The thing about vampires and vampire hunters is they both believed themselves to be better hunters than they were.
The vampires were first, walking down the street in a raucous and outrageously dressed group of four. Women out on a girl’s night, looking to make bad decisions. Except all of their bad decisions were going to end up dead.
But they had picked up a tail.
Three hunters, moving too fast trying to keep up with the women to make their casual saunter believable. They had made a half-assed attempt to blend in, trying to dress like the other college and mid-twenties bros that were drunkenly enjoying the night. But a backwards hat and a popped collar does not a fuckboy make. The three men radiated so much cop energy dudes enveloped in a casual haze of doob were crossing the street to avoid them. And marijuana had been legal in this state for half a decade.
The three hunters didn’t notice the civilians. They only had eyes for the vampires in front of them
The vampires clearly only had eyes for the hunters. They had been heading deeper downtown, toward the next block lined with clubs, and then had suddenly switched, going straight through an intersection toward the industrial side of the city.
The hunters were following.
The vampires knew they were being followed.
The hunters knew the vampires knew.
And trailing behind by half a block, Shuan and Honey might as well have rats in the gutter.
The amount of people on the sidewalk had dropped off significantly. No one down here was serving overpriced alcohol to the sound of too-loud music so why bother? The few people they did pass were blue collars getting off late shifts. They ignored the three groups of people, pretending they weren’t there even as they stepped off the sidewalk to avoid them. Honey had noticed people who worked late into the night had a better sense of when to see nothing and keep walking, even if they didn’t know why.
“So, they know they’re being followed,” Honey muttered. Just because they hadn’t been noticed yet didn’t mean screaming about it was a good idea. “And the others have to know they know, and they’re being led into a trap. But they still follow anyway?”
Shaun nodded, keeping his eyes forward.
“They are all fully confident that they will win,” he said. “So to them, it doesn’t matter.”
Honey snorted, and then looked nervously ahead. Nothing. Not even a glance back.
“What do?”
Shaun fired off three rapid ASL letters: S-C-P. Something they had co-opted from the internet for their own personal use.
Neither of them gave a shit if any of the vampires or hunters in front of them lived through the next twenty minutes. In fact, in an ideal world, they would all kill each other until only two remained, at which point they could both fatally stab each other at the exact same time, or perhaps a very small meteorite could cruise through the sky and crush them both. Honey wasn’t picky.
What they did care about was unsuspecting normies wandering into the fray and getting split in half. Vampires would pounce on any human they could for the strength, and hunters had a shockingly strict ‘no witnesses’ policy. As though, what, if a regular everyday human merely saw a vampire for the first time they’d be immediately drawn to the night-side and start filing down their incisors? Honey didn’t know and she didn’t plan on getting close enough to ask.
So, the last three…no, four, four times, now…the last four times they had come across vampires and hunters clearly about to rumble, Honey and Shaun had designated themselves the official bouncers of the fight.
SCP.
Secure and contain the fight. Protect the innocents who might otherwise wander into the fray.
Just shy of the train tracks the women supposedly on a girls night took their party down an alley. No, Honey realized as they got closer. An entrance. A factory, about four stories tall, with a courtyard in the middle. Probably for trucks. Loading and unloading. Honking. Getting impatient. That sort of thing. Certainly not for the bloodsport about to go down.
By the time they reached the entrance to the courtyard the vampires and the hunters were both inside. Shaun held up a finger and then was gone, jogging around the entire building. Something that would have taken Honey upwards of five minutes, but Shaun was back in a matter of seconds.
“All the other ways in are gated and locked,” he said. “And I’m pretty sure the building is empty, too. Maybe unused.”
“So, they’ve definitely done this before,” Honey said of the women.
Shaun nodded. “Or at least planned on it.”
Honey glanced up and down the street. A single person was all she saw, on the other side of the street and a few blocks down already, heading for the local.
“This is the only way in or out, for sure?”
“Yes.”
“So, we just need to be somewhere in this general area?” she said, gesturing with both hands down the alley into the center of the building.
Shaun understood what she was getting at. He grinned.
Neither of them wanted much to do with vampire/hunter turf wars. But watching the fights could be really entertaining.
They posted up down the alley, slightly behind a pile of those things that look like giant thread bobbins. In the middle of the factory courtyard the two groups were facing each other, still sizing up.
“Twenty bucks on the hunters,” Shaun muttered.
“Are you insane? They’re all going to die,” Honey said.
“How do you figure?”
“Those women are still wearing their heels, that’s how I figure. If they think they can win this fight four inches off the ground then their confidence alone is strong enough to snap some necks.”
“Over-confidence. They…here we go.”
Almost immediately the biggest of the three hunters managed to get a wooden stake into the chest of one of the women, evening the playing field and making Honey curse to herself. Twenty bucks could mean buying herself a guilt-free box of those overly-expensive French cookies she had seen in the shop window next to the Sundae Fundae.
Her attention was taken by one of the hunters, and then she couldn’t notice anything else.
She had seen him, of course, as they followed. Of the three he was middling in height, a few inches taller than the shortest one but almost a foot shorter than the big guy who had started the fight with a bang. He was smaller than both of them, though, not quite as thick around the shoulders, the arms, the chest. On the street she hadn’t thought anything of it. Hunters could be wirey bastards. Back in Baltimore she saw a hunter smaller than herself take out three vampires all on her own, in quick succession. Size didn’t matter as long as he knew what he was doing.
He did not.
Okay, that wasn’t exactly fair. He was doing well enough to stay alive, at least. But he was clearly new. Barely trained. Every hit he managed to get in seemed by accident, usually while he was in the process of scrambling away. He spent a lot of time knocked over, on the ground, barely managing to kick whatever vampire woman had put him there in the face to buy himself a couple of seconds to stand. Only to get hit again. If he survived this fight he was going to be a penguin with a sunburn: black and white and red all over.
Something rushed past them, waking Honey up.
It was one of the hunters. The big one. Rushing down out of the factory, blood dripping behind him. He didn’t seem to notice Shaun and Honey. He barely even looked back.
The other hunter was dead. In a broken heap off to the side.
There was only one vampire left. The one in the silver dress. Still wearing her heels. They clicked slowly, with every step, as she advanced on the only one left.
The new guy. On the ground again. Barely conscious. Trying to pull himself back.
He left him…he left him?
Honey had never seen that before. Hunters were massive pieces of shit but she’d never seen them abandon each other like that.
Left to die. That asshole left him to die!
“You need to go out there,” Honey hissed.
Shaun looked at her like she’d completely slid off her cracker. “What?”
“Kill her. Save him!”
“Why the fuck would I save a hunter?”
“He’s new, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and his awful friend left him to die! Go! Go!”
Honey shoved him out from behind the giant spools before he could argue.
The vampire stopped, confused, staring at Shaun.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” she asked.
“I don’t really know, myself,” he said, rubbing the back of his head. He looked toward Honey with pleading eyes.
Please don’t make me do this.
Honey waved a hand at him while making those puppy-dog eyes she knew he couldn’t say no to. Please. For me.
With a great big sigh and a roll of his eyes, Shaun turned back to last vampire.
“Fuck! I guess I’m here to fight.”
And before the woman could say he’d already missed all the fun he’d launched himself at her.
As soon as their fight took them away from the hunter, Honey ran to him. He’d given up trying to go anywhere, and was simply look up into the night sky. He was bleeding from a whole bunch of places. His shoulder looked dislocated. He’d definitely been hit in the head enough times to get a concussion.
“You’re okay,” she said. “We’re going to get you out of here. My name’s Honey. What’s yours?”
He turned over to his side and spat out a tooth, managing to get a spray of blood all over her pants in the process.
“Great.”
High Urban Fantasy Jazz 