Sal ripped off a table leg and approached the battered and bruised Pietro.

“Pietro Capello! By the authority placed upon me by the Wyrd King I sentence you to die!”

A ghoul, a regular vampire, or a master vermin. A stake through the heart would kill them all.

He kicked Pietro on his back and prepared to drive the piece of wood though the monster’s black heart. When he brought down the stake, the talons shot up and grabbed him by the wrists. The other set of claws slashed at the stake, reducing it to splinters and Pietro kicked him in the stomach. The jolt of pain made Sal reel and it was even worse thanks to his fight with the kelpie.

Pietro stood up and the cuts and bruises on his face healed before Sal’s very eyes.

“A skin-changer… I can’t believe I was nervous because of some filthy beast.” Pietro said and beckoned him closer: “Come and die.”

Sal rushed him and this time Pietro put up a fight. He had been a human soldier once and he hadn’t forgotten what he had learned as a mortal man. They traded blows that would have killed or crippled scores of men but for gods of The Wyrding they were mere annoyances.

Eventually they began to grabble, and a disturbing realization dawned on Sal.

The master vampire was stronger than him.

There was a gap in their strength that his righteous anger couldn’t overcome. Power that surpassed his. What was even worse was that Pietro had realized it too. Sal hadn’t thought he could hate Pietro more but when he saw him with a grin that could hold all the world’s arrogance Sal knew he had been wrong.

But he still hadn’t gone all out.

A human form couldn’t handle all his divine powers. How could it? The human body was so small and fragile. So ill-fitted for what he truly was. So, he cast aside his human mask and let the god out. The transformation had never been so abrupt and violent. An explosion of fur and fangs.

His Savage Highness roared.

Coming face to face with the prince of all foxes wiped the smug smile off the master vampire’s face. It became a grimace of pain when the fox prince sunk his fangs in him and shook him around like a rat… No. Not a rat. He had more respect for rats than that. Even rats would avoid a parasite like this. It was a fool’s errand trying to make Pietro pay for even a quarter for all the pain he had caused but that was no reason to not try.

The village he had grown up in…

Random victims whose only sin was running into him…

His children…

His poor wife…

The monster owed a death to all of them. Death and more. He would hound Pietro through all the circles of The Wyrding if he had to until the vampire’s spirit was broken.

When Pietro tried to slash at his face, the fox prince threw him through a wall.

The air was white with plaster and smell of mortar. Pietro was left lying in the rubble when the fox prince stepped through the hole in the wall, ready to eat the monster’s head.

But the master vampire was no more done than he was.

Dust fell off Pietro when he stood up and his eyes were pools of murderous hate. It was the kind of anger that could only come from wounded pride. The bite marks on Pietro’s shoulder healed fast but the memory of the fox prince’s fangs would linger for a long time.

“Filthy animal.” Pietro hissed.

Skin-changers and vampires were two sides of the same coin. Gods of light and darkness. Agents of rebirth and undeath. Immortals who could grant immortality to others they deemed worthy.

And both were beings that hid their true face under a human shape.

A vampire’s body was malleable. More spirit than flesh and according to legend, the greatest master vampires could even turn into mist. All of them could take the form of beasts to unleash their full might.

The vampire’s fangs turned into a sharp beak and the flowing black cape into a pair of mighty wings. The pale skin was hidden under a coat of feathers.

The closest thing the fox prince could come to describing Pietro’s true shape was that of a giant owl. An owl the way mice saw an owl. A soaring shadow of death that could swoop down from the heavens at any moment and carry them away. A demon in the shape of a bird. Only Pietro’s emberlike eyes remained the same.

The vampire owl screeched. A sound full of hunger and hate.

The fox prince howled in defiance and challenge.

The owl spread his wings. The fox bared his fangs. Then they crashed into each other.

The battle began anew. All pain and weariness had melted away with their false forms and human frailty no longer held them back. Fighting like a man had been a hinderance but to the fox prince’s dismay he realized that the same was true for Pietro. He had been the stronger one when they had faced as men. Showing his true face made it even more so.

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But even now he wasn’t beaten.

Pietro was a young vampire. His human years balanced out the time he had walked as an undead and he wasn’t comfortable in his true form. The house also turned Pietro’s superior size into a disadvantage. He couldn’t fly and barely move without slamming his wings into the walls or the ceiling.

As they fought, the fox prince felt an echo that ran down from an era before written history.

This battle… it had taken place before. Many times. A warrior of honor, duty, and kindness facing down a beast of primal barbarism. It was times like these when someone had lit a fire to drive away the darkness and followers of the Screaming had come to snuff it out. Now, he was one more in a long line of heroes fighting to protect the flame from those who would drag them back into darkness.

His Savage Highness stood in the company of heroes long gone.

The mansion was reduced to rubble around them when they tore into each other with fangs and a beak. Claws facing against talons. Amidst of it all, the fox prince was hoping for another advantage. That Pietro was so lost in his blood frenzy that he would forget to use his brain.

No such luck.

There was a crack of thunder when Pietro called down a storm. The dark clouds that had rested over the grey house for untold years came together and sparked.

A bolt of lightning struck the house.

The heavenly spear tore open the roof and walls and for a moment the world turned white. Tingling pain brought the fox prince back to his senses. The sound of thunder had been loud enough to feel like a steel fist smashing into his ears and all he could hear was a low moan.

Pietro wasn’t going to give him time to collect himself and sunk his talons into his sides. The fox prince howled in pain but when the vampire tried to rip his throat open with his beak, the skin-changer sunk his teeth into the feathers.

There was a screech of agony.

Then they were flying.

The vampire took to the air with a plan to fly high and let the fall break him but even with his inhuman strength, Pietro couldn’t soar while something so heavy weighed him down. And the fox prince’s teeth were locked deep in his chest. After a short struggle to stay in the air, they crashed into the yard and the skin-changer’s sides ached where the talons had gored him, but it was just a drizzle. A minor inconvenience he could ignore.

Before he could go at the vampire again, Pietro took flight.

For a moment he thought that the vampire was trying to flee but then Pietro started circling above him. The owl was preparing to strike. After a moment Pietro homed in on him like a bullet. Faster than Mathilde. Much faster. Too fast.

Pietro’s talons were painted red when they slashed at him.

There was no time to counterattack, and Pietro took into the air again before he could fight back. The vampire’s scheme was obvious. All he had to do was fly above him, safe from his jaws and attack at his leisure. Unlike the undead, a skin-changer couldn’t just heal himself at will. Time was on Pietro’s side, and he could bring him down with a thousand cuts.

“Coward! Come down and fight!” The fox prince howled.

The vampire’s predatory nature was stronger than his pride and Pietro just cackled before preparing to attack again. The fox prince hated to admit it, but this wasn’t a bad plan. He could already feel himself getting dizzy from blood loss. His anger could numb the pain but even a god’s heart would stop beating if it didn’t have any blood to pump.

Death or glory…

That was his only hope. He would have to weather the blows, let Pietro think he was more hurt than he actually was and then go for the throat. If he could get his fangs around Pietro’s neck, he could end this with a single bite. Even master vampires couldn’t survive the loss of their head.

So he endured it.

Every time the talons sank into him.

Every time the beak tore at his flesh.

Every time he pretended to fight back.

Every time he made sure that his reaction was a bit slower.

Until he stopped fighting altogether and collapsed.

Being the suspicious sort, Pietro circled around him for a few times to see if he was bluffing. When he landed, it was just far enough to be safe from his teeth and claws. Again, Pietro waited to see if he would try to get up, but the fox prince kept playing the part of the collapsed warrior. Even when Pietro’s beak hit his tail, his prized possession, the pride, and joy of every fox, he only whimpered weakly.

Once he was sure of his victory, the vampire owl let out a victorious screech. With a single flap of his wings, Pietro glided on top of him and raised his beak for the killing blow.

When one presented their throat to you like that, it would have been criminal to not go for it.

The image of Danielle had been burned into his mind. Pietro’s wife… the mother of his children… strapped into a bed and farmed for blood until she was reduced to a wisp. Used like cattle. The fox prince hung on to that image and mined it for every bit of strength that it was worth until his anger was a sheering blade burning white hot.

All that was unleashed on Pietro.

He fought like a mad man and even demons from the second circle would have fled at the sight of him. He fought with everything he had, tapping into powers he didn’t even know he possessed. Pietro’s strikes washed over him like water, and he avenged every drop of blood by doubling his ferociousness. All he had to do was get at the heart or the neck and this nightmare would be over. Pietro knew it too and now their battle was a war of desperate attrition. This time the fox prince would not let him flee to the safety of the sky and Pietro did not waste his energy trying it.

Had his mother, the fox queen, ever fought like this when she had joined the Wyrd King’s war against baron Stradheim? Would his fallen kinsmen have nodded approvingly seeing him wrestle with a master vampire? Would his older sister, killed by the baron’s second-in-command, the Firebird himself, have been proud?

The fox prince fought.

He gave it his all.

He could feel the dead demanding for justice push him forward.

He fought to the bitter end and then some.

But it wasn’t enough.

Pietro’s beak struck him in the chest like a needle in the heart and knocked him on his side. When his hind leg kicked weakly, the vampire’s beak closed around it. Their eyes met for a moment and the fox prince could see the grin in the red eyes.

The vampire’s beak snapped shut on his leg like a rusted steel trap.

There was an explosion behind his eyes when the bone snapped in two and a terrible pressure severed the ligaments. The fox prince let out a scream that could have awakened the Kraken when he no longer had enough power to maintain his true form. While trapped in the vampire’s clutches, he transformed back into a man.

A mortal man.

A frail man.

A dying man.

Pietro shook him with his beak and Sal let out horrified screams when he was trashed around. After a tearing sound filled his mouth with bile, he was sent flying and he hit the soggy ground with enough force to break his nose.

Sal rolled on his back and the only way he could breathe was in pained wheezes.

His left leg had turned into a fuse and even the smallest movement made it spark. He couldn’t even think. He had no time to think. The vampire owl loomed over him, and Sal tried one more time to tap into his divine powers so he could at least die as His Savage Highness but then… he saw something in the vampire’s beak.

A leg…

Pietro held back on the killing blow so Sal could look down at his feet and a mute scream was locked in his throat.

His left foot was gone.

Ripped off below the knee.

When the scream lodged itself free, the vampire threw his head back to laugh and swallowed his leg, boot, and all in one go. All Sal could do was scream from pain and terror.

Like the Screaming Beast he was… a follower of the Screaming Path, Pietro loved the sound of screaming.

Had this been a fight between two skin-changers… even ones from the Cat Clan, his enemy would have finished him off. Prolonging a fight that was over was work left to worshippers of the Screaming but… the Screaming was Pietro’s true Path. The powerful talons trapped Sal under the vampire’s weight.

“Not so brave now are we, gypsy?” Pietro said.

The smooth, deep voice sounded distorted and monstrous when spoken through a beak.

“I think I will…”

Before Sal could find out what Pietro would do first, he fell silent and looked at him confused. Then he faltered and started vomiting blood. Like Sal, Pietro lost control of his transformation and fell on his knees while he gagged and spat out red filth trying to cleanse his body. He held his stomach like it was riddled with holes.

Sal stared at the vampire shocked until the realization dawned on the last island of his mind not flooded by pain.

He was a skin-changer prince. A god of light. An avatar of the circle of life and rebirth.

The antithesis of undeath.

By gobbling down his leg, Pietro had poisoned himself! Sal would die tonight but he doubted that Pietro could ever feed again without thinking of this night and the pain Sal had put him through.

With the last of his strength, Sal laughed.

“… you…” Pietro gurgled: “… you think… this is funny?”

Sal met the vampire’s glare and then… smirked. He raised his fist and then his middle finger.

“… choke on it.” Sal whispered.

Playing with his food had lost its appeal and Pietro stood up, his talons bared. Walking was almost too much for him, but Pietro began to stagger towards him.

“… die.” Pietro hissed.

Before Sal could die, they were blinded by beams of light and deafened by the roar of an engine. Sal and Pietro looked towards the light confused and tried to…

A ton of steel moving at seventy miles per hour crashed into Pietro.

The master vampire hit the hood of the car and then flew over it, cracking the windscreen, but Nuncio wasn’t done. He hit reverse and the tires ran over the master vampire.

“Sal!”

Nuncio jumped out of the car while Pietro was trapped under the car but already struggling to free himself.

“… oh, Jesus.” Nuncio muttered when he saw Sal’s leg.

Nuncio was stronger than Sal had thought and helped Sal on the backseat of the car with his mother before speeding off. Away from his father. Into The Wyrding.