?THROUGH THE FOREST?
It was pitch black. The darkness was his friend. The night had worn on. It felt sometime around two. He had jumped all the way through the forest. He had little bearing of where he was but he knew where he was headed and he knew he was safe now. Safe again. But for how long?
Jake looked back. He saw dim lights in the distance twinkling in their tens. The hunters were far away now. He'd crossed the backup without alerting them. They were over two dozen. He'd stretched a fortune of distance between himself and them. Now he had the luxury of thought.
He inspected his two arrow wounds. The older wound had healed completely. Pale, wrinkled flesh had filled the hole that had bled. The second one was still open but it dripped less blood.
The hunters had outsmarted him twice. They'd killed his brood, his brothers, every one of them, even those from bits of his old life. Something that had seemed very much impossible to do. That was the thing: all of his primary senses were honed to perfection the day he died and resurrected. His eyesight was better than the hawk's, his sense of smell sharper than the shark's. He grew hearing sharper than the owl's. He was also stronger, more flexible, tread long distances meant to take him hours in minutes and endurance, endurance that bettered the Dipodomys. He also had the gift of thought transference. Telepathy. The Psychic communication. He could read minds, feel thoughts, particularly with people he was in some way connected to. He also had the ability to push thoughts into people but he hated it. There was nothing worse than being controlled. Being used. Forced to do against one's own will.
Forced to flee.
He was also blessed with the ultimate gift - Immortality. The span of his life was increased hundred-folds. Unending! He could live for decades, centuries even and wouldn't age a minute.
However, all of these abilities came with a price. A curse. Of course, why wouldn't they? They were all too good to be true. Every contract had loopholes. His, as well as his kind, had an arcane lust for blood as everlasting as their life span. His body needed blood to stay fit. Blood was the nutrient that kept his pigment fresh and kept him healthy. For centuries, his kind had lived off people, killing them, infecting others, bringing up a dysfunctional bloodline. There was no denying that huge fact. He was a vampire. It was little wonder they had been hunted ever since. The hunters had studied them over the years. They'd grown smarter. And they had slaughtered them till he was just one left.
He, he'd gathered a bunch of 'misfits' together. Many of them hadn't come to terms with their vampirisms yet. They believed they were lost for salvation and had no place among the free living people. He became their Xavier. Jake Xavier. He brought them together, made them his family. Some of them had killed to survive, killed a mighty few. He turned them around. He gave them hope. He taught them how to live off animals. Animal blood was definitely not as juicy, delicious as human blood but he taught them to take animal blood and go by. And it worked. The people identified them as Rippers. His merry band of Rippers. Why? They always left a bloody mess in their wake. Cow limbs torn apart, horse bowels flared to the public, one hoof here, a bloody dislodged chest there, probably some spilled random animal's guts soaked up in pig fats, those sorts of things. It was how they caught their fun, how they lived their life. The people complained bitterly but hey, it was rather the animals than them. They were satisfied. He was satisfied. The hunters weren't.
They were smart, he gave them that. He was strong, flexible, sharpest in all of his senses, immortal, but they were clever. And they had weapons. Weapons plus brains equals a very formidable foe. There was every reason to fear them and all of those reasons centered around him. He was the last one so figures.
Big Stan was the mad leader of their merry band of hunters. He was there when the hunters had stormed his nest and turned it into a bloodbath. He'd escaped, just barely. He hadn't seen the Mad Prophet that time and wasn't as scared of him as he was now.
Half of the moon had been eaten up by the night. He looked behind him. The tens of twinkling lights were still afar off.
Old Compshire was a little less than hundred kilometers before him. He believed he could get there unhurt. Get there and then what? The small town was all of the time quiet, organized, not the kind of place to be suspected for hosting 'monsters' like him. It was a small town and those hunters were a mighty plenty. They could comb the place in seconds. But as small as Compshire was, it had a vast number of hiding places. Other vampires had made nests there; in dried up wells, underground trenches, even some in old forgotten houses with old forgotten dungeons, at the cemetery? He knew where he had to go. There he believed he could survive the rest of the night and faintly, hopefully, the day. He'd stayed at Compshire several times in the past and knew the town even better than the hunters. The tiny town had its own dark secrets too. Ghouls against Vampires classics. That was many a decade ago. He sighed, breathed out, and was beginning to relax but his senses tinged startlingly. That familiar sound, he was hearing it again. Soft, whispering drums, beating in twos. Half of a second between the two and a second after the two, intermittent, continuous. Then another, distinct from the first, just as intermittent. Then two others much faster than the first two.
Heartbeats!
He attuned his hearing, just in time. A metallic scraping sound of something slicing through the air. He dodged and the arrow zoomed past his ear.
"Found him, papa," a sickly voice declared.