Chapter 74: Night Raid

Saturday January 1st, 2021. The Abbey.

Brontë had been on a night owls sleeping schedule for the last two weeks due to his newfound passion hunting Vampires. So when Blade proposed the idea of him joining their hunt the following night, not much of his schedule changed.

He went home. Took a shower, brushed his teeth and ate a bullet.

Then, he was back in the mansion. The mansion hidden in a pocket dimension created by the worlds supreme sorcerer. Raze would've laughed— saying he was in the big leagues. And Brontë would've cheekily told him Ororo was also almost Sorceress Supreme… and they would've laugh—

"Aye man, you alright in there?" A voice called from behind the bathroom door as Bronte leaned over the sink.

"I'm good." He gripped the porcelain counter so hard he could feel it turning to dust beneath his bio metal claws as they shrank and extended.

Sometimes the memories came when he needed them the least.

They also came whenever he was close to Vampires. Or Sabertooth….

The red eyes. The black smoke like a house fire. Like the actual house fire. The fangs. All synonymous with….

"Bullshit." Bronte looked down at the water faucet.

Pure silver with a wicked gleam that fed him his reflection, obscured and shrunk down to fit its tubing shape.

He used to be able to get the faucet working without a single touch.

Used to.

He reached up and turned the nozzle, grabbing up a handful of ice cold water and splashing his face.

He looked up at the mirror as he dried his face with his shirt. His dreads were still braided down in corn rows. Tight on his scalp like Mend was fresh on his mind.

His Klyntar relative slithered up behind him like a glowing tattooed snake. Also viewing themself in the mirror through white eyes.

"What? I don't get beauty hour?"

"You literally can look however you want… whenever you want."

Mend hissed, "Bigot."

Brontë turned away from the mirror and Mend reformed back into his arm.

"That's….. man that's not how it works." Bronte smiled internally and exited the bathroom.

Robbie stood by the door, panicking as he tried to pretend he was busy doing something else. The shuffle of his sweater and skinny-jeans was louder than the gunshots he heard around his apartment.

Brontë stared at him until he looked up from his chewed nails.

"Oh hey. Magik totally didn't tell me to come check on you."

"Right."

"We're waiting downstairs."

Brontë nodded and followed him down the spiraling staircase lined by black metal railings.

"So…. You're the driver." Bronte made conversation with each step.

"Si."

"How long have you had your license? I don't see too many young folks behind the wheel in my city."

Robbie chuckled as he itched the back of his neck, "I haven't…. Had my license."

"How…. You always drive illegally? I ain't snitching… just wondering." Bronte hopped off the last step and hit the wood floors, hearing the others discussing in the main room just like the previous night.

"No…. I uhhhh. I used to be a back up mechanic at a repair shop a year ago to feed my little brother back in Cali. Then I accidentally interrupted a super soldier drug ring and drove a semi up a skyscraper in LA."

Brontë raised his eyebrows.

Robbie smiled briefly, "Don't worry. Blade's taught me things, eh? I'm the best driver you've ever had."

"Never had a driver."

"My point!"

They made it to the main room.

"Thought you got cold feet!" Blade announced as he turned away from the window and stood over the pool table.

"Why lie?" Bronte replied as he pulled up and stood beside Ilyana. She ditched her civilian attire from before and opted for spiked black armor over pure black spandex. It made her hair and skin look like they were glowing.

"Hi." Ilyana whispered.

"Hey."

"To rattle, of course." Mr Knight finished Blade's reply from beside him.

"We're rattled enough." Jack mumbled as he hugged himself. Standing off to the other side of the dark skinned ringleader.

"Don't puss out on me yet, dog. We still need you." Blade didn't even spare the man a glance.

"Word choice." Ilyana eyed the man.

Blade sighed, "I'm old fashioned, go easy on me."

"Old fashioned is an understatement." Robbie whispered behind Bronte.

"Alright y'all, shut up." Blade pulled out a rolled up tube of paper and unrolled it over the pool table.

It was a map of the docs. Written and erased and rewritten a dozen times. Full of fix ups and mark downs like a psychopath was trying to retrace his steps while tripping out on acid.

Or maybe Bronte's lacking highschool diploma was whooping his as—

"Here we have the docs at Coney Island. And here's how we need to see it when we get there." Blade waved his hands over the paper.

"See it for all the nooks and crannies and vantage points. Stay high, we need to observe before we strike a damn thing. Why go in blind when we got eyes, you feel me?" Blade tapped his calloused index finger against the rim of his glasses.

They all nodded.

"Let's get to the details." Mr. Knight rubbed his chin.

Blade agreed with a grunt.

"Yesterday we cross referenced your hunting information with our own." Blade said while looking at Bronte.

"You discovered something important yesterday. While we were chasing down the blood bank robbers, you caught the real trouble makers."

"The experiments."

"Ya'll had the control group." Bronte realized.

"What?" Ilyana held out a hand to stop Blade.

"It was just something me and Mend…"

"Who?" Blade turned his head so his ear faced him. It was surprisingly pointy—

"Nevermind. My point is, I ran into the group of Vampires that were a field test. Y'all had the blanks. Control group and Experimental group."

"That's a surprisingly accurate but…. high-school way to think of it." Jack itched his beard scruff anxiously.

They all silently considered Bronte's words.

Mr Knight nodded, "They didn't show any particularly special skills beyond the usual. They died the same. They weren't remarkable."

"But they attracted us." Blade agreed, "Which was the point I was getting to. Now with your recent add on, there are two groups of blood-suckers at work. Like you said, the control group and the experimental group. The…. Which one is the blanks?"

"Control group." Ilyana replied.

"Right, the control group were the basic Vampires robbing blood banks."

"Why?" Bronte questioned.

"To attract people like me." Blade replied, "It's the most obvious modus operandi for Vampires. Especially old ones looking to blend in. Daken's a cunning one. He's been keeping the experienced Vampire hunters away from his special batch. It was a distraction… doubling as the control group."

"That's cold." Robbie chimed in.

"He is." Bronte agreed.

"So like I said. He distracted us experienced folks. You though,.... you aren't experienced." Blade smiled as he looked at Bronte.

"I get to it all the same, don't I?"

Blade chuckled, "…..Yea, slim. You get to it. You got to the next piece of the puzzle. Which gives us the biggest picture we've had so far. Can y'all see?"

"Daken wants to mix the Mutants and Vampires." Bronte finished. Ilyana nodded beside him.

Blade held up a hand, "Like I said, you brought a piece of the puzzle. That's one piece. Just one."

"The fuc— how is there more?"

"The prophecy!! Perhaps WE are the hero and this heals us… heroically!" Mend provided.

That could've been it but there was more. Not the hero part.

Blade smiled an inhuman expression full of fangs, "We're going to the docs for a reason ain't we?"

***

And just like that, Bronte was jammed into the back of a black muscle car seated between Ilyana and Mr Knight. Aka heaven and hell.

"I go by Moon-Knight now….. and I'm not racist. I'm dating a WereFeline… I kind of can't be a bigot at this point." Moon-Knight explained as he pulled his pointed white hood over his masked head. The leather seats squeaked from all the excess movement.

"Bigot! He said it!" Mend yelled in Bronte's mind.

"Man why do you always have to change in the car?" Robbie said from the drivers seat as they wove their way through evening traffic in Manhattan.

"I can't choose who takes the spotlight… or when. It just happens."

"Sounds stressful." Bronte groaned as Moon-Knight pulled his cloak out from under him.

"It's effective. I have a team….." He explained as he strapped on an arm guard with three claws…. And then a bracelet full of capsules of white fluid…. And then a some mechanical forearm bracer. "I have multiple life times of expertise and experience at my disposal. I'm a one man army."

Brontë focused on the three claws and remembered Mr. Knights words the first time they met.

"Do you want to meet your father?"

Moon-Knight sighed, "Next time I'll take my Crescent-Glider."

"What the fuc— so we didn't have to be packed in this car like sardines?" Bronte slapped his knees.

"Of course we did. We gotta assign roles. It's recon not a walk in the park." Blade said from the passenger seat as he blew cigar smoke out the window.

Brontë watched it drift into the encroaching dark of the sky under street lights and reflective window panes. The memories were coming.

The hum of the car engine reminded him of the rides with Agent Coulson. The blur of the streets and people reminded him of flying through hordes of Lupines. He could smell the after scent of burnt tar and—

"Bronte?" Ilyana's voice broke through his disgruntled miasma.

"What's good?"

Ilyana continued to stare at him with an expression he didn't understand as Blade spoke.

"Your abilities. What can you do? Are you a carbon copy of your daddy or do you bring something new to the table?"

"Resistant to the elements. At most temperatures I'm unable to be harmed. My healing factor isn't as good as the others but I'm denser and physically more powerful. I've got enhanced senses and I can speak to predatory species….. they listen to me." Bronte explained.

"Combat?" Blade raised an eyebrow beyond his dark shades.

"Jui-jitsu…. Tai-Kwan-Do, kick-boxing, Dambe, Krav-Maga…. Remus briefly taught me some Ninjutsu because my claws follow the function of Sai's but I'm still green." Bronte replied.

"What the…. Aren't you twenty-one?" Robbie questioned.

"He's been trained by some of the best. From a combative standpoint consider him as old as Moon-Knight." Ilyana answered.

Blade nodded, "That'll work….. You hunt?"

"Used to." Bronte replied.

"You'll be paired with Magik. Moon-Knight is a shitty assassin anyway. When we need lurkers out the way, that's you two. Teleport in, and rip your way out silently as possible. Just follow her lead."

"What about the rest of you?" Bronte questioned.

"You'll see. We already checked you out, I think it's fair you get to do the same." Blade suddenly pulled a whetstone out of the glovebox and started sharpening his daggers.

***

The rest of the ride went by in relative silence. Externally, the sounds of honking taxi's and corner protesters for Mutant rights faded as the moon rose and they exited the denser city. The scents of water and Ilyana's warmth grew the days absence.

Internally, he worked over his own gameplan and usual rules with Mend.

It wouldn't be the usual hustle with mindless fiends. Blade described it as more. So they also had to be more.

He got all the warm ups he needed. Game time rose in prominence parallel to the moon. And its highest point was less than an hour away.

When they parked their car, a bridge connecting them to Coney Island loomed in the distance. Empty and dark, hidden in shadow as the sun fell behind the backdrop of the city.

They all rushed out of the car, stretching their limbs.

Only when Bronte stopped stretching did he notice one of them wasn't the same as before.

Surprisingly it wasn't Moon-Knight.

Jack coughed into his hand. Even in the darkness Bronte could see the flexion of muscle he hadn't noticed before beneath his protective gear.

He was taller even.

"You good?" Bronte questioned from the other side of the car as Moon-Knight dug into his belt beside him.

"He will be." Blade threw a black cloak over him and handed Bronte an ear piece. "Let's move."

Ilyana threw a teleporting disc into the gravel ground and hopped in.

One by one the rest of them followed, falling out onto the top of a shipment container hidden behind a crane that hovered over the Coney Island docs. Bronte's earpiece screeched and fizzed inside his ear.

Magic had a tendency to troll technology.

It was plain. The docs. Not abandoned. Brontë could smell fish, fried foods and human perspiration all over the metal and swaying anchored boats.

The wood planks of the docs were old and covered and frozen bird poop that seemed to double as a crude polish or second coating.

In the distance, a rusty old Ferris wheel covered in snow creaked in the winds. A lasting bastion of the summer carnival.

Brontë used to beg his mom to take them as a kid.

He would've thought his dream would come true in such a bizzare way.

"Alright. I'm leaving you two at this post, the rest of us will spread out." Blade took off with Moon-Knight, Jack and Robbie.

Ilyana looked at her wrist, "They should be here soon."

"How do you know that?" Bronte questioned as he squatted on the shipment containers edge, dozens of feet above ground. In nothing but a black tank-top and cargo pants the cold felt calming.

"Blade….. forcefully obtained the information from a runner."

"Right…. Been there." Bronte whispered.

"You have?" Ilyana looked at him again with an expression he didn't fully understand.

"Girl, I been on the road. What did you think?"

"That is true….."

They grew silent.

He tried to train his night vision on the shadows to find the others but they were as good as invisible. That was good. Vampires had senses at least as good as his own.

"Are you thinking about Daken?…"

Brontë looked over at her as she squatted beside him.

He could hear the flexion of muscles in her hips, glutes and thighs as she adjusted herself.

The cold air gave her button nose a red glow. Her lips probably matched beneath the black and blue lipstick.

"I-I'm sorry…. I just. I didn't know that's how it went bad."

"Yea... it wasn't supposed to." Bronte started as he watched the docs. "But we didn't develop how he wanted us to. Nah, we didn't develop how he needed us to. He wanted me to be more ruthless. He wanted me to not think it was all over when I killed Romulus."

"It sounds like you agree…" Ilyana whispered.

"I do kind of— actually fuck that. I don't. And he's a hypocrite— a snake. He's talking all this shit about nothing changing but he didn't try to change nothing whenever it didn't work in his favor. He's trynna posture himself like some civil rights leader but he used and abused his own people. He sat back and plotted on us. He's killing his own people. He killed….." Bronte bit down on his fist to stop himself from going places he didn't want to.

"What will you do if you see your brother here tonight?" Ilyana questioned.

Brontë looked into her blue eyes, "He's not my brother. And he won't be here."

Like clockwork the last vestiges of daylight fell and an unmarked suv drove down the bridge and onto the docs.

Eight people spilled out of the car in suits and long coats.

Brontë scented the air, taking note of new scents of gunpowder and blood. Even from his current distance.

"Bronte?" Blade spoke over the ear piece, "What those senses telling you?"

"The SUV's trunk is full of assault rifles and blood bags. No explosives. A few of them either have handguns or fired the assault rifles recently I smell it on their fingers and coats. Hold on…"

Brontë listened.

"Remember the deal. We don't move until we can confirm a visual. He messed with Wakanda, this bastard is a slimeball. He needs to come all the way out of this cold ass water and show the damn thing before he gets any money or resources."

Brontë felt his blood warm.

"What?" Ilyana said.

Brontë held up a hand to quiet her as he focused.

The rest of their conversation was mundane in comparison. And what important bits he did hear he didn't feel like sharing. He didn't understand them.

"Trades up in five. Stay away from and out of the water." Bronte said.

"They're on schedule." Blade replied.

"Alright, the rest of you, fan out. When the others get here they're on me for the trade. Go suck on some blood bags and watch the water freeze or somethin." One of the Vampires said before four of the others fanned out into the darkness.

Another SUV rolled in seconds after.

"That's us?" Bronte questioned Ilyana as the Vampires spread out.

Ilyana nodded and threw a disc behind herself, opening a glowing rift behind the shipment containers.

The two took off, jumping off the metal box and falling into the mutant power of Magik.

The portal swallowed them and spit them out of the back wall of a reporting post built on the docs. Two Vampires stood a few feet from it drinking blood out of plastic bags.

Their eyes were just beginning to turn red when Bronte lunged.

He ran his claws through the ear of the closest Vampire, stunning it momentarily before throwing it behind him to Ilyana.

She removed the humanoid creatures head with her SoulSword as Bronte caught the other and decapitated it with his bare hands.

"You are….. strong…" Ilyana seemed surprised.

"I ate a Wendigo."

"Sounds…. Chewy." Ilyana threw down another disc and in the blink of an eye they were back to their previous positions.

Just in time for the waters to rumble as a submarine rose at the edge of the docs from beneath the wintery waves.

"What the…"

It was rusty…. Smelled old. Looked like something referred to as state of the art over a hundred years ago.

The Vampires waited patiently as whoever was inside popped the top open with the turn of a crusted wheel and hopped out.

He was the polar opposite of the submarine on the outside. But inside he was probably just as old and dirty and murky.

The man looked less like a man and more like an android. His skin had that flat ceramic look that made Bronte think it wasn't skin. It didn't have pores. And what wasn't shown as skin was covered in a vibrating sheen of red and dark purple fabric. It hurt to look at.

If that wasn't bizarre enough, he was missing a hand.

In its place a sort of audial device was attached. It almost looked like a loud speaker.

If loud speakers were made of Vibranium.

"Klaw." One of the Vampires on the docs said.

A lightbulb went off in Bronte's mind.

"He's supposed to be dead." Bronte whispered.

"Fill us in." Blade questioned.

"Black market tradesman, international criminal and previously dead." Bronte said stiffly.

"Nothing more to add?"

"Nah. Not until you tell me about the prophecy."

"Haha… tough nut." Blade whispered. "What do we need to look out for?"

"I don't know. He's different. I'm working off of decades old information. Wakandan tech in relation to sound. Enhanced strength. He supposed to be dead."

"Yet here he stands…"

"He doesn't look the same."

"Vampire?"

"Hell no." Bronte replied.

"That's not good."

"None of this is good." Moon-Knight announced. "But get ready, it only gets worse. Khonshu says so."

As if on que, the Vampires spoke.

"So… do you have the uhhhh..? Whats it called? The being of tokalhan?"

"The being of Talocan." Klaw corrected. But when he spoke his mouth didn't move. "And yes…. The organs are in tact."

"Mutants and Sea-People?" Ilyana questioned.

"The bigger picture." Blade repeated.