(Gypsy/Helen)
Read Night Thoughts
Disclaimer: This is loosely based on the movie Chin gei bin (Vampire Effect/The Twins Effect), although of course I’ve changed and tweaked things. I’m not sure who actually owns the rights to it, but it most surely is not me.
It is just a short little tale and I don’t think you really need to have seen the movie at all to be able to follow this.
NIGHT THOUGHTS
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by Carola “Ryûchan” Eriksson
I stare out into the darkness while the rain pours down from above, soaking me and running in rivulets down my black leather coat, but I remain unmoving on my high rooftop perch. I crouch at a ledge invisible to others, while my own eyes see as clearly as during the day. All my senses are so much stronger, so much sharper now, than they ever were before.
My prey will not be moving for some time yet, so I let my thoughts wander. They wander to a figure hidden down below, sheltered from the rain but not from the night, waiting for my sign.
I smile.
Has it been a year? It seems a lifetime ago that I was that fresh-faced agent given my first commission, assigned to partner a living legend among us who in secret to the world at large hunt and kill vampires to keep that world safe. Ever since my teens, when vampires murdered my parents and older brother, I had fought single-mindedly to become an agent, leaving little time for a life outside my training… and so I was in full hero-worship when I met my new partner, Reeve.
I, like any other anti-vampire agent, came into this business fully aware that no-one survives it, and only a rare few even makes it for any length of time. That was one of the reasons Reeve was a legend, he had survived the war for more years than most could hope to. Of course as if to balance that scale, his partners had a habit of dying… rapidly. I was aware of that, too.
Perhaps I harboured a death-wish for all those years and never faced up to it, since that fact never bothered me. It would be possible, and I certainly had no life outside of the service. Not until I moved in with Reese… and his sister.
I am not ashamed to say that I carried a kind of schoolgirl crush for Reeve. He was everything I could hope to aspire to as an agent, and he was also a kind, gentle older man that treated his sister with a lot of love… and later myself, as if by default because I was close to Helen in age. I cared for him a great deal, but ultimately it wasn’t he who awoke my passion.
That was Helen’s doing.
Our first meeting was… spirited. She, hurting from a betrayal, was looking for a fight and I, recognising the need, accommodated her. It was a lovely fight, wild, free, exhilarating… and rather destructive to the furniture, but we left cleanup for Reeve to deal with. Unfortunately I miscalculated something in our fight which left me smarting for days afterwards and her smirking whenever she saw me. I held back too much in fear of hurting her, not realizing that her training was nearly as extensive as mine, being raised by the legendary vampire killer as she had been. She won our tussle, and she wasn’t about to let me forget it.
Helen was the one who made me aware of my crush on Reeve, and because she thought it far more than it was, so did I. She had far more experience in the romance department than I who had none, so I assumed she was right… and by then I was ready to throw myself off a building if she asked me to.
Helen herself was dating, of all things, a young vampire prince. While Kazaf is a gentle and goofily sweet boy, he was still a vampire and that did not sit well with Reeve despite my intervention. And this led to the great tragedy of our time together.
Kazaf’s enemy captured Reeve when he was on his way to kill the prince, and Reeve was turned.
An agent’s weapons are her wits, her combat skills, acceptance of the inevitable death, and two more sinister things. One is a vial of vampire blood that once ingested grants a boost in strength, speed and endurance that lasts for an hour and a half if the antidote is taken in time.
The other is the slightly cumbersome-looking large baton that if pressed right will release either the long rope and grappling hook that is surprisingly handy at times, or the long, sanctified blade that is destruction to the undead. Just how the forger priests of the agency create these deadly blades is beyond me, but each agent carries one.
Reeve’s life ended on one. And some of my and Helen’s innocence died along with him.
The battle that followed was the hardest of my life, although I quickly found to my surprise that Helen and I make an excellent team. Far better balanced than Reeve and I ever could have hoped to be, and we seared through the vampires like a burning blade.
The problem was that the leader of the vampires was simply too strong for us, and not only that, by the time we reached him he was about to swallow the eldritch potion that would make him the ultimate vampire. A vampire that could walk in the sunlight and held powers far beyond that of any other.
We attacked, he beat us back. We were no match for him, but somehow during the fight the magical potion was splintered… and I ended up with nearly all of it clutched in my hand.
Reeve was dead. Helen was all but unconscious, Kazaf dying from what had been done to him in order to retrieve the potion, and I had no weapon in reach. Worse still, my opponent still had a sliver of the potion, and he swallowed it.
I did not have the time to consider what I was doing when I crammed the larger part of that same potion into my own mouth and forced it down a suddenly very dry throat. The pain that followed and that signified my death as a human being, even though I did not die, and my birth as something else, was intense beyond words.
This is what I am now and forevermore. A vampire but not a vampire like any other. No longer human, but not truly undead.
I am stronger, faster, have powers beyond those of any vampire and I do not need to fear the sun. I need not feed upon blood to sustain me, although I have occasionally drunk with Kazaf from the supplies the agency send us from blood banks. Neither he nor I will ever harm a human for our sustenance, and thanks to this arrangement, we need not concern ourselves with that detail.
Does it bother me that I have become that which I had sworn to fight?
It did at first… especially when Helen looked at me with wide eyes, taking in my fangs, my eyes and the markings on my face with a horrified expression. I wanted to hide, then. Didn’t want her to see me like that, and it took some time and some effort on Helen’s part before I stopped hiding that side of myself from her. Since then I have made my peace with this fate of mine. If nothing else I am strong enough to protect her now and that is important to me.
Kazaf was changed by the events as well.
As a prince he was strong, stronger than other vampires although he was ever a gentle boy, and indeed had he been less strong he would not have survived the ordeal, like his brothers. What remains now is something less than a vampire yet not quite human… he cannot bear the sunlight and still require blood to live, yet he is not quite as strong as a human that has taken vampire blood. He cannot fly nor change or any of those things, and his fangs are gone.
Kazaf joined us to become an agent, possibly knowing that even those that were his servants before would kill him now, possibly to remain close to Helen. It did not work out well.
He is a good agent, what he lacks in strength these days easily made up for by his naturally vast knowledge of vampires and their habits. But Helen distanced herself from him after the events that led to her brother’s death, and even though she in time was able to get over the fact that she felt Kazaf was responsible for Reeve’s death, the two was never close again. Although Helen didn’t treat Kazaf with much hostility, the cold was just too much for the boy, and not too long ago he requested a transfer. I heard he is paired off with another young female agent now, and things seem to go well for him.
I do not feel sorry that things ended this way between Helen and Kazaf, I cannot. I do feel slightly guilty though.
With my new powers came a greater clarity to my life, and it did not take me long to realise that I was attracted to Helen in a way I certainly had not been with Reeve, or with anyone for that matter. Attraction became hunger, an indescribable, undeniable need for her, but I said nothing to her of this… because it had become quite clear to me also that I love her, truly and fully. The beast in me screamed for me to claim my mate so many times, yet each time I shoved it down hard, satisfying myself with friendly affection that would not impose on her too much.
Apparently she was dissatisfied with the situation, and grew tired of waiting for me.
To put it plainly, she seduced me. Once I realised what was happening I was only to happy to let it, but even so I was still somewhat reticent, afraid to overwhelm her or hurt her, feeling that she deserved far more than a creature such as myself. Helen was uncharacteristically patient, taking her time to convince me, as she once had of my vampiric appearance, that she wanted all of me, all of my passion.
I tried to be discreet, not to hurt Kazaf’s feelings with the fact that his loss had been my gain, but the fact that Helen was only too happy to flaunt that we had become lovers and also that he now lived in the house that Helen and I shared, it was inevitable. He endured it for a while before he finally got his transfer.
Helen and I are alone now, and happy together. We do our work with quite a bit of satisfaction, and then we get to go home, loving one another and squeezing every bit of joy out of life that we are able to.
Or, upon occasions such as this night, we are given an assignment someplace outside of our own jurisdiction due to our skills, and find ourselves in places we had not expected. Like tonight, crouched on a rooftop next to a grinning stone gargoyle in rainy London, with the love of my life tucked away unobtrusively in black plastic in the alley below.
I peer into the darkness and the rain and spot the slight movement that signals that our prey has arrived. I wait a moment before signalling her, allowing the prey to settle where we will fall upon them, and I anticipate her sweet voice moments before I hear her whispering my name in the small microphone located in my ear. I give her the signal and give her two seconds to shed her cover and expose herself to the rain.
With a wild laughter I leap from the rooftop, hurling down towards my startled prey with the black coat billowing around me and my sword tucked securely into my belt. I see her charging from behind them, unnoticed, and my heart swells with pride at her competence and her fierceness. Our prey lost the moment they settled within our sight, but we will draw out the fighting if we can.
This night is ours, and we will enjoy it.
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