'm about to pass out.
Disclaimers and previous parts can be found here.
Part Ten
Deacon’s arm hurt, sick, throbbing waves that distracted him whenever he tried to work. He grit his teeth and did his best to ignore it, though what he really wanted to do was get drunk, say fuck it all, and walk out of the warehouse so that Scud could launch whatever rat-like plans that he had in mind. Just go, and never look back. He was accustomed to the human world enough by now so that he would probably be fine.
Deacon was not sure exactly when his fantasies had changed from actively feeding Blade to the vampires and into merely walking away, but he did not like it, and it did little to improve his mood. He struck the keys on his laptop much harder than was strictly necessary and scowled at the screen. His arm was killing him, making him wonder if the vampire had not had an entirely different kind of sickness in its saliva than the vampire virus, and he could not take anything stronger than aspirin until the battle was over. Anything else would dim his senses right when he needed them to be at their sharpest.
Deacon slammed the keys even harder as he continued to stare at his own feed from the security system, searching for any flaw that could tell him what the kid was going to try to do next. He rubbed at his injured arm absently as he did so. Deacon would have injected himself with the cure even if Blade had not walked in and made it one of his tests. He was still not sure if that had been a lie.
Scud, exercising as always his perfect sense of timing, opened the door to the living quarters without knocking at the exact moment when Deacon was most willing to kill somebody. “I could have been jacking off,” Deacon said mildly enough, though his eyes traveled around the room to make sure that he knew where all of the weaponry was located all the same.
Scud flashed Deacon the smile that Deacon highly suspected had gotten Scud in and out of more trouble than any of the words that followed. “And wouldn’t that be a sight,” Scud answered without missing a beat. “Be still my heart.”
“If you wanted in on the action,” Deacon said as he closed the program and brought down the screen before he set the laptop carefully to the side, “all you had to do was ask.” It would not do for Scud to learn that they were onto him, not at this late stage in the game.
Scud’s face underwent a subtle change before he could bring it back under his control, letting Deacon know that they were both thinking of the more unpleasant aspects of Deacon’s past that had been brought up over the previous two days, and also quite seriously of answering in the affirmative. What was it about Blade, Deacon wondered, that by nothing more than his presence he was able to draw the loyalties of so many people around him? After all this time, Deacon still had not been able to figure it out.
“I short-circuit something there, Sparky?” Deacon asked when Scud let the silence continue to stretch without saying a word.
Scud flushed and then cleared his throat into his hand. “No, I’m fine,” he mumbled, obviously embarrassed at being caught out. College kid turned hunter turned traitor or not, he still had moments when he reminded everyone around him or how young he actually still was. It was almost enough to make Deacon’s atrophied sense of empathy try to make a comeback, until he remembered that Scud was doing his level best to kill him. Deacon had a tendency to take that kind of shit seriously. He was funny like that.
“I was wondering if you were hungry, that was all,” Scud went on as he recovered himself somewhat. “I’m starving, think that I’m going to order something in. We got beer and corn chips right now.”
It was a glib, perfect, reasonable response, and it set every single hair on the back of Deacon’s neck to standing up all at once. He glanced once in the direction of his laptop before he answered, but there was no way that he could open it again and see what the security system was doing without Scud seeing the gesture and wondering what it was all about. He pushed himself up from the edge of the bed instead, wincing and smothering an oath beneath his breath as he forgot and briefly put his weight onto his bad arm. A look of sympathy crossed Scud’s face for a moment. Knowing what he knew now, it was all that Deacon could do not to punch him in the face.
“Delivery guy’s a security risk,” Deacon said, arching his eyebrow and injecting his voice with a withering incredulity as he allowed Scud to usher him from the room. There were more weapons than he could hope to use in the living quarters if he was attacked, Deacon reasoned, always keeping a running tally of where every potentially dangerous object around him was at all times, and an equal number of weaponry downstairs. It was only on the stairs that he would be vulnerable. Scud alone was not a threat, but the entire point of his species of bottom feeder was that they never acted alone.
Scud snorted in response. “If the suckheads have already infiltrated the Thai place a few blocks over, then pack it up. We lost the war a long time ago.”
Deacon chuckled in spite of himself. “Fair point.” He tended to eat lightly-much more lightly than Scud even though Scud admittedly had a few chemical spurs that aided his appetite along. He had never quite been able to adjust to solid foods again after so much time spent on a liquid diet. Deacon was hungry now, though. Call it adrenaline, call it a desire to break bread one more time with their very own Judas.
Scud was walking ahead of Deacon on the stairs, so that Deacon could not see his expression, but was instead left to read Scud’s mood and intentions through the set of his shoulders and the lines that ran through the back of his neck. Scud seemed relaxed, more relaxed than anyone had a right to be when they were waiting on a likely vampire attack, let alone an attack by an enemy that they had so eagerly leapt into bed with. Maybe Blade had against all odds been wrong, maybe Scud had gotten sick of walking around with such a heavy conscience and had decided to set himself square again. All of these options seemed equally likely to Deacon at the moment, and they all boiled down to the control being in Scud’s hands rather than Deacon’s own. Deacon had become resigned to a great many things being outside of his control that he had once been lord over, but he had never grown to like it.
A very faint noise, so soft that he would not have noticed it if he had not already been listening, echoed from the roof. Deacon jerked his head upwards towards the ceiling and listened with narrowed eyes. Funny how familiar that noise actually was. His arm began to ache that much harder, right on command.
Looking back downwards, Deacon saw that the relaxed, comfortable set of Scud’s shoulders had vanished. The kid now looked as if he expected to be dragged before a firing squad at any moment. “You know,” Deacon began in a musing voice, swiveling quickly to take stock of how far he was from the living quarters and the weaponry. Too damned far, and Scud was blocking his path down to the main floor of the warehouse. “You’re a real son of a bitch.”
Scud turned and looked up at him. Kid was a good actor, much better than Deacon had been willing to give him credit for previously. Blade had never explained to Deacon how he had learned that Scud wasn’t playing for their team any longer. With all of the other mysterious skills that Blade had popped up with, Deacon would not be shocked to learn that Blade had smelled the difference on Scud. “The fuck are you talking about, man?” Scud asked him.
Deacon twisted his lips into a hard, ugly smile. Quinn had always squirmed and abruptly knocked off his sass whenever Deacon had given him that sort of look, and Mercury had shivered and told him that it ruined his face. Merc was Merc, and Quinn had never been blessed with an overabundance of intelligence, but they were both kicking Scud right in the ass when it came down to the basic instinct for self-preservation right now. Deacon took a step closer to Scud, lower on the stairs, rather than retreating up the weapons that he was sure he was going to need before it was over. That chill and brittle smile never wavered.
“You know exactly what I mean,” Deacon responded. “And you’re probably waiting for me to give you a big speech and ask you how you could do this to Blade, since he saved your life and with everything else that he’s done for you since then.” Realization sparked in Scud’s eyes, try as he might to hide it a few seconds later. So the kid still had a conscience, hidden down deep under all of the layers of ooze. Well, Deacon had functioned for a very long time without any conscience to speak of, but Scud was still a goddamned idiot in spite of it. Right at the moment, Deacon was not seeing any reason to hold back from knocking Scud right down the stairs. “Fuck that. You want a pep talk or a come to Jesus meeting, go find Tony Robbins and have a chat with him.” Deacon narrowed his eyes into slits so narrow that he could scarcely see Scud at all.
“You’re a fool,” he went on flatly. “You think that you’re signing on to the winning side?” Scud made a noncommittal noise, and Deacon rode over him before he could speak. “Doesn’t matter. Win or lose, it all comes down to the allies that you can trust.” He flashed the grin again. Scud finally seemed to realize the gravity of it, for he looked for a second as if he was battling the urge to take a step back before he got himself under control again. “I would have taken a little piece of nothing like you and had you turned inside out so fast-“ Deacon cut himself off and made a clicking sound with his tongue against his teeth. “I could even make you think that it had all been your idea. But let me guess: Damaskinos promised you that you would be different.”
Scud’s face had gone white while Deacon had been speaking, leading Deacon to think that the hamsters might finally have been kicked in the ass hard enough to get them running again. It would be much easier to fight off the vampires that he knew without a doubt were outside with two people fighting them from the inside than it would be when the enemy was already inside the gates. They could deal with whatever else it was that they needed to deal with afterwards.
Scud’s face hardened over a second later, though, and his mouth twisted into a smile that was meant to approximate Deacon’s own. Deacon was of half a mind to tell Scud that he had a ways to go, until he realized that it likely did not matter. Either way that he turned now, Scud’s days on this earth did not number many.
“Sounds to me like your deal with Blade,” Scud told him in an icy-cheery tone. He raked his eyes across Deacon from head to foot. “Seems like you’re doing all right for yourself.”
Deacon was getting very sick of everyone hitting upon that particular button. He was also damned sick of how predictable his own reaction to it was, even as he could not quite get himself to stop. He drew his fist back and put it into Scud’s face with enough force to reverberate all the way back into his shoulder and drew such satisfaction from the act that for a few seconds it seemed as if it would turn his entire life around. Scud staggered backwards down the remaining few steps and nearly fell. His hands came up to cover his injured nose; already Deacon could see the bright ruby of fresh blood leaking around his fingers.
Deacon shook out his hand and advanced down the stairs. His heart was already beating faster and his blood was singing with the high, sweet thrill of violence. He was never going to stop loving this. He was not sure that he wanted to. “Hard knock life, kid,” Deacon told Scud in a growling voice that hardly sounded like himself. “I might be Blade’s rent boy, but I’m pretty sure that I won’t be dead by the end of the night.” That was possibly an exaggeration, but Deacon would be damned before he allowed a hint of his doubt to show.
“You son of a bitch,” Scud snarled up at him, sounding angrier than Deacon had ever heard him before. So the kid could be roused from his drug-addled congeniality. All it took was someone messing up his face. Scud grabbed an electric screwdriver from a table and, swinging it like a blunt instrument, took a swipe at Deacon’s head. Deacon jerked backwards before he could lose an eye and brought his leg up into a high, hard kick instead, knocking the screwdriver from Scud’s hand. He was not sure if the cracking noise that he heard was the plastic cover giving way or Scud’s own wrist, and neither could he move himself to actually care. As Scud reeled backwards, clutching his wrist to his chest, Deacon spun towards the weapons cabinet. He had not heard a sound from the roof since the one that had drawn his attention in the first place. That was not what Deacon considered a good thing.
Deacon reached the weapons cabinet and threw it open just as the computer gave out a series of sparks and then went dark. “Motherfuck,” Deacon whispered as he smelled ozone. That was not something that could be repaired in the next minute and a half. The lights went out a second later, leaving only the eerie blue of the backup lights. Deacon was starting to get all kinds of déjà vu here.
He wrenched a rifle from the cabinet and swung it around just in time to bear on Scud, who had been trying to come up behind him. Scud took a step back immediately. If only he had been that smart while he was still considering the merits of betrayal in the first place.
“You’re not a vampire yet,” Deacon growled at him as he disengaged the safety on the rifle.
Scud had the gall to actually grin at him. “Not yet,” he drawled. “But maybe someday. And in the meantime, I’m definitely in a better position than you are.”
Cocky little shit. Rom where Deacon was standing, he was doing the world a favor. Scud’s eyes widened as he saw Deacon’s finger begin to jerk back on the trigger, as if he had not known what Deacon would actually do it.
‘Whole world of things that you don’t know, kiddo,’ Deacon thought, and flashed to what the average lifespan of a familiar had been under his empire. ‘But I have a feeling that you’re going to learn.’
There was a soft thudding sound from behind Deacon, so soft that he would not have heard it if there had not already been a sick adrenaline tango going through his veins. Deacon began to spin and, as he did so, the shot that he had been firing went wild. The bullet that should have taken Scud right through his throat hit him high up in his shoulder. The kid yelled and spun around, clutching at the wound. Fresh blood began to leak around his fingers.
A vampire was standing in front of Deacon when he spun, wearing the same form-fitting black, complete with mask, that Nyssa and Asad had been wearing when they had first entered the warehouse. The insectile eyes only served to piss Deacon off further, and he raised the rifle quickly back up to his shoulder again.
Before he could get off a shot, the vampire reached out, seized the barrel of the rifle, and jerked it towards him. He then slammed it back hard against Deacon’s face, right against the bruise that he had received earlier. The world exploded into a world of white that quickly shaded over into darkness.
*
After he poked swiftly among the remaining Reapers to make sure that they were all truly dead, Blade wasted no time in heading towards the tunnel where he had last seen Nyssa. None of the Reapers that he had killed had been Nomak, of that much at least he was sure. It was not over quite yet, not while the carrier was still free.
That was not Blade’s greatest concern at the moment.
Upon reaching the tunnel, Blade found Nyssa at last. She was lying half in and half out of pool of water, bruised and burned. It looked as if she had begun to pull herself out after the light flash had faded; had she been half-in and half-out of the pool when the bomb pack had detonated, Blade doubted that she still would have been there at all. He did not see Reinhardt anywhere. Neither could he altogether bring himself to care.
Blade called Nyssa’s name softly and knelt beside her when he received no answer. Sliding his arms beneath her head and shoulders and pulling her half into his lap, Blade discovered that her pulse was weak and slow, even for a vampire, and that her skin had an unhealthy waxen cast. Though she did not open her eyes, Nyssa’s head turned towards the dozens of nicks and cuts that were weeping freely across Blade’s body, her mouth opening and the tip of her tongue protruding for a moment to take a swipe at her lips and leave them glistening before she pulled it back into her mouth. Nyssa made a small mewling sound from the back of her throat.
Blade hesitated for a moment, smoothing Nyssa’s hair back from her face and staring at the ugly burns that covered her chest and neck. He was developing an extraordinary taste for pretty poisons, and each one was a bit more dangerous than the last. He was going to wind up carting a Reaper home slung across his shoulders at the rate that he was going. Nyssa made another one of those desperate, hungry noises, and Blade’s decision was made for him, though his uneasiness over it remained. He drew his sword as Nyssa’s eyes cracked open a slit. Blade thought that he saw panic there, panic and confusion that did not diminish when he only drew the edge across his own wrist instead. Blood began to well up immediately.
Nyssa lunged upwards at the scent of the blood, only to make a feral, frustrated noise when Blade pushed her back down against his lap. For the first time since he had known her, the icy control cracked and her fangs slid free. They cut minute tears into her lower lip that welled up with blood, which she licked away immediately. Again her lips glistened, and her needy moan put Blade to mind of a great many other things besides saving her.
“Here,” he said, fighting hard to keep the betraying rasp out of his voice. Blade held his wrist above Nyssa’s mouth, not quite allowing her lips to touch him, so that the blood could fall down into her mouth. He did not know what vampire saliva would have the same effect upon him as it would upon a normal human, given how different he himself was, but he did not want to take that risk. Not with the way the thirst already affected him.
The blood dripped down into Nyssa’s mouth, and she parted her lips even further to take in as much as possible. Blade saw the drops gleaming on her pink tongue for only a second before she swallowed them back and darted it out for more. Nyssa then grabbed at Blade’s arm and pulled it closer down to her mouth. He eyes were much clearer now that she had warm, willing blood trickling down her throat again.
When Blade resisted her, Nyssa whispered, “Shh, I’ll be careful.” Her voice was husky and her pupils were huge. Against his better judgment, Blade allowed her to pull his wrist down to her mouth again. The first touch of her tongue against his skin was nearly enough to make him jump. Nyssa kept her promise and did not suckle at the lacerated flesh, thereby avoiding mixing her saliva with his blood. Blade held himself rigid and reminded himself that she was likely only making the distinction because she had promised him that she would, and because at the moment she was being held within his power. Rather that sucking at the wound, Nyssa merely ran her tongue in a tight circle around the edges of the cut, collecting all of the blood that welled up. She made a soft, pleased noise as she swallowed it back, and the waxen cast was fading away from her skin and being replaced by something that was nearly life. Blade stared down at her as the smallest of the blisters began to heal themselves over and tried to remind himself that he was not staring down at a human woman.
Such dark thoughts were still lingering within Blade’s mind as he glanced upwards and saw a blue figure hovering at the far side of the cavern, beyond Blade’s immediate reach but not so far that he could not reach him within seconds. Him, not it; the gleam of intelligence in his eyes marked him immediately as Nomak rather than one of Nomak’s creations. Nomak and Blade locked eyes for a moment before Nomak wrinkled his lips back into a silent snarl and slipped away. Blade allowed his chance to catch up evaporate because he was loathe to drop Nyssa back down to the cement without warning; he bit the inside of his mouth hard to keep from swearing. Looking back down into Nyssa’s face, Blade saw that she was looking back at him, and that she knew exactly what he had just done for her.
When the taser bolts slammed into Blade’s back, he was taken completely by surprise. His back arched and his teeth slammed together as the electricity coursed into him, making his entire body jerk. Nyssa, receiving a portion of the electricity where Blade’s skin was in contact with hers, jerked and fell away. As soon as she was no longer getting the juice, she braced herself onto her hands so that she could lift herself part of the way off of the ground and stared at the person standing behind Blade.
Blade ground his teeth against on another so hard that he was in danger of breaking them, fighting back against the pain and losing. He collapsed down on his face against the pavement and struggled to turn over. The blood from his slit wrist continued to pool across the cement. Though she continued to look horrified, Blade noticed that she did not turn her eyes away from the blood.
The sound of expensive shoes across the cement alerted Blade to the fact that there was more than one attacker, that there were many. As he rolled his head upwards, Blade realized that there was in fact a damned phalanx of vampires approaching him with their guns drawn. He would be flattered if not for the rising urge to kill. Kounen looked as if his entire wardrobe wanted to by the very fact that he was standing among such filth. Kounen himself did not look as if he would be far behind. Disoriented, Nyssa hissed at him as he drew close. Blade’s opinion of her went up considerably.
“You’ve done a great job,” Kounen said to someone that Blade could not see, ignoring Blade altogether.
When Reinhardt stepped into view, Blade supposed that he ought not to be surprised. While Nyssa bore serious but scattered burns, one half of Reinhardt’s face was been burned almost entirely away. If only he had moved a bit slower and allowed the light to finish its job. “Well,” Reinhardt said, sounding cheerful, “not that great, I’d say.” He raised his booted foot and brought it back down with great force into the side of Blade’s face.
End Part Ten
Disclaimers and previous parts can be found here.
Part Ten
Deacon’s arm hurt, sick, throbbing waves that distracted him whenever he tried to work. He grit his teeth and did his best to ignore it, though what he really wanted to do was get drunk, say fuck it all, and walk out of the warehouse so that Scud could launch whatever rat-like plans that he had in mind. Just go, and never look back. He was accustomed to the human world enough by now so that he would probably be fine.
Deacon was not sure exactly when his fantasies had changed from actively feeding Blade to the vampires and into merely walking away, but he did not like it, and it did little to improve his mood. He struck the keys on his laptop much harder than was strictly necessary and scowled at the screen. His arm was killing him, making him wonder if the vampire had not had an entirely different kind of sickness in its saliva than the vampire virus, and he could not take anything stronger than aspirin until the battle was over. Anything else would dim his senses right when he needed them to be at their sharpest.
Deacon slammed the keys even harder as he continued to stare at his own feed from the security system, searching for any flaw that could tell him what the kid was going to try to do next. He rubbed at his injured arm absently as he did so. Deacon would have injected himself with the cure even if Blade had not walked in and made it one of his tests. He was still not sure if that had been a lie.
Scud, exercising as always his perfect sense of timing, opened the door to the living quarters without knocking at the exact moment when Deacon was most willing to kill somebody. “I could have been jacking off,” Deacon said mildly enough, though his eyes traveled around the room to make sure that he knew where all of the weaponry was located all the same.
Scud flashed Deacon the smile that Deacon highly suspected had gotten Scud in and out of more trouble than any of the words that followed. “And wouldn’t that be a sight,” Scud answered without missing a beat. “Be still my heart.”
“If you wanted in on the action,” Deacon said as he closed the program and brought down the screen before he set the laptop carefully to the side, “all you had to do was ask.” It would not do for Scud to learn that they were onto him, not at this late stage in the game.
Scud’s face underwent a subtle change before he could bring it back under his control, letting Deacon know that they were both thinking of the more unpleasant aspects of Deacon’s past that had been brought up over the previous two days, and also quite seriously of answering in the affirmative. What was it about Blade, Deacon wondered, that by nothing more than his presence he was able to draw the loyalties of so many people around him? After all this time, Deacon still had not been able to figure it out.
“I short-circuit something there, Sparky?” Deacon asked when Scud let the silence continue to stretch without saying a word.
Scud flushed and then cleared his throat into his hand. “No, I’m fine,” he mumbled, obviously embarrassed at being caught out. College kid turned hunter turned traitor or not, he still had moments when he reminded everyone around him or how young he actually still was. It was almost enough to make Deacon’s atrophied sense of empathy try to make a comeback, until he remembered that Scud was doing his level best to kill him. Deacon had a tendency to take that kind of shit seriously. He was funny like that.
“I was wondering if you were hungry, that was all,” Scud went on as he recovered himself somewhat. “I’m starving, think that I’m going to order something in. We got beer and corn chips right now.”
It was a glib, perfect, reasonable response, and it set every single hair on the back of Deacon’s neck to standing up all at once. He glanced once in the direction of his laptop before he answered, but there was no way that he could open it again and see what the security system was doing without Scud seeing the gesture and wondering what it was all about. He pushed himself up from the edge of the bed instead, wincing and smothering an oath beneath his breath as he forgot and briefly put his weight onto his bad arm. A look of sympathy crossed Scud’s face for a moment. Knowing what he knew now, it was all that Deacon could do not to punch him in the face.
“Delivery guy’s a security risk,” Deacon said, arching his eyebrow and injecting his voice with a withering incredulity as he allowed Scud to usher him from the room. There were more weapons than he could hope to use in the living quarters if he was attacked, Deacon reasoned, always keeping a running tally of where every potentially dangerous object around him was at all times, and an equal number of weaponry downstairs. It was only on the stairs that he would be vulnerable. Scud alone was not a threat, but the entire point of his species of bottom feeder was that they never acted alone.
Scud snorted in response. “If the suckheads have already infiltrated the Thai place a few blocks over, then pack it up. We lost the war a long time ago.”
Deacon chuckled in spite of himself. “Fair point.” He tended to eat lightly-much more lightly than Scud even though Scud admittedly had a few chemical spurs that aided his appetite along. He had never quite been able to adjust to solid foods again after so much time spent on a liquid diet. Deacon was hungry now, though. Call it adrenaline, call it a desire to break bread one more time with their very own Judas.
Scud was walking ahead of Deacon on the stairs, so that Deacon could not see his expression, but was instead left to read Scud’s mood and intentions through the set of his shoulders and the lines that ran through the back of his neck. Scud seemed relaxed, more relaxed than anyone had a right to be when they were waiting on a likely vampire attack, let alone an attack by an enemy that they had so eagerly leapt into bed with. Maybe Blade had against all odds been wrong, maybe Scud had gotten sick of walking around with such a heavy conscience and had decided to set himself square again. All of these options seemed equally likely to Deacon at the moment, and they all boiled down to the control being in Scud’s hands rather than Deacon’s own. Deacon had become resigned to a great many things being outside of his control that he had once been lord over, but he had never grown to like it.
A very faint noise, so soft that he would not have noticed it if he had not already been listening, echoed from the roof. Deacon jerked his head upwards towards the ceiling and listened with narrowed eyes. Funny how familiar that noise actually was. His arm began to ache that much harder, right on command.
Looking back downwards, Deacon saw that the relaxed, comfortable set of Scud’s shoulders had vanished. The kid now looked as if he expected to be dragged before a firing squad at any moment. “You know,” Deacon began in a musing voice, swiveling quickly to take stock of how far he was from the living quarters and the weaponry. Too damned far, and Scud was blocking his path down to the main floor of the warehouse. “You’re a real son of a bitch.”
Scud turned and looked up at him. Kid was a good actor, much better than Deacon had been willing to give him credit for previously. Blade had never explained to Deacon how he had learned that Scud wasn’t playing for their team any longer. With all of the other mysterious skills that Blade had popped up with, Deacon would not be shocked to learn that Blade had smelled the difference on Scud. “The fuck are you talking about, man?” Scud asked him.
Deacon twisted his lips into a hard, ugly smile. Quinn had always squirmed and abruptly knocked off his sass whenever Deacon had given him that sort of look, and Mercury had shivered and told him that it ruined his face. Merc was Merc, and Quinn had never been blessed with an overabundance of intelligence, but they were both kicking Scud right in the ass when it came down to the basic instinct for self-preservation right now. Deacon took a step closer to Scud, lower on the stairs, rather than retreating up the weapons that he was sure he was going to need before it was over. That chill and brittle smile never wavered.
“You know exactly what I mean,” Deacon responded. “And you’re probably waiting for me to give you a big speech and ask you how you could do this to Blade, since he saved your life and with everything else that he’s done for you since then.” Realization sparked in Scud’s eyes, try as he might to hide it a few seconds later. So the kid still had a conscience, hidden down deep under all of the layers of ooze. Well, Deacon had functioned for a very long time without any conscience to speak of, but Scud was still a goddamned idiot in spite of it. Right at the moment, Deacon was not seeing any reason to hold back from knocking Scud right down the stairs. “Fuck that. You want a pep talk or a come to Jesus meeting, go find Tony Robbins and have a chat with him.” Deacon narrowed his eyes into slits so narrow that he could scarcely see Scud at all.
“You’re a fool,” he went on flatly. “You think that you’re signing on to the winning side?” Scud made a noncommittal noise, and Deacon rode over him before he could speak. “Doesn’t matter. Win or lose, it all comes down to the allies that you can trust.” He flashed the grin again. Scud finally seemed to realize the gravity of it, for he looked for a second as if he was battling the urge to take a step back before he got himself under control again. “I would have taken a little piece of nothing like you and had you turned inside out so fast-“ Deacon cut himself off and made a clicking sound with his tongue against his teeth. “I could even make you think that it had all been your idea. But let me guess: Damaskinos promised you that you would be different.”
Scud’s face had gone white while Deacon had been speaking, leading Deacon to think that the hamsters might finally have been kicked in the ass hard enough to get them running again. It would be much easier to fight off the vampires that he knew without a doubt were outside with two people fighting them from the inside than it would be when the enemy was already inside the gates. They could deal with whatever else it was that they needed to deal with afterwards.
Scud’s face hardened over a second later, though, and his mouth twisted into a smile that was meant to approximate Deacon’s own. Deacon was of half a mind to tell Scud that he had a ways to go, until he realized that it likely did not matter. Either way that he turned now, Scud’s days on this earth did not number many.
“Sounds to me like your deal with Blade,” Scud told him in an icy-cheery tone. He raked his eyes across Deacon from head to foot. “Seems like you’re doing all right for yourself.”
Deacon was getting very sick of everyone hitting upon that particular button. He was also damned sick of how predictable his own reaction to it was, even as he could not quite get himself to stop. He drew his fist back and put it into Scud’s face with enough force to reverberate all the way back into his shoulder and drew such satisfaction from the act that for a few seconds it seemed as if it would turn his entire life around. Scud staggered backwards down the remaining few steps and nearly fell. His hands came up to cover his injured nose; already Deacon could see the bright ruby of fresh blood leaking around his fingers.
Deacon shook out his hand and advanced down the stairs. His heart was already beating faster and his blood was singing with the high, sweet thrill of violence. He was never going to stop loving this. He was not sure that he wanted to. “Hard knock life, kid,” Deacon told Scud in a growling voice that hardly sounded like himself. “I might be Blade’s rent boy, but I’m pretty sure that I won’t be dead by the end of the night.” That was possibly an exaggeration, but Deacon would be damned before he allowed a hint of his doubt to show.
“You son of a bitch,” Scud snarled up at him, sounding angrier than Deacon had ever heard him before. So the kid could be roused from his drug-addled congeniality. All it took was someone messing up his face. Scud grabbed an electric screwdriver from a table and, swinging it like a blunt instrument, took a swipe at Deacon’s head. Deacon jerked backwards before he could lose an eye and brought his leg up into a high, hard kick instead, knocking the screwdriver from Scud’s hand. He was not sure if the cracking noise that he heard was the plastic cover giving way or Scud’s own wrist, and neither could he move himself to actually care. As Scud reeled backwards, clutching his wrist to his chest, Deacon spun towards the weapons cabinet. He had not heard a sound from the roof since the one that had drawn his attention in the first place. That was not what Deacon considered a good thing.
Deacon reached the weapons cabinet and threw it open just as the computer gave out a series of sparks and then went dark. “Motherfuck,” Deacon whispered as he smelled ozone. That was not something that could be repaired in the next minute and a half. The lights went out a second later, leaving only the eerie blue of the backup lights. Deacon was starting to get all kinds of déjà vu here.
He wrenched a rifle from the cabinet and swung it around just in time to bear on Scud, who had been trying to come up behind him. Scud took a step back immediately. If only he had been that smart while he was still considering the merits of betrayal in the first place.
“You’re not a vampire yet,” Deacon growled at him as he disengaged the safety on the rifle.
Scud had the gall to actually grin at him. “Not yet,” he drawled. “But maybe someday. And in the meantime, I’m definitely in a better position than you are.”
Cocky little shit. Rom where Deacon was standing, he was doing the world a favor. Scud’s eyes widened as he saw Deacon’s finger begin to jerk back on the trigger, as if he had not known what Deacon would actually do it.
‘Whole world of things that you don’t know, kiddo,’ Deacon thought, and flashed to what the average lifespan of a familiar had been under his empire. ‘But I have a feeling that you’re going to learn.’
There was a soft thudding sound from behind Deacon, so soft that he would not have heard it if there had not already been a sick adrenaline tango going through his veins. Deacon began to spin and, as he did so, the shot that he had been firing went wild. The bullet that should have taken Scud right through his throat hit him high up in his shoulder. The kid yelled and spun around, clutching at the wound. Fresh blood began to leak around his fingers.
A vampire was standing in front of Deacon when he spun, wearing the same form-fitting black, complete with mask, that Nyssa and Asad had been wearing when they had first entered the warehouse. The insectile eyes only served to piss Deacon off further, and he raised the rifle quickly back up to his shoulder again.
Before he could get off a shot, the vampire reached out, seized the barrel of the rifle, and jerked it towards him. He then slammed it back hard against Deacon’s face, right against the bruise that he had received earlier. The world exploded into a world of white that quickly shaded over into darkness.
*
After he poked swiftly among the remaining Reapers to make sure that they were all truly dead, Blade wasted no time in heading towards the tunnel where he had last seen Nyssa. None of the Reapers that he had killed had been Nomak, of that much at least he was sure. It was not over quite yet, not while the carrier was still free.
That was not Blade’s greatest concern at the moment.
Upon reaching the tunnel, Blade found Nyssa at last. She was lying half in and half out of pool of water, bruised and burned. It looked as if she had begun to pull herself out after the light flash had faded; had she been half-in and half-out of the pool when the bomb pack had detonated, Blade doubted that she still would have been there at all. He did not see Reinhardt anywhere. Neither could he altogether bring himself to care.
Blade called Nyssa’s name softly and knelt beside her when he received no answer. Sliding his arms beneath her head and shoulders and pulling her half into his lap, Blade discovered that her pulse was weak and slow, even for a vampire, and that her skin had an unhealthy waxen cast. Though she did not open her eyes, Nyssa’s head turned towards the dozens of nicks and cuts that were weeping freely across Blade’s body, her mouth opening and the tip of her tongue protruding for a moment to take a swipe at her lips and leave them glistening before she pulled it back into her mouth. Nyssa made a small mewling sound from the back of her throat.
Blade hesitated for a moment, smoothing Nyssa’s hair back from her face and staring at the ugly burns that covered her chest and neck. He was developing an extraordinary taste for pretty poisons, and each one was a bit more dangerous than the last. He was going to wind up carting a Reaper home slung across his shoulders at the rate that he was going. Nyssa made another one of those desperate, hungry noises, and Blade’s decision was made for him, though his uneasiness over it remained. He drew his sword as Nyssa’s eyes cracked open a slit. Blade thought that he saw panic there, panic and confusion that did not diminish when he only drew the edge across his own wrist instead. Blood began to well up immediately.
Nyssa lunged upwards at the scent of the blood, only to make a feral, frustrated noise when Blade pushed her back down against his lap. For the first time since he had known her, the icy control cracked and her fangs slid free. They cut minute tears into her lower lip that welled up with blood, which she licked away immediately. Again her lips glistened, and her needy moan put Blade to mind of a great many other things besides saving her.
“Here,” he said, fighting hard to keep the betraying rasp out of his voice. Blade held his wrist above Nyssa’s mouth, not quite allowing her lips to touch him, so that the blood could fall down into her mouth. He did not know what vampire saliva would have the same effect upon him as it would upon a normal human, given how different he himself was, but he did not want to take that risk. Not with the way the thirst already affected him.
The blood dripped down into Nyssa’s mouth, and she parted her lips even further to take in as much as possible. Blade saw the drops gleaming on her pink tongue for only a second before she swallowed them back and darted it out for more. Nyssa then grabbed at Blade’s arm and pulled it closer down to her mouth. He eyes were much clearer now that she had warm, willing blood trickling down her throat again.
When Blade resisted her, Nyssa whispered, “Shh, I’ll be careful.” Her voice was husky and her pupils were huge. Against his better judgment, Blade allowed her to pull his wrist down to her mouth again. The first touch of her tongue against his skin was nearly enough to make him jump. Nyssa kept her promise and did not suckle at the lacerated flesh, thereby avoiding mixing her saliva with his blood. Blade held himself rigid and reminded himself that she was likely only making the distinction because she had promised him that she would, and because at the moment she was being held within his power. Rather that sucking at the wound, Nyssa merely ran her tongue in a tight circle around the edges of the cut, collecting all of the blood that welled up. She made a soft, pleased noise as she swallowed it back, and the waxen cast was fading away from her skin and being replaced by something that was nearly life. Blade stared down at her as the smallest of the blisters began to heal themselves over and tried to remind himself that he was not staring down at a human woman.
Such dark thoughts were still lingering within Blade’s mind as he glanced upwards and saw a blue figure hovering at the far side of the cavern, beyond Blade’s immediate reach but not so far that he could not reach him within seconds. Him, not it; the gleam of intelligence in his eyes marked him immediately as Nomak rather than one of Nomak’s creations. Nomak and Blade locked eyes for a moment before Nomak wrinkled his lips back into a silent snarl and slipped away. Blade allowed his chance to catch up evaporate because he was loathe to drop Nyssa back down to the cement without warning; he bit the inside of his mouth hard to keep from swearing. Looking back down into Nyssa’s face, Blade saw that she was looking back at him, and that she knew exactly what he had just done for her.
When the taser bolts slammed into Blade’s back, he was taken completely by surprise. His back arched and his teeth slammed together as the electricity coursed into him, making his entire body jerk. Nyssa, receiving a portion of the electricity where Blade’s skin was in contact with hers, jerked and fell away. As soon as she was no longer getting the juice, she braced herself onto her hands so that she could lift herself part of the way off of the ground and stared at the person standing behind Blade.
Blade ground his teeth against on another so hard that he was in danger of breaking them, fighting back against the pain and losing. He collapsed down on his face against the pavement and struggled to turn over. The blood from his slit wrist continued to pool across the cement. Though she continued to look horrified, Blade noticed that she did not turn her eyes away from the blood.
The sound of expensive shoes across the cement alerted Blade to the fact that there was more than one attacker, that there were many. As he rolled his head upwards, Blade realized that there was in fact a damned phalanx of vampires approaching him with their guns drawn. He would be flattered if not for the rising urge to kill. Kounen looked as if his entire wardrobe wanted to by the very fact that he was standing among such filth. Kounen himself did not look as if he would be far behind. Disoriented, Nyssa hissed at him as he drew close. Blade’s opinion of her went up considerably.
“You’ve done a great job,” Kounen said to someone that Blade could not see, ignoring Blade altogether.
When Reinhardt stepped into view, Blade supposed that he ought not to be surprised. While Nyssa bore serious but scattered burns, one half of Reinhardt’s face was been burned almost entirely away. If only he had moved a bit slower and allowed the light to finish its job. “Well,” Reinhardt said, sounding cheerful, “not that great, I’d say.” He raised his booted foot and brought it back down with great force into the side of Blade’s face.
End Part Ten