“Jesus, Blade,” a voice barked, hard with an Irish accent. “How the fuck can you stand this shite? Sitting in the gloom, everything stinking of motherfucking wax and piety. Fucking oppressive is what it is.”

The kneeling man stiffened, eyes downcast. He clenched his fists and forced himself to breathe deeply. “Don’t call me that, Deacon. Call me Eric or call me Brooks, same as everyone else.”

“I’ll call you what the hell I like, bitch.”

Breathe. Breathe. In and out. One, two, three…

Eric Brooks stared at the floor, his eyes black as midnight. “This isn’t the place for you, Deacon.”

“Too fucking right it’s not. Stuck in a ten-by-ten cell for sixteen fucking hours a day not enough for you, you bastard? Talk about claustrophobia. This place is like a coffin…”

“The chapel’s sacred. You’ve got a problem, we can settle it later.”

“What? You’re fucking busy, Blade, is that it? What, you’re playing with yourself over your whore’s feet over there? Virgin Mary my arse. Like fuck she was a virgin. Cunt as sloppy as a mackerel, I heard. Gave it up to God easy enough, yeah? What, did she slobber on his holy fuckbone ‘til he was stiff enough to touch the sides?”

The man over by the altar stood slowly, turning to stare across the breadth of the chapel. Brooks was tall and solid with a pronounced ridge that stretched the shoulders of his prison greys, but there was rarely any aggression in his stature. Except when he was angry, of course. And he was angry now.

“You want to tell me what your problem is, Deacon?” he asked, softly.

“You mean aside from you being a murdering cunt? You get drunk in a bar and shiv some poor seventeen-year-old fuck for staring at you the wrong way, then think you can come pray at this bitch’s feet and be absolved? You’re damned, Blade. And that’s the only name you’ll ever be known by in this fuckpit because that’s the name you earned when you put that boy in an early grave.”

Brooks flinched. Over and again. He baulked beneath the cut of every word.

“It’s not about absolution, Deacon. It’s about responsibility.”

“Yeah? Well what about your responsibility to me, you fucker?”

The man with the mouth stepped forward from the shadows that clustered about the door of the chapel, the door through which he’d entered and locked behind him, the door that he’d ordered not to be opened until he’d finished the task at hand. Deacon Frost was tall, but not as tall as Brooks. He was nowhere near as broad. If Eric Brooks was a heavyweight then Frost was a middleweight; athletic, lean over muscle. The contrast didn’t end there. Brooks was black, with a shaved head and square jaw, and a welt of a scar that ran down from his right eye to the corner of his mouth. Frost, appropriately for his name, was white – the palest kind of white, the kind of white that only a man in prison in a city like Dublin where it rained every other day could be. His hair was auburn, long and scruffy in the fringe, and his delicate jaw was stubbled. There would perhaps have been something of the pretty boy about him if not for his eyes: grey, ice grey, no colour at all, as cold and hard as flakes of concrete.

Frost wasn’t smiling, Usually he loved to push Brooks’ buttons like this. But not today. Today was business, not pleasure.

“You forgotten how things work in here, Blade?” he breathed. “You think you can come here – here, to my fucking world, my fucking world where every fucking thing and every fucking person in it belongs to me – and ignore the fucking rules?”

There was one more difference between Brooks and Frost. An important one. Brooks was an offender. Frost was a warden. That was why Frost was able to lock doors and give orders that they shouldn’t be opened. And that was why Frost was able to bring a firearm into prison – like the gun he now withdrew from inside his jacket. Without another word he aimed the revolver at Brooks’ leg and pulled the trigger. Brooks’ left knee exploded. The man who, six months before, had been handed a life-sentence for stabbing a teenage boy half his size in the heart during a drunken exchange, now screamed and fell as the fading light of Jesus Christ cast a wash of blood across the chapel floor.

Frost waited for the screams to fade before he spoke.

“There, now,” he said, quietly. “That’s more like it. Just be thankful it wasn’t your fucking bollocks.”

Brooks rolled onto his back, mewling and twitching, his leg a mess of blood and flesh and cloth and splintered bone. Curses frothed at his lips but he wouldn’t swear. He wouldn’t. Not in the chapel. Not in front of –

Frost strolled across and stood over him as he squirmed, gun now tucked into his belt. “Heard you had a visitor a few days’ ago,” he murmured. “Some old fuck. Don’t know his name because it was my day off and some stupid cunt mislaid the paperwork, not that it fucking matters. What I want to know is what he gave you – and why the fuck you didn’t pass whatever it was straight to me as everyone knows they’re supposed to.”

Brooks grunted, his brow beaded with sweat. He turned his head away. He refused to scream again. He wouldn’t give Frost the satisfaction. He wouldn’t scream, he wouldn’t swear, he –

Frost placed the sole of his boot against Brooks’ shattered knee and pressed down. Brooks writhed and howled as he felt the splintered bones grind, his lower body skidding in the crimson slick that was pooling beneath him. Blood and bone at the feet of the Virgin Mary.

“Around my neck!” Brooks shrieked. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, around my neck, around my neck!”

Frost removed his foot then leant down and peeled open the collar of Brooks’ grey prison shirt. Laying upon the man’s chest, bright silver against his black skin, was a cross on a chain. A crucifix. Frost scowled. “What? What the fuck is this? Jesus, Brooks, you’re bleeding like a cunt and still you’re fucking with me, you stupid shite?”

“It’s true! That’s all there is! Fuck! Fuck. That’s all the old man gave me, I swear, I don’t even know who he fucking was. He just gave me this, told me… no, doesn’t matter what he told me. Just take it and get me to the infirmary, Jesus, take me - ”

“Will you shut the fuck up you whiny little slag?”

Frost pulled the chain over Brooks’ head then turned away towards the window so that he could examine what he now held in the meagre light that remained. A silver effigy, Jesus Christ on the cross. Christ in the palm of his hand. “Pissing bollocks is what it is,” Frost muttered. “I thought it was going to be drugs or, at the least, some kind of weapon - ”

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Frost glanced up. The sound was barely audible over Brooks’ whimpering but he’d just caught it. It was coming from the window – the other side of the window. The sun had set now, no more light shining through the stained glass. The chapel was immersed in darkness, no candles lit. Even so, Frost could just make out a shape pressed against the casement, framed by the yellow glow of a streetlamp. Tap. Tap. Tap. The steady rap of a fingernail. And, as Frost listened closely, the faintest of whispers…

“Little pig, little pig – let us in.”

Frost’s eyes narrowed. “What the fuck…?”

He stepped forward – and then the tap of a fingernail turned to the sudden crash of a fist slamming through the window with such ferocity that it not only shattered the coloured glass but also the lead piping between the fragments, peppering Frost with a shower of razor-edged splinters that caused him to shriek and stagger backwards, his face and chest speckled with blood and glint. The last thing he saw before he fell back against a wooden pew was the face of the thing that then crawled through the ruined window. That was when his shriek curdled into a scream.

“Little pig! Little pig! Eat you up, up, up!”

The creature moved like a dancer, so quick and elegant, flash-flash-flash, and then it was on him, it was leaning in, and Frost’s scream lodged in his throat like a dead rat. It was dressed all in black, like a second skin, but its true flesh was a ghastly white, so much whiter than Deacon Frost and all those other little prisoners, all those other little pigs in their cages. Chalk white, corpse white, glowing in the dark. Bald skull, utterly hairless. Eyes like perfect red marbles, no pupils, pressed into the chalk. Mouth a black slit carved into the chalk. Black on the inside, black tongue. Just two teeth. Elongated canines, perfectly straight, no curve. When the creature opened its mouth, to sing, to mock, to hiss, its jaw snapped back as if on a hinge and those teeth reared up and out like steel pins in a trap…

And the three other vampires crawling into the darkened chapel through the shattered window were just the same.

“The Ancient chose poorly, little pig,” the creature sitting on Frost’s chest cooed, those red eyes wide and unblinking. It extended an impossibly long finger tipped with a dagger-sharp nail and tapped at Frost’s hand, the hand holding the crucifix. “Didn’t he tell you that you were supposed to wear it? The magic only happens when you wear it, yes? Silly, silly little pig…”

“I… I don’t… it’s not - ”

Frost was flushed, close to choking on his own fear. The vampire sighed in delight, then drew its fingernail across its captive’s wrist. The sharp edge sliced deep, through flesh and tendon and then through bone. Frost screamed and bucked but the vampire held him down. It drew its nail back, cutting deeper still. Then pushed forward again. Slowly, slowly. Sawing through all resistance with barely an effort. Five slices in all, and then Deacon Frost’s hand fell away from the stump of his wrist. The stump gushed blood. The severed hand bounced on the floor. The crucifix spun forward with the impact and came to land half an inch from the twitching fingertips of Eric Brooks.

The vampire cocked its head. “Well now, little pig,” it said, gently. “I think it’s dinner time. Suck, suck, suck…”

And with that it ducked its head and penetrated Frost’s chest through his warden’s uniform with his fangs, its jaw snapping shut with such force that it cracked the man’s ribs. Before Frost could even scream the other vampires danced forward, flash-flash-flash, and jostled for position like puppies at a teat, fangs lancing down into throat and lower leg and crotch, whereupon they proceeded to gouge and wriggle and drink and croon in some kind of ecstasy.

The vampires cared nothing for Eric Brooks. In fact, they hadn’t even noticed him, lying there in his own blood. They’d been despatched by their master to kill the individual who had been presented with the crucifix by The Ancient: as far as they were concerned, that man – the man in possession of the artefact – was Deacon Frost.

They only realised their mistake when Brooks rose to his feet before the altar of the Virgin Mary, the silver cross once more hanging about his neck, bright against black skin, gleaming even though there was barely any light to be reflected, as if alive with an inner glow. Brooks could stand because his knee was no longer shattered by a bullet; his prison greys were shredded and bloodstained but the flesh and muscle beneath was fully healed. The vampire gorging on Frost’s chest raised its head, disengaging its fangs, and glanced back over its shoulder. Its red eyes flashed.

“And what’s this?” it murmured. “Silly little pig. Only the chosen one can wear The Ancient’s gift, yes? Now, you just wait your turn and we’ll be with you soon enough. Suck, suck, suck…”

Eric Brooks was silent for a moment, staring at the fiend with the chalk white skin now liberally smeared with fresh blood. Then, slowly, he smiled.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sucks to be you.”

The other three vampires looked up then, and four pairs of eyes smouldered brightly in the dark. Then, as one, they began to exhale an odd chorus of sounds somewhere between laughter and a sibilant hiss of disgust – and, without warning, the head fiend suddenly darted forward as quick as a blink, all claws and fangs, flash-flash-fl –

Brooks snapped out a hand and grabbed the vampire around its left wrist, sidestepping and twisting the fiend’s arm behind its back in one fluid movement. He then hooked the fingers of his other hand and stabbed them down into the vampire’s chest with such force that they punched through cloth, flesh and breastbone like a spread of knives. Like blades. Brooks then grasped the vampire’s rotting heart in his fist and wrenched it free. The beast shrieked. It shrieked until Brooks stuffed the heart into its open mouth and down into its throat then pinned its jaw shut with the heel of his palm.

Brooks smiled. “Hey there, motherfucker,” he whispered. “Dinner time.”

And then he curled his arm about the vampire’s throat, pressed his free hand against its temple, and twisted until its neck ruptured in shards of bone and bloodless white flesh, whereupon he whirled back to face the other three beasts that were already launching their attack.

Brooks skipped backwards with a grace that belied his bulk, ducked in mid-hop, then jabbed out a punch into the face of the closest vampire, sending it spinning away to one side. He then whirled and smacked a hard elbow into the gut of the next before snapping his forearm back into its jaw, causing its rapier-like fangs to slice down through its own lower lip and chin. The third vampire slashed out a claw, ripping through Brooks’ shirt and leaving four parallel slashes of shining scarlet across his abdomen. Brooks grunted and whipped out one fist and then the other with a speed that was even greater than that of his adversary. The vampire took both hits to the face, its head snapping one way and then the other, then squealed as Brooks shoved two of his fingers into its right eye socket, popping the red eye ball then sliding up all the way into the cavity of its skull. Brooks clenched his fist and thrust, with such strength that the vampire’s head was detached from its neck with a wet crack and ending up dangling from Brooks’ hand like a bowling ball. Brooks then hurled the head at the enemy with the lacerated chin, the impact ringing like a bell and resulting in both skulls exploding in a shower of fragments.

The final vampire screamed and lunged, slamming into Brooks’ back and sending him sprawling across the chapel floor, skidding through a veritable lake of blood that was a mixture of his own and that of Deacon Frost. Brooks rolled, jabbing out a fist, but the vampire dodged to the side then ducked its head forward, stabbing its fangs into Brooks’ shoulder. Brooks grunted and grabbed the beast by the back of its hairless scalp, pulling it free, but then his grip slipped and the vampire snapped in again, hissing and biting. It raked Brooks with its claws, shredding flesh from his chest and abdomen, then sank its fangs into the side of his face, puncturing his cheek. It was animal, fast and fierce. It only wanted to kill. Brooks stared up into its red eyes as he pushed its head back once more, his hands trembling, convinced that the next attack would be the one to finish him…

…but then he heard the voice, tickling the back of his brain. A man’s voice, deep and insistent. It was telling him… telling him to…

The vampire pulled free. Brooks gasped. The vampire lunged, jaw open wide, fangs aimed for its enemy’s eyes – and then Brooks opened his own mouth and ducked his head forward at the last second, and his fangs sank deep into the vampire’s throat, tearing through flesh and bone, ripping, chewing, feasting –

No. No!

Brooks wrenched his head to one side then shovelled the convulsing body of the vampire away. It continued to writhe, clawing at its throat and crawling back towards the shattered window and escape into the night beyond, but Brooks simply stalked forward and brought down his boot against the back of its bald skull, crushing it beneath his heel, crushing, crushing, until it no longer moved at all.

“Motherfuck!” Brooks yelled, raising his fingers tentatively to his mouth. “Fangs? I’ve got fucking fangs? What the bollocks is going on here?”

Just be calm, the disembodied voice murmured.

“What? Dammit, who is that?”

Brooks whirled, but even as he did so he realised that – impossible as it seemed – the voice really had sounded inside his head.

My name’s Doctor Stefan Strang. I’m communicating with you by telepathic link.

“Well don’t.”

Yeah, well, sorry, but this is way it’s got to be. Don’t worry about the teeth. Now the immediate threat’s ended they’ll return to normal – as will your newfound levels of strength and speed, and your accelerated healing.

“My what?”

Healing factor. Regeneration factor. Whatever the fuck you want to call it. Look at yourself.

Brooks blinked, then glanced down at his upper torso. His prison shirt was in shreds, mirroring the state of his trousers. However, just like the knee that had been obliterated by Frost’s bullet, the wounds to his abdomen, chest and shoulder were no longer evident, without even a scar to mark their existence. Brooks touched at his upper gum, but his canines – both elongated to a good four inches in length a minute before – had now retracted to normal size. He shook his head, then let his hand drop to the crucifix on the silver chain about his neck.

“It’s this, isn’t it?” he breathed. “The old man… he told me it would offer protection against evil, and that my life was in danger. But he didn’t say anything about me becoming some kind of freak…”

Not a freak. The cross simply channels the physical qualities of a vampire into your body whenever you share close vicinity.

Brooks grimaced. “You say that like it’s a good thing, Doc. It isn’t.”

No. But it’s necessary. We need you, Eric. The world needs you.

“Why me?”

Why not? That’s just the way things are decided.

“Uh-huh. God moves in mysterious ways, right?”

What we’re dealing with is a hell of a lot older than God, Eric. And a hell of a lot more powerful.

“Yeah? We’ll see.” Brooks paused then, disturbed by a sudden thought. “Wait. Hold on a second. Was I swearing…?”

Pain and fear can bring that out, even in a religious man. Don’t beat yourself up about a few f-bombs, okay? Trust me. I can be –

“No. No, that’s not it. When I was shot, yeah, fair enough – but then, after I’d healed, I changed. I wasn’t just channelling the vampire. It was Frost. I was speaking in Frost’s voice.”

Who the fuck’s Frost?

“The warden.”

Human? From what The Ancient told me, the crucifix doesn’t work that way. If you started picking up human wavelengths you’d be skipping around like a radio on multiple frequencies and you’d be mindfucked within a day. You can channel vampires and vampires only.

Brooks’ eyes narrowed. He turned slowly, scanning the dark interior of the chapel. He couldn’t be positive until he lit a candle, but… no, there was no doubt about it. The floor was saturated with blood where the mutilated body of Deacon Frost had been sprawled, but he wasn’t there now. Instead there was a vague trail leading across to the window…

“Tell me something,” Brooks said quietly. “The legends. Are they true? Someone gets bitten by a vampire then that’s what they become?”

The voice in his head didn’t reply. Brooks’ heart hammered in his chest. Yeah, that pretty much answered his question.

At that moment, from the other side of the chapel door, there came the sound of footsteps and voices, and then a key turning in the lock. Brooks scowled. Frost would have given the order for his fellow guards to steer clear of this area for a specific period of time. Guess that time was up. He glanced back towards the window. Deacon Frost. Vampires. He didn’t want to believe it – but he didn’t really have a choice, did he?

We need you, Eric, the ghostly voice of Stefan Strang repeated. You need to come to London. Greenwich.

“An offer I can’t refuse, right?”

Brooks sighed. He stared down at his hands, remembering the strength and savagery that had driven him, remembering the way he had stabbed out a vampire’s heart with his bare fingers. “Just one thing,” he said, coldly. “If my body’s going to become a living weapon, I reckon I’m going to have to put Eric Brooks to one side for now. So call me Blade, okay, Doc?

“Call me Blade.”

The gathering of Defenders is almost complete, with one recruit remaining. But what is Château Noir and who has earned the diabolical attentions of Satana Blackheart? Don’t miss “Conflagration”!

I remember it remarkably clearly, even ten years on. It was a ragamuffin cinema just off Leicester Square, and my then-girlfriend (soon to be my wife) and I took refuge from the rain, bought a big tub of popcorn, and settled back for a lazy afternoon in front of the big screen. I had no preconceptions, whilst she knew this was a comic book film but nothing more. Perfect. We proceeded to watch a sly woman lead some skanky guy to a secret party in the back room of a meat freezer, whereupon he was engulfed in a crowd of dancers gyrating to some drum n’ bass. The music pulse got louder. The dancing became frenzied. Everyone raised their hands to the ceiling, whereupon the camera cut to a sprinkler system.

And then the sprinklers came on and drenched everyone in blood.

And the skanky guy freaked out, understandably, because everyone, apart from him, was a vampire.

And then, just as skanky was about to die, Wesley Snipes showed up in a leather trench-coat and shades and, with a shotgun and a sword, commenced annihilating the (un)living fuck out of every last motherfucker in the room.

Which, let’s be honest, was fucking awesome.

I’d guess the majority of Blade fanfics out there take their cue from the movie version, not the original guy with the pimp ‘fro and the camel jacket from the 70s Tomb Of Dracula comic series. The Blade in Ultimate Defenders is most certainly Snipes influenced (as is the current ‘real’ Marvel interpretation), although it’s curious to note that the original character, created by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan, was born in a brothel in Soho, London – a fact that will seem even more ironic next issue, which takes place in a remarkably similar location.

Put succinctly, even though there’ll be some novel character traits to the re-imagined Blade, my over-riding motivation is shamefully transparent: I want to write a scene where he and his fellow Defenders beat the bones out of a pack of vicious vamps, and other assorted nasties, preferably to a funky soundtrack. And if someone somewhere reaches the end of that particular issue and looks up with a grin and says, “Hey… that was fucking awesome” just as I did that afternoon at the cinema, then, well… job done. Here’s hoping.

If you’d like to give feedback on this series, positive or critical, please don’t hesitate to drop a line to ameriades@hotmail.com

For those interested, a list of my fanfiction can be found at http://meriadesfiction.livejournal.com

Thanks for reading!

- Meriades Rai