Disclaimer: I don't own Blade or any of its characters. I do Max, Xavier, Rev, and Cam, so no stealing!

Thanks to wannabanauthor! You rock!

Chapter 6: Family

Max bounded down the steps and walked towards the back room. Whistler was there, working on something for her and Blade with his old time music blaring through the sound system. He had a cigarette in one hand and a blowtorch in the other. Max could've laughed at the sight. Whistler, who could've been her grandfather – who really should've been a sweet, retired grandfather – was melting silver into bullets and stakes.

"Hey, Whistler," she greeted, walking over to him with a little bounce in her step. "Where's Blade?"

"Out, getting more juice from Daniel," he replied, and she nodded.

Daniel was one of their handlers, who kept the supplies needed to make Blade's serum and the cure. The group didn't use the cure much, but they did come across a few people on the hunt that needed it every once and awhile so they made a stock and carried a little with them whenever when they went out. One of those people had been Cam.

Blade had been right when he thought the genius' database was going to get him in trouble. It did, and him and Max found him in a puddle of his own blood on the floor of his workshop a month ago. He lived long enough to joke about his situation, and tell them two very important things. That he regretted living his life the way he had, and that he had a younger brother in Detroit, Shen, who was a computer genius as well. Not to mention the fact that he knew all about Blade, and was compiling all the information he could on the vampire clans in his area.

Cam died in Max's arms. Even though she wasn't too fond of the man, particularly for his jibes and witty quips about her and her brother, that didn't stop her from crying when he died. Since Cam's death, Whistler had been hitting the streets when Blade and Max went hunting. Whistler was the one gathering information and, most of the time, it was total bullshit. The little family of three was pretty much flying blind.

"Let me ask you something, Whistler."

"Shoot."

"What's Blade's real name?"

"What?" he asked, stopping dead in his tracks to look at her as if she was crazy.

"What's his real name?" she repeated easily, ignoring his shock.

"Why do you care?" he asked impatiently, wiping his hands clean on a stray rag and walking away from her.

"Well, I've been with you guys for seven months now," she stated. "We're family, right?" Whistler looked over at her expectant face and smiled slightly.

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess you are," he replied, and she smiled at him. "This family's gone down hill," he added quickly, saving his image as a hard ass, and she rolled her eyes.

"Ha-fucking-ha, old man," she retorted bitterly. "Seriously! B hardly says anything to me besides the usual insults on the way I hunt. Speaking of which, I get the same shit from you."

"You get it because you deserve it," he told her simply, smirking as she growled in frustration.

"Back to the point," she gritted through her teeth, "I don't know anything about either of you except you like ashing vamps as much as I do! You guys know my story; it's only fair that I know yours, too! So, what are your stories?"

Whistler sighed and stopped what he was doing, setting his set of tools on the table. Again he looked at Max and she had an anxious and expectant look on her face. He wasn't sure if he should tell her the truth, but he'd told Karen after knowing her for about three days. Max had been with them for seven months, just like she said, and she was right. Both him and Blade knew all about her and she knew nothing about them. He hated that she was right, that it wasn't fair.

Damn girl.

"Fine," he caved with a sigh and walked back over to her. "I had a family once, a wife and daughter. A drifter came calling one night; turned out to be a vampire. He toyed with 'em first, made me decide what order he'd kill 'em in. I've been killing ever since."

"Oh, I'm sorry I brought it up," she said immediately, very sympathetic since she knew the feeling of losing family.

"Don't worry about, Max. I've told it before, I don't mind telling it again," he assured her quickly when he in fact did mind telling her; he didn't enjoy thinking about his family, much less talking about them.

"And you found Blade, took him in and trained him, right? You made his serum?"

"Pretty much."

"And what about him?" Whistler groaned inwardly. When was she going to stop?

"I think I'll leave it up to him to tell you or not," he told her, silently warning her to not say anything else.

"He won't tell me shit and you know it, Whistler, so spill!" she argued harshly. Whistler stared at her and she sighed, running a hand through her hair. "All I want is to know his real name," she said calmly.

"Why do you care so much?" he asked curiously, looking at her in a new light.

"I don't know. I just do," she said with a shrug, diverting her eyes to the floor. He noticed the way she was tapping her foot behind her and biting the inside of her cheek. "Look," she began with a sigh, "I already know about how he became the Daywalker. Every vampire is told that story, and it's really not the kind you forget so easily."

Whistler still didn't say anything. He didn't even look at her! He just grabbed his favorite shotgun and started polishing it.

"Whistler, come on, man!" she shouted exasperatedly, hitting her palms on the table. Her actions were so amusing to him that he couldn't help but laugh a little. "He was born, right, so he must have been given a normal, human name. Blade is an alias. So, what his real name? Give it up, Whistler," she demanded calmly, leaning on the table with both hands.

"Eric," he told her with a sigh and a hung head.

"'Eric'?" she echoed with a raised eyebrow.

"Eric Brooks," he elaborated.

"'Eric Brooks'," she repeated, letting the name roll off her tongue. "Sounds like the kind of name a lawyer would have or something."

"Wrong kind of bloodsucker, Max," he joked tonelessly.

"Damn straight!"

P.S.: Three pages total.