Esmond Linwood's Story

He looked down on the wastes of the city with no small amount of distaste. Staring through one of the numerous windows of the monolithic tower standing sentry with it's brothers and sisters as a memoir of a capitalist world eroded down into nothing, he saw them. A small group of ragged, hungry, filthy and diseased people, staggering their way through what was once one of the super cities of the world, in search of food, water, safe haven, or a place to die, it mattered little, if at all, to their watcher. The smell of them gave it all away, they could help him no more than he them. So he watched them wander out of his peripheral vision and into oblivion, ignoring their insignificant murmuring between one another. Something creaked, hissed, screeched as it crossed the precipice of it's own personal cliff.

His gaze averted to the source of the sound, just in time to see a light post crash down in the middle of 7th Avenue near the corner of West 45th. But that was all it was. He saw no one near there, nor smelled, nor heard. Nonetheless, he moved that way, and before the dust cleared he stood at the scene of the event, looking around in 360, keeping all his senses open, taking in every sensation, sight, sound and even the taste of the disturbed air. But just as he had previously concluded, there was no one there. Live or dead. The city seemed just as empty as had been the countryside. Aside from him. And the dead or dying.

Disappointment, intermingled with a tinge of self-pity and uncertainty, coursed through him. Only for a second, but he still knew it had been there. He knew he couldn't survive without someone, and soon! But this pursuit for something that may very well no longer exist was fruitless. As void of hope as this whole damned city. He let out a mental sigh, timed with the change of the wind's direction, and for just a second, less even, he caught the most welcome scent he ever had. A person, filthy certainly, but diseased? Questionable. Worth a quick look, and the brightest ray of hope he'd had in a while. He felt his throat involuntarily swallowing, despite the utter lack of moisture within, and willed himself in the direction of that chance breeze against the distractions of hunger and thirst!

It was the worst feeling, it made him feel so small and weak. So subject to the laws of those he'd for so long considered his lessers. He couldn't live without them. Without at least one of them! It made him furious to think that he could die like this. Like a rat in a hole, afraid of it's own existence because of what striving to survive feels like. Of the work that walks hand in hand with it. But it would not stop him. His pride held him up, fed his desire to live even when his body went without nourishment for weeks at a time. He would not die. Not here, not now.

All thanks to this scent. He came to a silent halt next to a bus stop just before West 47th. His senses tore at him to just turn right, towards the Square, but he was frozen in some sensation between pain and ecstasy. This scent! It was all he could think. There was never anything so exquisite. He felt his lips lift in a satisfied smirk, but the allusion of satisfaction only made him crave the source of the beautiful perfume all the more. His mouth opened to reveal his pearly white teeth, and his parched tongue scraped across his lips in an attempt to moisten them. It was futile. His throat suddenly burned with thirst, and the urge to slake it multiplied tenfold.

It was more than his concentration could take. He was sucked away from 7th Avenue and Times Square, the world warping and distorting around him, and then finally disappearing into a haze of confused shapes. But the scent stayed with him, in his mind if not his nostrils.

His eyes fluttered open, and he was back in his physical body, outside of New York's desolate hub city, sitting cross legged and stiff-backed in an abandoned barn that reeked of the dead man in the back corner of it. Esmond fluidly rose to his feet, bid his badly decomposed host adieu with a liquid twist of his wrist and a deviant smile, and began his trek to New York proper.

It was nothing more than an animal at this stage. He looked on at it impassively, a would-be god over the lessers, with some fine tuning. But it was without a master, without a guide through the dark, and so it thought itself to be the hunter, the Alpha and Omega. The stalker in the night had become apparent to Esmond from at least a hundred metres away, just before he had crossed into the city proper. It had caught a scent that an elder such as Esmond knew to be a foreshadowing of death. Abnormalities in the prey's blood were grossly obvious to those that had existed for longer. But this one, it knew nothing.

It's prey was sick, and once the hunter consumed the blood of the hunted, so too would be the hunter. The watcher in the deeper shadows would not intervene. Regardless of whether he stopped the animal or not, the humans would be dead soon. They probably didn't even know it yet, but Esmond's trained senses could pick them up from a mile away. Their pungent smell had also been obvious to this young one he followed into the city, but it was too foolish to know what awaited it.

Nor would he stop the creature to save it. It would feed on the sick, hence dooming its' own self, and then there would be one less immortal to contend with. And besides, Esmond would not risk this beast getting near his prize. That sweet scent still lingered in his mind, and he already was imagining the feeling of that covetous heartbeat wrapped in his powerful arms. Excitement coursed through him, but from outside you would never be able to tell he was anything more than careless. He wasn't within eyesight of the young vampire he stalked, but he could hear it scurrying like a rat through the dark towards it's meal. It smelled too, like the one that made it, he knew. One that was possessed of at least some cunning, he imagined.

There was another elder brethren in this city. A youngling would not have the self-control to attack any human without completely draining it. The perfume lingered in this one's trail. A seducer. Esmond leapt from the street through a broken window and onto the second story of an abandoned building. Not even the loose papers scattered across the floor stirred upon his arrival, there was no disturbance in the air as he strode past neglected cubicles and fetid bodies left to rot there. He moved like a phantom, but still, he'd felt too exposed out in the street as he had been. He couldn't risk the newborn discovering him, following him to his human.

Once it was immersed in feeding, only then would Esmond head in that direction. It couldn't be risked. Of course, he wasn't afraid he'd be unable to kill that animal if he had to, but the best way to win a fight was to avoid it altogether. He mused at how different he'd been as a mortal, so ready to jump into every conflict headfirst, damning caution as cowardice. But so much more was at stake now. Not just his life, nor his prize's, but he felt like there was so much more to his coming here. His dreams had been of New York for some time now, though of nothing specific. His dreams had led him out of starvation, or at least they would soon.

The diseased ones were now just across the street from the young hunter. Esmond was about a block away, hurtling in silence from building to building, sticking to the deepest shadows the pitch black night had to offer. He could see where the humans were now. He came to a halt, looking down on the street from behind a window that still had blinds on it, half broken as they were. With a complete lack of subtlety, the wild thing dashed from behind a vehicle stripped of it's tires and both doors on the passenger's side towards the unsuspecting two it had been seeking.

They were barricaded in a building that had once been a convenience store, but was now just a big, empty, echoing husk of what it had been. When the monster that had once been a man tore through the wooden boards that were meant to keep it's like away, a woman screamed a blood-curdling scream, probably audible from several blocks away in this ghost of a city, and a man shouted. It was meant to be a battle cry, a sign of bravery and strength, but Esmond could hear the fear intermingled with it. A grunt followed after, and the heavy thud of some blunt weapon making contact, but then there was a God-awful crack of bones, and a weak cry that seemed more a sigh. And then the death rattle.

The man shivered, Esmond knew, as the icy cold hands of his killer clasped onto him and the teeth sank into his throat. The woman screamed again. Esmond moved to gain a better view, although his intuition already had the scene well-defined. Gazing out through another window, his eyes pierced the darkness in the building. A thin boyish thing was hunched over a hulk of a man, heavily muscled, who had a carpenter's hammer still grasped in his hand. The boy-thing shuddered with every gulp of contaminated blood it took in. Esmond watched, felt his own desires claw for the surface of his being, and he subsequently snuffed them out.

The woman was sobbing in some unseen corner, crying for the man, crying for a God, crying for fear. Only the latter seemed able to embrace her. Esmond felt nothing. Or so little that it meant nothing. Their souls would soon be commended to whatever afterlife awaited. The man sooner though. He was gone, a vacuum-like void left where his heart's beating had been. The woman sensed it too, and shrieked in defiance of the truth, which pulled the monster's attention away from it's meal. It scurried out of Esmond's view, and he heard it strike her, then bite her. Ravenous, like an animal, it roared before it's teeth ripped through flesh. Blood splattered from the gaping wounds caused onto the floor. No finesse, Esmond shook his head in some sign of pity, and then he began on his own way.

The creature had had it's meal, and had ensured it would have it's just desserts. In less than the blink of an eye, the watcher was gone, graciously finding his way through the tatters of civilization. In a moment, he picked up the scent he'd been waiting for. His senses were aroused immediately, nostrils tilted slightly, taking in the lovely aroma greedily, and his ears perked, attentive of the deep, regular breathing. His treasure, his insurance of life, was sleeping. His temper flared for a second, the breathing was so loud, the smell so tempting, so obvious! How could the little mortal be so careless?

But in the width of a second, he was calm again, soothed just by being so close to his objective. Besides, not many vampires had the senses he was possessed of. Only time had granted him such skills. But still, this was an absurdly lucky find. Or a fateful find. He walked slowly through the Square, savouring the anticipation. He was now only a stone's throw away from a building that housed the source of his endeavours.

A faint gust of wind made his hair flutter briefly, and his jacket billowed to his left, the unzipped flap then falling back to his side. His attire was designed to draw no special attention to him, but was still neat and clean, a high contrast to his surroundings. The jacket was a dark brown, black in the night, and somewhat loose on him, underneath he wore a plain tee shirt, white in colour, although the hem on the bottom right had a slight smudge of filth on it. He wore plain, partially faded jeans that fit comfortably, and the only otherwise noteworthy thing on his person was his ring. He'd had it forever, or for so long that it might as well have been for so long. On it was a strange sigil of a thing that resembled a man, but had serpentine legs and arms, and wore a crown and carried a shield.

But it was not gold, nor silver, just a simple steel ring, so it did not often draw any attention at all. Afterall, his face and eyes were what pulled other's eyes his way. The deep, all encompassing blue, and the pure, perfect complexion and paleness of his skin, these traits were as much weapons as his hands. His hair he'd chopped down to an average length, again, just to help him blend. It was a thick but neat mass on his head, kept clear of his eyes but sometimes falling off to the sides, of a dirty blonde colour.

He was smiling a small, sweet expression when he saw her through the broken window she slept next to. She was facing him, and despite the filth, he immediately saw that she was a beautiful young woman, with full lips, a cute little nose and chin, and lovely, flowing blonde hair. Some locks rested on her chest, the rest flung out beside her head. He was only a few feet away now, feet carrying him without a thought ever closer. One of his hands extended towards her, without his permitting it.

He noticed just before he would have reached through the window and touched her, and then pulled his hand back and clasped both behind his back in a gentlemanly manner.

Still smiling sweetly, he whispered gently, "Hello, little one." There was only the slightest hint of an English accent in his words. "Won't you open your eyes for me?"

He watched her stir to the sound of his voice, but she refused to awaken at first, instead rolling over to face away from him. She murmured something about not wanting to wake up yet. Esmond almost felt sorry for disturbing her from her dreams, but his hunger was beginning to spike, and all other feelings were numbing in comparison. She was stubbornly still asleep, but her breathing rate had changed, his voice had found it's way to her through the veil of sleep. And so he held his silence, knowing that she would stir again.

Esmond watched her shoulders rise and fall with her breath, taking in the sights and sounds of life, fueling his desire all the more. He took a step forward, just on the edge of the window, and was about to try to rouse her again, or maybe even just move within, take hold of her small, fragile looking form, and indulge himself. His thirst burned as if the sun had set in his throat, and he would be gentle, of course. He would only take as much as he needed, never risking her health, and would feed again in a few days time.

About to take another step towards her, she suddenly leapt from the ground and through the window, directly into Esmond. Her heart was suddenly racing, and in the split second before she collided into him, he saw a look of utter panic on her face. She ran into him, stopping dead in her tracks, and then stumbled backward with a little screech, then stared up at him with big, blue-grey eyes that practically overflowed with fear. Her heart rate went higher still, as if it were trying to taunt him into acting out of passion.

It seemed to take her a second to realize the situation she was in, but when she did she immediately began to reach for a weapon, finding a sharp shard of glass on the ground. When she pointed it at him, he had to contain the urge to laugh, never betraying for a second his inner thoughts through his facial expressions.

"Wh-who are you?", she stammered, her hand shaking. She had good reflexes, certainly, but if she knew what he was, then she was lacking in good judgement, but it was likely she only took him for human. He decided to completely ignore the glass in her hand, and acted naturally, and entirely at ease.

With his hands still behind his back, Esmond began by smiling apologetically and slightly lowering his eyes in a shameful visage. "I'm very sorry," he started, and brought his left hand from behind his back, raising it to his chest and holding it there in a loose fist, "I didn't mean to startle you." He extended his fingers to point to his heart, with his ears, and mind, still focused on hers', "My name is Esmond."

Instinct told him to give her a slight bow, but these weren't the Middle Ages and he knew such behaviour could very well only alienate him to her all the more, and he would have preferred that she be a willing partner, rather than an imprisoned victim. "You may have met some others like me. But, then again, there are truly few just like me. I am far older, and stronger, than the majority of my kind. You have drawn me here, little one, for without you, I will die." Whether she gathered what he was or not, he left to her intuition.

His eyes were scanning her entire body for any hints that could be gleaned, mostly just that she was filthy, tired, and thin. She'd probably been alone for quite some time. As he'd spoke, she seemed distracted, and Esmond noticed her cringe with pain. He hoped his words hadn't fallen on deaf ears, but then he saw the expression on her face change. Now, he knew she knew. He thought he heard her heart skip a beat, causing his throat to clench and his eyes to flicker to her chest, startled. If she died...

But her teeth were grinding, and then the sickeningly delicious smell of blood found it's way to his nose. Esmond grimaced, visibly tensed his entire body, fighting not to leap onto her and tear her delicate neck apart. But he wanted to so bad... The nape of her neck, her smooth, pale skin, the slight tint the freckles cast... Esmond clenched his fists, refraining from breathing for the moment. He was still trying to keep control, when he saw her wiping her hand on her jeans and the smear of blood left in it's trail.

He forced his gaze upward, locking onto her fearful eyes as she backed away. "Please don't kill me..." Her voice, her demeanor in general, was so pitiful that now he genuinely felt sorry for waking her at all.

Esmond shook his head slowly, almost ominously, but only because his own hunger was tearing at his conscience, trying to make him act rashly, like that newborn animal from just a while earlier. "Kill you? On the contrary, I need you to live." He stepped forward to compensate for the space she had created between them. "If I killed you now, I would have to go in search of another like you. I might not survive another hunt." He hesitated for a moment, then looked out into the dark of the street. "What I have to offer you, can be mutually beneficial to the both of us."

He looked back at her, accidentally breathed in the intoxicating scent her hand was giving off, bit his lip and continued. "Tell me, what would you do if a much less civil Vampire than I found you?" The question was rhetorical, and Esmond went on before she could answer. "I'll do whatever it takes to keep you alive. In exchange," His eyes fell to her bleeding hand. "I need you to keep me alive."

Rather than him leading her through the dark, she led him. Esmond was even more surprised at her supposed comfort around him than he had been before. But, desperate times led to desperate measures. When she'd taken his hand, of course he noticed the dirt, the blood, the broken nails. And yet she still seemed delicate. Clean, in a strange way. But she was pulling him along through the debris of the street before he had much time to contemplate further on her qualities, instead his mind and eyes focused on the ruinous scenery around him.

His ears perked to pick up any hint of danger, and with every breath he took a new scan of his surroundings. For the most part though, everything was still except for the two of them. Only the light breeze occasionally disturbed bits of trash in the street, disrupting the sound of the girls' heart beating. Trying not to let it distract him, he kept up his guard while she led him along.

There was a smell of old, burnt flesh, and it wasn't long before he saw why. In front of a formerly tall building, there was a crater of large proportion. He'd seen the bombs fall one night, but had been well away from the city at that time. He'd known it would come to that sooner or later, so Esmond captured a human, left with him, and kept as far from all others as possible. In time, the plague would die out with it's last victims. But the time hadn't come soon enough. Fire rained down on cities all through the United States, as far as he knew, in a final attempt to save what little life remained.

The evidence was here before him. Hidden behind some overgrown weeds and brush, Esmond could smell the bodies. They were far enough away to be faint, if at all noticeable, to Abigail. But to him, they were practically still screaming. He could only imagine what it had been like to die that way. He'd seen people burn alive, vampire or human, but fortunately he'd always managed to avoid the torch, and the sun.

To his relief, Abigail didn't seem to notice the nearby corpses. She let go of his hand, then let herself slide down the side of the crater, and shortly after he saw her propel up and over the other side. He smirked at her, again finding himself in some form of awe of her ability to adapt.

"Your turn." She said with a smile, and he took it as a challenge.

Straight faced, Esmond took one long stride towards the edge of the crater, until his foot was half over the edge. And then jumped. His body flew through the air, clothing whipping around him, clear over the crater. And just like that, he was on the other side, looking down on the little human girl. He took her small, dirty hand in his own, and then proceeded towards the motel. Without hesitation, he barreled his leg through the door, breaking it off the hinges, chain and all. He turned, looking into Abigail's eyes, "If you'll please, just stay close."

He then loosed his grip on her hand, as a sign that she had free reign within the building. But only as long as she was nearby. He went on into the dark, in no need of light, towards another smell. This place had been largely abandoned, and then locked from inside, judging by the chains. Windows on the lower level had been barricaded, also from within. But judging from this pungent stench, whoever had taken all of these precautions was now dead.

He'd smelled it before, many times in his life, but he considered Abigail. "You may not want to come this way." He turned to glance back at her, only giving her a look and no explanation. Of course, she was free to choose for herself, but somewhere further on down this dark hall was a dead man. By what means, Esmond couldn't yet discern, but he could tell that, as bad as the stench was now, it would be worse once he opened the room the man was in.

He pressed on, keeping an ear on Abigail and the front door to ensure that no one was trying to sneak up on them, and shortly came to the door he'd been looking for. It too, was barricaded from within, but not with just a chain. It was a steel door, to a kitchen or a freezer maybe, and padlocked from the other side. Undaunted, Esmond pressed his hand against it, then pressed on it against its hinges. With a crack and a screech, steel broke and then slid apart, and Esmond pushed the door over to the side, making it topple over and fall on its face.

The smell was pungent. It swarmed around him and out of the room. The source was sitting in a corner of the room, propped against an open cabinet with his head hanging and chin resting on his chest. He was badly decomposed, features completely unrecognizable, bone showing through flesh here and there. There was a journal sitting on top of a metal table on the right side of the room, several empty water bottles scattered all about, and medical gauze unfurled across the left side of the room, close to where the dead man was.

The cabinets were stuffed with preserved goods. Esmond wasted no time in striding over to the nearest and beginning to unload it of it's precious contents. "Abigail!" He shouted, continuing to grab food and setting it on top of a stove.

Esmond was relieved to see her eat, it meant that his turn would hopefully be soon. Despite all the courtesy, the truth of the situation was that he had helped her only so that she could help him. His throat burned with thirst. As he watched her scavenge the body, with an unmarked can still in his hand, he had to fight not to jump on her right then and there. He knew he needed to contain himself, so as to not frighten her away. During the day, he would be helpless to keep her near him if she chose to flee. "That sounds like a good idea, why don't you go and find some corner of this place that doesn't smell quite so offensive?"

"In the meantime, I'll see about disposing of... Him." He inclined his head to the corpse. "I'll bring food with me after I'm done, shout if you need anything, Abigail." With that, he spun around, trying to keep his mind off her and his thirst for the time being, and inspected the room further. There were dried puddles of wax on many of the counters, empty food containers, and it seemed that the closet in the far corner of the room had been made into a makeshift lavatory. As there were no windows in this room, the man had had no means of disposing of his waste.

He wrinkled his nose at it, imagining living in this way, and wondering what had made him hole up in this room all by himself. Hording all the food, the water. It wasn't particularly normal to see a human surviving alone. Had he been with others? It was clearly plague that killed him, but would it have been the same for the rest of his group? Perhaps he wasn't the only dead man in this building.

Esmond would have to go and make sure there were no others, live or dead, though he hadn't heard anything, so assumed they would only be the latter. He would also need to ensure that this place was secured properly. Creatures of the night wouldn't be a problem in about an hour, but roving bands of humans could be a risk. Especially if Esmond went to sleep, leaving Abigail essentially alone. He moved to the body, lifted it one-handed, and then carried it outside, trying his best not to rub off too much of it's scent on himself. Upon re-entering the building, he did a quick inspection of it, ensuring there were no ways for potential enemies to sneak in, and once satisfied, he returned to the safe room, loaded up a large box with preserved food, and carried it to where Abigail had gone. He placed the heavy box gently in a corner of the room, "Please, eat Abigail. Until you are quite sated." And then, I need to take my turn.