Author's Note: A 15minuteficlet again. This one actually took me a while to come up with, for what the word was. Shocking actually. The word was 'painful'.
With a cry of agony, Tom dropped to his knees, and when the vampire shoved him in the shoulder with a boot, he collapsed backwards, one hand clutching at the fresh wound in his side. He panted madly, perspiring already from the assault on his body, and he looked with blurred vision to the piece of wood sticking out of his side like a thorn.
He'd been stupid to think he'd be able to handle the vampire alone… stupid, cocky and wrong. The creature had quickly turned the tables on him, and adding insult to injury, had staked him with the piece of wood that would have ended his own un-life.
"Foolish mortal," he drawled, looming over him, fangs showing behind his grinning lips, his eyes flushing red; red like the blood seeping out around the stake in Tom's side. The agent tried to move, but found he couldn't. Only one leg would obey him, and it did not possess enough power to shift him away from the monster. It growled hungrily. "While Americans are not to my taste… it will suffice."
Tom cursed quietly, under his ragged breath, shifting away from the monster very slightly, even as a boot came down on his chest, making him wince. It was useless to try and prize the foot off him; the vampire was too strong, and he was wounded too badly to summon enough strength to cast him off.
Another growl filtered over the air, like light thunder, and an icy voice hissed, "Remove your foot, sir… or I will do it for you." He knew that voice…
The vampire chuckled sarcastically, glancing over his shoulder after a pause, just in time to have a blade rammed through his neck. With a swift jerk and a sickly crunch, the vampire's head was severed, and his body crumbled to ash with an otherworldly squeal. A woman dropped to her knees at Tom's side, looking at the wound.
"We were worried sick about you," she revealed with a sigh and a shake of her head.
"Mina…" Tom managed to say, even as a floating duster came up on the other side of him.
"Oh, hell, Sawyer… you do have a talent, don't you?" Skinner's trilby angled in Mina's direction, concern in his cockney voice as he asked, "How is it?"
"Painful…" Tom rasped out with a cough. "Thanks for asking." He felt Mina clutch at the stake, and cursed again, looking to her with narrowed green eyes, almost begging that she not go through with it.
"This is going to hurt… a lot. But it has to come out, Tom. It could get infected if we leave it too long."
Tom groaned, feeling her take a tight grip around the wood, before she swiftly pulled it free. He gave a strangled cry, and then fell quiet, screwing his face up in discomfort.
"Sorry," she muttered, even as she pulled her scarf from around her neck to cover the wound, for lack of anything else; improvisation at its best. "Skinner, your help, if you please? We have to get him back to Jekyll if we've any chance of stopping the bleeding."
"Oh, that's comforting," Tom muttered weakly, even as Skinner and Mina lifted him from the floor, the latter practically cradling him in her arms to carry him back to the Nautilus, and to help.
Fin
