Disclaimer: I do not own Vampire Diaries or Avengers.
Plot bunny goes hippidy hop...
Future chapters will be much, much longer don't you worry. This is just a sneak peak as to what will come...
. Prologue - Chapter One .
"You're off your rocker. Steve, he's off his rocker!"
In the time he's been unfrozen, Steve has seen a lot in the ways of the unimaginable coming true - taking it with the stride of a half-suicidal, half bent in the head out-of-time-man (therapists be damned)— but even he couldn't argue with Tony.
Director Fury aimed look at Steve's long, guilty silence.
"I am not," he clears. "You know what it is. It's all there in the debrief file you hacked into this morning at precisely four thirty am. Eastern time."
Tony 'bah's in dismissal. Seating himself back in the chair he had dramatically leapt from. "Please, it's common knowledge I read ahead - even while attending a charity ball where everyone speaks Indonesian!"
"You speak Indonesian?" Bruce asked from the back.
"No. I have people to do it for me. I'm a billionaire, man."
Steve supposed that made sense in some privileged world.
"Be that as it may," Fury drawled, "what you're looking at now is indeed what you all think it is. God help me." He ends a tad bitter than Steve would have preferred him to.
A superior being knocked by reality wasn't in the least grounding for a man who's only just assimilating to it himself.
Crossing his arms, Steve exhales a tight sigh. "What are we looking at?"
Again, Fury stared. "Want me to spell it out for you, Captain?"
"Oh do. Translate," Tony leans forward. Fingernails tapping the glass table. "Like my minions."
"It's a fucking vampire people," Fury spat. Patience lost he jabbed a gloved finger at the x-ray of a skull blown up on the big screen behind him.
To be precise, he pointed at the elongated canines curling down like tusks from the upper gums. Curving all the way down past the lower jaw.
Steve stared at it in full disdain. "Fuck 21st Century."
. .
Simon Baskwell was pouring beer from the bar tap, hearing another one of Billy Joel's songs come on repeat shuffle, when a rush of exhaustion drags his awareness.
"Whoa. Easy there, chum," a drunken voice warns as he wavers. Beer spilling over the sides of the glass and foam licking his shoes. "You look a bit drained."
"Long night," Simon huffs. Glancing up to reassure the gentleman only to hitch a breath in slackened shock - glass in his hand dropping into shards that slice and tear across his ankles. "God."
Irises. So blue and crystal they glistened against bloody, burst red eyes.
The man of them seemed to stifle a sneeze - snorted, then coughed into an explosive laugh. Veins trickle from the eyes to a blood smeared mouth. Simon catches two, white elongated canine teeth stained from a red, red mouth.
"Oh," the creature - not man, not human - breathes, "Not quite."
Simon then notices it. The silence. All he could hear was Billy Joel.
He risks looking away from the thing to find everyone he had served, worked with, laughed with and lived near in this tiny, lively down - dead.
Necks torn and body's frayed like pieces of discarded meat from scavenging rats.
Simon doesn't fight the vertigo that slaps him. He sinks to the ground and watches in terror as the thing wearing a man's face leans over the counter to stare at him peculiarly.
"What you doing down there?"
"You," Simon's eyes shrink back to tears. "Monster."
"Oh," it groans, "don't look at me like that. Haven't you ever been hungry before?"
He chokes on a sob. "You're going to kill me too?"
"Nope."
"Really?"
It snorts, "Of course I'm going to kill you. I'm a dick."
.. .
Please review!