Hemmingstedt, Germany, 1500

Adam and Helena were riding following the seashore, the rain was pouring down on them when they heard gun and cannon fire through the sound of thunder. They rode to the hill to look at the battlefield below them.

Half a year earlier, Adam had drained the knowledge about the warfare from a Holy Roman Empire's general, and he shook his head. It was a gruesome sight; two armies lined up shoulder to shoulder, in the battlefield. Even the old general had thought that the way battles were fought was idiotic.

There were three lines of men on both sides, first-line shot, moved behind to reload, and a new first-line shot and so forth. It was easy to learn as long as you knew how to load your arquebus. Two groups of soldiers were just killing each other, mostly because targets didn't move.

The battlefield was full of dead or dying men. Adam heard someone coming behind them, and he turned to look. There were nine soldiers, all of them pointing their arquebus at him. Apparently, they didn't think Helena as a threat.

"Whatever happens, don't kill them until I give you an order," Adam told Helena, and then he looked at the sergeant. "Hello there, what appears to be the problem?" Adam hollered.

"Peasants or Friedrich?" The soldier asked.

Adam shrugged. "Neither."

The sergeant fired his arquebus. Adam could have easily dodged the bullet, shooting with an arquebus was slow to process, and he was so fast that he could have killed the man before the bullet left the barrel. But he was interested to see what they would do to Helena if they'd thought he was death. Adam let the bullet hit him in the chest and as he fell on the ground Helena calmly stared at the soldiers.

They laughed, and Helena said, "Adam, can I kill them? They want to rape and kill me."

As Adam got up, all nine soldiers got scared and fired their muskets. His body shook as the bullets hit him, one of the soldiers managed to get hit straight on between the eyes. "Auch," Adam said, wiggling his brows as his body pushed the led balls out from it.

The soldiers turned around and fled the scene. Adam read their minds, six of the nine weren't evil men, killers, yes, but that was what soldiers do; they kill. They weren't killers because they liked it, it just was their job. But three of them, including the sergeant, had been planning to rape and kill Helena who looked to be a young girl.

Adam glanced at Helena. "I suppose a little bloodletting is in order," he said, "but kill only the killers. The sergeant is mine."

Helena nodded, and under two seconds, she'd sunk her fangs into a soldier's neck. When Adam caught the sergeant, he was holding a bayonet on the throat of a young boy who had been under his command. "Take him! He's young!" the sergeant said.

Adam shook his head. "Ah, but his soul doesn't belong to me. Your soul, on the other hand, is dark and belongs to the Devil," he said and faster than the mortal could react Adam grabbed the bayonet and twisted it away from the boy's throat. Then he grabbed the sergeant by the throat and smiled at the boy as he read his mind. "Eilert, leave now, go home and ask Grethe to marry you, have children, and live a long life. You have a pure soul."

"A-are you the A–A–Antichrist?" the boy stammered.

"No, I'm..." Adam paused when the sergeant screamed and kicked him. He squeezed his throat hard enough to break his Adam's apple to stop the screaming. Then Adam looked at the boy. "I was born in the soul of misery. Never had me a name, but I have been called the Antichrist," he said and sighed when the scared boy still stood there, silently staring at him. "Eilert, as much as I would like to take your soul, I cannot. There are rules I have to obey, it's a shame, but that's the way it is. Go now. Live."

The heartbeat of the sergeant had started to slow down, Adam had squeezed his throat too hard, and he was dying. Adam opened his mouth and licked the man's face showing him the mouth full of sharp fangs to scare him a bit more; Adam loved the taste of the adrenaline in the blood. He then bit him and drained him from the blood.

When Adam was finished, he ripped his head off. The boy, Eilert, had been watching Adam from the tree line. Smiling Adam waved to him as he turned into a cloud of mist and flowed upward of the hill until he was away from the boy's sight.

"We should leave Germany," Helena said when Adam got to her.

Adam nodded. "Next stop is Rotterdam, I've heard good things about it," he replied.

"Meaning that there's a lot of murderers," Helena said.

"Exactly."

Rotterdam, Netherlands, 1500

The Rotterdam was a busy harbor city. Adam didn't really like it, but rarely did he like the places where humans lived. The awful smells and sounds mortals made irritated him. He had started his life as a naked man in the winter wilderness, and sometimes he missed that part of his life.

On their third day in Rotterdam Adam killed a slave trader who traded small girls and boys to the perverted men. Adam didn't know why, but he was enraged by the people who hurt children, and he never just killed them. First, he tortured and raped the perverts to make them feel the pain they had caused to the children. Only after they had suffered enough did he let them die.

Adam and Helena moved into the slave trader's house and made a home in there. After that, they hunted and killed every member of the pedophilic slave trader ring, confiscating everything they owned. Helena saw it as her holy mission to kill all of the men who had bought and enslaved young black girls and boys.

"And these beings call us monsters," Adam said, shaking his head while Helena helped four girls and two boys out from a dungeon where they had found them. The dungeon was full of instruments of torture. The girls and the boys they'd found from the torture chamber were between four and ten years old.

"We are monsters, but some humans are much worse monsters than we are," Helena said, "I want to send these kids to a school."

Adam shrugged. "Okay, we have more than enough money to pay their education," he said, "but you do understand that we can't adopt them?"

"I know... but we can't just leave them either. These kids have been through hell. They deserve to have a chance in life."

Adam sighed, sometimes he could not understand Helena. He lifted a small and skinny boy on his shoulders and took two girls in his arms. The city was too far for the children to walk. "I'm sure that you will find a good place for them."

Three weeks, the slave trader's mansion where they lived was full of little people. They were children, but their childhood had been stolen from them. They didn't dare to yell or play. They were an eerily quiet bunch of mortal children.

Adam was relieved when Helena found a place for them. The girls would go to a Catholic nunnery and the boys to a monastery. Before they left the children, Adam compelled the Mother Superior of the nunnery and the Abbot of the monastery to make sure that they'll try their best to give the black children the best education possible.

"Are you sure that they won't abuse kids?" Helena asked when they left the monastery.

"Yes, but we should come back and check them out," Adam said, "just to make sure that they're treated well."

Helena nodded. "Men like those rapists makes me hate humanity."

"I don't care enough about humanity to hate them," Adam said.

"And yet you only kill evil people."

"Yes, but only because you want me to kill people who are hurting others," Adam said.

"Yes, I believe that if we kill enough evil people ideas of the good people have a chance. We have to kill, humans are our food so we might as well try to make the world a little better place," Helena said, "and it isn't as if there is a shortage of murderers and evil people for us to eat."

Adam nodded, there wasn't much more to say about that issue.

Back in Rotterdam, Helena started a money lending business using Adam's name since he was an adult and a man. She taught him how the money lending business worked, and Adam quickly learned that making money was easy when you had a lot of money begin with. Money lending was a business that had high profits and low risk.

Their business flourished, in fact, soon they had to stop expanding the business because it was becoming too big and they were fast becoming so rich that people noticed them. The Church had spies everywhere, and they didn't want the church to send demon hunters after them.

Four and half years later they were still in Rotterdam. In a way, it was a safe haven for vampires. It was a busy city, in which people came and left, and if someone suddenly disappeared, no one would ask any questions. In harbors, like in any other place where the money exchanged hands, there always were loads of people who were ready to murder for a nickel.

So, it wasn't surprising that Rotterdam attracted vampires. For a while, Adam had fun killing revenant-vampires, but ultimately he got bored about that. Even when he tried not to use too much of his strength and power, he still was far too strong and fast for demon clad corpses. He and Helena continued killing them to keep them out of their city, but it became a tedious job.

In their boredom, they got acquainted with the Rotterdam nightlife. Adam loved to watch the plays; they often were gruesome and inventive. And after people got to know him as a somewhat wealthy man, they started to get invitations to balls and other parties of the rich and bored.

In one of those balls, the music suddenly stopped. The attention of the people in the ballroom was riveted with intensity on a tall, elderly female. The place was silently watching her till she sat on a cushioned seat they brought her.

Adam listened to the whispers, and then he looked at the lady, she was some sort of the matriarch of a shipping company. Everyone in the room seemed to know that she was the real force behind the success of the business even though officially her husband was the owner.

She looked at Helena and Adam as they got out from the dance floor. Adam had learned that most of the time, people ignored their red eyes. If they didn't, it was easy for him to make them think that red eyes were perfectly normal.

The old lady, Mrs. Anker, locked her eyes with his. [Vampire, those two are vampires!] Was the first thought Adam heard when he read the older woman's mind. She wasn't afraid; she was excited. She told her servant that she wanted to meet Adam.

Adam nodded to her and got up before the servant had moved. "Stay here, the lady wants to talk to me," Adam told Helena. "If it comes to it, use the second escape route."

Helena nodded. "I'll be listening."

When Adam got over to the older woman, the servant introduced them to each other. Adam wondered where the servant had learned who he was. The whole ballroom was quietly staring at them. Mrs. Anker motioned Adam to sit down and right after he had sat beside her musicians started to play. At first, they talked about the banking business.

Then suddenly she motioned her servant to leave them alone and stopped beating the bush. "You are a vampire, are you not?"

Adam nodded, there was no reason to decline, Mrs. Anker already was sure about his true nature and, if needed, he could always erase that knowledge from her mind. "Yes, I am, and no, I cannot turn you into one of us."

Mrs. Anker raised her brow. "You cannot, or you won't turn me?"

"Cannot," Adam said. "You have three sons, and we can turn only virgins of the opposite sex. That is why all of us look to be so young. If I'd try to turn you, you'd become a mindless undead being."

Adam wasn't lying, a few years earlier Helena had done some testing with humans, and she had found out that virgins became like them and non-virgins became mindless monsters. After she'd finished her study, Helena had killed the two girls that Adam had turned and the six boys she had turned. When Adam had asked why Helena killed their young fledglings, she told him that one undead child in the world was enough.

"Just my luck, when I found a vampire, it becomes clear that I am 32 years too late to be turned," she said.

As he read her mind, Adam was surprised to find that Mrs. Anker had accepted that the eternal life wasn't for her and she'd have to find another goal in life.

After that, they continued talking about banking. In half an hour, they got into an agreement that Helena telepathically suggested to Adam. Mrs. Anker would be the public face of their banking business, and she'd get her share of the income. Helena and Adam had not expanded their business only because they feared that, if they'd get too rich, Vatican demon hunters would notice them.

"I'm hungry," Helena said when Adam got back to her.
She led him to the small garden, and after she was sure that no one could see them, Helena disappeared into the shadows. Adam turned to a host of sparrows and followed Helena flying high above the city.

When Helena got out from the shadows, Adam landed beside her. In front of them was the area of the city where no sane man would go dressed as finely as they were. And women wouldn't even dream of going there.

In no time, they were surrounded by thugs. "You know," Adam said, "I've always wondered why do they even try? I mean, we've come here four years in a row, you'd expect them to learn that it is not a good idea to attack the well-dressed man with a girl."

"What did you expect? They're street thugs," Helena replied as she grabbed one of them and sunk her fangs into his neck.

Adam sighed and quickly cracked skulls of four of the men before he drank from them. After they had eaten, Adam phased their bodies deep into the ground. When he got out of the ground, he took a deep whiff and wrinkled his nose. "The smell of burning tar. If there's one thing in this city I hate, it is the smell of tar."

"It covers the smell of garbage and shit," Helena said.

"True enough. So what do you think if we'd start traveling again after we've signed the deal with Mrs. Anker? I would want to leave this city and go to the next seaport? I've always wanted to see Port of Lisbon."

"I'd like that. All of the demons and vampires have fled Rotterdam in fear that we'll kill them, this is not a fun town anymore," Helena said.

Adam smiled, and then, on a whim, he bit his wrist and placed it in Helena's mouth. "Drink," he said.

Helena sucked his blood into her. Adam smiled when he felt her getting stronger. When she stopped drinking, Adam shook his head as he again ripped his wrist open and put it in her mouth. "Drink, that wasn't enough." When she was finished drinking his blood, Adam kissed her forehead. "I don't know why I made you drink my blood. I just felt that it had to be done to make you strong, and I now know it was the right thing to do. I can sense that you now are much more powerful than you were only moments ago."

Helena looked at her hands. "Yes. The power is flowing in my veins now. I didn't know anyone can be this powerful. I feel like I'm a God," then she frowned. "And really, Adam? That little redhead in Constantinople? You were tempted to turn her? I am insulted that you even considered to make her my sister."

Adam laughed. "What can I say, I was young, and she was pretty. Besides, I slept with her, thus making it impossible for me to turn her. And I turned you. Shouldn't that count for something?"

"Yes," Helena said, shaking her head. "Your blood memories... you are a strange man. I wish I'd know what kind of boy you were when you were alive."

"So do I. So... we are going to leave Rotterdam behind and start traveling again?"

"Yes, after we have signed the deal with Mrs. Anker, I'll write the basis of our contract with her today."

Next years just flew away. They traveled through Europe; Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain. They came into the town, stayed a few years until demons and vampires, whom they hunted for fun and game, fled the place and then they moved to the next town.

They saw all the things Helena had ever wanted to see in Europe. Helena, who loved art and hated the patriarchal society, became a patron of many female artists, writers, scientists, and philosophers. She spent vast amounts of money to help women who had ambitions and talents.

Adam didn't mind her spending their money that way. They were rich, he didn't care about money, and he hated the way men treated women and children. In the hands of Mrs. Anker, the small loan business became a Bank in Rotterdam. Helena created a branch office of that Bank in every place she spent more than a year or two.

When Mrs. Anker's ruthless son took over her business, he and Helena expanded the business. Helena knew that Abraham Anker was skimming on them, but it didn't matter as long as he wasn't telling anyone what she and Adam were.

In time Adam became worried about Helena. Slowly she developed an unhealthy blood addiction. They needed to feed twice or thrice a month, but Helena was killing five, six, even ten men in a week.

Helena was slowly slipping from her ideals of killing evil men, and Adam had promised her that he wouldn't let her kill innocents. Adam shared her view that treating women as the property was terrible behavior, but it wasn't bad enough to kill men who acted that way.

It was how women were treated at that time, and if Helena wanted to kill men who thought that they owned their wives and children, she'd have to kill all men in the world. Not to mention that men actually believed that they were protecting women when they kept their wives and daughters locked in their homes.

Then, one night, when Adam had left Helena alone and went hunting to the wilderness, she had destroyed a whole town. When Adam came back, the city was in a fire, it looked like it'd been destroyed by an army.

As he walked through the burning town Adam shook his head, he'd already read Helena's mind, and he knew what had happened. A bunch of men had tried to rape her, and a girl painter and Helena had lost herself to the bloodlust and killed everyone in the town.

Adam found Helena lying on the balcony of their house in a fetal position. He picked Helena up and carried her into the house and tugged her on the bed. He crawled into the bed and pulled his vampire daughter to him and started to stroke her forehead.

"It was a monstrous thing to do," Adam told her, "but I do understand you. They tried to rape you and the girl, and you snapped. There still is a human mind inside of you. It was an all too human rage that you released. If you want to blame someone, blame me. I should have been here, I promised to make sure you won't kill innocents, and I failed on that."

"No," Helena whimpered, "it's not your fault," she shivered. "I just killed and killed and killed and killed and killed and..." she chanted that for minutes like it was some kind of a mantra. Then she stopped talking and all through the night Adam just held her, knowing that there wasn't anything else he could do. When Helena finally fell asleep, Adam tugged her in the bed and went out.

A few days earlier it had been a lively town of twenty thousand people, now it looked as if earthquake, tornado, and war had hit the city at the same time.

Helena had wiped the whole town from the map.

When Adam finally got to the edge of town, he found an army unit of soldiers; they were coming to examine what had happened to the town.

It was a time for them to continue their journey.

You should Google the Battle of Hemmingsted, it is a good example how the terrain can be used as a "weapon" of war.

Rotterdam has been an important port since 1340s.

TBC