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Akande enjoyed his usual sieges on the scum of the earth, but he had to admit, this one brought a special smile to his pace.
It was personal, after all, with all of Bartalotti’s idiocies yet to be answered for even after his death, and his successor, Vialli’s, attempts on he and the window’s lives, this was simply justice for slights against their group. A rot in their cause would be exercised and growth would be allowed to flourish in its place. Evolution would feed off of the ashes of the Italians and fuel their purpose again.
Akande watched as Widow tore mercilessly through Vialli’s men with intrigue, even as he busied himself with doing the same.
Typically, the woman restrained herself a bit, if not for the exhaustion it would undoubtedly cause here. Akande supposed it wasn’t very surprising. Even with her own motivations of Vialli’s attempt on her life, and Bartalotti dead, she still wanted revenge for her husband who’s life Bartalotti repeatedly came too close to taking. He wondered what was going through her head, as he often did. She was one of the only people in the world he could never seem to get a proper read on.
Mauga for once couldn’t seem to keep up with them, and by the looks of it was very frustrated by the fact. It was almost amusing seeing him be the one to struggle to keep up for once, with his little shifter-thrall keeping close to him trying to keep him healed up and in the fight.
It wasn’t very long before they found Vialli. The man tried to tell them that his hit against them had not been personal, just business. After receiving a go ahead from Window, the confirmation she was uninterested in having this kill for herself, Akande crushed Vialli’s throat like a straw between a child’s teeth, or a bug beneath his boot.
He effortlessly tossed the vampire’s dead body out the window of the tower, and didn’t bother to watch him fall. He had taken up enough of Akande’s time already.
“I will do a final sweep of the castle,” Akande said bordly, whipping his hands on a handkerchief. “Mauga, please ensure that Ms. Lacroix gets back to her home without issue.”
“I can take care of myself,” Amelie glared.
Akande leveled her with an unimpressed stare, “You can barely keep up right. You exhausted yourself and your powers. Mauga will take you home.”
“I told you you should have brought your little Calamity,” Mauga muttered.
“Elizabeth is busy taking care of Gerard,” Amelie said. “And I would never risk letting Vialli anywhere near her.”
Akande distantly listened to them continue their conversation about the merits of having their thralls on the battlefield as they moved in the opposite direction from him. The topic itself didn’t hold his interest, only his friends’ continued safety.
He did a final sweep of the castle, finding the activity uneventful and with nothing new to reveal to him about the situation. He still didn’t know who had taken out Bartalotti, and he doubted the castle itself would reveal very much, but something kept him there. Something kept him looking, despite there being nothing there to find.
At least, this is what he believed, until he heard a shout as he was walking down the east wing’s large hall.
He froze and looked around, trying to catch sight of who had shouted, but realized as it continued that it was coming from the floorboards.
Akande started to test everything in the hall for some kind of secret passage, and found it finally in the form of a book. It easily slid out of place and pulled the bookshelf like a door.
How tacky.
Stepping carefully down the stairs he heard as the shouts grew into screams of agony. By the time he reached the hidden basement, the screaming had stopped, but a pained yelp filled the air.
The cellar had been turned into a prison, thick bars filling the room as it divided into different cells, all of which were equally damp and plain.
This wasn’t what Akande focused on, however. He was much more interested in the potent scent of blood in the air, and the dead bodies creating a neat path for him to follow.
Carefully he stepped around the bodies, and avoided getting blood on his shoes to the best of his ability. The prison went on longer than he expected, but soon enough he was at the end of the hall, looking into the one open and lit cell. The cell itself was around the size of a small bedroom, but inside it the only three remaining guards stood in front of a tortoiseshell werecat with a glowing red eye.
The werecat had blood matting the fur on top of its head, with more coming from its back and legs. One of the guards held a thick whip in their hand, and sudden understanding and fury came over Akande.
He was sure the little beast could handle itself, considering how many guards it had taken out by that point. Still, Akande snapped into action, and in seconds the air polluted that much more with blood and death.
The werecat growled and hissed at him as he shook off his hand. He looked up at it, unimpressed but patient as it continued to hiss, all its fur standing up in warning. What a ferocious little thing. He almost had the sense to coo at it, but knew it was not the time.
Slowly he took step after step towards it, hands open and visible. He raised one of his hands so slow he felt the anxious energy buzzing under his skin for him to move quickly again. But he restrained himself, and watched the cat’s face carefully as it hissed and growled and spit at him, but didn’t back down. His hand landed on it’s head, and he carefully pressed his fingers into the blood soaked fur there.
Making sure to keep away from the most saturated parts, knowing under was where the injury was more than likely located, he started to gently comb his fingers through the fur. The knots were worked by his fingers to not pull and alleviate some of the pain there.
No matter how gentle he was, the beast continued to growl lowly.
“Stop that now,” he said, keeping his voice level and soothing as possible. “There is no need for it. If I wanted to hurt you, I would have done so by now.”
Something in its expression loosened, and then the growls turned quieter, though they didn’t completely disappear. It pulled back instead, and shook itself off some of the blood Akande could now recognize was not fully its own. When it seemed satisfied, knowing it couldn’t rid itself of everything, he took a careful step back and slowly started to change.
It didn’t morph into a different animal like Akande had seen Elizabeth do many times before. Instead, it just shrunk itself down to the size of a kitten, allowing him to finally see the rest of the cell.
The cat flinched as it hopped over towards one of the three unconscious and injured bodies there in the room with them. This body specifically wore a midnight black trench coat that was open to reveal a broken body. Very carefully, the cat settled onto the unbroken part of the man’s chest, crying at him as it batted at his face.
Akande took the time to truly take in the faces of each of the bodies, a weight settling his chest as he recognized each one.
The one closest to him was the only one he had never personally worked with. Young Genji Shimada, still young compared to the rest of them in his years as a vampire, running away from the empire of his family. One of the infamous dragon brothers.
Next was a woman he knew all too well. Moira O’Deorain. The doctor who had been around even longer than he had. A woman driven mad by the death of the fae who had served as both her wife and thrall, and the disappearance of her two children. Doctor O’Deorain had personally enlisted his help in hunting down her daughter, and when he found her, she had been less than pleased to find the young Emily had been raised into a powerful vampire by a family who had a taste for the macabre, and had bound herself to a fae.
Then finally there was the old raven himself. Gabriel Reyes, the count who Akande had once been close with before their ideologies built a wall between them. Gabriel had been married to his husband for as long as Akande had been a vampire, and his dislike for the other vampire surly aided in him and Gabriel’s drifting. It had been years since they had spoken, though Akande had seen Count Morrison in the past decade, and he hadn’t seemed inclined to share any information of his husband’s activities or whereabouts.
He was sure the two were together, which meant there was certainly no chance the shifter here was Gabriel’s thrall. He had once told Akande that as long as the two of them lived, both he and Morrison had agreed to never take a thrall and rely on themselves and each other alone for their power.
So what was this little shifter doing here with their destroyed bodies.
Akande knelt down to gather up Shimada, and it was when he reached for Doctor O’Deorain that the shifter finally noticed his actions and went on guard again, bristling up with a mean look in its eyes.
“Your masters are severely injured,” Akande said plainly. “I need to get them to safety and give them proper care. If you would like them to die here, then by all means, I will leave them.”
There was a hesitance, but the shifter backed down, going back to staring at the slack face of Gabriel Reyes.
Akande settled both Shimada and Doctor O’Deorain in his arms, shifting them to be able to make room for Reyes, but before he could the shifter started to morph again, growing to half the size of what it had been when Akande first arrived. It butted its head against Gabriel’s, eliciting a long groan from the count.
Gabriel’s eyes cracked open, his breaths coming labored and short.
“Good boy,” he said, voice thin. “You did good, Jess. I’m proud of you.”
The shifter bumped its- his - head against Gabriel again, dipping down so his belly was on the floor and he was laying right next to Gabriel.
“You’re injured,” Gabriel said, a semblance of grief in his weak voice.
The shifter let out a sound, less hostile and more urging. Gabriel hesitated a moment longer before slinging his arm over the shifter and closing his eyes again.
The shifter stood slowly, being sure to move correctly so that Gabriel ended up on his back. When he seemed sure the count was secure there, he looked to Akande.
Akande nodded to him and turned, making his way out of the cell. He led the shifter through the underground prison and up the stairwell, being sure he and Gabriel made it up safely before continuing through the house.
The whole time the shifter remained close behind, and boarded the private plane outside without argument when they reached it.
Akande watched him the whole flight, but said nothing. He sat as still as possible, and simply took in the sight of the fearsome Count Reyes laying on the floor with a kitten pressed under his chin.
~~~
Akande leaned against the wall in the west wing of his home in Oyo.
Inside the room the wall separated him from, he could hear Baptiste working. Shimada had been the one with the most extensive injuries, so Baptiste had earlier settled for stabilizing him and saving the rest of his treatment for last.
“He has the injuries of a man who expected to heal,” Baptiste had told him after he finished stabilization. “Someone as brash and reckless as himself would greatly benefit from a thrall. That shifter with them, is he his?”
“No,” Akande shook his head. “From the way the shifter acted, I doubt they know each other very well at all. My best guess at the moment is that Hanzo has been in contact with Gabriel and sent Genji to aid him in whatever brought him and the doctor to Italy.”
Akande thought back on the conversation and found hours later it was still the best explanation he had. Gabriel had business in Italy, or possibly the doctor did and he had just accompanied her. Either way, it had to be Hanzo in contact with Gabriel, sending his brother to supplement his inability to be present.
The door to his right opened, but he stayed where he was. Baptiste shut it behind him, pulling off a medical mask and gloves.
“Shimada is finished,” he reported. “They will all recover, but they’ll need time. You shouldn’t expect any of them to come out of deep rest for at least two months, most likely longer.”
“So any of them have thralls you know of that we could call?” Akande asked.
“Last I spoke to her, Doctor O’Deorain was still strong on the stance of abstaining from ever taking a thrall again,” Baptiste said. “I’ve never spoken to Count Reyes before, so I wouldn’t know in his case.”
Akande hummed, eyes wandering down the hall. He had never been alone here, but he might as well have been with how small the presence of the shifter was. The shifter was still in kitten form, sitting at attention right outside Gabriel’s door.
He could hear Maximilian’s complaints already about the blood streaked across the floor and gathering under the kitten. It would surely stain, and leave a lingering scent for years to come. With both of their ages as vampires, Akande had no worries of the blood being an issue. Unlike the younger breeds, and some of the more unhinged of their own age group, they knew well how to control themselves. Already Akande found he wasn’t thinking of the blood, not really, only the injuries it came from.
“Did he speak to you at all?” Akande asked, nodding down the hall to the shifter.
Baptiste followed his gaze, eyes going a bit sad when they found their mark.
“No,” he said. “I could barely get him away from the count long enough to do the work I needed to, but he never said anything to me. He wouldn’t let me touch him, either.”
“How much longer can he keep going like this?” Akande asked.
“A few hours at most,” Baptiste said. “From what I could see the wounds he sustained weren’t too deep, but there were enough of them that he will bleed out if he doesn’t get help. I’m not sure of their relationship, but I believe Count Reyes may have been the one supplying blood in the past to heal any injury or sickness, so he might not know how to receive other help now.”
“Why do you say that?” Akande asked.
“Well, he’s clearly healthy,” Baptiste said. “His blood is replenishing quick enough to keep up with his wounds, and from what you told me he has a strong control over his different forms. The only shifters I’ve seen like this are ones that have been given vampire blood consistently over a good measure of time.”
“Interesting,” Akande mumbled, his eyes staying on the shifter for a moment more.
He shook away his wandering thoughts and looked back to Baptiste, “I can handle it from here. Go home. I’m sure Mauga is getting impatient.”
“I’m sure,” Baptiste rolled his eyes, his professional demeanor melting away. “Call me if you need anything or if any of their statuses change. And… please try to take care of the shifter.”
“I will do my best,” Akande nodded.
“Wouldn’t expect any less from you,” Baptiste said. Then he was off, and Akande was alone in the hallway with the little shifter.
He couldn’t let it be. Not only did he not want to receive the wrath of Count Gabriel Reyes should he wake up and find this shifter with ambiguous relation to him dead, but he didn’t believe in watching such powerful life go to waste. No, he wouldn’t let this shifter be destroyed.
He made his way down the hall, seeing the kitten’s ear twitch. Beside that, though, he gave no response to Akande’s presence, eyes remaining on the door.
Akande reached down without precaution and scooped the kitten up. The shifter hissed and started to scratch at him right away, but he did not worry about it going further than that. He was too badly injured, too tired. He would only be able to shift between this form and his human one.
“Stop,” Akande said, keeping his voice calm and low to not startle him. “My only intention is to clean and patch you up. Do you really want to cause Gabriel further pain by waking up with you gone?”
The fighting immediately stopped when that thought sunk in enough. Such a loyalty to Gabriel, it only made Akande that much more curious of the relationship between the two.
“When we are finished, I expect you to eat, then I will open the door to his room for you,” Akande said, running with the assumption that he wouldn’t be seeing the shifter’s human form any time soon. He had yet to see anything, really, besides this form in multiple sizes.
He opened the bathroom door with his free hand and sat the kitten on the floor with trust he wouldn’t run away. When the shifter remained where he had been put, Akande turned on the faucet to the tub and got the water to the correct temperature.
He spoke as he prepared the bath, purely just to fill the silence and hopefully further relax the shifter.
“I’m surprised the blood has absorbed into your fur so much. From what I’ve heard, it’s difficult to get shifter blood to saturate something instead of beading on top,” he said. “Though I suppose a good amount of that blood is not yours at all. You know how to hold your own in a fight. The mount you managed to kill before I got there impressed me.”
He glanced down at the kitten, “At least< I assume all those kills were done by you.”
The kitten was unresponsive to his words, staring straight ahead. It’s eyes weren’t entirely focused, and AKande couldn’t tell if it was the blood loss, or the trauma and shock of what had happened finally catching up.
Akande finished running the bath, shallow enough that the kitten couldn’t drown as long as he was there. He pulled down a towel, but when he looked under the skin found the first aid kit had been moved. It hadn’t been used in so long, he wasn’t the least bit surprised. He was sure it was in another bathroom.
“I will be right back,” Akande told the kitten. He waited a moment, but received no response.
He made quick work of finding the first aid kit. It took a few tries, but eventually he found the bathroom it had been stored in the last time he had a guest who couldn’t heal themself.
In no time he was back to the bathroom he left the shifter in, but found himself frozen in the doorway.
The shifter was no longer on the floor in kitten form, but instead sat in the bathtub in the shallow water in human form, a towel tightly wrapped around his waist. The lash marks down his back were on full display, and without the fur to hold it there, his own blood had easily run off of him, collecting on top of the water as oil might. The blood of the people he had killed still clung to his skin and hair, obscuring some of his features.
“Thank you,” Akande said, moving into the bathroom to set the kit on the counter. “This will make it easier for me to help you.”
The shifter didn’t respond, and Akande set himself for a night of silence. It was okay, he had lived in silence for long enough, it wouldn’t phase him.
Akande drained the bath and started to run it again as he worked to patch up the shifter’s back and arms. He got a minor reaction of a flinch when Akande reached for his leg, but stayed perfectly still for everything else.
When he was finished patching him up, he ran a soapy washcloth along his skin, blood whipping and flaking off as he went. When the blood was gone, it revealed freckled skin that was hot to the touch, occasionally broken up by the smallest of scars that had clearly once been well cared for wounds. Just by the state of his body even after a terrible fight, Akande could tell this shifter had in fact been well cared for as Baptiste said.
“I need to clean your hair so I can get a better look at your head,” Akande told him as the bath drained and filled again.
The shifter didn’t react for a moment, but when Akande thought he might not, he slowly turned in the tub and lowered himself down towards the faucet.
Akande took another towel and wrapped it around his shoulders so that his neck was supported while Akande worked. Akande guided his head further under the faucet, keeping one hand at his hairline so that it wouldn’t get in his eyes.
He worked as gently as he could, untangling the mop of wavy brown hair as he went. The water ran pink as he worked the vampire and human blood from his hair, Occasionally darker blood with a black sheen, the trademark of shifter blood, slid down his hair and joined the water swirling by the drain.
The shifter released a whimper when Akande’s fingers brushed over one spot, and Akande immediately stilled. Carefully, he raised the shifter back up to lean against the tub so Akande could examine his head. Easily he found the place where his head had been wounded, and started to work on patching it up.
“Does your head hurt?” Akande asked. “On the inside, like a headache?”
There was a pause, then the shifter nodded.
“You need to let it rest and drink water,” Akande said. “Tell me if anything changes.”
Another nod.
“I’m going to go and get you some clothes. You shifted into your human form for me to patch you up, and while it made it easier it means you will need to remain like this until you heal.”
Another pause, then another nod.
Akande was back in the blink of an eye with clothes Baptiste had left the last time he and Mauga stayed at the estate. This shifter was about the same build as him, so Akande had no worries about the clothing not fitting as he waited outside the bathroom.
The shifter emerged, the clothes sure enough fitting well, hanging off of him slightly in only a few areas. His steps were unsteady, but he easily followed Akande through the halls to the dining room. Akande made quick work of the meal, and set it in front of the shifter, then left the room so he could eat in private.
It was something he had learned the hard way with Elizabeth. Unless it was specifically requested for him to stay, it was safest to let shifters eat alone. Their treatment as the animals they could turn into often caused an insecurity in performing basic tasks in day to day life.
Half an hour passed before Akande saw the shifter again. He came through the door looking lost and confused, a full glass of water held safely to his chest.
“Are you finished?” Akande asked.
The shifter nodded.
Akande motioned for him to follow as they made their way back to the hall containing the shifter’s companions.
“If you don’t mind my asking, what is your relation to Count Reyes?” Akande asked as he opened the room the count was being kept in during his rest.
The shifter didn’t answer. Instead, he went into the room and took a seat on the edge of the bed, setting his glass on the nightstand.
He reached out with tender hands and ran a hand over the count’s hair, a sad look in his eyes. Slow and careful, he laid in the space between the count and the edge of them bed, cuddling into the blankets that separated him from his side.
Akande believed he had fallen asleep and started to leave, but stopped when he heard a soft voice, accented similarly to Elizabeth’s.
“He’s my father,” came the whisper. Akande didn’t turn back around for fear it would scare the shifter. “Thank you.”
“He is an old friend,” Akande said. “This is the least I owe. There is nothing to thank me for.”
He closed the door behind him, leaving the shifter be.
As he walked through the halls, he couldn’t help but turn the idea in his head that Count Reyes had a shifter child. How curious.