Trapped - Nico Pontevecchio, Joey Quintero, Sierra Aguirre-Stoker, Shane Barrett, Pete Jemison, Maira Lawson

To her credit, Joey isn’t panicking. Yet. There are dried tear tracks on her face, but she’s not screaming or yelling.
Maybe it’s just practical. Nico had sure as hell screamed when that silver trap snapped shut on his leg, and no one came running. Maybe she’s already figured that out.
Joey is never one to waste her energy on a lost cause.
But Nico doesn’t know when to give up. 
He lunges at the vamp beside her, trying to draw attention away from Joey and onto himself. He’s pretty sure she’s been bound to the dual I-beam support pole that’s one of the few parts still standing in this old factory, but if he can give her half a chance to get away, he’ll take it.
All he succeeds in doing is hitting the end of the chain that is apparently welded to one of the floor beams that’s now buried under a dense tangle of rank grass and decaying weeds. Which is also how he missed seeing the trap waiting for him.
That, and he was paying a little too much attention to Joey, and the monster holding a silver-bladed kukri to her throat, to watch where he was stepping.
He can’t pry the trap off his leg. Every surface is coated in silver. Touching it burns his hands. The kind of grip he’d need to pry it off would leave him in so much pain he’d never be strong enough to manage it.
He can feel the trap’s teeth sinking deeper into his leg with every move he makes, but still straining to reach the flat piece of rusting steel he can see beneath another tangle of brownish leaves. If he doesn’t have to touch the trap…
The vamp steps forward, glances down at the exact piece of metal Nico’s fingers are inches from, then catches it with his boot, sending it flying, clattering, to the far end of the crumbling room.
Nico bellows something between a scream and a roar, lunging at the vamp but nowhere near close to touching him. He falls back to the floor, leg burning as the trap’s teeth dig in even further. The more he struggles, the worse it will be.
He’s not sure exactly how this day went so badly wrong, but he does know when it did. 
He’d thought it was taking Joey a long time to finish up on the third floor. But after he’d walked through every room calling for her, he’d found her mop bucket next to smashed glass with a note taped to the mop handle.
An address, and a warning. To come alone or get his mentee back in a coffin for good.
“What do you want from me?”
“I want my fledgling back.” The vamp snarls. “And you made sure I couldn’t take him.”
Nico’s first mentee was a mother of three, Roxie Conover. His second was Javier Avila. The third is Joey.
They’d never been able to determine who Javy Avila’s sire was. 
Well, they know now.
Not that Nico has a name to put with the face.
A face staring down at him while holding a blade to the neck of his mentee.
“You took something of mine,” the vamp hisses. “Now, I’m going to take something of yours.”
“Don’t you touch her. You can do whatever you want to me, just let her go.”
“Oh, no, that just wouldn’t do. I want you to know that you are powerless to stop me. Nothing you can do but watch.” He steps back slightly and swings the blade with a practiced arc, and Joey flinches back from it. “Trapped, just like I was in one of the hunters’ cages, while you took away what was mine.”
It’s starting to make a certain amount of sense. Javy was bitten in Nevada. Nevada is quite literally the wild west of hunting. There’s one official agency operating in Las Vegas, but the rest of the state is more or less patrolled by vigilantes with all sorts of fringe attitudes toward vampires, who are hard to find, harder to shut down in any legal or effective manner. A group who likes holding onto their captures and experimenting with potential cures must have had this guy.
Nico can’t say he’ll be too sorry if this vamp left a trail of destruction in the wake of his escape, but nothing excuses what he’s doing right now. 
He wouldn’t be surprised if both the knife and the trap are some of those vigilantes’ gear that this vamp decided to bring along; they’re not even close to common usage among vamps, but they’re exactly the kind of thing hunters who skirt the edges of legality are known to use. He’s not sure what group it is that favors this combination of weapons, traps, and long term captivity, but Sierra Stoker and her team probably know. 
If he lasts long enough to pass that information along, he imagines they’ll be more than willing to at least find out if this guy left anyone standing.
But at the moment, it’s not his survival he's most concerned about.
“Listen to me. She’s not my fledgling. She’s not mine.”
“But you care about all these like they are. See, that’s the problem. You traitors are ruining the natural order. Sire and fledgling. How it’s meant to be. You step in, on the side of the humans that hunt our kind down like animals, and you separate us from our children. Weaken our bonds. Make it easier for the humans to pick us off, one by one.”
“Then you don’t wanna kill her. She’s one o’ us.”
“Don’t you get it yet? She’s not one of mine.” The vamp snarls. “Which means killing her is doing my fledglings a favor.”
The knife moves away from Joey’s neck, but Nico knows that’s not a good thing. Staking is the preferred method of killing vampires, since it’s far easier to conceal stakes than a knife big enough to do the job right, but decapitation will do the trick as long as you impale the heart after. It’s a more complicated, but flashier method, and enough Sunrisers favored it that Nico knows the basics. Like the fact that to get a quick, clean cut, you need the arc of a wide swing. Trying to cut with the blade close to the body is time consuming and messy.
He knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that he is about to watch Joey die. 
This time, the metal pinning him down is wrapped around his ankle instead of stabbed through his thigh, and this time the terrified face of the person he promised to protect but can’t is Joey, not Vin, but the past and the present are blurring around him, and he can’t quite tell if he’s in a warehouse in New York or a derelict factory in LA. 
All he knows is, he’s going to have another person’s death on his conscience for the rest of his unnatural life.
Then Nico hears a footstep behind him.
“Put down the knife.”
He’s got to be hallucinating from the silver in his blood, because there’s no way Maira Lawson just happened to appear exactly when he needs backup.
The vamp moves in a flash, putting himself behind Joey and holding the knife to her throat, pressed tightly again, so much so that Nico can see and smell a bead of blood welling up and sliding down the blade.
“I think maybe you should put your weapons down.”
“Last chance.” Lawson’s voice is even. She’s a negotiator, a highly skilled diplomat. She knows when to push and when to back off.
Nico has to remind himself that Joey’s life is in the hands of the best possible person for the job.
The knife presses a little deeper, and a drop of blood splashes onto the cracked cement just as the crack of gunfire echoes through the space.
The vamp drops the knife and drops like a stone, howling.
Several figures move at once, feet shuffling while snapping repeated warnings of “don’t step in another one of those traps” with “you watch your own step” as the reply. 
Someone kneels next to him, hands working around the trap’s springs and jaws. He’s dimly aware that it’s Kira Burke, who he’s passingly familiar with from the agency, but he’s paying the most attention to Joey. She’s slumped against whatever cable was holding her to the support beam, almost unmoving as two more of the hunters free her. Someone cuffs the vamp, then drags him away, but it’s hard to see anything right now with the lights the humans need in order to see cutting back and forth across the area, occasionally swinging to hit him directly in the eyes.
He just needs to see that Joey’s okay. 
“I’ve got it. Pull your leg out, now.” Burke’s voice is strained, she’s got the jaws of the trap pried apart but he knows she won’t be able to hold it forever. He yanks his leg free and struggles to stand, shifting weight off his bad leg. He has to get to Joey.
He takes one step before he stumbles.
“She’s alright. Sit down before you fall down,” Lawson orders, stepping in front of him. 
He does, mostly because if he fell, he’d fall on her, and no one would ever let him live that down.
She’s brought the cavalry, looks like. John and Sierra Stoker, and parts of both their teams. Burke from John’s, as well as Barrett from Sierra’s. John’s wrestling the vamp into cooperation, while Sierra and Barrett work on freeing Joey. Actually, it looks like Sierra’s doing most of the work getting her loose, and Barrett is keeping her calm. Of all of them aside from Nico, he’s the one she knows best. 
He hasn’t actually realized Jemison is here as well until he catches a glimpse of the guy climbing down from a crumbling section of wall, slinging a well-worn rifle, without a scope, across his shoulder.
“Don’t you wear glasses?” Nico asks as the kid walks up. Not that he’s not grateful, but the slightest missed shot could have put that bullet through Joey’s skull. 
“For reading. I’m farsighted.” Jemison replies. “I was barking squirrels with my dad since I was old enough to hold the rifle steady.”
Nico doesn’t want to even ask what that means. 
He’s just glad that today, it means Joey is alive.
“Heard you were having a little trouble.” Lawson bends down beside him, inspecting the damage done by the silver-toothed trap with a grimace. “After he tried to get into the Avilas’ house, I got a call from Javy. He said his sire had shown up and tried to make Javy let him in, but thankfully Javy was able to refuse and block him out. We sent a team to his house as soon as we heard. Everyone’s okay, just shaken up. Unfortunately, given Javy’s one of the people who drives his work van home, I guess this vamp saw it in the driveway. The team found one of the windows punched out, and the clipboard with staff schedules that Javy said he always kept in the glove box was gone.” She frowns. “I tried to call you and warn you someone would probably be coming after you, but never could get hold of you.”
Probably because he left his phone behind at the last job in a rush when he realized Joey was missing. 
“H-how’d you find us?”
“Nico. When you were getting your business started, who gave you vans?”
“You guys. You were replacin’ half the motor pool and…” He trails off. “You never pulled the trackers. You sneaky…”
“Don’t say what I think you’re going to say,” Lawson replies. “It was in the agreements you signed when you leased the fleet.”
Damn. He really needs to start paying more attention to fine print.
Although in this case, it probably saved him and Joey. 
The vamp is hauled out past them, snarling and snapping at Nico until John Stoker wrestles him into the back of a holding van that’s just pulled up to what used to be a loading bay door. 
“He won’t be a problem much longer. Once we match his venom to Javy’s kit, he’ll get the stake.”
Honestly, after what this vamp has been through, that might be a mercy. 
Quick footsteps clatter across the open space, and then Joey is collapsing onto the floor beside Nico, a hand finding his and wrapping cold fingers through his own. 
“What’s a vamp doing running around with gear from the Hawthorne Hedge?” Sierra Stoker asks, holding the knife up and tilting it as the light in Lawson’s hand catches the blade, running her fingers over a pair of branching, entangled H’s stamped into the metal near the hilt. 
Knew she’d recognize the handiwork.
“Same with the trap,” Jemison answers, flipping it over and pointing out the stamp on the bottom of the plate. “Maybe he was a vigilante who got turned?”
“From what I could tell,” Nico manages, trying to sit up and wincing when it jars his leg, “he was one of their captives, managed to break himself out. There might not be anything left of that group, depending on how thorough he was.”
“Looks like we’re going to be heading to Nevada to check it out. Again.” Stoker grins. “And it’s gonna be my turn as road trip DJ.”
Jemison and Barrett both groan, but the Stokers just high-five as John returns from the van. 
Sierra’s team move off in a cluster, discussing their next move, and Burke walks up with two small packs of blood in her hand. 
“You’re both injured. No arguments.” She places a pack in each of their hands, then backs off, along with the others, to let the two of them feed in peace.
Nico ignores the blood in favor of putting an arm around Joey’s shoulder. She’s probably in some sort of shock, and while the blood will take care of the physical damage from tonight, there are deeper wounds he’s worried about.
“Hey. You okay?”
“No. I will be, but…not right now.” She’s shaking, the tension bleeding out of her. “You?”
It’s probably not wise to lie to her if she’s been honest with him. “Not really.” He pulls her in against him, running a hand over her hair the way he’s seen her do with Olivia. “I’m sorry.” It’s his fault. It’s all his fault. This vamp took her because of him. Because of what he’s done. “This is my fault.”
“For helping someone else just like me?” Joey’s voice is muffled in his sweatshirt. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
He doesn’t have anything to say in response to that. Just sits there and holds her and wishes doing the right thing didn’t have so many consequences.