The neon lights and depravity of the city suited the two just fine. Just as the sun set in New Orleans, an eternally young looking man, garbed in a white undershirt with a long black trench coat and leather pants, loomed over the edge of a small apartment windowsill. His fingers gripped the windowsill and his eyes shined a dark black as he gazed down upon the humans meandering down the bustling, lighted city below. He smiled and flicked his tongue along his lips.

His eternal companion and self-appointed guardian lumbered over and towered above him, giving him a look of severity. "You shouldn't keep going out," he said in his deep, gravelly voice.

"I never said I was tonight." the younger man said.

"I can tell you're going to..." his voice trailed off and his eternally dark-ringed eyes—eyes that were mismatched in hue—flashed down to the street below. He watched as all of the normal humans staggered about, nearly all clearly drunk or high. Such easy pray they would make, though he had long since learned that no matter what his baser instincts said, he didn't need to take their lives to survive. His companion, however, was a different story. Still, he worried about him; the younger man had been killing more frequently lately, almost out of sheer blood lust. It was quickly becoming a problem.

"I'll be back soon." the young man said at last. He smiled up at his friend, exposing a mouth of perfectly straight, stunningly white teeth. In fact, the only thing that seemed to set him apart from one of the normal New Orleans run-of-the-mill freaks were the slightly elongated canines that protruded from his gums.

"You should come," the shorter man said to his tall companion; he shook his head quickly.

"No, you know I wasn't made to be out like you...with people." his discolored eyes became sad and he looked down at his large boots. His friend rolled his eyes and nudged his side supportively.

"Stien, you shouldn't keep hiding away like this. It's just as unhealthy as-"

"As you going out night after night slaughtering innocent people?" The man called Stien questioned as he walked away from the window.

The movements that he made to go over to their tattered, stained couch were sharp and jerky, clear signs that he'd been through what normal people might consider a head injury. It was only his best friend that knew the morbid truth—he wasn't a person. Neither of them were, in fact. Both the men had been brought into the world by very unnatural circumstances—Stien's birth being the perhaps most unorthodox of all. He was a man-made creature of lightning and crude, ruthless science.

At last his friend spoke as he pulled the blinds down and walked quickly away from the window. He slipped on his boots and zipped them up. "Don't stay here," he insisted as he looked over to his best friend. His long, black hair slipped into his pale face for a moment as he got dressed. "Let's both go eat out tonight."

Stien stared at him for a long moment before admitting, "I can't. I'm scared."

"By the people?"

"By what I would do to them."

Although it was a dark statement, the younger man just shrugged and laughed. He had a heavy accent, one which caused him to laugh in a slightly cynical way. Through his years here in America—particularly New Orleans, the city of freakish corruption—he'd adapted quite well to the language. If he wanted too, he could nearly hide his strong Transylvanian roots. He didn't bother to disguise it in front of his best friend, though. He just went over to him and patted his shoulder sympathetically.

"Come with me tonight. It will be fine, I promise."

Stien said resentfully, "No, Drac."

Dracula knitted his brows together in a look of growing frustration. "Don't make me-"

"If you even try and control me, I'll rip you in half." he threatened.

"Okay, fine. But tomorrow night promise that you'll come with me." When Stien gave him a disapproving look, Dracula clarified quickly, "Not to grab a bite, just to get out."

"I'll think about it, but only if it's not a full moon."

Dracula nodded. He knew that Stien only said this because, on the rare occasions where he actually would go out, he hated to be seen. In fact, neither of them were very partial to bright light. With this promise in mind, the century-old vampyre nodded and walked out of the apartment. Perhaps tonight he could find something interesting to eat.

…

The thing that had disgusted the cultured, well-refined vampyre at first about this new home was the sheer level of poverty and filth that the people of New Orleans chose to live in. He supposed that it was only because he'd grown up relatively privileged, became the count and gotten his own curse so many hundreds of years ago. Or, at least, that was the feeling he had. It was a sad fact that none of his kind could remember their pasts—Stien remembered fragments, and every once in a while Dracula would get a sense of déjà vu, but beyond that there was nothing. He did seem to recall that he'd been foolish and spoiled, lost it all so easily—because he'd been bored and gone out on a killing spree. Like he'd been doing recently. He'd recognized this pattern in himself long ago, but was powerless to do anything against it.

He let out a lazy sigh and pushed past all the staggering people. He'd gotten used to this place. After all, he and Stien fit right in. All they had to do was keep themselves under control so their curses wouldn't take hold, and it would be fine.

As his boots scraped along the bricked sidewalk he looked up and noticed that the half full, shining moon. He swallowed and felt his throat becoming dry and his stomach aching. He was starving. Like he'd done so many times before he put on his most charming face and meandered into one of the many bars that lined Rue Burbon. The doors were already open for him, a reminder of how sticky and humid the summer nights in this cursed city were. He wandered over to the bar and sat down. It was then that he began to cast his spell.

All the surrounding girls instantly lowered their various drinks—their Grenades and Hurricanes—and cast their eyes upon him. The once great Count Dracula tapped his fingers on the bar impatiently until one of the females sat down next to him. Her blue eyes were glazed over, a sure sign that she'd fallen under his spell. She was powerless to resist his damning charm as he smiled at her deviously and motioned for her to follow him out of the bar. As he left, all the other ladies in the bar stared after him wantonly.

Neither a word was said by either of them as he lead her down more winding streets and far away from the bustle of Burbon. It was there, in a trashed and heavily grafittied alleyway, that he roughly pushed her against the cold wall and smiled. His eyes grew into a bloodthirsty red color, his teeth began shining in the moonlight as they grew into a pair of animalistic fangs. His nails dug into the spellbound girl's wrists and held her there. The spell was only broken when Dracula leaned forward and breathed hotly onto her neck. Just as her eyes dilated once more, as the spell was broken, he ruthlessly sank his fangs into her throat.

Hot, rushing blood flowed down Dracula's throat, tasting far sweeter and more intoxicating than any wine or alcohol he'd ever had before. It was addicting, and it had caught the vampyre lord himself in it's gory spell.

It was there, shrouded in darkness, that the life of another girl was lost to Count Dracula.

…

A couple made their way down the street silently. They weren't 'together' in the mortal sense; in fact, they looked upon the other as siblings, though this was far from the norm for their kind. The male was quite tall—though held nothing to Stien's height—and had a messily patched, torn, fur-lined jacket covering his muscular shoulders. His hair was a shoulder-length mess, indicating just as his heavily stubbled face did that he hardly took a moment to take care of himself.

His companion, however, was the exact opposite. She kept up with the hurried pace of the man with a quiet sort of disheartening grace; she was slender and delicate, yet she also held a quiet air of danger about her. She made it quite clear to all the men she glided past that she was unattainable and uninterested.

"Why are you walking so fast?" she said in her whisper of a voice. When no response came she said more angrily, "Damn it, Larry, don't you dare ignore me!"

He barely cast his deep brown eyes down at her. "Where you speaking to me?"

She gave him scornful glance, her black-painted lips frowning. Her wild ebony hair, pulled down into a ponytail to cover a scar that ran from her lower jaw to her neck, seemed even frizzier in the moonlight. Two distinct white stripes ran through it, a sure sign of exactly who—and what—she was. She ran her slender fingers through it nervously, as was her habit. "Don't ignore me."

"Shelly, piss off." the man growled. His eyes gleamed murderously as he pushed past more people. "I didn't ask you to come."

"You wanted me to let you throw a fit on your own?" Shelly let out a little rueful laugh and smoothed out her dress—it was a lovely thing she'd made herself from spare scraps that wrapped around her like the bandages she'd been brought to life in. Around her thin arms she still wore the same wrappings that she'd been made in long ago, hiding the sloppy stitches that the scientists had left behind.

At last Larry found he could ignore her no longer. He ceased his walking and turned to her, put his large, clawed hands on her tiny shoulders. "Shelly, stop doing this. I don't want you following me around like this when I'm-"

"The moon's hardly out yet," she commented, casting her bright eyes up at his unshaven face. "There's no danger I'm putting myself in. I'm not stupid. If tonight was a full moon I'd just have to let you go around on your own...but it's not. And I know your temper."

"And you know I'm hungry?" he let out a little growl and rolled his eyes. He put some of his hair behind his pierced ears and began playing with the fang that hung around his neck thoughtfully—one of his own that had fallen out several hundred years ago. "You can come," he said in the tone one might talk to their younger sister, "but when I eat, don't watch."

Shelly smirked and began winding her fingers through her naturally unruly hair. "But I already know what you are, and you know what I am. What does it matter?"

"Just do what I say!" Larry barked, turning away from his best friend. She grew silent and resumed walking after him.

Together they continued her stroll along. The good thing about this new city they'd recently moved to was that they could pretty much wear or act however they wanted in public, and little to nobody paid them any mind. Amidst the crowds, strippers, druggies, and street performers they blended right in. This brought Shelly much comfort, for she was surprisingly self-conscious of the scars that ringed her slight jawline. Most people just chalked it up to street makeup, and occasionally they even slipped money into her and her companions' hands, thinking that they were quite convincing performers or actors.

Slowly the crowds of Burbon street began to disperse, a sign that morning would soon arrive. It was then that Larry Talbot turned to Shelly and instructed, "Follow far behind me. I'm going to hunt."

She wordlessly nodded and waited until he was a good distance away from her to continue her stroll. Off by himself Larry finally let out a sigh of relief. He felt like an animal when he showed his true nature around his best friend. Shelly was quite a tough girl, she dealt with her own curse quite well, but she still barely grasped the constant pressure that he was under to control his baser instincts. It was a never ending battle with him, and it was only during the dark cloak of night that he could be himself.

The street grew shadowed as he quietly disappeared into a crowd and focused his attention on a man and woman walking; he was much smaller than himself, slender, and dressed in a long, black coat. The girl was a standard party girl, it appeared. Though she followed the boy in what seemed to be a mindless, drunken stupor, Larry could already tell that something was amiss with the two. They were different than the others in the crowd. That's made them weak.

Silently he followed them to the edge of the city, until the run-down and long abandoned apartments bordered the narrow streets. There were few cars and even fewer people as Larry watched the young man lead the girl into an alleyway. He arched a brow. What was happening, here? Was this some sort of new, mortal courting ritual? He hugged the shadows of the wall and felt his hair rising on end as he poked his head around the corner of the alley.

His eyes took on a wild yellow color as he grinned. Slinking into the shadows he crept behind the two. In his mind he thought back to when he'd first been given his curse—to that night so many years ago, to when a gypsy had read his future and seen nothing but death for him. No promise, only pain and suffering. It was nearly the only fragment of his past that he remembered. Anger flared up inside of him and he allowed it to take hold and change him. His teeth sharpened, his claws grew, but just as he began to fully transform into the werewolf that he was, he saw something odd.

The man was holding the girl against the wall, pressing his mouth to her neck. Larry, shocked, cried out, "What the hell are you doing..?"

His call was only answered when the girl grew limp and pale, bloodless. It was then that the strange man turned to face him, his mouth ringed in blood. "Oh...I didn't know that someone was watching. My apologies, but now I have to kill you, too."

The way that this man so casually said this made Larry laugh, his eyes losing their yellow luster as his anger faded. "You, kill me? I don't think so."

The shorter man took a moment to gently dab the blood from his lips with the rolled-up sleeve of his coat. He then adjusted his vest and ran a finger along the strange pendent that he wore. This caught the wolf-man's attention. Hadn't he seen that necklace before? It seemed to be a golden star with a red gem in the middle. Instinctively, he reached for it, and Dracula backed away.

"I felt you following me; I should've killed you right there. I don't have time for games." he grabbed the hand that Larry had outstretched and held it tight. This only made the other man laugh.

"You idiot, do you know what I am? You stole my prey!" As if to prove exactly how otherworldly he was to the mere mortal, he broke free of Dracula's grasp and threw him to the ground as hard as he could. Clearly shaken, the vampyre slowly got to his feet.

Whoever this new assailant was, he clearly wasn't human. He was a new breed of monster altogether; and yet he seemed oddly familiar. As the wolf-man lashed out at him again with his claws, Dracula nimbly jumped to the side. Despite the fact that the vampyre possessed nearly inhuman speed, even he was barely able to doge the savage assault. Realizing that he'd gotten into more than he'd bargained for—and also not used to having to put up such a fight—Dracula shielded himself with his cloak.

Just as quickly as he'd appeared to Larry, he was gone. The wolf-man was left standing there gnarling and clawing angrily at air. He was breathing hard, his eyes a vicious yellow as he looked around. It was then that Shelly finally caught up to him, her small hands wound tightly in her hair. She gave Larry a sideways look when she saw the state of the dead girl's corpse.

"This isn't your usual work," she commented, going over and kneeling beside the girl. She noted the two red fang-marks in the corpse's neck. "Usually you're not as neat; you just tear them apart and eat them like that. Never seen you take your time before."

"It...it wasn't me." he admitted at last, punching angrily at the alley wall. Shelly arched a brow.

"Oh? Then you just found a dead girl by luck?" She stood up, her boots nudging at the poor deceased girl's cheek. Shelly frowned and a look of sadness came upon her delicate features as she commented under her breath, "A shame...she was so pretty..."

"I think," Larry said at last, staring down at his clawed hand and noticing the nearly invisible scar of a pentagram that was there. He didn't remember when he'd gotten it, only that it, like him, was very old. "I think that I bumped into a vampyre just now, Shel."

She blinked over at him, clearly perplexed. "But Larry, there aren't any of them left—no more like us. You know how Van Helsing slaughtered our kind...it's impossible."

"How is it impossible that there might be one more child of night living in this place?" he snapped, smoothing out his jacket as he began to kneel down before the body of the dead girl. Although he hadn't killed her, who was he to pass up a free meal? Despite fact that neither he nor Shelly—or any children of the night, for that matter—could remember much about their pasts, he knew he'd spent at least a hundred years scavenging off the land before he'd made it to this city. He faced his back to his best friend as he tore away at the corpse with his claws, bringing still-warm flesh to his mouth. Closing his eyes, he breathed in the stench of death happily.

How beautiful it was, how addicting.

"At least you got your snack," she commented, twisting a lock of her black hair around her fingers, "now you won't have to change."

"I still feel it coming on." he said grimly as he took in another mouthful of flesh. Shelly turned away from the brutish display and began to make her way out of the alley. Larry watched her go, a sad look in his eyes.

He didn't know if his best friend believed her about the vampyre. She probably didn't. Too long had the two spent hiding in the shadows of night without a run-in with another of their own kind. Sure, there was still Van Helsing and the ever annoying presence of Nosferatu to worry about, but they hadn't gone anywhere in hundreds of years. Though Larry knew there had once been many more of his kind as well as other children of the night, he couldn't remember them. Their names were lost to him forever, in the shadow of this new life.

As far as he knew, he and Shelly were the only creatures of old left in this new world. Or so they thought, anyway.

…

**A/N**

Hopefully you enjoyed this first chapter. Yes, I know it was a lot of description and not much dialogue. Sorry about that, but I haven't actually started a new story in a while. I have to get back into the feel of things. If you liked this chapter and would like to see this story continue, feel free to review it. I'd appreciate it a lot. Thank you for reading.