parched {muke.vampire}

5 : intruder

Luke could see his apartment's door was ajar. This had happened before, but usually it wasn't anything serious. No vampire hunters of any kind had ever caught Luke. Not even once. He heard the sound of shuffling and urgent whispers coming from his apartment.

"What if he comes back?" A man was saying.

"Then we stake him," a girl said.

Luke poked his head over the door frame to get a look at his intruders. They were wearing black leather suits equipped with the familiar belt of vampire-killing weapons. Luke knew where they were from. They were the same organization that had killed his relatives, the only other vampires left, other than Luke and his brother Jack.

"You know what I really hate?" Luke held his hands behind his back, strolling into his ransacked apartment. The two VKL (Vampire Killer League - yes it's stupid) members turned to face Luke. "When people kill my cousins and then decide that it'd be a good idea to destroy my apartment a few decades later."

The two glanced at each other.

"For one, I'm immune to vervain," Luke paced around the two. "Two, you can't stake me. I won't be out for long."

"You're a Classic?" The girl asked. Luke silently laughed at the name they had given the first vampires. It was ridiculous.

"Yeah, I'm the only one left," Luke huffed. He didn't want to deal with this. He already had enough shit to deal with. "Listen, could we reschedule this whole confrontation thing?"

"Max told us to catch a vampire," the girl whispered to the guy. "That's exactly what we're gonna do."

"No, no it's not," Luke took a few steps closer to them. "I'm assuming you have vervain in your system, so I can't compel you, but I can always kill you."

"I'd like to see you try-"

Luke snapped the guy's neck before he could finish his sentence.

"Shit, and I was doing so well," Luke looked down at the lifeless body lying on his kitchen floor. "Dammit, this is your fault."

The girl looked a little taken aback, but her stance remained steady. She thought she could kill him. Luke knew better.

"Look, ah, person," Luke bit his lip ring. "You can't kill me. And I can't waste time due to a thing I gotta go do. So if we could please just -"

"Why can't I kill you?" Her hard expression faltered.

"I'm a Born as well as a Classic," Luke told her. "I was born a vampire. No one performed any ritual on me."

"But that's only happened-"

"Twice?" Luke nodded. "Yeah, but my brother doesn't keep in contact with me. Last time I saw him he was smoking pot with some burnouts in the 60's."

The girl went to say something, but Luke pinned her to the wall in a flash. He noticed that she was quite attractive, so he didn't feel the need to kill her. She was a rookie straight out of training. Luke was probably the first vampire she had ever seen.

"I'll let you leave on one condition," Luke saw the look in her eyes. She was attracted to Luke. Memories of his dark past tried to poke through, but Luke shook it off. He had used to seduce women into their graves. "Don't tell your boss, Mr. Stiren, that you ever saw me. Tell him that you lost dumbass over there in a crowd somewhere. Got it?"

She nodded.

"And just so you know," Luke loosened his grip on her arms. "The reason I'm telling you to keep quiet is that I've finally gotten close to someone and I don't want to leave them alone again."

The girl's expression softened. Luke let go of her arms. "Off the record," she said quietly, rubbing her arms. "You aren't as bad as they say you are."

"That's because they want to make brainless warriors," Luke shrugged. "But they've succeeded. Me and my brother are the only ones left."

"Can't you make more?"

"I could," Luke shook his head. "But Freshies are dangerous and impossible to control. They see people as walking blood bags."

The girl then left, leaving Luke alone in his sad little apartment, thinking of how in hell he was going to explain to Michael that he was thousands of years old.