Arthur’s first hunt alone was a lot more thrilling, and a lot more nerve wracking than he thought it would be. After a few days of not eating, there was a tingling feeling in his gut was telling him he needed to go out and drain some poor bastard. It felt a lot like when he’d not eaten half the day when he was mortal. So, he complied. Most of his time was spent around Glasshill recently, so he decided to take a walk around the neighborhood and get to know it a little better. The commercial park itself was upscale. It had a large underground parking garage and about six skyscrapers all clustered together in their own little village.
There were a number of restaurants and even a food court positioned strategically around the area. On first arrival it had seemed like a great place to be. But none of it much stood out to Arthur anymore. He had quickly lost any kind of desire for regular food or drinks. Coffee shops, bakeries, his favorite burger joint had all lost their appeal. So, he explored the area on foot, looking out specifically for places that were open at night, attracted big crowds, and were loud. Nightclubs stood out. Music venues. Some restaurants with dance floors. From his observations, it turned out that people were willing to walk into secluded areas alone more often than one might think, so he wasn’t short for choice. But still, knowing his surroundings was always something he considered useful.
As he was walking around a street that had two restaurants, a club and Walmart on it, Arthur noticed somebody walking alone. His years of experience tailing people as a cop came in handy as he stalked the man unnoticed, about twenty feet behind him. As Arthur was following, he realized he had been subconsciously picking out details of the person. Hair color, length, gait, what kind of clothes he was wearing. He realized that he was doing this by habit; a means of humanizing whoever he was following after, a rationale meant to justify and remind him that the criminals and victims he had to deal needed to still be treated like humans. However in this case, it just made him feel gross, and creepy. He didn’t want to think of his next meal as a living, breathing human with a family, goals and desires. But he couldn’t help it, and before he knew it the man had already turned and entered a corner shop, the door opening at his presence with a ding.
Arthur sighed. This was a bit more difficult than he thought it’d be. Jumping two coke-heads in a bathroom didn’t feel like that big of a problem. Following someone down the street did. He wanted to go find a nightclub again, but Persephone had told him he should practice his hunting by going after more difficult targets. According to her, that would not only help him develop his Potential but also help him determine just how exactly he liked to feed. Apparently most vampires had a preferred method that they excelled at, just like any other skill. Brute force, seduction, trickery. It was a difficult thing to figure out, because it seemed like no matter how you spun it, you were still taking advantage of someone without their consent.
Arthur turned on the street to head the other direction and felt someone collide into him. A woman fell backwards onto the pavement. Arthur’s brain was telling him that he should have stumbled, but realized his body had barely moved at all. He knew he hadn’t been that sturdy before, so it must be on account of his new, heightened physical abilities. As he looked down at the woman and she looked up, he realized she was scattered, trying to pick up the contents of her purse now all over the pavement. Arthur bent down to help.
“Oh, uh, hey. Sorry about that,” Arthur said, leaning down and offering a hand.
The woman was probably a few years younger than him, dressed like she was going out for the night. “No problem,” she said, standing with his help. She smiled at him. There was a strange feeling in between wanting to ask her on a date, mixed with wanting to drive his fangs into her thin neck. It was a strange feeling.
“Uh, have a good one,” Arthur said awkwardly and shuffled past her. He didn’t turn around to see what her reaction was, making his way around the corner of the block as fast as he could. “Jesus,” he muttered to himself, embarrassed. He certainly wasn’t going to seduce anyone tonight. Arthur sighed, standing alone on the street trying to figure out exactly how he was going to survive night by night if he felt moral qualms every time he got hungry.
The next twenty minutes was spent mostly treading up and around the same area wondering if he could just steal blood bags from the nearest hospital. That was until a group of five people were passing by him, laughing and chatting, clearly having already had their night out and now returning home. As they passed Arthur ignored them, but loudly overheard them saying goodbye to each other. He glanced over his shoulder, and the group was splitting up into two different directions. Three kept going the way they came, and two turned off on their own way. Something in Arthur drove him to follow them. A predatory instinct telling him that these were the targets. Half drunk, tired, looking like they’d barely make it home in the first place.
It was a young man and a young woman. As they began walking, Arthur began following. When they stopped, he stopped. When they moved, he moved. They were easy to follow. Thoughts about how wrong this way were no longer present in his mind. Now it was like a game. He the hunter, they the hunted. They stopped again, and Arthur pressed himself into the shadows of the nearest building. To his dismay, it looked like they were now trying to call a car and head home. Until, the man looked up and said something to the girl, heading across the street, his attention having been diverted by something. The girl followed across, and so did Arthur, crossing the street twenty feet down from them. He acted as nonchalant as he could. Just another, normal human being with no ill will.
As the man walked into some sort of grimy looking smoke shop, the woman stopped outside and continued to search through her purse looking for something. Arthur took a quick look around; there were a few people here and there passing by, but nobody was really paying attention to anyone else. Arthur started moving again, passing directly in front of the woman. She barely glanced up, still digging in her purse. A few moments later, Arthur passed in front of her again, this time heading the opposite direction. She wasn’t completely unaware, this time looking up with an expression that told Arthur she knew she had just seen something weird.
Arthur stopped. Despite not moving at all, there was a part of her brain telling her something bad was about to happen and she fumbled in her bag, pulling out a small can with a bright label, and a button on top to press. Her finger couldn’t even depress the spray before Arthur struck. In an instant his arms were around her and his fangs in her neck, dipping her like some sort of dark dance. All she did was gasp. The sweet taste of her blood began to course through Arthur. This time, he wasn’t completely overtaken by the frenzy of fresh blood, actively paying attention to how much he was drinking. But the sensation was still incredible, like he was being completely revitalized. It was a truly incredible feeling, made completely awkward by the fact that he was doing this in public and how awkward this must look to any passerby, probably like they were blatantly making out in the middle of sidewalk.
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He also knew if he left her in a drunken stupor like before, her friend might think something was wrong. Not that it really mattered to Arthur, he planned on being long gone by then. All of a sudden, the girl moaned as his fangs were siphoning blood from her. As best he could, he turned his eyes towards her face. She appeared to be enjoying what was currently happening. Part of Arthur felt like being aroused, part of him felt like this was truly disgusting, and it somehow managed to make the experience so much worse. This hadn’t happened with the coke-heads. Maybe they were too drugged out to even feel what was happening, but for some reason apparently having your blood drained was a good feeling.
Arthur retracted his fangs from her neck with a disgusted expression on his face, more disgust in himself than anything else. As he did so, the puncture holes in her neck seemingly closed right back up to the size of pin holes, only a single drop of blood or two escaping. The girl looked up at him as he held her, a dizzy look on her face combined with a state of bliss, and she smiled. Arthur stared back at her, momentarily taken by how pretty she was, until he heard a voice.
“Yo, what the fuck?!”
Arthur looked up. The man had just exited the shop and was staring at them. He dropped whatever was in the bag he’d just purchased and moved towards Arthur rapidly. Arthur turned, shoving the girl towards the man forcing him to catch her as Arthur backed away, grinning. Not from any perverse sense of pleasure, but more from the fact that whatever this guy thought had just happened, was nowhere near the truth. Like Arthur had been just over a year ago; he might as well have been blind to the reality of this world.
“Hey!” The man shouted, as Arthur moved to turn down the nearest alleyway. He looked left, finding one, but as he stepped inside and was preparing to disappear into the shadows, a hand grabbed him by the arm.
“The fuck man, what’d you do?!”
A new voice. The man was still holding the girl, who was slowly starting to recover. This was some sort of passerby. He didn’t look that physically impressive, but he was holding Arthur tight. Arthur didn’t know how much the man had seen, but it was enough to try and stop him here.
Arthur turned towards him, slowly. The man was sweating ever so slightly. In a voice far more menacing than he thought he had in him, Arthur snarled, “Let me go, now.”
The man shook his head, his grip tightening. But, he had flinched. Normally Arthur would’ve missed that, but the crimson fire in his veins had completely reinvigorated him, heightening his senses beyond anything normal once again. His eyes were noticing the pores on the mans skin, the twitching eyebrows, his dilated pupils. His ears able to notice not only the breath of the man in front of him, but even his heartbeat in his chest. And most importantly, the muscles on Arthur’s arms felt primed, like he could lift ten times his own weight. It felt good.
It was like in this moment the man holding Arthur might as well have been underwater. As he swung, Arthur saw the attack coming from a mile away, like it was in slow motion. Arthur took a gentle step back, and the man stumbled across him, losing his grip on Arthur’s arm. As gently as he could, Arthur pushed him as the swing of his punch carried him. With the extra shove, the man went crashing hard into the pavement. Arthur noticed that the woman was now almost recovered, standing on her own, holding her head like she’d forgotten what happened. Her friend, boyfriend, whatever, Arthur could see even from this distance was trying to leave the scene altogether, his eyes wide as Arthur shoved the man. Unfortunately, the other man was getting back up.
“Don’t do this,” Arthur said, this time less with much less menace, but a lot more warning. “Don’t.”
The man who had intervened stood. He hesitated as he looked past Arthur at the two others who were now moving the other way, the girl staggering as she walked. Something looked clearly wrong with her, but Arthur knew in an hour or so she’d be back to normal. To the hero in front of him, though, she probably looked like she’d just been drugged. So Arthur wasn’t particularly surprised when another fist was coming at him. It still moved incredibly slow to Arthur’s perception, but for some reason this time his instinct told him not to dodge.
There was a cracking of knuckle against bone, and the hero cried out in pain. Arthur’s jaw had absorbed the full brunt of the blow, and yet it felt like he’d only been smacked with a heavy ruler. His head had barely even moved, while the man in front of him was cradling his hand. Looked like he’d broken a knuckle. Arthur raised his eyebrows, somewhat surprised himself.
“What the fuck!” the man cried out.
Arthur took one step forward and snatched the mans shirt, “Look, asshole. I know what it looks like, but she’s fine. Why don’t stop trying to save the fuckin’ day and move on, they’re already gone.”
But his words had no affect. The fight or flight response in the mans brain was pushing him in one direction at an incredible pace, and unfortunately it was the fight direction. He swung again, clumsily with his other, non-broken hand. Rage swelled in Arthur as he saw yet another punch coming.
“STOP!”
All of a sudden, the man froze. Fear was causing his eyes to dilate. It was even more noticeable on account of the fact that the rest of his body had gone completely still. It was like he had been stopped in time. Simultaneously, Arthur felt a new sensation. The blood inside of him felt like it was roiling. His whole body felt hot, and when he had spoken the command, it sounded much different than his normal speech. A lower, more invasive pitch. It sounded like when Persephone had used her powers on Lysander, and at that moment Arthur realized what he had done.
Arthur stared at the man frozen in front of him. So this was what it looked like from the other side. He couldn’t help but laugh, though a few seconds later the man apparently had recovered from the initial command and attempted now kick Arthur in his valuables. Arthur barked the command again. The man froze again, unable to act. Arthur grinned wickedly. Drinking that poor girls blood had felt good. This felt even better. It was almost giving him a high. Maybe like some kind of runners high, or having lifted really heavy weights and put all your effort into it. The exertion, no, the usage of this supernatural physical ability was exhilarating. Arthur laughed out loud, then noticed two things. One, the man in front of him was terrified. Two, there was a small group of people who had stopped and were now watching this fight take place from a distance away.
Arthur shifted his attention to the man again. He was sweating, his arms were shaking, and his breathing was heavy. Arthur realized in that moment that, just like when this had happened to him in the past, something in this man’s brain knew something was wrong. Not just the fact that an average punch had little to no affect on Arthur, but also that somehow, words alone were preventing him from acting. His brain couldn’t draw the lines, because the dots simply weren’t there, but he knew something was wrong. He was glimpsing beyond the veil, even if he didn’t understand what he saw. Arthur knew exactly what that felt like. In that moment, the high of the blood and the expenditure of it waned, and Arthur felt bad for the man.
“Look dude,” Arthur said, “I’m going to walk away now. Just…just avoid doing shit like this again, ok? There’s people out there a lot worse than me.”
The man hesitated. He was teetering on deciding whether or he should listen, or if he was willing to risk breaking another hand.
Arthur made the decision for him. “Leave. Now,” Arthur hissed. Once again he felt his blood roil, and to his surprise the man obeyed. He walked straight past Arthur and began moving down the street. A few seconds later he turned around, terror still painting his face, but fortunately decided he’d had enough for tonight. Arthur didn’t think it would’ve been that easy, but it seemed to have worked. S he took his chance and disappeared down the alleyway as the onlookers were still gawking, and walked far, far away from the scene.
