Chapter 3

"Interrogation"

Beast Boy tapped his foot impatiently as he leaned against the outside wall of a local blood bank, chewing on his lip and looking as pouty as he'd ever been that day. Starfire and Cyborg were staking out in the T-Car by a popular part of the city that was known for its night life, compressed acidic beats seeping in through the almost airtight windows. Raven was checking out the mostly abandoned parts of the city that were supposedly a standard hang-out for vampires, and Robin covered whatever was left. The stake-out was thorough and split, because there was no way they would let "Alex" get away tonight. If they did, there would be more on their hands than they could handle.

Robin eventually became a bit impatient (three straight hours had passed) and contacted Beast Boy first.

"Do you have anything?"

"No," was Beast Boy's agitated reply. "Because I got the lamest and most obvious place in the city!"

"It's a blood bank, Beast Boy. Alex is bound to come by there."

Raven split the screen and came onto the top half of Robin's communicator.

"Perhaps not; he certainly seemed smarter than that. Remember, we can't take anything for granted."

Robin hid another sting of irritation. Where the hell could that creature be at this time of night? He had to be somewhere!

"Well, how is your search, Raven?"

Raven was wearing her usual stony look of stoicism. "Barren." she droned.

"What about Raven and Cyborg?" he inquired as he put them on the communicator as well. Cyborg made a "tch" sound.

"I haven't seen any freaks walk in or out…none that stood out more than the others, anyway."

Starfire leaned over Cyborg's shoulder. "Tell me, do you think tonight he may not be hunting?" she wondered.

"This was a kind of hit-or-miss night," Raven pointed out. "He might be making sure we're not spotting him by lying low. He may skip out the next few hunts to throw us off."

Robin paused in thought, and then said, "Which would starve and weaken him in the process. We can play this game of his if he doesn't show up tonight, either way."

"Cool with me," Cyborg agreed with a shrug. Beast Boy sighed.

"Fine, but next stake-out, I'm switching places with someone. No hat-drawing! That's how I got stuck here in the first place!"
Cyborg smirked. "Don't be jealous, B. Just 'cos we got better luck than you…"

"Shut up!" growled Beast Boy, ears turning a peculiar shade of red.

Robin suddenly heard a series of wing flaps behind him and jerked his head up to the sky. He shut his communicator off after briefly telling his friends he may have gotten a lead, and then he saw: there was a bat flying off in the distance. He smirked, knowing this was seemingly a bit too easy. He still kept his guard up, however, and followed the elusive creature through the streets.

At one point, Robin hid in an alleyway and watched as he heard a wispy sound, and witnessed "Alex" walking out to the streets in his human form. He was staggering and grabbing his side in pain.

Robin smiled and pulled his cloak in such a manner to look like a coat, and tucked away his mask, revealing a set of trustworthy blue eyes. He followed "Alex" a way before the vampire slumped to the ground, snarling and swearing in what could be presumed Russian. He put his hand on the creature's shoulder, who jumped and looked up at him. Robin met blue with red and calmly kept his face.

"Are you all right?" he asked. The vampire glared at him and nodded slightly, dragging himself back up the wall with nails that were at least four centimeters long, and covered in an alienated dark-red blood. He responded lazily in Russian.

"You look pale," Robin continued. "Do you need to go to a hospital?"

"Alex" snarled at him and bared his fangs in full. "NO!" he screamed, obviously already quite invoked. Robin jumped, feigning a startled attitude.

"Hey, calm down, I'm trying to help, okay?"

Still the nightly hunter gave him a crazed sneer, piercing him with crimson-red eyes. Robin held out his hand as if for a friendly shake.

"I'm Bruce. You got a name, pal?" The name he used was fake, of course.

He was still staring into a vengeful face when the vampire bared his fangs again, never sheathing those lethally long, black-painted nails. Blood was oozing from his side, and his head lolled to one side, eyes rolling. He was weaker than he'd been letting on.

"Vincent Gregorovich," he hissed, "And I do not need a doctor."

Before he could lift his head to look, the rest of the Teen Titans were circling him and giving him firm stares, Robin quickly donning his mask again and grinning.

"That's good, because you won't be getting much of one."

There was a very long pause. Vincent blinked lazily, surveying the situation.

"Come quietly and we won't muss you up more than you already are," Cyborg said with a slight growl, "Good trade, right?"

"No biting!" warned Beast Boy, eyeing Vincent sternly.

Raven was defensively charging for a spell, remembering the last assault, and Starfire wasn't any less prepared. Robin crossed his arms.

"Well?"

Vincent looked around him, staggering again and regaining his balance, his eyes seemingly shaking and rolling left, right, up, most all directions. He flashed his fangs again, but the zeal to the threat was gone, and he snarled,

"Fuck."

"Stop squirming, you little brat!" snapped Cyborg. Vincent hissed in a snake-like manner and defiantly stared at him, hugging his wounded side protectively. Cyborg growled and held a roll of gauze in his hand.

"If ya don't hold still, I can't patch you up, and we can't keep you for Q n' A!"

"It shall fix its' self!" snarled the vampire. Grammar obviously needed a bit of work.

"What kinda meth've you been taking, kid?" Cyborg asked.

"No, let him be." Raven said, gaining some questioning looks. "Vampires have a natural healing force in their bodies. If the wound is not a death blow, it can be fully healed within a day or less." She explained.

Vincent looked up and gave Raven a thankful smirk. "At least one person in this room is smarter than the average amoeba."

Beast Boy stiffened, Starfire's eyes steeled into a solid green, and Robin only gave an angry stare through the mask he was wearing. Cyborg pushed Vincent onto the couch, where several towels were already laid out, since he'd been planning to bandage him.

"A couch? I am a guest compared to the holocaust." Vincent joked.

"Don't get cocky," Robin hissed, "Else we'll just let you burn at the blinds for a lovely sunrise."

Vincent sighed. "Ah, I'd almost planned for that the other night…" Robin pressed his hands on either side of Vincent's head.

"First question: Your alias was Alex, and you told me Vincent. So which is it?"

Vincent rolled his eyes to another direction. Robin turned his chin sharply to warn him that he'd better look straight at him. The vampire grunted.

"Vincent Alexei Gregorovich." he replied.

"Nice start. Second question. Why are you hunting here?"

Vincent smiled. "I'm hungry, bitch." he answered…in Russian.

Robin gave him an unhappy glance and grabbed one of his Birdarangs, stabbing it next to Vincent's head. "Wrong language. Try that again."

"Fuck face!" German this time. Robin held his Birdarang to Vincent's throat, yanking at a fistful of Vincent's hair. The vampire hardly flinched.

"In English!" he snapped, "Or I cut your head off right here and now!"

Starfire frowned, worried of the display of hostility from their leader. Of course, everyone else hated vampires enough not to care by much.

"You're the most pathetic human I've ever seen," Vincent said happily, in English.

Nobody would want to comprehend the angry glare behind Robin's mask, but it was apparent by the way he threw Vincent across the room. Blood stained the carpet, and Cyborg yelped.

"Aw, Rob, my brand new carpet!" he cried. "Okay, tone it down! You're gonna wreck the Tower at this rate…"

"Robin, you are becoming frightening!" Starfire said. It wasn't in so much of a whine, as some may wrongly expect, but a sound of some rising distress. Raven sighed, and took the liberty of approaching Vincent, who was propping himself up against the wall. He looked up at Raven and smiled.

"Ah, Strawberry Girl."

Raven blinked. "What?"

"Because you tasted like strawberries," Vincent said, "The bite…do you not remember?"

Raven gave him a stony leer. It would have been funnier if everyone didn't hate him right now. Vincent looked in another direction.

"Oh, I suppose that was a bit off. Actually, you tasted more like—"

"Quiet!"

"Okay." Vincent tapped his foot in a personal rhythm, absently staring at the ceiling. Raven sighed.

"You don't help your position if you only answer to one of us," she said in a low whisper as she bent down to be at his level. "You realize that, don't you?"

"What good does it do me to better myself for this city's heroes?" Vincent groaned. "I have been hunting and have been hunted for months now. You lot make no difference."

"But we're serious." Raven warned. "If you don't cooperate with all of us, we won't hesitate to end your life. A vampire's immortality is fragile. You should know that."

Vincent scoffed, glancing at Raven from the corners of his eyes. "No matter how you or your friends try, fright comes as easily to me as rain does to a desert."

The two of them stared at each other for several moments. Robin was waiting for there to be some continuation, while the others were patient to see what would happen. Vincent shook his head and sighed, rolling his eyes.

"So, where did you get that wound? One of your meals fought back?"

Vincent lifted his arms enough to reveal deep claw-like scratches that were still bleeding, wrapping his coat tighter around it and stuffing his hands under his arms.

"You could say that," he grumbled. A pale, graceful hand held itself in front of Vincent's face. He eyed it suspiciously before he grabbed it, and Raven helped him to stand. She was ignoring the way he dug his sharp, black nails into the back of her hand as she helped him back to the couch.

"Why are you hunting here?" she asked.

"I told you that the last time you asked," Vincent retorted. Raven put her hands on her hips.

"I want you to say it to the rest of us."

Beast Boy was twiddling his fingers as the others awaited an answer. Finally, Vincent grunted and said, "I go where I go. I'm not going back to Russia."

"Poverty didn't suit you?" wondered Cyborg. "Or did you just hog that from the masses?" Vincent bared his fangs at him.

"I was quite happy with my homeland," he snarled, "It was my heritage I was sickened with."

"Do you have any others with you?" asked Raven. Vincent heaved another large cloud of hot air.

"No." he muttered. Robin and the others exchanged very relieved glances and smiles, but they quickly faded.

"All right, a question for the ages," Raven said a little teasingly. "How old are you?"

Beast Boy grinned. Vincent shrugged.

"I was born in October 1777; you do the math."

A Birdarang was a hair's breath away from hitting his neck when it landed in the couch, and Vincent jumped. "Two-hundred and twenty-seven!" he cried. Robin acknowledged the answer and removed the weapon from next to Vincent's head. Cyborg whistled.

"You still look like you'd be seventeen," he commented.

"Well, vampires are immortal." Vincent growled. "We keep the appearance of the age at which we turned. It helps us to attract our prey."

"Cool! What else can you do?" Beast Boy blurted with a grin. Some angry stares landed on him, and he sheepishly scratched his head. "What? Might as well figure out what his powers are," he said, quickly saving himself from sounding like a sympathizer. Vincent flinched and grabbed at his side again.

"Humans would die for a vampire's sight. The most experienced hunters can…'zoom', I suppose is the word, up to hundreds of yards away. I suppose eighteen miles has been the record set by one of my own kin." Some eyebrows were raised by that comment.

"Heightened speed, tuning accuracy of the five senses, and…" Vincent held up his nails, which were long to begin with, and they suddenly reached a length of four solid centimeters, razor-sharp at the tips. "…Growth of one's nails to become a set of miniature daggers, if you inherit the Romanian roots for it."

"What about your shape-shifting?" Robin asked. "Into a bat, I mean."

"I am the only one in my recent bloodline who has inherited the power to turn into a bat. We have not had the ability to shift shapes for centuries."

Raven frowned. "Why is that ability thinning? There has to be something different in the way your kind breeds if your inherited powers are becoming different."

Vincent leered at her. "Why should you care?" he hissed.

"Because we wish to understand your kind," Starfire said. Vincent scoffed and twirled a finger in the air in a circular pattern, sheathing his nails to a normal length.

"Whoop." he grunted. "You wish to understand the wrong line of vampires. Speak to the American bloodlines, and you shall find a less revolting answer."

"Okay, now he's being a smartass." Cyborg grumbled. Vincent smiled in his place when Robin suddenly yanked him up.
"Where do you want to sleep for the night?" he growled. Vincent glared fiercely at him.

"Why not just stuff me in a closet and forget about me?" he snapped.

"Closets are nice." Robin said sarcastically. "We'll give you the basement."

Vincent was escorted to the darkest, most claustrophobic part of the tower, and Robin gave instructions to watch him in shifts for the rest of the night. As soon as they began, however, starting with Robin himself, Vincent fainted to the ground and never gave his shape-shifting the time of day. He slept the rest of the night and day without even changing. The Titans, however, were given a surprise visit when a young woman's face took up their big-screen TV.

"Teen Titans, I presume." The young woman said. Robin came up from his shift and switched with Starfire.

"You presumed correctly. Who are you?"

"Name's Diamond Finesse. I'm a resident of Jump City. I'm also a newbie in the superhero business." Cyborg grinned.

"It's a fad," he chuckled. Finesse smirked.

"I've been in the biz by myself for a few months. Listen, I got a problem and you got a problem. You capture any vamps lately?"

"We have one downstairs," Cyborg reported. "Why? Have you been hunting him too?"

Diamond Finesse frowned. "Yes, and I was hoping to keep him to myself, but it looks like you already beat me to it. But hey, look. I've been tracking this bugger since I visited Russia to see my grandfather. He travels a lot. I want to see Vincent myself and do my own little interrogation. So maybe I could just drop by the Titan's Tower and chat him up a bit?"

"Sounds reasonable," Robin agreed after a pause. "You can come later tonight. Say around 7:00?"

"Fine with me." Finesse said. "See y'all at seven then."