Editor's Note: This story is set not long after the conclusion of Blade 2

He knows them too well. As one of the groups pale, white skinned face contorts, he knows what is coming. First of all the scar that leads from the middle of his bottom lip and halfway down his neck opens on either side of the scar. He has no teeth to speak of, but four sharp fangs, two inside his mouth and two on the edges of the widespread outside flesh. A disgusting sucking ‘tongue’ portrudes in the middle, surrounded by slimy pink flesh. This is a Reaper.

“Die Day-Walker!!” screams another of the group. Blade can’t help but grin as the first Reaper leaps at him, ravenously, going for his neck. As quick as a flash, Blade whips out his sword and slashes at the Reaper, who lands on the other side of Blade minus an arm. The rest of the group howl and go after Blade as well. These guys aren’t calculating fiends though, just hungry, afflicted by a horrible disease. At least, he figures, he’s putting them out of their misery. He spins around, sword swinging, cutting chunks out of the four Reapers. Before they can recover, Blade takes out two machine guns from inside his long, leather coat and opens fire. The Reapers recoil as a hail of specially designed bullets rip through them. Poor bastards, Blade thinks. This won’t be pretty. The Reapers scream in agony, as something begins to tear through their insides. Slowly, each one is shredded from the inside. As their bodies turn black and disintigrate, Blade can’t help but feel sorry for them for a moment …but only a moment.

“Damn, how does Whistler do it?” He puts the guns back inside his coat, and the sword back in it’s sheath, thinking about how his partner and friend came up with these bullets. Way Whistler told it, they are laced with a sort of poison that, once it’s inside a reaper’s body, emits what is like the equivalent of throwing a Reaper out into the sunlight. Burns them up from the inside. He’s better go back and tell Whistler how well they worked. Another four suckheads down.

This was a good night.

He can’t keep it inside anymore. It’s just too hard. Like a demon is clawing it’s way out of him, just waiting to take over his body. He hates it. The same kind of filth that murdered his family is now lying within him. The vampire. It must be stopped. Whistler painfully walks over to his workstation and takes one of Blade’s guns in his shaking hands. The leg brace on his shattered right leg made his walking very labored, which pissed him off, but at least he could walk. He slowly brings the gun up and presses the nozzle against his chest, right in front of his heart. This is it. Blade’s serum didn’t surpress it. Now it must die. His fingers close in on the trigger when …

VROOM!!!

Quickly, he throws the gun away when he hears Blade’s car pull in. The long, black roadster parks just metres away from where Whistler is standing, and Blade gets out. But Whistler doesn’t see the hardened, leather clad warrior that is before him. Rather,
he sees the troubled, young vampire who he took under his wing all those years ago. When he found Blade, the boy he treated like a son ever since, was a lone vampire, living in a rough neighbourhood, feeding off the homeless. Whistler taught him to control his anger, his resentment of what he was, and channel it into something better. Of course, the serum that supresses the vampirism also helped, but hey, Whistler likes to pat himself on the back. He made the serum after all.

“Hey old man! These new bullets are better than anything you’ve done before…You still there?”

Whistler snaps out of his thoughts and grins at Blade. “Fucked ‘em up good, didn’t they?”

“And then some. Thanks.”

“No problem. Any other problems with the Reapers?”

“No. There aren’t many left. They’re looking at extinction.”

“Good.”

Blade takes off his coat and is left with the body armor underneath. He creaks his neck from side to side and then cracks his knuckles. Whistler cringes.

“Do you have to do that?”

“No, but I know how much it pisses you off.”

Whistler smiles at Blade’s joke. He’s coping very well after Nyssa’s death. Surprisingly well in fact. Whistler thought that after the death of the woman he loved, he’d be a wreck, maybe even drink…like Whistler himself did after his family were murdered. But Blade is stronger than that. And as much as Whistler hates to admit it, he’s more of a liability to their mission, rather than an aid.

“Blade …we need to talk…”

Fucker. He lied to me. The bastard lied to me. This is what goes through Blade’s head as he drives through the city, in the dead of night. Whistler’s words repeat over and over.

“I’m not as cured as you think I am. The hunger is too much. I’m changing …into one of them.” Them. The damn creatures of the night. He can’t believe that Whistler would…

“HELP ME! OH GOD PLEASE! HE’S AFTER ME!”

The woman’s cried for help jerk Blade out of his thoughts. He spins the car around, screeching to a halt at the end of the alleyway where within, a vampire is closing in on a helpless girl. The car alerts the vampire and he spins round, fangs bared. Blade, who has got out of the car, is now leaning against the hood. The car blocks off any chance of escape for the vampire, as he trapped the girl in a dead end alleyway.

“You’re the Day-Walker aren’t you?”

“You better believe it shit head.”

Blade stares him down. This isn’t a Reaper, just a ‘normal’ vampire. And then it hits Blade. This is what Whistler could become. A monster. A monster who looks like a normal human being up until it decides to strike. Not a ravenous animal like a Reaper, but a cold, calculating fiend. In Blade’s nook, the lowest of the low.

There is no way he is going to let this happen to Whistler.

“Whistler…it ends now.”

Oh god. He’s back. Whistler looks at the man that he raised as basically his own. The man who has come to kill him ….Good.

“Blade listen, I know I shouldn’t have lied to you…”

“I know. Doesn’t the serum work?”

“No. I was too far into the change when you found me. And I think the serum is especially adapted to your blood, your body…I tried making a new one but nothing would work. I just couldn’t get it right, like I did for you.”

“So it’s come down to this. You want me to kill you.”

“Yes please …I don’t want to do it myself…if you really are the man I think you are, you’ll do this for me…at least let me go out with some freakin’ dignity. Not suicide or by becoming one of them.”

“I don’t know…Whistler…”

Whistler suddenly doubles over in pain. He grits his teeth and when he looks back up at Blade, his fangs show.

“No…”

“Do it now Blade! It’s happening! Kill me!”

Blade hesitates. This is the man who has been like a father to him.

“Kill me, you stupid bastard! NOW!”

Blade whips out one of his handguns, with the special bullets.

“KILL ME!!!!”

“I’m sorry, old man …”

BLAM!! One single bullet is fired and it rips through Whistler’s heart. As he is about to explode into dust, Whistler has only two words for Blade.

“Thank you.”

He is alone now. His mission. Alone.

He is the Day-Walker. He is …

BLADE.