Ann Siana was a nice enough 19 year old girl who enjoyed listening to alternative rock and dressing in blue and green. Right now she was walking home along a deserted nighttime stretch of pavement. The reason for her being so late was a sudden craving for beef jerky; and as she had decided her part of town was boring but safe enough to traverse at nine PM, she had gone to the local Walgreen’s. Ann had just taken her CD player out and begun listening to her music when she suddenly stopped mid-step.
Slowly she took her headphones off, put the CD player in the grocery bag, and inhaled slowly through her mouth, as if calming herself from a sudden fright, but she was really testing the air to make sure she hadn’t just imagined that scent which had driven everything away from her head. The salty-sweet coppery scent which, even as faint as it was, made her mouth water in a way she really didn’t like. The fresh scent of blood.
You see, Ann Siana was a vampire.
Carefully, she got her violently thrashing instinct to follow the blood-scent to its source, then took a few deliberate steps forward. Telling herself it was probably nothing, it was simply an imagined scent thrown out by her subconscious, she continued on her way when her ears caught the faint, pain-wracked moan of a seriously injured person--male, if she guessed correctly. Since her morals agreed with at least part of her vampiric desires, she decided to give it a look.
No sooner had Ann thought that before she broke out into a run towards the blood, the intensifying smell telling her she was on the right track. Her fangs, usually the length of an average human tooth, had practically erupted like a fast-forwarding film of the growth of a tooth, cutting painfully into the inside of her lower lip. The combined blood-scents making her already shrieking instincts run haywire until she came to an alley and stopped in surprise, dropping her bag.
Ann had only just processed that the injured person was, in fact, male, when he gave a nearly canine snarl and said something she couldn’t quite distinguish.
“W-what?” Ann asked, intimidated even though he was lying on the ground and injured while she was in relatively good shape and standing.
“The--the bullet, get the damn bullet out!” He was holding his arm oddly and the blood-smell was strongest there, so Ann figured it was lodged in his arm.
She had just bent to obey when she was halted by the fact that she had no tools to help her pull a bullet out of someone’s flesh. But she wasn’t empty-handed, she recalled; she had tools with her right now. After a moment, she decided on using them.
The method she had in mind would work, most likely--but it would also be incredibly disgusting and unpleasant for both of them. “Okay,” Ann told the man. “You’ll be in excruciating pain for about 15 seconds.”
She took a breath, steeled herself, and bit his arm.
Giovanni screamed as two razor-sharp points ripped into his arm, rendering at least the right side of his body paralyzed with pain and making him feel sure it had been hacked off.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” he yelled, looking at his arm--but his vision had gone blurry, tearing uncontrollably from the unknown torture and he couldn’t quite make anything out.
There was no answer, anyway. When he thought it could get no worse and he was on the edge of passing out, another pain, this time of something being inserted into his arm and pulling out the bullet, made him quite glad to lose consciousness where there was no pain.
The first thing Giovanni saw when he came to was the girl, with blood on her right hand fingers and--this made him suspicious--more trickling down her chin. Her left hand was on his shoulder and gripping firmly; she had obviously shaken him awake.
“Jesus, what’d you do to me?” he said, panting slightly and forcing himself not to touch his arm. “Excruciating... ha... torture, more like it...”
“I, uh... bit you.” Her speech was slurred a bit, like she had water or another liquid in her mouth.
That brought his head up. “Open your mouth,” Giovanni demanded. The two long, pointed, but most importantly bloody canines proved his notions correct, and he nodded. “Right. You’re a vampire. D’you know what I am?”
She gave him a Do-you-think-I’m-an-idiot smirk and replied, “Werewolf.” She stood up, spat out the remaining blood in her mouth, and offered him a hand. “Possibly Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, but I’m betting on werewolf.”
He gave a derisive snort and shrugged off the help, standing up with a little less difficulty than expected. “There’s nothing wrong with my leg, it’s my arm that’s screwed. So what’s your name?”
“Ann. Siana,” she added after wiping a remaining drop of blood off her lips. “What about you?”
“Giovanni O’Shea.”
Ann eyed him warily; now that he was off the ground and not passed out, she saw a somewhat older man with a shaggy mane of brownish blonde hair. Feeling even more conscious of her 5 foot 6 inch height, she looked up and judged (a bit hysterically) that he was a good six inches taller than herself.
Trying to cover her fear up, she began, “Shouldn’t you see someone about--”
“Nahhh. It’ll fix itself in a week now the silver’s out, werewolves are like that.” He picked up the scent of fear and told Ann, “Hey, I won’t hurt you. What you should be worried about is the bastard who shot me. He’s not only looking for werewolves, he’s looking for vampires too--”
“W-what?!” Ann said, choking. “Hold it, who--what--”
“You haven’t heard? Jesus, don’t you listen to...” Giovanni’s voice trailed off; as a werewolf, he could hear howls from others of his kind from miles away, but Ann was a vampire. She wouldn’t have heard a thing, and even if she had she couldn’t have understood. “Forget it. Listen, someone’s out to get vampires, werewolves, things that prey on humans in legend, and he’s somehow gotten this fucked belief that he’s helping out mankind. You’ll know who he is by the smell of blood on his hands.”
“Old blood.” Ann said.
“Yeah.” One of his ears twitched, hearing a distant howl on the very edge of his range, and he turned around, saying, “Shut up, someone’s trying to tell me something.”
“What--”
“Shut up!” Giovanni ran out of the alley and listened for a few seconds, then ran about a block to the right, straining to hear that distant wolf-call.
He’d been heading in the right direction; the sound was slightly clearer, and he kept running to the right until he could grasp it. It was a drawn-out death howl, he realized with a pang of regret, from a younger, female werewolf on the other side of the city. Even though, it was not unlike the one he had been about to voice before the kid vampire had saved him. And it was not only the last words of a dying werewolf, it was a warning to others that the hunter was still on the prowl.
The cry ceased gradually, and when the silence returned Giovanni’s guilt was washing over him in waves. If he’d just died and passed the message along, the other werewolf, whoever she was, would not have had to suffer the agony of silver lodged into her body, and she would not have died tonight.
As it was, he didn’t notice Ann till she was about ten feet away from him, panting from her rush to follow him. When she finally did reach him, Giovanni snarled and said, “Why are you following me?”
She took a breath and said, “I want to know what happened.”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, for--curious little brat aren’t you?” Her fake-innocent gaze brooked no argument, and Giovanni sighed. “It’s a werewolf thing, okay? I heard a howl and I couldn’t make out what it was saying, so I went closer.”
“I couldn’t hear anything--”
“God damn it, I’m a werewolf, I hear and understand things you wouldn’t imagine!”
“Well, excuse me, Mr. edgy creature of the night!”
They glared at each other, then Ann gave up and asked, “So, what’d you hear?”
Giovanni, too, lowered his gaze, scowling to hide his fresh surge of guilt. Then he said, “Death howl. She was telling all the other werewolves to keep an eye out for the hunter who killed her.”
Ann wasn’t deceived by the frown--she heard the slight undertone of sorrow and saw it in the way he hung his head. It surprised her, actually, for she didn’t really expect werewolves to have such drastic changes of emotion. But then, she hadn’t really met one before Giovanni, so she couldn’t really be sure.
“I didn’t know werewolves were so mood-swingy,” Ann heard herself say before she could stop it. He turned and advanced on her, genuinely angry now.
Oh, big mistake, she thought frightenedly, backing up slightly.
“Oh yeah?” he growled dangerously. “Haven’t you ever wondered why werewolves change most often on the full moon?” When she shook her head, he snorted and went on, “Then listen. It’s because the moon stands for the subconscious and emotion, and werewolves transform on the full moon because their instincts take over completely! It’s simple!” The last word had been yelled along with a terrifying roar, and Ann nearly recoiled even further with pure panic.
“Well--well, why don’t you give me a break!” Ann retorted, dredging up anger to make her feel brave enough to keep from sprinting away as fast as she could. It came more easily than she expected as she continued, “I’ve barely known you for half an hour and I already know you’re a stupidly unpredictable idiot!”
Ann’s fangs had begun growing again, probably out of both her anger and fear, and she nearly bared them when she remembered: An adult werewolf was a lot stronger than a 19 year old vampire, and wouldn’t be intimidated by a pair of sharp teeth when he most likely had a whole mouth of them in his transformed state. So she settled for a glare while trying to keep her mouth from being cut like before.
Giovanni sensed anger and fright on Ann, and he was much amused by the fact that the vampire had nearly bared her fangs like he had done so many times before when he was mad. Then what Ann had said sunk in, and he snapped, “Oh, ha! If you’re gonna be that way, then... then so long, Buffy the vampire!” And he bounded away, taking advantage of his unnatural speed so he wouldn’t do something they’d both regret.
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