The Vampaneze Apprentice

Downfall

The Vampese eyes bored into her own and she could clearly see the insanity twisting and writhing in his eyes.

“Well. Were have you come from my little beauty?” He paused, and quickly shifted his eyes around, searching the room. He reminded Yana of nervous, twitchy wolf after a kill. “No matter. You will die like the rest of your ilk”

He reached down with his hand and quickly made a cut with his fingernails on Yana’s neck, just below her chin line. The cut stung, and Yana’s vampaneze-laced blood dripped down her neck. With horror Yana realised he was going to attempt to drink her blood as well. He probably didn’t know she was a half-vampaneze; her hair and skin looked normal enough.

Yana almost smiled to herself. Time to do something he wouldn’t expect.

Quickly, as he leered down at her, she snaked her arm up to the collar of his shirt, gripped the fabric and jerked her arm down and back with her new unnatural strength.

Yana felt a surge of satisfaction as the man was pulled head over heels, landing sprawled on her legs with a muffled thump.

Yana quickly kicked out at him, sending him rolling across the room, and scrambled to her feet.

The man snarled and rose off the floor like a rearing snake. Yana saw that she had ripped his shirt in the process of throwing him off and almost gasped as she saw the long puckered scar that curved up from his belly-button, across his chest and ended at his right shoulder.

It looked like a ghostly-white centipede that had crouched on his body to feed off his flesh.

Yerl had tried to gut this man like pig.

Yana briefly wondered why Yerl was taking such an interest in this human. Surely Vampaneze don’t have that many encounters with a single human, even if he was mad.

The man suddenly surged towards her, cutting off further thought. He was hobbling on one foot, possibly sprained.

Yana instinctively crouched, preparing her muscles for a fight, as she had done many times in the slums. As a woman, it was especially important to know how to defend yourself.

Just as the man was about to collide with her, and enter into the bloody scrap that would be sure to follow, the windows in the room suddenly exploded inwards, pieces of glass spiralling into the room. The man, half turned in surprise and collided into Yana.

His shoulder caught her in the throat, and for the second time in the last half hour, Yana fell to the floor with the Vampese on top of her.

Twisting around underneath him she desperately looked towards the windows and caught sight of a dark shadow flitting across the light coming from the window.

Yerl seemed to appear in the corner of the room, solidifying from the blur that time-alteration had made him. His purple skin blended in with the darkness of the room, and all Yana could see of him was a dark shape, with blood-red eyes staring from his face.

“Leave her, Myolit” Yerl spoke, showing his white teeth in the dark. “She is vampaneze. Her blood will kill you.”

The man, Myolit’s, eyes seemed to bulge in their sockets.

“Yerl”, he whispered. He quickly scrambled up from Yana and backed away, stroking the scar that marred his body compulsively.

“You won’t hurt me” he spat suddenly, contemptuously. “You can’t. You won‘t”

Yerl’s face tightened and he stepped forward, into the illumination from the window, through which the cold night air was now curling through, chilling Yana as she stood up slowly, watching Yerl approaching Myolit. They were now standing in a triangle shape, with Yerl closing the gap on Myolit.