Note: Thank you for over 20 reviews and 1400 page views! I want to give a shout-out to Jesse-of-the-Fire for inspiration of the violence in this chapter.

Disclaimer: (It's about time I had another one of these.) I own everything of this story, save the concept of vampires. I do own my species (you could call it) of vampires, but I don't feel right even laying claim to that because all the stories are just mix-and-match of old legends and myths which I do not own. I guess I'll say I own my mix-and-match choice of vampires, the characters and the mystery of this story. Thank you for reading.

Chapter 9 – Mirror Image

My feet touched the ground as I heard several screams right outside of the alleyway I had been abandoned in. My breaths were shallow and uneven as my mind had not caught up with everything that had just happened and was barely registering what was going on now. Quickly I stumbled out into the open to find out what was taking place. Whatever these people were now screaming must have been why Luke left suddenly. To protect me again, I hoped, but doubted.

"Killer wolf!"

"Werewolf!"

"Run!"

I heard the small crowd scream before I saw it. There was indeed a wolf, a rather normal-sized gray-colored wolf; but with a monstrous level of violence and hunger. The canine tore its snout into the chest of a man laying lifeless on the ground, it ripped at the flesh and masked its own face in the blood.

I was petrified as I watched and heard the people around me break into panic. Many were getting into their cars and leaving, others were attempting to solve the wolf problem on their own. A different man ran forward with a metal bar of some sort to ward the creature away, but the wolf raised its body with lightning speed I'd only seen once before. Its orbs were red and deadly, blood spilling from the bared jaws as it veered around the man's bar and jumped straight for his throat. A choked cry was the last sound the man could manage before he fell to the ground, his life claimed by the beast who now locked it's bloody orbs on me.

Crimson drizzled to the ground from the wolf's jaw as another menacing growl echoed in my ears.

A woman who was fleeing the area ran in front of me and was snatched out of the air by what seemed like an invisible force. I gasped quietly, my eyes still locked on the beast, but heard the woman scream and hit the ground before her voice was muffled by a choking within her throat as well. What had taken the woman, I couldn't tell. I couldn't process anything that was going on and didn't have a chance to react to the fear built around me.

All I could see were the bright red orbs as the vicious blood-soaked wolf lunged for me.

BOOM! A gunshot erupted and I fell backwards from the shock of the noise; the wolf's body lay deceased only a couple feet from me. A group of males a few yards away were laughing in celebration, one of them held a shot gun in his hand and gloated about killing the man-eater. He looked at me and began walking towards me with the gun pointed safely toward the earth... He asked me if I was alright and if I needed a hand.

Sitting completely still on the cold ground, I watched as the wolf got back up from the dirt, seemingly shook off the gunshot, and lunged toward the young man who had brought it down for a few short moments. His buddies pointed and shouted, the young man himself just had enough time to look around at the beast and grip his weapon, but it wasn't enough time to defend himself from an agonizing death. The cry I had for him was caught in my throat.

My limbs shook and my body gathered itself from the ground and began to move away as the wolf feasted on the heart of the young shooter. The sound of the gunshot, the ripping of human flesh, terrified voices screaming for serenity; these caught more and more people into a fright. I stopped amidst the chaos; people were running and shouting, cars were trying to get started and others that were running were already screeching away on any path out of the lot.

When I turned, I saw the force who had snatched that woman from before out of the air. Rather than a force, the woman had been snatched by what looked like a man. A rogue-looking man with chestnut hair whose face happened to be buried into the woman's thin neck as he held her unmoving body. He glanced up, reddened eyes flicking back and forth as they followed the scattering people. Blood dripped from the fangs I didn't miss in his mouth.

I dared blink and the rogue vampire had his throat in Luke's hands; or something that looked like Luke. His blond hair jabbed violently in different directions and his face was contorted into a beastly anger as the rogue struggled in his grasp, but Luke seemed much stronger and held the vampire, choking him. The chestnut haired rogue fought the iron grip, growling ferociously and began wailing his nails about; with one longer nail he slit Luke on the face. I gasped softly when I saw a thin line of blood trail from a cut on Luke's cheek. I did not blink this time as Luke paused. A deep growl grew in the base of his throat as his eyes changed from blue to red, then he erupted and tore at the neck of the vampire with his nails until he'd decapitated the threat.

I still stood, even as most of the other people in the area had filtered away, completely shocked with my mouth hanging open. Luke looked my direction. His atmosphere was darker, even more sinister with the crimson eye color, but I realized the physical darkness was because clouds had suddenly formed in the sky and shielded the earth from moonlight.

The vampire Luke stiffened in stature and had heavy breathing as his eyes fixed on something passed me. I turned my body and strained to witness what.

Then I saw her. Her. Her pale body stood tall and graceful, her curves were clearly visible even though the apparel chosen for her wasn't half as deserving as her beauty. I didn't know her name, but I knew she wasn't me; she couldn't be. The darker mirror image of myself stood only meters away, staring at me through deep blue eyes and blood staining her brilliant golden hair and entire front. It didn't seem like she was real, but it was a different unreal feeling than my dreams; she looked like a perfectly carved statue that stole life from any soul who dared looked at her.

And I stared, fear striking me where I stood.

Her entire figure was perfection in my eyes. Whoever she was, she neatly wiped her mouth clean of all blood, then lowered her head to Luke and submitted to the warning in his appearance and throat. Red tainted honeysuckle strands of hair fell over her from behind her ear as she raised her head again and smiled deviously. A pair of white fangs poked out teasingly from behind her lips as she spoke in an enchanting voice.

"You've always kill my fledglings in the most brutal of fashions... He was only three days old, I believe..." Her tone was like a mother speaking disappointment into her child. "Shame." she added nonchalantly.

The strange mirror image began walking now, and she moved her arms artistically through the air as if she were dancing. Her steps were slow and perfectly in rhythm to the chaos around her. Her pace stopped when her foot was inches from the head of the vampire Luke had decapitated. Too quick for me to see, she picked the head up by the scalp, stroked the chestnut hairs, and then placed a chaste kiss on the lips of the head. "Pity." she whispered to it.

My eyes didn't leave her and the obscene actions she performed until Luke approached her. His red eyes had faded back into the icy blue, and I noticed something else that shouldn't have bothered me more than what the mirror image had just done to the head.

Luke stared at the vampiress with a calm demeanor and held the intensity of his eyes I'd only seen cast into my own. He came close to her, loomed over her but did not lay a hand on her.

"There's one more in this park, however." she told him with a soft smile on her blood-tinted lips. He tore himself away and growled deeply as if he'd just been struck across the face. "Lucas, you won't be able to stop me. You never have and you never will." She was gorgeous as she tilted her head to the side and grinned towards me. My breathing stopped. Her eyes moved toward the sky, where the moon had begun to poke out from behind the clouds again. "Farewell, my sweet."

The head of the chestnut-haired vampire hit the ground with a clunk. Luke stepped to my side and put his arm protectively around my waist as the mirror-image was transformed under moonlight. Her deep blue eyes blurred to red and the curly hair morphed and changed color to the shade of the rare gray wolf...

A growl escaped the transformed animal's throat before it ran.

Luke's own low growling died away with the tenseness of his body. With no time to waste, Luke had grabbed my wrist and was walking me away from the area. Graveness was stitched into his features. "Get out as fast as you can." he commanded quietly.

I blinked up at him as he turned and scented the air. My head pounded with confusion, unfathomably.

"Now." he shot, looking back at me.

Finally able to move once his command pierced me, I did as instructed and rushed to find Daniel and Lucy, if they were still there. I looked around at the dieing rush of the last few people left fleeing the area. I stepped carefully over a couple fresh corpses and recoiled when I smelt the stench of their fresh innards. And then one thought occurred to me.

I didn't have a camera. It was the only thought in that moment and repeated. I don't have a camera. Frantically I looked around; I saw a disposable one lying in the hand of a thin old woman that littered the floor. I cringed when gazing at her blank face, mouth agape since her throat had been so disdainfully ripped from her. But I took her camera none the less.

Flashing a picture of it's holder, I looked around and caught images of several other bodies and blood trails that so grotesquely painted the scene into horror. After the cheap disposable thing ran out of film, I felt so utterly ridiculous for risking pictures, that probably wouldn't turn out anyway, when I should have been leaving with my life. Leave it to the photographer to put the picture before their life. My brain had worked this way for some reason I didn't understand yet, and wouldn't until I was out of this nightmare.

Then Lucy, like an angel from heaven, ran toward me. I didn't know exactly what she was saying, but her frantic voice seemed to lull away the beating in my head. She pulled me into the truck bed of Daniel's car and then screamed at Daniel to step on it.

"I'm fine." I told her, though she hadn't even asked the question yet.

"Luke?"

I looked around, not knowing myself where he was at. "He's fine." I told her. I felt like a daze; the screams and panic had been numbed from my hearing, and shock hadn't quite caught up with my body yet.

A shiver ran up my spine when a cold hand touched my back. Luke's silky voice assured Lucy he and I were fine and we all needed to get out. The blonde female wasted no time in agreeing and jumped into the passenger seat with Daniel before they, like the others in the lot, were speeding off.

The rush of cold air stung a bit, but that was ignored once I turned to look at Luke. His breathing was heavy, his face was tightened in agony as he held his side, which was soaking with blood. Words were caught in my mouth as I reached out and looked at the wound in his torso. My hand hesitated from touching his skin when he began shaking and jerked away from me. I looked into his eyes and they were the brightest shade of red; they enticed and startled me both at once.

But I knew I couldn't reach out to him. He shook violently and cringed this way and that as his body healed the thick wounds gashed in his side and along his arms and one thin slice over his hollow cheek. From the red of his eyes and the need behind them, I knew he wanted blood.

I swallowed slowly as I realized this and stared intently at the vampire and his actions. His eyes seemed to be following some invisible trail that led from my face down, along the muscles of my jaw, to the lines drawing him into my neck. My heart was thumping in my ears at a race faster than the truck as he fixed his eyes there on the veins within the skin and I stopped breathing again...

"Luke..." I said carefully. I almost regretted speaking when he didn't look up right away.

When icy met the sapphire, I took in a gasp of air and my heart softened in sound. His face fell and the intensity in his eyes seemed to die as he recognized fear on my face; fear of him, fear of death. I opened my mouth to ask him who that dreadful vampiress had been. The words didn't produce, only an image of the mirror images blood-soaked stance appeared in my mind.

He blinked, apparently understanding what question I had lingering on my tongue. "Her name is Courtney. Courtney V." His tone was indescribable, a mixture of regret, remorse, respect.

"Courtney V?" I repeated, slightly confused with the letter at the end. He stared me, looking as if he debated what he wanted to say next. A blank stare glazed over in his eyes, and he spoke in a low and subtle tone.

"The V stands for Vengeance."