Sayre slunk out of his belfry-apartment and into the streets once more. He sat himself at a cafe, illuminated by gaslight and the new fangled electric bulbs, and joyously sipped at a cup of coffee–though he did have to add a cap of blood from a flask. 

The wrought iron cafe table and chairs were cold, but he couldn’t feel it through the woolen frock coat, red scarf around his neck, and gloved fingers. He peeled off his gloves when his coffee arrived. His cold fingers unbuttoned his coat. The scarf lay like banners down his chest. A blaring streak of color against his otherwise dark clothes.

Seated at the giant windows, he watched denizens stoll by, all as bundled as he was. One woman sported a wild fur coat that he almost rose from his seat just to track her down to steal. By the time he had made up his mind, she was already long gone from his sight. And honestly, he was too content to move.

The cafe had a gentle murmur. Stone floors. Giant green plants stretched and arched in corners. A little fire behind a golden peacock screen kept the worst of the cold at bay. Somewhere in the depths of the building, where larger tables for dinner service awaited, a piano lilted a soft, delicate melody. If there was a place of peace, this cafe was it for him.

It sat open into the dark hours of the night. Accustomed to strange characters. Attentive, but not prying.

It felt like one of the safest places in the city to him—aside from his belfry. 

As the carriages rolled by, he pulled out the envelope the Witch had given him, and pried it open. He expected names, or body parts, but instead he found… Actually, he wasn’t sure. In truth, he knew little about how witch’s magic worked. He barely had a handle on his own—if vampirism even was magic. He suspected as much. For centuries he'd looked the same. Never aged. Never grew weak. He was perpetually… How old was he?

The headache returned and he rubbed his head again, before he leaned forward for a long, long sip of red-tinted coffee. A waiter walked by with a tray of pastries, offering one to him, but Sayre sent them away. His eyes homed in on their bare wrist and the steady lub-dub of their pulse. Sayre groaned, took another long pull of his coffee, and shook the Hunger away. At least, for now.

His attention returned to the folded paper in his hands. A perfect crease. A smell of something dark. A lingering smear of dried blood. As he stared at it, it made the deal all the more real. It made the previous night…make less sense.

He had made a deal with a witch. What the hell was he thinking? A witch, who had managed to enthrall his body and orchestrate his limbs without his consent. A truly terrifying thing for him. Centuries of being top-predator meant he rarely was ever put into a situation like that. Even against other vampires, he ranked high. For the first time, something stepped into a fighting ring against him, and he found a challenge. A Grizzly Bear against a Bengal Tiger.  The thought that terrified him all the more, was that he wasn’t quaking in fear. No, he was brimming with excitement.

He felt a tug on the corners of his mouth when he thought about the Witch. Her dark aura. Her dark eyes. The impish smirk. Had he a heart—one that was still actively beating like a human’s would—he was certain it might have fluttered at the challenge. Certainly not for the curves of her jaw bone, or her lips. Or that shadowy pocket at the intersection of her jaw and neck that he wanted to bury his teeth into.

Sayre shook his head and drained the last of his coffee. He cleared his mind. Abated the hungers. Then, he forced himself to focus on the shopping list, and not on the fact it smelled faintly of her, somehow.

He read it once, then a second, and a third time. Things like ‘a seamstress’ idle fingers,' and ‘a coward’s bravery,’ and the like.

How?

A growl dissolved his smile. A roll of his eyes broke his concentration.

Sayre folded it and returned the envelope to his pocket. Whatever it was the witch needed, he was sure it would make itself known to him. He didn’t doubt— 

He didn’t doubt? The thought made him pause. Why? He was a centuries-old vampire. A little magic should mean nothing to him, even if he was hungry. How the hell did a witch hold him hostage? Command him? 

Though it wasn’t unheard of to meet others as old as him, or older, it was a bit of a rarity. Their appearances weren’t the only things they kept from their human past, the lust for power, for control, lingered on. As far as he knew, his kind could keep on, indefinitely, so long as they had blood (going without tended to mean wrinkles—gasp!—a body that weakened until it turned to a husk, and something worse and more murderous than hangry).  What really killed their kind were mistakes, and one another. It made the rules quite simple: eat, drink and be merry, and you’ll live a long, long undead life; but if you betray, if you scheme to usurp, chances are you’ll wind up dust in the wind. Dirt and Dust, and Horseshit.

It was widely considered as a general rule: Don’t Bother the Night Creatures. Do that, and you’d—human or nonhuman—live (something a lot of them very much enjoyed).

The sheer fact that Sayre was now employed by a witch was sure to have all sorts of repercussions. He was sure something akin to imprisonment, beheading, or worse: taxes, would follow.

Then again, Sayre wasn’t some stock-and-standard vampire. Sayre was an Old One. Not ancient, but many centuries lived. He had seen cities rise, and fall. Had seen good rule, and evil prevail. He had watched wars with disdain and anger. He was there when Chivalry was an acne-pocked teenager whining about beauty and courtly love (a thing that always made his eyes roll when someone said, “chivalry is dead!’).

He had seen a lot—and had a lot. And…lost a lot.

Sayre never belonged to a den. He pre-dated them. As a whole, he understood the notion, the need for it, but they tried to impose rules on him. Politics. And, the lot of it made him want to scream. So, with each new leader of the den (and over the years there were many—because, remember: what’s the point of immortality if you can’t start a coup?) Sayre would be invited before them, they’d wax poetic about ’community’ and try to entice him to join—a.k.a. absorb his powers. Everytime he left with some new headache, and on occasion the remains of ripped out hearts beneath his fingernails. (The main reason he had begun sporting black, leather gloves: blood was so  much easier to clean off them.) Dens for the most part learned to leave him alone, and he would, for the most part, leave them alone. Let them toil and agonize over the verbiage for a peace-treaty with —

Sayre groaned as another headache spiked through his brain. Hot and burning. He rubbed and pulled the white cup to his lips, hoping to drain the last of his drink, but there was nothing left but a droplet. It clattered back to the saucer louder than he would have liked.

He raked  a long breath into his dead lungs—somehow still needed it, or maybe it was reflex at this point? Like his body moved through the motions of being human, even though it was a long time since—held it, then forced it out. Sayre did it another time, and another, and soon the throbbing headache was gone.

He leaned back into the hard, metal chair. His eyes closed. His brow furrowed.

“You alright, sir?” someone near him asked.

“Perfectly fine,” he lied.

When he peeled his human eyes open, the couple in the table nearby shifted glances over him. Unease, and worry. He gave a charming smile. “Thank you for your concern,” he said, leaning into the lingering traces of his original accent. That tended to be enough to distract people.

They nodded and returned to their hot drinks. Sayre drilled his fingers into the corners of his eyes, rubbing them a little more, before he slipped his gloves back on. He threw money to the table, then he was up again in the streets, hat once more over his hair, frock coat on, with a list of ingredients for a witch.

But first, maybe he would see that waiter about a “pastry.”

His fangs leaped at the thought.