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It was supposed to be a regular night: wake up, eat, go to work, stress out, maybe kill a few things and then retire before sunrise. Fate – or maybe it was some galling Deity – had other plans for him, however. He maybe got two sixths of his routine done before disaster struck; the electricity grid in the area of Levitan Logistics went down.

“Oi! What the **** is this? Damn computer’s gone down… the lights too!”

The first of many voices bellowed out from the offices just beyond Levi’s door, beginning a war-like chorale of similar complaints. Obviously with the power out, no work was going to get done; just idiots wandering around expensive computer units and sensitive information in the ******* dark. Levi was pinching the bridge of his nose, sitting in the absolute abyss when the first peon burst into his room following a very brief knock.

“Hey boss, the light’s gone off.”

“No ****,” Levi growled back; eyes hidden behind a hand supported by the armrest of his throne.

“So… what do you want us to do in the dark?”

There was a long pause from the angry Vampiro.

“Boss?”

“Just tell everyone to **** off for the night. I don’t trust you fuckers with candles and lighters… and matches. Better to lose a night’s work than burn the ******* place down.”

The peon nodded and turned, closing Levi’s door with precise caution and silence before hollering the good news to the rest of the employees. It was like the silence before the storm and Levi wouldn’t tolerate the headache that was brewing. He got up from his chair, covered himself in shadows and left his office – perfectly avoiding every potential elbow, shoulder, back and knee bump so that no one noticed him leave. Ok, so maybe this Vampiro thing wasn’t a total pain in the ***.

After about half a block, Levi slipped into a short alleyway to displace the shadows and returned to the streets as the same-old highly visible, angry Italian in a particularly fine suit. With work out of the equation, that usually meant he had time to waste. This was rare. He could have headed straight for part four of his six-step plan, and you can bet he had enough of a temper to kill ****, but having failed to be productive tonight, he just wasn’t in the mood to spend bullets. Instead, his head went to real estate. Since he was spending so much time in Canada now and had actually been given permission by the don to stick around, it made sense to get a more permanent hide-out. As nice as hotels were, they lacked the kind of security he needed lately – not just from Mafia of course, but from Vampiri too. It was a chore to get his apartment in Boston and then get it up to spec, and no doubt it would be even worse for this hell hole. Location was the first most important aspect; he needed to be able to get around easily enough, but be out of the way from too much of your regular body traffic. Seeing as he had a few hours to kill before sunrise, Levi figured he’d make his way around the city and consider his options.

He spent a lot of time in Wickbridge, Bullwood and Cherrydale with the occasional – though soon to be regular – jaunt across Gullsborough. Remembering his times in the Quarantined Zone using Zombies for low-risk target practice and gun testing, Levi decided that it wouldn’t be a bad place to set up a first base. He made his way over to remind himself of the area – aesthetics, visibility, fortification, popularity and amenities being high on his check list. He knew the ground floor of Corvidae Flats was properly decked out, hosting everything your average Vampiro needed. Because it was so well-geared for the undead, it made it a popular destination for folks Levi assumed were Vampiri (he wasn’t 100% sure of anything these days), which almost made it unfavourable. He didn’t like people – dead, undead, it didn’t matter. People were either annoying, whiny little bitches who got in your way or annoying, arrogant bastards who got in your way. He could do without them, he told himself, but just because he wanted it to be true, didn’t mean it was. If anything, Levi needed people more now than he ever did and he knew, regardless of how much he felt like they were all going to irritate him into a coma, he had to play nice.

As Levi was making his way toward Corvidae Flats to jog his memory, however, his plans were interrupted again. Walking past the abandoned bar, he heard a commotion that drew his curiosity. He was busy, but, he could take a moment and figure out what that sound was. He probably shouldn’t be walking in on whatever was going down – it sounded like some kind of party or event and he hadn’t exactly received an invitation. Old rules, which should have become habit by now, told him not to intrude where he didn’t belong, but Levi said **** the rules and pushed the door of the bar open. He was quiet though, went unnoticed by the people inside; their focus was on the floor, on two stupid beasts which were trained to kill each other. Levi knew what he’d stumbled in on the minute he’d heard the barks, snaps of jaws and pained yelps of the dogs under a wave of human jeers and applause. Blood sport rackets like these were illegal for a reason, but it wasn’t his morals which put a disgusted expression on his face – frankly, he didn’t like canines – it was the fact that this **** was happening in his new neighbourhood without his consent.

Keeping quiet, Levi decided to make his way around the crowd to spot the ringleader. They were typically easy to spot no matter where you were in the world – they were the ones with serious faces, the kind with blood-shot, pointed eyes and protruding veins. Yeah, Levi spotted him and his companions easily enough. If he was counting the handlers too, that meant seven. He wasn’t sure if he was counting them, but he had enough bullets for them either way. Another old rule, which was more likely to become a habit than any other, told him not to kill people he didn’t know. Well, he could listen to that one tonight – probably. He wasn’t nearly pissed off enough to lose his cool and loose bullets, not yet. And, weirdly enough, even when he found a familiar-looking red head in amongst these idiots, he still kept his cool. Levi decided to approach Prudence, see if she knew anything about this; the stern concentration on her face failed to give him much.

“You enjoying the show?” he asked over her shoulder; low voice and condemning tone no different than usual and said nothing about his intent.

Prudence held her ground, but the look on her face suggested that she was not overly pleased to see him. Come to think of it, she never had been particularly overjoyed to meet him either. Prudence and CC had a strained relationship – that much was obvious – and maybe there were some kind of etiquette rules about bringing new Vampiri into being that CC failed to comply with. As far as he was concerned though, that wasn’t his problem. He didn’t ask for this **** and CC certainly hadn’t intended on bringing it either. Also, he couldn’t help being who he was; when his shitty attitude met with similar shitty attitudes, there was never going to be anything but war. They were never going to get off on the right foot, him and Prudence, still, he couldn’t complain right now; he wasn’t on the wrong side of a gun tonight. Levi felt the need to roll his eyes at her response, but held his position. He promised he would try, but why did people accuse him of sneaking around all the time? He wasn’t trying to be particularly stealthy – not to her anyway. Maybe he was so good at blending in with this type of crowd though that he effortlessly fused into street scum. Well ****, that hurt his pride.

Levi didn’t know what to expect of the hot-head and although violence was definitely in her hand, he wasn’t sure how she was going to play it. His head turned as a blood-curdling yelp pierced the veil of cheers, followed shortly by a battle of hissing and applause. The ringleader’s *****, which could only be described as some gangling ****** who’d never seen the light of day – don’t mark the irony – was quick to announce the next round as champion and corpse were remove. After that, two Rottweiler bitches – actual ones this time – were brought tearing into the ring by their handlers. Levi figured that they must have run low on males to have brought out the girls. Sure Human females could be vicious to one another, but in the animal kingdom there were few reasons for why females would fight to the death. Levi couldn’t see much from where he was, so, maybe they had just recently given birth. Using that mothering instinct for this purpose was a little sick; no wonder Prudence was losing her cool. He figured she was going to pull some kind of stunt, but whatever he was expecting, it wasn’t that she would disappear from his sights and then reappear; a man’s neck snapping between her hands. When the man’s body fell into the dusty ring between the dogs, all eyes turned on the red-head.

Prudence might not have been bothered, but everyone else in the room was looking to her with lasers for eyes. Levi saw the first couple of knives being drawn, but these folks didn’t look the type to actually have any sense of throwing ability if you disregard throwing up. He looked past them to the first gun being drawn. Of course Prudence would be expecting a come-back to her very bold assassination, so he kept the first gun man in mind and continued to search the crowd. There had to be at least thirty people in here altogether and in the seconds that he was counting and searching, the tension in the room was growing. The Rottweilers, maybe feeding off the dark energy in the room, were growling and snapping their jaws harder and their handlers had turned them to face the red-head. The irony wasn’t lost on him as the dogs lunged in her direction, barely being tethered, and by now everyone was armed and waiting for a reason to shoot. It didn’t take long.

Out of the corner of his eye, Levi saw someone take a shot, but his aim was well-off its mark. The bullet hit the dry wall some feet off Prudence’s skull, but the explosion itself set off a chorus of gun shots and yelling: “Kill the *****!”. Men with knives rushed the ‘stage’ that the red-head was on as the gunmen took aim from where they were. Fortunately for her, only a quarter of the crowd was packing a gun and as Prudence’s focus would undoubtedly be on the immediate threat, Levi decided to maybe help her out and take down the shooters. The old Levi would have started shooting back immediately, but now that he had other means at his disposal, it made sense to go for quick and ultimate damage. Blinding your enemies was a great way to halt them aggressively and defensively, ensuring a quick take-down. Levi took advantage of the shadows, first drawing them out from the corners of the room and from around the men to become thick, physical shrouds. Like blankets of black cloth, the shadows wrapped around the gunmen and in their physical forms, clawed out at them as well. Levi wasn’t giving it too much focus – he set his will on the darkness and left the shadows to wrap and claw; preferably at jugulars. He felt a strange tug from within as he stepped forward though, like something had stuck his feet to the floor. He looked down, expecting something sticky, then realised that the shadows he’d willed to life seemed to have turned on him too. Oh ****.

Why were the shadows attacking him? Had he missed something, maybe fucked up again? These powers were tricky – and just when he thought he might actually be getting the hang of things too. The shadows around his feet were like tar so he couldn’t move, but that didn’t mean he was out of options. He still had a pair of guns and the element of surprise; their focus was still on Prudence. As she battled with a few of them and made copies of herself in the same way he’d seen CC do – an admirable distraction that certainly had him confused when he was Human – Levi took aim at a couple of punks and then took them down with clean shots. When they realised some of their fellow angry thugs were being shot at though, interest quickly divided between Levi and Prudence. Knives glinted in the shallow light like jumping fish as they came at him quickly, aiming to drive metal through flesh, but they’d clearly forgotten that he was armed too.

As the first two came at him, he shot them down easily enough; headshots weren’t exactly difficult from the short distance. The third, however, had gotten past him. Levi took a shot, but it went over the man’s shoulder, ploughing into the back of some black-haired tart who went down rather dramatically. Levi’s aggressor came in slashing; a weird mixture of thrusts and arcs that forced Levi to defend himself with a raised arm. A cold pain drove into his forearm followed by an outward tug as the man attempted to pull his knife out and stab again; he wasn’t quick enough. Lowering his bleeding arm, Levi shot the man in the face. The flesh, blood and bone sprayed into the air as one liquid, spattering over the man’s shoulder and onto the backs of others. They weren’t best pleased, but Levi had more immediate problems to deal with. As the dead man succumbed to gravity, his grip on the knife pulled at the blade again and Levi felt himself being dragged into an awkward crouch.

“*********** get off!” he barked.

Levi dropped his gun instinctively to grab the man’s fingers and pry them off the weapon. The dead man slipped down into a pile on the floor and at that point Levi realised that not only were his feet unstuck – finally – but there were about a thousand cockroaches scrambling past him and up the legs of the crowd. He wasn’t freaked out by insects, but he could wait to get his gun back and focused on removing the knife from his arm. Whatever was drawing them in seemed entirely supernatural and was probably Prudence’s doing. It was most likely to be luck that had kept him from not being on the receiving end of those mandibles as it was, so it was better not to push it. As it happened, he wasn’t the only one with that idea of not pushing things; quite a few of the remaining thugs decided to flee. Levi let them move past him to the door; he wasn’t about to waste bullets on cowards. Ordinarily he worked under the ethos of never leaving a single man alive, but these weren’t his ordinary prey; just stupid junkies looking to get some cash together for their next score.

Once the chaos had died down a bit, the targets became easier to locate and execute. Levi picked up his gun again and took down a handful of confused, maybe distracted idiots as he moved toward the back of the room where they’d kept the cages. He figured he would see Prudence there freeing the dogs, but he didn’t get that far. Out of his blind spot came a bounding mass of muscle which tackled him to the ground; it didn’t take him long to realise that someone had set one of the Rottweilers on him when a brown and black muzzle full of teeth came snapping at his face and neck. Levi grabbed the *****’s neck with one large palm and pushed the dog back with controlled force. Neither him nor the dog was expecting the power that came from that shove, and a rather comical look of surprise was drawn on the mutt’s face as it was catapulted some feet across the room. From his position on the floor, he saw the dog land clumsily but safely before scarpering off, he also caught a flash of red heels making a break for it – the handler. Levi got up in a hurry and raced after her, making sure to grab a handful of ebony hair to drag her to a painful stop. Clutching her own scalp, the woman screamed and tried to fall to her knees to wiggle free, but he wasn’t about to let her off that easily.

“That was rude,” he growled into her ear.

Levi dragged her back onto her feet and when she wouldn’t stand, he made her hang there. Her legs kicked out furiously beneath her, heels catching his legs now and again and making him question his own motives. She was just some junky no one would miss and he didn’t have any qualms about killing her, still, he wondered whether it was the right thing to do. He didn’t know Prudence well enough to make that decision and if he was going to get into her good books, maybe killing some random whore wouldn’t help. Then again, hesitation could be just as costly and all this toing and froing wasn’t easing his mood. When he saw her grab a flick knife from her pocket though, Levi’s mind was made up for him. With a twist of his arm, he released her swinging into the floor. The knife slipped from her grasp and went hurtling across the ground, but she lunged for it immediately forcing Levi to intercept her hand. One boot came down hard on the pale, fragile digits and she screamed again. Levi didn’t consider himself to be all that sadistic and he rarely had to assault women, but it felt oddly justified to finally get some revenge on their gender; she was quickly silenced by a bullet to the skull.

It all went quiet after that shot was fired – that or he was experiencing temporary deafness. His hearing, which was sensitive enough as a Human, had become ridiculous as a Vampiro. If he focused too much on listening, he could hear minute details, kind of like zooming in on a particular sound and tuning everything else into a kind of background buzz. Alternatively, if he wasn’t particularly paying attention, the sense could just go off the charts; everything would become excessively loud with no one sound being distinguishable from any other. Those moments caused migraines, and pain was a good motivator. Levi had learned pretty swiftly to keep himself in check and maybe it came at the cost of developing other abilities and strengths, but as far as he was concerned, it was worth it. So when it was quiet like this, he got a little anxious – was something wrong or had he fucked up again? Hell, he was glad when Prudence spoke to him because it was confirmation that he wasn’t losing his ****.

Levi turned to her, appreciation evident in the fact that his frown wasn’t as harsh as usual. He motioned to check out where she was pointing, eyes flickering momentarily to the neon orange bra she had on. He couldn’t help himself; it was bright and distracting and caught his eye like a flash of a white rabbit’s tail in the brush. As a matter of fact, his hearing wasn’t the only sense he’d felt an upgrade to. He’d caught a good glance of her cleavage in such a short moment and had already judged it before chiding himself. She was pretty, but she wasn’t supposed to be. It was just the adrenaline talking, he convinced himself. Chill the **** out and pay attention to what you’re doing. Moving around her to reach, despite his earlier cautions, he checked her out again. He could have helped that one, probably. Curiosity told him to see if her underwear matched and if her arse looked nice. He couldn’t answer the first, but the second question was confirmed. As soon as he caught himself smiling, he straightened up and took a firm hold of the knife’s handle.

“I’m just gonna yank it out,” he told her bluntly. “You’re fine with that right?”

He’d asked, but didn’t wait for a response. With the distraction of the offer fresh in her mind, Levi decided to just pull the damn thing out in one quick movement. He knew it was going to hurt, but in a strange way, it felt like adequate punishment for distracting him. Levi knew it was ********, that it wasn’t Prudence’s prancing around half-naked rather than his fault for not being able to control himself, but that involved admitting that he wasn’t perfect and his ego didn’t like that. Inspecting the bloodied blade, Levi realised that one edge of the blade was slightly serrated like a proper hunter’s knife. Fortunately, it was a miniature so it didn’t tug and rip too much as it was yanked out. With a Human, Levi probably wouldn’t have been so reckless, but he figured Prudence had the same kind of healing ability as him – maybe even better. After that he reached around her, past her right elbow, proposing the blade which rested across the flat of his palm. This was probably as dangerous as it was amusing, so **** it. Wounds and injuries just weren’t as serious anymore and with lost limbs being repaired in a matter of days to be as good as new, he could risk her stabbing him.

“You want it as a souvenir?” he asked smirking.

Laughter wasn’t high up on his list of expected responses, but there it was: Prudence laughing quite jovially at his little joke. The smirk on his face persisted partly because he thought he was funny too and partly because he wasn’t eating that knife, which in itself, was amusing as well as surprising. When Prudence said that she didn’t want the blade though, Levi just tilted his palm forward and let it slide off to hit the floor like a clap of thunder. Well he didn’t want it either, he wasn’t much of a knife person as it was and the thing was pretty insignificant. He watched Prudence step forward, creating some space between them at last, and by the time she’d turned to face him that smirk was gone. Levi adopted his trademark irritable expression and met her question with a lazy shrug of the shoulders.

“I was just in the area and apparently I have a short attention span,” he said casually and just at that moment, a dog came bounding toward them.

Levi stiffened slightly when the canine came around him, running up to Prudence with a slobbering jaw. It didn’t look threatening, just unsanitary. Prudence found the dog’s sudden appearance amusing too and Levi began to question her sense of humour as well as her attention span when she started petting it. Hell, maybe it ran in their genes to be drawn by curiosity. He could see by the way she was playing with it too – and cackling to herself – that she was a dog person and Levi caught himself rolling his eyes. He didn’t understand these people who liked dirty mutts. Ok, he could understand the desire to have subordinates, but people usually liked dogs for one of two reasons: they were crazy and wanted to have a fur baby or they wanted to feel important by having charge over a powerful beast. Both kinds were equally pathetic in his opinion. Levi was solitary by nature and couldn’t really handle clingy bastards that relied on you for everything: this included animals (read: dogs) and people (read: women). Levi was pretty much lost in his own disparaging thoughts by the time Prudence’s voice pierced his conscious, talking some ******** about Tequila. Tequila is a ******* stupid drink and a ******* stupid name for an animal, he thought to himself. Nevertheless, Prudence seemed fairly pleased with it.

“So what now?” he asked her, slipping a hand inside his suit jacket’s inner pocket for a cigarette. “You heading back to… wherever it was you came from?”

Levi knew he wasn’t very good at making conversation, but he felt he deserved points for trying. Plus, when he puffed out every lungful of smoke, he blew them away from her. He wasn’t drunk or anything, just being nice – go ******* figure, Hell could freeze over.