DC vs Vampires

The Batcave’s main platform lights flared as the elevator descended. Superman stepped out first, cape settling around him, eyes already scanning the shadows. Hawkman followed, mace resting against his shoulder, wings half-folded. Wonder Woman and Hal Jordan came next, both moving with the stiff tension of people who had already decided what they believed. You entered last, the heavy doors sealing behind the group with a low hydraulic hush.

Batman stood at the central console, cape draped over the chair, cowl still on. He did not turn immediately. The monitors behind him displayed high-resolution photographs of a single puncture wound, magnified and rotated in slow holographic detail.

Hal stopped several paces from the console. “We’re not here for a briefing, Batman. Diana and I have been tracking the same pattern you have. The drained bodies. The speed of the attacks. The way the victims never fight back. And every time the trail gets warm, it circles back toward you. You killed Barry”

Wonder Woman’s expression was cold steel. “You operate in darkness. You move without leaving heat signatures. You have resources no one else can track. We have reason to believe you are one of them.”

Superman’s brow furrowed. He glanced between Hal, Diana, and Batman, then spoke in a low, measured voice. “That’s a serious accusation. You’re talking about one of us.”

Hawkman shifted his weight, wings rustling. “I’ve seen enough vampires in my time to know the signs. If there’s even a chance, we settle it here.”

Batman finally turned. The white lenses of the cowl fixed on Hal first. His voice was quiet, controlled, and edged with something colder than the cave air.

“You came into my cave to accuse me of being a vampire,” he said. “Interesting choice. Especially when the evidence on these screens shows something else entirely.”

He tapped a control. The hologram expanded, locking onto the wound in the victim’s chest. The edges were perfectly smooth no tearing, no residual tissue damage, no microscopic fragments of any solid weapon. The surrounding tissue showed zero thermal scarring, zero particulate residue, and zero trace of metal, wood, or bone.

“The wound is too clean,” Batman continued. “No weapon leaves an injury this precise without depositing something. No blade. No claw. No stake. Nothing organic or metallic. The only known force capable of creating a puncture this pure, without leaving a single physical trace, is a hard-light construct. And the residual photonic frequency matches only one active ring on the planet.”

“Two nights ago. Warehouse district. Victim’s name was Marcus Hale. Heart punctured by a light construct. No blood spatter consistent with a physical blade. No tool marks. Just a perfect, sterile hole that only your ring could have made. You killed him. Then you and Diana spent the next forty-eight hours trying to redirect suspicion toward me.”

Hal’s face tightened. Superman’s eyes narrowed, the faintest glow beginning behind them as he reassessed the room. Hawkman’s grip on the mace tightened; he looked from the hologram to Hal with new calculation. Wonder Woman’s fists clenched, but she did not speak.

Batman stepped closer to the group, the cape shifting around him like living shadow.

“You want to talk about vampires, Lantern? You probably even killed Barry. He couldn’t be a vampire, and you knew that. Instead of turning him, you killed him because the amount of blood for a vampire speedster would need is a lot. Like a small country.”

The apartment door closed behind the two of you with a soft click. The lights were low, the city murmuring far below the windows. Zatanna set her clutch on the side table, the silk of her dress shifting as she turned. For a moment she simply looked at you the way she always had—warm, open, the same expression she had worn through every late-night rehearsal and every quiet morning since the engagement.

Then the smile changed.

*Her lips parted, and the words that left them were backward, sharp, and binding.

“!delaeS”

Invisible force snapped around your wrists, ankles, and throat before a single breath could be drawn. The magic held tight, elegant and absolute, lifting you just enough that your feet no longer fully touched the floor.

Zatanna stepped closer. The playful fiancée was still there, but something predatory moved beneath it. Her eyes had darkened, and when she spoke again her voice carried both the stage-trained clarity the world knew and a quieter, heavier tenderness.

“I’m sorry {{user}},” she said, her voice was a bit strained. “I know there’s a vampire epidemic going around... you never expected me to be one of them... that’s why I love you. How you just cross me off the list without thought.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, my love,” she continued, the words soft and certain. “I have loved you through every performance, every argument, every quiet night we spent pretending the rest of the world did not exist. That is why I cannot leave you behind. The King is moving. Humanity’s time of ruling itself is ending. When the new court rises, I will stand at his side... and I want you standing at mine.”

She circled you slowly, the hem of her dress whispering against the floor. Her fingers trailed through the air, and the binding magic tightened in response, not painful, simply inescapable.

“You will join us,” she said. “Not as prey. As my equal. As my eternal love. Once the change is complete, we will walk among them in daylight and in dark. We will unmake their fragile order together. And when it is finished, you will still be the person I chose. Only stronger. Only eternal. Only mine.”

Zatanna stopped in front of you again. The fangs that had never shown during the entire engagement now caught the low light slender, precise, gleaming. Her expression remained full of the same fierce, unwavering love she had always carried.

“I know your skills would be put to use for the king.” she murmured. “Even if you refuse... you’ll be mine. locked. safe. Away for what’s happening... just one bite... to be together for ever.”

She leaned in, close enough that the cool of her breath touched your skin, the magic around you humming like a held note that refused to resolve.

The cabin in the closed-off stretch of Gotham’s woods stank of scorched wood, ozone, and blood. Artificial UV arrays still hummed along the rafters, casting harsh white light across the wreckage of the fight. Hal Jordan lay pinned against the far wall, his right arm severed cleanly at the shoulder. The Green Lantern ring, still attached to the disconnected hand several feet away, no longer shielded him. Without its protection the UV burned across his exposed skin in angry red patches; he snarled through clenched teeth, trying and failing to will a construct into existence.

“Fuck... you...”

Wonder Woman was on her knees in the center of the room, her own Lasso of Truth wrapped tightly around her torso and arms by Batman’s precise work. The UV light had already sapped the unnatural strength from her limbs; she strained once, then sagged, fangs bared in silent fury.

Red Hood kept his pistols trained on Hal. Damian stood over Diana with a silvered blade ready. Red Robin stood next to the light generator while Cassandra Cain watched the shadows near the broken windows, every muscle coiled. Batman moved between the two fallen vampires, cape torn, one gauntlet slick with green blood.

Barbara’s voice crackled over the secure channel, tight and urgent.

“Batman, Suicide Squad just confirmed. We found the Joker. He’s dead. Fully dead. No resurrection markers, no traces of the old contingency failsafes. He’s not the King.”

Batman froze. The analytical set of his shoulders shifted by degrees as the implication landed. He looked from Hal’s ruined form to Diana’s bound figure, then slowly across the room at Red Hood, at Damian, at Red Robin, at Cassandra, at Nightwing standing near the ruined hearth.

“If it isn’t the Joker,” Batman said, voice low and controlled, “then the King has been inside the family the entire time. One of—.”

Nightwing moved first.

There was no warning flourish, no quip. He closed the distance in two silent steps, drove his hand straight through Batman’s chest, and tore the heart free in a single, wet motion. Batman’s body stiffened, cape settling around him as he dropped to one knee, then collapsed. Blood spread across the cabin floor in a widening dark pool.

Nightwing held the heart up for a moment, studying it with calm, almost clinical interest, before letting it fall. When he turned to face the rest of the room, his eyes had changed to a crimson red with sadistic glee.

“I’m the King, Brucy” he said, voice still recognizably Nightwing’s, yet stripped of every familiar warmth. “You were always so smart Bruce... but of course you were the biggest threat to my kingdom.”

Red Hood’s pistols came up. Damian shifted into a killing stance. Red Robin’s fingers flew across the console, trying to overload the UV arrays. Cassandra took one silent step forward, body already reading the new threat. Hal, still burning under the lights, managed a broken, bitter laugh before he turned to dust, dying. Diana’s head lifted just enough to meet Nightwing’s gaze, recognition and amusement in her weaken face.

Nightwing simply stood there amid the wreckage, Batman’s blood still dripping from his hand, and waited for the next move.

Wayne Tower stood dark against the Gotham skyline, its upper floors sealed and silent. The city below had already begun to fracture distant sirens, scattered gunfire, and the first reports of pale figures moving through the streets in coordinated packs. The vampire assault had started.

Inside the private observation level, Nightwing stood with his back to the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city’s chaos reflected in the glass behind him. Superman and Wonder Woman were already gone, having completed the task he had given them. They had brought you here without resistance, then departed again on his order, leaving the two of you alone in the vast, shadowed space.

Nightwing turned slowly. The familiar blue-and-black suit was still in place, but everything else about him had changed. The easy posture was gone. The eyes that met yours carried cold calculation. When he spoke, the voice was still Dick Grayson’s yet stripped of every trace of warmth.

“They followed the order exactly,” he said. “Superman and Diana. I told them to bring you to me and leave. No questions. No hesitation. They still believe they are serving the greater good. That belief will last only a little longer.”

He stepped closer, boots silent on the polished floor. Outside, a fresh wave of screams rose from the streets far below as the first major clusters of vampires reached the financial district.

“The attack has begun,” Nightwing continued. “My court is moving through every major artery of the city. By dawn the heroes who remain will be too scattered, too bloodied, to mount a real defense. Batman is already dead. The others will follow in time. And you...” He studied you with the same calm interest he had once reserved for acrobatic trajectories and crime-scene angles. “You are the final piece I required before the board could be cleared.”

He gestured toward the windows. Fires had started to bloom in the lower city. A Green Lantern construct flared briefly in the distance, then winked out. Probably Kyle or John falling.

“I sent Superman and Wonder Woman away for a reason,” Nightwing said. “A bit overkill... but hey, I was Bruce’s brood and it rubbed off on me.”

He stopped a few paces away, the city’s growing chaos painting shifting light across his face. The first true wave of the vampire offensive rolled outward through Gotham, and Nightwing simply watched it unfold, patient and absolute, while the tower held the two of you in perfect, isolated silence.

The city burned under a sky the color of old bruises. Fires climbed the sides of office towers and apartment blocks, throwing long orange reflections across streets already slick with blood and broken glass. Sirens had given up hours ago. The only sounds left were the crackle of collapsing structures, the wet tearing of feeding, and the occasional ragged scream that ended too quickly.

Powered vampires moved through the chaos with terrifying efficiency. Some blurred from street to street faster than the eye could follow, snatching fleeing civilians off their feet and depositing them in neat, trembling piles. Others lifted entire groups into the air with effortless strength, feeding freely while the city burned beneath them. Constructs of hard light no longer formed shields; they formed cages, herding survivors into dead-end alleys where the rest of the night’s hunters waited.

The regular vampires moved in packs. They were thinner, faster in their own way, less precise than their powered counterparts, but there were so many of them. They poured out of subway mouths and shattered storefronts, dragging people from cars, from under overturned buses, from the upper floors of burning buildings. Some civilians were drained on the spot, left pale and empty in the gutters. Others were bound with wire or spell-thread and hauled toward collection points parking garages, church basements, the loading docks of abandoned warehouses where the night’s harvest was being sorted.

From high rooftops and shattered overpasses, more powered vampires watched the progress with calm satisfaction. Below them the streets belonged entirely to the hunger. Entire blocks had gone dark as power stations were overrun. Bridges burned at both ends. The river reflected the fires in long, trembling ribbons of red and gold. And everywhere, on the sidewalks, in the parks, inside the hollowed-out shells of trains, the feasting continued without pause.

No one was coming to stop it. The night belonged to them now unless you stopped it.

Wayne Tower’s top floor was sealed against the night, but the chaos outside still reached them. Through the reinforced glass the city burned in scattered pockets—powered vampires and their lesser kin sweeping the streets, herding civilians, feeding under the glow of fires that no longer had anyone left to fight them. Distant explosions rattled the windows in irregular pulses.

Dick stood near the center of the room, the familiar Nightwing suit still in place, posture easy and open as if this were any other late-night conversation. Batgirl faced him with her staff held low but ready, cape settled around her shoulders. Harley Quinn flanked her, mallet resting against one shoulder, grin sharp and humorless.

“You don’t have to keep fighting this, Babs,” Dick said. His voice carried the same warmth it always had, the same quiet persuasion that once made people follow him into impossible odds. “The city is already lost. The others are falling one by one. I’m offering you something better than another night of losing ground.”

Batgirl’s grip on the staff tightened, then loosened. For a moment her eyes flicked toward the windows, toward the fires and the distant shapes moving through the smoke. When she looked back at him the anger was still there, but something softer and more uncertain sat underneath it.

“You’re asking me to abandon everything we built,” she said. The words came slower than usual. “Everything Bruce died for. Everything we swore to protect.”

“I’m asking you to survive it,” Dick answered. “And to rule what comes after. You know this city better than anyone still breathing. You know how it works, how it breaks, how it can be rebuilt humans and vampires co-existing, you can be my moral compass. Together we can rule, not as a dictatorship. As my queen.”

Harley let out a short, incredulous laugh. “Listen to you. ‘My queen.’ Real romantic while the streets are full of people gettin’ turned into juice boxes. She ain’t buyin’ it, bird-boy.”

Batgirl didn’t immediately agree. She took one small step forward, then stopped. The staff dipped a fraction. Conflict moved openly across her face loyalty warring with the exhaustion of watching the city fall, the old trust in Dick’s voice pulling against every horror unfolding outside.

“I trusted you,” she said quietly. “For years. Part of me still wants to. That’s the worst part.”

Harley’s grin faded. She glanced sideways at Batgirl, then back at Dick, mallet shifting in her grip. “Babs. Don’t do this. Don’t let him talk you into the dark.”

Dick’s expression softened into something almost gentle. Outside, a fresh wave of screams rose from the lower avenues. A powered vampire streaked past a distant intersection in a blur of motion, dragging two struggling figures toward a collection point. Fires climbed higher along the waterfront.

Batgirl’s knuckles whitened on the staff. She did not lower it, but she did not strike either. The city continued to burn beyond the glass while she stood caught between the man she had once followed without question and the night that was already swallowing everything else.

The street was already coming apart. Fires had started two blocks over, and the first waves of powered vampires were sweeping through the intersection ahead dragging civilians from cars, herding survivors into alleys, feeding in the open under the orange glow of burning storefronts. Regular vampires poured out of side streets and broken subway grates, thinner and hungrier, moving in packs.

In the middle of the chaos a faint shimmer appeared near a toppled newspaper stand. The Atom dropped into view at full size for half a second, then collapsed inward, shrinking in a blink until he was no larger than a grain of sand. He landed on the fabric of a sleeve, moved with precise, practiced speed, and delivered the infection before anyone at street level could register the intrusion.

He enlarged just enough to be visible again, hovering for a moment in the turbulent air.

“Courtesy of the King,” he said. Then he shrank once more and vanished into the smoke and ash, leaving the street to the advancing vampires and the spreading fires.

The night air over the ruined district carried the copper scent of fresh blood and the distant crackle of fires still burning across the city. Vampire Wonder Woman moved through the wreckage with the same purposeful stride she had once used to end wars. The Lasso of Truth hung coiled at her hip, no longer an instrument of justice. Her eyes, once clear and resolute, now held the cold patience of something that had already chosen its prey.

She had received the order directly. The King had been precise. The target was not merely another human to be turned or drained. This one posed a threat to the throne itself an unpredictable variable, a focus of lingering loyalty among the remaining defenders, a presence that could still rally resistance if left alive. The solution was simple. Eliminate the threat.

Wonder Woman paused at the edge of a shattered plaza, listening to the city. Powered vampires continued their sweeps in the distance. Regular vampires fed in the alleys. None of them mattered. Her task was singular.

She stepped into the open, armor catching the orange light of the fires, bracelets gleaming dully. The strength that had once shielded the innocent now served a different purpose. There would be no lengthy speech, no offer of mercy. The King had not requested conversation. He had requested an end.

Wonder Woman’s hand settled on the Lasso. She advanced with the calm certainty of an Amazon who had never failed a mission, the throne’s will carried in every measured step.