Spoilers: None as yet
Content Rating: 15
Type: Vampyr Centric
Characters: ... shall be revealed when appropriate
Summary: It begins with a lone figure in a pitch alley on a cold night ...

Content Warning: This story contains the strongest possible language, descriptions of violence and sexually explicit content
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Was it prior to dawn, or just past sunset?

Damned if he knew.

He muttered to himself, “Either my mind’s maturing late, or it’s rotting early.”

Turning on the worn soles of his heavy boots, he saw the silhouette of the building he had just exited haloed against the dull neon glow of the city. Many would have described it as foreboding, and certainly, many more would have described its contents thus.

He gave a low, sardonic laugh at the thought, because compared to either, he wouldn’t even be considered worth a moment’s musing if you passed him on the street.

Yet he would be by far the most deserving of the epithet.

Both his gaunt hands delved their way into the pockets of the voluminous coat that shrouded his slender figure. Not out of any necessity of course – if his heart beat, just one of those would have been colder than this sub-zero night – but out of the force of a habit whose origins he had long since forgotten, either by choice or because it wasn’t worth knowing.

They do say the night is darkest in the hour before the dawn, he thought, still trying to discern the time, but that method’s scant little good under the blanket of this metropolis’s vile haze.

Exiting the pitch alley into the marginally better illuminated side street, he made his way towards where he was going at a slow, casual pace. It was not really lackadaisical, but neither was there any urgency in his step, for he was not one to be constrained by others’ needs, least of all something as irksome as punctuality. He would arrive when he damn well pleased, and if they didn’t like it – well, he’d not had any complaints so far this decade.

This street used to be so much better, he recalled absently. Back in the Regency, now then London was alive. The streets may have been teeming with sewage, shit and syphilis, but its heart was beating as passionately as mine once did. He sighed. It’s dead now, all of it. Died when the Americans invaded in the Seventies. They should have let the Nazis in a few decades previously, it’d still be interesting then. What have we now …

He slunk to the ground, the blood from his cheek spattered in a deep crimson against the uneven brick wall beside him.

That wasn’t very nice.

Already now, he could feel his assailant laying the boot in. Or both of them, to be exact. One of his ribs gave way, eliciting a small grunt of pain – that would take hours to heal.

Wearily, he put the effort in, and was behind his attacker as the man’s foot struck the wall where he had been but a second before.

“What …?” murmured the young man, who looked, as far as he could tell from the man’s shadow-shrouded face, to be in his early twenties.
“That wasn’t very nice,” he whispered in his assailant’s ear as he slowly constricted his windpipe. “Who are you?”

His cowed opponent said nothing.

“Oh for pity’s sake,” he said in exasperation, “answer the question already. It’s fucking freezing, I’m loosing my patience and I have no intention of being here the whole godforsaken night.”

“I … I just wanted you wallet man.” The reply had come reluctantly from the man’s chocked throat. “Take it, take it all.”

“Take what?” he asked testily.

“G-gear man, I got shitloads of it on me.”

He took a deep, unnecessary breath. “I’ve chased the dragon alongside Shelly and Keats, visited the Emperor’s opium dens in China and have inhaled alongside presidents and golden whores. What is there for me in the detritus of a scab’s pocket?”

“I … got nothing else man,” pleaded his would-be attacker. “Please …”

“Very well,” he acquiesced. He separated the man’s spine in a single movement, and removed the heroin from his pockets before the body had reached the ground.

He took a tentative taste of the powder, and spat it out in disgust.

“Most unjust,” he said. “An insignificant little cunt attempts to rob me, has the luck of his short life and catches me reminiscing so manages break my rib and my cheekbone, and I let the whore-monger off with a sore neck for his gear before I even taste it.” He tutted to himself. “Little surprise a warthog could shit better opiates than what I end up with, I practically deserved it. I’m really loosing my game.”

The junkie’s body was left suitably mutilated somewhere reasonably prominent – he would let people draw they own conclusions about how long his suffering had lasted – and he walked on, emptying the contents of the cadaver’s paper bag into a drain.

Wouldn’t give that trash to my worst enemy, he thought derisively.

He hoped it was just past sunset, because he felt the need to compose himself before he got to where he was going, for both his and his contact’s sakes.

Heading off towards Soho to achieve this, the streetlights’ soft neon haze caused his thoughts to drift back to the Blitz.

Oh how they danced as they burned, oh how they danced …

© Byron, 2002