ʙʟᴏᴏᴅ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴏꜱᴛ ᴏɴᴇꜱ ➼ Happy late three years!

    I cannot... I–I–I cannot, can't, can't...

    Please, please, I can't!

    Alex pressed himself into the car's crumpled side. The monster (beast? Creature? Abomination?) had thrown him so violently into the car, its once-smooth side had crumpled into the velvet seats. The metal, misshapen and crumped, groaned. Alex pressed himself more forcefully into it as his feet scrambled. The rest of him did not move.

    He pressed against the ground and slumped back against the car. The metal protested again. It caved against Alex's pressure. The vampire fell back and rested in the newly-made metal seat. Its shape was unnatural, bumpy and sharp at the same time, and Alex did not notice. He could not. Alex's weight settled into the ruined metal lump, and the vampire did not even register the shift.

    Instead, he remained simultaneously overwhelmed and disconnected. Smells overwhelmed him, as the reeking stench of death mixed with delicious blood and horrified sweat. His ears rang, full of screams and battlecries and the awful crunch of breaking bone. Yet Alex's mind was drowning, words swallowed by an ocean of panic and sense ripped away by a riptide of terror.

    I can't.

    Uncertainty. A vicious bastard, truly. It was a constant companion for Alex, yes, but it was only mildly malevolent for the most part. It hurt, sure, but it was a dull pain. A headache, perhaps. (Well, Alex is not sure if it is quite headache-like, seeing as how he as never had one, but the description seems similar.) Yet sometimes it swallowed the boy whole.

    Little boy. A child. Of all the descendants, you are the chosen one. Ha.

    Alex closed his eyes and stopped breathing.

    Somewhere, in his mind's turbulent hurricane, he remembered to tune it out. Leave everything. Run, run, run coward.

    He could not stop hearing, he could not stop feeling. But he could close his eyes, look away. He could hold his breath, reduce the smells. The stench. All of the death, the blood. So, so much wasted blood. The smells lingered, yes, but less was better than more.

    The chorus grew ever louder.

    I can't, little boy, I can't, child, I can't, I can't, please, let me go, foolish child, pathetic child, coward, cowardly infant, fledgling, pathetic. I can't, I can't. Let me go.

    The screaming continued. Thick death danced in the air. Some nearby artery flew open, blood splattering across the car. Splattering across Alex. An elemental, judging by the earthy undertones.

    While Alex could not see, he felt every drop. Red splattered across his shirt, his arms, his neck. Bright, life-losing red. So stark, so light, against dark skin and black marks. So small, yet so prominent and heavy.

    That blood snapped him back into the world. It cut his tether. Alex kept his eyes closed, but he inhaled reflexively.

    His lungs filled with muddled air. Blood, death, fear, exhaustion, nothingness, life, fire, adrenaline.

    Fire!

    Crackling flame filled Alex's ears, and the vampire moved. In the blink of a human eye, he jolted from the car to the far side of the street. The vampire pasted himself against a wall. His eyes locked on a stranger, a fire-slinging elemental (as if everyone was not a stranger). Alex pressed himself against the wooden wall. Vaguely, he registered its gentle creaks.

    So, apparently, did one of the beasts.

    The black mass lurched forward, slow but accelerating. Alex, so captivated (terrified) by the fire, did not notice. The dark aggregation slumped against the wall a good few feet away. It turned and faced Alex. Lumpy arms reached forward, the beast leaned forward, and then it fell forward.

    Alex smelled an intensifying stench of nothing. He jolted away. His steps were more like an instinctual flight than a purposeful dodge. Consequently, the uncertain vampire stumbled to his feet, like a toddler learning to walk. As Alex regained his balance (infant), the beast lurched forward, faster this time. It swiped at Alex, and he ran underneath the massive arm, plowing into the wall.

    Headfirst and full-speed-ahead was never a good way to run into anything.

    Alex found himself in a grocery store. The aisles were still pristine lines, but that was just about the only organized part of the store. The baskets at the front were strewn all over the floor. Apples rolled over the ground, grains fell out of pierced sacks, and a million other foods (many of which Alex could not recognize, much less name) were, well, everywhere. And then there were the bodies.

    All, all the bodies.

    Someone lay over a cash register. Someone else was smashed into the shelves. Someone else was scattered in pieces by the door.

    Everything was dead, save for Alex and the monster.

    The beast launched itself into the Alex-sized hole in the wall. Alex turned around, backing up slowly. Aside from the beast's own stench, he could not smell that revolting combination of nothingness and death anywhere else in the store. There were no other monsters. Yet he could also not hear any breathing. There were no survivors.

    The beast, too big for the hole, smashed itself against the wall. It threatened to give way, but by some miracle, the thing held strong. Alex clenched his jaw, and the beast rolled its lumpy head.

    It lurched once more, this time to its left. Alex stepped back again, eyes now locked on the door.

    Expectedly, the beast heaved its way through the large doorway.

    Alex took another step back, and his foot hit something. He looked back to see what it was, and then he regretted it.

    He had never been this close to a human corpse before. Animals, yes, but never a human. There was something different about seeing something that looked so much like you. Different height, weight, coloration, build (Alex did not have wings), but it —she—was so familiar. Like meeting someone who you could swear you had met before, like seeing a relative's smile on a stranger's face, like hearing a friend's laughter in a foreign crowd. Alex stared. He knew death. He had killed before. Yet he had never seen death so familiar, so close.

    The beast launched itself forward once more.

    Alex fell backwards, tripping over the familiar stranger. He rolled to the side and out of the way of the beast.

    From there, it became a strange dance. The beast would swipe an arm, kick out a leg, and Alex would run away. He leaped to the side, rolled on the ground, ran to the right, the left. The beast always followed, becoming faster and faster.

    Somewhere in the back of his mind, Alex knew there had to be an end. He could not be stuck in this death-filled store forever. There were humans outside. There were more beasts outside. He could not dance forever.

    Yet Alex could not bring himself to leave.

    They danced. The beast attacked, and Alex ran. (Coward.) Alex jumped over fallen boxes, fallen bodies. He jumped over one of the aisles, crashed into the ground, and then crawled out of the beast's reach. They danced and danced, feet flying over the red-checkered floor.

    Until, of course, the beast caught Alex.

    A vampire should be able to evade anything, yet Alex is, well, imperfect. A child, just barely able to walk. So when the beast went right with one arm and left with a leg, Alex did not back up. He stepped left, and the leg swept him onto the ground.

    This time, he did not recover fast enough, and a gargantuan arm pounded his stomach.

    Alex groaned. A fist-like lump raised itself up, preparing for another punch. The vampire raised his arms out of instinct and closed his eyes in fear.

    The black sludge hit his palms, and Alex held on. It was nearly gelatinous, the skin vaguely sticky and very rough. Alex squeezed and let his claws grow out, feeling them dig into the monster's hand.

    The beast tried to pull back, but Alex held on. He squeezed, tighter, tighter, burying his claws into the beastly lump. The mass compacted and collapsed, not unlike the car outside.

    Black liquid began to seep out of the beast's skin. Alex gagged and shoved the beast away before the revolting stuff could fall onto him. He knelt over his curled hands. His claws, short, stubby, and very sharp, were covered by the tar.  His fingertips were too, but not much more than that.

    The beast rolled on the ground. Its limbs wiggled, as if it was trying to move without paying attention to stability or direction or... anything, really.

    Alex stood up, his mind swimming once more. In a haze, he stumbled over to the beast, still squirming on the ground. He pressed his right hand on its massive chest to keep the beast down. With his other hand, Alex rested the his clawtips on what he hypothesized was the monster's neck.

    He took a breath. The beast squirmed, and Alex's mind swam. Then, moving thoughtlessly, he pressed down with hand and claw.

    The beast stopped moving.

    Alex stood up, tar now embracing his forearms.

    He walked towards the street, dazed, stepping over shoppers' corpses. Black goo covered his arms, and blood splatter painted his neck. The vampire stopped in front of the hole in the wall. He stared absently at the wet floor, at the rainwater seeping into the dead store.

    Alex stepped through the hole and into the rain. The downpour washed his arms, and the tar bled onto the cobblestone.