25

A SANCTUARY IN RUINS

"Oh my god.." There was no need to open the front door of Helen's Sanctuary – it was lying on its side, broken clean in half. The beautiful, crafted wood that had seen a city rise out of the low lying hills, dragging itself from an industrial smear to bustling hub, was now tinder for the fire places. Its copper knocker, a huge fashioned head of a roaring lion, was lying on its side, thrown against the marble floor with the force of whatever had torn its way through.

Helen, Ashley, Joe and Nikola were shocked out of exhaustion. They fumbled for their weapons, setting them at the house lit only by whatever sunlight inched through the torn curtains.

"It's fresh," Joe whispered, nodding over at the shattered vase and the puddle of water dotted with roses. They were still alive with fresh bruises blushing in their petals. "Maybe an hour?"

"How did he get here so bloody fast?" Helen hissed, carefully stepping over the rug that was crinkled from something skidding to a stop. There were used cartridges scattered over the floor and accompanying bullet holes on the wall leading into the sitting room utterly trashing the recent plaster job.

Ashley walked over to them, running her finger along a deep scratch in the stone courtesy of a sharp knife. "I have a really bad feeling about this, mum." The only person who took a knife to a gun fight was her father.

"Nikola," Helen spoke without looking at him, "straight downstairs to Henry's lab. Make sure the security network is up. And Nikola," she added, as he went to leave. "Put the EM shield online too."

Nikola nodded, taking the full meaning to heart. Druitt was a suspect and she didn't want him going anywhere – or coming back.

"Ashley," she continued. "Go check on our guest. Make sure it's still sedated. The last thing we want is a Magoi on the loose in the middle of a densely populated area."

"Yes mum – what about Joe?"

"You right to come with me?"

"Yeah – let's catch us a vampire, eh?" Joe nodded, clicking the safety off his gun.

"Shit..." Ashley regarded the grisly scene inside the Magoi's cell.

They didn't have to worry about it escaping any more. The ancient creature had been reduced to a husk. It was drained dry, bled out from every reasonable vein yet hardly any blood wasted on the cell floor. Scattered, broken containers littered the ground around it. Harvested, she realised, feeling sick. Amasis didn't just kill it, he'd stripped it for parts. God knows why but it couldn't possibly be a good thing.

"Yuck!" she padded over to the security camera, hoping to review the security feed but the thing had been torn from the wall and smashed against the floor, reduced to wire and bits of plastic casing. A trail of smoke lazily wafted out of its battery.

"All secure down here, mum," she said into her radio. "Magoi is down for the count, though."

There was a crackle over the radio, then her mother's voice. "See if you can find Will."

"There's not much left of your security network," came Tesla's irritated voice over the radio. Something electronic crackled behind him – then exploded. Nikola swore again, fumbling with the radio. He batted at the thick smoke with it.

Helen pressed her body against the wall, whispering her reply. "Do what you can. I want the external system back up to full power and the Red Zone secure."

"Just the world and a few moons on the side then!" he snapped back, chucking a bit of broken lab into the room.

"Just do it, Nikola!"

Joe nodded toward something shuffling around on the other side of the living room. The entire place had been turned into a wreck; its curtains were shredded, draped over the couch with hideous tears, the magazine rack was thrown into the wall, gouging out a sizable dent before falling in a heap beside the TV – which had also fallen and smashed to pieces on the floor. Her brand new flat screen. Helen scowled at the scene.

Another rustle from the corner drew her attention to an upturned lounge chair amid the broken glass. They fanned out, Joe taking the opposite side as her cover, Helen inching through the centre of the room. Based on the snuffling sound, it was some form of Abnormal set loose during the chaos. She peered over the chair – and lowered her weapon.

"It's okay, Joe," she waved him over. "Come meet Snuffles," Helen bent down and scooped up the five-legged animal which closely resembled a furry anteater. It looked up at them with its beady, frightened eyes just begging to be taken somewhere safe and warm.

Joe was about to give the adorable creature a cuddle when the sirens went off. The building started to shriek, lights flashing, security doors falling closed. Snuffles leapt out of Joe's arms and scrambled away in terror to hide.

"LOOKS LIKE TESLA GOT THE SECURITY SYSTEM UP!" Helen screamed, holding her hands against her ears.

"WISH HE'D BREAK IT AGAIN," Joe replied, pain beating through his head.

"Oh shut up," Nikola hissed at the computer, snapping at the keys with his claws. All the systems were coming online but for some reason the werewolf had decided to tie in the alarms to the basic functionality and Nikola simply couldn't get them to hush.

"Bloody hell..." Helen and Joe entered the room – or tried to enter.

Henry's lab was trashed beyond repair. Most of the cabling had been slashed with a sharp set of claws. It had also played host to a full scale fire fight with no less than three conventional guns and one of Henry's rip-off versions of Nikola's stun guns laying abandoned on the floor. The stun weapon had exploded and blown a hole through the main switchboard leaving the rack and most of the servers a crackling, smoking wreck.

When silence fell, it was like heaven had fallen to earth.

"How are you making that work?" Helen asked, not quite able to see Nikola over the deluge of ruined computers.

He stood up – Sony tablet in hand, keyboard in the other. "You're damn lucky I hack into your network and keep backups on a regular basis."

"Don't make me slap you."

He wasn't in any mood to spar with her. "Okay, you have your outer shield up, the SHU is secure and the worst of the worst are all still stalking around in their cages. You lost a few of the minor ones – their enclosures were opened and it looks like they are physically broken. I can't make the gates come back down from here so you'll have to do that with a crowbar."

"You did well, Nikola."

For once, he didn't even hear the praise. "You've got much bigger problems. The security is off-line completely in the Magoi pen."

"It's dead."

Nikola set the tablet down. "What?"

"Amasis got to it already."

He seemed to take a moment to digest that. Nikola had plans for that creature and its incredible ability to produce industrial grade silk. It had been one of the new projects keeping his mind active the whole time they were off trekking through the snow and now – now it was just gone. Snuffed out. Such a waste of a resource. "There's something else – Henry and the Protege aren't here. Either they're..." he stopped short of saying, 'dead', "or he's taken them with him."

"And John?"

Nikola shrugged. "He may not have even been here when things took a turn. You know what he's like. He probably fucked off at the first sign of trouble."

"Really Nikola," she snapped.

"When has he ever been around when you actually need his murdering skills? Come to think of it, what is his use?"

Helen frowned at Nikola. "What's gotten into you all of a sudden?"

"Have you noticed a pattern yet?" Nikola shifted his pose, one hand on his hip as he set the tablet down in frustration. "He's always gone when you need him most. Even back when we were in Oxford. He was a useless son of a bitch then and he's still one, two hundred years later."

"Hey..." Joe interrupted carefully, feeling like an awkward teenager watching his parents fight. "Maybe you guys should do this later?"

"It's okay, Joe – I know what this is," Helen didn't take her eyes off the very pale Nikola. "Run down to the infirmary and bring me back half a dozen blood bags marked with a black 'V'. Quickly now." Joe vanished. "Nikola, why don't you sit?"

"M-maybe I should," he admitted. "I'm starting to think your neck looks rather inviting and that is not a good sign," he added with a cheeky smirk, even though his head was starting to spin alarmingly.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to come any closer. You haven't had wine or blood for nearly a week."

"I have a headache," he complained.

"Just close your eyes and try to stay calm. You're hungry, that's all."

For a moment Nikola looked serene – then his hand tightened around the edge of the table, knuckles going white. "Can't we – sit down on the couch. I promise I won't bite," he whispered.

Helen exhaled softly, looking between Nikola and the couch. They'd been here before more times than she could count and despite every natural instinct, he'd never tried to bite her. "Oh all right then," she relented.

She sat down on the small, leather sofa, rearranging the pillows before he sank down beside her. Helen put one of the large, flat pillows on her lap and let him rest his head there. It wasn't long before he either fell asleep or passed out, purring. She ran her fingertips through his short, soft hair.

"You always were more of a kitten than a lion," she smirked. Nikola had a very distinct air of vulnerability that, despite all his annoying, world conquering, arrogant and dangerous behaviour, made her want to rescue him.

Joe didn't know whether to knock, so he stood in the door, weighed down by bags of bright red blood. "Doc?"

"Come on, he's perfectly safe," she assured the young cop.

Joe cleared a space on the table with his elbow then set all the bags down. "Is he going to be all right? Even by his standards, he looks kinda pale."

Nikola instinctively curled closer to Helen in his sleep. Helen nodded. He was going to be just fine.

"Dude this is not cool," Henry struggled against his restraints but John was no fool, he'd used a lovely steel and silver alloy that was more than sufficient keeping a werewolf pup in check.

"Oh stop your fussing!" John sighed, lingering against the far wall of the container – the kind used for shipping cargo around the world. The metal box was huge and devoid of anything except Will, Henry and John strutting around sharpening his knife on the wall. "It's only a spot of sailing."

Will uselessly struggled against his restraints, making John laugh. "Magnus is going to be so pissed at you," he taunted. He was kneeling beside Henry, their hands tied behind their backs and feet bound with the same chain. About all they could do was perch on the floor and hope they didn't topple over.

"Trust me, I've done a lot worse than this in my time," John answered quite seriously. "So long as you don't cause trouble, I fully intend to return you to your precious Sanctuary. At the moment, think of yourselves as currency. Henry, you're worth a little more," he winked.

Henry growled. "You know, when I expressed an interest in a pay rise, this was totally not what I had in mind."

Will could feel the slosh of the waves beneath the enormous ship. They'd reached open ocean, rocking ever so slightly, bobbing in the swell. "No movie and dinner service?" Will snapped at his boss's ex.

"Use your imagination, Mr Zimmerman. Is that not what Helen hired you for?"

With that, John left. The light vanished with him, plunging them into an abyss of night.

"Bastard..." Henry grunted, his irritated hiss echoing off every wall. "Now what do we do?"

"Wait to be rescued."

Henry stopped himself from laughing with a fake cough. "Yeah, that's very likely. The only way we're getting out of here is if we do it ourselves."

Will heard a strange shuffling sound beside him in the darkness – then a thud as something heavy hit the deck against its will. "Did you just fall over?"

Henry lay painfully on his side, cheek flush against the steel floor. "...no."

Worst. Hangover. Ever...

A bleary-eyed, mongrel vampire opened his blue eyes to an offending amount of afternoon sunlight. Nikola grimaced, covered his face with a paw full of claws and rolled away into the beautiful darkness of his pillow.

Thunk!

"Oh bloody hell!" he growled, finding himself unexpectedly on the ground with a throw and several cushions on top of him. He'd not been in a bed at all but Henry's rubbish little couch.

"Steady on, Nikola," Helen warned him, wandering over to her old friend who was a misshapen form of limbs under the silk throw. "You've been out for a while."

He must have been, because the lab was nearly empty – its salvaged bits of computer set back onto the dented desk along with a rescued screen. The chair was replaced with a stool and the charred floor craftily covered with a rug stolen from library.

"Helen?" he muttered, pawing his way back onto the couch. He held his head between his hands, running his fingertips through his messy crop of hair. He had a five-o-clock shadow where a beard and moustache were attempting to grow. It itched.

A glass of wine sloshed into view.

"Lighten up Nikola, or people will think you have a drinking problem."

He took the glass, taking a deep sip to calm his nerves. "Perhaps, but drinking problem with what?" he managed a toothy grin. "Now I remember why I don't travel."

"Introvert," she accused, seating herself behind the computer. "Henry, Will and John are missing. They didn't leave via any of the doors so... well it looks like John transported them out, one way or another."

Nikola cradled his half empty glass lovingly. "Son of -" he stopped himself, seeing Helen's look, "he's working with Amasis. He must be. God, don't ever let me go that long without drinking," he rubbed a pulsing vein on the side of his head.

"I'm not your keeper," she chided. "You need to perk up though, we have to get Henry and Will back. Whatever Amasis has planned for them, it won't be a picnic. What?" Nikola was shaking his head at her.

"No way, you've got two helpers. Take Ashley and the cop with you."

"And leave you lording over the manor? I think not..."

He rolled his eyes. "As relaxing as bringing this mess back into order sounds, I have better things to do."

The penny dropped for Helen, dark hair falling around her suspicious frown. "You're going after the keystones."

"We've got two vampires on the loose, my dear and Apries is going after that door. If we don't split up, one of them is going to get the upper hand. You chase Amasis, leave Apries and his shiny ancient door to me."

"I don't like the thought of letting you off leash..."

Nikola grinned. "I work better alone, you know that."

"Yeah," she sighed dramatically, "right up until the moment you need rescuing."