The Vampire & the Rebel (Completed)

Part 2: Chapter 13

It had been easy enough to get out of the fortress lair. I collected the clothing I had stashed with the intent to leave no evidence behind, and then I quickly made my way to where I had entered and simply walked out the door.

I was not particularly surprised that I had gotten out without human interference. In my experience, she was the outlier in the defense she kept on her home. Most other vampires whose lair's I breeched maintained reasonably strong defenses during the day while they believed they were vulnerable, but they did little to secure themselves at night, so completely overconfident were they in their own supremacy by darkness.

They were not entirely wrong. I would be screwed if they caught me now, so I grabbed my supplies from their hiding place and headed on my way as quickly as I could with only the light of the half moon to guide me.

I was tired, but still relieved when the sun finally broke the horizon. It was surely too soon for Ivan to discover its dead fledglings, but at least the light would make it difficult for a leech to follow me.

Pushing on, I followed a small river and washed myself and my clothing before I followed it downstream. The river eventually dropped off into a small falls and I had to abandon walking in the water in favour of climbing down a less steep way. At the bottom of the falls was a small lake, so I swam across it to make my trail again harder to follow.

At the height of the day, I finally paused to rest. Assuming that I had staked the only bloodsuckers at the fortress, I doubted any humans would dare take the initiative to hunt me down without orders for fear of being accused of attempting to flee, if they were not in fact fleeing themselves. I slept lightly, but still with a calm satisfaction that felt both foreign and new.

My initial adrenaline had worn off, but I still felt free. The fact that that demon bastard who had so coldly murdered Melissa was no longer in the world—no longer harming innocent humans—brought me greater contentment than I could remember.

Once I awoke I pushed on and found a place to hide come nightfall. I travelled for two days and lay low, simply trying to ensure that I would not be easily followed by pursuers. I had no hope that the ancient bloodsucker would simply let me go without at least trying to take his revenge on me, but if he could not discover my identity or find me, there was nothing he could do.

The next few days fell into an easy, watchful rhythm. I did everything in my power to keep myself undetectable while I waited for a potential attack from an ancient bloodsucker that I would have little defense against. When none came, I believed I was safe to assume that I had either gotten away completely undetected, or I had at least given them the slip.

I began to move in the direction of the cranky old man's hideout so that I could replace his knife. Would the weapon be able to be connected with the leeches I staked? Likely not, it was a common enough blade and I had cleaned it well. My trek continued, but oddly a sort of restlessness that was unrelated to physical movement began to prey at me in the stillness of the forest, whenever my mind was not occupied with the general acts of survival.

I knew how to keep myself alive with almost thoughtless precision. I could spot the fresh trails of game animals as easily as I could find the plants that helped keep me strong, but always before such activities had a greater purpose which was to keep me alive until I could finally take out that demonic bastard.

Now, the tasks of survival had a certain emptiness to them that I could not quite shake. It was an unsettling feeling, but it was thankfully broken by my return to the familiar area where the cranky old man occasionally stayed.

"Jamie? What the hell are you doing here?" Hadron groused when he saw me. He was greyer than the last time I had seen him, but his grey eyes were still sharp and his movements screamed he had not lost his vitality in the years since.