When Darness Calls

When death stares you boldly in the face, can you possibly turn away? Light had never really given much time to ponder this notion, seeing as the situation to ponder it had never really came up, until now of course. Had anyone asked her, she probably would have replied with a sensible, "No." Seeing as how death was unequivocally a part of a human being's life.

She had been told numerous times by her elders throughout her twenty-two years that the second you were first born, the moment you take your first breath, you are merely taking one monotonous step towards you imminent demise. A depressing train of thought? Perhaps. But, nevertheless, extremely true in meaning.

But had she thought of her own? Not in the very least. It had probably been the farthest thing from her mind. She had never really thought herself to be immortal, but to die? Perhaps the thought of one's death is not the uppermost priority for a specific reason.

Death loomed closer.

Light wished she could at least die in a faintly proper way, maybe even in her sleep if she was lucky. A death such as this wasn't even remotely civilized or humane. Death must come in many forms, why did it have to come to her in this particular one?

Red eyes loomed close to her face, a livid ruby color trained on her. The body attached to those jewel eyes was beautiful, as most of his kind most likely were. The chalky skin covering him almost glowed in the dark and cold alleyway, like diamonds were embedded into his skin, twinkling at her humorously. It reminded her of the mornings by her cottage, when the grass glowed with droplets of rain.

Shiny brown hair hung in the ruby eyes, carelessly making its strong-angled face even more beautiful. Could death truly be beautiful? For she knew it was death because she could feel herself slowly dying. The two burning teeth plunged in her neck testified to that.

Death dropped her carefully and slowly to the cold ground, blood covered its mouth and ran in droplets down the front of its black clothes. The eyes of ruby she vividly remembered had dimmed to soft amber and he looked at her with horror, with regret. Though she could not see it very well because her sight was fading.

He kneeled down slowly at her side, running a dark blond strand of her hair through his cold and fingers and sighed with grief.

"I'm so sorry..." he whispered, "But once you wake up again, it will be better."

The last thing she saw was that face looking down at her.

"I won't leave you." he muttered.

She felt herself slipping....

*****

Earlier that same day...

It was a usual Monday morning, well, mostly usual. Besides the fact that Light felt an oddly excited sensation that morning, like something wonderful was going to happen. The rain and light outside her window even seemed to be somewhat extraordinary. Instead of the usual murky fog and rainy drizzle, the light seemed to glow with a strange green intensity and the rain came down like snowflakes.

Although, it was nearly impossible for it to snow in Babylon, the town she lived in.

All the weather ever provided in this town was an endless turbulence of heretic and somewhat depressing rain. It got so cold sometimes that the rain would pour down the paved road and freeze all the way over, dangerous weather for driving, especially in the vehicle she drove in, a slug-bug.

However dangerous the task was, she still needed to make a decent living. Light worked at the veterinary clinic, down the Babylon's main street where she took in the occasional cat, dog or cattle. There really weren't that many people in Babylon, which was one of the reasons why she had chosen this town to live in, and the closest city was Pampa, which was 50 miles away. So pet options for the people were limited, as was the activity of business at the clinic.

However limited the pets were, she owned a canary that she had acquired on one of her previous vacations. Demo, (the bird, obviously) was the only companion she had in her house, and she had no other family nearby. So Demo was like a little baby to her. Demo, at the moment was tweeting happily by the window in his golden cage, oblivious to the outside world in his own little birdie dreamland. Sometimes it was nice to be oblivious. She slowly moved away from the window and sighed heavily as she went into the bathroom to do her normal routine.

Take quick bath, take toothpaste pill, brush hair, get dressed, and apply a quick brush of mascara and lip gloss. Light pulled her jeans up and smoothed her hands down her white shirt, satisfied with that part of her appearance, she began to apply make-up. After she swiped on her lip gloss, she stuck her tongue and licked her lips, realizing with a faint horror that it was the same she had worn since she had been in Junior High.

Bubble Gum flavored.

How pathetic. She almost even felt like a child while looking in the mirror, minus their incredible exuberance. Much really hadn't changed since Junior High. The same 5''3 feet height, the same 102 pound frame, the same dark blond hair, and the same hazel eyes she had acquired from her mother. Though she looked older. Her eyes no longer sparkled with innocence and excitement; they instead shone with wariness and intelligence. And there was a faint scar on the corner of her mouth where a cabinet had once hit her.

Light tossed one more hate-filled look at the dreaded lip gloss and clipped her watch underneath her black rain coat. She rushed quickly towards the door and quickly slipped on her usual rain boots and grabbed the red umbrella that seemed to precociously sit along the line of the door and scuttled out onto her front porch.

It was still faintly sprinkling outside. The droplets fell delicately onto the ground, making it sparkle with a gleaming point of light that seemed to come from the sun. The glare forming from the grass, shining into her eyes.

The constant rain in Babylon meant that all of the lawns were lush and green. Light's front yard was an emerald green and the sun's rays shone upon it and seemed to bounce mythical lights, causing the surface of the glass to see somewhat mirror-like. A beautiful natural phenomenon that she saw on a daily basis. This is what she loved about the morning.

She strolled down the sidewalk talking in all of this, smelling the air perfumed with flowers. It was incredibly pleasant, calming her senses and pulling together all of her thoughts. It was almost as if a garden was surrounding her, as if she didn't have a single care in the entire world.

Light climbed into her yellow slug-bug, dreading the thought of driving on the ice. She turned the key, expecting the worst possibly scenario...the car not starting. Surprisingly, the car started with amazing ease and she could see that this was going to be a good day as had formerly suspected.

*****

Sometimes Dante wished that he could be normal. Normality and its trivial matters somehow appealed to him compared to things that faded as his memories because less and less clear. The memories were slowly evolving into something that seemed another world...perhaps even a dream if it were possibly for him to sleep. But he knew that he would never be able to go back to the blissfully ignorant phase of humanity again.

Most people would be saddened with this concept, but Dante had to admit to himself that he wasn't even really considered a person. As he stared into the darkness, he felt no sadness. Darkness was good in some ways. It showed the good points of the light, and provided some, like him, with comfort beyond life.

He stared into the empty space below his perch on the library's roof and looked at the stone gargoyle to his right, touching it with a slow movement and feeling the cold stone beneath his equally cold palm. He felt the bone-weary tiredness again, the weariness never stopped. Weary of having to resort to such tedious measures to live. If what he was doing could be considered living. He supposed if someone defined living as the ability to maintain and support one's existence, it could almost be counted as that. Though the way he was supporting his existence was abominable.

He supposed over the centuries he should have grown accustomed to his way of life. But it was quite difficult. Although he only killed certain people: murderers , prostitutes , child molesters , and other inexcusable members of society, it left him somehow hollow with each drop of blood that touched his mouth. He should be used to it. But he wasn't....

Taking a humans life had never appealed to him, but to live, or whatever he was doing, he would have to deal with it. There was no way to avoid it, the lust for blood never left him even in his most composed moments, and he was an elder vampire. It surprised him increasingly that the younger vamps never seemed to get caught. He supposed the police thought it was some sort of cult or some other ridiculous thing, of course he knew that they would just turn the other cheek if they knew.

Frequent numbers of the attacks had been showing up in Pampa lately, and he faintly wondered who was making all of the young vamps. If the vampire had ever been caught, would he surely not be sent to The Judgement? Although, only elder vampires could change humans, so it probably had centuries of experience.

The Judgement controlled most of the vampire community, and was the most ruthless and unforgiving committee of tracking vamps. So he supposed that they had already caught onto what was happening in Pampa. He just wondered why they did not act, it really wasn't their style. They were usually right in the middle of things.

Once in a blue moon, a vampire would go insane, or simply want revenge and try to expose their own race. The Judgement took care of all situations of securing our secret from the humans, and in return the human government feigned being oblivious, although one percent of their population depleted per year, due to us.

It had been that way for years down, the corruption of the government had occurred during the Rising Era, when the vamps had come out of hiding and demanded that the eightieth president, Jeanette LiQuer had given them a choice of the freedom to feed or starting a war.

LiQuer, being the businesswoman had immediately gone for sacrificing some of her population to losing all of it; it had been a wise choice, but also a cowardly one in Dante's opinion. He hadn't wanted anything to do with that war.

Now they were on their hundred and twentieth president, Barney Bridges, who compromised quite well and just turned the other cheek, though not sacrificing as much as LiQuer had. The number of unexplained injuries in the morgue in LiQuer's time had caused uproar from the humans, whom contributed the increasing number of deaths from some type of drug to a new disease, and eventually LiQuer had been assassinated.

It was hard to believe that all this had happened centuries before, because it seemed almost yesterday to Dante, though he had heard the older you got, the quickly the years...decades....centuries past. He sometimes wondered how quickly eternity would pass.

Dante looked off the building and watched as the intended prey of the vampires scuttled on the sidewalk. They almost looked like ants from this vantage point, very tiny ants. And he wondered if that is what he looked like when he had been human. An ant? Dante looked down the building and felt the wind caressing his cheek and pulling the smell of the humans to him like a siren.

Hunger ripped through him like an avalanche, the muscles in his stomach quivering. He felt the flow of venom in his mouth, and swallowed with discomfort. He hissed through his teeth and he knew his eyes had begun to glow with a ruby glow. The scent that previously comforted him on the wind now tormented him.

Dante listened to the bubbles of voices below him and sighed with a resignation of fate, he hadn't fed in a long time, and he knew that now was the time. If he didn't feed now it would just be more difficult later to find a proper morsel of prey.

He sat up on the building and slowly put one foot over the side of the building. And jumped into the darkness, landing on the sidewalk without a sound.

He went hunting.

*****

Light closed up the door to the veterinary clinic, mentally sighing with weariness. There hadn't been much business that day, but their new shipment of equipment had partly came in and she more than usually had to unload every piece of it.

Though, there was still quite a bit of medicine in Pampa that she had to pick up.

The rain hadn't really been that bad that day, so she decided that today was as good as any other day, maybe even better than other days. Instead of the usual blackness of clouds overhead, the horizon loomed over the mountain in an intoxicating bouquet of purples, blues, and pinks. Nature always amazed her.

So, after locking up the clinic, she sighed with weariness and resignation, and hopped into the slug-bug, hoping to god that the luck from the morning hadn't worn off yet. And apparently it hadn't, because the car started as smoothly as it had this morning. She wondered what the catch was.