The annual Vampires vs. Werewolves paintball night (held on Halloween, how original) was always a chaotic, bloody affair. Rupert pulled himself up from where he had been tackled to the ground, wincing at the pain in his knees (he’d had them replaced. Twice. That’s what happened when you got turned at 60. Perpetual medical problems).

“Dillberd!” he shouted at the idiot who had shot him.

“I thought you were a werewolf! What was I supposed to do, when you were skulking in the bushes like that?”

Rupert pointed expansively to the silvery bat on his helmet, “Check my allegiance, you useless scum.”

Dillberd’s lip curled, and he got that stuffy hoity-toity look Rupert really wanted to shoot off his face.

“You weren’t in formation, anyway. Get back in line, soldier.” Dillberd had the audacity to shoo him.

“Oh, put a lid on it, toothpick.”

Dillberd had been a 14-year old dweeb when he was turned in the 1970s. Though he still looked 14 and a dweeb, he had grown into a controlling piece of shit, ruthless in the way tech geeks were about things like patents and startups, gunning for Rupert’s position as Night Father of their clan.

“Don’t call me that!”

“Then stop telling me what to do.”

Dillberd threw his toothpick arms out, flailing, “We’re losing, just as we’ve lost for the past seventeen years. Someone has to take change around here.”

“It’s paintball, not a godforsaken war. I’ve been in real wars, all right? Fought in every one of them I could. So listen: this isn’t a real war, stop treating it like one.”

Unpopular opinion: Rupert loved fighting. He had fought in every war he could because of all the free and fresh blood. The newer ‘hip’ vampires, with their vegan diets, were disgusted by him. The feeling was entirely mutual.

This paintball night, however, was not a war…it was more like a vacation. All Rupert wanted to do was get drunk on bloodwine, shoot a few wolves, and then go to bed. Why did he need to win? He had already won. He was a vampire and these werewolves would be dead in the next fifty or so years. What did it matter?

“That doesn’t mean we should lose to those fleabags! Where’s your vampiric pride?”

“Is there a problem, gentlemen?”

They both turned to face the newcomer, who slid out of the darkness like an eel out of a cave, all wriggly and slithery and devious. Dillberd, the fucking wet wipe, had called in backup, forming an alliance with a nearby clan to help them beat the werewolves.

The Night Father of the other clan was tall and suave, with dark hair and a darker suit, a seductive smile on his perpetually twenty-something face. He was the image of the Vampire, and everything Rupert (with his perpetually gray hair and sagging gut) was not.

Rupert instantly hated him.

He even had a frou-frou name, Song. How fancy. How modern. Rupert wanted to just shoot him with paint and be done with him, but no, as Night Fathers (and therefore generals of their respective armies), they had to work together to form a plan.

That plan went to shit very fast, because Rupert didn’t want to cooperate and form a plan. He just wanted to shoot wolves and drink.

So, they were currently pinned behind a tree, paintball fire coming from all sides (including above, what the hell), and Rupert was cursing werewolves and their superior night vision.

“You know, I’m not sure you’re using that correctly,” Song said.

Well, now that accusation would not stand.

“Of course I know how to use a paintball gun, you insufferable dandy. I was turned when guns were first created. I practically fired the first musket myself!”

“A musket, ha! I was using a fire lance in 10th century China. I fired a hand cannon at Nayan himself in 1287.”

Rupert sputtered, “You didn’t really do that.”

“I’m not a dandy,” he hissed, “I call myself Song to remember where I came from. I was born at the beginning of the Song dynasty, at the beginning of modern warfare, and I have never missed a shot.”

Then he pointed his paintball gun up into the trees, fired, and missed. Three werewolves in the tree howled with laughter. Song immediately chucked his paintball gun up at them, where it hit one of the buffoons with a satisfying crack.

“Now you’re unarmed,” Rupert said, extremely helpfully.

The gun fell from the branches and landed right back in Song’s hands, butt covered in blood, the awful sort that smelled so bad it could only have come from a werewolf. Said werewolf moaned piteously up in the trees; his buddies laughed at him instead of avenging him. So much for pack mentality.

Rupert whistled, suitably impressed. Not many people could use a gun like a boomerang.

“I can’t believe this!” Dillberd shot up from a nearby bush, “You’re both pathetic! You’re so old you’re literally rusted. So much for the greatest generals of your time. Sad excuses for vampires – neither of you deserve the title of Night Father. It should be me up there, leader of the clan. A modern vampire needs to take charge and blow the dust off of your decaying corpses! You both positively disgust--”

Rupert and Song looked at each other, simultaneously pointed their guns at Dillberd, and fired. Neither of them missed.

It was, as they say, the start of a beautiful relationship.