Now

Gotham City

There are literally dozens of vampire races, varying in strengths, vulnerabilities and population. Some fly, others don't. Some are allergic to garlic, others aren't. Some number in several thousand, others in a few million, and sometimes a species may consist of a single specimen.

The LaMagrans, the descendants of the Assyrian King Dagon, were endowed with amazing regenerative abilities, the ability to climb the smoothest walls as if they stalked the ground and great strength. At one point these numbered in thousands, an influential caste with clout in government and society, but were whittled down to a handful by a specifically-targeted, bio-engineered plague. These vampires could be killed by silver through the brain or the heart, severe mutilation, garlic or direct sunlight.

The Draculian vampires, the progeny of Prince Vlad Tapesh of Walachia, were never in great abundance. As a matter of fact there has been only one for the past hundred years, yet they were the most powerful species. During the daytime they were normal beings capable of venturing out into the sun, thought not perishable. Come nighttime, they were capable of shape shifting, flight, regeneration at a faster space than the LaMagrans and unparalleled power.

At this particular moment, one of the very last LaMagran vampires was locked in a fatal embrace with the very last Drculian vampire. Priest and Mina were plummeting from six stories high, and despite the fact that Mina was the more powerful being, Priest had the advantage for one simple reason;

The sun still reigned outside.

Priest's skin ached and itched all over, but he did not burn for being in the shadow of the surrounding buildings. He fought back the pain, holding on to Josephine, his bony finger tips digging into her flank, keeping her under him as the streets of Gotham came racing to meet them.

Mina had never fallen like this in her life, not in a weakened state such as the one she was in. And although she knew that no fall, no matter from which height could kill her, she knew and feared the pain that would come. Her last thought before impact was a passing realization that on top of the fall itself, her assailant was about to use her to break his own fall.

They sudden stop came as they crashed into a Bentley parked in front of the Novick building, collapsing the roof inward.

Neither moved for a few moments before Priest finally released his grasp, and then pushed himself up with a groan. The fall hurt him as well, and with silver burning its way through four spots of his body, he felt immense pain.

Priest looked down at Josephine, a halo of auburn hair surrounded a blood smeared face. She was unconscious and showed the full brunt of the fall.

"Was that as god for you as it was for me?" Growled Priest as he rolled away, "Next time, you get to be on top."

'Crap day to be a cop in Gotham.' Was what Detective Bullock said, and Commissioner Gordon had come to believe in during the past fifteen minutes.

For the better part on an hour, the bomb disposal unit had failed to deactivate the impeccable bomb parked in the middle of the city block. Having caught on to what was going to happen early on, they had managed to evacuate the city block, a move that would cost the city millions of dollars from business lost, regardless of whether or not the bomb went off, but it would spare thousands of lives. And so it was, Gotham was seconds away from being the site of a successful terrorist attack.

And that was when all the policemen standing behind the cordon saw two bodies fly out of a window and come crashing down onto a parked car.

The cigar fell from Bullock's lips. The uniformed policemen exchanged bewildered looks as Gordon squinted his eyes, to make sure he could see the wreked car up ahead.

"What the hell was that?" wondered the Commissioner aloud.

"Erm.."

"I thought we evacuated the whole goddamn block!" said Gordon as he tried to get past the barricade. Bullock was quick to grab him by the shoulders, and another policeman joined in the effort to restrain him.

"For christ's sake, Jim! They're already dead! The bomb'll blow any second now."

Gordon persisted in his attempt, but quickly relented. Bullock let go of him and everyone waited for the bomb to blow, but nothing happened.

A minute passed while nothing happened, and the fretful anticipation was replaced by confusion.

"What's going on?" asked Gordon the bomb disposal unit leader.

"I…I don't know, sir." Said the specialist, "The clock reached zero forty seconds ago."

"Then why the hell didn't the bomb go off?" asked Bullock.

"I don't know, maybe it's a delayed explosion."

"A delayed explosion? With a timed bomb?"

The specialist was at a loss for what to say. There was unrest in the crowd, they had prepared themselves for something horrible, and did not know how to react to a lack of it.

"Clear a way for me." Said Gordon and got into a patrol car. The policemen parted the barricade as Bullock got into the passenger seat.

The drive felt a million years long. Once they arrived at where the van was parked, Gordon and Bullock got out of the car, leaving the engine running. They took a peak into the van, careful not to touch it. The timer had reached zero.

"Well, that was a lucky break." Mumbled Bullock, "Guess they didn't wire the timer right, huh?"

Gordon didn't respond. He went to the back of the van and reached for the handle.

"Jim, Wait!" cried Bullock as he failed to stop the commissioner. The backdoor of the van opened to no results.

"The detonator isn't even armed." Said Gordon, looking with awe at the impressively complex wiring going in and out of the dozens of bricks of plastic explosives. So much power for destruction, rendered inert by a simple oversight.

And then something else caught his attention as Bullock stood to his side, a little brown powder on the matting. He touched it with his finger and raised it to his nose, took a whiff, then cautiously tasted it.

"What is it?"

With continued disregard for the risks he was taking, Gordon ripped one of the bricks out of place, then tore the cardboard wrapping off. The brown powder spilled onto the asphalt, Gordon dropped the brick.

"Alright, what's going on?"

"It's brown sugar." Mumbled Gordon.

"What?"

Gordon ran across the street toward the ruined Bently. He found a single body, a siren haired woman of her thirties in a dark steel green suit. Her body was shattered, one of her legs was bent in a way that it shouldn't.

"Oh, Jesus…." Muttered Bullock, "Where's the other one?"

"nnnghhgh…"

Bullock's jaw dropped at the unexpected sign of life. Gordon took his radio off of his belt and raised it to his mouth, pressing the button,

"I need an ambulance over here. We have one injured woman in serious condition."

"What abut the bomb, sir?"

"There is no bomb. Now get me that ambulance."

"What the hell?" muttered Lieutenant Cavanaugh as he spotted what had happened of that area of downtown Gotham, an entire city block evacuated and barricaded. He reached for the radio to put in a call for police headquarters. Speaking his call sign and requesting to inquire as to what was happening.

"Put down the Radio, Lieutenant." Said the 'Commissioner' as he sat next to him in the cockpit."

"Sir, there's something serious going. You should be down there!"

"No, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be." Said 'Gordon', "Put down that radio, it's useless, it has been dead since the moment we got on."

As Cavanaugh wondered what had gotten into the commissioner, there was a pair of metallic clicks. He looked over his shoulder to see the two other passengers holding one gun each, aimed at his head.

"Jesus… Who the hell are you people?"

"We're not people who want to kill you, but we do a lot of things we don't want to."

"What do you want?"

"Get us as close to the Novick Building as you can."

"Is… Is she dead?" asked Lana, looking down at Mona's motionless figure that lay on the elevator floor amid shards of shattered mirrors, as Lucy frankly pressed the elevator button. The elevator started ascended, the smooth sound was interrupted by a distant gunshot in the distance.

Mona opened her eyes slowly.

"Guess not."

"Mona! Are you alright?"

"No…" Mona said painfully, "The bullet… got me."

"Oh, god..."

"The bag… There's a plastic bottle."

Lucy rummaged through the bag as quick as she could, to find a small white and red plastic bottle labeled "Interfectum 600 mgs". Lucy opened it and tipped it toward her palm, trying to get a few pills out. Mona slapped Lucy's palm aside, knocking the pals away and took the bottle, then poured its contents generously into her mouth.

Mona got up to her knees with a groan and brushed the shards out of her hair, the painkillers were beginning to take effect.

"Where's Priest?" Mona growled as she took an assault rifle fitted with a grenade launcher out of the bag.

"He stayed behind."

"We have to get back to him."

"Are you kidding?" asked Lang, "He's got to be dead by now."

"You don't know Priest." Said Mona as she stuffed a piece of cloth under her vest over the bullet's entry wound to control the bleeding. As she looked casually at the elevator wall where there once was a mirror, something caught her attention. It was the bullet that was fired first that had torn Priest's hand to pieces and went on to strike the mirror and get lodged in the metal wall.

Mona pried the bullet out of the wall with her knife, and then inspected it in her palm.

"What is it?"

"Silver." Answered Mona, her voice filled a mix of sorrow, disappointment and rage, "Priest is-"

The elevator shook as in a seizure, and then came to a scratching halt.

The three women inside clung to the walls, and in a brief moment of silence that followed, Lang was about to inquire the obvious, and wonder why the elevator had stopped, but before she could, the elevator started moving again, in the wrong direction.

"What's happening?" asked Lang in panic as the elevator descended faster than it should. It was not the smooth, descent of a normally functioning elevator, but an unrelenting drop through the elevator sharp, accelerating with no bound toward the hard, merciless bottom.

"Grab onto Kroenen, both of you." Commanded Mona and then fired at the elevator's glass roof, shattering it. She flung her Machine gun's strap over her shoulder and then searched the bag with absolute clam, finally finding what she wanted.

Mona wrapped an arm around Kroenen, who in turn hung on to both Lucy and Lang, and Mona aimed the chrome plated gun in her hand up and as straight a she could before pulling the trigger.

A magnetic grapple traveled up the length of the elevator shaft as the elevator dropped, trailed by a thin yet powerful cable, finally clinging to the very top.

The elevator continued it's drop while the four remained in place. The sudden physical strain was hell on Mona's already injured arm, and she felt her grip loosening on Kroenen's torso.

"Christ! We're going to die!"

As the painkillers started doing their work, Mona managed to tighten her grip, and with a second pull on the trigger the built in motor started pulling them upward.

"We're going to die!"

"This grappling wire has never been tested for more than fur-fifty pounds." Mona said, her vision blurring, "That's fifty pounds more than our combined weight. It could snap at any second, but say one more word and I swear to god I'll drop you."

Priest staggered through the sewers. He'd taken refuge in them following his earlier stunt, getting in through a manhole under the Bentley he'd landed on. The thrill of getting even with Josephine was gone, the pain in his hand, thigh, chest and belly remained. The silver inflicted wounds would take longer than usual to heal.

Priest dropped to his knees, folded his jacket and lodged it between his teeth. Priest stabbed his hand with his knife, scraping at the silver burned flesh. He bit down hard and winced, feeling relief as the acid burin-like sensation was replaced with conventional pain. As soon as he was done with it, he did it again to the wound in his thigh, a process twice as painful, but nothing compared to what came last.

The sewers echoed with his groans as he drove the knife into his stomach, the pain was unbearable. He pulled the jacket from his mouth, dropped to his hands and emptied out his stomach onto an unsuspecting rat. Amid the fresh blood, raw meat and Mexican chili was a silver bullet.

Priest felt good to be rid of it, but it wasn't god enough. Aside from the wound resulting from the bullet that only barely missed his heart, which could not be treated and had to be allowed to heal on its own, there was something else on his mind.

Mona was dead.

Somberly getting up and continuing his march, Priest reached into his pocket and took out a cell phone.

He dialed a number and held the phone to his ear, waiting.

"Priest?"

"Sayid. I'm out of the building."

" I can't hear you. Are you out of the building?"

"Yes. Yes. Yes."

"Are the rest with you?"

"Sayid, my battery is about to die. I'm alone. Can you pick me up?"

There was a moment of silence.

"Sayid?"

"Can you make it to the top of the Aparo building?"

"Yes."

"We'll pick you up there. Listen, where are the rest?"

"They're dead."

"Priest, speak louder, I have no idea what you just said."

"They're dead." Priest mumbled as he tossed the cell phone into the water and walked away, while Sayid still spoke on the other line.

"What happened? Priest, what happened to the others?"

A bullet grazed Mona's inner thigh as she shot her way across the top floor, while Kroenen did fast work of everyone trying to get the drop no her. Lucy and Lana Lang followed a distance behind, staying out of the crossfire as per her order.

Mona shot a single round into the shooter's head at twenty feet distance, and then pulled the lower trigger, firing a grenade at the gate at the end of the hall, blowing it to bits. Mona hi behind a column, loading the assault rifle with her last clip.

Perhaps it was the adrenaline, or the belief that a good friend of hers was dead, or perhaps it was the silver bullet that woke something in her. But to every last guard that crossed her path, she seemed an unstoppable juggernaut, a vengeful spirit unrelenting in her wrath.

Mona stepped out of her hiding spot, armed again. She gunned down the two men that came through the destroyed gate before dashing straight to it. It led to a dimly lit stairway, which lead to the roof.

Once at the top, Mona kicked the door open, not even stopping to see who was there, and that was a mistake. The butt of a rifle was smashed into her face, she was knocked off her feet and her rifle flew away from her hand.

The roof guard wasn't a man to take chances, as soon her back hit the ground, he aimed his own shotgun right at her head and pulled the trigger.

Mona went momentarily deaf with the sound of the shotgun pellets passing her by ear and hitting the ground as she got out of the way. A fragment of concrete cut her cheek.

As her ears rang, Mona produced her knife and ram it through the guard's boot, pinning his foot to the ground, then kicked him in the knee knocking him down. Before his head even hit the ground, Mona caught him by the neck and gave it a quick snap.

It was over. This was the end of the line. Kroenen, Lucy and Lang joined her on the roof. Lucy said something that Mona could not hear.

"Before you say anything. I can't hear you!" Mona yelled.

Lucy kept shouting something at her, faster than she could read her lips.

"I. CAN'T. HEAR. YOUUUUU!"

Lucy started pointing behind her, so Mona turned around, and as sure as the bullet hole in her shoulder, the Gotham Police Helicopter was flying over edge. Shaun and Sayid tossed a rope ladder over the side, while O'Brien, disguised into the appearance of Commissioner Gordon, motioned for them to climb up.

"Lang!" yelled Mona, "You go first."

Lang did not need to be tolled twice, she eagerly climbed the rope as fast as she could, allowing Sayid and Shaun to help her up.

One by one, each climbed in, Mona getting in last. Lieutenant Cavanaugh was in utter horror as he saw the dubious characters climb in.

As Cavanaugh flew away in the direction he was instructed to fly toward, Lucy got behind his seat, and without any warning, placed both palms on his cheeks.

"Lady, what are you doing? Get your hands off of me!"

Her touch seemed to the Lieutenant as hot as a frying pan, memories raced through his mind, of his time in the military flight school, of flying over the Iraq during Desert Storm, of patrolling the skies of Gotham for the past eleven years. The world got darker and quieter, his heart raced as the flood of memories grew too powerful for him to withstand, and he drifted off to a coma.

"Eel, help me with this poor bastard." Said Lucy, loosing her light German accent and picking up a Jersey drawl, similar to Cavanaugh's accent.

O'Brien's unbuckled Cavanaugh as Lucy took over the wheel, and pulled him off the pilot's seat and placed him in the back while Lucy took over piloting the helicopter.

"Alright." Said Lang, "That's just weird. I want answer and I want them-"

Shaun seized Lang by the shoulders and pushed her onto the ground, pinning her under his body and placing a hand over her mouth while Sayid held her legs firmly.

Lang's eyes widened with renewed panic as she saw Mona loading a syringe

Lang tried to break fry as Mona pulled her arm to the side. Shaun simply shifted his weight to further restrain her movement. Lang tried to scream, but nothing could stop Mona from sticking the needle into her arm and pressing down the plunger.

The effect was instant. Lang went limp, drifting into a deep sleep.

"Christ, she's annoying." Muttered Shaun as he got off. He and Sayid pulled her to the corner and laid her comfortably.

"You have no idea," said Lucy.

In the front, O'Brien took off his toupee, glasses and fake moustache. He removed his necktie and unbuttoned his collar, all as his features stretched and shifted, growing younger, loosing Commissioner Gordon's likeness and regaining his own.

"Alright," said Lucy with glee, "Baltimore, here we come!"

"Wait," said Sayid, "You have to fly over the Aparo building first."

"Why?" asked Mona, "What's in the Aparo building?"

Priest stood in the on the roof, wearing a hooded jacket he'd lifted from an office store on his way up, watching the helicopter as it huvvered above, waiting for the rope ladder to drop.

The rope ladder wasn't what dropped; at least it wasn't the first to drop. A body was pushed over the side. Priest instinctively caught it. It was alive. It was the body of a man of fifty in a police uniform; his badge read "Lt. Cavanaugh".

The rope ladder dropped next. Priest lay the body on the roof, and then started climbing.

"Priest," said Mona as she helped him in, "You're alive!"

"Likewise." Said Priest, hiding his gladness.

"What, did you think I was dead?"

"Yeah! I cried, and vowed revenge, and everything!"

"Hey!" called Lucy, "I'm alive too, jackass!"

"Yes, you are!" said Priest, then acknowledged the people he knew were still alive, "Boys, good to see you."

"Hello."

"What's with the accent?" asked Priest.

"Heh. It'll fade away when the piloting experience does." Said Mona, "What happened to you?"

"Heh... You'll never believe who I threw out of a window..."

For everyone who was expecting an epic Mina Jekyll/Judas Priest slugfest, I'm sorry. you'll have to wait longer. Anyway, Hope you liked it, hope the last bit wasn't too much like an '80s movie.

R&R.

Next Chapter

The minutemen's actions makes a lot of people unhappy, both in the League and in the opposition.