Disclaimer: I do not own any famous characters you will recognize. They are the property of DC comics and an assortment of other people. I do not own the overall timeline for this story, as it is a parallel to ThSamurai's Kiss of the Dragon. I do, however, own the subplots, my other character Elm, and anyone associated exclusively with his background.

The situation at the chemical plant is based off events in koriandr Star'sThird Gospel of the Dead II: The Art of Revenge, so don't blame me for any of it you don't like.

I shot up in my bed, gasping with a pain that wasn't mine. It took me a moment to orient myself, to calm down and remember I was in Titan's Tower, and that, indeed, I was not wounded. Oh, the agony was real, all right, but not from any injury of mine. You see, one of my gifts is empathy, and with certain individuals who have the same or similar gifts of the mind, I also have a long-range telepathic connection. And presently, one of those individuals was in some kind of horrible pain. Whether it was physical or mental, I could not tell…

'Raven? Is that you?'

'Huh, what? Elm?' No, not her. As I apologized for waking her, I opened my window and looked out on the bright, full moon; certainly enough light for me to see all the way to the ground.

'Lee?' I donned my cloak and picked up my staff, at the same time calling to the only other person I knew was in the area. 'Lee? Are you all right?'

At first I got no answer from the samurai, but just as I was about to call again, I heard his voice in my mind. 'Elm? Made a—terrible mistake. Please, tell—'

He stopped, and there was a spike in the pain just as I teleported to the foot of the tower. I doubled over and nearly lost my dinner from the force of the feeling.

'Lee? Lee!' I bit my lip worriedly when there was no answer. Blood trickled from the pierced skin, but it was negligible. 'Hold on! I'm going to find you. Just hold on.' I continued to try and reassure him as I oriented on his mental signature. It didn't take long, and soon I was on my way.

I was getting close when all hell (and I most certainly don't use that word lightly) broke loose.

It came in the form of a nearly blinding flash, accompanied by deafening crash of sound not unlike thunder. I blinked several times to clear the bright lights dancing in front of my eyes, and shook my head in an attempt to put an end to the sound of many clashing, clanging bells.

I was less than successful, as another blast hit soon after the first, and another…and another. They just kept coming, one after the other, like an unceasing assault on my senses. I did, however, have the presence of mind to shield my eyes with my hood, and do my best to plug my ears. At least they weren't all as nearby as that first one, so I could develop a slight tolerance, enough to continue my mission—by maintaining the telepathic link, which depended on neither vision nor hearing, I could still walk in the direction of Lee's mind.

In this manner I came to a pair of gates set into a solid steel fence that surrounded a closed chemical plant. Though the gates were of the same metal as the fencing on either side, they were ripped apart like so much yarn attacked by scissors. I shuddered to think what force could cause such devastation, but it wasn't the worst thing that awaited me.

No, that was the bodies, scattered across the pavement. This time I actually did lose my last meal, rather violently. What was left of the workers probably shouldn't be called bodies; all but one of them were ripped to shreds. And that one wasn't much better off. It was laying up against a concrete wall, red liquid trickling out from between closed lips. The man, whoever he had been, was pale, probably from loss of blood. From what I could see, most of that had run down from some unseen wound in his back, and the more obvious stab wound in the belly.

I stood there, bent over slightly with my hands on my knees, recovering from the sight. When I stopped shaking, and my stomach finally stopped protesting, I stood back up. With one last glance around me, I made to move past the body, past the wall and toward the management facility that somewhere inside contained my friend. But some movement caught the corner of my eye, and I whirled to face what I had thought to be a dead body.

The movement that had caught my attention was one arm. Trembling all over with the effort, the man lifted it up a few inches above the pavement and beckoned with one finger, then let it collapse, having apparently exhausted his remaining reserves with that one motion. Still, appearances could be deceiving; by all rights this man should have been dead long ago, yet was not. Something was very wrong. Warily I stepped closer, gripping my weapon tightly. The sense of wrongness increased, and it had nothing to do with the pain I felt emanating from Lee or this man. It did, however, have something to do with this man.

When I was about five feet away, he opened his mouth, presumably in an attempt to speak—and that's when I saw the fangs. That stopped me dead in my tracks, and I heard nothing of what he had to say. But there was no need for words. I now knew what was wrong.

"Vampire!" I hissed. "So you've been behind all those killings these past weeks. It wasn't Slade at all."

"Thlade?" he spoke with a lisp, and a moment later I could see the cause of the problem. Part of his tongue had been bitten off. "Thlade?" he repeated, managing to look incredulous. Then without warning, he laughed, startling me. "No, whatever other admirable traitth he may have, "Thlade doethn't have the thtomache for math killingth. Thuch a pity. Were it not for that, he could have been a remarkable predator." He grinned, an expression that sent chills down my spine. But I stood fast. It wasn't like I didn't know how to deal with one of these creatures.

"Some predator you are, lying there helpless. Looks like you literally bit off more than you could chew." His smile faltered, twisting into a snarl.

"Come here and I'll thow you who'th helpleth!" He attempted to propel himself to his feet, but collapsed limply back to the wall, sliding down the vertical concrete and leaving a trail of blood. His head lolled to one side, twisting far farther than it should have been able to go, the trickle of blood from his mouth increased to a steady stream, and he lay still. Moments later he burst into flame, and I moved on before his ashes had a chance to settle to the ground.

Unerringly, my sense led me through the open doors of the main facility, past room after empty room, down several flights of stairs, through a number of hallways. One storage room I passed showed signs of some kind of struggle, with a dent in one wall revealing that someone had been slammed into it, hard. There was even a small bloodstain on the floor, and it trailed out into the hall I'd entered from.

Opposite that hallway, there was another door, this one revealing the last set of stairs, leading down to the lowest level more than forty feet below.

That last level didn't have much; odd bits and pieces of discarded machinery and pipes littered the floor. But those weren't what interested me. No, what interested me was the bloodstained mess that happened to be my friend, lying in the middle of a small crater of cracked and broken cement.

"Lee?" I rushed to his side, hurriedly checking his body for wounds. His body seemed to be a mass of bruises and abrasions, and there was a deep gouge in his left shoulder, but it seemed that the suit of Kevlar armor had prevented anything more serious. "Lee, can you hear me?"

He nodded once without speaking. "Well, you're bloodied and bruised, and you have a nasty wound in your left shoulder, but you don't seem to have anything broken." As I spoke, I ripped off a strip of fabric from my jeans. In the absence of regular bandages, that would have to serve to stem the flow of blood from his shoulder. I also changed the subject, having nothing more to say on the current one. "Now, we've go to get out of here. Do you think you can stand with my help?" He nodded again. "Good." I slid my arm under him as gently as I could. Even so, he winced as I made contact with several bruises, but didn't cry out. His samurai training had probably taught him how to deal with pain like this.

I teleported us to the top of the stairs and helped him stagger through the open door, beginning to retrace my path. As we walked through the first room, I saw the bloodstain again. I frowned as I followed it out the door. "What happened here, my friend?"

As tried to answer, he stumbled, but I held onto him. He tried again, this time telepathically. 'A vampire named Isard Triton, and her minions. I fought a human girl in that room, and another vampire outside.' Ah, so what had happened to that vampire had been Lee's handiwork. 'She's taken control of the Justice League's Watchtower, and is using it to initiate a worldwide strike.'

That news hit me over the head like a sledgehammer, and I froze at the base of another stairway.

I stood there, speechless and moving, with only one thought running around in my mind, over and over— 'Heaven help us!'

If only we'd known. That wasn't the half of it. This attack was only the first strike in a vicious, savage campaign that would forever change the face of Planet Earth…