Flat Tire with Bad Guys
A/N: You know the drill. Stargate, Marvel, and all things related belong to people who are definitely not me. No matter how much I might want to kidnap a certain snarky brunet. Part of the "Urban Legends" AU, after "Contact"; refers to bits of "Spies Like Us". No infringement intended; only the plot is mine.
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Hannibal
So there I was, dead lost, somewhere in a rockier part of Colorado whose only virtue was it wasn't anywhere I'd ever lived before. Or - well - you get the picture. Just off the side of a highway, maybe a half-hour after sunset, with a slightly used green Honda Civic whose right front tire was doing a decent rubber pancake imitation.
"Terrific." I gave my ride a jaundiced look. It may be a neat little car, with a trunk large enough for emergencies, but a lot of it's plastic. Still, the jack plates are steel; I grabbed hold and dragged the car off onto the shoulder. Stepped back - careful not to lose my balance going from asphalt to dirt - and glared at the sky. "First you get me mixed up with Strange again. 'The world is in awesome peril,' 'Demons will rise', yadda yadda yadda." I rolled my eyes. "Like I haven't heard that a thousand times before.
"But no matter how bad the world's been treating me, Deacon Frost coming back from the grave Blade an' I put the bastard in and all, I kind of like the planet in one piece, so I go. Demons, bad guys, demon bad guys trying to use some funky gold and glitter amulet and the Siege Perilous - the real Siege Perilous, 'ccording to Strange, that's supposed to pick through your brain and flip you into the world 'your heart belongs to', whatever that means - to turn our world into hell. We stomp on him, Strange nails the amulet... and I get the booby prize of getting flung through the gate damn near into the middle of San Francisco's midtown traffic, on some crazy variant of Earth that's never heard of the Hulk, or Galactus, or even the Daily Bugle."
Which was beyond freaky, into downright bizarre. I mean, yeah, I knew there were alternate worlds; Blade and I had even gotten blasted into one once where Manhattan was one big nest of vampires, and the head of 'em all had been-
Nope. Not going there. Over. Kaput.
But - no Daily Bugle? No anti-mutant laws on the books? No ageless Marie LaVeau doing her voodoo hoodoo down in N'Orleans as she slurped up Bloody Marys made with vin d' vampyre?
Not that I was crying my eyes out over that last, mind you. Had to rein in an impulse to fly down there and stomp on the grave but good. This Marie LaVeau hadn't given me any grief. Yet.
"So. I hang up my shingle and get set to wait; Strange may be a manipulative bastard, but he's not gonna leave me swinging in a whole 'nother dimension. Only months go by, no sorcerer, an' a lovely lady from the CIA shows up needing help; my kind of help." Given this world did have vampires of the homicidal kind, only they were a hell of a lot rarer than the Dracula variety. Just getting bit didn't turn you. Weird. "We smack-down Navarro, only he gets Stiles first. And I... and she..." I gnashed my teeth, glaring into the dark. "So she goes vamp in a big way overseas, takes out two Iraqis who might be terrorists. Bet she doesn't even think she did anything wrong. And everything in San Fran reminds me of her... But I'm a PI. I deal. It's what I do. And all you can come up with to throw me is a flat tire?" I flipped a finger toward the overcast. "So what else you got?"
Which, of course, is when it started raining.
Figures.
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I sloshed into the Lizard Lounge, trenchcoat dripping, long brown hair almost black with rain, and mood snarly enough to match a wolverine growl for growl. Which I was not. Growling, that is. Fun as it might be in the short term to see the roaches scatter out of here - and it would be fun for oh, maybe three seconds before the guilt kicked in - it just wasn't worth it.
Nope. What I needed was a phonebook, a pay phone, and a place to dry out while I waited for the tow.
I sure didn't need her.
Medium-tall, for a lady. Short blonde cut, blue eyes staring into the foam on her second glass of microbrew, minimal lipstick and nails. The "I'm pretty, but I work for a living" look. Nice. Also nice was the hint of muscle under the black motorcycle jacket; a hint the rough, tough biker-types sidling up to her with nudges and winks just weren't taking. Too bad for them.
Me? I headed for the phone. I'd played white knight enough for a lifetime. Even my lifetime.
Let's see. Tow trucks, tow trucks... yeah. I pulled out a notepad and pencil, noted down numbers from the tattered yellow pages. A bunch of which had been torn out between 'Engineers' and 'Event planners'. Yeah. Biker bar all right. Heck, even if the local streetwalkers had picked up the British trick of printing dirty postcards with their numbers, the guys probably would have plucked those out of here right along with all the 'Escort services' numbers.
Or maybe it wasn't them who'd assaulted the poor phonebook, but the guy pouring drinks behind the bar, so he could get his cut for "arranging" things. Fit the feel of the place.
What was a nice lady like that doing in here?
Reality check, King. You are Not Thinking about her. She's not your problem. Period. Getting your car back into shape so you can take off - that's your problem.
Yeah. Right. Take off where?
Didn't matter. Anywhere but here.
Okay. Dialing, dialing - answering machine. On a tow service? Sheesh. Next number...
A deep voice; deliberately deep, probably to go along with the guy hitching up his belt, the better to display the - ahem - family jewels. "If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?"
Cripes. That line was old when I first used it.
"Not interested."
Nice voice, too. Light, like it had a habit of getting distracted while the brain raced ahead of the tongue. Poet? Writer? Reporter? Naah - not cynical enough for that. Brainy type, though. Huh. In a motorcycle jacket?
Then again, people don't usually look at you and think "occult researcher", King. Life has a way of throwing you into things you never would've planned on getting mixed up in.
Well, life and other things.
Focus. Next number.
Which was kind of hard to dial, the more I overheard the snickers coming from the rest of the room. "...Gave me her keys," the bartender was muttering to one of Lame-line's buddies, sporting a matching rough beard and a greasy red bandanna. "Said to call a cab after the fourth beer..."
Setting her up for the local Lotharios? Not something you do to a regular customer. Meaning Blonde was out of her home territory, and likely way out of her depth, jacket or not. And she definitely did not look the type to take dumb risks like that if she was thinking straight.
Meaning she wasn't.
Meaning she was in trouble. And about to be in more trouble.
Damn it, she wasn't my problem!
...Yeah, right. And who else in this bar was going to lift a finger to stop it?
Crash!
Well. Looked like she was.
I hung up on an irate mechanic and sauntered back toward the brawl, watching Blonde perform formal introductions: Lame-line, this is Barstool. No, really, Barstool. One more time, just to make it stick... Barstool.
Oh, and Barstool? This is... darn, he's passed out again.
Which was about when Lame-line's buddies decided on a few meet-and-greets of their own; Mr. Fist, Mr. Blackjack, Mr. Hi-ya Karate, and-
Click.
Uh-huh. Mr. Switchblade.
I swirled into the knot for our rudest guest, grinding a few wrist-bones together until shiny metal dropped to the floor, then flicking a love-tap against his jaw. Mr. Switchblade's friend wilted like a half-price bouquet.
Smash!
Oooh. Looked like Hi-ya and Blackjack had had a mutual misunderstanding due to Blonde's just-snatched pool cue, and were currently admiring the pretty whiskey-smears on the floor. Remnants of said pool cue were still being twirled through Blonde's fingers, and Mr. Fist looked to be having second thoughts-
Thwam!
Flashing lights, world graying out, a feeling like somebody'd dropped a truck on my head - right. Wood. Another pool cue, in fact.
Okay. Now I was ticked. I snatched hard wood before it could give me another tap on the skull, gave Blonde a side-order of glare to go with her sudden wrist-strain. No dice, lady. You don't move this stick until I want you to move it. "Hey! Do I look like one of these tricycle trash-apes to you?"
...Way to go, King. You want some mustard to go with that shoe leather?
Which was about the last snarky comment my brain got to make, before it got busy in the 3-D chess-with-knives less knowledgeable types call a barfight.
Blonde twisted her cue away as I turned to meet our next contestant, laying smack-down on Mr. Fist like it was going out of style. I ducked, bobbed, and let loose with a hay-maker or two, all while reminding my aching skull these were ordinary guys. Slimy, yeah, and deserving of a night in the ER, but ordinary. Pulled punches was the order of the day here.
Not something bothering my dance partner, especially as the rest of the drunks pitched in and chairs and bottles smashed. She was mowing them down like no one her size should. Not in my weight class, not by a long shot - but there was definitely more to this lady than met the eye.
Given what she was dishing out right here and now, I'd hate to be the guys she was really mad at.
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Sam
I shouldn't be having this much fun. Really, I shouldn't. Getting banned from O'Malley's for life thanks to those darn drugging armbands was a fluke; get banned from here, too, on just one beer? People would start to see a trend.
But for once in my life, just once, I had a clear-cut problem at hand and the means to solve it.
Damned if I wasn't going to take it.
Still, all the chaos and adrenaline in the world couldn't disguise the fact that I was very, very lucky. Tall, Dark, and Snarky had shrugged off my hit like Teal'c would a lucky shot from an SGC rookie; yeah, it stung, yeah, he wasn't happy about it - but he didn't take it personally.
Matter of fact, he seemed just as relieved as I was to have something physical to fight. Made me wonder what demons he was running from.
But that was a passing thought, little flashes in-between busting heads. Here and now, all I cared about was that there was someone watching my back as I cut through the crowd to the bartender. "Keys!" Set me up for the local slime, will you? Asshole.
"Ah, sorry, I can't-"
"I hate this," my unlikely ally muttered through the crashing glass. "I really hate this, it ain't nice - but we're in a hurry, and I don't like you." He glared at the bartender. "Give. Her. The keys."
As if he were in a trance, the bartender held out a fistful of jingling metal.
Weird. Very weird.
But I snatched my car keys anyway, ready to make a break for it-
Somebody swiped them from me, almost breaking my fingers in the process. Spitting a few Cimmerian curse-words I'd learned from Gairwyn, I went after him.
From then on, things got confusing.
Keys flipped one way. Snarky went after it. He had them for a second, then lost them as a foam-flecked biker took after my bad example and slammed him in the ribs with a barstool. I grabbed for the flying metal, lost it to a face-full of teeth that were very sorry they'd ever met my pool cue. And so on.
Time goes weird in a fight, but I was pretty sure it was less than two minutes later when everybody but us was down, Snarky was fishing my keys out of somebody's limp hand-
"I've got two people busting up my bar..."
And the bartender was on the line to the cops. Perfect.
Snarky and I traded a look, then dashed out into the shivery rain for the parking lot. Well, sort of dashed. I'd only had one beer...
A trenchcoated arm caught me as I slumped against my car. "Lady? You okay? I thought I got the only guy with a knife, but I coulda missed one-"
"Nah; jus' tired," I managed, straightening. "Always forget how bad the crash is after a fight- hey!"
He carried me around the car anyway, unlocking it one-handed, then pouring me into the passenger seat with the other. Shut the door and dashed back to the driver's side; starting the car, snicking his seatbelt home, and pulling out of the parking lot in one smooth move that spoke of way too much time slinking out of bad spots.
Not that I could talk. I mean, how many times has my team broken the local laws when we're on missions? Even if they are other planets' laws. Heck, if you look at it from the intergalactic perspective, Earth constitutes a "rogue planet" as far as the Asgaard and the System Lords are concerned...
And - I was a passenger in my own car, being driven who-knew-where by a guy I'd met in a barfight. Oh yeah. I was hitting all cylinders tonight. The colonel would have my ass-
Only, no, he wouldn't. Which was part of the problem, wasn't it? The only guy I had a real interest in was completely and utterly off-limits, due to his being my ranking officer. If I really was interested in him. Anise's zatarc detector said so, but - the Tok'ra had a way of twisting things to get what they wanted, the truth be damned. After all, the Tau'ri were an "infantile" race; and who worries about lying to kids? Especially when it's for their own good.
The Tok'ra had my father with them. They knew how military regs worked. Get me and the colonel involved, and SG-1 would self-destruct.
Which might be exactly what they wanted. Two thousand years they'd been chipping away at the System Lords' forces, after all, and barely made a dent. We come along, and Goa'uld start dying like flies. It had to be ticking the High Council off.
Oh, they still wanted an alliance with the SGC. We had easy access to hosts - which they wanted. We had firepower, information gathered from other planets, and a Stargate the System Lords couldn't touch - which they also wanted.
And we had me. Which they really wanted. "Jolinar's memories should be among her people," the latest Tok'ra to visit with my Dad had mentioned a few hours back, before Jacob shut him up at the look on my face. Uh-huh. Right. The Tok'ra didn't have humans living with them. Which basically meant they wanted me to take on another snake... symbiote. They're symbiotes. Living in your head, sharing... though the longer Dad stayed with them, the less he acted like Jacob and the more like the stick-in-the-mud Council...
No. Way. Not now. Not ever.
The more I thought about it, the madder I got. And it really hadn't helped that our new shrink, Dr. John Baird, hadn't known the Tok'ra were about to drop in - for allies, they've got a real bad habit of not calling ahead first - so we'd both thought I had the day free of interplanetary concerns. Which had made it a good day to pick at some of the old scars SGC life had left, try to clean them out and get my head back on straight before the next crisis.
Today, we'd been talking about Russia. About nearly getting carved up like a lab rat by my own planet's people... this is Earth, it's supposed to be safe...
And just about the time Dr. Baird was about to hand me the tissues, the 'Gate klaxon rang. And - I had to do my job. I had to.
The second I was relieved for the day, I'd just - left. Bound and determined to get somewhere no one knew me, sit down with good beer, and get so plastered they had to pour me into the cab.
What can I say? It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Focus, Sam. Brown-haired guy driving. "And you are...?"
"King," he offered, casually driving the speed limit as local black-and-whites whipped by, lights and siren blaring as they headed for the Lizard Lounge. "Hannibal King." Brown brows quirked the question at me.
"Carter."
"Ah." He nodded. "Army? Air Force? Kinda doubt Navy, not out here..."
"How-?"
"Good technique." A wry grin. "Of the 'take 'em down before they take you' kind. Not the dojo."
I bristled a little; just because the colonel's hand-to-hand was a little rougher, didn't mean it didn't work-
Oh. Right. It does work. Because the colonel's a professional.
And... just what kind of line of work is this King in, to recognize that? "I'm an astrophysicist."
"Geshundeit."
Oh, come on! "I study-"
"Stars, galaxies, speed of light near weird things like black holes, whole universes bein' created from specks of De Sitter space... am I gettin' warm?"
I blinked. "Ah..."
His left hand gripped the wheel; his right dug into a pocket inside his coat, came out with a business card. "That's me."
Borderline Investigations, I read; clear black print on a white background that included the odd logo of a targeting scope over a crescent moon. And an address. "You had a case take you all the way out here from San Francisco?"
"Road trip," he said shortly. "So what the hell brought that on, Carter? Astrophysicists may be walking in the stratosphere most of the time, but anybody that sticks it out in the Air Force has to have one foot on solid ground. You saw those guys coming. Why the hell didn't you just take off?"
"Like you did?" I snap back. So now he's narrowed it down to Air Force? Either he's quick, or he's guessing. "As soon as you go back for your car, they'll be all over you. If I know cops, they'd just love to throw an out-of-town PI into a holding tank on general principles."
"Probably." And why doesn't he sound more upset about that? "Only my car ain't at the bar."
"You walked?" I snort. In this rain?
"Flat tire."
I can't help it; I snicker. Big, tough, macho PI, and he can't change a flat tire?
"On the side of the highway, in the dark, with a busted jack." Hannibal sounds about as disgusted as the colonel contemplating a site inspection. "We are now officially in the territory of don't try this at home."
Point. Not that I have to let him know that.
A sensible guy? Nah. Couldn't be.
We drove along in silence for a while longer, each of us glancing at the rearview mirrors every time headlights flash by. Never know when the cops might catch on. I didn't think the bartender had gotten a good look at my car, but...
I squinted at the side mirror; rolled down my window to wipe raindrops off it. Ah, better. For a second there, I'd thought I was a lot more drunk than I could have gotten on one beer; Hannibal had looked kind of washed out in the silvered glass. Almost... ghostly.
Darn rain. Darn Tok'ra. Darn everything.
"So," Hannibal said warily. "Where the hell are we going, anyway?"
I couldn't help it. I started laughing.
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Hannibal
I'm gonna regret this in the morning. Oh yeah. I can feel it.
But hell. Sounds like Carter's having a worse week than I am. If that's humanly possible.
"Hey." I patted her on the shoulder, careful to keep it casual. "You're not dead yet."
Hysterical laughter hiccuped, caught off-guard. "Wha-?"
"If they haven't killed you, they haven't won yet." 'Course, in some cases, even killing you didn't mean they'd won. Not if they didn't make it permanent.
"Who's 'they'?"
Suspicion. Definite suspicion there. So there is a 'they'. Hell. I don't want to get involved-
Ah, screw it.
"Whoever," I shrug, eyes on the road. "Illegitimati non carborundum, an' all that." And I nearly slapped myself on the head, thanking god I'm not in my old library right now. Speaking Latin in front of mystical texts is a good way to get fried.
Carter sucked in a breath, and snickered.
Whoa. She actually got that? Since when do astrophysicists know Latin?
"So... who's they for you?" she asked warily.
Um. Not mentioning vampires, not mentioning sorcerers, definitely not mentioning demons and extra-dimensional gateways...
Ah, what the heck. She's a listening ear I'm never going to see again in my life. And damn it, I hurt. "You know where I can find a good place to get a drink?"
A snort. "What, you can't talk about it sober?"
"Not if I can help it," I mutter. "Bad breakup."
"Yeah?" Blonde brows go up; definite challenge there. "How bad?"
"Scale of one to ten, one bein' not putting the cap on the toothpaste, ten bein' finding out she's actually Kull's soul-sucking Witch-Queen of Atlantis out to conquer the world - I'd say eight. Yeah. About that."
Was that a stifled snicker from the other seat? "What's so funny?" I grumble.
"Witch-Queen of Atlantis?" Carter breaks down, giggling.
But it's a normal giggle this time; just tired, and a little worn at the edges. I can live with it. "So. About that drink?"
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"-Yeah. Yeah, thanks." Absently listening to a much more pleasant background rumble from the tavern behind me, I scribbled down the tow service address. "Appreciate it." After a few more pleasantries I hung up, and headed over to the little side booth where Carter was drinking a cola and keeping an eye on my glass of something a lot stronger. "They're heading out to get it now."
"Really." Blue eyes were dark and skeptical.
"The wonders of plastic." I picked up my small whiskey, gave her black silence another glance. "Hey, I wouldn't still be in this line of work if I couldn't tell when someone was pulling a fast one." Not that you can really catch heartbeats over the phone; receiver's not good enough for that. But voices, yeah - and I can hear voice stresses clear as day.
"Must be nice," Carter murmured bitterly.
Yeah, I guess. Small favors. Like the fact that for better or worse, this much whiskey wouldn't make me any more drunk than Carter's beer had made her. Made following suspects from bar to bar a lot easier. Not much, when I balanced it against-
Stop that, I told myself. Stop that right now. It happened. Frost happened. And it wasn't your fault.
But Tatjana was, part of me snarled back, angry and hurting. You did that to her! If you hadn't turned her, she never would have-
Says who? the saner part shot back. Frost was a lunatic, but I didn't kill! She could have fought the bloodlust. She could have...
But she didn't.
I couldn't stop her. Not now. PI versus CIA agent - she had a hell of a lot more resources to hide than I had to find her. I needed a passport, cash, connections. And most of all, time to think.
Because the next time I saw her... I'd have to kill her.
Tatjana. I'm sorry.
But Tatjana wasn't here, and Carter was. And she sounded like everything she should have been able to count on in her world had crumbled under her. Kind of like I'd felt, waking up that first night years ago, cold and thirsty and just barely beginning to realize how deep I'd stepped in it. "You want to talk about it?"
She stirred the ice in her glass with a finger. "Can't."
"Ah." Since when do they classify astrophysicists?
Oh, wake up, Hannibal. NORAD's not that far from here. They may not have SHIELD an' stuff to look after in this world, but they've still got satellites up the gizatch. Plenty to slap under 'Eyes Only' and worse.
I tapped a finger on the table, thinking. "Okay. Forget work. You want to tell me about the guy whose skull you really wanted to crack?"
She flinched, but shook it off. "Doesn't matter." Her lips pressed into a grim line. "He's dead."
"Doesn't mean he can't still mess up your life something nasty," I grumbled, thinking of Frost. Guy had been all too dead, or undead, first time we'd ever crossed paths. And things had only gone downhill from there.
"It'll never happen again."
"Says who?" I groused. Hell, I knew that line. Had listened to it from Doc Strange in Castle Mordo when the fangs were gone, staring into the dawn and being told I'd never, ever feel the blood-thirst again.
Only guess what? That very same doctor had to leave a copy of the Vampiric Verses lying around where LaVeau could get at it, and less than two years later I'm sitting on the floor in my own agency as he poofs out, trying to wrap my mind around the fact that healing spells or not, every cell in my body remembered being a vampire...
And with the Montesi Formula up in smoke, they wanted blood all over again.
Well. There went that glass.
Carter raised a blonde brow as I signaled the waitress for another. "How drunk were you planning on getting?"
"Enough." Enough so it stops hurting. For a while. Enough so when I take the little thermos out of my coat later and slurp it down, I don't taste the red. Much. "So. Dead guy. Your problem with him was...?"
Carter squirmed. "It won't happen again." Stirred ice some more. "Just a- a fluke. Crazies with scalpels..."
I couldn't help it; I shuddered. "God, there's more of 'em?"
She gave me a hard look.
Uh-oh. Think fast, Hannibal, no way is the truth gonna fly here...
But sharp as she was, no way would a lie do, either.
Right. Word-dicing time. "Okay, let me give you a hypothetical... say you're a crazy Nazi-wannabe with medical training who believes he's made pacts with the dark gods." Malpractice was definitely that. "Now, say you read about this guy who got bitten by a rabid bat-"
Which Frost was, kind of, part of the time.
"Got declared dead-"
Which I definitely was - lucky for me, not as Hannibal King, given I was working undercover at that point.
"Then got off the slab and went back to work," I shrugged. "If you were this crazy, well... you might just figure you'd found yourself a vampire. And, well, vampires, immortal - way to get your unstoppable Nazi stormtroopers to take over the world. Not to mention, if you don't die, you never have to pay up all those mortgaged-soul deals, right?" I waved a finger before she could explode. "But everybody knows the Undead don't bring just anybody across. So why take the chance? Forget conning him into biting somebody you've got under your thumb; just dissect him, find out why he's immortal, and go from there." I tried to pull off a smile. Couldn't. "If my partners hadn't shown up, I'd be in little pieces all over the bastard's lab."
Whatever Carter would have said got cut off by a pretty brunette in a low-cut red blouse and black skirt with the drink tray. "Thanks, Miss." I paid for the next glass, with a fair tip on the side. "Might be a few more of these."
She shrugged her shoulders to show off her cleavage, slid in a smile for me and a calculating glance toward my temporary booth partner. "We call cabs."
"Good to know." I waited until she sashayed off, getting in one nice glimpse of leg, then spread my empty hand. "So. Crazies with scalpels, check. And if you think you're overreacting 'cause it 'won't happen again', especially if some idiots are telling you it can't happen again, it was just a fluke - I'd tell 'em to go to hell. Flukes happen. And if the hairs keep standing up on the back of your neck for no good reason... well, maybe you just haven't found the reason yet." Another shrug. "Trust your instincts, and watch your back. Works for me."
"Vampire?" Carter said faintly.
"I do a lot of night work." Not as much as I used to have to. Sunlight doesn't turn me into crispy-fries anymore; at least, not fast. Slather on maximum sunblock, I can even walk outside at noon.
Still stings, though. And I hate it. And I hate that I hate it; that deep down in my gut, where most people have cravings for kitten-fuzzies and hot-fudge sundaes and long, lazy summer days at the beach-
I want the night. Wolves howling. Wind in my hair. Blood on my tongue. Mist curling around my fingertips...
Solid, Hannibal. Stay solid.
That's probably what got Tatjana. The senses, the power... it just feels so good to let go and use it. To be the predator. The night-stalker. The monster.
Looks like this glass isn't gonna last much longer either.
Better slow down, then. Much as I wanted to get blind drunk - I couldn't. I didn't dare. Tatjana Stiles wasn't the first time I'd ever sunk my fangs into a living creature; feeding off animals cuts the craving more than cold human blood. She wasn't even the first time I'd bitten a human. Or at least, semi-human; thank you, Michael Morbius, for making that self-defense.
But she was the first time I didn't stop.
Blood, sex, addiction - the magic that makes a vampire what it is means we're all screwed up in the head. I just happen to know my brain's tied in nasty knots. Which meant I knew damn well I was a junkie teetering on the edge between the soft stuff and pure, soul-killing hardline. Get drunk around pretty ladies, who wouldn't take more than a smile and a look for me to get them out in a dark alley, where no one would hear them scream?
No. Never again. Ever.
"Alien abductee."
I blinked, dragged back to the present. "What?"
"That's... what he thought I was. Before he tried to..." Carter gave me a shadowed smile. "Crazy, huh?"
"Might be why they call 'em psychos," I shrugged. "Just a hunch."
"I was lucky; Daniel figured out I was missing-" She lifted her shoulders, let them fall. "It is over, though."
Long as you remember, it's not over. But she looked like she could figure that out for herself. I lifted my glass. "Let's hear it for luck. And good friends."
Some of the shadows faded out of her smile. "I'll drink to that." She lifted her soda. "I'm Sam."
And somehow, that hole where Tatjana had been didn't hurt quite so much. "So... ah..." Oh, great. Expert PI caught in battle of wits unarmed; film at eleven.
Another passing waitress brought a waft of fried chicken in her wake, and my stomach decided to remind me it wasn't all vampire.
Sam snickered at the growl, and picked up the laminated menu tucked up against the wall. "Every man for himself."
A wry grin tugged at my lips. "I'll go for that."
---------
Sam
Well, this is interesting.
I've actually had a nice, quiet, non-world-threatened dinner. With a guy who isn't an alien megalomaniac bent on galactic domination, a slimy Pentagon staffer trying to pump me for information on the SGC, a misogynistic "women shouldn't be in combat" type ignoring the fact I have a mind and a perfectly good trigger finger, or just Joe Average staring at my cleavage.
My legs, maybe. But not my cleavage.
Not that Hannibal's done much in the way of staring at anything, outside of his plate and his drink. Whoever this Tatjana is, she broke him up pretty badly.
"I want to hire you to find my husband's killers."
Hands, words, a sardonic twist of lip - I can see her standing in Hannibal's doorway from his sketch of that day, slinky black dress, ruby necklace, and all. A vamp of a lady he only later found out was no grieving widow, but an intelligence operative, out to stop Navarro, a South American Indian terrorist with access to chemical WMD. Oh, the killers were real enough; but they'd taken out her partner, not her husband, to retrieve critical info he'd grabbed from Navarro's underlings.
And I can see Hannibal kicking himself for falling for the story, and falling for her, even as he tries to forgive her for what she did. She couldn't let terrorists walk. No matter what it took.
Just like I can see what that bastard Navarro must have done to her, in the horror in his eyes.
Hannibal got pretty tight-lipped on the details after that; exploding terrorists, hospital, critical ward. And - what really perks my ears - "experimental treatment".
Something Hannibal thinks has twisted her mind.
Oh, he didn't say it that way. Just that Tatjana got better, and she seemed to be handling the aftermath - but then she disappeared. And weeks later, he found a brief blurb in a newspaper about two mysterious deaths: Iraqi guards, during a search for terrorist weapons overseas.
"It was her. It had to be her." He'd shaken his head; so utterly down, I wanted to haul him into a psych ward on suicide watch. "It's my fault. I said yes, an'... it's my fault."
Intelligence operative. In a black dress, not a white one. Meaning she probably wasn't from the Firm. Working inside the U.S., which is illegal for the CIA. Roping in a civilian because he was mentioned in Navarro's list of dangerous people - and just how did Hannibal make that list? - instead of grabbing the FBI, the NSA, SWAT, and all the rest of the alphabet soup to take the terrorist down hard.
Houston, my NID-sense is tingling.
Experimental treatment. Healed incredible damage. Created drastic personality change. Specifically, megalomania.
No. They couldn't be that stupid.
NID. They sure as heck could be that stupid, and you know it.
Carefully - and thanking all my lucky stars I'd stuck to soda - I'd turned the tables and started asking Hannibal for more details. Not directly; two whiskies or not, Hannibal still seemed only mildly buzzed. But roundabout, drawing him out by mentioning some of my own disaster of a love life.
Including Martouf. Pain calls to pain, and I could still feel that utter, gut-wrenching grief as he died in my arms...
Hannibal grabbed napkins for me to soak. Kept the wait-staff at bay while I cried myself out. Was just there, making me feel so guiltily glad.
But anyway. By the time we'd finished dinner and I'd bundled him into a cab, it'd worked. I had a name.
Tatjana Stiles.
Quite possibly host to an NID-acquired symbiote.
Damn it.
"Maybe I'll see you around sometime," I smiled at Hannibal as he got in the passenger side.
"Yeah." His smile back was still sad, still haunted. But at least it didn't make me want to turn him in to a shrink for his own good. "That wouldn't be too bad."
And off he went. Some broken-hearted, lucky schmuck of a PI who'd never know about aliens, or Goa'uld, or how close Earth rides to death every day.
Life is just not fair.
---------
Hannibal
"Maybe I'll see you around sometime."
"Yeah. That wouldn't be too bad..."
Little words, playing over and over again in my head as Sam started her car and my cab turned out of the tavern driveway. Just the kind of thing two strangers turned friendly acquaintances might say to each other.
So how come they felt like a rope yanking me out of hell?
Maybe... because they were so simple. So human.
I'm not human. I wanted to be - god, I wanted to be! I struggled through the Depression like everyone else in Milwaukee, got married, got drafted, ended up in the Pacific, lived through that, got back to my wife seein' another guy, lived through that, got divorced, went PI, investigated a certain warehouse at night - and didn't live through that.
I had almost two years of normal, thanks to luck and Strange. Outside of that, I've been part of the nightlife for over half a century.
Which means... if I had been normal, I'd probably be dead by now.
Yow.
Usually I tried not to think about that. The fifties are gone, the sixties were weird, the seventies are gone - thank god - and I'm still kind of bug-eyed about being in the years that start a century instead of finishing one. Much less being in those years in a whole 'nother version of Earth.
But still. If I hadn't kept going, Frost would have killed Blade. Meaning he wouldn't have been around to help Frank, and none of us would have been there to help Strange with Dracula. Much less build up Borderline, and help all the people we did. And we did help people. A lot of them. We saved lives.
Just like I did, helping Tatjana.
I shouldn't have turned her. That was a bad call. Up there with taking a job from Lilith the Demon-Queen bad - though then I'd known the strange lady was playing us, and we were deliberately heading into the trap to spring it.
I screwed up. No two ways about it. I'd been tortured and horrified and just trying to save one life out of the rubble Navarro had tried to make of my morality - and I screwed up. Bad.
But if I let what Tatjana did - what she chose to do - drive me over the edge, let it knock me into the black pit of despair where all I could see was the monster I was and not the man I tried to be... then Navarro won. Even if he was dead.
Hell with that!
"So." The cabbie chewed on a toothpick, heading slow and easy down the road. "Which hotel did you want again?"
Leaning back in the passenger seat, I winced. I wanted an aspirin, a slug of blood, and a solid day's sleep. Not necessarily in that order.
What I got was a look in the rearview, and a screaming bad feeling about the nondescript dark sedan following Sam's car out of the tavern lot.
Ah, hell. Didn't I say I wasn't getting involved?
But she was a nice lady, and she listened, and...
For the first time in weeks, she'd made me feel like I'd done something right with my life.
I jabbed a thumb behind us. "Follow that car."
---------
"Evening."
"Aaah!"
Crunch.
"You know," I said conversationally, dropping what used to be Peeping Tom's nine-millimeter as the wide-eyed suit tried to back up, "I just hate guns."
I know. Not subtle. But me and subtle kind of had a mutual avoidance pact at the moment, due to a preponderance of evidence and observations on El Creepo, here. The Lizard Lounge bartender, I just didn't like too much. This guy, I could work up a serious case of grudge over.
I'd instructed my delighted cabbie in the finer points of vehicle surveillance as we drove along, tailing this slime two, sometimes three cars back. El Creepo, in turn, had kept a more-or-less constant distance - not number of cars, but distance - from Sam.
Electronic surveillance, I'd bet on it. And not that long later, after I'd paid off one happy cabbie to drop me a block away from where my subjects stopped, I'd collected. One good sneak and a squirm under Sam's car, and I knew what I was looking at. The bastard had bugged her.
Question was, why?
For a second there I didn't care why; just saw red, reached up to pull it off and shred it-
No. Stop. Think.
I lifted my shaking fingers away from the little black box, trying to breathe through the blinding rage. Another nasty thing about being on the wrong side of the grave. Your temper gets a real shot in the arm. Not a hair trigger, not if you didn't have one before - but once something does finally get under your skin, you tend to stay mad. And not just slash the tires and key the paint mad. We're talking rip out throats and leave bodies scattered to the four winds.
I'd done that. Once. Been face to face with a whole cult of demon-worshippers after I'd summoned some mutts for extra backup, listened to them praising the kind of evil that had ruined Blade's life, and Frank's, and mine-
And lost it. Utterly.
I hadn't laid a hand on them. But god, I almost wish I had.
I tracked down the dogs, later. Made sure they didn't remember anything, and went to no-kill shelters. Least I could do.
Easy, Hannibal. You've done this before. Focus on the little things. Gravel digging through your coat. Mountain ground leaching cold into you. Get the demon back into its cage. Easy...
Okay. Now. Which way did he go?
"False alarm," a whisper carried on the wind. "Subject appears to have been simply out of usual territory for a date."
Ah. That way.
"Unknown." El Creepo had found himself a fairly good hidey-hole in some adult's imitation of a kid's tree-house, watching Carter's house through IR binocs. "Was present in the Red Boar Tavern when subject reacquired. Check the credit card receipts. Five-ten, brown on brown-"
Five-eleven, you asshole.
So. Carter wasn't imagining things.
Damn.
Misting into the shadows behind the blond in the suit, I let El Creepo finish up his report, thinking hard. High-tech equipment, formal call-in protocol - and creepiest of all, that casual assumption they could get their hands on credit card records to find out who I was. Organized bad guys.
Or - I gritted my teeth to play devil's advocate - maybe not. Carter hadn't said what she did, but it was obviously classified, and she was just as obviously stressed out about it. Could be organized good guys, checking to see if she still deserved what clearance she had.
And pigs could be flying south right this minute. You never know.
So I made my entrance, and got a nine-mil in my face.
Did I mention I don't like guns?
"Listen to me..."
Only when I had his mind in my grasp did I realize how risky this was. I was angry. Tired. Just a little drunk. I wouldn't let me drive like this, much less do open-brain surgery.
Okay. Improvise. "We're going to talk," I ordered, feeling the words echo around in his skull. "When we're done, you're going to forget we ever had this conversation. Understand?"
"Yes..."
"You saw me," I go on, keeping a lid on my temper, "but you didn't get as good a look as you thought. Maybe it was dark. Maybe there were too many people inside. Whatever works. You can't pick me out of a lineup."
"I can't pick you out..."
"Good. Glad we understand each other." I let go of his will, and grabbed onto his collar instead. "Who the hell are you, and why are you watching Carter's house?"
"Fu-" The blond kicked and twisted; tried a knife-hand to my throat-
Bad idea.
I didn't hurt him. Much. Just bent and twisted a few joints, ending up with his face pressed to the wood planks, his arm twisted up behind his back in a hold that wouldn't break it unless he did something else stupid, and me sighing like the ex-MP I used to be. "Tom, Tom; you're really disappointing me here."
"My name's not-" He wised up, and clammed up.
"Let's just say it is. 'Cause we're having such a nice, friendly conversation, here... and I'd hate for it to get unfriendly, capisce?"
"Yeah," he gasped. "How the hell did you-?"
"You were too busy drooling over your subject," I said dryly. "Bad technique, guy. Could've stampeded a herd of elephants up here, and you'd just be lost in that pretty pink haze of, is she boxers or briefs?"
He gulped. Hah! Bingo! "So," I went on, chat-casual, "who do you work for?"
He sneered. "I don't know who you are, buddy, but trust me - you don't want to know."
"No-" I upped the pressure on his arm, just a little, "I really, really do."
"Aggh... all right, all right! I'm working for her ex-husband-"
I snorted. "Exactly how dumb do I look?"
Silence. "It's a matter of national security," he bit out.
"And I should care about this why? Never mind." Yeah, I'm American. First and foremost, though, I'm on the side of them what wants to live and let live. Frost crossed that line with me, and I never left his trail until I found him. Even if it did take me almost fifty years. "So you say you're a Fed. Where's your ID?"
"Son of a- left front pocket! I'm going to have you up for assault-"
"Oh yeah? Before or after the people who own this place have you up on trespassing? I bet the jury will love hearing about this fine, upstanding young Fed in a kid's tree-house at night with spyglasses." Not that it was a kid's tree-house, from the magazines tucked into the corners. But juries are funny that way.
More silence.
"Yeah. That's what I thought." Somebody here was up to no good. And it was looking less and less likely to be Carter.
I fished his ID out, reading it quick; too dark for most people's eyes, yeah sure, but to me, might as well have been broad day.
What the heck was Homeland Security?
No SHIELD, I thought. No Avengers. Heck, not even any Excalibur over in Britain. Which means no Good Guys out there people can see an' feel like the world can't go too wrong. No Hydra, Magneto, or Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, either - but you know there are bad-guy supernatural types loose, hiding in the woodwork like Navarro. Which means people have gotta have this bad feeling about the world they pin onto what they can see. Which would be - other people.
Felt like a good guess. But I wanted to back it up with some research before I made any moves based on it. Starting with this guy-
Snk. Shing.
I know that sound. You didn't last two weeks around Blade without knowing that sound.
'Course, the reason I know it so well is the nightmares; his hand wrapped in my collar, his eyes glowing red with the Darkhold's spell, his katana coming across-
Which is weird, because what he really used was an axe.
Best I could figure it, Blade's possession and betrayal had shaken me so much, my subconscious had wrapped up what really happened with what I'd seen the last time I'd felt the world go tilt that bad. Which would be scattered, beheaded corpses on the damnedest set of islands in the Pacific I never wanted to see again.
Not like there was much I could do about it, except try to ride it out. Walk into a VA hall for WWII post-traumatic stress compounded by supernatural trauma? Yeah, right.
Besides, it wasn't that bad. Just nightmares. Everybody's got nightmares. Mine are just a little more... colorful.
I shook myself back to here-and-now, listening to the growl down below. "Carson Springs PD," a man bit out. "Get down here. Hands up."
A woman's sigh, touched with gun oil. "Ryan, he can't-"
"I can smell him, Mel. The guy he's got can't hear us - but he can. Trust me."
Hell. I should mist on out of here-
But damn it, I didn't want to. Didn't want to give into the curse that much. The vampire. It's monsters and crooks that slink off into the night when the cops come calling, not humans and PIs.
Maybe I wasn't human, but I could at least hang onto the PI.
Besides. That scent in the wind, a taint of wolf and human and pure magic... that was a cop? In Sam's backyard?
I sighed a little. "You gonna help me keep a grip on this guy?" I murmured. "He was peeping on the nice lady in the house next door."
"That depends," the cool shrug rang through Ryan's voice. "How many quarts were you planning on leaving him with?"
I stiffened. "Are you kidding me? I wasn't gonna-"
"Good." The cop's tone thawed out a little. "Come on down, and let's talk."
Easier said than done. But I managed, bundling El Creepo, crushed gun, binoculars, and all down the rough ladder into the waiting cuffs of a nice-looking lady detective with a flashlight, stormy blue eyes, mahogany hair cut short and pretty, and a semi-automatic that had seen way more use than the one I'd mangled.
Professional, too. Mel got her prisoner squared away before she let herself go bug-eyed over crumpled steel. "Holy..."
I let it slide, matching stares with the wolf-yellow glare of the tall, dark-haired guy pointing a katana my way. Actually pointing, not just aiming; Ryan had taken up some weird, left-handed stance I'd never seen a kenjutsu type use, that was obviously meant to skewer rather than slash. "Evening, Officer."
His smile showed a hint of teeth. "Mind if we see some ID?"
"Well, here's his." I held it up in the light for Mel, making no sudden moves. "Mind if we don't talk near the bastard?"
"Hey!"
"You are a bastard, Harry," I said matter-of-factly, noting how Mel had made sure the guy was turned so he couldn't see the sword. Harry Thompson, according to his ID. No wonder he'd jumped when I called him Tom. "Didn't Mrs. Thompson teach her kids anything? The policeman is your friend."
Ah. The lovely sound of teeth grinding.
Mel traded a partner-type glance with Ryan, then held the flashlight while he made his sword vanish under his trenchcoat and patted El Creepo down, coming up with at least one holdout .22 and a bunch of illicit electronic gizmos. "Mr. Thompson," Ryan said evenly, "would you like to tell us what you were doing up there on the Montgomery family's property?"
"I have every right-"
I tuned El Creepo out, listening into the dark for any other cops. None.
But somehow, I didn't think Ryan was alone.
Somebody out there is really, really good.
"On what charge?"
"Trespassing, for starters..."
I glanced back toward Thompson at the yell. Ooo. Look at the pretty red flush!
On second thought - don't look. Don't listen to the pound of an outraged heart. Don't smell that adrenaline-laced sweat, and think how that raging red would taste...
Dimly I heard Mel drag El Creepo off to her car, lock him in and head for the front door of the house where people were waking up; probably to get the Montgomerys' verbal confirmation and dot the legal i's that this guy was, indeed, not just a casual acquaintance dropping in unannounced, but a bona fide trespasser of the perverted kind.
Ryan... didn't leave. "You going to be all right, sir?"
I shrugged. Hell with it; he could smell me, he could probably smell this even with the lid on.
Digging out my thermos, I took a long, chill drink.
God. I feel like scum. Every damn time.
Recapping the red, I flicked a business card his way. "Hannibal King. I don't exactly rate a sir."
"Detective Ryan O'Connell."
And him looking at least half Japanese. Only in America.
"Homicide."
I stiffened. "Now, look-"
"Easy." He held out a friendly hand; but his left didn't stray too far from that sword. "They dump the weird cases on us, too. Which makes it a good place for me." He gave me a slight smile. "You want to tell me what happened here tonight?"
"You want a straight answer to that?" I muttered.
"You want Thompson cooling his heels overnight?" Ryan arched a dark brow.
Point. "I - ah - met Ms. Carter in a bar a little earlier this evening..."
---------
Translations and Info:
Illegitimati non carborundum - "Don't let the bastards grind you down." Yes, it's bad Latin. It's supposed to be.
Short history of Hannibal King for Stargate fans: Sometime in the forties, in another universe, a hardboiled detective with a heart of gold was investigating factory espionage when a white-haired vampire, Deacon Frost, killed everyone inside. Including him. But after three days on a morgue slab, Hannibal got up and went back to work...
Many decades later, Hannibal King, Doctor Strange (Marvel Earth's Sorcerer Supreme), Blade, Francis Drake, and others cooperated to cast a spell (the Montesi Formula) that would wipe all vampires from the face of the planet. As a vampire himself, Hannibal collapsed as the spell was taking effect - but Doctor Strange was able to medically revive him, due to the mystical effects of a vow Hannibal had sworn the first night he woke: that he would never take a human life to sustain his thirst for blood. (Dr. Strange #62. A vow I would say Hannibal still, technically, has not broken - he turned Tatjana Stiles because she was already dying, not to feed.) As far as everyone knew, Hannibal King was human again; able to walk in sunlight, eat garlic, shave, and take as much damage from a punch as anyone else.
When the Montesi Formula was later relaxed, Hannibal found out everyone was wrong.
In this AU, I'm presuming Dr. Strange in Nightstalkers #1 was correct - that Hannibal is neither a true vampire, nor human, but caught somewhere in between. Therefore, Hannibal's abilities and vulnerabilities have stopped wavering from one comic-book extreme to another (partly due to the inter-dimensional transit), and settled somewhere around the "dhampire" level.
Note this does not incorporate the whole Marvel Universe. (The angst! The horror! The continuity problems - eeek!) Hannibal essentially stumbled through a "quantum mirror", and since his human Stargate-dimensional counterpart would be at least a decade or so dead, he has no entropic cascade failure to worry about.