I once watched a documentary about the Gelada baboon—strange as far as primates went, curious and deceptively docile. Despite being herbivores, they had this unsettling habit when threatened. Their lips would curl back completely, exposing their gums and terrifyingly elongated canines. Then their mouths would distend, jaw unhinging like a snake preparing to swallow its prey. And when they’d bite, the inside of their mouths, gums and teeth, it would almost protrude out. Kind of like a slingjaw.

I’d always thought it was one of the creepiest things I’d ever seen.

It was infinitely worse to see something that looked human do the same thing.

In the span of a heartbeat, she threw her head back, mouth opening larger than her skull should have permitted, saw-tooth maw seeming to almost extend out slightly from the inside out.

Then she bit down onto my forearm. And everything became one long moment of agony.

My cries came out in muffled gasps, her hand still clamped on my mouth as serrated shark teeth gored and sawed into the veins, meat and muscle of my arm, slurping blood hungrily. I thrashed, kicked, punched and clawed, but it was like trying to unlatch a steel statue that had fused with my flesh.

Despite the agony and rising panic, a fragment of my mind grasped onto the thought of weapons. My gun was still wedged awkwardly between my back and the cupboard, out of reach, but Benjamin’s butterfly knife remained in my right pocket.

I let out a muffled scream into her hand, desperately hoping for the sound to cover the snap of me flicking it open.

It didn’t.

Halfway through the stab, she moved with terrifying speed, unlatching from my arm and swatting the knife from my hand.

“Oh. What a curious blade you wield, peasant,” she purred, voice dripping with disdain.

Instead of attacking again, the monster masquerading as a woman stepped back, movements deliberate and unsettlingly graceful. She tore a strip of rag from the clothesline, using it to wipe the blood that still dripped from her face and chin, her gaze never leaving me.

I looked down at the ruin of my arm and clutched at it, the pain so all-encompassing I couldn’t even gasp. Blood was pooling in fat rivulets. I may not have been a doctor but even I could tell it was enough for me to bleed out within minutes.

Before I could look away from the gaping wound, she was crouched in front of me again, that unnervingly calm, noble smile still fixed on her face. In a blur of motion too swift for me to track, she wrapped the same cloth tightly just below my elbow, pulling it so hard I thought my skin might tear. The bleeding slowed, the pressure of the cloth doing its grim work, but the pain... the pain was far from gone.

“You cannot bleed out, peasant. This was only our aperitif. Not the main course”.

Without waiting for an answer, the creature sprang back to her full height, her movements swift and fluid, facing the mirror, brushing my coagulating blood from her hair with dainty little fingers.

Her movements, her entire demeanour, were a smorgasbord of contradictions. Elegance melded with animal speed. Grace and brutality, coagulating in a singular package of inhuman presence.

There was only one assumption I could make regarding her nature.

“I thought vampires didn’t have reflections,” I whispered, the words barely audible, but they felt like the only defense I had left. Even through the haze of pain, I knew I had to keep talking, to buy myself a second—any second—to think, come up with a plan.

To find an opening to grab my gun.

“That’s what you are, right? A blood drinker? A vampire?” My voice cracked, but I pressed on, trying to sound steady despite the trepidation clawing at my insides, the fact that every ounce of self-preservation was screaming for me to shut up. To not draw attention to myself.

A useless instinct, in my current situation.

She froze mid-brush and her head snapped to me, eyes blazing with barely restrained violence.

“We assure you, we have a reflection. And do not use that word, blood-cattle. ‘Tis an infuriating term, created by unworthy mortal tongues and put in the same category as leeches, lampreys and other such parasites”.

She moved away from the sink and twirled in front of me, her motions a parody of humanity, unnatural in their surety and perfection.

“And we are no parasite. Our low-born kin may tolerate the word -vampire- but we shall not. We are immortal and beautiful. We are the Night’s Nobility. We are the Lady Erzebeth de Coutlierre, Baronette of the Red Woods”.

She finished with a courtesy, made all the more ridiculous by her oversized clothes.

“We…” I sneered, putting as much venom I could into the words “...don’t look like a lady”.

She glared at me, then at her clothes and sighed theatrically, affixing me with that condescending gaze.

“We. The royal we, peasant. Pluralis Majestatis. And you are correct, the clothes we have had to pilfer from one of your world’s corpses are less than…”

She pulled at the edges of the short denim skirt covering an all too alluring waist.

“...appropriate”

She tugged, trying to pull it lower.

“Are the women of your world strumpets? No self-respecting Lady would deign to show her knees and ankles so brazenly. And where is the silk? The frills? The…”

I didn’t pay attention to her rant. Despite the pain, the immediate danger of the situation, one phrase had just pierced through my mind, louder than everything else.

“My world?”

She paused mid-sentence, lips curling into a sneer, sharp and knowing.

“Why, yes,” she purred. “This is both your world and mine, blood-cattle. We are witness to the shaping of history. Two worlds, so alike yet diametrically opposite, reshaped into a singular one”

“What? What the hell are you talking about? How the…?”

With an indifferent shrug, the woman went back to the mirror.

“Mother Night and her Inner Circle would know the details. The Feyvolken surely do. But this noble Lady knows not, nor are we interested.

All that is of import is that when the worlds collided all was displaced and set back. Including this Lady’s estate.

Fate, cruel mistress that she is, resolved to shift the earth under this noble Lady’s chateau”

Her words didn’t make a lick of sense to me. Mother Night? Feywolken? I had no clue what any of these things were. But once more, the woman was clearly not talking for my sake. It was a performance just to hear the sound of her own voice.

She sighed and theatrically wiped non-existent tears from her face.

“What sorrow. What misfortune. Our estate splintered against cold stone. Our thralls and bed-servants pulverised by merciless weight. And worst of all, our wardrobe and clothes, reduced to kindling and rags.

Reducing this Lady to a pauper, pilfering strumpet’s clothes and traveling in daylight for sustenance”.

She dug through the over-sink cupboard, fingers dancing from one bottle to the next, the clink of glass punctuating her song-like voice. All the while, my own fingers crept ever closer to the pistol at the small of my back, a silent prayer on my lips that she wouldn’t notice.

“So you weren’t in trouble were you? You weren’t calling for help, you were hunting” I hissed.

The monster masquerading as a woman scoffed and giggled as she smelled a bottle of aromatic oil.

“Of course. You wouldn’t understand, would you, peasant?” Her tone was laced with contempt, dripping with the certainty of her superiority.

“We had caught the scent of fresh blood in this forsaken place, but... alas, the stench of rotbloods clutters the air. The dust from the Putrescent Swarms, thick as a plague, clouds our senses. We could not pinpoint the location. Not easily.”

Her face became a grimace and a small tongue poked out from between crimson lips.

“Disgusting filth. The Swarms, they hunt life—infest it, drain it, and leave nothing but festering husks. We cannot stomach the tar that the rotbloods pass for blood. The infected… they nest. Like rats in the walls. Pests. Disease.”

Her eyes flicked toward me, sharp as a hawk’s.

"And yet, even under the pitiless Sun, the wretched horde trailing behind us would have been nothing but an inconvenience for one such as this Immortal Lady. A nuisance. But we needed a way to draw you out. We needed a way to know where you were hiding."

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Lips curled back into that skin-crawling blend of smirk and snarl as she regarded me again.

“Like a fox-hunt, you see. Baiting you. Drawing you into the open. Only... you didn’t know you were the fox”.

I flicked the safety off, its metallic click sharp in the still air, and her head snapped toward me, eyes narrowing. For a heartbeat, I thought she’d heard it, that in the next heartbeat I’d have a dagger-toothed maw rip into my face—but no. It was just that infuriating sneer of hers, a mask of superiority that never quite left her features.

She was enjoying this. Making me twitch. Making me flinch.

“And you, peasant, have indeed succeeded in your actions. The kindness and help you have given us, has earned you a boon unlike any other”

I raised my arm, the one that had been savaged, wounds still fresh and oozing under the hastily tied tourniquet, skin already purpling from lack of blood flow. Despite the pain merely moving it caused, I waved it in the air, as if the injury itself might speak louder than my words.

“A shit prize”

She let out a soft chuckle, the sound rich with disdain, and returned to scooping out aromatic oil and dabbing it onto her wrists.

“A monumental prize, peasant. Not that we would expect a low-born like you to understand it’s inherent value.

To end your life on this mortal coil as nourishment for the Nobility of the Night? To go to the afterlife knowing that your blood and flesh have given succor to one of this noble Lady’s standing? It is far and above worthier than any other fate uncultured, low-born filth like yourself could ever hope to achieve”.

Turning back, her moves sinuous and sensual, like a coiling cobra rearing to strike, she crouched in front again, languidly caressing my cheek with her fingers.

“You should be thanking us, lowborn peasant. You will die at my hands instead of being ripped apart by the nesting rotbloods or killed by the scavengers that are soon to follow.

A death fit for royalty”.

I wanted to ask more, to wring every last shred of information from her before I made my final, desperate move. But before I could speak, she clapped her hands sharply, the sound cutting through the tension like a blade, and her grin bloomed—a predator’s smile—signalling that she was all but done with the “foreplay”.

“Now. As much as the melodious song of our voice must be a gift to swine like you, this Lady has been without distraction and food for too long to entertain you further. So, in our monumental magnanimity, we give you a choice”

The monster held two fingers to my face.

“Sport or pleasure”

My face must have been a mask of confusion, as she raised delicate fingers to her mouth to stifle a giggle, though the sound still escaped, bubbling out in a lilting, melodic chuckle.

“Sport or pleasure, peasant. We will drain you dry of blood within the hour, that is inevitable. But connoisseurs of the crimson wine such as this noble Lady have a finer palette than fledgelings and low-born immortals. Such rabble may be content with drinking any blood but we prefer it inflamed by the struggle to survive or the pleasure of carnality”.

She brought the two fingers in front of my face again, eyes as cold as ice.

“Thus, sport or pleasure. We will bleed you slowly as you fight against us, gentle cut by gentle cut, or you will pleasure us and we will slit your throat during the act”.

“How about you go fuck yourself?” I snarled, a malicious smirk twisting my lips despite the growing cold creeping through my limbs. My body felt distant and numb. I’d probably lost too much blood already.

It only meant I had nothing left to lose. So the least I could do before my last hail-mary pass was to try and be as spiteful and “uncooperative” as possible.

Empty little wins. But still mine.

She tilted her head and her arm flickered, fast like lightning and strong like iron, backhanding me across the face.

Fresh blood filled my mouth and I felt my lower jaw almost snap out of its socket, accompanied by an audible crack. It sounded far too much like a fracture. Considering how much that’d hurt, I’d overestimated just how numb my body had gotten.

“Peasant. You will give us either pleasure or sport. Otherwise, your death shall be a long and torturous experience”.

“HAH! As opposed to what I’ll get if I fight you?” I slurred, spitting out a mouthful of blood, peppered with the shards of a few broken teeth.

“Fight us? Oh no, infant. You misunderstand. It will be sport, not a fight.

We will not strike you. The point of the sport is for your blood to boil with the hope of survival. It makes it sweet, tangy and utterly delicious. We will simply evade and allow you the opportunity to strike us. Give you a…” her face twisted into that macabre perversion of beast and human as she let loose a deep, guttural approximation of a sigh.

“...fighting chance”

And, like a hungry hound being calmed, that same face immediately waxed back into a visage of beauty and perfection.

Lips, parted and full.

Pupils, soft and dilated.

“You could always choose pleasure. Most mortals do, when we give them the option”

Her hands cupped my cheeks and she moved in close, almost brushing her mouth against mine.

“This noble Lady will show you what four centuries of experience feel like. You will go to the hereafter a happy, happy man”.

“Nah, lady. You’re not my type" I hissed back, with as much venom I could muster through my slurred words.

She shrugged nonchalantly and let go, sauntering to where my knife had skidded off.

“We are surprised. Most men do not resist us. It is almost… insulting. But you have made your choice”. She bent over and retrieved the knife while I pulled myself up in a series of groans and grunts.

“Yeah well, I decided today that if I’m gonna die, it’s gonna be as spitefully as possible” I said and spat out another tooth, squeezing the handle of my concealed gun, thumb trembling slightly on the hammer.

I’d only have one shot at this. Had to make it count.

Moving back to me, taking slow, deliberate steps, twirling the butterfly knife, opening and closing it in smooth, fluid motions, as if she’d been born handling such weapons, the vampiress sneered.

“Hiding a blade in such an inconspicuous place, your world is wonderfully interesting”

Her face, a static mask of mild amusement and glacial contempt, the woman held it out and offered it back.

“Here, peasant, you may use it if you wish. The more hope you have, the sweeter your blood shall taste. Do put on a good show, yes?”.

“I’ve got a better knife,” I snarled, pulling the Taurus Judge from my belt in one fluid motion, the cold steel of the barrel aimed squarely at her face. My aim wasn’t perfect, especially with my vision swimming—my glasses had long since been lost to the chaos—but there was barely two feet between the muzzle and her. Point-blank.

Her stillness nearly made me hesitate. Not a twitch, not a flinch. She hadn’t moved, as if the weapon I held was no more dangerous than a toy. Was she so far removed from the world I lived in that she didn’t understand the concept of a pistol? Or did she truly believe this was just another knife, another threat beneath her contempt?

Eyes sparkling with an almost childlike glee, she giggled.

“Oh how entertaining, you simply have to tell us why you other-worlders keep their blades hidden in such curious contra….”

*BOOM*

I pulled the trigger and discharged the revolver into the vampiress’s face, mid-sentence. For all her speed, her strength, her durability, there was no dodging or resisting a slug.

The monster’s head snapped back and all became noise.

She backpedaled and howled like a banshee, hands over her face, brackish, tar-like blood gushing out from between fingers. Behind me, the sound of frantic clicking and blood-clotted hands slamming into the metal door grew into a tumult as the gunshot echoed out in the still and quiet campus.

It didn’t matter. Not anymore. If she didn’t kill me, the rotters would, and if they didn’t, the blood loss would.

“Take you with me!” I snarled, spite, hate and adrenaline boiling my blood, burning through the handgun’s painful recoil reaching my two fractured knuckles, as I followed her stumbling retreat and emptied the drum into her skull.

“BOOM!”

Three fingers flew off.

“BOOM!!”

Ear and a portion of her temple burst into red chucks

“BOOM!!!”

Half her left hand ripped apart in bony, gore covered shards.

These weren’t 9mm bullets. Not simple pot shots.

These were .401 bore.

It may have been the lowest caliber shotgun shell, fired from a handgun, but it was still a damned shotgun shell. Each cartridge fired a slug and two buckshot pellets and everything was striking her full-on, overwhelming the abomination and pushing her further back until her lower back slammed into the windowsill.

Cornered and panicking, she uncovered the red ruin of her face and screamed at me, face contorted in a mask of animal rage, all pretense of humanity gone and replaced with monstrous malice.

But it was too late.

“BOOM!!!!”

The last shot took her in the eye, bursting it along with her entire orbital bone, like a melon.

And still she didn’t fall.

It wasn’t enough.

…It didn’t matter. I wasn’t done. Not yet. Not by a damned long-shot.

It’s amazing how the human mind adapts and how quickly it does so.

Viciousness. Desperate ruthlessness. I experienced an inkling of this when I had put down whatever had been left of Benjamin.

But now, knowing death was inevitable and strangely at peace with it, everything felt muted. Cold. The pain thrumming throughout every inch of my body. The corpses crashing into the room behind me, rabid and relentless in their pursuit, barricade reduced to splinters. The woman’s screams as she desperately clawed at the gaping wounds in her skull.

Everything faded into the background, except for one phrase—burning, roaring like a raging inferno in my mind, goading me, pushing me into a rabid frenzy.

“Take. You. With. Me!”

And I bellowed those words, the heat of them rising in my throat, mixing with blood-laced froth, as I charged into her, driving the monster into the windowsill.

Then past it.

And into the scorching, midday sun.