The Stranger

The night was cloaked in eternal winter darkness, even the sun's rays couldn’t penetrate through the grey thickness of the sky. Carnage and danger lingered on the once peaceful suburban street of Oxford Avenue, where a hollow silence replaced the sounds of the neighborhood's lively holiday bustle. The snow had fallen slowly but menacingly, burying the entire town and ensnaring it in a rare ice age. Yet, on this dire night, the Stranger glided past the wreckage with complete ease and even a shadow of curiosity. The scene of strife had excited him and he was eager to release the shackles of boredom. 

The flakes had gently fallen on his black robe, whispering sweet kisses on the frozen, unmoving dead skin of his cheeks. The night almost felt tranquil. 

The raw scent of human meat permeated thickly in the frosty air, the densest aroma of blood coming from a pile of bodies scattered a few yards ahead of him in the front lawn of a pink house. The Stranger stopped and took a brief detour towards the scene. Two men and one woman had been killed by the Beasts, but only partially fed upon until they were interrupted by the multiple gunshots from the locals. The smell of human and wolf intertwined, predator and prey were both actors in the violent theater of nature. Despite the cold and the time that had passed, there was still warmth deep inside their bellies, though it would freeze with death’s finality within a few moments and the bodies would dwindle into frozen corpses.

The trio had most likely been killed only a few hours prior to his arrival. The woman had been struck with a fierce blow to the head, the beast's claws tearing into her skull and ripping the side of her ear and cheek off. The blood and ice made her black hair stick to her skin like glue across her crystalized face, and the Stranger felt a morbid urge to wipe the hair from her blue moon eyes. They are past death now, he thought to himself. There’s a certain safety in that, I suppose. The beasts had time to bite into the throats of the two men, but didn’t get beyond a meager second bite before running back into the backwoods, away from the bullets. The Stranger’s throat ached with the familiar sting of thirst and he imagined himself scavenging the bodies before him, delving into their last sockets of warmth. But he didn’t settle for scraps. Instead, he preferred fresh hot honey. He would have to wait.

The motion of warm bodies shifted in the distance. The few survivors had gathered together in one of the houses further ahead, using it as a final safe haven, their scent of fear still lingering sweetly in the air. The Stranger flared at the thought of quenching his white-hot thirst on the humans that huddled helplessly not so far from him. The faces of all the lives he took over a millennia of his existence conglomerated into a single, terrified expression; a face that was both male and female, young and old- a face frozen in eternal terror as the unfortunate souls met their ruthless end through him. He, and all those like him, were so clearly above all the rest. 

While they warred and bled and aged, his kind surfed on the infinite wave of rare and privileged immortality. They never tired, they never grew old, they simply drifted through the ages, watching empires rise and fall while they fed on kings and popes and princes. No matter what they believed, no matter what dogma any of them had practiced in their human life, a newly turned vampire understood that they were casted into an underworld, an infinite winter outside the rushing warmth of human nature. Their souls were lost like the velvet ashes of a dwindling fire on a bare, black night. 

The only triumph came in surrender. Some struggled with their existence while others embraced it, as the Stranger had. He yielded to the luscious warm wine that coursed beneath human flesh, worshipped it like a pagan god. Perhaps he should have felt damned, perhaps he should have mourned the loss of his eternal soul, as it now belonged to a demon. But he never did. The Stranger believed he was as he was meant to be, as if fate, however twisted, had smiled upon him and raised him as one of the fortunate ones. He would never cry out in fear and pain as humans did; he would never beg for help or squalor in misery, and he would never wince at the ache of old age. It came at a blood-price, one he had no qualms paying… to take human life. If man were created in God’s image, then he was created in the Devils- a far more exquisite and exhilarating form to exist in, and an equally colossal force to contend with. 

On this night, he had entered the Devil’s Playground, a realm where the archaic darkness hungered for the meat of man. Only ravenous werewolves and crimson-eyed vampires walked the street. God was absent on this unholy night. Perhaps it made sense then, for man, in his desperation to defend his kind, to turn to devils for help. What should have been a cautionary request for aid was more of a desperate cry for saving from the frazzled mind of a local girl. Her mind was a sharpened muscle, cool and clear, unlike the cloudy, static minds of the many mortals he encountered, if he even bothered to peer into them at all.  

The Stranger smiled to himself, finding the notion quite ironic, though perfectly poetic: man calls on the power of one devil to stomp out another. 

He glided past the rest of the bodies, their blood faded into a pink, vague hue in the snow. The rush of warmth pressed against him and he could feel the shifting of warm bodies in the final home at the edge of the street. It was the largest one, the most ostentatious and not the best kind if one were attempting to be inconspicuous. It was more like a small mansion, with stone walls and tall iron gates. Like the rest of the neighborhood, the impressive home was sunken beneath the weight of the white snow and the church-like windows had been boarded up, as if that could keep a creature of the night at bay. The flock of frightened hens gathered flippantly deep within the bowels of the home, the basement, where they nestled together fearfully in the innermost corner they could find. 

While the majority of the pack gathered together, a few bodies had tapered off as guards and stood by the window. 

“Someone’s here.” A young male voice barely whispered. 

Shoes scuttled across the floor. 

“It’s him.” A female voice asserted, her voice breathless from a sudden rush of apprehension. “He’s one of them.”

The pair paused before taking steps towards the front door. 

Even from where he stood, the Stranger could faintly make out the myriad of heartbeats thumping in their chests from within the fortress, emitting all the human chemicals of fear into the atmosphere. It was an appetizing scent, one that called to the most savage and predatory parts of his nature. 

But he would have to wait. For the first time in his second life, he would have to restrain himself; he would have to subdue the blood glutton that ruled so tyrannically within him, the hedonistic demon that casually fell to its own addictions night after night. Though it would be tiresome and maybe even painful, the challenge curbed the boredom that began to grow after the last few centuries. Besides, he was here on higher authority and had been given very specific instructions. Of course, his Masters would understand if the blood-lust overpowered him. Although they were briefly influenced to break their own rules out of curiosity, the old kings knew very well this insignificant chapter in their ceaseless existence could end poorly for the humans. They were a life-threatening risk the desperate locals were willing to take. 

More than that, they began to believe. 

The Stranger slowly approached the gates, knowing that those inside were anxiously watching his every move. 

The heavy door groaned as it creaked open. A young woman weighed down by thick layers cautiously stepped out into the woeful night. She was perhaps in her early twenties, though she was no taller than a child and her beanie, which was stretched below her ears, made her face look rounder and youthful. It was the face of a child. Her cheeks were flushed red from the merciless frost that bit at her skin and her lips were chapped and blue. The brown eyes that gazed back at him held only momentary shock and awe at the unnatural sight of his glowing, rose-red eyes. Then, her expression relaxed into unguarded recognition. 

The sound of her thoughts rang with the familiar tenor he had been hearing since the beasts descended on the town. The clairvoyant bridge that had formed was a rare anomaly in both the human and vampire world. The girl had called out to the darkness for help, and a devil answered. The young woman straightened herself and approached the gate to invite the vampire into her home.