Premise:

Humans evolved from vampires long ago, when a pair of vampires, Adam and Eve, who while pregnant, decided to feast on apples and the meat of the animals instead of their blood. Although the apples and the meat sustained them for longer than the blood, it made them weaker and age faster. When the child was born, he possessed none of the traits of a vampire. He did not thirst for blood, nor was he able to extend canine fangs used to extract blood. They were also considerably weaker and slower. They could however, venture into the sunlight without harm. They also aged faster, about four times faster. Which meant they reached breeding age four times faster than vampires. The human population exploded while the vampire population grew slowly. Relations between the two groups were good, even allowing for breeding between the two sub-species, though there were many vampire clans that were against it and kept from associating with humans. The children born to vampires and humans only had half the power of a pure blooded vampire. The strength of a vampire can easily be measured by the length of their fangs when it is extended for feeding or siring; the longer the fangs, the stronger their power, the purer the blood. A vampire of pure blood has fangs that extend all the way down to their collar bone.

The peace that existed between the vampires and humans soon dissolved after many millennia, when vampires discovered that the blood of humans sustained them and maintained their health and aging better than the blood of animals. Furthermore, they discovered that when the saliva that keeps animals and humans alive when feeding enters the heart of a human or animal, they too gain vampire powers and thirsts for blood, albeit slightly weaker powers with a weaker thirst. Thus siring was born.
Although gifted with superior strength and speed, the generations of cross breeding had led to a severe weakening of their vampire powers. The fact that they were vulnerable to sunlight also proved advantageous to the humans in their war against the vampires. The humans had also discovered that silver was particularly harmful to them and it took much longer to heal from and that wooden stakes would paralyse their bodies. Like humans, vampires weak spot is the heart, and once punctured would kill them. Over a hundred years of fighting, vampire numbers had dwindled. When the vampire clans that maintained their disassociation from humans and thus remained pure blooded threatened to step in unless the humans stopped their war, the humans stopped. A truce was negotiated that the clans would keep the vampires in line and out of human lives, so long as the humans provide them with a fair amount of human blood, enough to keep them sustained.
Although vampires still attacked, they were at a much rarer occasion and were often dealt with. Still, humans formed a school known as The Academy that trained those who wanted to learn the ways of vampire hunting.
Nonetheless, the truce still held true and the humans still provided blood through The Academy that deals with Human-Vampire relations. As human sacrifices soon developed into blood banks, vampires too faded into obscurity and into the likes of myths and folklores. Now they live underground, living off the blood banks. And just as vampires faded from existence, so did The Academy. But just like vampires, they still exist, underground.

Chapter 1

4 figures jumped across the night sky, dancing from snow laden rooftop to the next. Their speed was so great that to a human observer, they would have looked like a smudge darting from one rooftop to the next. The one dancing ahead of the quartet was wearing a tan waist length jacket, with a white shirt underneath and black pants. He would have looked like any other person if it wasn’t for the deep patch of crimson spreading across his left shoulder. His three pursuers behind him wore black over coats over black suits and red shirts and ties. The wild wind and the sheer speed of their movements made the tails of their jackets flow behind them like capes.

“He’s fast”

“A little too fast”

“Don’t worry, we’ll catch him” the three pursuers conversed with each other as they picked up speed. The distance between hunter and hunted shortens. The hunted notices the hunters closing in and instead of continuing straight, he decides to take a sharp right, sprinting along the rooftop he was on, and upon reaching the ledge, he takes a leap, landing softly onto his feet on a pile of fresh snow on the rooftop of the next building. As soon as he lands, he extends his left leg out to continue his escape. Less than a second later, his left foot touched down ten metres from where he was before. He feels his heart pulsating heavily; his lungs feel as though they’re weighing him down; his muscles start to feel numb. He looks behind him and sees his pursuers are still behind him and gaining. He pushes off from his left foot, another second, another ten metres and his right foot touches down onto the rooftop. Heart beats heavier, his lungs weigh him down more, his muscles become more numb. He knows that his assailants aren’t going to give up or slow down. Simply become faster. Not yet he thought to himself.

The chase continues, rooftop to rooftop. The figure being chased is beginning to reach his limits. Then he sees what he was looking for: light. Light emanating from the glass dome of the 49^th Street Mall across the street; another in a series of 24 hour shops in New Salem, Washington. He runs towards the edge of the building he was on and upon stepping onto the ledge, he leaps off, and in the blink of an eye, he was right over the glass dome, and falling. As he smashes through, shards of glass fly towards him, cutting him in several places, though he felt no pain. He was used it. He falls onto his feet, but quickly rolls onto his back across his shoulders along the ground to absorb the shock. As he comes out of his roll and onto his feet, he launches off once more, along shocked onlookers of late night shoppers looking for last minute Christmas presents, though they could barely follow him with their eyes. Only feel the wind he leaves behind.

He notices that the three he was evading had just fallen through the glass dome, smashing through more glass, and were now on his tail once more.

Shit he thinks to himself. He looks around him for an escape. All he sees are throngs of people. A man in his fifties wearing an expensive hand tailored suit looking at Cartier watches for his twenty-three year old mistress. A series of clothes racks. A couple in their early twenties though the guy seems like he was shaken awake thirteen minutes ago and forced here. Some display cases showing off some expensive jewellery. A husband looking bored as his wife looks at dresses. His foot touches the ground once more, and he pushes off. He sees a display case showing off an array of collectables, notably a silver letter opener. He sees a mother with her two children, a six year old boy with a blue rain coat and a blue beanie and a five year old girl dressed similarly except wearing a yellow rain cap. Finally something he could use.

He stops as his foot lands on the ground. He pivots around so he is facing his oncoming pursuers, who touch down three metres in front of him and stop amid people staring intently at the event unfolding. 5 metres behind them, a yellow rain cap falls to the ground as a mother screams.

The little girl who was once next to her brother and mother was now in the arms of a man in a tan jacket, his right hand clasped over her mouth and holding her up in the air against his shoulder. She was scared for her life. The man held a knife closely against her throat. She so desperately wanted to scream but her mouth was held tightly shut. She looks around at the people staring, mouths ajar, unsure of what to do. Looks back at her mother’s worried face as she looks on. She tries to approach but people hold her back, fearing for her safety. She looks towards the three men in black suits and black over coats, barely three metres in front of her. Though they had human form, their faces were clearly not human. What would have been a good looking face was severely distorted, with the lower jaw pushed back and the middle part of the face across the cheekbones were pushed forward to make way for two long fangs protruding from the front and over the lower lips. They went as far down as a half inch below their chins. The three of them simply stood there, waiting for something to happen. They were so close to the man holding the girl and knife that they could smell one another. The man pushes the knife, a ten centimetre silver blade that was rectangular three quarters of the way up when it breaks off into a steep right angled triangle so that it resembled more of a Stanley knife against her neck. The handle was barely longer than the blade and was a simple golden box as slightly wide than the blade with some decorative engravings. When he spoke, the girl truly began to fear for her life. His voice was coarse and rough like sand paper and had a hollow timbre to it.

“Not many know this” He began, taking a step closer to the trio. They were now two metres apart from one another, “But I do. The blood of a virgin is deadly to vampires. Those who drink from a virgin always die.” He presses the blade against the girl’s neck so she can actually feel the coldness of the metal make a slight cut. “Their blood burns them like hot silver and makes them throw up their own blood. It cooks them from the inside. It’s not a fast death either. The blood stays in their bloodstream and continues to burn them. Burn for seven days and eight nights. By then rigor mortis would have already set in and the corpse would be half rotten. Nothing can cure it except death.” The trio takes a step back as the knife wielding man took a step forward. “And it’s not just if they drink it either. A splash of the blood on their skins will still burn them like the sun. They’ll live, but for those seven days and eight nights, they’ll wish they wont”

“You won’t do that.” The figure in the middle of the trio answers, in a calm deep voice “You’re a human. And humans don’t harm other humans”

“You’d think that wouldn’t you?” was the only response. The tense moment that felt like a lifetime was suddenly interrupted and everyone returned to real time. A security guard had broken through the crowd, carrying a gun and calling for the man to drop the girl and the knife. Then it happened, all so quickly. A warm liquid sprayed across the two metre gap and went into the trio’s faces, burning them. They all scramble, hands over their burning faces, with the one on the right and middle fleeing right and the one on the left fleeing left, all at breakneck speeds. All the while, the security guard and all the people around scrambled to the aid of the little girl left lying on the ground, blood gushing from her slit throat, eyes rolling up, struggling for breath. She would die twenty minutes later in an ambulance to Angelus Memorial Hospital.

The vampire that broke left was weaving his way between shoppers who were unaware of the incident. Also running along side him, on the other side of a row of display cases was a man wearing a tan jacket with a crimson patch over his right shoulder and carrying a blood stained knife in his left hand held across his stomach. The vampire then quickly leaps onto the display case and then pushes off towards the man in the tan jacket, teeth bared, ready to bite.

But the man in the tan jacket was simply too fast. Before the vampire could land on him, he had turned his body so that he was facing him and had cleaved his knife upward so that it avoided his fangs and sliced along the cheeks through the mouth until it hit the joint where the lower jaw connects to the skull before being knocked to the ground by the weight of the vampire on top of him. Though it was barely visible, small streams of steam could be seen from the cuts along the vampire’s cheeks. Despite having his cheeks sliced open and his mouth hanging by a joint, the vampire looks down at the person still holding the knife pressed against the back of the jaw.

“I knew it” he manages to mouth out. Then, the man in the tan jacket then turns the knife so the sharp side was facing downwards and then pushes, severing the vampire’s lower jaw from the head. The man then raises his feet and kicks the vampire off from on top of him and into a glass display case, shattering it and scattering jewellery all over the ground behind him. The man then jumps on top of the vampire, knees pressing against the bottom of the vampire’s ribcage. He then plunges the knife straight through a couple ribs and straight into the heart, killing him.

As soon as he was certain the vampire was dead and would remain so, the man in the tan jacket leapt to his feet and over the shattered display case before speeding off through the crowd, heading to the closest exit that leads outside. In front of him, less than ten metres away, was a large two metre by two metre window, with the night sky gleaming through. He then pushes off with his right foot and in the blink of an eye; glass could be seen and heard shattering and a man in a tan jacket fell from the fourth storey window of the 49^th Street Mall of New Salem.

When his feet touched the ground again, the man in the tan jacket hit the ground running, looking for any place he can hide and rest. It’s been a long night. After a few seconds of running, he sees what he was looking for, a round manhole cover leading down to the sewers that form the foundation of the city. A second later he was gone and the only sound was the clinking as a manhole cover fell into place.

Down below in the sewer, a man in a tan jacket sat in the river of sewerage that flowed out from the bowels of the city into the sea, with his right hand deep in the water and his left sat limply on his lap, his knife in close reach. The water might have been filled with piss and shit and rats but it was cold. It was dark down there, with the only light coming from the eight square holes in the cover that let in the street lights stream in like golden beams of sunshine from Heaven itself.

With his head resting against the base of the ladder that leads up to the surface, the man in the tan jacket began to rest, closing his eyes. However before he could get much rest, a roaring sound startled him. With his left hand, he quickly reached into his tan jacket. Four loud bangs broke the silence. Four flashes of light pierced the darkness. The falling body of a dead eight foot crocodile with four bullet holes in the back of its skull shook the relative stillness of the water. The man in the tan jacket then replaced the Brazilian made Taurus T92 stainless steel handgun into its shoulder holster with his left hand. With peace finally restored, he then put his head against third railing of the ladder and drifted off into a gentle sleep.

Through the darkness of his mind came bright lights that were in the form of dreams. The dreams felt so real they seemed like memories than dreams. Nothing really happened, just horrific images flashing before his mind like a sick slideshow. An image of a man in his mid-thirties, slumped in a chair in his bedroom. He was dead. He didn’t seem to have a peaceful death either, as can be told from his eyes. He died in fear, shock and pain. His collar, neck and left side of his face were drenched in his own blood.

Another image came. This time of a woman, pinned to a wall by wooden stakes in her hands, spread out over her bed. Her face appeared rather distorted, with a pair of what looked like fangs extending just under her chin over her mouth. Her face appeared to be full of rage and blood lust.

The third image that came was of another man, much younger than the first, in his mid twenties. He was standing on a writing desk facing a small open window and all that can be seen of him was his back.

He was just over six foot, peak physical condition, though not particularly muscular. He wore a long sleek black jacket that had tails extending all the way down to his ankles.

Then, the only action throughout the entire slideshow. The figure turned his head over his left shoulder so the left of his face could be seen. He had a long black fringe that went all the way down to his mouth on that pale face of his. Then there were his eyes. Well the one that could be seen. It appeared to be a normal eye with the exception that the iris was pure black, with the pupil being a lighter shade. It looked as though no light could escape from the black hole that was his eye.

The slideshow ended with the opening rifts of the Stones’ classic Paint it Black. The man wearing the tan jacket was shaken from his nightmare with the ring tone of his phone. His left hand reaches into right pants pocket and pulls out a mobile phone. He looks at the front to see who was calling. With a groan, he flips it open and puts it to his ear.

“Jesus fucking Christ Glockenspiel. What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you fucking know how much fucking shit you are fucking in right fucking now?” The voice on the other end screamed out. It sounded as though it came from a balding overweight man in a sweaty shirt with his tie undone with a cigarette in his mouth. Which it did.

“No I don’t,” Glockenspiel replied, nonchalantly.

“You fucking killed a fucking kid in a shopping centre full of fucking people. You’re on the fucking breaking fucking news. The Academy aint like in fucking movies asshole. We can’t just erase people’s memories and make them fucking think it didn’t fucking happen. And worse off, you didn’t kill all your secondary targets.” The voice screamed once more.

“I got one of em.”

‘Whoop de fucking whoop. You’re a goddamn hero. Get your fucking ass back here for a medal of fucking heroism.”

Glockenspiel decided he couldn’t take any more of this. He grates the mouthpiece of the phone across the bricks of the sewers.

“What? Im losing you. Im in a tunnel.” He responds and grates the phone against the bricks once more. He hears more cursing from the earpiece and decides to just throw the phone against the wall, shattering it into hundreds of little pieces of silicone and plastic.

He places his head against the third railing of the ladder once more and closes his eyes. There he stayed for seven days and eight nights, until the burns on his right hand healed.

Chapter 2

Annette Dawson hurriedly stepped out of the elevator to reach her apartment door. When she approached the lock, she fumbled into her purse for her keys. She shot a quick glance over her shoulder. First toward the bank of elevators behind her which she got off from. Then to the stairs on either side of the hallway. Her sweaty palm clenches around the keys and wrenches it free from the clutter in her bag. Just as she’s untangling the keys to get at the right one with both hands, loud thumps emanating from the western stairwell shot through her body and sent her jangled nerves to pieces, making her drop her keys. Thoughts of horror and dread speared through her mind. What if it was that strange man following me home? What did he want? He was chasing me to the elevator just as the doors closed. What if he’s come up the stairs? How does he know which floor I live on? As she was thinking those things, she picked up her keys to her apartment and got up and shakily slid the key into the hole. As the key pushed aside the pins, the elevator bell behind her rang. Must be Mrs Peterson from 18F coming home from work at Angelus Memorial Dawson thought to herself, trying to force the thoughts of the strange man from earlier out of her head. She twists the key, undoing the latch. She pushes open the door and raises her left foot past the threshold. Before her foot touched the ground, five loud bangs roared behind her in quick succession. Dawson instinctively dropped to her knees, not letting go of the keys as she felt projectiles whiz by her hair. She hears heavy footsteps pound their way towards her before a firm cold hand wrapped itself around her mouth and her chin and pulling her back hard so her hand was jerked straight off the keys and sent flailing as she landed into a firm rugged chest. The hand held her tightly against the body and refused to loosen, no matter how much she struggled. She watched the world around her spin around as her whole body along with that of the person holding her rotated and backed itself against the wall.

Behind a shattered window and glass sliding door laid Anton Verdis, a former investment banker for the now collapsed banking firm Walker Saxons Valdov and Walsham, whose executives have been indicted on 62 counts of various white collar crimes such as fraud and corruption. Now Anton Verdis’ white collar was drenched crimson red with his own blood. Blood was still seeping from a pair of holes punctured into his neck, straight into his right common carotid artery. His left hand twitched with whatever life remained in him. On the balcony no more than six feet from him, a man with a pale moon face grimaced as glass shattered and fell on him. A bullet had just missed his face by inches. Still grimacing, the man with a pale moon face leaned into the scope of the M4 Carbine he had mounted onto the ledge of the balcony. Through it, he can see the reflection of the evening sky deadened in the reflection of the window. He can see the faint sketch lines around the furniture in the apartment across the eighteen storey deep sea of air. He can see the thin stream of yellow light flowing in through the slightly ajar door. Upon seeing the light, without hesitation, he squeezed down on the trigger. Hard.

Dawson heard a shattering of glass from behind the open door, followed by what sounded like carpet being torn apart. A second later, out of the corner of her eye, watched as splinters and chunks of wood flew into the hallway after hearing what sounded like wood being punctured. Dents began to appear in the closed metal doors of the elevator, accompanied by a ringing ping sound. The man’s hand still gripped her jaw stiffly, not letting go. She turns her eyes to the left where she sees a tan coloured jacket sleeve, with the hand up and tensed, carrying a smoking silver gun. She saw the muscles and veins of the hand tighten as it gripped the gun handle harder. Dawson then felt something warm and moist spread onto the back of her blouse.

Click. Click. Click. Despite his best efforts, the man with the pale moon face could not fire off another round from his M4 Carbine now that the entire magazine was expended. In his furor, he pushes his M4 Carbine off the mount and onto the balcony floor, lifts his right leg onto the ledge of the balcony and pushes off. As soon as he lands into the balcony across the road, he rolls forward on his shoulders to absorb the impact. As soon as he gets out of the roll, he springs forward, making his way toward the shot up door and kicking through it.

Nicholas Glockenspiel loosened the grip he held on Annette Dawson’s face and let her fall to the ground. As she scrambled to the western stairwell, he holstered the gun in his left hand under his left shoulder and with his left hand reached into his jacket, underneath his right armpit. From there, he extracted a two-foot long sword, a quarter of which was the golden rectangular hilt with no guard, slightly wider than the one inch wide blade all the way down to the end. Standing by the door with his right hand on the hilt below his left, Glockenspiel holds the sword over his left shoulder, preparing to swing it like a baseball bat. When he hears the loud pounding of footsteps, he swings the sword into the threshold of the door at eye level, where it connects with human flesh and bone. However, instead of slicing right through, the sword meets resistance and Glockenspiel begins to feel the sword being pushed back towards him. As it was pushed back, a figure in a sleazy leather jacket stepped past the splintered and cracked wooden door. In its left hand was the blade of Glockenspiel’s sword, with blood dripping down the edge. Glockenspiel looked up into the pale moon face of the man in gripping his sword.

“You’re slow” he said

“Oh yeah” Glockenspiel replied as quickly let go with his right hand that dashed under his left armpit in his jacket.

Annette Dawson wrenched down the door handle as hard as she could before hearing a loud bang behind her. Ignore it just run. Just run her mind screamed to herself. But her legs wouldn’t budge and her arms just stayed on the door handle. Against her orders, her head twists to see what was happening behind her. There was a spray of blood in the air which splattered around the walls and onto the ceiling. She hears a clattering sound as she watches a 2 foot long sword drop to the ground. She watched a body clad in a tan jacket slump against the wall, slowly fall to the ground leaving a thick red trail. And in front of the man in the tan jacket was another man in a cheap leather jacket, carrying a black handgun in his right hand, with a pale moon face. And on that face was a pair of canine teeth that extended beyond the mouth and were long enough to reach the top of his chin.