“There they are,” Wolverine says triumphantly, pointing towards the coven of vampires as they flit in and out of a large, dirty tenement building. At the entrance I can see Scanner slouching against the doorway, her face and mouth stained with blood and her blonde hair unfettered and flowing free around her shoulders. Her eyes gleam with malice, even from this distance, and I can tell that she wishes she were on the hunt again, instead of being stuck watching the door of her newfound friends’ little hideaway. As I watch, I see Frenzy emerge from the inky darkness inside the building and exchange a few words with Scanner, whose body language instantly changes, becoming excited and hurried. She immediately goes back inside the building, hunching over a little as she does so, and I can feel a shift in her thoughts that fills me with dread. It’s not a feeling of malice or evil that I can sense, nor anything overtly malicious – no, it’s just a simple, bestial sensation of hunger. The implication that there might be live prey inside that building makes my blood run cold with horror.

“Scott, we have to be careful,” I say quietly, crouching at the lip of the alleyway that our small team of X-Men is currently occupying. “They might still have some hostages in there.”

“‘Hostages’, Betsy?” Warren asks, frowning. He flexes his wings a little, easing out some tension that transmits itself down our psionic bond like chilled water. “Don’t you mean ‘corpses’?”

“Let’s hope it hasn’t got to that just yet,” Cyclops says, waving Warren quiet before turning to Kurt. “Nightcrawler, I want you to ‘port close to that building and take a look inside, if you can. Any idea of what we’re up against here is better than nothing.” Nightcrawler nods, and begins to gather his concentration for a precise teleport, before Cyclops grabs his arm and continues “Any sign of danger and you get back here right away, you understand? No sense in trying to take these things on by yourself.”

“Ja, Cyclops, I understand perfectly,” Nightcrawler says. “I have very little desire to stay around these creatures for any longer than I have to. However,” and he holds up the crucifix around his neck, “I suspect I have more protection than just my powers, wouldn’t you say?”

“Perhaps. Just don’t push your luck, Kurt,” Cyclops tells him sternly.

“Oh, you worry too much,” Nightcrawler says, his face splitting with a typically cavalier grin. Then he vanishes in a puff of acrid purple smoke, air rapidly rushing into the space where he had just been standing with a loud crack. He disappears from my telepathic radar for an instant, before he reappears a short distance away from our target. Creeping closer, he disappears into the shadows around the building, his thoughts almost becoming all that remains of him. He emerges from the darkness almost right next to the tenement’s doorway, keeping out of Frenzy’s line of sight as he does so, and then crawls along the wall in order to get inside. Frenzy is apparently none the wiser as she scans the street in front of her for any potential intruders, licking some last traces of blood from her fingers and chops as she does so, and Kurt disappears from view with no further incident.

“Damn it,” Wolverine hisses, his fists clenching. “Wind’s changed. Cargill’s going to get a hit of the elf’s scent any moment now.” Sure enough, I can see Frenzy’s eyes widening even from this distance, and she whirls on one foot and runs through the darkened doorway, shouting that the building has been compromised. Putting one hand to my head, I send a staccato telepathic message to Kurt telling him to leave the building straight away, and I see him emerging from one of the top-floor windows with a young girl in a ragged, filthy nightdress over one shoulder, who can’t be older than ten. He teleports quickly and reappears right next to us.

“They have ten people tied up in there,” he says once he has got his breath back. “I was only able to rescue this little one.” He sets the girl down on the ground, and she immediately curls in on herself, her eyes saucer-wide with terror and her hands curled tightly closed. Kneeling in front of her, I place both hands on her shoulders and look her straight in the eye. Instantly, she drops her gaze to her hands, as if returning my gaze was somehow painful for her.

“It’s all right, sweetheart,” I tell her softly. “You’re safe now. We’re the X-Men – we’ll protect you, I promise. Can you tell me your name?”

“Jill,” the girl mumbles. Finally she raises her gaze to me and I can see that her eyes are ringed with dark circles and her lips are split in several places... and more crucially, her neck is covered with bite 

marks – clearly, she had been in there for some time, as a kind of living blood-bank for the vampire coven.

“Nice to meet you, Jill,” I say, brushing my hands against her shoulders and wincing as she flinches at my touch. I know what it’s like to fear another person’s fingertips to that degree, and I can almost feel tears in my eyes as the sensation is brought back to the surface. Drawing my hands back with a start, I rub at my eyes and then continue “Can you tell me how long you were in there?”

“Don’t know,” the girl mumbles. “Never saw sunlight.”

“Bastards,” Warren says, and I know he remembers exactly what I’m remembering. I see his hands tighten into fists and he is almost about to fly right at the building, his anger is so great. Fortunately, Cyclops sees exactly what I’ve seen, and he reaches out with a gloved hand and grasps Warren’s shoulder strongly.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he says, in a simple, controlled tone. “Believe me, I’m thinking it too. But if you go in there right now, feeling the way you feel right now, you’ll do a lot more damage than you think you’ll fix. Trust me.” Warren scowls, but says nothing. Turning back towards the building, Cyclops gives it a cursory examination, his gaze moving from one access point to another and taking in every possible weakness. “Psylocke,” he says finally, “stay here with the girl – I need you to help keep her calm. Archangel, Wolverine, you’re with me. Nightcrawler, you try and get back inside that building and rescue those hostages as fast as you can. I don’t want them stuck in there one second longer than they have to be.”

“You can count on me, mein freund,” Kurt says, and vanishes without another word. As soon as he has, the building in front of us begins spilling out a horde of bestial, hissing monstrosities, their fangs and claws bared and ready to tear into us. At the head of this army of vampires is Frenzy, flanked on either side by Scanner and Voght. Frenzy charges towards Wolverine and begins trying to slice him to pieces with her talons. Logan ducks one wild slash and carves her open from collarbone to groin with one slicing motion of his claws. Frenzy’s blood splashes all over him and she collapses to the floor, a red pool starting to form around her body. Logan waits until she stops moving, and then takes an instinctive step backwards in order to scan for another target. He focuses on Scanner, who snarls at him wordlessly as she aims a kick at the side of his chest.

Wait. No, that can’t be...

“Logan, look out!” I cry, but it is too late. Frenzy has, impossibly, risen to her feet and has driven both sets of claws right into Logan’s spine. He roars in pain and then turns to face her with his own teeth bared. His mind has turned into little more than a white haze, all rational thought vanishing instantaneously, and so he is totally unable to control himself as he leaps at Frenzy and barrels her to the ground. The two of them roll over and over, bellowing at each other, until Logan finally wins the upper hand, pinning Frenzy to the ground with his knees pressing hard on her chest. Snarling, Logan unsheathes his claws again and stabs his prey through the eyes with them. Her bloodied body twitches for just a second and lets out a muted gurgle before lying still. His berserker rage subsiding, Logan immediately pushes himself up and turns his attention right back to Scanner, who has joined a pair of vampires closing in on Cyclops. Scott blasts a hole straight through the chest of one of them, and blows the hand off the other. While they stagger away from him, Scanner takes advantage of his momentary distraction to leap at him, screaming. Logan tries to intercept her before she reaches him, but she falls to the ground and clutches her skull, writhing in pain. I take my finger away from my temple, satisfied that I have at least made a contribution to this battle, and watch with pleasure as Scott and Logan converge on Scanner.

Mist abruptly swirls around them, and Voght materialises for an instant in order to spirit away her prone comrade. “Not today, humans,” she hisses as she disappears. “You already killed Cargill. You don’t get to kill Scanner as well.”

As Logan and Scott look at each other in stunned silence, I can see Warren using his wings to smash aside a mewling vampire, who has been almost incapacitated just by the sight of him. Crying out wordlessly, Warren ignores the creature as it flies through the air and hits the side of the building it emerged from, snapping its spine and causing it to fall to the ground like a ragdoll with its stuffing torn out. I can feel his intense anger and disgust at these creatures’ mere existence in a corner of my mind, ready to push into my own brain at any moment. Frowning, I lock it out, knowing that even if I agree with him, I can’t let my mind display that – not while I’m so close to a mentally-fragile young girl who could snap at any moment. I know that Warren can sense my discomfort, but he doesn’t 

show it, instead just battering aside another of the monsters as they run from him, hissing in fear and pain.

Kurt, meanwhile, is busy teleporting the vampires’ prisoners out of the building two at a time. It is a tremendously tiring feat for him, but he keeps his thoughts positive as he reappears next to me every few seconds. “Don’t worry about me, Elisabeth. This is what we are here for, nein?” he says as he deposits a man and child on the pavement. “There are only two more prisoners in there. I will be –” He doesn’t finish. Instead, his eyes roll up into his head and he collapses in a boneless heap, all of his muscles overwhelmed by the stress of so many teleports in such a short space of time. Blood oozes from his nostrils as he struggles to push himself to his feet, and I have to help him to sit up against the side of the alleyway. “Can’t... stop,” he mumbles, half-delirious with exhaustion. “Need to... rescue humans...” His strength fails him, and he slumps against the brickwork, his breath wheezing softly in his throat.

I grit my teeth, reaching a decision in an instant. “Yes, Kurt, we do. Stay here with them while I get on with that,” I say, standing and beginning a sprint towards the tenement.

“Betsy!” Warren cries, alarmed, as he catches sight of me moving away from the former prisoners. He starts to move in my direction, as if he is going to try to intercept me, but I quickly solidify the connection between our two minds and start explaining to him what I’m doing.

Keep them busy, Warren, I say quickly. Kurt’s unconscious – I need you and the others to keep the vampires distracted while I get the last two prisoners out of there. If I think I’m about to get overwhelmed, I’ll regroup with you.

No, Betsy – he begins, before I cut him off sharply.

Just do as I’ve asked you, Warren. There’s no time to argue about this. A vampire alights in front of me at that moment, hissing and salivating, clearly anticipating its next meal. Using my momentum to my best advantage, I spin on the point of one foot and kick the creature square in the stomach, causing it to fold like a deck of cards. As it doubles over, I unsheathe one of the katana blades from the harness on my back, and swing it down on the thing’s neck in one swift motion. It slices cleanly through undead flesh and decapitates the vampire, its head and body disintegrating into piles of ash as they hit the pavement. Without even pausing to take in what I’ve done, I keep running towards the apartment building, trying to home in on the last two remaining humans inside. A quick scan of the building tells me they’re on the first floor somewhere, and that they’re unconscious. Whether that’s because they’re sleeping or because they’ve passed out from blood loss, I can’t tell.

I need to find out, and quickly.

The front door of the building is open, barely bolted to its frame. I kick it down anyway, since I don’t want to be hindered in any way when I’m getting those two people out. A second could be all it takes for one of those creatures to get the better of me, after all. The door falls to the ground with a clatter, and once it’s stopped moving, I pad inside and start making my way up the staircase, its dirty, decaying banister offering me little support as I do so. Climbing the stairs helps to reduce the amount of psychic chatter that the vampires’ collective psyches are producing, and I can finally close in on the two humans’ telepathic signatures. I open the door to where they are being held, and I can see that they are two teenagers, both girls, and both of them are sticky with their own blood. One of them stirs as I move closer, and immediately starts to scramble backwards, shrieking, terror painting itself brightly onto her mind. “Don’t worry,” I tell her softly. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’ve come to help you escape.” Clearly, this girl wasn’t conscious enough to see Kurt evacuating the other captives, or else she would be far less frightened. Still, knowing that doesn’t mean a lot when I need her to be calm. Nudging her brain’s emotional receptors slightly, I encourage a small increase in dopamine production. It’s not ethical in the slightest, but it will help her to settle a little, which can only help all three of us in the long run. Quickly, her breathing slows down to a more regular pace, and her eyes look a little less wild. Reaching out, I take her hand and squeeze it gently. “This will all be over soon, trust me. Can you walk?” I ask her in a soft voice.

“I... don’t know,” she says quietly. “I can try.”

“Good girl,” I say, before I point to the girl who is still unconscious. “I might have to carry her if I can’t wake her, so –” It’s a second before I notice the girl’s attention is focused more on something behind me than my own words, and the creeping black stain at the edge of my telepathic senses is the reason why. I turn and look up at the vampires’ leader, a creature whose body is all muscle and sinew, his long black hair pulled tight into a ponytail. He is clothed in loose-fitting clothes, his white shirt 

and black trousers clearly made of the finest materials. Baring his fangs, he holds his clawed hands open at each side of his body, the tips of his fingers still wet with fresh blood, and moves closer to me so that I can begin to smell him over the overpowering stench of gore that coats the room like a second skin. It’s a musky, seductive scent that – had I not already been incensed by his coven’s treatment of their prisoners – would probably have been my downfall.

“Surely we can resolve this without further violence?” the vampire lord says quietly. “You can take the blood-whores if you like – they were nearing the end of their usefulness, anyway. At least if you take them now, you will spare me the trouble of having to dispose of them quietly later.”

“Oh, you’re all heart,” I say, sarcasm dripping off my voice, before I raise my katana blade and point it straight at him. “Get out of my way.”

“Or what?” the vampire says, with just a hint of a smile whispering across his face. “Surely you don’t think you can beat me?”

“I’ve beaten better than the likes of you, monster,” I say scornfully. “Immortal or not, you’re still nothing special.”

The vampire raises an eyebrow. “Ah, the audacity of youth.” He closes the gap between us in the blink of an eye, making my sword a liability instead of a benefit. I open my hand and let it drop to the ground with a clatter – I know it’s a risk, but it’s a calculated one. If I can manoeuvre this fight to my advantage, then the blade will become useful again... but for now it’s just a hindrance. As soon as I’ve done that, I drop my right hand to my belt and quickly pull the combat knife I had stowed there from its sheath. Lashing out with the edge of the knife, I score a mark onto the vampire’s cheek, carving a bloody line in his deathly pale skin from the middle of his cheek to the front of his ear. He bellows in rage and indignation, clearly enraged that a lesser being like myself should even be able to touch him. “Bitch!” he howls, clutching at his face with his left hand and swiping at me with his right. The claws that tip his fingers slice the sleeve of my costume open and draw three neat, almost surgical tally marks into the flesh of my left forearm.

Ignoring the sudden pain, I use the momentary respite I’ve been given to my best advantage. “Get out of here. Go!” I say to the girl as she cowers behind me. “I’ll be right behind you.” I hear her heavy, leaden footsteps as she scrambles away from the big vampire, and sense her fear as it almost glows in the back of my mind. The vampire recovers from the shock of his wound and snarls from the depths of his throat, grabbing a large piece of broken wood and hurling it at me. The sharp, ragged edges look lethal, but it’s all I can do to shift out of the way so that it doesn’t end up lodged in my stomach. It hurtles past me and lodges itself in the wall, spraying splinters everywhere.

He’s off-balance from throwing it for just a moment, so I use that to my advantage, leaping at him and driving my foot deep into his gut. The impact would have completely incapacitated a human attacker; however, this man is anything but a human attacker. He simply laughs and grabs my leg by the ankle, swinging me into a wall as hard as he can. I hit the floor coughing blood and trying desperately to get some air into my battered, protesting lungs, and before I can work out where I am, he’s pinning me to the ground, his fangs bared. “Silly child,” he whispers as he begins to lower his head towards mine. The fact that I can’t feel any breath from his mouth is a horribly chilling reminder of just what this man really is. “Don’t try to resist.”

“Resist this, you bastard,” I hiss, and slam my head right into the bridge of his nose, hearing bone crack loudly as I do so. Instantly, the pressure on my arms is relieved as he draws backwards, clutching his ruined nose and almost screaming in agony. Then, as I regain my footing as fast as I can, he glares at me, two trickles of bright scarlet blood trailing lazily down his face.

“That’s twice now, you insolent whore,” he hisses. “You don’t get a third chance.” Leaping at me, he rakes at me with his talons, gouging a long, ragged mark into the flesh of my stomach and left leg. It’s not incredibly serious, but it’s enough to set off a pain flare in my mind that burns white-hot for an instant or two. The feeling only lasts that long before my brain shuts it down in order to keep me awake and functioning – without that failsafe, I have no doubt I’d have collapsed before too long. What damage I do now will probably come back to haunt me later, but it’s going to be worth it, I’m sure.

I barely have a moment to gather my thoughts from the pain in my leg when the monster punches me hard across the face with his right fist. My jaw dislocates with a wet crunch, and I see white stars explode through my vision. Even though I’m disorientated and barely able to tell which way is up, I can still sense the vampire as he lopes towards me. Desperately blinking away the whiteness, I try to 

raise my knife and fend him off. The blade scrapes across his chest, but doesn’t even distract him. He barrels me over, but as we fall I jam my foot into his stomach and use the momentum to flip him over. He flies through the air and impacts hard against the wall. Pushing myself arduously to my feet, I turn to wait for him to come at me again, but he doesn’t. He is pinioned through the chest by the piece of wood he threw at the wall earlier. The look of shock and pain on his face is frozen there, his body unmoving and limp. Realising that his threat is ended, I kneel down to help the barely-moving girl to her feet, before throwing one of her arms around my shoulder and letting her lean on me as we leave the building.

As I do so, I see the other vampires flying away, their minds screaming with shared pain. Obviously they felt their leader die, and are cutting their losses by leaving. Cyclops sees me with the girl and moves quickly over to me so that he can take her weight from me. “You okay?” he says with obvious concern.

I’ll be fine once I get medical treatment, I tell him telepathically. Can we get back to the mansion, please?

“My Acolytes – did you kill them?” Magneto asks urgently, as we enter the infirmary.

“Frenzy’s dead,” Logan says, examining his knuckles for a second or two. “Scanner and Voght got away, though.”

Magneto’s head drops in disappointment and he closes his eyes for a second. “Then I have to find them myself. I let them down, and I have to make amends.”

“Not yet, you won’t,” Hank tells him, as he examines the chart resting on the end of Magneto’s bed. “You need at least a fortnight’s rest. I’d stay put, if I were you.”

“Sorry, Doctor, but affairs of state are none of your concern – and besides, Genoshan medical care is more than capable of finishing what you’ve started,” Magneto snaps, and pushes himself off his bed and onto his feet. He wobbles for a second or two, but then he puts his costume back on, the rips and tears in it sealing themselves thanks to his magnetism, and then storms out of the med-lab, almost gliding on a magnetic field. His cape billows out behind him as he heads towards the lift, his fists clenching tightly. “Don’t try to stop me, X-Men.”

Logan snorts as soon as he is gone. “What an ingrate,” he says contemptuously.

“No, Logan,” I whisper. “He’s just in pain.”