Disclaimer: I don't own Blade or any of its characters. I do Max, Xavier, Rev, and Cam, so no stealing!
Chapter 16: The Great Escape
In the hallway of the station, the group of three moved into the neighboring corridor. Cumberland and Hale had just rounded the corner when they spotted the trio. They reached for their weapons, but King was quicker and fired into the room behind him. Max proceeded to pull out a grenade secured to a bandoleer, and tossed it through the doorway. An explosion rocked the interrogation room, filling the corridor with smoke, and knocking back both Cumberland and Hale.
King looked over at Blade, eyebrows raised, a smile on his face, and arms wide open. He was looking for approval, but Blade just shook his head and walked off in the opposite direction. King's arms dropped to his side as he frowned and looked at Max. She just shrugged, ruffled his hair, and took off after Blade. King sighed and put his gun back in his holster, and headed in the opposite direction. Each of the three hunters were fighting the weak and pathetic cops that came after them, knocking them into and, in Blade's case, through walls.
They different hunters continued down their separate corridors until they met up when the halls joined. They were suddenly attacked from behind and while Blade was finishing off the last one, King turned and saw Abby engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a half-dozen uniformed officers. Three of them were already down and, in seconds, she finished off the other three. Much like Max, Abby never needed much help when it came to kicking ass against doughboy cops.
"WHISTLER!" King shouted. That grabbed Blade's stunned attention as he knocked out his last cop. Max walked past him, avoiding his eyes and strode towards Abby, who spun around, dispatching the last officer with a kick to the mid-section. She turned her head towards them, staring at Blade a moment. She knew who he though King had been calling. It must've been killing him to be wrong.
"This way!" she told them breathlessly, panting as Max caught up to her and led her to the right.
"Hey, Blacula," King said to Blade, slapping his shoulder with a friendly smile. "You ready to shake and bake?" Blade responded quickly punching King across the jaw with a loud snap.
"Call me that again, and you'll spend the rest of your life eating out of a straw," he threatened. King massaged his jaw with a scrutinizing look before tossing Blade a pistol.
"HEY!" Max called, rounding the corner into the hallway again. "You ladies comin' or what?" she asked impatiently. They soon ran up to her and followed her down the hall Abby had led them through to be their escape.
Even as Grimwood rounded the corner, hungry for blood, with two more vampire orderlies behind him, the group never stopped. Blade fired round after round of explosive bullets, causing Grimwood and the others to fall back and Blade to look at the gun with interest. He looked at Max, who shrugged as if she didn't know anything before all three moved to join Abby. There was more smoke and darkness in the hall, only the emergency lights illuminating the station.
Up ahead, a group of policemen spilt in from a stairwell, armed with bulletproof vests and guns. They open fired, and Blade, Max, and the Nightstalkers retreated into an alcove. It was then that they realized that they were pinned down between the vampires and a group of policemen. As they avoided and dodged gunfire with ducked heads from both sides, Blade simply looked up at the ceiling before jumping through it.
"Hey! HEY! COME BACK HERE!" he shouted up the gaping hole in the ceiling as he cocked his guns, back firmly against the wall. "Where are you going? Where the FUCK is he going? This is supposed to be a rescue!"
"We're pinned down!" Max shouted, informing both of them of the direr situation than Blade disappearing on them.
"We can't shoot around corners," King reminded Max, and both looked pointedly at Abby.
"I can," she said confidently, smirking at them.
As King and Max lay down as her cover fire, Abby reached behind her and withdrew a device that she always had secured there. She gives it a snap and it sprung open, taking the shape of her futuristic compound bow, her baby. Hedges had crafted the bow from aluminum. Its limbs were imbedded in key positions with vibration-dampening modules. Her bow was capable of firing an arrow upwards of three hundred feet-per-second.
After quickly unzipping up one arm length glove and zipping up the other, Abby withdrew a silver arrow with a time-delay explosive tip from her quiver, knocked it in her bow, and takes aim at a fire extinguished mounted at the end of the corridor. As the arrow went to work, King dove to around the corner and fired at the human officers from the ground as Max did so against the wall.
She let her arrow fly, and it banked off the side of the fire extinguisher, just as planned. It continued down the side corridor where it embedded itself in the shoulder of one of the vampires. The vampire screamed in pain, a joyful sound to the three hunter's ears, before he grabbed the shaft and ripped the arrow out. The vampire watched as the tiny "egg-timer" dial on the arrowhead spun and clicked in place. A red light came on, and the arrowhead exploded, catching all three vampires with the full force of a UV blast. Grimwood ducked away from the blast just in time as the other two vampires turned to ash.
Max, King, and Abby went racing out of the alcove, not looking back. They soon reached a stairwell where Muzak could be heard playing throughout the lobby. It was empty as they ran down the stairs, completely sterile clean and empty. The trip was still armed as they rushed outside of the station and into the night. The, sadly, was still station gated and flashing police cars were surging through the mouth of the gate. If they had been able to go out the way they came, they would've done it a long time ago, just to avoid the welcome party.
"Okay, we're fucked," King commented seriously as he looked around, lowering his guns to his holster.
"We're fine," Abby retorted, moving to stand between King and Max, each hunter staring down their own wall of officers.
They were trapped, and they knew that it would take a miracle to get them out there alive, not to mention without some serious injuries. Then, a loud was heard from above and everyone, even the officers, looked up. A window on the third floor of the station exploded outward, and Blade dropped three stories before landing before Max, King, and Abby in a cat-like crouch. His sword was in his hand, and he didn't have a mark on him, or even look phased by the drop.
"Forgot my sword," Blade said shortly by way of explanation, and King just nodded with a shrug.
"Is he epic or what?" Max asked with a smile, hitting Abby in her stomach with the back of her hand.
The police closed in around them, over the initial shock of Blade's entrance, and pinned the quartet down with firepower. Yet, Max, King, and Abby seemed unconcerned because headlights were soon washing over them. The familiar beefed-up, 1970s Land Cruiser was screaming up the street before jumping onto the sidewalk, smashing right through the gated wall. When the van screeched to a stop between the hunters and the police cars, Dex leaned out his window and gave a little wave as the rear doors popped open.
"My name is Dex. And I'll be saving your ass this evening," he greeted cheekily. "Let's go!" The group quickly scrambled into the back on the van.
Dex punched his ride into reverse, backing out the way he came. The police from the squad cars were firing, but the van was cleverly armored and the bullets harmlessly sparked off. In the backseat, Abby looked through the rear windshield to see Grimwood running after them, actually gaining on them.
"Well, if he isn't chewing up the asphalt like a cheetah," Max commented mirthlessly.
"Abby," King said shortly, and she nodded.
Abby leaned out the rear window, knocking a non-UV arrow in her bow this time. She took careful aim at Grimwood, let the arrow fly, and smirked as the arrow sunk into Grimwood's eye. He went down, his somersaulting figure quickly receding into the distance as the van sped away. Safe for the moment, King basked in the adrenaline rush of the well-fought battle, wrapping an arm around Max's shoulders. Meanwhile, Abby was detaching her bow, and Dex was on a cell phone.
"We got him. We'll be there soon," he said calmly and hung up, glancing at Blade briefly before keeping his eyes on the road.
"So," King began leisurely, looking at Blade, who sat in the front next to Dex, seriously, "my entrance back there, what do you think? Too flashy? Right on the money?"
Blade suppressed the urge to hit him in the jaw again as he was distracted, unbuckling his combat harness. Beside King, Max started doing the same thing, and both were revealed to be wearing their usual bulletproof vests beneath. Only, this time, they were riddled with imbedded slugs. Max locked eyes with Blade briefly and, even behind his sunglasses, she could tell that he was giving her a dark, questioning look.
"Who the hell are you people?" Blade asked simply.
"Well, my name's Hannibal King," he replied, and nodded to Abby. "And this little hellion right here is Abigail." Abby stared back at Blade with silent appraisal, looking back her with a scrutinizing eye.
"Whistler's daughter," he stated, turning around in his seat to face front with a sigh.
"Blade," Max began, looking at him seriously, "King, Abby, Dex, a few others, and myself, we're all part of Whistler's contingency plan," she explained.
"You knew about these rookies?" he asked dangerously, and she nodded without preamble.
"Bet your ass I did. Whistler knew you'd need more help later on, B, so he sent me to them," she explained. "I've been working with them for the past seven months. They're the ones that have been giving me all my new weapons," she told him, patting the guns strapped to her side affectionately. King reached into his pocket beside Max, and pulled out a pack of gum. He selected a stick, as did Max, before he offered one to Blade.
"Juicyfruit?"
P.S.: Four pages total.