The Vampire's Apprentice

With one final pull of the trigger, the final undead's head burst like an overripe watermelon, showering the area with a spray of blood and gore as its body fell to the ground, lifeless. For a moment, there was nothing but silence, before it was broken by the sound of a lever-action shotgun being cycled, the noise of metal-on-metal splitting through the night like a bullet, followed by the sound of the spent shell flying out of the action and rolling across the floor.

"Forty-two," a man's voice muttered. He shuffled a bit, slinging his shotgun over his shoulder, then fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette. Once he had one, he struck a match and went to light it, the dim blaze from the flame illuminating his face. He paused, catching a glimpse of himself in a nearby broken vanity mirror.

He should have looked the same as he always did – just over six feet tall, with black hair, a short black beard, and dull blue eyes. And yet, somehow, he looked different – not quite more tired, but certainly more weathered. The bit of gray in his hair didn't help with that; worrying, considering he was only in his mid-twenties.

It had only been eight months since New Orleans had been all but destroyed and the Veil had been lifted, and yet he looked so much older already.

Then again, that probably wasn't surprising – Colonel Stone had warned him that serving as a professional monster hunter would age him like nobody's business.

That didn't mean Alain was ready to catch a few strands of gray in his hair already.

Shaking those thoughts from his mind, Alain took a long drag from his cigarette before exhaling it, then turning back to the door he'd entered through.

"This room's clear," he called, his voice echoing through the dilapidated mansion. "Sable, Az, you both good?"

"Good here," Az confirmed from a few rooms away.

"That should be the last of the undead," Sable added from the other side of the hallway.

Alain took another drag from his cigarette. "Good," he said. "Let's go get paid."

XXX

"H-how much money?!" the bald man all but screeched. "You can't be serious!"

"The deal was five dollars per undead we killed," Alain reminded him. "We killed forty-two undead. You do the math – forty-two times five is 210 dollars. Ask me, that's more than honest pay for honest work."

"B-but… I didn't know there were that many…"

"Hm." Alain brought a hand up to his chin in thought. "Tell you what, we'll knock the last ten off, as a nice gesture. So now you're only paying 160 dollars for the bunch. And that's more than generous, if you ask me."

The short, bald man hesitated. "...Perhaps we could haggle a bit more?"

Alain took another drag from his cigarette, but nodded. "Sure," he said. "Who would you like to haggle with?"

"S-sorry?"

"I asked, who would you like to haggle with? I've already gone as low as I'm willing to go, which means your options now are the giant man who's built like a brick shithouse, or her. And if I were you, I'd be very careful about who you pick."

Alain motioned to the two people next to him. One was a short woman, standing just under five-and-a-half feet tall, with short blonde hair and skin so pale that it looked like she was made out of porcelain. Her most striking feature, however, was her deep red eyes, which marked her as something more than a mere human. She was still dressed in that same outfit she'd acquired a few months back, from the traveling seer – a deep black-and-red leather cloak that she kept drawn around herself, with the hood thrown over her head to keep the sun off her.

Meanwhile, on Alain's other side, there stood a large, musclebound man. Alain was taller than average, but this man dwarfed him by several inches, standing just over six-and-a-half feet. He wore an immaculately-kept black suit, complete with an ascot, which was somehow still spotless despite the carnage they'd all just been through with the undead.

The man in front of Alain blinked as he took in both Az and Sable. Slowly, he looked over to Sable, then nodded. "You seem reasonable enough."

Alain let out a tired sigh as he shook his head. "They always do this…"

"What?"

"They always make the wrong choice…"

The man paled as he looked over to Sable. She merely grinned, showing off a set of pointed fangs. Alain didn't think it was possible, but somehow, their client went even paler.

"So," she said, her heavy Romanian accent doing nothing to mask just how predatory her grin actually was. "Let's negotiate."

XXX

"One-hundred for me, one-hundred for Az, and one-hundred for Alain," Sable counted out, passing each of them a stack of money, her grin still plastered across her face as she did so.

Alain ashed what was left of his cigarette, tossing the stub onto the ground. He reached for his stack of money, stuffing it into his pocket. "You know, you can be pretty mean when you want to be."

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, spare me, Alain. We're running a business, not a charity."

"Still, these are supposed to be our clients. We don't want to get a bad reputation with any of them."

"You're the one who put me in charge of the money in the first place," she reminded him. "And I know why you did it, too-"

"You're too nice," Az finished for her.

Sable nodded. "Yeah, exactly right. If it were up to you, you'd probably do most of this work for free."

"You're not wrong," Alain admitted.

"See? You know when you've been beat. That's probably why you left me in charge of our finances in the first place."

"No comment." Alain stood up from his spot at the table. "First round's on me, as usual. Don't tell me, either – wine for Sable, and gin for Az?"

"You know us so well," Sable said, her tone sarcastic. "But yes. And none of the cheap stuff, either."

Alain raised an eyebrow. "Weren't you just giving me a speech about how I'm bad with money?"

"Money spent on good booze is money well-spent." She flashed him another grin, showing off her fangs once more. "Hurry back, please."

Alain just sighed as he made his way over to the bar. The other patrons gave him a very wide berth as he passed by them all, speaking in hushed tones as he walked through the tavern. It would have bothered him, but at this point, he was used to it.

Traveling with an obvious vampire tended to alienate any potential would-be friends.

In the time since the attack on New Orleans, the whole world had come to learn about the creatures that lurked on the other side of the Veil. Naturally, there had been more than a little bit of chaos when that news had first broken, but eventually, normalcy had won out once it was clear that nobody was really in any immediate danger. Plus, the knowledge that several supernatural beings had helped take back New Orleans hadn't hurt, either.

Granted, most people were still deathly wary of the creatures that had lurked on the other side of the Vale in secret, but at this point, there wasn't much they could do about any of them. Sure, a few enterprising ones among the bunch had immediately tried to band together for their own safety, but once it was clear that the majority of the supernatural creatures were content to be left alone, any kind of open hostilities had quickly been tempered.

That wasn't to say it was all smiles among the two sides, however – rather, tensions between them had simply been reduced to a level closer to a slow boil rather than a simmering hatred. Both sides were still very wary of each other, but for the moment, at least, they were also content not to push the envelope by doing anything too stupid.

Alain approached the bar, laying a small stack of bills on the counter. "Evening," he said to the bartender.

The man behind the counter said nothing. Alain's brow furrowed, even as he pointed at a few bottles lined up behind him. "I'll take those three, if you don't mind."

Thankfully, the bartender nodded, then turned and retrieved all three bottles, setting them on the counter between the two of them. He quickly pocketed Alain's money, only to pause when Alain flashed him another bill.

"You strike me as the kind of man who knows a lot about what goes on in this town," Alain said. "My friends and I just cleared out an old mansion full of undead. Now, I don't know how much you know about undead, but they don't just come up out of the ground for no reason. No, someone summoned them. Now, if you happen to know anyone in town who might have started to dabble in necromancy once the Veil was lifted, well… let's just say it'd be in your best interests to tell us who it is, and not just because Henry Clay is the one asking you."

The bartender snapped up the fifty dollar bill and hurriedly stuffed it in his pocket. He looked around to make sure nobody had seen him do it, and once he'd confirmed that it was all clear, he motioned for Alain to lean in.

"If anyone asks, you didn't hear this from me," he said. "But the butcher's boy, Adam, has started acting strange these past few weeks, always coming and going at odd hours of the night. Folks have said they've seen him pacing outside the nearby cemetery, just before several graves were dug up and their occupants' remains stolen. If you were going to look for whoever's responsible for this, I'd start with him."

Slowly, Alain nodded. "Much obliged," he said.

He went to walk away, only for the bartender to reach out and gently take him by the arm. Alain turned back around, leaning in once more. The bartender hesitated before speaking again.

"...This ain't gonna end up being like what happened in New Orleans, is it?"

Alain blinked. That was one of the most common questions people tended to ask him, particularly since they'd been dealing with so many undead incursions – everyone was always so concerned about their town becoming the next New Orleans. He couldn't exactly blame them for it, no matter how technically wrong it was.

After all, the government had never outright said exactly what had attacked New Orleans. Everyone had seemed to infer that it had been some kind of undead, and the government had apparently seen fit to let them keep believing that rather than try correcting them. Alain didn't need to think too hard about why that might have been the case.

Somehow, he doubted that people learning that the Underworld was real and occupied by true evil would have been preferable.

Still, he looked back to the bartender and nodded. "We're not about to let that happen," he said. "Count on it."

The bartender stared at him for a moment before letting out a sigh of relief and nodding. He let go of Alain's arm, and Alain tipped his hat to him before gathering up the three bottles of alcohol and making his way back to the table where Sable and Az were sitting.

"Making new friends?" Az asked.

"Not quite," Alain said as he sat down and began passing out the bottles. "But I did get us some information."

"Oh?" Sable said as she uncorked her bottle of wine and took a swig straight from the bottle, setting it down once she was done. "Do tell, Alain."

"Bartender recommended we look into the butcher's kid, some young man named Adam," Alain said to them in a hushed tone so the other patrons wouldn't hear. "Said that the kid might have been dabbling in some freaky shit."

"Necromancy?" Az asked, earning a nod. He let out a slow exhale, then shook his head. "You mortals… always so eager to mess with things you don't understand."

"Luckily for us, otherwise we'd have a much more difficult time finding work," Sable added. "Alright, so I guess we'll be looking into the kid tonight."

"Yup," Alain replied with a nod. "Though, if you ask me, there's no way one guy was responsible for this. There were almost fifty walking corpses in that old mansion, and they were pretty fresh. No way he was able to dig up that many graves by himself that quickly. I think it's plain to see that he had help of some kind, the only question is who."

"I suppose we'll figure that out tonight," Az mused. "But until then… congrats all-around, for another job well-done. It may not yet be finished, but at least the mansion is clear."

"And we got paid," Sable reminded him. "Don't forget that."

They all clinked their bottles together, then drank deeply of them. Alain gave a content sigh as he felt the whiskey flood through his system, leaning back in his chair with one hand still wrapped around the neck of the bottle, his face reddening as the alcohol did its work.

Another day, another dollar, he supposed.