For malevolosidade: There'll always be blood (Promise it'll never be yours) (2/2)
It took three more towns before Jean-Éric's jinx finally paid off. They'd been lulled by the incipient approach to New York - small isolated towns had vampires, large cities had more, small towns close to big cities tended not to have any, the vampires drawn to the bright lights, beating hearts and neverending pulse of the city.
The appearance of three vampires - lurking outside the gas station would have gone more quickly if one of the vampires had either a better aim or a much worse one. Daniel was shaking lime into the spare water canister, as one approached the car. Jean-Éric had momentarily stunned one of the others with a bucket of water than was pinker and more toxic than anything that pretty a colour should be - just by throwing the water at her and then lashing out with a more solid bucket related blow. The third vampire seemed largely unaffected by the plight of her fellows, more interested in her phone.
Jean-Éric had just thrown himself backwards, a graceless arc that would have won him no high jump medals, but which did take him away from the not-water that was starting to fizz and bubble. It also took him away from the action enough to see Daniel slip, wrong-footed by the damp concrete. He went down, the vampire followed after and Jean-Éric had never moved so slowly and so quickly in all his life.
Daniel shouted, high-pitched as the air was forced out of his lungs and then again as a trickly sensation fought and lost with the pain of needles jammed in his side. His hoodie flopped back a muddy green halo against slick concrete. Jean-Éric was running but he was never going to make it in time, he was never going to, he was- He slammed into the vampire, who was still staring at Dan as the two of them careered across the forecourt. Which was really painful and Jean-Éric would have made a mental note not to do it again if he wasn't pulling together his breaths to, to see two vampire beat a hasty retreat while the other, who kept staring at Dan repeating over and over, "I'm sorry, I didn't, I'm..."
Jean-Éric pulled a metal cord from his belt and snapped it open. The sound drew a flicker of the vampire's attention, setting braids swinging. Jean-Éric could almost see the competing needs of fight and flight flickering across dull brown eyes, before they closed. The vampire head cocked, neck bared and Jean-Éric, puzzled, but thinking he could still be puzzled afterwards, looped the cord over its head and touched the ends of the wire together. There was a smell of burning meat and solder as the wire curled up, careless of the intervening flesh. The head hit the ground with a sickening thud and the body toppled after to the complete disinterest of Jean-Éric, and Daniel too. Although in Daniel's case it was more a case of being physically incapable of concentrating on anything but how to breathe.
Jean-Éric pulled Dan into the backseat of the car, and fumbled with the seatbelts to try and hold him in place without exacerbating any more or less obvious injuries.
He grabbed the keys, tapped the ignition and put his foot. Jean-Éric couldn't remember the journey to the hotel - the town too small to support any of the resources they used to rely on in larger places. He supposed he'd driven it, that they hadn't flown to the door where he was fighting a stubborn lock.
Daniel crumpled into a pile as Jean-Éric - managing to get the door open had loosened his grip on Dan. He was still breathing and capable of a slurred "Sorry" as he waved an arm up for Jean-Éric to catch, where he made a valiant and mostly successful attempt at getting Dan onto the bed.
"Your anti-venom," Jean-Éric said steadily. He wasn't panicking. He refused to panic. He could panic later when he could also thank his lucky stars and the innovation of Austrians and the stubbornness of Australians. Or he could panic now and grieve later. Right now, he couldn't think of that, couldn't think as he checked Dan's clothes, running his hands close enough to feel the edge of his- of Daniel's hidden blades.
"My what?" Daniel looked up at the ceiling with the indifference of someone to which all this happened at a distance and didn't matter.
It's just a drill. We've done this hundreds of times. Maybe tens. Jean-Éric kept patting Dan down, fingers fumbled at the edges of pockets and he clenched fists to stop them shaking. He really wished he hadn't used his dose trying to save a civilian caught in his and Alonso's crossfire months before.
"Your epi-" Jean-Éric lapsed into French, then dragged his mind back to English, though the words felt thick on his tongue. "Your pen, Daniel. Your pen is where?"
Now was not the time for giggling. Jean-Éric was sure of that and if Daniel was maybe fifty percent more conscious he- No, he probably would still be snorting, giggles subsiding into a more relaxed smile that belied his lack of breathing as it settled on Daniel's face. "I knew it."
Was it a good sign that Daniel could still talk after taking a first bite? The toxin released by a vampire's first fangs was a mild sedative and paralytic. It was easier to take prey that was out cold, all pliant and unprotesting. Too much and it killed outright - muscles seizing up as life slipped away.
Fuck, he'd left the corpse at the gas station with enough toxic chemicals to make a great firework show. Jean-Éric shoved it to the back of his mind, his hands flexing around Daniel's ankles.
Got it.
Jean-Éric pulled out the modified epi-pen out of Daniel's left sock and flipped the orange plastic cap off. "Knew what?" he said absently, to keep him talking - it might help, shuffling back to grab Daniel's thigh.
"Liked me," Daniel said, gasping as the injector stabbed into his leg. "Ow! Might... change my mind for you though."
Seven, eight, nine and done. Jean-Éric put his hand on Daniel's chest. Should he be able to feel the pulse like that? It was more there than before. "Daniel, how do you feel?"
There was a sheen of sweat over Dan's face and more sliding down his neck. Pale other than the bruising coming up over the two scratched gashes below the shadow of his ear matching the set of teethmarks below his ribcage. "I'm fine," he said, voice racing off at a hundred miles an hour. "We can't spend the whole day lying here, okay?" He made to sit up and push Jean-Éric back from his perch by Daniel's side and back onto his heels. He got all of a few inches and about thirty degrees up before the whole world went a bit wobbly around the edges and suddenly he was horizontal again and Jean-Éric was looking at him like there was nothing else in the world except him and trouble. "Or I could just stay here."
"Jev." Daniel breathed out.
"Yeah."
"Don't wanna interrupt the like moment, we're having," and Jean-Éric jerked back the hand that'd been resting on Daniel's throat, trying to find a pulse that wouldn't jump out and away from his fingers. His hand was not shaking, okay. Not. "But I think I'm going to be sick."
A bloodstream in which a battle of competing drugs waged wasn't the best way to achieve the perfect aim. Daniel tried, but close counted as well in vomit as it did in horseshoes.
--
Jean-Éric thumbed through the phone that vampire number three had dropped. Only a few pages back, an oh so familiar picture stared out at him. The border of the photograph glowed red for a few seconds cycling through orange, yellow, down the spectrum and ending in a black so dark it glowed.
"Dan, did you see this?" Jean-Éric briefly held up the mobile phone.
"Huh," Daniel was propped up in bed. The light from his laptop made him look almost pale, and the headphones blocked out anything and everything. They also made the room seem to reverberate to a tinny echo centred on Daniel's head.
Jean-Éric leant over and tugged the cord out of one ear.
"Hey," Daniel protested, looking up at Jean-Éric as he fumbled for the stray earbud. He reached up and jammed it into Jean-Éric's right ear.
The music was not improved by a closer acquaintance. It seemed to be too slow and slippery at the same time as spitting out unexpected sharp edges.
"Your music is terrible."
"My music is awesome and you know it." Daniel shook his head with a grin, and patted the side of the bed, shuffling over to make room for Jean-Éric - hotel single beds not being the cutting edge of spacious design. He backed up the timeline by a few seconds and then let it replay - the view from Jean-Éric's headset - he'd forgotten he had even been wearing it back then but the film - captured a few moments before it went crunch, and gave a curious vampire a short-lived toothache - showed Daniel put a silver tipped wooden blade inches through the back of a walking corpse that stilled in mid-growl and pitched forwards, a puff of old bones billowing up in front of the camera.
"It's also why neither of us have been arrested as serial killers with a habit for decapitation." Daniel said, making a few changes to the dials on screen and replaying the last few seconds through again. This time the vampire body fell on one beat, and the bone cloud was accompanied by an electronic trill.
The footage cut to another, more recent fight. It hadn't been beautiful then, not even close. Footage from Daniel this time, focussed more on the vampire then on Jean-Éric's hands until the wire glinted on the break of a chord which faded away as the torso of the former vampire fell through the frame at half-speed.
Daniel nodded and pulled off the headphones, absently reaching up to detach Jean-Éric, fingers slow and clumsy as he did so, but otherwise apparently unbothered at watching something shot while he'd been a scratch away from making Jean-Éric make sure he never woke up.
"Or you could not film and show us off."Jean-Éric suggested, making the ritual protest. Daniel would put up the video and within a day or two be served with a takedown notice. The first time Jean-Éric had seen Daniel he'd been on a computer screen, nothing but a pair of dark eyes forming a challenging stare out of the pixels and gut level feeling in a teenage Jean-Éric's stomach that he wasn't mad or alone, despite the threatened charge of arson.
"No." Daniel's voice was quiet. Eyes and mouth fixed and cold. "I want them to see what's coming."
Then another flash of brilliant smile as he looked up across at Jean-Éric, bumping shoulders with him. "But have you seen you? Who wouldn't want to show either of us off?
--
Jean-Éric was only dripping small puddles on the way out of the shower. Small droplets that were hardly green at all. Nor had he seen any alligators in the morning's trip into the city sewers. His hair was plastered flat to his head, and almost entirely invisible under the towels, bathrobes and something that had probably started out its life as a curtain that was oranger and older than he was.
"We've got him back," Daniel told Jean-Éric, voice gone squeaky with glee, all the edges worn off his consonants. He enveloped Jean-Éric in a hug, bounced back on his heels, quickly hugged him again, and when it looked like he might have just got himself into a feedback loop, Jean-Éric reached out and asked.
"Who?"
"Mark, mate," There was something lighter in Dan's face, an ease of expression that Jean-Éric hadn't realised he'd missed since Daniel's return from Australia.
"That's good," Jean-Éric said. He'd not been as close to him as Daniel, but Mark was one of those guys about whom stories clung. The go-around with the flying was probably a lie, but if even half the rest were true?
"We've really got to go see him." Daniel told him.
"Sure, wherever you want to go." Jean-Éric sat down with a squelch. "As long as it isn't wading through slime."He continued to squeeze unidentified goo out his drying hair.
"All those conditions," Daniel laughed. "You are way too difficult to please, my friend. No, I know where he is."
--
Jean-Éric blinked at the fluorescent lights above his head and the possibly suicidal, possibly just really stupid fly that kept trying to run straight into the bulb. The bench at which he'd been sat had a grainy fake wood texture, smelt like the inside of a balloon after it popped, with the tangy plastic the back of the throat sensation that camped out and refused to leave.
"You've got everything." It sounded like a statement, not a question. His lawyer, blue shirted and with a black-striped tie that gave Jean-Éric a headache when he stared at it, frowned. It seemed like he'd been doing that since-
Okay, it should probably worry him that he couldn't remember that, or what he'd been arrested for. Floor tiles didn't generally flip between orange and blue and gaping empty holes into nothingness.
"Why are we here?" he turned to ask Daniel.
A line of blood drew a circle around Dan's neck. Jean-Éric's hand shook and the circle smudged and Daniel didn't seem to notice as one of his eyes turned pale yellow surrounding an orange flame, saying "Sorry, I-" before he woke up. The crick in his neck was sharp enough that he expected to find himself back in the car, not a hotel room that screamed cookie-cutter from its beige walls to its cream blinds.
"Bathroom's the door on the left." Daniel said, without looking up from his laptop. "But you might want to-" Jean-Éric had bolted for the toilet, hawking up a what felt like a lung, but was probably just last night's dinner, washed up on one or two or three too many drinks.
Jean-Éric thought about swearing of alcohol, food, Australians; decided he probably didn't have enough willpower for that, and also that standing on two feet was over-rated.
An unfamiliar arm caught him before he fell.
Mark looked different than he had yesterday. Same dark hair and inability to stay clean shaven. Scuffed knuckles and he's standing on his good leg. A bright yellow toothbrush was wedged in his mouth. It wiggled as he spoke to a staring Jean-Éric, but that wasn't it.
"You wanna take a picture, kid?"
He's unarmed. Not carrying weapons and maybe that's a more important clarification in their line of work than most. He's still got all of his limbs, but his shirt was short-sleeved and no place left for the concealed knives that Daniel reminded Jean-Éric to take off each time. Which wasn't fair when he had only accidentally stabbed Dan once.
"It's good to see you," Jean-Éric said, because it was, and because the alcohol content in his bloodstream had set his conversation gambit level to stating the fucking obvious.
"You said that already," Mark said, voice a bit less garbled after retrieving his toothbrush, "Dan!"
Handed over, and with a glass of water, fizzy with dissolving painkiller pressed into one hand, Jean-Éric sat on the end of the bed, head precariously balanced on his shoulders, while Daniel asked him. "What do you remember about last night?"
Jean-Éric peered through the fingers that were holding up his head. "What did I do?"
"Nothing," Daniel looked too bright-eyed for someone who Jean-Éric had the vague memory of matching him drink for drink. Neither of them drank a lot usually, it did nothing to help on the nights they got there too late, and was too much of a hazard the rest of the time. Strictly speaking Daniel should be as much of a lightweight as he was, and he said so.
"There's got to be some perks to being the one boy in the world, hasn't there, Dan?" Mark didn't look nearly as hungover as Jean-Éric felt, but with the perpetually windswept, five o'clock shadow look he would have probably still looked cool regardless.
"You know, I think I'm disappointed you went straight to the Buffy references," Daniel said, tossing an apple from hand to hand.
"Never claimed to be original, mate," Mark said easily catching the fruit that Daniel lobbed at him.
"Or the best."
If anyone was to ask Jean-Éric he would have had to say that was points to Sebastian in terms of dramatic entrances. He also had a sneaking suspicion that Seb had been standing outside the door waiting for an appropriate comment to launch his entrance.
"Come on, guys," Daniel stood up, shooing Seb backwards, and muttering something to Mark that Jean-Éric didn't hear, "Give us a minute, would you?"
Daniel didn't close the door in time to shut off Seb's, "Is that all the time it takes them?"
"I knew this was a bad idea," Daniel flopped down onto their hotel room bed, starfish-like and taking up most of the available space.
Jean-Éric stood up and reversed a chair, dropped it midway between the window and Daniel on the bed. "And still you did it?"
He paused a moment, "And what it exactly is it?"
"And you're my partner," Daniel complained. "You're supposed to back me up and point out the cliffs before I throw the both of us off them."
"Are you going to start making sense or should I should I start a foraging party before we run out of fruit?" It probably wasn't a great idea to cut a segment of pear using a knife that had slashed open throats but the sticky black-blood was long since scoured off and the knife itself tasted like bleach when he checked it. Jean-Éric chewed slowly, hoping the food would settle his stomach.
"So, about that," Daniel looked at his feet, contemplated his choice of stripy socks and launched into an explanation.
It was definitely an explanation. Jean-Éric would agree with that. There were multi-syllabic words and diagrams sketched out in pencil on the back of a gas receipt. There was even a PowerPoint presentation, although Jean-Éric would have avoided that particular shade of yellow. It had also contained the words 'prophecy' 'destiny' 'really fucking weird I know' the last of which was a sentiment that Jean-Éric could really get behind.
"So, since the February before last, there have been hundreds of years worth," Jean-Éric stopped when Daniel waved exhibit B at him, a painting on a rock that would have been more expected in a French cave than an American hotel room if it wasn't for the presence of their new car, smudged into stone behind a smaller figure. He went on, "Or more than that. And that doesn't even make sense, I just want to point that out. Years of people talking about you and some higher purpose."
"That's what it looks like," Daniel said.
"You are aware of how crazy that sounds?" Jean-Éric checked, because sanity was one of Daniel's qualities that he'd maybe not realised how much he'd appreciated, lost as it tended to get in the everything else he liked.
"I know," Daniel sat back from his laptop. "And people believe a lot of daft things. I know that doesn't make them real. I don't think there's something out there that's picked me to do... something that no-one seems to know exactly what. And I'm glad I don't because otherwise I'd have to get pissed at whatever that turned out to be. Waiting all that time to fix something by nudging and poking at people so that I'll turn out to exist here and now and - I don't know why anything with that much power, that could do that much, would be happy to sit on its arse while things get more and more fucked up."
Daniel ran out of breath.
"Do you want to run?" Jean-Éric asked.
"What?" It really wasn't fair that Daniel look at him like he was the one who'd lost his connection with reality.
"We could run, take the car and go" Jean-Éric said. He still wasn't sure he believed any or all or none of this, but focus of a mass delusion or culmination of a prophecy, the Daniel lying there was still his Daniel. If he wanted out, of course Jean-Éric would throw him the keys.
"We really can't," Daniel shook his head. "Much as I might like for that to happen. It might not be that every vampire east of the Mississippi is headed for the east coast, but there aren't enough of us left that we can just jack that all in." But if he wanted out he wouldn't be Dan. "And have you seen some of the new kit that's coming out of Europe, now?"
Jean-Éric followed Dan down into the hotel basement expecting a stack of shelves - drugs, blades and bottles. No. This was an armoury, armoury was probably a better word for racks upon racks of gear from knives to cube boxes that seemed to glow without a power source other than a steady internal ticking.
Daniel's eyes were out on stalks. Jean-Éric goggled.
Just because Seb managed to kill a vampire in the rain, with one stab of a lollipop stick, was no guarantee that'd be a reasonable idea for anyone else. He'd pushed Mark off a roof one time with a mistimed body check and no-one had been suggesting that everyone aim to do that. But there was well prepared and then there was enough pieces of equipment to build their own tank.
"Wow."
The room was small but crammed. Every available surface packed with everything from mutated fire-extinguishers to boxes of iron filings as well the more and the less conventional weapons. Some of the weaponry was decades old. Or older - one curved and rusted blade fell apart in Daniel's hands.
Two years ago Jean-Éric had tried to build a flame-thrower. It hadn't worked, but he'd managed a drooping dribble of flame that he'd been proud of. This was something else.
--
Jean-Éric and Daniel wandered outside in search of food, clanking a bit as they went.
"I was quite happy with vampirism as a contagious haemo-deficiency disorder, transmitted by fluid exchange, that included sunlight sensitivity and abnormal dental growths amongst its symptoms." Daniel said, as he paid for their burgers.
He handed one to Jean-Éric. "The complete lack of mystery, prophecy, and any kind of destiny or fate was one of the upsides. On the downside of course, you've got the irrational violence and painful death, but no-one can have everything."
The city looked busy as they walked, it was loud and bright and in daylight had little trace of vampire sign. Three junctions later Daniel stopped to ask a women in a beret, if she'd seen any bloodsucking creatures of the night. She'd said, "Tourists," as if the word tasted bad and walked on.
Jean-Éric had a better reaction from the second person they stopped. Guy with an ornamental feather in his hat hadn't heard anything of the walking dead, but had a range of opinions on just about everything else. Jean-Éric knew more than he had ever wanted about tenth century Polish cathedral etchings by the time Daniel had stopped laughing and pulled him away.
Four hours, five telephone numbers and an inordinate number of interrupted New Yorkers later and they were almost back to the hotel frontage. Burgers had been replaced by brightly coloured energy drinks had been replaced by vegetables fried and stuck on a stick.
"... could trade it in if you're not comfortable with most of our available cash coming from older men who like you a lot and the recently deceased who probably don't." Jean-Éric pointed out..
"Seriously," Daniel said, his head turning from side to side. They ought to have attracted attention enough by now, but he couldn't see any shadows detaching from buildings, and any figures lurking in doorways would find themselves pulled into shops or pushed out onto the street. "Could you not put it that way? It just sounds creepy when you say it like that."
--
The window gave a satisfying smash, and the cuts healed over, leaving a sheen drying black blood over Nico's fingers.
At least that still worked.
"All right," he said. "This is what we do."
--
"Concentrate, okay?" Lewis said.
He looked down at the camera in his hands. Technology was great. He reversed it and clicked a button. The Lewis in the display was perfectly visible, the only exception in the bottom right corner, where his thumb had obscured the viewfinder.
"Make sure you get my good side." Lewis looked back at Jenson, who was trying to looked bedraggled and scared and human. So, nought out of three there then.
"Try closing your eyes."
Now he looked like a corpse propped in a chair.
"Okay, that didn't work."
Jenson's eyes flicked open. "I told you this wouldn't work."
"You're not concentrating hard enough." Lewis said. Maybe if Jenson was on the floor...
--
"Oh hell," Mark looked down at the envelope again and tried really hard not to bolt out of the room. Instead he threw a lamp at the wall with a crash.
"What is it?" Daniel broke in, Jean-Éric at his heels. They piled through the hotel room door, one rolling to the right, the other to the left while Vettel followed them in, eyes taking in the lack of a threat as he walked over to the table on which had spilled the photos.
Seb's eye flinched a moment, but that was lost in the cracked voice as he said, "You know he's dead, right?"
Daniel and Jean-Éric crowded round. There was a figure slumped over in a metal chair; the same figure on the floor, eyes glazed, and raised welts around the ankles and wrists; in the third it was hard to see anything other than the blade, a piece of sharp and shining metal pressed against one eye - closed - while the other - open, blue and staring - looked out at the camera.
"No."
"I hate to say it, Mark, but Jenson got taken like a year ago," Daniel put in. "There's no way there's still enough of him left to do this to."
Mark ignored them both, kneeling to pull out a small dark case from under the bed.
"I know you don't want him to be dead," Seb started again. "None of us do, but," His voice broke and the words charged on, "you can't be stupid enough to see this isn't a trap."
"Of course, it's a trap," Mark gritted out. "You can practically see the engraved invitation. I'm still going."
Seb stared at him. Daniel tried to interrupt and Mark's, "Not your fight, kid." was softer than his argument with Vettel, but no less certain.
"Fine," said Sebastian, in tones that said he was washing his hands of the whole thing. "We'll need backup. Alonso will come if you call."
"Fernando's too far to make it in time." Mark said.
"Still," Seb said, "Maybe he can come back and pick up the pieces again, or maybe you'll listen to him." He turned, heading for the door. "I'll call Kimi." He laughed, and shook his head. "Perhaps it will be easy - we go in, we get out and we get what you came for."
--
"We're going, right?" Daniel said. It was more rhetorical a question, he was wrapped in layers of black and something that looked like a metal-Kevlar hybrid.
"None of us should, so all of us are." Jean-Éric fumbled with the packing tape trying to fix the lampshade. It seemed important to try and fix something. "We couldn't keep Mark tied to the radiator permanently."
It was just the four of them. The odds weren't great, they weren't good, they couldn't even manage the heights of really fucking terrible.
"I would have liked to have had a chance to retire," Jean-Éric said. "Maybe go back and visit my family." France seemed a long way from here.
"I never thought we'd be that lucky," Daniel stared down at his boots. Jean-Éric abandoned the lamp. On the slim chance one or more of them made it back, or the slightly larger chance that one of the long list of people they'd called made it here instead, then whoever could do what they liked with it.
Jean-Éric shrugged, "It might not have been that realistic a hope," he said. "But I always thought of it with you there too." He sighed and looked at his feet. "I like you a lot, you make me laugh, and also, you're kind of hot."
"Jev," Daniel said, slowly. "Is this one of those things where we say stuff we don't really mean because we'll be dead by tomorrow so none of it matters."
"No, Dan," Jean-Éric couldn't read Daniel's face, it shouldn't bother him. A small niggle in the bout of impending doom, but... "It matters," he gave a strained smile. "It is just incredibly bad timing."
"Then yes," Daniel said, his smile flickering until it was a steady flame, lighting up his eyes. "Yes, I... So much yes, okay, I, yes." He caught his breath, "I have so many ideas, and okay some of them aren't that practical, but we're going to..."
The outside world crashed in on his thought processes, and he pulled Jean-Éric in close. "Our timing really sucks."
"Yeah," Jean-Éric sighed, the word coming apart in a desperate kiss that pushed him back against the wall, the hanging mirror dislodged with a disregarded thud. Daniel's body armour pressed into Jean-Éric's side and one of Jean-Éric's wrist-guards scraped along Daniel's neck. The kiss was a mess of tongues, fumbling with gloves and the best of attempts to avoid something sharp being pushed against something delicate.
Mark banged on the open door, when opening it failed to attract either Daniel or Jean-Éric's attention. "Come if you're coming." He said with a jerk of his head. "Last one out's got to turn off the lights."
--
They left the car a few streets away and made their way to the building on foot, stopping on the far side of the plaza behind an ugly metal statue of a duck.
Seb broke right. Mark headed to the main doors.
"Get back here, okay?" Daniel said
"You too. Don't make me have to come back in and find you," Jean-Éric said.
"Don't."
Jean-Éric bit down what he was going to say, held Daniel tight enough to feel him breathe and then belted for the heavy goods entrance.
Daniel shook his head, swearing under his breath as he fixed his crampons and looked up.
--
"You have one new message"
Tap, tap, tap.
"Today at..."
Tap. Tap. Tap.
"Hi, Val? This is Daniel. I don't know where you are right now, but if it's anywhere near," The message faded in a rustle of paper, and Daniel read out an address. "We could really use any help you've got tonight, okay? " A crash, followed by, "Are those-" cut off with a rushed "Sorry, thanks. I gotta go."
Well, that was interesting. Val pocketed the phone, and fangs slipped out from a solid jaw. She'd come. And she'd bring friends.
--
It should have been quiet. Daniel flattened himself against the wall and hoped really hard that the flailing mass of fangs and fists was too invested in ripping each other apart to notice him.
It worked, but there was something incredibly disconcerting to being that invisible.
He ducked behind a wall that separated what must have been a kitchen and dining area. The kit on his belt flashed red twice. Low batteries. He looked down at it and completely missed the plank to the head.
--
Jean-Éric was bleeding from his head, and determinedly reminding himself that minor head wounds bled a lot. The heavy door stayed shut despite his best efforts, and he now had even more bruises down his side and an elbow that was plotting rebellion.
He thumbed again his radio. Nothing. Apparently working walk-in freezers were impressive in their insulating properties for radio signals as well as heat. Jean-Éric paced back and forth, wishing he'd brought some high explosives.
A quick inventory found no more than he had the last time. He mixed a couple of chemical canisters he'd been carrying, fairly certain it wouldn't explode on him and a bit disappointed because that would have made them more useful. The mixture was bubbling and smelt like it had jumped down the back of his throat and killed his taste-buds, so it was probably corrosive. Jean-Éric wrapped a scrap of fabric - all that remained of the last occupant - around the end of his third spare knife. He pressed it against the plastic covered metal of the door.
This would be a long job. Hopefully.
--
"I got the idea from you," Nico told him almost conversationally. "Not you, you, but your species." Almost as if he wasn't here, as if the vampire in front of him had a habit of walking round the lab, monologuing to any piece of equipment that couldn't roll away fast enough.
Dan couldn't run or roll anywhere right now. He wanted to. Lying there listening to a vampire talking about some not quite but almost vampire-IVF, while it sounded as if the building was breaking up around them wouldn't be on his top ten list of things to do, even when he hadn't realised Jev could be on that list in more of a solo-inspirational kind of way.
There's a nudge in the back of his brain that says he really should, he should get up, get up rip the needle out of his arm, slash Nico's face open and watch him scream until he choked on that...
Wait, no, he should get up, rip the needle out of his arm and... there's something else that he should do that isn't laugh at the prospect of the prolonged and painful suffering of his enemies.
Especially when he couldn't remember if there was anyone who wasn't an enemy right now.
His head felt like it was on fire. The pressure in his head pushed the rest of him forward. The IV line broke but the needle stayed lodged in his elbow. The sedative was wearing off. He pressed finger to the wound, but there wasn't light enough to tell if they came away bloody.
Daniel staggered forward. He needed water, he needed a drink, he needed a drink, he needed a drink and for someone to turn the lights down. His knees buckled and his stomach rebelled, throwing up a volume of bitty flesh coloured stew that he dimly thought would usually worry him, but it was drowned out by the pounding heat in his head.
Whatever fighting still remained was limited to the upper floors of the building. Nothing and no-one was undead enough to care about the staggered trail of blood and vomit that Daniel had left. He felt empty and his legs were weak, but his headache was better - stabbed with needles, and not clenched in a vice.
He leant back a moment, as he waited until he could corral his legs into working again. The wall pitched backwards as the door Daniel hadn't noticed it to be gave way sagging on its hinges.
Daniel hit blessedly cool concrete, and his eyes crashed open to see an upside down Jean-Éric. Which was great. What wasn't was the racking spasms as his muscles tried to turn the rest of him inside out.
--
Daniel scrambled to his feet quickly if clumsily, the soles of his shoes hissing slightly.
"Come on, Jev," Daniel said, clothes stiffening with blood.
He idly poked at the sad remains of the keypad, watching vacantly the pretty colours as it made a sad yellow beep followed by a happier blinky green one as the door still lay sideways etched off its hinges.
But out in the corridor Dan looked more like death warmed up and less like the walking dead. The trademark grin was tired, but not as pointy as it seemed minutes ago.
--
It took longer to get out than in. Jean-Éric wasn't sure that Daniel had any bones left, following one final violent racking spasm, but after that he'd seemed fine - wincing as he pulled out a needle and bleeding reassuringly red from it too.
There were three figures waiting in the plaza. Three figures and a grumbling tied up figure that scowled up at Mark, face distorted from the photographs but plainly still Jenson. They stumbled out of towards them, as relief and blood loss wobbled legs.
Sebastian was ice white and hugged an arm close to his body. Arms didn't usually bend in that many places. Blood was running down Mark's right leg, and his fingers were gripped tight on the arm of the third figure as if he needed the extra balance. Alonso had a makeshift bandage over his forehead and was standing with the really careful demeanour of a man with cracked ribs. The sword hanging bare to his right was bloody and his medical satchel was open to his left.
"Are you guys all right?" he asked. Daniel nodded and Jean-Éric gasped out a "Fine."
"I'm not fine," Jenson said, "But nobody asked if.."
"I have a gag," Fernando said pointedly.
"I'm still not fine." A pause. "But I guess this is good enough for now."
"So we can go now?" Sebastian prompted.
A clap sounded from the building that they'd fled from moments or more before. There was a figure by the door. Not tall, dark hair and pale skin lit by the flames billowing from the roof of the building. One figure became two, became three, became a ripple of figures.
"I think we're surrounded, you guys," Sebastian could see way too many exits blocked off, which ever way he turned.
"No, really?" said Fernando, reaching for his sword.
The clapping echoed around them. Daniel could see Fernando balanced on his toes but Mark and Sebastian were the next best thing to incapacitated. None of them would last long.
He grabbed Jean-Éric's hand, and muttered a "Fucking sorry for everything."
"Is okay," and he could feel Jean-Éric's shaky shrug as he moved to stand back to back with Daniel. "Would have had to happen sometime."
The three figures nearest the building were in a huddle; two dark heads and one fair. The fair one detached itself from the group. She stopped fifteen feet away from the group - far enough away to have time to dodge any pot-shots. "Thank you, Daniel," she said, "You can go." There was enough light to see that she hadn't started the evening in a purple-black shirt. Flecks of white-blue were still visible on it when she turned to go.
"Hey!" Daniel was aware it was a really stupid thing to do when he shouted it. But he wasn't dead, or undead, or bleeding out on the tarmac and at least of one of those had been on his to-do list. "Is that it?"
"Was there something else you wanted?" She looked almost kinda maybe familiar in her exasperation. Then again Daniel made a lot of people look like that, usually before they hugged him or hit him.
"No." Daniel said, ignoring the scuffle that broke out behind him at the question. What should he do next? "Thank you."
"This might sound a bit over the top," she said, turning away again. "But I understand its obligatory. The next time you see my face? Run."
No-one could have managed a run at that point. If Jenson had been more stubborn they wouldn't have been able to hobble back to their cars, but the vampire had evidently decided that they were less hostile than the rival crew taking his home apart with fire and sword.
A huddled discussion concluded - following pokes and prods - that they'd do better patching up away from a hospital, at least at first. Fernando's grey sedan was parked beside Mark's MPV. He tossed Jean-Éric the keys, with instructions to "Look after it this time, yes?"
Daniel took Mark's keys. He was in no state to drive, wincing every time he put weight on his leg.
Sebastian, Mark, and Fernando had bundled into the back of the minivan. Jenson had been bundled in head first and a blanket tossed in after as Alonso brandished a roll of tape and made threatening sounds about dentists.
Daniel threw a wincing glance at the still audible bickering as he made his way over to Jean-Éric who was sitting in the driver's seat of Alonso's car trying to adjust it back far enough to comfortably reach the pedals. "I think I've lost enough blood to fill a small swimming pool," he said happily, if tired and less than sincere.
"I feel like certain crucial body parts have been replaced with icicles." Jean-Éric told him.
Dan gave an easy grin, tilted against the open driver's side door. "That sounds like something you ought to get a second opinion on." He moved in to kiss Jean-Éric.
Jean-Éric responded, leaning into Daniel, weight hanging against the pressure of the seatbelt.
He felt his lips curl into a smile at a thought, and although the noises Daniel was making above him were distracting, he reached forward, and slipped the ice cold fingers of one hand past Dan's waistband.
Dan gave a startled eep at that and thunked his head against the underside of the car roof. Jean-Éric laughed, and said "For the rest, maybe later?"
"You can count on it," Daniel said, rubbing his head as he stepped back to let Jean-Éric close the car door and pull away. "I'll bring gloves," he called out. "And a crash helmet!"
( one | two)