Princes of the Undead

Part 1

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It was late or by that also very early. Agatha Van Helsing had long since given up on trying to understand the idiosyncrasies of the English language. It was a stupid hodgepodge of a language, the highwayman that stole whatever it liked from wherever it liked, and it lacked the simplistic logic of Latin, or the oral beauty of Aramaic.

Still it was England in which she washed up all those years ago, and thusly it was England to which she was confined/assigned, the semantics mattered little in the long run. Agatha wasn't going anywhere, not for the next 27 years at least. At 150 years of age she would finally attain full citizenship status. For a vampire to survive so long was a mark of prestige, almost like coming of age when all the associated restrictions of 'childhood' would finally be lifted.

Agatha really didn't care about gaining a seat on the council, it was never about power for her, she just wanted access to all those "lost manuscripts". The recovered contents from the library of Alexandria would be enough to keep her amused for at least a century. Although some small part of Agatha would miss the rush of working with her human retrieval team.

It was considered abnormal for a vampire to become attached to mortals. They were the food source after all, and although some mortal families had been long associated with certain clans, generational indentured servants as it were. Well it was still considered taboo to consider them people. Yet Agatha had never been one to do the conventional, not even when she was alive, she did not see any reason for that to change just because she was undead.

"Unit in position."

Touching her earpiece Agatha acknowledged her team and gave the command. "Move in slowly...5...4...3...2...1"

Her mortal team sprung the carefully weighted trap and Agatha watched from her perch high up in the trees. They worked well together, most of them had served with Agatha for years, and would do for many more to come. Turnover of staff was low, even for such a dangerous profession, and recruitment was strictly controlled. Agatha as one of the more long serving captains was often charged with training the newer recruits, and there was one here tonight, Agatha could smell his nervousness from 50 meters.

In hindsight Agatha should have seen it coming. If she could smell him...

The banshee like scream rent the quiet night and the newbie panicked. As the newly arisen vampire approached him at speed he reached for the wrong thing; the instinct to reach for his gun and not the taser was his undoing, and the poor lad screamed as the new-born vampire ripped his throat out.

"Shit...secure the perimeter." Agatha barked. They had lost the element of surprise and they were a man down, which made encircling their quarry even harder.

Jumping down, a drop that would have killed a human, Agatha had no choice but to directly engage herself. It went against the rules. She was there to lead, observe and evaluate the potential once it was secure. Her 'life' considered to precious to risk, when there were plenty of humans around to do the dirty work. Well risk was not something Agatha had ever shied away from, it was the whole reason she was in this mess to begin with and she wouldn't risk another member of her team dying.

Her age and ability to reason gave her the advantage. The new-born vampire had little warning before Agatha was there, pulling it off its kill, and Agatha had to fight her own urges as the scent of freshly split blood reached her nostrils. That moment of hesitation was a mistake, and Agatha was suddenly being taken down by 300lbs of snarling undead, pissed off at having their midnight snack interrupted.

Rolling the pair wrestled for dominance, Agatha could hear the screams of her team in her earpiece, yet the snarling jaws of the vampire in full bloodlust was a more pressing concern. She could go for her stake, but then she would get even more of a bollocking; losing a human was one thing, they could be easily replaced, losing a potential new initiate well that was something else.