Rating: T
Warnings: AU, crossover, gore, violence, coarse language, brief mention of animal abuse
Synopsis: Gina doesn't like it when Sean's family is attacked. [Oneshot, companion to Maelstrom, may want to read before Sha'lain'a 5]
All characters, settings etc associated with Young Justice and DC, are not owned by me. I merely own the plot and unfamiliar characters/organizations and am not making any profit off this fiction venture.
Blood Kin
"Blood will tell but often it tells too much."
Don Marquis
Somewhere in the Mojave Desert : July 9, 2010 – 22:17 PDT
Gina, once upon a time Daphne, and June, and Lily, licks the blood off her fingers. She rises, lighting the splintered skeleton with the pieces of rank flesh hanging off its ribcage on fire. The rank of burnt hair and melted rubber fills the ditch she had tossed the once living man into. He had been completely wasted and somehow still managed to drive a motorcycle. In another lifetime, Gina might have been impressed. In this lifetime though, she just saw an opportunity to improve humanity's gene pool.
Once, she wondered if her meals had siblings. Children. Friends. Parents, of course, but she doubted those people cared about the status of their kids – her meals. She made an effort to ensure her meals always came from the pool of infected criminals.
Last week she drained the life from a woman who shot and killed her neighbour. A month ago it was a robber. Six months ago it was a serial killer whose scent she had tracked a state across.
She's drank enough sick fucks who got their kicks out of breaking animals that she's realized they all taste the same. Good, thirst-quenching, but with a disgusting tang that never goes away.
"Get your fill?" Gina questions, looking behind her at the 19-year-old boy one of her not-so-understanding vampiric contemporaries accidentally turned in a rage. He's still new to vampirism so she's not surprised when she sees him cringing against the wall, blood dripping from his teeth and down his chin, while a hungry but satisfied gleam colours his crimson eyes. His slit pupils dart from the burning corpse to the older woman to the cooler at her feet containing the man's heart, strips of his muscles, and pieces of his intestines.
Gina takes that as a yes and tosses a pack of sand over the flames. The flames wither, then die, and as a blur she grabs any remaining bones, shatters them, disintegrates them, and scatters them. She grabs the cooler when she returns, the sound of the boy retching, his body shaking as he stares, wide-eyed, at the acidic mass of blood and chewed guts that left his mouth.
"Sean," Gina says, returning to the moment in time when she had found herself mentoring Sha'lain'a, Chevy, and then Chevy's kids. She squeezes his shoulder, because there's nothing else she can really say.
The young Iranian-American boy clenches his eyes shut and grinds his teeth together as he battles with his desperate desire to cry. Gina sighs, sets the cooler down, then wraps her arms around him. He twitches then wraps his arms around her and digs his fingers into her back, clinging, as his shoulders shake and he cries against her heavy jacket.
"I c-can't do this," he cries into her shoulder.
She doesn't say anything. She knows that nothing will help.
She found him when he was turning. Screaming silently, writhing, then finally leaping and nearly eviscerating a man walking through the alley humming in what sounded like Portuguese. He destroyed her favourite shirt and snapped the chain of her locket. She had given him one of her blood packets and he practically bathed in the stuff, begging his pores to open wide and let him soak up the intoxicating concoction.
She took him out of the city to help him adjust. Less people there. Less food.
When he finally settled and got past the initial freakout she began explaining everything to him. Once he stopped panicking after that she grabbed his first fresh meal. He devoured the man's limbs. She barely managed to save what she did. Once he realized what he did he had backed away and curled up into a ball and nothing she did would get him out of it. So she ate.
Star City, California : July 11, 2010 - 23:42 PDT
His younger brothers are talking furiously in the darkness of their shared bedroom. Gina doesn't watch them though. She's keeping a close eye on Sean instead as he moves silently past their window and to the tree in their backyard that has a mildly awkward view of the kitchen through the screen doors. His parents have been crying. That much is obvious.
Gina lays a hand on his arm, keeping him from entering the kitchen. She had told him that he could tell his family what happened to him, what he was now, but he refused. For now at least. Perhaps later. For now, he just needs to rest his mind, make sure that they are safe, that the vampire who turned him isn't planning on attacking his family.
She recognizes his father. He's been making some strides in robotics for STAR Labs. Dr. Dashti. Smart man.
His mother rises, squeezing his father's arm and kissing his head before she turns and heads upstairs.
An unappetizing scent joins that of the leaves, faint moisture, and blood of the Dashti humans. Gina wrinkles her nose in distaste and turns to Sean. He's grimacing and looking down, his crimson eyes focused on the plants below him.
The plants shift and eleven small, yellow, horned bipedal creatures scurry out of them, not noticing the vampires perched in the trees and hidden by the shadows. The creatures are hairless, with pronounced brows below their horns, and Halloween eyes. Each carry a sci-fi looking gun free from their belts and they're quiet as they scurry to the side of the house then vanish behind some bushes.
Sean turns to Gina, "Are those other…magical creatures?"
"None that I know of."
"They were carrying phasers."
"Phasers?"
"The guns. Sci-fi."
"I see."
"What were those things?"
"I have no idea."
Sean freezes and abruptly drops down from the tree, flattening himself on the ground then zipping to the house wall, pressing his back flush against it. He hisses, gesturing to the screen door, "I saw them in my house."
"Don't move," Gina orders, dropping down and reflexively blending into the shadows as she ventures behind the tree and watches as the three creatures sneak into the kitchen where Sean's father is at the sink, filling a glass with water.
Fwip!
Two blue bolts fly from a phaser. The first hits Dr. Dashti in the back of his left knee and he yelps, his left leg going out from beneath him. The second collides with his right knee and he falls backward into the waiting arms of the small creatures. Sean is around in an instant, ripping through the screen door as his bleeding father is being lifted by the small creatures.
"DAD!"
Something crashes upstairs.
"DON'T!" Gina orders, grabbing Sean as he suddenly dives not for the creatures but for his bleeding father. She grabs him by the back of his shirt and flings him backward, sending him crashing through the remnants of the screen door.
Dr. Dashti's scream echoes his fear, "SEAN!"
Gina moves, her jaw dislocating in the familiar reflex, her nails lengthening, her visage even more terrifying in its hunter state than it was resting. Phasers fire and Sean's mother – Salima, she recalls – screams, grabbing a vase and chucking it at Gina. She catches the vase only for a phaser blast to shatter it. The remnants of the vase clatter to the ground and Gina dodges another blast, grabs the nearest creature and rips it – him? her? – in half. The creatures drop Dr. Dashti and advance on her abruptly, firing at her and at the floor, hoping to drop her into the basement.
She's too fast. Her body is a blur that leaves behind pools of blood, ripped flesh, shattered bones, and crushed phasers. Then she twists and a second blur collides with her hand. The blur slams backward, crashing straight through the kitchen table.
"SEAN! SEAN GET YOURSELF UNDER CONTROL!" she shouts, one of the creatures struggling in her grasp as her opposite hand keeps Sean pinned by the neck against the floor.
His jaw is dislocated and snapping at her as his talons attempt to rip across her arm, obliterating her jacket. He snarls, his eyes completely scarlet.
"SEAN DASHTI!" His mother shouts.
He stills, his eyes wide, his grip on Gina's arm vise-tight. Sharply, his eyes jerk over to his mother kneeling by his father, attempting to quell the bleeding while at the kitchen door are his two younger brothers, their eyes wide, their bodies shaking.
"Argh, ugh, I…fuck fuck fuck fuck," Sean chants, squeezing his eyes shut as he returns his jaw to normal and presses his hands over his face. "Fuck."
"Sean," his mother, Salima, says. "Sean…Sean…what…"
"You're a vampire," one of his younger brothers gapes.
Sean nods awkwardly as Gina releases him warily, "Uh, yeah, vampire."
"Cool!" his youngest brother gushes, rushing forward, hopping over the blood and promptly hugging Sean. Sean's teenage brother doesn't move, just gnaws on his lower lip.
An awkward smile crosses Sean's face as he gently squeezes his youngest brother's shoulders. The expression leaves quickly and he looks at the creature struggling in Gina's grasp, "Why did they shoot my dad?"
"I have no-" she stops, the creature in her hand going limp, frothing at the mouth. She frowned, "It's dead. Killed itself."
"What the heck is going on?" Salima snaps. "Who are you?"
"She's alright," Sean assures his mother. "She's been helping me since I…turned."
"You…" Salima looks sharply between Gina and Sean, "you mean you're…"
"Uh, yeah, I'm a vampire, Mom." He glances at the creature still in Gina's grasp, "And apparently there are more aliens on Earth than just the ones in costumes."
Sean's youngest brother grins up at him, "You're cooler."
"Uh, thanks."
"He needs a hospital," Gina says abruptly, nodding to Dr. Dashti.
Salima gestures to her middle son. He moves forward quickly, grabbing his father. Sean joins him, helping him lift their father up. Salima gently guides them past the broken vase, saying, "Hurry, get him in the car. I'll be right there." Her youngest son follows them quickly. Salima pauses, looking at Gina, "What are they?"
"I don't know."
"Why'd they…"
"I don't know. But I'd suggest not calling the police for now. This isn't their jurisdiction," says Gina.
"Then what do you think I should do?"
"Just wait. I know some people, and until Sean has better control he should probably stay with me."
"You can't take my baby from me."
"I won't. I'll find out what's going on though, I promise."
Salima nods, "Try and eat my family…suck their blood out…whatever it is you do, and I'll kill you."
Gina nods, "I understand."
"Good. Could you, please, clean this up? I would prefer not to deal with it when we get back. ER will be a nightmare."
"Sure," Gina agrees.
She pauses before heading out, "Thank-you, for taking care of my son. He's scared, and tired."
"How can you tell? Vampires have slightly different cues than humans."
"I'm his mother. He shouldn't go to the ER should he?"
"Probably not."
"Thank-you."
Gina nods. Salima chews on her lower lip then turns and hurries out of the house. A moment later a car zips out of the driveway and Sean reenters the house.
"I don't get it," he says, shaking his head, staring at the ruined kitchen with the still smoking phaser-holes. "I don't get it."
"Neither do I," says Gina.
"So what do we do?"
"We figure it out."
A/N: This is a companion piece to Maelstrom. I would highly recommend reading it before Sha'lain'a 5, so you get some more background that I can't seem to fit well into Sha'lain'a 5.
And yes, the creatures are Kroleteans.
R&R