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Bloodletting
Half an hour later, Sawyer, Skinner and Jekyll were going over the evidence of the crime in the Nautilus's main conference room. Nemo was the only other one present; the crew generally were uninvolved in League activity, and Mina was currently absent.
Nemo had just finished reading a quick report that Jekyll had written on their way down to the Nautilus, and was now looking up at the others.
"I see your worries," he said, as he laid the papers down. "The evidence you have here is remarkably damning towards Mrs Harker."
"But it can't be her," Sawyer put in. "Mina's fought her vampire urges for blood for some years now, it's unlikely they'd have taken over now."
"Emphasis on 'unlikely' there, Tommy boy," Skinner put in, from where he had his feet on the table as he lay back in his seat. "How do we know her recent fight with Dorian didn't leave her more hungry than we know? I mean, she couldn't exactly eat on the Nautilus without tipping us off, but here she's free to do it."
Sawyer got up from his seat and stretched briefly. "One flaw there, Skinner," he said, looking over at the floating coat. "If it is Mina, why did she attack a victim right outside where we leave the Nautipod? She's not the type to take that kind of risk, if it is her."
"Well, she is one of our stronger members, if not the strongest," Jekyll said, raising an inquiring finger. "Maybe she thinks we won't be able to stop her."
"If you took enough serum, who's to say you couldn't overpower her?" Sawyer said.
"Maybe she just thought it was worth the risk?" Nemo pointed out. Jekyll and Skinner nodded; they could see the wisdom in that comment, Jekyll even more. After all, in his time as Hyde he'd taken any risk to survive before joining the rest of the LXG.
"It is possible, you have to admit," Jekyll said, looking over at Sawyer.
Sawyer briefly looked like he was about to argue with them, but stopped himself. He just turned around and walked out the conference room, leaving the three of them behind without even a goodbye.
The three remaining members looked around at each other.
"So," Skinner said, breaking their silence of a couple of minutes, "do we keep an eye on him, or what?"
"No," Nemo said. "Sawyer may be young, but he's still rational. He wouldn't go up against something that may be capable of doing what Mrs Harker can do by himself."
However, outside the conference room Sawyer was proving Nemo wrong. Not only was he now preparing to leave the Nautilus, he was also wearing a crucifix around his neck, along with carrying a few phials of holy water in his pockets. He had picked up two pistols loaded with silver bullets, his own remaining Winchester (The other one currently lying on Quartermain's grave in Africa, and this one repaired by Nemo following the damage inflicted by Moriarty), and Quartermain's old elephant rifle, Matilda.
The other parts of his arsenal for this hunt were a gun of Nemo's invention that he could use to fire the holy water at his target, a rope with a large metal hook on one end (To give him a better chance of reaching the killer in time), and he had a few stakes strapped around his chest.
He didn't think his target was Mina doing the killing, but it was definitely a vampire, so he'd need all this (Although he hoped he wouldn't have to use the stakes, he wasn't sure he'd survive a fight with a vampire at those close quarters).
And if it was Mina...
Well, he wanted to be the one to do it. If only because he wanted to show her that, just because of... the way he felt for her, it didn't mean he wouldn't kill her if she turned against them all.
"The game is on," Sawyer whispered to himself as he pulled on a hat, shrugged on one of Skinner's long trench coats, and headed for the Nautipod. If any of Nemo's crew saw him they'd probably mistake him for Skinner, so long as they didn't make him look up or take his hands out of his pockets.
Once out under the night sky, Sawyer locked up the Nautipod and left it in its usual place before going over his options as to how to track down the killer. It was still dark, so, if it was a vampire he was hunting it would most likely still be active; there were about three or so hours to go until dawn, so it wouldn't need to worry too much about getting out of the sun. Besides, from what he remembered of Mina's speed, the vampire could probably get to safety in at most an hour.
Sawyer reviewed what information he knew about Mina. Although she was able to manage on only one human every three or four days, with some extra food (Although at least the majority of the extra would need to be meat), she had once mentioned that a vampire feeding on humans alone would probably prefer one a night, especially if they'd been pushed for food in recent times. Given that the vampire had run the risk of there being more crucifixes in the house (If one room had them there was a chance they all would have had), he was prepared to bet the vampire had been having difficulties finding victims recently.
Since there was unlikely to be another victim that night, Sawyer's best bet would be to get to a location where he'd be able to keep an eye out for the vampire wherever he was in the city.
His eyes fell on a large tower near the centre of the city.
Perfect.
He worked his was towards it and, after a few minutes walk, reached it. Once there he quickly scouted around for the door, and, after finding one, he pulled out one of Skinner's lock-picks from the coat and began to pick it. He needed to get in before the sun was up, or he'd have a mass of people he'd need to avoid.
Later that day, Nemo arrived on the Nautilus's bridge, only to find Jekyll already standing there. The League were late risers normally; with a lack of light reaching them down here, they mostly woke up and went tot sleep whenever they felt like it. The only constant was that some were always up earlier than the rest, and Nemo had long gotten used to only Sawyer and Mina being up before him.
"Something wrong?" he asked casually. Jekyll jumped and glanced back, relaxing a little when he saw who it was.
"Not anything you wouldn't expect, after that...incident yesterday," he said, looking a little depressed. Then again, he often did. "I just had a rather hard night, and, after a few failed attempts at sleep, I decided to just come here."
"Understandable," Nemo said, as he leaned forward on the main wheel of the Nautilus. "We've already gone through one problem with a traitor in our midst. I don't think we need another."
"Yep, especially given who we're talking about," a voice said behind them. Looking back, they saw Skinner standing behind them in his black hat and coat, his glasses on where they assumed his nose was. They relaxed at the sight; the cream was better, but the other members of the LXG always preferred talking to Skinner when they could be sure they weren't facing the wall.
"An accurate statement, Mr Skinner," Nemo said, getting off the wheel and looking back at the floating coat. "Well, whenever Mr Sawyer gets up here, maybe he'll some ideas for hunting her. After all, he did learn from-"
Just then, Skinner interrupted. "Tommy's not here yet?"
"Obviously not, he's still asleep," Jekyll said.
"Actually, he's not," Skinner said.
"What?" Nemo asked. This wasn't encouraging news. "Why do you think that?"
"Well, I passed his room on the way up here and checked up to see if he was up yet," Skinner explained. "I didn't get an answer, so I tried the door. It was open, but the bed hadn't been slept in. He hasn't been in all night."
The three of them looked at each other and swallowed nervously. It didn't take a genius to work out what had happened. Sawyer was missing. Mina was the prime suspect in a murder. Sawyer was interested in Mina to a greater degree than the rest of them. Therefore...
"He's tracking whatever killed that woman by himself," Skinner groaned, hitting his forehead with the palm of his hand. "Is he nuts?"
"No," Jekyll said, staring up at the roof. "He's just in love."
The other two nodded at that. Sawyer may have attempted to conceal his attempts at flirting with her from the rest of the LXG, but they'd found out about it from some comments made between Sawyer and Quartermain on the way to the Fantom's fortress.
"But why would he hunt the killer if it may be her?" Skinner asked.
"Maybe because it could be," Jekyll said. "You know, if it isn't her, than he clears her name of murder, and if it is her... well, maybe he wants to prove to himself that he could hunt her."
Trying to show you bring more to this party than it appears, hmm? Hyde said in Jekyll's head. Forget it! You bring me and me alone to this game; it's just that nobody who normally makes these calculations is here!
I know that, Hyde, Jekyll replied, trying to sound calm. But, as you so ably pointed out, given the lack of Tom or Mina, I'm all we've got. So just calm down about it, hmm?
Hyde slipped into sulky silence.
The three men looked at each other. They had a fairly good idea of what was happening now, but the only question was what to do now.
"We need to check Mina's room," Nemo said. "We may find some clues as to where she went after leaving us."
"Sounds like a plan," Skinner smiled, turning around and heading out of the door, followed by the other two. "If nothing else, we could find something that proves or denies her involvement in these murders."
As Skinner opened the door to Mina's room, he briefly found himself remembering his old days as a thief, before he even found the formula of the physicist Griffin. One of his earlier heists had been on a dormitory for women in a nunnery; he'd failed to find anything really interesting, but he had tracked down a few golden crucifixes on the shelves above their beds. He didn't know why that had occurred to him, but theorised that it could just have been the similarities; after all, he was entering a woman's room now as well.
This room was different from the room of the nuns, but the lack of furniture remained the same. There was a large chemistry set on a table with a chair beside it, and a bed a metre or so away. As the end of the bed was a large wardrobe, but apart from that there wasn't a great deal of things in the room; either Mina hadn't bought a lot of possessions to the League from her early days, or she wasn't much of a 'belongings' woman.
"Bare, isn't it?" Jekyll said, looking around the room as he entered the room after Nemo and Skinner. "Doesn't seem like we'll find anything useful here."
"Well, you never know," Skinner said, as he walked into the room and glanced behind the chemistry set. "In the old days I often entered houses that didn't seem like much, and then I found some massive set of jewels hidden away somewhere safe."
Nemo and Jekyll simply nodded at his point, and then started looking around the room. Jekyll examined the chemistry set, Nemo looked under the bed, and Skinner checked out the wardrobe. However, only Skinner found anything interesting; a large, leather-bound book. He glanced at the title on it with some surprise; Dracula, by Bram Stoker.
"Look at this!" he said, turning towards the others. Glancing back, Nemo and Jekyll saw the book as it hovered at the end of Skinner's apparently empty sleeve.
"What's that?" Nemo asked, as he took the book from Skinner and idly flicked through it. He looked up at the others. "It seems to be the story of Mrs Harker's battle with Dracula, aided by her husband and various others a long while ago. Possibly irrelevant to our current objective."
"Unless..." Jekyll said, as he took the book out of Nemo's hands, shut it, and ran his fingers over the sides of the book. Finding a slight irregularity, he opened the book and began to look over the page.
Nemo and Skinner tried to look at the page themselves, but Jekyll shut the book before they could begin to read it. All they saw was that one corner of that page had been folded over, and that someone had written something in one corner of the book.
"Well, that clears that up," Jekyll said, as he laid the book down on the bed.
"What?" Nemo asked.
"Well, if the book is to be believed, a woman in Transylvania once gave Mrs Harker's husband a crucifix, which was of some protection to him in the castle of that Dracula character she mentioned once to us all," Jekyll explained, as he left the room and began to head to the Nautilus's control room, followed by the other two. "According to the note, Mrs Harker always intended to go there and thank her for it, but this was the first real chance she had."
Nemo nodded. "It makes sense. Transylvania is rather close to this area. At top speed, Mrs Harker could certainly make it there and back in only a few days."
'Mrs Harker', Henry? What happened to calling her 'Mina'? Hyde said in Jekyll's head.
"Shut up," Jekyll whispered under his breath.
"Well, it doesn't exactly stop Mina being the killer," Skinner said, raising one sleeve and (Jekyll and Nemo assumed) a forefinger.
"No," Jekyll admitted. "But it does give her a good reason for this long absence she's been on."
They walked along in silence for a few more minutes, reflecting on that suggestion.
"We need to track down Sawyer," Nemo said at last. "We may have found nothing to definitely clear Mrs Harker, but the fact that he may need our help is still a factor."
"Agreed," Jekyll said.
"Yo-ho, and up she rises, eh?" Skinner smiled, as they made their way back to the man control room.
"Basically, yes Mr Skinner," Nemo replied, sighing. "You two get to the observation deck; I'll join you once we're above water."
