This is my first shot at some kind of hybrid story. I am taking characters from The Southern Vampire Mysteries, from True Blood and inspiration from Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead and so many other amazing stories. It is certainly an alternate universe sort of setting, so expect nothing and everything. I hope you find an escape in it the way I do.

Daniel

Back to back, we ended up that way far more often than I was comfortable with. Me with my longsword, Alcide with his daggers and his other attributes, faced off against another pack of undead marauders. You would honestly believe that these things multiplied like the rabbits Alcide hunted for sport when we were not tasked by the Queen with ridding the land of this latest menace. You might believe we were the only warriors at her disposal with the nights we gave her. I would acknowledge that we were certainly the most unique team she had in her service, if not the most effective. Our kinds did not mingle often, Vampires and Weres generally only stood in the same room when compelled to. For some reason I had taken a liking to this particular Were, likely because he was an effective warrior, and I could respect talent. I also appreciated his gift for scenting out the hoards, even before I could. It gave us an advantage over the other Vampire teams, his nose giving us warnings minutes before the others. Sadly, even though the decaying creatures stank to high heaven, a few minutes head start didn't always save us from these damned situations.

My blade sang as it slipped through the skulls of the creatures who dared to venture close enough to me, and considering they were driven only by hunger and had no common sense to protect themselves, there were a great many who fell before me. That was the key to killing them, reducing their rudimentary brains to mush; a blade, an arrow, a well placed fist, even teeth in a pinch. But if you let them get that close to you, you were doing something seriously wrong. Their blood wouldn't feed you, and it tasted like shit, so I tried to avoid that necessity by keeping my sword sharp, and my friend at my side. Alcide wasn't so fussy. He wanted them in close, that's why he preferred daggers. A kill was a kill for him, and being a supe like I was, the blood didn't affect him the way it affected the humans in our Queendom. If they ingested the blood they caught the disease that killed and turned them. Alcide liked to transform and tear them to pieces. I couldn't fault his effectiveness.

It was the transformations that had brought our Queen to action, or rather, had brought her to order us to action. Her food source, all her Vampire subjects' food source was threatened. And really it trickled down to affect all the supernaturals in her realm. If the human population were decimated then ours would follow. And so we fought.

I heard Alcide behind me; he was not a quiet killer when he was enmeshed in the fight. I could almost feel the rumble of his growls disturbing the air around us. He would drive his daggers deep behind their eyes, tearing them free, covered in the gore of decomposing brain matter. I often wondered how anything in the corpses stayed patent after so many weeks of death. That was another good thing about Alcide, over a drink he and I would engage in the most interesting philosophical debates about how the Zombies could even survive to fight us as their external bodies rotted away. Not that we ever came up with answers.

More bodies fell; at least the beings were quiet as they finally died. It was easier to hear Alcide, and to give and take directions about where to direct our blades. There had been thirty or so in this latest hoard, and while they had us surrounded for a few minutes, it was easier to kill them as they came in; four heads could fall in one swipe of a longsword as they all tried to take a bite out of you. I also had my speed to rely on. Alcide had a primal ferocity, and he didn't even have to shift to his wolf form to draw on it. In fact, his half of the hoard fell with him still in human shape. His heavy breathing finally drew my attention as the last of mine collapsed into the horrid heaps that were left when the mind was finally separated from the body. I surmised that he was completed as well and so I turned to him. His face was bloodied, but the wide smile and the heaving chest betrayed just how happy he was. He wiped his daggers on his leathers and shook my offered hand.

"Damn good job man." His voice still sounded wolf-like in its depth; perhaps he had changed a little after all?

"And you as well. Let's get these bodies piled up and set alight, then we can get back home."

It was our tradition, once we had dispatched a hoard of the undead walkers, that we set a bonfire so that everyone in the countryside could see it and be heartened by a victory. I carried a skin of alcohol with me; that helped to get it started, and to cleanse wounds when it was required. It was funny how strangely they squealed and popped as they burned. As a human I had seen many cremations and I never recalled the bodies sounding like anything but timber. But of course, these Zombies were almost as far from human as you could get, present company excepted.

The smile on Alcide's face didn't change as we watched the mass burn. I held my own face more neutral, but of course I was older than he, and more in control of my emotions. I was proud of the work we had done, and I certainly enjoyed the warmth of the flames; my nature being generally cold. The dichotomy was not lost on me, that I was as dead as these creatures burning in front of me. But for some quirk of fate they had become mindless hunks of flesh where I had become eternally young, immortal and powerful. We both fed on the living, but I had the choice to start and stop, to kill or spare, and they had nothing but instinct. If I chose to ruminate on it it robbed me of sleep, so I gave it only a few moments at the time of each pyre. It seemed to be enough of a tribute to my maker, a monster in his own right, and to the universe.

"Wipe off your face, you'll scare the women." I tossed him a cloth.

"Maybe they'll like it Eric." He laughed as we began our walk back to the castle. "I'm a big hero you know." And he beat on his chest.

"I am certain your bed won't be empty this night. But clean yourself up anyways Alcide."

"And what about you Eric? Will your bed be full tonight?"

"I have had no recent offers."

"Because you always look so sullen. If you'd put on a smile once in awhile it might help. I could find you someone?"

"I don't need your help to bed women, wolf."

This was the banter that took us home. Alcide liked his women. I was, shall I say, more selective in my choices.

The hearth fires still burned for us as we came into the warriors' hall. We were not the last team to return from patrol, but we were also not the first. There were a few of the two natured nursing new wounds, Vampires healed quickly, but you could see the strain on the faces of some of the younger ones, drawing back goblets of blood to reenergize themselves from obvious bites. Feasting on humans was not allowed in the hall, an edict of the Queen. It only made sense, not everyone in the Queendom was privileged with the knowledge of the Vampires and the Two-Natured. The Queen understood that the people had enough worries with the monsters outside the walls. It was enough that they knew that she had an army that would fight against them. They didn't know of her nature either, but she was very old, and could rise before the sunset and stay awake after it had risen: longer than I could, and I was almost 500 years old. It was a simple enough matter to hide her for those few hours a day when she needed to sleep.

The servants who attended to the warriors were specially selected, committed to a life within the palace, trustworthy to a fault, and rewarded handsomely. Some were there that night, roasting meat for the Weres and bringing the goblets for the Vampires, in that way we were more alike than not. They needed the rare meat, the heme iron for the protein, not terribly different than what my people needed. I preferred mine from the source. So, clapping Alcide between the shoulder blades, making him choke on his mouthful; I had intended that, I gave him a salute. He roared at me as if he was angry, which he wasn't. Tonight was not the night for conversation, the other Vampires in the hall were eyeing me with disdain, because I chose to fight with a Were. They didn't have the courage to tell me to my face. Perhaps that was the common sense the Zombies lacked. I was easily the oldest and strongest of them all. The Weres treated me with more respect, but that was out of deference to their Alpha. Vampires did not have an Alpha, though they fought for the Queen they acted only in their self-interest.

I retired to my quarters, I needed to eat and I needed to sleep.