Fantasy Vampires(closed)

[Mikotsuhime]

“Somehow I get the feeling you don’t do much planning on these little hunting trips of yours,” Eric muttered dryly to Bram, because ‘get in kill them and then get out’ did not seem like a very good plan.

“Last disappearance was a week ago. Little girl, haven’t found her body. Nobody has any idea as to any kind of motive in this case, but then nobody but Isaac was actually seriously considering vampires, so.” He shrugged his shoulders as they parked the truck and got out.

He had a lot more questions, really. For one thing he was not sure how on board he was with murdering strangers without a trial, but he also highly doubted that he could arrest a vampire and put them in prison the way he could a regular person. He also had no idea what /he/ was supposed to do after all this, because he was feeling thirsty and antsy again, but he had a feeling that bringing it up would only cause problems rather than fixing them.

 

[Canth]

Meredith frowned. A whole week ago. Three or four vampires working in one area would not be satisfied with one person per week. And, considering they were taking enough to be noticed, they were not being conservative for the sake of not getting caught. Not to mention the change in the victims: starting with men, and now moving to young girls. If Eric had not been turned so recently, she might even think he was the cause of the sudden shift.

She dropped from the truck when they came to a stop, glancing left and then right as she shut the door gently behind her. It was dark, and quiet, save the sound of lazy waves lapping against the shore not far away and the lively chirp of crickets. She moved around to the front of the truck, finding the small shed Eric had mentioned. She looked down at the glass vial, giving it a shake. The ashes floated back and forth, and a soft orange glow emanated from within, remands of the fire that had created them.

“She’s still here,” she confirmed. She hesitated, and then glanced over at Vlad.

“Any chance this chick’s been making a whole family of baby vamps…? Most established vampires know better than to draw so much attention to themselves…I wonder if your boy here’s not the first she’s turned.” In her limited experience, Meredith had found that newly-turned vampires were often more of a handful than experienced ones. They were hungry, confused, and saw any and everything as a threat.

 

[Reynarda]

“Well, you don’t really need plans.”

“Yes, you do,” Vlad said. “My plans are the only reason your lack of planning has not killed you.”

Bram ignored him. Mostly because he figured it was true and didn’t really feel like arguing otherwise. He got out and walked around the truck.

“Do we need anything? Extra knives? I might have silver bullets, if worse comes to worse. Vlad? Do I have any left?”

“You have six, I think, with the revolver.”

“That’s in the false bottom, though.” He shrugged at Eric. “If you want a gun with silver bullets and don’t want to know about the false bottom with weapons, you might want to turn around.”

Vlad, for his part, just folded his arms across his chest and watched Meredith. He still did not trust her, despite the help she had been. And the undergarment-ashes were decidedly weird. When she addressed him, he shrugged.

“That has been the assumption I have been operating under. Currently I am trying to decide if she purposefully turned a police officer or it was random. I also would not be surprised if they were keeping some of the missing humans as blood cattle.” He shot Eric an apologetic look as it was not a polite term, and he figured Eric was the most human and newest to such things. “Otherwise, I am honestly not sure to think.”

 

[Mikotsuhime]

Eric snorted through his nose, clearly unimpressed.

“We’ve already crossed the line for illegal activity tonight, I’m pretty sure nothing you do could make it worse,” he pointed out, but he did turn around anyways. Unfortunately turning around brought him to facing Meredith and Vlad and the conversation that the two were having, which was not one that he was particularly keen on.

The idea that he might have been an accident of sorts was disturbing enough, but worse than that was the idea that this woman could be doing what she did to him to others. To /kids/. When Vlad called them cattle he ended up glaring at him, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Those are /children/.”

 

[Canth]

Meredith nodded. “I’m gonna go ahead and assume she knew what she was doing.”

Eric was hard to miss, and unless the chick was that incredibly dumb (or naive), then Meredith figured t was safe to bet she had turned Eric on purpose. Maybe she planned on setting up shop long-term and wanted someone on the inside to help sweep away the occasional disappearance or murder. Or—and this was maybe less likely but it was smart to consider all the angles—maybe she knew hunters were in town and planted the cop for the sole purpose of luring them all here to this random-ass boat launch for some sort of vampire ambush. The first was more appealing than the latter, though neither really concerned her. She had walked into her fair share of traps in her lifetime—sometimes a girl had to walk into a trap or two to get what she wanted. Either way, this was proving to be less of a bore than she had originally anticipated.

When Eric spoke up, obviously offended, the former witch cocked a brow.

“That didn’t seem to bother your kind when they were setting young girls on fire.” Really, people could be so sensitive.

 

[Reynarda]

Bram shrugged and unlocked the false bottom. He didn’t really care. This was vampire hunting. Vampires didn’t operate by human laws, so those who hunted them often had to stray outside human law. That was just how it was. You couldn’t bring a vampire into a court and accuse him of eating people. So you had to kill him without a trial. And you couldn’t cross national or state lines with weapons, and you couldn’t hunt without weapons, and some of his weapons were not strictly legal for civilians, so he had to have a false bottom. That’s just how it was.

Vlad inclined his head. “I understand that, officer. And I am sorry. What I am saying is that she and whoever else may be keeping them alive to feed on as she gets hungry. If it makes you feel better, such practices are illegal.”

Bram closed the false bottom and locked it. Joining them, he asked, “Who the hell is burning little girls?”

“I believe she is referencing the many, many witch trials. She is being kind and leaving out the part in which those involved tortured confessions out of supposed witches. The fact that they burned so well suggests that they were not witches at all.”

“And on that sobering note,” Bram said, as if that was the most sobering thing Vlad had said in the past five minutes, “here’s a gun, Eric. It’s loaded with silver bullets. Even if you shoot one, make sure I cut its head off. I am not making the same mistake again,” he added, nodding to Vlad, who grinned. “You got enough knives?”

“I have two and will most likely end up with several of yours,” the vampire replied.

Bram nodded. “Okay, then. We ready to slay some vampires?”

 

[Mikotsuhime]

Vampire legality was a concept that was still foreign to Eric, so hearing the term from Vlad didn't really help put his mind at ease. Meredith's comment didn't help matters either, and when he got over his initial confusion of what she meant, he glowered at her.

"That was hundreds of years ago," he pointed out harshly. "And it doesn't change the fact that those people in there are /kids/ they're not a food source or cattle or whatever the hell you want to call it."

His anger was simmering and his teeth were hurting again, so he quickly took a deep breath to try and calm himself down. He took the gun from Bram with a frown, because really, silver bullets? But he figured that he understood this whole thing better than he did, so he'd follow his lead on this one.

He nodded his head to the shed, that was just peeking out through the treeline along the beach, maybe half a klick from where they were standing.

"Well, there it is."

 

[Canth]

Meredith’s eyes narrowed at Eric. She was not planning to get into an argument on morality with this man, but he was stepping into territory he had no right to discuss. Meredith was not the best example when it came to right versus wrong (she was probably one of the worst), but even a witch understood the value in all life. The argument that such atrocities had happened one hundred years ago was both invalid and false. Meredith herself had been the witness to the death of many a young witch—witch hunters showed little restraint or prejudice when it came to her kind. A witch, no matter how young or small, was evil and would meet their destiny sooner or later if it were not for those self-righteous sons of bitches. Perhaps a tad hypocritical considering Meredith’s new profession, but she never took it so far as to murdering young potential witches. She reserved her anger for those directly responsible for her fall.

“He was only being technical. Everyone is a food source to someone. To assume a child is outside such parameters is foolish. I don’t care if you’re fresh into this world and still experiencing the growing pains of a young vampire, your prejudice is unwarranted and inexcusable.” She was not intentionally trying to defend Vlad, and she had a feeling he did not want her to anyway, but Meredith had little tolerance for the intolerant.

Deciding she had said enough on the matter, and still not wanting to waste her time arguing with someone who would most likely not hear a single word she said, the former witch turned her eyes on the shed.

“More than ready,” she rolled her shoulders back, drew in a breath, and took the lead. The sudden flare of anger was enough to fuel her, and she channeled it towards relieving vampires of their heads.

 

[Reynarda]

Vlad had, of course, noticed the narrowing of Meredith’s eyes, but he was more than a little surprised when she explained his breach of human protocol by referring to someone as food. He held his hands up in a placating gesture as the tempers of both parties flared, but the former-witch was already stalking away, taking the lead. Vlad was glad that he was not going to have to pull a witch off a baby vampire, but he made a mental note to have a vampire ettique talk with Eric.

Bram shrugged and followed after Meredith. He would have preferred to take the lead as he didn’t know her experience level, but she had a set to her shoulders that said trying to take the lead would not go well for him.

Vlad fell into his usual spot just behind Bram’s left shoulder, flicking a knife from inside his sleeve.

“Watch baby vamp,” Bram instructed Vlad in a poorly-executed whisper.

Vlad made an irritated sound in the back of his throat. He was not a babysitter.

“You gonna kick the door down?” Bram asked hopefully as he drew knives from his pockets. From where he was standing, she looked like she could kick a door down.

 

[Mikotsuhime]

Eric was getting really tired of being called ‘baby vamp’, but more than that he did not like Meredith’s tone. She didn’t care a bit that these were kids, just kids, being used as what... some sort of food source? Before he could help himself he felt his lip curling back into a snarl, though the second he realized what he was doing he quickly covered his mouth with his hand and turned away.

He did follow after the group towards the shed, gun at the ready, but when Bram asked Meredith if she was going to kick the door down, he found himself rolling his eyes. This wasn’t some action movie.

The decision seemed to have been made for them, however, when the door to the shed opened on its own, a young woman in her mid twenties standing there and looking decidedly unimpressed.

“Is this you hunters’ idea of a sneak attack?” She asked blandly, clearly unimpressed. “Because I could hear you coming a mile off.”

 

[Canth]

Meredith came to the shed and eyed the door for a second, taking Bram’s words into consideration. Before she could make a move however, the door opened inward to a young woman who Meredith instantly decided she did not like.

“Honey, please, the last time I needed a sneak attack, I was five.” She looked the woman up and down, taking in her size and weight and coming up with a few ways to end her, some quick for an emergency, others much slower and more fun. “Now, before we get this party started, for housekeeping sake, is this your trash?” She jutted a thumb back at Eric, having dropped any semblance of civility towards him the moment he thought he could tell her to forget about the hundreds of thousands of young child witches (and humans) who had lost their lives to his kind.

 

[Reynarda]

Vlad would have liked to inform everyone present that if a sneak attack had been his plan, he would not have brought those three idiots. However, Meredith was calling people trash and being rude, so Vlad slipped to the front of the group, the knife returned to its hiding spot.

“Good evening,” he greeted as if he had knocked politely on the vampiress’ suberban home. “Actually, we are here to inquire if you were aware you have a new fledgling.”

That was not at all the reason they were there, and Bram wasn’t putting away his knives just so Vlad could do his talk-to-the-enemy thing. He didn’t know why the vampire bothered, because the enemy inevitably tried to kill him regardless or he said something condescending and then they tried to kill him.

“As a representative of the Council—“

Bram tried but failed to keep a snorting laugh from escaping.

“—it is my duty,” Vlad continued as if there were not an obvious hunter, a former witch, and a baby vampire behind him, “to inform you that turning humans without their consent is illegal.”

 

[Mikotsuhime]

The vampire in the little shack raised her eyebrows at Vlad, looking supremely uninpressed by his act, while Eric lingered awkwardly behind. He did not appreciate being called trash by any means (he didn’t even understand /why/ Meredith was so pissed at him, suddenly) but he was far more focused on something more important than his ego.

“Where’s the kids?” He asked gruffly, and the young woman snorted through her nose.

“Yes, that is my trash,” she said with a roll of her shoulders, completely ignoring Eric’s question. “I was hoping nobody would find him before he snapped.”

She pouted a little, clearly put out, and Eric found himself actually growling at her.

“/Where’s the kids/?” He asked again, and again she ignored him to turn to Vlad, tilting her head to the side innocently.

“Oh my, I didn’t know the council was doing hunting work these days. That kind of goes against the purpose, doesn’t it?”

Eric was going to kill her. He leveled the gun at her, and she looked at him as though he were gum on the bottom of her shoe.

“Relax, your kiddos aren’t here. And if you kill me, you won’t ever find them.”

 

[Canth]

Well, she was a confident little thing, wasn’t she? How old was she anyway? Meredith wanted nothing more than to knock the smugness off her face, finding herself rather worked up all of the sudden. Was it Eric’s dismissal of her kind’s suffering? Was it the fact that she had aligned herself with two vampires and a hunter out of extreme boredom? Was it because this chick was not as nervous as she should be? Or maybe it was just because it had been at least five days since Meredith had killed something and she had grown anxious at the thought. She decided to go with that one.

“Oh, for feck’s sake,” she turned pointed eyes on Bram as she waved an impatient arm at the vampiress in the doorway. “I thought we came here to kill the bitch, not smack her around with the vampire law book.” Really, she had expected more of them. At least of Bram. He seemed tame compared to most other hunters she had come across; for one, he had aligned himself with the very thing he hunted. But still, she had been promised blood. She had even allowed Eric to live in exchange for this woman’s head. She was not opposed to the occasional conversation, but this had become ridiculous. They should have jumped her the moment she opened the door.

 

[Reynarda]

Vlad smiled. “If you think the Council doesn’t hire hunters to deal with problem vampires, you don’t know them.”

Vlad had a lot more questions. Like, what was she thinking hoping Eric would “snap”? And didn’t she know that hunting children was technically illegal—as per the agreement with the Guild—and why on earth had she hunted children?! But Meredith interrupted him before he could even open his mouth.

Bram noticed Meredith’s look and sighed. She didn’t have to live with a sulky vampire if she interrupted him while he was attempting to find a non-violent solution. He agreed this was ridiculous. It wasn’t like they could arrest her and drag her back to the Council. The Council didn’t care about giving some nameless vampire a fair trial. But Vlad was determined to try. Probably for the sake of information more than anything.

Vlad shot Meredith a look and thought about telling her that rules kept them from being in the public eye and getting slaughtered, but Bram tensed behind him.

She was dismissing the lives of children. Bram advanced on the vampire, his knife still in his hand. Vlad dug his heels in but just ended up gut pushed in front of his larger companion until he was uncomfortably close to the other vampire.

“We don’t need you alive to find those kids. You tell us right now, and we might leave you alive.”

Vlad sighed. Bram had no negotiating skills.