Daughter of the Night

The slick, rain-drenched streets of the big city described my mood perfectly. Not only was I irritable from my lack of sustenance, but I hated letting my predatory nature dominate my movements, as I was doing now. Even though I didn't have anyone in my sights, the pedestrians were subconsciously avoiding me, almost if I had an invisible shield extending four feet in any direction.

As of the moment I was traveling at the typical New Yorker walking pace, aimlessly traversing the dark blocks. People flitted around the corners of my vision, which was tinted red around the edges at this point. My eyes were downcast so no one would catch the reflection of one of the street lights upon my irises, which I'm sure were flashing a dangerous shade of scarlet.

It was, truthfully, all I could do to put one black-booted foot in front of the other. The scents of blood and sweat rolling off of those people, the delicate tap-tap, tap-tap of their heartbeats, was enough to make me go insane. My jaw was clenched so tightly that I could hear my teeth grinding. My fists were clenched so hard that my claw-like nails cut into the palm of my skin. The pain didn't register, though, and neither did the skin break. It would take more than that to penetrate a vampire's skin.

I watched my feet, the hems of my black cape flutter around them. That's right, I did say black cape. As a vampire, one has uncontrollable urges to clad themselves in swaths of black cloth. I could never figure out why; I just did it. This cape was from long ago; it was practically as old as I was. And, like I, it endured. The silver chains clasping it together in the front gave me a dark, gothic impression, especially with my raven hair and black, silver-buckled boots. It was enough to keep people away from me, to keep them safe. But now, no one was safe.

I sharpened my ears, new sounds washing over me like a tidal wave. All sorts of sounds slammed into me, from the screeching tires of a tired taxi across the street to the nearest street vendor two blocks away, cursing vehemently in Italian at someone who had cheated him out of his two-fifty.

None of that was what I was looking for, though. My eyes slid into slits as i trusted my instincts not to lead me into the path of a runaway truck, not that I really had to worry about that. The thousands of sounds washed over me. I sorted through them, sifting, waiting and watchful, until...

There. The slurred shouts of a gang of drunks; the pounding fists, the muffled yells of an overwhelmed victim.

As silent as a shadow, I streaked upwards, my cape billowing out behind me. As I reached the end of my sprint, maybe four stories off of the pavement, I spread my cape/wings to either side of my body, willing myself to lose the weight that bound me to the earth. As light as a bird, my shadowy form streaked through the night, towards the sounds of the fight.

Humans were completely oblivious to my flight, seeing as my constitution was little more than a shadow. This was one of the bonuses a moonless night had to offer; form-changing drained hardly any strength. I passed silently over rooftops and alleyways before coming to the source of the noise. I heaved a sigh. Naturally, it was in an alley behind one of the toughest bars in Flat Iron. There was generally a barricade of policemen close by, but I realized this must be between their shifts.

All the much better for me, I thought, acting every inch like the monster I was before diving sharply into the alley. An onlooker wouldn't have seen anything more than a falling shadow.

The men looked up through a haze of alcohol as I slammed into the ground, solidifying the edges of my countenance into my true form. My black cape settled faithfully around me as I rose gracefully to my feet, ignoring the cracks my impact had left in the cement beneath my feet.

I surmised the situation through predatory eyes. The alley, entirely dark saved for a flickering alley light, had most definitely seen its share of bar fights, judging from the numerous bloodstains and knife gouges engraved into the walls and concrete. It was maybe fifteen feet wide and extended maybe thirty feet before halting at a barb-wired fence at least a story high.

The men I took into account in a heartbeat. There were eight of them, the smallest easily 250 pounds. The hugest was a giant, standing at probably six foot five and weighing in at 300 pounds. Several of the men had blood pouring out of their noses and a few more had black eyes, while one had a prominent limp and another was rolling around on the ground, clutching his goods. I could see knives glinting in the hands of the men, and i caught whiff of discharged gunpowder.

I zoomed in on the victim. Certainly not in the same weight category as his aggressors, I noticed immediately. The boy couldn't have been a day over twenty. Although he was balanced lightly on the balls of his feet like a fighter, he had blood streaming out of a gash on his arm and his eyes wereunfocused. I could smell another wound from his back, hopefully not a bullet wound. With my hunger on the brink of overtaking my rationality, this was a pretty bad situation.

"Get out," I said to the boy, my voice a snarl. The men winced at the savage undercurrent to my tone.

The boys eyebrows rose in surprise. "A girl?" he asked dubiously, swaying from surprise.

I bared my teeth in annoyance. Even in the dark, they couldn't miss the pearly glint of those extra-large canines. "Get. Out. Now."

The boy backed away from his assailants slowly. As he closed the distance between us, his fists came up in self-defense. "I shouldn't let a girl take over my fight," he said sluggishly, his mouth saying one thing while his body did the opposite.

At the end of my tether, I jerked my head towards him. My eyes, I knew, were blazing a murderous red. If he was any sort of human, he would be running for his life in a matter of seconds. "Now is not the time to let testosterone do your thinking," I rumbled, a deep growl building up in my chest. A few more seconds and this kid was about to be the victim.

Sure enough, he staggered back a few steps. Instead of running, though, he squinted at me dubiously. "I need to finish this!" he insisted. I could discern dark, spiked hair and bright green eyes over what might have been a handsome face if it wasn't swelling black and blue. His right eyebrow, I noticed, bore a piercing that glinted in the lamplight.

My control was at its end. My lips peeled back in a hiss, exposing my white teeth to their fullest. "Watch, then," I grumbled before turning to the men. Realizing from some instinctive feeling that they were about to fight for their lives in a dead-ended alleyway, the knives and the revolvers came out, not that they would do any good.

"Say goodnight," I hissed vehemently, my cape extending into wings on either side of my body, trapping the men into the prison that they had been in charge of only a few short seconds ago. In a whirl of black and red, I had taken down the first man with a clawed swipe of his head into the concrete wall. Sensing one behind me, i ducked and twisted, my heavy boot clipping him under his chin. Two more came at me and I leaped into the air above them, grabbed their heads in my hands, and slammed them together like eggs.

I looked on in anticipation at the blood drenching my hands, yet in the back of my mind I was crying. One man raised his gun to me from across the alley; I could see the determination in his drunken face. I narrowed my eyes at his gun, which on cue curled in on itself like a potato peel left in the sun. The shock on his face lasted only seconds before I reached him, my left hand shooting out for his tender throat. Suppressing the urge to bite into him then and there, I threw him at the opposite wall.

The others all went in similar manners. Within seconds, it was entirely over. Looking between the senseless men lying on the ground, I finally picked the closest one, pressed my lips against the pulsating vein at the base of his neck, and began to drink. My black cape cloaked my shoulders as I slurped blood from my victim, giving me comfort as I did what I hated most.

I hate who I am. Yet I can survive no other way, and end my survival I cannot. It is in this self-loathing fashion that I've lived for these past decades, leeching off of criminals and murderers and convicts and rapists. Yet, no matter what I do, the void in my heart ceases to fill.

After several long minutes and several victims, I stood from my meal, my thirst finally satiated. I knew that if I didn't wait so long between hunts, I wouldn't have to drink as much, yet I could never bring myself to do it more than I absolutely had to. Unlike some vampires I had met, I didn't revel the sensation of the hunt.

I turned to the alley entrance, sensing a presence behind me. Shocked, i realized it was the boy. Now that I had the monster reigned in and under control, I could afford to see why he had stuck around. I strode towards him, licking the blood off of my face and hands as I did so.

His eyes grew as big as dinner plates as I approached, yet he didn't back off. I wasn't sure if it was out of extreme bravery or extreme idiocy. Probably both, I finally decided. Halting before him so that my limp cloak swirled around me, I looked up into his dazed green eyes. Annoyingly enough, the boy was taller than I, although that wasn't really saying much since I was barely five foot seven.

"Why did you not run?" I asked of him, prepared for a shriek of terror and then the sight of his back as he ran away. Alas, that didn't happen.

"I...I mean...are you a...vampire?" he stumbled. I could see immediately that he wasn't running because his blood loss was too great. It was probably clouding his judgement, too, or else he would have been hoarse from screaming.

I knew I should have left instead of responding, but it had been a very long time since i had last upheld a conversation. As comfortable as I was with a life of solitude, I still craved company once in a while. And, truth be told, I was interested with this sprout who wasn't running. Something told me that his blood loss wasn't all of it.

I licked off a bit of blood on the tip of my ring finger before looking at him coyly with my red eyes. "What do you think?"

He swallowed nervously, his Adam's apple bobbing temptingly, although luckily I had just had my fill so I was in no mood to pursue that path. "I...think you're a..."

Before he could complete his sentence, he staggered forward, landing heavily upon me. Surprised, I easily supported his weight. I pushed him back up so as to help him regain his balance, but he simply toppled forward again. With a sigh, I realized that his breathing had slowed and that now I had an unconscious human on my hands. Great.

I looked around at the carnage I had left in the alley. Vampires aren't exactly subtle when they hunt, since their predatory natures take over too easily. If I was lucky this could pass as a skirmish between gangs, although being one of the undead my luck probably wasn't that good.

Exhaling through my nostrils, I hoisted the boy over my shoulder and leaped up onto the rim of the barb-wired fence, my boots and feet impervious to it's prick. From there i leaped up once more, managing to land on the roof of a building maybe several stories tall.

Reading one of the street signs below, I realized it would be a long way to the hospital.