Title : Prey

Disclaimer : Not Shan. What else can I say?

Just another little snippet of AxL, nothing much—it's an idea I got from one of Rowan Rawr's fics, although I can't remember why it gave me the idea for this. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.

Novosibirsk was a cold and lonely city, and though Larten had company in the form of Seba Nile, still in the streets it felt empty and too open. In a way the feeling of being completely solitary was sometimes a comfort—the humans with their families and normal love-lives and happy chatter weren't as bothersome here as in the other cities he'd travelled to. Berlin and London had been the worst, but even Marseilles and Alsace had been tiresome. Moscow had the same blistering winds and grey skies, but somehow it had felt warmer with the hoards of people bustling past. In Novosibirsk all there was to concentrate on was the cold—the way the gusts of wind swept snow along the ground in tufts, the way the sky was too dark and clear for even rain.

As he became less and less human, Larten found he didn't miss the company of humans, and preferred to only have the company of those of his own species. It was for this reason that he loved life in Vampire Mountain the most—there was no need to associate with humans or hide any of his vampiric characteristics like he was forced to do in the rest of the world.

But, of course, there was still one thing vampires would always need humans for. It was for this one reason that Novosibirsk was not an ideal vampire residence: people here were scare during the day, and were an almost impossible find from the late afternoon onwards. This was partly because in such a remote area of the world the sun went down only during the afternoon—which was another factor that made the city almost perfect for vampires—and also because there simply weren't enough people that the streets would ever be filled.

This is why Larten Crepsley found himself wandering the ice cold, dark streets once again, looking desperately for a human. He and Seba had taken a little under a week to exhaust their blood supplies, and had expected collecting more to be a simple task. In fact, it was one that was nearly impossible with so few people and so few houses in the snowy and mountainous area. He'd scoured the streets last night, and the night before, and to no avail. The situation was becoming dire.

That explained why when he saw a figure making a way slowly down one of the snowy walkways, he began to trail them instantly, not stopping to wonder why they weren't in a hurry. Not stopping to wonder why they seemed so comfortable in the dark: humans after all had their own fear of the night for all the myths that surrounded the creatures that lurked within it.

This was the one thing that had changed beyond recognition about Larten since he'd been blooded—yes, he'd become more independent, yes, he'd become stronger, but above all he had stopped looking at people as people. As he followed the mystery figure—they were only strolling, and very easy to keep up with, and so he leisurely darted behind lampposts and flattened himself against shop windows lest the crunch of snowflakes with his every step give him away—he didn't see them as a person, just as another way to get a meal. He didn't look at what kind of coat they were wearing or the colour of their hair like he might have done if he were still human. He just looked them over and decided they were human and therefore they had something he wanted. It wasn't a new quality he was particularly proud of: all it meant was he had now conformed to the view that humans were just another link on the food chain that he had so strongly rebelled against during his early years of vampirism. He was just another type of predator now, another vampire that thought himself completely separate to the whole race he had been born into.

He caught sight of an alleyway leading off of the main street, and decided that would be perfect. Though he hadn't seen another person on the streets after midnight for three days, he couldn't take the chance of being caught when Seba had made it clear that their business here was not yet finished, and so he had to plan to make his attack somewhere that he couldn't possibly be seen.

To stop his prey moving too quickly and passing the turn-off into the dark street, Larten was forced to move along in the shadows at a much faster pace so that by the moment the human he was following had strolled near the exit he was close enough to dart out and grasp their arms.

But there was something different. Larten was as quick as he knew he needed to be to grasp the young woman's neck and breathe into her face. He had expected to feel her go limp, but he didn't have time to consider what the problem was when she didn't: he was too eager to make the incision on the side of her neck and fasten his mouth around it.

But if he'd thought something was wrong with the situation before, it was at that moment that he realized that he hadn't picked just any ordinary human. The blood that filled his mouth wasn't unpleasant by any means, but it wasn't the same as human blood—Larten tried to convince himself for the first couple of seconds that he was simply not experienced enough to know that blood could taste different in different people, but then he felt a hand press strongly back on his own neck, forcing him to take a step backwards.

"Funny," a voice mused. "How there are only three-thousand in the world, and yet you're always running into one."

He didn't have long enough to wonder about why he hadn't been able to knock her out on his first try: he was young, but not that young, and he knew he couldn't have been foolish enough to have forgotten to take that step. His first logical thought was that he'd been unlucky enough to uncover someone who was immune to the gas, someone who already knew about the existence of vampires, maybe a vampire hunter. If he'd been able to stop his heart from beating so rapidly, partly from the exhilaration of the chase and the attack and partly from the shock he'd received when he hadn't been successful, he might have been able to analyze her immunity to the gas, the way her blood had tasted different and the way she hardly sounded frightened as he would have expected to come up with the answer. As it was, blood still on his lips, he backed away like a caged, threatened animal and made to start running.

She copied his own move: she reached out and fastened her small hand around his forearm. When he attempted to escape regardless, she yanked him backwards. He almost stumbled in shock—he had put all his strength behind running from her, and yet somehow—

—Oh.

He leaned back heavily on one of the brick walls, warm now despite the cold, and stared back at what he could now (fairly safely) presume was one of his fellow vampires. She hadn't bothered yet to heal the incision he'd made along her neck, even though Larten imagined it must have been throbbing dully, and the blood trickled steadily down onto her shirt collar. She wore a crooked, sharp grin, and looked back at him with cool grey eyes.

"That won't sustain you," she told him, and it took him a moment to realize that she was referring to the blood he'd taken from her. "It's diluted. I haven't fed in a fortnight."

The red-haired man panted back at her. "Who are you?" he said breathlessly, to panicked and exhilarated at the same time to really mind his manners about the question.

"Arra," she answered, and, knowing what he really needed confirmation of, held up a hand with five scars on each finger for him to examine.

Larten couldn't suppress the little chuckle that escaped him. "Don't tell me," he laughed. "That there are three vampires in this city, and no humans!"

"Five," she answered promptly, grinning back at him. "Assuming you haven't counted the two I'm living with."

Larten managed eventually to regulate his breathing, but still leant back against the cold brickwork as she did the same opposite him. He would ask Seba later what was so important about the area—she was younger than he was, even, and he knew she'd be travelling with someone else that had brought her here and probably wouldn't know the reason either—and tell him that he'd encountered another vampire. There was going to have to be a good reason for them to stay here without enough blood to sustain them.

He took a step forward and placed a hand back underneath her chin, and tilted back her head to wipe away the blood still dribbling away from the cut he'd made, and then to press fingers slicked with saliva against it so that the wound could close. He didn't miss her smile, as if somehow she'd enjoyed the excitement that the whole interlude had provided.

In a quiet city, even this quiet encounter had alerted someone's attention. Larten couldn't help but wonder where this person had been all those hours he'd been searching for a feed as the light from his torch darted across the alley and illuminated the two vampires at one corner. The hefty policeman barked something in Russian at the two of them, motioning impatiently with his hands as if to tell them to get home, that they weren't to be out at this time of night when it might be dangerous.

But neither of the vampires did move. Their gazes lingered on the large man a second, and then they glanced back at one another.

They'd found their first meal in weeks.

Larten Crepsley grinned happily. "Ladies' first."

I hope you enjoyed this, feel free to review if you'd like to.