A/N: Hello all, sorry about the slow updates and the short chapter, kind of hit some writers block with this story... I'm working at it though... Thanks to Nate, Bittersweet Words, Lesbian-Lover and Kayyasha1 for reviewing. A special thanks to Juju and Adrain... for the reviews and prompting. Hope ya all enjoy...

Chapter Fifteen

Blooded Kisses

I kissed thee ere I killed thee -- no way but this,
Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.

William Shakespeare

King tips the juice in his cup from side to side, watching the orange fluid shift, trying to sort out his head. I was impossible though, he'd spent last night willingly in bed with Drake. What the hell did he think he was doing, what had he done? His hand tightened around the glass to the point where he was surprised it didn't shatter.

"Don't do that." Drake said from behind him.

"What?" King asked voice steady despite himself, quite use to being crept up on by now.

"It was just sex." The vampire says simply, fingers going to rest beneath Hannibal's chin. He brushed away the hand.

"I shouldn't have done what I did." He rambles, feeling at a loss and unsure of why. Drake was right, it was sex, nothing more and both he and Zoë were leaving. Zoë… this thing had murdered her mother and he'd enjoyed the touch.

"Your friends will never know." Drake sighed neutrally, unmoved by the admission.

"I'll know."

"I suppose you will." The stubbornly cool detached veneer is back in place, firmly and King wishes he could somehow backhand it off.

"Why did you kill them?" Hannibal asks trying to reason away his anger.

"They would've killed me." Drake explained what he really didn't feel needed explaining. He wondered what the other could possibly want from him; he couldn't change what had already happened.

"Because you're a monster." Drake pushes away the thought that he might actually be hurt by the statement; he tilts the other's head up.

"I never claimed to be anything else." Again his hand is brushed aside.

"No, you didn't." Hannibal sighs realizing that at no point did the vampire trick him into going to bed with him. His mistake and he'll live with it.

"It hardly-" The sentence was cut off by an odd metallic clanging in the next room, followed by a dull thud.

"What now?" Drake huffs, pushing passed King, stalking through to the lounge.

King follows the elder.

"Has Danica finally tripped off her ridiculously high heels?" He digs because he can.

The reality he finds is much less amusing and the sight before him will be brunt into his eyes forever. A piece of the rail has come loose on the catwalk, Zoë is lying sprawled out beneath it, one of the short copper spines, that Danica has had built into the floor along the wall as artwork, jutting out from her stomach.

-.-.-

"Come in." Karen comes as a low knock comes from the outside of her door.

"I'm not changing my mind Blade." She says folding piece of clothing, the half vampire's head appearing around the opening door. He steps inside and closes it behind him.

"Daystar is dangerous… and yes I'm biased because my son is part vampire and I'd be lying if I said that that didn't play into reservations. But there are other problems as well." She sighed.

"Is that why you left?" She looked over the careful neutral expression.

"Because I was pregnant? No." She says dropping the folded pile into her cupboard.

"No I always wanted to tell you about Ethan."

"You didn't." She sighs.

"It's not like you have an address or a phone number." She tried to keep the bitterness from her voice and didn't quite manage.

"You're the one who left." He accuses, voice still that maddening, impartial tone.

"That I am." She says resigning herself, no ones going to win this fight. Neither of them ever could.

"Why?"

"You know why."

"To hang out with other fuzzy bloodsuckers?" He snipes, having noticed that several of the staff are vampires.

"Don't do that. Don't you dare." Karen threatened.

"Deal with your demons on your own time. They are good people." She said, standing across from him, her bed resting between them.

"That was always your problem Blade… I could except that you were half vampire. It was you who had trouble with it." She said folding her arms across her chest.

"You once told me that every time you took out a vampire, you got a little piece of your life back." She raised her hands as an unconventional shrug.

"So what happens once you've killed them all? And you realize that you are still a vampire." He didn't move at all.

"Just gonna jump off that bridge when you come to it? You will never be able to cut it out of yourself Blade." Still he simply stared, sunglasses firmly in place.

"What about your son? Do you hate him too? He took on vampyric traits long before puberty you know?" Karen snorted.

"Hell he's ten, he still hasn't reached puberty. Don't know why he's like that; don't know why he's almost as tall as I am. He doesn't have your thirst yet though, heals a little faster than most people. Little quicker, little stronger."

There was another knock, Trevor head poking around the door this time.

"Oh I didn't know you had…" He stuttered.

"What is it?" Karen said shortly.

"There's been a little accident in the lab… Well actually not so much an accident as… that girl Abigail, she's stolen a vial of daystar."