(Marvel) Dying for a Drink 2/2

[tsukinofaerii]

Dying for a Drink
Previous part here
By tsukinofaerii
Betas: jazzypom & dieewigenacht
Rating: SNAP.
Standard Warnings: Male/Male, Female/Female, Suggested Male/Female, Violence, Profanity, Sexual content, potentially disturbing (see spoilers)
Extra Warnings: Death, vampirism, explicit torture, implied rape, threats to children, cancer.
Spoilers: Ultimates 1 & 2; breaks off before 3
Series: Marvel 1610
Pairings: Steve/Tony, OFC/OFC, past Steve/Jan

Summary: Tony takes up an offer that has tragic effects, and Steve is forced to handle the outcome. But Tony's business isn't done yet, and so Steve finds himself struggling with vampire politics and his own sexuality. (Complete novella — 60k words)

This story is a work of transformative fiction, such being defined as a work which incorporates characters and situations which have been created by other authors/artists. No infringement of copyright is intended and no profit is being made from the creation or dissemination of this work. Marvel and all its characters are owned by God Knows Who. They are used with respect and admiration for the work.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: This was plotted for Halloween (the alternative plot) and written for NaNoWriMo. It's been heavily edited since that original draft. It deals with sensitive, potentially triggering topics. Please feel free to contact me with any specific concerns that may not have been covered in the warnings.

I love jazzypom. You may thank her copiously for about 10k of this in numbers, and much of it in value. That is all.

Points of Interest (SPOILERS): 1) A wiki entry of note and a poem in use.

***
"Stephan and Erwin are not back yet. Nor Andrea." Pale fingers laced together as Caine stared at the tiny woman standing at the foot of the table. "And now you have sent out Ian and Woon."

The room was dark, as always, with only a pale glimmer of golden light from the oil lanterns daring to glance off the polished tabletop. Light was something their dinner needed, not them. The other eight members of the council were silent. The leader had the stage, and none of them wanted to risk catching his attention.

Ezrabet hung her head, platinum blonde curls tumbling around her shoulders, made even more striking by the slim black dress she wore. It was the only shade of pure black in the room, a mark of shame. It burned in her, but she kept her face placid, even as she cursed inwardly. "They're not. They're likely dead."

"They were very promising."

"They were." They had been fools, just like every other child taken from the modern era. Excitement overwhelmed caution, and led them to their deaths. If she didn't need Tony Stark so badly, she would have been pleased to see them gone.

"How many has Stark killed?" Wood scraped against the marble floor as Caine shifted in his chair. His green eyes were wide, a child asking an innocent question. Ezrabet had known children like that. They drowned puppies without a tear, and raised fists against the helpless. Of all things, she despised the petty sort of tyrant. "A dozen, now—wastes, for the most part, but some very promising children, gone to those damnable gadgets he uses. And Stark, only newly reborn six months past."

"It is not only Stark," Ezrabet insisted, her small hands clenched in fists at her side. "Captain America has joined him. He—"

Wood smashed against the wall as Caine rose to his feet, slamming back his chair with so much force that it shattered. "He would not have had a chance had you taken Stark six months ago!"

Icy blue eyes met green, and tension twanged in the air between them, as though Ezrabet would object to the accusation. Her lips formed the words silently, a breath away from speaking, and condemning herself. Then her head dipped down, bowed once more. "Yes, sir."

Breath eased out of chests that had grown unaccustomed to it when the moment passed. Ezrabet was not a favorite, but loss of a member was an eternal reminder that only one of them was permanent. He was older than all of them—older than any nation still in existence. He'd seen the passage of ages, and he'd taken down subordinates for less cheek than Ezrabet had offered, but none of them would respect her if she bowed too easily. She walked the razor's edge, and counted on her cut and bleeding feet to keep her from slipping.

He was the reason most vampires didn't see the end of their first century. The pack had to be culled to ensure strength, and it was up to the leader to do so. And he did. With glee.

Caine settled his gloved hands on the glass inset before him, palms flat. He stared at the submissive vampire, eyes sharp as he took in every line of her. "You have. But I am a forgiving man. You have a chance to redeem yourself."

Her chin came up. Ezrabet's eyes were huge and blue in her face, the skin bleached from the years before her death, when she'd been trapped in her tower with only a small window to show her daylight. She looked like a child, though she'd been far from it when death had first come for her, in a cold castle in Slovakia. "Anything. Tell me what to do."

A slender hand was held forth, palm up. "First, you'll renew your vows." When she looked away, he nodded. "You have started to stray. You all do. But it stops here. Feed, Erzabet."

Sullenly, she slunk forward, her head bowed over his palm, placing a kiss to the center. Her hands stayed steady, even though she longed to rip the arm from his body and feed it to him.

She was a member of the Council! A woman of the noblest blood, and he still treated her like the lowest of children, a commoner and an idiot. The insult burned in her stomach. For a moment, her fingers tightened, so close to attacking him that she could almost feel his flesh giving way under her hands.

Along the wall, Celicia's cloaked form watched. She was sandwiched between guards, unarmed and vulnerable.

Everyone heard when Ezrabet's teeth sank obediently into Caine's hand and she began to feed, binding herself to his order. She only took a few small mouthfuls, leaving the wound to drip blackened ooze when she was finished. Her head stayed bowed low, submissive.

The other hand smoothed her hair back from her brow. "You will not ever raise tooth or hand to harm me. You will follow my command. Won't you, dearest?"

"I will." The snarl in Ezrabet's voice was unmistakable, but she didn't lift her head. She couldn't. Too much rested on her strength to submit. "And what is your command, Lord Caine?"

"You know what it is. Capture Stark. Bring him here. Use any means you deem necessary."

She looked up. Razor-edged teeth caught at her lip, slicing into it until blood trickled down her chin. Ezrabet caught it absently on a finger and licked it up. "And Rogers?" Her eyes slid to one of the cloaked figures gathered at Caine's back. Before she could be called out on her wandering attention, they snapped back to the imposing figure in front of her. "What of him?"

"He is not needed."

Ezrabet nodded. If Caine wanted to underestimate Rogers, after how well he'd foiled their earlier schemes, so be it. It would be one more weapon in her arsenal. "May I have permission to withdraw, sir?"

He dismissed her with a flick of his fingers. She bowed to hide her disgust and let herself out, allowing herself the release of cracking the doors shut behind her.

"Celicia."

The woman appeared at her elbow in a blink. Ezrabet hadn't seen her leave the hall, but Celicia had her ways. "My Lady?"

Calculations ran behind Ezrabet's eyes. She would only have one chance to make this right before Caine called in his debt. The game had to end, or the sacrifice could not be borne. "Collect and send me sixty of the youngest. Have them report to me before nightfall to be bound. I shall not have any fleeing when they are needed."

"And me?"

They kept walking, passing row after row of her playrooms, with the toys tucked neatly inside. Some of them were still screaming. "You will stay here. Make certain the other members are safely away. No stragglers shall be tolerated." Celicia made a noise of protest, her hand briefly closing over Ezrabet's wrist. "I have placed you in too much danger," Ezrabet continued, switching to her home tongue in order to confuse any listeners. "I would never be able to live easy, if you were to be hurt before the game is played. Stay here, and safe."

Celicia said nothing as they passed to the next level up. Her new, black velvet cloak brushed Ezrabet's ankles, so close they walked up the steps.

Finally, before Ezrabet opened the door, Celicia broke the silence. "Do you think Stark would give in to Lord Caine's plans? Could he even build the machine?"

Ezrabet tipped her head at her companion, lips crooked in a smile. "He would rather take his own head. I am rather depending on it."
***
Steve leaned back against the closet wall. Beyond the shades of the closet blinds, the suite at the Hilton was exactly what it was supposed to be. The only time Steve had ever seen a room look like that was when he'd met the president back in '42. The room was done in tasteful shades of brown and gold, and Steve was pretty sure the curtains were silk. They'd scattered the bed sheets and some of the clothes Steve had left there to make it look lived in, even though leaving the bed unmade ticked every bit of basic training Steve had ever had. Tony had insisted, though.

An expensive hotel booked under the name Roger Stevens had to get some attention.

Next to him, Tony was a warm, still presence. At least he was breathing now and then; Steve had made it clear exactly how creepy it was when he stopped. Other than that, the only indication that Tony was even alive was the occasional slide of fingers up the inside of his thigh. Even the cheek against his shoulder was absolutely still, as if the need to move had departed with the rest of his technical life.

Tony had gone off on his own—to get something else to eat, he said, but when he came back it was with a condensed version of the Iron Man armor. It fit under his clothes like another skin and flexed like cloth. If Steve hadn't known it was metal, he would have sworn it was one of the new synthetic things that Fury had been all over.

It was weird, seeing Tony in bright light. He was still Tony, Steve would know him anywhere, but there were differences. He looked younger, skin less pinched, body not so scrawny. The lines in his face that Steve had gotten used to were gone, or faded. It had taken him a while to realize that was because he wasn't taking a whole hospital worth of medicines anymore, and the tumor was gone. He hadn't realized how much effect his ill health had been having until it didn't matter anymore.

Midnight was creeping past when the door handle jiggled. At his side, Tony tensed, but instead of looking at the door his head turned towards the balcony. His lips pulled back in what Steve was pretty sure was an unconscious expression, baring his teeth. A click sounded through the room as the electronic lock on the door was triggered.

Just as the front door eased open, the sliding glass balcony did the same. There were two of them—both male, dressed in dark clothing. They didn't say anything as they closed the doors and canvassed the room separately. Next to him, Tony had sat up, watching them. They moved so quickly, Steve could barely see them as dark blurs of motion. One paused and tipped his head to the other, then ducked into the small lounging room that had been set off to the side, while the other ducked into the bedroom.

The door to the closet was open and Tony gone before Steve could signal. The armor under his t-shirt and jeans didn't even creak as he crept across the room, steps muffled by the thick pile of the carpet. Steve scooped up his shield and followed. Tony went after the one in the bedroom, leaving the other to Steve. That was fine by him—one each was close enough to fair.

The entertainment room was simple: just a sofa and a recessed television in the far wall, with more electronics built into it than Steve had ever cared about. There wasn't much that might have been handy, but he made a note of it all; anything could be a weapon. Shouting a warning, he threw himself at the vampire's back. Wood and plastic cracked as his shield missed the head and crashed into the entertainment center instead. From the bedroom, he heard a thunk and a strangled scream. Practice and training let him ignore it. The vampire didn't have that much concentration. His bald head turned towards the sound, giving Steve a chance to grab him by the elbow and swing him into a headlock. His fingers dug at Steve's forearm, pressing muscle and tendon down to the bone. Steve jerked his arm, feeling the sharp crack of a broken collarbone as they grappled.

Biting numbness crept up Steve's arm as the vampire's grip did its job. His hold loosened and the monster slipped free, slamming a shoulder into Steve's stomach. He heaved, rolling Steve over his shoulder to crash into the couch. It collapsed in on itself with a crack of solid wood shattering around him.

Fangs showed under a pierced lip in a sneer. Tattoos writhed under the man's skin as he flexed melodramatically, making the snake writhe along his biceps. "Want a coke again?" It was the drink slinger from the bar—Ivan, Evan, something like that. Steve had known he was bad news. Another scream sounded from the bedroom, and a crack appeared in the adjoining wall. This time, the vampire didn't flinch. He'd learned his lesson from the last hit Steve had landed. "Or something a little heavier?"

Steve pulled himself out of the crushed wreckage of the sofa. Stuffing and ripped brocade scattered around him, along with the splinters of the wooden framework. The sounds in the other bedroom were growing almost gruesome, but he had to trust that Tony knew what he was doing. If he didn't, he'd go insane.

Under the bright florescent glare of the overhead lights, the vampire's skin was sickly pale, almost translucent, and his teeth were yellow. Steve kept his center of balance low and circled, shield up and braced for anything.

"Captain America, huh? You don't look so tough to me—sure as hell ain't the guy who had 'em on the run sixty years ago." The vampire blurred into motion. Steve barely brought up his shield in time to block the knife the vampire had pulled from an ankle sheath. He bounced backwards and rolled to his feet, putting his back to the wall. "They promised that whoever took you down would get as much of that super soldier blood as they could swallow, but seems like someone already raided the pantry." Metal screeched over metal as the vampire took another shot. Steve brought his knee up, catching him a lucky blow to the ribs. He grabbed for a handhold on its arm, but the cloth of his shirt ripped. The vampire sped away again and the chance was gone.

"I can smell him on you, Rogers. Like territory that's been marked. You take him, or you take it, huh?" Anger narrowed Steve's world down to a point as the vampire laughed. "I bet you bend over like a good little boy, don't you? Big bad super soldier. No wonder you wear all that damn leather. I bet you're just fucking eager to take Stark's cock. Who'd have though, Captain America taking it up the ass for a playboy like Stark. Makes ya lose faith in the world, don't it?"

The words sunk in. Steve refused to show how they hit home. He wouldn't give some two-bit brat that sort of victory. But his silence only made the lack of any other sound more obvious. Noise had stopped coming from the bedroom—he wasn't sure if that was a good sign, or a very bad one.

Steve kept his back to the wall and crouched down low, making sure the bastard couldn't use his speed to get behind him. It was just like sparring with Pietro. He just had to compensate. He wasn't bright enough to pull anything fancy—his whole strategy seemed to be fighting like a human, but faster and stronger. That was the sort of thing Steve could work with—had literally been made for.

When the vampire moved again, Steve stopped trying to focus on the movement and let his instincts estimate the trajectory. He jumped to the side and swung his shield at shoulder level. A clank and a jolt up his arm told him that he'd connected before he saw the limp body rolling to a stop against the wall. Blood poured out of a wide crack in his skull, staining the tan carpeting in a streak.

Even though the vampire seemed beaten, Steve kept his shield raised as he knelt down to check. Nothing happened as he bound its wrists with police grade cuffs, not even so much as a twitch. The head wound was still bleeding, though, and he hadn't shriveled, so he was probably still alive—or whatever it was vampires were.

A light step sounded in the doorway. "You got it?"

Tony didn't look affected at all. His hair hadn't even been ruffled. The vampire under his arm, though, looked about three steps away from blowing into dust. Blood caked down the front of his chest, oozing from charred wounds across his shoulders and arms. One eye was missing, and a full half of his scalp had been reduced to a pulpy mess. Tony dropped him to the floor, letting his face catch him. He hadn't even bothered with handcuffs.

"Yeah," Steve nodded, picking up his own prisoner, who groaned weakly as he woke. The man must have weighed almost two hundred pounds. It made balancing him awkward. "I've got him."

For a second, Tony was all predator as he looked down at his catch. His eyes were sharp and narrowed, expression passionless. It was an expression Steve used to see Tony use on Fury and his board-members. In a fight, he tended to be gleeful more than anything else, trapped in the adrenaline rush. Tony ipped his head thoughtfully. The toe of boot prodded his captive's probably cracked ribs. "Excellent. Now we just need to find out what they know."

Steve was aware of the vampire-bartender under his arm listening. "How do you interrogate a vampire?" His eyebrows rose in curiosity. They'd never bothered trying in the war. It was more important to kill the things, and the ones they had managed to catch were too dangerous to leave alive for long, but not high up enough to know anything useful. This time was different, though. They needed information, and this was the only source they had. "The only thing I know is sunlight, but we can't wait for dawn."

He just had to trust that Tony knew what he was doing.

A tiny bottle appeared out of Tony's pocket, small enough that it might probably be allowed through the airport check in. Small golden motes danced in clear liquid as he shook it. "I have an idea or two."

Steve eyed the bottle, keeping his knee on the vampire's back as he stirred. The head wound healed as he watched, much faster than Tony's had. Bone had already knit together, and the first layers of skin were starting to form. His injured wrist ached, reminding him that it would be hours before he could look forward to any sort of relief.

A little cruelty suddenly seemed like a good idea. "What's that?"

"Goldschläger. Cinnamon schnapps." Tony juggled it from hand to hand, the glass bottle clinking as it bounced off the half-gauntlets that wrapped around his palms. "Burns like the devil going down, trust me. Not my usual poison, but the minibar seems admirably stocked for our purposes."

Some things obviously wouldn't change just because of something like a death. "This isn't the time for a drink, Tony."

"Au contraire." Sharp lines crinkled the corner of Tony's eyes as he smiled. "It's the perfect time."

They picked the bartender. Tony's catch was in such bad condition that his skin had wrinkled and dried out while his wounds healed, leaving a barely living husk. On the other hand, the bartender was already awake and cursing. Tony sat on his chest and Steve on his knees.

Steve had never seen someone scream at the sight of a bottle of alcohol before. Metal slapped against flesh as Tony jabbed a palm over his mouth. "Don't even try to bite me. You'll break your fangs, and that would be terrible."

The bartender's glared up at him, eyes drifting back and forth between them and the alcohol.

Steve leaned on his shoulders, keeping him down while Tony broke the seal on the single-serving schnapps. "Here's the deal. We need information. You're going to give it to us, or else you get to take a nice big sip. Don't scream now." The hand let up.

Yellowed teeth flashed as the vampire stretched his jaw. "You wouldn't," he accused. "You're superheroes. You don't have the guts for it."

"Hold his mouth open." Steve's fingers dug into the muscle of the vampire's jaw. He resisted, locking his teeth together, but they couldn't hold forever and slowly pried apart.

"Do you really want to try me and find out?" Tony asked conversationally, swirling the bottle and making the gold flakes dance. "You assholes have been trying to catch me for months. I want to know why."

The bottle dangled again, the clear liquid and gold flakes beautiful as they danced inside the simple glass when Tony tipped it over the vampire's open mouth. Liqueur cling to the mouth of the bottle, only a breath away from dripping. "You know, it's not as bad with food, but alcohol's just a killer on our systems. I wonder why that is. Not too dissimilar from a mouthful of drain cleaner, is it? Except we heal the damage too fast to die. I figure just a sip will only hurt for an hour or so. I wonder how long a whole bottle will last. A week? Longer?"

The vampire's eyes widened. They didn't have time to react before a fist slammed into the back of Tony's head. The other vampire had woken up. Tony sprawled on the floor, limbs loose and awkward, temporarily stunned. Tattooed muscles strained as the bartender heaved himself upward, using brute force to throw Steve off. Metal snapped like damp clay as he ripped his wrists apart. His elbow swing at Steve, but Steve rolled out of the way, reaching for his shield.

"No time!" The words were oddly slurred through the other vampire's bruises. "Run!"

The bartender snarled, then grabbed the other's arm. Together he and his partner threw themselves out the closed balcony windows. Glass shards rained down as they shattered. The two vampires dived over the rail and out of sight.

Tony groaned and rubbed the back of his head, bracing himself with his other arm against the floor. "I'm growing terribly annoyed at the number of head injuries I've received lately. Just when I'm rid of the tumor, I collect permanent brain damage dealt by petty thugs."

"You'll heal." Steve rubbed his shoulder, leaning against his shield for support. "Did you get it on him? Will we be able to track them?"

"Easier than naked pictures of Paris on the internet." Tony held up a hand and wiggled it. "Not that those were my fault."

"Of course not." Muscles ached as Steve groaned and rolled to his feet. In a few minutes the aches would be gone, but those minutes would hurt. "You're sure you can hack SHIELD to track them?"

"Who do you think set them up?" Tony sniffed at the bottle of alcohol mournfully. It had been upended in the escape, leaving only a few flakes down at the bottom. "Some kind of genius I'd be if I didn't leave myself a back door."

Admiration and annoyance battled in Steve's head. Of course Tony would be underhanded enough to have holes only he could exploit in any security system he designed. But the dishonesty of it rubbed him entirely the wrong way. He looked at Tony through the corner of his eye, then finally gave a mental shrug and let it drop until they had more time. "We've got to get to your lab."

It was enough that Tony was a complete bastard, or else they'd have needed to track the vampires on foot. At the speed they moved, even injured, it could have been impossible.

A heavy knock sounded at the door. "Hotel security!"

Steve sighed. This was the part he always hated, and there was no one else to deal with it except for a supposed dead man. "After dealing with that."

Tony grinned so widely that he showed every one of his brand new fangs. "I'll toddle to the closet and leave you to that then, Mr. Captain."

"Thanks." Steve did his best to mimic Clint's best level of irony.

"Oh, don't mention it. I'll put it on your tab."

***

Luke Air Force Base had been closed back at the end of the millennium, before the Chitauri had even dreamed of putting their end game into motion. It had been a godsend to them. A massive military structure just laying around, waiting for someone to move in and make use of it. Somehow, over half of it had survived the battle over Phoenix intact. It wasn't the half that most people knew about, though.

Miles and miles of underground labs stretched out through the desert, almost entirely untouched by the fight that had decimated the buildings and aircraft hangars above. Everything from experimental research in nuclear fusion to biological agents had been developed there, in a place more secure than Area 54 could dream of being. It was the perfect place for a lone vampire to den up, where there were no leases or credit cards needed to out him. More importantly, it was the perfect place to hide for someone with as much hardware as Tony liked to play with.

Steve would never have expected to see Tony living underground, but he wouldn't have expected Tony to be undead either. He was learning to change his preconceptions. Sometimes he had to change them every few minutes. Tony Stark could do that to a man.

The tunnels were completely silent as they paced through them. Arizona didn't have a high enough water table to allow for much seepage, and the few rodents that had dared to burrow so close to human habitation had been scared off. Even their footsteps hardly made any noise at all, Steve's army boots not being steel-tipped. Tony had finally started acting like a supernatural creature and glided along the concrete corridors in relative silence.

It was weird, but peaceful. It reminded Steve of the few times he had worked espionage cases in remote areas. Rural villages tended to have the same sort of dead quality to them at night, when the farm animals were out to pasture and the people were smart enough to go to bed early and not witness anything that might get them in trouble.

That had always come with a sort of tension, though. Not with Tony. If anything, it was almost easier than a stroll through Central Park. He caught his hand reaching for Tony's and locked it around the strap on his shield. Tony wasn't a dame, and it would be a dumb move to act like he was.

In the dim glow of the emergency lights, Steve thought he saw Tony send him a long, low glance, and a frown. Then his legs stretched, sending him a few steps ahead. "My lab's close by. We'll run some checks, go over what I have and tap into the SHIELD network to track our little friends. I've already searched everywhere I can, but maybe you'll spot something. Maybe we'll even catch an episode of How It's Made—I love that show."

Steve snorted. "You miss being able to play with your tech. Admit it."

"Of course. I do love my work, you know. I'd marry it, if it weren't for a few pesky laws and some Senators I haven't managed to buy. The United States is so provincial." Tony took a sharp right and vanished to a small subset of deeper shadows. With a hiss of displaced air, a door slid open, spearing a rectangle of light into the tunnel. "Coming?"

The lab was visibly Tony's, from the tools scattered around to the equations written in barely legible print on the whiteboards. Red and gold armor dominated the far wall; the Iron Man armor was as sleek as ever, without any sign that it had been dropped into the Pacific Ocean. The lab wasn't nearly as large as the one Steve knew he had kept in New York, but it wouldn't need to be. Tony was only working on one project—staying alive, and his focus when he wanted to could be phenomenal.

Tony slid into a chair and curved his fingers over the keyboard. It lit up. A second later, three screens flared to life, the Stark OS logo flashing over it. When prompted, Tony typed in the password—Str1k3R, whatever that might have been, More screens lit up along the back wall, showing everything from CNN to MSNBC and, off in a corner by itself, the science channel. "Pull up a chair, Steve, and we'll get started. Nothing like a little espionage to get the blood pumping."

"You had all this brought in from New York?" Steve grabbed one of the office chairs and slid it into the open spot in the corner of Tony's workspace. "How'd you manage to stay legally dead this long? Someone must have noticed."

"This stuff?" A few key taps had a screen open, plain text scrolling down it at a speed that made Steve's head hurt. The only thing that stayed stationary was the SHIELD logo up in the corner. "No, this is all scrounged from here and there—it's amazing what Radio Shack doesn't know it has. Recycle, reuse, renew, I'm as green as the next guy. Probably more, since the next guy is you."

"I recycle." Steve stopped trying to follow what Tony was up to. He couldn't even keep track of his keystrokes, much less figure out what he was doing. Three years had given him a pretty good touch with modern technology, but Tony passed modern by a decade on his lunch breaks. "I'm surprised you bothered. Must be hard, trying to keep it all together."

"You didn't think I'd go six months without my toys, did you?" Bright blue eyes glanced at him under a thick fringe of lashes, and that was a come-hither look worthy of any starlet from Steve's era. "I gave up alcohol, sex and the world stage. Next you'll want me to stop mistranslating Wikipedia articles to Swahili."

"Yeah, sure you did." Steve frowned, annoyed at how Tony seemed to have to bring sex into everything. "Okay, alcohol and fame, got you, but that wasn't celibacy back there in the hotel room. Tony Stark is a vampire and he hasn't used it to pick up women?"

The tap-tap of the keyboard paused for a second, not long enough to be anything other than a blip in the rhythm. His eyes stayed fixed on the monitor. "No," Tony said, voice low and tight, "I haven't. Starting to think that was a screwed up idea, though."

"Why?" Tony's jaw tightened, but he didn't make a move to answer the question. It wasn't just strange that Tony had gone celibate, it ran counter to everything Steve knew about him. The only time Steve knew of that he hadn't had a different girl every night had been when he'd been engaged to Natasha. Then he'd been surprisingly... faithful... "This isn't because of me. Tell me it's not."

"Fine. It's not you." A piece of plastic cracked as Tony jabbed at something too hard. He whirled in his office chair to face away, yanking open a box to dig through the bits and pieces of scrap in it. Metal clattered as he shoved pieces aside to get to the bottom. "Happy now, Steve? It's not you, so you can feel safe tucked away in your little closet. Maybe you'll meet the other three Backstreet boys."

"Potts said that we'd been sleeping together exclusively for a year." And he hadn't believed her. Hadn't wanted to believe her. "Want to tell me about that?"

"Not in the least. I think I'd rather take a swig of vodka." Tony didn't turn around. "I had an arm full of a very vigorous, very eager Captain America every other night. I don't think I would have had the energy to entertain anyone else."

Steve stared at his back. It was so stiff that he could probably bounce a penny off it. "I don't get you."

"It's mutual, trust me." Tony must have found whatever he'd been looking for, because he whirled back around to face the monitor. He jabbed whatever it was into a port, still not even glancing in Steve's direction. There was a fine tremble in his fingers—Steve wasn't sure if it was anger or something else. He knew how to deal with anger, but there were a lot of other things Tony tossed around like juggling balls that he just didn't get. "Just let it go. I'm not going over this again. You're straight. I'm not. We'll forget about it, okay? Isn't that what you want?"

"What do you want?" He shifted forward, resting his elbows on his knees. The chair was just a little too small to be comfortable, but at least it didn't have arms; those always were too small for a man his size. "You're real good at not saying anything, and then getting mad when I don't get it."

"Same thing I always want: a good fuck." Tony's eyes lifted to his, finally. He had the same, devil-may-care smile he gave to dames and reporters. Steve was surprised to realize that it wasn't familiar—he hadn't seen it turned on him since before L.A. "That what you want to hear?"

No, it wasn't. Steve wasn't really sure what he wanted to hear. "I want the truth."

"No you don't." The smile vanished. Tony gave the keyboard three more taps—apparently without looking at it—then let the screen fill with flashing satellite images, searching, as he turned the last of his attention to Steve. It was like being at the center of a bulls-eye in a bomb drop zone. "If you wanted the truth, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

Tony would let it go, Steve realized. He really would this time. They'd let it drop, and they'd never have this sort of merry-go-round discussion again. That should have been much more of a relief. It really should have.

Steve set his jaw. "Just tell me. Then I'll tell you whether I wanted to know or not."

Blue eyes held his. Tony's hands laced together at the fingers, as if to keep him from doing something with them, Steve wasn't sure what. He'd forgotten to breathe again—it was strange to hear only his own breath and the whirl of the machinery in the lab. One of these days, he was going to ask how Tony could stand to forget like that.

A second, slow intake of air finally ended the quiet. Long, lean muscle shifted under his dark dress shirt as Tony leaned back in his chair. "The truth.... The truth is that I would, perhaps, be pleased by a slightly more permanent arrangement than what we have heretofore enjoyed. And you wouldn't. So that's that."

Something dark and unpleasant tightened in Steve's chest. He found himself starting to look away, then made himself look back. Tony hadn't really been right—he'd known that. It didn't mean he wanted to know it. "I'm not one of those kinds of guys. I'm not a faggot."

"Oh?" A slow, predatory smile curled Tony's lips. Before Steve could blink, a new weight come to rest in his lap. Tony settled against him, pressed chest to chest, with a leg on either side of Steve's hips. "You're not one of those types, huh? A faggot? What the hell do you think I am, then? Because I'm absolutely agog to know, I'm sure."

In spite of himself, Steve felt his cheeks grow hot. Worse, he was getting hard. "It's not like that—"

"Then what is it?" Warm hands tugged at the hem of his uniform, sliding along the skin of his sides. Steve kept his hands locked around the chair's seat like it would drop out from under him. "You got something against faggots, soldier?"

"Tony—"

"Oh, no." Tony's hands stopped creeping up him, but he didn't pull them back. "If you want to stay in that screwed up, pretty blond skull of yours, go ahead. I'm not under any obligation to hole up in there with you, and I sure as hell don't have to take this homophobic bullshit." Thin but soft lips rested against Steve's for the space a shared breath. "And I'm not going to be collateral damage while you work the war out in there. I can do casual, if that's what we're going to do, but you're going to tell me right the fuck now if that's what it is we're doing."

"I—" For once, Tony didn't interrupt him. Casual meant that Tony would go out and have the time of his life with probably about half the population of Phoenix. He'd thought that had been what Tony was doing. It hadn't set well with him before, and it did even worse since finding out otherwise. Just thinking about it made Steve want to hit things. But the other option would be a relationship, and he wasn't....

In the back of the room, every screen was playing the same thing. People were screaming, streaming off to one side. The image was oddly tilted, as if the camera had been upset. Streetlights had been broken, lying in the center of the street like downed trees. Bodied littered the sidewalk, splattered red with their own blood. Some of them were still moving, but stopped as they were trampled by the ones running away.

The capture beneath read Terrorist Attack in Phoenix, AZ.

Figuring out what they were doing was going to have to wait. Steve shoved at Tony's chest lightly, jerking his chin towards the back wall. "Tony, the television."

Familiar lines deepened around Tony's mouth as he twisted on Steve's lap, then even farther when he frowned. "Disable Mute."

Muffled screams and shouts came from hidden speakers, along with the unexpectedly soothing tones of a female newscaster.

—the Phoenix Museum of Art. The children who had been visiting the Museum are still held inside. Sergeant Brians from the Phoenix anti-terrorists task force says that the terrorists have yet to deliver their demands. There has been speculation over whether these are Islamic or Mutant insurgents, but official estimates are Mutant. No word on what sort of weapons they have, but the known body count has already totaled more than a hundred people, mostly adults, as the terrorists clear out the streets surrounding the building—

"Villains must love you. That sort of timing to avoid an issue costs me a few hundred thousand at a go. Mute." Tony slid off of Steve's lap and stepped back. "It looks like we don't have to go looking for them after all. Time to bust old Ironsides out of retirement. Interested in a little bit of action, big boy?"

Steve stood and tugged on his cowl. "You can't be sure it's them."

"True, true, but that's what the satellites are for." Tony grinned as he moved some of the clutter away from the Iron Man suit, a boyish expression that made him look more like a college kid out on a lark than a predator. "How well do you think you can hold on?"
***
Steve clung to Tony's side as they soared over Phoenix, fist firmly wrapped around a make-shift hand-hold Tony had cobbled together. The city was pretty at night—not New York, but not bad, set out in neat squares and grids that were lit up with Christmas lights. It was freezing cold so high up, but nothing he hadn't dealt with before. The smudge of what was happening at the Museum was obvious—it was lit up nearly as bright as day, surrounded by the red and blue flash of police cars, with no less than five news helicopters overhead. Most of the bystanders had been cleared off or killed. They were high enough that Steve couldn't pick out individual bodies as anything more than ant-sized shadows against the cement.

"Ready for action?" Sometime during the last six months, Tony had adjusted the tone of Iron Man's voice. It sounded even more mechanical, probably as an intimidation tactic.

Steve adjusted his grip, making sure that he wasn't going to lose it until he was good and ready. "Take us in."

"Roger that, Captain." Even through the synthesizer, he could hear the grin in Tony's voice. Or maybe that was just because he knew Tony. "Approaching for landing, please fasten your seatbelts and keep all tray tables in their fully upright and locked positions."

The thrusters cut to half power, and they dropped like the ton of metal the Iron Man armor was. Steve's stomach, unfortunately, didn't. He clenched his teeth against the surge of nausea and hung on. Fifty meters over the museum, the thrusters kicked in again, letting them turn their fall into a soar. Below the police and few civilians that hadn't been scared off screamed and pointed upward.

"Twenty five meters... Fifteen..." A large bay window approached, stretching across the top story of the building nearly from edge to edge. "Ten... Releasing passenger... Now!" The handle on Iron Man's side cracked and dropped away just as Tony cut sharply upward. Steve dropped off, spinning through the air straight towards the window. He brought his shield up just in time to deflect the shards, rolling to kill his momentum as he hit the floor.

Shouts came from below—they hadn't expected an attack from above. Below the orders and curses were the faint, wailing screams of frightened children. Steve was on his feet before he'd even stopped rolling entirely, racing for the first hiding place he could see, a shadowed alcove that contained a twenty-foot model of a satellite.

There were only two of them, and they didn't have any idea what they were facing. Until they did, he would need some sort of cover. He hopped over the display, crouching down in the shadows behind it.

Just in time, as it turned out. Three people rushed in and spread out, two peeling off while the third went to inspect the shattered window. They didn't have any weapons visible, but that didn't mean a thing. There were worse weapons than guns and knives.

"He was here," the one closest to the satellite display yelled, kneeling down to run his fingers over a piece of floor. "I can smell him."

"Yeah, I think we guessed that." At the window, the only woman held up a piece of glass as big as her hand. She was smart enough to stay low, out of sight of any sniper that the FBI might have called up. She had a head full of blonde curls that looked like they belonged on one of those tetchy little dogs rich old ladies carted around. "Just look around, will you? He's probably already made for the lower levels, if he's got any brains at all."

Steve waited, barely breathing, as the dumb one came closer, still paying more attention to the floor than to what was going on around him. When Steve yanked him around behind the display, he didn't even notice in time to scream before Steve had shoved a cloth between his fangs and wrapped a wire around his throat.

Whatever Tony had done to the wire when he made it, it cut through cloth and skin like soft cheese without any effort at all. It caught on the trachea, but only barely. Gloved fingers had wrapped around the wire as if to pull it loose, but they'd lost their fingertips in the attempt. Heavy weight slammed into Steve's chest as the vampire tried to throw himself backward to avoid the wire, but it wasn't enough to win free. Steve could tell that all it would need to slice the head clean off would be a tug. Bone might give it some trouble, but the rest would be easy.

The vampire stopped breathing, frozen in terror. Helpless noises sounded in the back of his throat, high-pitched from the need to remain perfectly still.

"You want to live, don't you, Mister? Just nod." Steve kept his voice low, mouth right by the vampire's ear. The vampire nodded, long grey hair bouncing frantically with every tiny jerk of his head. He looked old enough to be someone's grandfather, but he moved like a kid a fourth his age. "Good. Here's what we're going to do. Call one of your buddies over. No funny business or you'll be a foot shorter."

Carefully, Steve took the cloth out of the vampire's mouth.

Frightened, mud-colored eyes glanced up at Steve, then back towards his friends. "Hey, Vittor!" His voice was a little high-pitched, but strong and steady. "There's something over here. You need to see it!"

Footsteps padded across the wooden floor, occasionally crunching on a piece of glass. A dark form came around the edge of the satellite. "This had better be good, John— son of a bitch! Brittany!"

Steve cracked John over the head with his elbow and let the limp body drop as Vittor came in swinging. Bones cracked as his fists landed on Steve's shield, not even denting it. Steve brought the edge up, cracking his jaw, and then around. Blood sprayed as Vittor's head flew off, rolling off into a corner while his body dropped.

The woman—Brittany—barreled around the display and skidded to a stop, eyes going first to Vittor's shriveling body, then to John's still-living one. She finally looked up at Steve, and he saw the fear in her eyes. "Fuck."

"That's no language for a lady." Steve stepped around the fallen, shield up and ready, but she didn't seem ready to attack.

"If you haven't figured out that I'm not a lady yet, you're a lot dumber than we've been giving you credit for." Metal boot tips clicked against the hardwood as she stumbled backwards, then went still when Steve lifted his shield to throw. His other hand rested on the gun at his hip—it might not do any good, but even Tony hadn't been sure that a headshot wouldn't down a vampire. "I didn't sign up for this."

"You don't have to stay signed up for it."

She laughed. It was almost a giggle, squeaky and out of control. "You don't know— you've got no idea, do you? It's in the blood—her blood. I can't even run away." She doubled over, trying to quiet her laughter. The second her eyes were off him, Steve threw his shield. It bounced off the wall and rebounded, clipping her temple just as she straightened. The vampire crumbled, unconscious, to the floor.

A quick check showed that the room was secure. No one else had entered while he'd been busy. A news helicopter dipped low enough to shine a floodlight inside, but he ignored it. There were bigger things to worry about than a news crew who were too wiling to risk their lives for a story.

In his ear, the communicator beeped. "Cap, you in position?"

Steve tapped the send button and eased his way out of the room and down the nearest set of stairs. "Almost. Downed three. It's definitely vampires."

"Lovely." Shouts from the searchers echoed up the stairwell through the dark. The vampires had killed most of the lights, probably to confuse any humans that came after them. "Let me know when you've found the kids. Iron Man out."

The stairs wrapped around the outer edge of the building, letting out into different specialized levels at every landing. Steve ducked into each, making sure the hostages weren't there before moving on. A few vampires caught him, but the razor wire took care of them before they could warn the others.

First floor, the lobby and gift shop. It was the only place left. Steve crept around a corner and down the last flight of stairs, keeping low. The children's cries were louder, hiccupping sobs that echoed off the high ceiling. He rounded the last corner, then ducked back before he was seen.

Vampires ringed the kids, maybe thirty of them at a glance, all of them dressed in the same solid black clothing as every other vampire he'd seen except Tony. What he assumed was the tour guide, or maybe a teacher, was sprawled out by the entrance, throat gaping open. The children couldn't have been older than twelve.

Atop of the welcome desk, a petite blonde perched, legs crossed. Like the others, she was wearing black, but much of a classier sort—a real dress that went down to her ankles, with heels and a string of black pearls around her throat. She'd pulled her hair into the sort of up-do that dames wore to high-class events, like she was getting ready for a party instead of terrorizing a bunch of children.

A vampire melted out of the shadows behind her. She didn't even turn around. "Well? What word?"

"Whoever came through the window wasn't Stark." The vampire was barely visible in the dark, but Steve thought he was fidgeting. "It smells like a human—male, young, in good health. Carrying at least one firearm."

Sharp clicks sounded over the crying of the children as she tapped her heel back against the stand. "That would be our good Captain, I think. And where he is, Stark is not far behind. Keep looking."

"We've looked everywhere, Madame Bathory. Perhaps they ran."

Steve rolled his eyes, and was disturbed when the "Madame" did the same. "You do not know Stark or Rogers. They are inveterate heroes—they would not leave children in our hands. Stark, at least, knows what we will do with them. Search harder. Look for bodies."

"Bodies?"

Bathory's voice hardened in annoyance. "If you have not found them, then someone has, and that someone did not survive to report it. Look for them. That will tell us how deep they have penetrated. Has Brittany returned?"

"No."

"Find her."

Steve drew back into a dark corner, keeping his back against the wall. He punched the send button at his ear. "In position. First floor lobby. Kids still alive; let's keep it that way."

"Roger that, Rogers. Two minutes to deployment. Wait for it."

Metal dug into Steve's chin as he sank back into the corner, careful to keep the rough stucco from scraping his uniform and alerting the guards. The throat guard Tony had found for him was cumbersome, but it would at least save him from getting his throat ripped out. The rest, he'd have to take care of himself. Tony had wanted to shove him into chain mail, but it would get in the way and be too heavy.

He kept his breathing steady and slow, counting down in his head slowly, waiting for Tony to make his move. This was the worst part of any fight—the waiting. His muscles itched, wanting to be put into action and do something. He pulled down his tinted goggles and focused on staying quiet.

At five seconds to the bottom of the countdown, there came a tinkle of broken glass. Something heavy rolling across the floor. Steve tensed and started a new count from ten.

"What is that— Alex!" Bathory's voice rose. "Get rid of it!"

A crack sounded over the silence, then screams as the lobby was flooded with solid white light, about the same brightness as noon, and—according to Tony—exactly the same composition as sunlight. Steve rolled out, dashing through the burning vampires towards the cluster of children. He scooped up the few that were closest and shoved at the rest. "GO GO GO! THE DOOR! GET TO THE DOOR!" They hesitated, blinking at him through their tears, lowering their hands from their eyes.

One of the brighter ones grabbed the girl next to her and tugged, bodily dragging her towards safety. The wails turned to Captain America as they finally started moving. He put down the two in his arms so they could move on their on and dashed ahead, kicking the door open. More glass broke, this time a full-fledged crash—Iron Man had arrived.

The vampires were blistering, their skin turning lobster red and raw everywhere the light touched them. Some of them screamed, mostly the ones at the farthest edge of the radius. Those closer to the center didn't have enough face or throat left to cry out. One and all they scrambled for the back of the lobby, where the UV bomb couldn't reach, shambling and broken as if they'd been run over. Iron Man stood firm next to the shell, the suit doing its job protecting Tony, even from sunlight. Steve kept hustling kids out the door, picking up the ones that tried to shove before they could cause anyone damage.

Bathory was already back there, her skin only faintly pink in the shadows; she must have moved too fast for the bomb to work. She smiled brightly, hands folded before her as if it were a social situation. "Dear Tony, so good of you to come. It's been too, too long."

"Miss Bathory." If anything, Iron Man's voice was even hollower than before. "I'm afraid it hasn't been long enough, actually."

"You say such cruel things to your mother." The vampires that could were scrambling out the back exit. Most of them only reached as far as the shadows before collapsing. Some didn't even get that far. They curled into fetal balls as they died, skin flaking away. Decay took its toll, leaving a macabre blast radius of fast-rotting corpses. "It is time to come home, Tony. Mother has work for you to do. If you are a good boy, maybe we will even let you keep what's left of your darling Captain over there for a pet, after he has met his obligations."

The last of the children finally ran out. Steve pulled his gun and turned.

"My mother had better fashion sense." Iron Man crunched over the shards of the window he'd broken getting inside. Steve fell in step with him, aiming over the edge of his shield. "What do you people want with me?"

Big, baby doll blue eyes crinkled innocently at them as Bathory smiled. Her teeth were still stained red with someone's blood. "I suppose you shall just have to wait to find out, will you not? Good bye, Captain. Tony." Steve pulled the trigger, firing three shots. They pocked into the wall as she blurred into motion and was gone.

"Damn it!" The faceplate stayed down to protect Tony from the light, but the way Iron Man moved made Tony's frustration as obvious as his expression would have.

"We'll find them." Around them, the abandoned wounded groaned. They weren't going anywhere. Steve nudged one with his foot. She wasn't strong enough to roll out of the way. Most of them had already withered down to dead husks. While he watched, the one he'd nudged stopped whimpering and curled in on herself. "The police are going to have fun figuring this one out."

"The police are going to have fun?" Metal boots crushed a piece of wood as Tony knelt to inspect the flash bomb. It clicked, hissed, and went dark. "You should hear what the news reporters are saying. It seems my lack of death isn't going to remain a secret for much longer."

Steve stared at Iron Man's back, wishing for a second that he and Tony could talk face to face. "Damn it."

"My thoughts precisely."
***
Ring. Ring. Ri— click.

"You've reached the cell phone of Steve Rogers. I'm unavailable to take your call right now, but... Clint, this is ridiculous. You're joking again, aren't you?

"Just say the lines, Rogers."

"Fine. If this actually works, leave a message. Now, how do I delete it and start again?"

"You think I'm going to tell you—"

BEEEEEEEP

"Damn it! Pick up your God damned phone, Steve!" Jan threw the cordless phone down in disgust. It bounced off the edge of the end table and toppled to the immaculate hardwood floor in a clatter of plastic. She kicked it for good measure. Unfortunately, it didn't shatter against the rec room's pale green walls.

Why did they give him a cell phone if he didn't answer it in emergencies?

"Steven is still not answering?" Thor asked from the couch. When the Ultimates had gone private, Tony had brought one in brought in to suit large frames. Years with the team hadn't served it well. It was a battered but comfortable thing done in creams, with odd stains and patched upholstery. Steve had insisted that it be kept.

"Just because something's old doesn't mean you throw it away."

Just looking at it made Jan want to scream or cry, she wasn't sure which.

"No," she finally answered, turning away to run her fingers through her hair. It was getting a little long. Time for a trim. "He's not. I told him not to go. If he's dead because of this crap, I'm going to kill him."

Thor smirked at her illogic. "I'm sure he's in good hands. Trust his good judgment."

Sometimes, she didn't know what to think about Thor, and it was a lot more comfortable not to. They'd all, mostly, come to terms with the God of Thunder thing, but he saw too much for Jan to ever be completely comfortable with him. "Steve doesn't have good judgment. He has instincts and a lot of justifications."

"His instincts, then."

That was hardly reassuring.

Jan paced, ignoring the god on the sofa. She kept turning things over in her mind, putting the puzzle pieces together every which way. No matter how she thought of it, nothing made sense.

Tony had taken the Iron Man armor with him when he fell. Even if someone had pulled it out of the ocean, it couldn't have been in a usable condition. That meant, logically, that whoever was on TV in the suit either had the knowledge to repair it, knowledge of where the spare suits were or the ability to make one from scratch.

The first was feasible, but unlikely. Gregory Stark or Reed Richards might have been able to, but they were both accounted for. Pepper Potts had assured the team that Tony's spare units were accounted for. That left creation, which took her thoughts right back to Richards and Stark, with similar results. Rhodes in a modified suit was completely out of the question—he'd already called up demanding to know what was going on.

Him and the rest of New York. If she never heard Fury scream at her again, it would be too soon.

She'd been in the business long enough to know better than to discount long-odds possibilities, but something about them sat wrong in her gut. Something more was going on, something that Steve hadn't told them, that had to do with Tony and Iron Man.

"I'm going to kill him."

"Let me have a chunk, will ya?" Clint stretched as he came into the rec room, tossed down his jacket and headed immediately for the mini fridge. He bent over, shuffling through the shelves for one of his beers, which Jan had thoughtfully shifted to the far back, behind her soy milk. "If I've gotta say 'no comment' one more time, I'll shoot something."`

"That bad?" she asked, a moment of sympathy gnawing her stomach. It wasn't a long enough moment for her to admit where the beer was. "I thought some of the reporters would be gone by now."

"They're ten deep. I had to come in through the roof."

"You're both too dramatic," Thor announced, in a tone that sounded suspiciously like it needed handed down from on high attached. "If Steven could contact us, I'm sure he would. Be patient."

Jan opened her mouth to yell, then shut it. Patient. She'd heard that word one too many times for her to like it. Thor meant well, though, and she'd need him when they had to pull Steve's fat from the fryer. "Yeah, well, you be patient when your ex-boyfriend could be in a coma somewhere while someone makes off with Tony's armor."

High heels against hardwood announced the arrival of their source of funds. "Thor is right, Ms. Van Dyne," Potts said calmly as she sailed into the room. Even at five AM, she looked more like a picture than an actual person. Hair perfectly coifed, suit unrumpled, makeup flawless—Potts was never out of place. Jan thought it might have been a defense mechanism against Tony's wildness, but she couldn't say for sure. "Patience is the key. Short of flying to Arizona yourself, you can't make him call, or answer."

Suddenly aware that she was in the same clothes she'd worn the day before and that bags were under her eyes from not sleeping. Jan flushed. Normally she almost liked Potts, being the only other girl in the boys' club, but she didn't feel very sisterly just then. Potts had been the one to deliver the note that started it all. "Maybe we should go to Arizona then, and kick his ass back home," she said belligerently. "He shouldn't have left in the first place!"

"He had to." The driver, a big blonde man who'd driven Tony, hovered in the doorway. Jan turned to glare at him. To his credit, he didn't flinch away from her. "Rogers was following the boss's request. He had to do it."

"Bullshit," Clint and Jan said simultaneously.

Clint had finally found his beer, and ended the stereo-agreement with a long swig of it. "He doesn't do anything he doesn't want. He could have taken us with him. Or not gone."

Potts' stare could have melted steel.

"You seem awfully calm for someone who's probably catching more hell than we are about this mess." Jan dropped herself into one of the arm chairs, sinking deep into its cushions.

"If you think I'm calm, you're mistaken." Just then, with her chin up and shoulders back, Pepper Potts looked like someone made out of steel. She pulled a set of file folders out from under her arm and dropped them onto the ping pong table. "I'm simply biding my time until I can speak with Rogers personally."

"Bide a little more loudly, will you?" Clint asked, swigging his beer again. "It's kind of creepy."

Pink-glossed lips tilted in a smile. "I'll try. Now, about Christmas—"

"What do you know that we don't?" Jan interrupted, looking around the room suspiciously. The driver—Hogan?—wouldn't meet her eyes. That was interesting. "You're the one who did this, and now you're standing around talking about Christmas? You're not telling us something."

Heels ground into wood as Potts slowly turned to face her. "Ms Van Dyne," she began slowly, green eyes narrowed, "I don't tell you many things. But they're not my secrets to tell. Clear?" She held Jan's eyes for a moment, then bent over the table. "Now, about Christmas. We have a fundraiser planned..."

Jan tuned it out, slumping back in her chair while the boys gathered around to hear the holiday plans. The empty phone cradle mocked her from across the room.

Steve had better have a good excuse for not calling, or she'd rip him a new one.
***

"—reports of Iron Man at the scene, accompanied by Steven Rogers, who may be better known as Captain America. As we reported earlier, Tony Stark—owner of Stark International and the only known pilot of the Iron Man suit—had been declared missing back in June after an accident over the Pacific Ocean. His status was updated to dead after search and rescue failed to recover either the body or the Iron Man armor. We now go live to Fox News correspondent Eric Merryweather outside City Hall. Tell me, Eric, do you think it was Stark piloting the Iron Man suit? And if so, why did he fake his own death? What—"

Tony stepped out of the bathroom and snatched the remote control from Steve, flipping the television off before it could do any more damage to his fragile ego. "You're watching Fox, you heathen bastard. At least have the decency to turn on CNN if you're so interested in the speculation about me." He dropped down to the bed at Steve's side and crossed his legs, tucking the tiny hotel bath towel around his hips. Outside, the sun had begun its inevitable climb over the city, but the blackout curtains kept the room snugly dark. "Though Fox does have much more attractive anchors, I'll admit that much."

Blue eyes caught Tony's as Steve twisted his neck backwards in a way that looked positively inhuman. He was stretched out on his stomach, and his hair stuck up in damp spikes from his shower earlier, and clad in a pair of pajamas—likely deliberately to fend of Tony's advances, as if he had any hope at all of doing so. Tony could smell the soap on his skin, for the moment over-riding the distinctive musk that he'd started to categorize as purely Steve. "I wasn't watching them. Not really. They interviewed Carl." When Tony politely raised his eyebrows in query, Steve prompted, "The cab driver? The one you had pick me up at the airport?"

Memory returned. "Ah, yes. I suppose he gave them all the sordid details they asked for, hm?" And made a mint off of the story, no doubt. Not that Tony could blame him—it was hard for a working man to turn down an easy check.

"Just that he'd driven me a couple of places, and then a lot of 'no comment'. Good man."

Too little, too late, but Tony appreciated the loyalty from someone who wasn't even on any official payroll. "A very good man. Remind me to put his children through college, will you?" He leaned over Steve's back, stretching out as much as he dared, enjoying the solid mass under him. In a way, it was a relief that they hadn't finished their conversation back in the lab. It meant that he got to have Steve for just a little longer, without having to admit that his chances for keeping him were dead in the water. "Any word from our illustrious teammates, or has the news of my survival not yet traveled that far?"

"You don't hear my cell phone ringing, do you?" Tony hummed in question and rested his cheek against Steve's shoulder blade. "Jan kept calling while you were in the shower. I didn't know what to tell her, so I turned it off."

"Fair Janet will be absolutely furious with you, no doubt. Small breakables may be thrown. Teddy bears will be shredded. Manly pride shall be crushed under her exquisitely shod heel."

Steve shrugged. It jostled his shoulder under Tony's cheek, but he rode it out, not yet willing to move. "It's your secret, so you should be the one to tell them. They deserve that much."

"Very kind of you, I'm sure." He could give it up and let Steve go. It wouldn't be the first time he'd let someone walk away without a protest. It would be the first time he'd let them walk away and cared about it, though. That was a blow. "Not terribly brave, but kind."

"Right now they all think I let some stranger pilot an Iron Man suit. You're the one who let us all think you were dead. Me telling her won't save you from being yelled at." Steve rolled over onto his back, forcing Tony to either let him go or collapse on top of him.

He chose collapsing, sprawling himself over Steve's chest like an oversized lap dog. His head ended up cradled against Steve's shoulder, but his chest was massive and well enough padded with muscle that no inconvenient bony bits were in Tony's way. "Well, no, but it would mean I wouldn't be alone while being yelled at. Misery shared truly is misery halved."

"You should have told us." Steve's voice was gruff, but he didn't try to shove Tony off. That was good. Hanging on tooth and nail would have been terribly awkward. "We had your funeral. People cried. You couldn't have sent us a note?"

"To be fair, I was still trudging the Pacific during my funeral."

"And the note?"

When Tony closed his eyes, his lashes barely caught on the fabric of Steve's pajama shirt. It was odd, how aware of everything he was. Maybe it was that he was sober, or maybe it was the vampire thing, but he'd never paid so much attention to how they fit together. It was different from Natasha—different from any girl, really, but also from every other man he'd slept with. Steve was just comfortable, like a made-for-Tony body pillow.

"Tony?"

Breathe in, breathe out. Forgetting was easy, since his brain no longer received the message that air was in short supply, but a bad habit to get into. "I wasn't sure anyone would care. It seemed easier."

"What?" A large hand settled in the small of his back, hot against skin that was still a little cool after his shower. "Why wouldn't we?"

"It was just..." A stupid, ridiculous bout of worry. That's all it had been, something he was—in retrospect—obviously mistaken about. He had friends beyond Pepper and Happy, people who gave a damn whether he lived or died. People had cried at his funeral He'd never though anyone would shed a tear for him. "Never you mind. I was living free. No holds, no ties, that's all. But vacation's over, time to get back to routine."

He could tell by the way Steve huffed and rubbed his back that he hadn't fooled him one bit, but Tony really didn't care. Steve was the one who kept taking a step back. Until he stopped trying to back out, Tony was under no obligation to let him in.

"Speaking of routine..." Steve's hand moved in soothing little circles, completely disarming Tony for the blow that was coming. "We were talking about something earlier."

"No we weren't." The words popped out of Tony's mouth before he had a chance to screen them, but he decided that they would have to do. He was comfortable, warm, and only faintly hungry. The last thing he wanted to do was ruin a pleasant moment, and he had no doubt that wherever Steve thought their conversation had been headed would ruin it. "There was no talking. None. Trust me. I was there."

"Tony—" Steve's chest heaved in a sigh. It did interesting things to the sound of his lungs. Tony tried to focus on that, rather than whatever was on the way. "What happened to wanting to know?"

"I changed my mind. I'm allowed to do that." The same sigh again, and clearly Steve was not going to be dissuaded from explaining exactly why he couldn't commit to regular, monogamous sex, the bastard. Drastic measures were called for. Tony lifted himself up to straddle Steve's stomach, conveniently letting his towel fall by the wayside. "We can talk later. I happened to pick up some lube from the Hilton's bathroom amenities, and we're going to be stuck here all. Day. Long." To emphasize the point, he nipped at the tip of Steve's nose.

Steve stared up at him, and really, he had no lashes at all, or if he did they were the equivalent of a plastic wrap negligee on Pamela Anderson Lee. Finally, he laughed, hands settling around Tony's hips, and that was very, very okay. Much better than break up speeches, actually. "You're impossible."

"About time you noticed that." This time the bite landed on Steve's lips, then flowed on into a kiss that made Tony forget to breathe again. Buttons came undone under Tony's hands as he worked Steve free of his defensive pajamas. Steve really should have known that they were more gift wrap than protection. The last button on his shirt was a casualty of Tony's enthusiasm, popping free and rolling somewhere under a ripple of green comforter. He ignored it, spreading Steve's shirt wide and letting his hands explore the wonderful—dare he venture a cliché with rippling—muscles underneath.

One of these days, Tony was going to sit down and craft a thank you note to the White House for funding the Super Soldier project. Just as soon as he thought he could do so without going into unnecessarily exhibitionistic detail.

That was not likely to be soon.

Steve arched under his hands, mouth opening easily. His tongue slipped between Tony's lips, only to be chased out a second later with a muttered, "Teeth." The bottoms were even easier to remove—only one button and a lot of hope kept them up. Tony popped the button and tugged, giving Steve enough room to lift his hips, and away they went. Hard, hot flesh settled into his hand like it way meant to be there, and as far as Tony was concerned, it was. At least for that moment.

"No tighty whities?" he asked between kisses, sliding his hand along Steve's cock. He was already half-hard, how did the man do it? "Why Captain, I do believe you were laying in wait for me."

"You're the one who grabbed the lube," Steve accused, lifting his hips into Tony's hand. His chest was already flushing, and really, Tony wouldn't mind turning artist and trying to find that exact shade. It could take the rest of his life, but he rather thought it would be a worthy sacrifice. "Speaking of...?"

"Pillow. Condom too." Tony grinned and rubbed his thumb directly along the vein, applying gentle pressure just under the ridge. The groan he got was more than worth the glare that came with it. "You're not the only tactician in here."

Sheets crumbled as Steve tore at them, finally finding the little bottle discreetly labeled Hilton Strawberry Daiquiri Personal Lubricant in flowing script. Predictably, Steve rolled his eyes at the name, but poured a generous amount on his fingers anyway.

The sharp, sweet scent of pseudo strawberries hit Tony's nose. He wrinkled it, but obediently lifted when Steve tugged at his hips. A slightly chilly, slick finger pressed against him, easing inside. Steve's finger was thick, but not too much. Just one wasn't bad.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Tony let his chin drop to his chest as he focused on relaxing. Six months without had ruined his record prep time. He found himself staring down at Steve's cock. The thick curls at its base were just a little darker than the hair on his head, and much coarser. It wasn't the longest or the thickest he'd ever taken, but that was all to the good—they could skimp on prep sometimes, times like this when it had been too long and Tony wanted it now.

It looked lonely.

He gave a brief thought to his flexibility, and an even briefer thought to giving it up as hopeless. Teeth would definitely make things awkward. Then Steve tried the second finger, really starting to stretch him open, and that was that. He throbbed, and Tony had rarely been one to ignore such things. "Hold— hold up."

Tony pulled away, ignoring the confused noise from Steve, and flipped himself around. His knees went on either side of Steve's ribs, leaving his ass up and open. It was interesting how much wider he had to spread himself to straddle Steve's chest instead of his hips. A mental note tagged the back of his mind to explore that more thoroughly later.

Once again, he was looking down at Steve's cock, but this time he didn't need to break a hip to reach it. Delicately, Tony leaned down and curled his tongue around the head. It was a trick, learning to work around his new teeth. Teeth had always been bad, of course, but it had become too much to risk. He smelled simply amazing, all male and arousal, leather and soap and Steve.

Steve's breath hissed out between his teeth. His fingers slid back into Tony, a little too fast. It stung just a little, enough to send a not-entirely-unpleasant jolt up his spine. Tony retaliated by wrapping his lips around the head and humming the National Anthem.

Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light... Steve's hips jerked, but that was great, that was perfect, because his fingers twisted too, and that had been exactly what Tony wanted.

He pressed back, humming a muffled demand. Somehow, Steve got the point and did it again. Superbly thick fingers curled and rotated inside him. They brushed up against his prostate, and for a second Tony thought he'd died again. The fingers left him, and Tony would never, ever admit that he whimpered except perhaps to his therapist.

"Tony— Tony, c'mon." Steve tugged him up by the shoulders, even though Tony kept straining to run his lips along Steve's cock one more time. "You're going to finish without me."

Reluctantly, Tony sat up, looking over his shoulder. "Then fuck me anyway." The exact moment the meaning of that hit Steve, the smell of lust grew even stronger. Tony resisted the urge to grin—jackpot.

After there, there was no time to revel in his small victory. Steve twisted, knocking him aside and down to the mattress. A pillow wedged under the small of his back was the second surprise, followed quickly by a third in the form of an empty condom wrapper being launched overhead. He'd moved so fast that Tony didn't have time to protest, much less fight him off, assuming Tony was insane enough to do either.

God bless the super soldier serum.

Box springs creaked as Steve leaned over him, braced against the bed. His cock brushed over Tony's, the pre-lubed condom leaving a streak of dampness. "Ready?"

Tony snapped his legs around Steve's waist, digging in his heels into his ass and dragging him down by his shoulders. He sank his teeth into Steve's lip, accidentally nicking one on his sharper eyeteeth. A dribble of blood flowed out, right over Tony's tongue. "Just fuck me already."

Steve groaned into the kiss. The head of his cock dipped in, teasing. As much as Tony stretched, Steve had the leverage, easing in inch by infuriating inch. It peeled up open, spreading him wider than Steve's fingers could ever have. By the time he came to rest flush against him, Tony was panting as though he'd run a marathon. Worse than the previous crime, Steve stopped.

That was just unforgivable. Tony rocked against him, seeking some sort of friction. All it earned him was a slide of skin not even worthy of being called a thrust. "You—you bastard."

"Shut up, Stark." Steve's mouth settled against his as his hips pulled away. A disappointed groan caught in Tony's throat, then turn into a gasp when he thrust back in, hard enough to push Tony's back off the pillow a bit. That was the last of Tony's worries. A familiar, lovely charge shot through him as Steve touched his prostate again.

Heat built between them, thick and stifling. Sweat slicked their skin, smoothing the slide as Steve pushed into him again— and again, creating a rhythm that wasn't even nearly enough, but was just right. The pillow slid aside completely, but Tony barely noticed. He arched, doing his best to meet Steve half-way and being held down for trying. Squirming only made it worse. When he tried to reach between them, Steve grabbed his wrist and pinned it to the bed.

"Touch me," Tony growled, digging the nails of his free hand into Steve's back. "Fucking touch me! If you don't—" He groaned, losing track of that thought when Steve hit that lovely bundle of nerves again. He was making it pretty well impossible to think of a decent threat.

Then his wrist was free, but it really didn't matter because Steve's hand was on him, big and warm, the calluses tugging at the skin just so—

White flared behind his eyes. Tony came, falling backwards against the ugly green comforter, nails leaving furrows in Steve's shoulders. The pounding continued through it, forcing him deeper into the mattress long past the point where Tony's muscles had turned to pudding. When Steve finally came, he sank his teeth into Tony's shoulder, muffling his shout.

Tony focused on remembering to breathe as Steve gasped against him, trembling in the aftermath. It wasn't very hard. This much, at least, his body remembered needing air for. He ran his fingers apologetically over the scratches on Steve's back. "Are you certain sexual prowess wasn't one of the features the Army enhanced for you?"

A panting laugh came from somewhere in the vicinity of Tony's newly aching shoulder. Steve pushed away from him, pulling out and tying off the condom with a quick, practiced move. "I'm sure. I think they'd be horrified if they knew what I was doing."

"Ah, my life's work has been completed then." Tony wrapped his arms around Steve's shoulders and pulled him back down. He wasn't ready to give up his body pillow yet. "That was the last on the list, you see. Terrorizing World War Two era scientists. I can go to my grave in peace."

Steve laughed again. His bulk kept Tony effectively pinned, but Tony was strangely okay with that. "Sure it was. You have a foul mouth."

"You always say that, and yet I continue to curse." He leaned up to nuzzle Steve's ear. "Want to make me curse again?"
***
Sunset came like a relief, settling in Tony's bones and letting him know that he was safe again without ever making him look at a clock. He settled deeper into Steve's side, sliding their legs together. He ached, but that was a hazard of entertaining Captain America, and one Tony gladly put up with. In any case, it wasn't nearly as bad as a day in bed would have been before the accident. Then he would have had to worry about his medication and the side effects, never mind the soreness of marathon sex. As a way to avoid serious yet unpleasant discussion, a day spent in bed had just bumped saving the world off the top of Tony's list.

Whoever decided that having unpleasantness done with was for the best had never tried giving Steve Rogers an opening to break up with them. Just making the attempt while arguing had been hard enough. Actually going through with it in cold blood was very nearly impossible, as he'd discovered.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to play patty-cake with Steve on a less frequent basis. At least he would still have a piece of him, until Steve found a woman who was willing to put up with him. Surely by then Tony would have gotten bored, or found another dish to savor.

He really needed to practice lying to himself more often.

Tony's stomach grumbled petulantly; he wasn't going to be able to go for two days on a few mouthfuls of Steve, no matter how delicious and nutritious. And there was the satellite scans to check. By now, they would have located the two break-in artists and the fun could safely begin.

He pulled out of Steve's arms and went looking for his clothing, finding it appropriately scattered even though he'd taken it off on the way to shower rather than during any more vigorous activity. By all appearances, Steve didn't even notice when he left the bed, just grumbling and curling up in the warm spot.

Under armor, jeans, shirt, hat... Tony checked his connections one last time to make sure nothing would give him away, but no—cheap or not, his clothing hid the armor admirably. He was looking forward to being officially alive again, if only to be able to wear a ten thousand dollar suit. Locale attire had grown wearying rather quickly. Of course, the first thing he would be wearing said suit to would be a press conference about his supposed death and why he wasn't, but he would worry about that after he survived the mess he was in.

Steve's eyes opened while Tony finished buttoning his sleeves, blurred with sleep and what Tony prided himself on as satiation. It was remarkable how attractive Steve could be when he'd been well cared for. Tony almost expected him to stretch and purr like a contented cat.

"Going out?" His voice was pitched low and slurred, rasping over the vowels. He rolled onto his side, watching Tony through heavy lids.

For just a moment, Tony gave serious thought to skipping dinner and snacking on Steve again. The craving was too much, stronger than just the need. It was like wanting a glass of cognac—his hands started to shake from the urge to sink his teeth into Steve again. Unfortunately, his stomach vetoed that idea. It wanted more than just Steve could provide without affecting him adversely. If the satellite searched paid out, they'd both need to be up to full strength, and that meant no Steve-flavored hors d'oeuvres.

"Going out for a meal." He flashed Steve a grin and finished with the button as quickly as he could, to hide the tremble in his fingers. "And to stop by my lair and check on our little friends."

"Your lair." Steve snorted, but sank into the pillows, and it really was very unfair how delicious he looked spread out like that. "Do you want me to come along?"

Tony could put him on a menu and every vampire for a hundred miles would want to try him. Of course, then Tony would have to play jealous boyfriend, and whether he had the right to do so was still a question as yet unresolved. "Don't trouble yourself, honeybunch. You won't like it much, and all you'll be able to do is watch and get in the way." Steve scowled. That was a good sign—they weren't regressing. Tony grabbed his hat and headed for the door. "I won't be gone for very long."

"Be careful."

"Who, me?" Tony grinned, tipped his hat, and was gone before Steve could look any more scrumptious.
***
The knife slid through soft flesh with ease, carving delicate patterns. Ezrabet bit her lip in concentration as she focused on the curve of a line, carving sharp arcs around the protrusion of the hipbones. Strapped to the board under her, her chosen canvas tried to scream, but Ezrabet had ordered her gagged, so the sounds were muffled, so they didn't bounce off the bare walls as they could have. The attempts were vexing, however, and she finished her flourish with a glare.

"Do stop that, or I shall be forced to remove your tongue," she chided gently, tapping the girl's breastbone. She was a scrawny thing, ravaged by addiction and starvation, nothing like the lush ladies Ezrabet had played with in her life. Her hair was lovely though, dark tresses that spilled over the headboard in wonderful ringlets. It nearly made up for the odor of lowborn illness and drugs that lingered about her. If only Ezrabet could cull her toys from among the more prosperous, but alas, they were too readily missed. "You shall survive, I promise you, but only if you remain still and silent."

Poor human that she was, the girl was too far gone in her agony to even hear Ezrabet's admonishments. Ezrabet sighed and bent to lick a smooth line up the cuts she had made. Her saliva did its work, numbing the girl's wounds as she traced them. The pained whimpers faded, replaced by confused noises. "You see?" Ezrabet asked, drawing her index finger through the trails of blood that dripped from her work. "Pain is but temporary, little one, but my knife is very sharp. So do be good, or I may damage you."

The muffled screams started again as she turned to decorate the girl's spread thighs with loving curls of her scalpel. Modern times simply failed to produce the sort of strength her own era had—humans were weak, pathetic things, all vying to be the least pitiable among each other. Sickening is what it was. Her toys hardly lasted a week.

One of her own vampires eased into the room with a polite, quiet cough as Ezrabet finished peeling the centers from her designs. When she looked up, his eyes were caught by the girl's writhing form, though he was jaded enough to not allow his thoughts to show.

"Yes?" She licked the evidence of her work from the back of her hand. "What is it?"

"Lady Celicia has returned from her assignment."

"Wonderful."

"And Woon is recovering from his injuries."

"Perfect." Ezrabet dropped her scalpel in its dish. The towels she had laid aside were not enough to remove all of the mess from her, but she did her best to make certain she wouldn't drip. "What number of guests does she bring?"

"Only one, Madame."

A single one would do, especially if it were the one she suspected. She'd hoped that her Celicia would have had a chance to properly play with her promised, but on occasion sacrifices were needed. She patted the girl's knee absently and dropped her towel. "Take care of this. Make certain she is treated well—I do not wish to find her dead of infection before I have finished."

"Yes, Madame."

She made her way through the rows of cinderblock cells, casting a disdainful glance down the hall at her own throne room. It had been taken over by Caine, and every time she thought of him gracing her seat it enraged her even more. Still, sailing into the room and laying her claim would accomplish only her own death, and she had sworn to have care.

Celica waited for her in her private rooms, midnight blue cloak gracing her form as it spread around her. She lounged on the edge of the bed, feet kicking gently in time to some unheard beat. Her clothes were eminently practical—denim trousers and a loose blouse, both dark to more easily blend with the night. The trousers hugged her legs, displaying their length admirably.

Ezrabet leaned back against the closed door, taking in the details of her friend's attire. She was harshly aware that her black dress, bloody though it was, was simple and unadorned, severe in line and color. It made her feel awkward and ungainly next to her friend. The sensation was oddly uncomfortable, but Celicia had a way about her that made Ezrabet ignore what she would not in others.

"Do remove your trappings of secrecy, dear heart. They do you a wrong, and I would like to know that I chose the color well." She pushed herself off from the door and crossed the simple, dark wood floor to kneel at Celicia's feet. When she craned her neck, she could see the curve of her friend's lip and a glint from the earrings that adorned her lobes. "None other than I shall witness your visage. See? I have locked the door."

Satin rustled beguilingly as Celicia shook her head. "It is too fine for me. I told you that."

"Diamonds would not be too fine for you, if only you would allow yourself to see it." Ezrabet frowned, but let the matter drop, rather than risk a schism between them. "You were successful in your hunt."

"He came like a lamb to the slaughter house." Celicia ran her fingers through Ezrabet's hair, nails scraping gently over her scalp. "Exactly as you predicted, as always. I only pray this isn't an error."

Ezrabet's eyes closed and leaned into the touch. Already soothed by her play earlier, it took away the last bit of lingering tension. "We are almost finished with the game, regardless of the outcome. This risk is one that is needed, or I would not take it."

"Your promise."

"My promise," Ezrabet agreed, nodding. They fell into silence, Ezrabet captivated by the feel of Celicia's fingers, and Celicia lost in her own thoughts. Not even the vulgar beat of a human heart marred it. Her knees ached from holding the position, as they sometimes did when Caine forced her to kneel, but she allowed herself only small shifts to ease it, rather than move entirely.

The peace ended when Celcia kissed her brow. "You must prepare for the final act, before any more guests arrive unannounced."

"You are correct, loathe though I am to end this." Ezrabet pushed up from her tender knees, dragging herself along Celcia's legs as she did so. "I do not suppose I could entice you to assist me in dressing?"

Clever fingers slide down Ezrabet's cheek to undo one of the buttons over her breast. "Of course," Celicia answered, her smile audible in her voice as another button came free. "You know I enjoy playing with beautiful things."
***
Steve's boots clicked against the concrete-lined tunnels under Luke AFB. Nothing had changed in them; they were still the same poorly lit rat warrens as before. That should have been reassuring, but instead it sent a chill down his spine.

0200 and Tony wasn't back yet. Steve had done everything possible to pass the time, from cleaning his weapons to checking the news. Everyone was still holding communications silence on Tony's condition. About the only one handling the issue with grace was Thor. Even Fury hadn't taken time to chew anyone out on national television. More than anything else, that told Steve that he had probably known Tony wasn't dead. It didn't surprise him—Fury was good at keeping secrets, and Tony's status wouldn't have been the first one.

Steve had tried to be patient. He didn't know how Tony handled his food needs, or how long it would take for him to get back from the lab. Then midnight had passed. And then another hour. It wasn't even close to dawn , but Tony had only gone out to check the search results and eat. It shouldn't have taken four hours, and if something had come up, Tony would have called the hotel, or even left a voicemail on his cell phone—Steve had cleared it out of the twenty messages Jan had left just to be sure that there was room. But still, Tony hadn't returned, hadn't called. So Steve put on his uniform under his civvies, called Carl for a ride, and headed out.

Something was wrong. He could feel it in his gut.

When he came to the lab entrance, Steve almost missed it. It was recessed into the wall, and every light was out. He doubled back on himself, eyeing the barely visible door. They hadn't turned the lights when they'd left—Tony had said that they were motion activated by sensors in the hall. Keeping low, Steve crept towards the door and pushed it open. It swung without protest; whoever had left last hadn't checked to be sure it latched.

Bracing himself, he reached over on the wall and slapped the button for the lights.

Steve eased inside, staying low. At first, he couldn't see anything wrong. The lab was as messy as they'd left it, with notes and random mechanical parts scattered in an order only Tony would be able to identify. Boxes were still in place, and there was no visible damage to any of the computer systems. Even the door didn't look as though it had been forced.

That was when he noticed it.

Tony's hat. The razor wire had been pulled from the brim and was covered in blackened gunk. Next to it was a smear of more of the same, and splatters led across the concrete floor. Looking up, Steve saw more stains on the ceiling. Ice froze in his stomach. There was no corpse, but there didn't need to be—they could have taken it along in an attempt to clean up after themselves.

Cursing, he pulled out his phone and hit the power button. It lit up, then immediately dimmed. Service Unavailable. Cell phones didn't work underground.

A quick search turned up nothing useful—no sign of a body, nothing missing that he could identify as actually gone. They hadn't even touched the Iron Man suit. Maybe that had been a smart idea, though. Putting a distressed Tony in the same building as his armor was a quick way to be exploded across the local landscape and sometimes parts of the moon. One thing that could be said about Tony; in a crisis situation: he seldom held back. A gore-stained wrench had been discarded in the corner; whatever it had hit, it had done so hard enough that he could see the outline of the hand that held it around the stains.

The hum of the main desktop attracted his attention. After one last glance around, Steve sat in front of it and jiggled the mouse. The monitor flared to life, and a password prompt flashed at him, with a small animated computer chip tapping its foot angrily in the background. Thinking back, Steve carefully entered the password—knowing Tony, too many bad attempts would trigger something permanent, and there was no telling how many times the ambush team had tried. The computer processed for a few moments, then the computer chip grinned and gave the thumbs up.

Welcome back, Mr. Stark! Your search using SHIELD SAT GAMMA has completed! Would you like to view the results?

Pressing his lips together grimly, Steve clicked onward. The first thing that appeared wasn't the satellite images that had been running before, but an e-mail.

Damn it, Stark, if you're going to hack into classified systems, at least cover your tracks! I had to have three techs work on cleaning up your trail, you lazy son of a bitch.
Fury

That answered that question: Nick knew Tony was alive. Steve was going to have a talk with him about that, after he found Tony and blew the vampire's hideout back to Hell.

Steve didn't let himself think about the very real chance that he wouldn't find Tony. It didn't work that way—they needed Tony alive, or they wouldn't have been screwing around for six months trying to catch him. They could have set off a bomb in the lab and waited for him to trigger it. Instead they'd sent in a task force. That said hostage to Steve.

What they wanted with him was anyone's guess. It had to be big, to have gone through the trouble they had and more than three years setting it up. Whatever it was, they were willing to take time and make it work. That made them smarter than half of the guys Steve had spent his time out of the ice fighting.

Behind Nick's email was the satellite search results, with a street-level view of the building. It was an oddly-shaped glass skyscraper, narrower in front than behind and lit up with blue running lights. It stretched up high enough that the camera couldn't see the top, losing the view somewhere around what looked like the twentieth floor. What it did get an image of was the sign across the door: Bank of America. Below, an address picked neatly out in bold text blinked gently.

Steve stared at it for a long minute, then reached for a pen and a pad of paper.
***
Almost as soon as he reached the surface, his phone rang. Steve snapped it open without bothering to look at the screen. "Jan, before you start yelling at me for ignoring your calls, we have an emergency. Get the team together and have a plane readied for Phoenix. Or ask Thor. A jet might be too slow." He hadn't yet made it out of the abandoned base, and the crushed remnants of the final battle of the Chitauri loomed around him. Nothing had even been touched. It was an abandoned site and a reminder of a near catastrophe. Phoenix preferred to put its money into a new tourist trap and airport rather than take care of actual damage.

A long moment of silence came through the line, then, "This isn't Ms. Van Dyne, Mr. Rogers, but I'll be sure to let her know you spoke in such cordial tones." Pepper Potts' voice was positively icy through the slightly static-laced receiver. "You said there's an emergency? What have you screwed up now, besides Tony's reputation and everything we've been doing for half a year?"

Steve paused, one hand resting against a shattered and fire-scorched wall. "Ms. Potts, I wasn't expecting to hear from you."

"I run Tony's life, and you just outed it on national television. Of course you're going to hear from me." Potts must have covered the receiver, because the long string of shouted orders that came next was muffled. Then she was back to full volume. "So why don't you tell me why you thought it was a good idea to deal with a few small fry when you should be concentrating on helping Tony."

"It's more complicated than that." He started moving again. In the distance, Carl's cab was a bright yellow speck under a miraculously working streetlight. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but I don't have time to talk."

"Yes. You do. You seem to forget that until Tony is declared legally living again, I hold the keys to the jet. Now, tell me what's going on."

Potts definitely should have been an Army general in World War Two. He waved at Carl, and was recognized by the car rumbling to life. In the still desert air, it was the only human noise audible. "Fine. You want to know what's happened? Tony's been captured, and I need to get him back. Now, are you going to let me assemble the team, or am I going to have to go after him alone?"

Another moment of silence carried through the phone, broken only by the hiss of static. There were more muffled orders, and then Potts was back. "Happy's contacting Thor right now. If we can find him, we should be able to beat a plane out there. How long has Tony been missing?"

"A few hours, but—" Steve's tongue and feet both tripped to a stop. He started moving again, picking up the pace. "We? You're not coming here."

"We," Potts confirmed firmly. "And yes, I am. Iron Man's been spotted in Phoenix? I can't afford not to go check it out." As if sensing his disapproving frown, she chuckled. "Don't get full of yourself, Rogers. I'll stay out of the way of the real heroes. Just keep me apprised of the situation and let me handle the press. That's all I'm asking."

Carl waved at him through the driver side window, and Steve slid gratefully into the backseat of the cab. He missed his motorcycle and all the options Ultimates had open to them in New York, but Carl wasn't a bad compromise. At least he could keep a secret. "It doesn't sound like you're asking anything, lady."

"That's because you don't listen very well." A click, a thud and shouts echoed in the background. For almost dawn on the east coast, Stark International was awfully lively. "Look, I'm busy handling the fall out from your little stunt over there, and I don't have time to debate. I'll call you when I've got something, until then, hold tight and for God's sake don't get caught on camera again, and don't go off half-cocked. If I have to attend Tony's funeral again, I'll make sure you wish it were yours. And answer your damn phone." The line with dead with a sharp click.

In the driver seat, Carl adjusted the mirror. He was still wearing his Yankees cap. Steve really didn't have the heart to tell him that he preferred the Dodgers. "Arguing with the little lady?"

Steve stared at the back of his head, then shook his own and buckled his seatbelt. "She's not my little lady," he corrected absently. "And I'm not sure what I was doing. Losing, whatever it was."

"Some girls are like that. You just gotta let 'em have their way, you know?" The cab kicked into gear, gravel grinding under the wheels as Carl preformed a u-turn in the middle of the road. "Where we headed, then?"

The street lights were few and far between near the base, and they vanished entirely after a few blocks. No doubt it used to be lit by security lights, but there was nothing left to secure. At least, not according to the government. "Do you know where Alma School and Southern Avenue is? There's a Bank of America building."

"Hell, yeah I do. It's downtown Mesa, near the mall. You can't miss it—damn building looks like its falling on you all the time. Creepy shit."

Tony could be taking torture right that second. For all he knew, the vampires wanted him for the nanites in his blood, or for some sort of grudge that meant slicing him thinly from the feet upward. He didn't have time to wait for Pepper Potts and the Ultimates to find Thor. There were a lot of things worse than death. "Take me there."
***
Tony blinked himself awake, weaving on his feet. His bare feet, with his bare body. Someone had stripped him. His head pounded like he'd run it through a brick wall, or maybe tried to take on Hulk in the nude, and blood crawled up the back of his throat, tasting more of bile than the meal he'd put into his stomach earlier. Chains rattled and kept him from falling on his face as he lurched forward, retching onto the cheap poured concrete floor. When he finished he hung there, panting and trying to remember that he didn't need to. It made the nausea worse, as he had plenty of experience with.

He was so unsteady, the manacles around his wrists were all that held him up. They connected back to a solid wall of cement blocks, and were the only notable features of the six by six square foot cell. Even the lighting was recessed overhead and covered by a pane of plastic. The floor sloped towards a drain that ran down the center of the room. No windows and only one door, made of what looked like the same impossibly thick metal as the chains. Off to the side, someone had left a room service cart, complete with a white sheet and a large metal lid over the top, hiding the contents of the tray from view.

A covered tray and chains. Oh, that never ended well at all.

"Are you feeling better, Mr. Stark?" A familiar, oddly accented voice asked in a sickly sweet tone. He lifted his head, gore and bile dripping down his chin. Ezrabet Bathory smiled at him, hands folded like a teacher in front of a class of elementary school students. She was dressed in black again, like every time he'd seen her since the first, this time a sleek dinner gown with more pearls. "Did you get it all up, or would you like some more time? We certainly don't want you to keep it in your system for too very long. It curdles, you know, and that just makes everything very messy."

He didn't need to breathe—he didn't, it was just his body remembering one too many hellish mornings. But trying to stop was harder than it ever had been when he'd been alive. "What—what did you do to me?"

She smiled, coral pink lip gloss shimmering in the overhead light. It dimpled her cheeks in a way that would have been fetching on a woman who wasn't standing in a pool of blood and stomach acid. "Milk, Tony. It does wonders for the human cattle, but for us, it is more than a little distressing. I was beginning to fear you would not wake up before you processed it. That would have set back our plans while you recovered. We cannot have that, can we?"

Sharp clicks sounded on the floor as she circled him slowly. "You really should be much more careful flying that armor of yours, no? Anyone at all can follow it back to its landing, if they are watching closely where and when it takes off." Ezrabet came back to her original place. "But you were too busy hurrying back to notice. Sloppy."

Bile rose up in his throat again. Tony lunged forward, gagging up more of the contents of his stomach. He did his best to aim for her shoes, and was darkly pleased when a bit of blood splattered over the hem of her skirt. Small revenge, but when chained to a wall by villainous vampires, even the least of rebellions was sweet.

The smile faded. Ezrabet lifted her skirt and stared down at it, lip curled in disgust. Tony had just enough time to savor a surge of triumph before she giggled and let it drop. Baby doll blue eyes looked at him through thick lashes. Delicately, she stepped over the mess on the floor and pinched his chin to lift it.

"Oh, Tony, Tony, Tony." She clicked her tongue in disapproval. "You are naughty, are you not? And I did try so hard to catch you before you were ruined by the cattle. Look at what you have done. If you had not ran, back in California, we would not have to do this." Slowly, her fingers dug into his cheeks, brilliant sparks of pain slicing through him. Her nails dug runnels in his skin, one of them reaching so deep it clicked against his teeth. Tony hissed and yanked away, leaving blood crusted under her manicured fingernails. The left side of his face throbbed as the wounds tried to close.

Ezrabet stared at the blood, then wrinkled her nose and wiped it off on her dress in four long, red streaks. In seconds, they darkened to black as the blood aged and dried. One of her nails had ripped off, dangling by a thread of meat. The underside of the cuticle bubbled, oozing puss where Tony's poisoned blood had gotten into the wound. As he watched, Ezrabet tugged the last bit of the nail off. It turned yellow and collapsed into dust. "That hurt. I believe I shall enjoy taking you. And then you will help mother in her little pet project, will you not?"

"Go to Hell. Again." Tony leaned away until his back pressed against the cold wall. His ribs ached where he'd fought his ambushers, but nothing felt punctured this time. The cold eased his headache a little, and settled his stomach enough that he didn't feel like he was about to cough up a kidney. "You're not my mother."

"I made you what you are, Antonio Stark." Platinum curls tumbled around her cheekbones as she looked up at him.

She was so close that he could see the dark roots just beginning to grow back in. A vampire with a bleach job. He had known it couldn't be natural. That was just hilarious for some reason, or would have been if her knee hadn't connected with his groin. Pain shot through him from crotch to skull, rattling his bones and closing his throat so that he couldn't even gasp at first. Tony tried to double over, and this time when he threw up it was directly down her chest. She didn't even try to move away. He dangled by his wrists while his entire body rocked with the pain.

"I raised you up from your personal little hell, from the shell of humanity that held you down." Sweet, delicate tones rose up and down in a musical litany that Tony would have appreciated much more had he not been in agony. "I fed you your first true meal, back when you had been nothing but another cow, waiting for the butcher. I ended your pain, when the cancer would have let you suffer on. I am more your mother than Maria Stark had ever been. She only gave you life. I gave you eternity."

"What do you people want from me?" Tony choked. He didn't have the strength to stand up straight, but the chains had started to pull at his shoulders. Shaking knees held him up for a few moments before he collapsed again. His shoulder wrenched when his weight hit them, drawing a pained gasp from his throat. "Look— Lady, I'm all for kinky BDSM, but I usually get a safe word. This isn't the way to get what you want."

"Au, contraire, my precious little one. It is precisely the way to get what I want." There went the smile again; it made her look as wholesome a Joss Whedon villain. Her fingers tapped against Tony's chest, the nail-less one a soft pat next to the sharp digging of the other three. Metal flashed under her fingertips—she'd put some sort of blade under them. That explained how she'd been able to draw blood so easily. Nails didn't usually slice and dice so well. "Torture does not work on human cattle. They are too delicate, too mortal to last long enough to break thoroughly. But you and I, our people are not so weak, are we? And there are ways other than torture, ways between two vampires that would not work at all on a human."

Steve would find him. Tony tried to focus on that. Steve would find him, because saving people was what Captain America did. No matter how confused he was about their repeated and frequent one night stands, Steve wouldn't stop until he'd either found Tony or whoever had killed him.

Maybe it would be for the best if he died. Steve could find a nice girl next door type and forget he'd ever had a homoerotic misadventure. Pepper would get the business, but that was better than Gregory sinking his claws into it. Most of the world would never know the difference if Tony Stark clocked out a few months late. Just the Ultimates, Pepper and Happy would ever know it had happened.

Blood trickled down his chest from the cuts Ezrabet had made, drying before they even reached the dark trail of hair over his navel. The cuts didn't heal all the way, barely starting to close before his condition got the better of him. There was too much damage, between the concussion from the wrench and the milk, and he'd lost everything he'd eaten. There was no way they'd feed him—they weren't stupid.

If he tried hard enough, he could trick her into killing him. He knew he could. God knew he'd almost done it enough times before, sometimes not even on purpose. It would be easy.

"We had your funeral." Steve's back was warm and strong. Steve was warm and strong, everything Tony wasn't and had always admired from afar, but never really wanted to be. He was content enough to leave it to people better than him. "People cried."

People had cried over him. Maybe not much, but they had. Someone had cared enough to shed an honest tear. He couldn't do that again. It felt too much like cheating, to give up the ghost before they'd had a chance to yell at him for the first time he'd done it.

"Tony?" Razor-sharp metal dug into his face again, making him clench his teeth. How had he ever thought she was pretty? It was all artifice, and while Tony could appreciate a good persona, there was nothing worth seeing under hers. It was like a piece of watered silk, thrown over a month-old corpse. Once you knew what was under it, you couldn't stop seeing the shape. "Child, you must stop ignoring Mother or I shall think that you do not love me. What are you thinking, when you go so deep into your thoughts?"

"I was thinking..." Tony coughed to clear his throat. It was sore from the times he'd heaved, and he had a feeling that he was only going to do it again. "That my friends are going to splatter you all over the desert."

Sharp white fangs flashed in a brilliant, childlike smile. When her nails sunk in again, they kept digging until they scraped against his jawbone, dragging downward. The razors under her nails ground in, scraping as she curled her fingers. Tony gritted his teeth so hard that one of the back molars cracked. He wouldn't give her the satisfaction of screaming as she methodically stripped away pieces of his flesh, but he couldn't entirely keep back a strangled whimper. "I was so hoping you would say that—what is it?"

Bathory's fingers ripped down his jaw, coloring the space behind his eyelids gray with pain. Something wet splattered against his chest, sticking for a moment. When Tony opened his eyes—when had he closed them?—he saw a chunk of skin drop to the floor. The pain eased as Bathory turned away, down to a throb that wasn't much worse than being punched by an irate husband.

Rusty hinges creaked as the heavy metal door scraped open. Tony almost laughed at the cliché. It was too much. He almost expected the man who leaned in to have a flat head and a hunch, or maybe just bolts in his neck, and inevitably be named Igor. Instead, it was a perfectly ordinary man, the sort that wouldn't look out of place behind the desk at a used car lot. He even had the thin, desperate lank brown comb over of the truly hopeless.

The newcomer's heartbeat fluttered like a bird's, so fast that Tony thought it might be a health condition. It was the only sound in the room other than the occasional groan of Tony's chains, making Tony's stomach churn as hunger battled with nausea. He tried to ignore it. Whatever the problem was, the man was human—which meant that this went a lot father than just some undead megalomaniacs, as Tony had been assuming. "Lady Bathory, Lord Caine asked me to deliver a message for you."

"What?" From the way she bared her teeth, she looked about three seconds away from killing the messenger before he'd even had a chance to deliver the news. Then she paused and visibly straightened. "I mean, what is it that Lord Caine wishes to tell me?"

"We... we've had word." The human licked his lips nervously, his eyes darting from Ezrabet to the still-covered cart, then down to the bloody vomit on the ground. "Captain America found the lab—the man that was left behind spotted him coming out. He spoke into a phone and then took a car. Lord Caine has decided to assume that he's on his way here. The prisoner must be finished before he arrives. You are to bring him down as soon as possible."

Cap. Tony tried to keep his face blank as his mind raced, not wanting to give Ezrabet anything to work with. Steve was on the way, and about to do something impulsive and stupid. That was reassuring, even though it sounded like they were just going to step up their plans. He only had to hold out until Steve got there.

Ezrabet's face twisted in anger. He hands curled into fists. Tony watched as blood trickled down between her fingers where they'd dug into her palms. By the time it dripped to the floor, it had aged to dust. "I was promised that I would be allowed to play when we had caught him. Promised. Is the Lord no longer a man of honor?"

Apparently the messenger wasn't entirely stupid, no matter what working for the vampires said about him. He cringed and huddled against the doorjam, eyes submissively low. "I'm just repeating what I was told to say, Lady."

"Tell Lord Caine that I will be with him shortly to discuss matters." The human nodded frantically and scurried out of the room, using both hands to haul the door shut behind him.

Blue eyes turned contemplatively on Tony. She reached for the tray and finally pulled off the cover. Underneath was the expected array of blades—Ezrabet was a woman who liked her knifeplay. What he hadn't expected to see was a bottle of cheap, rotgut Canadian Sour whiskey and a shotglass. The bottle looked bulky in her tiny hands as she poured two fingers of the amber liquor and lifted it up for his inspection.

Tony couldn't take his eyes off the shotglass. The old craving hit hard, crawling through his bones. He needed that drink, needed the space from the world that it gave him to think. But now it was mixed with fear.

"Oh, yes." Ezrabet smiled and swirled the whiskey in its glass. It glittered like the downfall of saints. "All the world knows of your weakness, and I know that you are aware of what this will do to you. Would you like a drink, little Tony?"

There was nothing he could do as she ground her fingers into his jawbone until it was a choice of open his mouth or lose the jaw. As soon as the whiskey was in his throat, she slammed her palm up, snapping his mouth shut and keeping him from spitting it out. It burned his tongue, not the old familiar burn, but an acid heat that scalded the inside of his mouth. Heat blasted at his nerves, blistering the soft tissue of his cheeks and tongue where he'd bitten them. The half-healed wounds split open again, gaping wide as the alcohol ate at their edges.

"Swallow now, swallow..." A tiny fist connected with his stomach. Before he could stop himself, he gasped, and the liquor burned its way down his throat. "Oh, good boy, you are such a very good boy, are you not?"

Pain doubled him over as the burn spread. It ate through the thin lining of his stomach almost immediately. Blood welled up what was left of his throat and between his lips. He could feel the liquor sliding through his body, burning away everything it touched. It was a blast furnace in his stomach, flames licking along his blood and into every organ. Chains snapped as his legs gave out, wrenching his arms in their sockets as he dangled just inches above the floor, without enough slack to kneel. His throat locked up, lungs spasming as they tried to cough the blood filling them. Vision faded, blessed darkness giving him a nanosecond of respite. Then it bloomed again as the healing factor went to work.

Tony tried to scream. The best he could manage was a wet gurgle.

Ezrabet giggled and kissed his cheek. "Something to think about, while I am away. Think hard, Tony."
***
Carl had parked a block away, where a sorry excuse for a parking lot broke up the space between buildings. He killed the lights and the engine. "This is it, buddy."

Steve grabbed his shield and unbuckled his seatbelt. He really missed his bike. A cab was no way to travel. The door slammed behind him, sounding too loud in the empty lot. Leather straps locked around Steve's shoulders, hooking his shield to his back for travel. "Go home to your wife. If this goes wrong, you're not going to want to be nearby."

The front seat creaked as Carl twisted to stick his head out the window. His big face was set with worry, deepening the lines exposure to the hard desert sun had already etched into it. The streetlights caught a few silver strands in his hair. "Man, you sure you don't want me to wait? I can tell when something big's going down, you know? And this is major. I can call the cops if you don't come out or something."

His shoulder was solid under Steve's palm as he clasped it. "You're a good man, but if I don't come out, there won't be anything the police can do."

That didn't seem to reassure him, but Carl nodded. "I'll be watching the news for you guys. Good luck, man. God bless."

Steve clasped his shoulder one more time, and then found the deepest shadow to slip through, leaving the cab behind. Every step sounded too loud, and every time he had to dash through brightly lit back lots he winced. Bright blue leather wasn't the stealthiest thing to wear, but he didn't have time to go back to the hotel and get something better.

Time, time, time. It ticked away in his head, seconds to minutes to hours. They'd had Tony for at least several hours. That was enough time to board a plane and fly just about anywhere, as long as they had human pilots and a safe place to hide from the sunlight. A few minor thugs hiding someplace didn't mean that they'd take Tony there. It could even be another trap, like what had obviously been left for Tony, designed to catch Steve too.

Even if it was a trap, though, there would be someone there. And if there were someone to catch, there was someone he could squeeze information out of about Tony's location, or what they were planning for him. Eventually, he'd catch up, and then make them pay for whatever they'd done.

Thick decorative bushes rustled as Steve eased between it and the building it was decorating. The landscaping was all more eastern than everyplace else Steve had seen in Phoenix—less gravel and cactus, more grass and hedges. It wasn't perfect cover, but it kept him out of sight should anyone pass by. It was almost 0300 though. Phoenix was mostly asleep.

It was so quiet that he couldn't help but hear his own thoughts, even when he knew he should have been focusing on the mission and his surroundings instead. He couldn't stop thinking about how close he and Tony had gotten. Pushing through the lower branches of a rhododendron, he realized that eve if he still wasn't sure what he wanted, the few days they'd spent together had been simple, comfortable. Even with things being weird and Tony supposedly dead, it worked better than he and Jan ever had. Tony hadn't even slept with anyone when Steve had thought he was dead. Steve never would have even thought that possible until he'd heard it.

Blue lights from the overhead signs lit a covered path under the hedges. He ducked under, movements slow and stealthy. The bushes were still flowering, even in winter, but the gaps between the branches gave him an excellent view as he worked his way along. The edge shield caught the lower ones, snapping them like small gunshots in the quiet. It took Steve some trial and error to work out how to hunch his back, forcing the branches to slide off the curved face of it.

Having Tony back was like having his shield back. He managed to get by without him, but everything was easier when the Tony-shaped hole in his life was filled. And now he'd been taken away again.

Steve really, really wanted to hit something.

The building was exactly the way Carl had described, all dark glass and an odd polygon shape that gave the impression of falling. It was lit up with bright blue runners along the edges that made it stand out among the other glass buildings like a bluebird in a flock of crows. It didn't look like the sort of place that someone would be kidnapped to, or that houses the kind of people who would threaten children. He wouldn't have thought Bruce was the type to turn into a monster like the Hulk, either. Appearances counted for nothing.

A security guard paced around the target building. He looked completely normal, like any human security guard might. Tall, slightly out of shape and not really paying much attention to what he was supposed to be doing. Steve hunched down in the bushes when his flashlight passed over them, too quickly to be searching for anything specific. Either he was an innocent man who'd been hired out to the wrong people, or he was a vampire, and there was no way to tell.

If he happened to be innocent, Steve didn't want to hurt him too badly.

Steve waited until the guard had passed him, then rolled out of the bushes. The man had enough time to turn his flashlight beam before Steve's fist connected with his jaw. He went down like a tree. He checked to make sure he was really unconscious, then rolled the body under the hedge where it wouldn't get stepped on. Pavement jarred his knees as he dashed for the entrance. Security cameras would spot him, and probably had already alerted them to his presence. Tony would have been able to disable them, but there was nothing Steve could do about that. A subtle entrance was pretty much impossible anyway.

He brought his shield up to protect his face and crashed through the glass doors. No alarms sounded that he could hear, but he had no doubt that there were plenty that he couldn't. If they had any sense at all, any alarms wouldn't be audible, or triggered to alert the police. People like this didn't want police officers investigating their business—they'd much rather take care of it themselves.

The lobby looked just like a bank should. White florescent panels had been set up so high in the ceiling that the created an illusion of sourceless lighting. Only every fifth was lit, keeping the entire room dim. Faux marble columns that were no doubt load bearing stretched up to the ceiling, and neat velvet ropes created a twisting line for customers up to the counters. What few decorations there were had been done in red, white and blue, which offended him on principle. His footsteps were loud on the tile, echoing through the cavernous room. Steve flattened himself against the wall and waited.

It took less than a minute for the lobby to be flooded with people. Most of them were human, but a few vampires were there too. Steve picked them out by the way they moved, too quick to be anything but super human. No identifiable uniforms marked them except for color—every single one of them was dressed in solid black.

These humans were fair game.

They rushed him without guns, trying to take him down by sheer numbers—gunshots in the lobby would attract too much of the wrong sort of attention. Steve followed their lead, keeping to his shield as he fought them off. One tried to come up from the side, a machete glinting in the low lighting. Steve kicked it out of his hand and immediately brought his leg back around. It caught the attacker in the temple, putting him down for the count. Another three rushed him from the front. A wide swing of his shield a head-height took them down, and put him in position to catch another in the gut with his knee.

Steve felt his conscious mind take a step back, years of training and reflexes taking over. He kept his back to the wall so no one could take him from behind, but everything else was automatic. None of the humans were any sort of hand to hand experts, and the worst weapon they had were blades.

A blur of black shoved one of the humans aside, landing a blow on Steve's ribs, then sprinting away again. He grunted, bending too late to protect his side. One of the humans darted forward to take advantage of the opening. His knife skittered off Steve's uniform before biting into meat, leaving a long, shallow gash over his hip. Steve rewarded him with a boot to the chest.

The humans were getting thinner. Whoever had organized them hadn't expected Steve to put up as much of a fight. Blackened, decayed slime clung to the edge of his shield, where vampire blood had decayed and stuck like glue. A detached, distant part of his mind realized that it was going to take hours to clean. Steve tossed another one into a wall, then caught the next comer in the throat. One of the vampires rushed him again, but this time he was ready. He brought his shield up horizontally, directly in the vampire's path. The monster's head rocked back as he ran right into the edge. Another blow to the neck and his head rolled off to be trampled by the men around him.

A second later, another vampire stepped up to take its place, this time a female who looked like she'd stepped out of a poster for Rosie the Welder. She didn't make the same mistake her colleague did, choosing instead to swing one of the stands that held the ropes. Steve ducked, and was caught in the chin by her shoe. He grabbed her leg, forcing higher and sweeping her off balance. Marble dented under his shield when he brought the edge down on her neck. Her eyes stared up at him blindly, before the decay shriveled them beyond recognition.

Ten humans and one vampire left.

They seemed to realize what their chances were against someone who had taken out twenty of them. Everyone hesitate, even the vampire, as they glanced around. Then, en masse, they charged.

For a minute, Steve thought he was going down. His back slammed against the wall and his shield crunched open a skull as they cornered him. Then an opening appeared. It wasn't much, just enough room to get his feet braced, but that was all he needed. He took it, stepping forward to balance, and laid into the mob. He barely noticed when the vampire's head went flying. It was hardly the only one, the press of people hindering them more than it did him.

Five, punch, kick, slice, three, jab, punch, one, kick, done.

Steve took a deep breath, wrinkling his nose at the pervasive odor of decay and bloody death. Most of them were gone, either unconscious or worse. He waded through the bodies, scanning for movement.

A groan in the corner caught his attention. He stepped over someone whose neck had been broken and bent down. It was another woman—ancient or not, vampires were obviously equal opportunity employers. She rubbed her head where it looked like his shield had caught a glancing blow and sat up. Blood matted her dark hair to her head and crusted the side of her face. When she saw Steve leaning over her, she yelped and tried to scramble back.

"I don't know anything, I don't, please don't kill me," she babbled, dark eyes huge with panic. "Please don't, please, please—"

Steve covered her mouth to shut her up. "You know something, or you wouldn't be here. Give me some answers, and I'll let you run out through those doors. Clear?" She nodded frantically, then wobbled as the movement upset her balance. She probably had a concussion. He took his hand off her mouth. "Good. Tell me where Tony is."

"Who?" Steve narrowed his eyes, and she blanched. "Honestly, I don't know. I'm just human, they don't tell us anything."

That made sense. "He would have been brought in early tonight. Vampire—dark hair, tall, probably unconscious."

The girl—and she had to be a girl, she barely looked eighteen—shook her head, more carefully this time. "Word said they'd caught someone, someone important, but I didn't see them bring him in. If they did, he'd be downstairs in the sublevels."

"How many sublevels are there? How occupied are they? Are the upper floors occupied too?"

It took her a few seconds to speak. Steve ground his teeth, but waited. The concussion was obviously getting to her, and trying to force things wouldn't get him straight answers.

"Five sublevels, not really thick. Lady Ezrabet lost about half of the vampires last night at the museum, and the rest are probably still out feeding. No one but human guards are on the above ground levels—it's the business part, so they run it as a front."

"What level would they be holding Tony on?"

She swallowed, closing her eyes as if dizzy. "Bottom—fifth level. That's where the cells are. They'd put any prisoners there. If your friend's a vampire, he'd definitely be there."

Steve nodded solemnly. "Is there anything else I should know?"

Dark hair fell over her forehead as the girl bowed it, visibly trying to think. "Lord Caine is here," she said eventually. "He's the oldest. Older than anyone. I don't know why he's here, though. He usually stays in Europe—the United States belongs to the Lady."

"That's all you know?"

"Yes." She swallowed again, glancing up at him weakly. "May I— may I go? I don't want to die yet."

"Sorry." Steve swung his fist. She collapsed backwards bonelessly, unconscious but still breathing. "You'll have to wait."

Tony was in the building, probably level five if he trusted the girl. With no other intel to go on, he had to. At the worst, he'd find someone else down there with more information. If he didn't find Tony, he'd find out where he'd been taken to.

It was all he had.
***
The first level was almost entirely empty. Steve caught a few workers and knocked them out. They were all humans, who looked more like penpushers than any sort of security. He worked his way through the office cubicles to the next level of stairs. The same thing greeted him—a handful of humans who couldn't even run and more wide open office space, filled with computers and filing cabinets. Another staircase, and he made his way downward.

He eased open the door to level three and barely brought up his shield in time to deflect the gunshot that had been aimed at his chest.

Bathory took aim with the wide, easy stance of a practiced marksman. It was hard to see, but her black evening gown was splattered with vomit and blood, as though someone had thrown up directly on her. She didn't seem to care.

"Hello, Captain." The gun clicked as she chambered a round. The space behind her was a set of barracks, long rows of beds and trunks, as neatly kept as anything he'd seen in the army. "We heard that you were coming to visit us. I apologize for the lack of hospitality, but you were too rude to give us proper warning. I was just on my way to speak with my superior about you, but I could hardly miss the noise you were making above."

"Where's Tony?" Steve kept his shied up, stepping sideways to try and throw off her aim.

It didn't waver. "Tony should hardly be your primary concern right now, Captain. Do keep your attention where it belongs. You might hurt my feelings." Another gunshot sounded. Steve ducked his head behind his shield, momentarily taking his eyes off the enemy to protect his head.

It was a mistake.

Bathory leaped at him, covering the distance in an eye-blink. Her nails raked over his face, slicing cleanly through the leather and into skin. Blood blurred his vision, giving her enough time to land another blow on his temple. Something hooked his legs at the knee. Steve toppled to the floor, almost catching himself on his shield. Then that was ripped out of his hands and hurled across the room, where it stuck in the wall.

Satiny dark fabric bunched around her waist as Bathory perched on his chest. One hand pushed against his throat, keeping him pinned. "You reek of him, did you know that? I could smell you from the moment you entered the building," she purred. "Oh, but I do understand what my little Tony sees in you. Big, strong human—not intelligent, and too impulsive for your own good health, but handsome. They do not breed men of your caliber any longer."

Steve lunged, using his weight against her to try and throw her off, but she grabbed his throat, cutting off air. When he pulled away, the pressure released.

"Do not do that. I would have to hurt you, and that would be unfortunately premature." Her lips pursed as she leaned over him, meeting his eyes. "You have been fighting little ones, so far. I have been as I am since before this wretched country was even discovered by that idiot Italian. You are not strong enough to defeat me, Captain."

Breathing hurt. She'd managed to bruise his trachea. Steve forced himself to take deep, even breaths and not tense under her. "If I don't, someone else will. The Ultimates—"

"Yes, your friends shall be annoying, I have no doubt, but it will not be them, nor this century, I think." Blonde curls brushed over her cheek as she bent over, sticking where blackened blood clung to it. Her tongue ran over his forehead, lapping up the blood that oozed from the cuts she'd made. Steve flinched away in disgust, but she just smiled down at him and licked his blood from her lips. "You taste sweet—the serum, maybe? I think I shall keep you."

"You're a monster."

"Yes, I am. And?" She peered at him for another minute, then brought her free hand up to her mouth. Steve heard the moment her teeth dug into her palm. Blood splattered down her chin and over the star on his chest. Bathory pressed her bloody palm to his mouth. He pressed his lips together and tried to turn his face away, but her hand tightened around his adam's apple.

"Swallow." Nails bit into his throat, sharper than any sort of human nail should have been. "Drink before it heals, or I will kill you now, and then do worse to your lover. I have never castrated a vampire before. Do you think his manhood will grow back, or would the lacking remain?"

Reluctantly, Steve opened his mouth. Blood slid between his lips, already half-clotted and more disgusting than it had any right to be. It tasted like how old, rotten meat smelled. He gulped a mouthful down before he could gag on it, then coughed when more of it dripped down his throat between swallows. It settled in his stomach like lead, heavy and faintly metallic. The taste filled his nose, until every breath he took reeked of it.

"Such a good boy." Bathory's palm wound only stayed open long enough for him to get down a few mouthfuls, for which he was incredibly grateful. When she took it away, she wiped it on her dress, leaving black streaks behind.

Steve focused on not gagging. The way she had him pinned, he'd either choke on his own vomit or she'd break his trachea. His hand eased down to his hip, where the butt of his gun dug in. "What—" He grimaced as bile rose and forced his back down. Had to distract her, had to get free and find Tony. "What are you going to do with me?"

"Kill you, of course." Her smile was as bright and cheery as any he'd seen on one of the painted gals on television. A smear of his blood was caught on the corner of her mouth, but she didn't seem to notice. "Do not worry, Captain. I promise it will not last long. You shall barely notice." Her hand drew back from his throat. "Hold still now."

He took the chance, heaving himself to the side before she could strike. Bathory screeched as she toppled, rolling across the floor until her back slammed into one of the beds. Slim arms braced against the floor, pushing her upright. Steve didn't give her a chance. The butt of the gun slid into his hand smoothly. As soon as he had her in his sights, three shots fired almost by themselves. She jerked, eyes wide in shock.

Blood spread from the entry wounds—shoulder, chest, stomach. Bathory touched them tentatively, forehead pinched in confusion. Steve kept the gun up, waiting for her to fall.

Instead, she huffed in annoyance. "That stings." Steve fired another shot, catching her in the other shoulder. Bathory jolted with the impact, but finished rising to her feet. "Ow. This is very inconsiderate, to injure your host. You are a most vexing man, Captain." When he gaped, she just smiled and finished rising to her feet. "What? You thought your silly toy would kill me? If we were so fragile, we would not have survived, Captain. Now... Shall we dance one more time?"

Steve dived out of the way as she blurred into motion, coming so close to hitting him that he felt her dress against his cheek as she passed. He rolled to his feet, holstering his gun and whirling to find her.

Bathory perched on the edge of the bed, skirt shamelessly hiked up to her hips. Pink-stained teeth flashed in a leering grin. "Close, but not close enough." She vanished again. This time Steve couldn't move fast enough. A blow connected to his jaw, then his stomach. He whipped around, bringing his elbow up to what he estimated what head-height. It cracked against something.

High heels scrabbled against concrete as she stumbled back, blood dripping from her nose. It was blackened with age before it reached her lips. The mocking little smile was gone, replaced with a snarl. Great—he'd made her angry. At least he was managing to do something.

She lunged, jabbing the side of her hand at his throat. Steve arched over backwards, flipping himself entirely. His feet caught her in the chin, knocking her back to the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, his shield gleamed where it had stuck in the wall. It wasn't razor sharp, but it had done for enough vampires already—it would do for Bathory. He edged towards it, keeping his eyes on her.

Black satin spilled across the cold grey concrete as Bathory pushed herself upright. She didn't try to get to her feet. Her hair had come out from its style completely and spilled over her shoulders, hiding her face behind a curtain of white-blonde curls. "You forget something, Captain. Something which is very important."

"What have I forgotten?" Fifteen feet... ten...

Her arm came up in a blur. Gunshots fired. Steve's leg started to buckle when it was hit. He locked his knee to stay upright, clutching the wound to apply pressure.

"You forgot that I am armed." Her gun arm stayed steady as she rose to her feet, even though her high heels made her lurch. "Now. Hold. Still."

Light flashed as the electricity flickered. The reek of ozone filled the room along with a crash of thunder. "Steven, you should have waited for us." Thor loomed, as large as ever, grinning behind his beard, Mjolnir slung over his shoulder. Behind him, Clint and Jan were still crouched to get their bearings and balance. Even farther back, Pepper Potts and Harold Hogan, dressed to the nines in their business best, swayed and clung together.

Bathory wasn't stupid. She took one look at the Ultimates and vanished. The door to the stairs shut behind her so hard that its hinges cracked.

Potts was the first one to pull herself together. She pulled away from Hogan and stood up straight. "Where's Tony?"

"You brought civilians?" Steve demanded, lurching the last few feet to yank his shield from the wall. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"We were thinking we'd show up in a hotel or something," Jan snapped. She was wearing her battle gear, but her hair was still tousled and there were pillow creases on her cheek. "Not the middle of a damned warzone. What's going on? What's this about Tony? Tony's dead!"

"But not yet gone." Thor set his hammer, head down, on the floor and rested his hands on the handle. "Is he?"

"Something like that." Steve pulled his hand off the gunshot wound. It was going to need surgery to get the bullet out, but the bleeding had stopped. He'd be good enough for a fight. "Tony's in the building—probably on sublevel five. We're on three."

"What do they want with him?" Clint, at least, didn't look like he'd been asleep. "And what are we dealing with?"

"Vampires." Everyone except Thor and Steve turned to stare at Potts. She'd pulled a handgun out of her briefcase and was checking the magazine. Hogan was doing the same. Steve hadn't even known they knew how to shoot. "You're dealing with vampires."

"Great, just great." Jan wrinkled her nose. "You mean, stakes and holy water?"

"No, I mean decapitation or game over." Potts frowned down at her gun, then slammed the magazine home. "Hollow points should do it, if you can manage a headshot—arrows are useless, sorry Hawkeye."

"You two are not coming." Steve ignored the pain in his leg to stand up straight. He crossed his arms, and was a little surprised when Potts and Hogan crossed theirs. "And no arguing. We are not taking civilians into a combat situation."

"You already have, Rogers." Hogan wasn't as big as Steve, but he managed to loom as though he were Hulk-sized.

Potts kicked off her heels, losing four inches of height like magic. "And you can't stop us. We might not be super human like you lot, but that's our boss down there, and we're not leaving him."

Steve glanced at Thor, who shrugged amicably and leaned on his hammer. No help there. "Fine, but you stay back unless you've got no options, understood? And you follow orders."

A thinly plucked red eyebrow arched sardonically. "Sir, yes, sir."

That was that, then. Steve turned back to the Ultimates. It felt good to have his team back. It would be better once Iron Man was there too. "Okay, here's the situation. They move like Pietro and they pack a punch like the Hulk. Take out their heads first chance you get, because you won't get another one. Jan, I don't know how good your stingers will be; if they're not, focus on reconnaissance. Hawkeye, you got any explosive tips?"

Clint held up a handful of arrows. "And some hollow points. We're good."

It would have to do. "Okay, civilians in the back. Let's move out."
***
When Ezrabet came back, Tony had finally managed to stop choking on his own blood. She didn't even bother to close the door behind her, dancing in gleefully. Her dress was still stained, but new tears that looked like they were bullet holes had appeared in it, covered in her blackened blood. More blood smeared her face, and bruises had started to heal, turning yellow as they did. She twirled, making her skirt flare around her knees.

"Oh, Tony, Tony, I do see why you like him so much. He is very tasty."

Tony tried to find his feet, refusing to give her the satisfaction of seeing him hang. He wasn't beaten yet. Not by a long shot. His tongue and lips worked, forming the word "Who", but his throat was still ravaged by the whiskey. No sound made it out.

She seemed to understand what he'd said anyway. She paused, hands clasped at chest height, right where a bullet had gone through her. "Why, your Captain America, of course. The super soldier serum in his blood, it tastes very sweet. I have not ever had its like. It is a shame he did not last. Even he was only another of the human cattle, in the end."

Steve. She couldn't have known that about Steve unless she'd actually bitten him, and he couldn't imagine Steve letting her get that close. Tony's knees started to give out again as despair hit him, but he made them lock before he could put any more weight on his aching shoulders. The burn of the whiskey through his internal organs was suddenly secondary compared to the black weight of determination. His lips moved, blood burbling up between them. "I'll kill you."

"You will try." She reached up to pat his cheek fondly, like someone might do a favorite pet. There was fresh blood dried around her lips. "But for now, my plans must move forward. We do not have time to play."

He was helpless to resist as she sliced open her wrist and forced it to his mouth. The blood tasted awful—nothing like the warm, smooth copper of human blood, or even the acid tang of his own. Tony gagged and tried to spit it out.

"Drink, Tony." A tiny fist wrapped in his hair, forcing his head back so that her wrist would drip straight to the back of his throat. "Drink it all down, that is a good boy." Against his will, he swallowed reflexively, then again when more blood followed. "Did you never wonder how we maintain order, among our people? Why not one child ever goes back to their family, or to the tabloids? This is why, little Tony."

It wasn't as bad as the whiskey—nothing could have been as bad as the whiskey, dying hadn't been as bad as the whiskey—but once the blood hit what was left of his stomach it made his head swim. Not in nausea, but as if he were underwater and being spun around in circles.

Ezrabet pulled her wrist back and watched him through narrowed eyes, obviously waiting for something. "You see, Lord Caine wants to use your lovely brain to devise a way to turn the humans into the docile cattle they are. We have tried so many times, with other men, with the Chitauri, with machines." Her hand worked his throat, forcing him to swallow the last drops that remained in his mouth. "But I— I know that would be our downfall. We were meant to rule the shadows, not the day. Caine is old, and insane with his age. He is no longer relevant."

One by one, Tony's muscles went limp, giving him over to gravity. Even his tongue felt heavy in his mouth. Chains clinked as he sagged against them, his weight pulling at his shoulders and arms, slowly ripping them from their sockets.

She leaned in, lips brushing his ear. "You shall kill him for me, and then you shall die. A happy accident, yes? After I told them all that taking you was a mistake. Such a shame. But his territory will be mine. My homeland, given back to me." Her tongue traced over his ear. "I do wish I had been able to play with you. You are almost as pretty as your Captain. But we all must make sacrifices."

Tony tried to stand, or at least to spit on her, but nothing responded. His body was entirely limp, dangling like a marionette from its strings. He couldn't even shudder.

"Stand." The word had the weight of an order. His body did it for him, even though all he wanted to do was double up from the acid still eating through his gut. "Look at me." He did that too. Ezrabet was smiling, a small, smug little tilt of her lips that he wanted to wipe off her face like he'd never wanted anything else in his life.

Steve was gone. Tony was helpless. His mind raced, but no matter what way he looked at the situation, he came up hopeless. Even his body was betraying him.

"You will walk with me, and you will act normal." Her arms folded across her chest as she eyes him. "When Caine attempts to feed you, you will grab his neck and squeeze, until it comes off."

Tony did his best to glare at her, pleased to find that he could glare. She didn't have perfect control.

There had to be a way around this. Nothing was perfect, no amount of orders could close every loophole. And she couldn't stop him from thinking. He could take her out. It would kill him, there was no way around that, but he could do it.

Living had just lost its novelty anyway.

Ezrabet didn't even seem to notice the look he was giving her. She gave him a quick, once over inspection, then nodded and put her hands on his arm.

"Come. It is time to finish this."
***
The fourth level was at least twice, maybe three times as large as the ones above it, designed in a series of offices and what looked like personal apartments. It was also filled with vampires. Whether the girl had made an honest mistake or not flashed through Steve's mind for an entire second. Then there was no time to think.

Thor barreled into the halls with a battle cry that sounded like something out of a fantasy novel. Vampires didn't even get a chance to get near him. He laid around him with the sharpened end of Mjolnir, chopping off not just heads, but limbs and torsos at well. Lightning sparked overhead, running from each of his foes in a widening circle. Vampires screamed as they cooked. It didn't kill them, but they stayed incapacitated long enough for Mjolnir to do its work.

Hawkeye followed after him, shooting off arrows so quickly that his hand seemed to blur with speed. Every target he hit exploded, taking out the whole upper body. Jan whizzed above them all, shooting off her stingers. They weren't much, but they distracted the vampires long enough for Hawkeye to land a shot. Then came Steve, swinging his shield in an imitation of Thor's hammer. The team worked as smoothly as ever, pushing their way through the press of monsters and leaving only rotting bodies behind.

It was Potts and Hogan who surprised him most.

They hung back, as ordered, staying close to the wall and firing off shot after shot. Not all of their bullets hit, but when they did they always took off an arm or a leg, and a few times the top of a head, with little explosions of flesh and gore that were understated next to Hawkeye's kills, but effective. They aimed to the sides, Potts on the left, Hogan on the right, so none of their stray bullets risked hitting the team. Steve wouldn't have expected even one shot to hit—professional police and soldiers had a hard time hitting the broad side of a barn in action. Whatever Tony had been paying them, they were definitely worth the money.

The vampires didn't even try to run. That was strange. Usually in heavy hand to hand, even the best trained forces had one or two who cared more about their own necks than orders. This time they just kept throwing themselves at the Ultimates, and getting sliced and blown to small chunks in the process. Steve felt weirdly like he was in some sort of movie, where the villains were incompetent and the hero barely had to do anything to kill them.

It wasn't a fight. It was a slaughter. And it was wrong.

"Wasp!" Steve sheered through another vampire, who didn't even try to raise her arms to protect herself. He reached to tap his communicator, then cursed. It was still at the hotel, with his spare ammo and gun. As a make-shift, he kicked a skull towards her to get her attention and raised his voice over the din. "Wasp! To me!"

Jan appeared overhead, fluttering in small circles. Her mouth moved, but he couldn't hear her tiny voice over the gunshots and the sounds of slaughter.

"Go find Tony!" Steve ducked a clumsy blow from a vampire that looked like he was a boxer when he'd been alive. "This isn't a fight—it's a delay! Find out what's going on!" She nodded and zipped off towards the stairs on the far wall.

Steve stepped back, boot crunching the rotting remains of a vampire bone. His shoulders touched Thor's, who turned to look at him.

"You believe they are sacrificing themselves?" he asked, hammer taking out three enemies in a swing.

"You haven't fought them like I have." Steve ducked and brought his shield around, slicing a vampire in half. They weren't even trying to use their speed, or their strength. Just from having sex with Tony, he knew they were holding back. He still had bruises on his waist from Tony's thighs. "A handful of them almost got me upstairs. This is too easy!"

Thor nodded, cutting through another vampire like a wax doll, wading deeper in. "I had begun to come to the same conclusion."

"You shits think this is easy?" Clint demanded from farther back. He'd run out of arrows and had moved on to hollow points, like Potts and Hogan. His gun let out a report at twice the speed of theirs, and all of his shots were headshots. "You're nuts!"

The vampires keep coming, and Steve wasn't sure from where. They poured out of the rooms and other hallways, packing them in and making each step one that had to be cut through the crowd.

Jan reappeared overhead, circling frantically. She swooped down and landed on Steve's shoulder, clinging to the edge of his cowl. "Tony's downstairs!" she shouted, almost having to yell directly in his ear to be heard over the carnage. "There's something going on—that blonde woman and another guy are there! He looks bad!"

Tony was alive. Alive. A tight feeling in Steve's chest that he'd barely been aware of gave way.

He looked around, spotting Thor a few feet away. "Tony needs help! You got this?"

Looking every inch a god, Thor nodded regally and sent a head flying. "Rescue Tony! We will handle these!"

The only way to the stairs was either through the crowd or... Steve backed up, ignoring the crunch and ooze of decaying body parts under his boots. He took three quick steps and then leapt, twisting his body mid-air to soar over the heads of the crowd. A few of them tried to swipe at him, but he'd gotten too high up. When he came down, it was with his shield under his feet and accompanied by a crunch of skulls breaking. Then he was surrounded, but most of the press was focused around the team. They hadn't expected anyone behind them. Some sweeps of his shield and a few punches cleared the way between him and the door.

A buzz of energy sparkled overhead as Jan fended off one of the few enemies that had hung back. She waved a tiny arm and whizzed off, ducking down and squeezing through the gap underneath. Steve followed, knocking the vampire out of the way before pounding down the steps after her, taking them three at a time.

The final floor was dim. He could barely see the walls, which looked like they were made of solid concrete blocks. It didn't have any of the human touches from the upper floors—no carpet, no paint, not even any furniture. If anything, it reminded him of a kennel, from the drains that ran across the floor to the solid metal doors that obviously led to individual cells.

Dark, rusty red and black stains were smeared over the floor and walls in some places, obviously blood. Steve shuddered and prayed that none of it was Tony's.

Jan hovered in front of his face, her wing beats fanning his cheeks. Even in the low light and shrunk down, her tiny face was pinched with worry. "Follow me. Quiet."

Steve nodded and stepped after her, doing his best to keep his footfalls silent. People groaned in the cages to either side. Just sound alone didn't tell him if they were human or vampire, but it didn't matter. They were hurting. He hesitated, looking at the doors, but Jan swooped around him and shook her head.

Tony. Grimacing, Steve set aside his guilt and followed her.

The room Jan led him to was lushly decorated, as elaborate as the rest of the level was bare. If anything, it was too extravagant, like the decorator had tried too hard. Bright crimson carpets, gilded furniture, marble statues—it was more of a throne room than anything else. It took up half the level, at least, and the ceiling had been painted to give an impression of vaulting height when it was exactly the same as the rest of the building. Steve stayed low, ducking behind oversized furniture and statues to stay hidden.

Voices carried from deeper in the room, measured cadences barely audible. Jan stayed close by Steve, darting down to hover nervously around his ear before fluttering off out of his line of sight. He wanted to tell her to settle on his shoulder and stop distracting him, but when he caught his first sight of Tony, he understood her nerves.

Tony looked like someone that should have been dead. He knelt naked on the floor, weaving as if he'd pitch forward as any minute. Still-bleeding gouges had been sliced into what Steve could see of his sides, and a large piece of his skull was matted with blood. Every few minutes he leaned forward, coughing. Blood visibly splattered on the white suit of the man standing before him.

Steve thought he'd be ill. Leather creaked as his grip tightened around the straps of his shield. Every instinct yelled to dive in there, to kill the thing that had hurt Tony. His hands shook with it. It took every bit of will he had to force himself to crouch down and wait for his chance. He'd only get one shot at rescuing Tony, and he wasn't going to waste it.

"This is what we've come to." The vampire knelt down and forced Tony's chin up, like he was inspecting him. He must have been taller than even Steve, but he was skeleton-thin. His skin was the sort of pasty color that reminded Steve of nothing so much as a corpse. "Treating our children like dogs."

Bathory hung back, well away from Tony and the other vampire, head bowed submissively, but Steve saw her fists clench. "He would be dangerous without it, Lord Caine. This man is not one to be trifled with, and he would not agree to our cause."

Dark auburn hair fell into eyes that were so pale, they almost looked white. His fingers slid through Tony's hair, coming away sticky black with blood. Silently, Steve urged Tony to fight, but Tony just sank into the touch and gagged on his own blood more. "Did you try to convince him, before you tried to break him?"

"No, my Lord. The Ultimates attacked. I had no time. We must bind him to you before they can take him from us." Steve saw Bathory shift, taking a step closer to the wall. Her hands were still clenched behind her, blood oozing from her palms. "Hurry, my Lord."

"They are only cattle. This will not be rushed." Jealous rage curled in Steve's stomach as the man pet Tony. Steve looked away to try and get a grip on himself. That was when he saw the guards, tucked away in shadowy nooks. Five of them, and they looked more competent than anything from the upper levels. "This is our triumph, Bathory. With Stark, it will not take long to make the humans see their place. It should be savored."

"Captain America—"

"Is dead, isn't he?" Caine looked up, and Tony sagged more. Steve's eyebrows rose in surprise. "That is what you reported."

Bathory startled, obviously upset at being caught in a lie. "But his people— they are still above. And dangerous. They are killing our children."

"Yes, you've shown great concern over the welfare of the young ones. I commend you for doing an excellent job in clearing out the chaff." Caine sighed. "But your meaning is well taken." A small knife, roughly the size of a letter opener slipped out of his sleeve. Steve tensed, but he didn't make a move to use it on Tony, instead slicing open his palm. It oozed sluggishly, black and thick straight from the wound. "Drink, little one."

Tony's head came up. His back tensing was the only warning before he lurched into motion, slamming his head into Caine's chin. His hands weren't tied—they must have thought him beaten. The taller vampire went down under the assault, Tony's hands locked so tightly around his neck that blood oozed between his fingers.

"That's our cue!" Jan chirped, speeding out into the air overhead. Her stingers sparked near the guards, confusing and slowing them down.

Steve rolled out from his hiding place, hurling his shield. "Tony, down!"

To his credit, Tony didn't even look before throwing himself to the floor. Steve's shield cut right through Caine's neck. It struck the wall and rebounded, coming back to him as surely as if it were on a bungee. The body folded slowly to the carpet, already mostly gone before it even hit.

The guards froze, looking over to Bathory.

"Get them!" she shrieked, pointing a blood-stained nail at Steve. "They killed Lord Caine!"

Their faces set. Swords slid out of the scabbards at their sides—a sensible weapon for a species that had to be decapitated to die. Steve didn't wait for them to finish drawing. He dived in, swinging his shield. It caught the first in the chest, throwing him backwards but not killing him. Before he could follow up, the second was on him, sword held expertly steady as it swiped at his legs.

Jan darted down from above, stingers flaring in the vampire's eyes. As soon as he was blinded, Steve kicked the sword out of his hand. His shield crunched into the vampire's skull, cleaving it open. The sword skittered over the carpet, clattering to a rest against a geometric-shaped statue. Steve whirled to catch the next attacker.

He wasn't fast enough. The bullet wound in his leg slowed him down, just enough for a closed fist to backhand him. He felt the crunch as his nose broke, blood washing down his face. Another blow caught him in the sternum, cracking ribs as it threw him. Steve landed on his back and rolled to his knees, coughing, lungs spasming as they tried to suck in air. He kicked out backwards, the snap of a kneecap breaking traveling up his leg. Someone screamed, then the noise cut off abruptly.

The body sagged to the ground, its head neatly removed at the shoulders. Tony sagged against a sword, using it to prop himself up.

Steve nodded and rolled to his feet in time to catch another one in the throat. The vampire gagged, pitching forward. It was enough of an opening for the shield to crunch down between its vertebrae. He brought it up to catch the sword that was swung at him from one of the last two. In the corner of his eye, Tony weaved and brought his own sword to take the other one, but he was so unsteady he could barely keep upright.

Two small explosions cracked through the air: gunshots. Chunks of skull and brain splattered onto Steve's face. The last two guards fell, withering down to husks as they dropped.

"At least they saved some for us." Clint holstered his gun. Thor hadn't even bothered to bring up his hammer. Behind them, Hogan and Potts had their weapons down too.

"Hey, boss," Hogan frowned. "You don't look good."

Tony took one look at them and crumbled. Steve caught him before he managed to hit the ground. A pained gurgle and new blood coughed up between his lips when Steve's arm wrapped around his stomach.

"What did they do?" Thor knelt down at Tony's side, pressing two fingers against his neck. He frowned and shifted them, searching.

"Nothing good. Stop that, you won't find a pulse." One of Steve's gloves was already half off. He rolled up his sleeve as much as he could, baring his wrist. He shoved Thor's hand out of the way and pressed his wrist to Tony's mouth. "Come on, Tony, drink up."

Tony's eyes met his, impossibly blue behind black smears of gore. Then his teeth sank in, grinding down so deep Steve felt them scrape bone. The familiar numbness spread, dulling the pain until Steve couldn't even manage to twitch his fingers. Tony's mouth locked around the wound, suckling, pulling the blood out as if Steve could bleed any faster.

"What the hell—"

Jan expanded to her full size, touching down beside Steve lightly. "Shut up, Clint. Did anyone get the woman?"

Thor dragged his eyes from Tony, shaking his head. "We did not see a woman. Only the two Clint killed."

The pull at his wrist slowed, then stopped as Tony's head sagged forward. He went limp, curled against Steve's chest like a child. None of his wounds were healing yet, but they would, even if Steve had to drain himself dry to do it.

Steve pulled his sleeve down. It would help keep pressure on the bite until he could get it bandaged. When he stood, he kept Tony cradled in his arms, glaring at Thor when he made as though he'd take him. "We'll find her later. We need to get Tony somewhere safe before dawn. Someone get upstairs and call transport."

Potts flashed her cellphone, thumb already slapping the keys. Her eyes were locked on Tony, and worry set deep lines in her makeup. She still hadn't put her shoes back on, and she was covered in muck up to the ankles. "I've got it. Just keep him going, Rogers. If he dies again, I'll never forgive you."

Steve couldn't bring himself to meet any of his teammates' eyes as he shouldered past them, carrying Tony's limp body. "Neither will I."
***
Everything ached, like the worst hangover Tony had ever had, or possibly the time he had seduced the Swedish Tag Team Wrestling pair. Breathing hurt, moving hurt, thinking hurt. Light pierced his eyelids, and no amount of sticking his head under a pillow seemed to help.

"Lights!" The word barely came out as a croak. "Off! Lights off!"

For the first time in six months, they obeyed, shrouding the room in blessed darkness. Tony relaxed, sinking into the body-hugging mattress. Thank god for voice controlled buildings.

Voice controlled buildings. The mansion. He was in the mansion.

That shocked the last bit of sleep out of him. He sat up sharply, then clutched his head when the motion made it feel like it was coming off. Nausea surged and died when his stomach proved to have absolutely nothing in it to throw up. It adjusted swiftly to the discovery by instead cramping with hunger. The room had the grace not to lurch, but it spun alarmingly. He clenched his eyes against the sensation of everything moving around him and tried to keep from tipping over.

Warm, strong arms wrapped around his waist, holding him upright. The hot, coppery scent of blood hit him, enticing, laced with the even more tempting scent of Steve. His stomach seized again, craving settling deeper into his veins than the need for alcohol had ever reached. He needed— he needed...

Before he could stop himself Tony twisted around, shoving Steve down to the bed. He was too weak to put any real force behind it, but Steve didn't fight him, toppling backwards easily. Tony's teeth sank into the thick muscle of Steve's shoulder, slicing down deep. As soon as the blood touched his tongue he relaxed, lapping it up. It slipped down his throat, soothing the rawness and settling in his stomach. Steve's hand cradled the back of his neck, his thumb rubbing a calming circle as he fed.

The bite was too deep for Tony to catch it all. Excess blood spilled over Steve's shoulder, staining the sheets. He whined and tried to catch it before it was lost, sweeping his tongue over the broken flesh. He'd never been so hungry in his life, not even after the six day slog through the Pacific.

"Slow down, you'll make yourself sick again." Warm fingers smoothed through his hair. "Easy, easy... Breathe..."

Tony pulled away, resting his forehead against Steve's chest. He was naked, and Steve was naked, and while usually this would be a wonderful state of affairs, he couldn't bring himself to enjoy it. Steve's heartbeat was so loud, the blood moving just under tender skin, so close. It was like a siren's song, calling to him to seek it out. He could taste it on his tongue, that odd sugary flavor that was only Steve's. Just a small taste more, that's all he needed, just a little more... "Steve?"

"You should finish." The hand never stopped rubbing the back of his neck. "I know you're hungry."

He settled on Steve's stomach, suckling at the wound. It was practically on top of the one he'd made before, ripping through the scar tissue. The bleeding had slowed, but started flowing again when licked it, breaking it open where it had started to seal. Tony fed until the cramps eased and he could straighten without immediately doubling back over. Steve still smelled like the most wonderful thing ever, but he wasn't so mind-numbingly tantalizing. Tony pushed himself up, using Steve's chest to balance before he drank too much and he did make himself sick.

Steve reached over to press his palm into the wound. White gauze peeked out between his fingers. Clearly, he'd been prepared to be jumped. "Are you okay?"

Tony nodded. He could feel his throat healing, a hundred little wounds stitching themselves together with the fresh influx of blood. An experimental swallowed proved easy enough, so he tried speaking. "What happened?" When pain failed to assail him, he continued, letting the words flow. "Not that I don't appreciate breakfast, but this was hardly on the list of things I expected to wake up to."

"You've been unconscious for about a week." Steve shifted away, pushing at him. Tony obediently let him move, heart sinking, but Steve only reached for more gauze and some medical tape. "We moved you here a few days ago. Potts and Hogan insisted. Are you still hungry? There's some bagged blood..."

Pepper. Wonderful, lovely Pepper and Happy. Angels in the form of a redheaded ballbuster and her love-struck boxer. They knew how to take care of him. He'd have to give them a raise, when he got control back of his company. Or maybe they could give themselves raises. "No, no, I'm fine. Full. You're delicious, by the way." Tony stretched, enjoying the pop and crack of his spine after a week without movement. "You happened to be present when I woke?"

Steve flushed. It was reassuring, in a way. He had enough blood in him to flush. Not that Tony felt like he had really taken that much, but he had no way to quantify it realistically, and quite a bit had spilled. "I didn't want you to wake up alone." He squirmed and sat up, taping the gauze in place and steadfastly refusing to meet Tony's eyes. "How do you feel?"

"Surprisingly good for a man who choked up his small intestine. Almost ready to be declared living, again. We are declaring me alive again?" Tony watched Steve with a sinking heart. Waking up to find Steve there had lit a small, desperate flame of hope. Steve was alive—not dead at Bathory's hand, not a victim of Tony's mistakes. And then he'd said he wanted to be there...

He was tired of having the same candle lit and then snuffed, over and over.

"Potts is working on it. You'll have to ask her for the story. I've been avoiding the press." Steve's blue eyes finally met his. For just a moment, Tony wished that he hadn't bothered to wake up. "Look, about that talk—"

"No talk." Tony fell back, sprawling elegantly and then adjusting it to something that put less pressure on the back of his head. His cracked skull still hadn't healed, it seemed. The ceiling was as fascinating as it had been the last time he'd stared fixedly at it to avoid looking Steve in the eye. "I'm done with talking, and I don't have the energy to seduce you out of it. I understand."

"You understand?" The bed didn't shift—really, it was wonderful to be in a decently expensive bed again—but he felt Steve move. The subtle shifts of the air and the direction of his voice told Tony almost more than his eyes could have. His voice came from Tony's side. If he concentrated, he could see the edge of Steve's shoulder in his peripheral vision. "What do you understand, Tony?"

"Everything." A sweeping, looped gesture tried to encompass the word. It didn't even get half of it, but Tony figured that the attempt counted. "You know, it's almost morning, isn't it? You still have time to get back to your own bed. Maybe Jan will keep it warm for you."

Airflow changed again, but Tony was still surprised when Steve leaned over him, frowning. The little gold cross dangled from his neck, cold where it brushed Tony's collarbone. "Tony—"

"Do you mind?" Tony frowned back as sternly as he could. "You're blocking my view of the ceiling."

That was the exasperated roll of the eyes he knew so well. Unfortunately, the sarcasm failed. Steve settled down against Tony's chest, practically pinning him down. No weight pushed against him, for which Tony was terribly grateful since his aches were still present, but he blocked him in with chest and arms. If Tony wanted free, he'd have to wiggle for it.

"I think I want to stay here." Steve's face was absolutely solemn. "Your bed is more comfortable than mine."

One last ember of hope that he hadn't quite been able to snuff flared back to life. Tentatively, his hands curled around Steve's biceps, not quite holding him. "Well, if it's in the name of comfort, I suppose we could simply move a few of your things in here? So you don't have to go back and forth, that is."

Steve's lips brushed over his, so soft that if Tony closed his eyes he could almost think he imagined it. "I'd like that."
***
Ezrabet settled into her chair gingerly, hands flexing against the arms. Caine had died in her territory, passing his own province on to her by tradition, and good riddance to him. He'd thought age was strength, when all it meant was the weakness of habit.

The other members of The Council watched her warily. They knew that she had arranged Caine's end, and it frightened them. Politics were petty and dangerous among the other nine, but assassination was unheard of, and no one had dared to threaten the oldest. They tasted mortality, for the first time in centuries.

The seat reserved for Eastern Europe was her rightful place. She'd worked for it for centuries, since her first taste of death, when she'd been dragged screaming from her castle to be taught her place. She'd longed to have her homeland back, with its mountains and the taste of wind in the trees.

Only one matter remained—assigning her old territory. "Celicia."

Her dear friend stepped up from the shadows. She came close enough to touch, dark head bowed in submission. For this occasion, she was unhidden. Ezrabet wished she could claim such rights more often, but she would have to content herself with Celicia's bared visage being saved for only herself. "My Lady."

Ezrabet leaned forward and took her hand, thumb sliding over the slight bumps where her fingers had once been broken. She had always been Ezrabet's dearest, the one she trusted and the only one left from her old life. Now she could return a small portion of what Celicia deserved for her loyalty. "You are my eldest, are you not?" she asked, for the sake of formality. Ezrabet had only ever taken two children of her own, and Celicia was the first.

"Yes, Lady."

"North America is yours, by right." Ezrabet squeezed her hand gently, as she had centuries before when she'd pulled her Celicia from the house of the wretched man called her father. Long centuries of caring for her, hiding her away from danger and placing herself before it were coming to fruit. It felt right and good, as few things did. "But also, there is someone there who I am sure you would want to meet again, and I made you a promise. Would you like to claim your gift?"

Celicia looked up. The lighting was soft, almost hiding the slight change of skin tone and uneven bone structure where her jaw had been ripped away. Her eyes gleamed like amber. "Yes, Lady."

Fin

Comments

[valtyr]

\o/
AWESOME.
This was great! Your vampires are awesome and scary. I liked Jan! And Steve and Tony, d'aww. Steve is such a stubborn donkey, isn't he? But sweet sometimes. Pepper is a badass. Also there was an excellent sense of place to this, Phoenix sounds very amusing.

I may comment again when I have more thoughts. :)

Oh, and I think:
Steve groaned into the kiss. The head of his clock dipped in, teasing. As much as Tony stretched,

Clock kink? :D

fly by reply

[tsukinofaerii]

♥ Thank you! I may or may not have cheated by using my old home city (I was desperate and shameless).

It's a new thing! >.> ARE YOU JUDGING MY KINK? (quietly fixes)

(funny note, this is so long that gmail tries to eat the comments lol)

[alexiel-neesan.livejournal.com]

Here via... via I don't remember.
Fantastic ride you gave us - Tony and Steve being frustrating and them, Phoenix (it should be a character in itself), Carl the cab driver...
One has to ask, though, what will happen next? Because the vampires are still on their trail, aren't they?
Great read, great fic - thank for sharing

[tsukinofaerii]

*ahem* I may or may not have ideas what happens next. Whether or not they're ever set to text is a different question entirely.

Thank you for reading! ♥ I'm glad you like it! :D

[stormseye]

\o/ You finished it yay! I don't have lots and lots to say about it, but I really enjoyed it :D Worth the wait indeed.

[tsukinofaerii]

I'm glad you think so! ♥ Mayhap the next long fic won't take longer to get edited than it did to write.

(hug!) Thank you for helping to cheer me on! I definitely needed it. ♥♥♥

[cursor_mundi]

I really enjoyed this--more or less the highest praise I can think of for any work is that it was incredibly well thought out, with a nice leavening of wacky yet very thoroughly thought out hijinks (vampires! in Phoenix! and Tony making UV bombs to defeat them!! I do not know why this made me so very happy...), and I could literally not stop reading it despite exhaustion and a pressing need to use the toilet and, um, the need to actually do work, which (congratulations) I did not do last night after I started reading it. Stories that are so thorough, and so gripping, and so skillfully presented are rare in any medium, and this is something you should rightfully be very proud of!

I also really enjoyed Steve's mental gymnastics regarding his not-relationship (ha!) with Tony. I think it rings very true to both his character as it stands in-universe, and as an extrapolation of how he would react if he were to be in this situation in-universe. The accidental mutual fidelity was just...sweet isn't the right term, neither Tony nor Steve are sweet, but it's touching in a way that speaks volumes about their true feelings and priorities.

[tsukinofaerii]

Oh dear, I really shouldn't be grinning so much that I made you forget rest and work! I'm glad I was able to provide a good ride. ♥ You can't see it (I hope :o) but I'm blushing. Thank you so much for the awesome review! ♥

(Your icon. It's very distracting. My eye gets drawn up there every few minutes. It made this incredibly difficult to write.)

[(Anonymous)]

This was absolutely marvelous. I adored it. The... just... squee. Sorry for not giving you a more articulate review.

-Mar

[tsukinofaerii]

Squee is always welcome. ♥ Thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

This was absolutely perfect. I started reading it when I was about to fall asleep last night (mistake deviating to LJ when setting my alarm on my phone)and ended up not getting to sleep until the sun was coming up. I love that it doesn't end in a way that is too neat and resolved. It's more authentic this way. Really wonderful!

[tsukinofaerii]

^^;; Sorry for causing you missed sleep! But I'm thrilled that you like it. ♥ Thank you!

[m-steelgrave.livejournal.com]

This may be the first vampire fic I've read in this fandom that wasn't pure angst. I liked Tony's approach to the whole vampire thing: very practical, from using it as a means to improve his lot in life to his tactics when fighting them. Nicely in character. And you handled Steve well, too. After the opening scene, I wasn't expecting Steve to be particularly open to the new and improved Tony. You used that as a means to show how much Tony meant to him, even if he didn't know it yet.

And those are some classy vampires. It read more like they were fighting against a drug cartel that just happened to have a taste for blood. :) It worked very well for this universe.

Nicely done. I enjoyed it very much.

[tsukinofaerii]

♥ Thank you! I was hoping to pull off a decent set of vampires (it's such a done trope). I'm glad it worked, and that you enjoyed it!

from whimzii

[(Anonymous)]

AH. FUCK. I DON'T EVEN.

You're amazing, darling, and I'm so proud of you for finishing this. I LOVED the battle scenes; you did gore tastefully, but still made me wince. More coherent comment later, when I'm not stunned. :]

Re: from whimzii

[tsukinofaerii]

XD ♥ Glad you enjoyed it! :D

[jessara40k]

I loved this. The reference to Tony not having the spoons for the relationship talk when he woke up with Steve was neat. I loved it that Tony had his funeral planned out in advance - illustrates his control freak ways nicely. Then when we met Tony again I enjoyed the way he was hustling pool to blend in - shows his mathematical skills and co-ordination. The UV bombs were really cute. I wasn't entirely clear on how strong Tony is now though. Erzebet was stronger and faster than Steve, but was Tony just his equal in that area?

Speaking of Erzebet, I found it hard to entirely see her as the villain, even with seeing her torturing that girl, and then Tony, because you gave her sympathetic motivation.

It was interesting that Steve had to check for deaths in the area, and didn't think about checking back to before Tony became a vampire. I loved that you showed how hard it was for Tony to force the issue of the relationship talk, and then once the point was past he resigned himself to taking what he could get - letting Steve treat him like some sort of Victorian gentleman's mistress almost - until Steve came to terms with their relationship enough to make the move himself. Oddly I think that was probably the most effective tactic, that Steve would have gone for fuckbuddies if he'd had to answer when Tony brought it up, and that it was later events that forced him to acknowledge that Tony mattered to him.

The blood binding thing was cool as well, and does Erzebet feeding her blood to Steve mean that he'll become a vampire when he dies as well?

All in all a great story.

[tsukinofaerii]

I wasn't entirely clear on how strong Tony is now though. Erzebet was stronger and faster than Steve, but was Tony just his equal in that area?

I didn't address it in-fic, but Tony is technically stronger and faster than Steve. But, if Tony ever actually took Steve on hand-to-hand as he is now, Steve would win. Tony's not in any serious way trained to personal combat without his tech toys, whereas Steve's body is a weapon. Ezrabet had the advantage of several centuries of experience, whereas Tony hasn't even had a single year, and all of his attention has been focused on his usual methods (technology) rather than his new abilities.

Speaking of Erzebet, I found it hard to entirely see her as the villain

I admit that I'm very fond of Ezrabet. >.> So I'm glad that you think she had a sympathetic motivation! You can thank jazzypom for a lot of her scenes though; I didn't have her nearly as well fleshed out originally.

does Erzebet feeding her blood to Steve mean that he'll become a vampire when he dies as well?

(coughs and looks mysterious) I've had some thoughts in that direction, which is why I included it in the fic, but answering that is a bit spoilery if I do a sequel. (If you want to be spoiled, however, I'm open to gushing.) I left quite a few threads hanging, just in case, and you just snagged one of them. ^~

Thank you for the review. ♥ I'm thrilled that you like it!

[jessara40k]

if Tony ever actually took Steve on hand-to-hand as he is now, Steve would win.

Yeah, that came across very well in the wrestling scene and I know skill and experience can trump strength and speed, unless there's too much of a difference. It makes sense for Tony to stick to his tech toys; in the circumstances he just doesn't have the time to get up to speed in more conventional fighting. Regarding Erzebet, I just assumed that vampires get stronger and faster as they get older - it didn't occur to me that Steve's difficulties facing her, as opposed to the younger vampires was more a function of her experience.

If you want to be spoiled, however, I'm open to gushing.

I don't have any problems with spoilers, and if you want to gush I'll be happy to provide an audience and try to offer helpful comments/questions if you want them.

[tsukinofaerii]

Part of what's going on in my head canon is that vampires don't necessarily get stronger, but they get more used to shrugging things off. For example, when it comes to bullets, Tony would dodge, because he still hasn't become accustomed to the fact that nothing short of taking off his head will kill him. For punches, he pulls the blows a little, because while he can hit hard enough to crack his own bones (for that matter, he can run that fast too), subconscious instinct keeps him from doing it. Older vampires have realized that and gotten past it; thus, Celicia fighting even with multiple broken bones. (You could call it Wolverine Syndrome.)

\o/ Gushing!

The Steve-was-infected thing is a big complicated, in a Comic Book Science Which Needs More Research sort of way. According to my notes (I have notes; I'm insane), vampirism works partly by re-writing the DNA of the infected person postmortem, when there's none of those pesky biological functions to hold it in check. It survives dormant in the bloodstream until then, when it takes over and gets with the rewriting. (So Tony is literally related to Ezrabet, though only in the vampire-adjusted parts of him.) For Steve's case, his adjusted biology will reject the dormant infection, just like it would reject a flu or a cold. Unfortunately, because it's not a normal illness, the virus itself could kill him, with even odds on whether or not he'd come back as a vampire. The choices are either going to be strengthen Steve via fresh infusions of the Super Soldier Serum which has never been recreated or strengthen the virus so it can overcome his adjusted biology (which is to say, Steve would lose the effects of the serum, but when he dies he'd react normally for a human infected with vampirism). Further complications arise with the DNA—it has to be from the same "family". Bringing in a second line would probably just kill him.

At least, that's a subplot. (collapses in exhaustion) I'd forgotten how many notes I had on this that were put aside and left alone lol. Thank you for letting me ramble!

[jessara40k]

Oh, right, I can see how it might be difficult to adapt to the regen issue and learn to stop holding back. And that probably explains why Caine killed most vampires before they reached the end of their first century: it reduces the likelihood of them learning not to fear injury. I'd sort of ignored some ramifications of the bloodbinding thing and assumed that the older vampires needed to be more powerful to control the younger ones.

About Steve and the virus, does that mean he'll probably need infusions from Tony, since he's a) the only other vampire available, and b) Erzebet's 'child' so to speak.

[tsukinofaerii]

It wasn't something I much focused on, since it wasn't really very necessary to the plot. It'll probably come up later, though, since theoretically even a younger vampire could control an older one if they manage to get close enough to force the exchange.

Tony or Celicia's blood could help sustain Steve, but the effect won't be as certain or as beneficial as Ezrabet's blood. If Tony were still alive-but-infected, his blood would hold a relatively pure strain of Ezrabet's infection that could be worked with. Since he's died and it's bonded with his own DNA, he's a direct descendant but it's not a perfect match. Going with the flu analogy, it would be like getting a vaccine made for last year's flu. Could work, might not.

[zheddy]

I really enjoyed this! I hope you'll write more. :)

[tsukinofaerii]

♥ Thank you!

[skund]

This. is. awesome. Thank you! I could hardly stop reading, even when I really, really had to actually get work done.

[tsukinofaerii]

I'm sorry your work suffered! D: But thank you! ♥

[clair3.livejournal.com]

this is brilliantly writen!!!!!!!!!!!!!! hoping for a sequel? Lol

[tsukinofaerii]

♥ Thank you! I have thoughts towards a sequel, but nothing yet.

[(Anonymous)]

And to think that I initially thought 'not another vampire fic'.

Started reading this late at night, had to break for that pesky thing called sleep, then had to endure twelve hours of snatches between work breaks before I can lock myself in my home library, leaving my poor hubby outside, and just curl up and finish this already. God damn this is good.

Tony is still very Ultimate!Tony but his vulnerability kind of reminds me of 616!Tony, and I liked this Steve a lot more than I usually like Ultimate!Steve (even if his notgay!denial wants me to hit him in the head. Has he never heard of bisexual before?). And surprisingly, because most badguy!vampires in fics and even in a lot of books and movies are one-dimensional cutouts that are just there for the audience to boo and hiss and cheer when they get killed gruesomely by the heroes, Ezrabet is most definitely not one. She's still a psychotic, twisted sadist, unscrupulously ambitious, but that's not all she is. The scenes with her memories and Cecilia made her a rounded and well fleshed out character, I wish I could write original characters that well.

And because I'm a hc whore, Tony's scene with Ezrabet in the cell hits the spot :p.

Great job, and hopefully you'll continue to write in this universe.

Naga

[tsukinofaerii]

♥ Thank you so much! Steve's Not!Gay is just... oi. I hope he'll develop slowly, but he's so indoctrinated and determined that "slowly" may end up being like cold molasses.

I adore my OCs and am not ashamed to admit it.. :D I'm thrilled that they worked so well for you too!

I definitely hope to play in this one again; I left some plot threads hanging, and Tony/Steve have a long way to go. But right now, I'm trying to get through other fic commitments. Here's hoping!

Thank you again for the lovely review. ♥