Like a Powershake

For the request "hurt/comfort and vampire hunters".

Midwest

November, year four

A shot goes off. This isn't particularly unusual in the grand scheme of things—all data considered, the probability of a shot going off is actually higher than the probability of a hot meal around Doc Worth—but it's also not even slightly a good thing.

Worth is the first to lift his head, hands stilling on the stalk of corn in the evening darkness. It's the last week of November and the last of the harvest is coming in hard, so hard that with the winter sunsets even the resident vampires have been pulled in for regular shifts. It's yet another year's tedious race to beat the snowfall, with a running commentary from fagula about the bugs hibernating in the shucks, and so far Worth has been sort of zoned out on autopilot, letting the repetitive labor carry him along.

And then the shots go off.

Conrad turns to the woman on their left and asks her for a rundown of who's where and doing what, but Worth isn't interested in that. This is crop country, and the only people with firearms—let alone the ammo to put in them—are the bandits and the landowners. The owners of the land here are out on a hunting trip to stock up on meat before the freeze sets in. The bandits—

Conrad draws his gun. He sometimes falls asleep with the damn thing on accident, which would be fine with Worth in theory but in practice there's something about waking up to four inches of steel against your thigh that puts a damper on the evening ambiance. Something to do with reflexively jumping out of bed in the defensive position, probably.

"Could be hunters," Conrad says, although he doesn't look like he's holding out much hope.

"An' I'm the queen'a England."

As it turns out, Worth might be at least qualified for some kind of duchy, because the source of the gunshot is definitely some kind of hunters—just, not the kind that bring home backstrap.

Down the hill in the fields, the night shift is working to consolidate their crop while they've still got all their limbs in working order—wheelbarrows are squeaking frantically, terse shouts are going up from the rows—and as Conrad and the doctor sprint up the hillock their goal is mostly just to keep order long enough for a full evacuation. They don't actually need to discuss this. Worth assumes that Conrad assumes, because that's always how they do it.

They're harder to kill, they're tougher to fight, and whether they like it or not, they're walking this earth to keep the peace. Anyhow, that's how Hanna likes to phrase it. Worth would settle for being "bloody sentimental sons of bitches" if they were voting on job descriptions.

Worth comes over the hill about a step before Conrad, so he's the first to see what the damage is.

On the downward slope of the hill, where the crops were carved out to make way for a service road, four men in varying layers of denim and dirt stand over the body of a field worker, muttering contentiously amongst themselves. The oldest looking one, whose eyes are dark and heavy with displeasure, glances up just in time to catch sight of the vampires.

Worth pauses. One of the men has a complicated knotwork tattoo up one side of his neck, probably the branch of a celtic cross. Another of them has snakebites, and the one beside him is dressed in what looks like a haphazardly patched pilot's jacket. But the old one, the one with the dark eyes? Worth can smell a man like that miles away. He smells like trouble.

Conrad breaks the spell of silent consideration, nearly flying over the ridge of the shallow hill and skidding to a stop, mouth popping open, before he turns his attention, too, onto the old man with the dark eyes.

"Did you kill her or is she still breathing?" he demands, flicking the safety off his gun.

The stranger hardly blinks. "She's breathing," he says. "We're keeping her."

"Excuse me, what?"

Conrad advances on him, steps dangerously precise, and a nasty sense of foreboding zings through Worth's head. Most people, when you bear down on them like that, they take a step back or scramble for a weapon or do something to make you back off. That bastard, whoever he is, looks way the hell too in control for a guy with a raging armed vampire coming down on him like a hammer.

"Connie," Worth snaps.

Conrad stops mid-step, doing a complicated little grapevine to redirect the forward motion. "What?" he snaps back.

Worth nods toward the stranger, whose dark eyes have narrowed now. "I think he wants ya in arms reach, princess. Course, he don' know what kinda hell he's like to get for that."

The strange man's hands move rapidly—he doesn't pause to posture or cajole, he just moves—drawing out an engraved revolver that flashes in the sunlight, white lines of knotwork along the barrel. He fires. The shot explodes, shatters the sound barrier, and then three sibling shots scorch out after it, three sets of bullets slicing through the air. Worth ducks and rolls and slams into Conrad's hip because the fat bastard isn't moving quick enough, he's too startled—he's always startled, really, everything surprises him.

Worth hits the dust and kicks up a cloud of cold dry dirt, scrabbling with his lengthening nails for traction. He pushes up—inhuman speed is a thing he was more than happy to get used to—and lunges forward underneath the rain of bullets. Projectiles are fast, sure, but human hands are slow and human minds are slower. By the time they've adjusted their aim lower to the ground, he's already sprung onto the old one with his talons out. There goes the ribcage with a pop, there goes the skull with a crack. He'll worry about recycling later, though; feeding in the middle of a firefight is a fast way to get yourself killed off permanently.

A slug blows through his abdomen, and it just makes him mad.

He's vaguely aware that while he's ripping the tattoo off of a human jugular Conrad is behind him firing shots—while he's snarling and clawing and ripping, Conrad is above him taking direct aim at the bastard who was about to blast off Worth's arm. As much as he made fun of Conrad while the man was transitioning, for being a neurotic pansy and a shriveling coward to boot, Worth is coming to understand how that very reservation was the thing that kept Conrad mostly human for years.

Worth, who has never been much good at keeping himself in check, has trouble just keeping the flesh on his body some days.

There's a hand on his shoulder, fluttering and then firm, and Worth comes up from his berserker haze with a full body shudder. Reflexively, he takes a deep breath. He looks down at the gaping fish mouth of the man gurgling his way to death's door, shrugs, and pulls the body up into his lap for better reach.

Conrad snatches his hands back. "Eeeugh," he says, "that's disgusting."

Worth punches fangs into the sad sack's stripped-off throat and shrugs again, sucking down as much hot liquid as he can manage. His head is pulsing and his side feels like it's about to explode into flames, but he's thirsty as hell and if you waste not you want not. Besides, the screwed up face Conrad is making would be worth a stomach full of carbonic acid.

"Worth," Conrad says, but he's eyeing the hunter flopping mutely against the ground with expanding pupils. "Worth we're like ten feet from a bunch of civilians you can't just—"

Worth pulls his mouth free with an exaggerated pop. Eyebrow up. Lick lips.

Conrad covers his face with one dusty hand. "No, no, I swear to god Worth I will gut you."

Twinge.

Worth starts thinking, suddenly, about guts. Specifically he starts thinking about his own, and how a chunk of iron just passed through them a few minutes ago, and how he's probably got a hole in his back the size of a fist leaking thick undead blood.

"Aw," he mutters, "shit."

Then he's scrambling to unbutton his shirt and shrug off the leather field working jacket, patting at the wet cotton for the white hot core of an injury that's getting more and more painful with each passing second, as the adrenaline cools in his sluggish veins.

"Oh," Conrad hisses over him, "they really shot you. Damn, that's got to hurt."

Worth grits his teeth, glares up with one eye—the other eye is squinted shut because that seems to help. Closing both would be even better, but Worth has depths to which he will not sink. The enamel of his molars squeaks ominously.

Conrad flutters his hands, uneasily glancing from the corpses to Worth to the hill and then back like some bizarre bee dance, probably, bee dances are something Worth doesn't know a lot about for reasons you could guess pretty easily.

…This is painful. This is very painful. This makes Worth wish very deeply that he'd not done the whole panther-jumping-attack, honestly, what kind of absolute tit does the panther jumping attack in the middle of a fire fight?

Worth takes a seething, gritted moment to regret most of his life choices leading up to this moment. Silently. Won't do any good to let Conrad know that he fucked up this badly. It'll just go to his head.

While Worth is staring pointedly at the ground and carefully not making little pathetic noises of animal pain, Conrad is shifting around behind him doing… something, probably. Worth doesn't have the energy to find out what. Mostly he's just glad the faggot isn't hovering over him like a tweedy grandmother.

What fucking organs did that bullet puncture anyways god damn.

A pale hand pushes his forehead, gently but firmly, and Worth allows himself to be manhandled into a less slumped position because he is a very charitable guy. Conrad glares down at him, probably going for disapproving but mostly coming off as worried.

"Here," he says, with a sigh, "let's get you up and running again, hm?"

He presses something lukewarm and soft against Worth's lips, skin that tears against the wicked tip of a fang. Instinct kicks in, and Worth seals his mouth against the puncture wound with a thoughtless suck.

Something thick and black tasting, like the dregs of office coffee left stewing for days at a time—hemoglobin and a sparking aftertaste like lithium batteries on your tongue, swampy and cool. It tastes like death.

Worth reels back with a displeased noise. "Th' fuck?"

Conrad is crouched down at eye level with him now, lips pursed and unimpressed—lips, Worth suddenly notices, smeared at the corners with something wet and dark. Color him surprised, the princess took a pull off a corpse in the middle of a field. He's holding up his wrist, the slender pale length of it splattered with viscous undead blood.

"High nutritional content," he says, gesturing to the wrist. "It's like when mother birds puke up worms for their chicks, voila. You're a dumb bird and I'm feeding you."

"Tastes like puke," Worth retorts, one hand clutching at the hole in his side.

"Well duh, it's predigested. Look, this is like apex predator meat, okay, it's full of whatever mercury and stuff—oh fuck it, you have no idea what I'm talking about. Worth just drink the damn blood."

Worth eyes the dark smears. In the darkness, the only real difference between human blood and vampire blood is the thick clotting way it oozes. Reluctantly, Worth settles his lips against the flesh again, and takes a long pull.

He's eaten worse, honestly.

Conrad makes a surprised noise, a little hmmph that tapers off into a soft throaty noise. Worth isn't looking, but he thinks he feels the shift in muscles as Conrad twists his neck up to stare pointedly at the sky.

Tendons flex underneath the doctor's teeth. Conrad's fingers twitch, extending and closing in waves like they do when he's trying not to think about something. Oh, now Worth is curious.

He pulls free again. "Havin' some trouble up there, Mr. Harker?"

"Ha ha," Conrad replies in a monotone. "You're the one with the injury. I'm just peachy since, you know, I didn't go charging full tilt into gunfire on all fours like some kind of dumbass lion."

Worth bites down and pops a completely new set of holes in Conrad's arm. Whoops, did that hurt? Sorry.

This time Conrad hisses like a kettle, shoulders rolling uneasily.

"Weeeell now," Worth says, pulling off enough to speak into the pane of the wrist, lips brushing skin, "do my eyes deceive me, or do we have a little more in common than ya led me ter believe?"

"It's not a—" Conrad started, but he didn't get very far. After a twitching moment he regrouped successfully. "I'm not masochistic. That's just—there's something—well look, you've had your blood sucked before right? I haven't."

Worth waggled his eyebrows. "Uhuh."

Conrad dragged in a breath to say something, paused, and then reached forward and tipped Worth over bodily with one hand. "Would you look at that," he said, "looks like you're feeling better already. I'll just go and see if the locals need any help, hm?"

Worth tried to get up. He had a lifetime's experience getting up, it should have been a piece of cake. And yet, the legs would not cooperate. Did he have a bullet lodged in those too? What the hell, how had he missed that.

"Conrad ya nasty bitch!" Worth shouted after his partner, "I ain't done with you!"

"Yeah," Conrad called back, "well you just stand up and come after me and then we'll see who's done with whom."

After a moment of irritated wriggling, Worth gave up and punched the corpse nearest to him.

Shit, he really thought that was going somewhere sexy.