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

Chapter 19: Making the Plans

Blade had followed King, Abby, and Max into the Nightstalkers armory later that day. All four hunters stood before a table where Hedges' assortment of weaponry and ammunition had been laid out on display. Hedges was there himself, assisting them, as Zoë watched from a far corner. Both King and Abby had told her that it was safe for her to get closer to Blade, but she was still precautious around him, like she had been with Max when she first arrived.

"Oh, wow. Holy shit," Hedges breathed when he saw Blade. "Okay! So, gentlemen and hotties," he began, nodding to each party, earning amused smirks from the women. "We've got a wide assortment of ass-kickery for your viewing pleasure today." It was then that he hefted up a pistol. "Electronic pistol. Comes with a variety of tasty rounds, built-in fingerprint security system. Fires a three-shot burst in 1/500th of a second. Bullets can also be triggered remotely."

King suddenly tossed Blade a bullet. He studied it, and saw that it was more complex than a standard round. In fact, he noticed that it was one of the same rounds that Max had started using. At least now he knew who her supplier was.

"Explosive rounds?" he asked, tossing the bullet to Max, who caught it easily.

"Yeah, but with a concentrated burst of UV light instead of your standard hollow-points. I call 'em Sun Dogs," King explained and turned to Hedges. "Hedges, super-size me, sweetheart." Hedges shook his head in amusement, but still tossed King one of the four-barreled firearms. On the stock was an irreverent decal of the mud-flap girl silhouette. "This little peashooter - a modified version of the Army's Objective Individual Combat Weapon. Pick your poison: Sun Dogs, stakes, heat-seeking mini-rockets. Whatever gets you hard, this puppy will pump out," he explained crudely. As he set the gun down, he gestured to Blade's sword. "Of course, it doesn't have the range of a sword, but…"

Hedges groaned quietly at King's sarcastic comment while Blade glowered at him. Meanwhile, Max smacked King in his gut again. He looked down at her, mouth hanging open like a fish. She simply quirked an eyebrow at him, and he nodded his head apologetically to her. He seemed to have forgotten that she once fought with a sword, and that it was sitting on a display in the weapons lab. Next, Hedges showed Blade the UV Arc that Max had played with months ago. Another one of Abby's favorites.

"Over here, we call this the UV Arc," he said, giving the device a twist. Over the past seven months, Hedges had made advances on the arc since Max had first seen it. His plans to make it more compact had worked and the device was now extending from either end, telescoping outward until the concentrated UV laser resonated between the two connected tips. "You hold the Arc in the center, curved away from you. Connecting the tips is a powerful UV laser beam. Because of its high focus –"

"Hedges, I'll take it from here," Abby interrupted, and he gratefully handed the device over to her with a smile. Abby turned to Blade and smile, performing spins and tricks for him. "This bad boy half as hot as the sun, and cuts through vampire flesh like a knife through butter."

"We're still trying to sort out fact from fiction when it comes to Dracula," Max interjected, bringing everyone back to the subject at hand as Abby closed the Arc up and gave it back to Hedges.

"Turning into mist? Kinda doubt it. But general shape-shifting? Maybe," King added.

"Not into a bat or a wolf or anything like that," Hedges offered off of Blade's skeptical look. "But another human, with practice, someone with the same approximate body mass, might be possible. You see, he wouldn't have a traditional skeletal structure. Probably something more like a snake, with thousands of tiny bones in the place of a normal array. Commensurate with this would be an exquisite control of electrical potential across his tissues, resulting in an ability to effectively change shape at will."

"I actually have a question about that," King interrupted from behind him with a raised hand. So, thinking this was true, Hedges turned to look at him seriously. "Have you ever been laid?"

"Many times," he replied, and turned back to look at Blade with a look that clearly said, this is what I have to live with. "With ladies."

"More to the point, boys," Max stated wearily, "we've got a lot of work to do if we're gonna figure out what Drake and the rest of the fucking vampires are up to. So, I have a crazy idea. Tell me if you like it. I say we go on a hunt."

"You can't hunt for the Gnome King's men in the day time," Zoë reminded her from the shadows, and Max smiled at her.

"Of course not, sweetie," she agreed, walking past Blade to Zoë. Max picked her up and held her against her hip as Zoë wrapped her arms around her neck. "We're not gonna hunt those mean Gnome men," she assured her, using Zoë's nickname for vampires from the Oz books. "We're gonna hunt Familiars."

"Not a bad idea," Abby commented, and Max put Zoë on the ground. She completely missed the way that King smiled when he saw her holding Zoë like she was her own child. He thought it was a good look on her – motherhood, that is.

"More specifically, we hunt the Familiars that are under the Talos family's control," Max continued as soon as Zoë had left, her tone going back to serious.

"I knew I was dating a genius," King said to himself, nudging Hedge's tauntingly. "That's my girlfriend."

"Yes, I know," Hedges replied solemnly, annoyed by the fact that King just had to rub that in his face.

"I suggest we rest up for now, eat, and then go out before sunset. Once the sun's gone, we're gonna lose the Familiars completely," Max explained, and Abby nodded.

"I agree. Let's get some shuteye," she said to everyone, and her eyes fell on Blade. "Some of us need more rest than others."

P.S.: Three pages total.