The building was nothing special: worn-out walls with spots of unfinished graffiti here and there; several half-broken steps, leading down to the nondescript door with an unlit hardly readable purplish sign above it; boarded windows, also covered in vulgar writings and old paper commercial notes. The local area matched the building with rubbish rolling around in the wind, more boarded windows in walls, earning for renovation, old construction boards and shop signs, rattling in that same wind, poorly lit ladders, leading to nailed-up doors and empty dark door-frames. The sun was yet to raise, but the pink tint has been already spreading from the horizon in the east, bleeding onto the darkened skies above.
Tom Riddle, more known to the world as the Dark Lord Voldemort, in his human and less famous form, stood in front of the steps of the building, looking around warily and frowning in contemplation, throwing occasional glances alternately to the lightening sky or to the door under the purple letters reading "D…dly Sin Bar" with one letter missing from it and another one dangling on the worn out red cord below the line.
At last the first ray of sunlight appeared behind the buildings surrounding the bar, reflecting from one of the few non-boarded windows somewhere to the west and almost blinding Tom. Squinting his eyes at the bright light, Tom made the first careful step down to the door of the bar. Frowning even more and briefly closing his eyes to adjust his sight to the possible darkness inside, Tom reached the floor in two wide sure steps and pushed the door open with forceful gesture. With a creak it flew into the wall with a loud 'bang' and bounced off of it, almost hitting Tom in the face. Hissing lowly under his breath, he quickly caught the brass handle, not allowing the door to make more noise than had been already heard from his brash breaking in.
And that was what he was trying to do – break in into the London Master Vampire's Lair, while the latter was hopefully knocked out for the day.
Wincing at his own decision to retrieve one of his followers, Avery, from the Master's clutches, the Dark Lord took out his wand from the sleeve and entered proper, after taking a deep breath of the newbie diver going under water.
It was dark, with almost no light coming through the narrow holes in the boards covering the windows. The area opened to the public was empty at this early morning hour, with chairs raised to the tables, small bar near the wall farthest from the entrance sporting no man, the second door near it covered with black curtain.
Tom went to this curtain on tiptoes with less surety – the Master of London had been said to be powerful enough vampire to be still up even at dawn, so one could not be certain to avoid him – or her. The identity of the Master was not known to the general public, rumors going around about shifts of power and political games played behind the closed doors of vampire society of Britain.
The Dark Lord, too, had no knowledge of the personality of vampires' leader, though, he had had his suspicions for a while now about who they might be.
Clutching his wand tightly in his fist, Voldemort carefully raised a curtain over the entrance to the bar's back rooms with his free hand and squinted his eyes, which were quickly changing color from purplish dark blue to the red, in an attempt to see the room inside.
It was almost impossible, but that area was even darker, without any hint of light – pitch black with hardly perceived outlines of some objects – possibly, furniture, and more curtains, hanging from the ceiling in random places, waving in a droughts freely dancing around the room.
The Dark Lord made several slow and careful steps towards the center of the room, trying hard not to jump at the tricky shadows and veils, which the curtains were made of, flying around him. Suppressing a shudder, when one of the shadows seemed to grow a veiled hand and landed it on his shoulder, the Dark Lord moved on with his wand at the ready and his eyes with magically enhanced sight scanning the dark area around him.
At one point he thought he heard very low whimper somewhere ahead and to the right of him, the voice almost unrecognizable, but the tone familiar enough for him to turn towards the sound, pointing his yew wand there and murmuring low: "Lumos Minima". The tip of the wand gave out a dim and weak glow, almost unnoticeable, but enough to make out the lines of big something standing in one of the corners on a raised platform.
The coffin. It was huge and old-fashioned, its lid not fully closed, one of the veils beside moving as if in a gesture of caress from small wind.
Tom almost stopped breathing, while still moving very quietly towards the coffin, the glow at his wand tip going out as if by its own accord. He paused when coming almost to the wall of the coffin, warily looking down into it.
Avery was there, lying on his side, tucked like a huge teddy-bear under the arm of a woman. She was lying on her back, with her eyes closed peacefully and with no movement to her plump breasts. Vampire.
Tom could not make out her features, but was almost certain that she was not the Master. One of his minions, maybe.
Avery made another whimpering sound low in his throat, when noticing Tom, his eyes widening at the sight of his Lord coming personally to retrieve him.
Tom tried to convey the silent message to him: don't talk, don't move yet, wait a bit, until it would be truly day outside and it would be safe to leave the vampire's side.
Avery was clever enough to oblige this silent order or, more probably, to understand the situation himself.
When Tom felt a cool something touching his shoulder, he didn't pay enough attention to it at first, thinking it was another veil. Avery's eyes widened again, him looking somewhere behind the Dark Lord shoulder with dread.
Tom froze, implication of what was happening sinking in, at last. One of the other vamps must have risen from their coffin and now must be standing behind him!
Still moving slow like one would in the presence of a dangerous and spooky animal, the Dark Lord turned around – only to find there was no one there, stranger's cool hand leaving his shoulder, as if it had not ever been there in the first place.
Quiet chuckle from somewhere behind him reached his ears, the sound tingling like a small bell and echoing in half-empty space, the veils not thick enough to muffle it. Tom whirled around in search of the source of this laugh – but again found no one. The darkness around him seemed to become thicker, the air was becoming heavier and the echo of the laugh still ringing in his ears – louder.
Avery gave a soft sob from where he continued to lay under the vamp-woman's hand.
Tom raised his wand higher, its tip again giving out the soft yellow glow, which hardly illuminated the room, only blinding both Tom and his opponent. When he realized this, and also the fact, that it could awake more vamps, thus giving him more enemies to fight, the Dark Lord finished the spell with swift motion of the wand and instead adjusted his blood-red eyes with another wordless spell allowing him to see in this darkness, which was blinding in itself.
Straining his hearing in an attempt to recognize vamp's almost imperceptible breathing, Voldemort stealthily moved closer to the coffin, in which Avery was held, hoping to help him out of there before going into full-blown battle with the monster who quite possibly could be the Master himself. He didn't notice if the laughing vamp was male or female, the voice too high and at the same time too soft to understand this, but it didn't matter.
He had been hoping at some point to make an ally from London's Master – and from all British vamps, by proxy, – but his underlings, especially those loyal to him from his early days, like Avery, – they were more important to him, and at the same time they had faith in him, so –
His trail of thought was broken by the sudden sound of cloth being ripped right beside his left shoulder, the veil falling from the ceiling and covering his wand hand. He let out a soft angry hiss, ending it in a Parseltongue spell, which lit the cloth on his hand aflame. Shaking the remnants of the veil off his elbow, before they could burn him, Tom swished his wand in a slicing motion, cutting the rest of the offending curtain from its hinges and successfully dropping the vamp, hanging from the ceiling upside down, clinging to it, to the floor with a loud thud. A moment later the vampire, his motions quick and fluent like those of liquid torrent, melted away, hiding somewhere in the dark.
Another second passed, and Tom felt the presence at his back, cool hand going around his torso and up to his throat in the parody of caress, nails scratching his skin lightly. The vamp's chuckle rang in his left ear, and immediately he felt hard sharpness of other's teeth touching the vein to the right of his throat, cold hand tilting his head to the side to allow the bloodsucker the better access to his neck.
He managed to writhe himself free from the vampire's hands, again whirling around and squinting his eyes in the darkness, anxiously looking at nothing. The monster was gone in a beat of a heart, the merry chuckle sounding from behind him once again.
Ignoring the vampire for a moment, Tom returned to Avery and dragged him out, pushed towards the hardly perceived exit with a low "Get away!", and jabbed the vampire woman, raising from her sleep, in the chest, right between her big breasts, with his wand, murmuring the same burning spell in snake-language – all in one long movement, not stopping for a glimpse of a second, before the vampire dropped back to the pillows with a shriek and slammed the coffin lid above herself, still wailing.
Only when he was left with the sole opponent again, Tom spared a glance to the exit and supposedly leaving Avery. The Dark Lord cursed under his breath – the idiot Avery was still there, couple of yards away from Voldemort, held by the neck and one shoulder by the third vampire, whom he had not noticed waking up earlier. She was going for his blood, the elongated fangs eerily glistening in dark room with no sources of light to illuminate them, but still clearly visible to everyone concerned.
Moving almost as quickly as the vampires around him, the Dark Lord approached his underling in no time, bodily removing the vampire girl from Avery, roughly yanking her by the shoulders while she was preoccupied with sniffing at Avery's neck with a low murmur of appreciation. The girl snarled at him, whirling around, her hands going up in attempt to grab his own throat. Fangs flashed in the beam of the bright light, appearing at Voldemort's wand tip, blinding the vampires and humans for a moment.
The girl howled, flinching away from him, disappearing in an instant. Avery hissed, covering his hurting eyes. Voldemort bared his own teeth in a snarl, turning off the wand-light, but the damage had been already done – none of the humans had known where the vampires had been hiding even before the blinding light cumbered their night-sight, and now it was close to impossible to leave the vamp's lair undamaged. They were back were they'd started – with unknown number of monsters lurking around in the deep shadows between floating veils and only their sense of direction indicating the location of the exit from this dreadful place.
Suddenly Avery, who should have been beside Tom, took a loud intake of air, ending in a strangled sob. The sound, though, came as if from some distance, meaning that his companion was taken away by one of the monsters. Before Voldemort could locate his underling, the sound of something being broken came along with a pained yelp. Going to the general direction of the sound the Dark Lord swished his wand in complicated pattern, ending it with a motion as if yanking on something invisible.
Instead of retrieving Avery, though, he came nose to nose with one of the vampires, brought to him by his tricky summoning spell. The blood-sucker made an ugly grimace, snarling right in Tom's face, his fangs dangerously close to human's lips. After a brief moment of contemplation the vampire went for his mouth, growling in the process. Tom pushed him in the chest hard, avoiding this half-kiss and half-bite. The vampire, airborne, disappeared in the dark.
The battle continued in the same eery silence as before for another round: Voldemort was whirling around in search of opponents, the wand tightly clutched in his fist; his movements disturbed the veils, or more accurately – construction drapes, made of plastic, hence their cool, almost cold touch and lightweight movements in hardly noticed droughts, making the Dark Lord flinch and frantically look behind his shoulder in dread of vampires lurking there in wait of the opportune moment to go for his throat with bared fangs. The said vampires jumped him, but met the hastily spelled shield and moved away again, once, twice, then all went still at the low animalistic growl coming from one of the corners, yellow lights in someone's eyes almost blinding after the long time of complete darkness.
The big shadow with its eyes glowing yellow and white teeth flashing in its snarling mouth jumped the vampire, who was approaching Avery unnoticed by both humans. Something metallic rattled, probably the thing had been chained but managed to break free.
The unknown monster and vampire rolled to the ground growling and snarling, snapping their teeth with audible sound at each other, wrestling the opponent and clawing at them.
"Werewolf," Avery breathed out beside Tom suddenly. Tom just nodded jerkily and moved his wand in a wide gesture, enclosing them both in a protective shield. He was late for a blink of a second, one of the vampires launching at him and the other jumping Avery, bringing them both to the ground.
Avery grunted, straining his broken limb – Tom thought he'd seen him limping moments ago, so the vamps must have snapped his leg or something.
The Dark Lord hit the ground with a grunt of his own from the impact, the pain going through his back. The vampire at his chest growled, thrashing him by the throat in attempt to get access to his neck, fangs missing the vein by the hair. The vamp then went down on him, mouth crashing Tom's mouth, tongue going so deep inside that Tom almost gagged on it. The man – and now Tom clearly felt, that the vampire was male, his hardness grinding in Tom's pelvis – rubbed against Tom, clawed hands clutching his shoulders in a parody of embrace. Tom made a weak attempt to wriggle free from the vampire's ministrations, but to no avail. His frantic squirming and writhing seemed to only set the monster up more, his almost powerless wrestling making him chuckle. The laughing mouth again crashed Tom's mouth with force, his lips bitten with a heated growl of desire.
The weight suddenly was lifted from Tom's chest – vampire was thrown off of him by the werewolf, who managed to wrestle down his own opponent seconds ago. Avery gasped. Tom swished his wand in frantic motion, glad, that he had managed to hold onto it in all of the commotion. The dark shadow, looming over Avery, who was still spread on the ground beside Voldemort, like a parody of the eagle, in the pose, mirroring Tom's, went up lifted by the Dark Lord's spell and crashed into the far wall.
"The windows!" barked the Dark Lord. "Daylight! – "
Avery scraped onto his feet and hurried to the side, looking for the window, while the werewolf jumped yet another vampire, who followed him. Tom sent a curse to the other vamp, coming onto him with his fangs bared menacingly. The monster met the curse midway, purple beam hitting him in the chest, making him collapse.
Suddenly Tom heard the familiar tingling laugh behind him. Caressing hand glided down his chest, the other crossing his mid-torso from left to right and cupping his right cheek lovingly. Growling and making a disgusted grimace, his red eyes flashing dangerously, the Dark Lord whirled around and grabbed the still laughing monster by the collar with right hand and jabbing him with his wand in one of the eyes. The laughing stopped, vampire wailed and howled, quickly retreating into darkness, clutching his wounded eye with one hand, but not before he slashed Tom's chest with the clawed other hand.
Tom bend up like a jacknife in pain, clutching at the front of his robes, right when the board on one of the windows burst open, allowing the light of the morning sun wash over the gruesome scene: the only vampire, who didn't manage to hide from the light into his coffin, was squirming on the floor in pain, several wisps of smoke already going up from his burning body, his skin quickly reddening and starting to peel off of his body, the gut-wrenching smell of burning human flesh already starting to fill the room.
"Out!" Voldemort coughed out, trying not to act upon this smell – he could not allow others to see his moment of weakness and, moreover, his wounded chest was hardly going to agree with him vomiting all over the place. He was mildly disturbed by the sight of the blood, too, which was also new to him, but he blamed Harry and his morning nausea going through their link.
Harry –
Right at this moment two things happened at once: the other vampire, clad in black cloak, which was tightly wrapped around him fully covering his figure, jumped Tom, trying to reach for his bleeding wounds, attracted by the smell of fresh blood.
And he felt Harry's presence in his mind, trying to reach him: 'And where are you frigging around this time?' Harry's annoyance was felt even at this distance.
'I apologize. Got hold up a little.' Tom tried to shield Harry from the pain he still felt from the wounds, which were now clawed at again by the dauntless cloaked monster. 'I'll return as soon as I can.'
'Tom? What's wrong?' Harry's mental tone changed to worried in a blink of an eye, as Tom was trying to converse mentally, shield from the person on the other end of the mental link and fend off a physical attack of a rough vamp at the same time.
'Later,' Tom cut off his end of their mental connection, concentrating on the fight, when one of the claw-like nails got deeper into the already opened wound bringing him more unpleasant sensations and the other got caught onto something there, making him almost writhe in pain, hissing and spitting in his opponent's face angrily, scrunching his face in an ugly snarl and simply hitting the monster with his hand to his temple, the wand's weight adding the force to the blow and the magic from its tip yanking the vampire away from the Dark Lord.
"My Lord!" Avery, wincing and carefully stepping on his wounded leg, limped to him in a rush and helped him stand upright.
"Werewolf?" in clipped tone asked Voldemort.
"Left," Avery nodded towards the broken window. "And we should probably, too – "
"Hold onto me," Tom ordered in harsh voice. Avery grabbed him by the arm. "Home," Tom hissed in Parseltongue, activating the emergency Port-key he carried around all the time. They were whisked away by magic a second before the wailing vampire on the ground went up in flames, quickly become something akin to a huge bonfire, igniting the floorboards and the nearest coffin, which occupant left it shortly afterwards with an angry yelp. The building slowly started to catch fire.