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Hannibal saw the blood pouring from the gaping wound on her neck. Thick, yet so quick to flee her body, the blood clung to her flesh and stained her white dress a sickening shade of rust red. He couldn’t hear her screams or her pleas for mercy, but he saw everything in the expression on her face. Her eyes were wide open, just like her blood-stained mouth, torn between absolute terror and another nameless emotion. He couldn’t understand. With the blood dribbling from her mouth and the conflicting emotions in her facial expression, he couldn’t grasp the movements of her lips. She was talking too fast!

He grabbed her shoulders and shook, trying to get her to understand that she had to communicate. She wasn’t moving her hands, just flailing them around. What was wrong with her? What had happened to her throat? She managed to sign a very vague you, and then he felt someone grab him by the back of the neck and lift him from his feet. He was tossed to the side, landing with a loud thud in a berry bush. Splayed out across the top of the bush, the bent limbs barely supporting his weight, he watched as the strange man let out a laugh or some sort or growl.

“STOP!” The word was foreign, coming out in broken pieces, but he forced it from his lips. Hannibal tried to free himself, but his shirt had tangled in the thorns of the blackberry bush and he scraped the skin off his arms in his attempts. “Stop!” He repeated the plea over and over, flailing his arms and his legs. When he landed on the ground, he scrambled toward the two, crawling as fast as he could on his hands and knees.

He landed one punch to the pale man’s face, but only succeeded in hurting himself. The man jerked away and Hannibal finally looked into the monster’s eyes. There was something inhuman in the empty orbs, something that matched the intensity of the red staining the monster’s lips. Hannibal wanted to throw another punch, to do anything he could to get to his sister, but he drew the monster toward himself. He had the wild-eyed creature bearing down on him and he didn’t know what to do, so he surveyed his surroundings for some sort of weapon.

A jagged piece of asphalt was off to the side of the road, beckoning him, drawing him as if it emitted a beacon of light. Hannibal grabbed it in both hands and thrust it at the creature’s throat. It wasn’t a killing blow, but it drove the monster away. He went straight for Edith, pulling her from a pool of her own blood. She was heavy in his arms and very still, far too still. He brushed his fingers over her face and rested them over her lips. She wasn’t breathing. Her lips were cold.

Kneeling on the ground, his back to the feral creature, he lost himself in his own little world. With his free hand, he fisted the grass, yanking the sharp blades from the sheath of the earth. He didn’t hear the growl of the feral vampire. He didn’t hear the shuffle of hands and feet on grass and pavement. He didn’t hear anything at all.

He had died in front of her. The sickening crack that had resonated off the stone walls of her candle shop had yet to escape her mind, the image of his head at such an unnatural angle unnerved her. Such a fragile creature, her human thrall had simply pissed off the wrong individual at the right time and she hadn’t hesitated. Blood had leaked from his nose, from the corner of one of his eyes and had she had the nerve to look, Sence would have seen the bone sticking through pale skin that had been the cause of the pooling amount on her floor.

Two weeks had passed before she’d taken a new thrall. Theodore. He was a sweet kid, often underestimating himself and his usefulness around Sence before she would frown and poke him. On occasion, he’d found her sitting on the curb outside of the mall and urged her to go home early after noting the tears that stained her face, such as they had that night. He would close up the shops and do the numbers, although Sence told him she’d do them from home – it wasn’t hard, everything was kept on record in the computers and she could simply access them through her mind. She felt guilty knowing what she’d gotten him into.

The knitted cap on the top of her head slid slightly as her amber eyes looked around curiously, the sound of a strangled word catching her attention. Trying to locate where it had come from, she heard the plea again and she stepped in the direction of the park as the smell of blood was strong as it reached her from a light breeze that caused snow to slide the cap further off her head. With each step taken, the snow crunched underneath her shoes and she subconsciously shivered despite the lack of need to do so. The scene was terrible.

Not one to speak out loud, Sence felt her lips part as she squeaked out a warning for the man while the feral approached from behind, wondering if the human man had even noticed the creature. Her eyebrows furrowed. “That will not do.” What would her sire do? There was a growl and instinctively, she stepped forward as her hand went to the handgun that was concealed beneath the hem of her cardigan. “He wouldn’t stand here and do nothing. But, he would be careful on what he did.” She reasoned and cleared her throat before shouting out, “Hey!” to draw the attention of the other vampire from the man holding someone.

The feral turned to face her, snarling as it seemed to gauge the distance between them and immediately, she raised trembling hands to fire off two shots. One missed, landing in the snow and causing her to swear mentally as the second punched into its chest, narrowly missing its heart. “Come and see me, puto.” When it regained its balance, she readied herself for the retaliation as she activated predictive reflex.