Fools.
All of them.
If they didn’t try to become us, they would go to any lengths to snuff us out.
I just so happened to live next to the rowdiest bunch for the next sixty odd years or so.
Personally, I’d exhausted all the typical New Year resolutions fickle humans made and a few others my well-meaning brethren tried and failed. I’d spent the better part of the last two centuries amassing a fortune and art to make the Hermitage weep and the MoMa look like child’s play. My attic was a treasure trove Interpol would love to get their hands on. Jewels from Queens, lost relics the Church would send Templars to recover, and art stolen in the midst of Wars. There was nothing I couldn’t acquire or hadn’t touched, and yet it left me unsatisfied.
I stood at my window, peering between the thick velvet drapes watching the full moon, round and plump in the sky glowing a bright white. Not a single cloud marred its beauty even with the crisp scent of snow in the air.
I bet the werewolves loved this shit.
The grandfather clock would strike midnight in fifteen minutes and then the howling would begin. New Yorkers would brush it off as coyotes, blame sound pollution from New Jersey, or some such nonsense. By morning, all would be forgotten as if it hadn’t happened at all. Hangover brunches would be the prelude to a new work week. Their naivety made me crack an ageless smile judging the never-ending cycle. I moved to sit back in my chair in front of the crackling fire when I heard it.
My head cocked closer to the direction of the window and listened as a pit unfurled in my abdomen. Rank and acid like, I hadn’t felt this way since before my turning. It was the anxiety of fear reflected in pure sound. A sharp sour scent burned in my nostrils as the ribbon of doubt honed my attention toward the window whence it came.
A faint whimper.
A terrified plea.
A cry for her life.
My super speed had me sprinting out the front door of my mansion, the door swinging wide open and onto the sidewalk before I could stop myself and think this through. Chilled air made puffs of fog as I breathed in the ice and exhaust of a taxi that sped by as I dashed into the grove of the park. I sniffed the air to find my quarry. Wet rust stung my nose and my canines descended hungry and lustful. Fresh blood had been spilled. I fingered the leaf of a tree and tasted the spatter.
Female.
Young.
Vibrant.
Nature called to me and I answered back moving closer. The cry came again and I had a decision to make in that moment. I didn’t have to intervene. I shouldn’t intervene. If I’d learned anything from living for over five hundred years it was better to let nature take its course. Predators hunted prey, it was the balance of things, even if innocents payed the price. It was probably some woman, girl maybe, who led on her lover with her inexperience of things. He probably felt he was owed some compensation for an expensive dinner, a gift, the glamour of his false attentions.
I should walk away.
I turned to leave resolute in severing my ties to this sad situation. A vampire didn’t survive this long saving every Mary Sue we came across from a rapist. Good girls should know that nothing good happens after eleven o’clock at night, especially in a city that never sleeps. It wasn’t blame, I viewed it as common sense. I was the worst predator out there, and this was prime hunting time.
That damn cry came again piercing my eardrums.
I clenched my fists as my nails cut into my palms.
I rolled my eyes and cracked my neck cursing my eternal damnation sprinting like lightening toward the source. Comic book characters had nothing on me. I found the clearing easy enough within the woods of the park. Two men cornered a woman. Her jacket torn, blood seeped from a wound in her chest. A wicked knife protruded from her breast just above her delicate heart. The blood pumped gushing from the wound. I scanned the clearing for others as moonlight reflected off her assailants’ eyes. They moved and my instinct to chase, hunt, and kill overrode my logic. I grabbed them both, but my eyes never left the terrified face of the girl who slid down the boulder behind her as she watched me drain their blood.
They tasted awful, of drugs and disease making me spit out their worthless crimson life force to the dirt. Disgusting what degenerates did to themselves. I made quick work of them doing less feeding and more ravaging slicing skin from bone. I chuckled and gurgled on blood thinking how the police would report this one. It had been a while since an animal attack occurred in the park and I contemplated dropping them off at the zoo. The tigers could use more protein in their diets anyway.
I tossed their bodies about ten feet away easily. The girl whimpered, weak, and paralyzed locked inside a world of terror. I felt
