Adrift-mxm

Chapter 7

He's finally asleep. 

He'd begun to get worried about his captain after the man refused to rest for nearly three days. Inkani had stayed up for almost seventy-two hours straight just to keep his pup from having more tummy aches. 

Just a fur coat, huh?

The guy had even attempted to feed on him in front of his entire crew, too! If he'd tried any harder to stake his claim, he would have had to pee on him like an actual dog! 

Rubbing a hand over his face, Bin refocused his attention on his own growing problem. 

"Why do you keep following me? I know I changed you, but I can't be your master." 

Karalius's ghostly form stood across the street shrouded in black miasma. It wasn't the actual man himself, but a copy, of sorts. It had fooled him the first few times he'd seen it, but now it was easy to tell apart. 

"You keep following me, but I can't give you what you want. I changed you into a vampire to try and help you, but in the end you were attacked before I could return, and now you're a..."

Hell, he didn't even understand what the man was now. A demon was the easiest description, but he'd never even seen one in real life, and neither had the rest of their crew. It was just a word used to describe some sort of fictional beast more aggressive than a werewolf and more cunning than a vampire. According to legend, they could also fly, too, but he'd yet to see that happen. 

Of course, there was no way for him to explain how the man caught up with him so often when he clearly didn't have a ship to sail on, so the ability to fly wasn't out of the question. He also had no idea how the form he currently saw worked. It couldn't speak, nor could it move quickly or even with much consideration, and yet it still always seemed to find him. 

And when it did, then its true form would, undoubtedly, show up sooner or later, too. 

"I really should tell Inkani, but he just fell asleep with his pup," he mumbled as he rubbed at the back of his neck.  

Besides, Karalius only ever attacked him, so as long as no one came out to try and help him, they would probably be safe. 

Deciding to err on the side of caution, anyways, Bin started heading down the darkened cobblestone street. The town they had stopped at this time was a little smaller than the previous one, but it tended to cater more to pirates than normal folks. 

That meant that there were still quite a few people milling about even though it was getting close to midnight. Several of the larger men were even eyeing him up, but no one dared to make a move yet. 

He wasn't exactly built like most pirates, and since he'd been changed into a vampire when he'd been pretty lean, that was the body type he carried into his undead state. 

The other thing that might have kept other people from jumping him right then and there was the abyssal miasma slowly following him down the street. It stumbled here and there on the cobblestone, though everything it did happened in slow motion, as if it was just a literal cloud of darkness and there wasn't much weight to it. 

Of course, you could still tell that it was a person, or at least had the basic outline of one, but there was nothing else beneath that darkness. 

It was just a mindless tracker formed into a cloud... and it was just for him. 

Shrugging off his unwanted follower, Bin stepped into a little shop he often frequented when he was in town. The place was really busy, but as soon as the older gentleman running it noticed him he quickly rushed him off to a little table in the back corner.