Embers in the Dark (4)

From the impenetrable darkness, a figure emerged.

Tall. Impossibly tall.

His gloved hand was still extended, held in the aftermath of the strike. Blood trailed down his fingers in lazy, glistening rivulets. Each drop fell too slowly, too silently, as if the very air around him was thicker, more viscous. As if time itself bent to his will, reluctant to move on from the violence it had just witnessed.

He stood absolutely, unnervingly still. Like a monument—a statue sculpted not by mortal hands, but by something ancient, cruel, and divine.

Moonlight seemed to cling to him, a pale, reverent illumination that caressed the lines of his frame, afraid to touch the shadows he wore like a second skin.

But what truly stole the breath from Elise's lungs—what made her mind go white and silent—was his hair.

Silver.

A waterfall of molten silver, pouring in deep, silken waves down the entire length of his back, cascading past his waist to brush against his thighs. It caught the faint, fugitive moonlight and shimmered, each strand seeming to hold its own captive light, a living river of pale metal and starlight. It was a sight not of this world, stark and blinding against the severe darkness of his tailored, pristine clothing.

A nobleman's attire, immaculate and refined, now adorned with a fine, grotesque spray of crimson along the cuffs of his sleeves and the edge of his gloves.

And yet, his face...

She could not see it.

The magnificent fall of silver veiled most of his features like a curtain of secrets. What little the moon dared to touch was obscured by the deep, possessive shadows of the alley, blending the suggestion of pale skin and sharp angles into a tantalizing mystery.

Only the faintest curve of a jaw, sharp enough to cut, caught a sliver of light.

The air around him pressed against her skin, heavy and tangible, thickening with every thunderous beat of her heart like a presence. A physical weight that felt both sacred and profane.

Beautiful. Horribly, devastatingly beautiful.

Angelic and monstrous, woven together into a single, terrifying form.

Her pulse violently drummed against her ribs, so loud it drowned out the world.

Before her mind could break free, her hand instinctively fell to her side, reaching for the hilt of her revolver.

But her eyes—her eyes were traitors. They remained locked on him. On the unnatural, preternatural grace of the figure standing amid the visceral ruin of the corpse, as serene as a king in his court.

The gloved hand finally dropped to his side, the movement casual, unhurried. A king dismissing a subject. The river of silver hair rippled with the motion, shimmering like silk soaked in a galaxy's light.

Then, slowly, as if he had felt the weight of her stare like a physical touch, he began to languidly turn his head.

A chill, colder than a grave, slid down her spine.

Something ancient and infinitely cold stirred behind that veil of silver—a consciousness that made every primal instinct in her body scream to move, to flee.

But she was locked in place, caught in the devastating gravity of his presence, a fly suspended in amber.

He remained there, poised and utterly still, as if he had all the time in the world.

Until finally, her mind snapped out of it, breaking free from the spell.

Her fingers closed around the checkered grip of her revolver, the polished wood a sudden, grounding warmth against her ice-cold skin.

In one fluid, explosive motion born of pure survival instinct, she drew the weapon, leveled it at the center of that silhouetted head, and pulled the trigger.

BANG. BANG.

The man—no, creature—didn't even flinch. He merely tilted his head with languid, almost bored ease, as though watching her bullets drift past him on a lazy breeze. Then, without a word, he began to walk towards her, his steps a slow, inevitable approach, like the tide coming in.

Elise's heart hammered against her ribs. Gritting her teeth, she fired again.

BANG! BANG!

The bullets screamed through the night, but he evaded them with an infuriating, effortless grace, a blur of motion too swift to follow.

Another shot.

CRACK!

This time, her bullet struck true.

It slammed into the left side of his chest, silver tearing through the fine dark wool of his coat and the white linen beneath, embedding itself deep with a wet, sickening thump.

And yet, the impact did not send him stumbling nor make him cry out.

He simply... jerked. A single, full-body convulsion that was there and gone in an instant. Then, utter stillness. Steam curled from the wound, the silver sizzling against undead flesh. A black stain bloomed across his pristine white shirt, spreading like a grotesque flower.

As expected, a vampire.

An abomination draped in a gentleman's skin. A monster she had been trained to hunt and kill.

A bead of cold sweat trailed down Elise's cheek.

What... is he?

The burn should have been excruciating, crippling. It should have set his blood on fire.

Yet he remained standing, as still and steady as a monument, seemingly impervious to the searing agony.

No noble could take a silver round to the heart and remain standing. Not without screaming. Not without burning from the inside out.

Her fingers tightened around her revolver, the wood biting into her gloved palm.

Did he come from the deep forest?

Her breath hitched in her throat, and her eyes widened in dawning, horrific disbelief at what happened next.

Slowly, with an eerie, fluid grace, he reached up. His gloved fingers probed the bloody ruin of his shirt, slipped inside the wound, and wrapped around the embedded bullet. There was a wet, sucking sound as he pulled it free.

A wisp of smoke rose from the open hole in his chest.

Elise's stomach plunged into a void of ice.

The silver bullet gleamed in the dim light, slick with viscous black blood, held lightly between his thumb and forefinger as if it were a trinket. He turned it over once, inspecting it with mild curiosity, and then flicked it aside. It landed on the cobblestone with a small tink.

The sound echoed in the silence like a death knell.

Then, the hole in his chest began to close. Flesh knitted itself back together, weaving over the void until only smooth, moon-bleached skin remained, unmarred beneath the torn fabric of his shirt and coat.

Elise had seen vampires writhe and scream from a mere graze by silver. This one had been shot through the heart, a wound that should've at least comatosed a noble type. And he had... healed.

Her grip on the revolver tightened, but her fingers felt numb.

This was wrong. This violated every known law.

With a ragged breath, her finger tightened on the trigger for a final shot.

Almost.

She was a breath away from firing—

Then, he was gone.

The air displaced in front of her. He suddenly appeared before her, so close she could smell the faint, clean scent of neroli and the cold, metallic tang of fresh blood on his clothes.

His bloodied gloved hand snapped out and slapped the revolver from her grasp, sending it flying several meters out. The weapon clattered and spinned across the ground until it came to rest several meters away, the polished metal now gouged and scarred.

Before she could blink, before she could even register, his hand swung back—a blur aimed at her temple. It was the same effortless motion he'd used to decapitate the drunkard.

Too fast.

In that split second, her own hand shot down, fingers barely brushing the hilt of her hidden dagger.

No. Too late.

There was no way she could block it in time.

Elise's mind emptied of everything but the certain, final impact—

...

It never came.

His hand stopped. A hair's breadth from her skin. The wind from its sheer velocity gusted against her face, whipping her pale curls into a wild, momentary dance.

Cold sweat traced a path down her temple. Her eyes, wide and trembling, were fixed on the gloved hand that had come so close to ending her.

It simply hung there in the air. The only sound was her own ragged, terrified breath..

Then, before she could process this mercy, her body acted on pure, frantic instinct. She ripped the dagger from its sheath. Gripping it with both hands, she drove it deep into his abdomen, twisting the blade with a final, desperate grunt.

Smoke hissed from the wound. Black blood welled, soaking into the fine white fabric of his shirt.

And yet... nothing. No cry of pain. No flinch. Not even a tremor.

His legs remained upright, a statue weathering a storm, his chest level with her eyes, barely seeming to rise with breath.

Elise's breath hitched. A denial screamed in her mind. Gritting her teeth, she yanked the dagger free and plunged it in again.

And again.

And again.

Black droplets pattered onto the cobblestones like dark rain.

Silver hair rippled around her like moonlit curtains.

Still, he did not fall. Not even a stagger.

As if in a trance of denial, Elise pulled the dagger out once more, its blade coated in his thick, dark blood, her arms trembling with the effort.

Then, before she could plunge the blade into him again, she felt something brush her cheek.

She froze.

His other hand—clean, untouched by the drunkard's blood—cupped her cheek. The leathered touch was impossibly tender, a heartbreaking caress that brushed her messy, sweat-dampened curls away from her eyes.

Her breath stopped. The world fell into a profound silence.

And in that silence, she heard it.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Her eyes widened.

Was that... a heartbeat?

Slowly, disbelievingly, she let her gaze travel upward from his bloodied abdomen, toward his chest.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

No. It was impossible. A vampire's heart was a dead, still thing. It only imitated life in the fleeting moments of feeding. And yet, beneath the frantic drum of her own pulse, she could hear his beating. A steady, accelerating rhythm against the silence of the night.

With a mixture of dread and a terrifying, pulling curiosity, she lifted her gaze further, slowly, to finally see his face.

And her world shattered into silence.

The wind died. The distant sounds of the sleeping town vanished. The very air seemed to still, holding its breath.

Everything ceased to exist except for the twin points of light burning in the darkness above her.

Eyes.

Not the piercing, predatory gold of a noble.

Not the dull imitation of a human's.

Red.

The red of apocalypse. Of ruin.

Twin pools of liquid fire burned through the veil of night—searing, luminous, impossibly vivid. Red like a dying star. Red like the last drop of life spilled on an altar.

They glowed. From within. An inner, fathomless fire, something ancient and terrible that was never meant for mortal sight.

Time splintered. Stopped.

The weight of his presence crashed over her, absolute and freezing, like being plunged into the heart of a glacier, the ice locking around her, eternal and inescapable.

Her useless hands lost their strength, and the dagger slipped from her grasp, clattering to the ground.

Those eyes didn't just see her.

They unmade her. They dissected her soul, measured every fear, every failing breath, and found her infinitely small.

And yet, Elise couldn't look away, pinned like a butterfly under glass.

The rest of his face was a beautiful mystery lost to shadow, a canvas for the masterpiece of his gaze. Only the eyes remained.

Red. Absolute. Eternal.

Not a commoner.

Not a noble.

Far, far worse. Something that had witnessed the dawn of time and would see its end.

Ancient.

Devilish.

Divine.

They held no fury, no hatred. But then... what did they hold?

What was that sense of sorrow that seemed to gleam through those eyes?

Why was he looking at her like that?

Are those... veins? she thought distantly, seeing a glimpse of darker threads spidering along the left side of his face.

"Such cruelty..."

His voice was silk spun from shadow, smooth and unhurried, cleaving through the sacred silence he had created.

"To make me dream again."

The words slithered down her spine like a shard of absolute zero, freezing her from the inside out.

Then, slowly, oh so slowly, his other hand rose. He caught the collar of her blouse, the blood from the gloves staining the pristine white fabric coppery red. And with one decisive, effortless yank, he ripped it open. Buttons pinged against the cobblestone, one by one, like tiny, breaking bones.

She inhaled sharply, her voice caught in her throat, her body frozen in place.

The night air kissed her newly exposed skin, raising goosebumps. Her cloak slipped from her shoulders, pooling at her feet in a heap of midnight blue—a final, silent surrender.

His breath, cold as a winter grave, ghosted across her throat.

Then, his fangs pierced deep.

Icy shards sawed into her flesh, into the warm, pulsing vein beneath.

"Ah—"

A strangled cry tore from her lips.

An unbearable, white-hot agony detonated through her nerves as blood surged forth, siphoned greedily from her body. It was nothing like the sharp sting of a blade or the dull ache of a bruise. This was worse, primal. A violent theft, a desecration of her very being.

She thrashed instinctively like a wild animal caught in a trap, but his grip only tightened, crushing her with terrifying ease. One arm banded around her waist, an iron coil that locked her in place, while the other cradled the back of her head with an obscene, intimate tenderness, keeping her throat in perfect offering.

He drank.

And drank.

Elise could barely think. Her heartbeat pounded wildly in her ears. Her body bucked, kicked, twisted, but it was useless. A petal in a storm.

Then—

He froze.

It was just a moment. A fractional hesitation.

But she felt it.

A sudden, profound tension coiled through him. A pause in the relentless pull. The smallest, sharp intake of breath against her skin, as if something in her blood had reached out and struck him to his very core.

His breath shivered against her neck, a tremor in the glacier.

And then he resumed.

But now it was different. Deeper. Hungrier. It was no longer just feeding; it was a ravenous consumption. He was lost in the intoxicating taste, his breath fluttering erratically against her failing pulse. The more her strength waned and her struggles grew weaker, the deeper his fangs seemed to sink, the tighter he held her—devouring, savoring, consuming.

He wasn't feeding on her blood.

He was indulging in it.

He was losing himself in her.