Part Four
Blade and his companions had wanted to go back to their stronghold alone before Nyssa, Asad, and the rest of the Blood Pack followed. The reason given was that they wanted to make sure that their security system, designed to bring about the deaths of vampires, would not accidentally fry any of the ones that were meant to be their allies. It was the kind of official political lie that no one actually believed but was necessary for things to run smoothly all the same. What they really wanted, Nyssa knew, was to hurriedly throw together something that resembled a battle plan so that they could hide how badly they had been blindsided by the notion of any peace offers coming from the vampire nation. It did not matter what they claimed their intentions were. Nyssa had fulfilled her role, had engineered Blade's acceptance, had pleased Father.
It had been a good day.
Once in the headquarters of the man that she had been taught to fear over the last two decades as much as little children were taught to fear the devil himself, and without the distraction of the UV lights and the realization that there was only a thin sheet of plastic saving her from either blindness or death, Nyssa found that there was a great deal to distract her and occupy her attention. It was all clean, for one thing, and well-lit, the vehicles and weapons alike gleaming and smelling faintly of oil. Her father's own were not better kept. Nyssa began to run her fingers lightly along a rack of guns, remembered the tales of that sword that Blade was reputed to carry, the one that could take off a vampire's hand if he or she was not careful, and drew back abruptly. Behind her, the Blood Pack shifted restlessly, no member able to stay in one place for too long, though when they were on a battlefield they could stay in one place for hours without giving any sign of life. They were each one of them a weapon in his or her own right and unused to sitting on a shelf for too long. Especially when the hospitality was so…effusive. Nyssa glanced at the humans in their midst and was afraid that she could not stop herself from making a face.
Blade's pet and his mechanic were each leaning back against a table that held the scattered remains of a transmission and the motorcycle that it had once belonged to, respectively, watching the predators in their midst as alertly as mice would watch the cat that had missed a meal. Frost's arms were crossed over his chest, his face carefully blank. Nyssa was surprised to see that he had drawn that far from Blade's side at all, frankly. Familiars tended to stay close to the hand that fed them…and as a result, far away from all of the mouths that wanted to feed on them. It would be suicide to bite one of Blade's people in his own territory. That did not mean that Nyssa had not caught several members of the Blood Pack casting longing looks towards the places where Frost's and the mechanic's pulses were running just beneath the surfaces of their necks, immediately visible to a vampire's eye.
The mechanic had introduced himself as Scud, and had stared at the Blood Pack with such open fascination that Nyssa had been given cause to wonder how long it had been since he had seen a real vampire, if ever. His clothes and hair still smelled of marijuana, but his eyes were for the moment, at least, clear. He carried on a low conversation with Frost throughout the time that the Blood Pack was moving through the open spaces and getting themselves acclimated. For the most part Frost would let him ramble on without reply, though every now and again he would turn his head to give a monosyllabic answer. When he did so, the white line running down his neck would flash. Frost had been quite the threat, back before he had finally overstepped himself with La Magra. Virtually every pureblood had been able to recognize his face, if for no other reason so that they could better curse it. He had not borne that scar then. Nyssa could not help but stare at it now, wondering where he had gotten it, how long ago, and what on earth he thought eh was going to accomplish here and now by flaunting the evidence of his human fallibility in front of them. Scud had never been a part of the vampire nation and was not likely to know how little they thought of him, outside of food. The old man who was hanging about the fringes and muttering dark things, Whistler, might know, but was unlikely to care. Frost, though. He knew how it worked. He had once ripped through the humans so gleefully that he had put them all at risk of exposure several times. It was unsettling to seem him leaning back against a table with one of them and so seemingly at ease.
People should not move from their proscribed positions and be able to fill another one so fluidly, Nyssa decided. She did not like it when they did.
Realizing at long last that he was being watched, Frost glanced up and gave Nyssa a sarcastic salute. She scowled and turned away quickly.
Along with the rest of the Blood Pack, it appeared that Reinhardt had had enough. He heaved a big sigh as he folded his arms over his chest, sending all of his weaponry to clanking. "We gonna meet this bogey man any time soon?" he demanded. "Or is he going to spend the entire night powdering his nose?"
Nyssa locked eyes with Asad where he was standing on the other side of the room. She liked Asad. He was loyal, and he appreciated order in the same way that she did. Reinhardt did not. Nyssa and Asad had discussed the possibility that he would unleash his glee for chaos at the wrong moment, and how the two of them would rein him back in without disintegrating their united front.
"Like a kid in a doctor's waiting room, isn't he?" Frost said to Scud in a voice that, for all that the conversation was supposedly meant to be private, was pitched just loudly enough for everyone to hear. He smirked at Reinhardt when the other man spun on him. "Easy, stud. I'll go poke the bear for you." Frost headed towards the stairs that led to Blade's living quarters.
The flash of fury that crossed Reinhardt's face as he realized that the human was showing him up turned into glee, as if he could not believe that so fantastic an opportunity was being handed to him. "More like the bear pokes you, I figure," he drawled.
Frost spun, and Nyssa uttered a blistering curse beneath her breath. All that they needed was for Frost to throw the first punch; as soon as that happened, the truce would be broken and Frost's blood might well be declared forfeit. That was the last thing that they needed, to damage Blade's human at the same time that they desperately needed Blade's help.
"I'll retrieve him," Nyssa cut in smoothly. Frost halted his advance and even took a step back. Reinhardt only looked disappointed. Nyssa was depriving him of a good meal.
Asad looked every bit as upset by that thought as Nyssa felt, meaning not at all. He was the closest thing to a friend that she had. There were reasons for that.
"Unless," Nyssa added, and stepped up and into Reinhardt's personal space, between him and Frost. If the idiot human appreciated the gesture, then he felt no need to voice that opinion. From what Nyssa had read of him, he had been possessed of much the same quality even when he had still been a vampire. "Unless you think that perhaps he will attempt to poke me?" She knew that her arched eyebrow was a challenge. Reinhardt would not dare strike her, unless he wanted the fury of Asad, her father, and all of the vampire nation to come down on him at once.
Reinhardt was the kind of man who would always equate sex with violence. Nyssa saw it in the head to toe leer that he passed over her before he stood to the side with exaggerated courtesy so that she could pass. In his sick albino head, she knew that he would be imagining Blade doing just that. Someone might pay later for the satisfaction that she was denying him now.
It was not Nyssa's job to save the world, she reminded herself, only her own people. She ignored Reinhardt's look and walked over to the stairs, passing Frost as she did so.
"The first time that I called you 'princess', I had no idea that it was going to be quite so literal," Frost murmured to her. His mouth quirked into a smile that was used to getting what it wanted, magnetic even though it was still so very cold. "Noblesse oblige?"
He had known what he was doing all along. Nyssa pulled back and stared at him, trying to decide if he was foolish, crazy, or running a game so complicated that he could not hope to pause and explain its purpose to the rest of them. Perhaps it was a mixture of all three, and that was why La Magra had collapsed on him. "Pragmatic concerns," she told him smoothly. "However it is that you keep Blade happy-" Frost's eyes went flat. "The fact remains that you do. A happier Blade is an easier Blade to deal with for all of us." She turned and started calmly up the stairs, aware of Frost's gaze on her back with every step that she took.
Upon reaching the room where Blade and Frost were supposed to share quarters, Nyssa raised her hand and considered knocking for a moment before she remembered Frost's derisive words to her down below. A princess did not need to knock, after all. She felt her lip curl for a moment in disdain before she grabbed the knob and shoved her way in uninvited.
There was one shocked second in which the soldier in Nyssa was able to wander at will and note with a clinical detachment the signs of a double occupancy within the room: the boots flung into one corner, the laptop computer on the bed, the gun only a few feet away from that. Her eyes were then drawn upwards and to the corner of the room where it seemed that a miniature lab had been set up with a refrigerator, a stainless steel table, and a small fortune in chemistry equipment. Though he was not making a sound, Blade's head was bowed, those broad shoulders trembling ever so slightly, his hand clenched so tightly into a fist that Nyssa was amazed not to hear the creaking of tendons all the way to the other side of the room. There was a small dot of blood against the inside of his elbow, smelled as much as it was seen, and a syringe and hypodermic needle on the table beside him.
His serum, Nyssa realized. As she had been taught, his poison. If the way that he was reacting to it now was anything to go by, then what she had been taught was correct. Nyssa cast her eyes to the floor in horror and felt color rising in her cheeks.
Blade's head had jerked up the second that he heard the door open. Though he did not speak, Nyssa could still feel the weight of his gaze on her. She raised her eyes at last. "They are ready whenever you are," Nyssa said, ticking her head slightly to indicate the vampires downstairs. She fled, feeling Blade continuing to watch her as she left. His gaze prickled every bit as much as Frost's had.
Speak of the devil, and he should appear. Frost was leaning nonchalantly against the railing as Nyssa hurried back down the stairs. He eyed her up and down as if he had any right to do so. Had it not been for the truce, Nyssa thought that she might like to reach out and backhand him into a wall. "No blood," Frost said once he had finished looking her over. His gaze was not so different from Reinhardt's as he probably liked to think. "Guess I'm keeping Blade pretty happy, after all." If the son of a bitch had known what Nyssa was going to walk into at the top of the stairs, then his face was still open and guileless. Frost sauntered away as Blade appeared at the head of the stairs. He walked down them slowly; if he was anywhere near as unsettled by what had occurred in his living quarters as Nyssa was, then he certainly felt no need to show it. His eyes moved slowly across each of his humans in turn, marking certain that none of them had received any wounds, before he moved on to examine the Blood Pack. They were looking back at him with fascination, and a few of them with far less wariness and respect than was wise. Nyssa had known that Reinhardt was going to be trouble.
Asad waited for several long moments in silence for Nyssa to claim her rank and make the introductions herself, but she was still too mortified. After casting Nyssa one final concerned and expectant look, Asad went on, "Blade, meet the Blood Pack." He indicated each of them in turn as he spoke. "Lighthammer, Verlaine, Priest, Snowman, Chupa, and Reinhardt." Each member dipped his or her head in acknowledgment as their name was spoken. Blade nodded back. This was going surprisingly well. Nyssa could feel herself beginning to relax.
Naturally, there was one vampire who was determined to ruin that. Nyssa cursed beneath her breath as Reinhardt stepped forward and made a note to herself to ask her father if they could not do something about him once this was all over. He had no powerful family to speak for him if he were to quietly just…disappear.
"Hey, uh, me and the guys were wondering," Reinhardt began as he stepped forward. He was the very picture of loose-limbed, sloppy malevolence while Blade continued to stand ramrod-straight, his hands clasped behind his back as he remained balanced and ready on the balls of his feet. A thug circling around a warrior. Nyssa would save her full admiration for some time when Reinhardt was not on the verge of flipping a carefully constructed alliance onto its head.
Nyssa bit at her lower lip until she tasted her own blood and began to lunge forward. A hand curved quickly around her arm, halting her. There was a moment in which Nyssa thought that it might even be Asad, before she realized that he was still on the opposite side of the conflict and looked as if he was struggling with the impulse to lunge forward himself. A moment after that, she wondered when Frost had decided that he had the right to touch her.
"Don't," Frost leaned down and murmured against her ear. He could turn his voice into pornography by nothing other than lowering it an octave. Knowing what she knew about him now, Nyssa supposed that she ought not to be surprised.
"Are you insane?" Nyssa whispered back. She put her hand over Frost's and pulled it from her arm. Because he was Blade's, she did not break his fingers.
Frost curved his fingers around and caressed at Nyssa's wrist. Her eyes widened, and she would have broken his fingers, Blade be damned, had he not jerked away again as quickly as a cat. He still did not seem to think that personal space was something that he needed to be troubling himself with overly much, leaning so close against her ear. His pulse was loud to her hearing, his blood flush and warm beneath the skin of his face. "They can't follow him if they don't respect him," Frost told her softly. "You think that that's going to be possible if he gets saved by a girl?" He was lucky that he distracted her from all of that hot, sweet blood at that exact moment, and he had no idea how much. Frost looked past her, towards Blade. There were too many emotions on his face, moving too quickly and in too much of a muddle, for her to hope to read all or even most of them. "Besides, I think he's got it under control."
"What was that?" Blade was asking. His stance had not changed, but he seemed larger now, more alert, and the air around him seemed to pulse and swell with the first hint of danger. Glancing back once at Frost, Nyssa saw that his eyes were gleaming and that he was leaning forward ever so slightly onto the balls of his feet. If only she could write him off as stupid as well as arrogant. Nyssa ground her teeth against themselves and remained where she was.
It contrast to Blade's tight, disciplined precision, Reinhart was graceful and easy, confident to the point of negligence. His smile was just wide enough to show his fangs. "Can you blush?"
The rest of the Blood Pack broke into a series of chuckles. Nyssa thought that she heard nervousness in the sound. She cast Asad an alarmed look where he was following her lead and holding his ground. There seemed to be little else that they could do.
Blade smiled, and the set of his shoulders relaxed by a millimeter or so. Frost said to Nyssa, "Princess, you might want to step back."
"Oh, I get it," Blade said, his tone easy and jovial. "I see now. You've been training for two years to take me out, and suddenly here I am." He gave a great mock shiver as Nyssa folded her arms over her chest and felt her mouth set into a hard line. "Oooh, so exciting, isn't it? Okay. Here's your chance." He flipped one of his silver stakes up from the holster at his waist. As if they were made of many bodies sharing one mind, the Blood Pack drew their guns. Nyssa swore and began to leap forward again, only to be halted by Frost quickly speaking her name against her ear. He looked like a Roman watching someone preparing to fight the lions, all gleaming-eyed excitement.
"C'mon, what are you waiting for?" Blade went on. He placed the point of the stake against his chest. Nyssa closed her eyes for a moment before she opened them again and gestured for the Blood Pack to put their guns away. They did so with a greater reluctance than Nyssa appreciated. She vowed to keep an eye on that. "Go ahead. Adolf here can even have the first shot." Reinhardt glanced towards Nyssa. Oh, now it was permissible for a woman to instruct him. "What are you looking at her for? You need permission?" Reinhardt spun back towards Blade, outrage. "Or maybe you need a little bit of incentive, huh? Okay, I can help you with that." Blade began to flip the stake back and forth through the air. The Blood Pack was so tense that had any one of them been human he or she likely would have fallen from a stroke, but they kept their hands away from their weapons. Nyssa relaxed, just slightly, until Blade used the hypnotic movement of the stake to crack Reinhardt hard across one of his cheeks. Reinhardt snarled, but Blade kept going. "What's the matter, did you miss it? That's okay, I can do it again." He struck Reinhardt across the other cheek.
Verlaine's discipline cracked. She yelled out in vampire, "Do it, Reinhardt! Do it!" A glare from Nyssa caused her to shrink back against Lighthammer again.
Reinhardt snapped and lunged forward against Blade, snarling. Blade's control remained rigid even as he moved gracefully to the side, grabbed at Reinhardt's wrist, and twisted savagely until he had the arm at the point of breaking. Nyssa swore that she heard the bone beginning to crack and give way before Blade released Reinhardt and brought his elbow savagely up and into his face. He trailed Reinhardt out like a fish for a moment before he jerked him back against himself and slapped a small, blinking device onto the back of Reinhardt's skull. The entire process had taken place in under five seconds.
"Now you've got an explosive device stuck to the back of your head," Blade said as he released Reinhardt and shook out his hand as if he had been touching something filthy, "rigged to explode if anybody so much as tampers with it. I'll have the detonator with me." For the first time, Blade betrayed his anger, eyes narrowing and voice lowering as he finished, "You so much as look at me wrong, and-whoo!"
"No blood," Nyssa said quietly to Frost. She had not realized how tense she had been until the danger was gone, leaving her feeling both wrung-out and cleansed.
Frost's mouth twitched upwards for a moment. "He's having a good day," he replied as Blade straightened and addressed the rest of the Blood Pack.
"From now on we work as a unit," Blade said. He raised his voice until it rang about the warehouse and to the assembled warriors, be they calm or seething. Nyssa frowned for a moment as she realized that he seemed to think that he could simply usurp her authority out from under her. "You'll be taking orders from me." That annoyance was not growing any lesser. "Any questions?" Blade waited a beat before he nodded and said, "Good." He acknowledged Nyssa again at last. "You want to catch the hunter, you start with the prey. We'll target all of the night places where vampires congregate. Blood banks, safe houses, the bigger the better. So…what's first?"
Nyssa exchanged a glance with Asad, who looked about as comfortable with the self-assured way that Blade was scooping her authority up as Nyssa herself was. "The House of Pain," Nyssa said after a long pause in which she wondered at the wisdom of turning this wolf free among her sheep. If only there was not a larger and more dangerous wolf already lurking about the edges of the flock.
Scud had been so quiet and still during the power play between Blade and Reinhardt that Nyssa had nearly forgotten that he was there. He made a snorting noise, muffled only a second later. Everyone's head turned towards him, Frost's included. Frost was still wearing that mixture of smirk and Mona Lisa smile that he was prone to do so frequently. It did not have a right to look that good on a man. "Yeah, I know," Frost said to Scud as he reclaimed his place against the edge of the table. "Melodrama is kind of a pureblood thing. You get used to it."
Reinhardt had been seething all the while about the ease with which Blade had gotten one over on him all the while the conversation was continuing to go on around him. No longer able to attack the master, he then decided to go after the pet. "What would a little faggot like you know about being a pureblood?" he growled, taking a step towards Frost as if he really meant to strike him. Nyssa thought of the carnage that would have ensued if Blade had struck Kounen while in her father's presence and wondered if she might not have been better off simply allowing Blade to blow Reinhardt up. Reinhardt's normal pallor was flushed with rage.
Frost neither stepped back nor unfolded his arms from across his chest so that he would be able to defend himself. More notably, neither did Blade. Frost watched Reinhardt approach, and those eyes were as cold as they ever were. He opened his mouth as if to say something, seemed to change his mind, and spread his mouth into the same smile that had once offered an apple. "Nothing much," he said finally, and cut off Reinhardt's smug look by saying, "I just dealt with the Council personally for nearly fifteen years before this girl's daddy-" He jerked his thumb in Nyssa's direction. "Decided that monarchy had a much better ring to it, especially when you're standing at the top and looking down. Can you say the same, or do you just yap around at the end of your leash?" Reinhardt's face darkened further. Nyssa thought that Frost looked proud of himself, frankly, for the fact that he had not allowed himself to be baited again.
"You killed them," Nyssa blurted, unable to stop herself in the face of such gall.
That smile again. Nyssa was more surprised that he was not constantly black and blue from people smacking it off of him. "And I'm eaten up with guilt for that, princess, I really am. Anyway, I know what purebloods are like because I can look into their flaws." He passed his eyes over Reinhardt, who, interestingly, stiffened slightly. "And I was a hell of a lot more than a thug, too."
There was subtext going on within those stares that the two of them were exchanging, but it was too deep beneath the surface for Nyssa to catch all of it. She did not like it, and frowned. No one seemed surprised to see her wearing that particular expression. "We'll start at the House of Pain," Blade said. Nyssa thought that he might even be holding back a smile. "Whistler, Scud, you'll be the backup." Whistler looked pleased that Blade was not putting his full faith into the vampires quite yet. Scud looked mildly troubled, though Nyssa cold not see why. "Frost, you'll stay here and keep an eye on the security system."
Frost jerked his head up and for a moment fixed Blade with a hard, calculating look before he shrugged and began examining the odds and ends on the table behind him. Whistler was watching him touch them as if he saw Frost casually breaking kitten's necks. "Sure," he said.
Chupa chuckled. "You'll be safe here, boy, don't worry."
The glitter in Frost's eyes said that he had been called 'boy' before, and that he liked it now roughly about as much as he had then. Nyssa wondered if he had kept a list of everyone who had ever done so and then paid them a visit after he had ascended. His eyes gave away nothing afterwards. "You warm my heart, sugar," Frost said as he began to walk away. "Just knowing that you'll be looking out for me makes it go all pitter-pat."
In a low voice, Reinhardt said to Lighthammer, "We're going to follow these jokes?" His eyes followed Frost as he left. Verlaine, at Lighthammer's side, might as well have not existed at all.
Nyssa was not surprised. "No," she said sharply. Reinhardt's head jerked around towards her with such speed that he seemed to have forgotten that she was even there. Seeing as she had no cock to speak of, it was possible that he had. "You follow me."
Reinhardt nodded so deeply that it was nearly a bow. "My mistake," he told her. He tapped at his head, and the device affixed to the back of it. "Still ringing."
A used-car salesman would have been more believable. Nyssa kept her face very still so that she would not twist her lips ever further and stalked off to find Blade. He was standing just beneath the stairs that led upwards and to his living quarters, strapping on his weaponry and carrying on a conversation with Frost. Nyssa heard the murmur of their voices before she came across them and turned away swiftly, willing vampire ears not to tread where they were not wanted. Blade could think of her as a seeking, grasping animal all that he wanted; it did not mean that she actually had to be that woman. When there was a seeming lull, she approached again.
"Stay alert," Blade was saying as she came into sight, and handed Frost one of his guns. Realizing now that the conversation had not been finished yet, Nyssa would have ducked away again, but Blade had seen her. To move away would look as if she had something to hide. Nyssa continued forward again.
"Really doubt that I would be able to sleep, anyway," Frost said, grimacing. He took the gun away from Blade and turned the safety off before he turned and saw Nyssa. "Those UVs aren't going to set themselves," he said. Walking over to the computer, he threw himself down into the seat before it.
Even with Frost gone, Nyssa felt as if she had intruded upon something intimate. She cleared her throat as Blade continued to stare at her. "Something I can help you with?" he finally asked her.
His tone, at once disgusted and so bored, found and replaced Nyssa's spine right when she had been on the verge of slinking off. She straightened. "Do not do that again," she ordered Blade in a ringing voice, once more thinking of the smirk in Frost's tone when eh had called her 'princess'. Then she would be the best damned princess that any of the three of them had ever seen.
Blade's eyebrow arched upwards. "Excuse me?" he asked. His face did not change expression, yet he still managed to let Nyssa know how great a favor he was doing her by allowing her to get away with that, and that it had nothing to do with the fact that she was a woman.
"Do not disrespect me in front of my people again," Nyssa ordered. There were a great many things that Blade could do with his favor. If she were not so well bred, she might even have told him a few of them. "Do not try to take that leadership away from me."
Blade leaned forward and into her face. Unbelievably, his smile only made things worse. "Little girl," he growled, so close that his breath was a warm fan against her cheek. Nyssa was not used to such warmth, and she was afraid that she started at the first touch of it. "It's because I'm doing this that you will have a people left to lead at all." He brushed past her and went back to readying his weapons.
End Part Four