Chaos in the Club
Posted on Sun May 31st, 2026 @ 3:18pm by Kennedy Kelly & Narrator & Hayden Davis & Maeve MacKenna & Jennifer Bryant & Alaric Thane & Josiah Martin
11,552 words; about a 58 minute read
Mission:
Episode 7: Pathogens and Contagions
Location: Club Blood, New York City
Timeline: March 10, 1992
The scene inside of Club Blood was carnage and disorder, part of which was planned and the other unexpected. The patrons on the dance floor fell into a trance as they danced in the blood that rained down from the ceiling above them, their bodies coated in thick, viscous liquid thanks to some vampire’s sick sense of humor.
The body guards that lined the club shifted in form, their large bodies transforming into furred and bat-like figures. Massive beasts that were half human and half animal. Their giant bodies sprung into action and they began to feast on the unknowing dancers, their initial attacks lost in the trump of pulsing bodies and loud music.
Blade noticed the patrons that fell victim on the floor below them and without hesitation, he jumped from the edge of the balcony onto the dance floor. His heavy, armored body hitting the ground with a hard -THUMP- that turned all the attention towards him.
“The Daywalker!” The vampire behind the bar hissed and every single vampire in the room went on edge.
As the X-Men followed through the portal, they found Maeve and Jennifer in entangled with the rest of the vampire hoard. Every face twisted and angry as they moved to strike and to kill.
In a few short seconds, the appearance of Blade and the X-Men caused the entire club to panic, and dangerous bedlam began.
Having given him a good shove, Jennifer took a few steps back from Xarus and brought her hands up. She didn't expect to take him on her own. She just had to hold for another second or two now so the X-Men could close. She wrinkled her nose as the blood started. Getting in her hair. On her close. She tried to suppress the way her stomach growled.
The first thing that hit Maeve wasn’t fear.
It was hunger.
Not the ordinary kind. Not the ache of an empty stomach or the sharp craving that had been needling at her for days. This was older than that. Meaner. The blood raining from the ceiling struck her skin and hair and bare arms in hot, sticky splashes, and the smell of it hit the back of her throat so hard she nearly gagged. For one awful second the whole world narrowed to iron and heat and pulse. The club around her blurred into red light and moving bodies, and every nerve in her body seemed to turn toward it at once.
Her breath caught.
The vampire in front of her was moving, she knew that, some shape baring its teeth and coiling to strike, but Maeve’s body had gone somewhere else entirely. Somewhere low. Instinctive. Feral. Her fingers curled so hard her nails bit crescents into her palms, and a shudder ran through her like she was trying to hold a live wire still inside her own skin.
'Yes,' the whisper purred, slick and intimate, coiling through the back of her mind like smoke through a cracked window. 'There you are.'
Maeve’s head snapped up.
Her pupils had blown wide, swallowing most of the blue from her eyes, and there was something wrong in the way she stood now, too still and too alert all at once. Blood slid down her temple and over her cheek. She wiped at it with the back of her hand and only made it worse, smearing red across her skin. The smell intensified. So did the pull.
“Don’t,” she muttered, though whether it was to the thing in front of her, the voice behind her thoughts, or herself, she couldn’t have said.
Another splash hit her mouth.
That did it.
Maeve made a raw, furious sound deep in her throat and lunged, not cleanly, not like a trained fighter thinking three steps ahead, but like someone whose body had finally decided it had had enough. She moved with the awful speed the bite had gifted her, faster than she should have been, shoulder dropping as she drove forward to meet the attacking vampire head-on before it could get its hands on her. One hand shot out for purchase, fingers clawing for cloth, flesh, anything she could seize, while the other came up hard and wild in a strike meant less to finesse than to break rhythm and space.
The whisper laughed softly in the back of her skull.
'Good girl. Let it out.'
“No!” Maeve spat, the word torn out between clenched teeth. It came with another shove of force, all of her anger and revulsion and frightened hunger crammed into the movement. She didn’t want the blood. She didn’t want the wanting. She didn’t want the sick, hot thrill uncoiling in her belly as the room collapsed into violence around her.
But she did want to hit something.
Behind her, she could feel rather than see Jennifer and Xarus, the charged air around them like storm heat against the back of her neck. Somewhere at her flank the sudden arrival of the others through the portal shifted the balance of the room, but Maeve barely registered it beyond a distant flare of recognition. Joey. Hayden. Alaric. Kennedy. Safe enough to keep fighting. Close enough that she wasn’t alone.
That mattered.
It was the only reason she managed to drag herself half a step back from the edge of what the blood was doing to her.
Maeve planted her feet on the slick floor of the balcony, chest heaving, every muscle in her body wound too tight. Her curls were wet with red, her skin streaked with it, and she looked every inch like she belonged in this place now, some furious little creature dragged up from the underworld and dropped into the middle of the feast.
She hated that.
Her eyes flicked once toward Jennifer, brief and blazing, a silent check that she was still standing, still there, before snapping back to the vampire in front of her.
“Come on then,” Maeve said, breathless and shaking and meaner than she’d ever sounded in her life. “Let’s get this over with.”
Joey hit the balcony and was nearly knocked on his arse the moment he landed by the smell. Blood. Far too much of it, raining from the ceiling, and the whiff of something more. Death from whatever the hell those bat things were starting to feed on people. For a heartbeat, the Cyclone tried to crawl back up him. He shoved it down, hard.
Movement to his right caught his attention. Fuck, a vampire was already close and angling in, moving for Kennedy, who was closest to it. He surged forward. He didn't even try to make it clean. "Artemis, back and flash!" he said, sharp and quick as he moved.
It wasn't pretty, not by a long shot, but it didn't have to be. He made a hard, driving spear into the vampire, enough to keep it from getting any closer, and enough to take them both straight into the balcony's railing. He felt the metal give far more easily than it should have before they went over together.
The vamp twisted in Joey's grip, too fast and too strong as they fell through the air. Joey couldn't handle the vamp while human, so he let it go, the rat spilling out of him in a painful rush of popping bones and shifting mass as they fell through the air. Fortunately, the vampire didn't have the same option, and Joey was able to ensure it hit the ground first, hard.
Weight and momentum drove the vampire down, slamming it into the floor with an audible crack, albeit perhaps less dramatic than Blade's. Unfortunately, this time, however, the vamp wasn't quite out of the fight yet. It moved, because of course it did, trying to get the rat off and fight. Joey didn't give it a chance; his claws, now like switch blades, drove down into the creature under him. Not clean or pretty, but fast, effective, and brutal. Unfortunately, one down. Far too many to go.
Hayden staggered a half-step the moment she came through the portal, her whole body recoiling as the smell hit her. It wasn’t just blood, it was too much blood. It was hot, metallic, and thick in the air. Her stomach lurched violently, and for a second she thought she was going to be sick right there on the balcony.
"God...," she choked, dragging the back of her hand across her mouth as she forced it down. "Gotta focus." She snapped up, taking in the scene. Maeve, Jennifer, the crowd, the vampires...okay. And the others...the manbat? What the heck?
Her fingers twitched at her sides, instinct already pulling at the moisture in the air, in the blood, in everything. It was heavy and unclean. But she could still feel it.
Alaric stepped through just behind Hayden, his boots hitting the slick floor with a muted, wet sound. His gaze swept the room once, sharp and assessing, jaw tightening. For a split second, it felt familiar, the chaos...the violence. The way the air itself seemed to pulse with them. But Limbo had been honest in its brutality. This? This was a slaughterhouse wearing a mask.
"Alright, listen up!" Alaric’s voice firmly cut through the noise as he turned toward the others. "We move fast." He gestured sharply toward the panicked dancers. "Get the civilians out. Blade and Joey got the vampire's attention, so we use that. I can open a portal to Times Square, but we'll need crowd control to herd them through. The vampires can't go."
He checked Maeve and Jennifer, confirming they were still on their feet before turning back. "Meanwhile, we fight." A glance down at the floor showed a slick sheen coating it. "And watch your footing," he added. "That blood’s going to get you killed faster than they will if you’re not careful."
The first scream cut through the music like a knife, then came another, and another, until the pounding bass was drowned beneath raw panic. What had seemed like a decadent of blood raining from the ceiling was now twisted into something unmistakably real. The bat-like bodyguards moved as one, snapping into position and slamming the exits shut. Heavy locks clanked into place and Club Blood became a slaughterhouse.
Panic erupted as bodies collided and patrons slipped in the slick crimson coating the floor. People fell, then vanished beneath the stampede. Screams turned to choking cries as they were trampled underfoot, desperation turning the crowd into a weapon against itself.
It would have been total carnage except for the portal that tore open across the club, a swirling fracture in reality. For a heartbeat, no one understood.
Then someone screamed, “EXIT!”
The tide turned and the survivors surged toward it.
The vampires and guards noticed and they moved faster. As wall of monsters formed in front of the portal with fangs bared and claws ready. Anyone who got close was dragged down, ripped apart, devoured before they could even scream.
“I can’t get a clean shot at the door!” Kennedy shouted from the balcony, her voice cutting through the chaos.
She stepped to the edge, raising her bow. A golden arrow shimmered into place as she drew the string back, aiming for the sealed entrance. Kennedy never saw the vampire behind her and it struck like a striking viper. Cold hands clamped around her shoulders and wrenched her backward. Kennedy screamed as she was dragged off balance, her shot ruined before it could be loosed.
Across the floor, Hayden and Alaric were already engaged. Two vampires and a bat guard circled them, low and coiled, bodies tense with predatory intent. Then movement as they lunged towards the pair.
Jennifer tore free from Xarus’s grip, stumbling back only to find no escape waiting for her. Mina stepped into her path, smiling.
A bat guard slammed into Jennifer from the side, locking her arms in a crushing hold. She struggled, but the creature’s grip tightened, pinning her in place.
Mina approached slowly, savoring it.
“I promise,” she purred, her eyes burning yellow as her face twisted into something feral, “to make it slow… and painful.”
"Can't take no for an answer, can you?" Jennifer said, jerking in the tight grip of the bat guard as Maeve came closer. His arms held her tight.
Maeve, meanwhile, had given in just for a moment and it was enough. The first vampire that came for her didn’t survive the mistake. She met it with a fury that surprised even herself, tearing it apart in a savage blur of motion. Its body dissolved into thick, blackened sludge at her feet. For a heartbeat, she saw it and felt it.
Power. Then it was gone.
Two more closed in, flanking her with predatory patience. Waiting for Maeve to either succumb to the vampire’s lust or submit to their hungry bite.
Joey hit the ground hard after his fall, the impact knocking the breath from his lungs but he didn’t stay down long. One vampire lay broken nearby, a small victory. But it didn’t matter because he had landed in the worst possible place.
The vampire from the DJ booth vaulted the turntables, crashing down toward Joey as a bat guard barreled in behind. They hit him together, driving him back to the floor under the force of their combined assault. No space, no time just teeth and claws that assaulted Joey.
Blade moved differently, where the others struggled, he flowed. Each motion was precise and controlled in its lethal execution. A bat guard lunged as he sidestepped with blade flashing. Silver cut cleanly through flesh and bone and the creature turned to ash before it hit the ground.
A vampire followed, who was faster, stronger but not fast enough. Blade pivoted, struck once, and ended it. Another body dissolved, leaving nothing behind.
“Daywalker…” Xarus hissed, his voice thick with hatred. His attention locked onto Blade, the chaos around them fading into irrelevance. This was older than the fight. Older than the room.
“You dare come here?” Xarus growled as he jumped down. “You will die tonight.”
The ground cracked beneath the force of his landing as he dropped from above, rising slowly as his body began to change. Bones shifted and muscles swelled as fur covered his body. His form twisted into something monstrous, part wolf, part bat, into a combination that was far worse than either. Xarus’s eyes turned black as void and what stood before them now wasn’t just a vampire, it was a nightmare made flesh.
Alaric didn’t retreat. Instead, he stepped into it and summoned the soul sword. It didn’t appear, it assembled. Shadow and dark energy coiled into steel in his hand, violet runes pulsing like a second heartbeat. The dark powers of Limbo shown brilliantly in the presence of the undead.
"Tenebrae, servite ferro meo." Shadows, serve my blade. The air around the sword darkened and faint whispers echoed... infernal voices of Limbo responding to their master's call.
The first vampire came in fast, a blur of teeth and claws. Alaric spun and sliced at the creature. The Soulsword passed clean through the vampire’s torso. There was no resistance, no blood. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the vampire collapsed into ash. Not dead, but undone. The voices in the shadows became louder.
"Now!" Alaric yelled.
Hayden moved on instinct. The second vampire was already on her, and every part of her recoiled from what she was about to do. But there wasn’t time to hesitate. Her hand snapped downward, fingers flexing as she pulled. The plasma in the blood answered.
It wasn't clean, not like water. The slick floor surged just enough to rip the vampire’s footing out from under him, his lunge collapsing into as he pitched forward. Hayden pivoted with it, shoving hard with her water cannon to send it crashing past her instead of into her.
Behind them, the bat guard came next.
"Umbra iudicat sanguinem," said Alaric. The shadow judges the blood.
"You think you can judge us?" the vampire Hayden was battling with snarled. "You reek of darkness, too!"
Alaric tilted his head slightly. There it was, the truth of it. For just a moment, something deeper stirred behind his eyes, something with teeth.
"Yeah," he said softly. "I do."
Wanting to shut the vampire up, Hayden summoned the blood plasma and formed a solid orb around his head.
Alaric turned toward the bat guard. "Come on. Face your judgement."
Maeve barely registered the black sludge at her feet before the next two came for her.
The first kill was still in her system like a bad hit of something she hadn’t meant to take. For one ugly, flashing second she’d felt power in it — not just relief, not just survival, but something hotter and meaner — and the blood raining from the ceiling only made it worse. It streaked down her face, into her mouth, over her lashes, warm and metallic and thick enough that every breath felt like swallowing a dare.
Then her eyes went red.
Not a flicker. Not a trick of the strobe. Both of them, all at once, burning bright and wrong in her face as she lifted her head and fixed on the bat guard bearing down on her. Somewhere in the back of her skull, the whisper purred with quiet delight.
'There you are.'
Maeve lunged first.
She drove toward the bigger shape on instinct, pure fury and momentum, aiming to hit before it could close the gap. But the creature was faster than its size should have allowed. One massive arm swept out, not to grab, but to strike, and the claws tore across her side in a brutal rake that split fabric and skin in the same instant.
Pain burst through her like white fire.
The force of it spun her half sideways and slammed her into the wall hard enough to crack the breath from her lungs. Metal rattled behind her. Her shoulder hit first, then the side of her head, and for a second the whole balcony flashed in and out under the strobes.
Maeve dropped to one knee with a choked sound, one hand flying to her side.
Blood spilled hot between her fingers.
The smell of it hit the room like a dinner bell.
The second vampire changed direction at once.
She saw it in the sharp turn of its head, the way its mouth parted, the way hunger overtook whatever patience it had been pretending to have. It came at her low and eager now, drawn by the fresh cut, while the bat guard advanced more slowly, enjoying the damage it had done.
Maeve looked up from under wet curls, breathing hard, red eyes blazing.
For a heartbeat she stayed there, crouched against the wall, blood slicking her hand and dripping down her hip. She looked cornered.
Then the whisper slid through her again, silk-soft and poisonous.
'Good. Now make them bleed for it.'
Maeve’s mouth pulled back, not quite a smile.
When she moved, it was fast and vicious. She shoved off the wall with her good side and launched herself straight back into the fight, pain and rage and the smell of her own blood driving her harder now instead of slowing her down. She didn’t retreat. She didn’t call for help.
She went to meet them.
On the floor, Joey had barely had time to return to his feet before another vampire and one of those bat things drove him down into the floor again. Son of a—fetch that hurt. He needed more space. Even transformed the vampire at bat creature were stronger than him.
He twisted on the pressure, one leg instinctively snapping up and driving into the vampire's knee at a bad angle. Not a clean break, but good enough. The crunch was followed by the vamp crumpling just enough to take the pressure off.
Then the bat came down over the top.
Joey didn't try to fight it, instead he rolled with it, his claws hooking into fur and muscle just enough to drag it off-line as he shoved himself sideways across the slick floor. Not a win by any means, but at least he wasn't pinned anymore.
But, broken leg or not, the vampire scrabbled back towards him, fangs bared. Joey didn't have time to think properly. He met it, claws out flashing low and brutal, spilling viscera, or whatever passed for it in a vampire onto the floor.
Joey came up afterwards, low, chest heaving and covered in goo...again. He had just a moment to scan. The crowd was panicked and trying to move. The portal. He needed to clear the portal for them.
Kennedy’s scream tore free as she raked her nails across the vampire’s face while thrashing in his grip. He staggered under her panic and she seized the moment to drive him hard into the second-floor railing. The wood groaned and bowed from their combined weight but the vampire maintained his tightened hold. She saw her out in that moment and began to bucked and twisted while slamming him into the railing again and again. Each impact shuddered through the brittle wood frame until it finally splintered with sharp edges jutting out like broken teeth. On the final collision, the jagged beam punched clean through the vampire’s chest.
For a heartbeat he hung there in his impaled state, then his body collapsed into a plume of drifting ash that scattered into the open air. Kennedy staggered free, her breath ragged and skin stinging where splinters had cut her, but she was alive and moving.
Alaric’s portal had turned the crowd away from the front entrance and that had created a clear line of sight for her. Returning to her previous plan, Kennedy lifted her hands and drew her shimmering kinetic energy into the form of a bow and arrow. Nocking the arrow that pulsed with powerful light, she took aim and loosed it.
The shot struck the doors.
BOOM
The entire club shuddered as the blast tore through the entryway, swallowing the two bat-guards in a flash of force and fire. When the rubble settled, a second exit gaped open.
For a moment, the patrons only screamed, still frozen in a huddled mass as they braced for more horror. Then realization broke through the panic, another path was open. The crowd split and ran, surging towards both exits, the tide turning as the vampires lost their grip on the room.
Joey’s combat skills matched those of the vampires that had swarmed him and with the same animalistic instincts, he quickly disposed of his fellow creatures of the night. Only one bat-guard remained now wounded and limping. It dragged itself forward in a desperate final lunge.
At the heart of it all, the dance floor had cleared into a brutal stage. Blade and Xarus circled each other in a deadly waltz. Xarus, now a towering monstrosity, lashed out with raw, primal power but Blade answered with precision, his sword flashing silver in the dim light, each strike deliberate and filled with lethal intent.
Behind them, the last few vampires and guards faltered in a frenzied and scattered manner. Their numbers broken and their control unraveling as their prey slipped through their fingers.
On the second floor, Alaric and Hayden shook free of their attackers, attention snapping outward to what remained of the fight. Jennifer and Maeve still grappled with the last of the guards, their movements just as feral. They snarled and tussled as the half-changed mutants met the vampire’s attacks with the same ferocity and savage speed.
The bat held Jennifer tight. She pushed back, bringing her legs up, and kicked hard at Mina. The vampire fell back. Jennifer squirmed and twisted, falling to the ground. She hit her knees roughly. He was already spinning to come back at her.
Maeve hit the wall hard enough to feel the shock all the way through her teeth, but she was moving again before the pain had properly caught up with her. The cut in her side burned hot and wet beneath her hand, blood spilling through her fingers in a steady sheet, and the smell of it turned the whole balcony savage at once.
The second vampire came for her first.
It moved on that fresh blood with all the patience stripped away, mouth open, hunger naked now, and Maeve met it halfway. She pushed off the wall with a vicious burst of speed and drove straight into it, shoulder to chest, carrying all her weight and fury through the impact. The two of them crashed into the railing in a clang of metal and bone. The vampire’s head snapped sideways just as Maeve’s hand shot up and seized it by the jaw.
For one ugly, red-lit heartbeat, she saw her own reflection in its black eyes. Blood on her skin. Hair stuck to her face. Both eyes lit red like coals. Not a girl anymore, not in that moment. Something else.
Then she slammed the back of its skull into the iron rail once. Twice. The third time there was a wet crack and the body sagged in her grip. She tore it sideways with all the hateful strength the bite had poured into her muscles, and it came apart into thick black sludge that sprayed the floor and her boots.
The whisper in her head made a pleased, breathless sound.
Maeve turned before the sludge had even finished dripping.
The bat guard was already on her, or trying to be. It came in low and heavy, great leathery wings half-spread, one clawed hand slick with her blood. It looked less like a creature and more like a bad dream someone had taught to walk. Maeve bared her teeth at it without thinking, and this time she felt the change in her own mouth before she understood it. Her canines had lengthened, just enough to hurt. Just enough to matter.
“Come on then,” she snarled, voice ragged and wrong.
The bat guard swung. Maeve ducked under the blow by inches, felt the rush of displaced air over her head, and drove her shoulder into its ribs. The impact staggered it, but not enough. One hooked arm clipped her across the back and sent her stumbling sideways, her injured flank screaming bright enough to turn her vision white for a second. She caught herself on the wall, spun, and launched again with a raw, furious sound torn out of somewhere deep in her chest.
This time she went high.
Her hands caught in its fur and the base of one wing, fingers locking down hard enough to tear. The creature shrieked and bucked, trying to shake her off, but Maeve hung on and used its own movement against it. She twisted with all the speed and feral strength she had, wrenching the wing sideways while driving her knee up into its middle over and over again until something gave with a dull, sickening crunch.
The bat guard folded.
Maeve didn’t let it fall cleanly. She hauled it with her, dragged it down and drove it face-first into the balcony floor. Once. Twice. The third impact caved its resistance. Its limbs spasmed, claws scraping uselessly at the blood-slick metal, and Maeve seized the chance with both hands. She grabbed its head, planted one boot against its shoulder, and with a savage, breathless cry wrenched hard.
The neck snapped.
For a second the body just twitched beneath her, wings shuddering, fur soaked dark. Then it started to break down, collapsing in on itself into a foul, blackened mess that stank of rot and old blood.
Maeve knelt over it, chest heaving, one hand clamped over the slash in her side, the other braced in sludge. Blood ran down her arm. Her eyes were still burning red. Her lips were pulled back from those half-formed fangs. If anyone had looked at her then, they wouldn’t have seen an eighteen-year-old girl. They’d have seen a cornered thing that had decided to bite back.
Then Jennifer’s movement caught in the edge of her vision.
The red haze didn’t clear, not fully, but it tightened into something sharp and brutal. Jennifer was on her knees, and the bat thing that had held her was already turning back, hungry and furious and stupid enough to think it still had the upper hand.
Maeve moved before thought had a chance to catch up.
She drove off her back foot and crossed the space between them in a blur, blood still pouring warm down her side, curls wild around her face, both eyes burning red. “Jen!” she shouted, voice torn raw, and hit the creature from the side with everything she had.
Her forearm smashed across its throat first, snapping its head sideways, and the force of the blow sent all three of them skidding across the slick balcony. Maeve didn’t stop there. She came down on it hard and fast, one hand fist-deep in its fur, the other striking again before it could recover — a savage, close-range blow across the face that cracked bone and sprayed black spit across the floor.
The thing reeled, stunned just long enough for Maeve to plant herself between it and Jennifer, chest heaving, one arm spread slightly as if she could physically block the whole bloody room.
“Touch her again,” she snarled, breath ragged and fangs just barely showing now, “and I’ll rip your head clean off.”
She barely recognised her own voice.
She didn’t care.
“Foolish girl, you dare dance with danger?” Mina hissed as Maeve baited her. The vampire’s once beautiful face was grotesquely twisted, warped by hunger and the trauma that had already hollowed her out. “There’s something savage in you… something deeper than the gift you waste.”
Mina lunged and moved with predatory grace, so fast she blurred in and out of sight as she closed the gap between them. In a blink, she seized Jennifer by the hair and dragged her forward like a shield as she closed in on Maeve. Bodies collided in a snarling knot of limbs and teeth as they scratched, tore and thrashed together until the struggle faltered, then stuttered to a halt.
Only then did Mina seem to realize she was coming apart. Her abdomen hung open, entrails spilling free in a slick cascade of black ichor and rotting tissue. The scent hit a second later, it was sweet and foul and unmistakable.
“Your violence will haunt you…” Mina rasped, collapsing to her knees, voice trembling with pain and rage “At night, when you try to sleep, that voice inside you won’t be silent. It will call… and call… until you answer.” Her ruined lips peeled back in something between a smile and a curse. “You’ll break, and when you do, you’ll destroy everyone you love. There is no peace for the wicked.”
Her body gave way, flesh sloughing off as she dissolved into a reeking heap of offal.
Hayden tried to 'get a lock on' the vampire near the railing for a water sphere, but he was too fast. Between his speed and blending in to the shadows, she wasn't having much luck. She backed up against a wall and sighed. She briefly thought about her talk with Jean and remembered this was to protect those who needed help.
"Come on, let's just get it over with," she said. At which point, the vampire stopped in front of her and grinned, fangs showing.
"Now that's more like it, pretty girl," he said to Hayden. He took a few slow steps towards her. "Let's make this last as long as possible."
With each step, Hayden could feel the pulse of the water in his blood. She never took her eyes off of him and only raised one hand. "Wait," she said, voice a little shaky. When he paused, she balled her hand into a fist and stopped the flow.
Her enemy made a wretching sound before he fell to floor of the balcony in surprise. Hayden watched as he vanished into dust and then jumped over the balcony to the floor so she could help get the rest of the civilians out. One way or another.
With the shadows and echoes of Limbo still surrounding the soul sword, Alaric turned towards the bat guard on the balcony. He immediately saw the partygoer in harm's way. Alaric’s voice cut through the chaos, "Umbra viva, cinge et protege—Aegis Draconis." Living shadow, encircle and protect—Dragon’s Aegis.
Shadows didn't just rise, they coiled as they spiraled outward from his feet like a living serpent. Then they snapped inward around the person, forming a semi-spherical dome. The surface looked like overlapping scales made of shadow with veins of dim violet energy pulsing between them.
The bat guard hit it and recoiled with a scream as the barrier burned cold into its flesh. For a split second, a massive, horned silhouette moved within the surface of the shield watching. Guarding.
Alaric ran towards the bat guard and leapt into the air. He brought the soul sword down through the bat's head and torso. The creature screamed and fell into a pile of ash. "You are judged and have been found wanting."
Since it leaned into the power of Limbo, leaving the barrier up for too much longer would have been dangerous. Besides the fact that his sorcery was weaker on Earth and the ward wouldn't have survived another attack. Alaric lowered the barrier and pointed in the direction of the doors. "Go." He then leapt over the balcony and entered that battle.
The doors and portal stood open now and civilians poured through in a frantic rush. Across the dance floor, a handful of vampires still lingered and they desperately snatched at anyone too slow to escape. If they wised up and retreated, they would slip out through the doors or the portal, the infection would continue to spread and the city would have another nest taking root. The vampires could not escape, not this time.
A wounded, rabid bat-guard tore after Joey, snapping at his heels. It moved with reckless desperation, heedless of its own injuries. If Joey was going to stop the few remaining vampires, he couldn’t afford to be bogged down in fighting with the bat.
Kennedy didn’t hesitate, and light flared in her grip as she conjured another arrow, drawing it back against the curve of her golden bow. She exhaled, steadied, and loosed it.
The arrow struck the guard square in the back. It detonated on impact, not with the thunderous boom that had blown the doors apart, but with a sharp, cracking pop like a firecracker. It was enough though and the creature seized mid-stride before collapsing in a twitching heap as blood pooled across the dance floor under him.
Joey was now clear to run.
He wasn't able to look back as the bat thing dropped behind him in a pop of light and meat, but he did send a silent prayer of thanks to Kennedy, and a mental note to thank her later.
For now, the room had changed. Panic was flowing outward now as people rushed the exits, trampling fear into motion. The living were rushing one way, while a few of the undead were trying to run the other.
Wrong choice, in Joey's opinion.
Blade seemed to have Xarus well enough occupied, and even if he didn't, Joey would probably be more in the way than helpful there. Instead, he cut through the dance floor, claws finding grip where shoes would have slipped, weaving through bodies and broken furniture. The first vampire nearly made the threshold before the rat slammed into him from the side hard enough to send both of them through a table.
The table lost.
The vampire tried to get up, but Joey didn't let it. A sharp, scissor motion of claws and the vampire was relieved of its head before he jumped again, over the crowd, toward one of the remaining bat creatures, driving his claws into its sides as he landed while his teeth found purchase in the back of its neck.
Turns out, werebats actually tasted terrible.
He banished that rather macabre thought with a small internal chuckle.
The remaining two vampires were nearly to the door already, half-hidden in the crush of fleeing bodies.
Decent plan.
Shame it involved other people.
That would not do.
With tenacity and grit, Joey disposed of the final vampires. Snatching and grabbing at them with his clawed hands he dragged them back into the club and towards the rest of his team. With dark vengeance Alaric disposed of the last two vampires, his soul sword seemed to hum and thrum from the act of slaying monsters.
As the X-Men cleared the rest of the club and got the civilians to safety, Blade continued with his battle with Xarus.
He moved in a blur of steel and muscle, his sword flashing in a tight arc that bit into the creature’s shoulder but Xarus only grinned, splitting his muzzle wide as black blood steamed and its wings snapped open with a thundercrack. Xarus then lunged and his claws raked across Blade’s chest, tearing leather and flesh in one savage pass. Using his hold on Blade, he hurled him through a concrete pillar that shattered on impact. Blade hit the ground hard but he rolled away and came up firing. Rounds made of silver and laced with garlic punched into the monster’s torso, each impact staggering but not stopping it. Xarus came faster now, an enraged nightmare of fur, membrane, and fangs. He crashed into Blade before he could reload and they hit the ground in a brutal tangle. Blade drove a stake upward, but the creature caught his wrist mid-thrust, bones grinding as it bent his arm back until something cracked. Blade snarled through the pain, trying to twist free, but the monster’s jaws clamped down on his shoulder, shaking him like prey. Blood sprayed, hot and dark but Blade still kicked, stabbed and clawed but the strength difference was absolute. With a final, vicious motion, the beast slammed him down and drove its talons deep into his chest, pinning him as his resistance faltered, then stilled.
“I will murder you all.” Xarus hissed from his position on top of Blade and he sized up the X-Men with a single sweeping glance of his red eyes. “This place will become your tomb.”
Maeve didn’t move straight away.
Mina was gone, and what remained of her was worse than ash. A reeking heap of black ichor, split flesh and spoiled insides spread across the balcony floor, mixed with the blood raining down from above until everything looked the same shade of red-black under the strobes.
For a second Maeve just stared at it.
At what she had done.
Her stomach turned hard.
She staggered back a step, hand flying to her mouth, but it was already too late. She bent forward and vomited onto the blood-slick floor, the sound ripped out of her and swallowed by the chaos below. Her side screamed where the bat guard had opened her up. Her ribs ached. Her hands shook, still sticky with Mina’s rot and the foul remains of the guards she’d torn through.
This wasn’t her.
It couldn’t be.
She wasn’t cruel. She wasn’t savage. She wasn’t some thing that ripped bodies apart and stood there breathing hard with red eyes and half-formed fangs aching in her mouth.
Except she had.
She had done it.
Maeve wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist and hated the smear of blood it left behind. She could still feel the shape of it inside her, that awful second where violence had felt easy. Where protecting Jennifer, protecting the others, protecting everyone had twisted itself into something red and hungry. She knew that part of herself too well, the need to prove she was enough, that she could stand between people she loved and anything coming for them.
But this wasn’t strength.
This was something using strength as an excuse.
Mina’s voice crawled back through her memory.
Your violence will haunt you…
Maeve squeezed her eyes shut.
“No,” she whispered, though her voice shook. “No, that’s not me.”
Then the other voice came, deep and patient, threaded through her mind like roots pushing under stone.
Isn’t it? Look how well you protect when you stop pretending to be gentle.
Maeve’s eyes snapped open, still red, wet now with more than blood-rain.
“Shut up,” she hissed, low and furious.
Below, Xarus’s voice cut through the wreckage of the club.
I will murder you all.
Maeve’s head lifted. She was still on the balcony, looking down through the flashing red-white haze. Blade was pinned beneath him on the dance floor, Xarus crouched over him in that monstrous shape, all fur and wings and teeth. The others were moving, fighting, trying to clear the last of the civilians, but for one horrible second he looked untouchable.
The voice stirred again, pleased.
There. There is the king of them. Break him.
Maeve gripped the balcony rail hard enough that the metal groaned beneath her fingers.
“No,” she said again, louder this time. “I’m not doin’ it for you.”
Of course not. You are saving him. You are protecting them. Such noble little lies.
Her breath came ragged. That was the worst part, because it almost sounded true. Blade was down. Jennifer was alive behind her, but for how long if Xarus got loose? The civilians were nearly out. If he broke through them now, people would die. Maeve could feel the answer building in her body before she gave herself permission to think it.
Fight.
Not because the voice wanted it.
Because she chose it.
She looked once toward Jennifer, making sure she was still standing, still herself, still there. That helped. It pulled Maeve back from the edge just enough to remember her own name beneath the hunger and fury.
Then she looked down at Xarus.
Her hand pressed to the wound in her side, fingers coming away red. The sight made her stomach twist again, but this time she swallowed it down.
“I’m not lettin’ you hurt anyone else,” she said, voice raw and shaking, and this time she meant every word.
It wasn’t the whole truth. The anger was still there. The rage. The horrible wanting to tear into something bigger than herself until it stopped making her feel small.
But there was another truth underneath it.
Maeve was scared of what she’d become in this room.
And she was still choosing to fight.
She backed up two steps on the balcony, boots slipping slightly in the blood, then ran for the rail. Her body moved with that borrowed speed, savage and wrong and powerful, but her mind held onto one thought as hard as it could.
Not theirs. Not yours. Mine.
Maeve vaulted over the balcony toward the dance floor below, throwing herself at the nightmare crouched over Blade, fighting the monster in front of her and the one whispering behind her eyes at the same time.
Xarus’s shoulders dipped under the sudden impact as Maeve crashed into him as the monster roared not in pain, but in fury. His maw of jagged teeth flashing in the club’s dim, fractured light. With brutal indifference, he reached back, seized her by the leg, and wrenched her free from his back. Maeve’s nails raked down his spine, tearing flesh and drawing blood, but he didn’t slow. Pain meant nothing beneath the surge of bloodlust and adrenaline driving him forward.
With a single, careless motion, the vampire lord hurled her across the dance floor. Maeve’s body slammed into the bar in an explosion of glass and liquor, bottles shattering on impact as she disappeared into the wreckage at the far end of the room.
Xarus was both strong and impossibly fast, his blood was ancient, far older than the Lost Boys of Coney Island or the cowering counsel of vampires now dead at his feet. No lone mutant could hope to stop him. But if Maeve and Jennifer were to be freed from his grasp, it would have to happen tonight.
He threw back his head and howled, a raw, feral sound that cut echoed in the vacant club. Then he lunged forward, a predator unleashed, intent on devouring the next X-Man who dared cross his path.
Jennifer was back on her feet by now. She was aching and a little shaken but she was back in the fight. Maeve, she knew, had saved her life. She had also just watched her thrown aside by Xarus. She called out to the others. "Come on!" she said. "We all have to go for him together.!"
Calm in the midst of chaos. "Yes," said Alaric, "but don't swarm him. We split his focus." Xarus was too powerful to use a straight on brute force attack. So the plan became contain, pressure, isolate, and terminate.
His gaze darted across the team rapidly. "Dynamo, Calypso, distract and slow down. Rat Pack, sneak attacks and I'll provide the portals. Artemis, wait for the opening and pin him down." Trusting people to play to their strengths.
Finally, his eyes found the recovering Maeve. "Morrigan, when he finally stops moving…" Alaric's grip tightened around the Soulsword. "You end it."
Hayden nodded and began pulling the rancid moisture and humidity together for water cannons and a slippery floor. She had no idea if vampire bat fur could be weighed down with water, but at least it would be something.
"I don't have my regular powers," Jennifer reminded him. "Superstrong and superfast. Nothing ranged."
“There is more to you than your powers, and you don’t have to physically touch him to distract him,” Kennedy commented from her position on the railing. “You’re just going to have to get creative with it. Look around you and see if there is another opportunity."
"Yeah, but we're supposed to be playing to our strengths," Jennifer said with a sharp intake of break. She grimaced. Aware Xarus could almost certainly hear them. They couldn't just sit here and have a whole planning meeting. She looked to Alaric again. Her muscles were tense. She looked to Kennedy and Hayden. She ran to the side. She kicked one of the chairs and made a stake, holding it firmly, not sure how different he would be than any other vampire.
Hayden had soaked Xarus well enough for a distraction. She let the filthy water fall to the floor and looked up at him. "Hey guano-for-brains! Nice wings. Do they come with a personality, or just the rabies? Huh? Don't you have a Spencer's to be lurking around?" Hayden was running to different spots as she hurled insults mixed with the occasional water bomb to the face.
Jennifer ran at Xarus, diving low, bringing the stake up. It was knocked from her hand, almost casually. She didn't give up her forward momentum, diving and rolling to the side.
"Perfect," said Alaric. "Your strengths are vampiric. Continue using those." He ran so as not to be found in the same place when Xarus turned back around.
Hayden and Jennifer provided enough of a distraction that allowed Alaric opened a Shadow Gate in front of Joey and an exit one on the left of Xarus' head. As Joey would exit, Alaric would open another one to get him out of harm's way and start again.
Joey sensed more than saw the portal open. He was about to jump through it when he realised the angle would be wrong to avoid Maeve in that moment. He could probably avoid hitting her, but better not to chance it. Instead, he vaulted up, gaining a higher vantage point in the shadows, waiting for a more useful opportunity to strike.
Maeve hit the bar like a thrown stone through a church window.
There was no graceful landing, no clever twist at the last second. Xarus ripped her off his back and hurled her with so much force that the world became a smear of red light, black shadow and noise. She caught one impossible glimpse of the club turning around her, then her shoulder smashed into the bar and everything exploded.
Glass went everywhere.
Bottles burst against her back and arms, showering her in liquor and sharp glittering fragments. Shelves cracked loose behind her, collapsing in a hard rain of broken spirits, chrome fittings and splintered wood. The mirror behind the bar spiderwebbed around the impact of her body before giving up entirely, falling in jagged sheets that shattered across the counter and floor. Maeve disappeared beneath it all with a strangled cry, the breath punched clean out of her lungs.
For a few seconds she couldn’t move.
Couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t hear anything except the awful ringing in her skull and the thud of her own heart, too fast, too angry, too alive.
Then pain arrived.
Her side screamed first, the earlier slash tearing open wider under the impact. Her ribs followed, deep and bruising. Her forearms were cut from glass. Something warm ran down from her hairline, slipping past one red eye and over her cheek. She tasted blood again, hers this time, mixed with spilled whisky and the sour chemical bite of smashed club liquor.
A broken laugh scraped out of her before she could stop it.
“Bastard,” she wheezed.
She shoved a crate off her legs and rolled onto one elbow, teeth bared against the pain. Her fingers slipped in blood and broken glass as she dragged herself upright behind the ruined bar. Every part of her wanted to launch herself straight back at him. To tear across the floor, climb him again, rip at his throat until that smug, monstrous howl turned into something properly frightened.
The red in her eyes burned hotter.
Go on, little fury. He threw you aside. Show him what happens when a king insults the earth.
Maeve’s hand tightened around the edge of the bar hard enough to split the wood beneath her fingers.
“No,” she hissed under her breath, shaking with rage. “Not yet.”
That took more strength than getting up.
She heard Alaric’s voice through the chaos, cutting cleanly across the club. Not the words at first, just the command in them. Then her name. Morrigan. When he finally stops moving… you end it.
Maeve spat blood onto the floor and pushed herself fully upright.
She was a mess. Red-streaked curls clung to her face. Glass sparkled in her sleeves. Blood ran down her side and soaked into the waistband of her jeans. Her fangs still ached in her mouth, not fully there but close enough to scare her. She looked like something feral had been dragged through a storm of bottles and left standing out of spite.
Her gaze found Xarus across the dance floor.
He was moving again, huge and terrible, but now the others were shifting around him. Hayden pulling moisture from the air. Jennifer looking for her opening. Joey ready to strike. Alaric cutting holes through shadow. Kennedy poised above with light in her hands.
Maeve forced herself to stay where she was.
Her whole body trembled with the effort. Rage paced inside her like an animal in too small a cage, throwing itself at the bars. But she stayed behind the wrecked bar, one hand pressed to her bleeding side, the other curling around the broken neck of a bottle without quite realising it.
“Fine,” she muttered, voice raw. “We do it smart.”
Her eyes never left Xarus.
She crouched slightly amid the shattered glass, waiting for the moment Alaric had called for. Waiting for the monster to stop moving. Waiting to become the last thing he saw before the night took him back.
Jennifer was on her feet again. She was on the other side of Alaric to Maeve. She tried catch the other infected girl's eye, just a moment. A lot passed in that moment.
Joey had positioned himself, watching the scene unfold. Maeve and Jennifer were going to do the heavy lifting here. He could see it pass between them in a glance, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t give them a leg up, so to speak, and take some pressure off.
He judged the angle for half a heartbeat before launching himself forward, claws aimed for the stretched membrane of Xarus’s wings, trusting Alaric and the girls to move before Xarus recovered enough to tear him apart.
The team moved with a coordinated grace that came from training and trust. As Maeve stood amid shattered glass and spilled liquor, Xarus turned toward her with a predatory grin, clearly relishing the thought of tearing her apart.
With a subtle nod and an elegant flick of his wrist, Alaric opened a portal beside Jennifer, its exit snapping into place just behind the distracted Xarus. She struck from the rear with a flurry of blows that caught him off guard, his reaction slowed just enough to keep him from seizing her immediately.
Before he could recover and focus on Jennifer, Joey surged forward, his claws flashing and teeth snapping as he added his own feral assault to the growing dogpile. Maeve followed without hesitation, driving in with a crushing strike, and together the three of them forced Xarus to the ground.
Xarus reeled under the unified onslaught. Individually, none of the X-Men could overpower him, but together they became relentless and every time he lashed out at one, another stepped in. The vampire grew frantic, unable to decide where to focus as the coordinated assault kept him off balance.
The struggle might have dragged on until exhaustion gave way to a fatal mistake. Unwilling to risk her teammates, the moment a limb broke free, Kennedy took it. She loosed an arrow into Xarus, her design drawn from her Kamar-Taj research. Silver tipped and barbed arrows that seared as they tore through his flesh to hold him down. Shot after shot struck with lethal precision, until Xarus was pinned to the dance floor like a specimen awaiting dissection.
Furious and snarling, he strained against his bindings, held fast just long enough for the three X-Men to pull back and catch a breath.
“End him,” Blade rasped, coughing as he forced himself upright. His sunglasses were gone, revealing eyes that burned with a vampiric glow beneath the club lights. A surprising reveal that the hunter was more than human, but another victim of the same curse. “If you don’t… I will.”
Alaric stood there, one hand still raised from the last Shadow Gate. Violet light flickered across his knuckles as he watched the team move as one instead of scattered fighters. For a brief moment, despite the blood and chaos, something fierce and proud crossed his expression.
Alaric’s eyes flicked immediately to the pinned vampire...then to Maeve. His eyes burned an ethereal yellow as he allowed DarkFang to surface just beneath. A single, sharp nod of approval and command followed. "Morrigan!" he called out, in Darkfang's deep, gutteral voice.
Maeve heard the name before she understood it was hers.
Morrigan.
It cut through the blood and strobes and ruined music with a weight that went deeper than the room. She stood in front of the wrecked bar, one hand pressed to the torn mess at her side, the other braced against splintered wood. Broken glass glittered around her boots. Liquor and blood ran together in dark streams across the floor. Behind her, shattered shelves hung crooked from the wall, bottles still dripping their contents onto the counter like the whole place was bleeding.
Across the dance floor, Xarus strained against Kennedy’s arrows, silver barbs pinning him down as black blood steamed from each wound. He was monstrous now, all wings and twisted muscle, talons gouging into the floor as he fought against the trap. He looked less like a man and more like a nightmare forced into flesh.
Jennifer caught Maeve’s eye.
That one look steadied her more than it should have. There was fear there, and pain, and the same horrible hunger they had both been fighting all night, but there was also trust. The hard kind. The kind that said, I know what you are right now, and I still know who you are.
Maeve pushed away from the bar.
Every step hurt. Her side pulled wet and hot beneath her palm. Her ribs protested. Glass cracked under her boots as she crossed the ruined space in front of the bar, red curls stuck to her face, skin streaked with blood, both eyes burning like warning lights in the dark. The voice stirred again, eager now, almost breathless.
Yes. Take what he is. Tear the crown from him.
Maeve’s jaw tightened, but she didn’t stop.
“No crown,” she muttered, barely loud enough to hear. “Just a monster.”
Xarus’s head snapped toward her. Even pinned, even wounded, he was still terrible. Ancient. Furious. His claws dragged furrows through the dance floor as he strained against Kennedy’s arrows, lips peeling back from rows of jagged teeth. For a moment Maeve saw exactly what he wanted her to see: the king, the nightmare, the thing every lesser vampire in the city feared.
But she had seen men like that before. Not with wings, not with fangs, but with the same certainty. Men who thought fear made them gods. Men who mistook cruelty for power because no one had stopped them yet.
She stepped over Blade’s fallen stake without reaching for it.
Her hand came away from her side slick with her own blood. She looked at it once, then at Xarus, and something inside her went very quiet. Not calm. Not mercy. Control, thin as wire but still there.
“You wanted me changed,” she said, voice raw and low. “Wanted me hungry. Wanted me scared enough to crawl toward you and call it a choice.”
Xarus snarled and bucked, one arm tearing halfway free before another of Kennedy’s arrows held him down with a hiss of burning flesh. Maeve flinched at the sound, but kept moving until she was close enough to smell rot under the blood, close enough to feel the hate coming off him like heat.
Her fangs ached in her mouth. Her red eyes didn’t blink.
The voice pressed harder, sweet and deep as buried roots.
End him as he would have ended you. Show them what answers when you are wounded.
Maeve dropped onto him hard, hands finding purchase in ruined flesh and torn clothing. One gripped beneath his jaw, fingers digging in. The other drove against his chest, not gentle, not careful, searching for the brutal centre of him beneath bone and muscle. Xarus thrashed under her, and for one terrifying second it felt like he might throw her off, might rip free and turn the whole room into a grave.
Then she saw them at the edge of her vision. Jennifer. Joey. Alaric. Kennedy. Hayden. Blade forcing himself upright, bleeding but watching.
Not alone.
Maeve drew in a shaky breath that tasted of iron.
“I’m not yours,” she whispered, and she wasn’t sure whether she meant Xarus or the voice.
Then she tore.
It was not clean. It was not graceful. It was awful, brutal work, all muscle and fury and desperate strength. Xarus’s roar shook the club as Maeve wrenched upward with one hand and drove the other deeper, forcing past what should have stopped her. Bone cracked. Flesh split. Black blood burst hot over her arms. His wings beat once against the floor, talons carving deep scars through the blood-slick boards.
Maeve screamed with the effort.
Not fear. Not triumph.
Refusal.
Her hand closed around something cold and pulsing where no human heart should have been, and with one final, savage pull she ripped it free.
Xarus went rigid.
For a heartbeat, the whole room seemed to stop. The strobes flashed white, then red, then white again, catching Maeve standing over him with his black heart clenched in her fist, blood streaming down her arm, her whole body shaking from pain and horror and the terrible satisfaction trying to claw its way up her throat.
Xarus looked at her then, no longer regal. No longer certain.
Just afraid.
His body began to crack apart from the wound outward. Silver light from Kennedy’s arrows burned through him as ash crawled over his skin and bone. The heart in Maeve’s hand crumbled first, collapsing between her fingers into foul black dust. Then Xarus followed, his monstrous shape folding in on itself until there was nothing left but ash, smoke and the stink of old death.
Maeve stood there, hand still closed around nothing.
The red in her eyes flickered.
Then it went out.
The change hit her like a fall.
The strength vanished first. Not faded. Vanished. One second her body was a live wire, sharp and brutal and full of borrowed power; the next it was gone, ripped out from under her so fast her knees buckled. Her fangs pulled back with a sting that made her gasp. Her hearing dulled. The hunger snapped silent. The night’s call died in her chest, leaving only a hollow, ringing absence.
And then the earth came back.
All at once.
Maeve sucked in a broken breath as the floor beneath her answered. Not softly. Not gently. The connection roared up through her like a tide smashing through a broken wall. Concrete. Stone. Dust beneath the foundations. Metal threaded through the building. Every mineral, every fracture, every weight-bearing beam and buried pipe slammed into her awareness at once.
The club rumbled.
Bottles rattled behind the ruined bar. Broken glass trembled across the floor. Cracks spidered through the concrete beneath her knees as her power surged outward without permission, wild and overwhelming after days of silence.
Maeve made a small, frightened sound and pressed both hands to the floor, as if she could hold the whole building still by force.
“Stop,” she gasped, but she didn’t know if she was speaking to the room, the power, or herself.
Her body remembered being human again all at once. The slash in her side. The bruised ribs. The cuts from glass. The blood loss. Pain rushed in so hard it stole what little breath she had left.
The room gave one last deep shudder.
Then Maeve collapsed.
She hit the blood-slick floor, one arm folding beneath her, auburn hair spilling across her face. The red was gone from her eyes now. Only blue remained, dazed and wet and terrified as she fought to keep them open.
The voice whispered once more, softer than before, almost amused.
Beautiful.
Maeve’s fingers twitched against the floor, and somewhere beneath the club the earth trembled in answer.
“No,” she breathed, barely there.
Then her eyes slipped shut.
Alaric surveyed the battlefield with sharp, exhausted eyes. Club Blood was in ruins. Bood painted the walls and floors in dark streaks. Ash lay scattered everywhere in drifting piles, mixing with shattered glass and splinters of wooden chairs. The remnants of Hayden’s water cannons intermingled with it all. Smoke curled through the pulsing red lights that somehow still flashed overhead despite the devastation.
They had survived. Xarus had not. His attention moved quickly across the team, counting heads, and checking wounds. Then he saw Maeve collapsed.
"Maeve," he called out. A Shadow Gate tore open beside her instantly, swirling with dark violet light and revealing the mansion infirmary beyond. "Get her through now." His gaze swept over the others. "Everyone gets checked and cleared first. Then we can relax."
Hayden was already moving, dropping beside Maeve. "Jennifer, if you can get her shoulders, I’ve got her legs."
Jennifer took a step towards Hayden. She was frozen where she had been. One hand was extended towards where the now dead master had been, to hold him back and still if another arrow shook loose. That had proven unnecessary. And now he was gone. Maeve had finished him. Jennifer stood shocked not by the brutality of the attack but by the sudden absence of the power that had defined her existence for weeks now. Just because Maeve had landed the killing blow did not mean Jennifer's body wasn't going through the same changes. She had taken blows, fallen, thrown her body around, with a strength she no longer had. She winced at a sudden sharp pain in her side and doubled over. And then her real power came back. The power flickered in the place as it flew into her. Her hands sparked as she fought for the memory to control it. She gave Hayden a helpless look and took a deep breath. "I've barely got me."
"I've got her." A familiar voice came through from Alaric's portal where Jean and Dr. Reyes were waiting for them. The a careful telekinetic touch, Jean carried Maeve from the club into the Med Bay of Xavier's.
As the gruesome bedlam finally came to an end and Xarus crumbled before their eyes, the club itself seemed to exhale. The oppressive darkness that had saturated every corner of the building evaporated with him, leaving behind only the harsh glow of flickering lights and the wreckage of what now looked more like an abandoned warehouse than a den of death. The air no longer carried the suffocating weight of ancient evil, only smoke, dust, and the metallic scent of blood.
Blade pushed himself to his feet with a few uneven steps. He paused to inspect the wounds across his body and the curse that still lingered beneath his skin. Jennifer and Maeve had been freed from their afflictions, but Blade remained what he had always been, he was still the Daywalker.
“You do good work, X-Men.” The words came rough through a cough as he steadied himself. Despite the injuries, he appeared to be recovering with unnatural speed. “There are always more things lurking in the dark, but New York’s a hell of a lot safer now that the Son of Dracula is dead.”
“What about you?” Kennedy asked as she climbed down from the wreckage and moved toward Alaric’s portal home. “You’re still…”
“That’s a story for another time,” Blade replied with the faintest smirk, just enough to reveal the sharp edge of his fangs. “Until then, me and my crew will keep hunting the monsters that plague this city.”
He turned toward the club’s ruined entrance. Outside, several figures dressed in the same black leather had already arrived, tending to wounded patrons and securing the area with practiced efficiency. Blade glanced back over his shoulder one last time. “But if the night ever gets bad enough again, I know who to call.”
With that, the Daywalker disappeared into the chaos outside, leaving the X-Men alone within the ruined remains of Club Blood. For several long moments, nobody moved. The adrenaline of battle was beginning to fade, replaced by exhaustion, relief, and the lingering realization of just how close they had come to disaster. Around them, the wrecked club stood silent save for the crackle of dying fires and the distant wail of approaching sirens, giving the team their first real chance to take stock of themselves, their injuries, and everything that had happened that night.
"Nice work X-Men, at least the collateral damage was in an abandoned building." Jean said with a small smirk as she took in the damaged club. "Dr. Reyes is available if you need medical care and my doors are always open if you'd like to talk. Otherwise, there are hot showers and a dinner waiting for you."
As the team traveled through Alaric's portal, the sound of police sirens could be heard moving in at an accelerated rate. The little evidence inside the club would be minimal and confusing during any form of police investigation, but those who knew would understand that New York City now a little safer thanks to the X-Men.
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