"Why do you think I'm a monster?" a child pleaded at a woman as she chained his skinny legs twice, three times over. After glancing at her work, she tightened the chain connected to the collar at his throat. "I just want to go home to my mommy."
His eyes were wide, innocent, not for a second leaving her face.
The woman did not reply to his complaints or his begging as she worked deftly and silently. It was quite obvious that she had perfected the art of torture and bondage. Everything was wiped clean, too clean. The room smelled of old bleach and various sanitizers. An array of gleaming metal tools lay on display in an arranged fashion on a surgical table nearby, without being close enough for anyone to possibly reach, even if they stretched their bodies to do so. She was there now, seemingly pondering over her selection.
"What is it you want?" the child asked shrilly. He rattled his chains, perhaps in an attempt to get the stranger's attention. "Please, just let me go home to my mommy."
The woman drew into the light with objects from the table in either hand: a polished dagger with an ebony handle carved into the shape of an angel with silver wings drawn against its body and an ampoule of crimson liquid. Holding the dagger out into the light for her prisoner to see, the boy went dead still.
"Please don't hurt me," the boy begged. His voice went cold as she drew closer, an alien, guttural voice that sounded foreign coming from a child's mouth. "Just look at me. I promise I'll be good if you just look at me."
He snarled triumphantly when her gaze flitted to his face and landed at his eyes. Her face, already slack, waited.
"Release me, you insolent swine," he commanded with the same guttural voice. "Then stand still and shut up while I rip you to shreds with my bare hands."
A glow of pure self-satisfaction beamed from his eyes as his soon-to-be-dead abductor closed the few steps between them and raised a hand. . .
. . .and pressed the dagger against his cheek.
As if he had been struck by hot coals, the boy lurched and howled in pain and fury. His eyes were insane with rage. The metal bit into his skin and a bead of blood slid down the length of the blade and smoke dribbled from the wound.
"Let's see those pearly whites, then," the woman finally spoke.
The boy growled, eyes blazing, "Fuck you."
She used the blade to pull back his lips. Where two blunt lateral incisors had been, gleaming in the dim light were two fangs peaked from angry, red gums.
"Quite the little mouth you have on you. Now what would 'mommy' think?"
Satisfied with what she saw, she sheathed the dagger beneath her jacket and reverently held the ampoule in front of her face.
"I'm going to tear you to pieces, you little bitch," the little vampire hissed angrily. "My Maker is part of the Authority. I have been alive longer than it took your imbecile ancestors to figure out how to fuck one another."
The woman, ignoring all the curses spewed at her, said a prayer in a language the vampire had not heard. Then her eyes snapped open, the pupils completely swallowed by iris, and she uncorked the ampoule.
"Do you know what this is, child?"
Completely still, the child vampire breathed heavily over and over as his pupils dilated. His fangs flashed as he snapped his mouth in the direction of the vial. His whole body strained against the chains, despite the enormous billows of smoke emanating from his smoldering skin.
"The blood of Lillith! Give it to me now!" He licked his lips as if parched, rivulets of bloody drool staining his torn shirt. "Give it to me. Please."
His begging now showed the woman how much of a farce the earlier show had been. She laughed cruelly.
"Lillith?" she said. "No. This is the blood of angels, of the holiest of holy, of the one true god, of the Son."
Despite the feeding frenzy that had overtaken him, he took a moment to look surprised or concerned. Always hard to tell with the unfeeling dead creatures of the night.
She smiled and placed a drop of the blood on a dissolvable square of paper, returned the ampoule to its original place, then wafted the paper in front of the child's nose.
The smell of the blood so close to the vampire's face made him yowl and crow with pain.
"I'll do anything you ask," the vampire gasped, the silver chains nearly slicing off his limbs as he strained further against them.
"Tell me where the Dallas nest is."
He choked out a laugh as the silver chain around his throat cut into his jugular. "They'll kill me if I tell you. Their leader is over two-thousand years old."
"Looks like you're doing a fine job killing yourself." With a surprising amount of strength, the woman coiled the chains around one hand and, with the other, squeezed his throat. His eyes bugged. "You'll heal once I give you this blood. You'll be stronger. You'll be euphoric. You might even think you will be able to kill me. Let me assure you, little fangling, there is no chance you are walking away from this alive. Er, well, in your case, as alive as you are now. You are going to meet the True Death. It is up to you whether you wish to go with a smile or in what I am told is the worst possible painful thirst in your existence."
"You're going to try to kill them when I tell you," the vampire said, resigned.
"Yes, but they've already been dead for a long time."
He laughed again but this time blood dribbled from his mouth. "I don't know what you are, but they will kill you. Godric is death incarnate. His progeny is merciless. You don't stand a chance."
Still holding him by the throat, she placed the blood paper against her lips. "Fine, I will not waste the blood."
"Wait! I'll tell you!"
She stilled, mouth open, the paper millimeters from her tongue.
He licked his lips. With eyes locked on the blood, the vampire told her the location. He trembled and held open his mouth expectantly.
"You can go to the True Death knowing you have done the right thing," the woman murmured before throwing the paper over her shoulder.
The child screamed in such a high-pitch, she had to plug an ear to keep the sound from rupturing the ear drum. She thrust her fist forward, the stake mechanism in her sleeve going straight into his still little vampire heart. He burst like a water balloon loaded with blood.
She closed her eyes and sighed blissfully, raising her face to the heavens. When she opened them, her pupils had returned. She wiped a bit of vampire off her sleeve and smirked at a figure standing in the corner of the room, cloaked in shadow.
"We have some work to do."