The vampire's face twisted yet again, going from fear to rage, and he let out a wild roar, baring his overgrown fangs.

  Then he launched himself toward Kurt, cracking the rock beneath his feet with each stride, and swinging his arm in an artless parody of a haymaker, more fit for a small child pretend fighting than for any sort of confrontation.

  For his part, Kurt held his sword with both hands, holding it tightly and upwards, like a paladin, and moved to meet the blow, rousing and flaring his Od while he did so. Holding his sword in front on him with his arms relaxed, Kurt blocked the vampire's meaty fist with the flat of his blade, with knuckles and metal meeting right above the handle.

  Kurt felt the weight behind the blow, and though it was pretty massive in its force, he knew he could have stopped it dead on its tracks, had he wanted to. Instead, he allowed it to push his sword back toward his chest and, while this happened, he threw his upper body to his left, pushing his arms to his right at the same time, deflecting the blow.

  He felt the wind the blow had roused ruffling his hair, and heard it whisttling against his ears. That and the feeling of the vampire's fist's weight being lifted from his sword were the signs that told him to move. And move he did, bolting forward with such strength that now it was his stride that cracked the floor, letting his blade trail behind like a comet's silvery tail.

  A wet squish, the feeling of his blade cleaving through fleash, and the scream of the vampire where his signs to stop his charge and turn around. He was received by the sight of the vampire slunched forward, his back facing Kurt, and clutching his right armpit, from which black blood poured in a thin cascade that trailed down the side of his chest until it reached-and stained- the waist of his pants. The wound itself sizzled and steamed.

  It might sound like a fairly ridiculous place to cut somebody, but the thing was that the armpit was one of the worst places where one could get cut, trailing only behind the neck, because that's where the arm's blood supply flowed. Kurt was fairly certain that he had managed to cut either his axillary vein or artery, possibly both.

  Which made the low amount of blood being shed quite worrying indeed.

  The bloodsucker let go of his wound, exposing it to the world, and showing an already closed, if still blistering, scar.

  Kurt really had been underestimating just how potent a vampire's healing really was.

  Well,he thought as the creature lurched toward him with another overly wide swing of his arm ,Just gotta keep slashing 'till it stops moving. Same ol', same ol'.

  This time, Kurt crouched beneath the blow and, instead of charging, he threw his foot at the vampire's stretched knee, slamming his sole against the joint, forcing it to bend inwards with a snap and sending the brute's hulking figure sprawling into the ground. His charge had carried such momentun that his tumbling stopped 10 feet behind Kurt.

  "Holy shit," Alfred gasped. Kurt raised his head to look at him, and saw both him and Buck in the same spot he had last since them, before his clash with the vampire.

  Kurt took special notice of how Buck's head snapped at one of the tunnels, and how enthralled he seemed when he sniffed at it. Probably the only reason he hadn't joined in shredding the vampire to shreds yet.

  "Buck's got a trail," Kurt said, gesturing with his head at the direwolf, drawing Alfred's attention to him. "You two can go check it. I can deal with this guy on my own."

  Alfred seemed to hesitate, his eyes darting between Buck, Kurt, and MacArthur's fallen, whimpering form. For a moment, it seemed like he would try and argue.

  Kurt nipped that development in the bud.

  "Alfred," he called, looking at the young man straight in the eye. "If Amelia's somewhere in this place, then it's down that shaft. Go save her. I'll deal with this on my own."

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  Alfred's eyes widened, and all hesitation flushed from him. Turning on his feEt, shovel in hand, he walked to the tunneL, taking one of the lanterns on his way out. Kurt looked at Buck, who was staring at him with much the same expression Alfred had.

  Kurt nodded sharply. Buck's eyes softened, shinning with almost human-like intelligence, and he bolted for the tunnel alongside Alfred, his flesh shinning and bulging with crimson flame.

  "Okay then," Kurt said aloud, turning to face his foe. "Are we going to talk this through, or do you want to charge at me again and see what I do this time?"

  The vampire stopped his trembling. After a couple seconds, he stood up, his once broken knee as good as knew. In fact, it had probably healed even before he touched the dirt, and the pain of the process had most likely been what had kept him down so long.

  Looking at the vampire's cold, hateful eyes, Kurt knew he probably wouldn't get to exploit that mental weakness again.

  "Who are you?" the vampire asked, his voice dangerously even.

  "A passerby, nothing more," answered Kurt. "One that really would like to just talk stuff through, rather than try and kill you. We are both human here, right? Nothing's blocking that lane."

  "Human," the vampire said with contempt. Then, he rose his left arm, with the palm facing Kurt. In an instant, his righthand went for it, snapping the forearm right at the middle with a wet crunch. The vampire didn't even flich this time, and as soon as he let go of it, his forearm flowed back into proper shape. "Does this look human to you, boy? I've gone past that now. I'm a superior entity, a predator of men, a go-!"

  "A drug addict," Kurt said, cutting through the vampire's monologue, and drawing yet another shocked gasp from him. "And one that's into the hard stuff, too."

  "You," MacArthur chocked out. The muscles on his neck went so tense that his head trembled, and he looked oddly vulnerable. "How do you know that?!"

  Kurt rose his own arm, and pointed at the inner part of it, tapping at it.

  MacArthur's eyes damn near bugged out. He extended both his arms before him, with the back of his hands facing the ground, and loked at the fur-free extension of his inner forearms, and the collection of blackened track marks decorating it like stars.

  "No," he gasped, shaking his head. "Why the hell are these still here?!"

  "Because you had them as a human," Kurt answered, his tone sympathetic. "Any 'scars' you have before the transformation stay, at least for a while." Kurt's brow furrowed, and he slightly tilted his head to the side. "Now that I've answered one of your questions, why don't you do the same for me, Mr. MacArthur? Like telling me how you came across this place, for example?"

  "I didn't 'come across' this fucking place! That goddamn fosil took me here!"

  "The old man you killed and drained in the manor, right?"

  MacArthur nodded, his face a grimace. "He took me off the street, promised me food and some money if I let him fuck me." Kurt must have reacted to that last part more externally than he thought, because MacArthur immeditely moved to clarify, "Not an uncommon deal out there, boy, and the guy seemed safe enough. He offered me some blow before we went to it, and I did it. Next thing I know, I'm zoning out and waking up in that manor, while that old guy fiddled on his vintage meth lab."

  "Must have been terrifying," Kurt said.

  MacArthur scoffed in derision. "Again, that shit's pretty common out in the streets, boy. I got lucky enough that this idiot didn't think about tying me up, or checking my pockets for shivs." He laughed darkly, sourly. "I shanked that wrinkled fuck, stabbed him right in his old, shriveled kidneys. Something fell from his hands, and when I checked to see what it was, what do you think I found?"

  "A syringe," Kurt said. "One filled with a thick, red liquid."

  "Bingo!" the vampire exclaimed in mock cheer. "I was crashing down real hard from whatever that guy gave me, so I decided 'hey, let's see what this shit does," And well... you can see what it did, right?"

  "Yeah, I see," Kurt said. So that was it, uh? A vampire wannabe that got too careless when securing himself his feed. "And the red wolves?"

  "Found them tied up in some other building while exploring the town. Was so hungry that I can't even remember even deciding to eat them up, I just did. Got so frenzied up that I broke one's bonds before getting to bite it. The other four woke up on their own and started wandering around."

  Four. So there he had spawned four thralls. That meant that there were three unnacounted for, probably wandering around the town.

  But it also meant something else.

  "And the other three?" Kurt asked. "That alchemist created eight of those wolves. Four dead. One escaped. What happened to the other three?"

  The vampire gestured a the tunnel Buck and Alfred had gone into with his chin, and simply said. "Saving them up for later."

  "And the girl?" Kurt continued. "What did you do to her?"

  The vampire looked at Kurt with narrowed eyes, and said. "I think I've done enough answering already, brat. Why don't you tell me what the hell was that thing I shot up to balance things out?"

  Kurt let out an exasperated sigh, and proceded to answer MacArthur's question in detail.

  "A vampire?" he asked. Kurt nodded. "Ah... would you look at that? No wonder sunlight felt like I was getting acid dumped on me. So what does this mean for me."

  "It means you either begin killing and eating other living creatures or you die, and that unless a good chunck of those creatures are human you will mutate into a form so animalistic your brain won't be human anymore, which spells the loss of your mind." Kurt's eyes narrowed, and his tone grew sharper. "That's what 'this' means for you."

  "Oh," gasped the vampire, seemingly grasping the gravity of his situation for the first time. "Well, what about blood bags? I could rob a blood bank or something and..."

  "No," Kurt cut him. "Vampires feed by hijacking thir victims life force, the connection between soul and flesh. Spilled blood, no matter how fresh, doesn't have a soul behind it. It's killing or nothing."

  "And what does that mean for me?"

  Kurt took a deep breath, and spoke solemnly, "It means you either start killing people, mutate into an abomination, or accept a quick, clean death."

  "I see..." said MacArthur. He let out a soft, mirtless laugh that seemed to degenerate into sobbing. Then, he slumped forward, like a puppet with its strings cut.

  And then his flesh began bulging and glowing with a dirtier, darker version of Buck's own power. Red Aura corrupted by necrotic energy.

  MacArthur's head snapped toward Kurt, his eyes slit and glowing red, and spoke. "I choose killing."

  And for the third time, the vampire lunged at Kurt, and the ground where he had stood shattered.