Blade hasn't come for him. It's maybe one of the worst experiences that Hannibal has ever suffered.  He’s just started to think that with Blade on their side they actually stand a chance and then their own headquarters gets raided and there's no rescue attempt.
 
Sure he’d been through a lot of crap.  Chief among them being taken the first time, turned and made into a plaything for the Talos siblings, and man were they ever willing to get their freak on.  Well, life hadn’t ever really been a picnic.
 
But when Dracula himself had shown up in their own damned headquarters, had killed Sommerfield and stolen Hannibal and Zoe away, well, he’d had high hopes, maybe even expectations because come on, this is the friggin’ Daywalker we’re talking about, right? Right? 
 
It’s hard to put that into perspective when he’s standing, swaying really, in the middle of a throne room with heavy steel manacles around his wrists, chains attached to the collar around his neck.  When he’s been held here, a captive for god knows how long and Zoe is sitting on evil incarnate’s lap with a smile on her face and looking like a little princess in a pair of white mary jane's and a little blue dress with tiny white flowers on it.
 
“I’ve been told you were once a vampire.  Tell me, why did you choose to repay such a gift with betrayal?” Dracula has an even stare, one that could probably out stare Blade, you know, if bad ass vampires had staring contests.  Dracula, Drake, looks nothing at all like he's supposed to.  Instead of a scrawny pasty white man with a widow's peak, he's tanned, muscled and has the deepest eyes Hannibal has ever seen.  He blinks away from those eyes because some part of the legend has to be right and if it's the mind whammy part, he doesn't want Drake in his head.
 
“I wasn’t having that good a time really,” Hannibal says.  "Figured it was time to move on." His voice is hoarse and tired from screaming and his body is one giant mess of pain.  Jarko, all 220 pounds of anger and revenge fueled blond vampire had really worked him over the night before and if there’s anything Hannibal is glad for it’s the fact that he’s locked down in a room with an untinted skylight, though he suspects it is what it is so that he can recuperate during the day and they can go back to having their fun at night.
 
Drake makes a noncommittal sound and strokes a hand over Zoe’s hair.  The little girl is clean and there isn’t a bruise on her that Hannibal can see, she looks well-fed and taken care of.  In direct opposition of Hannibal himself; he’s still wearing the same tattered and bloodstained pants he’d arrived in almost a month ago.  He’d probably stink to high heaven if it weren’t for Jarko and that damned garden hose he likes so much.  His dirty blond hair is matted with blood at the side of his head.
 
He takes a moment to pray for Abigail because the daughter of the great Whistler himself has to be dead.  There’s no way that Zoe would still be sitting on Drake’s knee if she wasn’t.
 
He wonders if Blade is dead too, then he wonders if he actually cares and then one of the guards, anonymous in their body armour that covers from head to toe, shoves him to his knees.  Drake looks kind of amused and Hannibal figures he was drifting away.
 
“Sorry, starvation, the mind kind of wanders,” he says and gets a thump to the back of his head for his troubles which makes the cut on the side of his head reopen and start dripping down his face again. Which makes a few of the vampires in the room hiss in excitement.
 
“Hold,” Drake orders and the guard steps away from the beat down Hannibal was expecting, hoping for, he's sure it would have killed him this time. When he looks up, Zoe has her face hidden in Drake's chest, Drake's hand holding her there.  “You’re a pretty thing, surely you pleased someone,” Drake says, there's a glimmer of something dancing in those eyes, interest maybe and Hannibal leers up at him.
 
“I pleased a lot of people," he says and the grin drops off his face in favour of one of his more serious expressions.  "In the end though, it was always about them, less about me.  And if I was a vampire, I couldn’t figure out why they were treating me like cattle.”  Again with the noncommittal noise from Drake.  Hannibal kneels there, legs spread to take his weight in the least painful way possible, in silence. Long enough for the floor to get uncomfortably cold, long enough to take in the opulent setting and the sun outside high at it's zenith through the tinted windows.  Somewhere his brain realizes that this isn’t the old digs, the glass and steel of Danica’s complex didn’t have enough room for the solid stone throne and the tapestries and stone floor he was kneeling on, let alone the room he's being held in, the stretching length of hallway they dragged him down to get here.
 
“Who turned you?” Drake asks and Hannibal shrugs and ignores the flare of pain in his chest wounds, he really has no idea.  There were a lot of vampires that night.
 
“There were a lot of bloodsuckers the night I got bit,” he says.  “Danica and Asher took me home, showed me the ropes, kept me as their pet but I never found out who had the important chunk out of me.”
 
He remembers a lot of drugs, a lot of blood, and a lot of pain.  He remembers a lassitude that had spread over his body like the best hit he’d ever taken and then he remembers being hungry.  Sometimes when he’s tired and wrung out, especially when Abigail had locked him in the Nightstalkers’ small 8x8 holding cell to sweat out the vampire, the meth and the heroin he thinks he remembers pale skin, blond hair and the bluest eyes he’d ever seen.
 
“Talos,” Drake says and Hannibal looks up when Asher steps forward, still looking slick as ever in a dark suit with his hair styled back but there's a hunted look in his eyes.  Danica is nowhere to be seen which is weird because the two of them are never far from each other, fucking twisted motherfuckers.
 
“My Lord,” Asher says and my, aren’t we all humble and shit, Hannibal thinks.  He doesn’t know he’s said it out loud until Zoe gasps and he feels the pain in his hand from where one of the guard steps on it.  Hears Zoe's shocked cry at his treatment.
 
“Sorry, Zoe,” he says automatically. Ingrained reaction.
 
“That’s fifty cents,” she says quietly but her voice is loud in the room.  He smiles at her through the pain in his hand like they're the only people in the room.
 
“Sure sweetheart, I’ll owe you this time though, 'kay?” Back at headquarters there are three jam jars on the counter, full of quarters, nickels, dimes, the odd ten dollar bill, all dedicated to the cause of teaching Hannibal King not to swear in front of anyone.  Drake looks at him and smiles and it makes something in Hannibal want to crawl away and hide.

"Talos has been telling me interesting stories, stories that show I might have a use for you after all," Hannibal doesn't miss the way the head bloodsucker’s words are structured to not scare Zoe.  “Tell me again who turned him,” Drake orders.  Asher looks down at Hannibal on his hands and knees and Hannibal feels a shock of familiarity to it, he’s been on his hands and knees for Asher before.
 
“He was the last human turned by Deacon Frost; he’s the last of Frost’s line.” Hannibal blinks because that means nothing to him.  Yeah, he knows who Frost is, what vampire, or ex-vampire for that matter, didn’t? But what the hell did Frost have to do with anything.
 
“And you say it was after the transformation had begun?” Drake asks.  Transformation, Hannibal doesn’t like where this conversation is going.
 
“After Frost had begun the preparations, yes; Frost was killed after the transformation had begun.”
 
“And what does this mean for the information you’ve been seeking?” Drake demands.  Asher licks his lips tentatively, it’s the look he used to get when Danica was going to be displeased with him.  His brows pulled together a little, his throat working convulsively.
 
“The research we have shows that it's possible there might have been some transfer.  We haven’t fed him anything but the blood he’s licked off his own lips for weeks, my Lord, if he were fully human...” He lets the sentence drift off and Hannibal stares at him in confusion.  No, there had been a meal…he tried to remember the last time he’d eaten, the last time Jarko hadn’t shoved a hand coated in blood into his mouth and asked him if he’d been hungry and couldn’t think of anything immediately.  He isn't a bloodsucker, they hadn't turned him.  He doesn't understand.  He doesn't think he wants to. Transfer of what?
 
“Excellent,” Drake says with a smile.  He lifts Zoe off his knee as he stands and drops her gently onto the seat of the throne. She watches Hannibal, her feet making a rhythmic thump against the chair as she idly kicks them back and forth.
 
Drake moves faster than he should be able to, even for a bloodsucker, and when he reaches for Hannibal, Hannibal dodges out of reach or tries too.  Drake’s hand wraps tightly in his hair and yanks Hannibal’s head to the side and then back, inspecting him.  Hannibal fights the urge to bare his teeth.
 
“I want him cleaned up, fed and put into a more comfortable room.  I want guards posted on him at all times.  New chains, and I want to know the minute he’s been settled,” Drake orders, he lets go of Hannibal’s hair and shoves him to the ground with a casual display of supernatural strength then holds his hand out behind him.
 
“Zoe?” he calls and Hannibal tries not to feel any kind of utter betrayal when the little girl hops off the throne and hurries her way over to Drake to take the offered hand.  Survival.
 
“Will you be better soon?” Zoe asks him directly and Hannibal grins at her, his big brother goofy grin as Abby used to call it.
 
“You bet, doodlebug,” he says.  “You go on now, I’ll be fine.” Hannibal tracks their progress and doesn’t look away even when he hears Asher’s heels click lightly on the stone floor beside him.
 
“Come on,” Asher orders and drags Hannibal to his feet by his forearm.  “Get up.”
 
“Go fuck your sister,” Hannibal shoots back.  Asher’s hand tightens noticeably on his arm to the point where Hannibal can feel the bones start to rub together but he doesn’t say anything. 
 
Years ago, Hannibal would have been backhanded into a wall, more than ever he wonders where Danica is.
 
***

He's pretty much dragged by the chains down a long stone hallway that kind of fucks with his brain for a bit.  There are torches on the wall that look like they used to get used a lot but then there's actual florescent lighting everywhere.  There are guards stationed every twenty feet or so, around every corner.  The walls are high and there are no windows so to speak.
 
The room is bigger than his cell but lacking in the skylight, allowing Asher to move around easily, in fact there are no windows, there aren't even any doorways.  What there is, is a queen-sized bed dominating the middle of the room, a desk and chair set up on the right wall in the corner and a closet recessed into the wall on the left.  Everything is a muted brown and beige including the honest-to-God bed hangings and a few feet away from the closet there’s a doorway that Asher drags him through.
 
The bathroom’s done up the way the bedroom is, brown and beige everywhere, tile floor that feels warm against his bare feet and a tub sunk into the floor with a shower head hanging down from the ceiling above it. He catches sight of himself in the mirror and winces, bloody and bruised with a beard that takes over his entire face.
 
“Get cleaned up, I’ll be waiting outside.  You take too long and I’ll come in here and clean you myself.”
 
“What the fuck is this all about, Asher?” Hannibal demands.  The vampire flinches at being addressed directly.  “I’m nothing but cattle so what the fuck is going on?”
 
“You don’t need to know right now,” Asher says and unlocks the manacles and collar, Hannibal rubs at the abused and scarred flesh on his wrists.  “Soon, but not now, get cleaned up.”
 
***

The shower is probably the nicest experience Hannibal has ever had in his entire life.  His entire life. It's scalding hot, and the pressure is just perfect and he just sits on the floor of the tub for a few minutes letting the water pound down on him and watching the layers of dirt swirl their way down the drain.

When he gets out, skin red from the too hot water, there are clean clothes sitting on the counter.
 
The first thing Asher does is slip on the new collar, this one is made of leather at least and doesn't scratch too hard at the raw spots from the metal one.  His new manacles are leather too and then the chains, which Asher hooks onto the d-rings at the sides of Hannibal's collar down to the cuffs on his wrists.  These ones seem mostly for show though, unlike the last pair that didn't even have enough give to let him rest his arms at his side without pulling his head down with them.  Asher treats his wounds, rubs salve everywhere and bandages up what needs bandaging.  The whip marks on his back make Hannibal hiss when Asher's cold hands slide over them.

"I'm leaving now," Asher says when he's finished.  Hannibal is lying prone on the bed in a kind of daze.

"Don't let the door hit you on the ass on your...oh wait, there is no door," Hannibal says.

"You can get some rest, you should get some rest," Asher says and leaves, just leaves.  Which leaves Hannibal staring after his retreating figure in confusion.  Since when did Asher not go ballistic when Hannibal got after him.

***

Against his own better judgment he does get some shut-eye, mostly the bed's way too comfortable for words and if they were going to kill him they would have done it already.  Bloodsuckers? Not really known for their patience.

He wakes up to voices talking and he'd pretend to be sleeping but he can tell that one of them is Asher and it's not like he can slow his breathing down and Asher would believe it.  So instead he opts on staring at Drake and Asher standing just inside the room; he can't hear what they're saying and after a few minutes of just staring at them, Asher turns and glares at him.

"What?" Hannibal asks.  Asher snorts.

"Shut up, meat," he says and Hannibal puts on a pout.  It's so easy to forget he's not Asher's pet anymore, so easy to fall back into the role, so hard not to roll over and get fucked.  Drake moves easily to the desk chair and sits himself down, he spins and props his boots up on the bed and Hannibal controls the urge to flinch away.

"Tell me what you know about Deacon Frost," Drake says.  Hannibal stares at him blankly for a moment because that's the last thing he'd expected.  It takes him a minute to remember.
 
"Well, I don't know, really.  He was a vampire, he killed a couple of the council members, decided to become a god named La Magra, then killed the rest of the council members and used their blood to become La Magra and then Blade killed him."
 
"And he made you," Drake adds.  Hannibal gives him a confused look and shrugs.
 
"I already told you, I don't know who made me.  I don't remember."  Drake turns to Asher who smiles thinly at him.
 
"Frost turned him, I know he did because after he gave him to Danica and I as a peace offering for letting Blade kill an entire club's worth of our people." Drake nods and turns back to Hannibal.
 
"I want to know what he can do," Drake says and even though he's looking at Hannibal he's talking to Asher.  "We will schedule tests."
 
"Yes, my Lord," Asher murmurs.
 
"And Talos?" Hannibal takes note of how Asher tenses.
 
"Yes, my Lord?"
 
"Your pet has displeased me, ensure he does not do so again. You may leave."  Asher pales and utters another “yes, my Lord” and takes off out of the room, Hannibal wonders what it's all about.  Drake sits in the chair staring at Hannibal, clearly deep in thought and Hannibal waits until he's fidgeting under the scrutiny.
 
"I have a question," Hannibal says finally to break the silence and Drake's eyes focus on his face.  "Actually I have a couple, but I figure the biggest one is what the fuck is going on here?" 
 
"Quite simple," Drake says and leans forward, elbows on his knees.  "You are very pretty and I've decided to take you as my pet.  Your value increases with your abilities and right now I'm told that you are practically priceless.  The last source of La Magra's blood rests in your veins.  I'm interested, La Magra was a legend even in my time and Frost's research was very, very in depth."
 
"So you want to resurrect the blood god too?" Hannibal demands, with as much derision as he can manage.  Drake smiles at him, amused and calls out to the guards instead.  A second later Zoe is running into the room and climbing onto the bed and Hannibal is holding onto her for dear life.
 
"Some matters are not of your concern," Drake says.  "Your room is next to mine, if you have need of anything you may ask the guards and someone will fetch it for you.  I have ordered dinner for the both of you and you may keep Zoe company for the time being."
 
"Where's Zoe's room?" Hannibal asks and Drake smiles that amused smile again. 
 
"Some matters are not of your concern," he repeats and then he leaves, but not before ruffling Zoe's hair, pressing a kiss to the top of her head and maintaining eye contact with Hannibal the entire time.
 
***

When Asher comes to get him for the tests the next day he looks angry, and Jarko, trailing faithfully along behind him looks damaged.  Beaten bloody.  Hannibal smirks when he realizes that Jarko is the pet Drake had referred to.

The tests are friggin' lame.  Really, the only time Hannibal is even grateful for them is when he gets to run on the damned treadmill because at least then he's moving.  The rest of the time they hook him up to a machine and he sits there and gets told, again and again, to keep still until Asher gets fed up with his fidgeting and straps him down to the table.

The only good thing is that it gets him out of his room, walks him past a tantalizing glimpse of daylight down a long hallway and he just knows it's the way out.

***

"You like it here, kiddo?" He gets visitation with Zoe every couple of days.  Today they're playing with her new dolls.  Which makes him think about supply lines because things have to come from somewhere.  She smiles up at him a bit sad.

"I miss Mommy," she says.  "But Mr. Drake is really nice and I like my new room, it has a big window."  Hannibal ruffles her hair and smiles at her because he doesn't want her upset, she had time to adjust, time to get brainwashed by the bloodsuckers while he was locked away.

"That's good.  That's really good, Zoe."  He wonders if she knows that her mother is dead.

***

"So what exactly are these tests going to do? Show I have some La Magra DNA or something?" Hannibal asks.  Asher pushes the needle into Hannibal's arm a little rougher than he needs to but answers him all the same.

"This is phase I, and yeah, if you really have to know, we're looking for La Magra DNA. You're a freak of nature, King, Danica always said so."

"Speaking of the evil she-demon from hell, how is your sister these days? Haven't seen her around much." Hannibal isn't anticipating the cold look that settles over Asher's face, or the dark angry one that falls over Jarko's.  He certainly isn't expecting the backhand Jarko delivers and the only thing that saves him from getting his head ripped off there and then, strapped to the table, are the guards that follow Hannibal around everywhere.

They pull Jarko off of him and Asher holds his pet back while the guards unstrap him for the day.  Hannibal doesn't seen Jarko at all for almost a week and when he does, Jarko doesn't look at him.

***

He makes an escape attempt, once and only once.  He grabs Zoe during one of their play dates, kills his two guards.  Zoe is frightened and clinging to him but she's still listening to him, still keeping quiet when he tells her to. They even make it all the way outside.  Drake is waiting for them, lounging against the outer wall of the compound in the sun, watching him and Hannibal's eyes dart around looking for something, anything familiar.  Apparently he was out longer than he thought he was when he was first captured because they aren't in Kansas anymore.  There's sand everywhere and a road leading off into the distance is the only sign of civilization other than the actual palace they just walked out of.

Drake shoots a quick look at Zoe before meeting Hannibal's eyes.  Hannibal licks his lips and looks down at Zoe holding onto his hand tightly, she looks more scared then when he killed the two guards.  She looks more scared then the first time she saw him, strung out from heroin withdrawal and screaming his head off.  He wishes more than anything he hadn't put that expression on her face.  "If you wanted to go for a walk outside, you could have just asked." Drake smiles brightly at Zoe who loosens her death grip on Hannibal's hand but doesn't let go.  Drake moves towards them slowly and wraps an arm around Zoe's shoulders, his hand latches onto the waistband of Hannibal's pants and he looks at Hannibal calmly.  "You only get one," he says and Hannibal flinches away from the quiet tone.

"Yeah, okay," he says.  "Let's go for a walk." 

The walk is meant more for him than anything else he knows.  Drake takes them around the entire complex, enough for Hannibal to see all the security guards who hadn't shot them for trying to escape, all the cameras on every doorway he hadn't noticed, the fact that they really are the only complex for miles around because even the road looks disused.  There are no vehicles, no garages, nothing.  There's a garden though.

By the end of it, Hannibal is carrying Zoe who's resting her head on his shoulder and breathing evenly, not asleep but almost and Drake has his arm around Hannibal's waist.  Hannibal almost wants to break down into laughter at the domesticity of it all but he stops himself because he's not sure he's not hysterical and he's not sure he's not going to cry.

The escape attempt ends with one good thing.  Hannibal learns that Zoe's room is two doors down from his, on the other side of Drake's and it's well lived in.

He gets to visit the garden whenever he asks, sometimes Zoe comes with him.  Sometimes Drake comes with him and just stares at him thoughtfully.  Hannibal gets pretty much everything he asks for except a land line and the newspaper.

***

"We're ready to begin phase II" turns out to be bloodsucker code for 'we're ready to make the life of one Hannibal King more hellish than he thought it could possibly be.'

Hannibal spends almost three weeks solid locked back in the cell with the skylight after the first injection, apparently his screaming was starting to frighten Zoe.

He swipes at Jarko when he comes to take a blood test and manages to rip the vampire's index finger right off.

***

The second injection, after a week of recuperation lying in his bed staring at the ceiling, occasionally eating the food brought to him, by comparison barely stings, even if it makes him feel like he's floating on the good morphine the entire time.  When he surfaces a week and a half later staring at the two IVs hooked up to his arm, he realizes it's because he is actually on the good morphine. Because he went from totally calm and unflappable to apeshit insane in less than sixty seconds and ripped Jarko's entire arm off this time.

It takes him a while to come off the morphine withdrawal.  About the same length of time it takes Jarko's arm to grow back.

"Has a kind of symmetry to it, doesn't it?" he says out loud to no one and the guards don't look at him while he laughs.  He remembers a man with no arm and thinks of his favourite line from an old sci-fi series.  All this has happened before and will happen again.

***

He has no idea how long he's been a prisoner here and subjected to these random tests, they don't make sense, nothing makes sense.  They make even less sense when he wakes up in the middle of the night screaming and banging on the door of the cell for Quinn to get him the fuck out of here right the fuck now.  When Asher asks later, he doesn't know who Quinn is, has no idea.

***

They take a break between the second injection and the third because he really, really needs to recuperate.  He looses time and sometimes when he falls asleep he wakes up in odd places. 

Once, he wakes up to Asher shouting at a guard about how he couldn't have possibly made it this far without the cameras catching him.  Hannibal is outside, lying on the ground in the garden, staring up at the sky.  There's blood all around him and it turns out that while his brain was off in the twilight zone his body was carving strange symbols into his own flesh with a pair of pruning shears.

After that, Asher is assigned as his personal security and follows him around like a goddamned puppy.

"What does he have over you?" Hannibal asks curiously one day.  He is curious; he doesn't understand what the fuck Asher is doing bending to the whim of some overhyped bloodsucker.  So what if the guy can walk in the sun and shapeshift.

"The same thing he has over you, now shut the fuck up."

"Really? Because he's holding Zoe over me, hell, if Zoe weren't here I'd have killed myself long ago," Hannibal offers a smile.  He knows word will get back to Drake and whatever the fuck they're using him for it's hopefully important enough to keep Zoe safe.

"You have a hearing problem? I said shut the fuck up, don't make me bite you," Asher hisses and bares his teeth.  Hannibal's brain says stop fucking with the bloodsucker, Hannibal's sense memory says if you push him just a little further he'll beat the shit out of you and then fuck you blind but he figures that's not a healthy mind set.

***

"Stop picking at the scabs, fuckwit."

"They itch," Hannibal sulks but he dutifully sits on his hands while Asher pulls out the antiseptic cream he carries around with him now on a constant basis.

"Well maybe next time you won't act like a little bitch and go around carving ancient Sanskrit into your skin with rusty nails."  Hannibal bares his teeth at Asher.

"They were garden shears, and you know it." It doesn't feel like much of a win, and the familiarity between them is starting to get scary.

***

The third injection is – strange.  They lock him up in his cell, freshly padded and ready for whatever new crazy he's going to pull.  Two days later Hannibal is slowly tearing the padding off the wall, piece by piece when Asher finally ventures into the room to take a blood sample. Jarko had outright refused.

"I don't think this one's doing anything," Hannibal says.  "I'm bored out of my fucking skull. Can I come out now?"  The answer is no for another three days and then Asher gives up and lets him go back to his room.

***

Hannibal spends the first whole day after every injection has run its course sitting in the garden, staring out into nothing.  He remembers Whistler, Sr. that is, sitting down with him after he finally came down from the shakes but before he let go of the need for the needle.  He remembers the lessons Whistler taught him and he meditates.

"I had the patience to teach one stubborn ass idiot half-vampire to do this back in the day, I figure I can teach two."

Whistler is the only person who ever really understood that just because the teeth were gone didn't mean he was fully human.  Except maybe Whistler wasn't the only one, Hannibal just hasn't figured out what Drake is trying to get out of these tests.

The more they stick him with their needles the more he remembers the meth and misses the heroin.

***

Once, after the third injection, Hannibal is out in the garden staring out at the desert and Drake joins him.  Even knowing about Blade and knowing what he does about Drake, seeing the vampire out in full sunlight is a happy new mind fuck all on its own.

"In my time this was a thriving metropolis," Drake says and settles down on the grass beside Hannibal.  "Now we have supplies shipped in because there are no cities for hundreds of miles."  Hannibal files that fact away because he's been staring out at this desert scene for God knows how long and he's sure he's seen evidence of activity, human activity, not more than a few miles away.  He's convinced he smelled the spices on the air.

"Well in my time, we don't say things like 'thriving metropolis' unless we're talking about Superman," Drake stares at him with a curious expression.

"Superman?" he asks.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Hannibal mutters and flops down onto his back and stares up at the clouds.  No way in hell is he giving Dracula the pop culture talk.  That's not his job.

***

"Why do you keep going away?" Zoe asks him.  He's sitting on his bed with her playing Snakes & Ladders of all things and apparently this time the visitation merits the attention of two guards, Asher and Drake.  Asher is still waiting for the fallout from the third injection.  Hannibal hasn't told him he's been climbing the walls of his bedroom, literally.  Maybe he will tomorrow.  Maybe he won't.

"Well, I've got some things to do, Zoe, we can't all just run around here playing, now can we?" he asks with a grin as he rolls a three and lands on the biggest snake on the board.  He makes a big moaning deal of it and Zoe laughs.  When she finally wins their fourth game she's yawning widely and Drake orders Asher and the guards to take her back to her room for the night.  She gives both Hannibal and Drake a goodnight kiss and leaves happily.

"You are very good with children, aren't you?" Drake muses.  He sits in Zoe's vacated spot and watches while Hannibal packs the game back up into its box.

"I had a bunch of younger kids I took care of when I was younger." On the streets, because his parents hadn't wanted anything to do with him, because their parents hadn't wanted anything to do with them, because someone had to be in charge.

"How are the tests progressing?" Drake asks.  Hannibal meets his stare evenly.

"I don't know, you tell me, I don't even know what they're supposed to be doing, now do I?" Drake grins and brings a hand up to cup Hannibal's face.

It's a shock.  Hannibal hadn't realized how much he missed actual physical contact and it's hard not to lean into it.  He sees Zoe a lot, and Asher is always touching him to hook something up or unhook his chains because they're getting in the way.  None of them have actually touched him just to touch him.  He doesn't think he gave anything away but there's a knowing look on Drake's face anyway and Hannibal finally gets it.

"You planned that out pretty well," he says.  He's already hooked, no point denying it. 

"Well, you are very pretty," Drake says and runs his thumb over Hannibal's cheekbone.  He pulls Hannibal towards him gently and Hannibal doesn't resist.  When their lips meet Hannibal opens his on a small moan, Drake takes instant possession of his mouth and doesn't pull away until Hannibal is desperate for air and flat on his back on the bed.  After that it's a desperate scramble for flesh.  Hannibal rips the shirt off of Drake and Drake gets Hannibal completely undressed, pressing him down into the bedding until Hannibal goes limp, submits fully.

His lips and hands are everywhere and Hannibal can't help crying out when Drake's hand wraps loosely around his cock and pulls.  Hannibal has no idea how long it's been since anyone touched him like this.  Since Abigail freed him, if not longer.  Drake moves on after a few heartbeats, dragging tongue and pointed teeth down Hannibal's chest to his nipples, sucking and biting.  He sucks kisses down Hannibal's body and sucks a dark purple bruise into the flesh of Hannibal's hip bone, hands holding Hannibal's hips hard and steady beneath his onslaught. When he's done he trails his hands back, spreading Hannibal's ass cheeks and fingers, two of them, coated with something slick and wet push into him.  Hannibal arches in want and pushes back against them.  Drake chuckles against his neck and presses in a third.

"Such a lovely little whore," Drake murmurs and Hannibal doesn't even care.  Drake can call him anything he wants as long as he keeps hitting that spot deep inside him that makes him see stars.  "You've been worth the wait."

"Please," Hannibal gasps brokenly.  "Please, anything, please fuck me." He's so far beyond shame.  Begging for Drake's cock, spread out under the other man naked and wanting in a room with no doors.

Drake complies without hesitation, he shoves his cock into Hannibal in one smooth move and Hannibal's body begs for it just as loudly as his mouth does when that cock rams against his prostate over and over again.

"Come for me, my own," Drake orders dark and soft into his ear and Hannibal shouts and comes so hard that the world kind of greys out for a moment.  When he comes back to himself Drake is still pushed deep inside him, rolling his hips to feel his own orgasm better.  They stay connected like that, Drake twitching inside of him every so often until he finally pulls out and Hannibal hisses in pain.  Asher's intense, worried gaze meets Hannibal's from the doorway and Hannibal stares back at him, mostly unsurprised.

***

The night Drake takes him for the first time is the night the other anvil drops on injection number three.  Whatever it was changed Hannibal's hormones and Hannibal gets locked in his cell until it's flushed out of his system and he's not vampire catnip anymore.  In retaliation he doesn't tell Asher about climbing the walls.

***

"I'm not saying I'm not enjoying our time together, Talos, I'm just saying you’re going to be dead meat if you come near me with that thing."  The words come out of his mouth but Hannibal hears them like he's standing four feet away, instead of lying strapped to the exam table, watching someone else talking through his body.

"Bite me, bitch," Asher mutters and stabs the needle into Hannibal's arm.

"You're going to regret this, you and your sister.  I'm going to sic the entire clan on you for this." Again Hannibal's voice, again not Hannibal speaking.  Asher pulls back surprised and stares down at him.

"Hannibal?" It feels like he gets snapped back into place, like a rubber band and he would say something clever like, 'they're here' in a creepy voice to fuck with Asher but injection four hits a lot harder than any of the others.  Luckily his head doesn't even hurt from where he smacks it back into the table.

***

His head fucking hurts from where he smacked it onto the table, he'd say something but Asher's just finishing the blood tests to confirm his systems have been flushed clean of the drugs and he still has a bit in his mouth, his jaw hurts from clenching down on it and he can't make himself relax.  Drake is watching from the other side of the small, sterile, white room with a dark expression on his face.

***

After number four he gets another break.  Half of it is spent in bed, Drake's bed, recovering and getting his brains fucked out whenever the big guy feels like it.  The other half is spent with Zoe running around the compound playing tag.  Asher watches over him like a mother hen and drives him crazy.

He asks Asher one day "how long have I been here?" and gets a real answer for once.

"Around six months. Why, you looking for a change in scenery?  I could have sworn you were pretty happy with your situation." The old Asher tends to shine through a little more these days and Hannibal can't decide if the sarcasm and bitchiness is a good thing or a bad thing.

"Fuck you too, asshole," Hannibal says.  Asher grins at him.

"No, sweetie, I think Drake might get a little jealous if you did."  Hannibal would have just let it go but it's like there's a switch that gets flipped in his brain.  It starts with Hannibal recognizing the dawning awareness of the change coming and ends with him holding Asher on the ground, the guards scattered around him in various states of injured and dusted.  The thing that freaks him out is he has fangs.  He can tell he has fangs because they're cutting into his bottom lip and his tongue flicks out to catch the drops of blood that well up.

"You gonna let me up?"  Asher asks calmly and Hannibal's too stunned to do anything but.  Drake eyes him up curiously the rest of the day but if Asher told him anything, he doesn't show it.  Hannibal spends the rest of the day running his tongue over his completely human teeth and trying not to freak out.

***

He goes to sleep in Drake's bed, he knows he does because Drake fucks him and leaves him in bed to go take care of some sort of infighting, who knew the life of Vampire Master to the World would be so difficult?  He wakes up in a room he's never seen before.  There's a computer and it's going through some sort of search, popping up random symbols and there's a man sitting on the floor listening to music, ear buds firmly in place.  He stares at Hannibal in surprise and then shakes his head and pulls the ear buds out.

"Definitely not what I was expecting," he says.

"Sorry?" Hannibal offers.  Then "where are we?"

"We? There is no we, there's you and you're me, so there's still only you."  Hannibal blinks at him and the guy smiles with fangs.  "This is your subconscious talking to you direct from your hind brain."

"My subconscious is a vampire, why couldn't it be some hot chick in a lot less clothing?" Hannibal leers.  The guy rolls his eyes.

"You're not narcissistic enough to try to fuck yourself," he says and Hannibal takes a good look at him and shrugs.

"Jury's still out," it's more of a question than a statement but he doesn't figure that his subconscious will mind too much.

"You're supposed to ask me deep and meaningful questions," the guy pulls a pack of smokes out of his pocket and lights one.  He doesn't offer one to Hannibal.

"Why haven't I tried to escape again?"

"Okay, one, next time don't ask questions you already know the answers to."

"And two?" Hannibal asks when the guy pauses.

"Two? Wake up."

"What?" Hannibal asks. The guy gets up and almost glides across the floor towards him.

"Wake up," the guy says and slams his fist into Hannibal's gut.  Hannibal wakes up with a gasp, clutching his stomach.  Jarko is in his face, teeth flashing, eyes crazy and Hannibal reacts by bringing his hands up and shoving Jarko away as hard as he can but it doesn't do much to the larger man whose hands instantly go for his neck.

"You're not taking him away from me," Jarko hisses.  Hannibal's hands scramble to pry the fingers away from him, his lungs working to try and suck in much needed air.  It's about the time that things start to spin that Jarko finally goes flying through the air and through a wall.  Hannibal watches Asher, chest heaving desperately while Drake shoves his hand through Jarko's chest and rips out his heart.  Jarko doesn't even scream when he flies into pieces.  Asher looks like he's going to break into tiny little pieces and never be put back together but by the time Drake looks over at him the other vampire's face is schooled into an expression not quite stone perfect.

***

Injection five is lined up on the tray and Hannibal stares at it with trepidation.  "He made you test it out on Jarko first this time, didn't he?" he forces himself to ask.  Asher just stares at him blankly and shoves the needle into his arm.  Hannibal can't help but think that the old Asher, the one he was just starting to like, is gone forever.  He doesn't know what's been left in his place.

***

"And so the boy, who everyone else thought was just a boy, was really a Prince of the Faeries and he lived under the hill with the King and Queen and the entire faerie court of Avalon loved him. And they loved the girl too, who had lived her whole life locked in the tower by the evil witch and the two of them lived happily ever after.  The End." Hannibal closes the book and looks down at his girl.  Zoe is curled up against him on Drake's big bed and she's almost asleep but not quite.

"Poor girl," she murmurs.  Hannibal frowns.

"But Zoe, she's out of the tower and she's a fairy princess now." 

Zoe blinks at him sleepily and yawns. "But she's just like the girl in the box, except ours isn't a fairy princess."

"What girl in the box?" Hannibal asks.  But Zoe's out like a light and leaving Hannibal puzzled.  Injection five makes him restless, he hasn't slept in days so he tucks Zoe in and goes on the prowl through hallway after hallway, mapping the complex out in his head.  He climbs a couple of walls when he manages to ditch the security guards and he has no idea how he's managed to keep that quiet as long as he has what with the constant supervision and the cameras everywhere.  At least the fangs haven't come back.

The complex is so much bigger than he ever thought.  Even on the day Drake had taken them around the entire thing.  He's been to three floors, but he knows there are at least two more below him and the guards just won't let him go down the stairs.  He's seen Asher come up them a time or two though, so he figures that's where the lab is because he knows it's not anywhere he's been allowed to roam.  He suspects that's where his cell was but he can't be sure.

***

"Oh fuck yes," Hannibal groans the words, hands clutching spasmodically in the bed sheets.  Behind him Drake chuckles and presses in a little deeper, it's the most he's moved in what feels like hours.  When Drake had said he planned to blow Hannibal's mind, Hannibal had interpreted it as yes, blowjob! Instead, he finds himself on his knees over Drake's lap, the other man's chest pressed tightly to his back, his hands tight on Hannibal's hips and his cock a hard presence buried balls deep inside of Hannibal.  Hannibal lets his head fall back to rest on Drake's shoulder, muscles too weak to hold himself up any longer.

He shudders, his cock is hard and leaking against his belly and he wants nothing more than to wrap his hand around it and jack himself off but Drake bats his hands away and makes him hold the sheet and orders him not to let go.

"Please, oh god please," he begs hoarsely, trying to hold onto sanity because Drake is pulling him apart from the inside out and he doesn't know what to do.

"No," Drake says and his cock twitches inside Hannibal again.  "I think I want you to come, just from this," he says and Hannibal whines because he's going crazy but he doesn't think that's even going to be possible.

"Fuck me, just fuck me, please, I'll..." Drake licks a bead of sweat making its way down the back of Hannibal's neck and Hannibal keens again when he feels the sharp canines scratching his flesh.

"You'll what?" Drake asks, voice low and dark and silky and dangerous all at once. "You'll do anything? Say anything? Give anything? You have nothing to bargain with, you are already mine, mind and body.  Your soul is just a formality, give in."

Hannibal turns his head on Drake's shoulder and his parched lips brush Drake's neck when he whispers "please" again in a broken voice.

"Give in," Drake orders softly and Hannibal is so wasted he can't even cry out when his cock jerks and he comes hard, semen pulsing out over his stomach, dripping down his balls.  "Perfect," Drake says.

Hannibal manages a shocked cry when Drake pushes him forward to sprawl out on the bed and he can't do anything but hold on when Drake fucks into him like a jack hammer, harsh thrusts that shift them minutely up the bed until Drake's hands tighten on Hannibal's hips and hold him steady. Hannibal isn't even in his own head when Drake finally comes, all he knows is pain and pleasure and belonging.

***

He wakes up in the garden again, this time he's got the blood of twelve very bewildered, tied up, vampires in a cup and he's half drinking it, half pouring it over a piece of sandstone that has the same marks he carved into his skin, the old scars reopened.  He blinks at his arms, twined up and down with thin lines of drying blood and he blinks over at the vampires all sitting against the wall and he offers a shrug.

"Any idea what I was doing?" he asks conversationally and feels his fangs rub against his lips.  No one answers, but then, they're all gagged anyway.

***

"Apparently you're trying to summon La Magra."

"I'm trying to what?" Asher doesn't answer, just stares at Hannibal.  "How is that even possible?"  By the time Asher and the guards had arrived suited up for war the fangs had disappeared but that didn't stop the captured vampires from telling everyone about them.

"Probably has something to do with the DNA that Frost gave you.  He was in the middle of the transformation process when he turned you.  It's what we're looking for."  Hannibal looks at him in horror and Asher laughs but it sounds almost hollow.

"Don't worry your pretty little head, it's not like you're a candidate," he says with a sneer as he slaps antibiotic ointment onto Hannibal's self-inflicted cuts.  "You're just the key," and then he grabs Hannibal's jaw hard and says "open wide."

***

"Those are pieces of precious ancient history that you have your dirty human fingers all over."  Hannibal is standing in a white room, there are too many panels to count, all as tall as he is, made of glass and suspended from the white ceiling.  Inside each panel is a scroll, all in various stages of decay, all completely legible and all bearing the same symbols he's been carving into his flesh.  All the same symbols that were flashing on the screen of the computer the last time his brain took him on a trip to see his subconscious.  His vampire subconscious is watching him, blue eyes strangely intent.

"So what are they?" he asks.  "What are they doing in my brain? And are you sure I'm completely human?"

"They're memories, they're not important.  You're human, you're just a newer, better version."

"How can memories not be important, especially when they drag me in here?"  The vampire smiles, a slow creeping thing and shrugs.

"How does that go? 'Some matters are not of your concern,'" he quotes and Hannibal feels the same spark of anger that he felt when Drake had said those words to him months ago.

"You think you're king shit, don't you?" Hannibal asks.  The vampire actually laughs, an honest loud laugh.

"Oh, sweetheart, this is your brain, you learning anything interesting about yourself?" he asks.  

"Fuck you," Hannibal says.  When he blinks he's standing in a hallway and his guards are waiting patiently for him to move again, he has no idea how long he's been standing there, paused.

***

"Where do you go in your head?" Drake asks.  Hannibal stares at him blankly.

"I don't know what you mean."   Drake levers himself up on his elbow, the light from the bedside table shadows his face and he looks kind of like an angel or something, except his eyes, where the colour always seems to move.  Looking Drake in the eyes too long makes Hannibal sick to his stomach.

"The guards say you pause, sometimes stop in the middle of walking, eating."

Hannibal rolls over so he's facing Drake, plants his palm on the vampire's shoulder and rolls him onto his back and then straddles him.

"I don't know what you mean, let's talk about something else." He says it with a smile on his face and an accompanied rock of his hips.  He's still stretched out and wet from their last go round and if it stops Drake from asking about it then he's fine with that.  He thinks maybe he'll be enough of a distraction that he'll even get to stay here tonight instead of being sent back to his own room.  He doesn't dwell on that thought process too much, like Drake's eyes, thinking about it too long makes him sick to his stomach. 

***

The stairway to the lower levels draws him like a moth to the flame.  He doesn't know what's down there, he wants to know what's down there.  Every time he gets a little too close his guards lead him away.

***

There's screaming and smoke coming from somewhere and it takes his brain a minute to catch up.  It's a memory, one of his own finally, and he's standing outside staring up at building, watching vampires burn because they can't get out.  Abigail is standing off to his side and his subconscious vampire chuckles from right beside him when Hannibal finally realizes that he's back inside his own head. 

"You know, it can't be a good sign when my subconscious is fucking with me."  The blond slinks over and presses himself up against Hannibal's back, wraps his hands around Hannibal's hips over the bruises Drake's fingers had left.

"Oh yeah? How about we just fuck instead?" he asks and licks Hannibal's neck.  "You're starting to smell real nice, we need to work on the taste though, you need a bit more vampire in you."  Abigail turns to look at him with a smile and a casual backhand out of nowhere that drops Hannibal onto his ass. 

"You're turning into one of them," she says.  "I thought it would take more than a couple of good fucks for you to turn coat again."

"Go on," his subconscious whispers into his ear.  "Tell her it's not what it seems, tell her you're only doing it to survive.  Tell her."  Hannibal can't tell her anything.  She snorts in disgust and turns away.

"You figure yourself out," she orders him.  "You sort yourself because you're worthless to me like this.  One escape attempt? Pathetic."

"Abby, I..."

"Wakey, wakey," his subconscious says with Asher's voice and then he's standing in the doorway down the set of stairs he's not supposed to be down and there's Asher staring at him and there's Drake staring at him and there's Danica in a plexiglass cage staring at him. There's dust and blood coating his hands, his face, the floor and the stairs and there's an edge of hysteria to Danica's laughter when she says "he's going to kill us all."

***

"You have Danica Talos locked away like fucking Hannibal Lecter in the basement of your super secret compound," he says to Drake, "and not that I don't appreciate the comparison because, wow, genius, but what the fucking fuck is going on around here?"  There's still blood and dust clinging to him and now that they're back upstairs in the hallway, he can see the floor is littered with the bodies of security guards and a vampire corpse not quite done bursting into flames.  He hadn't known that any of the guards were human.

"You should not have been allowed down there," Drake says and his face and eyes and everything about him down to his voice scream angry at Hannibal who shrugs it off.

"You tell me what the fuck is going on around here," he counters and finds himself pinned against the wall, Drake's hand wrapped around his throat and oxygen suddenly in short supply.

"Do not presume that because I fuck you that I am beholden to you in any regard.  You are a prisoner here, not a valued pet, it's time you remembered your place."

"Let's not be too hasty here," Asher says and when Drake turns on him the smaller vampire holds his hands up quickly in the traditional 'oh god, don't kill me gesture.'  "Hear me out," he says.  "His blood is our only shot here."

"At the expense of how many more of my soldiers?  I listened to your council after the last group was killed and placed him with humans that you assured me would not get killed."

"I'm sorry about that, it's not like this is an exact science or anything, we're experimenting. I have no idea what these injections are doing to his body and mind."  Hannibal's horrified 'what!?' is considerably garbled due to the lack of breathing but he supposes he shouldn't be surprised, he's having conversations in his head with his subconscious who happens to be a vampire.

"I care little about what you think, if you continue along this path of failure, I will kill your sister and I will put you down there.  I only need one of you."  Asher pales and Hannibal would comment on it but Drake drops him to the floor and he's too busy sucking in air to say anything.  Not for the first time Hannibal wonders what Asher's place, and now Danica's place, is in all of this.  If he's the key to La Magra then what are the Talos siblings? Because vampires are much too selfish and greedy, Drake is the only one who will be trying to ascend to godhood or whatever the fuck he's planning.

"Put him back in his cell," Drake says.  "He can return to his room when he's earned the right," and he leans down and stares at Hannibal harshly.  "You'll be lucky if you see the girl ever again."  If he'd had a cape on Hannibal is sure it would have swirled dangerously around his legs when he turned around and stalked down the hallway.

He turns to Asher and repeats himself in a hoarse voice, "what the fucking fuck?" Asher doesn't answer and then there's a wave of guards to drag him back down to his original homey little cell and chain him to the floor.  He cannot believe how utterly stupid he was, how he forgot what was going on around here.

***

It's kind of pure hell being chained down under the skylight.  When the sun is out he spends half the time trying to shy away from it and the other half huddling under it because there are vampires down here and they like fucking with him.  In the night he stays in place and when the vampires come out to play he takes it.  Every punch, every kick, every fuck. He deserves it.

He was stupid and he did think that sharing Drake's bed made him something above the prisoner he'd started out as.  Blame Danica and Asher for that, they're the ones that taught him that fucking the boss meant privilege.  And Danica, he never thought he'd ever feel sorry for the bitch, but sometimes when he closes his eyes all he can see is her face, desperate and manic in bad florescent lighting.  Whatever there is that's planned Hannibal knows now that at the end of the day he's 99.9% likely to be killed, her he's not too sure about.

He should never have mouthed off to the man in charge, now he's stuck back where everything started.  He knows realistically that Drake dotes on Zoe, sees the girl as his daughter or something and that he'd never hurt her but that doesn't stop him from worrying, doesn't stop him from listening to the things the vampires whisper into his ear about the things that Drake is doing to Zoe to punish Hannibal for acting out.

Hannibal hates Drake, hates Asher, hates everyone here a little more every day that passes, that he's kept down in the cell.  Hates them a little more with every punch, every kick and every fuck.  He's going to get out of here, he's going to kill Dracula, he's going to kill every last one of these motherfuckers and then he's going to take Zoe and they're getting the fuck out of here, wherever here is.

"You're not thinking very clearly," his subconscious says to him.  Being locked in place 24 hours a day is certainly giving him a lot of opportunities to delve down inside his own head.  Hannibal leans back against the pure white wall of the archive room, as he's taken to calling it, and stares back at the blond vampire.  He tilts his head to the side and really looks at him.  They're sitting in similar positions across the room from each other, both of them with their backs to the wall, knees drawn up.

"You're Deacon Frost," Hannibal says and Deacon grins at him, wide and with too many teeth.  Kind of like a shark.

"Took you fucking long enough."  Hannibal shakes his head.

"Doesn't make sense, how are you in my head?"

"Some mumbo jumbo I don’t really care to explain," Deacon says.

"But hey, since we're both here, and this is my brain, how about you explain anyway," Hannibal orders.  The vampire shrugs.

"Fine, you want a history lesson, have a fucking history lesson," Deacon says in a bitchy voice that makes Hannibal interject “don't be such a bitch about it” and get a glare for his trouble.  "So way back when, back when Dracula himself was roaming the earth, and I hear that you've been really getting to know the old bastard, there was a bond between sire and childe, one where they communicated on an instinctive biological level.  It used to be that when you created a new vampire, you kept them under your wing, you nurtured them and taught them to hunt and then sent them out in the world.  You could communicate with them and if they were hurt or killed you could tell."

"What do you mean used to?" Hannibal asks.  Deacon rolls his eyes.

"Stop interrupting, fuck," he pushes himself to his feet and paces the length of the archive room, a convoluted path that winds from one end of the room to the other through the glass panels.  "Over the years the blood got diluted more and more until there were barely any purebloods left and only from the original twelve clans.  The more the blood got diluted, the more the vampires being made were just psycho and bloodthirsty and had no connection at all to each other."

"So you're saying you and I had a connection, that doesn't make sense, because last I heard you killed the heads of the pureblood clans for shits and giggles," Hannibal says.

"I did my research, drained a few purebloods before the main event.  When I turned you, I could feel you."  Hannibal laughs hollowly and Deacon stops his weaving long enough to look at him.

"All my life, and even my unlife apparently, I've been nothing but an experiment." Hannibal shrugs. Deacon moves so fast that Hannibal can barely track him when the other man moves from the far end of the room to right in front of him, puts his hand on Hannibal's chin and looks him in the eyes.  They're the same flash of blue he remembers and Hannibal wonders why it took him so long to catch onto that.

"Oh no," Deacon says reverent and soft, "you weren't an experiment.  You were my next in line, you were my first real childe." He brushes his lips against Hannibal's in a ghost of a kiss and then a firmer press of lips against lips, then his tongue slides out to meet Hannibal's in a languid kiss until Deacon pulls away, lips shiny with saliva.

"Why'd you leave me with Danica and Asher?" Hannibal's voice is soft in the sudden quiet around them.  The only thing he can hear is his heart beating and the sound gets louder and louder until he feels like the walls are shaking apart around him and he ducks to avoid the inevitable flying debris.

"You reek," Asher says and Hannibal lifts his head out of his arms.  He's curled over on the floor in his cell with his head hanging as low as he can get it and the pounding sound is the sound of Asher's shoes on the stone floor.  He blinks at Asher for a second and his mouth disconnects from his brain when he says "yeah, well, there's no more Jarko with the garden hose, so what are you going to do, good help is hard to find" which earns him a kick in the gut, followed up with a punch in the head.  He's completely dazed but he still hears Asher when he gestures to the guards.

"Hose him off and get him upstairs," he says and then he smiles grimly at Hannibal.  "Phase III is ready."

***

When he had thought to himself that Phase II was secret code for making his life hell, he hadn't accounted for the possibility of a Phase III, who the hell has more than two phases of anything?

"You do know the only people who have more than two phases to any plan are like evil geniuses, right?" he asks.  "You know that evil geniuses always get what's coming to them in the end, right?"  Asher's smile is razor sharp as he tightens the straps around Hannibal's chest and pushes the injection into Hannibal's arm.

"Enjoy the ride, sweetheart," he says. 

"I hope this is a repeat of Phase II and I rip your fucking head off," he tells Asher in a pleasant tone.

"Oh please, put us both out of our misery," Asher mutters and walks away.

He's waiting for the injection shit to hit the fan, so to speak, for so long that he falls asleep staring up at the florescent lighting.

***

"You were gone for a while," Deacon says, he pulls the pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and pops one into his mouth.  Hannibal, wondering how Deacon can tell time, holds his hand out and Deacon shakes his head.  "Nuhn uhn," he says.  "Daddy says cigarettes are bad for you."  They're sitting side by side back in the room with the computer constantly scrolling.

"Don't be a hypocrite, daddy," Hannibal mocks. Deacon smirks at him.

"Yeah, but I'm already dead."

"Asshole," Hannibal says.

"Respect your elders, bitch.  I made you."

"Why did you make me, we didn't get to that."

"God, it's like you have a one-track mind, it's so tiresome," Deacon moans.  Hannibal rolls his eyes.

"Suck it up, you're stuck in my head, remember."

"They think it can be anybody," Deacon says.  "But it can only be you.  If it can't be me then I only want it to be you."

"What does that even mean?" Asking is just a formality, he thinks he knows.

"You'll figure it out," Deacon says.  "I didn't turn you just to turn you, I turned you because you were going to be my in.  I wanted to know what the Talos fuckers were up to and I made you and I gave you to them knowing we would have a connection and you'd be loyal and come back to me but then the transformation went to shit thanks to Blade and well, here we are."

"Here we are," Hannibal agrees.

***

He wakes up to absolute darkness, he doesn't know what's going on and when he turns his head to the only light source it turns out he's not awake at all, he's still far enough in his own head that Abigail Whistler is staring at him, sitting in a chair in a pool of light.

"You're a fucking freak of nature, King," she tells him and Hannibal just stares.

"Yeah, well, if I'm anything it's your fault," he tells her.  "You're the one who rescued me, you're the one who changed me back instead of killing me like you should have.  I wouldn't be in this mess if it weren't for you."

"You're a pussy whipped bitch," Abby says.  "You're blaming a figment of your own imagination for your situation.  You're a pussy whipped bitch."

"Fuck you too," Hannibal snaps at her and looks away but he knows, he knows in a way that he hasn't known anything else before.  Blade and Abby are coming for him, no one's managed to kill them and they haven't left Zoe or him behind.  They just haven't found them yet.

"That's better," Abby says but when he looks over it's just her voice, there's no more Abby, no more chair, no more spotlight.  He has escape in mind.

***

When he really wakes up he's in his own bed, well, in his own, more comfortable, not a cold cement cell being tormented by vampires, bed and he wonders what he did to earn back the right.  Then the guards burst into the room with actual guns drawn instead of pain sticks.

"Hey guys, what's up?" he asks.

***

What's up turns out to be him, literally.  Well he had wondered how long the ability to climb walls would go unnoticed.  The video playback shows him waking up in the lab, he rolls his head to the side and then he sits up. The bindings holding him to the exam table don't offer any real resistance; when he flexes his arms they fall right off. He slides off the table and walks into the hallway and this time he doesn't kill any guards because they're all smart enough to get the fuck out of his way except for one big guy that Hannibal vaguely remembers from the old Danica days who lunges at him and on the video Hannibal climbs the wall, hisses at the guy from the ceiling and then drops onto his head and the guy disappears into a cloud of burning ash.

"Lucky break?" Hannibal asks with a shrug.  Asher stares at him, Drake stares at him, Hannibal picks at the ragged edge of his shirt and ignores them both.

"Increase the guards on him," Drake orders and walks away.  Hannibal ignores the churning feeling in his gut and the sour taste his conditioned yearning for Drake's touch leaves in his mouth.  "You don't need him," Deacon's voice whispers in his head.

"Does this mean I'm not going back to the cell?" Hannibal asks with forced cheer.  Asher just keeps staring at him.

***

What really fucks with Hannibal's brain is that if he broke out of the straps holding him to the table, where are the bruises?  If he fought a vampire three times his size, and he saw the guy land blows, where are the marks?

His canines are pointier than they used to be.  They're not as long as fangs, but they cut.

***

His guards don't actually watch him anymore unless Drake is nearby, if the master bloodsucker is near by then they're on their best behaviour, otherwise they stay a good eight feet away from Hannibal at all times, not that he can blame them, he doesn't even know how many he's managed to kill.  It makes it easy to get down the stairs.  Danica is curled in a ball on her cot, hair dirty and matted, muttering to herself and he knows what it is.  Knows she's probably going crazy from starvation because he's seen her do this very thing to others and then set them loose in the city to gorge themselves and cause chaos. Her skin is even rotting in places.

He settles down on the floor on the other side of the Plexiglas wall that's covered in scratches on the inside.  He traces one with his own fingers until he gets to the point where a few of Danica's nails had come off and are now bloodily embedded in the material and makes a face.  "So what are they keeping you here for?" he asks her.  He doesn't expect an answer so he's surprised when she looks at him and he hides his shiver of reaction at the crazy, crazy look in her eyes.

"You're going to kill me," she tells him.  "I know you will, you're going to kill us all."

"I don't think that's possible," he says.  He's really positive that there's no way he's going to manage to kill everyone, he might make it through a dozen or so but eventually the vampires will get him.  She shakes her head and slides off her cot to the floor and scurries over to him with a sense of urgency surrounding her.  She presses her hands against the Plexiglas, an oddly intent expression on her face.  Her fingers, bitten down, leave fresh blood trails on the barrier between them.

"No, see, I've done the research, Asher and I dug and dug until I found him, found Dracula," she frowns.  "No, I found –" she pauses looking for some piece of information that isn't coming to her. "I found his research and I made it better and they're going to turn you in to a god and you're going to kill us all," she whispers it like it's a secret and giggles like a little girl.  "I found him."

"You found Deacon?" he asks, going with his gut and she smiles at him fever bright and when she nods it looks like her head's going to come off her neck.

"I found Frost, I found Frost in the middle of the city in the summertime," she sing-songs.  Hannibal smiles at her.

"You're creepy as fuck," he tells her.

She nods, face serious and says "I know."  Her eyes go distant and she stares at the Plexiglas like he's not really there, and she trails her finger across it, painting a picture in her own blood. Hannibal frowns because he recognizes the symbol as one of the ones he's drawn on his arm but she's drawing it wrong.  She's humming something that doesn't quite connect, note after note.  One of the dolls Zoe plays with is sitting on the cot.  It's missing its eyes.

***

"It doesn't mean what she thinks it means," Deacon says smugly.  "God, they're going to fuck this up so royally.  And you're going to be there for it."  He pulls Hannibal's face to him and shivers in fake ecstasy.  "I'm so excited!" he says, he presses his body up against Hannibal's, presses Hannibal up against a wall and kisses him hard on the mouth.  Maybe, Hannibal thinks, I really am that narcissistic.

When he opens his eyes he's surrounded and Danica is screaming hysterically.

"Death awaits you with sharp pointy teeth," Hannibal says with a grin of his own.  His guards have finally braved the stairs and closed ranks around him.  He doesn't make them fight him though, just gets up and makes his way up the stairs and out to the garden.  It's been a while since he's come here.  He sits down cross-legged on the grass and closes his eyes to meditate.

***

"Hello, hello? Is this thing on?" He snaps his eyes open and stares around the garden.  He'd heard him, heard Blade clear as day.  It's while he's scanning the date trees that he notices his eyes are better.  Not that they've ever been bad, but now his sight is sharper, clearer.

"Well that's new," he says softly.

"What is?" Drake's voice asks right by his ear.  Hannibal can't even hope to control the startled reaction.  His heart leaps into his throat, his arms flail wildly and Drake catches him and holds him in his own lap to avoid injury from flailing limbs.  Hannibal can feel Drake's cock hard against his ass and rolls his eyes in annoyance.

"Jesus," he says and pretends not to be grateful for the contact.  "Warn a guy next time you decide to get your freak on, asshole." Drake's hands tighten on Hannibal's arms.  They have mind-numbing sex in the garden under the sun, which makes Hannibal hate himself just a little bit more for not being able to resist, and afterward Drake leaves Hannibal in a heap on the floor with a parting shot of “you'll have dinner with the girl tonight in my rooms.”

***

Zoe is ecstatic to see him. She runs to him, wraps her arms around his waist and squeezes as hard as she can when his guards push him through the open door.  Drake's room, Hannibal thinks almost bitterly, has an actual door that closes and everything.

"I missed you!" she says and when he looks down there's a fear in her eyes that sinks its guilt-ridden claws into Hannibal's gut.  Hannibal smiles down and ruffles her hair and then stares hard at Drake when he says "Don't worry, I'm not leaving you again." 

"Promise?" she asks almost giddily.

"Promise," he says.  There's a smile on Drake's face that doesn't reach his eyes.

Dinner, needless to say, is kind of a strained affair and after Zoe gets taken back to her room, Hannibal gets taken back into Drake's bed.

He wakes up to voices and realizes that Drake and Asher are having a conversation in the hallway, hushed angry tones drifting through the open door to Hannibal's ears.

"Please, I'm begging you, please, my Lord," Asher says and there's a defeated tone mingling with the anger in his voice.

"I could say no," Drake says and he sounds kind of magnanimous as he continues.  "However she serves no purpose to me if she's completely insane.  Feed her if you must."  Figures, Hannibal thinks, Asher will beg, but only for Danica. Asher's footsteps, heels clicking on stone, hurry away from the door and Drake's voice calls him back.

"Talos, on the other matter?" he asks.  

"I think we're ready," Asher's voice is hesitant.

"I want them found, Talos, I want their heads on pikes outside my door."

"We'll find them, fuck, I told you we'd find them, it would be easier if you hadn't fucking killed Jarko, it'd be easier if half of the fucking troops hadn't been killed by your goddamned experiment!" Asher shouts.

"Watch your tone, you miserable sack of shit," Drake's voice is a snarl and there's the sound of flesh against flesh.  "Get the final preparations done on the chamber, I want to proceed as soon as possible, I've waited eight months, I won't wait any longer." Eight months whirls in Hannibal's head, he's been here getting mind fucked by vampires for eight months.

"Does it have to be her?" Asher asks angrily.

"I can kill her now and you can take her place if you're so eager," Drake says in a milder tone than the one he's been using.  Asher swears loudly, something loud breaks in the hallway and then Asher's footsteps retreat until Hannibal can't hear them anymore.  When Drake comes back in the room Hannibal doesn't even pretend to be asleep, just meets Drake's eyes until he has to look away or be sick.  Blade and Abigail are coming for him.

***

"You understand how fucked they all are, right?" Deacon asks.  Hannibal shrugs and stares at the archives.  The Book of Erebus, Deacon called it.  The vampire Bible.

"Explain it to me," Hannibal says.  Deacon's arms settle around Hannibal's waist, his chin on Hannibal's shoulder.  Even if it's only in his head, it's still the first comforting touch he's received in ages and it feels good.

"They're going to set up the chamber, but I know they haven't done the right research because I deleted a shitload. I didn't want anyone to ever replicate my work, can't have two La Magras running around the world, now can we? They're going to use you as a catalyst, the way I used Blade, they're going to try to drain you dry but it's not going to work."

"Where does that leave me? Dead?" Hannibal asks.  Deacon's lips brush the side of Hannibal's neck.

"You're going to be a bloodgod, baby, we're going to rule the world."  Deacon sniffs theatrically and says with a fake warble in his voice.  "My little childe, all grown up and taking over mankind.  I'm so proud."

***

They have a chamber set up alright, the ceiling is at least thirty feet from where they're standing and there's a staircase inlaid on the far side from Hannibal, it winds up and disappears into the stone too high up for him to see.  There are two levels above the ground level he's standing on that he can see, there are twelve alcoves on the second level above him and there are twelve vampires writhing in pain from the silver chains holding them down.  Hannibal can see the smoke rising from where the chains touch bloodsucker flesh, no, there's smoke but it's hanging there in the air.  Like the world is frozen around him.  Drake is frozen in a sarcastic smile, teeth showing. Hannibal bares his and hisses at him.

He moves forward but falters at the edge of the walkway.  The cavern extends below him and it's a long fucking way down.  Deacon walks behind him and nudges him forward.

"This is where they dug him up," Deacon says.  Hannibal stares at him.  "They made some improvements, of course, wouldn't have worked very well as a sacrificial chamber if they hadn't."

"How the fuck could you possibly know that?" he demands.  The word sacrificial makes him want to scream and hit things.

"He knows it because you know it and he's in your head," Hannibal spins around and Blade is standing on the other side of Drake.

"How do I know this?" Hannibal asks.  Blade takes a few steps towards them.

"Because you're different, you're not a vampire, but you're sure as hell not human anymore," Blade says.

Hannibal turns back to Deacon and demands "what the fucking fuck?" and Deacon laughs lightly.  

"This is just too fucking perfect," the vampire says.  He wraps his arm around Hannibal's shoulders and turns him to face Blade once again.  "Blade," he calls out, "meet my childe, he's a way better son than you ever were.  He hasn't tried to kill me yet."  Blade smiles in a vicious way.

"Give it time, I'm sure he'll come around." 

"Can the world not go crazy on me right now?" Hannibal demands.  "I'm pretty sure I'm about to be sacrificed on the alter of the godamned bloodgod so I'd appreciated it if you could all contribute helpfully, and if you can't, then get the fuck out of my head!" he's yelling by the time he's done but they're all, all three of them, still standing in the frozen tableau of the sacrificial chamber.

Blade moves, vampire fast, and goes from the far end of the walkway to right in front of them.  "I'm coming to get you," he says.  There's a sharp pain in his face, like getting bitch slapped, and Hannibal reaches his hand up.

"Hannibal?" Blade asks.  Hannibal looks at him in confusion.

"Ow," he says and then he wakes up.

***

Zoe is cowering behind him, Drake is in front of him glaring and Hannibal is in between them on the ground, the pain in his face is still there, so is a muted throbbing and Hannibal guesses that he did just get bitch slapped to the ground.

"Did you think I was joking when I told you that you only get one?" the vampire asks, which is when Hannibal takes in his surroundings.  They're in the middle of the desert, sand all around them and he can just barely see the complex in the background.  There's a jeep idling about ten feet away from them.  Zoe is covered head to toe in a light coloured robe to keep the sun off, similar to the one that Hannibal is wearing.  There's a heavy bag on his back.  Hannibal doesn't remember seeing any of this before but he knows the bag is filled with dried food and bottles of water.  He has no idea what his plan was but Drake is here and angry and Zoe is clinging to him.

"Where are we?" he asks, and puts as much confusion into his voice as he can without making it seem like he's playacting.  It's not easy after so many months of not letting Drake into the secret of the places he goes in his head.  There's no relief from the anger Drake is sending out in waves.  He grabs Hannibal's arm hard enough to bruise, if Hannibal still bruised, and shoves him in the direction of the jeep.

"Move," Drake orders and Hannibal picks Zoe up off the ground and walks towards the jeep.

"I'm sorry we didn't get away," she whispers into his neck.  Hannibal nudges the head covering out of the way with his nose and plants a loud smack on her cheek.

"No problem, doodlebug," he says softly.  "We'll just have try again."  Drake forces him to keep his head down the entire ride back.

***

Not bruising turns out to be an okay thing, especially when Drake is staring at him and asking questions he doesn't want to answer with the threat of him hurting Zoe hanging over Hannibal's head.  They're in Hannibal's room, Drake is sitting on the end of the bed and Hannibal is sitting in the desk chair with two really fucking big vampires holding him down.  It's almost a replay of their first conversation in this room months and months ago.

"You will tell me everything you know about La Magra," Drake says coldly.  Hannibal sighs heavily and rolls his eyes heavenward.

"I know as much about La Magra as I do about Deacon Frost," he says, which isn't a lie, he just happens to know plenty more about Deacon Frost and La Magra then he originally had.  Drake doesn't like that answer, as evidenced by the shifting skin, the flashing eyes, the nervous twitch of the guard on Hannibal's left.

"We have recordings of you attempting the ritual.  You will explain them."  It's not even an order, it's a positive affirmation.

"You know, I hate to burst your bubble, well okay, not really," he says with sarcastic smile, "but those times when I 'attempted the ritual,'" he mocks Drake’s tone of voice and makes finger quotes and he's totally playing with fire because Drake's looking more than a little pissed and the guards' hands tighten on Hannibal's shoulders.  "I'm totally not even conscious of it.  Ask your pals, oh wait, I've killed them all."

"Do not think that I have grown so attached to the girl that I won't use her as a tool to gain your cooperation.  If she's willing to attempt escape with you a second time, clearly she is of little value to me." Hannibal opens his mouth to retort and at the same time feels the switch flipping.  In his mind he makes an almost desperate grasp to hold on but can't, doesn't know how.

"Go fuck yourself big guy, you're not getting anything out of my boy," Deacon says through Hannibal's mouth and inside Hannibal is a big messy ball of panic because except for that one time with Asher, he's never been conscious when Deacon takes over.  Deacon slouches Hannibal's body down in the chair and shoots a smirk at Drake.

"Your boy?" Drake asks and sits forward, resting his large forearms on his thighs, eyes burning with what Hannibal would actually consider an unholy light.  He wonders if Abby would find that funny.  He claws at the connection between them trying to get any kind of a hold on it but can't.  "And who exactly are you?"

"I'm your worst fucking nightmare, bitch, but if you're real nice, I might let a few things slip, you worked so hard to bring me out after all."  Drake signals with his hand and one of the guards goes to the doorway, calls Asher in. 

"Sir?" Asher asks.  There's more of an aura of anger around him than Hannibal has ever seen.  He wonders if Danica got fed yet or not.

"Aww, isn't that just cute, you call him that in bed too?" Deacon asks.  Asher snarls and tries to grab him but Deacon moves too fast for Asher to keep up and Asher ends up with his face being smashed into the chair Hannibal had been sitting in.  The vampires who were holding him down look a little stunned.  "Ah, ah, ah," Deacon warns and waggles a finger.  Asher glares at him and lunges again.  Deacon buries Hannibal's fist into Asher's gut and says "no damaging the merchandise you sister-fucking piece of shit," as he drops Asher to the floor.

"Deacon Frost," Drake says.  Deacon spins Hannibal's body around, arms splayed out wide.

"Give the man a kewpie doll!" he says and laughs.  Hannibal's body seizes from the pain stick one of the guards jams under his ribs and before the blackness can take over Hannibal thinks way to give away the end game, thanks a lot asshole.

***

He has a dream about walking through the Honeycomb Hideout, the farther down the hallway he walks, the clearer Zoe's giggle is.  It's gloomy, the lights flicker on and off, and somewhere he can hear Sommerfield.

The Gnome King was in an angry mood, and at such times he was very disagreeable. Everyone kept away from him, even his Chief Steward Kaliko.

Therefore the King stormed and raved all by himself, walking up and down in his jewel-studded cavern and getting angrier all the time. Then he remembered that it was no fun being angry unless he had someone to frighten and make miserable, and he rushed to his big gong and made it clatter as loud as he could.

"You know, we should invest in some artwork, plain beige, while very easy on the eyes, is really fucking boring to keep waking up to," Hannibal says. The ceiling doesn't look like it's going to give up any secrets anytime soon.

"Maybe if you would stop acting like a fucking asswipe all the time," Asher answers and rests his feet up on the bed.

"Where'd you get that?" Hannibal asks staring at Asher's rapidly healing black eye.  

"Walked into a door," Asher says and kicks Hannibal's shin viciously and then Drake is in the room, hand wrapped around Hannibal's forearm so tightly it feels like his bones are grinding together.

"The preparations are complete, bring your sister to the chamber, assign guards to the girl," Drake orders harshly and drags Hannibal unceremoniously out of the room.

*** 

The chamber is exactly the way Deacon had shown him.  The vampires are all tied up in their circle on the level above them, the only difference is that Drake isn't standing there offering Hannibal his hand, though he is standing there in armour, a sword strapped to his back.  Drake is standing at the edge of the walkway and Asher is standing nearby, trying to coax Danica up the walkway.

"He's going to kill us all!" Danica says. Her voice is panicked and fluttery, desperation and hysteria mixing to form an ugly expression on her face as she tugs frantically, trying to get out of Asher's hold. Her skin looks healthier, even if her eyes and her entire presence still scream crazy.

"You sure you should be letting her out to play?" Hannibal taunts.  "I don't think crazy is the new look of the season."  Drake drags Hannibal around to face him and clamps a hard hand on Hannibal's chin, forcing Hannibal to meet his eyes.

"You're going to die, you pathetic meatbag," Drake says contemptuously.  "And all this time wasted on you will finally be worth something." He shoves Hannibal onto the walkway and Hannibal stumbles forward, hands bound in front of him with black cord that he knows he could break through easily.  They're stained red and he twists his wrists to get a better look.

"Do you like it?" Drake asks, leans in and whispers into Hannibal's ear.  "I brought them from your little fortress.  I used them to string up the girl's mother; I used her blood to paint the curtain with my message."  He flicks his tongue out and licks the shell of Hannibal's ear and Hannibal ignores the way his body betrays him as the vampire continues.  "Immortality will come to such as are fit for it."

"You're a fucking piece of work, you know that?" Hannibal asks rhetorically. "Eventually they'll all turn on you, it's the bloodsucker code."  Drake chuckles in his ear.

"Fitting that I'll be their God then, isn't it.  Fitting that when they turn on me like they turn on each other, children squabbling over their shiny toys, that I will be truly immortal and there will be nothing on this earth that can stop me.  Not even your precious Daywalker."

"I'm going to send you to hell if it's the last think I do, motherfucker."  Drake laughs again.

"No, pet, I think I'm going to send you there." Drake pushes him again.  "In fact, I think we'll take care of that right now."  Hannibal almost resists, but Deacon glides past him, dragging his hand over Hannibal's neck and wraps loosely around Hannibal's wrist.

"Come on," he says.  "Let’s get this show on the road."  Hannibal looks at the stairs in trepidation, at Drake whose eyes are sharp on the sacrificial vampires one level up, at Danica who's crying alligator tears and pulling so hard in Asher's grasp the other vampire can barely hold onto her.  He thinks I don't want to die and Deacon's hand wraps a little more firmly around him and says "you're not going to die, I told you that."

Hannibal squares his shoulders and stands up straight, because whether Deacon is right or not, hallucination-Abigail was wrong.  He's not a pussy whipped bitch, he's not going to die with his head hanging and his tail tucked between his legs.  To his right Deacon gives him a light tug and an approving grin.

"That's my boy," he says.

Hannibal walks the few steps to Danica and Asher and takes her wrist out of Asher's hand.  She gives him a half hungry, half angry look but Hannibal takes it as a good sign when she doesn't automatically go for his throat.

"Come on, kitten," he says with a bright grin.  "If I'm going to kill you all, well, at least it'll be over soon."  It doesn't sound comforting to him and Deacon lets out a loud bark of laughter that no one else can hear but apparently it works for Danica because she's docile all of the sudden and she follows him to the stairs.  And now everything looks the way it did in his vision.  Drake is standing there holding out his hand, smoke is rising from the unconscious vampires tied down with silver chains. Behind them Asher curses bitterly and kicks a rock over the edge of the walkway, Hannibal doesn't hear it hit bottom.

They aren't even halfway up the stairs, Drake and Asher climbing up behind them, when the commotion starts and one of the sacrificial vampires bursts into dust and the vampire standing guard down at the main entrance does too.

"Blade!" Drake shouts.  Below, Blade gives Drake a feral grin and he looks exactly like he always has.  Black leather trench coat that he discards to the side, black body armour, gleaming sword, sunglasses firmly in place.  "You won't stop me!" Drake calls out and Blade laughs a short barking sarcastic sound that stops just as suddenly as it started.

"Watch me," Blade says and it's like a cue to attack for the vampires just standing around staring at the Daywalker in dismay.  Blade swirls around and buries his sword into the chest of one, pushes that vampire into another vampire and pushes his sword through that one too, both of the vampires disintegrate into ash and Blade launches himself at the rest of them.  Deacon is leaning against the stairwell looking impressively bored for a figment of Hannibal's imagination and Hannibal is so stunned by the whole thing that he almost doesn't get out of the way when the first arrow flies out of the darkness from the level above them, the level that Drake had been shoving Hannibal up to, and lands itself in the wall in front of Danica's face.

"King!" Abigail shouts and Hannibal grins and waves.

"Hi Abby!" he says brightly and without a second thought shoves Danica off the stairs, she hits the walkway and doesn't move.  Asher lets out a furious snarl that changes into a scream of pain when Abby nails him with another arrow.  He doesn't explode but he does fall, follows his sister.  He lands in a crouch and Hannibal watches him like it's in slow motion as he rips the arrow out, tosses it into the pit, picks Danica up and darts across the walkway and out a side door.  Abigail lands arrow after arrow at his heels but they don't catch the blond vampire or his sister.

Drake wraps a hand around Hannibal's arm, squeezes tight and says in a voice that echoes around the room "stop, or I'll kill him."  Everyone freezes.

"What?" Blade asks in an incredulous tone.  "You think we came here for him? Motherfucker, we came here to kill you.  We wrote him off the day you took him."  Hannibal doesn't wince when Drake's hand tightens around his arm.

"Hey!" Hannibal says.  "There's no cause to be mean like that.  Words hurt."

"Did you 'write off' the girl as well?" Drake asks and Hannibal can hear the quotes in the way Drake says the words write off.

"Girl? Oh, you mean Zoe, yeah, we have her already.  The problem with human guards is that they’re human and your guards were real helpful when we stormed the castle. They were quite willing to just stand back and let us pass so long as we didn't kill them," Blade adds as an afterthought.

"You sure do let the bodies pile up," Abby adds and releases the arrow she's holding.  Drake catches it before it lands in his chest and the action is back on, but he had to let go of Hannibal to catch it and Hannibal doesn't waste time.  He starts to charge up the stairs but Deacon changes his mind.

"Don't be a chickenshit, make the jump," he says and Hannibal changes directions just as Drake leaps towards him.  His foot hits the edge of the stair he's on and he propels himself up to the third level through the open air.  Abby lets out a shocked cry but Hannibal makes it easily enough, lands and stumbles to his knees beside her.  "Ouch, rough landing there, sport." Deacon taunts from beside him.  Hannibal glares at him and says "shut up, some of us can't move around with our minds."  Abby looks over at him in confusion.

"What?"

"Not you," Hannibal says to her and stands.  He grabs her arm but she jerks away, looking at him with an expression of fear mixed with horror.  "What?" he asks.

"How the hell did you make that jump?" she demands.

"You know, now's not really the time for that explanation," Hannibal says and then Zoe is there shouting his name and throwing herself at him.  "Zoe!"

"You're safe," she says and clings.  "Are we leaving?" Hannibal meets Abby's untrusting gaze and picks Zoe up so she's settled firmly around his waist.

"You bet, Doodlebug, we're blowing this Popsicle stand." He gestures at the doorway he can see to his left and says "Lead the way, Whistler."  She stares at him for another second before moving out in the open, Hannibal watches her catch Blade's eye and jerk her head to the door.  Below Blade is running out of opponents.

"This isn't over, Blade!" Drake shouts.  Most of his vampires are too hesitant to attack.

Blade grins up at Drake again, teeth shining white against his dark skin.  The muscles in his shoulders bunching under his skin like an animal ready to pounce but instead he slides his sword back into it's sheath and says "Like I haven't heard that before," and then he's out the door.  

"King," Abby says harshly.  Hannibal turns away from the ruckus down below and follows Abby out.  Behind them Drake lets out an animalistic roar.

***

It's light outside, they exit out of the complex through the garden and true to Blade's earlier statement, the human guards are quite happy to stay out of the way, but then Hannibal's pretty sure that he's scared them for life and the minute they can they'll be leaving Drake's service, if Drake doesn't kill them all first.

He bursts out the door without hesitation and slows down enough for Blade and Abby to take front and lead them around the corner to a new looking Land Rover.  "You dating the older guys now?" he asks Abby.  She doesn't answer and Blade gives them both funny looks.  Hannibal sits Zoe in the back and climbs in with her.  She clings to his hand and he clings right back.

"Think we'll make it far this time?" Zoe asks as Blade hits the road out, going at a speed that's probably going to kill them all.

"Probably," Hannibal says.  "If Blade's driving doesn't kill us all first."  Zoe giggles, and Hannibal ignores the glare Blade gives him in the rearview mirror.  Or well, he assumes it's a glare, he can't really see the Daywalker's eyes through his sunglasses.

"This time?" Abby asks, keeping her voice light.  Zoe's quite content to babble away.

"The first time we made it to the garden and Hannibal only had to kill two vampires, the second time we made it past the gate."

"What gate?" Hannibal asks.  Zoe stares at him in confusion and points to a very blown up looking shack with a wooden gate lying shattered on the road.

"It didn't look like that last time," she says.

"Well, we had to get in somehow," Abby says to her.  Hannibal has a vision so sudden it swamps his head and if he'd been standing he would have lost his balance but he can see with crystal clarity, Blade and Abby driving down the road towards the barrier.  Abby standing up in the back of the Land Rover and drawing her bow.  The human guards diving into the shack to get out of the way of the vehicle that isn't going to stop for them. Blade says "Do it now Whistler, before they get a call back to Drake," and Abby lets loose her arrow, which goes straight through the open window.  Inside the shack humans hear the whine from the explosive tip and they dive for the door but don't make it as the entire shack goes up in flames.

"Ahh," he says when his vision clears.  "That gate."  He totally doesn't remember the gate, but then, he wasn't in his right mind when they made their second escape attempt.  He looks out over the desert.  Eventually the dirt road turns into a real road and Blade picks the speed up a little until Abby puts a cautioning hand on his arm.

"Slow down, Blade.  We don't need to get pulled over when we're this close."  Blade makes an annoyed sound that hisses out from behind his teeth but he slows down to a reasonable speed.  Zoe's hand relaxes in Hannibal's, her body gets more and more lax until she slumps down over his lap asleep.

Hannibal doesn't ask why it took them so long to get there, doesn't ask if they were really expecting to rescue them, doesn't ask Blade if he remembers the conversation with Deacon and Hannibal in the cavern.

***

"You know it's not over right?" Deacon asks.  Hannibal shrugs and lies down on his back in the archive room.  He pillows his head on Deacon's thigh and Deacon makes a disgusted sound but doesn't push him away.  "All that planning, the months it took to bring me out, get the blood results they were looking for, building the cavern and getting ready to bring La Magra back to life, he's not just going to let it go."

"I'm not stupid, Deacon," Hannibal says.  "What's it to you anyway?"  He can't figure out if the vampire is worried for him, or worried for himself.  Hell, he can't even figure out if he has multiple personality disorder and his brain is supplying this fantasy to keep him occupied, keep him out of reality for a while.  Maybe he's just as bugfuck crazy as Danica.

"There's you and you're me, so there's still only you," Deacon says and Hannibal remembers the first time he heard those words.  He looks up at blue, blue eyes and rolls his own.

"I'm not going to wake up digging more symbols into my flesh with garden shears, am I?" he asks.  Deacon pets Hannibal's hair mindlessly.

"How should I know?" he asks.  "I'm just here for the ride.  Try not to get us killed, huh?"

A loud explosion echoes through the room, the pages from The Book of Erebus sway violently for a second. Deacon taps Hannibal on the cheek and Hannibal pushes himself up with a sigh.

"I know," he says.  "Time to wake up."  And he had been so comfortable too.

When he opens his eyes and looks behind them, there's a giant smoke cloud rising high into the air where Drake's complex should be.

"That can't be good," Abby says.

"It's vampires, nothing's ever good." Blade says.  Hannibal hmms in agreement and settles in for the ride.

"Are we there yet?" he asks.  Abby turns around in her seat to glare at him.

***

"Drake killed everyone at the hideout," Abby says.  They're sitting in a crappy Iraqi hotel.  Hannibal is on one bed with Zoe still sound asleep, Blade is leaning against the wall, looking like he might split in half if someone made him sit down in a chair.  Hannibal figures that if Blade ever relaxed the world would probably come to an end.  Abby is sitting on the other bed watching her fingers twisting her bracelet around over and over again.  "Everyone but you and Zoe.  Sommerfield," her voice breaks and she looks away from her hands and out the window.  "Sommerfield finished her work on Daystar," she says finally and Hannibal sits up a little straighter.  "One of the other hives built the virus into an arrow head for me.  Blade and I raided Danica's lair, we were going to inject Drake with the virus, put an end to the vampires, but they had already moved operations.  There were a few vampires and familiars left behind to make it look convincing."  Her voice breaks again and Hannibal feels a sliver of dread worming its way into him.

"What happened?" he asks, and whatever it was, it must have been something bad.  Abby doesn't answer and Hannibal looks to Blade and demands again "what happened?" 

"What happened was the vamps were up to their tricks and they dressed a familiar up in Drake's armour.  Whistler Jr. here shot the familiar with the virus and of course, nothing happened."

"So that's it?" Hannibal demands, voice low and dangerous.  "What the fuck were you doing for the last eight months? You just decided to fuck off into the night or something? Please tell me it was something pretty damned fucking awesome."  Blade snarls and Abby snaps back into the present.

"We only had one shot at it, King," she says.  "There was only one arrow, only one virus.  When I wasted it on that familiar, we were shit out of luck.  It took months to find the right person to rebuild the goddamned virus," her eyes flash dangerously and Hannibal gets the feeling he might have stuck his foot in it.  "It took months to find even the smallest fucking clue that you and Zoe were still alive and we only found that out by accident when we took out a blood farm and the vampire there started mouthing off about Drake's little fuck toy, so don't you start with me you miserable son of a bitch, I've only spent the last eight months trying to find your sorry ass." 

"Right," Hannibal says with a smile.  "I can see as to where the righteous indignation comes from, but what the fuck is the plan now?" 

"We have the new virus," Blade says.  "We found someone who went through Sommerfield's notes and recreated it."

"It won't kill them all over the world, but it will kill them locally, and if we can take out Drake, we can save some blood and mass produce the virus," Abby says.  

"Problem is," Blade says, "we still need a pure source of vampire blood, the purer the better."

"Drake," Hannibal says.

"Or La Magra," Abby counters and Hannibal feels the weight of her words hit him full on like a ton of bricks.

"Fuck," he says succinctly.

***

The flight to the new headquarters in Chicago is nerve-racking at best.  Hannibal doesn't want to get on the plane and both he and Zoe are having issues with the sheer amount of people crowding into the airport.  Just the idea that they're going to get on a flying tin can and head back to the USA is almost terrifying.  Zoe's asleep, thank God, because she hasn't stopped crying since Abby had told them what happened to Sommerfield.  Hannibal hadn't broken down when he'd seen Sommerfield's message, but it didn't stop the guilt from setting in.  He'd stayed there, in the desert, and Zoe had stayed there too, in the hands of a madman, for almost an entire year. Somehow he didn't think that's what Sommerfield meant when she asked them to take care of Zoe.

"I don't understand why you won’t help us," Abby says, voice tightly controlled to keep from yelling in the middle of the crowded airport.  There are people looking at him and he can't figure out if the eyes he feels on the back of his head are Drake's or a familiar's or just plain old paranoia.  It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you.

"What, you don't understand that I'm not willing to become a god so that you can use my blood to kill every vampire in existence and then what? You're going to let me just walk away?" Hannibal demands.  His anger is a sudden hot flash and he has to curl his hands into the sides of his shirt to keep from punching Abby in the face until it abates.  "Stop being such an unreasonable bitch, Abby, I'm tired of it.  This is over.  If you can't get what you need out of my blood right now, then fuck off.  I'm done.  Far as I'm concerned, this is over for me.  You want to keep fighting, you want to use pure vampire blood, you go to Drake and get his.  I'm taking Zoe and we're getting the fuck out of here."

He walks the few feet over to a row of uncomfortable blue plastic chairs where Zoe is sleeping curled up into a miserable ball and scoops her up into his arms, she doesn't even wake up that's how tired and wrung out the poor girl is.  Hannibal makes it to doors that open up to a street that's just as crowded as the airport, only less air-conditioned, before Blade stops him.

"What are you going to do exactly?" Blade asks him quietly.  "You're going to wander into the desert where he'll never find you again, just you and the girl, and you're going to survive out there with nothing? You may not be human any longer, but that doesn't mean she isn't."  Hannibal refuses to look at the dark man, just stares at the stream of people jostling each other as they walk along.  "Or were you thinking you'd set up shop here, in this city, twenty miles away from Drake's compound.  Just because it's been destroyed doesn't mean we got him.  In fact, I'm positive we didn't get him.  You want to be that close to home?" Hannibal hadn't really thought about it, except that he had, he'll admit to himself that he doesn't actually know what his motivations are here but Blade's next words hit him closer to home than they should.  

"Maybe, just maybe," Blade says.  "You're hoping that's exactly what will happen.  Do you want Drake to swoop down and take you both back? He won't just kill you, he'll kill her, and what do you think he'll do to the girl when he doesn't need her to keep you occupied, contained?" Hannibal shoots an angry glare at Blade but concedes with a jerk of his head towards the inside of the airport.  Abby's shoulders sag with relief when she sees Hannibal storming back towards her.

"I'm not talking to you right now," he tells her when she opens her mouth to speak.  Sure it's childish but fuck he does not want to deal with this shit anymore.  Why him? Why the fuck does it always have to be him.

***

The new headquarters are in Chicago, an imposing underground labyrinth that Blade guides them through.  It takes him ten minutes of walking, hand clasped loosely with Zoe's, through doors and taking right after left after right, going up a level then back down, before Hannibal realizes that Blade is making sure that Hannibal doesn't remember the way out.

"You know," he says casually, when they've stopped in front of a solid steel door and Abby has knocked in the secret 'I'm a Nightstalker' code.  "I have, like, perfect memory now, right? Total recall.  So this whole, running around in the tunnels thing, not really going to get me lost."  Blade makes a sound that could have been a growl and Zoe snickers into her and Hannibal's joined hands.  Deacon leans against the wall a few feet ahead of them and looks around with a raised eyebrow and a disdained expression.

"Hate what they've done with the place," he says and Hannibal rolls his eyes but doesn't answer.

The cell, which isn't as awesome sounding as the Honeycomb Hideout, that Abby and Blade have joined forces with is led by a tall but scrawny man with scraggly dark hair and a scar down the side of his face that slides through a sightless eye that used to be blue.  His other eye examines the newcomers intensely before he steps aside and lets them in.  Abby introduces him as Scar.  Hannibal has a hundred jokes on the tip of his tongue but an elbow to his side from Abby stops him.

"This the one?" he asks when the door closes behind them with a heavy locking sound.  Hannibal rolls his eyes and holds out his hand.

"Hannibal King, former vampire fuck toy, current contender for the crown of La Magra, at your service," he says.  Scarface ignores his hand and stares down at Zoe with a strange interest.  Hannibal brings his hand back to his side.  "Okay," he draws out the word and gathers Zoe a little closer to his side.  "So, what's going on here?" he asks.

"What's going on is none of your business," Scarface says and looks directly at Hannibal for the first time.  "Your only concern is to keep your mouth shut and yourself out of the way while we get everything ready for the ritual so that we can bring out La Magra and get his blood." Hannibal looks the man square in the eye.

"Well then," he says pleasantly.  "Just so you know, I like hot, hot showers, three to four meals a day, a nice view and I have a tendency to go out of my head and kill people.  And if you look at Zoe again, I won't need to go out of my head to do it." Scarface twitches.  Hannibal smiles viciously and follows Blade when Abby shoves him in the half-vampire's direction.

***

Eventually, after a few hours of cooling his heels with Zoe and Blade in the room serving as the cell’s lab, Scarface gets over his attitude problem and comes in to explain the plan.  The Plan, with an audible capital P, is this:

The cell is built out of the remains of the original chamber of bloodgod resurrection.  The structure remains intact behind a gigantic wall of 4 inch thick solid steel and the only way in is through a 4 inch thick solid steel door and Scarface is the only one who knows the access codes.  They're going to go into the chamber, they're going to put Hannibal into position, Blade is going to get into position, they've got twelve angry vampire purebloods in the basement ready to do their part, Hannibal will become La Magra and once that's done, Hannibal will get shot through the chest with Abby's arrow of Daystar Virus goodness and then all the vampires in the world will start to die, and they have a few extra vampires on hand to see if it actually works.  Then they're going to kill Hannibal, unless he can prove he's not going to kill them all first.

"That," Hannibal says with as much sincerity as he can muster.  "Is a fucking god awful plan."  Which is when he gets hit in the back of the head.  He can hear Zoe screaming as the darkness swallows him whole.

***

"It's not really going to be that bad," Deacon says.  Hannibal stares at him incredulously. 

"Not going to be that bad?" he demands.  "What planet are you living on? I'm going to die, they're going to turn me into a bloodgod, then kill me."

"Yeah, well," Deacon shrugs.  He takes a drag of his cigarette, the room they're in is like a blank slate.  There's nothing here, everything is grey, the only feature to the room is the door behind Deacon, light spilling golden underneath it.

"Is that?" Hannibal asks.

"Sure is, sweetcheeks.  That's the door to your future, our future."  Deacon's face is almost rapturous. "And this time, this time it'll work, because if there was anything I knew when I built the damned thing, it was that I knew how to perform the goddamned ritual."

"Shut up, Frost." Hannibal turns to eye Blade warily as the half-vampire walks closer to them, straight out of the nothingness of the room.  He's standing tall and his tattoos stand out on his skin, arms bare in his sleeveless shirt, blood dripping a trail along behind the man as he walks.

"Are you really?"

"Yeah, he's fucking really here," Deacon bitches and points an accusing finger at Blade.  "I should have fucking known you'd figure out the bond.  Always were a little quicker on the uptake than your average moron."  Blade raises an eyebrow.  His shades are gone and Hannibal is startled to realize he's never really looked Blade in the eyes before.

"What are you doing in my head?" he asks, Deacon finally letting him get a word in edgewise.

"You're off in your head somewhere, you almost killed someone," having his own threat thrown back at him shocks Hannibal a little.

"Where's my body then?" he manages.

"Locked in one of the cells, I got you down there before you did too much damage.  You're going to be sore when you wake up. When the fuck did you get fangs?" Blade turns his arm outward, to show a deep gouging bite mark on the inside of his right bicep.  Deacon makes a happy crowing sound at the sight and Blade narrows his eyes at the vampire.

"Fuck you, Frost," he says.  Deacon puts on a regretful face.

"No, baby, we never got to have that kind of fun." Hannibal doesn't even flinch when Deacon winds an arm around his waist, hand resting just under his waistband, fingers stroking his lower abs gently.  He shivers in a strange sort of excitement.  Watching Blade watching Deacon, watching Deacon's hand.  "Baby boy here wouldn't mind if you wanted to get your freak on, go on, ask him," Deacon adds.  Hannibal doesn't need to look to know Deacon's wearing a sarcastic smirk.

"I thought I told you to shut up," Blade says.

"You don't get to tell me to shut up, bitch," Deacon says.

"I already killed your ass once, don't think I won't find a way." 

"You know what!" Hannibal shouts to be heard over the two men locked in their pissing contest.  "I'm busting out of here," he pushes Deacon's hand away and walks the way Blade came in, follows the little trail of blood.  There's light coming from some otherworldly source, and it gets brighter and brighter until he blinks, puts a hand up to shade his eyes.

"Don't do that," an unfamiliar voice says, "I have to check for concussion," Hannibal pushes the man in the white doctor's coat, holding the small penlight, away from him.  Blade is leaning against the doorframe of the cell, there's a white bandage taped around his bicep and there's still the taste of blood, thick in Hannibal's mouth.

"Sorry about skipping out on you," he says, staring at Blade. Anyone else could misunderstand completely, put their own spin on what Hannibal is talking about, which is just fine for him, because as far as he knows, no one else knows about Deacon except him and Blade.  "It gets pretty fucking crowded in my head sometimes.  Did you enjoy your trip?" Blade bares his teeth with a snarl and whirls away, Hannibal smirks at his retreating back.  The doctor scurries after him.  They leave the door open so Hannibal figures it's okay for him to leave too. So he does.  And then everything goes black again.

***

The chamber is almost exactly like the one that Drake had built.  There are twelve vampires tied in place on the second level, there's a walkway going across an open pit, there's a set of stairs that lead up to a third level.  The differences are obvious though.  Hannibal can see the bottom of the open pit under the walkway, it's littered with bones and dust.  There's a raised platform atop the walkway that he knows instinctively is for him to stand on, and directly above the platform there's this giant thing that looks like half of a perfect sphere, dried up streaks of rusty brown where blood runs down.  Deacon is standing on the platform, arms out to the side, head tilted back.  Hannibal’s hands are tied behind his back and Scarface shoves him hard, hand flat between his shoulder blades, towards the platform.  Hannibal doesn't stumble and he doesn't break the bonds around his arms and beat the shit out of Scarface either.  Apparently the only thing that Abby and Blade know about is his ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

"This was it, baby," Deacon says. His eyes are closed, his skin shines pale in the artificial light.  "The blood just rained down and the purebood souls poured out and the power rushed in," his voice drops from reverent to completely flat, "and then Blade killed me."  He glares at Blade, standing beside Hannibal, who takes no notice of the ghost/vision.  "Cocksucking, motherfucker." 

Blade looks up at him, eyes again unreadable behind his glasses.  "I won't let them kill you, not unless I need to," Hannibal stares down at the man impassively.

"Yeah," he says deadpan.  "That right there, it gives me a lot of comfort. Thanks for that."  Blade snorts and makes his way up the stairs.  Hannibal watches him go.  Abby is standing across the walkway, holding an arrow at the ready, watching him like a hawk watches their prey.  Through his enhanced vision he can see the vial holding the Daystar virus, so green it's luminescent.  Deacon puts a hand on his shoulder and strangely, or maybe not strangely at all, Hannibal feels more comforted by the touch than anything.  Then again.

"So you died here last time, huh?" he asks.  Scarface and Abby look at him confused.  Deacon shrugs.

"Yeah, but hey, look on the bright side.  Now that I'm back, thanks to Asher the slime ball, I'm definitely not going to let it happen again."

"Good to know," Hannibal mutters.

***

They're standing in the grey room, but it's so dark inside that Hannibal can barely make out anything except the outline of the door, highlighted in a glowing yellow.  Deacon wraps his hand around Hannibal's, wraps their joined hands on the doorknob.

"I don't want to do this," Hannibal says.  Almost desperately.

"Sure you do," Deacon says with enthusiasm that isn't faked.  "Bloodgod, godhood, no one will ever mess with you again.  The world will be our playtoy.  We can fuck that shit up."

"Or in the alternative, we could not fuck that shit up."  Hannibal says.  He doesn't let Deacon turn the knob.  Deacon sighs in his ear, his hand tightens on Hannibal's but Hannibal still won't let Deacon turn the knob.

"There's no coming back from it, is there?" Hannibal asks.

"Oh come on," Deacon whines.  "Stop being such a fucking pussy and open the goddamned door."

There's a screaming sound and Hannibal opens his eyes in time to see a body, human, come flying towards him.  Has enough time to duck out of the way as Scarface goes flying past him and crashes dead to the bottom of the pit.  Drake's laugh is horrible and echoes through the chamber.

"Did you think I would let you take my glory?" Drake demands as he stalks forward.  "Did you think that it would be so easy to kill me?" his voice rises up to a bellow.  "I was the first! You are nothing but remnants and slaves."

"You know what the thing about slaves is?" Hannibal asks, and snaps the bonds holding his wrists together at the small of his back.  He cracks his neck to the side and hops down off the platform. "The thing about slaves is that they always rise up against the tyrant in the end." 

"Sic 'em, boy," Deacon says.  Hannibal rushes Drake at the same time as Drake rushes him.  They crash into each other at the edge of the walkway and Drake is the one that stumbles back.  Everything feels heightened to Hannibal, around him there's the sound of fighting, but he concentrates on Drake alone.  He doesn't know how Drake tracked him here, but he's going to kill him this time.

Drake comes at him with a powerful punch that Hannibal dodges under and Hannibal's hands come up in a double punch to the vampire's rock hard solar plexus.  Drake grunts and brings an elbow down on Hannibal's back.  Hannibal cries out and uses the downward momentum to sweep the legs out from under the vampire.   Drake rolls with it and comes up, sword in hand.  Hannibal doesn't have a weapon.  Drake's hands twirl his sword in a threatening manner, Hannibal still doesn't have a weapon.  There's a clatter from above and Hannibal barely catches the sword before it impales him in the head.

"Watch where you're throwing shit!" he shouts.  Blade glares down at him.

"You're welcome," he says.  "Kids these days."  Hannibal twirls Blade's sword around, not as gracefully as Drake had done and barely blocks the swing from the incredibly angry vampire.  Drake's face, which had once looked on him with the kind of fondness that one looks on their dog or cat, is twisted in a mask of rage, his eyes are burning swirls of gold and brown and Hannibal really doesn't want to die.

He blocks another strike and another, and then he falls for a feint and gets a slash along his side for his trouble.

"I'm going to kill you," Drake says.  "I'm going to gut you and I'm going to take your head and mount it on my wall to show the world what happens when you challenge me." 

"Yeah?" Hannibal says, the cut on his side is already knitting itself closed.  Drake's eyes widen at the sight.  "I think that's going to be a little harder than you think it is." 

"What is this?" Drake demands.  Hannibal grins at him, cock sure and leaps up, flips over the vampire’s head and lands behind him, fangs down.

"This is what you created," Hannibal says roughly.

The fight is furious, a battle of skill and swordplay that Hannibal is pulling from somewhere because he's sure he should be dead by now, and trying not to fall into the pit below.  Around them vampires and humans are fighting bitterly and it looks like the humans are winning, Hannibal can't even call out a warning to Abby and it looks like she's about to get it until Blade lands on his feet behind the vampire creeping up on her and stakes him through the heart.  Abby stakes hers and, defended by Blade and a few humans who flock to her side, she levels the Daystar virus at Drake. The noise dies down, bit by bit until Hannibal and Drake, standing facing each other, are the only combatants left in the fray.

Hannibal can see that Drake knows it too, and then Drake sees Abby.  He turns on Hannibal and catches him, faster than Hannibal thought he could move, and Hannibal finds himself pinned to the man, Drake's chest pressed tight against Hannibal's back.  Hannibal's body reacting to the closeness of the man.

"Go ahead," Drake says.  "Launch your weapon."  Hannibal stares at Abby, willing her to fire.  He's seen her practice, he knows that with enough pressure the arrow will go through his body and into Drake's, he can see the knowledge in her eyes.  Then he hears the crying, muffled quickly, but not quick enough. Hannibal turns his head to see Zoe, held tight by a vampire with a manic expression on his face.

"Do it," he orders.  Abby shakes her head, he can see her arm trembling.  "Fucking do it!" he shouts at her.

"No," she says.  "I can't." Drake laughs in his ear.

"Do you see, pet, even now, while your body is begging for me, even while she watches you cleave to me, she can't kill you, you were her friend." Louder, for the benefit of everyone else, he says "if you loose your weapon, I will order the girl's death." Abby lets out a sob.

"God," Deacon complains.  "You can't even handle a decent death scene without the angst.  You're kind of pathetic, you know that, right? It's not like her stupid little arrow is going to kill you.  You can heal yourself." 

"I've poisoned your water supply," Hannibal tells her.

"No, you didn't," Abby says, her face says ‘thanks for trying.’

"You can't possibly know that," Hannibal counters.

"You were unconscious the entire time," Abby counters back.  

"Just shoot me," Hannibal says.  "It's okay, I'll be okay." He can see the resolve in her eyes.  Her arm stops trembling.  He can feel Drake's arms tighten around him and Hannibal stays where he is, unable to move.  Abby lets loose.  The arrow flies at Hannibal and he can't help the pained scream when it buries into his abdomen.  He can tell it didn't go far enough.

"Do you see?" Drake demands loudly, there's a kind of madness to his voice that Hannibal hasn't ever heard before and it makes him wonder what's happened to him. "I can not be defeated.  Immortality will come to such as are fit for it."  Hannibal grimaces at the arrow in his stomach.  The bloodstain is spreading over his shirt.

"I really, really don't want to do this," he mutters.  Deacon's hand joins Hannibal's on the arrow shaft.

"I'll do it," Deacon offers helpfully and they shove it through, the force expelling the arrow out of Hannibal's body and into Drake's in one smooth movement.  The feel of it tearing through his insides, pushing its way out of his body is excruciating, Hannibal feels the blood welling up in his throat.  He coughs it up and he hopes that the virus was in Drake's body long enough to do the damage it was meant to do as Hannibal collapses on the floor.

***

Deacon's holding Hannibal's head in his lap, hands clasped over Hannibal's ears. Somewhere there is the sound of screaming. Constant and loud, interspersed with a constant loud beeping.

"Make it stop," Hannibal begs.

"Not on your life," Deacon says and laughs but if he's said something funny, Hannibal doesn't get it.  The screaming doesn't stop, the beeping doesn't stop.

***

Everything is fuzzy white and he gets the feeling he's on the good drugs.  There's a lot of murmuring but no voices, there are faces that lean over him but no features.

***

"Hannibal?" the first voice he hears clearly is soft and hesitant.  The beeping is still there, but muted, the door is still there, and it shudders on its hinges, the screaming is still there but also muted.

"Deacon?" Hannibal says.  Deacon runs his hand through Hannibal's hair.

"You don't want to wake up yet," Deacon answers.

"Pretty bad?" he asks.  Deacon looks longingly at the shuddering door.  Hannibal realizes that's where the screaming is coming from, primal and angry.  Desperate.

"We could open the door," Deacon says after a minute.  "Everything would be better then." 

"I don't want to be a god," Hannibal replies.  "Where's the fun in that?"

"Please wake up, Hannibal, please," the voice says again and Hannibal recognizes Zoe.

"Deacon?" he asks again.  Deacon huffs a sigh.

"Yeah, okay," he says and lets go.

***

Zoe's face is the first thing he sees, leaning over him, he can smell that she's been crying, he can see the tearstains on her little face.

"Hey doodlebug," he says.  She smiles at him brightly and throws herself into his open arms. A look around shows he's in the cell's infirmary, there's a morphine drip beside him and he can feel the residual lassitude of the drug leaving his system.  He wonders how long he's been down and if he'll go through withdrawal with his changed body.

"I was worried about you," Zoe says.  "They said not to, but I wanted you to wake up," she says and holds up an IV tube from the morphine drip that isn't in his arm any longer.

"I'm good, Zoe, no worries."

"Come away from him, Zoe," Abby says from the door.  Hannibal looks at her evenly and Zoe refuses point-blank to get off his lap.

"Whistler," he says.

"I'd call you King, but I don't know if that's even you anymore," she replies.

"That's bullshit and you know it," Hannibal tells her.  Blade steps up behind Abby and nods at Hannibal.

"We're leaving in twenty minutes," the half-vampire says.  Abby's mouth twists with indecision but she doesn't stop Hannibal from getting out of the bed, carrying Zoe behind Blade.  They'll work through this, he broke through the hard shell once, he can do it again.

***

He leans out on the rails of the new headquarters' balcony, in Barcelona of all places, and stares pensively at the neighbouring roof.

"You could totally make that," Deacon is standing on the balcony beside Hannibal, staring out at the same view that Hannibal had been staring at before Deacon had decided to show his pretty face. 

"Probably," Hannibal agrees.  The urge is pretty strong to do just that.  They stand in companionable silence for a moment before Deacon opens his big mouth.

"We could have ruled the world you know,” Deacon says.  He's getting used to this, Deacon in his head, popping up randomly and not so randomly.
 
“I know,” Hannibal says.  “I’ll admit, I was pretty tempted.”
 
Deacon reaches through the space between them and cups the back of Hannibal’s head in his hand.  He presses his lips to Hannibal's in a light kiss.  “Well, when you get bored of almost dying let me know, we can open the door and you and I, we’ll live forever.”
 
“Yeah,” Hannibal says and when he blinks Deacon is gone and Blade is in his place staring at him blankly.  Hannibal wonders about the thoughts going through Blade’s head, wonders how long it will be before he’s a risk and a liability and Blade ends him.  Wonders if Blade has his own conversations with Deacon, or ever intrudes on Hannibal's moments.
 
“Deep thoughts,” Blade says calmly in a way that implies he knows what Hannibal and Deacon were talking about.  Hannibal shrugs, he doesn't feel much like talking to anyone about Drake or anything else that happened in the desert.  

He goes back inside before the temptation to make the jump from their balcony to the roof fifteen feet across gets to be too much.

***

Five Months After Daystar
Middle of Nowhere, Iraq

"I think we should wait," the man says and runs his hand through the dark, shiny hair of the woman using his chest as a pillow.

"I think I want my revenge," the woman says and her nails sink into the man's side.  He hisses, fangs visible and glares at the top of her head.  She laps away the small bloodstains on the tips of her fingers.

"We don't know if the Daystar is finished disbursing yet," the man says. It's a reminder, it's a conversation they've had over and over again.  The woman lifts her head and meets the man's eyes.  "You don't want to die the minute we step off the boat, do you?" he asks.

"I made friends with one of the ambassador's aides, a familiar, at the American Embassy," she says.  "They haven't had a single case in months.  Vampires are free to return."

"I don't think it's a good idea," the man insists.  The woman smiles and crawls up his side and kisses his cheek.

"It's really sweet that you're all worried about me," she whispers into his ear.  "But if you don't fucking stop it, I'm going to rip your dick off.  I want my revenge, Asher," she says.  Asher stares at his sister, still not all there in the head, eyes alight with fury.  Her hand's tight on his arms, body shaking a little at just the thought of payback.  He licks his lips and lets out an unnecessary breath.

"Pack your bags, baby doll," he says.  "We're going home." Danica's fangs glint in the light of their underground bunker.

"I'm going to rip Hannibal King's fucking heart out," she says.

/end