What had begun as a shitty day, had become the most unbelievable of my life.
I had been fired. Working as a night ticket clerk in the subway wasn't much good to begin with, but it had been paying my way through college... why I chose Ancient & Medievil Lore is still beyond me. The rain was pissing down, the clouds black, dreary, broiling.
I was walking past a wannabe Gothic style building, circa 1720 (I guess my A&M lore must be good for something after all), when I felt a hand grab my arm. I heard a woman whisper into my ear; "Keep walking, don't turn around." Her accent... was it British? I wasn't sure. She did, however, sound confident and serious, so I followed her instruction. That, plus the fact that the grip she had on my arm was enough to crush metal.
I should explain a bit about myself before I go on. I'm a big guy (6'6, 230 pounds), but generally don't throw my weight around. Optimistic people have called me a gentle giant, while everyone else realises I'm just a pussy. I'm generally the do-what-I'm-told, seen-but-not-heard type of guy, so when a powerful woman grabs me in the street and starts giving me instructions, I don't do nothin' else.
She steered me around a corner, picking up pace, pushing me along. We reached a street corner where she must have hailed a cab (I was still looking straight ahead, as per instruction), because the next thing I knew she was dragging me inside.
"Get us out of here," she ordered the driver, while throwing a $100 bill at him. He, of course, complied, and the tires squealed as we raced off into the night.
As I continued to resolutely stare at a point in front of me, I heard her sigh impatiently. "You can turn around if you want to now, human." I did, slowly, and must've spent two minutes just sitting there in shock.
She was a brunette, beautiful, wearing a skin-tight leather bodysuit that left nothing to the imagination. Her skin was pale, flawless and in heavy contrast with her dark hair and suit. The leather followed every contour of her body - her firm breasts, her slim waist, her long, shapely legs.
I was in love, or at least a helluva lot of lust. After that two minutes of gawping at her, she looked at me with a slightly amused glint in her eye, and said, "I'm called Seline. You're a target of a group of lycans, and they're not going to stop until they find you."
The cab screeched around a corner. "Lycans? You mean werewolves? Are you serious?"
"Deadly," she replied. "They would have had you back there, but I stepped in. You're lucky to be alive."
I may be a wimp, but I am quick on the uptake. "If they're lycans, what does that make you?"
She smiled, slowly, and I watched in astonishment as her two upper canines began to grow and extend, until there was no doubt as to what I was looking at. "You're a vampire?" I asked in trepidation. "Are you going to suck my blood?"
She shook her head in amusement, before retracting her fangs. "Sometimes you're clever and others, you're unbelievably stupid. If I were after your blood I'd have taken you to a quiet place, canted your head to the side, and slowly sunk my fangs into your exposed, luscious neck." She grinned vampyrically at my look of horror. "In reality, blood is what we vampires eat, but it is not essential, nor an irrepressible urge. It is always there, but only the vampires who we would equate to your drunkards and addicts cannot contain their hunger. We - "
She suddenly became silent, and glanced out the back window of the cab. "We have to get moving. Open the door and jump out when I say to. Make sure to hit the ground rolling."
It was perhaps lucky that I was so dumbfounded by all that was happening. I followed her instructions without hesitation or conscious thought, and after she had told the driver to slow down and ordered me out, I jumped and rolled a few feet down the rain-sodden road. She must have followed me straight after, because I felt her smack into me once I had slowed, and we both rolled a bit further. She ended up on top of me, one of my legs between hers, our faces inches apart. She looked into my eyes with... perhaps it was curiosity, before standing, dragging me onto my feet, and pulling me into the shadows of a large, decrepit old building.
The cab driver, for reasons which never became clear to me, slowed down to a stop, and poked his head out the window, looking back at where we had rolled out, possibly wondering where we had gone. We watched him in silence for a moment, her finger over my lips, a warning to stay silent.
Suddenly, three blurs flashed down the street, jumping on top of the car. As they slowed, I was able to make out that they were vaguely humanoid, but much more hairy, with wolfish heads and bodies that seemed much too muscular, like something out of a comic book.
The blurs, which I had worked out were werewolves (I told you I was fast), roared in anger when they only found the driver, sitting dumbly, looking up at them in abject terror. I don't like to repeat what I saw happen to him, but needless to say it made me rather grateful that Seline had rescued me from encountering the creatures.