@absqxatulate - “wandering alone at night “
It was always intended to be a normal night of hunting - she’d been in town a few days and she’d gotten her bearings. A few vampires had been hunted and slain, but she had yet to find any threads that would lead to something bigger. That was good news. If this town was mostly small, disparate groups they’d be dealt with much more easily.
But something had felt wrong in the air that night. It was too still, too quiet in the usual places. It made the seasoned huntress suspicious. Usually there was some action - especially on a Saturday evening. There was so many people bustling about that prey was easy to find. But there was nothing.
Tehra changed her course, her senses telling her to go to a different part of the city, one where she knew a poor, but very full, hospital was situated. Occasionally she got these gut instincts, and Tehra had learned not to question them. She simply followed them.
She knew something was wrong before she reached the door - the power seemed to be completely out in the building and there were small groups of people huddled together inside the parking lot or trying to force their way into the vehicles of those that could drive. In the confusion, it seemed no one noticed the huntress which was a good thing. She could only succeed if the locals didn’t catch her saving them.
The automatic doors opened easily, giving view to the dead security guards and receptionist just within. She’d grown used to the sight of innocent bodies by now, but these struck something in her. They were the most blameless of victims and the most sinister of murderers.
The huntress picked up her pace, weapons drawn as the ran through the halls. Emergency lights silently blinked, illuminating the path of devastation before her. Each room she passed had been forced open, metal and door frame buckled from the hands of the vampire that had torn it apart. Rage had already begun to build inside of her, but it was being a more powerful force with every step.
Tehra quickened her pace again as she ran through the hallway - every room on this one had been broken into. Eyes landed upon the stairwell. That would be the only way to climb… to track down the coven that had committed this unforgivable sin.
Sticky fingers grope aimlessly at his side where vividly dark, nearly black blood pours from his too pale skin, seeping through the gaps and running down his leg where’s painted the fabric of his shoes brown. Rosy lips pull back as a pained hiss rolls off of his tongue; vibrating against elongated fangs that seem to shimmer in the dreariness of the stairwell, even with the bright, flashing lights of the alarm blaring over his hunched form. Willing golden irises to focus on the blood-splattered concrete, he tries to shove the screeching alarm from his head and soothe his rampant nerves. But the ringing in his ears was overwhelming, and there was so much blood in the air that it threatened to make him ill; bile already lacing the back of his tongue as he squeezed his eyes shut against the dark hall and the flashing lights to try to make sense of everything swimming about in his head.
His wound was deep, but was healing rather quickly, and wouldn’t impair him. But it was the least of his worries. He could still hear the agile footsteps of the killers lurking about upstairs, and the shivering, cold blood of the residents still trapped somewhere on the upper floors. Even with his keen senses he couldn’t pinpoint their exact location with smell alone thanks to all of the bodies already tossed about the hospital, and the overwhelming stench of the other vampires storming through the building like it was their personal playground. He swallowed the lump in his throat, and the vomit that threatened to creep up from the depths of his throat at the memory of walking through the automatic doors to the sight of helpless patients and workers strewn about the tile floor; wide-eyes, deathly pale, and bloodless, and his fingers tighten about his wound.
He wasn’t confrontational. He despised vampires, and did his damn best to avoid getting caught up with them, but when the thick stench of must and blood had drifted out into the lazy streets from the rundown hospital, his feet had stumbled their way through those doors before his mind had the chance to catch up with them. He wasn’t much of a fighter either, but he had snapped at the group of vampires lording over their victims heedless of how every bone in his body screamed at him to run away. And he should have, but he had gotten tangled up in blurry limbs, filthy claws, and sharp fangs instead. In the chaos, he had somehow managed to get a lucky hold about the throat of one of the vampires; his claws sinking into his flesh and muscles, and nearly ripping his head from his shoulders, but he had panicked, and earned a nasty wound in his side as the group fled to the higher levels of the hospital (if he hadn’t been so much of a coward, he could have killed him, but no matter how much he hated them, he couldn’t bring himself to take a life: a vampire who couldn’t kill and vomited at the sight of blood, he had been doomed from the start).
He could still turn back now, and pretend he had never gotten involved in this. But the nagging guilt that tugged harshly at the back of his mind screamed at him to keep moving forward. Peeling back heavy eyelids, and tearing his fingers away from the scabbing wound, he watched the shadows dance in the small, tight space before the sound of footsteps snatched his attention away from the coven he had foolishly attacked. Quickly turning on his heels, his bright eyes easily make out the person standing before him and he tenses. He’s not entirely sure what she is, only that she isn’t human (and she’s not a vampire either). He hasn’t enough experience with the supernatural to even start making guesses, and frankly, he doesn’t think it really matters either.
His fingers curl against the wall; nails digging trenches into its surface. “What are you doing here?” a low hiss bubbles up from his lungs as he speaks. Nothing about her reminds him of the vampires raging upstairs, but he’s not about to write off the possibility that she could be involved with them (and if she’s not, why is she here in the first place). Every fiber of his being wants to get a thousand miles from this place, but every, little pang of guilt keeps him rooted in place (he can still remember the meek, ashen faces of the employees and sickly who had gotten away with their lives because he had involved himself in this mess; because he had given them time to escape, and wasn’t that reason enough to keep himself grounded? Wasn’t that reason enough to keep fighting; for the chance that he could do something worthwhile with the devil’s power that flows through his undead body).
“I-I won’t let you through if you intended do any of the people still here harm.” He doesn’t sound confident, but he doesn’t back down either. “I won’t let anyone else die tonight.” And the words are meant more for himself than her ears, yet he speaks them aloud. His resolve is a fleeting, fragile thing, but, God, he’s come this far and he’ll take this fight to his grave if he has to, for the sake of the people still trying to flee the property; for the sake of the people he knows are still hiding in these halls, and for the ones who have already died at the hands of his kin, even if he refuses to claim any relation to other vampires in general.
