I exhale slowly, realizing I'm about to be an aggressor rather than a reactionary, and it makes me hesitate. My eyes shift at the corner, and I see Aria focused on me, realizing I see something. She nods at me, and I shift my eyes back to my mark, having been given the go-ahead. I swallowed thickly, and my throat felt suddenly dry. Hunting animals is different from hunting men, and if I loose the arrow right now, I'm becoming the aggressor. There's a faint snap of a twig as I raise from crouch to half-standing. I completely draw the bow back and exhale all the air from my lungs, and then I release the arrow just as the man crosses in front of a large, older tree. The modern arrow whistles through the air, its broadhead tip spiraling as it bears down on the unsuspecting man.
I watch my entire shot, which seems to happen in slow motion: I loose the arrow, and it flies like a shot across the distance, the spiraling broadhead ramming into the throat of the mottled and nearly entirely hidden man on the other side. The broadhead arrow continues through the tissues of the man's neck and slams firmly into the tree on the other side of the man's neck, temporarily pinning him to the thick old wood tree by his neck. There's not much of a spurt of blood, but the mottling and shifting camouflage of the man immediately ends as he shouts and gurgles out in surprise and pain.
The now wounded man is desperately pale, wearing plain and dark clothing with a black bulletproof vest over it. On his back, I can see what looks like the stock of some rifle, giving him the appearance of a soldier or hired gun. Knowing that having broken the man's camouflage would have allowed Aria and Khalil to see him standing out like a beacon of white where I pinned him to the tree, I carefully returned to my crouch and picked up a second arrow. Having gauged how the last arrow flew, I'm now confident in the range and accuracy of the compound bow–it was almost certainly calibrated before I laid hands on it.
The man struggles, his hands desperately reaching up to grab hold of the arrow that is pinning him to the tree. Instead of waiting to see what he does, I nock a second arrow in the compound bow and carefully raise it to fire a second time. When I loose this time, I do so directly at his chest, covered by the bulletproof vest. I'm not firing bullets, and I know my arrows will pierce through his protection. The arrow whistles through the air in a perfect arc, then slams right into his chest. The man jerks, then does something unexpected: he howls and snarls like an animal, in pure unadulterated rage–not pain.
He reaches up and jerks his hands simultaneously, finally snapping off the modern arrow holding him to the tree and likely injuring himself a bit more in the process. With a quick burst of speed, the man dashes away from the clearing and back into the forest proper. I wouldn't have seen him move if I weren't watching. As he runs away with my arrow still partially in his neck and another in his chest, the pulsing of my silver ring fades away and goes calm. I carefully lower back to a crouch again, plucking up the third arrow. I know I started with twelve arrows, and now I only have ten, which is not a great number.
I hear some rustling behind me, and I turn my head just slightly to glance for a moment to see who it might be. Aria and Khalil are carefully coming up behind me while I maintain my absolutely still crouch. Aria's voice is deadly soft, barely more than a whisper when they get within five feet of me.
"Vampire."
"Has to be," I murmur at the same volume, "no one else is that pale, moves that fast, and barely bleeds with a wound to the throat and chest. And we knew they were in the area."
"I doubt he is alone."
"Probably regrouping," Khalil adds. And I nod slightly to show my agreement with what he said.
"Had a rifle on his back."
My ring vibrates again, this time with a little more enthusiasm. I tense, causing Aria and Khalil to do the same. My pale eyes sweep the clearing and the trees past that, but I don't see anything now.
"Getting closer again. Don't see anything yet. Hold on."
I no longer get a chance to survey the area because as soon as I rise slightly to look, a whistling comes in, and an intense stinging sensation bursts out from my left shoulder. I know exactly what just happened when the sharp rapport of a gun firing cracks slightly belatedly in the silence of the night. My senses go haywire, and I lose concentration on everything, falling backward toward Khalil and Aria. I drop the arrow in my hand and reach up to grab my shoulder, unable to stop the cry of pain from escaping my lips.
Immediately, Aria grabs hold of my other shoulder and drags me down the natural embankment, shoving Khalil back in the same motion. Khalil's eyes are wide as I look up at the forest's canopy and then my hand covered in vivid red blood. He immediately growls, and that's the last I see of my friends in human form–they become inhuman fey.
Khalil backs off, and his clothing immediately sinks into his body, his arms thickening and his hands becoming great brown paws with talons. His face shifts and stretches, cracking and disjointing as his human-like teeth become large incisors and molars meant for breaking, crushing, and chewing. His body sprouts with tufts of brown hair, his back thickening into the hide of a human-sized brown bear. He roars as an enraged bear would, and all attempts at silence end.
I have enough awareness to see that Aria changed at the same time. Her skin has charred and blackened, and her body is twice or three times its average weight and girth. Her previously beautiful hair is anything but: ragged and black, stringy, wild, and waving. Her black eyes are now round saucers, oversized bright red baseballs set into a forehead ridge of bones. Aria's lips have split apart towards her ears, exposing a shark's needle-like maw of serrated teeth. Her hands are the length of her forearms, and her fingers are like an arachnid's legs, tipped by viciously sharp talons.
The silver ring on my index finger, now coated in my blood, continues to buzz and vibrate insistently, warning me that, indeed, there are still individuals who mean to do me harm. And if anything, they seem to be getting closer.
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"Coming. Closer." I gasp as I try to get over the shock of having been shot for the first time in my life.
Adrenaline is shooting through my system, probably keeping me from the worst part of the pain. Finally, I dragged myself away from where Aria pulled me while she and the bear Khalil protected me. My free hand, slicked with blood, shakily grabs hold of one of the five arrows in the quiver attached to my compound bow. I quickly crouch and then crab dash towards another copse of trees.
It's clear that the vampires hear my movement because instead of shooting in the direction of where they heard Khalil roar as a bear, bullets start to spray just above my head in the trees. Luckily, Aria pulled us down the embankment. Otherwise, those bullets might not have just been hitting trees. Sitting down, I place my back to a thick tree, which will keep me hidden from the other side of the glade, and breathe a few times. I take a moment to catch my breath and then look at the wound on my shoulder. It's not a nasty wound, but it'll definitely affect my drawing and loosing accuracy.
"I'm good, I'm okay. But, what the fuck do we do about bullets?" I audibly grunt, though no one answers me.
Aria lowers herself to the ground as if she sees something drawing nearer. She's much more dangerous than I'd given her credit for because she wasn't crouching to hide; Aria was crouching so she would get more spring into a leap. She flies through the air as soon as a hint of white comes around a tree near our embankment. Aria directly lands on a small pale woman holding an assault rifle that looks far too big for her.
The victim, a waif of a woman, has absolutely no chance. By the time Aria lands on the woman, her long, spindly and taloned fingers are already clawing apart the bulletproof chest protector she has and are deeply gouging wounds into the chest of the unlucky victim.
Three quick shots ring out, and I see shreds of flesh and clothing shoot away from Aria's side as the three bullets must have impacted along her ribcage or waistline. The snarl and howl of a bear charging into the fray are all I see before a man who looks like he could have played quarterback for any professional football team in the 1960s is pulled from behind a tree and thrown to the ground by the immense force of Khalil in his powerful bear form. The assault rifle he's carrying is all the man has to defend himself from the jaws of Khalil, and he uses it like a bat, keeping Khalil from clamping massive jaws down onto his face.
I scramble to my feet, seeing Aria lower her face–jaw distending and maw opening wide–and tear off the head of the woman she'd pinned to the ground and was savaging just moments before. The bullets don't seem to have impacted her too much. Almost immediately before the woman's head is completely removed, there's a broken screech and howl of pain before the woman starts to break to ash right underneath Aria.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the man who I'd already laced with two arrows, though the wound on his throat is seemingly closed now. While Khalil tries to claw, crush, and maul the well-muscled man underneath his great furry bulk, I catch my breath and nock the blood-slicked arrow onto my compound bow. As the man aims at Khalil, I loose my arrow with a shaky, adrenaline-fueled grip on my bow. I was aiming for the man's chest, knowing how my accuracy would suffer, and it's good that I did. My arrow, instead of hitting his chest, drills into his left thigh. He jerks as he fires his weapon, and his bullets miss their mark on Khalil.
The sounds of ripping, tearing, and jaws repeatedly cracking on the metal and hard plastics of the man's assault rifle fill the air. Aria draws up to her full height again, and the eyes of the vampire I just shot in the leg widen to an almost comical level.
"WAIT!" He screams, trying to save himself from the assault he can see coming.
It doesn't save him. Aria is on him at almost the same speed I saw him move after I'd shot him to initiate the entire battle. Having dropped the ashing head of the woman she just murdered, her hands and mouth are free to savage the next vampire in her path.
I reach up, grabbing the second of my quivered arrows from my compound bow, and I start to nock another arrow. As Aria takes the man down to the ground, she immediately begins to sling her arms left and right, brutally mauling the vampire underneath her on the ground in the same way Khalil is mostly succeeding in mauling the strong and tough vampire under his furry bulk. I shift my aim between the two, not wanting to fire and hit my own people. I hesitate, and it's good that I do because, during my hesitation, I glimpse my bloodied silver ring and see the eyes and ears glowing a bright red. I start to whirl, looking for the danger, but it's too late.
My body is lifted entirely off of the ground and flung sideways against the tree next to me. At the vicious impact of my ribs and shoulder blades cracking against the tree, I lose my grip on my already-nocked and drawn arrow, loosing it into parts unknown of the surrounding forest. My compound bow clatters off against the ground as I hit the ground. A beautiful, dark-skinned woman grabs me by the hair, pulls me up, and hisses through her fangs, her tightly braided hair a blur of movement as she smashes her forehead into my face. I feel something break, and pain shoots through my face. She grips me by the throat, pinning me to the tree with my feet dangling in the air.
"CALL THEM OFF!" She screams in my face, a fanged, snarling display of vampiric strength, leaving me unable even to try to get away. Cassandra was right; they are stronger here.
I spit blood out from my lips, trying to speak. The dark-skinned beauty seems to recognize that I'm trying to speak, and she loosens her grip on my throat so I can get air to my lungs since she knocked it out of me when she heaved me against the tree.
"S–Stop, Khalil. Aria. Stop!" I wheeze and gasp.
There's some more snarling, and the woman draws back her lips like she's about to tear out my throat. I breathe in some more air and, this time, scream into the nighttime air.
"STOP! ARIA! KHALIL! STOP!"
The sounds of hissing and snarling slowly abate, and an odd silence creeps over the six of us, all gripped in violence just moments before. Khalil stands over top of the now badly mauled man, with his saliva dripping down on either side of his mouth where he's biting down on the center of the man's assault rifle. Aria is holding the man she's on top of by the throat, one of her blackened, outstretched, death-inflicting arms held up above her head, ready to inflict a fatal final blow.
Blood pours down from my nose, and pulses of pain start to shoot from my wounded shoulder as the first bit of adrenaline begins to wear off. The woman holds me against the tree, fangs still wholly distended.
"Tell them to let them up."
"No." I spit back at her, complete with blood spray.
She slams my body back against the tree, and I feel another of my ribs crack, for sure, on the same side of my body that I hit the tree with, which causes Khalil to snarl down at the man he has pinned under his great muscled weight. Before the woman has a chance to speak again, I blurt out.
"I HAVE A PATRON!"