Authors' Notes
"Look at us, and our preoccupied selves, moving up some such grades in school and totally neglecting our greatest collaboration project in...like...EVER! We deeply apologize for our absence, everybody. Rest assured, we barely saved our sorry little asses keeping our files in check. For some reason, all of
the chapters, which I had been logging on my laptop, got erased during
my last virus check. I don't know how. I don't know why. But it greatly
strengthens the urges deep within me to pick up my computer and throw
it out my bedroom window." -Keiko
"We're asses, and we're sorry." -Lomesir
Chapter Six
"An Unwanted Shadow"
"I got 'er! She's on her way past Raven's room!"
Cyborg and Diamond Finesse trailed the intruder that was rushing past Raven's room in the hall. The person was dressed in all black, except for long, curly brown hair. She suddenly turned around, and it turned out she was wearing a balaclava. Only her eyes and her mouth could be seen.
"Give me a shot at her!" Finesse said, whipping out three poker chips. She threw a white one at the intruder, and the black-dressed young woman leapt up...and attached herself to the ceiling. Cyborg's eyes widened.
"Okay, that ain't human!"
"She's a vampire!" declared Finesse. Cyborg blinked twice at her.
"Another one!"
The young woman opened her mouth and hissed, revealing a set of closely-set, stubby fangs. Cyborg prepped his arm cannon.
"Well, here goes then!" In an attempt to shake the infiltrating enemy and at least get her knocked out, Cyborg fired from his cannon. There was a blur of black in the darkness, and she was gone. Finesse sighed.
"They love to play it rough nowadays..."
There was a snake-like hiss beside Finesse, and she shrieked as the woman lunged to bite. When she missed, the woman used a burst of superhuman speed to not only run away, but to crawl along the wall as she did. Cyborg paused.
"...There's no way we can catch that thing runnin' after it, is there?"
"I would think not. But I know what to do." Finesse looked up at Cyborg. "Let's corner her. We can give her fewer and fewer options on where to go."
"Like how?" wondered Cyborg. Raven came in behind them after phasing out of her soul self. Finesse took a blue poker chip and set it on the floor, and clicked it. A blinding white strobe light began to blink continuously. Staring too long would make one's eyes ache.
"We'll trap her with sunlight."
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As Robin and the other Teen Titans chased after this intruder, Vincent stood up from his temporary bed and lifted his eyes up to the ceiling. He felt a tingling run up and down his spine, and warmed up his fingers, wiggling them slowly. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath of the air, only slightly parting his lips to taste the scent he detected. He re-opened the lids over his crimson-colored eyes, and his expression changed from tranquility to irritation. He threateningly exposed his fangs.
"You had better not be here, you bitch..."
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Robin thrust his bo staff at the enemy, and the black-dressed woman dodged it. When he continuously began to attack her, she hissed and ran circles around him, distorting his vision with her speed. Starfire had her bolts ready to fire, but the target was moving too fast for her to pinpoint. Robin was startled when the brown-haired woman stopped on a dime in front of him, and smiled, her canines pointed as fangs.
"Hallo," she hissed, her "h" presented with a heavy Germanic hacking sound. She leapt up high and crawled along the ceiling as she rushed away. Starfire attempted to toss a few star bolts at her, but the girl was still way too fast. Robin pulled out his communicator.
"Finesse, I lost her! Can you hurry up with those strobe lights?"
"Going as fast as I can," replied Finesse through Cyborg's communicator. "We're covering the top floor hallways where she's wandering around."
Robin snapped the communicator shut. It was good enough for him.
"I shall take the left!" said Starfire, and Robin nodded to show he agreed, covering the right.
Some turns down the way, Starfire passed by Terra's old room just as Vincent came out to present himself, eyes glowing red in the dim lighting. She stopped on her errand.
"Vincent! How perfect! There has been an intruder in the tower, and—"
"Where is she?" prompted Vincent, interrupting Starfire. The alien girl paused.
"The enemy, you mean?"
"Vanessa. Where is Vanessa?"
"She is with Cyborg. But please, Vincent, you must—"
"She is setting up those blinding lights?"
Starfire blinked. "Why, yes, but...how ever did you know?"
Vincent hissed. "Because it feels like those mornings when sunlight is streaming in between the blinds. Tell her to take them down, immediately. I must have darkness on my hunting ground."
Starfire gave Vincent a firm stare. "This is no time to be thinking of food or drink, Vincent! If you wish to help us, then—"
"Do you want it or not?" Vincent sighed. "I am proposing you allow me to help you corner this person, but you must alert Vanessa to take down the strobe lights, or I shall have limited movement around the Tower. With limited movement comes limited hunting ability." He quirked an eyebrow. "Do we have a deal or not?"
Slightly puzzled by Vincent's proposal, Starfire only nodded after a pause and continued patrolling the halls as she pulled out her communicator to talk with Vanessa through Cyborg. Vincent waited until Starfire had turned a corner, meeting with Raven, then allowed his eyes to come into focus. The normally rounded black centers snapped to center in a thin black slit, much like the appearance of a cat's eyes. His fangs unsheathed once more, and he let his eyes roll, letting his head fall back, and he relaxed to taste the air again. He detected the intruder's perfumed scent only a few halls down. Vincent smirked, and in Russian, he declared:
"Let the hunt begin."
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"What? Why!"
"He says that if you allow him the darkness to perform his hunt, he will help you to track this person." said Starfire. Diamond Finesse sneered.
"He's trying to prove himself to you guys. I say we keep the lights up."
"He seemed awfully sincere, Diamond Finesse. Perhaps we should listen to Vincent's advice, and take the strobe lights down as he insisted." Robin's face appeared on the communicator.
"What's going on?" he asked. When Cyborg gave the situation, Robin immediately protested.
"I don't like it. What if he's working with her?"
"That's unlikely." Finesse assured him. "If that were true, I would have known. Vampires don't go individually, they hunt in packs—like wolves." Beast Boy had come onto the chat line as she had said this.
"Wait, so this lady would have been with Vince when we originally caught him if they were workin' in cahoots, right?"
"Correct." said Finesse. She sighed. "All right, fine. I'll turn them off, but everyone, be very careful. I don't know how experienced this vampire is, and we don't know what she's capable of. We'll give Vincent full mobility, and we'll have to put our faith in him."
"I agree with this decision," voiced Starfire.
"Works for me." Beast Boy said.
"I'm cool here." echoed Cyborg. Robin reluctantly gave permission for this, and after all communicators were shut off, Diamond Finesse took her card box and pulled out a thin white pen, clicking the red button on the end of it. A blinking strobe light down the hall turned off.
"I just flipped off all the strobe lights at once." She held out her open card box, and closed her eyes. "Now we'll just have to follow Vincent's lead." Five seconds after she'd begun talking, all the poker chips she'd set down flew into her box with the card set she stored in there, and she closed it.
"So you have some psychic powers?" Cyborg assumed.
"More powerful than I would like." answered Finesse. "I can cause things to explode if I concentrate on them hard enough. I channel my power through my cards and chips."
"Maybe that'll come in handy," said Cyborg. He turned and began to backtrack through the halls, and Finesse followed him. They were fighting blind now. Whatever happened would be up to Vincent.
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Vincent had analyzed the entire tower. Where the girl was, and where the Titans were. He was rushing so fast down the halls, a normal person would think he were only a shadow passing by. He followed the vampiric senses he trusted, and turned five more corners. The woman was staring at him on the other end of the hall.
She bared her fangs at him, and suddenly she smiled, speaking in German.
"Vincent!"
Vincent froze, and his eyes became the size of dinner plates. The girl held her arms out to him.
"Ich bin hier Sie zu retten!" (I am here to rescue you!)
"Like hell you are!" shrieked Vincent, tearing down the hallway towards the girl and roaring fiercely, startling her. She screamed and ran away from him, and it became a high-speed chase. The first group Vincent rallied her towards was Raven and Starfire. From there, Beast Boy and Robin were coming from a different direction, and Vanessa and Cyborg would eventually be alerted.
"Vincent, halt! Halt! Es ist ich!" she squealed. Vincent only bared his fangs and tackled her to the ground. The girl screamed at the top of her lungs and wriggled out of his grip, only to back up against Raven's cloak. She jumped and backed away, and Vincent sunk his claws into her clothing, slamming her roughly against the wall.
"Halt!" begged the girl. "Vincent, halt!" Robin and Beast Boy came in from the left side, while Raven and Starfire closed in on the right. The girl hissed.
"TRAITOR!" she screamed. Vincent closed his palm around her neck and forced her to begin choking, and she gaped her mouth open wide, but hid her fangs. Vincent sneered.
"You should really work on your act." he growled, shoving two fingers between her lips and prying her teeth apart when she began to close them down. He pressed his knee into her stomach to pin her to the wall and peeled the girl's lips back, exposing stubby little fangs in the canine area. Vincent slid his tongue over his own fangs to check. His were just behind the canines.
Vincent snarled. "Elke." he muttered, accenting in his best German as he ripped off the stocking and shoved the girl out into the open, holding her firmly by the arm. "I knew you were a witch the day you gained power, but you've just fallen to countless levels of low."
Elke, the intruder, looked up with emerald-green eyes and glared at Vincent defiantly, her curly brown hair shadowing some of her face.
"You are a snake," she snapped. "A snake to king over all snakes!"
"How nice." growled Vincent. "And here I see you running errands for my bloodline. Now who is the snake?"
"Do you know her?" Raven asked. Robin looked at Vincent expectantly, and Vincent showed his gleaming fangs to the leader.
"Of course I know her," he said boldly, staring straight at Robin as he did. "She's a deceiving little child who has been bugging me since eleven years ago." Elke began to try and yank her arm out of Vincent's grip.
"I am no child!" she argued. "I am the next heir as the head of my family line, and you will respect me for it, Vincent!"
Beast Boy chewed on his bottom lip. "This is getting a liiittle weird." he mumbled. It was then that Cyborg and Diamond Finesse arrived. Finesse blinked.
"Who the hell is this bitch?" she growled. Vincent surveyed the group, and yanked on Elke's hair.
"Why don't we sit down and chat, Elke? Just you, me, and these other guys. What do you say?"
Elke leered at him and spat at his feet. "Sometimes I wonder why they ever chose you." she sneered. Vincent laughed.
"Was that supposed to hurt me?" he teased. "Poor Elke. Believes that she can own the world."
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"Why are you here?" asked Robin. Elke stubbornly crossed her arms.
"Ask me no questions and I shall tell you no lies," she sniffed. Vincent sighed, and bowed his head, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingertips and mumbling something in Russian. Robin's eye twitched behind his mask.
"Let's try that again. Why are you here?" he prompted, more firmly this time. Elke turned her head and kept silent. Robin smacked his hands down on either side of her head.
"Listen, you stubborn little brat, I already had to deal with one bloodsucker today, and I do not want to drag this out with another one! So you either cooperate or I will follow through on a previous threat I laid down on the table!" Robin turned her head around and glared at her straight in the face. "You got that?"
Elke spat at Robin's feet and swore at him in German. As soon as Robin moved to strike her, Starfire pulled him back. Vincent put his hands on Elke's shoulders, and began to rub them soothingly.
"Elke..." he purred in a singsongy voice, lowering his head. Elke looked up at him curiously, and he took his fingertips, gently turning her head around to face the now extremely angered Robin. German became his language mode as he whispered in her ear.
"Do you see the Masked Crusader in front of you?" he said quietly. "He has recently ascended to vampire hunter." Elke blinked.
"So?" she replied, also in German. Vincent wrapped his arms around her and kissed her ear, still speaking foreignly.
"Well, if you ever want to live to see the next sunrise," and he added harshly to this with fingernails digging into her shoulders, "My dear..." Elke yelped from the surprise.
"...Then I suggest...you answer his questions...or he will cut off your head, and display your skull like this country's Ku Klux Klan..." Vincent trailed his hands up and cupped Elke's cheeks in his palms. "Regardless of your half-breed blood or not."
All of the Teen Titans were now in puzzled awe at the German they had conversed in, and the look of sweating horror on Elke's face. Raven, of course, picked up on the jist of the exchange, and Robin was ready to jump at the interrogation again. Vincent played with Elke's hair.
"So," he said in English, "What do you say to the Masked Crusader, Elke?"
"...A...Anything he wants." she squeaked. Vincent smiled and patted her head.
"Good girl." Robin was also happy to hear her more pleasant response, and patted Vincent's shoulder.
"Nice job." he said, although not entirely friendly.
Vincent leered at him. "Of course. You only begin to trust me when I do something good in your eyes." he hissed. Robin pointed a finger at him and growled.
"Don't push it," he warned. As he turned to Elke, now asking her questions, Vincent felt a sting at his side and cringed, grabbing at his left side. He peeled away his hands to find blood staining his clothes; he bit his lip and growled.
"I am a Dhampir," Elke replied timidly as Robin asked her if she was a vampire or not. Vincent gave Elke a defiant stare.
"You caused my wound to openly bleed again, you witch." he growled in Russian, leaving the room and trying to keep up his posture. Elke stuck her tongue out at him and crossed her arms.
"I am not the one who first caused it!" she snapped back in German. Vincent held his hand out in the air, and made a series of hand signals that the Titans couldn't interpret. Vanessa, however, was smiling like the Cheshire Cat. Elke gasped, and her eyes went wide.
"How dare you insult your fiancee!" she shrieked. Beast Boy paused.
"They're engaged?"
"Yeah, and Vincent basically just flipped her the middle finger." She shook her head. "Aaah, they must make such a lovely couple." she said sarcastically. Elke growled and drew her knees up, crossing her arms.
"So what are Dhampirs?" Robin asked, still pressing onward.
"We are half-blood vampires," Elke explained, "half-human. It is a stigma among us vampires—or, it is considered one." Raven's eyebrows lifted in curiosity, and a bit of empathetic nostalgia sunk in. Beast Boy sat down next to Elke, eager to learn more about the creatures he loved that he'd believed were fictional (for most of the time, anyway).
Starfire and Cyborg, however, were watching Vincent very slightly hobbling out of the room. There were trickles of blood hitting the ground, but that could be cleaned up. The fact that Vincent was bleeding at all worried them.
"Should he not be healed by this point?" wondered Starfire. "After all, he has the power to quickly heal, does he not?"
"I'll check him out." Cyborg volunteered. "I think you should be keeping a leash on Rob for a while. He's still kinda antsy."
Starfire nodded in agreement, and Cyborg followed Vincent out into the hallways. He didn't have to walk very far; Vincent paused and looked around, lost.
Can't find your room?" Cyborg assumed. Vincent looked at him and groaned.
"Must there be so many hallways?" he complained. "The only other place with this many turns is my mansion in Russia."
Cyborg blinked. "You have a mansion?"
"Well, a family castle, really. Quite a large estate." Vincent shifted to hide his injured side. "When I was younger, my brother and I would play hide and seek in those halls. There were hidden passages, closets, entire rooms made out as mazes...you could get lost in your own house, if you did not know the layout." Vincent smirked. "That happened to me several times."
"Well, you shouldn't be wandering around with a bleeding open wound." Cyborg said. "I can help you find your room if you want."
Vincent hugged his arm closer to his side. "It is healing," he insisted, "Just slower than I would have expected." Cyborg crossed his arms.
"You said they usually heal within a day. It's been two already."
"So perhaps it was deeper than I thought." said Vincent with a shrug. Cyborg rolled his single human eye and sighed.
"Just follow me, and at least I can let you sit in your own room so you don't waste blood."
Vincent took a glance at him and grinned, exposing pearly white fangs.
"That's no matter. There is always plenty more."
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Of course, as soon as Vincent was sitting down, he was forced into being bandaged by Cyborg. He hissed when a hot cloth touched the still-deep scratch marks at his side.
"That stings!"
"So stop squirming! You did this same crap when I tried it last time," groaned Cyborg. "You can be a stoic little bastard about scratch marks but you can't handle a hot cloth?"
Vincent narrowed his eyes at Cyborg and stiffly held himself to the bed. Cyborg carefully cleaned up the blood seeping from the wound and pulled out the roll of gauze, wrapping Vincent's torso as if it were an art. He didn't want to injure upon the injury or deepen the wound.
"Those didn't look like human scratches." he remarked. "Rival vamp?"
Vincent grumbled, "You could say." He hissed, "Not too tight!"
"Well, do you want all your body fluids to sploosh out? Then it's not too tight." Cyborg finished the wrapping job. "There, see? Not that hard if you sit still."
Vincent grabbed his midriff black undershirt with the cross on the front, and slipped it on. Mesh sleeves were attached at the shoulders—one was longer than the other and had openings for the fingers. He left his trenchcoat alone, and inspected the makings of Cyborg's bandaging job. A reminiscent smile crossed his face only briefly, and Cyborg tilted his head.
"What?"
"Nothing." Vincent said quietly. "You just...remind me of my brother. That's all."
Cyborg sat on the bed next to Vincent. "You guys were a pair, huh?"
Vincent glared at him. "Don't push me," he snarled, "Just because I'm telling you about my brother doesn't mean I'm going to fully trust you bastards!" Cyborg grinned and looked another way.
"Sure, sure..."
"I'm serious!"
"I didn't say I disagreed," Cyborg replied, still smiling. He chuckled and shook his head.
"Back on track. You really liked your brother?"
Vincent scoffed. "Other than the fact that he snitched my blood when he skipped a hunt, yes.
"He was the one who first introduced me to the hunts. We'd usually go out when the moon was full, or if there was enough light to see. When it was too dark even for vampires, we often skipped about a week. Those were the weeks when he stole from me..."
Cyborg paused a moment as he thought over Vincent's words and listened intently to his story. Vincent went on to explain everything his brother had taught him—how to make a clean bite, how to hunt secretively if he had to. Some of the stories weren't in Cyborg's exact taste, but he would suffer for Vincent's sake. The vampire seemed to be enjoying the story time.
"I didn't know vampires had any feeling, to tell you the truth." he said. Vincent glanced at Cyborg and raised an eyebrow.
"Of course we can. Our hearts stop beating, but they're still in use, don't you know." He laid back on Terra's old bed, sighing. "When you are a pureblood vampire, you are basically...you are born dead. Low body temperature, no blood circulating in your body but the stuff your mother gave you in the womb. That is why humans consider us without souls."
Cyborg frowned and thought back on what it was like for most of your body to be machinery. And after some thinking, he could understand Vincent's position. There had been times when citizens hadn't even bothered to thank him, seeing him as an AI machine instead of a human. It was similar to Vincent being viewed as having no soul. He looked down on the teen-looking vampire.
"Well, I can relate to that." he said slowly, "But...if you can have emotions, like you said, then you gotta have at least a little bit of a soul, right?"
Vincent scoffed. "Only those who use their emotions are the ones with a soul. Most vampires shun the part of them that acts human. Even when they marry, it is only to carry the blood." Vincent sat up. "I can't even see why my family bothers."
"Why? You don't support the marriage?"
Vincent gave Cyborg a glance. "My father is also my uncle." he said in a flat tone. Cyborg almost leapt off the bed.
"W-Wait...brother-sister marriages!"
"And fathers and daughters, and mothers and sons, and first cousins, and—"
"I get it, I get it," Cyborg said suddenly, cringing. "Gaaah...do all vampires do interbreeding practices like that?"
"Also polygamy." added Vincent. "Each pureblood male is branded with the family tattoo showing their heritage name and the number of their generation." Cyborg felt his human eye twitching. That was...wrong...
Vincent carefully stood up and slid his jeans and underwear down only slightly, to show a tattoo on the left side of his pelvic bone. It was a white stake in the center, with a black-headed axe on each side for a makeshift cross, pillowed on a black-lined diamond. Two bat wings were at the top point of the stake.
"This is mine. My brother also received his a while ago. All of us are tattooed at an early age. See?" Vincent sat down again, and pointed to the tattoo. Beneath the ax-stake cross, in all caps, was the surname GREGOROVICH. On the left of the stake, ALEXEI was present, and on the other side, 57th.
"My surname at the bottom, my middle name on the left, and the number of my generation."
"Okay, okay, you flashed me enough skin. Put it away." Cyborg muttered. "I think I'll just go check up on your girlfriend now..."
Vincent hissed. "If you mean Elke, she is a nuisance, not a girlfriend. She ages at the same rate as a human because of her Dhampir blood. She's been using me since she was four."
Cyborg laughed. "You were outsmarted by a four-year-old?"
"She was cute, she was innocent, and she looked like good food!" Vincent snapped. Cyborg smirked.
"What about Diamond?"
Vincent's voice threateningly lowered. "That is none of your business," he snarled.
Cyborg shrugged. "Okay, so it ain't. Wanna go back out and tease Elk some more then?"
"Elke," Vincent corrected. "Elka, Americanized."
"Whatever, all I know is that they're takin' up the main floor that has my GameStation." Cyborg clapped his hands. "So, let's go back out there before the talkin' turns cold, eh?"
Vincent shrugged. "Go ahead. I'll just sit here. Away from Robin."