Except, there was no sign of life. No home had lights. No people walked around apart from the two of them. There weren’t any signs of cats or dogs. No barking or mewling. No birds tweeting. It was as if Nature herself had decided to leave town.
In that silence and in that smog, as they meandered through the town, a high-pitched whine shook the very air.
Literally. The air vibrated alongside the sound.
Wayne snapped his neck towards Serena so fast that he suffered a bit of whiplash. Jovial countenance gone, her face was dead set in a serious expression.
“Did you feel that?” she asked.
“It wasn’t you?”
“I don’t scream like that,” she said, aghast.
“Scream?” Wayne blinked. “That whining sound?”
One of her hands gripped the opposite elbow, rubbing it lightly. “It was a kid. In trouble, I’d reckon.” After giving a light shudder, she pointed off in the direction they had already been walking. “That way. And I,” she sniffed before dropping her voice to a murmur, “smell blood too.”
Wayne didn’t bother to point out that Serena was a kid as well. “Come on, let’s look into it. Stay behind me.”
“I’m a vampire, I can help too.”
Wayne ignored her, turning his brisk walk into a light run. He scanned every bush, every roof, and every window that he could see for any kind of movement.
It didn’t take long to find the source of the disturbance. A small, single floor home had its doorway kicked in. The tell-tale illuminated circles of a flashlight danced around through the windows.
Wayne pressed himself against one side the door. He almost jumped out of his shoes as Serena pressed up against him. She had followed so silently that he had been certain that she had remained behind.
Serena had the audacity to let out a short giggle.
Narrowing his eyes behind his mask, he pressed one finger over his lips in the universal gesture for silence. At her nod, he leaned around the entryway, peeking into the front living room.
There was a short and rotund man standing over a fireplace that had its covering grate thrown to one side. “Master will be so pleased we found another one.”
“And this one,” a female standing at his side said, “looks so tasty.” Her tongue darted out of her mouth, licking her lips. She was notably missing any sign of elongated canines. Merely a deviant thrall.
“Go away,” squealed a third voice.
As before, the air rumbled. Here it was far more violent than before. It was unmistakably a sign of magic, though likely performed without a focus. The slight rumbling of the air didn’t use nearly enough magic to do anything of any use.
Neither of the thralls seemed very concerned with the possibility of a mage around, likely because of the impotence of said mage’s attacks. They glanced at one another with mocking looks.
“You already killed the hag,” the male said. “If Master finds out you’ve been toying with his food…”
The woman moved fast, though not so fast as to make Wayne reconsider her thraldom. Her arm wrapped around the man’s neck. “Master won’t find out,” she said, pulling her arm tighter. “Will he?”
Gasping for breath, the man kept smacking his hand into the woman’s arm.
“Thralls,” he hissed towards Serena while they were making a good amount of noise.
Serena had moved to look in through the front windows. “I can take them,” she said.
Before Wayne could object, she vanished. For a moment, he thought she had teleported. Feeling her brush past him threw that idea out the window. His eyebrows crept up his forehead.
He didn’t have time to consider the implications. Inside, the woman had released the other thrall.
“Now that we understand each other,” she said, turning back to the fireplace. “Come out, little girl. I won’t hurt you, I just want to play a little.”
“Play with this!” Serena reentered the visible spectrum of light just behind the thrall. Before either could react, she jumped up on the female’s back. Her legs wrapped around the waist while her arms kept the woman’s arms from interfering, much the same way she had initially attacked Wayne.
Unfortunately for the thrall, she lacked the fireball in her hand to keep the short vampire from biting down.
The thrall back-stepped and tipped over the side of a chair, all with Serena’s teeth plunged deep within her neck.
Panic on his face, the male thrall lifted up a gun.
Wayne moved to act. He threw out a shield immediately in front of the gun, catching the bullet before it left the barrel. With no place for the gas to expand to, the barrel split in two, sending shrapnel into the man’s hand.
He sank to his knees, cradling his hand as he cried out in pain.
Wayne strode across the room in three large steps, barely paying attention to the broken-necked corpse of a woman lying on the couch. He kicked the thrall upside the head, knocking him out cold on the floor.
“Serena,” he said, “are you alright?”
The child-like vampire was still beneath the female thrall, teeth sunk deep inside the withering woman’s neck. Their fall had torn open her neck, spraying blood around the room.
