#vampire!stone

-

“Flynn!” Eve called up the stairs, “If we don’t leave now there won’t be time to get popcorn!”

“There’s always time for popcorn!” came the disembodied voice from somewhere above.

“Not if we arrive fifteen minutes after the movie starts!”

No reply.

Eve sighed and grabbed her coat from the rack, shrugging it over her fancy-ish date night jumpsuit. As she turned, she found Stone at the table - not surprising since he had covered half of it with various portfolios - but he was oddly neither engaged with them, nor watching her.

She had yelled pretty loudly, and usually this might be met with a smirk from him and some joking comment about Flynn’s punctuality or maybe a reference to the last time they had a movie date, and things went less than smoothly.

But he was facing away from her, and from the table, his posture tense.

As she watched, he brought his right hand up, pressing it to the side of his head.

“Stone?”

After a too long pause, he opened his eyes and squinted up at her, one hand still against his head.

“You okay?” she lightly touched his arm, but he flinched away.

“Yeah,” he said quickly, looking at her hand and then back to her, “Yeah. Jus’ a headache.”

She withdraw her hand and offered a sympathetic smile, “I guess Tylenol isn’t going to help?”

“Not sure it’s been tested on vampires,” he replied softly, then smiled a facsimile of his usual smile, “Date night?”

“It’ll be date morning if Flynn doesn’t hurry up,” she replied, “I swear if he…”

“I’m coming!” Flynn interrupted, running down the stairs with one shoe on and the other in the hand that wasn’t holding a bundle of cravats, “Which do I wear? What shoes are you - okay, orange it is.”

Several of the cravats fell to the floor and he began to finish getting dressed, “We still have time for popcorn?”

“Yes, we still have time for popcorn.”

She had told him half an hour earlier than the film actually started, so they actually had a good amount of time.

“Try not to get sucked into this one,” Stone smirked tiredly as they set the back door.

Eve took Flynn’s offered arm and glanced back over her shoulder, “No promises.”

She saw a ghost of a smile, and then she and Flynn were walking out of a toilet cubicle into the movie theatre.

That got them some amused looks from some other visitors, but it wasn’t the first or probably the last time she and Flynn would exit a toilet stall or changing room or other small enclosed space together.

They got popcorn, they got to their seats, and they watched the entire movie through without getting sucked into it, attacked by ninjas or snake monsters or anything, or even getting told to be quiet too many times by other movie goers.

It was a nice normal date. They did manage to have those from time to time these days.

But their lives weren’t normal and inevitably their conversation, as they strolled around a park after the movie was over, fell into less normal things.

“I’m worried about Stone,” she said.

He nodded, “His headaches?”

“You noticed too?”

“I’m very observant.”

She sighed, “He says he’s fine, but I’m worried he’s just trying to not be a burden.”

“You’re thinking it’s something vampire-y?”

“Honestly, I’m thinking it’s more something trauma-y,” she replied, stopping and dropping onto a bench, “He went through hell and we dealt with the weird magical supernatural part, but we never helped him deal with the rest of it.”

“You think he has PTSD?”

“I’m not ruling it out. You saw how bad he was when we found him.”

“Well,” Flynn said, taking her hand and linking their fingers, “Though your opinion may be plausible, I don’t think we actually dealt with the weird magical supernatural part.”

“What do you mean?”

Flynn mused for a while, expressively mused, his face taking on a thoughtful expression so she couldn’t possibly doubt that he was thinking.

She smiled slightly and waited.

“You’re right,” he said at last, “Stone did go through something horrible. The question is, why did the vampires do that to him only to turn him?”

“For fun?” she shrugged, “Because they were hungry? We could be here all week trying to justify the extreme brutality of a bunch of evil vampires.”

“Maybe, but something…something just feels…I can’t place it.”

“I’m not sure if I’d rather it be PTSD or some long game vampire trick…”

“Why can’t it be both?”

Eve shot him a glare, against which he raised his hands in surrender.

“Hopefully not both.”

“I really hope not either,” she sighed, “I’ll try to talk to him tomorrow…how about dessert before we go back?”

This last, with an attempt to dispel the dark mood she had pulled over their date.

Flynn smiled and raised her hand to his lips, “Yes to dessert, and don’t worry about Stone. Whatever it is, we’ll solve it.”

-

Eve planned to talk to Stone when he went to train in the morning. He had a routine of morning martial arts training before the vampires took him, and recovering that had been part of his efforts to regain a sense of himself.

In the past, she and him had had most of their more serious - serious so far as it didn’t relate directly to the library or imminent threats against the world - conversations while hitting the bag or sparring. It was an easier place for them both to be open than sitting down and being still.

She didn’t find him in the gym when she expected he would be there, nor did she get an answer when she knocked on his door.

Walking into the annex she vaguely glossed over the incongruent presence of a large wicker giraffe or long-necked horse or something, and scanned the space. Jenkins, Cassandra, but no Stone. She knew Flynn was still asleep and guessed Ezekiel was.

“Anyone seen Stone?”

“No,” Cassandra frowned, “Isn’t he in the gym?”

“I checked there.”

“His room?”

“No answer.”

Jenkins pursed his lips, “You believe something is amiss?”

“I just want to check he’s doing okay,” she replied, “He's been having headaches lately.”

“Not just headaches,” Cassandra added quietly, “He’s been spacing out, getting jumpy for no apparent reason. Ezekiel and I noticed it, but he shuts any questions down.”

She looked down at her hands, and added in a whisper, “It’s been getting worse.”

“Alright,” Eve said, “I’m going to go check his room again…”

“Don’t bother,” Ezekiel walked in, “He’s not there. Just checked. Not in the gym or with the chupacabra either.”

“Why would he be with the chupacabra?” Flynn asked, wandering in with a piece of toast.

“They’re mates,” Ezekiel shrugged, “But he’s not there.”

“Okay,” Eve pushed back her rising concern, “We split up and search the library. Whatever’s going on, we can’t let him try to deal with it alone.”

They searched, not the entire but the likely parts of, the library, but they didn’t find him anywhere.

“Time for a locating spell?” Ezekiel asked when they were all back around the table having failed in their task.

“It won’t work,” Cassandra frowned, “The spell we put on him is cyclical. It isn’t emitting any signal that can be detected from outside. And even if we could find a way around that, we’d need something with the same magic signal here and we don’t have anything like that.”

“But we did it before,” Eve questioned, “Using the Monkey King’s staff?”

“The magic isn’t the same anymore. We modified it too much.”

“Then we solve this old school,” Flynn said, “Where would Stone go? Back to Oklahoma?”

“No.”

“Although if he was gonna go killy, his dad…”Ezekiel mused, breaking off when Cassandra nudged him angrily.

“Jacob Stone. Is. Not. Killing. Anyone!”

Ezekiel raised his hands in surrender, “Okay. He’s not gonna go killy. Obviously he’s not. He’s still the same Stone.”

“Assuming he left of his own free will,” Jenkins interjected, “I would wager Mr Stone would go somewhere with as few people as possible.”

“What do you mean ‘assuming he left of his own free will’?”

“There is precedence in parts of vampire lore…”

“Which varies a lot depending on the cultural context. Vampires are not actually as uniform a group as generally perceived and…” Flynn held up his hands at Jenkins’ glare for the interruption, smiling sheepishly and gesturing for the former knight to proceed.

Which he did, after allowing the glare to linger a little longer, “It is believed that some vampires are capable of mind manipulation, especially strong when it comes to the vampire who turned them. There is a sort of psychic connection, or not quite…something conceptually rela…regardless, it is conceivable that Mr Stone did not leave entirely by choice, in which case we have to presume his location was also not his own decision. The vampire who turned him, most likely The Angler, decided.” 

“But we don’t know whether or not he chose, so how do we decide where to search?”

“Well, if he chose to leave, at least we know he’s probably sort of safe? But if he was taken or forced then he’s not,” Eve began, “So without a way to be certain which it is, I say we try and track down this Angler guy. If he has Stone, we get him back, and if he doesn’t we at least finish the job we began last time.”

“Colonel, need I remind you that The Angler is not your average vampire? He has persisted for so long without being killed for a reason.”

“He hasn’t had three librarians and a guardian to face at the same time before,” she replied, “If he has Stone or is a threat to him in the future, we take him out.”

“And save the lives he would definitely keep taking,” Ezekiel added, “He’s not exactly going to stop.”

“And if Mr Stone is the bait specifically being used to lure all of you in?” Jenkins warned, “We do not know his plan. He turned Mr Stone for a reason, and it could very well be his intention to lure all the librarians and the guardian into a trap, and I do not believe I need to elaborate on just how disastrous the consequences would be were he able to get all of you.”

“It’s difficult to imagine another reason for him turning Stone,” Flynn agreed, “Unless he needs an eternal companion who happens to be an expert in art history or oil rigging.”

“You’re acting like there’s logic here,” Ezekiel argued, “We’re talking about a guy who for centuries lured people in to kill or turn them.  Basically a serial killer, and that comes with whole other areas of logic and psychology that don’t exactly make sense to everyone else.  I mean, he killed, not turned, the librarians who tried to stop him before, but he’s turned other people.  Why?  And has he used people as the bait before?”

“Ezekiel’s right,” Cassandra frowned, “We’re looking at this from our perspective.  The library matters to us, but The Angler might not care about it.  If he wanted any of us, he could have tried when we rescued Stone the first time.”

“We didn’t see him there the first time.”

“But he might still have been there.  Jenkins said Stone was turned shortly before we arrived, right?  And probably by The Angler.”

“So he let us escape with Stone?”

She shrugged, “Maybe.  But, the point is, I think we need to look more into his history.  Who The Angler targeted, and how and why.  Where he operated, other than the places we already know.”

“We should also check the locations we know already,” Eve continued when no one objected to this approach, “Just in case Stone’s there.  Ezekiel, you and I are on that.  Surveillance and enquiries, and if we think there’s a lead we’ll figure out a plan of attack that includes all of us.”

“The rest of us will look into what we can on The Angler,” Cassandra nodded, “See if we can guess his plan.”

And hope that they could do all quickly enough to get Stone back before he could be harmed beyond their help. Maybe he was just hiding out somewhere very safe on his own, and he would turn up sometime when they were still looking into The Angler, or after and he’d just have been taking time to clear his head.

-

The basement where they had first found Stone was completely empty. No surprise there. After their attack, it seemed that the vampires left had cleared out.

The first two of their other possible locations to search were less empty and more just completely devoid of anything resembling a vampire. Or anything weird or magical or supernatural. Just a normal apartment building and a normal shop.

But the third was more promising.

Scoping it out beforehand from a distance showed that they never once opened the blinds or curtains on the windows, people only came and went at night, and those people just so happened not to be reflected in the dark windows.

“Okay, so,” Cassandra set down a tray of shot glasses containing a pink liquid, “Jenkins and I mixed this up. It should disguise any sound or scent we make from the vampires. We’ll still be visible, but it might at least give us an advantage.”

“How long does it last?” Eve asked, raising one glass and sniffing it, something she immediately regretted, “And what is in it?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“It should last an hour,” Jenkins said, “And it will not be easy to make more.”

“So, we know the plan?” Flynn asked, “We go in, clear each room, take out any vampires that are hostile and attempt to get a jump on The Angler if he’s there. Easy!”

Before they could say anything or, really, overthink the plan, he grabbed a shot glass, downed the potion with a grimace and turned to grab Excalibur, “Let’s go!”

From the outside, the target looked like a normal apartment building locked in between two other normal apartment buildings in a normal street.

Three stories high, steps up to the front door, foliage hanging from a balcony above, an intercom with four names listed beside the buttons.  The only slightly conspicuous part of the building was that blinds were closed in every window.  Not that odd in California, but it supported the theory that this was one of the vampire’s residences.

Then the names all matched one of his known victims.

The fact that it was bright daylight gave them a clear advantage.

The cloaking spell gave them an even greater one.  Ezekiel could pick the lock on the front door, and they could walk in, knowing that the vampires would be unable to hear or smell them.

Eve gestured to the first room, stake held tight in her right arm.

Cassandra knocked and then ducked out of the way.

Eve waited.

The door opened, a brunette in a blue dress stood there, for a moment annoyed, and then angry.  She threw herself at Eve too quickly for her to react and fight back, slamming her into the mailboxes behind and making an attempt to bite her, but the vampire hadn’t sensed anyone else, hadn’t seen them, and wasn’t prepared for Ezekiel to drive a stake through her heart from behind.

A moment of shock dispelled the feral expression, and then the vampire dissipated into sparks and ashes.

That noise had been heard, and now there was another vampire running at them, but not for long.  Excalibur sliced cleanly through their neck and destroyed that one too.

The plan was that they stick together.  Their strength in this moment relied on them being together, one or two of them hiding to get the jump when the vampire’s attacked someone they saw.  Which meant they had to decide between the upper two floors or the basement.

A sharp, agonised scream from the latter decided it for them.

“Was that…” Cassandra whispered, not finishing the question because it and the answer were both perfectly obvious.

That was Stone’s voice.

“Come on,” Eve breathed, readying herself to open the door.  Just as she did, she felt herself dragged forcefully back, hitting yet another wall, hard enough this time to have her vision blurring for a moment and her head ringing.  More vampires were on them now, but Flynn was already running down towards the basement.  Eve struggled up, dodging the vampire and surging forward to get her stake through the back of a vampire that tried to follow him.  The one that had attacked her was already ash by the time she turned around, Jenkins wielding a sword as smoothly as he must have done as a knight.  She gave a brief nod of thanks and went for the vampire that had backed Ezekiel into a corner and knocked Cassandra into the wall.  It nearly managed to get her down too, but suddenly stopped abruptly, long enough for Eve to get her stake through the heart of that one too.

It disappeared and there was silence again.

Too much silence.

She checked them all over in one sweeping gaze.  Ezekiel was helping Cassandra to her feet, checking on her, Jenkins was intently scanning the stairs for signs of more enemies, and the door to the basement was still open, Flynn somewhere beyond.

“Cover me,” she said to the others, moving quickly towards the door and down the dark enclosed stairs to a metal door, beyond which was a surprisingly well-lit concrete chamber.

It was really nothing more than that.  Lights overhead and concrete floor and walls, which were completely bare other patches of dried or drying blood.

In the corner farthest from the stairs, she saw Flynn and Stone, just stood there for a second before suddenly Stone launched himself at Flynn, throwing a punch that she really hoped the obvious blood loss was going to make relatively weak.

Stone had a strong punch before she started training with him. It had become genuinely impressive after he worked on it.

As a vampire, it was potentially lethal.

The blow sent Flynn flying backwards, landing hard on the concrete. Jake was on him almost immediately, and Flynn was definitely out cold, no way was he going to be able to summon Excalibur to defend himself.

But Eve had been in motion too ever since she saw Stone about to attack, and now she threw all her body weight into dragging him off Flynn.

She readied herself for an attack, steeled against the emotional burden of having to potentially use serious force against her friend.

But no attack came.

Jake was stumbling back away from her, his expression so terrified she could barely stand to keep her gaze on him. But his eyes didn’t leave her face, even when he tripped and fell back into the wall.

There tears carving paths through the blood on his face as he finally looked away from her and towards Flynn.

Behind her, Eve heard the others running down the stairs, and within seconds, Ezekiel and Cassandra were sprinting over.

"We got him," Ezekiel said as he passed her.

Eve nodded and tore her eyes away just as Cassandra dropped to her knees in front of Stone.

Jenkins was knelt beside Flynn, propping him up gently as he started to come to, groaning and mumbling something incoherent.

"Flynn?" she said gently, tugging off her jacket and folding it to place under his head, "Flynn? You okay?"

"You gotta stop teaching him martial arts, Eve," Flynn muttered groggily, wincing as he opened his eyes and immediately closing them again.

She let out a soft laugh and moved over to try and get a better look at the injury. The punch had landed just below his right eye and he would probably have a horrible bruise by tomorrow. He almost certainly had a concussion, but he hadn’t been out for too long, which was the most reassuring thing.

"I'll get Mr Carson back to the library," Jenkins said, looking up and beyond Eve, "I believe you are needed here."

She looked back over her shoulder.

All three of the other librarians were kneeling on the floor now, Stone with his head buried against Cassandra's shoulder, and his right hand tightly gripping the fabric of Ezekiel's shirt. She couldn't see Cassandra's face, but from the hunch of her shoulders and the tears on Ezekiel's cheeks, Eve knew she was crying.

"Take a look at his head," Eve turned back to Jenkins, "Stone punched him hard. I don't know if he might..."

"I will take care of him, Colonel," Jenkins said calmly, "This is not the first serious head blow I have tended. Nor do I expect it will be the last."

She nodded, gave him a small smile, and bent to kiss Flynn lightly, "Try to be a good patient."

He mumbled something between "No promises," and "Always good," as Jenkins helped him to his feet.

Eve waited until she had watched them both disappear, and finally turned back to their other serious problem.

Finding Stone chained up and physically brutalised had been horrific, but right now Eve felt even that was preferable to seeing him like this, with his mind having been torn apart by whatever tricks that vampire had been playing.

As she walked around to kneel with them, she caught Cassandra's desperate expression, confused and afraid and desperately upset. Ezekiel's differed only in that some part of those emotions was subdued by a barely contained frustrated anger that had nowhere to be directed now The Angler was dead.

"Stone," Eve said softly, "Jake?"

He looked up, bright eyes seeming impossibly blue, and almost fumbled to release his grip on Ezekiel, half-falling forward to reach for her. Eve almost flinched back, but this was no threat. He didn't grab her neck, but touched it. Fingertips touching. Pressing lightly.

"You're alive," he rasped, eyes searching her face as his fingers remained on her neck.

She reached up and took his hand in both of hers, "Yeah. I'm alive."

"I-I thought...I saw..." he looked from her to Cassandra, to Ezekiel, seeming confused like he only just was realising they were there too.

"Is this real?"

Exactly the same question he had asked after he had first been turned, the words even more broken than they had been then.

"It's real," she replied, her voice cracking as she struggled to hold back her own tears.

He suddenly pulled his hand free of her’s, shifting away and looking between them as tears still streaked his face, “How the hell do I know?!”

"Ask me something only I would know," Eve suggested, remembering the forest and how she had been convinced it was their Jacob Stone talking from within the tree.

"Y-you're in my head. You know all the answers!"

“But only the ones you already know,” Cassandra said, struggling to find her voice through the sobs she had barely been holding back, and then letting the words tumble desperately from her, “Like, your mind couldn’t explain to you why the priors and likelihoods are effectively interchangeable in Bayesian inference, except in the rare instances that the likelihoods are in fact derivatives, albeit implicitly, of the input…”

Eve followed the stream of words she didn’t actually understand for about as long as she ever did, and quickly lost the thread. It didn’t matter, because she saw a look of hope flicker across Stone’s features as he listened, probably as utterly confused as she was.

“Did you get any of that?” Ezekiel asked, almost managing to make himself sound calm and casual, “Because I didn’t.”

“No,” Stone whispered.

"This is real. Whatever you saw before is gone," Eve continued, "The vampire who was making it happen is gone. Flynn killed him..."

"I saw him kill you."

That explained the punch Flynn had taken.

"He didn't," she continued, "I'm right here. But that vampire is not."

“Come back to the library with us. We’ll help you figure out what was and wasn’t real," Ezekiel added, lightly squeezing Stone's right shoulder, the left side being unnervingly soaked with blood, down the entire sleeve of his hoodie.

Slowly, Stone nodded, his eyes still shining with tears.

He stumbled to his feet, holding his left arm close, and let Ezekiel help him walk unsteadily with them to the back door, and back to the library.

Jenkins was waiting in the annex, already facing the door with the first aid kit set on the table behind him.

"Where's Flynn?" Eve asked, walking ahead and speaking quietly.

"Resting off his concussion," Jenkins replied, "I gave him something to help with the pain and swelling, but he will have a nasty bruise."

She nodded, "He's okay though?"

"He is," Jenkins replied, "And is..."

Eve glanced back to the other three, Stone leaning against a desk and looking no less shaken up than in the basement, "I don't know."

Jenkins inclined his head and stepped closer to the group, "Mr Stone. Would you kindly allow me to look at your injuries?"

Stone looked up, confused and then nervous.

“Here?”

“We can use your room if you’d rather.”

“Can you put the sigils back?”

Ezekiel was already shaking his head to object, “You want us to trap you again?”

“Please.”

Eve nodded, catching Cassandra and Ezekiel’s eyes significantly, “For now. Until you’re feeling more like yourself again.”

Cassandra stood, lightly touching Stone’s shoulder and hurried off to get what she needed for that spell, while Ezekiel began to help Stone towards his room.

Walking a pace behind them, Eve heard Stone ask quietly, “Where was it? Th-that place?”

“Just now?” Ezekiel had adopted the tone he used when he was trying to act calm and unconcerned, “LA.”

“Thought it was Portland…”

“Definitely LA.”

“Were there any,” Stone hesitated, stopping outside his room and looking in, “Have there been any murders? In LA or Portland or…or anywhere else?”

He didn’t really react as Jenkins ushered him inside to sit on the bed, looking to Ezekiel for an answer.

Eve found she was too.

Watching and hoping he would find nothing. The question alone made very clear what Stone believed he had done, and Eve hoped desperately it was a lie.

Stone had either been made to think he had killed people, or he had done so, and one of those was so, so much preferable to the other.

“I’m looking for animal attacks, stabbing with neck wounds, and anything else that a vampire attack might show up as,” Ezekiel pulled out his phone and explained before he began his task, “Across all states since I’m guessing you didn’t cross an ocean…adding to that Canada and Mexico to cover north and south…there are a lot of reports to sift through so this might take a while.”

“Nothing showed up in the clippings book,” Cassandra offered, looking in through the door with a stick of chalk in one hand, “Usually it would show us if there was something like that going on, right?”

It was unclear if that applied to incidents because of the librarians themselves, but thankfully no one brought that up to weaken Cassandra’s reassuring words.

“While Mr Jones peruses the Internet,” Jenkins said firmly, peeling off the bloody fabric of the hoodie sleeve he had cut while Ezekiel was talking, “Will you allow me to take care of that arm before it starts healing incorrectly?”

Stone lowered his gaze to the arm, “It’s broken.”

”Yes, I can see that,” Jenkins replied with a touch of familiar sarcasm in his patience, “We can immobilise it for now while we deal with your other injuries. Resetting it will not be straightforward, although I do believe I have done so before…not for some time, admittedly…Colonel if you would assist.”

There were two puncture wounds, deep and wide, on Stone’s left arm, near the shoulder. Stone thought they were gunshot wounds, but they definitely were not. Not from fangs either. Like he had been stabbed with something pronged.

They were bad, had bled a lot and that couldn’t be helping his fractured mind, but the worst part was that Stone thought Eve had done it. Had shot him, broken his arm.

“I would never,” she began as he explained quietly what he had seen, and what she wasn’t sure he entirely disbelieved yet.

“Even if I was a danger? If I lost control an’…an’ if I hurt one of you? Or worse?”

“We will never let that happen,” she said seriously.

“What if it already has?”

“If you mean you losing control and going feral vampire?” Ezekiel said, “I don’t think it has.”

He moved forward to sit beside Stone on his bed, showing him the phone screen while Jenkins and Ever finished dressing the wounds on his arm.

“I still have like twenty states and Mexico to search, but other than a lynx attack in Alaska, stabbings in Minnesota and Nevada, and a domestic dog attacking someone at a park in LA, there’s nothing so far that looks like even remotely like vampire killings, and half of those ones have victims who survived or who’s attackers were found,” Ezekiel said, “So, cowboy, if you’re thinking you went on a killing spree, you didn’t.”

“I saw them. Their blood…” he looked down at himself, his bloody t-shirt and arm held in a rigid splint, held firmly in place against him.

“All the blood on you right now looks like yours. From injuries we can see,” Eve said, “I agree with Ezekiel. It doesn’t seem like you killed anyone.”

Stone looked only half convinced, but that was still half better than a moment before.

“But I must’ve drank something,” he murmured, “I felt it. The…”

He cut himself short, a look of fear briefly overcoming his features.

“Conceivably you were given blood to drink by other vampires in the house, or the sensation may have been another trick,” Jenkins replied, carefully reaching over to pull the edge of Stone’s duvet over his right shoulder. He had started shivering.

“But what you think you did isn’t real,” Cassandra finished for him.

“Why?” Stone pulled the duvet as far around himself as he could with his right hand and without getting in the way of Jenkins’ medical work.

“To weaken you mentally and physically at once, to make you believe you had already slipped,” Jenkins replied, “I imagine The Angler was attempting to break you so that would join him.”

“That’s stupid,” Stone growled, a sudden animation and alertness in his pose and eyes, “Already slipped? Killin’ thirty people sure as hell doesn’t make killin’ the thirty first okay!”

“No, it doesn’t,” Eve said, “But we’re talking the logic of a centuries old serial killer here.”

“Our perspective doesn’t apply,” Stone whispered, all of that anger dissipated back into exhaustion.

He was going to need time to process everything, and to sort out what was and was not real.

Stone might not have been entirely convinced, but he accepted for now. Or, at least, didn’t have the energy to ask more questions or recount anything else of what he had seen.

He looked utterly drained. With the confusion and fear fading, be succumbed to the mental and bodily exhaustion from the past days. , The pain of resetting his elbow seemed to sap what little energy he had left.

Almost before Jenkins had finished stabilising his elbow, he was starting to fall asleep. They managed to keep him awake just long enough to be convinced to drink a bottle of the blood they still had stored to help with recovery and, more importantly from his perspective, staving off blood lust.

“We should keep watch,” Cassandra said as they left him sleeping apparently soundly, “I know we have spell but, just in case he thinks he’s back there again. Or it’s a trick or something.”

“Cassandra and I will take first watch,” Ezekiel volunteered, “You should check on Flynn.”

Eve nodded and squeezed his shoulder before turning to leave. She had checked on Flynn already, and when she walked into their room now, she saw him sleeping still. In a different position. And the ice pack she had removed from his head because it was melting was back on his head and melted.

It made her smile. It was very Flynn and very familiar.

She managed to catch maybe a few hours of sleep after climbing into bed, but the clock showed it can’t have been more than that.

“Can’t sleep?” Flynn mumbled sleepily.

“Not really,” she sighed, “How’s your head?”

“Painful. You have to stop teaching that man martial arts.”

“You said that already.”

“It merits saying twice. He hits like a 32 pound canon ball,” Flynn replied, “You find out why he did it?”

“He thought you killed me. The vampire made him think I was the one attacking him…”

“So when I killed The Angler, what he saw was me killing you,” Flynn summarised, “Combined with the pain and blood loss and whatever he was made to see before, he followed instinct and attacked…suppose I was lucky he didn’t do worse.”

They were very lucky. Stone could easily have killed Flynn. He must have been weakened a lot more than they realised, or had enough of his own consciousness to keep him from putting all his power into that punch, or biting straight into Flynn’s neck.

“How bad was he?” Flynn asked into the silence.

“I can’t tell…he thought he had gone on some sort of killing spree or something. Who knows what else that asshole made him believe. How does someone recover from something like that?!”

“With help, Eve. And we will help him.”

-

The question was how to help. All they could do was try to pick apart the tricks the vampire had played on him, and be there for him when he needed them.

Eve didn’t know if it was enough.

It didn’t feel like enough. Stone still had nightmares, still questioned whether this was real or yet another trick, still didn’t trust himself not to harm them, and he behaved like an echo of the man they knew.

She had decided, after almost two months of barely any progress, that she would reach out. One of the people she had served with had gone on to open a clinic and treated people who had suffered trauma. He might have some advice on how Eve could help Stone better, even just whatever vague ideas he could offer from the necessarily incomplete description of what had happened.

Or maybe Cassandra’s idea about talking with an existing vanpire wasn’t such a bad idea, as long as Stone agreed to it, which he probably would not. Or maybe the Monkey King could help with some wisdom or something…

Maybe she could just talk to Stone. Ask him if there was anything he could think of that might help.

Eve was a couple of paces from his door, intent on doing just that, when she heard voices already inside and paused. Ezekiel and Cassandra were on a job the clippings book had sent them on two days before.

Except it was definitely Ezekiel’s voice saying, “There’s gotta be a connection, right? I mean, they all suffer the same symptoms within weeks of each other, all of them completely unexplained. No cause the hospitals can identify.”

“And all but two of them live in the same town,” Cassandra continued and Eve leaned back against the wall to listen, “The only point of complete overlap is a museum. They all either visited it or work there.”

“The museum have an online gallery?” Stone asked tiredly.

“Yeah.”

There was silence for several minutes. Eve considered moving to join them, but didn’t want to interrupt what sounded like the closest to normal she had heard in months. Nor did she want to leave, to miss what came next.

“This, right here,” Stone broke off with a slightly pained sound, suggesting he had just done something to hurt his still healing arm, “This pot. Look at the red pigment, an’…an’ the finish.”

“Looks like a painted pot…”

“This pigment, the red, it doesn’t match the pigments used in the region this pot’s from. An’ look at the finish. The way the light plays off it…look at that…I’d need to see in person to be sure but it sure as hell doesn’t look like slip.”

“So…”

“It’s a fake, but nothin’ here says anything about a fake being on display,” Stone replied with genuine excitement in his voice, “An’ didn’t you say the victims they all had smallpox symptoms but not one tested positive for smallpox?”

“Yeah,” Cassandra replied, “The symptoms alone perfectly but no biochemical or microscopic method was able to identify the virus associated with any of them.”

“The region where this pot was made was nearly totally wiped out by smallpox.”

“So, you think maybe the real pot’s somewhere? And it’s giving people smallpox?”

“I dunno, maybe? To make a fake this good, an’ it is pretty good, someone’d need access to the real thing. Close up. An’ time.”

“The real one might be in the museum, just not on display,” Ezekiel said, “Museums only show a fraction of what they have. The rest is on archives just sitting there getting looked at maybe once every few years, and with really pretty shoddy security. Much easier to get into those than the museum if you forge the right pass.”

“Well, I guess we’re going to the museum,” Cassandra said, adding with just a hint of nervousness, “Want to join?”

Eve held her breath waiting for the answer.

Stone wasn’t healed up yet. Most of his injuries had faded almost entirely, but his arm had started to heal wrong after he banged it during a nightmare and Jenkins had to do a very painful-looking procedure to get it back into the right position.

It didn’t help that he refused to drink more than a minimal amount of blood each day, never a drop more. He needed to prove his own control to himself, and Eve understood that, but it delayed his healing and maybe made his mental struggles worse too.

And now he wasn’t replying.

He had withdrawn again, slipped back, but then he quietly replied, “Sure,” and Eve had to hold back a laugh of unexpected relief.

She quickly retreated before they came out, back to the annex, where Jenkins was working on something odd-looking.

“Stone’s going to go with them on this job,” Eve said quietly, grinning across the table at him.

The former knight smiled, a fondness in his expression as he looked up at her, “I dare say he is. I thought I saw some improvement of late.”

“I hadn’t…I thought…” she broke off, “You think he’s up for it?”

“I think only Mr Stone can know that.”

She nodded, and tried to bury her concern and her more outward relief, so that when the three eventually walked in she looked calm and casual and not at all on the edge of both utter joy and extreme worry.

“Hey guys,” she looked up from the papers she had not been reading on her desk, “Going somewhere?”

“To a museum!” Cassandra grinned, “Gotta find what’s giving people smallpox.”

Stone’s expression was guarded, giving away none of the anxiety he was surely feeling, stepping out of the library for the first time since they’d brought him back.

“You need back up?” Eve asked, looking pointedly at the sling supporting Stone’s left arm to hide the real reason she was asking - to know if they needed more people to help in case Stone’s mind fractured once out of the safety of the library.

Ezekiel and Cassandra both looked to Stone, who finally replied with no hint of false confidence. Just soft, calm, resolution.

“No, thanks,” he smiled softly at her, “We got this.”

The words held little meaning really, but his expression as he caught her eye, Eve understood perfectly what he really meant. Whether or not he felt ready, Stone needed to do this. He had to take that step now, before fear of leaving the library settled too deep.

She smiled back at him and nodded, let him know she understood, before the back door opened and in a moment all three were gone.