My Flock

"Don't say anything and I won't hurt you," began the scene about to unfold. A grimy man with a gun, down on his luck, and desperate for a lay lied to the woman he'd pulled off the quiet street into his alleyway. Raping a woman hurts her immesurably, but anything to keep her quiet. The woman lay quietly whimpering under the gun, obviously too frightened to move. The man grinned a dark grin and began removing the neccesary bits of clothing to get what he wanted. When the woman realized his true goal, she began to thrash wildly attempting to escape.

"Stop that, bitch!" The horrid smelling man held her down with one hand for a moment, but when he realized she would not stop struggling without an object lesson, he pistol whipped her face. She was not totally unconscious, but her feeble attempts to resist were no longer an impediment to this desperate man's goals.

"No... Please...." came her quiet moaned plea. The woman was crying as the blood from the wound on her temple bled down into her eyes and her mouth. "Please don't..."

"Shut up," the dark man insisted as he finally reached the point where he could get what he wanted. The woman tried to fight, but there was nothing to stop him now. He growled as he got what he wanted, ignoring the feeble cries from the woman. When she tried to push him off, he pistol whipped her again, this time knocking her totally unconscious.

"You shouldn'ta struggled, bitch," the man laughed at the unconscious woman as he pulled up his pants, satisfied with his work. He turned away and began to walk out of the alley. Then he gasped as a hand plunged out of the shadows and grabbed his chest. He felt like he'd been punched. He looked down and realized that the fingers on the hand in his chest had punctured to the first knuckle. He was then lifted off the ground by his rib cage, and few of his ribs survived the trip.

"And you shouldn't have raped one of my flock," snarled the horrifying creature that melted out of the shadows, still holding him in the air. It looked like a man, but his skin practically glowed white. The creature's hands ended in wicked sharp claws, his incisors were as long as fangs, and his eyes glowed firey red, as if flickering with the rage of the creature holding him.

"Fuck you!" the grimy man said before pumping the two bullets in his gun into the creature's chest. The creature snarled and stumbled back with each impact, but after the gun clicked empty, the grimy man felt himself fly though the air before he felt a sudden impact with the alley wall. It was a short, but bone crushing trip.

The man looked up in horror as the monster stalked after him, shaking with rage, licking the blood from his claws. The creature cast about before finding a short piece of rebar and retrieving it.

"No! Please!" the grimy man begged as the monster approached. "Please don't-"

"Funny hearing those words coming out of your mouth, isn't it?" the monster snarled with a glance towards the woman. "Do they sound familiar?" Then the creature drove the rebar through the grimy man's shoulder and into the alley wall. The pathetic man screamed as much as his traumatized body would allow him, which wasn't much. The tiny punctures in his lung left behind from the creature's claws didn't help.

The monster, confident that the rapist could not escape, turned his attention to the woman. She was regaining consciousness, but slowly. She was obviously groggy from the pair of blows to the head, but the horror of her situation was returning. She started to desperately scuttle backwards with her feet and hands till she thumped into the alley wall.

"It's ok, now," the monster, who now looked like nothing more than a sad young man, told her. "He can't hurt you anymore." The woman, looked at the young man with bleary eyes for a moment.

"He... that man... he..." the woman started to say before bursting into uncontrollable sobbing.

"Shh... I know what he did," the young man replied. The woman noticed that, a dark note entered his voice. When she looked up she saw a simmering red glow in the man's eyes, and watched as the man's face turned into a monster's face when he growled at the greasy man, now whispering bubbling screams.

"What..." the woman started to ask though her tears, but the monster's face turned to her and all she saw was a sad young man again.

"He won't hurt you," the young man told her. "Never again." The woman took some comfort in that reassurance. For some reason, those words spoken by this young man held in them a promise written in blood.

"You... Who are you?" she asked.

"My name is Jay," the sad man smiled slightly. "I am your friend Karrin." The woman blinked away tears, surprised, but before she could speak, Jay continued.

"There are a couple of ways we can proceed from here," he told her. "I could go, call the police, and let them handle this. You'll say that after he finished and stood, you kicked at his legs, and he fell onto the spike on his own. He will see normal justice, and so will you. The evidence here is farily incontrovertible." Jay's eyes began to glow again as the woman began to cry, the enormity of the situation beginning to overwhelm her again.

"There is another option," he said quietly. The woman cried for a moment, but sniffed loudly, pulled her self together again for the moment, and looked at Jay.

"What option?" she asked shakily. The glow in Jay's eyes burned darker.

"Two things will happen," Jay replied. "I will give this... creature... what he deserves. He will die terrified and alone without hope." The woman's face hardened as Jay spoke. She liked that idea. "The other thing is that I will make you forget."

"What?" Karrin gasped. "How can you think I could ever forget this!" Her rage held off her horror momentarily. Jay, eyes blazing red, replied by turning to the whimpering man.

"Pull the rebar out," Jay commanded casually. The grimy man's hand shakily reached up to grasp the rebar, then slowly pulled it out of his body. The man shook and rasped with agony, but the man did not stop until the rebar was completely out of his body. The man curled into a ball as the rebar clanged to the alley floor beside him. Jay turned back to Karrin with a sad and compassionate face.

"I will make you forget," he told her quietly, gently. Karrin looked at him in shock for a moment.

"But..." she touched her head, the blood. Jay looked away from her wound.

"You will remember him grabbing you, trying to take your purse," Jay told her. "When you resisted, he hit you, twice, but ran off when you didn't let go. You'll be woken up by a good samaritan who will take you to the clinic down the street." Jay turned back to her with his sad eyes. There was no unearthly glow, just two brown sad eyes rimmed with tears of blood. He blinked and a blood tear ran down each cheek. Karrin reached out to touch his face, but he turned away, hiding his tears.

"You're a vampire?" Karrin asked. Jay wiped his face clearn and nodded, still not facing her. "Why would you do this for me?" she asked, confused. "I thought vampires were bad people."

"Vampires are just people," Jay told her as he turned to face her. The slightly bubbling breaths and coughs of the man dying in the alley were getting shorter and his eyes getting more desperate. Blood had begun to dribble out of his mouth after his racking coughs.

"But why me?" she asked. Jay sighed.

"Because you're part of my flock," he replied. He looked her in the eyes. "Because I feed on you." Karrin's eyes widened, but she blinked and regained her calm. Jay sighed before continuing. "I don't want any of my flock hurt. If I did nothing for you, I would be that evil vampire you thought I was. I had to do something."

"You feed on me, but you also protect me," Karrin more stated than asked. More tears fell from Jay's eyes.

"I was too slow," Jay said to the floor. "I'm so sorry, Karrin, but I was too slow." This time when Karrin reached out to touch him, Jay did not shy away. He simply sat silently as she rubbed his tears away.

"You did what you could," Karrin told him. She took a deep breath. "And I can forget." Jay looked up at that comment, his face stained with blood.

"That's what you want?" he asked. Karrin nodded.

"But one more thing," she said. Jay nodded, wiping his face clean again. Karrin's face grew hard. "I want to see what you do to him." Jay leaned back in surprise, then a truly evil grin spread across his face, any hint of tears or compassion buried under the cruel face of a monster. Karrin almost took back her request when she saw this. Jay, no longer a young man, but a terrible monster, rose and stalked to the man who had gathered the will to try to crawl out of the alley. Jay kicked the man in the chest hard enough to throw him to the alley wall again. Then Jay crouched in front of the man claws bared, fangs dripping, eyes blazing red.

"I'm not going to kill you," Jay informed the man. While the man gasped, Jay cupped his hands under the largest wound and gathered a mouthfull of blood, drank it, then started to get more. "Killing you is too easy, and I don't kill my food. I'm going to take you into the shadows and let you die. And I don't mean pull you out of sight; I mean take you into the world of shadows. You will feel nothing but your pain, see nothing but shadow, hear nothing but your own dying breaths. You won't be able to escape or do much ov anything else. If you are very, very lucky, you will die before the living shadows find you." Jay drained the remainder of the blood from his cupped hands and stood, licking his hands clean. The man began to cry helplessly as Jay grabbed him by the collar and started to drag him to the back of the alley. As he walked into the shadow on the wall, Jay paused to look back to Karrin. She had a horrified, but satisfied look on her face. Suddenly sleepy, the last thing Karrin saw was the dying man's shoes disappear in shadows.

  *  *  *  *  * 

"Shit lady, are you ok?" The young man asked as he gently shook Karrin's shoulder.

"My head... got hit..." Karrin gasped through the pain. She tried to explain as quickly as possible. "Mugger."

"Well, you still have your purse," the nervous looking young man told her while looking around. "Looks like he ran off without getting what he wanted. But anyway, we have to get you some help. I think there's a clinic around here."

"Down the street," Karrin told him, feeling stronger. "About two blocks." Karrin wasn't sure why she remembered that, but she didn't question it.

"I'll get you there," the young man promised her. "Can you stand?" When Karrin nodded, the young man helped her to her feet as gently as he could. After a few hobbling steps, the young man said dubiuosly, "I could try carrying you." Karrin smiled.

"It was just a couple of bumps on the head," she scolded her samaritan. "He didn't hit me in the leg."

"You must be feeling better if your sense of humor is back," the young man smiled at Karrin as he helped her towards the alley's mouth.

"I'm just lucky you happened by," Karrin smiled weakly and stopped hobbling for a moment. "What's your name, oh knight in shining armor mine?" Jay smirked.

"Actually, my armor is in he shop," he told her jerking his thumb over his shoulder. "Jousting accident, you know. But my name is Jay."

"Thank you, Jay," Karrin told him firly. "Thank you for helping me."

"I live but to serve you," Jay replied almost seriously as they walked, together out of the alley. Karrin glanced back into the alley, feeling strange for a moment, but as they walked away from the alley, that feeling disappeared.

As they walked screams Karrin could not hear, reached Jay's ears. He smiled an evil smile. Apparantly the man did not die before the living shadows found him. The screams followed till Jay walked Karrin into the clinic. His smile did not die for some time after.