Because I am bored and have no life, I'm gonna post the disclaimer in German. Cheers for Google Translate! *ahem*
Disclaimer: Ich besitze kein Predator, und ich muss sagen, diese so in einer anderen Sprache zu betonen. Denn ich bin einfach so cool.
Aja irritably stuffed her passport into her long coat and pushed the sunglasses tighter against her nose. Security was a pain in the ass, as usual; they just didn't seem to understand that some people needed to transport weapons via airplane, or that some people had metal on their bodies that couldn't be taken off. Ignorant asswads. Moments like that made her truly hate the silver scars all over her body. Not that she was ever particularly fond of them, but they at least proved that she could handle herself in a fight. She thanked whatever deity that had the gall to look after her for making the security guards' minds so malleable, or her hunger-weakened compulsion would have been totally ineffective.
Blinking blearily from the aftereffects of the powerful mental attack, she promptly sought out her seat and waited for the plane to take off. Time to sit back, relax, and brush up on her newest victim. What fun.
At least Sol had done a decent job in digging up a passable subject. This week was Taion, the lone Master of Ireland. The information didn't give her a last name, so he must have been old enough to originate from a time when they weren't widely used. The small packet of info Sol had discreetly passed her in the airport provided a short profile of Taion, and Aja skimmed it with droopy, sun-weary eyes.
No formal use of any weaponry (the last I checked); possibly Northern Shaolin user, not entirely sure. Probably fire user, again not sure.
Aja rolled her eyes at Sol's chicken scratch. Glad you did your research, buddy.
Taion appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary, though; most older vampires trained in at least one form of martial arts on the grounds that it sometimes helped control the element they specialized in. The movements of Northern Shaolin certainly would prove a decent physical outlet for an aggressive fire user.
Aja continued to glance over Sol's hastily scribbled notes, already formulating moves she could use, different scenarios that could play out; more from boredom than any anxiety over the looming confrontation. This vamp didn't seem any more lethal than the others, though one word mentioned in the report stuck out: umbraso. A user of dark attacks, a manipulator of shadows. Huh…interesting. That meant that Taion was a half-breed-one that hadn't died yet as a human, and the vampire genetics had yet to completely kick in.
An umbraso…Aja's jaw slacked in disbelief. Damn. That changes things. Umbrasos were a foreign concept to her. She knew next to nothing about them, which was about as much as the rest of the world knew. In fact, the only thing that she was entirely certain of was that the shadows they manipulated were too lethal to wield close to the body. That meant Taion would definitely be fighting from a distance. And Aja was going to have to get right up in his face early in the confrontation if she would have any chance at a successful kill.
Something jolted in her mind, something that had nothing to do with fighting tactics. With a start, she flipped back through the thick pages, unsure what exactly she was looking for but figuring she would know when she found it. Sol must have given her a photo or a physical description of some kind so she could identify him…Aja nimbly plucked sheet after sheet and finally came upon a small pocket photo, dimmed with age and wrinkled on the corners. A tall man in a long, dark leather coat seemed to be skirting around bystanders of a grisly car accident, his face angled in a shifty glance away from the camera. The glimpse allowed by the picture confirmed the thought that had pinged in her mind. Dark amethyst eyes peered from behind a high collar, framed by dusky skin and long, black hair. Aja's breath caught in a silent gasp.
The umbraso was the spitting image of Antigone.
Her mind sputtered in frantic thoughts, all boiling down to one distinct presumption:
Sol sent me after my own brother?
A brother she'd never known existed, but a brother no less. She knew Antigone had sired many half-breed children in his time, but she never really thought about it until she literally came face to face with them. She'd only met three in her lifetime, and all of them were now dead, thanks to the Council.
So, there's more. One that dear ol' Dad missed.
Aja pursed her lips in thought. Besides the fact that Taion was probably worlds stronger than she ever would be, she didn't know if she would be able to kill him when the opportunity arose. Kin should always come first, especially when they were essentially on the same side of a fight. The Council was after both of them, simply for being what they were. Would it really make sense for her to kill Taion?
Dammit, Sol! She grit her teeth in frustration. Fangs clenched so tight that they were in danger of chipping.
She slowly released the pressure on her jaw and relaxed her muscles. It had been a long day, and she hadn't even been out of bed for more than three hours! Her deep breathing earned a few questioning stares from other passengers. She resisted the urge to smack herself for being so open about her frustration. The last thing she wanted was humans gawking at her.
Just think of what they would do if I flashed a fang. She snickered at the mental image of dozens of humans plowing through each other in a panicked mob, trying to outrun the ravenous monster breathing down their necks.
Frowning, Aja kicked the thought away. They were just humans. As weak and irritating as they could be, they were also her food source, and they deserved at least some recognition for that. She almost felt shameful for what she had been thinking.
A lanky teenager with ear buds stuffed in his ears suddenly tripped over some girl's heels, making her shriek and kick at him as he crashed to the floor with her ankle in his hand. Loud murmuring erupted in the crowded cabin as he scrambled up, shoving his way farther back in the plane. A scandalized expression planted itself on the girl's face, and the next thing the teen knew, a wooden hairbrush connected solidly with the back of his head, knocking him to the ground once more.
Aja couldn't help it; she rolled her eyes and bit back a smirk. Almost shameful. If only humans were gifted with a vampire's grace...
Speaking of humans and nonhumans…Aja peered up and down the noisy aisle with suspicious eyes. She had half expected her alien stalker to come aboard after her in pursuit; he had definitely still been at her house when she'd left. After a quick scrutiny, she realized that his smell didn't linger anywhere except on her clothing, proving that he was nowhere in the vicinity. Sighing in a befuddling combo of relief and disappointment, she pulled the blinds over the window and slouched back to try to catch up on her lost hours of rest.
Perhaps he hadn't thought this through clearly enough. Rai'ken had been able to follow the vampire to the airlift complex on his own ship, but now that the cloaked vessel was hovering over the structure housing several of the crafts, he was very nearly kicking himself for not simply implanting a tracking device in the girl while he had the chance to make his following her a little easier. How was he supposed to know which craft held the blood drinker?
I'm proving to be more brain dead with each passing day…
He knew her destination, at least, which gave him something to fall back on: Dublin, Ireland. Thank Paya for context clues. Now he just needed to figure out where in the world that was. Easier said than done. Simply typing it into the ship's locating system did nothing without exact coordinates, so he had to resort to tapping into the humans' archaic data files. He was disgruntled to admit that it was more effective than his own ship's superior technology.
According to the humans' information, at this time of year, Dublin's average temperature was barely over 50 degrees Fahrenheit. He didn't exactly comprehend the human way of measuring temperature, but he knew it was too cold for his liking. Rai'ken growled to himself as he went to fetch heavier thermal netting. Why couldn't this female ever go somewhere warm? It'd certainly make his search a little easier to handle.
After retrieving said bulkier netting, he settled back into the front of the ship and scanned the airport once more. It was a little harder to do from such a distance, but he could make out Aja's cooler form flitting through the mass of red-orange blobs of human heat and. He tried desperately to keep track of her sporadic movements, her blurring speed not assisting his attempts in the slightest. Neither was the fact that another cooler heat signature had approached her at one point-no doubt it was that male superior he had first encountered. After they split up in different directions, Rai'ken had to wrack his brain to figure which one was the vampire he was after.
Pauk…
Well, that settled it. He'd just have to meet her there.
Resigned, he tapped in the coordinates to the ship's database and set it at a slow cruise. No need to beat the blood drinker there by such a large amount of time, after all.
Aja exhaustedly flopped onto her king-sized bed in the Superior Bedroom at the Westbury Hotel; the one and only good thing about Sol was that he always booked a decent hotel for her, though she hadn't a clue why. Maybe he was just bored with all the money he had.
Cuddling up to the plush pillows, Aja wondered where she would begin to look for Taion tonight. Individual Masters were sometimes hard to keep track of, which meant that Sol often couldn't give her a clear idea of where her targets were. Still, with Taion being the only Master in Ireland, it was hard to believe Sol hadn't come up with something useful. He hadn't even given her any idea of his residence.
Sighing, she sank deeper into the pillows and kicked her shoes off into the corner of the room. She glanced out the window with tired eyes, gazing at the wonderfully colorful streaks of the clouds, courtesy of the sunset. Magnificent fuchsia and indigo laced the dimming sky, tiny flecks of stars twinkling in the abyss of night trailing after the glowing orb.
For a second, Aja almost felt peaceful, knowing how petty and small she was in the grand scheme of things, a simple blip on the radar of the universe. Somehow, the thought that she was a mere thread woven into the tapestry of life was comforting in the midst of all the meaningless turmoil she went through day after day.
With that thought, she drifted into a deep slumber.
Gah, I cannot stand how this chapter turned out, but I needed to put something in to make the transition between chapters. And this came in late, and it's short. Ugh, I'm horrible! I have to give props to all of you who have put up with my ranting and have kept reading thus far; I know I've thrown a lot of details (sometimes overly irrelevant ones) and other useless junk at you in a short span of time. I'm doing my best to even things out, so hopefully this'll get better. If it's any consolation, everything in this chapter was completely necessary to mention. It's kinda sad that I have to say that, don't you think? *sigh* Again, thank you to everyone who has been reading and reviewing this! ^_^
Your favorite contradiction (I've been wanting to say that for awhile XD),
Clear as Mud