Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Fellowship, any of the demons they're fighting, or Malcolm; he's someone from fiction going around under an alias. The plot is mine, and that's it.

Feedback: Is Skinner slightly annoying? Of COURSE I want some!

Sean Malloy-1: This soon enough for you?

Funky in Fishnet: You guessed right; not only is Marcus a vampire, but he's one of the vampire Elders from the film 'Underworld'- you ever seen it? But, glad you liked the pasts of the Black Arrow and the Prince; I was hoping they'd work out well.

The Fellowship of Extraordinary Men

"So," Marcus asked, as he sat down in the cart with the rest of the Fellowship, "what, exactly, is the situation I'll be helping you with?"

"Demons," the Prince said, as Ivanhoe started to drive the cart onward to their next destination. "A fortress, origins unknown, has appeared in the centre of England, inhabited by several demons, although their numbers are unknown. Attacks on it by the King's armies have proved fruitless so far, so they have created our fellowship to find out the fortress's secret."

"I see," Marcus said, looking at the picture of the fortress in his hands.

"I confess a certain curiosity as to what, exactly, you shall bring to this Fellowship, Marcus," the Black Arrow put in. "The rest of us all have traits which are useful in this little endeavour; Robin and I are the best archers of our time, Ivanhoe is an exceptionally talented knight, and the Prince has knowledge of remarkable martial arts abilities. What of you?"

Marcus smiled. "I have two things that none of you are likely to have," he replied. "The first is simple; I have great experience of the world at large."

The Black Arrow raised a surprised eyebrow at that; Marcus didn't look all that much older than the rest of the Fellowship.

"How can you have experienced more than us, when you are around the same age as Robin and I?" he asked.

Marcus smiled again, an enigmatic smile that made him look far older than he had at first. "That is connected to the second thing I bring to this team," he said, as he stood up and, despite shaking slightly due to the uneven ground, walked over to a large box full of swords, that must have weighed at least several tonnes, and picked it up with as little effort as though it had been a twig.

He looked back at the Fellowship as he put the box back down. "Extraordinary enough for you?" he asked casually.

The Black Arrow and the Prince stared at Marcus in amazement; they just couldn't believe what they'd just seen. Robin looked a bit calmer then they did, but, then again, he had the advantage of having read the information the King had on Marcus; he'd known about the man's superhuman strength.

"Wh... what?" the Prince asked, his usual calm attitude lost for the moment. "How can you... can you..."

"Do that?" Marcus smiled. "The reason is simple; I'm not human. I'm a vampire, a being like a human but possessing superhuman strength, speed, reflexes, and practical immortality." He shrugged a little as he looked at his hands. "Of course, there are certain disadvantages, such as being unable to go out into the sunlight and a dependence upon drinking blood to survive, but in general, the positive effects are far greater than the negative ones."

"Wait a minute..." the Black Arrow said, raising one hand in alarm. "You drink blood?!"

Marcus looked puzzled for a moment, and then smiled reassuringly at the masked man.

"Don't worry; I won't use any of you as a snack," he assured them. "As one of the elder vampires in the world, I was responsible for the creation of a rule that bans all vampires from drinking the blood of innocent people; we only drink the blood of cattle these days. I'm not going to violate my own rules, no matter what the temptation is."

He sighed a little. "Of course, if it was my colleague, Viktor, you were working with, you may have a bit of a problem; we sometimes need to keep an eye on him when he's active. One of the oldest vampires in the world at this time, but he often acts like the rules don't apply to him. He's been the cause of a couple of problems for us."

"Ah, that was what the King was referring to in that royal pardon he had us give you?" Robin asked.

"Exactly," Marcus replied. "I'm not just in this for myself; I'm in it to save my people from being wrongly attacked for murders they didn't commit."

"A noble goal," the Prince said, nodding at Marcus.

"Thank you," Marcus replied. Then he glanced over at Robin. "Where are we going now?"

"To the house of an occult expert whose resources have been used by the Government now and again," Robin replied. "According to King Richard, Sir Edward- the knight that recruited me," he added, noting the momentary confusion on the faces of his fellow members.

"Anyway, Sir Edward and I were attacked by some of the demons we shall be facing when he visited my castle, but we managed to kill them before they could hurt us. According to the King, Sir Edward had some of the demon's bodies sent over to this 'Malcolm' so that he could examine them and give us some information on the person that is controlling them."

"Controlling them?" the Black Arrow asked.

"Well, you don't think several demons just decided to come up and play for no good reason?" Marcus asked, with the casual attitude that came with a couple of centuries of life. "There has to be some sort of central intelligence behind this little mess; if the demons were capable of attempting this sort of thing by themselves, they'd probably have done it long ago."

The Prince nodded. "An astute point, Marcus," he said, a half-smile on his face as he thought of the idea. Then he looked back at Robin. "How far away is this occult expert, may I ask?"

"Oh, only a few hours by cart," Robin replied. "We should be there shortly before sunrise, so Marcus will be perfectly safe from the sun."

"Oh, I'm sure he'll be fine when we go into this expert's house, but how about going out?" Ivanhoe said from the front of the cart, where he'd been listening in on everything that his fellow Fellowship members had been saying in the back. "I mean, we have no idea how long we'll need to stay in the house; if the sun rises, what will we do about Marcus?"

The vampire didn't reply. Instead, he reached into one of the boxes and pulled out a large brown cloak, complete with a hood.

"I'll wear this," Marcus replied simply. Then he put the cloak down underneath his seat, lay back against the 'wall' of the cart, and shut his eyes. "In the meantime, let me just catch a couple of hour's worth of rest before we get there."

Robin smiled. "An excellent idea, Marcus," he said. "I think we all should do the same. Ivanhoe!" he called out to the knight, who was still sitting at the front of the cart while driving the horses.

"Yes?" Ivanhoe replied, taking his eyes off the road to look back at his strange new colleagues.

"We're just going to have a brief doze," Robin explained. "However, when about an hour has passed, I want you to wake me so that you can get some sleep; I shall steer the cart while you catch some rest. Clear?"

"As crystal, Robin," Ivanhoe replied. "Sleep well," he added, as the Fellowship fell asleep, Robin barely staying awake long enough to see the Prince and the Black Arrow nodding off as well...

The Prince blinked in surprise at the sight in front of him.

He was standing on a battlefield, surrounded by the bodies of apparently countless murdered knights. He could only see one moving figure on the entire battlefield; a lone knight, his arm stretched out after a boat that was drifting away on a nearby lake.

The Prince recognised this scene from stories he'd read of when he was younger. The tales were English in origin, but a member of his family had visited England in the past and had found out about these tales, and had told them to his family upon his return.

The Prince was witnessing King Arthur's trip to Avalon, after his final battle with the forces of evil....

Namely, the witch Morgraine LeFay.

Walking forward, the Prince looked around the battlefield, trying to see if he could see anyone still alive amidst this terrible slaughter. He knew it was pointless; the legends said clearly that only Sir Bedevere had survived this terrible confrontation and remained in England.

But, with his sensitivity to the flow of time following his exposure to the Dagger, he rarely dreamt of anything that didn't have some relevance to a situation he was involved in at present. He couldn't see how the final fight of the Knights of the Round Table could be involved in a mass attack on England by several demons, but he had to see if he could find anything.

Then he saw it. Near the centre of the field, with several bodies lying around the centre as though they'd been trying to reach someone in particular, was a man in black armour, lying on the ground with a fatal-looking stab wound in his side. His head was turned away from the Prince, but he didn't appear to be in that bad a condition.

As the Prince edged closer and closer towards the body...

...He was awakened by the Black Arrow shaking his shoulder.

"We're here," the Black Arrow told his friend.

The Prince blinked the sleep away from his eyes, cursing the bad luck that had made the Black Arrow wake him up before he could see the mysterious knight's face. He couldn't explain it, but he got the impression that the knight would play an important part in this adventure...

However, he shook it off and jumped out of the cart after the rest of the Fellowship. He noted that Robin and Ivanhoe had indeed swapped places at some point while he was asleep, and Robin was currently tying the horses up on a tree near the house which, the Prince guessed, was the home of the occult expert they had come here to talk to.

It wasn't an especially large house, being only a simple one-storey affair made of stone with a thatched roof. However, the smoke that issued from all the windows and holes, coupled with the fact that there were several assorted organs hanging on the outside of the house, dissuaded any ideas that the house was a normal one.

"Well, this is... interesting," Ivanhoe said, looking over at Marcus, who was already pulling his massive brown cloak over his head. "What is your opinion of it, Marcus?"

"His house certainly matches the living conditions of past occultists of my acquaintance," Marcus replied, as he pulled the hood over his head. The sun wasn't up yet, but he didn't believe in taking any chances. "However, whether or not his skills will be all we have heard of from the King, I cannot say. We shall have to go in and see."

"Very well," Robin said, walking up and knocking on the door.

It was opened after only a couple of minutes by a tall, handsome man with a slight scar on one cheek, long, dark and dirty hair, and piercing blue eyes. He was wearing an elegant dark blue robe with gold embroidery around the sleeves, and carried a long wooden staff with a glowing blue ball on one end of it. A long, elegant sword hung at his side.

(AN: Think of him as looking like Pierce Brosnan, but, of course, a little dirtier.)

"Yes?" he asked Robin. "Can I help you?"

"I believe so- that is, if you are Malcolm, the occult expert we have been sent to meet," Robin replied. "We are the Fellowship of Extraordinary Men; I assume King Richard informed you we would be coming?"

"Ah, so you're the Fellowship I've heard so much about!" Malcolm smiled, as he opened his door and stepped back to allow the Fellowship to enter. "Please, come right in; I just finished examining those demon corpses the king sent me."

"Excellent," the Prince said, as he and the rest of the Fellowship stepped into Malcolm's house. "We were... wondering if...."

His voice trailed off as he saw the inside of the house. It was filled to the brim with all kinds of pots and plates, each one with oddly coloured steam coming out of them. Several assorted organs were hanging from hooks on the walls, although some of them didn't even look human; if nothing else, the Prince was fairly sure no human had hands and arms that looked like massive knives. There were also several books and pieces of parchment on some shelves around them, apparently, from what the Fellowship could see of the book titles and drawings on the parchment, devoted solely to the subject of demons and other such magical creatures.

"Sorry about the mess," Malcolm smiled, as he picked a book off the shelves and looked back at the Fellowship, who were just standing in the centre of the room. He groaned. "Where are my manners? Please, sit down over there," he said, indicating a table near one corner of the house.

As the Fellowship took their seats, Malcolm sat down as the head of the table and opened the book, laying it down on the table so the Fellowship could see it.

It showed a few pictures of various demons, all of which the Fellowship recognised from Robin's story as being the demons that had attacked him when Sir Edward tried to recruit him into the Fellowship.

"These are the demons you wanted information on, correct?" Malcolm asked. "It's just that I'm prone to be absent-minded, and since I dissected the bodies a couple of days ago to find out anything else about them, I may have forgotten some of the finer points about their appearances."

"Yes, they are. Can you tell us anything about them?" the Black Arrow asked, looking curiously at the occult expert.

"Well, not that much, really," Malcolm replied, as he set the book down and looked up at the Fellowship. "These demons in question are fairly low in the demonic hierarchy; they have little actual powers beyond the strength of a well-trained fighter and the ability to absorb a great amount of damage before going down. Evidently, something is controlling these creatures, and, according to what I have heard, has created a fortress to act as a central base for their operations."

"Any ideas what could be controlling them?" the Prince asked.

"Not really," Malcolm replied. "The logical assumption would be a powerful demon, but I haven't been able to find anything currently active with the level of strength required to erect the fortress the King told me about and control all the demons that must be in it. After that, the only alternative is a witch or wizard, but that's not much help for you if I can't work out any weaknesses they may have..."

"That's not going to be a problem," a voice said from behind the Fellowship. "You won't survive long enough to use the information even if you did have it."