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

Chapter 29: Life Bites

In the atrium upper gallery, Abby emerged with Zoë safely behind her. She soon spotted an alcove, and indicated with a nod to Zoë that she should hide there. Before she could run off though, Abby slipped a silver stake into her hand. Just in case. Once Zoë was out of sight, Abby rushed to the handrail, and looked down at Blade and Drake. Her view was obscured and that was very bad: she couldn't get a good shot.

On the ground floor, Drake was digging his fangs into Blade's shoulder. The Daywalker struggled and managed to slip a stake from his bandolier, slamming it into Drake's ear canal. The beast shrieked in pain, dropping Blade to the floor, who had only succeeded in driving Drake into a berserker rage. He swung his fist and Blade ducked, sending Drake's fist through the wall and puncturing a steam pipe. Drake reached in through the venting steam, and ripped an eight-foot section of the pipe from the wall, bringing a sparking nest of electrical cables along with it. He swung the pipe section around, whacking Blade. KRUNCH! Drake swung his makeshift club once more, becoming a one-man demolition crew, decimating everything in his path. He was smashing holes in the floor, the walls, and plowing through partitions of glass and steel.

Upstairs, Abby moved down the gallery and looked up at a series of lighting gantries that spanned the length of the atrium ceiling. Balancing on the handrail for a moment, Abby jumped out and caught hold of one of the crosspieces. Looking like an acrobat, or Max when she first met the Nightstalkers, she monkey-swung her way beneath the gantry. She knew if she lost her grip, she'd fall more than fifty feet.

BA-BANG! A bullet struck just in front of Abby, showering her with sparks. More bullets followed, fired from below, trying to pick her off. Suddenly, UV bullets struck each of the Vampires. As they ashed, Abby looked over to see Max and King. Max was carrying King's battered body out onto the upper gallery. Both were shooting and playing guardian angel to Abby, laying down cover fire so she could continue.

"KING!"

Danica appeared behind King and Max raised her gun to fire, but Danica pushed it away before grasping Max by her throat, pulling her off the ground, and throwing her across the room. Max hit the wall hard and landed on the ground, knocked out. King tried to stand up to help her but Danica tackled him, wrestling him to the floor and pummeled his face with her fist.

King tried to ward of f the blows, but he was sorely outmatched. After all, Danica was a vampire, a female vampire, a pissed off female vampire, and he was a man, a weak and severely wounded man. Trying to regain some of his dignity, not to mention the upper hand, he swung his electronic pistol up at Danica. Unfortunately, she twisted it from his grip, ejecting the clip from the stock. King's Sundog bullets spilt out all over the floor. He was in deep shit. He knew it when she tossed the gun aside, reaching for King again.

Back at the lighting gantry, Abby was breathing heavily, trying to call up new reserves of strength. She glanced down – big mistake. Forcing herself to look back up, she tried to forget the immense fear of plummeting to the floor to her horribly painful death. She swung herself pendulum-style, and managed to snag yet another crosspiece as another shot rang out.

Down below, Asher was armed with a rifle. He fired again, grazing Abby's shoulder, who cried out and nearly lost her grip. From the other side of the room, Max was slowly gaining consciousness. With a hand on her head, she started to shake herself back to reality. She heard the gunfire and saw Asher getting trigger-happy on Abby, and Danica kicking King in his gut with her pointed toe shoes. Looking around, she saw that her gun was not far from her.

"No offense, Danica," King gasped in pain as he rolled on his side, "but I've wanted to kill you since the moment we slept together."

"I was that bad, huh?" she asked, not even caring what he had to say. Taking a moment, King reached a palsied hand for his discarded pistol, and pointed it vaguely in Danica's direction. "No bullets in your gun, King," she laughed.

"Yeah, but here's the beauty of it," he told her, wiping his bloody mouth. "These babies can be triggered remotely." King pulled the trigger, and the scattered Sundog bullets erupted with UV light. Danica shrieked, trying to shield her already burning face from the glare. Horribly wounded, she turned tail and ran.

On the Atrium ground floor, Drake was pummeling the shit out of Blade, flinging his body about like a rag doll. Grabbing Blade by his ankle, Drake swung him upwards some thirty feet – SMASH! Blade collided with the underside of a massive hanging glass lighting fixture. Stunned, he fell back to the ground, dropping his sword. Drake saw this as the opportune moment, and immediately pounced on him. Blade could barely fend off Drake's blows anymore so, in desperation, he dug his fingers into the master vampire's eyes. Drake swung both fists downward, Hulk-style, and shattered an entire section of the limestone flooring in a fit of rage and pain. A shock wave rippled out from the point of the impact, sending waves of two-foot stone tiles flipping up into the air. This little trick also ended up knocking Blade off his feet as he tried to regain some balance.

Loading up a Sundog into her pistol, Max steadied her aim on the railing she was currently leaning on in the upper gallery. She had crawled her way over to her gun, still disoriented, and climbed her way to a standing position on the railing. Gritting her teeth, she fired at the unsuspecting Asher, and the Sundog screamed across the atrium, striking dead center in Asher's open mouth. As the bullet exploded, UV light caused Asher's skull to burn up from the inside out. It was not a pretty picture as his headless corpse fell forward over the gallery, carbonizing and burning up before it even hit the ground.

Relieved, Max sunk to her knees.

"Maxie!" King called breathlessly, limping over to her side. "Hey, you okay?"

"Yeah, just killed that stupid fucker Asher," she replied, smiling.

"Damn, I was hoping to kill him!" he exclaimed childishly.

"Sorry, sparky, but I can't let you have all that fun. Besides, you got Jarko," she replied. King shrugged modestly, grinning at the fact that he'd taken down the walking diaper stain. "I bought Abby some more time at least but Blade needs help, fast."

"Then go help, babe," he told her, kissing the top of her head as he helped her stand up, "I've some unfinished business with a certain cock juggler we all know and hate."

"Be careful," she warned, kissing him quickly.

"Always am," he retorted, turning to go after Danica, cocking his gun as he went. Max, meanwhile, slipped from the safety of the alcove and made for the stairs.

It was true that Max had bought Abby more time. Back on the lighting gantry, she was swinging her body forward, successfully hooking her legs over the next crosspiece. Letting go with her hands so she hung upside down, secured by on the tension in her calves, Abby reached behind her to remove her bow. Blood from her wounded shoulder dripped down over her collarbone, reaching her cheek and obscuring her vision. Frustrated, she wiped it away and reached back once more and, because her quiver is pointed downward, a number of arrows slid out. Panicking, Abby twisted her body and just barely managed to snag the Daystar arrow as it tumbled past her.

Exhausted, Abby shut her eyes, trying to find her center as she had hours before she left the Hideout with Blade, just after they'd found everyone dead. With her eyes closed, she cocked the arrow and drew the bow back. Opening her eyes, she realized then and there the severity of this shot.

Drake and Blade were locked in combat below her. She could easily track their progress, and waited for Drake to move into a better position. That was all she could do: wait. She was only going to get one chance, and she had to take the shot of a lifetime while hanging upside down.

Damn.

Drake shouldered a support column, snapping t in two. This caused an entire section of the gallery walkway above to come crashing down, burying Blade in debris. But that wasn't enough for Drake. More needed to be done to satisfy him. He leapt forward, fishing Blade out of the rubble and hauled him up into two cracking head butts. Blade's eyes rolled to whites, weak and tired as he was dropped to the ground. Looking down, Drake saw Blade's discarded sword and scooped it up. He moved to strike at Blade, to finish him off with his own sword, when Blade managed to roll to the side and avoid the blow.

Abby was waiting.

More blood had trickled down her neck, into her eyes. But she didn't wipe them away. She couldn't. She had already drawn her bow and was committed to the shot. Nothing could get in the way of that. Her heart was beating and she could feel all her blood pumping into her head as she settled. She'd finally found her center. Taking a final breath, Abby held it as she let the Daystar arrow fly. It streaked downward, hurtling towards Drake at more than three hundred feet per second. Then, at the last possible instant – CHINGG! Drake deflected the arrow with Blade's sword. It harmlessly fell to the floor, rolling a few yards away.

Drake's attention had quickly left Abby, who was stunned and melting into despair, and he was now plunging the sword into Blade's side. As he pulled it back out, Blade gasped and sunk down to his knees in shock. Roaring, Drake shifted again, conjuring up seventy centuries of violence and perdition. The nightmare shape that was only hinted at before, extrapolated on Sommerfield's computers and theory drawings by the rest of the Nightstalkers, finally took center-stage.

Blood suffused Drake's flesh, turning his skin crimson. His canines elongated, his lower jaw distended. Jagged bone spurs erupted all over his body, like he was growing a suit of razor-sharp thorns. He didn't even need a sword anymore; he had become a living weapon. Drake was gone, only the Beast remained.

Drake swung the sword overhead, ready to decapitate Blade. Just as the sword reached the top of its arc…

"Hey, fuck head. You forget about me?"

Max emerged from the shadows behind Drake, clutching her gun in one hand and a silver stake in the other. Before Drake could even turn around, she shoved the stake into his back, pushing it with all the strength the rest of her body could muster. It wasn't a lethal blow, but it hurt all the same and was enough to make him stagger. As soon as he regained his balance, he turned on Max, enraged and his attention distracted for that one crucial second.

Blade, summoning the last of his reserves, pitched his body forward, managing to snag the end of the Daystar arrow. Before Drake even realized what was happening – WHAM! Blade sunk the arrow deep into Drake's back, and Max stumbled backwards, gun raised at the Beast roared. He dropped the sword and turned to face Blade, who was exhausted beyond measure.

Max knew Sommerfield's work well enough to know what was happening to Drake. Inside his chest, the arrowhead would be dispensing the bio-weapon. The virus would be flooding his internal organs, causing them to blacken and fail as his circulatory system carried the virus throughout his body.

By the look on his face, Max guessed that it hurt like hell. He let loose and inhuman scream, vomiting up a spray of bloody mist. His monstrous features began to melt, reshaping into his human face. All of the blood he's expelled, and all the blood he hadn't, was infected. Each raggedy breath he took had the virus latched onto it; every blood cell was infected and blackened until they became necrotic.

Every vampire still alive, or as alive as they could be, inhaled the virus. Danica, throttling King on a set of stairs, was telling him to give up. He clutched at her hands, trying to pry them off. It didn't matter though. Daystar had made its way through Phoenix towers, and Danica was soon amongst the infected. She started clutching at her throat, gasping for breath as the virus infiltrated her system. Tiny black threads expanded across her face until she swayed and fell back onto the stairs. King had been catching his breath at this point, backing away from her even as she reached a beseeching hand towards him.

"Hold on, Kitten. I'll go get help," he told her insincerely, turning around and walking away from her as she finally died with a stillborn curse on her lips. More vampires around the building were feeling the effects now as well. One by one, they dropped to the ground, choking and going into convulsions. As they writhed in pain on the floor, the Daystar virus ravaged their bodies until they turned to ash.

Drake slumped against the wall, dying and back to his mortal disguise. Hero and villain were separated by only a few feet with only one thing in common: both were at death's door.

"Well done, hunter. Well done," Drake complimented.

Blade just stared back. At this point, he was just trying to remain conscious since he'd lost a ton of blood. Neither even paid attention to Max, who still had her gun in both hands, raised and aimed directly at Drake. She didn't care that Daystar had worked; she was scared and shaky and was going to keep her gun aimed high until he permanently stopped moving.

"Funny, isn't it? All this time, my people were trying to create a new kind of vampire…when one already existed. I don't need to survive. The future of our race lies with you. You fought with honor," he commended, shuddering as his breathing became increasingly shallow. "I respect that. The humans are coming for you, you know. In their eyes, you and I are the same. So, allow me one last indulgence, then," he gasped, "a parting gift. But know this. Sooner or later, the thirst always wins," he warned.

Eyes still locked on Blade's, Drake grew still and died.

"Blade, you all right?" Max asked. She sighed in relief, eyes closing tiredly as she lowered her gun. When he didn't answer, she looked over at him. "Blade?" she called in a panic, scrambling to her feet and rushing over to him. "Blade!"

Max didn't even notice Abby and King rush into the room, Zoë in Abby's arms. Max knew as soon as she reached Blade and shook him that he was dying, fading fast. She called out to him again, the tears that weren't falling from her eyes though came out in her voice. Blade could hear her though, however distant and muted it was compared to his own fading heartbeat.

"Are you with me, Blade?" she asked fearfully, but he didn't answer. "Blade? Blade!" Silence. "Eric!" she shouted tearfully, her welling eyes obscuring her vision. Blade's couldn't seem to focus on her anymore. His eyes were clouding over and then, without warning, he stopped breathing and his world faded to white. "ERIC!"

P.S.: Six pages total.