Had he fed more recently, this may not have been a problem, then again, there weren’t many things in the world that could go toe-to-toe with his kind, and walk away. Not many. 

Sayre started to narrow them down as he followed the woman through a dimly-lit hallway with decaying mustard colored wallpaper ( a surprise, he noted, and change from the arsenic-laden green he favored), then down a flight of stairs to a dark basement—far deeper than a normal basement, where the stench that smacked against his senses was foul: standing water; feces; fresh and old blood; decay. Waste, in all meanings of the word.

The woman lifted a lantern at the base of the stairs and walked on. Sayre didn’t need the light. His kind could see well-enough in the dark, but he suspected the enchantment he was under would have homed him wherever she was headed anyway. Which it turned out, was an operating room, or at least the attempts of one: a stained table, a line of saws and clamps, and empty jars.

“On the table,” she said, and he did. The body hit with a thud. “Good, at least now he won’t go completely to waste.”

The woman pilfered through the pockets and coat, uncaring of the blood. Whatever she found in them, she tossed to a crate where other items from presumed other bodies lie. When she found the wallet, she flicked it open, then sank.

“Rodger fucking Carroway,” she said. “Roger fucking Carroway!” She shook the wallet towards him.

Though he still couldn’t speak, the expression he tried to give was enough for her to explain, though she was going to anyway, given the stomp and slam of Rodger fucking Carroway’s wallet to his still body.

“You killed a councilman-elect in my shop—and you were going to waste him!”

Sayre fought against the enchantment and managed to produce a scowl.

The woman huffed and puffed, and put irritated fingers to her forehead. Little dots of blood smeared. She didn’t seem to care. A sigh fell out of her with the return of her glare on Sayre.

“My word! This is why no one likes a vampire. You are messy! Inconsiderate! S—selfish!” The rest of what she had to say fell into a grunt. Her fingers tapped on the table next to Mr. Carroway’s dead ones. “Well?” She glared. Her irritation rivaled only by muffed mothers and tormented teachers. “Have you anything to say?”

Sayre’s glare darkened. He willed his body to move, but when that did nothing, he concentrated and called upon something deeper. A joint twitched and jerked, then another. He crackled out of the enchantment with a shudder and shake. An unholy chrysalis.  Sayre stretched his neck. His fingers dug against his jaw that ached. “That was a poor choice,” he said.

“Mine?”

“Yes,” Sayre hissed.

“You’ve made a mess of your dinner in my shop, and then when it wasn’t to your taste, you were going to leave it for me to clean up!” she snapped. “A feast—left to rot.”

“You don’t know that.”

The woman whipped a finger in a circle. “Pray, tell! Why do you think the enchantment spun on?”

“And, now that I’m free of it…” Sayre stepped forward.

“Do you think you could do that faster than I could shove a stake through your heart?” she threatened quickly, and when he stalled in his step, she added: “Faster than I could stop your heart with the snap of my fingers?”

As if his heart hadn’t been long, long dead and still already. 

Sayre bore his fangs. His eyes blazing with anger, white hot. “Doubtful.”

“The audacity!” Her fingers tapped on the table more. “I should report you.”

Sayre shifted his frock coat open, no longer in the cold, dark, foggy night, but now in some unusually warm, dank basement horror. The red knitted scarf unfurled down the length of his torso. Two red lines, like the ones still in the corners of his mouth.

 “What’s to keep me when I walk out of here—And, we both know I will walk out of here—from reporting you, and this fun little operation you have.” He shifted his eyes about the macabre scene. The shelves of jars. The smell of formaldehyde. It prickled his sensitive nose.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I sell poultices,” she defended with a bold lie, punctuated by her flat, teeth-baring smile. 

“You sell ingredients. What are you? Necromancer?”

The squeak of insult that erupted out of her was inhuman. “Makes a mess of my shop, and insults me?” 

Sayre looked her up and down. The books. The herbs. The enchantment. The cat. He knew at once what she was, and he hated that it took him this long to recognize his sworn enemy. “Witch,” he spat through his bared fangs.

“Vampire,” she growled back through her own flat smile. “Make no mistake, the only reason you don’t have a tree branch through your heart”—she stabbed with a pointed finger— “is because I’ve had a terrible idea.”

He scoffed, and challenged, “Make no mistake” —Sayre stepped into her and held a hand towards her beating heart— “the only reason I’m not chewing on your aorta like a piece of grizzle in my steak…is because I don’t want to…yet.”

The Witch eyed him, unfazed. Snarl to snarl. Fang to magic. They stood squared and raring to fight. Of all things for him to run into, a witch was the worst. Their ability to craft curses and jinxes made his kind keep distance; for what use was eternity, if a witch cursed you to hear your most hated song, or to always get shocked when you reached for a robe, or to always smell blood at its foulest when you most yearned for it. 

A vampire may have been vicious, but a witch’s wrath was wholly devastating. 

In the end, it was best to mind oneself when it came to a witch. Let the dens pay their dues to the various covens and stay out of their way. They, vampires and all the others, lived and existed in peace because of witches’ glamours—especially long-lived beings like him.

When the witch lifted her hand, she flourished it, and from her fingertips a small glass bottle appeared, which she held out for him. 

Sayre’s eyes broke away first, but curious, he took it.  He turned it over with the roll of his still bloodied fingers. “What’s this?”

“Payment.”

His head cocked to the side. “For what?”

“Services rendered,” she said, but when he continued on glaring she added: “ingredients.”

Sayre pulled the cork and sniffed. It rippled down his spine in pleasure. Blood. Blood—as fine a quality as fit for a king. He felt himself lost for a second, realizing the depth of his hunger. Sayre ached for a taste, but he corked the bottle. His stomach roared.

“There’s more,” she offered, voice softer.

“If?”

“If…you bring me more ingredients.”

“This”—he lifted the bottle between thumb and finger— “is not going to satiate me.”

“I didn’t think it would.” The witch stepped away from him and to a desk in the corner, where a pile of books sat, including one left open and with awaiting quill. She pulled open the drawer, her back turned to him.

Oddly trusting. Or, oddly stupid, he thought, as Sayre studied her. When he focused, he could hear her heartbeat, even though it was paces away.

It was as steady as a dirge. Unafraid.

He eyed the soft of her neck behind the lace hem of her blouse and the wispy curtains of loose hair from the intricate up-do that kept it high and away from her shoulders and face. A choker of black made a perfect intersection, like a black ‘x’ on a treasure map. His stomach grumbled. His fangs ached. The Hunger demanded.

The Witch bent and wrote something quickly. A moment later, she walked back to him  with an envelope in hand. 

Sayre trailed his eyes up the path of her jugular, into the corner of her jaw, and along its curves. He watched her lips move into: “A proposition,” but it took him a moment to push out: “Terms?” He crossed his arms.

“Oh, those should be quite simple I think: You need to eat, and I need a new supplier.”

“Your little vials of blood aren’t going to be enough. I’ll need more.”

“I don’t need their blood. I just need their bodies. Honestly, I could do with a lot less blood around here.”

Sayre studied her expression. Dark-rimmed eyes; even darker irises. Her face was clean and poised, as stoic as any marble statue he had seen—except for the dots of blood on her forehead. Dots, that he lifted his thumb to and wiped off with one long drag. He stared at it intensely, as she did him—broken for the first time from her stubborn stoicism. The foul blood of Roger Carroway sat in his throat as much as it did his thumb, but the scent of the blood from the witch’s vial still vibrated down his spine. There was no contest. 

Sayre chirped something satisfied in his chest, then turned his gaze back into the Witch’s. Irises like dark, moonless midnights. They felt magnetized. Held against one another by supernatural super glue, fused by hatred, and cured by curiosity. “Deal,” he cooed.

The Witch regained herself and lifted the envelope higher. She cleared her throat. “A shopping list.”

Sayre plucked it from her grip and tucked it away. “What about my actual payment? That vial will do little for me.”

“Bring me something from that list, and next time, it won’t be a vial. Next time, I can send you home with a pint, if you’d like.”

Sayre rubbed his thumb against another finger to smear the foul blood away. It had already begun to blacken. “Dare I ask what kind of—”

“Do you really care?”

He sank his human, sapphire eyes into hers. Oppressive and unyielding. If she felt any way about it, he had no idea. Her pulse never wavered—not since he had stepped into her to drag his thumb across the blood on her forehead. “I care enough…” he said slowly, “ that you don’t try to poison me.” 

This, of course, wasn’t an unheard of thing. Sayre had just hoped that she wouldn’t be foolish enough to try to poison a vampire…let alone one as powerful as him. Then again, so far, nothing about this witch made sense to him. Not her laissez faire attitude, not her dark makeup which was so bold against current fashions, or how when she smirked—an impish, hellish, spine-rendering slice—he liked it. 

Maybe the enchantment still had some hold over him?

The Witch chuckled through a thin smile. “If I wanted to kill you, you would be dead. I don’t waste my time on grandeur, not unless there’s revenge involved.”

Sayre believed her. He gave a flat smile and peeled away. “I take it” —he stepped back— “we’re not going to be exchanging names?”

“Ah, yes, so you can formally have me charged as a witch, and I can have you dragged in front of a tribunal? No, no, I think the anonymity is what’s going to work, don’t you?”

A vampire, and a witch. Two beings of mountainous power, but pebble-sized triggers to their tempers. 

“Between something like the two of us? Unlikely.” He scoffed and turned again.

“I wouldn’t be so doubtful,” she called, fingers tracing the black velvet choker and cameo at her neck, “besides it looks like you were right. You are going to be walking out of here alive.”

Sayre stopped at the threshold and turned a final time to her, and the grin of amusement sliced across her face. That smirk of hers would be trouble, he was sure of it. More trouble than the bargain he'd just struck—but those thoughts would be for later, when he was home, alone. At that moment, he haunted the doorway, and she stood by the operating table, a statue of sin. 

“Let’s hope it’s not the last time,” she said—both threat and invitation. 

Then, she waved fingers patronizingly, and lifted a giant pair of shears. Sayre’s last sight of the Witch was her looming over the body cutting the suit of Roger fucking Carroway away.

Then he was gone, down the sewers and through a hole in the wall that led into the cellar of an abandoned church, and up, up, up, to the unused belfry he made home. High above the rooftops with the clearest view of the night sky, Sayre leaned himself into the railing as he looked across the fog-laden city—pocked with islands in a swirling, white sea, and he, a sailor against the edge of a ship. All things he hadn’t seen in ages. 

Though it was said that his kind couldn’t cross running water, honestly it was the thought of sinking to the bottom of the ocean and having to subsist on starfishes and fish, and the absurdly long trek back to dry land that kept him clear of the waters. But, from this height, he could see the Thames, and like all the centuries, it was a familiar sight. A companion. Everything kept changing, but at least he and the Thames were a constant.

Wait, no, that wasn’t right.

Sayre rubbed his head and the ache that formed. He hadn’t been home in decades, in a century. He was in the New World now. New—whatever name they stole and reused. That wasn’t the Thames, that was the Hudson. 

Sayre grumbled and massaged the side of his head until it was gone, then he returned to the night sky. In the moonlight, he pulled out the Witch’s vial and once more held it between finger and thumb.

His head tilted with curiosity and bemusement.

“Well, that was…interesting,” he said to the night, and heard a bit of his voice echo behind him in the giant bell.

Sayre smirked, uncorked the vial, and drank the finest blood he had in years. It drenched his soul. Then he tucked it away, and climbed down the belfry to his make-shift bedroom, where he fell asleep in perfect darkness as the sun cracked on the horizon.