The room was small, dank, dark, and the floor was cold, moist, hard-packed dirt. He could feel the small stubble of roots pressing against his hands that were bound behind his back as he lay terrified in this hole again. Questioning the Master was wrong but striking the ass of a son always earned severe punishment with time in the icebox with only breaks for obedience beatings from his Mentor.
He could hear the footsteps growing closer. That scuff of her boot, the way she typically dragged her left heel slightly as she limped from an encounter with a rival dhampir a decade ago. The lantern light, so warm, was as inviting as a knife to his throat or a stake to his chest, hammer set to fall, as it slipped into his cell through the tin on top of the roof of this cursed hole. At the moment, that tin felt like the shield of the Archangel Michael, but it was going to be ripped away by Satan herself. He tensed himself when the footsteps stopped outside of his cold refuge. Screams echoed from his lips as the light seared his eyes...
"Sir, it is alright. You are fine."
The hand shook him awake as the red-haired youth sat up slowly, looking around. A light was shining in his face from the hand of a lady. Heath held up a pale hand to block the light from his eyes as the lady looked at him with concern, vapor puffing with each breath. The night was cold, and frost crackled on his outer clothing with each movement. The clothing already felt odd, heavy, and bulky to his frame. Stolen not two nights past from someone's building that he had broken into that had one of the mysterious things that these people rode in up and down these roads.
"I am sorry," he began slowly, "I...I have nightmares from a troubled past."
How was he supposed to explain this to a woman dressed in uniform about his past? He shied naturally away from her, finding her daunting at first as her stance reminded him of his Mentor and the trauma of his past briefly resurfaced. The apparent skittishness of the young boy before her caused the lady's face to become a mask of concern. Heath, with a realization of another mistake made by his carelessness, swore under his breath. To humans, he looked like a teenage boy, no more than fifteen years of age, when in reality, he was more than twice that. These people seemed very protective of their young and his momentary lapse into his past combined with finding him sleeping on this bench had alarmed this woman apparently.
"Son, I need to know where you live. We need to contact your guardians at least to let them know you are alright. You don't have to go back if you don't want to, but you do have to come with me..." she paused for a moment to give him a chance to comply with her request.
Heath hung his head and let out an audible sigh. He did not understand part of what she was talking about, what guardians were, but if it was what he thought they were, then what he was planning might just save this human's life. This official wanted nothing to do with his psychotic family, especially since she would most likely be nothing more than entertainment or the main course. He let most of his muscles go lax except for his core, making it look like he was defeated. His shoulders shook, and he sobbed some. It did not take much acting to make the sobbing seem genuine. Over the past month, he had lost everything he knew, his life had been upended, living homeless in the human world. His past, what he considered his family, however, screwed up it was, all his possessions, and all because he dared to challenge his half-brother.
The woman's pity overcame her as she let her guard down and placed a comforting hand on the youth's shoulder. Heath let the spring wound in his core to release pivoting his body around the officer with inhuman speed. He might be a sterile half-breed bastard, but it did not come without some advantages. He made sure he was gentle with the lady. She was one of the better ones he had met since entering the human world. She deserved better than even what was needed here but there was not a better plan B that he could come up with on the spur of the moment. His hands held just enough pressure to hold her but not enough to hurt, and he pivoted her to the ground.
From somewhere on her body he heard voices, and then different voices. Heath looked around worriedly towards the darkness beyond the light of her machine. Then he looked back at the lady being held on the ground but this time the gentleness had left his eyes and grip.
"Who was that?" Heath asked softly applying more force to her forearm
"What are you talking about?" She asked in a low, halting voice.
"The voices that I just heard, who are they and where are they?"
"That was dispatch and they are at the station! Oww!!" She cried as he applied more pressure.
"Forget you saw me, forget this night," Heath said in a low sad voice as he relaxed his grip a little, "There are people, things, after me that will find you if you do not."
"What are you?" She asked through a gasp of relief as she realized her arm was free, but she was talking to the night air.
The young man was gone as if he was never there, only leaving some bruises, a sore shoulder, and a haunting warning as proof of the encounter.
Karen opened the door to the Willow Springs Police Department. The weather was turning sharply colder, and even in the United States mid-latitudes, snow was flying before Christmas. She looked at the report that she had obtained about the sightings of Heath a week back here in town. Acting under the pretense of a concerned mother, looking for her runaway child was an easy story to sell. The officers inside were eager to help this poor mother find her only son and get him back home before the Holidays.
Heath was suspected in a string of thefts in the area, sloppy ones of someone who was not used to society and its rules. Novices such as Heath had not yet been initiated or integrated into human society, never setting foot outside the Vampire Domain until their Mentor deemed them ready to withstand the culture that they would be exposed to during their five-year tenure of the grooming stage of their training in which they learn to live within human cities and eventually groom humans to become feeders for the Masters.
During times like this, when they had a dhampir run, one that was uninitiated, it helped in the tracking process. Someone unfamiliar with the world's ways made a mess of things and left a trail that allowed easy and swift capture. At this rate, Karen expected to have her prey back for the pleasure of the Master's own invention by the weeks out. She smiled inwardly as she walked to the hotel where her crispy partner lay sleeping the day away.
ns 15.158.61.51da2
