Ana and Aneta, twins, looked at each other and grinned simultaneously. They had come seeking refuge with the Rogue coven only a few weeks back—escapees from an Occult in Slovakia. Prisoners of war. It had been one of the first outside of the Czech Republic invaded by the Regime, and turned into a ghetto. Valek had accepted them out of mercy when he’d seen their abused, emaciated appearances at his door—as though they hadn’t fed in weeks. Valek always seemed to be the angel of mercy, Lusian thought, which made his intestines twist. And though he found the twins slightly odd, he was glad to see new faces mixed in with the ones he was becoming steadily exhausted of looking at. Plus, it didn’t hurt that they were, in fact, twins. The thought made him flash a deviant grin in their direction, which they instantly returned, causing vengeful thoughts to sweep over the group from where Dusana stood at the back of the gaggle. Lusian grinned at her, happy to see his ex-partner squirm. They were no longer together after the coven had taken in the twins, and she noticed Lusian’s lustful thoughts. She had always been the jealous type. She sneered at him once more, and he stuck out his tongue.
Jorge continued, trying to reason with him. “Valek will be done with her soon. We just came from hunting—”
“Elven blood doesn’t fix this!” Lusian pointed a jagged finger to the center of his throat and clutched at his chest.
Dusana balled her hands up into fists at her sides. She whipped her head toward Sasha, frowning, the pewter piercings on either side of her lips pulling down in a judgmental frown.
“I’ll go,” Sasha said toward her, his voice baritone and booming in comparison to Jorge’s trilly one. His thirsty, black eyes seemed only a shade darker than his ebony skin.
“It is not smart. Who knows which members of the Regime are still out there? Every time one of us crosses that border, it’s another risk,” Jorge argued again.
He was edging on Lusian’s last nerve.
“Then what’s the point of us calling ourselves liberated?” Lusian formed air quotes around his head has he muttered the last word. He threw his arms up in the air. “We are
free
, aren’t we?”
“That is not the reality yet, and you know it! Valek insists we remain in hiding,” grumbled Dusana. She crossed her tattooed arms over her small chest. “I say we risk it. I’m sick of hunting for humans out here and finding only rats because we’ve sucked this countryside dry. If the surviving members of the Regime want a fight, I’ll gladly hand them one. We’ve beaten them once. I think we can do it again.”
“We
are
free, but it is true. There must be Elves seeking revenge out there! I don’t want to risk my neck for a meal when there’s an easy one just on the other side of these doors.” With an extended talon, Jorge indicated the barred entrance to the library.
Jorge was older than Lusian, and was able to maintain a little more control over his thirst. Lusian
almost
thought that to be a commendable attribute—almost, if the know-it-all Vampire weren’t so annoying.
“We need to convince Valek to let us at her again. We’ll keep her safe. Just like last time,” Sasha added.
The arid feeling was becoming overwhelming, beginning to crawl up Lusian’s throat and burn in his nose. The sloshy, thick sound of Charlotte’s heart throbbing just behind her rib cage, from the other side of the double doors, drove him deeper and deeper into a wild bloodlust.
“We agree,” voiced the twins in quiet synchronization in response to his mind. “Her blood smells divine.” They flashed their fangs once more in a wider grin as they answered Lusian’s thought about her
throbbing heart
. Lusian thought of it again and swallowed thickly.
“Maybe it
would
be better of Valek allowed her as our main source again,” Dusana continued. “When we can ensure that the rest of the Regime has been taken care of, we can go back to hunting out in the open, again.”
Behind closed eyes, Lusian imagined his claws ripping through the girl’s chest, just to taste it. How warm and wonderful it would be as it filled his frozen veins. He couldn’t bear it any longer and arguing about it was only making him thirstier. “That’s idiotic. Valek is never going to give over his precious little
Lottie
again. Whoever is afraid can stay here.
I
am hunting.” He gunned through the front door and out into the night.
The winter air barely stung at his skin as he raced down the cobblestone pathway and into the Occult town square. The night wasn’t cold to him. There was just a small shift in the way the air smelled to him when winter came, the way it frost prickled against the skin of his face when he ran. Back in South Africa, there was never any sort of shift in the air. It smelled the same three hundred sixty five days a year.
Snow, powdery and freshly fallen, flew up in little parting waves around his feet as he sped through it. He sensed Sasha, who caught up easily alongside of him. Ana and Aneta followed quickly after, moving at the exact same pace as each other, as though their minds were fused. Their story was an interesting one. He recalled their first night in the house as Valek and the rest of the coven listened to their memories. They were once Siamese twins, having been raised in an orphanage in their poor village because their biological parents probably didn't know what to do with them. That explained their strange sameness. They were stolen one night by a man they referred to as "the scientist". The truth was, he was nothing more than a Vampire gone mad, curious about what it would be like to transform two mortals conjoined. Lusian shuddered. The odd biology worked through their system, and when they woke again, they were separated, though forever mentally linked. Weird, but kind of hot.
“Where are we going?” Sasha’s voice was like a sonic boom over the rush of speed.
“Kojakovice is the next human village to the north. It’s small.” Lusian glanced behind to see that the rest of the coven had resolved to join them as well. Even Jorge decided to man up. Surprising. A good hunt was impossible for anyone to resist, even a self-righteous little know-it-all. Lusian grinned to himself before facing front, and racing even faster through the tunnel of trees. Finally,
he
felt like the coven leader. It was the way things should have been.
It was a moonless night in a sky blanketed by thick clouds that held the promise of more snow. He could see every indigo and navy detail of the forest around him, the lengthy trunks of the evergreens, and bristly foliage. Sasha roared behind him, a warning to any other Vampire in the area that they had claimed this hunting territory as their own. The sound of it sent a jolt of excitement up his spine. It aroused him, setting the tone for what they were about to do.
Several other minds infiltrated his, listening in, hearing his own thoughts echoed to himself. He was laying out the map for the rest of them, the picture of what Kojakovice looked like and how the homes and the taverns were set, the buildings so close together. It was an old, Bohemian town. No large buildings to scale. Just modest homes that had sat on the same, dusty hills for a hundred years and more. The group shoved through his head as they all studied the image of it, claiming homes, one by one, for themselves.
“This will be fun.” The twins smiled to each other.
“This is how we’ll have to hunt with our newfound
freedom
.” Lusian shot a look to Dusana before he continued, “Choose the small towns. The villages that will capture the least human attention. We have to be fast and leave absolutely no one behind. This is how Vampires were meant to hunt! With freedom. With darkness.” He concluded just as the entrance to the village appeared over the hill. “It’s time we reclaim what we really are. Children of the night. Monsters. Demons. Blood-feeders. I’m tired of this humanity crap. It wasn’t what we were designed for.”
The rest of the coven howled in agreement behind him, like a pack of banshees. He meant every bit of what he said. He was tired of acting with discretion. With Francis gone, and no threat to his existence, Lusian would be under no one’s thumb. Valek can shove it, he thought. He could never be what Valek was.
The entire town of Kojakovice was asleep, every house and tavern light turned dim. The coven stopped at the border of it, their thirsty eyes scanning for the first home they were to claim. It didn’t really matter how small this town was. Lusian and the rest knew very well this would show up in the mortal news tomorrow morning. An entire village dead because of some twisted serial killer. Perhaps a group of them. Angry at society, the government, their parents. Whatever explanation they would try so desperately to come up with. Lusian knew it was only a matter of time before the humans became aware—before they found out exactly what lurked in the shadows while they had been so daft and oblivious.
Dusana shot off first to the north. Lusian saw in her mind that she had claimed one of the smaller homes on the outskirts of town, near a cornfield on the edge of the main road. It was just her taste, set far back and away from the rest of the commotion to be brought by everyone else. When she was done with that house, she would move on to the farm house a few kilometers east.
The twins followed only milliseconds after her, though they flew to a clump of homes on the west side of town. Sasha and Jorge went next, until finally Lusian was the only one left standing on the lonely, cracked road.
He didn’t want to rush. The house he chose was very near, just one kilometer before him. He wanted to savor the first time in a long time when no one would be in charge of his hunt, when he could choose any throat he wanted, and no one could dictate. He closed his eyes and sucked in a long breath of the frosty air. It smelled so clean. He was ready for a heavier smell, finally, and he set off at a normal, human pace down the road again.
The ground beneath him made no sound from the impact of his footsteps. The street was silent. Empty. He could smell the waiting mortality over the crisp January air. The scent of it sat like oil on top of water. Thick. It invited him forward, and willingly he went until he was just before the locked door of the sleeping home.
He could hear their slight movements just on the other side of it. The people rolling in their soon-to-be graves. Their bodies winding around in their sheets and blankets. There was a man in the house. Middle aged. Medium height and build. He sleeps next to a woman, probably his wife, Lusian guessed. Her heartbeat was much faster than the man’s—naturally. The sound was bewitching, and drew him in like a snake to a charmer’s melody. Each pulsation was thick, wet, and sticky. It made his gums ache and his mouth water. Those would be the first two hearts he would silence. He counted two other pulses in the house as well. One belonged to another male. Much younger than the first. It sounded healthier, too.
He would go after that one last. It was the most appealing to him–athletic, and would satiate him the longest. The last pulse he counted was also female, and the youngest in the house. It belonged to a child.
Lusian couldn’t fight the grin that spread across his face as he licked his chops and kicked in the wooden door. Several panes of glass that surrounded it shattered with the impact and the house’s occupants startled awake.
The older man appeared, a fireplace poker clutched tightly in his right hand. “Who’s there?”
Lusian silently commended how fast the man had moved to protect his household. A pity his attempt would turn out to be so futile.
“I’ll call the police,” he warned again. “Show yourself!”
Lusian flew quickly from the shadows to tear into the man’s center with his talons. Blood spilled out over Lusian’s hand and about the floor. He could afford to waste a little now, and he’d always been fond of playing with his food. He sank into the man’s throat too fast for the human to even realize what was already happening to him, before he was drained and dropped to his knees. Lusian finished with him when he heard the wife’s blood-curdling scream from the bedroom threshold. She’d watched. The man’s empty body fell forward to the wood floorboards with a thud and Lusian raced toward the woman.
As he sank into her neck, securing her to him from behind, his other hand covering her mouth, he heard the muffled scream of the little girl. The younger male had tried to stifle the noise in an effort to keep her hidden and safe in the other room. Lusian didn’t even bother to finish off the mother. The scent of the younger ones beckoned too strongly and he knew she was near death anyway.
Lusian dropped the woman and moved stealthily to a locked bedroom door and chuckled darkly. He scoffed. Like a mere brass lock would do anything to keep him out. He leaned in to listen to the little girl’s whimpering, and her brother’s staggered breathing next to her as he tried to calm and quiet her. They were under the bed. Lusian didn’t even need his acute hearing to know that. The heat emanating off their bodies and the thermal trail they left was enough to find them.
Lusian punched as easily through the wooden door as he would have if it were crafted of cardboard. He reached for the door handle to unlock it. The girl screeched and the young male jumped out from his hiding place under the bed, with his arms outstretched wide, in a final attempt to protect his little sister.
“Please.” His voice was even, his stance almost a little threatening.
What a brave human
, Lusian thought. Nothing like the sniveling cowards Lusian had come across in the past. “Please, you can have anything you want. Just let her go. You can kill me. Just let my sister go.”
In that moment, Lusian discovered something further about this strange mortal. He cocked his head slowly to one side as he continued to study the human’s features. He began to laugh. An uncontrollable bellow exploded from him as he threw his head back and guffawed. If he were capable of producing normal tears, they would have begun rolling down his face, he was laughing so hard. The human was watching him with the uncommon mix of hatred and curiosity. What an interesting occurrence, Lusian thought. All the more reason to kill this person.