If there was one thing that Eric hated more than vampires, it was driving in unfamiliar cities. Ever since he had driven his '68 Charger out of the cargo container in Croatia, it had been one near disaster after another. He had brushed up on his Russian when he had finally gotten a solid lead on Whistler that led, of all places, to Hungary. Unfortunately, while he had a gift for speaking foreign languages, reading was still beyond him. Thankfully, many of the road signs were made in such a way that he could make do, and it was fairly straightforward to take E71 once he got past Karlovac.
Of course, that didn't help him at all once he actually got to Budapest. A local contact had given him a meet point and he'd been two hours late just trying to find the damned place. It had not put him in the best of moods and the safehouse that he'd slept in, a flea-bitten hovel in a closed factory's boiler, had driven his temper close to the breaking point.
The info he had gotten had been good though. His contact had even driven him to an observation post half a mile from the mansion the local vamps had: Ördoghaz. Eric had watched the place for a few hours and could only grin as a large number of the local vampire muscle that were colorfully known as "Death Dealers" drove away in a caravan of modded SUVs. Tonight was obviously his lucky night as security looked especially light.
Eric shook his head at the guards patrolling the grounds. He could tell they were suckheads without even using the thermal viewer in his hi-tech binoculars. No one in the 21st Century would be caught dead in glossy, plastic-looking latex outside of some stupid Hollywood action movie. Vampires biggest advantage over humanity was that the average human was kept in the dark by the string pullers. Eric didn't care how big the string someone pulled was if every vampire walked around as though they were going to a hardcore S&M dungeon.
Then again, I always knew there were two strains of vampire in the world.
His normal prey called themselves the Draconis Strain in homage to the vampire they supposedly descended from. There was a lot of bullshit spoken of in the Book of House Erebus, their "Vampiric Bible", about how they were the evolution of the vampire race and superior to the Corvinus Strain. From what Eric had learned, the Corvinus Strain suckheads were immune to silver and garlic. They burned a little faster in the sun but not by much. In fact, the only advantage that the Draconis Strain had was the fact that they could regenerate limbs. Corvinus suckheads could still die from exsanguination and, if his standard hollow-points didn't do the job, there was always EDT and his sword.
Eric opened his trunk and placed his binoculars in their case. He loaded a dozen throwing darts with the blue liquid EDT that made vamps painfully and explosively expire; those went on a bandoleer across his chest. His thigh holster of silver stakes was next. On his opposite hip, he put four spare magazines for his MAC-11, in addition to the four he normally kept on his tac-vest. His two-bladed silver-steel alloy glaive went into its compartment in his jacket; in a pocket beneath that he placed a silver garrote. He checked how his Kevlar vest fit before, with a satisfied grunt, he slammed the trunk shut.
Automatic weapons fire had him sprinting back to the overlook with the inhuman quickness inherent to vampire regardless of strain. It only took him seconds to see that the attack was coming from within since the guards had all been rushing inside the mansion.
Eric jumped in his Charger and was roaring down the street in seconds. Soon, he was passing a car speeding through the open gates that was probably full of fang-faces but his only concern was gaining intel on where Whistler was. He stopped twenty feet down the driveway, hopped out of his car, and raced towards the building. A door to a balcony on the second floor had been left open and Eric stopped just long enough to gather his strength before leaping straight up. His feet easily cleared the low stone railing and, just like that, he was inside the Budapest Coven's primary lair.
Too fucking easy, Eric thought suspiciously but then he heard terrified screaming coming from the hallway.
The slayer entered the wide hallway and barely caught the screaming vampire as she scrambled around the corner while facing the opposite direction. To Eric's bemusement, she clung to him with desperate strength that, if he had been fully human, probably would have left him with deep tissue bruises if not a fractured humerus.
"Is Viktor with you!?" The suckhead shouted with an accent decidedly English . "It's Marcus! The Elder... he's... he's gone mad! He's killing-"
The rest of her pleas fell on deaf ears as Eric had drawn a stake and placed it near her spine at just the right angle to pierce through to her heart.
"I think you have me mistaken for somebody that gives a fuck," he whispered just before tensing to end her.
That was when the Elder Marcus chose to come around the corner in tattered robes. Normally, that would not have given Eric pause. The fact that Marcus looked like someone had given the vampire a bat's face and wings did. He had never seen a vampire look like this and all the data that centuries of vampire slayers had collected didn't cover such weird shit.
"You... you are not a part of this Coven. You smell..." Marcus sniffed the air and sneered in disgust, "...American. Leave me that one and go back to the New World Coven. Tell them... tell them I'll save them for last."
The blonde vampire whimpered and took shelter behind Eric who, in his shock, let her. Eric stared at the vampire-bat-thing through his Oakley Fours for several seconds before he chuckled.
"Second time in the last thirty seconds I've been mistaken for somebody that gives a fuck about your little power play. I just want some information but, since you just woke up, I'm thinkin' you don't have shit for me. Sucks for you, you ugly-ass muthafucka."
With a roar, Marcus blurred through the fifteen feet separating him and Eric. Despite his speed, even faster than Frost after his La Magra upgrade, Eric was sure he could have gotten a weapon in hand before Marcus got within arms-length. Unfortunately, he hadn't counted on the vamp's wingspan. A pinion darted out and speared him through the left side of his trapezius, below the clavicle, and dangerously close to his subclavian artery. The opposite wing darted in to puncture the right side and his sword was drawn in a flash; resistance was met and then overcome. At least a quarter of the wing came off and Marcus withdrew with a sibilant vocalization of pain. Blade spun with the abrupt motion, drawing his MAC-11 as he went to one knee, and came up firing. He put a nice tight cluster in the center of the Elder's chest. Normally, that would send a vampire straight to Hell in a fiery dance of death.
Marcus roared in pain as the center of his chest was carved open by the hollow-points into a mass of bloody flesh. Eric could only watch in disbelief as the vampire darted into the room he himself had come from. He waited until the sounds of the injured vamp crashing through the balcony doors had faded away before he allowed himself to even look at his wound.
Dark blood oozed at a steady rate from the hole in his torso and he knew that the vein had been hit but not the artery. It wouldn't do him any good at the rate his heart was beating. One side effect of his half-human body was that his heartrate was naturally higher than a human's and even years of meditation had not enabled him to get a resting heartbeat below 90 BPM. Any artery or vein puncture could lead to exsanguination far faster than it did in a human or even a vampire.
All this time and I'm going to die in fucking Eastern Europe.
Eric fell onto his back as the world started to go fade away. He could hear his heart struggling to beat in his ears as his vision went darker and darker. The blonde vamp-bitch from before started crying and whispering something but it was no concern to Eric. Oddly enough, he found that he was at peace. Frost was dead and he had made sure his mother was no longer walking the Earth a rabid animal. He only wished that he had been able to rescue the old man.
Blood, that smelled like fresh lilacs of all things, dropped onto his lips before a wrist was placed against his mouth. Without his consent, his body fell back on instinct and he began to gently suckle as a hand stroked his head and a voice pleaded for him to live. The blood tasted of honey and apples, one of his favorite combinations from before The Thirst took over, and he found himself gripping the wrist and hungrily drinking for a moment before he came back to himself. With a growl of warring hunger and disgust, he pushed the arm away and rose to his feet.
The vampire looked up through a fringe of dirty-blonde hair with watery blue eyes. She covered up her bleeding wrist with a soft hiss, exposing a longer-than-average set of fangs, and lowered her head. He idly noted that his sword was still clutched in his right hand but his glasses were missing. Eric cast his dark golden gaze around the hall before he found them nearly in the vamp's lap. When he leaned over to get them, she scrambled back with a whimper. Calmly retrieving his Oakley's, Eric placed them on his face before he return to his silent study.
What do I do with a suck-face that saved my life?
"You're The Daywalker, aren't you?" She whimpered as soon as the words were out of her mouth.
Eric could only grin, showing off his own modest set of fangs. Her reaction was surprising though he didn't let it show on his face. Tears, not the bloody tears so often popularized in fiction, burst from her eyes and she crawled to him on her hands and knees.
"Please, please, don't kill me! I've never killed a human! I swear! Please, I'll do anything! Anything! I saved you! I saved you! Even when I suspected, I still did it!" The tears slowed some as she looked up at him. "That has to count for something! Please!"
It seemed as though she had run out of words or breath because she just sat there, pathetically clutching his right pants leg in both hands, as he stared down at her. With a resigned sigh, Eric sheathed his sword and hauled her to her feet.
"Stop it. I'm not gonna kill you... yet. I came here for information and, if you're useful, I'll release you."
"You swear it?"
"Excuse me?" Eric asked again in disbelief at the kind of question a kid would ask.
"Do you swear it?"
"You're lucky I don't stake your ass right now," Eric growled but backed off when her face twisted as though she would start crying again. "I'm lookin' for a newly Turned vampire. He was taken in America and kept in stasis while he's been moved around Europe. His name is Whistler. Do you know where he is?"
"America? Amelia was overseeing the New World Coven the last few decades and I didn't hear-"
"The suckheads that took her were Draconis."
Interesting, Eric thought as that beautiful face twisted into a look of disgust for a brief moment.
"Then I don't know. We don't have much to do with the Draconis Houses besides making sure they don't garner too much attention."
Eric gripped the handle of his sword and asked, "So you're not useful?"
Panic overcame her features again as the blonde held up her hands as though that would save her. "Wait! Viktor has just woken but he would know who to contact! They should return soon!"
"So you expect me to wait here for them to come back with their little army and then sit down for tea and biscuits?" Eric asked incredulously and, amusingly enough, the vampire actually gave him a weak smile. "Yeah, not gonna happen. Take me to where the Death Dealers nest at."
"Nest?"
"Yeah, where they gather and get their shit together. Or do you Corvinus suckheads prefer to roost?"
"We're not animals! We're not lycans!"
"You're all just walking corpses to me. Let's go."
Eric spun her around and gave her a light push. She stumbled and it was then that he noticed that her feet were bare. He also couldn't help notice that, for a white girl from Europe, her ass wasn't too bad. It could have been the way the odd pants and corset combination she wore clung to her frame but Eric was having a hard time keeping his cool with all the blood pumping through his veins. He felt strong and knew that his core temperature was probably spiking to over a hundred degrees. It was always like this after feeding on actual blood. His Serum had a similar effect but it took a toll on him before the positive effects came to the forefront.
Focus, you shithead! She's a bloodsucker anyway.
With that mental chastisement, Eric found it easier to focus on his surroundings. They passed a number of shredded bodies, some drained entirely of blood, as well as a few living vamps. One of them, a larger male dressed in the ridiculous Gothic latex, emerged from a room and headed directly to them as though he had questions. Eric reached out and grabbed the blonde around the wrist. He pulled her close, drew his blade, and pointed it so that the tip rested in the approaching suckhead's throat.
"Listen up!" He barked and waited a moment for him to get everyone's undivided attention on the foyer down below. "All you suckheads got lucky tonight! Normally, you'd all be toast by now but I've got other shit to do so I'd advise you all to get the fuck out of sight before I lose what little cool I have left!"
Eric sheathed his sword in a fluid motion that he knew would be almost too quick for most vamps to follow and pushed his informant in front of him. The male vampire hurried up the steps as Eric was led down to the ground floor. She took him through a set of non-descript doors and down a long, narrow hallway that opened into an expansive area he could tell was where the Death Dealers resided. There were barracks down one long hallway to their left but the rest of the space was open and divided between what looked like a workshop, armory, firing range, and sparring mats.
The vampire hunter found it interesting that his prisoner didn't even try to fake him out by leading him to the armory where she could possibly find a gun. Instead, she led him straight to a whiteboard with a number of maps and diagrams laid out on it. Years of planning raids with Whistler let him ascertain the entry points to some sort of underground lair even if he couldn't read the language.
"Viktor led most of our Death Dealers to wipe out the lycan threat. If anyone knows how to find your Whistler, it will be him. Am I free to go now?" She asked quietly.
Eric grunted and shook his head as he tore down several maps, "I can't read this shit. I'm going to need a navigator." When her mouth dropped open in dismay, Eric could only grin. "If you fuck me, it'll be the last thing you ever do."
"You must be really good at it then."
Is she flirting with me?
He had found that, in times of confusion, it was best to let the other person's anxieties go to work for him. Eric watched the vamp's body language shift from quietly flirtatious to increasingly unsettled when he remained silent. There was an air about this one that told him she often used that combination of innocence and sensuality in order to navigate through her parasitic life. In the furtive looks that she kept giving him, Eric knew that she was coming to the realization that it would not help her with him.
"Let's go!" The hunter snapped, grabbed her by the left bicep, and marched her back towards the main entrance.
The foyer was a ghost town when they passed through it and his vampire captive kept her eyes on the arm clamped around her bicep as he walked through the open front doors. He decided to give his prisoner a verbal reminder before she tried something stupid.
"Don't think about running because you can't outrun a bullet and I will shoot out your knees."
"I won't run," she practically whimpered and Eric bit down hard on the growing feeling of sympathy he felt for the vampire.
It has to be the blood.
He was a bit rougher than he needed to be when he opened the passenger door of the Charger and pushed her in. Taking a bit longer than necessary to circle around to the driver's side, Eric took in a deep breath of the chilly night air in an effort to settle his emotions. He slid into the driver's seat and took a moment to revel in the feel of the 440 Six Pack roaring to life before he pealed out of the driveway in a cloud of smoke.
"Take me to the closest entrance," Blade told her.
"Erika."
"What?"
"My name's Erika. Not blood-breath or suck-head or whatever other colorful slurs you have for my kind. Would you like me to call you "The Freak"?"
So she does have a spine in there.
"What? You think we're on a date? I don't give a fuck what your name is. You're useful to me and I'm not gonna smoke your ass but don't get shit twisted. Now," Eric stopped at an intersection, "What way?"
There was a rustling as Erika checked the map before she said, "Left."
The rest of the ride passed in silence only broken by her nearly whispered directions. Eric could practically smell the fear dripping off her. He had the inexplicable urge to tell her that he wouldn't hurt her as long as she followed his orders; that she was as safe as a bloodsucker could be in close proximity to him.
You're getting soft in your old age.
If anything, Eric would have thought that she would have gotten less afraid when they arrived at a building that looked like it used to be a functioning water works of some sort. A pair of SUVs sat parked out front with their headlights still on. Erika's fear seemed to spike and he was shocked to find her hyperventilating.
"Calm your ass down. I don't have any blood to feed you and you'll end up needing to if you keep that up."
"I've never been in a fight before."
Eric raised an eyebrow at that, "Looking like you do, I guess you get your victims to come willingly."
"I told you, I've never killed a human." Erika gave him a quick glance out of the corner of her eye and then smirked as she said, "And they always come for me."
Okay. This vamp-bitch is definitely twisted. I know that was a heavy-handed attempt at flirting.
Eric watched her for a moment before he got out of the car with a shake of his head. She probably thought he was just being intimidating but, in reality, he had just been waiting for his semi-erect penis to go completely soft. Her blood was really screwing with his reactions.
"Where are they? I would have thought the Death Dealers would be policing the area by now," She questioned the eerie stillness of the night as he hauled her out of his car.
"Policing?"
"Making it seem like it was rival gangs instead of lycans and Death Dealers. We do try to keep a low profile, dhampir."
"Damp-what?"
"Dhampir. A half-breed. Vampire and human. It's a name. You won't tell me yours, so I had to come up with something."
"You really don't know my name?"
Erika rolled her eyes, "Maybe those Draconis savages all know you but I have much more pressing concerns than worrying about some dhampir."
Eric was about to snap at her when she preempted that by letting out a terrified shriek at the headless body draped over the hood of the SUV closest to the entrance to the warrens that the lycans had taken for a den. The head was nowhere to be found and, when Eric went closer to examine the body, he could tell that something had decapitated the suck-head manually.
"Werewolves are allergic to silver, right?" He asked Erika as he drew his MAC-11 and led the way through the warrens.
"Yes. Not as badly as the Draconis Houses but it will kill them."
They were deep into the warrens, following the signs of battle, when Erika let out another shriek as they came upon a trio of Death Dealers in about twelve different locations down a dismal corridor. She pulled at his hand and led him to where a dark-skinned vamp was staring at the ceiling despite the fact that his stomach was lying in a stagnant pool of water. That probably wouldn't have killed him, Eric had seen vamps recover from worse, but the fact that his heart had been torn from his chest meant that there was no chance at recovery.
Erika sobbed softly for a minute before his patience was up.
"We're on the clock. Unless you want to be stuck down here with all these lycans when the sun comes up."
"What?"
The blonde finally started scanning her surroundings and it was hard to miss the fully transformed werewolf lurking in the shadows of an alcove at the far end of the hall or the one clinging to a pipe two stories above their heads. Eric could hear more, most likely in human form, scurrying behind walls as they decided what to do about him. He could tell that none of those trailing them had any more stomach for a fight. If so, they would have already attacked. Erika did not have his experience to draw on though and, to his surprise, she started clinging to his bicep.
Without a word spoken about her hanging on to him as though he were a life preserver, they made their way into an open space with a shallow pool of water dominating it's middle. There were signs of a fight and a large body floated near the edge of the pool close to a concrete wall with a big hole about a story above the ground. Eric immediately made his way to it but, halfway there, Erika made a strangled noise and threw herself into the nasty water as she rolled the body over.
"Oh, no! No, no, no, no, no!"
Eric whistled quietly at the neat, diagonal slice that had bisected the vamp's head. He had done the like many times and had seen humans do it often enough when he was training with his various instructors but it was the rare suck-head that developed that level of talent. The older ones especially tended to simply rely on being so much stronger and faster than their opponents.
"Viktor, I take it?"
Erika didn't reply and just sat in the cold water as she shivered violently. Eric shrugged and quickly searched the so-called Elder's pockets for anything that might lead him to Whistler. Of course, he came up empty and stood with a grunt of disgust.
Why can't it ever be fucking easy?
"Fuck off, Dallas! If you're too chickenshit to go after that Blood bitch that killed Lucian, then you can stay here, licking your balls and letting your flunkies sniff your ass! You're not my Alpha; if I were a man, you'd be my Beta right fucking now."
The voice was female, high-pitched in her distress but Eric thought it would probably be husky normally, and had a barely detectable Indian-English accent to it. He ghosted his way up a set of stairs and into what looked like the stereotypical mad scientist's dungeon. The stand-off was occurring in front of a corpse with thick black veins covering every portion of exposed skin. A lone female was surrounded by four men; the smallest of the lot was bare-assed. The woman was dressed in dark grey tac-gear complete with a shoulder-mounted Personal Light Source. A kukri was sheathed on the left side of her waist and a revolver on her right. She also had a semi-auto pistol in a shoulder holster for a left-handed draw. There was no fear in her stance and Eric could see that her eyes, dark as night, were fixed solely on the naked one.
"Look, Lucian's dead. Someone's gonna have to step up and take control. I'm offering you the chance to be my Top Bitch! Forget those fucking Bloods, Rishima! Viktor's dead! Amelia's dead! And that other Elder is cold in the ground and weak as a bloody kitten! The city is ours! The fucking world is ours!"
The lycan woman, Rishima, laughed cruelly and got right in the filthy naked man's face. "I'd rather live in the woods and get fucked by a mangy cur than be anything of yours, Dallas. Now, get the fuck out of my way before I get mad!"
"What the fuck are you gonna do, bitch? Lucian and Raze ain't here to protect you anymore! Now, you're gonna do what I tell you and we'll be easy on you the first few times. Otherwise, I'm gonna make it hurt!"
Dallas reached out and grabbed Rishima's left shoulder. Eric could tell from the way his back tensed up that he was trying to squeeze it painfully.
She could be useful if she can really track whoever killed that Elder. They probably know how to find Whistler.
With that thought in mind, Eric was about to make his move when the look of utter disdain on Rishima's face made him hesitate.
"I'm sure this isn't the first time a woman has asked this but... am I supposed to feel something, Dallas?" Dallas growled, far too deeply for a human, and muscles in his back bulged. Now there was a hint of pain on Rishima's face but a foreboding anger came with it. "You've got five seconds to get that hand off me before you lose it."
"Let's just get the bitch on all fours, Dallas!" One of the taller flunkies crowed and the others laughed.
That laughter was cut off when, in a flash of movement, Dallas' arm ended at the elbow. The lycan looked at his spurting stump for a moment and, when he raised his head to Rishima, another flash of movement opened his throat almost to the spine. As the man's convulsing body began to fall, Rishima blurred into motion. She wielded the kukri with a skill that was quite literally supernatural. The tall Lycan with the smart mouth only had a moment to clutch at his guts before his throat was also cut so hard that his head was barely hanging on. Another blade, a stilletto, was driven through the eye of the burly one in the biker jacket. The remaining foolishly ran at her, his skin distorting oddly as though his bones couldn't decide what they wanted to do, and was tripped in mid-run. While airborne, his head was forcibly removed from his body and thus he landed in two pieces.
The entire series of actions had barely lasted a minute.
Eric clapped slowly as he emerged from the shadows, "Impressive."
"And just who the fuck are you?" Rishima challenged roughly as she spun to face him; her hair, bound in a tight ponytail that came down to just below her shoulders, whipped audibly through the air with the speed of the motion.
"Blade."
Rishima began to growl, a bass rumble from deep inside her chest, and drew her revolver in a flash. It was a Colt Python .357. If she had been human, the recoil would have broken her wrist with the one-handed grip she had. The wolf was holding it steady and she wasn't the slightest bit human anymore so he had to play it cool.
"Daywalker," the lycan female hissed between clenched teeth. "You're not a full-Blood and you hunt them too. So why are you here?"
"Same reason you are. I'm hunting some suckheads. I tracked Viktor here but..." He paused to give her a brief smile, "-it looks like he lost his head. Now, I'm going to track down the ones that did it for answers. I heard you wolves are some of the best trackers there are. You help me and you can have them after I get my answers."
"How do I know you won't just kill me when my back is turned?" Her brow furrowed as she pondered his offer.
"You've heard about me. I hunt vampires. I've never killed any of your kind before and I don't plan to unless they get in my way. Now, either pull that trigger or put it away so we can get moving. The sun'll be up soon and I have to get my vamp prisoner back to her hole."
"You have a prisoner?" Rishima asked as she holstered her Python, wiped her kukri with a cloth from a pouch on her tac-vest, and then sheathed her blade.
"Straight from the Coven's HQ. How do you think I found this place? I'm not exactly native."
"I suppose-"
"No!" Erika's shriek had Eric spinning around and diving out of the hole in the wall before the last echoes of her cry had faded.
Flipping through the air, the hunter splashed down in the water and straightened to his full height with a slow roll of his shoulders. Standing in a broad half-circle around Erika were half a dozen Lycans. All of these were clothed in heavy fur coats and dirty leather clothing. All of them were armed with Desert Eagles. Maybe it was a Lycan thing but he was starting to notice a theme with them and their weaponry. They seemed to prefer power over finesse but that was fine with him. That just made them slower and probably bad marksman; it was a good combination- for him. The apparent leader, several inches taller than Eric with a heavy beard, beady blue eyes, and a Neanderthal brow, took a couple of aggressive steps towards him.
"Get the fuck out of here, meat, before you get used like this vamp cunt's going to!" Eric heard a splash behind him but didn't turn. "Yo, this your human pet, Rishima? Tell this fucking monkey to go find a tree to swing in. We're gonna have some fun with this bitch."
"You might not want to talk to him like that, Kristoff."
"Oh, my bad," the thuggish Lycan taunted and held the hand with the Desert Eagle to his mouth. "I'm sorry! Are you his bitch now? Hey, darkie, go fuck your bitch someplace else! We got dibs here!"
Eric smiled, relaxed all his muscles, and then sprinted into furious action. His blade was in his hand, swung, passed through resistance and the small pack's leader's head flew from his shoulders. He drew his MAC-11 and fired on the move, scoring chest shots to the three on his right. Moving into a spin, Eric holstered his MAC-11 and whipped his glaive from its holder. When he halted his spin in a crouch, the glaive was flying through the air to slash the arteries of both Lycans wide open. With smooth surety, Eric rose to his feet and turned to face the direction both Erika and Rishima were watching him from as he caught his glaive behind his back and the body of the first Lycan finally crashed into the water.
The Daywalker smirked at Rishima and gravely intoned, "They were in my way."
