The curtains fluttered, casting long, whispery shadows on the back wall. As sad as it sounded, these very curtains had been her only source of entertainment for what had to be almost two hours by now. Dacy sighed and leaned a little farther forward against the counter, rocking the short barstool forward onto two legs. She hated late shifts.

Night hours were always incredibly slow- truth be told, even day hours weren't exactly stressful. Grandma had gone home quite awhile ago, entrusting Day with the spectacularly boring task of watching the store until closing time. The radio to her right hummed a low, seductive melody that seemed almost haunting in the quiet of the tiny shop. She rather wanted to turn it off, but she knew the total quiet without it would be far worse. So instead she picked up the inventory journal and began skimming through it, noting all the purchases of the day with only feigned interest. Truly she was just counting down the minutes until she could go home. She was tired, and it was a school night. And she still had at least an hour's worth of calculus homework waiting for her.

After maybe two minutes, she closed the little book again and pushed it aside, stifling a heartfelt yawn in the process. Bending down to grab her book bag, she fished out her calculus book and a pencil- no point in wasting precious integral time. Maybe she could get most of it done and do the rest during lunch period tomorrow. She hunched over her book and, resisting the temptation to doodle, was soon intent on getting some real work done.

William had been behaving lately. That is to say, his actions were no longer drawing public emergency services attention as of late, but his thirst for blood and violence needed to be satiated nightly.

Tonight, however was different. It was an anniversary of sorts from a time since passed, but nonetheless it had a sobering effect on the Tarepha vampire this evening.

Wandering the streets, cigarette in hand, he found himself in the business district walking around the square. The sudden inundation of mortal smells and sounds began to flood his senses, but even that was not enough to activate the monster vampire.

Suddenly he felt alone, alone amongst many and decided to step into one of the mom and pop shops that were still open.

As he stepped in the smells changed dramatically from that of the streets to that of herbs, old text and age. Taking another drag on the cigarette he pushed his hat up to get a better look at the wares on the shelves and cabinets coming to the realization that he was standing in what at first appearance was a new age shop. Further examination, however, quickly revealed that it was not a trinket and tourist shop, but rather was the real thing and was most likely where real practitioners of their art went for supplies and fellowship. The reason for this belief came from his experiences with his former girlfriends and experiments in various religions.

With a deep sigh he fell deeper into the melancholy with the irony of walking into a shop like this on this day of all days, maybe the universe was telling him something.

He dropped the cigarette onto the floor rubbing it out with his foot. If he knew, the girl was sitting behind the counter doing homework it did not show.

His aura. It was...off. Day had hardly noticed him enter- numbers had that unpleasant, sobering way of demanding her full attention- but it was his persona that made her look up from her textbook. He didn't glance her way or even appear to notice her but instead immediately began to filter through the cluttered shelves. That wasn't really a surprise. Many customers didn't notice her, and it was an easy mistake to make. But this time, Day didn't immediately speak up with the typical shopkeeper greeting. Instead, she closed her book very quietly and waited, watching him curiously and craning her neck to follow him when he vanished from sight.

It wasn't the fact that it was very, very late to be browsing- even the unusual characters such a shop as her grandmother's often attracted weren't much into roaming the streets of Demaitre past a certain hour. It wasn't his appearance, which in itself was more than a little intimidating. Again, it was...something else.

But a customer was a customer.

She opted to stay behind the counter, though. Not that it offered much protection, but there was a phone within reach and a small pocketknife her grandmother insisted on keeping around, just in case. Her fingers closed gently around the slender, silver cross above her breast and inadvertently began to turn it. It was an old, nervous habit.

"Is...," she cleared her throat in an attempt to amplify her intrinsically soft voice, "is there anything I can help you with, sir? Anything in particular you might be looking for?"

The girl’s voice broke his concentration and a reflexive low guttural growl emanated from his throat before he stood up from the stack he was inspecting.

At full height with the hat on, he easily stood seven feet in height and had the body width and musculature to support it.

He noticed that she was looking his way, but more she was reviewing him as though she was seeing something that she did not quite understand. She was a small thing, almost non-existent in his view. She was rubbing something that hung from a chain around her neck between her fingers.

Moving to the counter at the speed bestowed upon his kind, in a blink of the eye he stood before her with a reflexive sinister grin partially covered in the shadow his hat provided.

“Hello darling, maybe you can help me. What do you have?”

Even though he was not feeling particularly homicidal, he did not necessarily feel obliged to behave either.

Her tiny greeting was met with something like a snarl and a stare that made her skin tingle and her blood run cold. Her mind was flicking through scenarios, ideas of what he might and might not be. And then he was right in front of her. Within the span of time it took for her breath to catch in her throat, he was at the counter and looking down at her from his intimidating height, his face darkened by the shadow the brim of his hat cast over it. Day started back with a gasp, jarring her elbow into a shelf behind her and shattering several of the more breakable things into a myriad of glimmering pieces. Pain seared up through her arm from the nerve she’d bruised, and she subconsciously rubbed the spot in her other hand, her eyes glued to what she could see of the stranger’s.

“P-please, sir, I…I don’t want any trou-trouble.”

She swallowed hard and shut her eyes for a moment, fighting back the simultaneous stuttering and trembling that seemed to have a very good hold on her. Her gaze flicked from him to the counter, and she stepped forward slowly against her better judgment. Locking eyes with him, she very delicately reached into the little nook beneath the register and closed her fingers around that handy knife she’d been contemplating. Letting her hand trail back to her side, she slipped it into the pocket of her apron. Now her attention split between him and the phone, and she glanced at it, quickly, fighting to keep her breathing even.

“What do you want?”

William watched the little girl’s mind race for options and choices.

It was clear that she was on the defense, but something of a spirit and baseline courage was evident in her. He had a fondness and weakness for these types of girls, usually employing them to help him with his business from time to time.

“What do I want?” he asked rhetorically. Pulling a cigarette out of his coat, he lit it with a match that seemed to fall from his sleeve. “What do I want?” This simple question suddenly created a great weight as he reflected on the fact that what he wanted he could not have.

“What do I want?” he asked again taking a pull on the cigarette.

With a wicked smile, he thought of his sire and the fact that he was alone; maybe he should sire one of his own.

Reaching over he picked up the phone’s receiver and dialed the police, a number he had come to know well in the last few months.

When the dispatch officer came on, he handed the phone over to the girl.

“I want to give you a choice, do what your fear tells you or,” pulling an unopened bottle of whiskey from his coat pocket and placing it on the counter, “come outside and have a drink with me.”

He smiled broadly allowing his fangs to show as though it was a natural thing.

He flashed her a revealing grin, extending the phone receiver to her, and she froze in her slow attempt to take it from him. All other assumptions, all other guesses fell away in that one simple, dangerous look. Vampire. The word, the very thought, always had the same effect. She felt cold all over, goosebumps raising all across her skin. But there was a thrill in it, a low and aching thrill that made the slightest flush rise to her fear-paled face.

"No," she whispered, her quiet voice gone even quieter, "no, you're going to kill me if I go with you. Aren't you?"

And yet when her fingers closed around the phone receiver, she did not bring it to ear- instead, she slowly placed it back in its cradle, the officer's voice cutting off in a sudden halt. Day liked to think she was a sensible girl. She knew more about these creatures than most mortals did. She knew they were dangerous, that many of them were nothing more than dishonest murderers. But she knew also that she had been fascinated with them from the moment she had first learned that they truly existed.

"I don't drink," she murmured, but she found herself slowly edging from around the counter, towards him, drawn to him. She had a weapon, and outside was better than inside should he attack her.

William continued to smile as she placed the receiver back on the cradle.

“Good choice little lady.” He noticed that she was slowly making her way out around the corner.

Suddenly he took her hand and she found that she had cleared the counter and whether she liked it or not she was going out the door with the vampire cowboy and his bottle of whiskey.

As suddenly as he had grabbed her, they were suddenly sitting on a bench in the square people watching.

Breaking the seal on the cap, he took a long drink and handed her the bottle. “Here ya got try new things, life is short enough.” There was a natural malice in his voice accompanied by an undertone of unfortunate circumstance. It was clear that he no intention of killing her now.

Looking around he said, “Do you think they live life or just get by in it. I know that I was surviving until I found the freedom to start living.”

Chuckling at the irony of his statement, he threw his cigarette down and pulled out another one.

Day instinctively recoiled at his frigid touch, but the motion did little good- his grip would not be broken, even if she had struggled and done her very best to break from him. Within the bounds of a single second she was standing still, then moving, weightless, and finally roughly seated beside him on a bench in the middle of the square. Her heard whirred violently for several moments, struggling to piece together what he'd done. At first it seemed as though he'd literally teleported them both from the shop on the corner, but no vampiric lore made reference to such a power. He had physically crossed the distance, only he'd done so very, very quickly.

She breathed a tiny, startled sigh and followed his gaze into the loose crowd. But his words immediately called her attention back to his rugged face, and she took the bottle in silence, casting a quick glance into the bitter liquid.

"No, people don't care," she murmured and shrugged her narrow shoulders, slowly turning the bottle in her hands. "Th-they...they hardly notice they're alive half the time, I th-think. Not e-even the smart ones, the beautiful ones, the r-rich ones."

She slowly brought the bottle to her lips and took a hesitant sip, shocked by how much it seemed to sting and burn for such a little amount. She damn near choked and had to blink back the awkward tears the stuff induced.

"U-um," she held the bottle out without looking directly into his face. "Thank you."

He did not realize that she was not looking at him, but took the bottle back all the same and drank a good portion of it in the one draught handing it back to her again when he was done.

“So I guess the question is why they care when something happens to them then. If it does not matter then why bother getting upset. I reckon it is because they are faced with dealing with their life.”

Looking around, “Take a look at that family over there,” he pointed across the square at a couple pushing a carriage and a carrying a small child. “If you are right then the loss of one of the children shouldn’t matter, but we both know that in the short term it will.”

Turning to look at her, “I used to try to help, but usually ended up disappointed or at a loss for it. So now I live for me, and I am finding joy in raw carnage and the pain of others, but in truth isn’t that the basis reaction of human nature after all.”

William knew he was rambling, but to him it did not matter what the conversation was about it was just that he was having one.

"Maybe people pretend to care- simply because that's how they've been raised, or taught." She tried a meek smile, and it came out a little crooked.

Dacy took the bottle back warily- she figured one had to be built of sterner stuff than she to actually enjoy drinking whiskey. Still, he was a vampire and she a mortal. However curious she was about him and what exactly he was, he was dangerous. Better to humor him. She held onto it, feigning a decent sip every now and again.

"N-no," she whispered, "no, I don't think that's true. I don't think it's in human nature be so violent or sadistic. I...I don't think that's how people should be. They are now, I guess, but I think the hostility comes from something else. People...are cooped up, stuck in jobs they hate or living with people they don't love. And I think that's what makes them so aggressive. Take away all of this," she gestured vaguely around the square, "all the houses, all the clothes, all the jobs and cars and thoughts of the future, take a basic, primitive man, and there would be no purposeless violence. A will to survive, maybe, but no one would kill someone else just because they woke up one morning and hated their life..."

She trailed off, painfully aware of how long she'd just gone off on a complete- and dangerous- stranger. Perhaps she wasn't as sensible as she'd figured.

William began to laugh fully and without constraint drawing the attention of a few of the people around them.

“I like you girl even if you are in over your head.”

Standing up he looked down at her and said, “Let’s go shopping; I don’t think one of my girls should look so plain.”

He began walking down the square realizing she was not following.

With a broad smile, “It is okay, I’m rich.”

His laughter was chilling. Not the sound of it, really- he sounded like any mortal man might sound. Maybe it was more the statement following the laughter that did it. In over your head...one of my girls. What did he mean? Certainly not-? Day stood up very slowly as he began to walk off but did not immediately follow. Even after he spoke again, reassuring her and urging her along, she only took a couple of short stops before glancing back at the store she had left.

"I...I don't think so," she tried, her voice coming much quieter than she'd intended. "I mean...I can't leave with you. I...I d-don't belong with you."

She took a slow step backwards, her arms crossed over her chest but the fingers of her right hand pressing lightly through her shopkeeper's apron against the small knife. To be completely truthful, a considerable, perhaps unreasonable amount of her wanted to follow the vampire into the shadows. Maybe she had a death wish. But Dacy Halden wasn't sure that wish was meant to be granted this night.

William turned around very slowly, looked directly into her soul, and spoke very simply, “How unfortunate.”

With that, he stepped into the shadow simply disappearing scaling the wall to the roof where he sat watching his new prey’s next move.

He smiled as he thought that she might make a better vampire than meal, “Kid’s got guts,” he whispered to himself.

Dacy had to forcibly stop herself from taking a step after him or from asking him to wait. Her left hand inadvertently raised just slightly in a gesture to make him stay, but he was gone and she immediately felt very foolish. Letting her fingers trail back to her side, she studied the place he'd vanished into from her safe distance then, clenching her jaw with newfound resolution, turned to resume what she should have been doing all along.

By now it was past closing time. She'd left the shop unattended- a very stupid thing to do, though the choice hadn't really been hers- so when she returned and found it apparently untouched, she exhaled a brief sigh of relief and dealt with her apron's knot tied behind her neck. Tossing it over its hanger, she moved to flip the open-closed sign around and locked the register. She flicked off the lights on the way out and locked up behind her, fumbling to keep the annoyance that was her purse out of the way. She was a methodic girl. She'd done this a hundred times before the exact same way.

Stepping out into the sparsely-lit square, she took particular care to keep her eyes on the road in front of and behind her tonight. But she couldn't help being distracted. A vampire, in her shop, during her shift. She'd spoken with him, sat next to him. She'd been close enough to touch him, to see every little detail. His eyes, his fangs, that way he'd moved so quickly. She walked a little faster and stretched her long legs to their fullest, eager to get home to write all of this down. The question was, should she tell her caretaker about the encounter? She hadn't even gotten his name...

He decided that she was of interest and used the rooftops to follow his new prey to her place of residence.

About six or seven blocks from the shop, he decided to growl and let loose an inhuman howl that echoed throughout the buildings and concluded it with laughter.

Sadistically, he stayed and monitored her reaction.

An unseasonably cool wind was putting a chill through her heart. By the time she was near her small, unkempt home, Day’s pulse had reached new heights. Where there was silence, she interpreted menace. Where there were indeterminable shadows, Dacy saw shapes and figures looming out towards her. As she made her way up the familiar drive, she inhaled slowly and finally slowed her breathing to a reasonable pace.

And then the sound.

Inhuman and at the same time very much the sound that would come from a man, the howl echoed up and down the lonely street for what felt like entire minutes. Her flesh crawling in the sluggish way panic will ensure, she fumbled with the keys and hurried inside. Day had no idea what would work against vampires and what would not, but there was no time like the present to find out. She shut the door in the hope that the undead could not entire a home without permission and glanced once in to her grandmother’s room to make sure she was quite safe and quite asleep: she was both. Fingering the cross around her neck, she traded in her pocketknife for a slightly bigger one and smashed a branch from their fireplace into an uneven, makeshift stake which she tucked into her belt.

New weapons in tow, she snuck through the back door and onto the wide porch behind the house. The backyard was small and overrun with weeds and thorns and dead things. The moon was nearly full and almost directly above, casting a dim and eerie light down on the scene. Dacy took a few tentative steps forward away from the door until she was at the edge of the porch. Her eyes flitted through the darkness again and again. Nothing. She swallowed hard and tensed her fists.

"Where are you?"

Her voice sounded thin amidst the much weightier silence, and if her question had stirred a thing in the darkness, she did not find it.

William watched with delight as she struggled into the house.

Dropping down he moved around the house watching her through the windows seeing the old woman within.

“How quaint,” he said to himself as she fashioned herself with weaponry that would have little effect on the layers of leather he was wearing.

Slowly he followed her, almost admiring her spirit and stupidity for coming outside as if to challenge him. This was dumb move if he was only just a sick mortal of his stature, but she knew what he was and she was asking for more.

She stood on the edge of the porch calling for him. With swift and inhuman speed, he placed himself directly behind her, between her body and the back door.

After letting the silence hang he replied, “I’m right here.”

Dacy couldn't hide her surprise at hearing his voice nor could she keep from jumping slightly when she turned to find him standing right behind her. She tilted her chin forward the slightest degree and swallowed hard, irritated with herself for having not kept an eye on the door. It didn't seem possible to have forgotten how menacing he had looked in the short span of time it had taken her to get home, but apparently she had. He towered over her, and she was tall for her age. But she did not step away.

"W-why are you following me?" Her eyes flicked to the door and back to his shadowed face. "Get away from my house, pl--" She inwardly rolled her eyes in frustration. She hadn't just nearly "politely" asked a vampire to leave her grandmother alone.

She took a slow sidestep, her attention rapt on him, motionless as he was. Not that it mattered. If he chose to attack her, he'd have no problem. He was a thousand times faster, stronger. If he wanted to kill her, he could do so with a swipe of his hand. But he wouldn't. If his intentions involved ending her life, he would have done it already.

"What do you want? I...I'm not rich or anything if it's money you want. But I'm sure you can see that yourself."