The room was small, dank, dark, and the floor was cold, moist, hard-packed dirt. He could feel the small stubble of roots pressing against his hands that were bound behind his back as he lay terrified in this hole again. Questioning the Master was wrong but striking the ass of a son always earned severe punishment with time in the icebox with only breaks for obedience beatings from his Mentor.

Heath could feel the stiff cold had seeped into his limbs making them almost impossible to move. He would still try to try to fight back, to give that bitch of a mentor something to remember him by before his next flogging. His eyelids, still swollen almost shut, but the pain long ago had been numbed by the frosted dirt he applied to them to help soothe the pain. This would be the time he would die before he endured another time lashed to a wall, a living practice dummy for her sadistic pleasures while his equally cruel Shtriga father watched, sipping on his cup of evening blood.

He could hear the footsteps growing closer. That scuff of her boot, the way she typically dragged her left heel slightly as she limped from an encounter with a rival Dhampir a decade ago. The lantern light, so warm, was as inviting as a knife to his throat or a stake to his chest, hammer set to fall, as it slipped into his cell through the tin on top of the roof of this cursed hole. As the light grew closer, he felt his heart rate elevate. Heath froze in the moment. His pep talk had vanished from his thoughts and the tin was his only protection between his unprotected body and the approaching horror with the setting of the sun.

Not again His brain screamed as he curled into a helpless ball at the very bottom of the cell.

The tin peeled backward and the light seared him to the very back of his eye sockets. Heath clamped his eyes closed tight as he felt a hand reach for him, grabbing him by the coat collar...

"Sir, it is alright. You are fine."

The hand shook him awake as the red-haired youth sat up slowly, looking around. A light was shining in his face from the hand of a lady. It seemed to stream out of nowhere without a flame. This was an alien world to him and the strange objects they wielded had often scared him as much as his Mentor ever did. Heath held up a pale hand to block the light from his eyes as the lady looked at him with concern, vapor puffing with each breath as she shivered in the late fall air. He had fallen to sleep on a bench, down beside a running body of water. The constant chance that someone was chasing with the threat of being captured to be transported back to Marumures, the city where his sentence had been pronounced, was enough to keep him moving at an exhausting pace. He did not even know in what direction he traveled, just he had to keep moving.

It was beautiful beside this body of running water and unlike anything he had ever seen. Even with the strange plant life dying in the turning weather, it was peaceful and that was something that had been elusive to the young Dhampir in his short life. Heath had not slept a full night since escaping captivity on a death sentence and he thought that such a relaxing environment would help him. The night was cold, and frost crackled on his outer clothing with each movement. The ice, sparkling, broke as he moved to sit up. The clothing already felt odd, heavy, and bulky to his frame. Heavier clothing had been unnecessary to Heath in the underground city, making the torturous days in the day cells seem like years during the wrong seasons. He had stolen these not two nights past from someone's building that he had broken into that had one of the mysterious things that these people rode in up and down these roads. Those things made awful noises and left smells that burned his nose with acidic gases, leaving him gagging for a few minutes.

"I am sorry," he began slowly, automatically bowing to the female figure "I...I have nightmares from a troubled past."

How was he supposed to explain this to a woman dressed in uniform about his past? He shied naturally away from her, finding her daunting at first as her stance reminded him of his Mentor and the trauma of his past briefly resurfaced. The apparent skittishness of the young boy before her caused the lady's face to become a mask of concern. Heath, with a realization of another mistake made by his carelessness, swore under his breath. To humans, he looked like a teenage boy, no more than fifteen years of age, when in reality, he was more than twice that. These people seemed very protective of their young and his momentary lapse into his past combined with finding him sleeping on this bench had alarmed this woman. Others he had come into contact with accidentally, also tried to take certain measures to protect him. Sometimes it meant he could find a meal when he was hungry and other times it required more brutal tactics that had ended a few human lives to keep his existence a secret. This was the first encounter with an official-looking person. He may not be from this culture but uniforms meant the same.

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"Son, I need to know where you live." the lady said calmly, removing her hand with a look of understanding crossing her face, "We need to contact your guardians at least to let them know you are alright. You don't have to go back if you don't want to, but you do have to come with me..." she paused for a moment to give him a chance to comply with her request.

Heath hung his head and let out an audible sigh. He did not understand part of what she was talking about, what guardians were, but if it was what he thought they were, then what he was planning might just save this human's life. This official wanted nothing to do with his psychotic family, especially since she would most likely be nothing more than entertainment or the main course, possibly both. He let most of his muscles go lax except for his core, making it look like he was defeated. His shoulders shook, and he sobbed some for an extra effect. It did not take much acting to make the sobbing to seem genuine. Over the past month, he had lost everything he knew, his life had been upended, living homeless in the human world. His past, what he considered his family, however, screwed up it was, all his possessions, and all because he dared to challenge his half-brother. He no longer had what he found remotely comforting and the end to his story would most likely be his death at the hands of his Maestru, if his step-brother did not do the job first.

The woman's pity overcame her as she let her guard down and she placed a comforting hand on the youth's shaking shoulder. Heath allowed the spring wound in his core to release pivoting his body around the woman with inhuman speed. He might be a sterile half-breed bastard, but it did not come without some advantages. He made sure he was gentle with the lady, applying only enough force to flip her onto the ground. She was one of the better ones he had met since entering the human world. She deserved better than even what was needed here but there was not an alternative plan B that he could come up with on the spur of the moment.

From somewhere on her body he heard voices, and then different voices. They were broken sometimes and spoke in a code that the Dhampir did not recognize. Heath looked around worriedly towards the darkness beyond the light of her machine. Then he looked back at the lady being held on the ground but this time the gentleness had left his eyes and his sure grip. Doubt and suspicion crept into his mind on her intentions with him and he would have answers from her.

"Who was that?" Heath asked quietly in her ear, applying more force to her forearm

"What are you talking about?" She asked in a pain-filled, halting voice, gasping between the words.

"The voices that I just heard, who are they and where are they?" this time he raised his voice without moving his head away from her ear as his temper flared some from her perceived arrogance at thinking he was stupid. She flinched as some of his saliva hit the side of her face.

"That was dispatch and they are at the station! Oww!!" She cried as he applied more pressure. There was a pause and then a slight relaxation in the pressure.

"Forget you saw me, forget this night," Heath said in a low sad voice as he relaxed his grip a little more, "There are people, things, after me that will find you if you do not."

"What are you?" She asked through a gasp of relief as she realized her arm was free, but she was talking to the empty night air.

The young man was gone as if he was never there, only leaving some bruises, a sore shoulder, and a haunting warning as proof of the encounter that had left her with questions and a difficult report to write at the end of her shift.

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Karen opened the glass door to the Willow Springs Police Department in Willow Springs, Missouri. The weather was turning sharply colder, and even in the United States mid-latitudes, snow was flying before Christmas. She looked at the report that she had obtained about the sightings of Heath a week back here in town. Acting under the pretense of a concerned mother, looking for her runaway child was an easy story to sell. The officers inside were eager to help this poor mother find her only son and get him back home before the Holidays.

Heath was suspected in a string of thefts in the area. They were sloppy in nature, committed by someone who had led a sheltered life and did not know the norms of a civil society. Novices such as Heath had not yet been initiated as a Guardian or integrated into human society, never setting foot outside the Vampire Domain until their Mentor deemed them ready to withstand the culture that they would be exposed to during their five-year tenure of the grooming stage of their training in which they learn to live within human cities and eventually groom humans to become feeders for the Masters.

During times like this, when they had an escaped Dhampir, one that was uninitiated, it helped with expediting the tracking and apprehending of the offending property. Someone unfamiliar with the world's ways made a mess of things and left a trail that allowed easy and swift repossession. At this rate, Karen expected to have her prey back for the pleasure of the Master's invention and entertainment by the weeks out. She smiled inwardly as she walked to the hotel where her crispy partner lay sleeping the day away. This should make even that psychotic asshat happy.