Subhuman
Half-hunched because of its great age, the creature shambled along a night-darkened cobblestone side street. It was hungry, so very hungry. It would feel regret afterwards it knew, but that was not enough to stop it. Its pale skin was incredibly wrinkled, its cheeks half-sunken, but its dark blue eyes still glittered with an unnerving canniness. Its hair a mass of frazzled snowy tangles that lay halfway down its back. The dark blue clothes that it wore hung loosely off its withered frame. So much of its mind had left it that barely it noticed anymore the silver ring on its left middle finger. Far more often it noticed its nails, elongated to a natural point and very yellowed.
The wind was kind in blowing a scent to its nose, it followed the scent slavishly. When he saw it led to a young blond woman a faint smile crossed the cracked lips. It walked up to tug on the girl's hand briefly, its voice rough as wind through a barren forest. "Mi'lady, mi'lady, you would help an old creature wouldn't you ? Please ?"
Impulsively, the girl looked down...right into its hypnotic eyes. "Of course, what do you need ?"
Gently, it coaxed, "Come closer, young one, or I should lose my voice, I think."
She leaned down and it grabbed her, its nails sinking deeply into her shoulders, like the inescapable grasp of time itself. As it did so the hypnotism broke, before she could scream its fangs lengthened and sank into her neck. Life, sweet life, rushed over its tongue and the change was instantaneous - its shoulders straightened as hers sagged, its skin regained its youth and hers aged, its nails retracted and whitened as hers yellowed and elongated. When the last drop of blood hit its tongue its hair gained luster turning raven black as hers whitened and died.
In a voice beautiful and treacherous as a snow-covered forest it whispered, "Thank you kindly...Helena."
One hand reached up to its nape and sliced the overlong hair off, which fell lifeless as Helena in its arms. Gently, it swung her body into now leanly muscled arms and picked up its hair laying it across her chest.
Far far away a mother's voice called, "Thomas ! Thomas, come inside it's late."
That sound conjured lovely, but painful memories. Once it'd been not a James or a Lily nor a Derek or a Helena, but a Thomas. So long ago, it'd been known as Sir Thomas Sharpe, Baronet of Harding Poole. That village wiped out by a mortal disease that'd only stopped when all living in the village had died, it was the only one left. Its loves were long gone too, its sister cold seeming, but ever caring Lucille and warm, jovial Edith. Lovely Lucille killed by a shovel to the head by Edith while its father had sunk his fangs into its still warm neck pulling it back from peace. Effervescent Edith had lived for over a hundred years dying of old age with what it had vaguely recognized as its great-grandchildren around her.
Now, now, it wandered, searching, longing and never finding. When it could wonder, it wondered if they missed it as it did them. Perhaps it thought now that they would never come back, that they rested forever in death. Oh how it longed for that fleeting peace it'd had, yet it was too cowardly by far to end its own existence. It took Helena's body out of the city where buildings touched the sky; six feet below the topsoil it buried her and stood vigil for those whom would never know her fate. One day it thought it would join her in death until that time came it would wander again and again into the city, ever a monster. Ever a subhuman creature whether it were in lovely or ugly form.