Fan Fiction ❯ The Vampire Hunter ❯ Chapter 7

Chapter VII

Gabrielle woke the second the sun finished its descent below the horizon. Even though there was no way for the light to get in through the bricked over windows, she knew the moment the sun was blocked by the Earth's rotation.

She sat up and looked over at her fellow vampires. She'd always been an early riser. It was how she had been able to get to Clark's before the sun had completely gone down the day before.

Thinking of Clark brought an expression to Gabrielle's face that was part smile and part frown. Clark brought out feelings in Gabrielle that she'd never experienced before. Considering the thousands of years she'd been alive, that was quite an accomplishment.

Gabrielle focused on her surroundings once again and found David watching her.

"Good evening," she said.

"Good evening to you, too."

They both got up and roused Michelle and Shiri from their slumbers. They jumped down and found Richard, Samantha, and Clark playing cards. Richard greeted his Master and prepared to do his bidding. Samantha did the same with Michelle. Clark hid her smirk and stood to find out what Gabrielle's plans were.

Gabrielle was still sated from her last meal at Claudio's expense, but the others needed to feed. They decided that, since Richard and Samantha wouldn't be accompanying them to the Gathering Place, Richard would take Samantha home and then take the night off. Shiri, Michelle, and David went off in search of prey and Clark and Gabrielle left to find Clark some dinner.

They stopped at the first nice looking restaurant they saw and Clark ordered a large meal of spaghetti with meatballs and garlic bread. When the waitress turned to take Gabrielle's order, Clark informed her that they would be sharing and the waitress kindly offered to bring a second plate for them.

Gabrielle smirked at Clark's order of garlic bread when the meal arrived. "Glad that myth isn't true. I rather enjoy kissing you," Gabrielle told her dinner companion.

"I rather enjoy it, too," Clark replied.

After Clark was done, and they'd settled the bill, they walked around and did a little window-shopping. It was strange and yet totally normal somehow. Clark was still having problems reconciling her life of a few days ago with her current reality. Everything felt completely wrong and completely right all at the same time.

When Clark thought about being with Gabrielle, she felt right. It was when she tried to include the fact that Gabrielle was a vampire and she was a Vampire Hunter, that things felt decidedly out of whack. It was as if her world had tilted just enough to throw her off balance, but not enough to keep her from walking. So, she kept on walking.

Finally, it was time to meet up with the others and head to the Gathering Place. They took Clark's car, but Shiri drove, since Clark was blindfolded. Shiri made sure to take a very convoluted route, just in case Clark was able to map the turns in her head.

They arrived and Gabrielle led Clark into the building, not taking the blindfold off until they were underground and away from windows that might identify their location to the Vampire Hunter. Clark blinked several times to get the fuzziness out of her eyes and then followed the vampires down a few more flights of stairs.

The door that led them out of the concrete stairwell opened onto a plushly carpeted room that could have easily been on the top floor of some high-rise office building. The lights weren't as bright as those normally found in such a setting, but there was enough light to see the entire place clearly.

In the middle of the room was a long wooden conference table. There were already several dozen vampires in attendance and they looked up at the latest arrivals. Several vampires gasped when they recognized Clark and a low buzz went around the room as those who didn't know who she was were swiftly informed.

Blake, who was seated at the head of the table, stood up and a large group of vampires stood with him and edged closer to their new 'leader.'

"How good of you to come, Gabrielle. I see you brought your little human. I wonder how long she'll last, if I only take a few pints a day from her?" He laughed and those around him chuckled with him.

"You'll never find out, Blake. I'd kill her myself before letting you have her," Gabrielle responded and the room went completely silent.

"Ah, Gabrielle. You're a disgrace to vampires everywhere. Defending this human. Defending humans in general. Why? You were born a vampire. Why do you insist on this.. this masquerade? You're not human and you never will be. I don't even understand why you would want to be. It's very unpleasant. You get a scratch and you die from blood poisoning. Well, I suppose not anymore. My time as a human was a while ago. They have made a little progress."

Blake smirked and got a few laughs from the vampires standing around him. He focused on Gabrielle again and his eyes lost what little humor they'd had. Gabrielle appeared to be studying him and everyone else in the room.

"I will make this simple, Gabrielle. Leave her with us. Then disappear. You have no place in the Order anymore."

"On the contrary, I've just decided to take my rightful place as First Born."

"You can't be serious. Have you noticed how outnumbered you are, my dear? You can't possibly take all of us before we can get to you. That's why you went after the others when they were by themselves. You were too cowardly to fight us openly, so you slunk around with your little Hunter and murdered them in their own lairs."

Gabrielle could see that this wasn't news to anyone in the room. Blake had obviously told them all of her busy night, but the reminder was enough to garner her more than a few hateful looks.

"You're right. I murdered them in cold blood. They had to be stopped before they started something irreversible. Have any of you thought about what it will mean to attack the VHA directly? Right now, most of the humans choose to ignore us. At most, we're something to be feared, like burglars, and rapists in the parks. Some have even built up cults around us. But no matter what they feel about us, the VHA is a kind of balance, a check against us becoming too much of a threat. If we take away that security blanket, people who never even thought twice about us will be out for our fangs."

Gabrielle saw the unsure faces turn to wait for Blake's rebuttal. She could tell they were really hoping he had some kind of answer because a war with millions of angry humans had never been on the agenda.

"Why should we be worried about a few pitiful humans? Once we destroy the VHA, they won't stand a chance against us."

Most of the vampires were nodding their heads in agreement, but Gabrielle just smiled. Blake had walked right into the admission she'd needed from him to prove her point.

"If they're not a threat to us, then why attack them at all?"

Blake looked at a loss for a moment, but then he recovered and smiled at Gabrielle's attempt to turn the conversation to her advantage.

"We have a right to defend ourselves. They've been hunting us down for millennia..."

"And we hunt them every night. I think the balance is complete."

"No! It's not the same."

"It doesn't matter. We kill them for food and they kill us to protect their own. It is the cycle you each chose to become a part of and the one I chose to live with. I will not allow our kind to be wiped out by some idiotic notion of revenge. Even if that means wiping out all those who oppose me and starting over."

Gabrielle could see the looks of confusion and surprise running over the faces of those present. She'd always remained in the background, letting them decide for themselves what course to set for their kind. This dictator they were now faced with was something new altogether.

"In the millennia you have known me, I have never asked for preferential treatment. I offered the wisdom of my years and let you make your own decisions, sometimes what I considered to be the wrong decisions. But I will not stand aside and watch you annihilate yourselves with this course of action. We need the humans as much as they need us, though it seems neither of our species will admit that fact."

Gabrielle stood just a little taller and made her proclamation.

"I am the First Born, daughter of Re, once known as Geb, the only true vampire left on Earth. And I give protection to the humans and death to those who would stand against me."

"Wait, Geb was male," Clark whispered into her ear. She'd really gotten into Egyptian mythology after reading Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles.

Gabrielle turned her head slightly to mumble a reply to the tall woman.

"No, I was not. By the time the mythology of my father's worship had spread, patriarchy had claimed Egypt and I was the sole survivor of my half-siblings and had gone into hiding. The humans rewrote the scrolls to suit their purposes." She shrugged slightly. "I chose not to correct them."

Clark leaned back away and waited to see what the others had decided.

"That's a rather empty threat, don't you think? You're still badly outnumbered. And in case you've forgotten, I'm as strong as you now. We're not just going to suddenly bow down to you, now that you've decided to take your father's place. It's too late for that. They've chosen me."

"Maybe I didn't make myself clear enough. Anyone who attempts to stand against me will die. And Blake? Just because you stole my blood, doesn't mean you've gained all my strength. I'm still older than you and the full power is not passed on with a single feeding. If you challenge me, you will die."

Blake could see it in her eyes. Even with his newfound abilities, he knew she'd be able to make good on her threat. Unless he could convince the others to attack her now. If they didn't, she would continue to thwart his plans for global domination, though she obviously wasn't looking that far into the future. But he was.

He looked around the room, studying those sitting and standing around the table. He could see fear, surprise, worry, disbelief, humor, and even pride in the faces of the vampires listening to their exchange. There were just enough nods in his direction to make him confident that he would win any conflict with the four opposing vampires and the human female. Everyone else seemed to be willing to stay out of it, if a fight erupted.

Gabrielle watched as Blake lunged toward her and the occupants in the room moved as a single wave in her direction, though they seemed to be moving in slow motion compared with the lightning fast movements of her and Blake. They were ripping at each other's bodies, and both of them were completely naked and dripping with blood by the time Blake's followers met up with the three vampires and one human backing her.

Gabrielle was fully concentrated on killing Blake and keeping him from landing a disabling blow on her. In the back of her mind, however, was the realization that far too much of her and Blake's blood was free for the taking.

Clark's eyes widened as Blake was suddenly at Gabrielle's throat. Then she felt the room surge forward and whipped out a stake for each hand from her belt. She flung them forward and they landed in the hearts of two vampires trying to get to Gabrielle. She had another two stakes at the ready even before her first two kills hit the ground.

Shiri and Michelle stood side-by-side and grappled with several challengers. Michelle set up one of her attackers for Shiri to dispatch and then moved on to the next in line. She was aware of Clark flinging stakes in all directions, sometimes killing those who were about to attack and other times nailing those that had already been taken down to ensure that they stayed down.

David found himself being ganged up on by three Fifth Order vampires and grinned. He was Third Order and no lowly Fifth Orders were going to take his blood. He flew at them and ripped the stomach out of one, the throat out of another, and the eyes out of the last. He briefly nodded at Clark, when she staked all three, before going back into the fray. He hadn't been in a really good fight since before he'd been converted. He'd forgotten the adrenaline rush facing death could bring to his singing veins.

Blake wanted to look around to see how the battle was going, but he didn't dare take his focus off Gabrielle. She had just a nanosecond of edge on her speed compared to him, but he'd studied fighting techniques, whereas she had never seen a need to. She was also over a thousand years older than he was, closer to two thousand, and she seemed to be able to anticipate everything he did before he actually did it. When she grinned at him, he realized she was using a power he didn't possess.

Gabrielle listened. She was moving without willing her limbs to action. She knew she was very close to a new understanding, but when it hit her, she nearly froze, almost letting a very serious blow land across her throat. She could feel what Blake was doing. She could nearly hear his thoughts. She realized the blood he'd taken from her had given her some kind of link to him.

Vampires were semi-contact telepaths. That is, while they were feeding, they shared a link with that person. The prey could feel what the vampire was feeling and the vampire could get a sense of what their prey was feeling in return. That's why there was so much seduction involved with some vampires' hunting habits and brute force with others'. It depended on what each vampire wanted to feel from his or her prey: desire or fear. It only occurred during feeding, however, and Gabrielle suspected it had something to do with their fangs being extrasensory receptors. Through experimentation, she'd learned that her fangs had to be immersed in her victim's blood before the link was established. And younger vampires, less potent in their abilities, seemed to lack this sensitivity completely.

That's why she was so surprised to realize that she knew what Blake was planning to do even as he was thinking it up. She hadn't been able to get her fangs anywhere near him, just as she'd kept his mouth far away from her own body. Now that she knew what was happening, and that Blake seemed to be in the dark about it, she used her newly discovered power to increase her small advantage.

Gabrielle blocked everything he threw at her and started sending a few moves back to him. Less than thirty seconds had passed since Blake's attack, and only five more seconds went by, before Gabrielle ripped her nails through his chest and stabbed him through the heart. She pushed her hand completely out the back of his body and then pulled back towards her own. She sunk her teeth in his neck and pulled with all her strength. She wanted her blood back and she needed some strong blood to repair the damage Blake had inflicted.

When she was done, she let his body fall to the floor and wasn't surprised to see a stake land where his mangled heart still tried to beat futilely in his chest. She looked up and got a wink from Clark. Gabrielle turned away and started helping those around her.

It was all over a few minutes later. Clark held a stake in each hand, prepared to fling them at any of the vampires standing in front of her. Shiri and Michelle leaned against each other, spent from their struggles with the others and defending each other. David held a hand to his stomach to keep his intestines from spilling out, something that would only add to his recovery time, since his body would have to recreate them from scratch, instead of simply repairing them.

Gabrielle stood completely still, her shredded clothing in little piles on the floor, her body covered in blood, both hers and Blake's. She looked at each of the vampires Clark was holding at stakepoint. None of them wanted to die, that was obvious. But could she trust them, let them live to come back and mutiny another day?

Cold-blooded murder based on 'what ifs' wasn't really her style. Granted, in the past forty-eight hours she'd orchestrated the deaths of over a dozen vampires, though they'd held no threat to her, just because they'd intended to kill a few humans that were members of the VHA. But this felt different. If she killed them, without giving them a chance to prove their loyalty, or disloyalty, she'd be no better than Blake and his insane paranoia-induced revenge regarding the humans.

Still, there was one thing she had to take care of, no matter what else she did.

"Everyone strip. Wipe your bodies clean. If I see you attempting to taste the blood on your skin, I will kill you."

They looked at each other and then carefully began removing their ripped and bloodied clothing. Gabrielle kept a watchful eye on them. Nobody tried to get a taste of the crimson liquid that was starting to dry on them.

"Clark, go through that door there and bring back some cups of water."

Clark nodded and went to retrieve the water. Normally, she would have objected to the seeming command, but she knew it was only because she was the only one Gabrielle trusted out of sight with the blood covering her body and clothes. She returned with four paper cups full of cold water and passed them out to the nearest vampires.

"Clean yourselves," Gabrielle ordered them.

It took many refills of water, but after about half an hour, all the vampires were clean, except for their own blood that still seeped from healing wounds. Even those that had ended up fighting against Blake's people were forced to undergo the same treatment, including David, Michelle, and Shiri. Finally, Gabrielle took time to clean her own body.

Clark looked around her and had a moment of hysteria when she realized she was the only clothed human amongst a group of naked vampires. And she wasn't just any human and these weren't just any vampires. She was the goddamn best of the best Vampire Hunters and these were the leaders of the fucking Vampire Order. She shook her head. What a night.

"Michelle, Shiri, I want you to help David and lead everyone downstairs to the recreation room. Clark and I will bring up the rear. If anyone tries to cause any trouble, I will personally drain you dry and leave you to rot."

They started out the door and Gabrielle looked around the room. They'd have to burn it, but not until everyone was out of there. It was the only way to make sure no one got an accidental taste of her or Blake's blood. She glanced over to Clark and Clark pulled back her trench coat slightly. There on her hip was a small contraption that looked like a plant sprayer, except that it was all metal and the nozzle was blackened. Gabrielle grinned. The Hunter thought of everything.

"Not 'til we're out of here. On our way back up, you can torch the place."

Clark nodded and then they both moved to follow the last of the naked vampires down the stairwell.