Bruce was hungry. He'd been doing it again, spending too much time in the lab and ignoring his body's needs. He was starving and weak but he didn't have any bottled blood left. He would have to go to the morgue and sneak some. Even though he hated drinking from dead bodies almost as much as he hated drinking from baggies. When someone dies, their blood thickens and it feels and tastes like you're drinking chunky sour milk. Who would willing do that? Bruce felt a sharp pain from his stomach and he whimpered, doubling over slightly. He needed to eat, now. Corpses or not.
The physicist hurried over to the window and cracked it open slightly, slipping under it like it was nothing. He dug his nails into the steel of the tower as he quickly climbed down, thanking the Vampire Gods that his lab was relatively close to the ground. One he reached the ground, he leapt down and took a deep breath before flitting.
Flitting was running, in a way. It was the talent that some vampires possessed, the ability to move so quickly that all the human eye could pick up was a blur. Superhuman speed. Flitting meant more than just speed, if you could flit fast enough, you could build up so much static energy that you could easily open any lock. The only real downside to flitting was that you had to hold your breath while doing so. If you wanted to flit for a long time you would have to stop to breathe.
Bruce stumbled when he finally stopped, he fell to his knees and breathed deeply, coughing and hacking as he did so. He shouldn't have flitted while this weak, that was a mistake. He groaned as he pushed himself back up and grabbed onto a nearby wall for support. His vision began to blur but still he staggered forwards until he reached the morgue. The morgue was an old crumbling red brick building that would be easy for him to scale and enter.
Or at least it would've been if he hadn't been about to pass out. The climb was even more exhausting as he dug his nails into the crumbling brick and tugged himself up, inch by inch. By the time he reached the top, he was panting and stuttering, leaning against the sterile white wall of the morgue.
When he finally got his bearings again, he lurched towards one of the bodies. It was an older woman, dead maybe ten or eleven hours, her once curly gray hair splayed out behind her head, it was so matted with blood that it had soaked through a towel some kind soul had placed over the back of her head. The only thing showing was her face, cleaned free of any blood that must have come from whatever had destroyed the other side of her skull. Bruce could tell that she hadn't died a happy death, that's why he was wary as he dug a fingernail into the soft flesh of her upper arm. When the cut began to well sluggishly with blood, Bruce bent and pressed his mouth to the cut.
The moment the blood reached his lips, the hard bumps in his mouth that guarded his fangs released them and despite the blood being slightly sour, he sucked greedily. As slightly congealed blood slid down his throat like butter. That's when he felt it, the sensation of falling, the wind whipping his face and hair, the screams that pierced the air as the rest of the family hurried outside onto the balcony. As they stared downwards to see their grandmother in a bloody, crumpled heap at the bottom. She had wanted them to take the children back inside, to shield their young eyes from the sight of their grandmother. They didn't deserve to see that...
Bruce ripped his mouth away from the cut, gasping as the woman's memory faded from his mind. That was why he hated drinking straight from the source. Plastic bags filled with blood didn't carry memories, while living people and corpses did. Bruce felt sick as he wiped the dripping blood from his lips, he felt much better as the poor woman's blood churned in his stomach. He really was a monster.
'You are not a monster, Puisor.'
He could almost hear Dragomir's voice chiding him. Bruce bit his bottom lip, he longed for his family, he truly did. He missed Afina's soft words and her laugh that sounded like tinkling bells of silver, Ivan's small smiles whenever Bruce would hug him around the waist, the way that Mihai would make funny faces behind Father's back to cheer up Bruce whenever he was being scolded, Dimitri's bright eyes always alight with joy, He missed everything about Dragomir and he even missed Emil, back when his brother was kind and his words were soft instead of painful. But none of them knew Bruce Banner, they knew Vladimir.
-TimeSkip-
Once he was back in the Tower, Bruce decided to go ahead and take the elevator, it wasn't like anyone was going to be up at six o'clock in the morning anyway. But no such luck. The moment he stepped foot in the Tower he heard JARVIS' voice from overhead.
"Ah, Dr. Banner. Sir, Director Fury and the other Avengers are awaiting your presence in the meeting room."
Bruce sighed and consented, taking the elevator to the meeting floor. Where he found Fury and the rest of the Avengers grouped around a single meeting table. They all turned to him the moment he entered, the Avengers smiling and Fury just glaring as he usually did. Tony grinned and gestured for Bruce to sit in the empty seat beside him.
"Come and sit over here, Brucie!"
Tony cried, grinning slyly as he usually did. Bruce just rolled his eyes at the nickname and just plopped down in the seat beside him without complaint. He knew that if he didn't, Tony would be pouting and whining about it the whole time. The genius was such a child sometimes. Fury cleared his throat and began to speak in a gruff voice.
"I have assembled you all here for a mission, of a strange kind. I assume you all know what vampires are?"
Fury rumbled and Bruce felt a cold hand clutch his heart, oh gods no. Fury couldn't know...could he? Dear gods...what if he wanted them to kill a vampire. Bruce couldn't kill one of his own kind! It was against the Vampiric laws!
"You mean like Edward Cullen from Twilight? Come on Fury, we aren't teenage girls."
Tony scoffed, but Fury just glared at him and pulled a picture up on the screen, a portrait of a young girl from maybe the 18th or 19th century, she had long curly brown locks, pale skin, and wide blue eyes. Bruce could've recognized that face anywhere. It was Afina, a bit younger and more childlike but still Afina.
"This is a portrait of Princess Afina Cicilia Bela of Romania on her sixth birthday, in 1892."
Fury said, solemnly as he changed the slide to a more modern portrait of the same girl, it was clearly still Afina, she even had the same slight scar on her jaw that she had in the first picture.
"This is a portrait of the same Princess on her twenty first birthday, in 2012."
Fury added, looking around at the Avengers shocked faces, none of them spoke. Most the Avengers were frozen in shock, Bruce was frozen in pure and utter terror. But Fury just kept talking.
"In fact, none of the Romanian Royal Family has aged much since the 18th century. They all look twenty one at most and their King Dragoslav has admitted that his family are all vampires and that they are the head of the vampire clan. The only vampires that aren't under their thumbs have created a rival coven and they have taken one of the royal family to use as bait. They have enlisted your help to save him."
Fury explained and Bruce began to hyperventilate silently. No...who did they take?! Oh no...they couldn't have taken Dragomir.
"Who did they take?"
Clint hissed and Fury answered in a low voice.
"The Crown Prince, Dragomir."
