Nightshade Manor

Chapter 35

In the middle of the night, an old man was walking home from a bingo game, he didn't mean to stay so late but at his age, time was not always easy to keep up with. Unfortunately he had made an awful mistake by choosing to go out alone at this hour because it was usually at this time when thugs and lowlifes came around. One especially vile and unrepentant scumbag was loitering on the same street the bingo game was held at and he had decided to follow him. Or rather stalk him as a predator would stalk his prey.

Once they were well into the dark, away from public eye, the crook attacked. He knocked the old man to the ground and began digging around in his pockets for anything valuable. But all he found was a five dollar bill and that made him very mad.

"Five bucks! What the hall am I supposed to do with five bucks?!"

"It all the money I have!" The old man whimpered. "Take it if you want it, just please let me go!"

"You stupid ass geezer! You wasted my time!"

"I'm sorry!"

"You're sorry?! I'll show you sorry!"

He grabbed the old man's cane and started beating him with it.

"Stop! Please stop!" The old man pleaded. "Please!"

"You're wasting your time begging for your life! Why should I let you live anyway? You're a pathetic, worthless old man! No one will miss you when you die!"

No mercy and no remorse. He beat that poor old man to the point of unconsciousness and he would have beaten him to death if he had not been stopped by the most mind boggling thing. His own shadow moved as if it was an actual person, jerking the cane out of the thug's hand and flinging him into a tree. Before he could he even think about standing up, his throat was roughly seized and gripped by a clawed hand, his body being hoisted from the ground with very little effort from the arm that held him.

In the blink of an eye he found himself facing a twisted grin full of ravenous fangs and red eyes full of contempt.

"My, my, what a tasty morsel I've caught tonight." The figure said. "And it couldn't have been at a more perfect moment."

"Who...What are you?" The thug asked.

The figure didn't answer. He just gripped the man's throat tighter.

"Don't kill me!" He begged in a rather pathetic and cowardly way. "Come on man! I'll do anything! Just let me go!

"Begging for your life? How amusing." The figure chuckled sinisterly. "Just like how that fellow over there was begging for his life? Tell me, did you have any intention of letting him live?"

The thug became completely petrified when he realized where this was going.

"You're wasting your time begging for your life. Why should I let you live anyway? You're a cruel, sadistic pig. No one will miss you when you die."

After that he opened up his fanged mouth and proceeded to suck the life out of that man. Devouring every last inch of his essence until not a single trace of life remained his body. In mere seconds his entire form decayed and rotted into a hideous corpse, which the figure then dropped. He snapped his fingers and two shadows appeared to pick up the dead body.

"Take that back to the house and make sure that it's chopped up and burned."

The two shadows nodded and fled to do as they were told. Next the figure slowly bent down and inserted two fingers next to his neck.

"Still alive, but not for long if he doesn't get immediate medical treatment."

He snapped his fingers again and two new shadows came to his aid.