Update
I got into the action today, and found it quite enjoyable. Still, it was a bit of a short update, as I'm also currently spending my time scripting commercials for the clubs at my college, partly to practice and have my writing in my portfolio, and partly in the hopes I can get them produced and have some more videos to show in the portfolio, as well.
Current Word Count: 31,978
Scene of the Day
I felt the attention on us as soon as we were in sight
of the fortress.
Psychic energy rose in agitated waves against us, signaling
just how alerted they were.
With a jerk of my head, I directed him after me as I
slipped around the side of a large, abandoned shack.
“Maybe we should’ve been more subtle?”
“Probably. Stupid, on my part, thinkin’ on it. One good
thing comes outta’ it, though.”
He frowned in thought while staring at the building.
“We know how many are in there?”
“That, too, but no. You smell the magic air?”
As soon as I brought it up, he cringed.
“Smells like death.”
“That it does. An’ a lot
of it,” I agreed with a grin. “Compared ta’ tha’ unholy stink, my wee
little patch a’ Fae won’t be raisin’ any devils from the river.”
“Could it have reached us, on land like this?”
“Maybe. It has legs, I imagine. An’ it’s a big bastard.
Now, we don’t need ta’ find out.”
He paled further, seeming to wonder how much danger I’d
really brought his way by bringing him out near the mysterious, faerie-eating
monster I was describing.
“I’m lookin’ forward to that pint,” he finally said as
he brought himself back to the task at hand.
“I’m sure. Here’s the plan.”
With a quick twist, I moved around him until I was at
the very edge of the shack.
“I’m going in first. Come in when ya’ think the chaos
sounds big enough. If possible, I wanna’ keep ‘em off-kilter an’ expectin’
walkin’ Hell on Earth comin’ their way. If they think one person was stupid
enough ta’ come out ‘ere an’ take on their whole compound, they’re likelier ta’
get scared.”
“Or find it all entertaining.”
“Or tha’, but when I drop one ‘er two, they’ll change to
what I want. ‘Sides, this is what yer payin’ me fer, after all,” I added with a
wink.
Since subtlety wasn’t a concern anymore, I strode
casually up to the front door.
Without stealth, I tend to enjoy a bit of flare.
Which is why, when I got to the porch, I jumped into the
door and rode it down when it snapped free of its hinges.
Right out of the door’s reach were two of the vampires.
Their fangs were gleaming knives of ivory, and they
stared at me with narrowed eyes glowing dark red from bloodlust.
Otherwise, they looked like thugs straight off the set
of a mob film, with neat black suits and slicked, well-kept black hair.
They both had dark, mocha-colored skin that was made all
the darker by the suit.
At a glance, it was obvious they were related, as the
only thing making them not identical was a scar down one of their cheeks.
They came at me from both sides, rushing to kill me
quick.
I was faster with the watcher’s machete, which easily
sank into the first vampire’s shoulder.
It almost reached his neck before he reacted.
With a vicious snarl, he threw a clawed hand at my face
in a blur of motion.
Using pure instinct was the only way I managed to duck
under the swipe and roll out of his range.
His brother wasn’t prepared when I came up foot-first.
The second vampire wheeled back, clutching at his throat
while I put myself back into a stand facing the first.
That time, I wasn’t fast enough.
Stars bounced in front of my vision when he punched the
side of my head.
The force of the hit was akin to a small wrecking ball,
and it carried through into I was sent bodily slamming into the opposite wall.
Despite the agony, and doubled vision, I now faced, luck
seemed to be in my favor for once.
If he’d been an older, stronger vampire, my head
would’ve been snapped cleanly from my neck by the blow.
I pushed into motion and dove out of the way of another
punch, the hand burying itself into concrete exactly where my head had been.
With a snarl, the vampire reached up and pulled the
machete free from his shoulder, intending to behead me with only one usable
arm.
I drew my athame and put it straight through his hand.
As he howled and bucked against the wall, I sent my foot
into his groin.
When he curled into a ball to protect himself, he put
his head in perfect position for my knee to slam home.
His eyes rolled back and he went limp, hand still stuck
in the wall.
Dropping a vampire by myself wasn’t something I was used
to, if only because I avoided the leeches like a plague.
Evidently, seeing
someone who looked like me drop one wasn’t something his brother was used to,
either.
I used the advantage and charged at the brother.
My elbow was lodged in his windpipe before he could
react, and then he, too, dropped unconscious.
Even with the satisfaction of taking both of them out,
my body really didn’t care.
Agony lanced through my entire being, centered around my
skull and arm.
A low whistle snapped my attention around, and I found a
man standing over the first vampire.
With a grimace, he tapped the downed vamp with the tip
of his wingtip shoe.
That would probably be the third vamp, and he looked
nothing like the other two.
His hair was down to his shoulders in a blood-red
curtain, and he had a pallor of death to his skin.
An expensive-looking tailored tuxedo coiled around him
like a second skin, and a gloved left hand held a long, thin dagger.
On his right middle finger was a small ring inlaid with
a ruby, and from each of his ears hung a black, Gothic cross.
He was grinning ear-to-ear, revealing a pair of
razor-sharp fangs that snapped into existence with a soft click.
Under the harsh lights in the building, his earrings
cast shadows on the downed vampire beneath his foot.
It took me a second to smell the smoke, and another to
realize that the shadow was causing the vampire to smolder and burn.
In a few short instants, his body went up in a wall of
dark, green flames.
Even as the earrings burned the vampire to death, the
symbols rested harmlessly against the newcomer’s skin.
Vampires, like in the myths, really do have some weird
aversion to symbols of any faith, but as they got older, they were affected
less.
It usually still left some mark, though.
Since his skin was unmarked, either he was older than
Rome, or the slight glow around the earrings’ metal was the actual cause for
the horrific damage.
“Well, you did quite the number on these two. An
impressive feat, I admit, for a human, to take down not one, but two vampires of adequate age, however
weak, slow, and stupid they are.”
His voice washed over me in waves, the sound a deep,
smooth timbre that seemed to belong in a jazz club far more than a militia
compound.
“Well, what can I say? I love a good workout,” I quipped.
He grinned even wider at that, and turned to face me
fully.
“Well then, allow me.”
In a flash, he vanished from sight.
I jumped back, just narrowly dodging the dagger that
would’ve opened my jugular like a zipper.
As it was, he still
managed to nick my neck, and the biting scent of my blood, and its wild
Faerie magic, hit the air hard.
His eyes turned to solid red slits, dark enough to
nearly be black.
As though putting on a show, he brought the blade up and
dragged his tongue across the fresh spot of red.
His eyes widened when the taste slammed into his senses,
and I fought the urge to scrub myself with a knife to get the feeling off.
“O negative, and full to the brim with… something,” he
mused. “You’re not a woman to take lightly.”
The feeling of revulsion at having my blood drunken and
analyzed is something I could never put into words.
Somehow, though, my curiosity got me.
“Seein’ future in blood a vamp trick, now, too?”
“Nothing as impressive as that,” he scoffed. “Did you
know that your blood has so much magic in it that it’s like drinking lightning?
It’s quite an experience.”
“I’ll take yer word fer it. Sadly, I don’t have all
night to shoot the breeze, so let’s get this over with, yeah?” I asked while
putting my knife between us.
“Planning a late night with Mr. Maxwell?” he asked with
a smirk.
I really wanted to punch that expression off his face.
“Nah, I’m just bored with vampires. Much more interested
in the woman behind the curtain. The suspense is just killing me.”
He became a blur as he dragged the machete out of the
vampire and threw it at me.
I brought my knife up into the side of his weapon and
sent it spinning into the floor.
The whole exchange lasted five seconds, but by the end
of it, I had my knife in front of my throat, desperately holding off his own
dagger by a twitch.
“Don’t worry, that
won’t be what will kill you tonight, Miss P.I.,” he hissed.
A grunt left me when I was slammed into a wall, his
supernatural strength pressing me up high enough that my feet barely scraped
the ground.
His mouth expanded, and his fangs cast a sinister light
as they stared up at me.
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