Chapter 12: A New Mission

When David entered the princess' office the next day, Alice didn't seem to notice. This was very odd because not only had she always noticed when he entered and greeted him with a smile, she was a vampire, like it or not she can hear things far better than he can, she could probably hear him coming down the hall for quite a distance. He notices that she has a disgruntled look on her face, and she is staring intently at a few papers on her desk. He had no idea what was going on, so he walked right over to her desk, leaned forward and said "Hi, Princess!" loudly, purposefully trying to startle her. After all the crap she puts him through it feels good to get a little payback. 

Alice, who had up until now been engrossed in thinking about the human trafficker problem, nearly jumped out of her seat when David loudly called to her. 

"What the hell?" Alice said as she looked up to see David standing only a few feet away. "Do you want to die? Cause sneaking up on me, that's a good way to die!" Alice said sternly. Her reaction was rather surprising, never once had David seen Alice mad before, of course there were times she faked it, or times where she was annoyed at him like when he ate food that was specifically for her, but genuinely mad? No. 

Alice looks to David who is standing there surprised. 

"Ah, look I'm sorry I just," Alice starts as she shuffles the papers into her desk before David can see them. "Have a lot on my mind right now." Once again David was surprised, to see her this worked up about something was new to him. 

"You know, you can tell me what's bothering you if you want." David began, genuinely concerned for his friend. Alice hesitated for a moment before shaking her head. 

"No, I don't want to get you involved in something dangerous." David raised an eyebrow. 

"I've seen plenty of danger so far." He said as he leaned on the couch. "I'm not going to force you to tell me if you don't want to, but as your friend I want to be able to help you whenever you need it. Even if I can't do anything, I can at least help you vent." He said with a smile. 

"Besides, I saved you once, you saved me twice, the way I see it I still owe you one."

Alice sighed, she really didn't want to get David involved in this mess let alone tell him about it. Not only was this a dangerous thing to even know about, but the whole reason she is struggling right now is because of a failure on her part to gather information. She doesn't want to drag David into her mistake. But the fact that he was concerned for her, the fact that he was asking to help as a friend was... nice. 

"Alright I'll tell you." She said as she pulled out the files she had put into her desk. He hands them over to him and starts explaining. 

"Right now, in the capital there are a band of human traffickers. David who had only just begun to look at the papers he had been handed looked up at Alice, his eyes wide open. 

"What?!" He said exasperated. 

"We have been trying to track these guys down for years now, in the last 5 or 6 months we have managed to gather enough information to know where their biggest hideout is." 

"Then are you doing something about it?" David said now fully invested. 

"I want to, but there just isn't enough information." Alice sighs and puts her hand on her head. 

"What do you mean, you just said you know where their hideout is?" David said, shocked that there is a hang-up. 

"No, we know where the biggest hideout is, not where they are keeping their captives or where the boss is." She paused as she got an angry look on her face again. 

"We don't even know who their boss is! If it wasn't for all the corrupt nobles backing them then we wouldn't be in such a bind." This caught David's attention. 

"Corrupt nobles?" Alice looks up at him with a worried expression. "Yeah. You might not know this but many vampires consider human blood to be like an exquisite wine. Since arbitrarily kidnapping humans and drinking their blood is obviously illegal, there is a sizable black market for human blood." 

"Wait, you mean that there are people out there that are being kidnapped, locked up and then sold to the highest bidder for a noble's enjoyment?" David was getting furious by this point, these people, the ones running the black market were doing the same thing to other humans that was done to him. It was inexcusable that they could do this! 

"Why don't you have any more information? What happened?" David said, now trying to look for answers himself. 

"It took us all these months just to gather this little data simply because we didn't know who to trust. Those backing the traffickers are powerful and have ears everywhere, it was nearly impossible for us to send someone to find out more without them hearing." Alice said as she tried to explain her failure to David. 

David couldn't accept this, there was scum out there that were taking people from their homes, from their families and friends, and were locking them up to be used like livestock. It was precisely because it was the same situation as he was in before that he was getting so worked up about it. Then as both Alice and David stood there and stewed in anger David came up with an idea. 

"Why not use me?" He said, his face completely serious. Alice, without looking up, said 

"Use you to do what?" 

"Use me to infiltrate them and find their boss." He said, still completely serious. Alice slowly looks up at him like he's stupid. 

"No! It's far too dangerous." She said, not willing to let her friend go and something so needlessly stupid. 

"You don't have any other options right? I'm positive I can be useful!" 

"No!" Alice said, worry dripping from her words. She would be sending David into the lion's den, they would eat him alive, no matter how lucky he was he couldn't do it! 

"If you hadn't saved me from the dungeon under the Velma manor, I would have been just like them." David said, taking a step back, a solemn look on his face. "Trapped in a perpetual nightmare, being treated like livestock to be groomed and fed until I could be eaten." Alice's heart was wavering as she listened to David speak. 

"Please Alice, give me a chance to free those people from their fate, like you did me!" There was a moment of silence as tension filled the air, Alice just looked at her hands resting on her desk. All she had to do was say no and shut this whole stupid idea down and that would be the end of it, right? She just needs to tell him no and then he will let this whole thing drop. The silence continues for a moment longer before Alice breathes in deeply and lets out a tremendous exhale. 

Later that night David was walking down the street heading towards a bar called the Dancing Dragon. As he stepped through the door he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small pill. Quickly swallowing it he heads over to the bar and orders a drink. The next 3 hours David spent all his time drinking at the bar, getting more and more drinks until his face was flushed with blood. He told stories about how he was now alone with no one to take care of him, how his only friend hated him now and abandoned him, how he was a fugitive from several powerful people, and how not even his family knew where he was. He then said how he was sick of it all and just wanted to drink the night away. After the three hours went by, he was kicked out of the bar by the owner for being too drunk and then stumbled his way through the alley. He must have taken a wrong turn at some point because he somehow found himself in a dead end, he was about to leave when he felt himself get grabbed from behind, a hand covering his mouth as he was dragged into a building in the alley. After a few minutes of being dragged through the building and being brought underground he is thrown into a cage with several other people all of whom are cowering in fear, several with bruises on their bodies. 

A man wearing a rather nice silk robe enters the room after David had been thrown in the cage and eyes him over. 

"Are you sure you got a good product here? This just looks like another drunk to me!" The man in the robe yells to the men who dragged David in. 

"We are sure boss, he spent hours talking all about himself while drinking himself into a stupor. He has no friends, no family, and is even on the run, no one will come looking for him." The man said with a smirk. 

"Well." The robed man said as he pondered what to say. "Eh, It's fine." He said after a lot of thinking. 

"We are leaving soon anyway, one more piece of cargo won't make a difference. If he doesn't sell, we'll just chop him up and sell him piecemeal." David looks up, terrified at what was just said as he looks up and gets a better look at the three men talking, he notices something shocking, they are all human. Not even one of them was a vampire. 

"Just leave him there until morning, we'll deal with it then." The boss said as he walked away. Shortly after he left the two men, talking amongst themselves, left the room. The only people now in the room were David and the people in the cage with him. David leaned back and breathed a sigh of relief. 

"Stage one done, right Alice?" He thought to himself as he recalled the conversation from earlier. 

Alice, who had been silently sitting there staring at her hands on the desk, breathed in suddenly, after holding her breath for a moment she exhaled. 

"Okay! Fine!" She said with a serious look on her face, David felt giddy, he knew he had to get those people out of there no matter what, he was glad that Alice was on his side. 

"But we are going to do this my way!" Alice then spends the rest of the afternoon detailing the plan with David. The plan basically consisted of three parts, the first part is to get the attention of the kidnappers, get them to grab David and bring him to the other people. Hopefully from there the boss will come to inspect his new "cargo" and David will get a look at his face.

"The second step is to escape from whatever sort of cell they put you in and create a distraction." Alice said as she looked down at the paper detailing their plan. 

"Wait, hold on." David interjects. 

"How exactly do I escape? I'm not exactly great at picking locks." 

"With this" Alice said as she pulls out a small red crystal from her desk that she had asked a maid to get her earlier, she also grabs another red crystal and puts that beside it. 

"This crystal is imbued with magic to force any lock open." she said as she handed it over to David so he could look at it. 

"That's awfully convenient, must be easy for thieves in this world huh?" David said sarcastically as he spun the stone in his hand. 

"No, something like this is extremely valuable and extremely expensive. Even in the Empire the number of magic stones like this probably number less than 100 total." Alice said as she snatches the stone away from David before he breaks it. 

"All you have to do to activate it is to say..." 

"Open!" David said quietly. From his back pocket a faint red glow is emitted before there is a metal clang and he can hear the lock on the cage click. David turns to the other people in the cage.

"I'm here to get you all out, but you have to listen to me okay?" He said quickly trying to get the next part of the plan on as soon as possible. 

"I need you all to go cause a distraction." At the word "distraction" many of the people shuffle away from him, afraid for their lives. 

"All I need you to do is go out there and get their attention, you can even tell them that I let you out, or something. But don't fight back if you don't, they shouldn't hurt you." David said as he turned his attention to the cage door. 

"Please, just help me out and we will all get out of this." David then opened the cage door and slowly walked up to the door to leave the room and put his ear up to it. After a moment he heard someone on the other side. He had no choice, he had to make his move now. David quickly threw the door open, seeing the man from earlier on his right, without missing a beat he put him in a chokehold, as the man violently struggled to get out of it, he heard sounds from behind him, he turned around to see the other man from earlier next to the door, knife in hand. 

"Shit! I screwed up!" David thought to himself as he closed his eyes and braced for the inevitable, but after a few seconds nothing happened, he opened his eyes to see the man, now lying unconscious on the floor, and another man, who had been in the cage previously, holding a plank of wood and standing over his body. 

Despite having his life saved by this man David's first reaction is to yell at him. 

"What are you doing? I told you to not resist!" David's only concern was the safety of those who were kidnapped so seeing this man, who had just assaulted his kidnapper, made him worry that he just made himself a target. The man just turns to look at him, his expression only slightly worried. 

"You needed a distraction, right? I'll make sure you get one." He said as he walked off, weapon in hand. By now David had successfully knocked out the guard, so he let him go and he fell on the floor with a thud. Since that gentleman was going to be a distraction for him, it was time for stage three.

"Stage Three." Alice began as she looked at the last part "Is the most important part. Assuming you already know what the boss looks like you will have to run through their base and track him down, incapacitate him somehow, knock him out, trap him, it doesn't matter but you must not let him leave, he has the information that could allow us to track the corrupt nobles. If you can't find him then just find some documents that prove their involvement in the black market. Then once you are done," She said as she picked up the other red stone. 

"Hold this up to the sky and shout "F.I.R.E." Much like when she told him to use the other red gem, she spelled out the word fire so as not to activate it prematurely. 

"And don't forget to take this," Alice said, picking up a small white pill from the table for the second time. "Take this pill before you enter the bar, it will prevent you from getting drunk, but your cheeks will still get flushed. You'll need to put on a rather convincing show for them." Alice said, sighing, having finished talking through the entire plan more than once. 

"Alright, I understand. That's it right?" David said as he grabbed all three items off the table. 

"One more thing," Alice leans over the table and grabs David's hand, squeezing it tightly. "Don't die."

David by this point had already busted in a few doors and found nothing, he was prepared for a fight at any moment however, he had stolen a sword off one of the unconscious guards and was prepared to fight if he had to. As he was about to kick down yet another door, he heard loud talking coming from inside. David readied himself for a fight and kicked the door down. As soon as the door flung open all three men inside, two unknown men and the boss, turned to look and saw David. He was not going to waste a single moment, in their confusion David immediately thrusted the sword into one of the guards. David was surprised how little resistance he felt, apparently these men were not wearing any chest armor as the blade slid easily through his stomach. David then felt something hard hit his back. The other man was now hitting him with a wooden club. David defended himself with his free hand while he tried to pull the sword out with his other. The sword had much more resistance coming out than it did going in. All the while David was repeatedly being beaten. Eventually though David managed to dislodge the sword from the man's abdomen and swing it towards the other man's throat. He left the sword there, inside of him as he slowly walked towards the boss, club now in hand. 

"Stop! I'm begging you!" The boss pleads. "You want money? I'll give you more money than you know what to do with! You want women, all the women I have are yours!" He said with a whimper as he slowly retreats to the corner of the room. 

"You know what I want?" David said anger flowing out, a fire burning in his eyes. 

"What?" The boss said terrified, now completely backed into the corner. David leans in close to him and whispers. 

"Your legs!"

It took him several minutes to finish. The objective this time was to secure the information from the boss. Alice needed him alive, how he was captured or incapacitated was up to David's discretion. As soon as David saw the club in the room, he already knew what he was going to do. After David had finished venting his anger, he quickly left the room leaving the man unconscious, both his legs broken in multiple different directions. If he had cut off his legs he might have died, doing it this way ensured he lived but could never walk again. It wasn't nearly enough considering what he deserved, but perhaps torture by the authorities would give his dead victims some peace. David quickly rushed outside, on his way out grabbing another sword he saw just in case, and then reached into his pocket and grabbed the other stone. He held it to the sky and cried out- 

"Fire!" All of a sudden, a brilliant red light shot into the sky with a long red tail that followed it up. David marveled at it for a few moments before he realized what it was. 

"So, it was a flare." He said softly to himself. He is about to take a seat and wait for the reinforcements when he hears the door open behind him. He turned around to see a vampire, in full leather armor standing there holding the still unconscious boss over his shoulder. His getup reminded David of the bounty hunter he encountered in the woods. This was bad, a vampire was here after all, he stood no chance of beating him one on one, but he couldn't let him escape with the boss in tow. He had no choice.

David stood there, sword out, ready to fight. The vampire chuckled to himself. 

"Right then. I'll kill you then I'll make my escape with the baggage." He said as he gently put the boss down, leaning against the building. 

"They don't pay me enough for this!" He said as he swiftly drew his sword and lunged at David. The blade was moving so fast David could barely react in time and only managed to dodge by a hair, a cut with fresh blood was now on his cheek. 

"Ah, so you are going to make this interesting, are ya?" The vampire said as he licked the blood off of his sword. 

"Then let's dance!" He yells as he goes in for another lunge. David already knew he stood no chance if he fought him with the intent to win, so all David could do was defend. Blow after blow came down on him, each time David received a new cut, on his arms, his legs, his neck, his torso. All the while the vampire seemed to be speeding up, it was beginning to go so fast David couldn't even react, so he made a decision, he stopped blocking all but his vitals. So now, instead of being cut he was being stabbed all over. However rather than being done in after a few blows, David was still standing by sheer force of will. It was not a miracle though, besides David's ironclad will, the vampire had purposefully not made the stabs too deep so he could keep playing with David longer. However, all the fun has to end sooner or later. With a single strike the vampire flung the sword out of David's hand leaving him defenseless, the motion of the strike also causing him to lose balance and end up on the ground. The vampire pointed the sword at his throat. 

"Sorry lad, the game's up, been fun!" He shouts as he pulls back to stab David in the neck. 

However, right before he could finish David off, he is tackled by a man in armor. Almost as soon as David was saved the whole alley was filled with knights taking control of the situation. Many were standing guard outside while many more were flooding into the building. A few even grabbed the boss and put him in shackles and then carried him away. David stood up slowly. 

"I did it." He said to himself shakily, his whole body in pain. Then he sees from the end of the alley, Alice standing there, tears in her eyes. David smiles and walks over to her outside the alley. As soon as he reached her, she immediately threw herself onto him and embraced him tightly. It hurt, especially with all his wounds, but she needed this almost as much as he probably did. Through her tears she said, 

"Why'd you have to get so hurt you big dummy!" Finally getting over the shock of being hugged he slowly put his arms around her and hugged her back. 

"Sorry." He said to her quietly. They hug in silence for a few moments. 

"David?" She said, no longer crying but still distraught. 

"Hm?" 

"Let me stay like this for just a little while longer." And so, they did for just a few precious moments more as they bathed in the dim moonlight.