Hateful Vampires

Gaude had no desire to have his very first mission be considered a failure, even if both the client and her would be killer were both vampires, meaning parasitic dark creatures as the book told. Unfortunately, other than the fact that they were allergic to garlic and getting a wooden stake driven through their heart, the book didn't tell much else about their weaknesses.

As for their abilities, it was only mentioned that 'the abilities of Vampires are about as varied as a Wizard's, with the difference that each Vampire family has their own powerful specialty. Each family can only use their own specialty and the physical and common abilities characteristic to all vampire kind.'

As that was the case, Gaude waited a few more instants to make sure that he read the situation right. Bryan moved slowly and took a position where it would be easy to stab Amanda's heart through her back. That was enough evidence for Gaude.

Since Linda had left with the butler, he was free to use all the tools in his disposal, so Gaude took out four large throwing stars from his pouch and flung them towards Bryan. A moment before they struck him, Sanguini noticed the throwing stars and moved inhumanly fast to dodge them. The result was that only his thighs were cut, and even that wasn't too deep.

The next instant, Bryan's hands had already turned into a clawed form and he was stabbing towards Amanda once again, seemingly hell-bent on finishing her off to reduce the number of variables even if he was in a fight against a child.

Gaude tried to slice him again on the return of the throwing stars but discovered that by the time he would overcome the inertia of the weapons and reverse their motion, the client would most likely be already dead. Instead, Gaude gave her a telekinetic push with all his might towards her left.

Amanda, who hadn't even noticed anything while she was busy sipping fresh blood, suddenly jolted to the side. The dagger that Bryan was wielding was still successfully stabbed into Amanda's body, Bryan somehow managing to react to Gaude's efforts.

The blade tore through fabric and flesh, slid smoothly through the gap between her ribs and exited through the right side. Amanda fell down from her chair. She was opening and closing her mouth like a fish out of water. There was blood leaking out of the wound and some from her mouth.

Gaude's throwing stars finally reached Sanguini again, this time managing to cut deeply into his left thigh and right arm before the vampire reacted. However, the vampire had seemingly considered Amanda dealt with as he turned towards Gaude.

Sanguini's face had distorted into a vicious grimace and his canines were much longer than they had been before. In a blink, he was already in front of Gaude, slashing towards his opponent with outstretched claws. Bryan didn't consider Gaude a worthy opponent, and as such, he was going easy on the boy – anything more than a physical transformation would go against his pride, even if nobody else found out about it.

Gaude managed to block the attack with a shielding charm concentrated into a small area. However, the concentrated shield wasn't enough to block a strike from the large bat-like wings that had sprouted from the vampire's back.

Gaude heard a sickening crack and felt a jolt of blinding pain from his left arm as it was snapped in half. He felt something warm flowing down his broken arm – it was an open fracture. The throwing stars suddenly lost his input and with a *thwack* they ended up stuck in the door behind Gaude's back.

Gaude had bet on the attack from the vampire's claws being way worse and blocked that instead. Due to his left hand being busy with controlling the throwing stars, Gaude didn't have the freedom to cast another shielding charm. He had figured that the strike from a wing couldn't be all that much.

With not enough time to retrieve the throwing stars and one hand too few to control them in the first place, Gaude pulled out his wand – spells were more versatile than any cold weapon could ever be.

Gaude used the time when Sanguini was preparing for the next strike to cast a chantless Stupefy – beside the shielding charm, it was the fastest that he knew – he still had to chant the spell in his mind. As Gaude cast the spell, he also jumped backwards to get just a little bit of distance from the vampire. Unfortunately, the charm didn't do as advertised and the vampire simply shook his head once before charging at Gaude again.

This time, Gaude's legs were struck by the vampire's claws, causing deep gashes in Gaude's thighs, a payback for his previous actions. If the vampire managed to cut Gaude any deeper, he would've been in serious trouble – as it stood, there was just a fraction of an inch from Gaude's femoral artery getting sliced.

While Gaude was still in air, he cast an array of severing charms, barely managing to graze his opponent with most of them, his mind on the edge of blacking out from the pain he was feeling. Yet, one of the spells found its target and as a result, Sanguini stumbled on one leg – the other fell onto the floor, removed from his body.

Gaude used the opening that he had managed to create to pour even more spells onto his opponent, this time the enemy was close enough to touch with an outstretched hand and momentarily dazed from an unexpected turn of events.

The charms managed to hit properly and Bryan became half the man he used to be, both his legs and an arm severed. Gaude felt a strong compulsion to go towards Bryan and expose his neck, but it wasn't as strong as Gaude's occlumency. With the help of telekinesis, Gaude managed to change both his own and Bryan's flight paths to keep the enemy at a safe distance.

Bryan wasn't down for the count, however as his wings were flapping frantically, lifting his prone form up from the ground and propelling him towards Gaude. For some reason, it didn't look like Bryan had the super regeneration that Gaude suspected vampires to have and was instead bleeding heavily from his three stumps, yet it didn't seem too bad as the vampire was still quite conscious and able to move around.

"Argh, I fucking hate vampires!", Gaude shouted, seeing how tenacious his opponent was.

Red mist started spreading from Bryan's wounds, quickly reducing the visibility in the room. Gaude's nose was filled with a strong stench of blood, rendering two of his senses useless. Of course, Gaude wasn't all that reliant on his sense of smell in the first place, as it hadn't been worth much until recently.

"It's too late to bring out your family's ability now. It's for you to meet Dracula or whatever your kind does after they die."

Bryan responded with a furious screech: "Even if I'll die, I'll take you with me!"

Fortunately for Gaude, he had enough of a gap to pull more throwing stars from his storage. He concentrated on the input from the Supersensory charm – it didn't rely on the five senses, but instead added a sixth one, an extrasensory perception of the surroundings so to speak.

The throwing stars were already spinning on his sides and he sent them out towards Bryan, this time severing his wings near his back, leaving inch-long bleeding stump as only testimony to the man's possession of an extra pair of limbs.

Finally, Gaude amputated the vampire's remaining arm, fearing that it would use even that to attack him. The only consolation Gaude had in the entire situation was that instead of an offensive special ability, this one seemed to have a support type capable of concealment during combat and possibly allowing for a quick retreat.

Done with the fighting, Gaude returned the wand to his wrist holster. He took out several potions and poured some on his open wounds and into the gaping hole in his arm that led directly to the broken bone, then gulped them down.

As the pain from the healing effects was causing him to see all white, Gaude turned to his healthy hand and knees to crawl towards the defeated enemy. Gaude needed to test the effect of the potions before using them on Amanda – with her injury, she wouldn't last long enough for Gaude to recover.

As to why Gaude didn't try to walk or levitate – his legs weren't currently capable of walking, still healing muscle damage and his magic reserves had been almost completely dried out due to the recent fight. Gaude was already rationing his magic to maintain his consciousness and hasten his recovery. Among other things, he was holding the broken bones in his arm in their correct positions.

After what felt like hours of struggling, Gaude reached Sanguini. He dripped a few drops of Essence of Dittany onto a shoulder stump and observed how red and green smoke rose from the spot. As it did, the area scabbed over before revealing fresh pink skin underneath. The skin quickly turned white like the rest of the vampire.

With his test finished, Gaude took a pilgrimage towards Amanda that was actually just ten feet away. Gaude poured three phials of the potion into her wound. A thick cloud of smoke emerged from it. In addition to red and green, indicative of the vampirism and the trademark of Essence of Dittany, it also included silvery this time.

Gaude's patient begun violently trashing on the floor, a sign that she was still alive and possibly in quite a bit of pain. Gaude, satisfied with that finally gave in to the tiredness that had overtaken him and collapsed onto the floor. Try as he might, he didn't manage to keep his consciousness any longer and ended up in a dark place in the middle of nothingness.

He woke up an eternity later, still in mind-numbing pain. As he tried to move, he felt a blade being pressed against his neck.

"Don't move! If you do, I'll kill you!", a scared girl's voice came.

"Do I look like I'm a threat to you right now?", Gaude asked. He was feeling extremely light-headed, as if he had just gone through a major blood loss. "Why exactly are you trying to keep me down anyway?"

"You killed my husband and tried to kill me, I'm just going to hold you here until the other one gets back, then I'll have her deal with you. I'm sure she'll like to know that her new prodigy turned out to be a traitor."

"Oi, you old bat, if I wanted to kill you, you'd be dead without knowing what happened. It's the guy on the floor that intended to harm you. If you don't believe me, take a closer sniff at the knife you're holding. I bet you'd still be able to smell him on it."

Gaude felt the blade dig deeper into his neck.

"Old bat?! How dare you! I'm not even thirty yet! I bet you just want to distract me so you can kill me!"

"Not thirty? So, you're what, twenty-nine and eleven months or something? Did you not just see what I did to that pedo-looking guy there? Do you really think I need a distraction to kill you?", Gaude shouted in exasperation and regretted it immediately – a strong bout of pain shooting through his chest indicated that his ribcage had suffered damage as well, he just hadn't noticed it before.

Amanda's pout became more apparent, making her look like a cute child who had been reprimanded by an adult. She had gotten a good grasp of the pain that came from her wound. She was also using the conversation to distract herself.

Besides, It wasn't like she was in pain for the first time in her life, the training to wean her off the constant need for blood had made her feel like her entire body had dried up and put through a meat grinder every day. "I'm not that old either! Fine, I'll believe you for now.", she huffed and removed the knife from Gaude's neck.

As that happened, the door exploded off its hinges and Linda appeared in the opening, torn clothes soaked in blood. There were gashes and scratches on her body that seemed to be in the process of quick healing, if one were to judge by the reddish-black smoke emanating from them.

Gaude quickly hid the throwing stars into his pouch, hoping that Linda hadn't noticed them. He didn't want to reveal what he didn't absolutely have to, after all.

"It's a trap!", Linda shouted.

"I wish!", Gaude shouted in response from the floor, it would hurt him way too much to move at that point. It would've certainly been easier on the eyes if Bryan had been a trap instead of a psycho-looking dude.

"Where's Sanguini?"

"He's resting, in pieces."

Linda finally had the time to take a look at the floor and the six limbs decorating it. After a while, her gaze stopped on Gaude who was lying in a small puddle of blood, fresh scabs covering his wounds.

"You should've left him alive, at least we could've interrogated him."

"I thought I did? Aren't vampires really hard to kill or something?"

"No, he's definitely dead.", Linda replied.

"Eeeh? Then I guess his last words are really edgy. I didn't expect to exsanguinate a Sanguini today.

Besides, aren't there a bunch of servants and other staff that we could question about what went down here?"

Linda dry-coughed a bit and then spoke solemnly: "Well, about the servants, I was in a hurry to get back to you two…"

"So, you didn't leave anyone alive either. Looks like we'll have to wait until somebody comes. How long does it usually take for vampires to come checking if one of them goes silent for a long time?"

"Around two years.", Amanda said from the side, her pout as steep as ever.

"Oh, I guess we'll not wait around then. Linda, what should we do about her?"

Linda seemed to think for a while. Suddenly, she took out a certain gold coin and inspected it for a while. Linda was one of the professionals 'trusted by the house' and was thus privy to special, 'house jobs'. Due to that, she had been briefed on the secret function of the coins and kept it in her blouse pocket to be alerted the instant it heated up.

On the coin's edge, a line of text could be seen: Amanda Lestaot. Deliver to Firepit room 1001. While Gaude didn't see it himself, he had actually been the one to transmit the orders to Linda in a roundabout way. Gaude had taken a sudden interest in vampires and who better to work with than one that owed him her life.

"I guess we'll be taking her with us.", Linda replied.

Gaude looked at Amanda that had seemingly become much calmer. Whether it was due to her accepting her fate of getting killed by the two or trusting them, Gaude wasn't sure.

"You heard the lady, get your ass off the floor and let's go.", Gaude demanded.

The facial expression that Amanda showed was truly pitiful, she tried to keep it to a pout but her eyes were getting moist. She really didn't like being treated like that, nearly killed first and then put through hell-like torture. After all, Essence of Dittany had one unfortunate side-effect on vampires: it changed their tissues to human ones while being healed and only when the effect subsided were the tissues reverted back to vampire type. The process itself was agonizing, as if being burned alive.

Gaude, seeing that Amanda wasn't willing to answer, bowed down and picked her up. Since it was most convenient, he took her into a princess carry. While Amanda might've been able to walk on her own, it didn't look like she was willing, so Gaude simply reinforced his body with magic, adding to the emergency treatment that was approximately equal to wrapping duct tape around the broken bits and hoping it holds.

"Don't take it to heart that you failed to capture a hostage. What's important is that you kept the client and yourself alive. All things considered, it's a job welldone.", Linda said.

Gaude couldn't help but smile at that – for some reason, Linda's praise felt like it really mattered to him. Of course, there was the matter of his brain being in a mess after the recent near-death experience as well, but Gaude wasn't quite aware of just how close he had come – if Amanda had been just a bit thirstier, or Gaude forgotten to take the blood replenishment potion, he might have not woken up at all.

Finally Linda took out the Portkey. She waited until all three hands were touching it before saying: "There's no place like home!"