Heldor pulled out a Bowie knife that had previously been sheathed to his calf, ran after the beast, ducking several fast, whipping motions of its jaws and horns by dropping to the floor and sliding. Using the momentum which he'd thrown into the slide, he jabbed the tip of the blade into the first carotid artery. The blood gushed. As the stream fell back on the creature's face, so it blinded him in the right eye. Heldor used that blind spot to come up on it and target the carotid artery on the other side of its neck. With both geysers flowing, the creature's range of vision was even more curtailed, even if he hadn't slowed much. The geysers were rapidly dwindling in force, and he didn't think it was on account of the creature running out of blood. More like rapid clotting mechanisms; definitely a cool adaptation.
Heldor jumped on its back, and repeatedly plunged the knife into its eyes, one, then the other, twisting both times.
Now completely blind, the creature paradoxically expanded its radius of destruction. Not seeing anymore, it was enough to charge any direction from which sound was coming. Heldor's own scant weight had yet to be detected by the beast. Instead he just took out some more tavern regulars. As it turned out, he didn't need his deadly jaws at all. All he had to do was tackle them sideways to turn them into paste against the wall, as if the proprietor had taken a sudden liking for Jackson Pollock inspired paintings, providing they were done in blood and guts.
Heldor crawled his way under the beast, using his matted fur for handholds until he was in position to make a go for its heart. Jabbing between the ribs with the knife forcefully and quickly-using those enhanced reflexes, which weren't exactly Damian good, but still pretty good-he got the heart out, watched it beat in his hands. Feeling triumphant, he was soon made the fool. The creature must have had two hearts, not one, as all it did was detect the intruder on his person which had previously gone unnoticed. And that wasn't good news for Heldor.
The creature flung him off and against the wall so hard that Heldor was impaled on one of the hooks meant for hanging things other than live meat.
Damian moved in the blink of an eye to position himself between Heldor and the beast. It was the first time he'd demonstrated that this was anything more than an amusing sideshow for him. Damian's hypnotic eyes slowed the creature, making him sluggish, but only slightly less temperamental.
"Little help here?" Heldor moaned.
"What do you think I'm doing?"
"Trying to hypnotize a creature with no eyes."
"It's more of a mind meld thing."
"Hook in back, not good for the living," Heldor managed somewhat breathlessly.
Damian glanced back at him.
"Look on the bright side; now everyone has to look up to you."
Heldor, impatient, used his legs to put Damian's neck in a scissor's hold, snapped his neck, as he used the leverage to lift himself off the hook and back onto the floor.
Damian un-snapped his neck. "Your friendly embrace leaves something to be desired."
The beast lunged for Heldor, pinned him to the ground, drooling. The cavity of its fanged mouth was larger than Heldor's head.
"I bet you wish you'd stayed where you were now, with that hook in your back."
Damian continued speaking, this time in his spell casting voice, in what sounded like Liturgical Latin, his words every bit as hypnotic as his eyes. The beast struggled to shake it off as if hit by chloroform, then bounded through the opening it had made earlier into the forest.
The locals wasted no time hammering boards over the gaping hole where once there was a door, pulling the planks right out of the floor. The innkeeper kept no shortage of tools on hand-usually meant to mend the busted furniture, not the busted walls.
Damian fussed over Heldor's wounded back, mumbling words of magic.
Heldor pushed him back. He hated to admit it, but he did feel better. For once, Damian's reflexes, working faster than Heldor's nervous system had time to react so he could object, might have saved his life. What felt like a lethal wound earlier, now felt more like a bad backache. "I'll live."
"That's doubtful. You sure you don't want me to turn you?"
"Nice try, blood sucker."
Damian's tone was suddenly less cavalier. "You'd be surprised what you can get over in two hundred years, and what you can't-like the absence of good company."
Heldor flinched as Damian's last remark struck a nerve. "Your hypnotic abilities clearly aren't what they used to be."
"Clearly."
Heldor threw him a nasty look. "You're the deep thinker. Figured out what the hell's going on around here yet?"
"I thought you were sure it was me, and that's why you came to kill me."
Heldor did a double take. "Christ, you're psychic, too?"
"What better for the greatest of hunters but the most impossible of prey?"
"You remember that when I turn on you."
Damian smiled ruefully.
"You don't seem so thrilled to find out I've put the idea of killing you on the back burner for the next five minutes."
"I like being the baddest bad ass in town. These creatures are cramping my style." Damian morphed. Space and time undulated about him as if he were no more than a mirage in the desert created by the heat. The ripples subsided once the transformation was complete.
He lifted off the ground, in part on his levitating abilities, and in part on the wind tossed up by his vampire wings. As for his residual humanity-well, let's just say, the humanoids adapted to living off world were suddenly looking a lot more endearing-and a lot more human. Transformed, Damian was utterly terrifying, and the locals and off-worlders, both backing off, acted more afraid of him than any hell beast the nexus could queue up.
The leathery wings spread out made him more than twice as wide as he was tall. The wings themselves tapered at the bottoms into three spikes that looked like lethal weapons in and of themselves. Even hovering just six feet off the ground, he filled much of the unoccupied overhead space of the bar. The leathery wings and skin looked nearly as rugged as the bony protuberances undergirding the wings and body, and nearly as impenetrable. But what really made him more than Hell's butterfly was the head; the way all that evil came together in the pointy ears and recessed eyes, the hairless dome with recesses in his cranium as if his brain were just growing in the regions related to enhancing his predation. And no description of his makeover would be complete without a word or two about the eyes. It wasn't their blackness and the sense of the abyss staring back at you-that was just the appetizer. It was the keenness of the eyes, as if the mind of the predator was working a hundred times faster than yours. You might escape the reach of his wings, but you would never escape the mind behind the eyes. Assuming you hadn't already turned to stone just looking at him, and still had your faculties about you, no prey was eluding this guy.
He climbed the wall, using the bony ends of his wings as grappling hooks, reached the cowboy with the broken spine, bit him at the neck in a perfunctory manner. His saliva was enough to reanimate the man, even if he was still paralyzed. When Damian started feeding off his blood as much as his screams, that's when all guns went to him. But no one fired. No one dared. It was a last line of defense amid the hopeless.
Damian drank the man dry. Heldor had never seen a corpse so white-especially one that was still living. Damian changed the secretions in his salivary glands yet again, and with a final perfunctory bite, the cowpoke turned to dust.
He flew through the gaping cavity where the door once was, right through their makeshift patch job, everyone's weapons on him the whole time-including Heldor's.
Taking a look around, Heldor was surprised at how few had actually exited the bar by way of the nexus now that it seemed to be operational again, with the odd traveler bleeping out here and there. Apparently, where these remaining life forms hailed from, these disturbances weren't quite so perturbing. Then again, he'd already guessed that was why most of them were here, for Thresdar's unique sense of ambiance. Fewer still seemed interested in patching the door this time, since the creature appeared to be long gone. And absolutely no one could be bothered with the dead bodies, resuming their games amid the fallen.
The innkeeper was already dragging the corpses one at a time at the end of some grappling hooks into the stone well in a corner of the bar, once used for water, since converted into a body dump. He sprinkled lye on top of each one before dragging in the next body. The recent modification to the concept of good inn-keeping was yet another sign of the times.
Heldor sidled up to the bar, poured himself a drink.
The burly bartender, Kryster, looking old enough to be his father, grabbed him by the scruff, lifted him off the ground, and shook him. "That vampire said he put some enchantment spell on this place, make it safe from these hell beasts."
"Well, I'm guessing he's just a little off his game." He belched. "That, or they're evolving faster than he is. Now, put me down. You've used up my quota of kindness to strangers for this lifetime."
Kryster, finished sizing up Heldor, gulped, set him down, and watched him trudge toward the door. "When you gonna kill that vampire?" he shouted after him.
Heldor stopped, turned. "Damian's something far scarier than any vampire, even a very old one. He's used his time well to hone his magic. He's more warlock now than vampire. But the answer to your question is-the second I don't need him anymore."
He pranced through the still gaping cavity to the outside.
Kryster snorted. "With friends like you, who needs enemies?"