Seraphilium

ONE

I was running through the streets of London with the wind whipping my elongated, black hair around my face. My weighty boots thudded on the pavement in time with my heartbeat. The adrenaline pumped through my veins allowing my speed to increase as though it had a mind of its own.
My sharp eyes zoomed in on a very petite looking young woman who just happened to be wandering the dreary alleyways of London, very much alone.
She had long brown hair and bright blue eyes. A spotted beach dress fluttered around her knees as she hurried through the alley. She looked over her shoulder as if to check  anyone was following her. It was amazing how vulnerable humans could be.
My victim was prowling in the shadows. I followed along almost as quietly, my heart drumming in my chest.
As I shifted my gaze back onto the young girl, I had a second’s lapse in concentration and my boots crunched on a pile of shattered glass. I winced when the sound echoed through the deserted alleyway; it seemed incredibly magnified, even for my sensitive ears.
The vampire whipped around so fast he looked like a blur of white. He immediately recognised me for who I was and seemed to forget about his prey. His black eyes narrowed in what I could only read as disgust. I felt my muscles in my legs tense up, waiting for his attack. It never came. Instead he started running in the opposite direction, well ‘running’ was an understatement considering his super-human abilities, but I had no trouble keeping up.
I pursued him through the labyrinth of streets, turning a sharp left and right on every corner until I was sure I could never retrace my steps.
He must have decided he wasn’t getting away so easily because the vampire hastily changed directions and leapt up onto a ladder that lead to the rooftop of a tall, red-bricked building, looming above me. I sped up, but by the time I got to the bottom of the ladder, he was already at the top.
Baring my teeth, I took the rungs three at a time, not bothering to be careful. I reached the top, vaulted over the raised bricks that bordered the edge of the building, and landed sure-footed onto the rooftop.
I stared at the figure straight ahead of me. Even though it was night time, I could easily make out his features. Wispy hair that looked like it was turning grey, deep black eyes that were filled with madness, and his skin glinting strangely in the moonlight, coming up a pale, yellowish-white colour. He had very dark rings under his eyes which indicated that he mustn’t have fed for a couple of days. Yes, he was a vampire. A pretty pissed off one too. I’d just interrupted his dinner, who wouldn’t be?
He eyed me warily.
I slowly pulled my sword from its sheath across my back and held it defensively in front of me.
He grinned. Okay, not what I was expecting.
“Think that’s going to save you, little girl?” he asked.
Honestly I didn’t know what I hated more, the fact that he was calling me a little girl, or when they started babbling at me. It never managed to distract me.
“Well that depends, considering how many vampires I have killed with this, I would believe the answer to be yes, don’t you?” I shot back at him.
“We can do this the easy way, or the hard way. It’s your choice. You can surrender yourself to death, figuratively speaking, or I can humiliate you in taking your head off following your pitiful attempts to take me out first,” I told him, analysing every bodily movement he made, including the slightest shift of weight from one foot to the other.
         His dominant foot shifted forward and he sprang at me with incredible speed, but I was just as fast. Dodging the attack, he flew past me and regained his footing easily. I spun around and landed a kick into his side, hoping to throw him off balance. I might as well have kicked a concrete wall for all the good it did me.
Spinning in a circle to build momentum, I lashed out with my sword in an upward motion, slicing a deep gash in his chest from the middle of his torso to and finishing just beneath his strained neck. And that’s when the blood started gushing out. Not his own blood, of course, but the blood he had drained from previous victims. He had lost his own long ago. My nose pinched at the smell of blood. I had never enjoyed the scent.
         He screamed in agony and his eyes blazed with pain glaring directly at me. He snarled,  showing his fully extended fangs, and I couldn’t help but shiver slightly. He had gone from slightly civilised to completely crazed in less than a few seconds.
Feinting to the left, he quickly changed directions and beat the sword out of my hand, catching me off guard. He showed his fangs and tackled me to the ground. When you have the smell of rotting corpses in your face, it really makes it hard to concentrate.
The vampire held up his wickedly curved nails and said, “I wonder if you bleed as easily as you talk, half-breed,” and slashed along my shoulder with two of his nails.
I yelled in pain and struggled as he leaned closer and closer towards my neck.
He wasn’t counting on me having a spare dagger hidden on the inside of my right boot. Like lightening, I pulled it free and shoved it straight through his heart, which is on the right hand side of their body, something that happens during the very excruciating change to become a vampire. I really don’t think there was anyone within a five kilometre radius who didn’t hear his scream of agony.
“There is no way I am becoming one of you,” I spat, staring into his eyes as the light in them slowly flickered and left.
His body slumped onto mine. Desperate to get away from the smell, I rolled him off me and stood up. I was spattered with droplets of blood.
It was closer to dawn now and I could hear the faint echo’s of a bird chirping softly in the trees below, the only sign then and there that assured me I lived on earth and not in hell.
I glanced down at the vampire I had just killed, well aware that he had once been human. I felt a lump rise in my throat at the thought.
I sighed and pulled out my lighter and a small bottle of oil, sprinkling it over his body and setting it alight with my zippo. It was best not to leave him there incase another human found him. It wouldn’t help their mental stability. Don’t be seen and destroy all evidence, that was what I was always taught. Being part of The Moonlight Guard has opened my eyes to some really strange things. Weapons, traditions and especially vampires. If I hadn’t been attacked at the age of ten by a vampire, I would never have known they existed.          
         As I walked briskly back to our base in the very heart of the city, I spotted the girl that I had saved from the alleyway. She was now walking along a graffiti-free suburban street with average looking apartments.
         “Hey!” I yelled out.
She looked over her shoulder and her eyes widened in shock and I wondered briefly what it meant.
l sloshed through deep puddles on the sidewalk until I reached her, grabbed her shoulder and swung her around to face me.
         “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she cried.
         My first reaction to seeing her up close was utter shock. She had the same shaped face as me, and something about the colour of her eyes reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t think who.
         “Oh, well I called out to you but you didn’t stop and I guess I just wanted to talk to you, that’s all. You realise you were being followed don’t you?” I asked her sceptically. I almost sounded like I was scolding her. Examining her she didn’t look much older than me, maybe one or two years at most.
         “Oh and you don’t think I knew that did you, Sasha? Please, I was just about to take care of the bloodsucker until you showed up and had to play the hero. I can take care of myself. Thank you for your concern but I really need to be somewhere,” and with that, she turned and started hurrying away.
I was so shocked that this girl knew my name, and that a human who wasn’t part of The Moonlight Guard actually knew about vampires.
         “Wait, who are you? How do you know my name?” I yelled at her.
         “It doesn’t matter how I know your name. What matters is that you should forget this meeting ever happened, head back to your house or wherever you live and in the morning, everything will be as normal as it ever is for you,” she said over her shoulder. “By the way, I’m glad I ran into you. I always wondered if your eyes were the violet that rumours said they were.” She gave me one last fleeting look and disappeared around the next corner.
         I didn’t have the heart to go after her, but as soon as she left it hit me. Her eyes were the precise colour blue of my mother’s eyes in the small amount of photograph’s that I have of her. I raised my hand to my shoulder and winced in pain as I stared at the corner of that building for an hour until the sun came up.