Standing above him, the vampire gives the blood dripping from his fingers a curious lick. After a moment, he sighs and reaches up, wiping the rest of it off onto Cletus’s shirtfront.

“Nothing more than average A-type blood.” He complains, the liquid already drying sticky under his nails.

He leans over Caius’s supine form.

“At this rate, you’ll bleed out slowly, over half an hour or more.” He says, frowning. “It will be very painful. Sorry about that. You were struggling unneccesarily, so I couldn’t pierce your heart cleanly.”

Caius’s eyes are glassy. His breathing is labored. His lips are turning lilac. He watches the predator with glazed pupils, his brain slowing to a crawl, unable to process the world without blood pumping through it.

The vampire kneels down next to him. Cletus’s body over his shoulder doesn’t seem to burden him at all.

“I respect prey that fights for its life.” The vampire says softly. His crimson eyes are alight - Caius doesn’t feel the same fear as last time. Instead, they almost look warm. The vampire reaches out to stroke a thumb delicately over Caius’s cheek, smearing his greying skin with his own blood, then brings his jagged nails to Caius’s exposed throat. His voice is more gentle than any human’s. Its tender tone almost disappears into the velvet blackness of the night. “And I feel mercy for the weak. So I will relieve you of your suffering.”

He draws his hand to Caius’s skin -

There’s the crack of a gunshot. A hole blasts straight through the back of the vampire’s veined palm. The vampire’s watery blood splatters over Caius’s already-stained shirt.

The vampire whips his head around - a man with blond hair sprints up the stairs to the porch of the old house, long legs taking the steps two at a time. As the vampire sees him, he holsters his handgun and swiftly pulls a knife from his waistband. The blade glints silver in the night, shining with the light of the slowly rising moon.

The vampire reels back - the wound in his hand starts to sizzle with an agonizing sound, the smell of burning flesh and sulfur filling the air, mixing with the acrid iron tang of blood and the florid scent of the forest’s undergrowth. The bullet hole bubbles and purples around the edges, slowly expanding, eating into the vamp’s flesh.

He hisses in agony and anger. The man steps in front of Caius’s body, shielding him from the vampire, warily wielding his knife.

The vampire glances once more at Caius before baring his teeth.

“I know not to fight a losing battle,” he spits - the veins in his left hand bulge, and the nails elongate, and with a sickening sound of rending flesh he rips through his right wrist with his own deadly hand, severing the afflicted limb from the rest of his body. The dissolving hand falls to the porch with a hollow thud and a splatter of blood. 

The vampire flees, blood dripping from his stump.

The blond man stares after the vampire, then glances at Caius, unconscious on the ground. The pool of blood soaking him slowly grows bigger. The man sheathes his knife and kneels down to attend to him...