She was restless. He was restless.
They'd been battling for hours now-the slashes on his chest and the bloody lines on his cheeks were beginning to regenerate with efficient speed only a Dacian heir could have. But then why did this red-haired woman-this annoyingly strong woman beguiled him with a deep feeling of…what? Loathing? Hatred?
He knew that he often despised his foes and enemies, especially infuriating cowards, especially people who dared enough to challenge an invincible being such as himself-and later show their concealed fear towards him, but alas, they were too late. The beast had been released. Such cowards. Such mind-stricken fools.
But then he stared at the criss-crossing lines on his muscled chest, the fresh blood from him seeping into the expensive couture white shirt he wore, and a fury inside him stokes and licks him again. How dare that woman injure him? A lowly being such as herself ought to…
Slash! The woman's curved sword almost cuts his head in half had it not been for his supernatural speed and dodging accuracy. He struggles to stand up begrudgingly in an awkward and poor fashion with his one leg shamefully kneeling down. The single end point of the flickering silver sword right between his eyes greets him. He knows he is humiliated and discomfited, but a slow smirk reaches up to the corners of his red lips, which are turning slightly upward.
"Before you begin to execute me painfully, may I ask you what your name is?" He asks the woman with the flaming-red hair. She wore all black: black trousers and black sleeveless shirt complete with steel-toed black Magnum combat boots. A long bow and a set of arrows hang on her back, while the sheath of her glowing twin swords were strapped to her hips. The other sword not trying to cut his head off was flickering grey instead of silver.
"What use is my name to you?" She asks. Lothaire notes that she has a Scottish, vaguely Celtic accent. Her alarmingly bright green eyes flickered between his handsome face and the bloody injury mark on his chest that she herself inflicted on him. Luckily, his chest wound is healing fast. If he was fast enough and the female was slow, he could rip her pretty head from her shoulders with just a clean swipe of his hand.
"I want to know the name of the person who lands the last blow, which ends my immortal life," he replied nonchalantly, as if she was a casual friend and he was telling her about the weather. He was surprisingly calm; eerily so. Lightning flashed all around them. Lothaire suspects that this woman could be one of the fearsome Valkyries, but he knows she is not one of them. Her ears were not slightly pointed like the fey creatures' ears.
Her grass green eyes hadn't turned silver like the other Valkyries he fought, like the rest of them he slaughtered ever-so-mercilessly. From across her pale white face, an array of freckles, clearly visible, spread out like tiny droplets of blood. He suddenly had a sudden impulse to take the nape of her neck and bite into it wholly, but then the hollow look in the woman's eyes stops him in his tracks.
It is the look of unrelenting indifference. He knows because it happens to him too, when he ends his victims' lives. She plans to kill him now, and the way her face morphs suddenly into a terrifying and horrifying being, he is disturbed. Not because he was frightened or threatened. It was because the stranger reminded him of himself-a monster a thousand times scarier than the beasts hidden and lurking inside the dark.
The perturbation of the woman, and of it all, confuses him with an absolute frustration. Her green eyes shadowed and darken considerably.
She shifts uncomfortably. The bright red-eyed vampire notices this. She is aggravated as he was right now. "I do not wish to put an end on your life. I was sent here to thwart an impending doom."
"Do you mean me?"
"No; I just sought to cut year head off because I saw you advancing towards me, aiming to end my life first than letting me do my important mission."
"Who sent you? What are you really seeking here?"
"My…my grandmother sent me. And as I told you, I was sent here to kill someone, and I would prefer not to let my target's identity be known. And I would rather not share my personal motives or agendas with you, vampire."
"You know I am a vampire?"
"Well, duh. You keep on baring your fangs, and your wounds are already disappearing. You regenerate faster than most, I have to say." Did she just sound impressed? "Plus, your eyes just darkened considerably. You're hungry. You want to suck my blood, don't you?"
Lothaire was suddenly impatient. "If you know then, why do you ask?"
"Because, vampire, I too am one of your kind." She grinned at him, and showed her sharp incisors. But that was impossible…or maybe not. Maybe she was born a vampire, like that half-Valkyrie, half-vampire girl he heard about somewhere. The shy woman who was kidnapped by a Lykae. Lothaire instantly felt disgusted about it and pushed it out of his thoughts.
"Were you turned?" He asked. Maybe a Daci vampire just like himself bit her. Dacians were known to have the rare ability to make a female, particularly a human, turn into one of them, a bloodsucker.
"No. I was born one."
"If you are really a vampire, then you would find it foolish to cross me."
She slightly tilts her head to one side. "Why so?"
He laughed, which sounded more like a mocking bark. "You are foolish and naïve. You do not know who you are addressing. I am Lothaire, Enemy of Old. I see it to rip your body in half, child, once I get the right opportunity."
Her hand tightens on the hilt of her raised sword. "Then I think that opportunity is now, no? I won't be taking second chances."
"If you do that, then you prove you are more stupid and gullible than I originally thought. I am merely tricking you into giving me information." Maybe she knows about the ring, he thought warily. Images and visions of La Dorada rising and being the rightful heir of the Dacians made his head hurt. The relentless stress he'd been experiencing these past four years since meeting his destined bride, Soraya-who was in that annoying mortal's body, the teenager named Elizabeth Peirce. He'd vow to release her from prison and that infernal mortal's derisive subconscious and strong will to resist the death and blood goddess's might herself. He had much to do, but so little time.
The red-haired woman blinked. And then chuckles out loud, her lips curling and revealing her pointed fangs. Lothaire suddenly felt irritated. Just who the hell was this woman?
"Why the fuck are you laughing?" He irritatingly spat out.
"Do you have any idea who I am?"
"I don't. I have no fucking idea so much as your name."
She smiled broadly. "Well then, introductions first. I am Scathach."
Lothaire frowned. "Scathach the Shadow? The Warrior?"
She nodded curtly. "The very same."
Suddenly he felt like laughing again. Originally, Scathach was a Celtic female vampire from Scotland. In the Lore, many feared and revered her as one of the legendary warriors the world had ever seen. Few insulted her for fear that she would take away their lives. Yet as time went by, people were starting to doubt if she was just a myth or a legend. Sure, there had been evidences across the Lore about her whereabouts, but she was nowhere to be seen now. There had been reports of her residing now in the mortal world, but Lothaire doubted it.
But every Lykae, fey, and vampire still had a quiet reverence towards her. It was said that even the mere threat of promise of her annihilating a kingdom ensured immediate success. She had even threatened a goddess before: Hel, the Norse goddess of death herself, to release an immortal prisoner which she considered a valuable friend. Within days of her threat Hel herself escorted and walked with the newly released prisoner.
"You lie! Scathach the Shadow does not exist anymore in this world. She had been gone for many long centuries. Why return now?"
The woman's eyebrow rose. "Who told you that? Had I been gone that long from the Lore? Sorry, I'd been busy tracking and running away from some Dark Elders." Dark Elders? What the hell is that?
"You are mad. You say this to frighten me. Shut your mouth, imposter."
Her green eyes narrowed. "I am not an imposter. I speak the truth, vampire. I returned here to end a powerful and evil threat, something so dangerous my assistance was required."
"You are delusional."
"Fuck you."
"You think that just because you are good, you can already be considered the Warrior? Ha!"
"I've dealt with prejudice in the past," she muttered, "even from my own parents. People thought that I was weak since I was only a female. But I proved them all wrong. But you…you are really starting to get in my nerves, leech. Are you seriously going to give me a tirade?"
"You are right; I am a leech, though not the way you motion it to be. I do suck blood directly from the flesh."
The woman threw him a disgusted look. "Before back in my time, only the lowliest of the low drink blood. My kind gets their energy from the emotions of people, their feelings. I believe that is better than being an actual leech."
Lothaire shrugged. "To each their own, perhaps."
The severe injury on his chest was slowly healing…the blood drying on his couture shirt.
"Are you one of the Forebearers, or the Horde?" He suddenly asked.
The red-haired woman gazes at him long. "I am neither, and I do not know what you are talking about, if that was the case." A long pause. "I am going to let you go. You are of no threat to me, not unless you try to kill me. I just hope that this encounter will be a lesson; something to remind you not to mess with one of the Shadows."
Not at threat? Lothaire laughed. Oh, how wrong she could be.
He silently watches as the strange woman walks out until his enhanced sight and perception could only see a small black dot and her shining swords.
Closing his eyes, he lets himself be traced to somewhere else where he is in familiar territory.
If that little girl, who was pretending to be the legendary Scathach herself so much as dare take the ring from La Dorada before he got it, then he would find it in himself to massacre her. Severely.
Not a threat my ass.
Oh, how very, very wrong she could be to underestimate the Enemy of Old himself.
End of Chapter