A Chance To Save The World 1/2
Title: A Chance To Save The World
Author: kristories
Fandom: Blade: Trinity
Pairing/Character: Drake/Hannibal King
Rating: FRAO
Kink: Vampires, First Time, Past Lives, Soulmates
Notes/Warnings: AU, movie spoilers, slash, vampires, badly explained reincarnation, Mentions of past drug and alcohol abuse by a minor, nonspecific mention of a past prevented child abuse incident
Banner, Icon and Wallpaper Art by blueslashicons
Book Cover Art by taibhrigh (originally for smallfandomfest 6)
a/n: I'm also totally claiming this for my 'soulmates' square on my schmoop bingo card...I may understand the definition of schmoop.
Part 2
There’s real gold inlaid in the floor under Hannibal’s knee. It swirls and runs out past his line of sight in a majestic pattern. It sparkles where the firelight touches it. A hand brushes over his shoulder and he looks up directly into hazel eyes. The need pulsing under his skin abates for a few moments.
“You are not required to present yourself in such a fashion, my love.” The man’s voice is deep and rich and makes Hannibal feel like molten lava is pooling at the base of his spine.
“You are my liege,” Hannibal replies. It’s not his voice though. This voice is stronger, a little rougher. It sounds like back when he used to smoke, back before a pretty girl, a fast car, a fucked up party, passing out from too much coke and waking up with a thirst for blood. The hand cups his jaw firmly and the man leans down until their lips are about touching. The urge to complete the kiss sends tremors down Hannibal’s spine, he can feel his muscles quivering as he holds himself completely still.
“You are the second half of my soul. I do love you so,” the man says and takes Hannibal’s lips in a kiss that sweeps them both away. They tear at each other’s clothes as Hannibal is pulled to his feet. Hannibal shivers a little at the glint of firelight off sharp canines when the man smiles a predatory smile. “You will be mine,” the man says. Hannibal opens his mouth for the sharp kiss but pulls away on a gasp of pain. There’s a cacophony of noise sudden in its onset and Hannibal stares down at his chest, the blade of a sword pierced through.
“Traitor,” a new voice hisses in his ear and brings an accompanying feeling of anger and betrayal that he has no reference for. Hannibal screams as the blade is pulled up and out. The last thing he hears is the man, screaming a battle cry. The last thing he feels is the sword slashing at his throat.
He wakes up scrabbling at his throat, choking on blood that isn’t there. His heart is pounding a mile a minute and Whistler is staring at him like he’s got three heads.
“The hell’s the matter with you?” she demands from beside him. Hannibal stares at her for a moment too long, enough to make her uncomfortable. His hands are shaking so he puts them on his knees and breathes in deep. The scenery is whizzing by and the sun reflects hot off the tinted window of the Nightstalkermobile.
“Nothing,” he says roughly, “just a bad dream.” Just a funny, fucked up, way beyond crazy dream. At least there weren’t any clowns.
***
The village is in an uproar. The King is coming tomorrow and rumor has it that he will choose his new companion.
“It isn’t right,” he hears his mother whisper to his aunt. They’re sitting around the table in his mother’s kitchen and he’s watching them from the hallway. Hannibal’s eyes take in the sight of his father standing at the narrow slit of a window glaring out into the darkness of the night and Hannibal feels fear. He thinks ‘stop it, he can see you, he can hear you’,’ but he doesn’t know why and he doesn’t say anything. They all know what will happen when the King comes. Not only will he choose his new companion for the years to come, but he is also coming for the annual tribute and this year’s harvest isn’t enough to feed the full village over the off season, let alone the village and -
“You might as well come out if you’re going to listen in the dark,” his father says. Hannibal looks at him. There’s concern and anger and fear there. But he knows this voice from the last dream. This is that man that will kill him. Expressions Hannibal has never seen on his father’s face, his own father in reality or this man he knows is his father in this strange dream world. Whatever this dream is, he knows this comes before the gold room.
“We needn’t worry,” Hannibal hears himself say. “He will not choose me.” Revulsion replaces the myriad of expressions on his father’s face.
“The King’s proclivities are well known throughout the kingdom. It’s distasteful.” Hannibal doesn’t know why, but he thinks to himself ‘trust father to be more concerned about the chance that a man, his own son even, might get chosen as the King’s companion than about the village’s impending food shortage’. The bitterness of it sticks at him.
“Let us speak of different things,” his aunt says with a forced smile. Her eyes are on the hallway behind Hannibal and he turns his head and he jerks awake with a sharp gasp.
“Now what?” Whistler demands.
“Fucking clowns.” Hannibal mutters. Fucking clowns. He’s a) not eating taco’s before going out to hunt vampires and b) not falling asleep in the car around Abigail Whistler again.
***
They know that he’s coming. They’ve heard rumours over the Nightstalker communication lines which is a little more high tech than two cans and a piece of string, better results than the purple monkey dishwasher system, but just barely.
“So,” Whistler says to the room at large. There’s a heavy silence and damned if Hannibal’s going to be the first to break the ice. Whistler threatened to break his face if he cracked one more mosquito or lesbian vampire joke. Sommerfield says what they’re all thinking.
“Dracula,” she says with a sardonic twist to her lips. In her lap her daughter, Zoe’s, eyes widen in surprise and Sommerfield hushes her when she tries to ask questions. Hannibal would debate the appropriateness of the seven year old being in this meeting. He’d even question the appropriateness of a blind woman being put in charge of some of their more scientific endeavours but hell. Better that they be prepared. There’s some nasty ass shit out there and they need all the help they can get.
“Doesn’t that seem a little, I don’t know, over the top?” Hannibal demands. “We’ve got ourselves the war to end all wars with these overgrown mosquitoes, some stupid ass ‘final solution’ that we can’t figure out” he ignores the death glare Whistler sends his way. “And they think it’s a good plan to go and resurrect Dracula? Do they want to run around all Renfield-ed?” He also ignores the ‘you’re too stupid to live’ look he gets from Abigail.
“We don’t know if it’s a resurrection -.”
“Shut up, Hedges,” Whistler snaps, but there’s no real heat to it. “What we need to know is what the end game is here. What’s the point of all of this, we need to anticipate their next move.”
“What we need is Blade,” Whistler Sr. doesn’t seem surprised at the startled looks that everyone throws his way. He’s pretty damned good at sneaking around, but then, living with Blade for as long as he has, well, that’s gotta count for something.
“You, my good man, need a bell. Hell, I’ve met bloodsuckers who weren’t as quiet as you are,” Hannibal grins unrepentantly at the upturn of the older man’s lips.
“Blade doesn’t want to help us,” Whistler says. She doesn’t look at her father, they’re on the outs these days. Hannibal doesn’t know what set it off this time but he knows they’ll come around. The two of them always do.
“Well I’ll see what I can do about that,” he says. He throws a book at Hedges. Hedges being Hedges, fumbles the catch leaving Hannibal to nab it before it hits the floor. Hedges sneezes at the dust cloud the book gives off when Hannibal squeezes the pages in his hand. “Thought you might find that useful.” Hannibal turns the book over. The cover is leather, the front is etched with a swirling gold symbol. “I went through a lot of trouble to get that, a little appreciation wouldn’t come amiss.” The dust isn’t dust, it’s ash. Hannibal grimaces.
“Oh gross,” he bitches. “I think I just breathed Vampire cooties.” Zoe giggles at him. Everyone else ignores him.
“Where did you get it?” Whistler demands but Whistler Sr. is gone with as little fanfare as he’d arrived.
“Needs a fucking bell,” Hannibal mutters.
“Get on it, Hedges, I want to know what the fuck is going on.” Hedges gulps at the bite in Whistler’s words and Hannibal knows he needs to head this attitude off right fucking quick.
“Don’t get pissy, Princess,” Hannibal’s voice makes it clear it’s an order. “Just because daddy likes big brother better right now doesn’t mean you get to break your toys.” She bares her teeth at him when she smiles.
“Fuck you, King. Fuck you.” She stomps off in the direction of the training area which guarantees that no one else will be going in there for the rest of the day but he got the reaction he was hoping to get. At least now she won’t be bitchy clear through to next week.
“Thanks, man,” Hedges mutters.
“I got your back,” Hannibal says with a grin.
***
Blade doesn’t know what’s good for him sometimes, Abraham figures. That’s part of the problem. If he did, they wouldn’t be right here right now. If the half vampire wasn’t so determined to keep people away there’s every chance that they’d have backup right now. Abraham hopes like hell that Blade doesn’t fuck around and takes Abigail’s help.
He hopes that Abigail doesn’t blame Blade for this and that she’ll forgive him for leaving and most of all, Abraham really, really doesn’t want to do this, but each to their own path or some bullshit.
“Move a finger and you’re dead!” the cop shouts. Abraham Whistler raises an eyebrow and holds up the radio detonator.
“How’s about this one?” he drawls. He lifts his finger from the switch and hears the telltale whine of the detonator going off.
“He’s got something in his hand!” someone shouts out but it’s too late for any of them. It doesn’t hurt as much as he thought it would and then it doesn’t hurt at all.
***
The market place is crowded like Macy’s on a super sale Saturday. Not that it looks remotely like Macy’s or even a normal street. There’s far to much sand. What there are are to many people in one place craning their necks too see over the others trying to get a glimpse of the King and his party. Some of the overly obsessed moms fidget impatiently, waiting for their chance to draw the King’s attention to themselves or their children.
The King’s party is slowly winding its way down the street. One woman pushes her daughter out into their path, so close to them that only the quick actions of a guard thrusting his spear out prevents her from being trampled to death.
“Disgraceful,” his father keeps his voice low, below the crowd. Hannibal looks down at his feet and catches his reflection in a puddle of water. For half a second he’s himself, confused as fuck expression and awesomely styled hair, and then he’s gone and in his place is a rippling image of a man in his early, early 20’s maybe even 18. He has dark hair and dark eyes and he’s -
“Enki, come away,” his mother says. What the fuck kind of a name is Enki? Hannibal wants to demand. Some kind of old English? She’s got a haunted look in her eyes and Hannibal wonders what she sees when she looks at him that makes her so worried for him.
“I only want to see, mother. I’m much to old to be chosen,” Hannibal says it with such confidence that when a heavy hand lands on his shoulder he almost brushes it off. Almost. The look in his mother’s eyes tells him not to as the hand tightens on his shoulder and turns him around.
“Your name?” the cleric asks when Hannibal faces him, but Hannibal doesn’t answer because his eyes are caught completely by the man on horseback staring back at him. The man with shifting hazel eyes that look almost gold in the sunlight. The man from his first dream, where he’d died but he knows he doesn’t know about that yet. Having two sets of memories is really, really confusing.
“Enki,” the man says, proving the rumours of his superior hearing true. When he smiles Hannibal can see his teeth. “The God of the Earth for a God among mortal men.” His voice is deep, rich, full of amusement and sends a shiver down his spine. Hannibal’s heard the voice before, in his first dream but he knows right at this moment in time it’s the first time he’s ever heard it.
“My Lord,” Hannibal says and bows his head. The King himself has singled him out. Something in his belly clenches in pleasure at being chosen.
“Bring him,” the King orders. The cleric’s hand tightens on his shoulder with strength no human should have. Behind him his mother yells something, his father doesn’t even look him in the eye as Hannibal is dragged past.
There’s no one there to bitch him out this time when he wakes up in his own bed with pleasure of someone else's past still curling in his gut. A quick check in with Google and he knows Enki is the name of a Sumerian god, Lord of the Earth. Seven thousand years ago.
He shakes his head and stares resolutely out the window into the grey smog of sunset and resolutely thinks about his own past.
***
There was a time when Hannibal’s life had been pretty decent. The classic American family. His father had been a Businessman with a typical nine to five job. His mother had married her high school sweetheart three weeks after they had graduated, two days after she had turned eighteen. They’d had a wonderful marriage, regular Ward and June Cleaver. First, Marcus had come along and two years after Marcus, along had come Hannibal.
From the little he remembers of it, they’d lived the American Dream. He remembers a small blue house with small front yard and a modest sized backyard surrounded by a white picket fence. His bedroom had had a window that looked out onto the front street and the kitchen had almost always smelled like cookies.
It all came crashing down in stages. First there was the car accident when he was eight. When he’d been staying with the neighbours because he’d had the flu and his parents had taken Marcus to his first little league game of the season. The game had been rained out barely two innings in. The car had been found in the ditch barely two miles away from the ball diamond. The hood crumpled in where it had connected with the concrete highway divider. The paint transfer on the side proving they had been run off the road, but the other driver had never been found.
Then he’d been admitted to a group home where he’d met Burt the Creepy foster parent two years later and where he had busted in Burt’s face in the first time the man had told him to call him Daddy and tried to stick his hand where it didn’t belong.
He had run away then, on the streets at ten years old because he didn’t trust the system and Burt had told him through a bleeding, broken nose that he would just go somewhere worse, where they punished little boys like him.
By thirteen he was binge drinking, by sixteen he was chasing the white dragon and paying for it with the odd robbery, the odd trick, here and there. At twenty he had made the worst decision of his entire life to date. Hannibal had met Danica Talos and learned Vampires were real and that was fucking cool.
Danica Talos was one cool fucking bitch, literally. If she’d had a heart when she had once been human it had probably been as cold as ice. She had pulled up next to his street corner in a red Lamborghini Diablo. She said she thought it was a shame, a good looking nice guy like him down on his luck, selling himself for dime bags. She’d liked his self deprecating sense of humour. She’d decided that he was so nice and so fucking funny that she would take him home with her. And him in his naivete, he’d gone along thinking it was just like Pretty Woman only she was Richard Gere and he was Julia Roberts.
Two months later, she had sunk her fangs into him and made him one of them. It was around the exact same time that he had realized that, in the movie that was his life, Danica was the Sid to his Nancy, their heroin was blood and the sex was almost fantastic enough that he didn’t care that he was going to end up as the poster child for vampire domestic abuse.
Five hellish years after that he’d been standing in an alley facing down Abigail Whistler’s crossbow.
“You looking for a good time sweetheart?” he’d asked with a sarcastic smile. She had looked like a challenge but an easy meal. Back then, barely two years ago, if she hadn’t had another Nightstalker backing her up with a shotgun full of tranquillizer, she would have been dinner, not something Hannibal would ever tell her now though. At the time, she had smiled back at him, a cross between, ‘sweet and innocent’ and ‘I’m going to eat your face’ which was a look he got a lot being around Danica.
“I think you’ll do just fine,” she had said and when the tranq had worn off he’d already had the first of three doses. He’d been the first test subject of Sommerfield’s vampire cure. He couldn’t find it in him to hate either woman for doing it, despite the fact that it had been like coming off heroin only a hundred times worse.
Waking up human had been the best damned day of his life.
***
“He can transform,” Hedges said. Hannibal’s mashes his face into the table, missing his bowl of Froot Loops by mere inches. Energy like that this early in the morning should be outlawed. A comic and the leather bound book are dropped onto the table beside his head. “Into a wolf,” The smugness and the gleeful geekery are way too much to handle.
“I’ll kill you, I swear to God.” Hannibal tells the ugly floral print 1960’s table top.
“A whole new person! but definitely not a bat or a wolf. That’s just stupid. He can control you with his mind!”
“I have a gun and I know you’re afraid when I use it.”
“There’s -” Hannibal pulls his backup out of his boot, aims it at Hedges and clicks the safety off his gun, face still pressed against cool formica. “Shutting up now.”
“Make me coffee,” Hannibal orders, he can hear Hedges swallow, hurry away to the counter and the coffee pot. Hannibal clicks the safety back on and holsters the gun.
***
Abby stares at the television set with mixed feelings. On the one hand, fuck him. He’s in jail and there’s no mention of her father and the warehouse is on fire. Whistler is more than likely dead.
On screen there’s a replay of the interview with some douche psychiatrist about Blade’s delusions. She can see he’s a Familiar from the way he holds himself and the occasional flash of the tattoo under the cuff of his dress shirt.
On the other hand, if her father is dead, he’s not going to want her to leave Blade to the human authorities. Or the vampires that are bound to get their hands on him sooner or later. The last thing the world needs right now is another La Magra attempt.
“You’re fucking insane, Abigail Whistler,” she whispers to herself. She shakes her head and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, she doesn’t have time for tears and her father wouldn’t have appreciated it anyway.
Hedges had better have some fucking information by now.
***
This world is nothing like what it had been when he had gone to sleep. The people and the things are too loud. His children are too demanding. They are bastardized versions of what his people should have become, living in the shadows and foraging like animals. This is not how things should have been. Even worse they have retrieved him, woken him, and they have not even had the foresight to find one who could match his heart. He has nothing in this world to keep him sane and they are constantly shoving mortals into his path in the hopes that he will be distracted.
He will leave this place and find his mate.
***
“Right,” Hedges says, he taps his fingers together in front of him. “Now that we're all caffeinated.” Hannibal just grins and raises his cup, a toast, in Hedges direction. “And we've all left our weapons behind.”
“Right, okay, whatever, moving on," Whistler says. Hedges flushes at her look but continues.
“So, everything we ever knew about vampires from myths and legends and Hollywood is wrong. And everything we ever knew about Dracula, that’s also wrong.”
“Go figure,” Hannibal murmurs. Whistler shoots him a glare. Hannibal holds his hands up in a don’t shoot me gesture and tips himself on the back two legs of his chair.
“Right, okay. So, it’s not Vlad Dracula. He’s not a count and he’s not from Transylvania. That Dracula was just some lord protecting his Fortress in Poenar way back when. Dracula as we know him would actually be more closely translated to Drake and he’s much, much older.” Hannibal thumps his chair back on solid ground, Whistler sits up straighter and attention is now firmly on Hedges. Older vampires mean more powerful vampires. Older than the myth of Dracula means older than five centuries. More than 500 years old. Even the ruling council that Deacon Frost had taken out when he’d tried to raise La Magra, the oldest has only been three centuries.
“How much older?” Whistler asks. Hannibal doesn’t need to hear the answer from Hedges. It’s already in his head.
“Six or seven thousand.” No one has anything to say to that. “From what I’ve been able to figure out, our informant in the Talos clan and from the book it’s pretty clear cut. He wasn’t just born a vampire, he was the first vampire. He drinks blood, he’s super strong, he’s super fast, he can change shape into almost anything and he can probably take Blade in a fight. We know he disappeared about a thousand years ago for some reason or another. Speaking of Blade, we need to figure out how to get him out of lockup.”
“Well this is getting depressing fast.” Hannibal quips. The corner of Whistler’s lip quirks up but she doesn’t smile. Not that he can blame her. The news confirmed one body, human, in the wreckage of the warehouse. A vagrant named Abraham Whistler, thought to have died a few years ago.
“So how do we destroy him?” Hannibal demands.
“There’s nothing in the book, not really. There’s no source to his power that we can destroy. There’s no time of the month where he’s weakest. He’s had a long life, he’s had a few lovers and one was even close enough to him to be called his soul mate. He’s fought in war for centuries. He’s a ruthless killing machine that was born ”
“Do you like, live, in the Marvel universe?” Whistler asks.
Hedges looks at her with an utterly serious expression when he says “yes” and it would be funny if it wasn’t completely obvious that Hedges isn’t fucking with them.
“Is the sky green?” Hannibal asks. Whistler elbows him in the gut hard enough that he loses his breath for a second.
“Do we have anything, anything at all, that could help us here?” She’s got her own serious face on. Her ‘lets kick some ass’ face.
“That’s where Sommerfield comes in,” Hedges says and gestures to the blind woman.
“I’ve been working on something,” Sommerfield says drawing their attention to where she’s sitting by her specialized computer. “We’re calling it the Daystar Virus.” She clicks a few keys and something sciencey happens on the computer monitor, not that Hannibal understands it at all. “It’s an artificial virus, a super virus, based on vampire DNA that will target vampires specifically. It’s been tested at a couple of other Nightstalker cells and it works. It’s one hundred percent transmutable, but it’s really temperamental. We would need as close to an undiluted source of true Vampire DNA as possible for it to actually spread and kill as fast as we want it to.”
“A true vampire DNA source?” Hannibal asks confused.
“Wait,” Whistler says, holding up a hand. “So what you and Hedges are saying isn’t that we’re in shit because we’ve got a seven thousand year old vampire who factors into world domination plans that we have no idea of how to deal with. You’re saying we’re in shit because we need his blood to deal with the world domination plans.”
“Basically, yes,” Sommerfield says.
“We are so, so fucked,” Hannibal says.
“Fuck this,” Whistler says. “The two of you keep working. King, grab Dex, we’ve got a Daywalker to rescue.”
“Wow, Whistler,” Hannibal says to her with a sarcastic grin on his face. “I think your heart just grew three sizes.” Whistler, already heading down the hallway to the gear-up room waves her middle finger at him as she walks away.
“I think this shows you growing as a person!” he shouts after her.
“You know you’re going to be stuck in the car with her, right?” Sommerfield asks.
“Sometimes my mouth disconnects from my brain,” he says.
“You’re implying your brain is ever connected.” Hedges winces when Hannibal punches him, not that hard though, because he completely walked himself into that one.
***
When Hannibal gets frustrated he likes to take it out on a punching bag in the gym, or if someone is up for it, a decent sparring session. Not many people are usually up for it and today is no exception. Hannibal has this itchy feeling under his skin that’s driving him insane. He resists the urge to scratch the ‘bugs crawling under his skin’ sensation.
***
It’s a pretty fancy room they have him in. He’s waiting for the King. He’s thinking things over, making a choice. The Cleric had lead him here and explained to him that he hasn’t got a choice, that he’s the only thing in the entire world that will keep the King from going insane (again) and razing villages to the ground (again) and they will be mated. Not entirely true though, that he doesn’t have a choice, because Hannibal can see the knife they left on the table next to the old time fruit basket and he could totally kill himself with it. He doesn’t know why killing himself is the first thought that pops into his head, something just tells him (tells Enki, rather) that killing the king isn’t an option. The only thing in the room other than the table with the fruit (the knife) is the bed, a large Harlequin Romance style bed in the centre.
“You are very beautiful, Enki,” Hannibal looks up at the man in the doorway. He’s around 6 feet tall, broad shoulders, large muscles, tanned. Hannibal’s brain screams at him that this man is a threat. Enki’s brain seems to be more taken with the man’s green eyes.
“My Lord,” Hannibal says and bows.
“Will you be mine, beautiful Enki?” Now that he’s looking, Hannibal has to admit, the eyes are pretty fucking awesome. Green, but swirling with gold.
“Yes, my Lord,” Hannibal.
“Call me Drake,” he says. Oh god, oh god, he’s going to die. Drake cups Hannibal’s face with broad, warm hands, lifts Hannibal’s face up and kisses him. It hits him like a ton of bricks because Jesus fucking Christ he’s the original gangster’s main squeeze. The kiss itself steals his breath away. It rocks his fucking world. Hannibal’s stomach is tied up with emotions that he’s never ever felt before and all from a simple kiss. There wasn’t even any tongue! Also, vampires just, aren’t that hot. Unless they’re David Boreanaz. Or Brad Pitt.
“Drake,” Hannibal sighs, and wow does he ever sound like a thirteen year old girl. The room spins around him and stops when Drake drops him onto the bed. Hannibal is a bit shocked. Okay, he’s a lot shocked. Drake is covering him, pressing him down into the bedding. They’re the same height but Drake has so much more muscle than Enki does. He’s a bit embarrassed by how into this Enki is but there’s no denying that it’s good. Fucking fantastic.
Drake takes him in a gentle way, as gentle as he can be taking someone for the first time with his monster fucking cock and Hannibal would be swearing up a shit storm if it was him but Enki just lies there with his hands clutched in the bedsheets and moans small little sounds that make Drake’s cock jerk inside him. Enki turns out to be a little vixen who scratches and bites.
***
“Look, I think we need to own up to it, Dan, we made a big fucking mistake,” Asher says. He’s tired, Danica’s tired. They’re all tired from all the running around they’ve had to do lately and they’re running short on Familiars. Hell, they’re having trouble paying people to be Familiars. Could be that they keep letting the Familiars get eaten and somehow word had gotten out to the clubs that life expectancy of a Talos Familiar had dropped staggeringly in the last few months.
“I’m not willing to give up,” Danica’s lips are twisted up in a snarl of loathing and Asher doesn’t know if she’s directing it at him or at herself. “We can’t exactly say ‘oh, by the way, we think we made a mistake waking you up. Would you mind going back to sleep so we can unfuck ourselves?’ now can we?”
“Hey,” Asher snaps. “Don’t get bitchy with me, Kitten, I’m not the one who pushed and pushed for this. This is your Party, I’m just a fucking guest.”
“You’re worse than a guest,” Danica mutters. “You’re like that person who crashes the party and hangs out in the corner and then narcs to the cops about the underage drinking.”
“Ouch,” Asher hopes the heavy sarcasm makes it past Danica’s ego. “That one really hurt. You’re losing your touch sweetheart. Is all this starting to get to you?”
“Fuck you, Asher.” Asher licks his lips and grins a big shit eating grin.
“Anytime you want to hop on board and give it a spin, Dan, anytime.” She hisses at him and stomps away. The door suffers her wrath. The metal splinters apart under her hands as she shoves it out of her way.
“What the hell are we going to do about this?” Jarko demands. “Drake’s fucking useless, the blood bank isn’t working fast enough. And what the fuck was the point of finding him?” Asher tosses an incredulous look over at him. Jarko Grimwood, his and Danica’s Hannibal King replacement. They’d wanted someone with less brains, less mouth and about the same brawn. Jarko was the very definition of ‘be careful what you wish for’, thank god his mouth is good for other things.
“We’re not going to do anything about ‘this’,” Asher tells him. His stern stride from the room is interrupted by having to step over pieces of the door. “Danica is.” His next words are for him alone. A little bit of bitterness he doesn’t intend to share with the world. “She’s the one that wanted to be Queen of all the vampires. This is her mess.”
***
There are broad hands sweeping over his naked skin and wherever they touch it feels like burning. Hannibal wouldn’t stop them for the world. Not that he’s in control of anything. Enki is shaking like a little leaf under Drake’s body. Drake’s kisses are like a drug and Enki is making all these pitiful moaning sounds and seems more than content to let the other man take control. Hannibal can’t make his hands do anything except clutch at Drake’s naked waist slick with sweat as Drake pushes into him over and over again.
“You are perfect, you are absolute perfection,” Drake whispers into Hannibal’s ear. “I could take you like this forever.”
“Please, oh please,” Hannibal begs. His legs feel stretched where they’re wrapped around Drake’s waist and Drake’s cock feels like steel inside him. Every stroke pushes Hannibal higher and higher, touches that place inside him that he hadn’t known existed until Asher. Didn’t know he missed until just now. Enki is shaking and crying out a low keening wail and he feels his whole body tense up.
“Give me everything,” Drake orders. His hands tighten on Hannibal’s hips. Enki shouts as he shakes apart. Drake roars and it’s something beastly, inhuman and when he sinks his teeth into Hannibal’s neck it feels like coming again.
***
Hannibal wakes up and knows three things. There is a sticky, wet, cold mess in his boxers, a rock hard erection pressed into the sticky/wet/cold mess and a persistent idea fully formed and completely fucking insane, rattling around in his brain. He’ll start with the hard on and move on from there.
A morning jerk in the shower leaves him loose in the shoulders and in a better mood than when he’d gone to bed. Still hyped up and angry over the attitude a certain Daywalker had shown upon rescue. Ungrateful bastard.
Hedges is microwaving strawberry poptarts when Hannibal makes his way into the kitchen and then makes a beeline for the coffee pot.
“That’s disgusting, Hedges, you’re an animal.” Hannibal says and sits down with his Froot Loops and coffee.
“You really don’t get to judge,” Hedges says. He juggles the poptart from one hand to the other, hissing at the heat.
“Poptarts should only ever be toasted,” Hannibal reproaches. “Honestly, you’re a heathen.”
“Says the man eating his Froot loops and coffee.” Hedges snorts. Hannibal just grins unrepentantly and dumps some brown sugar on top of the whole mess.
“You find anything else out from that book?” he tries for casual. Hedges just raises an eyebrow because Hannibal’s never really been good at casual.
“Not so much,” Hedges shrugs. “War, pillage, plunder, rape, steal, create superhuman race of night walking, blood sucking crazies, sleep for a thousand plus years.”
“I do so love the cliff notes version, of anything really. It’s always so concise and to the point.” Hedges rolls his eyes. “Tell me more about this soul mate period.” Hannibal demands.
“Why?”
“Because I woke up this morning with a hard on for historically accurate porn, true fact.” Hedges stares at him and Hannibal keeps his ‘I’m stupid’ smile on his face until the geek sees whatever he was looking for, maybe decides that Hannibal’s not making fun of him. “I’m not making fun of you,” Hannibal reassures. If anything Hedges looks ever more worried.
“Whatever, you’re freaky.” Hedges says, but then explains anyway. “He was using some excuse that without his ‘soul mate’ he would go crazy and burn down a village or something. So the villages would put out all their available boys and girls and let him pick which one he wanted and he’d keep them around for a while and then suddenly a few years would go by and there would be a new search. So not so much a soul mate, but like, a concubine that matched him.”
“So, basically he wanted his chance to diddle his way through the ages?”
“Did you just say diddle?” Hedges asks.
“What? No. Crazy person.” Hannibal pushes away from the table and claps Hedges on the shoulder. “Thanks, man, there’s plenty of historically accurate monkey spanking in my future.”
“You are seriously the grossest individual I have ever met, please leave my sight before I’m forced to drink bleach in an attempt to cleanse my mind of that horrible, horrible image.”
“That’s what I like about you Hedges, always to the point.” Dex leans into the kitchen and gives them both the stink eye. Then again, Hannibal is convinced that’s the only look Dex know how to give.
“Whistler wants us in the gear up room, she wants to put Blade through the electronic paces. Match up intel.”
“Such is life,” Hannibal says and makes a face at his now soggy, uneaten coffee Froot Loops. “No rest for the wickedly awesome.”
***
“Fucking Hannibal King,” Danica screams at the top of her lungs. She’s got an impressive set of lungs. The sounds that come out of her mouth make his head hurt more and more. She’s violent, unpredictable and she breaks just as many things as she makes. Drake has disliked her from the beginning. The lassitude and the multiple feedings has done much to restore him. His mate will do the rest.
“We’re going to need another plan, goddamn it. I can’t believe they found the warehouse.” From his place in the shadows Drake watches Asher stare at the mammoth, Grimwood, with complete disdain.
“They got to Vreede,” Danica says. “Someone in here is leaking information.” The side door to the room bursts open and the young abomination who had been guarding his cell comes flying in. Drake grins. These children, they think themselves so clever. They think themselves capable of containing him.
“He’s gone!” the youngling exclaims. “I don’t know how.”
“What do you mean you don’t know how. He can’t walk through solid steel, you fuckwit,” Grimwood shouts. They know so little of him. Drake doesn’t linger, he wants to see this new world. This world he will rule.
***
He’s figured out he’s probably not going crazy. Hannibal’s just not appreciating the x rated dreams he’s having. Enki seems to be having all the fun and Hannibal’s the one waking up with a mess to clean.
Hitting the streets is probably not the best thing to do, but man, the hunt is calling and there’s nothing that winds him down better than a good hunt.
This particular vampire is pretty vicious and has possibly completely lost it’s mind judging by the carnage it’s leaving behind him. Hannibal finds him in the alley behind a creepy goth toy store of all things. The hulking shape in the shadows promises fight that will take the edge off.
“Hey, Sweetcheeks, wanna rumble?” the shape resolves itself from the shadows and Hannibal’s breath catches in his throat.
“Sweetcheeks?” Drake asks, rolling the word around in his mouth. “Some form of an insult?” Hannibal has two burning desires. The first to see if that trail of hair goes all the way down and the second to run like fucking hell. “Would you like to come with me?” Drake holds his hand out to Hannibal and acts for all the world like he’s going to take it.
Hannibal runs like fucking hell.
***
Author: kristories
Fandom: Blade: Trinity
Pairing/Character: Drake/Hannibal King
Rating: FRAO
Kink: Vampires, First Time, Past Lives, Soulmates
Notes/Warnings: AU, movie spoilers, slash, vampires, badly explained reincarnation, Mentions of past drug and alcohol abuse by a minor, nonspecific mention of a past prevented child abuse incident
Banner, Icon and Wallpaper Art by blueslashicons
Book Cover Art by taibhrigh (originally for smallfandomfest 6)
a/n: I'm also totally claiming this for my 'soulmates' square on my schmoop bingo card...I may understand the definition of schmoop.
Part 2
There’s real gold inlaid in the floor under Hannibal’s knee. It swirls and runs out past his line of sight in a majestic pattern. It sparkles where the firelight touches it. A hand brushes over his shoulder and he looks up directly into hazel eyes. The need pulsing under his skin abates for a few moments.
“You are not required to present yourself in such a fashion, my love.” The man’s voice is deep and rich and makes Hannibal feel like molten lava is pooling at the base of his spine.
“You are my liege,” Hannibal replies. It’s not his voice though. This voice is stronger, a little rougher. It sounds like back when he used to smoke, back before a pretty girl, a fast car, a fucked up party, passing out from too much coke and waking up with a thirst for blood. The hand cups his jaw firmly and the man leans down until their lips are about touching. The urge to complete the kiss sends tremors down Hannibal’s spine, he can feel his muscles quivering as he holds himself completely still.
“You are the second half of my soul. I do love you so,” the man says and takes Hannibal’s lips in a kiss that sweeps them both away. They tear at each other’s clothes as Hannibal is pulled to his feet. Hannibal shivers a little at the glint of firelight off sharp canines when the man smiles a predatory smile. “You will be mine,” the man says. Hannibal opens his mouth for the sharp kiss but pulls away on a gasp of pain. There’s a cacophony of noise sudden in its onset and Hannibal stares down at his chest, the blade of a sword pierced through.
“Traitor,” a new voice hisses in his ear and brings an accompanying feeling of anger and betrayal that he has no reference for. Hannibal screams as the blade is pulled up and out. The last thing he hears is the man, screaming a battle cry. The last thing he feels is the sword slashing at his throat.
He wakes up scrabbling at his throat, choking on blood that isn’t there. His heart is pounding a mile a minute and Whistler is staring at him like he’s got three heads.
“The hell’s the matter with you?” she demands from beside him. Hannibal stares at her for a moment too long, enough to make her uncomfortable. His hands are shaking so he puts them on his knees and breathes in deep. The scenery is whizzing by and the sun reflects hot off the tinted window of the Nightstalkermobile.
“Nothing,” he says roughly, “just a bad dream.” Just a funny, fucked up, way beyond crazy dream. At least there weren’t any clowns.
***
The village is in an uproar. The King is coming tomorrow and rumor has it that he will choose his new companion.
“It isn’t right,” he hears his mother whisper to his aunt. They’re sitting around the table in his mother’s kitchen and he’s watching them from the hallway. Hannibal’s eyes take in the sight of his father standing at the narrow slit of a window glaring out into the darkness of the night and Hannibal feels fear. He thinks ‘stop it, he can see you, he can hear you’,’ but he doesn’t know why and he doesn’t say anything. They all know what will happen when the King comes. Not only will he choose his new companion for the years to come, but he is also coming for the annual tribute and this year’s harvest isn’t enough to feed the full village over the off season, let alone the village and -
“You might as well come out if you’re going to listen in the dark,” his father says. Hannibal looks at him. There’s concern and anger and fear there. But he knows this voice from the last dream. This is that man that will kill him. Expressions Hannibal has never seen on his father’s face, his own father in reality or this man he knows is his father in this strange dream world. Whatever this dream is, he knows this comes before the gold room.
“We needn’t worry,” Hannibal hears himself say. “He will not choose me.” Revulsion replaces the myriad of expressions on his father’s face.
“The King’s proclivities are well known throughout the kingdom. It’s distasteful.” Hannibal doesn’t know why, but he thinks to himself ‘trust father to be more concerned about the chance that a man, his own son even, might get chosen as the King’s companion than about the village’s impending food shortage’. The bitterness of it sticks at him.
“Let us speak of different things,” his aunt says with a forced smile. Her eyes are on the hallway behind Hannibal and he turns his head and he jerks awake with a sharp gasp.
“Now what?” Whistler demands.
“Fucking clowns.” Hannibal mutters. Fucking clowns. He’s a) not eating taco’s before going out to hunt vampires and b) not falling asleep in the car around Abigail Whistler again.
***
They know that he’s coming. They’ve heard rumours over the Nightstalker communication lines which is a little more high tech than two cans and a piece of string, better results than the purple monkey dishwasher system, but just barely.
“So,” Whistler says to the room at large. There’s a heavy silence and damned if Hannibal’s going to be the first to break the ice. Whistler threatened to break his face if he cracked one more mosquito or lesbian vampire joke. Sommerfield says what they’re all thinking.
“Dracula,” she says with a sardonic twist to her lips. In her lap her daughter, Zoe’s, eyes widen in surprise and Sommerfield hushes her when she tries to ask questions. Hannibal would debate the appropriateness of the seven year old being in this meeting. He’d even question the appropriateness of a blind woman being put in charge of some of their more scientific endeavours but hell. Better that they be prepared. There’s some nasty ass shit out there and they need all the help they can get.
“Doesn’t that seem a little, I don’t know, over the top?” Hannibal demands. “We’ve got ourselves the war to end all wars with these overgrown mosquitoes, some stupid ass ‘final solution’ that we can’t figure out” he ignores the death glare Whistler sends his way. “And they think it’s a good plan to go and resurrect Dracula? Do they want to run around all Renfield-ed?” He also ignores the ‘you’re too stupid to live’ look he gets from Abigail.
“We don’t know if it’s a resurrection -.”
“Shut up, Hedges,” Whistler snaps, but there’s no real heat to it. “What we need to know is what the end game is here. What’s the point of all of this, we need to anticipate their next move.”
“What we need is Blade,” Whistler Sr. doesn’t seem surprised at the startled looks that everyone throws his way. He’s pretty damned good at sneaking around, but then, living with Blade for as long as he has, well, that’s gotta count for something.
“You, my good man, need a bell. Hell, I’ve met bloodsuckers who weren’t as quiet as you are,” Hannibal grins unrepentantly at the upturn of the older man’s lips.
“Blade doesn’t want to help us,” Whistler says. She doesn’t look at her father, they’re on the outs these days. Hannibal doesn’t know what set it off this time but he knows they’ll come around. The two of them always do.
“Well I’ll see what I can do about that,” he says. He throws a book at Hedges. Hedges being Hedges, fumbles the catch leaving Hannibal to nab it before it hits the floor. Hedges sneezes at the dust cloud the book gives off when Hannibal squeezes the pages in his hand. “Thought you might find that useful.” Hannibal turns the book over. The cover is leather, the front is etched with a swirling gold symbol. “I went through a lot of trouble to get that, a little appreciation wouldn’t come amiss.” The dust isn’t dust, it’s ash. Hannibal grimaces.
“Oh gross,” he bitches. “I think I just breathed Vampire cooties.” Zoe giggles at him. Everyone else ignores him.
“Where did you get it?” Whistler demands but Whistler Sr. is gone with as little fanfare as he’d arrived.
“Needs a fucking bell,” Hannibal mutters.
“Get on it, Hedges, I want to know what the fuck is going on.” Hedges gulps at the bite in Whistler’s words and Hannibal knows he needs to head this attitude off right fucking quick.
“Don’t get pissy, Princess,” Hannibal’s voice makes it clear it’s an order. “Just because daddy likes big brother better right now doesn’t mean you get to break your toys.” She bares her teeth at him when she smiles.
“Fuck you, King. Fuck you.” She stomps off in the direction of the training area which guarantees that no one else will be going in there for the rest of the day but he got the reaction he was hoping to get. At least now she won’t be bitchy clear through to next week.
“Thanks, man,” Hedges mutters.
“I got your back,” Hannibal says with a grin.
***
Blade doesn’t know what’s good for him sometimes, Abraham figures. That’s part of the problem. If he did, they wouldn’t be right here right now. If the half vampire wasn’t so determined to keep people away there’s every chance that they’d have backup right now. Abraham hopes like hell that Blade doesn’t fuck around and takes Abigail’s help.
He hopes that Abigail doesn’t blame Blade for this and that she’ll forgive him for leaving and most of all, Abraham really, really doesn’t want to do this, but each to their own path or some bullshit.
“Move a finger and you’re dead!” the cop shouts. Abraham Whistler raises an eyebrow and holds up the radio detonator.
“How’s about this one?” he drawls. He lifts his finger from the switch and hears the telltale whine of the detonator going off.
“He’s got something in his hand!” someone shouts out but it’s too late for any of them. It doesn’t hurt as much as he thought it would and then it doesn’t hurt at all.
***
The market place is crowded like Macy’s on a super sale Saturday. Not that it looks remotely like Macy’s or even a normal street. There’s far to much sand. What there are are to many people in one place craning their necks too see over the others trying to get a glimpse of the King and his party. Some of the overly obsessed moms fidget impatiently, waiting for their chance to draw the King’s attention to themselves or their children.
The King’s party is slowly winding its way down the street. One woman pushes her daughter out into their path, so close to them that only the quick actions of a guard thrusting his spear out prevents her from being trampled to death.
“Disgraceful,” his father keeps his voice low, below the crowd. Hannibal looks down at his feet and catches his reflection in a puddle of water. For half a second he’s himself, confused as fuck expression and awesomely styled hair, and then he’s gone and in his place is a rippling image of a man in his early, early 20’s maybe even 18. He has dark hair and dark eyes and he’s -
“Enki, come away,” his mother says. What the fuck kind of a name is Enki? Hannibal wants to demand. Some kind of old English? She’s got a haunted look in her eyes and Hannibal wonders what she sees when she looks at him that makes her so worried for him.
“I only want to see, mother. I’m much to old to be chosen,” Hannibal says it with such confidence that when a heavy hand lands on his shoulder he almost brushes it off. Almost. The look in his mother’s eyes tells him not to as the hand tightens on his shoulder and turns him around.
“Your name?” the cleric asks when Hannibal faces him, but Hannibal doesn’t answer because his eyes are caught completely by the man on horseback staring back at him. The man with shifting hazel eyes that look almost gold in the sunlight. The man from his first dream, where he’d died but he knows he doesn’t know about that yet. Having two sets of memories is really, really confusing.
“Enki,” the man says, proving the rumours of his superior hearing true. When he smiles Hannibal can see his teeth. “The God of the Earth for a God among mortal men.” His voice is deep, rich, full of amusement and sends a shiver down his spine. Hannibal’s heard the voice before, in his first dream but he knows right at this moment in time it’s the first time he’s ever heard it.
“My Lord,” Hannibal says and bows his head. The King himself has singled him out. Something in his belly clenches in pleasure at being chosen.
“Bring him,” the King orders. The cleric’s hand tightens on his shoulder with strength no human should have. Behind him his mother yells something, his father doesn’t even look him in the eye as Hannibal is dragged past.
There’s no one there to bitch him out this time when he wakes up in his own bed with pleasure of someone else's past still curling in his gut. A quick check in with Google and he knows Enki is the name of a Sumerian god, Lord of the Earth. Seven thousand years ago.
He shakes his head and stares resolutely out the window into the grey smog of sunset and resolutely thinks about his own past.
***
There was a time when Hannibal’s life had been pretty decent. The classic American family. His father had been a Businessman with a typical nine to five job. His mother had married her high school sweetheart three weeks after they had graduated, two days after she had turned eighteen. They’d had a wonderful marriage, regular Ward and June Cleaver. First, Marcus had come along and two years after Marcus, along had come Hannibal.
From the little he remembers of it, they’d lived the American Dream. He remembers a small blue house with small front yard and a modest sized backyard surrounded by a white picket fence. His bedroom had had a window that looked out onto the front street and the kitchen had almost always smelled like cookies.
It all came crashing down in stages. First there was the car accident when he was eight. When he’d been staying with the neighbours because he’d had the flu and his parents had taken Marcus to his first little league game of the season. The game had been rained out barely two innings in. The car had been found in the ditch barely two miles away from the ball diamond. The hood crumpled in where it had connected with the concrete highway divider. The paint transfer on the side proving they had been run off the road, but the other driver had never been found.
Then he’d been admitted to a group home where he’d met Burt the Creepy foster parent two years later and where he had busted in Burt’s face in the first time the man had told him to call him Daddy and tried to stick his hand where it didn’t belong.
He had run away then, on the streets at ten years old because he didn’t trust the system and Burt had told him through a bleeding, broken nose that he would just go somewhere worse, where they punished little boys like him.
By thirteen he was binge drinking, by sixteen he was chasing the white dragon and paying for it with the odd robbery, the odd trick, here and there. At twenty he had made the worst decision of his entire life to date. Hannibal had met Danica Talos and learned Vampires were real and that was fucking cool.
Danica Talos was one cool fucking bitch, literally. If she’d had a heart when she had once been human it had probably been as cold as ice. She had pulled up next to his street corner in a red Lamborghini Diablo. She said she thought it was a shame, a good looking nice guy like him down on his luck, selling himself for dime bags. She’d liked his self deprecating sense of humour. She’d decided that he was so nice and so fucking funny that she would take him home with her. And him in his naivete, he’d gone along thinking it was just like Pretty Woman only she was Richard Gere and he was Julia Roberts.
Two months later, she had sunk her fangs into him and made him one of them. It was around the exact same time that he had realized that, in the movie that was his life, Danica was the Sid to his Nancy, their heroin was blood and the sex was almost fantastic enough that he didn’t care that he was going to end up as the poster child for vampire domestic abuse.
Five hellish years after that he’d been standing in an alley facing down Abigail Whistler’s crossbow.
“You looking for a good time sweetheart?” he’d asked with a sarcastic smile. She had looked like a challenge but an easy meal. Back then, barely two years ago, if she hadn’t had another Nightstalker backing her up with a shotgun full of tranquillizer, she would have been dinner, not something Hannibal would ever tell her now though. At the time, she had smiled back at him, a cross between, ‘sweet and innocent’ and ‘I’m going to eat your face’ which was a look he got a lot being around Danica.
“I think you’ll do just fine,” she had said and when the tranq had worn off he’d already had the first of three doses. He’d been the first test subject of Sommerfield’s vampire cure. He couldn’t find it in him to hate either woman for doing it, despite the fact that it had been like coming off heroin only a hundred times worse.
Waking up human had been the best damned day of his life.
***
“He can transform,” Hedges said. Hannibal’s mashes his face into the table, missing his bowl of Froot Loops by mere inches. Energy like that this early in the morning should be outlawed. A comic and the leather bound book are dropped onto the table beside his head. “Into a wolf,” The smugness and the gleeful geekery are way too much to handle.
“I’ll kill you, I swear to God.” Hannibal tells the ugly floral print 1960’s table top.
“A whole new person! but definitely not a bat or a wolf. That’s just stupid. He can control you with his mind!”
“I have a gun and I know you’re afraid when I use it.”
“There’s -” Hannibal pulls his backup out of his boot, aims it at Hedges and clicks the safety off his gun, face still pressed against cool formica. “Shutting up now.”
“Make me coffee,” Hannibal orders, he can hear Hedges swallow, hurry away to the counter and the coffee pot. Hannibal clicks the safety back on and holsters the gun.
***
Abby stares at the television set with mixed feelings. On the one hand, fuck him. He’s in jail and there’s no mention of her father and the warehouse is on fire. Whistler is more than likely dead.
On screen there’s a replay of the interview with some douche psychiatrist about Blade’s delusions. She can see he’s a Familiar from the way he holds himself and the occasional flash of the tattoo under the cuff of his dress shirt.
On the other hand, if her father is dead, he’s not going to want her to leave Blade to the human authorities. Or the vampires that are bound to get their hands on him sooner or later. The last thing the world needs right now is another La Magra attempt.
“You’re fucking insane, Abigail Whistler,” she whispers to herself. She shakes her head and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, she doesn’t have time for tears and her father wouldn’t have appreciated it anyway.
Hedges had better have some fucking information by now.
***
This world is nothing like what it had been when he had gone to sleep. The people and the things are too loud. His children are too demanding. They are bastardized versions of what his people should have become, living in the shadows and foraging like animals. This is not how things should have been. Even worse they have retrieved him, woken him, and they have not even had the foresight to find one who could match his heart. He has nothing in this world to keep him sane and they are constantly shoving mortals into his path in the hopes that he will be distracted.
He will leave this place and find his mate.
***
“Right,” Hedges says, he taps his fingers together in front of him. “Now that we're all caffeinated.” Hannibal just grins and raises his cup, a toast, in Hedges direction. “And we've all left our weapons behind.”
“Right, okay, whatever, moving on," Whistler says. Hedges flushes at her look but continues.
“So, everything we ever knew about vampires from myths and legends and Hollywood is wrong. And everything we ever knew about Dracula, that’s also wrong.”
“Go figure,” Hannibal murmurs. Whistler shoots him a glare. Hannibal holds his hands up in a don’t shoot me gesture and tips himself on the back two legs of his chair.
“Right, okay. So, it’s not Vlad Dracula. He’s not a count and he’s not from Transylvania. That Dracula was just some lord protecting his Fortress in Poenar way back when. Dracula as we know him would actually be more closely translated to Drake and he’s much, much older.” Hannibal thumps his chair back on solid ground, Whistler sits up straighter and attention is now firmly on Hedges. Older vampires mean more powerful vampires. Older than the myth of Dracula means older than five centuries. More than 500 years old. Even the ruling council that Deacon Frost had taken out when he’d tried to raise La Magra, the oldest has only been three centuries.
“How much older?” Whistler asks. Hannibal doesn’t need to hear the answer from Hedges. It’s already in his head.
“Six or seven thousand.” No one has anything to say to that. “From what I’ve been able to figure out, our informant in the Talos clan and from the book it’s pretty clear cut. He wasn’t just born a vampire, he was the first vampire. He drinks blood, he’s super strong, he’s super fast, he can change shape into almost anything and he can probably take Blade in a fight. We know he disappeared about a thousand years ago for some reason or another. Speaking of Blade, we need to figure out how to get him out of lockup.”
“Well this is getting depressing fast.” Hannibal quips. The corner of Whistler’s lip quirks up but she doesn’t smile. Not that he can blame her. The news confirmed one body, human, in the wreckage of the warehouse. A vagrant named Abraham Whistler, thought to have died a few years ago.
“So how do we destroy him?” Hannibal demands.
“There’s nothing in the book, not really. There’s no source to his power that we can destroy. There’s no time of the month where he’s weakest. He’s had a long life, he’s had a few lovers and one was even close enough to him to be called his soul mate. He’s fought in war for centuries. He’s a ruthless killing machine that was born ”
“Do you like, live, in the Marvel universe?” Whistler asks.
Hedges looks at her with an utterly serious expression when he says “yes” and it would be funny if it wasn’t completely obvious that Hedges isn’t fucking with them.
“Is the sky green?” Hannibal asks. Whistler elbows him in the gut hard enough that he loses his breath for a second.
“Do we have anything, anything at all, that could help us here?” She’s got her own serious face on. Her ‘lets kick some ass’ face.
“That’s where Sommerfield comes in,” Hedges says and gestures to the blind woman.
“I’ve been working on something,” Sommerfield says drawing their attention to where she’s sitting by her specialized computer. “We’re calling it the Daystar Virus.” She clicks a few keys and something sciencey happens on the computer monitor, not that Hannibal understands it at all. “It’s an artificial virus, a super virus, based on vampire DNA that will target vampires specifically. It’s been tested at a couple of other Nightstalker cells and it works. It’s one hundred percent transmutable, but it’s really temperamental. We would need as close to an undiluted source of true Vampire DNA as possible for it to actually spread and kill as fast as we want it to.”
“A true vampire DNA source?” Hannibal asks confused.
“Wait,” Whistler says, holding up a hand. “So what you and Hedges are saying isn’t that we’re in shit because we’ve got a seven thousand year old vampire who factors into world domination plans that we have no idea of how to deal with. You’re saying we’re in shit because we need his blood to deal with the world domination plans.”
“Basically, yes,” Sommerfield says.
“We are so, so fucked,” Hannibal says.
“Fuck this,” Whistler says. “The two of you keep working. King, grab Dex, we’ve got a Daywalker to rescue.”
“Wow, Whistler,” Hannibal says to her with a sarcastic grin on his face. “I think your heart just grew three sizes.” Whistler, already heading down the hallway to the gear-up room waves her middle finger at him as she walks away.
“I think this shows you growing as a person!” he shouts after her.
“You know you’re going to be stuck in the car with her, right?” Sommerfield asks.
“Sometimes my mouth disconnects from my brain,” he says.
“You’re implying your brain is ever connected.” Hedges winces when Hannibal punches him, not that hard though, because he completely walked himself into that one.
***
When Hannibal gets frustrated he likes to take it out on a punching bag in the gym, or if someone is up for it, a decent sparring session. Not many people are usually up for it and today is no exception. Hannibal has this itchy feeling under his skin that’s driving him insane. He resists the urge to scratch the ‘bugs crawling under his skin’ sensation.
***
It’s a pretty fancy room they have him in. He’s waiting for the King. He’s thinking things over, making a choice. The Cleric had lead him here and explained to him that he hasn’t got a choice, that he’s the only thing in the entire world that will keep the King from going insane (again) and razing villages to the ground (again) and they will be mated. Not entirely true though, that he doesn’t have a choice, because Hannibal can see the knife they left on the table next to the old time fruit basket and he could totally kill himself with it. He doesn’t know why killing himself is the first thought that pops into his head, something just tells him (tells Enki, rather) that killing the king isn’t an option. The only thing in the room other than the table with the fruit (the knife) is the bed, a large Harlequin Romance style bed in the centre.
“You are very beautiful, Enki,” Hannibal looks up at the man in the doorway. He’s around 6 feet tall, broad shoulders, large muscles, tanned. Hannibal’s brain screams at him that this man is a threat. Enki’s brain seems to be more taken with the man’s green eyes.
“My Lord,” Hannibal says and bows.
“Will you be mine, beautiful Enki?” Now that he’s looking, Hannibal has to admit, the eyes are pretty fucking awesome. Green, but swirling with gold.
“Yes, my Lord,” Hannibal.
“Call me Drake,” he says. Oh god, oh god, he’s going to die. Drake cups Hannibal’s face with broad, warm hands, lifts Hannibal’s face up and kisses him. It hits him like a ton of bricks because Jesus fucking Christ he’s the original gangster’s main squeeze. The kiss itself steals his breath away. It rocks his fucking world. Hannibal’s stomach is tied up with emotions that he’s never ever felt before and all from a simple kiss. There wasn’t even any tongue! Also, vampires just, aren’t that hot. Unless they’re David Boreanaz. Or Brad Pitt.
“Drake,” Hannibal sighs, and wow does he ever sound like a thirteen year old girl. The room spins around him and stops when Drake drops him onto the bed. Hannibal is a bit shocked. Okay, he’s a lot shocked. Drake is covering him, pressing him down into the bedding. They’re the same height but Drake has so much more muscle than Enki does. He’s a bit embarrassed by how into this Enki is but there’s no denying that it’s good. Fucking fantastic.
Drake takes him in a gentle way, as gentle as he can be taking someone for the first time with his monster fucking cock and Hannibal would be swearing up a shit storm if it was him but Enki just lies there with his hands clutched in the bedsheets and moans small little sounds that make Drake’s cock jerk inside him. Enki turns out to be a little vixen who scratches and bites.
***
“Look, I think we need to own up to it, Dan, we made a big fucking mistake,” Asher says. He’s tired, Danica’s tired. They’re all tired from all the running around they’ve had to do lately and they’re running short on Familiars. Hell, they’re having trouble paying people to be Familiars. Could be that they keep letting the Familiars get eaten and somehow word had gotten out to the clubs that life expectancy of a Talos Familiar had dropped staggeringly in the last few months.
“I’m not willing to give up,” Danica’s lips are twisted up in a snarl of loathing and Asher doesn’t know if she’s directing it at him or at herself. “We can’t exactly say ‘oh, by the way, we think we made a mistake waking you up. Would you mind going back to sleep so we can unfuck ourselves?’ now can we?”
“Hey,” Asher snaps. “Don’t get bitchy with me, Kitten, I’m not the one who pushed and pushed for this. This is your Party, I’m just a fucking guest.”
“You’re worse than a guest,” Danica mutters. “You’re like that person who crashes the party and hangs out in the corner and then narcs to the cops about the underage drinking.”
“Ouch,” Asher hopes the heavy sarcasm makes it past Danica’s ego. “That one really hurt. You’re losing your touch sweetheart. Is all this starting to get to you?”
“Fuck you, Asher.” Asher licks his lips and grins a big shit eating grin.
“Anytime you want to hop on board and give it a spin, Dan, anytime.” She hisses at him and stomps away. The door suffers her wrath. The metal splinters apart under her hands as she shoves it out of her way.
“What the hell are we going to do about this?” Jarko demands. “Drake’s fucking useless, the blood bank isn’t working fast enough. And what the fuck was the point of finding him?” Asher tosses an incredulous look over at him. Jarko Grimwood, his and Danica’s Hannibal King replacement. They’d wanted someone with less brains, less mouth and about the same brawn. Jarko was the very definition of ‘be careful what you wish for’, thank god his mouth is good for other things.
“We’re not going to do anything about ‘this’,” Asher tells him. His stern stride from the room is interrupted by having to step over pieces of the door. “Danica is.” His next words are for him alone. A little bit of bitterness he doesn’t intend to share with the world. “She’s the one that wanted to be Queen of all the vampires. This is her mess.”
***
There are broad hands sweeping over his naked skin and wherever they touch it feels like burning. Hannibal wouldn’t stop them for the world. Not that he’s in control of anything. Enki is shaking like a little leaf under Drake’s body. Drake’s kisses are like a drug and Enki is making all these pitiful moaning sounds and seems more than content to let the other man take control. Hannibal can’t make his hands do anything except clutch at Drake’s naked waist slick with sweat as Drake pushes into him over and over again.
“You are perfect, you are absolute perfection,” Drake whispers into Hannibal’s ear. “I could take you like this forever.”
“Please, oh please,” Hannibal begs. His legs feel stretched where they’re wrapped around Drake’s waist and Drake’s cock feels like steel inside him. Every stroke pushes Hannibal higher and higher, touches that place inside him that he hadn’t known existed until Asher. Didn’t know he missed until just now. Enki is shaking and crying out a low keening wail and he feels his whole body tense up.
“Give me everything,” Drake orders. His hands tighten on Hannibal’s hips. Enki shouts as he shakes apart. Drake roars and it’s something beastly, inhuman and when he sinks his teeth into Hannibal’s neck it feels like coming again.
***
Hannibal wakes up and knows three things. There is a sticky, wet, cold mess in his boxers, a rock hard erection pressed into the sticky/wet/cold mess and a persistent idea fully formed and completely fucking insane, rattling around in his brain. He’ll start with the hard on and move on from there.
A morning jerk in the shower leaves him loose in the shoulders and in a better mood than when he’d gone to bed. Still hyped up and angry over the attitude a certain Daywalker had shown upon rescue. Ungrateful bastard.
Hedges is microwaving strawberry poptarts when Hannibal makes his way into the kitchen and then makes a beeline for the coffee pot.
“That’s disgusting, Hedges, you’re an animal.” Hannibal says and sits down with his Froot Loops and coffee.
“You really don’t get to judge,” Hedges says. He juggles the poptart from one hand to the other, hissing at the heat.
“Poptarts should only ever be toasted,” Hannibal reproaches. “Honestly, you’re a heathen.”
“Says the man eating his Froot loops and coffee.” Hedges snorts. Hannibal just grins unrepentantly and dumps some brown sugar on top of the whole mess.
“You find anything else out from that book?” he tries for casual. Hedges just raises an eyebrow because Hannibal’s never really been good at casual.
“Not so much,” Hedges shrugs. “War, pillage, plunder, rape, steal, create superhuman race of night walking, blood sucking crazies, sleep for a thousand plus years.”
“I do so love the cliff notes version, of anything really. It’s always so concise and to the point.” Hedges rolls his eyes. “Tell me more about this soul mate period.” Hannibal demands.
“Why?”
“Because I woke up this morning with a hard on for historically accurate porn, true fact.” Hedges stares at him and Hannibal keeps his ‘I’m stupid’ smile on his face until the geek sees whatever he was looking for, maybe decides that Hannibal’s not making fun of him. “I’m not making fun of you,” Hannibal reassures. If anything Hedges looks ever more worried.
“Whatever, you’re freaky.” Hedges says, but then explains anyway. “He was using some excuse that without his ‘soul mate’ he would go crazy and burn down a village or something. So the villages would put out all their available boys and girls and let him pick which one he wanted and he’d keep them around for a while and then suddenly a few years would go by and there would be a new search. So not so much a soul mate, but like, a concubine that matched him.”
“So, basically he wanted his chance to diddle his way through the ages?”
“Did you just say diddle?” Hedges asks.
“What? No. Crazy person.” Hannibal pushes away from the table and claps Hedges on the shoulder. “Thanks, man, there’s plenty of historically accurate monkey spanking in my future.”
“You are seriously the grossest individual I have ever met, please leave my sight before I’m forced to drink bleach in an attempt to cleanse my mind of that horrible, horrible image.”
“That’s what I like about you Hedges, always to the point.” Dex leans into the kitchen and gives them both the stink eye. Then again, Hannibal is convinced that’s the only look Dex know how to give.
“Whistler wants us in the gear up room, she wants to put Blade through the electronic paces. Match up intel.”
“Such is life,” Hannibal says and makes a face at his now soggy, uneaten coffee Froot Loops. “No rest for the wickedly awesome.”
***
“Fucking Hannibal King,” Danica screams at the top of her lungs. She’s got an impressive set of lungs. The sounds that come out of her mouth make his head hurt more and more. She’s violent, unpredictable and she breaks just as many things as she makes. Drake has disliked her from the beginning. The lassitude and the multiple feedings has done much to restore him. His mate will do the rest.
“We’re going to need another plan, goddamn it. I can’t believe they found the warehouse.” From his place in the shadows Drake watches Asher stare at the mammoth, Grimwood, with complete disdain.
“They got to Vreede,” Danica says. “Someone in here is leaking information.” The side door to the room bursts open and the young abomination who had been guarding his cell comes flying in. Drake grins. These children, they think themselves so clever. They think themselves capable of containing him.
“He’s gone!” the youngling exclaims. “I don’t know how.”
“What do you mean you don’t know how. He can’t walk through solid steel, you fuckwit,” Grimwood shouts. They know so little of him. Drake doesn’t linger, he wants to see this new world. This world he will rule.
***
He’s figured out he’s probably not going crazy. Hannibal’s just not appreciating the x rated dreams he’s having. Enki seems to be having all the fun and Hannibal’s the one waking up with a mess to clean.
Hitting the streets is probably not the best thing to do, but man, the hunt is calling and there’s nothing that winds him down better than a good hunt.
This particular vampire is pretty vicious and has possibly completely lost it’s mind judging by the carnage it’s leaving behind him. Hannibal finds him in the alley behind a creepy goth toy store of all things. The hulking shape in the shadows promises fight that will take the edge off.
“Hey, Sweetcheeks, wanna rumble?” the shape resolves itself from the shadows and Hannibal’s breath catches in his throat.
“Sweetcheeks?” Drake asks, rolling the word around in his mouth. “Some form of an insult?” Hannibal has two burning desires. The first to see if that trail of hair goes all the way down and the second to run like fucking hell. “Would you like to come with me?” Drake holds his hand out to Hannibal and acts for all the world like he’s going to take it.
Hannibal runs like fucking hell.
***