Nosuë: The Wandering Vampire
VI: The Attack of the Wanderer

There were three of them.

They came in, shouting and with knives and a modern firearm. The one wielding it fired into the ceiling.

"EVERYBODY DOWN! NOW!”

Takena shrieked in horror, and Ronald pushed her to the floor, shielding her with his body. They were shaking. They were frightened.

“We want the jewels and the money, and we want it now!” the man shouted. “You, pale boy, get down on the ground, damn it!”

“Come on!” Another of the assailants pointed his knife at me. “On the ground, we said!”

But I just raised an eyebrow, slowly.

Human blades don’t scare me. A vampire doesn’t feel pain in the same way or to the same extent. Could they stab me? Yes. Kill me with that? Hardly.

Of course, they didn’t know that.

"GET DOWN ON THE GROUND, YOU FUCKER!"

The third man bent down and grabbed Taneka by the hair, forcing her to her knees to threaten me with her life if I didn’t obey. Ronald shouted something.

I looked into her eyes for a moment, just a moment.

Then I grabbed the man by the collar and lifted him off the ground. Quickly. Barely visible. Inevitable.

He tried to scream and kicked me, but I didn’t let go. I held him up, choking him.

“You’re assaulting my hosts,” I whispered. “That’s not right. Don’t you have a shred of decorum?”

He was terrified. I had moved faster than he could see and I was choking him. I could kill him with a simple gesture, I didn’t even need my fangs.

Suddenly, there was a thunderous boom, and I felt a pang in my back. I smelled gunpowder.

“Nosuë!” cried Ronald in horror.

I had just been shot.

“What the...?” my assailant muttered.

I let go of the enemy, who gasped and fell to the ground, trying to catch his breath. I turned slowly. The wound hardly hurt, and it certainly wasn’t bleeding. I was actually more bothered by the fact that it had ruined my clothes.

“That wasn’t nice,” I commented quietly.

The man was holding the gun, pointing it at me, but he was shaking like a leaf. The one I had almost choked didn’t even get up from the ground, and the other stood motionless to one side, incredulous.

But what pathetic humans. They came, they intended to steal and even murder, they didn’t mind doing harm… but the thought of suffering themselves left them paralysed.

Truly pathetic.

“To bite, you have to be prepared to be bitten,” my sire used to say when she was alive. And she was right. If you want to kill, steal, hurt or hunt, you have to be prepared to suffer retaliation. It’s a law of nature. A law that humans tend to forget.

“Oh, my God…” I whispered. “Sometimes I can’t stand you.”

“Wh… what…?” The man pointing at me trembled.

“Ronald, Taneka?” I knew I had their attention, so I didn’t look at them. “I recommend you cover your eyes.”

Ronald threw himself on his wife, and I put an end to the little annoyance of uninvited visitors.

When I whispered that they could look, Taneka did so with dread. Her gaze locked on the nearest body.

“Are they… ?” she muttered in a choked voice.

“No,” I denied. “I just knocked them unconscious.”

’That might be a problem, though,’ I thought with annoyance.

The couple got up.

I was very surprised when Taneka took a hesitant step.

“Are you…? Are you all right?” she asked.

I blinked and looked at her, raising an eyebrow. Ronald was slightly behind her, looking at me with anxiety… the same anxiety that was in his wife’s eyes, I noticed. As if they cared.

“Yes,” I nodded calmly. “This is something that can hardly hurt me.”

“B… But…”

I think Taneka was looking for a joke to lighten the subject, but she couldn’t find one, so she was quiet and tense.

“I’ll get rid of them,” I said. “I’ll leave them somewhere.”

“But they’ll talk,” said Ronald. “They’ll talk about you.”

“If they do, no one is likely to take them seriously.” I shrugged.

“But rumours attract vampire hunters.”

“Don’t worry, Ronald. I’ll take care of everything.”

I bent down to pick up one of the bodies and put him over my shoulder. He was a stouter, heavier man, but I was a vampire, and so my strength was far greater than it appeared.

“Okay.” Ronald sighed, looking at me. “We trust you.”

I noticed he put his hand on his wife’s shoulder.

“Just in case,” I asked, “don’t tell anyone you’ve been mugged. They are more likely to believe you than them.”

“Don’t worry, we won’t say anything. After all, there’s nothing to be sorry about.”

“Good.”

I put the other man on the other shoulder. It was more awkward than heavy, carrying them like that. The third one, I took him like a sack at my waist. They were all alive and well: breathing, hearts beating normally… though I should have just killed them.

I should have, but it seemed very uncivilised of me.

“Ah… N… Nosuë…” Taneka muttered. Sᴇaʀ*ᴄh the (ꜰind)ɴʘvel.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“Don’t thank me,” I asked sharply.

“No… I wasn’t going to.”

I growled under my breath without meaning to, and gave her a sideways glance. She licked her lips; I could hear her heartbeat, quick as a hummingbird’s.

“That’s…” she mumbled. “It’s… See you at dawn.”

I froze. Had she just said it as if I was coming back?

“Okay,” I replied.

Not knowing what else to do, I walked out of there, under cover of night, with the three bodies in tow..

You can't really fight a vampire just like that, without any kind of knowledge or preparation... and it's not correct to attack the house of his hosts.

We just love how polite he can be.

Thanks for your reading! See you soon.

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