XXXIV. Concatenation
That very afternoon, while Peter and Mary Jane helped Gwen experiment with her powers, Harry Osborn sat in his office at Oscorp. There were four televisions built into the office wall, and these were all tuned to different news stations. The computer at Harry's desk was logged onto a local news site, set to periodically refresh itself. He was waiting for any news at all that Spider-Man or one of his friends had been spotted and engaged by the mercenaries whose services he'd recently retained. There was nothing so far, though; that was disappointing.
The door to Harry's office was suddenly, violently flung open. Harry looked up to see a grim man walk into the room—a man carrying a submachine gun in one hand, and the limp form of an Oscorp security guard in the other. More curious than anything else, Harry got a good look at the newcomer who'd just barged into his office. He was in his thirties, maybe, with messy, black hair tied back by a headband. And he wore a long, black coat draped over black clothes, the most outstanding of which was his shirt—a black t-shirt with a big, white skull across the chest.
"Can I help you?" asked Harry.
"Are you Harry Osborn?" asked the man.
Harry pointed at the unconscious guard and said, "I guess that depends on what you want with Harry Osborn."
The man smiled and dropped the guard. He also lowered his gun. "Mr. Osborn, my name is Frank Castle. And I want to help you with your problems."
Harry quirked an eyebrow. "Another mercenary? Word must really get around when you put out a fifty million dollar bounty. Listen, Mr. Castle, I do appreciate the offer, but I've already hired—"
"No, Mr. Osborn, I don't think you understand." Castle crossed the room and put his gun on Harry's desk. Then he placed his hands on the desk and leaned over it, looking Harry in the eye. "I don't want you to hire me. I'm going to help you for free."
Harry was a little surprised at that—most of his life, most of the people around him had wanted his money. So this was a first. His answer was simple, just one word: "Why?"
"Because it's what I do. Some people call me 'the Punisher'—because I've made it my life's work to bring justice to criminals that the law can't touch. And these costumed clowns running around New York, they've ruined countless lives, not just yours." He paused for a moment and looked around Harry's posh office before continuing. "To be honest, Osborn, men like you—men with the resources to help themselves, to buy their own justice—aren't normally the sort of people I help. But the plain fact is, in this case, you're at the center of it all. Spider-Man… the Green Goblin… you're the poster-child for all of their victims."
Harry leaned back in his chair and thought over Castle's words for several seconds. Then he asked, "What happens if I say no?"
Castle answered with a short, hollow chuckle. "Who said I was asking your permission? But I do need to make one thing clear first: I don't work with criminal scum like Sable Manfredi and Sergei Kravinoff." He picked up his gun again and pointed it at Harry's chest. "So this is what happens now: you're going to take your cell phone out of your pocket, and you're going to call them up and tell them that they're fired."
"Are you insane!?" protested Harry. "I can't just—"
"You can, and you will," insisted Castle. "And don't bother calling your security office, by the way: they're having nap-time right now."
Shaken by this new turn of events, Harry slowly took out his phone and dialed Silver Sable. "Ms. Sable? Harry Osborn here. I… regret to inform you that I'm going to have to terminate our arrangement."
"What!? Who do you think you are, Osborn? You can't just back out of a contract like that!"
"Circumstances beyond my control have—"
"Fuck your circumstances! The Wild Pack's gonna deliver, and you're gonna pay up. End of story!" Sable cut the line.
Harry had beads of sweat forming on his brow now. "Well, that could've gone better."
"I take it she wasn't thrilled?" said Castle.
"No, she wasn't," said Harry, glaring.
"Good," said Castle. "Maybe that'll give Sable an excuse to get in my way. Then I can take her down too." Without another word, he turned and walked for the door.
As Castle was leaving, Harry called after him, "Don't forget, I need one of them alive—preferably Scarlet Spider! I need to learn the truth!"
Castle acknowledged Osborn's request by holding up his submachine gun and giving it a little wave; but he didn't look back, not even to spare Harry a glance over his shoulder.
• • •
That evening, just as the sun was going down, the spider-trio swung their way into Manhattan—and Peter got a cell-phone call from Felicia. "Cat?" he answered, still swinging from a web-line. "How did you get my number?"
"From Fury. Contacting you like this is so much easier, Spider! No more standing on rooftops and waving my arms like an idiot!"
"Uh… yeah, great," said Peter with minimal enthusiasm. He shifted his phone from his right hand to his left, so he could more easily spin web-lines and keep swinging. "So… what's up?"
"SHIELD has a little mission for us. Do you and the girls want to meet me at Avengers Tower?"
That gave Peter pause. "'Avengers Tower'? They've got a tower now?"
Felicia giggled. "Well it was the new Stark Tower; but they've kind of repurposed it."
Now Peter knew what she was talking about. It was the Stark building in the middle of Manhattan, the one powered by the big arc-reactor—which everybody in the city knew about, both because of Stark Industries' publicity machine, always touting the arc-reactor as the key to a green energy revolution amidst much hype and fanfare; and because that tower had been ground-zero for the Chitauri invasion and the Battle of Manhattan.
"Okay," said Peter, "we're on our way."
• • •
A short while later, the trio spotted Felicia on the roof of the newly-christened Avengers Tower. Where once, the name "STARK" had been splashed across the top of the building in big, gaudy letters, now only the "A" remained—cleaned up and repaired since the summer, of course, but Tony Stark had otherwise chosen to leave it that way. It was part memorial, part trophy—a commemoration of the Battle of Manhattan and the victory of the Avengers over Loki and his alien army.
Felicia was in costume and reclining on a deck-chair, legs crossed and tapping one set of clawed fingers impatiently on the arm-rest. "What took you so long?"
Peter was the first to land on the rooftop, followed shortly by Gwen and MJ. "Oh, you know what it's like," he quipped, "trying to hail a cab in this city."
"What's the rush, anyway?" asked Gwen.
Felicia produced a file-folder and said, "This." She opened the folder and took out a black-and-white picture of Blade. "I saw this guy in the park the other night. Look familiar?"
"Yeah," said Peter. "We saw him fighting in some kind of monster-mash melee on a security tape over at ESU."
Gwen nodded. "Looked like a pretty tough bastard, fighting a vampire and a werewolf at the same time."
"Wait, werewolf?" interrupted MJ. "Nobody said anything about a werewolf. Please tell me you're joking."
Felicia ignored her and continued, "According to SHIELD, this guy calls himself 'Blade'." She opened the folder and took out a dossier. "Real name Eric Brooks, born in London in 1929—guy looks good for an octogenarian—but he's been living in Detroit since the sixties. Where, apparently, he hunts vampires."
"What a coincidence," muttered Gwen. "We're hunting a vampire too."
"And if the one we're looking for really is Michael Morbius," said Peter, "then we've got to get to him and cure him before Mr. Buffy Van Helsing here can drive a stake through his heart."
"Exactly," said Felicia. "That's why Bruce gave me these." Here, she went over to a metal suitcase and opened it up, revealing a number of hypo-spray injectors and a dozen vials of Curtis Connors's adaptive anti-mutagen.
"'Bruce'?" echoed Peter. "You're on a first-name basis with Dr. Banner now? Wait, Dr. Banner is here!?"
"Oh; he lives here, I guess," said Felicia nonchalantly. "His apartment is even nicer than my mother's. I guess that's what happens when you make friends with Tony Stark and save the world."
"Well anyway, it looks like he was able to reproduce Doc Connors's formula," said Peter, "so that's something."
"Now we just need to figure out where the bad guys are," said MJ.
Felicia went back to the dossier and said, "SHIELD's got us covered there too. Their latest intelligence has Blade snooping around in Brooklyn Heights, looking at warehouses near the docks."
"Well then what are we waiting for?" said Gwen. "Let's go kick some monster ass." And in truth, she was equal parts eager for a fight and righteously angry at Michael. If Michael really had gone and used her research and Peter's blood to turn himself into a monster, she felt as if she owed him the thrashing of his life, if only to make herself feel better, given the part she'd played in bringing this little mad-science nightmare into being.
• • •
And so three spiders and a cat made their way south, towards the Brooklyn Bridge. But little did they know that they were being watched. High up on a rooftop, only a few blocks away from Avengers Tower, Silver Sable finally spotted her quarry through the sniper-scope of her high-powered rifle. She activated a wrist-comm and said, "Wild Pack, I've spotted the targets heading south on Park Avenue. Gear up; we're heading out. Kraven, do you have a visual?"
"Da, I see them," replied Kraven the Hunter. He was on another rooftop, some distance away, clinging to a flagpole with one paw-like hand and holding a walkie-talkie in the other. He peered into the night with yellow, catlike eyes, his gaze following the foursome as they swung between buildings on webs and grappling-lines. "I will be your eyes in the canopy of this steel jungle, and together we will hunt our prey to whatever ends—"
"Stow the poetry, Tarzan, and just keep hot on their tail," said Sable. "I want constant updates; we can't afford to lose them now, not if we want to make Osborn pay up. Sable out."
Kraven growled something impolite in Russian and then sprang off the side of the building. A short while later, he was running across the rooftops on all fours, bounding and leaping with super-human agility. Keeping up with Spider-Man and his allies would prove no challenge at all, since they weren't even aware that they were being hunted. His only concern lay in making sure that his pursuit went unnoticed for the time being. To that end, he remained in the shadows and tailed the Spider-Squad from a considerable distance, relying more on scent than sight to follow them.
Silver Sable, meanwhile, came down from her vantage point on the rooftop and joined her Wild Pack in their armored van down on the ground. Her mercenary underlings locked and loaded their weapons, itching for some action and the payday they'd been promised. Sable wasn't about to let them down, so she took it upon herself to stay in contact with Kraven and make sure he kept them in the loop.
The armored van peeled away from the curb and out into traffic, weaving between cars as it sped south in Kraven's wake.
• • •
When the Wild Pack van screamed past the alleyway where Frank Castle was hiding out, that was his cue to go to work. Sable was sloppy enough; the fact that she'd chosen to partner up with an attention-hound like Kraven the Hunter just made things ten times easier.
Castle was sitting in the driver's seat of his own heavily armed and armored Battle-Van—and he had some military-grade hardware stowed away behind him that would make Sable's Wild Pack and all their gear look like cheap plastic toys. "Showtime," he said, activating a voice recorder. As he pulled into traffic and sped up so that he could tail behind Sable's van, he said, "War journal, entry thirty-one-ten-twelve-alpha. In pursuit of secondary targets: Silver Sable and Kraven the Hunter. They are targets of opportunity, to be eliminated if circumstances permit. Primary objective: bring down Spider-Man, Scarlet Spider, Green Goblin, or any associated allies. Kill or capture… is irrelevant."
• • •
Blade's motorcycle came to a stop outside an old, abandoned church in Brooklyn Heights. Although the night was still young and the moon was full, this place was shrouded in darkness. Taller buildings on either side of the church grounds cast long shadows, blocking out the moonlight. The church building itself had a partly-collapsed roof and boards over most of the windows. Graffiti covered the outside of the building. The grounds were unkempt and strewn with rubbish.
"Sacred ground," Blade muttered to himself. "I'll see it cleansed of unholy filth once more." He got off the bike and crossed the threshold of the churchyard. Then he shouted, "Creature! I sense your presence! Show yourself!"
Out from around the side of the church, Man-Wolf prowled into view. "Hunter…" he growled. "You are… foolish to challenge me again…" Drool dripped from his maw, and he flexed his claws, as if eagerly anticipating the coming fight.
"Varcolac," said Blade, addressing his opponent with the Transylvanian word for a werewolf. "Your kind was wiped out long ago. I shall see to it that you join them!" He drew a pair of magnum pistols loaded with silver-and-wolfsbane bullets and shouted, "I was caught by surprise last time—but now I've come prepared!" He opened fire, and the fight was on.
The Man-Wolf rushed straight at Blade, snapping his jaws and swiping his claws. He made little effort to dodge any gunfire; consequentially, Blade managed to unload round after round right into Man-Wolf. With each hit, the silver bullets left a smoking, smoldering wound that caused Man-Wolf to stagger back… but he never faltered for more than the merest instant, and the wounds certainly didn't stop him. Both guns' magazines were soon empty, and Man-Wolf was upon Blade.
Blade dropped the guns and pulled his silver katana, just in time to deflect several furious strikes from Man-Wolf's claws. As they dueled, Blade could see Man-Wolf's wounds slowly closing. "Impossible—" he said between battle-cries and heavy breaths. "Silver—is supposed to be—your weakness!"
Man-Wolf answered with a deep-throated, growling laugh. "I am Man-Wolf! I wear the amulet! I have no weaknesses!" Then he lunged forward and wrapped both paw-like hands around Blade's neck, and he started to squeeze.
Blade gasped for breath, and he thought fast. Every legend concerning werewolves implied that either silver or wolfsbane could kill a werewolf, if it thrice pierced the heart… in a flash, he realized how stupid he'd been. He was on the verge of losing consciousness now, but he managed to keep a firm grip on his sword and plunged it into Man-Wolf's chest. Man-Wolf reared back and howled in agony, losing his grip on Blade. The silver katana was stuck in his ribcage now, the blade having pierced directly through his heart. He staggered back, whimpering like a wounded dog, before he finally succumbed and fell to the ground.
Blade struggled to his feet and limped his way over to Man-Wolf's fallen form. He pulled his sword cleanly out from the gaping chest-wound and flicked it a few times to get the blood off. Then he looked down and spotted the ruby around the creature's neck. "The Amulet of Lycaon," he whispered. He reached town to take the artifact… only to find that he couldn't remove it. It seemed to be bound firmly to the Man-Wolf, fixed into the flesh just above his sternum. "Very well," said Blade. "I'll just have to cut it out of you…"
"Wouldn't that be cruelty to animals?" asked Spider-Man. He and his squad had been drawn here by the sound of gunfire almost immediately; Peter landed on the ground in a spider-crouch, ready to spring on Blade at a moment's notice. MJ and Gwen descended from their own web-lines a moment later, putting up their fists in more traditional fighting stances. Then Felicia finally caught up to the others, reeling in her grappling-hook as she took up a position behind Peter.
"We're really going to have to work on our timing," said Felicia. "Either that, or you can make me some web-shooters sometime."
"Whoever heard of a cat with webs?" asked MJ.
"Whoever heard of a spider with a tush as cute as your boyfriend's?" countered Felicia, who directed a leering gaze at Peter.
"Touché," said MJ.
"I'm gonna slap you both," said Gwen.
"Lord, I miss being a solo act…" muttered Peter.
Blade interrupted their banter with an angry snarl. "You are foolish children!" he roared. "You have no business being here! Leave this place at once, before you get hurt!"
Gwen cracked her knuckles and said, "Look who's talking." Then she pointed her fingers at Blade and spun a dense mass of webs all over him, effectively pasting him to the ground. He roared and struggled, but he wasn't anywhere near strong enough to break through Gwen's organic webbing. "That's one down," she said.
"…And another one getting back up," said MJ. She pointed at the fallen form of the Man-Wolf, who was already healing from the sword-wound and starting to rise. "So… not joking about the werewolf, huh?"
"Apparently not," said Peter. "Red, Sparks, same trick!" Peter, MJ, and Gwen all fired webs, likewise gluing Man-Wolf to the ground. The werewolf snarled and pulled against the webs, straining to tear through them, and it looked like he was making some headway cutting himself free with his claws. And so, as an added measure, Mary Jane decided to further subdue the Man-Wolf with a burst of impact-webbing. She fired a little web-ball that exploded into a sticky mass that completely covered the werewolf and hid him from view. He was still struggling under the blanket of white glue, but it looked as if this would hold him for a bit longer, at least.
"Good thinking," commented Peter.
Gwen pointed at the old church. "Think Mikey's in there?"
"We won't know until we look," said Felicia.
And that was when Silver Sable's armored van appeared. It came screeching to a halt on the street behind them, with Kraven the Hunter clinging to the vehicle's roof. Kraven sprang twenty feet into the air, roared like a lion, and came crashing to the ground a short distance away from our heroes. "Spider-Man!" he yelled. "Our long-awaited rematch… begins now!"
At the same time, Silver Sable and her Wild Pack exited the van, fanning out into a wall of heavily armed and chrome-armored soldiers-of-fortune. They pointed their guns at the Spider-Squad, and Sable said, "Give yourselves up, come quietly, and no one gets hurt! Resist… and we open fire!"
Peter let his head fall into an open palm. "Oh, for cryin' out loud… how many flippin' lunatics are we gonna have to take down tonight?!"
"Never mind them!" said Kraven. "We must fight! It is a matter of honor!"
"Kraven, that's not the plan!" said Sable. She looked at Spider-Man's allies nervously; they looked more than half ready to spring into a fistfight with her Wild Pack, and that wasn't what Sable wanted. She needed this to go down quickly and cleanly—even with all their firepower, they'd be at a disadvantage against four super-humans in a drawn-out battle.
Before anyone could say anything about Sable's plan, though, two things happened that changed everything. First, another armored van appeared behind Sable's—and it didn't slow down. It just plowed right into the side of Silver Sable's van, taking no damage itself but sending Sable's vehicle skidding on its side into a building wall. Then, from forward-mounted missile-tubes within the Punisher's Battle-Van, two small missiles launched out and streaked across the short distance to the other van, where they impacted and exploded—leaving Sable's vehicle, along with her entire backup arsenal, reduced to a smoking crater.
At the same time, Man-Wolf suddenly tore through MJ's impact-webbing and launched himself like an angry, toothy, clawing furball, right at the first living thing he saw—which happened to be Kraven the Hunter. So while Silver Sable and her Wild Pack stared, gaping in surprise and disappointment at the wreckage of their van, Kraven suddenly found himself locked in the most ferocious life-and-death battle he'd ever faced or imagined. Moreover, his own feline-enhanced DNA caused him to feel an intense antipathy for this canine monstrosity attacking him. It was more instinct than anything else, but he wanted nothing more than to tear this wolf-man apart with his own claws.
To make a long story short, Kraven was now having the time of his life and loving every violent second of it.
"In case you're counting, that makes at least a dozen 'flipping lunatics' so far tonight," said Felicia to Peter helpfully.
"Right; we need a new plan," said Peter.
Meanwhile, the Punisher leapt out of his Battle-Van, carrying an anti-tank rocket-launcher over his shoulder. He aimed this right at Silver Sable and fired; she shouted "MOVE!" and dodged the rocket-propelled grenade along with the members of her Wild Pack. The blast left another crater in the ground where she'd been standing; as she and her mercenaries coughed and rolled away and tried to regain their bearings, Castle dropped the bazooka, pulled out an assault-rifle, and fired a clean three-round burst into the head of one of the mercenaries, pulping it like an overripe melon.
"It's the fucking Punisher!" cried Sable. "Forget the spiders; take him down!" She flattened herself against the ground, lined up Castle's head in the sights of her heavy auto-sniper rifle, and started emptying the magazine of round after high-caliber round. The report from each shot was loud enough to be deafening to anyone nearby.
Castle calmly ducked back inside the Battle-Van again, peeking out only to return fire. He sprayed-and-prayed with his weapon set on full-auto, pausing from time to time to duck back from the Wild Packs' shots and reload.
Just about then, Blade finally managed to get his sword into the webbing holding him down. Now he was cutting himself free, and laughing in triumph as he did so. Peter saw this and started shouting orders. "Cat, take the gene-juice and go after Michael! Sparks, see if you can zap some sense into Kraven and Fido over there. Red, you're with me; punch anyone with a gun!"
The girls all gave shouts or nods of acknowledgement, and then the Spider-Squad split up to handle their assigned tasks. Felicia went chasing after Blade, into the church. Gwen leapt into the fray with Kraven and Man-Wolf. And Peter and MJ shot webs at the Wild Pack mercs, surprising them from behind.
One by one, either Peter or MJ stuck a web-line to the back of one of the Wild Pack, gave a sharp tug, and pulled the unfortunate soldier right off his feet and into one of their fists. Of the five remaining Wild Pack members, they disposed of three this way before the others noticed, and Silver Sable starting ordering them to shoot at Spider-Man and Scarlet Spider too. The spiders dodged the bullets and shot up into the air, disappearing from sight for a moment. Seconds later, nets of webbing caught the remaining two mercs by surprise and glued them helplessly to the ground.
"Not a bad idea," said Castle from within his van. He reached back for another piece of hardware, stepped out into the open, and said, "Here's my webbing." The device he carried over his shoulder was essentially a heavy net-gun: it fired a weighted titanium mesh net, and it was loaded with several rounds. The first of these, he shot at Silver Sable, and he scored a direct hit. She became completely entangled in the metal net. He grinned and walked over to her, resetting the net-launcher as he walked.
"You vicious bastard!" spat Sable. "You just murdered Powell! He had a family!"
"So did I, once upon a time," said Castle. "But they were killed. By the Maggia. Costa family, not Manfredi, but what difference does that make?" He knelt down next to Sable, drew out a pistol, and pointed it at her head. "You're all the same. You've worked for Silvermane all your life. Give me one good reason I shouldn't just end you right here."
Sable's eyes were wide open, pleading. "I'm not in the organization anymore! My father's in jail! I'm a legit mercenary now—!"
Castle snorted a laugh and said, "Just kidding. There's nothing you can say to me." His finger closed on the pistol-trigger, and in that same instant, he was yanked off his feet by webs from Spider-Man and Scarlet Spider. The shot went wide and the pistol flew out of his hand. Silver Sable, her life spared for the moment, heaved a sigh of relief.
But even as he hit the pavement hard and rolled to absorb the momentum, Castle was smiling and reaching for his net-launcher. Now it was on. It was time to dance with the spiders in the pale moonlight.
• • •
Felicia didn't like the idea of breaking into a building that she hadn't properly cased out. It went against her every instinct as a burglar. And this old place was downright creepy. She crept inside the front door and took a cautious look around. The inside was badly ruined. Only a few of the church's pews remained, and these were broken down and overturned, along with the font and altar. Blade was already recklessly dashing toward the back of the church, to the rectory and the bell-tower. Felicia ran after him.
In the space behind the altar, rickety wooden stairs ran up the walls all the way to the belfry in the main steeple; like the rest of the church, these were ancient and rotted away. Blade gave this no thought; sword drawn, he ascended the tower, taking two stairs at a time. Felicia followed behind. As she climbed, she noticed that some of the stairs were probably ready to give way under any weight at all. She avoided these with ease.
Blade wasn't so lucky: about two-thirds the way up the tower, he hit a bad stair and went crashing straight through. He lost is sword, which went clattering all the way back down to the floor, and he was left hanging from the broken staircase, holding himself up only by the strength of his own two arms. Felicia pranced up the stairwell past him and taunted, "Black Cat crossed your path…" She blew him a kiss as she sailed by.
Blade growled in frustration and strained to pull himself back up onto the stairs.
At the top of the tower, Felicia emerged through a trapdoor into the belfry, and she gasped at what she saw. A table had been set up like a surgeon's slab: resting on it was a woman with ash-white skin, pointed ears, and an upturned, batlike nose—a female vampire. "A woman?" whispered Felicia to herself. She crept over to where the vampiress appeared to be sleeping, and sure enough, she didn't respond at all to Felicia's presence.
"Yes," said a raspy, accented voice behind Felicia. Black Cat turned around to see Michael Morbius hanging upside-down from the ceiling, near the cluster of bells. He descended slowly, turning upright as he floated down to the floor. "My woman. Debra. My mate."
Felicia swallowed. "Are you… Michael?"
Michael's eyebrows rose. "You know who I am?"
"Yes!" said Felicia. She held up one of the injectors that she'd gotten from Dr. Banner and said, "I'm here to help! We can cure you!"
"Alas," said Michael, "you cannot." He walked past Felicia and leaned over Debra's unconscious form, gazing down lovingly at her mutated features. "My disease has progressed too far. If you try to make me human again, I shall surely die. It would be a matter of hours; maybe days, at the most."
Felicia pointed at Debra and said, "What have you done to her? Did you… did you bite her in the neck?"
Michael looked up and glared angrily. "This is not a fairy-tale!" he cried. "I have transformed her with a gene-altering serum… so that we might be together…"
"That's… kind of romantic, I guess," said Felicia, "but you still turned her into a monster for your own selfish reasons! Now you both have to feed on human blood to survive!"
At this point, Debra stirred. She let out a little yawn and woke up on the table. She sat up, opened her eyes—they were blood-red now, just like Michael's—and fixed them on Felicia. "That's not true," she said. "Don't you know anything about vampire bats? We can feed on anything… mammals, birds… if it's warm-blooded, it can sustain us."
"But… but you killed a girl," said Felicia to Michael.
Michael looked down in shame. "I was… newly transformed. Confused, and hungry. I… I did not know…"
"But he knows better now," said Debra, who walked over to Michael and put her arms around him. "I'm here now. I'm an expert on bats. I can teach him… we can find some place to live… some way to live, so that we don't have to hurt anyone else."
Michael looked into Debra's eyes and said, "You don't have my blood-disease. You could take the cure… you could be normal again…"
"I don't want to," said Debra. "This is… not just my life's work. It's everything I've ever dreamed of! And I have you…"
Blade appeared in the trapdoor, once again brandishing his sword. When he saw not one but two vampires, embracing in the moonlight, he howled with rage and sprang into the belfry. "Rrraagh! Die, vampire scum!"
In that moment, Felicia made a decision. She dropped the anti-mutagen injector and positioned herself between the lovers and the vampire-hunter. He swung his sword; she intercepted with her claws. Super-soldier reflexes disarmed him with ease; then she grabbed ahold of Blade, and super-soldier strength restrained him. "Go," she said to Michael and Debra. "Get out of here!"
Michael stared wonderingly at Felicia. Then he nodded. "I thank you."
"Come, my love," said Debra. She led Michael over to one of the openings in the side of the bell-tower. They both lifted their arms, revealing flaps of skin that resembled bat-wings; and then they lifted up off the ledge and sailed off into the night together.
"No!" cried Blade, struggling against Felicia's grip. "Why are you helping them!?"
"Because they don't want to hurt anybody!" said Felicia. "They just want to be left alone!"
Blade redoubled his efforts to wriggle free; finally, Felicia released her grip on him.
"I cannot simply let them go!" cried Blade. "I have made it my life's purpose to rid the world all vampires!"
"They're not even real vampires!" argued Felicia. "They're just a couple of mutated scientists."
"This isn't over," insisted Blade. "I will chase them down, and I will destroy them!"
Felicia answered, "In that case, you can believe me when I tell you this: I wish you all the worst of luck with that… which means that you'll never find them now."
Blade spat at Felicia's feet and muttered, "Foolish woman." Then he stalked back down from the bell-tower and went off into the night, to continue the hunt.