The dark night felt as cold as it always did. A man strode casually down the sidewalk, not aimlessly, but with no particular destination in mind either. 

He walked past another man lying down, drunk, on a bench. This wasn’t a new sight, as he was here every few days. The drunkard hiccuped as he watched the young adult continue along on his nightly walk. They ignored each other like usual as they weren’t so curious to inquire about the struggles of another man.

The man walking looked to be about the age of twenty-five. His green eyes were accented by his short yet messy dark brown hair. He hid his moderately toned arms under a tan longcoat that fell down to his knees. One could easily mistake him for some kind of spy from a Bond film, but the people he worked with knew that it was just his sense of fashion.

One of the many things that they didn’t know about this man was that every night, from the time of twelve to three in the morning, he had the peculiar habit of walking around the city. Firearms and knives were illegal in this country. Because of this, people only walked during the day to avoid any possibility of getting robbed since they had no real self-defense mechanism. So, doing the opposite and walking around alone, at night, would reasonably raise concern in many people.

His walks weren't pointless, however- he was searching for someone. Not a certain individual, no, he was searching for the type of person who lived in the night and slept during the day. The kind of person who lived life with no true goal in mind, whose only objective was survival, and not prosperity. Individuals who relied on blood to survive.

Yes, he was searching for a vampire.

To be frank, he didn’t know much about them. Despite having read dozens of stories about vampires, he didn’t have accurate information about them. He didn’t even truly know if they were real. The idea that they existed seemed like a joke to anyone over the age of fifteen, but there was also no guarantee that they didn't. No one could prove their existence, but at the same time no one could prove that they were completely fictional.  With so much lore surrounding the general subject, surely the concept of a vampire must have been based on something real.

For every day that these mysteries remained unsolved he thought up even more questions. Legends of vampires were the only proper material that he had to do research with, and he couldn’t trust anything after the 18th century as accurate, even to a limited degree. Not to mention the fact that there were studies about how vampires were probably based on diseases and animals. But he still hoped they were real, and he enjoyed reading modern novels that featured the bloodthirsty ghouls as each piece shared its authors’ own interpretations of what a vampire was. 

After years of reading vampire-based literature, he had a few ideas of what the monsters were like. The most harmless version of them was one in which they were simply beings that consumed human blood to survive. Susceptible to garlic and cross-bearing hunters, they stole blood bags from blood drives for food and didn’t attack humans. They didn’t always turn regular people into vampires, and all they cared about was waking to see another morning. 

But the version that he feared the most was the type that were all-powerful, extraordinary beings that could shapeshift their own flesh into whatever they desired. The kind that devoured a human like humans do livestock, were infinitely fast, regenerated instantly, and were only vulnerable to sunlight. They could generate matter from nothing, effortlessly ignoring the law of conservation of mass. From there, there were many other varying types of vampires that had unique characteristics, some that were remarkably similar and some that were almost completely unique. 

He didn’t have a favorite kind of vampire. He felt that if he did, and they were real, he would’ve chosen the wrong one to be his favorite. 

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For seven years now, he had wandered the forlorn streets of Bend searching for the mythical bloodsuckers. Every day ended up fruitless and he hadn’t witnessed so much as a bat fluttering around despite their supposedly common appearances. Maybe vampires and their kin were avoiding him?

He rounded the corner of 7th street onto Emerson Avenue when suddenly the ear-piercing shriek of a horrified man reached his ears- but just as quickly, the sound of the voice disappeared. He whirled around, heart pounding.

What greeted his eyes was a street devoid of light. He couldn’t see the bench or the drunken man. The streetlamps had turned off, but it wasn’t just that; it was as if the moon itself decided to stop casting light upon this street. Even so, he could still make out a dark shape that stood in the middle of the street, about where the bench was. If his eyes weren’t so well-adjusted to the night, surely there would have been no chance he could’ve seen it. 

The darkness stood upright, and although he couldn’t make out the ominous shape’s features he felt as if it was staring at him. He backed up slowly, keeping his eyes trained on the shade. 

Listening to his surroundings, he didn’t hear any noises. Whatever was in front of him was dead silent. If there was something behind him, it wasn’t making a sound, either. 

His heart seemed to tremble as he bravely called out to the darkness. “What are you?” He reached for a small mirror in his coat’s pocket and pulled it out. The entity in the distance seemed to notice his action, and it shuddered slightly. 

He blinked.

But when his eyes reopened even from that fraction of a second in which his eyes were shut, the darkness had moved- no, it would be more accurate to say “appeared” in front of him.

Teleportation?

Fear gripped his heart as every muscle in his body told him to run.

How did it get here so fast?

The figure had a more comprehensive shape that he could make out, now that it was this close to him. It wasn’t very well defined, but he could tell that it was as tall as him, had slender arms, and had a curtain of something long- whatever it was, it was long enough that he could see the ends of it at the figure’s sides and sprawled over its back. 

Could it be-

In an instant, he remembered that female vampires from the Acerola-Orion mythology measured their strength by their hair length. But before he could act on his realization, the light-absorbing nebula grabbed his neck and lifted him up with only one hand. It started to squeeze, and he could no longer breathe. He grabbed her arm with both of his hands and tried constricting it, but it didn’t budge- even against his death grip.

His life flashed before his eyes, and as the unmoving fist tightened a euphonic female voice echoed into his mind.

“For the grave sin of sloth, you shall be executed by my hand-”

But before it could continue any further, the voice stopped, and the firm grip around his throat hastily let go. He collapsed on the floor, arms slamming down onto the pavement. Coughing and gasping for air, he could barely manage to look up at this being of monstrous strength. 

What he saw was no longer a shade. Now, what took its place was instead a paralyzingly beautiful lady in a gothic dress that screamed “vampire”. Dark, feathery wings protruded from the back of her waist. Vampires could be potentially any age, but she looked to be about the same as him. She had long, silver hair with golden eyes that pierced his. Her face held a contemptful gaze, and she looked down upon him from above. 

She questioned him with a weary tone, “Out of all the people I stumble across, why do you have to be one of them? What on earth would even possess you to walk out this early in the morning?”

Before he could give her a response, she knelt down and gently held the gasping man’s chin up.

“I had hoped to see an old friend while here. A shame that the first person I meet is you. And in this form, no less. I guess fate just doesn’t have a leg out for people like us, does it, Merlin Aglovale?”