Connor felt the heat of the velvety, succulent liquid splash over his tongue and down his throat, filling his body with strength and vigor. The man held down under his weight and raw power twitched and writhed, spasming violently as Connor suckled the lifeblood from his throat, the vampire's mind glowing brilliantly with pure ecstacy. Ah, the hunt was ever so much better when one had the field all to themselves.
The coppery aroma of that wonderful nectar soon soured, though, as the prey inevitably released its bladder and bowels in death, going still moments later. Combined with the faint aroma of wet garbage coming from the dumpster down the alley toward the street, it brought Connor back to the ugly reality of post-feeding life. He felt renewed and mighty, but even this could not cut through the putrid environs.
Nor could it eliminate the sudden and overwhelming sense of another presence in the alley with him. He turned around, and found standing under a security light over the nightclub's back door a tall, narrow man in an old western drifter's hat and black duster, a shining blade in his pale, long-fingered hand. The newcomer's face was hidden from the nose up in shadows thrown from his hat brim, but the set of his jaw, along with the weapon, told Connor this man was not afraid- he was angry.
Connor smiled at the man, wiping his mouth on one of his Armani jacket sleeves. "Oh, I'm sorry," he cooed mockingly. "Was he a friend of yours?"
"He was mine to cleave, you filthy little mosquito," the newcomer said in an even, gravelly voice. It put Connor in mind of the kind of rough, grizzled cowboys in old wild west shows from the 40's and 50's. A brief glance at the man's feet even revealed dust-worn boots with genuine spurs. It was almost enough to make him laugh. Almost. The cowboy's precise words sank in then, 'cleave' and 'mosquito'. Connor's expression of false good cheer morphed into a scowl of hostility, his fangs bared.
"So, you know what I am," Connor snarled, taking a ready stance, flexing his fingers to let his claws out. "Are you an Exemplar? I thought this city had none."
"I'm no Catholic, pest, nor am I what you would classically call human," said the cowboy, shifting his stance slightly, combat-ready. Connor wondered if perhaps this man had a mental defect or illness. It wouldn't be surprising, after all. This city had a reputation for warping the minds of its inhabitants.
"I haven't got time for this," Connor said, leaning forward in preparation to launch himself at the fool. Humans could barely keep track of his kind's movements with the naked eye, let alone match their speed. This would be over quickly. He sprang forth, his left arm sweeping in a short and lethal arc-
-and hit nothing at all. Instead, standing where the cowboy had been less than a second ago, Connor felt a keen pain along his cheek, accompanied by wetness dripping down the line of his jaw. He stood upright, touching his cheek and looking at his hand. His own deep scarlet blood came away from the shallow cut on his face.
"Surprised, I wager," the gravelly voice remarked behind him. Connor wheeled about, finding the cowbow standing where he had been before, right next to the dead man. His stance was relaxed, a thick drop of blood dribbling down off of his wicked knife.
"H-h-how," Connor stammered. The cowboy eased back the left side of his duster, hand on his hip, and twirled the knife around one finger like a gunslinger with his revolver. His mouth stretched out in a predatory grin, his own teeth sharp-looking but not quite fang-like.
"With a flick and a few steps," the cowboy said. "What's your name, vampire?" He stopped his knife with a downward stabbing grip, yet otherwise remained aloof, loose. Connor wiped his cheek on his suit, trying to retain his composure.
"Connor Laghflin," Connor said. "My clan is the Feinish of Boston."
"Boston? You're half a country from home, friend," the cowboy said, pointing his knife tip at Connor. "What are you doing out this way, hmm? Let me guess; supply's getting cramped with competition back home, and you came out to the Midwest looking for new hunting grounds. Amelia City seemed as good a place as any, right?"
Connor spun around to run, but when he'd gotten only three lunging steps toward the street, a booted foot came rocketing out of the darkness, crashing into his face with such force he saw the world loop-a-loop four times before finishing up on the alley floor, still a good ten feet from the street. His speed, combined with the force of the blow, had made him shoot forward like an acrobat defying physics, cartwheeling backward but still flying forward.
He had never met any creature that could put him on the defensive so quickly. This man, whatever he was, Connor knew could not be human. He had been hunted by dozens of Exemplars over the years, and slaughtered them all. He'd squared off against seven werewolves in one-on-one confrontations, and slain five of them, escaping the other two with even damages dealt to both sides. This cowboy was something else entirely.
"Now, now," said the cowboy, his spurs clanging as he came up a few steps closer to Connor, who picked himself up quickly. "Fair's fair, friend. You took my prey, so now you stand in for him. Hell, it'll be more interesting this way. At least you can put up a fight."
"Who are you," Connor asked, taking a long, measured step backward, edging toward the street.
"Good of you to ask," the cowboy said. He took a grand bow, whirling his knife hand in a tuck toward his stomach. "I am the stranger named Roderick, He of the Blade." He rose up once more, twirling his knife again. "And this city belongs to my Master. Haven't you noticed there's no other vampires in this county? No werewolves? I'm sure you've been told by your contemporaries to avoid Amelia County, particularly the city itself."
Connor didn't want to stick around for anymore of this creature's speech, and running away was clearly not going to be an option in his current state. He rolled backwards and flipped up to his feet, ever agile, and stood with his legs set wide apart, arms billowed out to his sides, hands flexed out.
"You seem to know plenty about my kind, Roderick," Connor said with a sneer of his own to match the stranger's. "But did you know we have a higher level of power at our disposal," he rasped, feeling his inner power answer to his silent call. "We call it 'Unleashing the Crimson', mortal. And now, you will see mine!"
Energy surged through Connor, filling him with even more strength and menace than before. His eyes flooded with darkness, turning black as night, his flesh giving off a heavy scent of sulfur. His claws lengthened, narrowed into sharper edges, his fangs protruding even further than before. His expensive suit tore in the back as leathery bat wings burst from his back, and he roared like a beast. Yet the stranger remained utterly still, only his smirk disappearing by degrees.
"Hmm. Impressive," the stranger remarked. Connor dashed to one side of the alley, disappearing into the shadows. The world faded into grayscale vision for him, his physical body suspended in the darkness itself, part of the shadows as he moved unseen around to the stranger's side. What sort of order are these 'strangers', he thought, coiling himself to strike as the other man spun about, knife held aloft, trying to ready himself for Connor's attack.
Finally he struck out, unable to maintain his cover much longer. The Shadowwalking technique was useful, but taxing. Still, it paid dividends as Connor leapt silently from the darkness, hammering the stranger with a powerful cross punch to the jaw that sent the man spiraling against the opposite alley wall with a grunt, his face visible in the brief beam of light thrown by a streetlamp near the mouth of the alley. He was younger than his voice let on, and handsome. Shame he has to die, Connor thought, wings fluttering.
Yet Roderick springboarded right off of his contact with the wall, lunging at Connor with a sloppy haymaker which the vampire easily leaned away from, popping one foot out in a stop-kick to Roderick's gut. The stranger woofed air, doubling over, and Connor pressed his opening, grabbing him by the weapon-hand wrist and throat. He drove Roderick back against the wall, and Connor's inner beast howled with triumph as the fool turned his head aside, exposing his throat.
Connor struck, as was natural for his kind, biting deep at the vein. No sooner had the blood begun to flow, however, than his own mouth filled with white-hot agony, as if he had poured molten metal down his gullet. He shrieked and flailed away, smoke steaming from his mouth. When he was almost against the wall opposite from Roderick, he looked up at the stranger, and saw the man's eyes gleaming at him, head still partially turned aside. What dribbled down his exposed neck looked like motor oil.
"Oh, should've warned you, me and mine don't make for fine dining," Roderick quipped. Connor turned and sped off, sprinting out into the benighted city. Amelia City teemed with life, so much of it easy prey, meals in a various range of economic condition. One of the homeless variety yelped upon seeing Connor, and a gaggle of young ladies coming down the sidewalk from the downtown area added to the noise by screaming and cursing at the sight of him. Connor ignored these, running along until his wings began beating, slowly but surely lifting him off the ground.
"No you don't, bastard," Roderick growled right behind him. Connor risked a quick look back, just in time to watch the stranger leap through the air, knife sheathed on his hip, and come down in an arc to land heavily on his back, sending them both crashing back into the street. They tumbled together for several yards, each man taking quick punches at the other, with Roderick proving far more skilled. Every blow Connor threw was either blocked by an elbow or dodged by less than an inch, while the stranger jabbed at him with ruthless accuracy. The punches weren't very forceful at this body-to-body range, but they were several.
When they came to a halt, Connor on top, the vampire heard the shriek of tires on concrete as a pickup truck skidded to a stop inches away, engine whining. Connor coughed, gagging on diesel fumes, but he had enough presence of mind to bury his claws in Roderick's shoulders and lift him up, pivoting on his heels to throw the stranger through the glass storefront of a convenience store with a satisfying crash of glass and screams from humans inside. He shook the brackish blood from his claws, which had begun to deteriorate in it.
Whatever these strangers were, they were clearly monsters, like him. They looked human, sure, but so did vampires and werewolves, most of the time. He had to make a decision here, choosing between taking flight to escape, or pursuing his enemy inside where he'd thrown him.
Connor leaped through the broken window, baring his fangs and snarling at the scurrying humans inside. Roderick was extricating himself slowly from a set of shelves, and the clerk was reaching under the counter for a weapon. Connor locked eyes with the man, using his hypnotic power of command, eyes glowing red. He held out his hands. "To me," he growled. The clerk nodded, standing up and tossing Connor a 12-gauge combat shotgun, which he deftly caught. Roderick was on his feet as Connor, letting his long tongue loll out over his lower lip, held the weapon at hip level. "Game over," he said, firing the gun.
Scattershot ripped into Roderick's belly and chest, shredding his torso and throwing him backward to land in a crumpled heap six feet back. The stench of gunpowder and rotted meat, coming from the stranger, filled Connor's nostrils. He stood panting, dropping the gun and stumbling over toward the clerk, adrenaline starting already to decline. He grabbed the still hypnotized man and bit into his throat, free for once to feed without the need for subterfuge and subtlety. He immediately began to feel restored as he imbibed, his cheek still burning from the stranger's blade.
Nothing could have prepared him for what came next. A hand grabbed one of his wings from behind, pulling it taut, and an unspeakable agony blasted through him as a blade carved right through the bone which protruded from his flesh, tearing it clean off. He howled, releasing his victim, leaping back outside through the open door of the store. He bounced off of a car parked out front, wheeling to face the stranger.
Roderick looked utterly unharmed, blade in one hand, severed wing in the other as he stalked out onto the sidewalk. His expression was one of stern malice, jaw set, blue bombardier's eyes shining in the moonlight as he dropped the wing to the sidewalk. There was no sign of damage whatsoever on him, not even tears in his coat or deerskin shirt.
"That's not possible," Connor groaned. "I shot you!"
"You did," said Roderick, his voice cold, devoid of emotion.
"How," Connor managed, unable to finish his question. Roderick waggled one long, knobby finger at him in a 'no-no-no' gesture.
"Trade secret," he said. Roderick came at him then, and Connor, wounded and desperate, used one of his only remaining tricks, his body vanishing the instant before Roderick struck, morphing into a cloud of gray fog. The stranger cast about, trying to locate his foe. He straightened and smiled. "Well, you must be a few hundred years old, at least," he said, slowly turning in a circle as the fog cloud eased away from around him. "This is a trick I've never seen for myself, but I have heard of it."
Connor floated in his gaseous form up the street, away from the stranger, yet hearing his voice as if the thing's mouth were right by his ear. He decided to risk a quick reply. "I am over four-hundred years old, stranger."
"And here I am, just a spring chicken," said the stranger named Roderick. Connor, having no eyes in this form, was nonetheless able to guide his vision, staying the course as he pulled further and further away from the enigmatic creature. He rounded a corner at an intersection, losing sight of his foe. Yet this would do him little good, as the ruckus they'd caused at the convenience store seemed to have chased off all other humans in the area. There weren't even any cars on the street he'd floated out onto.
There was, however, a small park with a playground across and up the street a litte bit. A darkened, secluded area, it would serve perfectly as a shelter to hole up and allow himself to heal in. When he was a few yards from the entrance in the chain link fencing around the litte park, he rematerialized in his human-looking form, blood oozing down his back and cheek.
As Connor stumbled through the gravel of the playground, heading for the darkness under a set of slides, he wondered why his cheek hadn't stopped bleeding. By now such a shallow cut should have healed, melded shut by his race's supernatural powers. Yet still it wept slowly. He hunkered down and crawled into the darkness under the slides, perfectly able to see in bluish hues in the dark.
A fat bodied spider depended down from a thin line of silk a few inches from his face, its multi-faceted eyes blinking wetly at him. "You wanna talk about it," the spider asked in a squeaky, cartoon voice. Connor flinched, swatting the bug with the back of his hand, its pudgy body splatting against his skin. As he pulled his hand back, the mashed innards twitched, saying, "Hey, whoa, pal, overreaction much?"
Connor yelped and scurried out from under the slide, almost tripping over a nearby accoutrement, a bright yellow duck on a thick copper spring. Its eye, painted with black circles like bruises around it, rolled toward him with a wooden scraping. "Think you're fucked, buddy," it said in the spider's voice, pitching back and forth with force, slamming its front and back into the gravel repeatedly, blood spraying from its wooden beak as it splintered and chipped with each impact.
"No," Connor moaned, hands gripping his head as the duck began laughing, a thick, syrupy chuckling filled with blood. And that crimson spray was real, he could smell the sweet, metallic odor wafting off of it. Yet how could this be real? How could the swings now be going back and forth, up and down, with no one in them?
How could the stranger named Roderick be standing only five feet away from him now, when Connor had neither seen nor heard him arrive, blade in hand? Connor morphed once more into fog, but as he started to drift away, he heard behind him, "Hand." The stranger followed this with a swipe of his weapon, and it cut through the fog, coming away bloody as Connor's severed hand fell uselessly to the gravel, the rest of his body solidifying in sheer, hellish pain. He fell to his knees, clutching the spurting stump where his hand had been, his expensive trousers clinging to his crotch as he pissed himself.
"Nonononono," he whimpered, squeezing the wrist to stop the flow of blood. "This isn't possible! This is insane!"
"This is Amelia," the stranger pronounced firmly, crouching down on his haunches before the vampire, arms resting on his knees, his faded denim jeans spattered with drops of blood. He used his thumb to push the brim of his hat up to show his face, a gesture so human, so normal, it nearly struck Connor as funny. "See, we know all about your kind, Connor. And some of your kind," he said, pointing with his knife, "well, they know a bit about Amelia. Not a whole lot, but enough to keep away. You figured you were old enough, strong enough, to handle whatever was here, right?" Connor nodded feebly. "Right. Except, turns out you were very wrong. Now, I know your kind can touch a body, and see and hear that person's last few minutes of life. That's a very handy trick, one I wish I could do, but hey," he said, flapping his hands, mouth a straight line, lips folded inward. "Them's the breaks. But since I can't do it myself, I figure I can at least get involved." Connor blinked at him, confused.
"Wh-what do you mean?" The stranger named Roderick snatched him by the throat then, his fingers squeezing like a machine vice, drawing him close.
"I mean, for whoever is listening when this body is found, I am the stranger named Roderick, He of the Blade. I am the youngest, newest of my kind. There are more," he said, ramming his knife into Connor's chest. The vampire's heart burst as the tip plunged inside, yet he survived long enough to hear, "and they are worse."
-Fin
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