Chapter 84: Sun-Walking and Soul-Searching

The sun-walking Vampires didn't last. The sun wasn't their only enemy, as Mend said.

And now, the east end of Manhattan was a polar ice cap.

Massive frozen pillars ripped up the road from below, sending frozen in time splashes of sewage and blown back Vampires. Cars above were pushed against buildings and covered in thick white frost.

It looked like winter restarted.

Brontë climbed out of the frozen rubble, Mend covered him everywhere but his face as he scanned the area.

Jessica Jones ran down the frozen over street towards him. Her leather jacket was torn to shreds and a gash over her eyebrow splashed half her face in red.

Somehow she still looked bored.

"Angel is down. Iron Fist was able to…. Zen him to sleep or something. Daredevil's got an ear on the next few blocks all the way to the next hospital. He can hear the next squad's got their area covered..."

"Got it."

For a small moment they stood in silence. Almost as still as the ice around them.

"I'm telling you to leave." Jessica Jones added in a rush.

Brontë didn't get a word out as Mend took him over and they took to the skies in a blur of blue flame.

His earpiece rattled beneath the Symbiote suit.

"Bronte—…. StormWolf, this is Reed Richards. I understand the use of your Sibling-Symbiote gives you a version of your wind-rider ancestral abilities, I was hoping you'd—"

"Go to L.A. I'm heading there right now." Bronte replied as Mend dipped and dove through the clouds, splitting them in airy explosions with an increase in speed.

Mend moved through the sky like a missile. Or a shooting star. A lot of wishes were inadvertently being made below.

Chicago blew by below in a myriad of gloomy grey cityscape, trains and apartment complexes.

A burgeoning fire split up the colorless top view mosaic. The screams and scents of pain were audible even from Mend's distance.

"Can we afford a stop?" Bronte spoke into the earpiece?

"….If you're fast enou—"

Mend divebombed, "WE are fast!"

Mend's tongue hung out like a dog with its head out the window as the cracked and bloody streets grew closer.

Mend hit the ground like a meteor.

The hospital stood before them, in state of chaos. The building was massive— over twice the size of the hospital in New York. Meaning more casualties. More vampires. More….

There were dozens of overlapping levels and decks. Busted open windows and people running across the rooftops.

The Vampires inside had grown so overwhelming people jumped from the rooftops.

Brontë could smell their blood from the alleyways where they lay with broken limbs. It only made the Vampires inside more aggressive.

"Ice?" Mend questioned.

"No. Heal the ones that jumped."

Mend took off as police officers yelled obscenities and pedestrians were hauled into ambulances aided by Fantastic Four equipment.

When they hit the alley, black shadowy dust rose from the rising winds. A cloaked man danced, fighting off and quickly restraining two Vampires with the help of a blonde haired woman in white. She held two slivers of pure light in her hands.

"What are you doing here?!" The cloaked man questioned as Mend dropped down to the closest victim with a hideously broken leg.

"Helping." Mend replied while beginning to work on the man.

"Are you one of the good guys? You…. You really don't look like it." Tears streamed down his face.

Bronte's face appeared as Mend's snouted maw shrank away. "Yea, we're with you. Just don't move."

Brontë refrained from telling him he'd never healed someone with an alien before.

He reached out for the man's leg. His fingers extended into tendrils that formed a veiny black-skinned cast around his leg.

All the while more tendrils slithered from his back and shoulders, reaching out for the other victims laying in the alley.

Soothing heat. Numbing cold. Revitalizing electrical shocks to restart heartbeats. Resetting bones.

Brontë and Mend… Mostly Mend, had become their own active clinic.

"You know… I saw something like this on the news— with Spiderman. It wasn't like this last time I checked." The man with the previously broken leg commented as Bronte helped him to his feet.

"We're different." Bronte replied. Before he could say anything else his ears caught the sound of footsteps pounding towards him.

Immediately a woman screamed as she jumped out of a window on the third floor. Shards of glass dug into her feet and knees following the window shatter.

Three Vampires flew out after her in bloody hospital gowns.

Mend took over Bronte and they jumped to catch her.

"Don't let them bite us— they'll disintegrate!" Bronte said inside the Symbiote.

The Vampires were fast. But not as fast as Mend. Mend reached the woman, turning as the Vampires collided. Before they could sink their fangs into black Symbiote skin, a gust of wind threw them back into the hospital.

Mend hit the ground and found the man with the previously broken leg waiting.

"I can take her."

"Thank you." With Mend's tendrils still connected to the people in the alley, they were swiftly carried to the ambulances and police. Freeing the area was important.

Immediately after, Mend dove into the hospital. It didn't take long to access the situation more accurately with all their senses focused on the building.

Blood splattered against the walls. Curtains were torn and left in discarded shreds. Trauma equipment was left beeping deafeningly, reading off old scans of patients post transformation.

There were still people inside. People unaffected, holed up in barricaded rooms as the infected clawed and bashed at the doors.

"We got this." Bronte said.

"We do." Mend agreed and took off down the halls.

They flew in a blur, knocking aside and freezing Vampires to walls until they found a horde focused around a door covered in holes.

"Ice won't work." Bronte said as they smashed into Vampires. "Let's do it like Spider-Man."

"If we use too much you'll lose the suit until I can recover, Bronte." Mend replied as a Vampire lunged into them from the toppled horde. Mend caught the Vampire by the throat and threw him down the hall.

"That's ok."

"Bronte—"

"Mend, we don't have time! L.A still needs us. You're doing great. Keep going. You're saving people."

Mend's snouted maw parted into a toothy grin, "You sound happy, Unc."

"That would make me insane."

"No. It makes you a hero!" Mend sent out a thread of Symbiote webbing and tied up the vampires.

In seconds the hallway was blocked off. But the Vampires were also immobile, caught in a spiders web.

The cloaked man teleported into the hall. Blade ran up the stairs to stand beside him.

"Oh thank you….. We're running thin here." The shadowy man commented.

"Who's we?" Blade rolled his shoulders. He didn't look tired at all.

Brontë felt relieved in that regard.

"Get them out. We're leaving." Mend busted out of the nearest window and took to the skies, back on his previous mission.

They continued on as they were. Faster. Harder. More focused.

Brontë and Mend were a blur over the horizon, divebombing into the fray wherever Vampires festered.

They reached L.A in quick time. Brontë nearly mistook it for the Limbo Dimension as thick rain poured from deep black clouds.

The Vampires were in the streets. Chasing down speeding cars seconds from collisions and death.

They hovered over the large city. Mend was barely covering Bronte from all the other Vampires across the nation theyd restrained.

He didn't even notice.

He was too busy.

Daken launched a terrorist attack this deadly seemingly with no effort.

"For what?"

They raised their hands to the clouds. It didn't matter. All the deaths Daken caused. All the innocents he turned into savage monsters. All the deaths Bronte caused chasing Daken, it already happened….

The more he stopped from happening, the better.

That's all that mattered. The spiral had taken him down deeper than he ever wanted to be. He had to…. get out of the ocean, for lack of a better term.

Be better.

Wind-Rider magic swelled. Bronte's spine vibrated beneath his skin like an old car engine revving back to life. Heat bloomed across his skin. Across Mend's skin? He couldn't tell. He didn't care.

As he looked at the clouds shift and split, he could've swore he saw Oshtur watching. Eyes like grey diamonds glistening between the suns rays.

They'd spoken only days ago. Spoken about a dozen things. Things he was too young and lacking in a philosophy degree to understand.

Self forgiveness. Intertwined journeys. Parallel development.

He had no solutions for what she proposed.

But the sky was blue. The sun was out. The Vampires were diving into the sewers and retreating back to the hospital as Heroes restrained them and police guarded the victims.

And Oshtur's words were back in his head. So were Ilyana's.

"Magic requires a certain state of mind.."

"You seem to be on the right path." He could almost hear her knowing smirk.

His oddly out of body experience faded and he regained self awareness.

He hovered over the city. The wind ruffled his dreads and brushed against the thin layer of hair over his skin.

Wait…

"Bronte! I knew it!" Mend said from within his mind. "You're healing….. We are mending what was broken…. HAHAHA!"

Brontë looked down at himself— noticing most of Mend's Symbiote skin was gone. The arm included.

He was flying.

"I'm fl—"

He spoke too soon.

Brontë fell like an anvil was tied to his feet.

The world spiraled as rampant winds twisted and spun him until he crashed into the streets below.

"Fuck, man…" He said from a dislocated jaw and shoulder.

"Work in progress! HAHA— WE are making PROGRESS!" Mend celebrated.

"Turn up later." Bronte growled as he forced his way out of the crater he made in the road.

Magic or no magic, all the Vampires did was relocate aside from the few captured.

He ran. A slow hobble that quickly evolved into a high speed sprint. He covered six blocks in seconds and rounded a corner to find the nearest blood transfusion clinic.

It was overtly obvious that they were in a slum. Shell casings lay in the lawns of apartment complexes across the street from the clinic connected to a strip mall of sorts. But no blood.

They were shooting the vampires.

Just like someone else was.

A woman with a bow and arrow.

Hawkeye.

"Thanks for clearing up the sky!" She yelled over her shoulder before firing another arrow that exploded into a net. It covered a previously broken window like many others.

"Yea, no sweat."

"Be careful in there. Mr. Knight's acting…. Crazier than usual." Hawkeye commented.

Brontë rushed into the clinic, jumping in through the second floor. As soon as he was inside, Hawkeye netted the opening closed.

And then it was just him, and…. well, you know what.

A curvaceous tiger woman with red eyes.

Mr Knight stepped out of room to Bronte's left. His sleeves were rolled up and he bled from everywhere. Behind him a gaggle of Vampires were tied to a chair on wheels causing them to bounce around the room like a basketball.

"Bronte."

"Hey."

Mr. Knight referred to the werecat woman getting ready to pounce from down the hallway.

"Meet my girlfriend."

"Awe…. Damn."

"When this is all over, I'm going to kill your brother. I mean— I know that was already the goal but I've never been so emotionally invested in someone's death before."

"Word."