Five

Wasting away time in an abandoned observatory got tiresome very quickly. Nines only dared leave for short periods of time and whittled away the rest as best he could. Would that he could go into torpor but he couldn't leave himself vulnerable to hunters or werewolves. If he ever got his hands on LaCroix, he'd wring that worthless vampires neck for putting him through these weeks of perpetual boredom.

He spent that night cleaning the chambers of his guns, hands slick with grease while he sat cross legged with his back against the cool metal of the observatory. He'd been on edge for weeks, ears pricked to pick up the slightest disturbance and so he heard her far sooner than his eyes laid upon her. Feet walking on metal floors, he'd slid his gun back together and pressed his back to the wall near the entrance of the room in a few swift strides. She stepped through moments later, clad in tight black leather and had he realised it was her before he moved he might have reconsidered his steps.

But he didn't notice it was her in the darkness, and his hand closed around her mouth with remarkable dexterity, his gun pressed into her side as he hissed in her ear, "If you're looking for a trophy kill, you should have picked a different target."

Mumbled words died against his hand and he tightened his hands on the trigger, until a familiar scent filled his nose and he realised who she was. His hand slipped quickly from her mouth, gun sheathing at his side and he stepped back to stare at her, more than a bit surprised to find her there.

"What are you doing here, kid?"

"We were asked by the Jester Prince to extend apologies, but we do not trust his tricksy words." Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "We know he lies but we are not sure about what."

"There's a surprise," Nines muttered dryly. When had he ever expected LaCroix to be straight with anyone, let alone not try and screw people over?

A small smile tugged at her red lips as she briefly looked him over. "We missed you." When his lips parted to dismiss her feelings she added, quickly, "Not because of the shared blood, we have lost that in our system many suns ago. We missed the company and the personality." She paused a moment, a rueful look staining her features. "We are tired of having no one to chew words with but Damsel."

He looked at her carefully for a long moment, trying to judge and feel if anything from that illfated bond he'd made between them resided – and he felt nothing. Relieved, he allowed himself to smile. "I heard rumours you've been making LaCroix's life hell, making quite a name for yourself."

"We try our best. It is fun to see the twitching in his forehead when he angers." A grin pulled at her lips that was more than a little bit sadistic. Perhaps he should be proud of her, she was turning into more of an Anarch than she was.

"So, LaCroix sent you here to tell me they've called off the blood hunt, then? That he needs us all of a sudden for an alliance?" She nodded her affirmation. "Forgive me if that doesn't sound right to me."

"Forgiven. The Camarilla tremble at the sight of the Eastern bloodsuckers."

"The kue-jin?" A curse fell from his lips and he pressed a hand to his brow, shaking his head. "Shit, kid, I can't make this decision. You're putting me stuck between a rock and a son of a bitch."

"We would prefer the rock, it is more predictable, geology rarely stabs one in the back," she stated flatly.

"Ugh, this is a shitshow." He raked a hand through his hair, pacing back and forth in the observatory a moment before turning back to her and her curious yellow and blue eyes. "Do you have any idea what the kue-jin are capable of? How they view us? And LaCroix wants to go to war with them all of a sudden?"

She shrugged. "The tunes sounded odd to our ears too, but most tunes do apart from those from another Looney."

His nose wrinkled, glancing around until his blue eyes found the open door to the observatory and the all too familiar and unwelcome scent the breeze brought with it. "Something's not right."

"We thought we had established that-"

"Not what I meant, kid." Lips pulled back over his teeth, a soft hiss to match the baring of his fangs. "Do you smell that? That's smoke."

"Ah! We will barbecue our enemies!"

He shot her an incredulous look for a brief moment, then shook his head in disbelief. "Not like that, we have to get out of here." He moved to the door, stepped outside and cast his gaze around until he found the smouldering fires in the distance. "Shit, kid, were you followed?"

A frown graced her features but he interrupted her before she had the chance to reply. "That fire's man made, it's coming from every direction, we have to go, now."

"We only smell a small fire, it shouldn't burn us-"

"It's wasn't set to kill us," he pressed a hand to the small of her back, pushing her onwards where his words didn't seem to sink in the importance of the situation, "We have to go get to the tram- shit."

A howl echoed in the distance, deep and long, filling him with dread and he tore his gaze around, trying to pinpoint where it came from when she murmured quizzically, "We did not imagine that noise, did we?"

"I didn't hide out here for the nice view," he growled, his fingers slipping to his gun with practised ease as his blood fired up within his veins, rage building in anticipation of what was coming. "I did it because no one would come looking for me here, this is werewolf country."

"Troublesome," she stated flatly.

"They'll be out for blood from that fire." He loaded his gun, put his finger over the trigger although why he bothered he didn't know, his bullets wouldn't do shit against a werewolf if one of them found them. Pushing her with his other hand towards the tram station, he added, "Kid, c'mon, move!"

"We could try bringing a dog treat-"

He didn't hear the end of her sentence when something smashed into him, claws ripping into his flesh and fangs sinking into his arm, a furious growl ripping from his throat to match the werewolf trying to maul him. They flew off the cliff, his hands balled into fists and trying to punch the beast in the head, as if it might make a difference and then he was falling – instinct and bloodlust kicking in and he barely remembered the events that followed from the savage Brujah fury flooding through his veins.

o0o

A string of profanity left Nines' lips as he staggered through the Hollywood streets, one hand bloody and grasped in the fur of the beast's head and the other clutched around his side, trying in vain to stem the steady flow of blood seeping from the gashes and lacerations in his mangled flesh. Blood was running from the cut in his forehead and down his face, pooling at his chin and dripping from his short stubble. He was probably attracting attention, but he could care less in that moment, all he wanted was help.

He made towards the run down hotel on instinct, a vague memory in the back of his head from when he'd decided with Skelter and Damsel that they'd use that as a backup safehouse if shit ever hit the fan, which, given the situation, it definitely had. Lucky for him, they remembered that conversation too and Damsel shouted his name when he staggered into to hotel, his feet dragging.

"Oh my god," she practically yelled, "You're alive? Is that...?"

"Shit man, you killed a werewolf?" Skelter grinned at him and he couldn't help but return it, although it pained Nines to pull his face like that given his injuries. "Nice."

"You want it?" He threw the blasted head at his friend, his strength failing him finally so that he staggered and grasped onto the hotel's desk to steady himself. Where the clerk had gone he didn't know, far less cared. "Little help would be appreciated, if you wouldn't mind."

They both hurried towards him, an arm slipped around his back from each side and he groaned in pain with each step they helped him up until he could collapse on the bed in one of the rooms. Damsel brought towels from the bathroom that he pressed, gingerly, to the cut on his forehead for a moment as he caught his strength once more. The blood drenching his clothes made it hard to know where he'd been mangled and where he hadn't, so he worked his jacket and top off while Skelter placed the werewolf's head neatly on a table in the room. Damsel had disappeared, promising to bring bloodpacks back with her while Nines dabbed at cuts and lacerations with increasingly blood towels.

"You hear anything about the kid?" Nines murmured after a while, his voice dry and scratchy in the back of his throat.

Skelter shook his head. "Not a word."

"Damn." He leant back against the wall behind him, gazing pointlessly up at the ceiling and realising that he felt disappointed, concerned even – a foreign emotion to him that he hadn't felt in years, but he genuinely hoped she wasn't dead.

"Ahh! Imposter!" Perhaps he'd thought too soon about missing her. "The real Nines is in the belly of a wolf!"

She was pointing a finger at him, shooting him an accusing look as if it would force him to admit he wasn't the real Nines. All he could do was laugh softly from where he still sat on the bed, blood drenched towels around him and empty blood packs on the floor.

"You mean that guy?" he offered, inclining his head towards the trophy werewolf head sitting on the table. Skelter had done a nice job of arranging it before he left the room, what with it's tongue sticking out and eyes open – it would make a tasteful victory prize when all this shit was over. She stepped towards it, poking it inquisitively as if to ascertain if it were real while he told her how they'd been set up and what he'd learnt.

"Time to pick a side, kid," he offered her when he eventually had all the cards laid out on the table. "It's the end game now, us – or them. Got a preference?"

A grin spread over her features. "You have all of us, which is all you need."

He couldn't have missed the twinkle in her eye if he'd wanted to, so he stared for a long moment, wondering if she really had gotten over the entirety of that damn blood bond after all. But he could tell she had, the look in her eyes was different, changed – it wasn't one doped up on irrational puppy love, it was the look of someone with a deep set determination that knew what they wanted. The only issue for him was he wasn't certain if what she wanted was to gut as many of LaCroix's goons as she could, or grab him by his jaw and kiss him. Truthfully he wasn't entirely certain which he wanted either.

"To the revolution, then? Kill them both and damn the rest, LA stays an Anarch free state as long as I'm alive."

"We already hear the people singing the song of angry men," she giggled, then corrected with, "Uh, angry vampires."

For a long moment he stared at her before murmuring, "Seriously, kid, if you're going to start singing shit from musicals, I'm done."

"You ruin all of our fun." He had to chuckle at the pout that she gave him but he obliged telling her what the plan was, how they'd fix this mess with cleaving Xiao and LaCroix's heads.

"Wish I could join you, but I've already pushed fate too far for one night. Take this, though." He stood up, grabbing an unused grenade from his belt and pressing it into her icy cold hands. She slipped it into a pocket of her clothes, then gazed up at him, her multicoloured eyes meeting his cool blue ones and for a long moment he simply stared.

"One last thing," he started softly, his eyes darting from her face and to her lips, the soft flesh at her neck and chest. "Promise me you don't feel any of that blood bond shit in you any more?"

"Our mind is one hundred percent filled with our madness and our madness alone."

"Good."

A bloody hand cupped her cheek swiftly, lips pressing to hers in a hungry kiss as his arm snaked around her waist. She hesitated for a moment at first, but then her fingers were tangling in his matted hair, her head tilting and her tongue insisting to deepen their kiss. A desire like fire burnt inside him, ignorant of the voice in his head that had told him for decades that vampires shouldn't do this, and far less could. He realised that night it wasn't true, that passion could rage just as strongly through his dead veins now as it did when he was still alive.

And this time, when he pushed her onto the bed, covered her body in kisses and tore at her clothes, it wasn't because the mixing of some of their blood.

o0o

"Where's Jack?" Skelter shouted over the thick din of music flooding the Last Round, so heavy you could feel the beat thundering through the ground.

"Who cares!" Damsel laughed, taking a deep breath of a cigarette while she lapped up the chance to celebrate LaCroix's demise. "He'll turn up again eventually, always does."

"We know where the Smiling One resides," Miriam offered and she had to shout to be heard over the music, Nines would've told them to quiet it down a bit but he couldn't bring himself to break up their celebrations.

"Ahh, don't go spouting off your kook shit tonight for once!" Damsel waved a hand, far too intent on enjoying herself that night than trying to decipher the madness behind the words the woman who'd killed LaCroix spouted.

Miriam glowered at her briefly but the look faded when Nines curled a hand around her own and said, as softly as he could while still being heard, "Don't take it personally, she hasn't had many opportunities to celebrate anything in recent years since the Camarilla starting moving back into town."

"We will squash them next," the Malkavian replied defiantly.

"Easy there, take it one enemy at a time." He grinned at her, a hand worming down to rest at her waist. "Besides, they're already backing off, they know they've lost."

"We could still shoot the boom-sticks at them, though."

He laughed, deep and full of mirth. "You sure you really aren't a Brujah after all?"

She nodded. "Positively, we would not have this many voices in our head if we were like you."

"Oh, come here." He pulled at her wrist, dragging her towards one of the old couches in the corner of the room. Shins hitting the side, he fell into it, his hands running up her thighs as she knelt over him, arms around his neck and fluttering kisses against his lips.

"Ugh, you two are like some shitty romance novel," Damsel shouted from the other side of the room.

All it earned her was Nines' middle finger displayed in her direction while his other hand tangled in Miriam's black hair, his eager lips parting beneath hers. Any concerns he had for LA and her future fled him that night, between the ecstatic celebrations and the woman in his arms, he could care less in that moment. Let the future come when it wanted – they'd all earned a reprieve.

End