Chapter One- Hostile Ground
(A/N: Andi and Tal share a mind link, and to show that, I'm notating it like this. Tal is mind speaking Andi is mind speaking
Andi leaned down to watch the street from her perch high above the city. A playful breeze tugged at her hair, pulling a few auburn strands out of the loose bun it was piled in, whipping it across her high cheekbones and pixie nose. Crouched atop the roof of the forty-story building, clad in leather, black glasses and even darker expressions, she and her hunting partner made a formidable pair. It was just after 5:00 PM and she and Tal were getting re-con on the building across the street. In this battle against the undead they gained their greatest advantages in the daylight hours. Looking over at her partner she raised her had and gave him the signal to move around back and check out rear exits. He nodded an affirmative and disappeared from sight. Sighing, she turned back to the building before her. Appropriately named the House Of Blood, it was one of the many flourishing vampyre nightclubs/feeding houses that were slowly creeping into more and more public areas in most of the bigger cities of Asia, North America, and especially Western Europe. It was a war and it was being fought constantly between vampyres and the few real slayers that were left, and there were not many. She could literally count all of the openly active vampyre hunters in the world (with any true experience to speak of) on the fingers of one hand, and two of those were Tal and herself. Glancing briefly down at the street she caught sight of the few mortals hurrying along, huddled in jackets against the piercing autumn wind, going about their lives, completely oblivious to the battles that surrounded them night after night. Focus she scolded herself. It seemed she was always watching the mortals. Their lives seemed so orderly and small compared to her own. At times she longed to join them, just give up the war that threatened to slip out of her hands more and more each day, but she knew that to do that would eventually mean the end of the human race, or at least the slavery of it. And it was becoming increasingly obvious that this eventuality was soon to be fulfilled. And they have yet to take any notice of it. They're too busy worrying about the Evlons to take any notice of their real problems. She often wondered how long it would take the vampyres to exhaust their precious blood source if she and Tal were to stop hunting. There were times when the thought was tempting. After all it was humans who had made her what she was. Ice blue eyes seemed to fill with molten silver and she clamped them tightly shut as remembered flashes of her childhood passed through her mind. Cool it down An came Tal's voice in her head. We've got a lot of work to do before sunset.
Sorry Tal, I've just got a lot running through my head right now.
Understandable, just try and keep it clear.
Yeah thanks mom she quipped. Got any more words of wisdom locked away in that hollow space between your ears I should know about?
His warmth and affection washed through her and although there was an entire building between them she could tell he was smiling. They had acquired this "psychic" ability at the time of their Fulfillment Ritual. Having been best friends even before the ritual they become, if possible, even closer. Smirking and shaking her head she turned back to the task at hand.
She counted three doors on the front of the building but so far as she could tell only two of those were accessible from the main floor that they would be entering that evening. And hopefully leaving full of dust and essence bullets she thought vengefully to herself. She could never fully explain the burning hatred that filled her when confronted with vampyres, but after accepting what she was she no longer tried to fight it.
Moving silently she stood and slid a few steps to the right, blending in to the shadows. The pupils of her bright blue eyes dilated noticeably behind the dark lenses of her sunglasses and the small vampyric runes etched into the metal door across the street came sharply into focus as though she were suddenly looking through binoculars. (A/N: I actually have a rune system that I used here when I wrote it by hand, but not only can I not type that on the computer, but this server thing doesn't support and of the runic fonts that I could have used instead. So please just use your imaginations...Thanks.) "Letum sanguis sequi," she muttered, translating easily. "Yes, let death follow blood." Her feral grin and the silver glint that passed fleetingly through her eyes was evidence enough of whose blood she hoped would flow tonight. Raising her eyes to the clear autumn sky, already gathering into cool darkness, one corner of her mouth curled upward in a smirk. She called Tal back to her through their mind-link and slipped fluidly over the side of the building and, landing on her feet as effortlessly as a cat, she disappeared into the twilight, skeletal city of downtown London.
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The window slid closed almost noiselessly, except for a small protesting squeak near the bottom, and two pairs of booted feet dropped to the floor just as quietly with not even the smallest of thuds to herald their entrance. Gleaming silver eyes peered out of milky-white faces and quickly took in the surrounding area. Silver-vision effectively banished the shadows from the views of Andi and Tal and a look through their eyes would have seemed like looking through night-vision goggles that cast a black and white glow over everything as opposed to lime-green. A racing beat pulsed through the floor under their feet and though they were four stories above the main room of the club, the pounding bass line was still distinct. The slightly tensed bodies of the two youths relaxed almost noticeably as the extensive room proved to be clear. The room ran approximately half the length of the building and a coat of dust lay heavy on the floor. Water dripped in some places from the sagging ceiling above them and a moldy smell pervaded the entirety of it. Rusted office chairs lay on their sides and backs, swivel-bottom legs, coated in cobwebs, pointed solemnly toward the only exit. A broken door, still hanging halfway off its hinges from when the immortals or...whoever...had kicked it in, led into a tiled hallway darker even than the ghost-like office without the pale light of the moon to reach its eerie emptiness. (A/N: Have to read that sentence a few times? I did when I was typing it up and I wrote it! But hey, I couldn't bring myself to change it...)
Glass crunched under careful feet as Andi and Tal made their way to the door, remnants of overhead lights and expensive desk lamps. Heavy wooden desks were belly up; contents strewn across the damp floor, and stepping across them, Andi glanced at the memos, ledgers and stock reports. Molding evidence of someone's hard day's work, forgotten and rotting on the floor of a corporate jungle in a condemned building, never to be seen or appreciated again. The two hunters slipped out the door and crept down the darkened hallway, into the stairwell. Blending with the shadows they entered the stronghold of their enemy, and the bass pounded on...
A/N: A big, big, big, humungo thank you to elvesmagic010. You're my hero! Wow, my first reviewer on this story. All you others who are reading this right now, you can thank her for this chapter. (Especially the fact that it's up so soon after the prologue.) Anyway...I'm totally open to feedback of all sorts. If you have any suggestions whatsoever, or anything you want to see and you want me to try to work into the story, just tell me, review or e-mail works. But if you do e-mail, please put something about fanfiction as the subject, because I tend to delete e-mail from people I don't know just in case it's a virus and I don't like getting infected. That involves getting a cure. I hate needles. Thanks everybody who's reading this and extra thanks to everyone who reviews. I don't like to do it either, but I do, and so should you, it's productive...ish.
Kisses,
Ember