Title: The Lies You Live
Author: alyse
Fandom: Blade: Trinity
Pairing: Abigail Whistler/Hannibal King
Word Count: 101,850
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Highlight to read: violence, implications of past torture and sexual abuse, potential triggers for suicidal thoughts and actions.
Betas:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aithine and Leah (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
taste_is_sweet)
Challenges: Written for: the 2011![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
het_bigbang; my ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hc_bingo square 'lacerations/knife wounds' (although, frankly, it could cover about half a dozen of them ::g::); and medie's request back for the first time Abby saved King, back when I did the 'request a drabble' meme. Yeah, I fail at drabbles, apparently. By a factor of 1,000.
Author's notes: Many thanks to: my tireless cheerleaders, particularlyhiddencait and torigates; my betas, Aithine and Leah; and my artist, skylar0grace, who made me some completely wonderful artwork found here. You should go pet and stroke it! Also, thanks to irony_rocks and peanutbutterer, who worked so hard on making sure that this whole Big Bang went smoothly and was immense amounts of fun.
This is the extended, director's cut version of the story - it includes an expanded sex scene, hence the higher rating, and given the length, I'm going to be posting it in many, many parts over the next week or so. If you'd prefer not to wait, a complete (non-sexy, rated 15!) version can be found here.
Summary: Hunting is in her blood and in her bones, but when Abigail Whistler's path crosses that of a smart-mouthed vampire who seems perfectly happy to die, she's left questioning everything she thought she knew. While her team work to cure Hannibal King of his vampirism with an experimental antivirus, she finds herself warming to their captive in spite of her reservations, and when their actions turn out to have devastating consequences, Abby's loyalties are left torn.
-o-
Masterlist: dreamwidth :: livejournal :: insanejournal
-o-
When reality finally returned, it washed over Abby in thick, heavy waves. Even breathing hurt; the pain threatened to swamp her, dragging her back down with each hitching breath she took. There was a nagging sense of urgency in her hind-brain, a sharp, jagged surety that she was missing something important, but every time she tried to concentrate on it, tried to remember what it was she'd forgotten, it skittered away again, lost in the slow, sluggish hammering in her brain and the bone deep ache in her ribs.
She opened her eyes but the world stayed dark, everything blurred and indistinct. She blinked hard, trying to bring it back into focus, but when she lifted her head, nausea rushed over her, the world greying out and leaving nothing behind but the sound of her breathing, echoing loudly in her ears. She hung there for long, aching moments, taking deep breaths and cataloguing each twinge of pain, each twist of her stomach, every pounding twitch that clenched tightly behind her eyeballs; counting and naming them gave her back a semblance of control, enough to finally open her eyes again and to ease her arms underneath her so that she could push herself up.
The world swam out of focus, dizzying and disorienting, and she took another deep breath, gritting her teeth as she rolled over and used the wall to lever herself upright. On the plus side, she was breathing and nothing seemed to be broken, not even her ribs, which ached but lacked the familiar sharp edge to each inward breath.
She had no idea where she was, and that was definitely a minus.
She finally managed to right herself, ignoring the way that the world swirled around her, bright sparks dancing against the blackness even though there were no light sources that she could see. She knew better than to call out for the rest of her team. If they were around, they'd find her. If they weren't, there was bound to be something else out there that would find her instead, something considerably less friendly. All she could do right now was concentrate on breathing and straining her ears for any sound that might be human.
Frank Reilly was a cold-hearted bastard sometimes and she respected that, although it was easier to respect when it wasn't her ass on the line. But even Frank didn't leave people behind if there was any chance that they were still alive. They'd be looking for her - she held onto the thought as hard as she could.
The bricks behind her were cold to the touch, rough with age and crumbling beneath her fingertips. She leaned against them, letting the wall bear her weight as she blinked grit and worse out of her eyes, trying to take stock and trying not to panic. If no one came, she'd just have to rescue herself, which meant she needed to figure out what the hell had happened and where the hell she was. She tried, but the memories were vague, sensations instead of concrete events. Yelling and flashes of bright light. Moving fast but not fast enough and then... nothing. Nothing until she'd woken up in the darkness here.
There was a throbbing knot above her right eye and when she touched it, her fingertips came back wet.
"You're bleeding."
The unfamiliar voice came out of nowhere and she scrabbled backwards, instincts kicking in as her eyes searched the dimness, her heart beating rabbit fast and frantic in her chest. It was instinct to reach for her weapons, too - as unconscious as taking the next breath or as making sure that her back was against the wall so nothing could circle around behind her - but the silver plated knife was gone from her boot and the stakes had gone from her vest.
Shit, shit, shit. She was down to nothing but fists, feet and teeth - hopefully hers and not something else that bit - but she wasn't going down without a fight.
Something - someone - shifted in the darkness in the opposite corner and she flexed her fingers, all of her muscles tensing up as she readied herself for the charge that didn't come. Instead the voice drifted towards her again, too light and conversational for the words being said. "I can smell it." And then the man's voice dropped an octave, still light on the surface but with something darker, hungrier lurking underneath. "I think it's a little inconsiderate to be all the way over there when you smell so fucking good."
Vampire. Had to be, and if he was close enough to smell her, he could probably hear her heart beating as well and tell how fast it was racing. He could even be getting off on it, tormenting her before he moved in for the kill. She wasn't going to give him the fucking satisfaction; she took another deep breath, forcing herself to move into a state of being that was alert without being tense. Slowed her heartbeat, slowed her breathing. Pushed herself up the wall until she was standing and blinked the sweat, or blood, out of her eyes, feet planted firmly on the ground, balanced and ready for anything.
"Relax, sweetheart." There was a harsh metallic jangle, like an anchor being weighed, the metal chain running through a cleat, and she pricked her ears up, listening for anything else that would give her any hint about where she was. "I'm not going anywhere. Certainly not anywhere near you. Unless you feel like wandering over here?"
She didn't answer him, still listening, still trying to make him out in the dimness as her eyes adjusted to the low light levels, refusing to be drawn into whatever head games he was playing. Most vamps went straight in for the kill, simple if never clean. Trust her luck that she'd ended up with one of the others, the ones who liked to play with their food.
There was another sound, more metallic clanking, and she tensed, feeling far too exposed even with the wall behind her. She'd had nightmares like this, things hunting her in the dark while she crawled around, blind and helpless; she avoided Sommerfield after the worst of them, too sick and ashamed of her relief that she wasn't blind to be able to look the other woman in the face.
"No?" There was amusement as well as disappointment in his voice, and she wasn't quite sure which one of them pissed her off more. "Well, can't say I blame you for that one. That's too bad. The view's on this side of the room."
She took her eyes off him briefly, scanning the wall and spotting the small, lighter rectangle of the high window without much effort. She dismissed it as an escape route almost immediately; it was too small for her to fit through and too close to him for her to risk scaling the wall to see if she could see out of it. Instead, she stayed where she was, turning her full attention back to him.
He hadn't moved, but at least now she could make out the vague outline of his shape, the dizziness from whatever blows to the head she'd taken fading. His body was half-turned towards her, his head tilted as though he was watching her as closely as she was watching him. She leaned back against the wall and folded her arms, hiding the tremble in her fingers, and he snorted, the sound sudden and startling in the silence.
"Not stupid, are you?" He didn't wait for an answer. "No, I'd guess not. Or not reckless, anyway, which pretty much amounts to the same thing." He paused for a second, the silence stretching out between them, and then he added, the amusement back in his voice, "Are you sure you wouldn't be more comfortable moving closer? Maybe leaning in a bit? I'm getting a crick in my neck."
"I'm fine where I am," she said, answering him before she could think better of it, but her lapse in judgement seemed to have caught him off guard - he shifted position slightly, his boots grating against the stone floor, and there was a watchful air to his silence now. "And no," she added, more deliberately this time, "I don't think I'm particularly stupid."
"And yet you managed to get yourself caught and locked up, all nice and neat. I think the jury's still out on that one, sweetheart."
The endearment had her gritting her teeth but she didn't call him on it, tilting her head as she tried to make out his face. "You're locked up in here as well," she hazarded, intending to gauge his reaction if she could.
He snorted again, not sounding at all put out, the amusement dark and rich in his voice. "Well, I never said I wasn't stupid."
"Why are you down here?" If she kept him talking, it might distract him long enough for her to figure a way out of here, or for the sun to rise, whichever came sooner.
He tutted, the sound raising the hackles on her neck. "Are you always this forward? Shouldn't there be small talk first? Hey, how you doing? Fancy meeting a nice guy like you in a dungeon like this? What do you do for a living? You know, something before you leap straight into 'how exactly did you fuck up'?'"
It sounded almost normal, like they were simply shooting the breeze, but she didn't miss the sudden tension in his voice. "So how exactly did you fuck up?" she asked, and he laughed, the sound harsh and broken and yet still with some traces of amusement clinging to it.
"Not one for small talk, huh?"
"Not really." Smart quips were something that happened in the movies. In the real world, you got in, you staked the fuckers, you got out as quickly as you could. No time for one-liners, not if you wanted to keep on breathing and Abby intended to do that for a good long while yet.
"How did I fuck up?" His tone was musing this time, almost philosophical, but there was still an edge to it, something ragged underneath the too smooth surface. "In a thousand different ways, most of which I won't have been told about yet." And then his voice grew sharp and hard. "And how did you fuck up? Never learned how to duck? Or did your momma teach you and you were just too slow? Because I might be locked down here, sweetheart, but you're the one who got locked in with me."
"And I should be scared by that?" She kept her voice steady, never moving her eyes away from where he was sitting, a darker shape against the dull grey wall behind him.
"You should be fucking terrified."
"I didn't get the memo," she said coolly and he snorted again, the sound harsher even than the rasping, metallic scrape that rang out as he shifted position, stretching his body out until she could make out long limbs.
His feet were bare, pale in the weak moonlight coming in from the high window, which meant that it hadn't been his boots she'd heard scraping against the concrete. She risked moving a couple of steps to her right, deliberately unstudied. He turned his head and watched her, focused on her in a way that caught her breath in her throat and set her heart pounding again in her chest.
She could make out more of his shape now, but as she strained her eyes to see more of him, he turned his head away, keeping stubbornly silent. The longer he kept silent, the more she wanted - needed - him to break it. She could rationalise it if she needed to, but at least part of it, she thought bleakly, came down to the fact that she was twenty one years old, locked in the dark with something far older. Evil bloodsucking leech or not, at least he was company.
She took a deep breath, letting it out and not missing the fact that it was shaky. Maybe that was what pushed her into pushing him. "Why should I be scared?" she needled.
He stayed silent, but at least he was listening. He shifted again, angling towards her. She couldn't see his face, but maybe she'd wished hard enough; the clouds outside drifted further past, and faint silvery moonlight streamed through the window. He wasn't in its path, but the room brightened enough for her to make out more of his form, catching the sharpness of his cheekbone, something sparkling briefly in the lobe of one ear as he turned his head.
He pulled further back into the shadows, drawing his feet back. The light was enough for her to catch the gleam of metal around his ankles before they, too, disappeared out of sight.
"Why should you be scared?" His voice drifted out of the darkness, and there was no amusement in it this time, just something old and remote, cold enough to send shivers down her spine. "I may be wrong about this - it's been known to happen before," and there was the amusement, back in his voice, like he couldn't stop finding things funny no matter how dire his situation, "but I'm pretty sure they didn't put you in here to eat me." He leaned forward, the light catching in the gleam of his eye.
"Or maybe they did," he added, and the prickles ran down her arms. "First thing you did when you woke up was to check for weapons. Meaning you're the kind of girl who carries weapons. And that leaves me with two questions. Well, three really..." He trailed off, leaving an expectant little pause in his wake that she was determined not to fill.
After a moment, he sighed, the sound loaded with overdone disappointment. "Firstly, what's a nice - and tasty, I'd bet - little hunter like you doing in a dive like this?"
She kept her silence, ignoring his little inquisitive head tilt, and he sighed again, the sound softer this time, with an edge to it she couldn't quite make out.
"Secondly," he continued blithely on, although his voice was a little thready this time, a little distant. "Did they leave you any? Weapons, that is, and I'd guess not or I'd probably already be dust."
Abby cleared her throat, the sound echoing too loudly in her ears. "What's the third question?" she asked, hoping that the fact that she was finally answering him would throw him off balance and keep him there for long enough that he couldn't dwell on the idea of her being unarmed.
"Talking of eating... I don't suppose there's any chance of you coming over here and sucking my dick?"
The crudeness of it startled a laugh out of her, one that echoed around the chamber. It caught in her throat as she pulled it back, but too late - his teeth flashed in the darkness, his face splitting in a sudden grin.
"Do you always sexually harass your dinner?" she asked, and some of her lingering amusement at him crept into her voice, warming it up in spite of her fear and her instinctive hatred of his kind.
"Well, if you're not going to let me eat you..."
"I think I'll pass," she said dryly, and he let out a soft sound that was a hairsbreadth from disappointment.
"My loss," he said, and for a second it sounded like he actually meant it. But then he shifted position again, the outline of his head emerging in the dimness, and she knew he was back to watching her closely, hungrily.
"What's the plan?" she asked, and her voice was too weak. She cleared her throat and tried again. "You batter me with bad one-liners and when I've finally lost the will to fight, you strike?"
"You think that Danica would actually let me in on the plan? Assuming she has one and isn't just fucking with me for the hell of it?"
"Who's Danica?"
He didn't answer her, and she heard the scraping of metal against concrete again. The sound had a sharp edge to it this time, as though he'd shifted position suddenly, jerking in impatience or something else she couldn't read. And then his voice echoed out of his corner again, sounding dead.
"Does it matter?"
She licked her lips; they were dry, as was her mouth, her heart back to tripping fast and uncomfortably in her chest.
"So what now?" she asked, and the words came out soft, maybe more than a little scared, but she couldn't dwell on it. He'd said he could smell her blood. She'd be surprised if he couldn't also smell her fear.
"I'm going to kill you," he said, and there was no glee in his tone, none of the over-the-top boasting or hyperbole she was used to from the vamps she hunted, at least those who'd lived long enough to talk. Instead he sounded tired, old suddenly in a way he hadn't before. "Sooner or later I'm going to kill you. That's why you're here. Don't doubt that, sweetheart."
She didn't.
"Who's Danica?" she asked again, because any information was better than none.
He shifted again, that ever-present clank of chains that accompanied his every movement setting her teeth on edge. "Aren't you going to ask me not to kill you?"
"Would it do any good?"
He tilted his head at her sharp tone, back to watching her. She still couldn't see his eyes, not now that he'd retreated into the shadows, and it bothered her more than she wanted to admit. "No," he admitted, and the bastard actually sounded regretful, or faked it really well, which was the more likely scenario. "Believe me, princess. It's better than the alternative."
"Letting me live?"
"Letting you become like this." There was a pause, and then he added, "I don't think fangs would be your thing, sweetheart. I mean, far be it from me to complain about hot, long-legged, and toothy chicks, but the psychotic bitch side of the equation tends to be a boner-killer, you know?"
There was nothing she could say to that. She lapsed into silence, and he followed her lead, although he was restless. She could tell that from the low clinking of the chains that rattled out every now and then.
Her head was still throbbing, and the silence only made her more aware of it, nothing to distract her from the sharp pain behind her eyeballs. She kept her eyes focused on him, but he stayed in the shadows and for once he didn't seem to be paying her any attention. She risked bringing her fingers up to her forehead, gingerly pressing in where the skin throbbed the most, a tight and sore knot, and swallowed down the instinctive hiss of pain when she pressed too hard.
"It's still bleeding," he said, his voice dull and drained of colour, bleak and hopeless. "In case you were wondering."
She swallowed again. "You can still smell me," she said. It wasn't a question.
"Yes, I can smell you." There was another clatter and scrape of chains, managing to sound sharp and frustrated this time. "And you smell so fucking good."
Abby took a step back, and then another until cold, brick wall hit her back. It put steel and stone into her spine again and she straightened up, fingers flexing, ready for him.
"Relax." He clanked his chains again, the sound twitchy and irritated. "You're safe for now, sweetheart."
"Don't call me that," she growled, the sudden spike of fear fading and leaving her pissed at his easy familiarity, his casualness at the idea that sooner or later he'd kill her. Slaughter her like she was a fucking animal.
"You got a name I should call you instead?" he asked, back to conversational. His shifts in mood, from friendly to dangerous and then back again, were leaving her edgy and off-balance, which was probably exactly as he intended. She stayed silent, not wanting to give him any power over her, even if keeping silent might be doing just that, but her silence simply seemed to goad him. "Should I just call you kitten?"
"Do that and I'll tear your fucking face off."
He laughed, hard and fast as though she'd said the funniest thing he'd heard in a long time, and maybe it was.
"I like you, hunter, I really do."
It wasn't much of an improvement on 'kitten' and she let her lips curl up in a snarl, half fury and half - though it pained her to admit it - amusement at his antics. She shot back straight from the hip, as though she was used to this sort of exchange, "I bet you say that to all the girls you're going to eat."
"The boys, too." He laughed again, body shaking with mirth before he finally stilled with a hissing breath she caught. "I'm an equal opportunity asshole." There was a pause before he repeated, sounding almost wistful, as if vampires were capable of such things, "I like you, sweetheart."
She had no idea what to say to that, not when there was something close to truth in his voice, and it was difficult not to feel some vague, creeping sympathy for him, chained up here in the dark, waiting for the sun to rise and turn him into ash and dust.
Maybe she'd hit her head too hard, or maybe Frank was right and she thought about things too fucking much and too fucking deep, but the idea of what he'd done to deserve this, how he'd pissed off his own kind this much, was eating at her the way that the sunlight would eat at him, burning all the way through her until she couldn't stand it any more. And any intel was better than none. "How long have you been down here?"
He shifted again, restless in a way that would set her teeth on edge even if they weren't trapped here together. "You mean, how long has it been since I pissed Danica off enough to put me down here?" He hesitated for a long moment, and she couldn't tell whether that was simply because he felt the need to drag it out as melodramatically as possible for his own purposes, or because he was wondering whether to answer her at all. "What day is it again?"
There was reluctance in his tone, unless she was imagining it. He was good, or he was genuine, and she wasn't sure which of those was worse.
He waited her out until she cleared her throat and offered, "Tuesday."
"Huh." There was another pause and then he added, back to chatty, the sudden shifts in his mood giving her whiplash, "More than three weeks, then. This time."
The phrasing had to be deliberate, just a little hint to whet her appetite for more, get her leaning in a little closer, make her feel a little more sympathetic. She couldn't figure him out, his angle or his damage. The one thing she was sure of was that she wasn't going to take whatever bait he was laying out. She stared up at the window instead, wondering how he'd survived almost a month down here. The only Day Walker she knew of was Blade; any others were the stuff of legend, not the reality she dealt with every day.
"They close the shutters," he said, and it was eerie how he'd caught her thoughts. "Before the sun comes up." He shifted again, moving further into the moonlight. It brought him closer to her and she tensed, ready for treachery, but he simply moved as far as he could until the chains around his wrists tautened and jerked him back with a hiss.
"They don't close the far one," he said, jerking his head to the far end of the room. If she'd turned and looked, maybe she'd have seen another patch of light. She kept her eyes firmly on him instead.
He wasn't paying her any attention. Instead he was sitting back on his heels and just staring down the room. It was too dim to make out the expression on his face, but there was something about the tension in his frame that set her heart thumping in her chest again.
Maybe he heard it, because he turned his head to look at her, sitting back on his heels and just watching her for long, silent moments, like he was trying to figure out what was going on in her mind. Or maybe it was just the sound of her heartbeat that caught his attention, echoing in his ears as well as in hers, only for him it was the siren call of prey.
"The sunlight's about six inches too far away." His voice was light, but he didn't relax. His frame was still tense, as though he was poised for action. When he finally smiled, it was close-lipped, no teeth glinting in the darkness, not this time. "Enough to give me a tan, maybe, but not enough to make me burn."
The words crawled over her skin, making her shiver with a combination of pity and repulsion. She faced death pretty much every time she picked up her gun, her blades or her bow and stalked out into the night, but the idea of sitting in the darkness, waiting for it to come - wanting it to come - and being denied...
That might actually come close to her idea of hell.
He didn't miss her reaction, not as closely as he was watching her or as close as he was getting to crawling under her skin. "Are you actually feeling sorry for me, hunter?" He sounded like he might be pissed at the idea, but she couldn't get a clear read on him. Something was lurking in his voice, turning it bitter and hard-edged, but that could have been anything, from anger to grief.
He tilted his head, chains clattering again as he shifted impatiently, and it sent another shiver through her. It wasn't pity, not this time. She shouldn't need reminding that he was dangerous, he himself had said as much, and yet...
She'd stepped away from the wall, just one step towards him before she realised and came back to herself. Sweat dripped down her spine like icy fingers. She stepped back until she was pressed up against the rough brickwork.
She should say something smart or at least smart ass, but instead she just stared at him and he stared back.
He broke the silence first, of course; she was beginning to think that he'd never met a silence he didn't feel the urge to fill. "So you ever going to tell me your name, sweetheart?"
She wasn't going to answer him, not and give him another route into the inside of her head. He was already in too far and too deep for her comfort, especially if she was starting to feel some sympathy for him. She should... she should give him a name that wasn't hers, something to build the rapport between them so that she could damned well use it. Frank would do something like that, but Frank wasn't here. Just Abigail Whistler, alone in the dark with something she was beginning to think was a little too human for her to cope with.
"Well, if you're not going to share, do you mind if I do?" He paused again expectantly, sighing when she kept silent. "My name is Hannibal King." His voice was quiet, almost reflective, and it was drawing her in again in spite of her resolve.
She rolled the name - odd and old - around in her head for a moment, feeling the shape of it and how it fit him; it was only when she caught sight of his teeth flashing in the darkness - a sudden, shark-like smile - that she realised that she must have repeated his name out loud.
"You can laugh if you like," he offered graciously, humour lacing his voice. "Not like you'd be the first."
"But it would be the last thing I'd ever do?"
He laughed. "Yeah, sweetheart. That would be why I killed you. Not because I'm a fucking vampire."
"Get the shit kicked out of you at school?" she asked, and it didn't come out as cocky or as sharp as she'd been hoping.
"Not as bad as my elder brother," he shot back. "His name's Hephaestion."
She barked out a laugh, her hand coming up to her mouth too late to stop it.
He seemed to appreciate it. When he shifted again, it was to lean towards her, as though he was about to share a confidence. "It could have been worse," he continued, his tone musing. "At least by the time I started school, the other kids were half-convinced that I was named after Hannibal Smith. That earned me some coolness points."
It took her a moment to place the name - she'd never been one for pop culture, not beyond the music that had mapped out the beat of her teenage years - but even she couldn't avoid re-runs entirely.
"The A-Team?" she ventured, her memory hazy, but he cocked his finger at her, a universal 'you got it' gesture that seemed all too human.
"Got it in one, sweetheart."
He was young, she realised, her stomach lurching suddenly as the realisation struck her. Not much older than her, even if he'd watched it as it first aired. He couldn't have much more than a decade on her, maybe a little more, maybe a little less.
'His name is' he'd said about his brother. Not 'his name was'. The idea that he might still have family out there somewhere was horrific all on its own.
"How long?" she asked, her mouth suddenly dry as dust.
He cocked his head again, not seeming to follow her. "How long did they tease me? How long did I let them? How long is my dick? C'mon, sweetheart. You've got to give me a little more than that." He paused a beat and then added, "The answer to that last question is 'very', by the way. Just in case you were wondering."
"I wasn't," she answered automatically, too caught up in the idea of him as young to take offence or to take any notice of his rambling. "How long since you were vamped?"
He stilled; the sudden absence of that constant shifting of his - so ever-present that it had become background noise, something she'd forgotten he was even doing - struck her more any of his words could. "Is vamped actually a word?" he asked mildly, but she didn't miss the tension in his voice. "To vamp. I vamped, you vamped, they were vamped? Not convinced by the etymology of that one, sweetheart."
"How long?"
He twitched, a jangle of chains that had her twitching in response. From the shape of his body in the dim moonlight, she thought he'd looked away from her.
"What's the year?" he asked, and his voice was back to quiet. "I lose track sometimes."
"Two thousand and two. June," she added, in case that made a difference.
"Five years then," he said. His tone was dreamy, distracted - almost as though he'd forgotten she was there. "Give or take."
Five years. Jesus. She'd been sixteen, maybe seventeen, when he'd been turned, and maybe he hadn't been much older.
"How?" she whispered, and he snorted.
"And just like that we're back to the personal questions." The bitterness in his voice silenced her but he didn't need her input to keep talking. When he spoke again, the bitterness had faded - drawn back under the surface, if she'd had to guess, but not gone entirely. "So you expect me to just share even though you won't even tell me your name?"
Maybe it was the idea that he'd only been a few years older than her. Maybe it was the idea that he was down here, alone in the dark, and had been for days and days. Maybe she was just so fucking tired and couldn't think straight, couldn't see a way out, but her name - her real one - hovered on the tip of her tongue until she bit it back, waiting him out.
She didn't have to wait long.
"I picked up this little hottie in a bar," he said, and the rattle of his chains this time sounded like he'd shrugged his shoulders. "Turned out her eyes were bigger than her stomach."
"Danica," she guessed, and he snorted.
"Got it in one. I always go for the crazy 'do not engage' ones, you know?" She didn't, not really. "But Danica kind of blew them all away in the fucking up my life stakes."
"She didn't mean to turn you?" she hazarded.
"Who the fuck knows? Danica certainly isn't the sharing kind." The acidity was back in his voice, sharp-edged and stinging. "Besides, does it really matter? Do you hunters sort vampires into different types now? Definitely evil, only moderately evil, and worth saving?"
All of her words had been stolen away. Just when she thought she had a handle on him, he switched again, all over the place. He leaned forward until she could see the curve of his cheek again in the moonlight, the gleam of his eye and the glint of a fang.
"I haven't exactly been shy about killing people since then. I don't think that any of us are worth fucking saving."
She watched his fingers flex against the ground, sharp nails clear in the moonlight, and thought about him reaching for the sun. "Abigail," she whispered, the word finally creeping past her lips in spite of her caution.
His fingers stilled, palm pressing firmly against the ground. And then he sighed.
"You probably shouldn't have told me that."
"Probably not. But it's not the first stupid thing I've done tonight, is it?"
He snorted. "You and me both, sweetheart. You and me both."
She let the wall take her weight, watching him and not bothering to hide it. It wouldn't do much good to pretend anyway and maybe, just maybe, she was crawling into his head the same way that he was crawling into hers.
"Are you at least hot?" he asked when she didn't look away. "Abigail," he added seemingly as an afterthought. He purred the word out, and she hadn't thought that was possible before now. Her name was too old, too staid to be sexy. He was too far into her head. She was going to lose it if she wasn't careful.
"I was wondering the same thing about you," she shot back, the fear, being constantly on edge, making her a little stupid. The words left her mouth dry, her heart hammering in her chest. She'd overstretched herself, leaving him an opening into her head, and in doing that she'd left herself vulnerable and exposed to the next little mind trick he might want to play.
He laughed, a deep and rich sound that sent a shiver through her.
"You are so full of shit, Abby."
She swallowed, her tongue darting out to wet her dry lips. "We've gone straight to Abby? That's a little familiar. Were you one?"
"Was I what? A familiar?" He snorted again. "I strike you as a wannabe, Abby? Someone who crawls around, looking for favours? Looking for this?" He jerked his chains so that the metal screeched as it ran through whatever fastenings attached it to the wall or floor. "On my knees, sucking someone's dick for the chance of immortality?"
"Well," she pointed out coolly, letting her fingers slowly uncurl from defensive fists and evening out her breathing again. "You are on your knees. And I don't judge about anything else."
That sent another rumble of laughter through him, another switch in mood. "You are something else, Abigail..." He trailed off, inviting her to fill the gap he'd left with the rest of her name, but she wasn't that stupid, not yet so far under his spell that she was giving everything away.
"So tell me about Danica?"
"Danica's hell on wheels," he said, "and not in a good way." He sounded tired now, all of the life drained out of his voice. It jarred; vampires weren't exactly undead, not like the books would have people believe, but, vampire or not, up until now Hannibal King might actually have been the most alive person she'd ever met. He certainly was the most changeable.
But she wasn't going to let him distract her, not about this. Not when she was making the gamble of her life - with her life.
"So how does she fit into things? How do you?"
"Are you always this nosy? I'm beginning to think that you're only interested in my brain. Personally, if I were you, I'd go for the body every single time."
"Yeah, well, I've got a feeling that you only want me for my blood, so..."
His laughter spluttered out this time, sounding genuine, but then he was good at that. "Oh, I think I'd probably want you for more than that, Abigail. Like I said - I like you."
It should have been comforting. It wasn't.
"You haven't answered my question," she pushed.
"No, I haven't." He still sounded tired rather than snippy, and he shifted position again, accompanied by another creaking and clanking of metal. "Do you really want to know?"
His voice was dead, deader than it had been up until now, and she bit her lip, a sudden insane idea that the way this conversation was going was hurting him. It was a stupid concept - she knew enough about vampires to know that they cared very little for anything but their most immediate comfort. For creatures as long lived as they were, they lived in the moment, all about appetites and how best to sate them as quickly as possible.
She didn't want to start considering whether or not she was wrong. Life wasn't a fucking Anne Rice novel; vampires were grotesques, not tortured souls.
"Tell me," she said softly.
"Why?" There was no curiosity in his voice, nothing but that dead, empty weight with five years behind it.
"Because you might have given up, you bastard, but I haven't. The more I know about your Danica, the better chance I have of getting out of here alive."
He laughed again, just once, a hard, harsh sound that did nothing to soothe her erratic temper. "Do you honestly think you stand a chance, Abby? Really?"
"No." Her voice was stone, cold and implacable, and that wasn't all down to Frank Reilly's training. "But I do know that I'm not about to sit around in the dark, waiting for death to come to me."
He was staring at her again, and she really wished - for one brief moment - that she could see his face, read some of whatever it was that was running through his mind.
"Give it five years, sweetheart," he said, and if her voice was cold, his was warming up, anger tingeing the edges red. "And you'll be fucking begging for it."
"Immortality overrated?"
"Five years," he repeated. "And I'm already fucking bored."
"So why not end it?" she pushed, needling him because she could, because she was scared, because she was angry.
"You think I haven't tried?" She could hear the smile in his voice, as sharp and bitter as an unripe apple. "The lock's on the outside of my door, sweetheart."
"So you won't take a walk in the sun?"
"I've thought about it," he said. "And it's a fucking awful way to die. But stepping in front of a hunter's blade, on the other hand..."
The ice water went down her spine again - it put his questions about whether she was still armed into a whole new light. The flash of fury that followed hard on the heels of her revelation took her by surprise. It was illogical and it was dangerous and she shouldn't fucking care when she was all about killing vampires, but the idea of being used like that...
He turned his head, his eyes catching the moonlight, shining eerily.
"Do me a favour, Abigail, and go and stand behind the door, there's a good girl."
She tensed, the tone in his voice - flat and just as eerie as the gleam of his eyes in the moonlight - sending tendrils of something like fear creeping through her body.
"Why?" she breathed, and maybe she took a step towards him, just one, before she stopped abruptly. "What the hell are you up -"
The lights overhead flicked on with a high pitched hum, and she blinked, suddenly blinded by the brightness, stumbling backwards until she hit the wall again, her heart racing as she readied herself for an attack that never came.
When her vision cleared again, adjusting to the brightness, King hadn't moved. He was still sitting in the same spot she'd last placed him in her mental map of the room, and he was watching her.
His eyes were golden, the colour washed out of them by the virus that had him in its grip rather than the bright fluorescent lights. She couldn't tell the colour they'd been originally, but his hair was dark and spiky, his face lean and angular. The skin beneath his eyes was parchment thin, and tiny tension lines creased the corners of his mouth. In spite of that, he looked as young as she'd expected, but he was a hell of a lot better looking than she'd anticipated, his skin pale and his bare chest covered with curling, dark hair the same shade as the hair on his head.
But it was his hands that caught her attention as he shifted again, an unconscious little twitch that had his fingers curling against the dirty fabric of his chinos. Faint tendrils of smoke rose from his wrists. He twitched again, the shackles moving further down towards his hands and leaving dark marks behind, the skin charred where they'd been resting.
The chains were silver, she realised with a sudden clench of pity in her chest. Silver or silver plated, which was more likely, burning him wherever they touched.
"Because Danica's coming," he said quietly. "I heard the starter warm up. She always likes the light on." His lips quirked, but there was no real amusement in his smirk.
Her mouth was dry, all of her spit ripped away by her fear. "You think I'll stand a chance if I hide behind the fucking door?" she asked, the disbelief clear in her voice.
"No," he admitted, and his voice was calm and even. "I think she'll catch you before you take three steps. But I think she'll be so pissed you tried that she'll kill you quick and clean. Snap your neck, just like that." He clicked his fingers, and the cuff slid further up his arm, the skin underneath puckering and burning in its wake.
"That's... comforting," she said, staring at his wrist and watching the skin heal over again, slowly and sluggishly as his mouth tightened with pain. There couldn't be enough silver in the metal to burn straight through his skin to the bone underneath, not as long he kept shifting so that it didn't rest in the same place for more than a few minutes at a time. But there'd be enough to hurt like fuck.
"Better than the alternative, sweetheart," he said, and he gave her a smile, the first she'd seen clearly. Maybe she wanted to believe it - because she was just that desperate or that stupid - but it really did seem genuinely sweet. "And, hey, maybe you'll actually take the bitch out. That I'd pay to see."
"I bet you say that to all the girls," she said absently, tearing her eyes away from him long enough to scope out the door and wonder whether it was actually feasible. When she turned back to look at him again, he was grinning at her, and this time the smile lit up his entire face.
He must have been a heartbreaker back when he'd been fully human.
"Only the cute ones," he said. "Nice meeting you, Abigail. Do your best not to get eaten, eh?"
If she'd had the energy, she would have rolled her eyes at him; as it was, she took two or three steps towards the door, pausing briefly to look back at him. He hadn't moved, although his eyes were tracking her, golden and opaque, giving nothing away.
It sent a shiver through her, but he was right. It might be the only chance she'd get - better than being trapped in a room with whatever came through the door. Better than being trapped between whatever came through the door and him.
Her heart rate slowed as she reached the door and braced herself against the wall behind it. She took a deep breath, then another, reaching down inside herself for that well of calm that rose up within her whenever it came down to a fight. It flowed through her, settling her as she rolled her shoulders, loosening herself for the battle to come. And when the door finally flew open, she threw the first kick.
It landed at chest height - she'd been aiming for head height, anticipating that whoever this Danica was, she'd be no taller than Abby. Frank Reilly was six foot and broad with it, but she still managed to knock him back several inches.
"Jesus fuck, girl!" His hand flew to his chest, the heel of his palm rubbing firmly at his breastbone while he stared at her, his ever-present scowl settling on his face. "It's the vamps you want to kill, not me."
Her breath escaped her in a gasp, fingers tingling as the adrenaline surged through her. It made her stupid and reckless - or perhaps that was King's brief influence. Before she could think better of it, she snapped out, "Learn to duck," and Frank's frown deepened, the piercing look in his blue eyes making her squirm. Behind him, Mick waggled his eyebrows at her, the look on his face telling her quite clearly that he thought she'd lost her mind, answering Frank back like that while they were still in the field.
Maybe she had. She didn't know any more, but it was a good job Mick hadn't come through the door first or she would have kicked his face in - he was a good four or five inches shorter than Frank.
"You okay?" Frank asked her, giving her a slow once over, a look that managed to be both concerned and impersonal at once.
"I'll live," she said, keeping it brief and to the point, the way that Frank preferred. "How did you find me?"
He grunted, switching his attention from her to the rest of the room, the little he could see of it from the doorway. "Beat it out of some familiars. They're quick to help when -"
He'd stepped into the room, stopping abruptly when he spotted King, his hand flying to his firearm. It was instinct to reach out and stop him, her hand slapping down his arm when he aimed, even if it wasn't a very smart instinct.
"What the fuck, Whistler?" Mick was the one who interjected; Frank never minced words. He simply turned his head, staring Abby down until she let go and stepped back. "He's a fucking vamp!"
"I got that, thank you," she snapped back, turning her attention to Mick because it was a hell of a lot easier than meeting Frank's eyes and the questions in them, questions she wasn't sure she knew how to answer. "He's chained up; he's no danger."
"How the fuck do you know that?" Mick's voice was growing high pitched, the way it always did when he got wound up about something or other, and she had no patience left for him, not when she'd used it all on King.
"Because he hasn't eaten me." She winced the moment the words were out of her mouth, turning to jab a finger in King's direction with a scowl that couldn't even come close to Frank's worst for sheer terrifying. "Not a word," she warned him before he could even open his troublesome mouth. He flashed her an amused look, but it was Mick's mouth that slammed shut, his gaze darting between her and King. Under other circumstances, the confused and bewildered look on his face might have been funny, but Frank was looming and he wouldn't have agreed.
Frank took two steps further into the room, his finger resting on the trigger of his weapon. His face was impassive, unreadable as far as Abby was concerned. He didn't point the gun in King's direction; he didn't need to.
King seemed to get that. For once he didn't have any smart ass remarks; instead he watched Frank move slowly towards him, his face giving absolutely nothing away.
"Your friends aren't here," Frank said slowly. Another man might have tried to make the words menacing, but Frank didn't need to resort to those kinds of theatrics. His voice was as impassive as his expression; it was enough to silence Abby, but nothing short of death was likely to silence King.
King tilted his head, the gesture now too familiar to Abigail to be comfortable. "Would those be the same friends who left me chained up down here?" he asked. "Please tell me you killed them."
Frank let out a snort. "Think I'm not going to kill you, too, vampire?"
King shrugged. "I'm pretty sure you are, actually. But I'd appreciate it if you didn't give me one of those overblown, heroic speeches first. You know the ones. All about how you're ridding the world of evil, striking a blow for humanity against the forces of darkness, how I'll get my just deserts burning in hell, yadda, yadda..." He paused, his golden eyes focused firmly on Frank even though his expression managed to give the impression that he was bored out of his skull. "I'd prefer it if you just shot me now. No, really. I mean it. Shoot me now."
Frank simply stared at him, not amused, before his gun hand slowly rose again. "Happy to oblige," he said, and Abby's fingers twitched, the near-suicidal impulse to push Frank's arm down again rising perilously close to the surface.
Maybe it was King's show of nonchalance - one that was not entirely genuine, because his jaw tightened as Frank's finger came to rest on the trigger - but Frank didn't shoot. Instead he gave King a long, considering look, the kind that set the hairs of the back of her neck tingling. And then he lowered his weapon.
"Maybe I should just let the sun do it," he said. "Not waste a fucking bullet on you."
Abby didn't miss the sudden flash of fear that crossed King's face and judging from the way that Frank's mouth twitched into a hard-edged half-smile, Frank hadn't missed it either. King's eyes darted away from Frank as the fight temporarily drained out of him, and then he swallowed heavily, turning back to meet Frank's eyes again and pasting a blasé look on his face that didn't fool her for a second.
"Messy," he said, "but what the fuck? Dead's dead."
"We have a cure."
The words spilled out of her before she could stop them and she didn't need Frank's sudden glare in her direction or Mick's sudden intake of breath to tell her she'd screwed up. But now that she was committed, she intended to see it through.
King froze, turning his head towards her. His face was expressionless and his eyes suddenly wary. He swallowed again, but she didn't think it was with fear this time. In spite of his blank expression, his body grew tense, angling towards her, a dreadful kind of eagerness in the fluid lines of it.
"You're lying," he said, but he didn't sound convinced. There was longing in his voice, something so hard and clear that it sounded like greed or need, or maybe even a combination of both.
"No," she said, holding his eyes and knowing that hers were challenging, unyielding. Frank's fingers tightened around her upper arm, dragging her back towards the entrance, his mouth thinning into an ominous line.
She shot a quick look at Frank, taking in his stormy expression, before she tore her gaze away again and looked back towards King, catching one last glimpse of him before they turned the corner. King was still leaning forward, eyes bright and his expression hungry and half-broken as he watched her go.
"What the hell, Whistler?" Frank cursed at her as soon as they were out of earshot. "Have you lost your goddamned mind?" His anger was a palpable thing, vibrating through his body and tightening his fingers so that they pressed into her skin past the point of pain. She'd have bruises there tomorrow, matching the ones on the rest of her body, the ones she'd actually earned.
She took a deep breath, fighting the impulse to snatch her arm away from Frank's grip. Fighting the impulse not to punch his fucking lights out. She was no match for him, not yet and maybe not ever, and besides, she knew where he was coming from. But she also knew, somehow deep in her bones, that this was the right thing - the smart thing - to do.
"Sommerfield's looking to test her enhanced antivirus," she said, as calmly as she was able. The words still came out too sharply, too strongly, and she took a deep breath, not missing the dismissive look in Frank's eye. "The one she thinks might actually work on vamps, not just the ones who haven't turned yet. Jesus, Frank. She's been nagging you for weeks about finding a subject."
"Not him."
"Why not?" His eyes flashed with anger at her tone and she took a deep breath, stepping back from him, his fingers finally slipping from her arm. Her flesh ached but she didn't reach up and rub where it was sore, and she didn't take her eyes off Frank. "If what he told me is true, he's only been a vamp for five years, Frank. Five years, not five hundred. Where else are we guaranteed to find a relative newborn?"
"If he's telling the truth."
"Yes." She tried not to snap out the word, reining in her eagerness. "But Frank, he's chained up with silver. He's goddamned gift-wrapped."
"That's what's worrying me," Frank said heavily, and she blinked at him, thrown. "Jesus, Abby, sometimes I forget that you're so goddamned young."
The words stung, but she swallowed down the hurt. Looked at it as dispassionately as possible, he was right. He had nearly twenty years more experience of this than she did, and she knew him well enough to know when to shut up and listen to him.
"You think it's a trap," she said evenly, and Frank snorted, glancing back towards the makeshift dungeon with a kind of remote anger in his eyes. "Maybe it is," she admitted. "But for it to be a trap, they'd have to know we had a cure, or the chance of one. Do you think that's likely?"
She wasn't challenging him; he needed to know that. She was simply putting it out there, and Frank was smart enough - old enough and grizzled enough - to pick his fights with care. He was right - she was wet behind the ears, but he didn't need to throw his weight around with her. Reason worked much better.
"You think it isn't?"
She gave the question the consideration it deserved, turning it over in her mind. "Maybe," she said slowly. "But if they know, I think we'd have seen a lot more effort to root us out, find Karen Jenson at least, even if they don't know that Sommerfield's been building on her work."
Frank let out a snort again, but it was thoughtful rather than dismissive this time. "Jenson's gone to ground," he said, "and I can't blame her for that one. Blade tends to have that effect - if you're not dead at the end of it, you need to fall off the fucking grid."
Abby kept her silence, thinking of the one person who'd done both - her father. Instead she watched Frank as the wheels turned over in his mind, all of the angles considered, all of the risks rooted out and examined.
"Okay," he said slowly. "Maybe they don't know. Maybe he was just supposed to get you to talk. I'd guess he's cute, if you go for that type." His voice was dispassionate but he turned his head and gave her a look that said clearly what he thought of that.
She bit back on her irritation, settling on a mild, "I think he wants this. I think he wants this badly enough that maybe he's the one who's going to end up talking."
Frank grunted. She kept her face as expressionless as she could, but Frank was older and wiser; who the hell knew what he could see there.
"Okay," he said eventually, and she was careful not to give any sign that his answer affected her one way or another - it didn't, no matter what Frank thought, but who knew what he saw, or thought he saw. "Since he's gift-wrapped," he phrased the words ironically, "we take him with us, see if Sommerfield can use him. If not, we stake him."
He held her gaze steadily but she didn't look away, limiting herself to a brief nod and earning one of his rare smiles in response.
"Okay, Whistler. You're up. Tell your boy he gets the cure, and if he doesn't co-operate nicely, he gets the sharp end of my best silver blade."
She nodded again, taking a deep breath as she stepped back towards the room, schooling her face into impassivity. Only now did she rub her arm, dropping her fingers back down to her side before she stepped through the doorway.
King was waiting for her, sitting back on his haunches, his eyes fixed firmly on the door. Mick was standing to one side of him, too close, within the range of movement King's chains allowed him. Mick's expression was fixed in a sneer, and his fingers were tapping against the stock of his weapon, a staccato rhythm that gave away more than Mick meant to.
Dex was leaning against the wall, safely outside of King's range, his arms folded and his expression drawn down into a thoughtful little frown, silent and watchful as usual. He glanced up from his contemplation of King when Abby entered the room, treating her to a brief nod of acknowledgement before his attention once again turned back to King.
King was ignoring both of them. He only had eyes for Abby, straightening up slightly when she finally came to a stop, meeting his gaze.
"You're lying," he repeated, picking up the conversation as though she'd never left. He still didn't sound convinced by his own words, more as though he wanted to believe them, didn't want to have that hope.
She shook her head, not looking away from him no matter how difficult it was to meet those inhuman eyes. "You must have heard the rumours," she said gently. He licked his lips and looked away, his fingers trembling slightly where they were pressed against his legs. He didn't answer her, and she pushed on. "That some victims have been bitten but not turned?"
He swallowed, still not meeting her eyes. "Bitten's not the same as..." He trailed off, his fingers jerking, but she got his meaning.
"An antivirus is an antivirus." She kept her voice as even as possible, and not just because she didn't want to spook King. Frank's presence was heavy in the room behind her; she could feel him in the tension that ran along her spine, in the way that her scalp prickled. He was watching her, waiting for her to screw up before he stepped in, or maybe hoping she wouldn't screw up at all. With Frank, she couldn't always tell.
King's face slackened, smoothing out and giving very little away. She figured it was a reflexive thing, but the skin around his eyes was still tight with tension, and the look in them was lost, a thousand yard stare while he turned it over in his mind.
"How many?" he asked, finally dragging his eyes back towards her. "How many vamps have you cured?"
She felt the muscles around her mouth tighten, and King didn't miss it, staring at her while she searched for an answer. In the end, the truth was the only way to go. "You'd be the first fully-fledged active one," she said, and he laughed, full and rich, with a biting edge to it.
"So I'd be the lab rat?" His face was bright with mirth, but his eyes looked hard and cold, although she couldn't tell whether that was simply down to the effect of the harsh overhead lights. "Wow. An offer I can totally refuse."
"What have you got to lose?" she asked him, straining to keep her voice even.
His lips compressed into a tight line as he glanced away from her again, and the look on his face was faintly troubled, like there was a lot more going on under his surface than she could ever hope to know. When he looked back his expression was set, settled into grim lines.
"And if it doesn't work?"
She wasn't going to lie to him. It was pointless anyway - in spite of his mouth and his tendency to be an ass, she didn't figure him for a fool. "Either the antivirus kills you or we do."
His face settled into that carefully blank mask again, his eyes losing focus as he mulled her offer over. "So I'm either cured or I die," he said, and Frank shifted behind her, impatience and a barely concealed threat of violence in the sound.
King ignored him, staring out into space for one long, silent moment. And then he nodded abruptly, more to himself, it seemed, than to her. "Sounds like a win-win situation to me." He closed his eyes, turning his face up towards the bright lights overhead. "I'm in."
-o-
Part 02: dreamwidth :: livejournal :: insanejournal
Author: alyse
Fandom: Blade: Trinity
Pairing: Abigail Whistler/Hannibal King
Word Count: 101,850
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Highlight to read: violence, implications of past torture and sexual abuse, potential triggers for suicidal thoughts and actions.
Betas:
aithine and Leah (taste_is_sweet)Challenges: Written for: the 2011
het_bigbang; my hc_bingo square 'lacerations/knife wounds' (although, frankly, it could cover about half a dozen of them ::g::); and medie's request back for the first time Abby saved King, back when I did the 'request a drabble' meme. Yeah, I fail at drabbles, apparently. By a factor of 1,000.Author's notes: Many thanks to: my tireless cheerleaders, particularly
hiddencait and torigates; my betas, Aithine and Leah; and my artist, skylar0grace, who made me some completely wonderful artwork found here. You should go pet and stroke it! Also, thanks to irony_rocks and peanutbutterer, who worked so hard on making sure that this whole Big Bang went smoothly and was immense amounts of fun. This is the extended, director's cut version of the story - it includes an expanded sex scene, hence the higher rating, and given the length, I'm going to be posting it in many, many parts over the next week or so. If you'd prefer not to wait, a complete (non-sexy, rated 15!) version can be found here.
Summary: Hunting is in her blood and in her bones, but when Abigail Whistler's path crosses that of a smart-mouthed vampire who seems perfectly happy to die, she's left questioning everything she thought she knew. While her team work to cure Hannibal King of his vampirism with an experimental antivirus, she finds herself warming to their captive in spite of her reservations, and when their actions turn out to have devastating consequences, Abby's loyalties are left torn.
-o-
Masterlist: dreamwidth :: livejournal :: insanejournal
-o-
When reality finally returned, it washed over Abby in thick, heavy waves. Even breathing hurt; the pain threatened to swamp her, dragging her back down with each hitching breath she took. There was a nagging sense of urgency in her hind-brain, a sharp, jagged surety that she was missing something important, but every time she tried to concentrate on it, tried to remember what it was she'd forgotten, it skittered away again, lost in the slow, sluggish hammering in her brain and the bone deep ache in her ribs.
She opened her eyes but the world stayed dark, everything blurred and indistinct. She blinked hard, trying to bring it back into focus, but when she lifted her head, nausea rushed over her, the world greying out and leaving nothing behind but the sound of her breathing, echoing loudly in her ears. She hung there for long, aching moments, taking deep breaths and cataloguing each twinge of pain, each twist of her stomach, every pounding twitch that clenched tightly behind her eyeballs; counting and naming them gave her back a semblance of control, enough to finally open her eyes again and to ease her arms underneath her so that she could push herself up.
The world swam out of focus, dizzying and disorienting, and she took another deep breath, gritting her teeth as she rolled over and used the wall to lever herself upright. On the plus side, she was breathing and nothing seemed to be broken, not even her ribs, which ached but lacked the familiar sharp edge to each inward breath.
She had no idea where she was, and that was definitely a minus.
She finally managed to right herself, ignoring the way that the world swirled around her, bright sparks dancing against the blackness even though there were no light sources that she could see. She knew better than to call out for the rest of her team. If they were around, they'd find her. If they weren't, there was bound to be something else out there that would find her instead, something considerably less friendly. All she could do right now was concentrate on breathing and straining her ears for any sound that might be human.
Frank Reilly was a cold-hearted bastard sometimes and she respected that, although it was easier to respect when it wasn't her ass on the line. But even Frank didn't leave people behind if there was any chance that they were still alive. They'd be looking for her - she held onto the thought as hard as she could.
The bricks behind her were cold to the touch, rough with age and crumbling beneath her fingertips. She leaned against them, letting the wall bear her weight as she blinked grit and worse out of her eyes, trying to take stock and trying not to panic. If no one came, she'd just have to rescue herself, which meant she needed to figure out what the hell had happened and where the hell she was. She tried, but the memories were vague, sensations instead of concrete events. Yelling and flashes of bright light. Moving fast but not fast enough and then... nothing. Nothing until she'd woken up in the darkness here.
There was a throbbing knot above her right eye and when she touched it, her fingertips came back wet.
"You're bleeding."
The unfamiliar voice came out of nowhere and she scrabbled backwards, instincts kicking in as her eyes searched the dimness, her heart beating rabbit fast and frantic in her chest. It was instinct to reach for her weapons, too - as unconscious as taking the next breath or as making sure that her back was against the wall so nothing could circle around behind her - but the silver plated knife was gone from her boot and the stakes had gone from her vest.
Shit, shit, shit. She was down to nothing but fists, feet and teeth - hopefully hers and not something else that bit - but she wasn't going down without a fight.
Something - someone - shifted in the darkness in the opposite corner and she flexed her fingers, all of her muscles tensing up as she readied herself for the charge that didn't come. Instead the voice drifted towards her again, too light and conversational for the words being said. "I can smell it." And then the man's voice dropped an octave, still light on the surface but with something darker, hungrier lurking underneath. "I think it's a little inconsiderate to be all the way over there when you smell so fucking good."
Vampire. Had to be, and if he was close enough to smell her, he could probably hear her heart beating as well and tell how fast it was racing. He could even be getting off on it, tormenting her before he moved in for the kill. She wasn't going to give him the fucking satisfaction; she took another deep breath, forcing herself to move into a state of being that was alert without being tense. Slowed her heartbeat, slowed her breathing. Pushed herself up the wall until she was standing and blinked the sweat, or blood, out of her eyes, feet planted firmly on the ground, balanced and ready for anything.
"Relax, sweetheart." There was a harsh metallic jangle, like an anchor being weighed, the metal chain running through a cleat, and she pricked her ears up, listening for anything else that would give her any hint about where she was. "I'm not going anywhere. Certainly not anywhere near you. Unless you feel like wandering over here?"
She didn't answer him, still listening, still trying to make him out in the dimness as her eyes adjusted to the low light levels, refusing to be drawn into whatever head games he was playing. Most vamps went straight in for the kill, simple if never clean. Trust her luck that she'd ended up with one of the others, the ones who liked to play with their food.
There was another sound, more metallic clanking, and she tensed, feeling far too exposed even with the wall behind her. She'd had nightmares like this, things hunting her in the dark while she crawled around, blind and helpless; she avoided Sommerfield after the worst of them, too sick and ashamed of her relief that she wasn't blind to be able to look the other woman in the face.
"No?" There was amusement as well as disappointment in his voice, and she wasn't quite sure which one of them pissed her off more. "Well, can't say I blame you for that one. That's too bad. The view's on this side of the room."
She took her eyes off him briefly, scanning the wall and spotting the small, lighter rectangle of the high window without much effort. She dismissed it as an escape route almost immediately; it was too small for her to fit through and too close to him for her to risk scaling the wall to see if she could see out of it. Instead, she stayed where she was, turning her full attention back to him.
He hadn't moved, but at least now she could make out the vague outline of his shape, the dizziness from whatever blows to the head she'd taken fading. His body was half-turned towards her, his head tilted as though he was watching her as closely as she was watching him. She leaned back against the wall and folded her arms, hiding the tremble in her fingers, and he snorted, the sound sudden and startling in the silence.
"Not stupid, are you?" He didn't wait for an answer. "No, I'd guess not. Or not reckless, anyway, which pretty much amounts to the same thing." He paused for a second, the silence stretching out between them, and then he added, the amusement back in his voice, "Are you sure you wouldn't be more comfortable moving closer? Maybe leaning in a bit? I'm getting a crick in my neck."
"I'm fine where I am," she said, answering him before she could think better of it, but her lapse in judgement seemed to have caught him off guard - he shifted position slightly, his boots grating against the stone floor, and there was a watchful air to his silence now. "And no," she added, more deliberately this time, "I don't think I'm particularly stupid."
"And yet you managed to get yourself caught and locked up, all nice and neat. I think the jury's still out on that one, sweetheart."
The endearment had her gritting her teeth but she didn't call him on it, tilting her head as she tried to make out his face. "You're locked up in here as well," she hazarded, intending to gauge his reaction if she could.
He snorted again, not sounding at all put out, the amusement dark and rich in his voice. "Well, I never said I wasn't stupid."
"Why are you down here?" If she kept him talking, it might distract him long enough for her to figure a way out of here, or for the sun to rise, whichever came sooner.
He tutted, the sound raising the hackles on her neck. "Are you always this forward? Shouldn't there be small talk first? Hey, how you doing? Fancy meeting a nice guy like you in a dungeon like this? What do you do for a living? You know, something before you leap straight into 'how exactly did you fuck up'?'"
It sounded almost normal, like they were simply shooting the breeze, but she didn't miss the sudden tension in his voice. "So how exactly did you fuck up?" she asked, and he laughed, the sound harsh and broken and yet still with some traces of amusement clinging to it.
"Not one for small talk, huh?"
"Not really." Smart quips were something that happened in the movies. In the real world, you got in, you staked the fuckers, you got out as quickly as you could. No time for one-liners, not if you wanted to keep on breathing and Abby intended to do that for a good long while yet.
"How did I fuck up?" His tone was musing this time, almost philosophical, but there was still an edge to it, something ragged underneath the too smooth surface. "In a thousand different ways, most of which I won't have been told about yet." And then his voice grew sharp and hard. "And how did you fuck up? Never learned how to duck? Or did your momma teach you and you were just too slow? Because I might be locked down here, sweetheart, but you're the one who got locked in with me."
"And I should be scared by that?" She kept her voice steady, never moving her eyes away from where he was sitting, a darker shape against the dull grey wall behind him.
"You should be fucking terrified."
"I didn't get the memo," she said coolly and he snorted again, the sound harsher even than the rasping, metallic scrape that rang out as he shifted position, stretching his body out until she could make out long limbs.
His feet were bare, pale in the weak moonlight coming in from the high window, which meant that it hadn't been his boots she'd heard scraping against the concrete. She risked moving a couple of steps to her right, deliberately unstudied. He turned his head and watched her, focused on her in a way that caught her breath in her throat and set her heart pounding again in her chest.
She could make out more of his shape now, but as she strained her eyes to see more of him, he turned his head away, keeping stubbornly silent. The longer he kept silent, the more she wanted - needed - him to break it. She could rationalise it if she needed to, but at least part of it, she thought bleakly, came down to the fact that she was twenty one years old, locked in the dark with something far older. Evil bloodsucking leech or not, at least he was company.
She took a deep breath, letting it out and not missing the fact that it was shaky. Maybe that was what pushed her into pushing him. "Why should I be scared?" she needled.
He stayed silent, but at least he was listening. He shifted again, angling towards her. She couldn't see his face, but maybe she'd wished hard enough; the clouds outside drifted further past, and faint silvery moonlight streamed through the window. He wasn't in its path, but the room brightened enough for her to make out more of his form, catching the sharpness of his cheekbone, something sparkling briefly in the lobe of one ear as he turned his head.
He pulled further back into the shadows, drawing his feet back. The light was enough for her to catch the gleam of metal around his ankles before they, too, disappeared out of sight.
"Why should you be scared?" His voice drifted out of the darkness, and there was no amusement in it this time, just something old and remote, cold enough to send shivers down her spine. "I may be wrong about this - it's been known to happen before," and there was the amusement, back in his voice, like he couldn't stop finding things funny no matter how dire his situation, "but I'm pretty sure they didn't put you in here to eat me." He leaned forward, the light catching in the gleam of his eye.
"Or maybe they did," he added, and the prickles ran down her arms. "First thing you did when you woke up was to check for weapons. Meaning you're the kind of girl who carries weapons. And that leaves me with two questions. Well, three really..." He trailed off, leaving an expectant little pause in his wake that she was determined not to fill.
After a moment, he sighed, the sound loaded with overdone disappointment. "Firstly, what's a nice - and tasty, I'd bet - little hunter like you doing in a dive like this?"
She kept her silence, ignoring his little inquisitive head tilt, and he sighed again, the sound softer this time, with an edge to it she couldn't quite make out.
"Secondly," he continued blithely on, although his voice was a little thready this time, a little distant. "Did they leave you any? Weapons, that is, and I'd guess not or I'd probably already be dust."
Abby cleared her throat, the sound echoing too loudly in her ears. "What's the third question?" she asked, hoping that the fact that she was finally answering him would throw him off balance and keep him there for long enough that he couldn't dwell on the idea of her being unarmed.
"Talking of eating... I don't suppose there's any chance of you coming over here and sucking my dick?"
The crudeness of it startled a laugh out of her, one that echoed around the chamber. It caught in her throat as she pulled it back, but too late - his teeth flashed in the darkness, his face splitting in a sudden grin.
"Do you always sexually harass your dinner?" she asked, and some of her lingering amusement at him crept into her voice, warming it up in spite of her fear and her instinctive hatred of his kind.
"Well, if you're not going to let me eat you..."
"I think I'll pass," she said dryly, and he let out a soft sound that was a hairsbreadth from disappointment.
"My loss," he said, and for a second it sounded like he actually meant it. But then he shifted position again, the outline of his head emerging in the dimness, and she knew he was back to watching her closely, hungrily.
"What's the plan?" she asked, and her voice was too weak. She cleared her throat and tried again. "You batter me with bad one-liners and when I've finally lost the will to fight, you strike?"
"You think that Danica would actually let me in on the plan? Assuming she has one and isn't just fucking with me for the hell of it?"
"Who's Danica?"
He didn't answer her, and she heard the scraping of metal against concrete again. The sound had a sharp edge to it this time, as though he'd shifted position suddenly, jerking in impatience or something else she couldn't read. And then his voice echoed out of his corner again, sounding dead.
"Does it matter?"
She licked her lips; they were dry, as was her mouth, her heart back to tripping fast and uncomfortably in her chest.
"So what now?" she asked, and the words came out soft, maybe more than a little scared, but she couldn't dwell on it. He'd said he could smell her blood. She'd be surprised if he couldn't also smell her fear.
"I'm going to kill you," he said, and there was no glee in his tone, none of the over-the-top boasting or hyperbole she was used to from the vamps she hunted, at least those who'd lived long enough to talk. Instead he sounded tired, old suddenly in a way he hadn't before. "Sooner or later I'm going to kill you. That's why you're here. Don't doubt that, sweetheart."
She didn't.
"Who's Danica?" she asked again, because any information was better than none.
He shifted again, that ever-present clank of chains that accompanied his every movement setting her teeth on edge. "Aren't you going to ask me not to kill you?"
"Would it do any good?"
He tilted his head at her sharp tone, back to watching her. She still couldn't see his eyes, not now that he'd retreated into the shadows, and it bothered her more than she wanted to admit. "No," he admitted, and the bastard actually sounded regretful, or faked it really well, which was the more likely scenario. "Believe me, princess. It's better than the alternative."
"Letting me live?"
"Letting you become like this." There was a pause, and then he added, "I don't think fangs would be your thing, sweetheart. I mean, far be it from me to complain about hot, long-legged, and toothy chicks, but the psychotic bitch side of the equation tends to be a boner-killer, you know?"
There was nothing she could say to that. She lapsed into silence, and he followed her lead, although he was restless. She could tell that from the low clinking of the chains that rattled out every now and then.
Her head was still throbbing, and the silence only made her more aware of it, nothing to distract her from the sharp pain behind her eyeballs. She kept her eyes focused on him, but he stayed in the shadows and for once he didn't seem to be paying her any attention. She risked bringing her fingers up to her forehead, gingerly pressing in where the skin throbbed the most, a tight and sore knot, and swallowed down the instinctive hiss of pain when she pressed too hard.
"It's still bleeding," he said, his voice dull and drained of colour, bleak and hopeless. "In case you were wondering."
She swallowed again. "You can still smell me," she said. It wasn't a question.
"Yes, I can smell you." There was another clatter and scrape of chains, managing to sound sharp and frustrated this time. "And you smell so fucking good."
Abby took a step back, and then another until cold, brick wall hit her back. It put steel and stone into her spine again and she straightened up, fingers flexing, ready for him.
"Relax." He clanked his chains again, the sound twitchy and irritated. "You're safe for now, sweetheart."
"Don't call me that," she growled, the sudden spike of fear fading and leaving her pissed at his easy familiarity, his casualness at the idea that sooner or later he'd kill her. Slaughter her like she was a fucking animal.
"You got a name I should call you instead?" he asked, back to conversational. His shifts in mood, from friendly to dangerous and then back again, were leaving her edgy and off-balance, which was probably exactly as he intended. She stayed silent, not wanting to give him any power over her, even if keeping silent might be doing just that, but her silence simply seemed to goad him. "Should I just call you kitten?"
"Do that and I'll tear your fucking face off."
He laughed, hard and fast as though she'd said the funniest thing he'd heard in a long time, and maybe it was.
"I like you, hunter, I really do."
It wasn't much of an improvement on 'kitten' and she let her lips curl up in a snarl, half fury and half - though it pained her to admit it - amusement at his antics. She shot back straight from the hip, as though she was used to this sort of exchange, "I bet you say that to all the girls you're going to eat."
"The boys, too." He laughed again, body shaking with mirth before he finally stilled with a hissing breath she caught. "I'm an equal opportunity asshole." There was a pause before he repeated, sounding almost wistful, as if vampires were capable of such things, "I like you, sweetheart."
She had no idea what to say to that, not when there was something close to truth in his voice, and it was difficult not to feel some vague, creeping sympathy for him, chained up here in the dark, waiting for the sun to rise and turn him into ash and dust.
Maybe she'd hit her head too hard, or maybe Frank was right and she thought about things too fucking much and too fucking deep, but the idea of what he'd done to deserve this, how he'd pissed off his own kind this much, was eating at her the way that the sunlight would eat at him, burning all the way through her until she couldn't stand it any more. And any intel was better than none. "How long have you been down here?"
He shifted again, restless in a way that would set her teeth on edge even if they weren't trapped here together. "You mean, how long has it been since I pissed Danica off enough to put me down here?" He hesitated for a long moment, and she couldn't tell whether that was simply because he felt the need to drag it out as melodramatically as possible for his own purposes, or because he was wondering whether to answer her at all. "What day is it again?"
There was reluctance in his tone, unless she was imagining it. He was good, or he was genuine, and she wasn't sure which of those was worse.
He waited her out until she cleared her throat and offered, "Tuesday."
"Huh." There was another pause and then he added, back to chatty, the sudden shifts in his mood giving her whiplash, "More than three weeks, then. This time."
The phrasing had to be deliberate, just a little hint to whet her appetite for more, get her leaning in a little closer, make her feel a little more sympathetic. She couldn't figure him out, his angle or his damage. The one thing she was sure of was that she wasn't going to take whatever bait he was laying out. She stared up at the window instead, wondering how he'd survived almost a month down here. The only Day Walker she knew of was Blade; any others were the stuff of legend, not the reality she dealt with every day.
"They close the shutters," he said, and it was eerie how he'd caught her thoughts. "Before the sun comes up." He shifted again, moving further into the moonlight. It brought him closer to her and she tensed, ready for treachery, but he simply moved as far as he could until the chains around his wrists tautened and jerked him back with a hiss.
"They don't close the far one," he said, jerking his head to the far end of the room. If she'd turned and looked, maybe she'd have seen another patch of light. She kept her eyes firmly on him instead.
He wasn't paying her any attention. Instead he was sitting back on his heels and just staring down the room. It was too dim to make out the expression on his face, but there was something about the tension in his frame that set her heart thumping in her chest again.
Maybe he heard it, because he turned his head to look at her, sitting back on his heels and just watching her for long, silent moments, like he was trying to figure out what was going on in her mind. Or maybe it was just the sound of her heartbeat that caught his attention, echoing in his ears as well as in hers, only for him it was the siren call of prey.
"The sunlight's about six inches too far away." His voice was light, but he didn't relax. His frame was still tense, as though he was poised for action. When he finally smiled, it was close-lipped, no teeth glinting in the darkness, not this time. "Enough to give me a tan, maybe, but not enough to make me burn."
The words crawled over her skin, making her shiver with a combination of pity and repulsion. She faced death pretty much every time she picked up her gun, her blades or her bow and stalked out into the night, but the idea of sitting in the darkness, waiting for it to come - wanting it to come - and being denied...
That might actually come close to her idea of hell.
He didn't miss her reaction, not as closely as he was watching her or as close as he was getting to crawling under her skin. "Are you actually feeling sorry for me, hunter?" He sounded like he might be pissed at the idea, but she couldn't get a clear read on him. Something was lurking in his voice, turning it bitter and hard-edged, but that could have been anything, from anger to grief.
He tilted his head, chains clattering again as he shifted impatiently, and it sent another shiver through her. It wasn't pity, not this time. She shouldn't need reminding that he was dangerous, he himself had said as much, and yet...
She'd stepped away from the wall, just one step towards him before she realised and came back to herself. Sweat dripped down her spine like icy fingers. She stepped back until she was pressed up against the rough brickwork.
She should say something smart or at least smart ass, but instead she just stared at him and he stared back.
He broke the silence first, of course; she was beginning to think that he'd never met a silence he didn't feel the urge to fill. "So you ever going to tell me your name, sweetheart?"
She wasn't going to answer him, not and give him another route into the inside of her head. He was already in too far and too deep for her comfort, especially if she was starting to feel some sympathy for him. She should... she should give him a name that wasn't hers, something to build the rapport between them so that she could damned well use it. Frank would do something like that, but Frank wasn't here. Just Abigail Whistler, alone in the dark with something she was beginning to think was a little too human for her to cope with.
"Well, if you're not going to share, do you mind if I do?" He paused again expectantly, sighing when she kept silent. "My name is Hannibal King." His voice was quiet, almost reflective, and it was drawing her in again in spite of her resolve.
She rolled the name - odd and old - around in her head for a moment, feeling the shape of it and how it fit him; it was only when she caught sight of his teeth flashing in the darkness - a sudden, shark-like smile - that she realised that she must have repeated his name out loud.
"You can laugh if you like," he offered graciously, humour lacing his voice. "Not like you'd be the first."
"But it would be the last thing I'd ever do?"
He laughed. "Yeah, sweetheart. That would be why I killed you. Not because I'm a fucking vampire."
"Get the shit kicked out of you at school?" she asked, and it didn't come out as cocky or as sharp as she'd been hoping.
"Not as bad as my elder brother," he shot back. "His name's Hephaestion."
She barked out a laugh, her hand coming up to her mouth too late to stop it.
He seemed to appreciate it. When he shifted again, it was to lean towards her, as though he was about to share a confidence. "It could have been worse," he continued, his tone musing. "At least by the time I started school, the other kids were half-convinced that I was named after Hannibal Smith. That earned me some coolness points."
It took her a moment to place the name - she'd never been one for pop culture, not beyond the music that had mapped out the beat of her teenage years - but even she couldn't avoid re-runs entirely.
"The A-Team?" she ventured, her memory hazy, but he cocked his finger at her, a universal 'you got it' gesture that seemed all too human.
"Got it in one, sweetheart."
He was young, she realised, her stomach lurching suddenly as the realisation struck her. Not much older than her, even if he'd watched it as it first aired. He couldn't have much more than a decade on her, maybe a little more, maybe a little less.
'His name is' he'd said about his brother. Not 'his name was'. The idea that he might still have family out there somewhere was horrific all on its own.
"How long?" she asked, her mouth suddenly dry as dust.
He cocked his head again, not seeming to follow her. "How long did they tease me? How long did I let them? How long is my dick? C'mon, sweetheart. You've got to give me a little more than that." He paused a beat and then added, "The answer to that last question is 'very', by the way. Just in case you were wondering."
"I wasn't," she answered automatically, too caught up in the idea of him as young to take offence or to take any notice of his rambling. "How long since you were vamped?"
He stilled; the sudden absence of that constant shifting of his - so ever-present that it had become background noise, something she'd forgotten he was even doing - struck her more any of his words could. "Is vamped actually a word?" he asked mildly, but she didn't miss the tension in his voice. "To vamp. I vamped, you vamped, they were vamped? Not convinced by the etymology of that one, sweetheart."
"How long?"
He twitched, a jangle of chains that had her twitching in response. From the shape of his body in the dim moonlight, she thought he'd looked away from her.
"What's the year?" he asked, and his voice was back to quiet. "I lose track sometimes."
"Two thousand and two. June," she added, in case that made a difference.
"Five years then," he said. His tone was dreamy, distracted - almost as though he'd forgotten she was there. "Give or take."
Five years. Jesus. She'd been sixteen, maybe seventeen, when he'd been turned, and maybe he hadn't been much older.
"How?" she whispered, and he snorted.
"And just like that we're back to the personal questions." The bitterness in his voice silenced her but he didn't need her input to keep talking. When he spoke again, the bitterness had faded - drawn back under the surface, if she'd had to guess, but not gone entirely. "So you expect me to just share even though you won't even tell me your name?"
Maybe it was the idea that he'd only been a few years older than her. Maybe it was the idea that he was down here, alone in the dark, and had been for days and days. Maybe she was just so fucking tired and couldn't think straight, couldn't see a way out, but her name - her real one - hovered on the tip of her tongue until she bit it back, waiting him out.
She didn't have to wait long.
"I picked up this little hottie in a bar," he said, and the rattle of his chains this time sounded like he'd shrugged his shoulders. "Turned out her eyes were bigger than her stomach."
"Danica," she guessed, and he snorted.
"Got it in one. I always go for the crazy 'do not engage' ones, you know?" She didn't, not really. "But Danica kind of blew them all away in the fucking up my life stakes."
"She didn't mean to turn you?" she hazarded.
"Who the fuck knows? Danica certainly isn't the sharing kind." The acidity was back in his voice, sharp-edged and stinging. "Besides, does it really matter? Do you hunters sort vampires into different types now? Definitely evil, only moderately evil, and worth saving?"
All of her words had been stolen away. Just when she thought she had a handle on him, he switched again, all over the place. He leaned forward until she could see the curve of his cheek again in the moonlight, the gleam of his eye and the glint of a fang.
"I haven't exactly been shy about killing people since then. I don't think that any of us are worth fucking saving."
She watched his fingers flex against the ground, sharp nails clear in the moonlight, and thought about him reaching for the sun. "Abigail," she whispered, the word finally creeping past her lips in spite of her caution.
His fingers stilled, palm pressing firmly against the ground. And then he sighed.
"You probably shouldn't have told me that."
"Probably not. But it's not the first stupid thing I've done tonight, is it?"
He snorted. "You and me both, sweetheart. You and me both."
She let the wall take her weight, watching him and not bothering to hide it. It wouldn't do much good to pretend anyway and maybe, just maybe, she was crawling into his head the same way that he was crawling into hers.
"Are you at least hot?" he asked when she didn't look away. "Abigail," he added seemingly as an afterthought. He purred the word out, and she hadn't thought that was possible before now. Her name was too old, too staid to be sexy. He was too far into her head. She was going to lose it if she wasn't careful.
"I was wondering the same thing about you," she shot back, the fear, being constantly on edge, making her a little stupid. The words left her mouth dry, her heart hammering in her chest. She'd overstretched herself, leaving him an opening into her head, and in doing that she'd left herself vulnerable and exposed to the next little mind trick he might want to play.
He laughed, a deep and rich sound that sent a shiver through her.
"You are so full of shit, Abby."
She swallowed, her tongue darting out to wet her dry lips. "We've gone straight to Abby? That's a little familiar. Were you one?"
"Was I what? A familiar?" He snorted again. "I strike you as a wannabe, Abby? Someone who crawls around, looking for favours? Looking for this?" He jerked his chains so that the metal screeched as it ran through whatever fastenings attached it to the wall or floor. "On my knees, sucking someone's dick for the chance of immortality?"
"Well," she pointed out coolly, letting her fingers slowly uncurl from defensive fists and evening out her breathing again. "You are on your knees. And I don't judge about anything else."
That sent another rumble of laughter through him, another switch in mood. "You are something else, Abigail..." He trailed off, inviting her to fill the gap he'd left with the rest of her name, but she wasn't that stupid, not yet so far under his spell that she was giving everything away.
"So tell me about Danica?"
"Danica's hell on wheels," he said, "and not in a good way." He sounded tired now, all of the life drained out of his voice. It jarred; vampires weren't exactly undead, not like the books would have people believe, but, vampire or not, up until now Hannibal King might actually have been the most alive person she'd ever met. He certainly was the most changeable.
But she wasn't going to let him distract her, not about this. Not when she was making the gamble of her life - with her life.
"So how does she fit into things? How do you?"
"Are you always this nosy? I'm beginning to think that you're only interested in my brain. Personally, if I were you, I'd go for the body every single time."
"Yeah, well, I've got a feeling that you only want me for my blood, so..."
His laughter spluttered out this time, sounding genuine, but then he was good at that. "Oh, I think I'd probably want you for more than that, Abigail. Like I said - I like you."
It should have been comforting. It wasn't.
"You haven't answered my question," she pushed.
"No, I haven't." He still sounded tired rather than snippy, and he shifted position again, accompanied by another creaking and clanking of metal. "Do you really want to know?"
His voice was dead, deader than it had been up until now, and she bit her lip, a sudden insane idea that the way this conversation was going was hurting him. It was a stupid concept - she knew enough about vampires to know that they cared very little for anything but their most immediate comfort. For creatures as long lived as they were, they lived in the moment, all about appetites and how best to sate them as quickly as possible.
She didn't want to start considering whether or not she was wrong. Life wasn't a fucking Anne Rice novel; vampires were grotesques, not tortured souls.
"Tell me," she said softly.
"Why?" There was no curiosity in his voice, nothing but that dead, empty weight with five years behind it.
"Because you might have given up, you bastard, but I haven't. The more I know about your Danica, the better chance I have of getting out of here alive."
He laughed again, just once, a hard, harsh sound that did nothing to soothe her erratic temper. "Do you honestly think you stand a chance, Abby? Really?"
"No." Her voice was stone, cold and implacable, and that wasn't all down to Frank Reilly's training. "But I do know that I'm not about to sit around in the dark, waiting for death to come to me."
He was staring at her again, and she really wished - for one brief moment - that she could see his face, read some of whatever it was that was running through his mind.
"Give it five years, sweetheart," he said, and if her voice was cold, his was warming up, anger tingeing the edges red. "And you'll be fucking begging for it."
"Immortality overrated?"
"Five years," he repeated. "And I'm already fucking bored."
"So why not end it?" she pushed, needling him because she could, because she was scared, because she was angry.
"You think I haven't tried?" She could hear the smile in his voice, as sharp and bitter as an unripe apple. "The lock's on the outside of my door, sweetheart."
"So you won't take a walk in the sun?"
"I've thought about it," he said. "And it's a fucking awful way to die. But stepping in front of a hunter's blade, on the other hand..."
The ice water went down her spine again - it put his questions about whether she was still armed into a whole new light. The flash of fury that followed hard on the heels of her revelation took her by surprise. It was illogical and it was dangerous and she shouldn't fucking care when she was all about killing vampires, but the idea of being used like that...
He turned his head, his eyes catching the moonlight, shining eerily.
"Do me a favour, Abigail, and go and stand behind the door, there's a good girl."
She tensed, the tone in his voice - flat and just as eerie as the gleam of his eyes in the moonlight - sending tendrils of something like fear creeping through her body.
"Why?" she breathed, and maybe she took a step towards him, just one, before she stopped abruptly. "What the hell are you up -"
The lights overhead flicked on with a high pitched hum, and she blinked, suddenly blinded by the brightness, stumbling backwards until she hit the wall again, her heart racing as she readied herself for an attack that never came.
When her vision cleared again, adjusting to the brightness, King hadn't moved. He was still sitting in the same spot she'd last placed him in her mental map of the room, and he was watching her.
His eyes were golden, the colour washed out of them by the virus that had him in its grip rather than the bright fluorescent lights. She couldn't tell the colour they'd been originally, but his hair was dark and spiky, his face lean and angular. The skin beneath his eyes was parchment thin, and tiny tension lines creased the corners of his mouth. In spite of that, he looked as young as she'd expected, but he was a hell of a lot better looking than she'd anticipated, his skin pale and his bare chest covered with curling, dark hair the same shade as the hair on his head.
But it was his hands that caught her attention as he shifted again, an unconscious little twitch that had his fingers curling against the dirty fabric of his chinos. Faint tendrils of smoke rose from his wrists. He twitched again, the shackles moving further down towards his hands and leaving dark marks behind, the skin charred where they'd been resting.
The chains were silver, she realised with a sudden clench of pity in her chest. Silver or silver plated, which was more likely, burning him wherever they touched.
"Because Danica's coming," he said quietly. "I heard the starter warm up. She always likes the light on." His lips quirked, but there was no real amusement in his smirk.
Her mouth was dry, all of her spit ripped away by her fear. "You think I'll stand a chance if I hide behind the fucking door?" she asked, the disbelief clear in her voice.
"No," he admitted, and his voice was calm and even. "I think she'll catch you before you take three steps. But I think she'll be so pissed you tried that she'll kill you quick and clean. Snap your neck, just like that." He clicked his fingers, and the cuff slid further up his arm, the skin underneath puckering and burning in its wake.
"That's... comforting," she said, staring at his wrist and watching the skin heal over again, slowly and sluggishly as his mouth tightened with pain. There couldn't be enough silver in the metal to burn straight through his skin to the bone underneath, not as long he kept shifting so that it didn't rest in the same place for more than a few minutes at a time. But there'd be enough to hurt like fuck.
"Better than the alternative, sweetheart," he said, and he gave her a smile, the first she'd seen clearly. Maybe she wanted to believe it - because she was just that desperate or that stupid - but it really did seem genuinely sweet. "And, hey, maybe you'll actually take the bitch out. That I'd pay to see."
"I bet you say that to all the girls," she said absently, tearing her eyes away from him long enough to scope out the door and wonder whether it was actually feasible. When she turned back to look at him again, he was grinning at her, and this time the smile lit up his entire face.
He must have been a heartbreaker back when he'd been fully human.
"Only the cute ones," he said. "Nice meeting you, Abigail. Do your best not to get eaten, eh?"
If she'd had the energy, she would have rolled her eyes at him; as it was, she took two or three steps towards the door, pausing briefly to look back at him. He hadn't moved, although his eyes were tracking her, golden and opaque, giving nothing away.
It sent a shiver through her, but he was right. It might be the only chance she'd get - better than being trapped in a room with whatever came through the door. Better than being trapped between whatever came through the door and him.
Her heart rate slowed as she reached the door and braced herself against the wall behind it. She took a deep breath, then another, reaching down inside herself for that well of calm that rose up within her whenever it came down to a fight. It flowed through her, settling her as she rolled her shoulders, loosening herself for the battle to come. And when the door finally flew open, she threw the first kick.
It landed at chest height - she'd been aiming for head height, anticipating that whoever this Danica was, she'd be no taller than Abby. Frank Reilly was six foot and broad with it, but she still managed to knock him back several inches.
"Jesus fuck, girl!" His hand flew to his chest, the heel of his palm rubbing firmly at his breastbone while he stared at her, his ever-present scowl settling on his face. "It's the vamps you want to kill, not me."
Her breath escaped her in a gasp, fingers tingling as the adrenaline surged through her. It made her stupid and reckless - or perhaps that was King's brief influence. Before she could think better of it, she snapped out, "Learn to duck," and Frank's frown deepened, the piercing look in his blue eyes making her squirm. Behind him, Mick waggled his eyebrows at her, the look on his face telling her quite clearly that he thought she'd lost her mind, answering Frank back like that while they were still in the field.
Maybe she had. She didn't know any more, but it was a good job Mick hadn't come through the door first or she would have kicked his face in - he was a good four or five inches shorter than Frank.
"You okay?" Frank asked her, giving her a slow once over, a look that managed to be both concerned and impersonal at once.
"I'll live," she said, keeping it brief and to the point, the way that Frank preferred. "How did you find me?"
He grunted, switching his attention from her to the rest of the room, the little he could see of it from the doorway. "Beat it out of some familiars. They're quick to help when -"
He'd stepped into the room, stopping abruptly when he spotted King, his hand flying to his firearm. It was instinct to reach out and stop him, her hand slapping down his arm when he aimed, even if it wasn't a very smart instinct.
"What the fuck, Whistler?" Mick was the one who interjected; Frank never minced words. He simply turned his head, staring Abby down until she let go and stepped back. "He's a fucking vamp!"
"I got that, thank you," she snapped back, turning her attention to Mick because it was a hell of a lot easier than meeting Frank's eyes and the questions in them, questions she wasn't sure she knew how to answer. "He's chained up; he's no danger."
"How the fuck do you know that?" Mick's voice was growing high pitched, the way it always did when he got wound up about something or other, and she had no patience left for him, not when she'd used it all on King.
"Because he hasn't eaten me." She winced the moment the words were out of her mouth, turning to jab a finger in King's direction with a scowl that couldn't even come close to Frank's worst for sheer terrifying. "Not a word," she warned him before he could even open his troublesome mouth. He flashed her an amused look, but it was Mick's mouth that slammed shut, his gaze darting between her and King. Under other circumstances, the confused and bewildered look on his face might have been funny, but Frank was looming and he wouldn't have agreed.
Frank took two steps further into the room, his finger resting on the trigger of his weapon. His face was impassive, unreadable as far as Abby was concerned. He didn't point the gun in King's direction; he didn't need to.
King seemed to get that. For once he didn't have any smart ass remarks; instead he watched Frank move slowly towards him, his face giving absolutely nothing away.
"Your friends aren't here," Frank said slowly. Another man might have tried to make the words menacing, but Frank didn't need to resort to those kinds of theatrics. His voice was as impassive as his expression; it was enough to silence Abby, but nothing short of death was likely to silence King.
King tilted his head, the gesture now too familiar to Abigail to be comfortable. "Would those be the same friends who left me chained up down here?" he asked. "Please tell me you killed them."
Frank let out a snort. "Think I'm not going to kill you, too, vampire?"
King shrugged. "I'm pretty sure you are, actually. But I'd appreciate it if you didn't give me one of those overblown, heroic speeches first. You know the ones. All about how you're ridding the world of evil, striking a blow for humanity against the forces of darkness, how I'll get my just deserts burning in hell, yadda, yadda..." He paused, his golden eyes focused firmly on Frank even though his expression managed to give the impression that he was bored out of his skull. "I'd prefer it if you just shot me now. No, really. I mean it. Shoot me now."
Frank simply stared at him, not amused, before his gun hand slowly rose again. "Happy to oblige," he said, and Abby's fingers twitched, the near-suicidal impulse to push Frank's arm down again rising perilously close to the surface.
Maybe it was King's show of nonchalance - one that was not entirely genuine, because his jaw tightened as Frank's finger came to rest on the trigger - but Frank didn't shoot. Instead he gave King a long, considering look, the kind that set the hairs of the back of her neck tingling. And then he lowered his weapon.
"Maybe I should just let the sun do it," he said. "Not waste a fucking bullet on you."
Abby didn't miss the sudden flash of fear that crossed King's face and judging from the way that Frank's mouth twitched into a hard-edged half-smile, Frank hadn't missed it either. King's eyes darted away from Frank as the fight temporarily drained out of him, and then he swallowed heavily, turning back to meet Frank's eyes again and pasting a blasé look on his face that didn't fool her for a second.
"Messy," he said, "but what the fuck? Dead's dead."
"We have a cure."
The words spilled out of her before she could stop them and she didn't need Frank's sudden glare in her direction or Mick's sudden intake of breath to tell her she'd screwed up. But now that she was committed, she intended to see it through.
King froze, turning his head towards her. His face was expressionless and his eyes suddenly wary. He swallowed again, but she didn't think it was with fear this time. In spite of his blank expression, his body grew tense, angling towards her, a dreadful kind of eagerness in the fluid lines of it.
"You're lying," he said, but he didn't sound convinced. There was longing in his voice, something so hard and clear that it sounded like greed or need, or maybe even a combination of both.
"No," she said, holding his eyes and knowing that hers were challenging, unyielding. Frank's fingers tightened around her upper arm, dragging her back towards the entrance, his mouth thinning into an ominous line.
She shot a quick look at Frank, taking in his stormy expression, before she tore her gaze away again and looked back towards King, catching one last glimpse of him before they turned the corner. King was still leaning forward, eyes bright and his expression hungry and half-broken as he watched her go.
"What the hell, Whistler?" Frank cursed at her as soon as they were out of earshot. "Have you lost your goddamned mind?" His anger was a palpable thing, vibrating through his body and tightening his fingers so that they pressed into her skin past the point of pain. She'd have bruises there tomorrow, matching the ones on the rest of her body, the ones she'd actually earned.
She took a deep breath, fighting the impulse to snatch her arm away from Frank's grip. Fighting the impulse not to punch his fucking lights out. She was no match for him, not yet and maybe not ever, and besides, she knew where he was coming from. But she also knew, somehow deep in her bones, that this was the right thing - the smart thing - to do.
"Sommerfield's looking to test her enhanced antivirus," she said, as calmly as she was able. The words still came out too sharply, too strongly, and she took a deep breath, not missing the dismissive look in Frank's eye. "The one she thinks might actually work on vamps, not just the ones who haven't turned yet. Jesus, Frank. She's been nagging you for weeks about finding a subject."
"Not him."
"Why not?" His eyes flashed with anger at her tone and she took a deep breath, stepping back from him, his fingers finally slipping from her arm. Her flesh ached but she didn't reach up and rub where it was sore, and she didn't take her eyes off Frank. "If what he told me is true, he's only been a vamp for five years, Frank. Five years, not five hundred. Where else are we guaranteed to find a relative newborn?"
"If he's telling the truth."
"Yes." She tried not to snap out the word, reining in her eagerness. "But Frank, he's chained up with silver. He's goddamned gift-wrapped."
"That's what's worrying me," Frank said heavily, and she blinked at him, thrown. "Jesus, Abby, sometimes I forget that you're so goddamned young."
The words stung, but she swallowed down the hurt. Looked at it as dispassionately as possible, he was right. He had nearly twenty years more experience of this than she did, and she knew him well enough to know when to shut up and listen to him.
"You think it's a trap," she said evenly, and Frank snorted, glancing back towards the makeshift dungeon with a kind of remote anger in his eyes. "Maybe it is," she admitted. "But for it to be a trap, they'd have to know we had a cure, or the chance of one. Do you think that's likely?"
She wasn't challenging him; he needed to know that. She was simply putting it out there, and Frank was smart enough - old enough and grizzled enough - to pick his fights with care. He was right - she was wet behind the ears, but he didn't need to throw his weight around with her. Reason worked much better.
"You think it isn't?"
She gave the question the consideration it deserved, turning it over in her mind. "Maybe," she said slowly. "But if they know, I think we'd have seen a lot more effort to root us out, find Karen Jenson at least, even if they don't know that Sommerfield's been building on her work."
Frank let out a snort again, but it was thoughtful rather than dismissive this time. "Jenson's gone to ground," he said, "and I can't blame her for that one. Blade tends to have that effect - if you're not dead at the end of it, you need to fall off the fucking grid."
Abby kept her silence, thinking of the one person who'd done both - her father. Instead she watched Frank as the wheels turned over in his mind, all of the angles considered, all of the risks rooted out and examined.
"Okay," he said slowly. "Maybe they don't know. Maybe he was just supposed to get you to talk. I'd guess he's cute, if you go for that type." His voice was dispassionate but he turned his head and gave her a look that said clearly what he thought of that.
She bit back on her irritation, settling on a mild, "I think he wants this. I think he wants this badly enough that maybe he's the one who's going to end up talking."
Frank grunted. She kept her face as expressionless as she could, but Frank was older and wiser; who the hell knew what he could see there.
"Okay," he said eventually, and she was careful not to give any sign that his answer affected her one way or another - it didn't, no matter what Frank thought, but who knew what he saw, or thought he saw. "Since he's gift-wrapped," he phrased the words ironically, "we take him with us, see if Sommerfield can use him. If not, we stake him."
He held her gaze steadily but she didn't look away, limiting herself to a brief nod and earning one of his rare smiles in response.
"Okay, Whistler. You're up. Tell your boy he gets the cure, and if he doesn't co-operate nicely, he gets the sharp end of my best silver blade."
She nodded again, taking a deep breath as she stepped back towards the room, schooling her face into impassivity. Only now did she rub her arm, dropping her fingers back down to her side before she stepped through the doorway.
King was waiting for her, sitting back on his haunches, his eyes fixed firmly on the door. Mick was standing to one side of him, too close, within the range of movement King's chains allowed him. Mick's expression was fixed in a sneer, and his fingers were tapping against the stock of his weapon, a staccato rhythm that gave away more than Mick meant to.
Dex was leaning against the wall, safely outside of King's range, his arms folded and his expression drawn down into a thoughtful little frown, silent and watchful as usual. He glanced up from his contemplation of King when Abby entered the room, treating her to a brief nod of acknowledgement before his attention once again turned back to King.
King was ignoring both of them. He only had eyes for Abby, straightening up slightly when she finally came to a stop, meeting his gaze.
"You're lying," he repeated, picking up the conversation as though she'd never left. He still didn't sound convinced by his own words, more as though he wanted to believe them, didn't want to have that hope.
She shook her head, not looking away from him no matter how difficult it was to meet those inhuman eyes. "You must have heard the rumours," she said gently. He licked his lips and looked away, his fingers trembling slightly where they were pressed against his legs. He didn't answer her, and she pushed on. "That some victims have been bitten but not turned?"
He swallowed, still not meeting her eyes. "Bitten's not the same as..." He trailed off, his fingers jerking, but she got his meaning.
"An antivirus is an antivirus." She kept her voice as even as possible, and not just because she didn't want to spook King. Frank's presence was heavy in the room behind her; she could feel him in the tension that ran along her spine, in the way that her scalp prickled. He was watching her, waiting for her to screw up before he stepped in, or maybe hoping she wouldn't screw up at all. With Frank, she couldn't always tell.
King's face slackened, smoothing out and giving very little away. She figured it was a reflexive thing, but the skin around his eyes was still tight with tension, and the look in them was lost, a thousand yard stare while he turned it over in his mind.
"How many?" he asked, finally dragging his eyes back towards her. "How many vamps have you cured?"
She felt the muscles around her mouth tighten, and King didn't miss it, staring at her while she searched for an answer. In the end, the truth was the only way to go. "You'd be the first fully-fledged active one," she said, and he laughed, full and rich, with a biting edge to it.
"So I'd be the lab rat?" His face was bright with mirth, but his eyes looked hard and cold, although she couldn't tell whether that was simply down to the effect of the harsh overhead lights. "Wow. An offer I can totally refuse."
"What have you got to lose?" she asked him, straining to keep her voice even.
His lips compressed into a tight line as he glanced away from her again, and the look on his face was faintly troubled, like there was a lot more going on under his surface than she could ever hope to know. When he looked back his expression was set, settled into grim lines.
"And if it doesn't work?"
She wasn't going to lie to him. It was pointless anyway - in spite of his mouth and his tendency to be an ass, she didn't figure him for a fool. "Either the antivirus kills you or we do."
His face settled into that carefully blank mask again, his eyes losing focus as he mulled her offer over. "So I'm either cured or I die," he said, and Frank shifted behind her, impatience and a barely concealed threat of violence in the sound.
King ignored him, staring out into space for one long, silent moment. And then he nodded abruptly, more to himself, it seemed, than to her. "Sounds like a win-win situation to me." He closed his eyes, turning his face up towards the bright lights overhead. "I'm in."
-o-
Part 02: dreamwidth :: livejournal :: insanejournal
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Thank you. (BTW when it is up on A03? THIS IS SO GOING ON MY KINDLE)
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There was more to this scene originally, but