Part Eleven

Reinhardt had kicked Blade, and kicked him viciously, when he had no right to do so. That was the last thing that Nyssa remembered before even Blade's blood had not been enough to keep her awake in the face of her injuries and she had been forced to succumb herself. It echoed through her dreams and motivated her into lurching awake, finally, feeling disoriented and as if she was letting someone down by not fighting at their side. Whether that someone was Blade or her father or even Asad, Nyssa's dreams could not tell her. Her unease did not fade even as her disorientation did and she began to realize where she was.

Nyssa touched at her face and neck and felt only smooth flesh where there had once been such terrible burns. She had been left in the clothes that she had fought in, which still smelled strongly of charred flesh, and, when she looked for it, the scent of two distinct humans. Likely her father's familiars had been frightened to touch her any more than they strictly had to, as Nyssa was well known for not welcoming uninvited contact with her person, and did not know what else to put her in, besides. She was lying on a cot, small but comfortable, and covered by a blanket that she recognized at its very first sight and touch. She recognized the room that she was resting in almost as quickly. Nyssa's father was a great lover of books and of learning, and had allowed Nyssa free run of his study as she pleased when she had been small. Nyssa's heart warmed as she realized that he had ordered her placed by him, so that he might better monitor her condition himself. In the light of that, it was easy to push aside the thought that he had still ordered that she be brought to him so that he would not have to interrupt his work even though she had been grievously wounded, rather than going instead to her.

Seeing her distress on her face, her father called out to her in the human English, "What is it, my daughter?"

Nyssa launched herself up from her cot without thinking at the sound of her father's voice and dashed across the study with the same blind abandon with which she had sprinted in circles around his desk when she had been a child. She stumbled to a stop in front of her father and then fell to her knees, pushing her face against his legs. Nyssa had not done that since she was very small, either. She could sense his confusion as he raised his hand and stroked at her hair.

Nyssa struggled for a moment to say what she needed in English before she found that she was forced by some internal impetus to speak in vampire, the language of her birth. "I've shamed you, Father. I have dishonored the family crest." Her father's fingers through her hair stilled for a moment. "Blade saved me." By giving her his blood, the very act that must have been abhorrent above all others to him. Nyssa had no doubt that the same action would not have been performed for any other members of the Blood Pack, or even for Asad. "He is brave. Honorable." He was not deserving of what your man did to him, Nyssa thought but could not bring herself to say. Neither had Frost deserved the attack that had been lunched upon him while they were at the House of Pain, the attack that Blade and Frost alike had conspicuously not kicked up any outrage over, for reasons that Nyssa had not understood then but had terrible suspicions of now. They were worthy of respect for reasons that had nothing to do with their blood. Nyssa felt dizzy and for a moment actually swayed on the verge of falling down.

Her father's fingers began stroking through her hair again, soothing her as easily as if he might even have an idea of what was upsetting her so. "I understand," he told her, his voice so gentle that she had no choice but to believe him.

Nyssa took a deep breath and asked, "Is he alive?" Her father's silence rang back at her.

---

Scud's shoulder had still not stopped bleeding. Good for him; Deacon's head had still not stopped ringing. He pushed one palm against the fresh bruise, laid right across the old one, and resigned himself to being painted in beautiful shades of purple and green for at least the next two weeks.

Deacon glanced up towards the balconies and made note of the assorted vampires and familiars who were standing there with their guns drawn. Granted that he even survived long enough to see his bruises fade, of course. They way that things were looking right now, if he had been standing on the outside and looking in he certainly would not have been laying money on the odds of his own living to see the dawn.

On the other hand, Deacon could remember at least six separate occasions since he had been turned when he ought to have died and had not, including the incident that had put the long white scar down his neck. Maybe the betting men were onto something. He girt his teeth against one another and took up his pacing again, cutting a contemptuous glance in Scud's direction as he did so. The idiot wasn't saying much, and seemed stunned that his new buddies had not plucked him up to treat his wounds yet. Deacon wondered if it would be Damaskinos or Reinhardt who would be the first one to disabuse him of that notion. Given those choices, Deacon was fairly certain that if death was not an option then he would by-God make it one.

Perhaps his outlook would not be so bleak if it had only been Scud and himself who had been carted off to serve as the maidens tied to the railroad tracks, but Blade and the old man had been dragged in and dumped unconscious right along with Scud and Deacon. Whistler was only just beginning to twitch and stir; when Whistler turned his head, Deacon could see twin burns in his neck that looked as if they had been caused by a taser. It Whistler had two, then Blade had at least eight that Deacon had been able to locate, and yet to make a single move save for the slow rise and fall of his chest. He had cuts and bruises all across his body that suggested that he beaten the Reapers by offering himself up to be drop-kicked from one end of the sewers to the other. Darling Nyssa was nowhere to be found at all.

"Blood will out," Deacon muttered to himself while he continued to watch Blade for signs of movement. Had Scud actually been stupid enough to call Deacon out on his anxiousness, Deacon did not think that he would have been able to stop himself from lunging at Scud and throttling the life right out of him, and the bullets that would have slammed into him a few seconds later be damned. Scud was very wisely making sure that there was a great deal of distance between them.

It was only because he was fucked without Blade, Deacon told himself savagely, and not in the way that the two of them had become so very good at over the ensuing months and years. He could not be a vampire again, not without anyone willing to turn him rather than merely killing him. He needed Blade, goddamn it, and Blade had come to find him useful in his own way. That was the basis of it; that was all.

Deacon remembered how he had told himself earlier that he could walk away any time that he wanted to and only just restrained himself from kicking Whistler in the head. They both probably would have been the better for it.

Whistler moaned and shifted finally, as if he had somehow picked up the nature of Deacon's thoughts and needed to give some kind of response even though he was still too disoriented to flip Deacon off. The old man blinked slowly and sat up, putting one of his hands against the burn marks on the side of his neck. Whistler's eyes found Deacon almost immediately, even though he had been awake for only a few seconds, and the look within them was not friendly. Imagine that. Someone needed to pull Whistler to the side and tell him that he was going to get boring if he continued to be so predictable, and no one wanted that.

"Morning, beautiful," Deacon said in response to Whistler's bleary glare. Whatever else he might be feeling, it did not show in his voice. Standing on the outside and listening to that voice, he would have been more than happy to punch himself in the face. Whistler looked as if only his own aches and pains were keeping him from leaping up and doing just that. "Coffee maker's broken, sorry."

Whistler scowled at him for a moment before his mind caught up with the rest of him and he remembered whatever it was that had caused Blade and himself to be brought here in the first place. "Son of a bitch!" he exploded, and lurched back up to his feet. Deacon did not know if Whistler was referring to him specifically, but it seemed as good a presumption as any.

Whistler wobbled for a few seconds, as if his legs had to have a conference before they decided whether or not they were going to hold him up, and staggered over to Blade as soon as the answer came back in the affirmative. Deacon could not shake the feeling that he was an imposer on an intimate family scene as Whistler knelt beside Blade and tried unsuccessfully for several seconds to wake him. He stubbornly continued to watch, aware all the while that Scud was watching him in turn. There was a great deal of calculation in that stare.

'If only you knew what you were getting into,' Deacon thought disdainfully in Scud's direction as he watched Whistler rise to his feet again. He was not so far gone that he could not still go Machiavellian on some puppy's ass.

"What happened?" Whistler demanded as he stalked towards Deacon and Scud once more. Though he directed the question mostly towards Scud, his glare was all for Deacon. Whistler's eyes widened as he caught sight of the bloody hole in Scud's shoulder. It was still weeping sluggishly, though the bullet had passed cleanly enough that it didn't look as if Scud was going to die of blood loss any time soon.

Just once, Deacon wished that the universe would cut him a fucking break.

Scud's face twisted in pain that he probably did not have to feign and answered, "Deac here shot me."

Whistler's head snapped around in Deacon's direction. Deacon shrugged. "Damn right I did." Most of his attention was still being drawn towards Blade, who still was not moving, and he could really give a shit about what Whistler or Scud thought about him then. "You ever meet someone who just had one of those faces that you want to smack?" In the meantime, he took a peek around at their surroundings while he still could. It was chill and artificial, all smooth, clear plastic right down to the floor itself, with a fountain filled with real blood. Ostentation plus a desperate desire to prove that Damaskinos could still compete with the modern world. Deacon was not sure how he would even use that information, except that retreating back to his old practice of observing and interpreting was keeping his mind away from a contemplation of how bad their situation actually was.

"Why?" To Whistler's credit, he sounded as if he genuinely wanted to know. There was that one point of amusement in the whole affair, at least.

Deacon could see Scud winding himself up to tell the story and knew damned well that Whistler would believe it, too, because that was what the old bastard wanted to see. He remained perfectly still, glaring hard at Scud, as Scud said, "There's been a mole for months, man, ever since we came to Romania. Blade just wanted to give him room to hang himself. Deac's the one who let the bloodsuckers in."

Lies were made convincing by two things: just enough connection to the truth to continue to give them flavor, and enough psychological awareness of the person being lied to to tailor the story to what they wanted to hear. Deacon swore inwardly as he admitted to himself that, fine, Scud at the very least had that much talent to call his own. Whistler's head snapped around in Deacon's direction. "You son of a bitch," he growled before he lunged towards Deacon, sounding nearly gleeful. Deacon just bet that he was. If Blade was merely letting Deacon spin himself out before he was truly caught, then Whistler didn't have to admit that Deacon had an actual niche within the operation, much as he frequently didn't like it much more than Whistler did, didn't have to admit that Blade was fucking him just because he liked fucking him, didn't have to cope with or change a single goddamned thing.

Deacon, who had spent the previous two years trying to find his balance again, had very little patience for Whistler now that the world was tilting on its axis again. He ducked as Whistler took a swing at him, spun back around, and planted his fist hard into the old man's mouth. It was more force than he knew himself to be capable of; it nearly split the skin over his knuckles. It was still all that Deacon could do not to lunge forward and do it again, and save some for Scud as well.

While Whistler was stumbling back and getting his bearings back, Blade finally began to stir and wake up. Deacon had to fight back an urge to put his boot in Blade's side purely for putting him into this situation in the first place. As if he was reading Deacon's thoughts, Blade raised himself onto his hands and locked eyes with Deacon for a moment before his gaze moved on to take in the rest of the room, noting all of the fixtures that Deacon himself had observed only a few moments before. As always, Deacon could read anything or nothing into Blade at the same moment and was left to find his own footing.

Deacon blew all of the air in his lungs out on a frustrated sigh and said only, "I tried." He did not know how he had even come to feel that he needed to justify himself that much, and would not consider it a right well spent until he had managed to kill something.

Blade favored him with a nod of acknowledgment so slight that Deacon would have missed it if he had not already been looking, making Deacon want to put his fist into something even harder. "What happened?" he asked Whistler.

Whistler's humorless snort said that Blade should not have needed to ask that question in the first place. "Your pet turned on you," he said. "He's your man on the inside." Deacon, his arms folded over his chest, said nothing, but narrowed his eyes. "He must have let them know where we were going to be hunting."

"I managed to get myself attacked, too," Deacon said flatly. "I'm that much of a criminal mastermind."

"Couldn't help but notice that you didn't get bit that deeply, sunshine," Whistler snapped back at him. "Just deep enough to put you back on the road to your old stomping grounds."

It would have been very plausible, to anyone who had not been there and felt the burn of the vampire's fangs in his arm. They had meant to kill him, not to let him run with the wolf pack again. Deacon stayed still and let no betraying expression flick across his face. He thought of the cold way that the needle had bit his skin when Blade had administered the cure again. It was closer than he had managed to get to vampirism in two years, and it was gone in less time than it had taken to blink.

"It could have been any member of the Blood Pack," Blade grunted, which was not an answer at all. Scud relaxed slightly, though Deacon noticed that Scud continued to watch him closely, waiting for Deacon to begin making his accusations. Let the kid sweat. Deacon had bigger things to deal with. Whistler, meanwhile, had made a frustrated noise, as if Blade was now being so unconscionably stupid that Whistler did not know how to deal with him any longer. "Where are we?"

"Damaskinos's lair," Deacon answered. "Pretty deep, too." Whistler's look said that he was unsurprised to learn that Deacon could get his bearings in a supposedly unfamiliar environment so quickly.

"Everything's gone, B," Scud said. "The entire lab. They smashed everything."

Fuck. Deacon had not been conscious for that part. He noted that Scud's voice was subdued, nearly apologetic. It was a little late for that reaction, in Deacon's opinion. You did not get to change sides just because it was suddenly your blood that was being splashed across the floor.

Blade's face remained expressionless in the face of Scud's stumbling explanation. Deacon exhaled slowly, aware all the while that Whistler was continuing to glare at him. The old man even looked wounded, as if he was at a genuine loess now that his last-ditch effort to pry Blade away from Frost's influence had failed. As if Deacon could possibly influence Blade in any way that Blade didn't want to be influenced. As if Blade would not have dealt with Deacon swiftly and surely if he had ever really thought that Deacon was trying to betray him.

"They've been lying since Day One," Whistler went on, though he still cut a glance in Deacon's direction suggesting that he had very clear ideas of where the lies had originated. "The Reaper strain didn't evolve. It was designed."

Funny. That was the exact same thing that Deacon had said two days before upon first learning about Nomak. He raised his eyes and met Blade's for a moment. In response to Blade's questioning look, Deacon lifted his shoulders into a shrug and said, "We haven't exactly been chatting over tea, stud."

"How do you know that?" Blade asked Whistler after Deacon proved himself to be immune to the powers of Blade's glare.

"Nomak told me," Whistler said. The arrogance had bled out of him, and now he sounded genuinely confused. "He let me live."

"That's very generous of him," a calm, cultured voice rang out. Deacon recognized Damaskinos's voice immediately even though he had heard no sound of them entering. He was not shocked to see that Reinhardt was with him. Nyssa, however, was something of a shock. Deacon had thought that she was starting to wake up, too. It was a shock to Deacon, this ability to actually pass moral judgment on someone, but he was so angry that he did not have time to do the human lament. He stared hard at Nyssa instead while she looked either at the ground or her father as a way to avoid having to look either Deacon or Blade in the eye.

"I've allowed you to live this long because I thought that you should see what you were protecting," Damaskinos continued. He did not seem to realize that there were layers of conflict occurring between Blade, Nyssa, and Blade. Outside of her presence as a beautiful ornament, Damaskinos did not seem to realize that his daughter was there at all.

Damaskinos gestured to one of the silent guards standing above their heads, and a large rectangle of space began to open up in the floor. A structure that reminded Deacon terribly of the sort of kiosk that could be found at most malls began to rise from the opened floor. Deacon doubted that any kiosk would sell these wares to bored teenagers, however. Rather than cheap sunglasses or purses shaped like guitars, the kiosk was stocked with dozens or hundreds of embryos in various stages of development, each one floating peacefully in its own jar of amniotic fluid while hooked up to dozens of different monitors in the center of the kiosk. Deacon somehow did not think that they were growing up to become bouncing human babies.

Nyssa was staring at the display in open horror, as if she had never seen anything like it before. As much as Deacon felt no sympathy for her in her predicament, he did not think that she was faking it.

Damaskinos, rather than appearing horrified as Nyssa did, wore an expression of soft pride as he stared at the large display of fetuses frozen in time. Deacon, who prided himself on having seen so much that it was impossible to turn his stomach, still did not care for that look.

"For years, I've struggled to rid our race of any hereditary weaknesses," Damaskinos began, casting a loving glance across Nyssa as she did so. Nyssa must have taken after her mother, because her daddy had a powerful amount of ugly going for him. Damaskinos's next glance was for Deacon, letting him know perfectly well that Damaskinos considered anything less than a pureblood to be one of the most glaring genetic weaknesses of all. Deacon glanced up once at the guards and decided that he could contain his powerful urge to flip Damaskinos the bird until later.

"Recombining DNA was simply the next logical step," Damaskinos continued. The loving look that he had bestowed upon Nyssa was now being given to the fetuses themselves. "Nomak was the first-a failure-but in time there will be a new pure race, begotten from my own flesh. Immune to silver, garlic, and even sunlight."

Deacon brought his hands together in a series of slow, mocking claps. It was the loudest sound in the room, and everyone save for Blade seemed startled to hear it. "Congratulations," Deacon drawled, ignoring the piercing, deadly stare that Damaskinos was fixing onto him even as it was next to impossible to forget the guns all around him, or the fact that he could be riddled with bullets with a single impatient gesture. "You are one step away from either writing Mein Kamf or fucking your own daughter. That's a legacy to be proud of, right there." In the shocked silence that followed, Deacon flashed a grin and jutted his thumb out in Reinhardt's direction. "Attempts to purify a race always seem to wind up with inbred albinos like that, or haven't you noticed?"

Reinhardt growled and began to lunge forward, only to be stopped by a sharp "Reinhardt!" from Damaskinos. Wearing a sulky expression that promised that the dispute was not even close to over yet, Reinhardt fell back into line.

"Spoken exactly as I would expect of a whore of impure blood," Damaskinos continued smoothly. Deacon felt himself blanch and began to step forward himself, before he remembered where he was and stepped back of his own accord. Maybe he was and maybe he wasn't, but he did not need a master yanking on his leash in order to moderate his own behavior.

There was a bizarre expression on Whistler's face as he watched Deacon step back. It took Deacon several seconds to realize what the expression meant, and when he did he was not sure that he believed it. It looked as if Whistler was, very much against his will, even impressed by what Deacon had done, or not done.

"I got a question, you lying son of a bitch," Whistler told Damaskinos. "You want to tell me how your lab rat got this?" He hurled something that looked like a ring at Damaskinos's feet, the kind of gold and gemstone monstrosity that was usually worn by frat brothers and football stars. Damaskinos ignored it, but Nyssa knelt down and picked it up, slowly and as if she thought that it would bite her. She looked as if she was about to fall over.

"I thought that it was obvious by now," Damaskinos continued without missing a beat. "I gave it to him, from father to son."

Nyssa's hand clenched shut around the ring. She stared up at her father as if he had just knocked the entire world out from under her and she did not even know how she was still standing before she straightened and rushed from the room. Damaskinos looked after her for a moment in a fair facsimile of concern before he followed after her, albeit it at a far more sedate pace. Several of the guards who had previously been standing above their heads began to make their way down to the lower level. Deacon figured that they wanted to see whatever show was coming up next at a much closer level.

Though Reinhardt was still incredibly pale, there were now twin points of color, product of a deep anger, standing up high on his cheeks. "I thought that he would never leave," he growled, slinging his rifle down from his shoulder. He fired a bullet into Blade's knee. Blade let out a short, snarling cry of pain and dropped down to the floor. Whistler and Deacon lunged towards him as one animal. Whistler became the recipient of a rifle butt directly to his mouth for his trouble, while Reinhardt subdued Deacon by quickly bringing the rifle around to bear on him. Deacon had a feeling that the only thing that kept him from being riddled with bullets then and there was because Reinhardt did not want to damage the merchandise quite yet. It was beginning to get tiresome, being that popular. "The wolf has lain with the sheep long enough," Reinhardt panted, staring hard at Deacon.

From the ground Blade growled, in the dangerous voice that he used rarely, but that still made Deacon and Whistler both perk up and pay attention, "Reinhardt, you can kiss your ass goodbye." He detonated the explosive, and Deacon quickly turned his face to the side to avoid being sprayed with flesh in case Blade had a fit of pique and decided not to adhere to the original plan after all.

The explosive conspicuously did not go off, and the air felt as if it had received a blow. Whistler in particular looked as if all of the good sense had been knocked right out of his head. That look only deepened when Scud began to giggle.

"Last test, kid," Deacon said in a low voice. "You just failed." Scud did not hear him.

"Oh," Scud said, giggling so hard that he could barely speak. "Oh, oh, Blade, man. I'm sorry, but you're wasting your time. It was never supposed to explode. It was only supposed to make you feel like you were in control." Deacon locked eyes with Blade over Scud's shoulder and took a step backwards. Whistler was the only one who noticed that he did it, and he was hardly in any position to pull Deacon to the side and ask him what was going on.

"Thought you had me on a pretty short leash, didn't you, jefe?" Reinhardt said, nearly sneering. He pulled the explosive from the back of his head with a grunt of pain and a few drops of blood and tossed it to Scud. Scud caught it from the air with an easy grin.

"See this?" Scud asked Blade before he jerked his lower lip down to show the place where a glyph had been tattooed into the inner flesh. "I'm one of Damaskinos's familiars. They needed you here to control Nomak, and so Damaskinos can further his project. Ever since you and Deac were in Russia, Whistler was just bait to get you here."

While Scud was speaking, Reinhardt took Whistler and began roughly handcuffing his wrists behind his back. Deacon started to step forward against his own better instincts, only to be halted by one of the guards thrusting a gun into his face. When Reinhardt finished with Whistler and moved to cuff Deacon, he grinned at him first. "You and I are going to party before this is over," Reinhardt snarled at him.

"Looking forward to it, big boy," Deacon answered evenly, grunting a little as Reinhardt dug his thumb into his wounded forearm.

"Better watch that mouth of yours," Reinhardt said as he stepped away, "or I might have to knock all of your teeth out of it for you."

"He's your only weakness," Scud was continuing. "At the end of the day, you're just too human." He turned and backhanded Whistler hard across the face. Blade snarled and began to rise to his feet, only to have his wounded leg fail on him. Scud continued to Whistler, "You really think that they scoped out my security system? Mine? I let them in." Whistler was continuing to look as if someone had struck him in the head with a board. It would have been funny, had their situation not been so dire.

Scud looked over at Deacon, who smirked. "Don't think that you're going to hit me, kid," he warned Scud. "Not unless you want to lose that hand. You got plenty of time as a familiar ahead of you to start losing limbs." Deacon could not keep the sneer out of his voice as he pronounced the words 'familiar', and he raked his eyes slowly across Scud's shoulder. "You're getting off to a great start so far."

Scud glared, but Deacon could still see that he was unsettled and unable to completely shake off Deacon's words. "We'll see who's the bitch when it's all over," he snapped. "You're on the wrong side, man. You should have taken your chance to be turned again when you had it. You think that we're going to win this war? Three people?" Scud leaned in close, effectively destroying any concept of personal space between Deacon and himself. Deacon narrowed his eyes. "And you're supposed to be fucking smart, too. We're going to lose, and when that day comes I'd rather be someone's pet rather than someone's cattle."

"Lucky you," Deacon snapped. "I'm sure you're going to get the chance to be both."

Scud let out a contemptuous snort. "I'd still rather be me than you, pretty. What do you have to say to that?"

Blade was struggling against his bad leg, trying to force it to bear weight. There was a great deal of blood. "I think two things," he said in a voice ragged with pain and a rage that only momentary physical infirmity was keeping under control. "One, I've known from the very second that you turned on me. Two, do you thinking that I'm going to allow I any /I of my weapons to be faulty? I've been checking everything that you made for months."

"Duck your head," Deacon snapped at Whistler, and followed his own advice without waiting to see if the old man was going to do the same. There was a booming sound of the explosive going off, and then a rain of hot and I wet /I against the back of his neck. There was the best argument in the world for not betraying Blade, right there, and he had not even had to ask for it.

Deacon shook the worst of the mess formerly known as Scud from his hair and glanced back towards Blade again. What he saw there was a black rage, held in control by the weaknesses of the flesh and nothing else. God help anyone who happened to be standing in Blade's way after his knee knit back together enough to hold him again. Deacon's personal experience of the deity had been that of an angry kid holding a microscope over a cluster of ants on a sunny day, one of the ants ordinarily being him, but maybe someone else would get lucky and find mercy there. It would certainly be a fool's gamble to expect any from Blade right about now.

"I was just starting to like him," Whistler finally said once he had found his voice again, though Deacon did not miss the shocked glance that was slid his way. He did not even bother to lift his shoulders in response. No, he was not the traitor, no, he had never been the traitor, and it would be a cold day in hell before he justified himself to some hillbilly shitkicker who apparently had one whopping hell of a learning disability, if it was taking him this long to get with the program.

Reinhardt himself was staring at the place where Scud had been with a nearly shocked expression, as if he could not believe that Blade would actually do that to one of his own. Deacon would have thought that Blade's deep disgust when it came to familiars would have been well known by now. "Take him down!" Reinhardt finally snapped, and Damaskinos's familiars moved in, tasering Blade with enough juice to kill a normal human with voltage to spare. It was just enough to subdue a wounded Daywalker. Whistler made a strangled noise as he watched and leapt forward, only to receive a casual backhand from Reinhardt. Casual from that well of force still meant that Whistler staggered back so hard that he nearly fell. While he was still reeling, Reinhardt seized Deacon by his cuffs and, when Deacon responded by struggling, twisted his arms up behind his back so hard that Deacon could either go limp or cope with a pair of broken wrists. "'Bout time we get this part started, what do you think?" he breathed into Deacon's face.

"Long past," Deacon agreed before he drove the top of his head forward and into Reinhardt's nose as hard as he could. There was a great, satisfying cracking noise of breaking cartilage as Reinhardt jerked back and snarled. A pleased smile found room to creep across Deacon's face; it did not fade even as Reinhardt struck him so hard that the world went black around the edges.

"Let's go," Reinhardt growled as he seized both Whistler and Deacon by the backs of their necks in order to drag them off. Deacon tasted his own blood in his mouth, sour with adrenaline.

---

Blade was hardly conscious, his body still humming with the amount of electricity that had been poured into it, but he still made note of every detail around him. Part of this was the training that Whistler had administered to him some twenty years before. Part of it was that, in his blood-deprived and nearly feverish state, every living thing was potential food, and so he could not help but notice them.

Humans dragged him into the lab, as he could not walk on his own and would not have allowed himself to be led even if he had been able. Familiars. Blade's lip would have curled, but they were so close, and the blood that he could both hear and smell was so tantalizingly sweet… One of the familiars accidentally allowed his arm to brush near Blade's face. Blade jerked his head away so hard that he nearly gave himself whiplash.

Kounen, standing at a podium a few yards away, smiled to see the gesture. As the familiars continued to drag Blade towards a stainless steel bed that looked as if it had been made for vivisection, and vivisection for the pleasure of it far more than for any scientific benefit, Kounen pressed a few buttons on his podium. Spikes leapt out from the bed and were then quickly retracted. Kounen's smile said that this pleased him; Blade was going to kill him.

While Blade was stripped of his armor and then lowered, bare-chested, onto the bed with its spikes lowered, Kounen began to speak. His voice had a plummy, self-satisfied quality to it even though Blade could not see why, even though he could not see how Kounen or any other humans like him were anything other than parasites, lower than the humans who were legitimate prey and needed protecting, lower than even the predatory vampires, who at the very least came by their kills through their own strength.

"We're going to harvest your blood," Kounen told Blade in that voice that made Blade want to reach out and break his neck right then and there. "Every drop of it. Then tissues, bone marrow, organs-everything. We'll find the missing key to creating Daywalkers."

Frost had tried to same thing, Blade wanted to tell Kounen. He had gotten off far, far more lightly than anyone within Damaskinos's compound was going to. If Kounen noticed any change in Blade's expression, however, it was not so troubling that he felt any need to make mention of it. At a few keystrokes from Kounen, a new set of spikes came up, piercing Blade through his wrists and thighs and allowing the blood to flow freely. Blade arched his back against the spikes that were keeping him pinned like a moth to a board and locked his jaw to keep himself from making a sound.

"Now, this might hurt a bit," Kounen finished, sounding terribly amused by his own wit.

Blade's mind was, meanwhile, occupied with other things beyond even the pain. Everyone else in the room with him was human, and as such could not smell the reek of pheromones that still clung to his skin, or else dismissed it as nothing other than stale fear-sweat. Blade was not quite human, however.

He waited.

End Part Eleven