Chapter Eleven
Dead

John DeKalb turns from the limp body to the appalled woman on the floor. He opens his hand, Tony's body crashes to his feet and he advances on Ziva like a leopard, hungry for her sweet, hot blood.

Ziva scrabbles in the dark for either lost black Sig, trying not to think of the brutal murder of her friend. She stands no chance, unarmed, against his speed and strength. She feels more than sees the madman's inexorable approach. She looks up and DeKalb vanishes in a blur of furious Marine.

DeKalb crashes into the wall near DiNozzo's body. Gibbs pummels him with devastating blows, batters the madman with punches so fast and powerful they blur in the dimness.

Tim hauls Ziva to her feet, but neither can look away from the brutal pummeling the incensed agent metes out. Gibbs' fists slam so hard and fast DeKalb is pinned to the wall.

As the dénouement to the brutal vengeance, Gibbs grabs DeKalb's shirt, hauls the bloody man off the wall, across the room to the boarded window. Wood and glass explode outward and welcome daylight takes their places as DeKalb plummets to the overgrown lawn below.

Gibbs hadn't cared if DeKalb had bounced, impaled himself on glass and wood or went straight through. He is content.

The three furious agents look down from the portal to the real world, shielding their eyes from the glare of the afternoon sun. The monster writhes upon the grass, shrieking his agony. He tries to cover up in an impossible effort to escape the sunlight. Gradually he goes limp, within the minute he is still.

"Boss? Do you suppose he's dead?"

Their answer comes from behind them in a long, pained groan. They turn, astonishment morphing into delight as DiNozzo turns onto his back, one hand reaching up to his wrenched neck. They are about to go to him en masse, but Gibbs blocks McGee.

"You cover him," he points emphatically out the window. "If that bastard moves, shoot him!"

Gibbs joins Ziva at their friend's side as Tony forces his eyes open. "Just lay still until Ducky checks you out," he commands as Tony cautiously massages his neck.

"No argument from me," his words are a long groan. "He might have become a good chiropractor, almost as good as you, but I'm siding with O'Mallory on this one."

"How so?"

"I want a raise."

x

Ziva will continue her own expression of relief at a more opportune time, for now she must relieve McGee at the window so he can go out and inspect their prisoner. A minute later McGee, examining the body, calls up to the shattered window. "Boss?" A moment later Gibbs joins Ziva, "I think he's dead."

"I heard two shots," Gibbs says, referring to the blasts that had called him and McGee up from the basement.

"I am sure I missed with mine," Ziva admits, glancing at the hole in the closet door. DeKalb's speed had been appalling.

"Ditto me," DiNozzo says from the floor, not wanting to raise or even move his head.

"I can't find any blood on him or on the grass where he rolled." McGee calls up, ignoring the damages to face and body that aren't gunshot wounds. He knows the source of those injuries.

"Then how can he be dead?" Gibbs calls down.

"That's what I was hoping to ask you. How is he dead?"

xx

"It's not an unknown phenomenon, Jethro," Ducky explains a half hour later as they stand on either side of the body. NCIS and Metro Police vehicles crowd the street, uniformed officers fill the house and grounds. "The brain is a powerful tool, and belief a potent source of physical manifestation. In this case I would say Mr. DeKalb's fixation on vampirism was so powerful, and so consumed his life, that he believed implicitly in all its advantages and disadvantages."

"Are you telling me he believed that sunlight would kill him, so he died?"

Ducky extends his hands above her body. "Until I find another cause at his autopsy, I can only say that the evidence is before you."

"What are you going to put on the death certificate?"

The question gives him a moment's pause. "I shall have to think about that one, though I suppose photophobia could be a reasonable contributing factor."

"Good luck with that one." Gibbs has heard of it as a disease, but never as a C.o.D.

He turns from the collection of vehicles crowding the street to the house full of police and agents. This will be a very long afternoon and evening. He's grateful, however, that this time he doesn't have to engage in a jurisdictional turf war: DeKalb, murderer of a Seaman Apprentice and assailant of four NCIS personnel, killed in an Agency operation, is most definitely theirs. Lt. Jeffery Carpenter of MPDC Homicide is more than welcome to the thirteen bodies already in coffins in the basement.

xx

DiNozzo groans as Samantha Sky, clad in the extra-small blue field coveralls, secures the brace to his neck and shoulders as Ziva hovers nearby.

"There, Agent DiNozzo, that should hold you until you can get x-rays taken."

"You've a good touch," he says warmly, "and a wonderful bedside manner."

She smiles and an instant later Ziva is at her shoulder. The dark woman kneels closer to DiNozzo, not touching Sammy yet crowding her aside with her manner more than her body. "Yes, expertly done, but you will find thirteen bodies in the basement more suited to your pathological skills."

Sammy's smile remains on her lips, yet it is there only through greater effort. "As you wish." She manages not to sound cold as she gets up and leaves, but that too requires effort.

DiNozzo looks up into his partner's brown eyes, seeing things he hadn't expected.

"How are you?" she asks, not allowing him the moment.

"How are you? That was some slam."

"I have had worse."

"I'd expected you'd land on your feet, like any cat." He can tell he's lost her. "You're showing your claws."

"You do not need the assistance of a twenty two year old girl."

He doesn't mention that twenty two is hardly a 'girl'. "What do I need?"

"I thought you were dead."

x

He doesn't need a map to follow that detour. "When I couldn't beat him, couldn't shoot him, I decided to play possum until you could blow him away. When he went all Chiro on my neck I thought that was as good a time as any; but I didn't expect it to hurt worse than one of Gibbs' demonstrations. I'll be fine, though."

"No, you shall not."

"I won't?"

"Not without a night of bed-rest together with extensive physical therapy."

He smiles. There's nothing like shared near-death experience to enhance the libido. "Doctor, I leave myself entirely in your hands."

Unfortunately, Sammy's prediction for the rest of his afternoon proves more accurate than Ziva's. He will ultimately be allowed to return home, under his partner's escort, late that evening, but the painkillers will assure him of a challenging evening.

xxx

It's early evening when Ducky and Samantha, with only one corpse to concern them, return to Autopsy.

He wheels the gurney up to the first silver table, locks the wheels and prepares the implements they will need. Samantha changes in the store room out of the blue coveralls into more appropriate, and smaller, blue scrubs. When she returns, Ducky pulls down the zipper of the black bag.

DeKalb sits up with a feral roar, grabs Ducky and flings the astonished man across the room. He falls near the wall and the monster turns on Samantha, hissing threateningly. She shrieks, seeing his long fangs and runs for the door. DeKalb kicks out of the body bag and catches her before she can get out the sliding door. She struggles desperately, unable to resist his manic strength as he drags her back into the room and slams her against the bank of coolers, enjoying her screams. He grabs the scrubs top at her neck and rips the garment in half, baring her demi-bra covered breasts.

"Let – her – go." Ducky's deadly command silences even Samantha's terrified screams. When DeKalb glances back to face this challenge the angry man stands across the room before his desk, a gun held in each steady hand.

x

For a long moment no one moves, DeKalb stares into Ducky's grim visage and at the twin weapons.

"Back away now." The guns are trained upon the center of the vampire's back.

DeKalb turns to the small woman, barely feeling her ineffectual struggles, eyes fixed on her heaving breasts. With a bestial roar and the speed of a viper he strikes, Sammy's screech reverberates through the room.

Two shots are lost under her shriek but DeKalb stops before reaching her, his roar cut off in a startled gasp. He tries again and Ducky's third shot is no louder than a cough. DeKalb stops again and slowly collapses to his knees.

With his head now no higher than Sammy's chest, he tries again. Sammy still can't hold the madman off as her mentor fires again, striking DeKalb's neck.

DeKalb slips away, falls onto his back and lies still.

x

"You – you killed him!" She can't believe this. None of it could be real. He'd been dead, her confused and terrified mind insists, but Ducky killed him.

"No, my dear," he shows her the guns, "these are loaded with sedative darts. Even four doses will not prove fatal, though why he is still alive is something I look forward to learning, since I pronounced him dead." He sets them on a tray, ignoring her shredded top that hangs loose before her. "No, these weapons were actually borrowed from Bethesda Psychiatry and I am actually fortunate to have been careless enough to neglect to return–"

Samantha breaks from the wall, leaps over her slumbering attacker's body, dashes across the room, hops up and throws her arms about her savior.

Ducky is quite unable to continue his explanation while his face is being peppered with kisses.

x

Gibbs steps through the sliding doors and halts at the sight of their dead prisoner sprawled upon the floor near the cooling units and Samantha held aloft in Ducky's arms as she kisses him over and over. Ducky notices Gibbs first and quite guiltily pushes Sammy away, lowering her to the floor.

She turns, sees him and quickly yanks the fragments of her blue scrubs top back up, blushing at her exposure.

"Anything you want to tell me, grandpa?"