Helen thought she could handle the Vampire King; she'd done it before and now she had a better understanding of his personality- massive ego and quick anger.
The door to the infirmary wasn't even completely closed, but it suddenly banged open with such force the top hinge broke, the glass in the top portion shattered, and it hung sadly askew. Little chunks of safety glass splattered across the floor as Nikola leapt into the room.
She could see he'd paid a price for breaking the titanium straps; his clothes were sliced and wet with blood where the straps had held him. She wondered if he'd broken bones as well, but if he had he seemed to be completely healed. Perhaps the King was not only stronger than a normal vampire but healed more quickly too.
Helen curtsied deeply, lowering her head and eyes as well and held that position. Thank goodness she had been born early enough in history to know how to do it properly. She heard him approach.
"Your Majesty," she said, "Please forgive our temerity in restraining you; it was only done to help you, no harm or disrespect was intended."
She saw his hand reach toward her neck; was he going to cut her? But no, the back of his hand was toward her and he put the side of his finger under her chin and lifted gently. She rose and faced him, boldly raising her eyes to his.
"You're mine" he stated flatly.
Not this again. "Of course Your Majesty. But please let me help you."
Her submissiveness appeased his anger and she saw him calm down and recognize her. "Helen?" he breathed softly. She saw confusion in his eyes and hope leapt within her; perhaps she could bring him back to himself quickly.
"Your Majesty, Nikola, please, let me get you your medication."
Nikola frowned, his eyes becoming suspicious as the King reasserted himself. He grabbed her arms and pulled her roughly to him. She could see he had extended his feeders.
"Nikola, I know you're in there and you don't want to do this. You don't want to hurt anyone, remember? All you have to do is release me and just stand there; I'll do everything else."
His breathing sped up and he tilted his head and lowered it slowly, positioning himself to bite her neck again; she could feel his warm breath on her neck. Helen could see he was struggling with himself; finally he opened his hands and moved them away from her. She backed away from the fangs at her throat and turned quickly to get his medication.
She found his pills first, but that would take too long to take effect, so she loaded a syringe with a double dose of his liquid vampire control medication and a tranquilizer. She turned back to find he'd lowered his hands and raised his head, but he was staring at the wall with his feeders still extended as if he'd forgotten they were there.
Helen grabbed his nearest sleeve at one of the cuts and tore it open. She inserted the needle in his arm and depressed the plunger while he stood immobile. Nikola jerked his head around and snarled at her when he felt the medication enter his body.
"It's all right, Your Majesty, you'll be fine now" she said soothingly, hoping she was right; the liquid was meant to be added to his wine, not injected. She tossed the syringe into medical waste and added "Why don't we go to the royal lab and you can enjoy some of your special libation?" If he was drunk he would soon be relaxed, happy, and back to his old self.
Nikola withdrew his feeders but said "No, we will go to the library. Summon one of my concubines, I want my claws tended to and you can read to me. Tell her to bring my diamond file, a light oil, and wine- and not rotgut either."
One of his concubines? Was he delusional or did Nikola have women on the side she didn't know about? She would dig into that cesspool later; right now the main thing was to keep him calm and hope the drugs would have the desired effect.
They strolled out of the infirmary arm-in-arm. Big Guy and Will were in the hall and she silently mouthed "bow" at them. Big Guy grunted unhappily twice and Will rolled his eyes, but they both did as she directed. Biggie was actually graceful at it, extending a leg and putting his arms in front and in back of himself, while Will just bent forward awkwardly; he was too young to have much practice at the archaic sign of respect.
As they passed Helen muttered to Biggie "The blood sample is in a drawer, put it in the analyzer when it has finished with the last one." She had confidence in his ability to handle the chore properly; he'd been training with her for decades and was quite a competent doctor on his own.
Where was she going to get someone to play the part of concubine and how could she keep them safe? Kate wasn't at the Sanctuary at the moment, which was just as well since Helen doubted she could pretend to be submissive long enough. Erica perhaps; as a HAP she could possibly defend herself from Nikola at least for a little while.
Helen called Henry's wife on her cell phone when they reached the library. Nikola allowed her to edge away from him while he looked through the books he hadn't read yet.
"Erica, I'm in the library with King Teslat and I need your assistance. Could you please stop by his suite and bring a fresh set of clothing for him and the diamond file and oil for his nails? And the 1948 Chablis Blanc from the wine cellar and glasses."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"I've given Nikola some medication. I need to stay with him and attend him for a while." Helen lowered her voice, although Nikola could probably still hear every word if he was paying attention. "Since he's probably the greatest threat in the building in the moment and you are running Security while Henry is recovering, it wouldn't be a bad place for you to be especially if he becomes aggressive."
"All right. Nail stuff, wine and clothes, right? I'll be there in a few minutes."
Helen turned back to Nikola to find he'd enthroned himself in an armchair with the matching chair pulled over for him to rest his feet on. Biggie would not be pleased at having to remove scuff marks from the chair.
Helen moved a straight-back chair over to sit next to him; she would take care of any personal care Nikola demanded and Erica could keep her distance and do the reading. And with a little luck no one would mention the word "concubine".
The beautiful HAP arrived moments later with a bag of Nikola's things and another clinking with wine and glasses; Helen could see she'd also stopped to arm herself and had a walkie-talkie hooked to her belt. Good, two guns would be better than one if things got out of hand and reinforcements could be summoned quickly. Helen unpacked the bags, laying out a new outfit for Nikola on a couch.
The Vampire King shrugged, rose, and stood with his hands out from his sides; good lord, he was waiting for them to dress him. Helen handed Erica the book he'd chosen and said "Please read this aloud to His Majesty while I see to his wardrobe."
Undressing her vampire lover wasn't that unusual an activity for Helen, but dressing him was. However she managed, wondering when the drugs would kick in and fearing they already had without affecting Nikola at all. Erica had placed herself in another seating group entirely and was plowing through a physics treatise.
Once dressed, Nikola sat down and interrupted her with a derisive comment, and continued to do so every couple of sentences as the HAP read. Helen uncorked the wine and poured a glass for Nikola and then picked up the diamond file. He sipped wine, continued to interrupt the reading, and held one hand out to her languidly for his vampire manicure.
"Just smooth any rough edges, don't touch the tips" he directed, "Then a light coating of oil."
"Of course, Your Majesty" Helen said, doing her best to sound civil, but it was getting harder. She could tell from Erica's tone of voice that she was getting tired of being interrupted as well. If the medication didn't work, Helen hoped that the computer in the room would beep with a message from Big Guy giving her the results of the blood analyses.
Helen filed his claws in a couple of rough places she found and massaged in a little oil which was absorbed quickly and left a shiny dry finish. She completed one hand and shifted her chair to Nikola's other side since he obviously wasn't going to move a muscle to accommodate her except to switch hands holding his wine. She worked slowly, but there wasn't that much to do and she soon finished his second hand, dreading what the Vampire King would think of next.
Nikola admired his now smooth and shiny claws; Helen hoped he would retract them and his fangs, but he didn't. He said "Excellent" and waved her off.
He got up and sauntered over to Erica and took the book from her hands. He leafed through it and then tossed it carelessly aside. "What rubbish. My, you're rather lovely, aren't you? Stand up so I can see you better."
Helen was quickly at Nikola's side. Erica looked at her for direction and Helen gave a small nod. The HAP stood, but placed the chair she had been sitting in between her and the vampire. Nikola batted it aside as if it weighed nothing and advanced toward her.
Erica stepped back and pulled her gun but pointed it at the ceiling when Helen deftly inserted herself between them. "Your Majesty, Erica Foss is a married woman and not one of your concubines; none of them were available so she just agreed to assist me."
Nikola put his mouth by her ear and said very softly "Don't be ridiculous Ahelena, any woman I want is my concubine, and I think the three of us could . . ."
Helen leaned back and slapped his face as hard as she could. It certainly wouldn't hurt him but it would let him know what she thought of his idea and focus his attention on her instead of Erica, who stepped to the side so Helen wouldn't be in the way if she had to shoot. Then Helen took out her gun as well.
"Nikola please, just sit down. I'm sure Erica could fetch some of your special tequila from the lab, you'd like that wouldn't you?"
The Vampire King laughed. "No you're the one who would like that. You just want me to get drunk so my weak human side can take over again. Not going to happen, lovely one."
He spun and leapt at Erica who got off three shots that hit him before he knocked her gun aside. Helen shot him twice from the side but then hesitated, wondering if she should shoot him in the head; that would stop him for the moment, but eventually they'd only have to go through all this again.
Nikola picked up Erica and swung her around, tossing her into Helen. Erica changed in mid-air, landing on Helen in her furry, elongated, dangerous HAP form and they both went down in a heap. The King didn't seem to care; he just jumped on top of the pile.
Helen had hung on to her gun; at close range she couldn't miss, but she had to get Erica out of the way. The HAP was trying to get up, but Nikola wouldn't let her squirm out from under him. His feeding fangs were out again; Erica clawed at him but she wasn't strong enough to stop him.
But his concentration on Erica let Helen get her gun into position. She fired one shot into his groin at close range and two more into his chest when he howled and jerked back.
With eight gunshot wounds the Vampire King rolled off of them, closed his eyes and went limp, giving both the women the opportunity to disentangle themselves and get up. The library door opened and Henry and Will ran in, both armed and ready to shoot. Henry was barefoot in jeans pulled on over pajamas and wearing sunglasses, but ready to defend his wife.
"Quickly" Helen said "We have to get him restrained."
"With what?" Will asked.
"Good question" Helen replied, perplexed. One of the bullets in Nikola's body oozed out and slid to the floor and she could see his groin healing; they didn't have much time.
"Right then. Take him to the gate. If he's going to be the Vampire King then we'll send him to the vampires."
Will took his legs and Henry and Helen each took an arm, leaving Erica in the library to change back to human and dress. They raced through the halls, every once in a while hearing another bullet clunk on the floor as the vampire healed at a record pace.
They got to the gate room and put him on the platform in front of the oval. Helen quickly pulled out her controller and turned on the transport apparatus, tuning it to the vampire caves. She and Will each grabbed an arm, dragged the slowly awakening King through and ran back. Helen turned off the gate and the three of them stood panting and looking at each other.
Henry recovered first and said "I'm going to go check on Erica."
Helen let him go; his wife would see him back in bed where he belonged, and he might stay there once he was sure she was safe.
Will just said "Sorry." He knew how hard the past few days had been on Magnus and how much worse she felt now with no way to even try to help Nikola. She bent down and picked up a bloody bullet from the platform.
Helen looked at it staining her hand and said "There was nothing else we could do."
"You know he'll be back eventually."
"Will he? I'm not so sure. If the blood analysis doesn't give us a medical solution . . . I don't know if the Vampire King will want to come back. But he might and Queen Ana has a controller with a Sanctuary button. We must not underestimate Nikola, even as the King; we'll need a twenty-four hour watch on this gate until we figure out an answer."
"Right. I'll tell Security, but I sort of think Henry and Erica will have figured that out already."
Helen perfunctorily said "Thank you" and walked back the way they had come, picking up bullets as she went. She found six in all and took them to her office where she put them in a small dish on her desk. She wanted to see them every day to spur herself on to find a solution to control or eliminate the Vampire King and save her best friend and lover.
If she couldn't find a way to bring Nikola back to himself, she wasn't at all sure the Vampire King wouldn't just take over permanently and she didn't want Tesla to be an enemy again. They'd gone through being on opposite sides and neither of them had liked it; but now perhaps Nikola didn't have any choice.
She could possibly get reports on him from Ana, but she knew the Queen wouldn't help her change him back. And it didn't seem as if Nikola could cooperate either. Would she ever have him back? Helen felt like she just couldn't face decades of being at odds with Nikola as the leader of the vampires; what would the Vampire King do with an army? Was the world even safe?
/
Nikola became aware of himself and his surroundings slowly. There was still quite a bit of pain; damn that woman, she wasn't supposed to shoot him in the head or the groin. A man's gonads should be safe from petty anger.
But it hadn't been petty anger this time; this time he'd really crossed the line when he'd jumped on another woman, even though she wasn't all that attractive by the time he'd landed. Why had he done that?
Oh yeah, Vampire King. But he wasn't the King now; his mouth was still full of fangs, but he was just Nikola in vampire mode. Being shot in such a sensitive place had shocked him back to himself. Do not tell Helen he told himself; she would just start shooting him there whenever she needed to vanquish the King and he did not ever, ever want to experience that again.
Gradually the pain subsided and he carefully sat up. Now where . . . oh, they'd shoved him through the gate. Fair enough, but he wasn't the Vampire King now so . . .
Nikola searched through his pockets and found nothing at all. He could borrow Ana's controller, adjust it so he could use it and go back, but maybe that wasn't such a great idea, at least not right away. Helen would be angry at him, Erica was likely steamed and Henry would probably shoot him on sight. Maybe waiting a day would be a good idea.
His clothes of course were ruined again, and there was a very large hole in his pants in an embarrassing location. What was inside his pants was pretty much back to normal although not showing any interest in engaging in any activities at the moment except peeking through the hole. Nikola took off his jacket and tied the arms around his waist, knotting them in the back, glad he had only been shot from the front and side so he had a solid piece of cloth to hang in front of him. He sighed; he definitely had to change immediately. Fortunately he had his own well-stocked rooms here in Queen Ana's house.
Nikola unlocked the gate room door and strode quickly through the halls. He encountered few vampires and he just walked past like wearing his jacket that way and bloody bullet holes in his shirt and vest were perfectly normal, but he was immensely relieved to gain his own rooms and lock the door behind him.
After showering and changing he wondered what he should do. Call Helen perhaps? No, too soon, she would connect the dots and realize that shooting him somewhere extremely painful had allowed him to push the Vampire King aside. He would have to think of something believable to tell her before he called.
He should probably let Queen Ana know he was here, if she didn't already. And afterwards he needed to acquire a cell phone and a gate controller that would connect with all the gates. He thought of going to New York for a while; he really needed a vacation. But no, he couldn't let the Vampire King loose in a city of defenseless people. So he needed a controller with just one button- the Sanctuary and nowhere else.
Nikola went to Ana's quarters. The Queen's secretary/handmaiden or whatever was there; Nikola had never heard her title. Iris didn't seem surprised to see him. "You are expected Your Majesty" was all she said and Nikola nodded his thanks and proceeded through the inner door.
Ana was standing in front of an easel, painting. She set down her palette and brush on a nearby stand when he entered and gestured him toward a chair. Curious, Nikola walked over to see the incomplete canvas. Her technique reminded him of the Old Masters, but the painting was dark and eerie with undefined figures in the background and what appeared to be insane cherubs around a still blank space in the foreground.
The Queen watched him closely; he suspected she could tell the King wasn't currently ascendant. He smiled at her a little and just said "Excellent technique." She shrugged and they both sat down.
"King Teslat, what has happened to you?"
Nikola understood she was asking where his raging, egotistical, insane side was, but he didn't want to answer that question. So he said "I cannot be the King anywhere else, he's far too dangerous to be around anyone but vampires." Great, I'm referring to myself in the third person now.
"Then remain here with your people."
"I intend to for a period of time, but I came away quickly without my cell phone or gate controller."
"I am not tech support, Teslat. The labs can furnish whatever you wish. Why did you leave so abruptly?"
The labs could supply a cell phone possibly, but she was telling him to go build his own gate remote control. She knew it would take time and she wanted to keep him here. "As I said, I was endangering others."
Ana sighed. "If I could make one change in you, my King, it would be for you to stop caring about those lesser creatures and allow the true King in you to rule."
"I respect your opinion but I don't really like the true King very much. He's cruel and overbearing."
"He is strong and does what must be done without sentimental hogwash. Well, potato, potahto. He is you and now that you have come to your Kingship, you may sporadically revert to a lesser state occasionally, but eventually you will only be the King and we will have an able leader once again."
"And where do you expect me to lead you, Ana?"
"Through all of hollow earth and back to the surface; back to our destiny to rule all there is."
Nikola leaned forward and said with sincerity "Not going to happen Ana, not now, not ever."
The Queen smiled and said "Oh, sweet little vampire, think what you will; your days are numbered. Soon you will disappear and a better Teslat will take your place; it is just a matter of time."
Shaking his head a little, Nikola leaned back again. He didn't know what to say in the face of her certainty. She had seen so many more centuries than he had and her knowledge was so much greater, particularly about vampires. But she couldn't be right about this, because if she was Nikola Tesla would cease to exist and the Vampire King would lead his people to lay waste to the world.
And the Sanctuary would be destroyed as well. Their defenses were good, but he knew them as well as anyone and the vampires could get through them with his guidance. No one would survive the onslaught- not Helen, not Henry, no one.
Ana could see he was troubled by her words. "It is not your fault, you are what you are. I thought at first you did not have enough of the royal blood in you for this to happen. I am so pleased I was wrong, and it happened so quickly. We will be strong again." She clapped her hands in delight.
Nikola met her eyes. "I will not allow it to happen. I would sooner destroy myself than commit mass murder or start a world war."
"You will not destroy yourself, Teslat, the King is already too strong for that. Soon you will not care about such things as the deaths of lesser beings."
"Vampires will die too" he said desperately. There had to be some way out of this.
"Yes, but our numbers will come back. In such an exciting time we will lose few to natural death and once we are on the surface, breeding will increase greatly with the expansion into the much greater available space."
He argued "I was not always a vampire, but I have always loved humanity. All my life I have tried to give people better lives- free electricity, enough food for everyone through improvements to the soil, inventions to make their lives better. I haven't always succeeded, but I still believe that's what I'm here to do."
"Those humans who surrender to us will have better lives, you know that. Science and art will flourish, there will be no more war, and the golden age will return under our benevolent guidance. Some will die, but in the end the earth will be a better place. You know this is true, Teslat."
"It won't work, Ana, it won't. Humans are too stubborn and they're no longer simple peasants for the most part. If I have to be this King, I'll still know that, I'll still know that we can't just kill everyone who objects to being a slave."
She gave him a speculative look. "Perhaps, perhaps not. Vampire royalty has its own way of thinking, I believe you have learned that much, and that is why you argue so hard. You do not really believe your own words. Once you are completely the King of the Vampires you will be different."
Nikola felt defeated. He said quietly "I do believe in what I'm saying, I do." But he couldn't quite convince himself.
Queen Ana rose and said "I wish to go on with my work before my paint begins to dry on my palette."
Nikola rose as well. They inclined their heads politely to each other and Nikola left while Queen Ana went back to her hobby.
A/N: Lorienleaf, epichlexi, Lilliant, Guest and Guest, thank you for the reviews.