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I thought that these things didn’t happen any more
I thought all that blood had been shed long ago
Dark night
It’s a dark night

                          -- The Blasters

The Raven And The Gecko

By

Matt R. Jones, Esq.

Sand and grit swirled around in a mini-dust devil out at the edge of Benito’s property, sending grains of said detritus rattling against the painted-peeled and sand-scoured body of the Galaxie that Benito had given up all hope of ever getting back in running condition again.  The big old car’s engine had blown out back in 1983 and Benito had stripped it of its wheels and put it up on cinder blocks out behind his modest little home in his modest little town in this modest little part of Mexico, assuring it that once he got the means and the time, he’d have it up and running just like new again.  Fourteen years later, the poor beast still sat where he’d put it that terribly hot day back in ’83, no different than it was then, except that almost all of its usable parts had been cannibalized for other vehicles, by both Benito and unwelcome raiders who snuck the parts away in the middle of the night, and repeated exposure to the winds that were common in this part of the country had stripped most of its blue paint away, revealing the flat gray of primer and the metal beneath.

The Galaxie wasn’t alone, however, as Benito had managed to drive several of its successors into the ground in the years between now and 1983, and they kept the big car company out in the dirt and scrub of Benito’s backyard.  At least it wasn’t a small backyard, as Benito was lucky enough to be on the edge of town, so that there was no definitive line where his backyard ended and the wild desert country began, which pleased him to no end.  After a long day at the factory in the next town ten miles away, Benito would come out onto the back porch of his rundown little house and look past the auto graveyard, up to the stars shining impossibly clear in the sky above, and he was able to forget his humble life for a time.  The television factory and that fat, self-important foreman ceased to exist out here on the back porch, as did the shitty little Ford Escort that he drove to the damn television factory, and his ungrateful, troublemaking son of 17 years, who was assuredly heading down the wrong roads in life despite Benito’s best efforts, didn’t weigh so heavily on his mind . . . and he could forget that he’d been sleeping alone for the past ten years, following a car wreck that had taken his beautiful Lola but had left him with hardly a scratch.

“Here’s to life’s fucked-up sense of humor,” Benito said, holding his bottle of cerveza high for a moment before putting it to his lips and draining a full half of it before setting it back down onto the rough, paint-peeled surface of his porch.  The peeling paint reminded him of the Galaxie, and he looked back out at the hulk of the old car sitting in the yard . . . if they’d been driving that car when the fool tourist had collided with them, Lola would have been sitting next to him right now.  Lola had loved that car . . . it was what he’d driven when he’d courted her back in those long-ago days, and it was in the backseat of that very car that they’d made love for the very first time.  She’d said he’d looked so regal sitting behind the wheel of such a big automobile, and the expert way he handled the monstrous vehicle had always made her smile, because Lola had always said that the way a man drove his car reflected how he handled his life, and when she rode with him, she’d felt safe on both the road and in life.

But the Galaxie’s engine had gone to hell in 1983, regardless of how well Benito drove it.  It was one of those cases where a car that was well-taken care of still took a shit on the owner, and Benito, short on cash at the time, had been unable to heal its wounds.  Even though it had hurt Lola for him to do so, he put the car up on blocks, got himself a beater car to take him from place to place, and promised her that one day the Galaxie would rise again.  Days had turned to weeks, weeks had turned to months, and months had turned to years.  Money wasn’t as easy to come by as it had been when Benito was younger, especially with Carlitos in the house now . . . Benito wanted his boy to have all the things that he’d never had as a child, and so Carlitos had benefited while the poor Galaxie had had to go without.  Benito didn’t regret that, even though his son had turned rogue despite everything he had done for him, and even though if he’d cut back on spoiling Carlitos and had put some money into the Galaxie, Lola would still be alive.  Love, when it was genuine, was never a wasted thing, Benito felt, though at the times when Carlitos would disappear for days at a time and then reappear with no answers to his father’s questions, he wondered.  Lola would have known what to say, but then again, if Lola had been around, Carlitos would have turned out better.  Benito spent nearly all of his time working in order to support himself and his son, and that left him precious little time to spend with Carlitos, and the boy simply hadn’t taken to staying with the neighbors when Benito was at work . . . if he’d had a mother to stay at home with, things would have been much better.

Benito sighed and took another pull from his beer as he gazed at the Galaxie.  A lot of things would have turned out better if that car had been fixed years ago . . . if he’d worked a little harder at fixing the old beast instead of being content with the other junkers he’d driven, his life would be a lot different.  Funny how so much could revolve around a car, wasn’t it?  He would never have met Lola if not for that car, as she had been immediately impressed by the wiry young man with the slicked-back hair who had such a large car and had kept it in such good shape, and while the car had hooked her, the man who drove it had kept her.  That car had always been there for him when he’d needed it, it had even provided a safe, comfortable place for him and Lola to show their love for one another when they both still lived with their parents, and he’d let it down when it had needed him.  And how he’d paid for it ever since.

Benito finished off his beer and threw the empty bottle into the yard, where it clinked against another empty bottle . . . the yard was littered with similar bottles, and Benito saw no reason to clear them off.  No grass save for tufts of scrub grew in his backyard, and he had no wife to scold him for his sloppiness . . . and as for Carlitos, he could care less what his father did, as long as he stayed out of Carlitos’ way.  The wiry, balding man clad in dirty blue jeans and a white tanktop stood up and stretched, looking at the stars as he did.  After satisfactorily stretching out some of the kinks in his tired muscles, he lowered his eyes again and set about turning around to go back into the house and retrieve another beer from his rattling old refrigerator.  Just before he turned, however, something caught his eye, something out in the desert.

The stars were so clear and bright tonight, as was the full moon, that he had no trouble making out the form striding through the scrub and dirt several hundred feet from his house, nor the two forms loping along on either side of the first form.  Though he couldn’t make out all the details, the person was a female with long, dark hair dressed in a jacket and jeans, most likely wearing boots of some sort if she was trekking across the desert, and while that in itself wasn’t terribly unusual, the two coyotes walking along with her were.

Benito felt his heart skip several beats in his chest as he fully absorbed the sight of the woman and the coyotes, and he crossed himself.  “Madre de Dio!” he hissed softly.  He’d heard of her before, heard of her during long drinking sessions with friends and with conversations with old-timers who’d seen a lot more in their lives than he could ever have hoped to, and he and Lola had even had a conversation about her one night on this very porch, back when the paint on it was still new and fresh and the Galaxie still purred like a contented cat.  He crossed himself again, for good measure.  “La Vampira Loca!” he whispered as he heard the sound of her voice wafting to his ears, carried across the distance between himself and her . . . she was laughing about something, like everybody said she always did.  But when one was loca, they tended to laugh a lot, did they not?

And then Benito had the greatest fright of his life, as he saw her turn her head and look directly towards him, and he would have sworn on his mother’s life that her eyes glittered in the moonlight with an unholy, unearthly power behind them.  That was all he needed, and after emitting a strangled cry and nearly soiling himself, Benito leaped up the steps of the back porch and slammed the door of the house behind him, bolting it tightly.  He spent the rest of the night sitting in the corner of his bedroom holding his rifle in his hands, not relaxing the slightest until the sun came up, at which time Carlitos came home.  The boy had the temerity to laugh at his father’s “superstitions,” which set Benito off.

The lingering fright mixed with the weariness of staying up the entire night energized Benito, and he had laid down the law to Carlitos right then and there, and whether it was the tone of his father’s voice, the wild look in his eyes, or the rifle he still held in his hands, neither of them knew for sure, but for the first time in years, Carlitos listened.  And he continued to listen.

Three years later, Carlitos was well on his way through college, and the Galaxie was again parked in out in front of the house, in perfect condition.  Benito and Carlitos had worked together in the ensuing three years, and had slowly but surely rebuilt the Galaxie from the ground up, so that it was as good as new . . . better perhaps.  After the “talk” he and his father had had that warm morning, Carlitos had regained a great deal of respect for his father, and the two had mended their fences remarkably well.  Carlitos was into his second year of engineering college and was doing quite well, and now when he was gone for days at a time, it meant that he couldn’t get away from his work and studies.  Benito still sat out on the back porch at night, though not nearly as often as he used to, as life was such that he didn’t really want to forget it . . . when he sat out on the porch now, it was usually after a fine day in which everything had gone well for him.  And every night he sat out on the porch, he gave thanks to La Vampira Loca, who had gave him the scare that had helped to change the lives of both himself and his son.  He thought perhaps that she had had a moment of great wisdom, and had turned her gaze upon him to help galvanize his resolve towards his life and that of his son.  She had known he had had the potential in himself all along, but just needed something like that night of terror to flip the switch and make him get off his sorry ass and do something about where his life was going.  She may have been loca, but she was no fool, and he wished that he would someday encounter her again so that he could give his thanks to her personally.  He never told anyone of that wish, not even Carlitos, as they would have all though him to be as loco as she, because one always left La Vampira Loca alone unless she specifically desired their attention . . . but loco or not, Benito was happy once more, and he had La Vampira Loca and her wisdom to thank.

*     *     *

            She laughed as the mortal let out a strangled scream of fright and hurried into his little hovel, slamming the door shut behind him and most likely locking it.  Not that deadbolting it a thousand times would make a difference if she truly wanted in, but then, nobody ever accused most mortals of being particularly bright, especially the small-minded fools that lived just about everywhere she went.  His reaction pleased her, as it showed that she hadn’t been forgotten since her last visit to this little town years ago . . . it showed that her legend had not diminished, which meant that she didn’t really have much reason to do anything new to perpetuate it.  Not that that would have bothered her, either, as that would have been fun, but she didn’t much care for the thought that she hadn’t left a strong enough impression that last several times she’d passed through this area of the country.  It wouldn’t do for a legend to lose her status, not at all, and if she had lost it, then it was very likely that several people would have died on this evening, just so that everyone remembered her.  In fact, it was very likely that several people would die anyway, just because that sort of thing tended to happen when she was around mortals, as she intended to be tonight.  Why did she intend to be around them?  Because she wanted to be, and what she wanted, she did.

            “Isn’t that right?” she asked the two coyotes that had accompanied her since she’d risen from the cave over a dozen miles away from where she now walked.  They hadn’t been there when she’d gone under in the morning, after her successful acquisition of the item now safely ensconced in the inner pocket of her black leather jacket, but when she’d reemerged into the world several hours ago, they’d been waiting there for her, as though they wished to be her escorts for a time.  She thought nothing of it, as this sort of thing also tended to happen to her, whether it be coyotes, wolves, stray dogs, domestic dogs, or whatnot.  Canines seemed to have a fancy for her and enjoyed her company, which worked out well, as she enjoyed their company as well . . . they were friendly, loyal, aesthetically pleasing, fun to play with, and they never interrupted you when you were talking.  They also usually never answered when asked a question, either, but that didn’t bother her.  She laughed at their silent response to her query of a moment ago, and reached down to pet one of them on its furry head as they moved across the scrubby desert, heading towards the trucker bar that was about a mile away from here, on the opposite end of town.

            She enjoyed going to this bar, though her visits were infrequent at best . . . the atmosphere was very nice, she thought, as it had been converted from an old, medium-sized warehouse, and thus had a very open atmosphere as opposed to the tighter, more cloistered atmosphere that most bars fostered.  There was another bar with similar construction a good hundred miles from here, but she didn’t much care for it, as it was nothing but a trap for mortals ran by a horde of those degenerate beasts that dared to call themselves vampires.  They thought themselves vampires because they subsisted on blood, had longer lives than mortals, could use telepathy to hide their true appearance from others, were generally stronger than the average mortal, and could even do some minor shape-shifting . . . feh, they were nothing.  There was more to being a vampire than merely drinking blood and strength, it took style to be a vampire, it took pizzazz, it took a strong mind, spirit, and body to be a vampire, and while the bodies of those degenerates were relatively strong, they lacked strong minds and spirits, and so thus she didn’t consider them to be true vampires.  Others would argue her point, certainly, but she could have cared less what others thought.  If they spoke to her of the subject, she’d ignore them, and if they annoyed her, she’d kill them.  She had had more than her fair share of encounters with those beasts, which she called screechers because of the noises they made in combat and distress, and she’d made up her mind about them long, long ago . . . they’d disgusted her back in the days of the Aztecs, and they disgusted her to this very day.

Sometime, perhaps soon, she’d have to go to that bar a hundred miles away from here and wipe out all of the screechers, just to show them who was boss.  She smiled.  They’d be upset soon enough, after what’d she’d done to them the night before, though they wouldn’t know it had been her until she decided to let them in on the fact that it had been her, which she would do at a time when it would bring her the greatest amount of amusement.  In the meantime, though, she’d keep a low profile, as she’d worked with them a bit in the past when it had suited her, as they had the tendency to be able to dig up some of the most interesting and useful items she’d ever seen.  True enough they disgusted her, but she was able to keep her disgust at bay long enough to acquire something she wanted or to go on an adventure of sorts . . . she always laughed especially hard when she worked with a group of screechers one day and then killed another the next.  They were so stupid.  Yes, maybe after she had had some fun here, she’d wander over to that bar, which was somewhere by the border, and just completely clear the place out.  Now that would be fun.

She laughed again, liking the sound of the idea.  But for the moment, she was more concerned about the present and the bar she was going to now.  It was a bar for mortal truckers, which meant that it was more than likely that one or more of the crude bastards would try to make acquaintance with her by means besides charm, which would mean that some roughhousing would be in order . . . that was fine with her, as she was always up for a little excitement, even if it was only tossing mortals around.  Perhaps after she demolished the bar by the border, she’d have to travel back into America and go find him again, the one vampire whom she considered to be an equal, the one who had fascinated her for centuries, and the one that she never grew tired of seeing.  That might have been because they didn’t see one another all that often, but she doubted it . . . she knew when someone was interesting and worth being around and when they weren’t, even if she’d only been around them for a few moments, and he’d never been anything but intriguing and fun for her.  Yes, that was be a very good idea . . . she wasn’t sure where in America he was at the moment, but tracking him down would be a great deal of fun for her, as she loved to track things down.

She laughed once more, delighted by the new ideas that had popped into her head.  If it was one thing she loved, it was an itinerary full of things that were guaranteed to provide her with a great deal of fun.  “Life is good, my friends,” she said to the coyotes, now petting the other one so that he didn’t feel as though she were neglecting him in her affections.  “Life is very good indeed.  Quoth Raven, nevermore!”

*     *     *

            Raven sat down at the bar of the trucker’s establishment known as Fernando’s and banged her fist on it several times to draw the attention of the portly Mexican bartender with the big handlebar mustache.  He looked over at her appraisingly, taking in her finely-boned, almost aristocratic face, her long pitch-black hair, amethyst eyes, and ivory skin, and once he’d put all of the individual features together, his eyes widened so much they nearly fell out of their sockets.  Raven smiled as he stammered and stuttered, extremely happy at the further evidence that her legend hadn’t fallen into disrepair.  The people of this part of the Mexico were quite good at preserving the important details in life, it seemed.  After nearly a full minute of trying to regain his composure, during which Raven rested her elbows on the bar and her chin on her hands so that she could better watch his conniptions, the bartender timidly stepped over to her, bowing his head in a respectful manner.  “What . . . how may I help you?” he asked in a rural dialect Spanish dialect, trying hard to keep his voice from quivering.  Sweat stood out on his forehead, which was of considerable, as he had quite the receding hairline, and she could taste the fear radiating out from him.

            “Your best whiskey, my friend,” she replied in a dialect that matched his perfectly.  Unlike some vampires, she was able to drink all of the alcohol she wanted . . . she wasn’t totally certain, but she was pretty sure that it was due to her hummingbird-like metabolism, but the actual reasons behind her ability to drink straight alcohol didn’t much matter, as it meant she could enjoy the taste of any liquor she wanted, not needing to drink it through the blood of a mortal, as most other vampires did.  She didn’t suffer any ill effects from imbibing, as her body metabolized the alcohol so quickly that it was like she was drinking nothing at all, but then again, she found the whole concept of drinking or taking substances in order to alter one’s consciousness stupid and wasteful, so that if drinking alcohol had caused her to become even slightly tipsy, she wouldn’t have done it.  No, she drank it because she liked the taste.  While alcohol could never taste as divine as blood, it had its merits, especially the stuff that went down like silk and burnt in her stomach like napalm . . . she found some alcohol to be interesting to drink, so thus she drank it, pure and simple.

            The bartender, to his credit, didn’t hesitate for a moment, and hurried away to fetch her his best whiskey.  “One moment, please, and you will have the best I have to offer,” he promised before he scurried down to the other end of the bar, and she nodded at him pleasantly, and then promptly forgot about him for the time being as she turned in her chair and surveyed the interior of Fernando’s.

            It was just as she remembered it, with its high ceiling that was tall enough that the light provided by the warm electric bulbs didn’t quite reach it all the way, so that it was wreathed in shadow, making it seem even farther up than it really was.  Beyond that, the place was much the same as any other lower-class bar that could be found in Mexico, though she thought that the high ceiling really helped add something special to the place, made it seem bigger and better than it really was.  She also liked the lighting, which was much more amber and natural in tone than the fluorescent white that kept cropping up in bars she went to . . . she hated those blasted things and despised it when bar owners were too cheap to be able to get some real lighting as opposed to the crap one went out and picked up because it cost less.  Yes, it cost a bit more to get more natural lighting, and it probably wasn’t as efficient either, but blast it, good ambience doesn’t come for free, and it’s worth the price one has to pay for it.  Fernando’s was relatively full tonight, with a good amount of people sitting at the various tables scattered around the floor or playing pool on one of the three tables that the bar boasted.  There was no place for a band to play if a band was so inclined to perform here, which was a loss in Raven’s book, but the jukebox was able to belt out a good amount of noise to put down a nice layer of musical sound on top of the constant thrum and babble of the various conversations going on throughout the establishment.

The aforementioned babble of conversation was picking back up to full swing again, as it had quieted down a bit when she’d entered . . . there were enough locals here to know the stories of La Vampira Loca, and when they’d laid eyes upon her, they knew the tales were true.  Several of them, mostly older folk, had left, probably to go home and hide under their beds, but the young ones had all stayed on, most likely to see what she was all about and whether or not the old ones were pulling their legs when telling the legends.  She didn’t mind that, for it was the nature of young people and always had been, even since the time when she was mortal.  As the odds were good that something would go down before her visit was over, which always seemed to happen to her, Raven was confident that these young people here tonight would have a good story to add to the legend with.  As for the rest of the occupants, they were truckers, both Mexican and American, and they could really have cared less about the legends and what the locals had to say about this woman dressed in black jeans, boots, leather jacket, and a black Doors t-shirt.  All they saw was a lean, attractive woman that was shorter and smaller than they were, so they assumed that she would like to spend some quality time with them, whether by her choice or by force.  After all, a woman that walks into a trucker bar by herself looking like that must be asking for some attention!  Raven knew how the minds of men worked, and that was why she was certain that Fernando’s would see some action tonight, perhaps sooner than later, if the way the large American trucker sitting on the stool next to her was an indication.  Apparently the way the bartender had been affected by her presence meant nothing to him . . . well, that was his mistake, and Raven certainly wouldn’t feel sorry for him if she had to hurt him.

“So baby,” said the big, burly trucker, who looked a great deal like the movie character Grizzly Adams, as a matter of fact, asked after a few moments, as he leaned over towards her, breathing the scent of a liquor that most definitely was not the best whiskey in the house on her, “You gonna go back to my truck with me tonight?”  He then put his hand on her posterior and gave it a squeeze.

Raven’s elbow shot out from the top of the bar and crashed against the side of the trucker’s head, jellifying his brains instantly, and the remaining energy behind the elbow flung him backwards off the stool a good ten feet, where he crashed against the floor in a twitching heap.  Conversation had instantly ceased, and Raven turned in her stool to look at all of the shocked faces eyeing her and the body on the floor.  She smiled at them all and nodded in a very pleasant manner, just has she had the bartender, to show that she wasn’t an unreasonable individual.  She just happened to have a certain set of rules that she lived by and certain standards of conduct she held people to, and if someone thought they were going to be cute and violate the standards of conduct, they were going to have to pay the price.  All of this was communicated to them through the look in her eyes and the set of her face, and it seemed as though just about everybody picked up on it right away.  Cause the lady no trouble, she’ll give you no trouble, but if you cross her, you die.  She saw some flashes of challenge in the eyes of some of the larger truckers, but seeing as how the Grizzly Adams-type fellow was well over six feet tall and probably weighed over 350 pounds, she figured that they’d think twice about messing with her . . . anything else would have been stupid.  She enjoyed the wide-eyed manner in which the young locals were regarding her . . . this would definitely help to build upon her legend in these parts, and if any of the other truckers decided to cause trouble, then she’d just add to things even further.  Turning her eyes towards the back of the bar she noticed one of the patrons, who was sitting in one of the corner tables (which were more shadowy than the rest) wasn’t looking in her direction at all, though he was sitting with his back to the corner, so that he was facing in her direction.  He was instead lightly scratching at the surface of the tabletop with one of his fingers, paying her no heed at all.  Her eyes narrowed . . . now this was unusual, not to mention interesting.  Maybe the potential trouble in the air she was sensing was coming from him . . .  He had the right demeanor to cause and handle a great deal of trouble, she decided, but further musing was interrupted by the arrival of the bartender.

He set the bottle and shotglass down on the bar in front of her when she turned back around, then bowed his head again.  “Forgive my lateness,” he said in his rural Spanish, “I needed to get this from my office . . . it is a special home-brewed whiskey that a friend gave to me long ago.  It is the best I have to offer you.”

Raven picked up the bottle, which was adorned with no label but halfway filled with amber fluid, and swished it around a bit, deciding she liked the looks of it.  “Forgiveness is not needed, my friend,” she replied, taking the cork from the bottle and pouring herself a shot.  “You were only seeing to my wishes, and for that I cannot fault you.  Your generosity is to be commended.”  She knocked the shot back with practiced ease, letting the liquid slide down her throat, where it started a considerable fire in her stomach, one that she liked very much.  It was almost enough to make her cough once, and that spoke highly of the quality of this whiskey indeed . . . most other drinks only tickled her insides at best: this one actually gave her a good kick.  The bartender looked at her anxiously, wringing his hands, most likely remembering the tale of the bartender whom she’d thrown across the room and then thrashed the daylights out of when he’d tried to give her rotgut instead of quality whiskey.  When she smiled and said, “Bueno,” he nearly collapsed with relief.

“Muchas gracias,” he said, bowing his head to her once again.

“No, my friend, thank you,” she said, and then poured herself a second shot.  She replaced the cork in the bottle and handled it back to him.  “You are a good man, I do not want to take all of your best.  Keep that for yourself and bring me a bottle of your usual.”

“Are you certain?  Do not let me keep you from—“ the bartender began, but ceased immediately when Raven held up her hand.

Raven said, “I like to enjoy a man’s generosity, and when he is a good man, I will not abuse that generosity.  Enjoy the rest for yourself because you have earned it, and I will take the regular whiskey of the house for myself.”  Just when the bartender began to move away, Raven added, “Sorry about the mess.”

The bartender peered over the bar at the body of the big trucker, which had now quit twitching, and shook his head.  “It is no trouble.  I know people who can take care of problems like that . . . with the truckers, problems come often.”  Raven noted with some amusement that nobody else in the bar had even made a move towards the corpse . . . they were probably afraid she might object to someone doing anything to it, in case she wanted to claim it for a prize.  However, she had no use for a dead body, so she’d leave that up to the bartender’s capable hands.  She liked this fellow a lot better than the sleazy scumbag she’d tossed around in the late 1960’s . . . he’d tried to cheat her out of his best whiskey, and had acted as though she was nothing at all, ignoring her when she came to the bar despite the protests of an older fellow at the bar who remembered her from a previous visit.  She’d given that big-mouthed lout a good pounding that had left him missing several teeth and had given him two broken arms, not to mention several broken ribs.  She would have killed him, as he was an ignorant jackass of a man, but she preferred to leave him alive so that he could give firsthand accounts of what it was liked to have his ass kicked by the legendary La Vampira Loca.  As she knocked back the second shot and let it slip down like quicksilver and then light up in her stomach, she reflected that she could be very well accused of vanity.  But did she care?  Not at all.  When one was over a thousand years old, one was allowed to get away with any eccentricity they pleased, especially when they had the raw power to back it up, so Raven did as Raven wanted.

The bartender brought back a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, which suited her just fine.  After sitting it down on the bar in front of her, he asked, “Is there anything else I can get you?  Anything in this bar that you desire you may have.”

She graced him with a very genuine smile.  “I thank you for you kindness and hospitality, and I need nothing further from you.  You may resume your business as you had before, I am very well taken care of.  Muchas gracias.”

The bartender returned her smile for the first time, then bowed his head respectfully.  “If there is anything further you require, simply ask and it shall be yours.”  He stood there for a moment, as if expecting a dismissal, and to humor him, Raven made a motion with her hand for him to go on about his business.  He hurried away, leaving Raven to herself and her own thoughts.  She opened up the bottle, which was completely full and new, and poured herself a shot.  This one didn’t go down or stay down as nicely as the previous two had, but it was still nice, nonetheless.

She heard sounds coming from her right and behind her, and when she glanced back she saw two young men, in their early twenties at the most, struggling to remove the body of the trucker who’d dared to fondle her backside less than ten minutes ago.  The task wasn’t easy, but they were managing well enough, and when they saw her looking at them, she saw respect in their eyes . . . after all, the two of them were having a hard time simply moving the man, and she’d sent him flying backwards for ten feet with just a slam of her elbow.  “You’re lucky that rigor mortis hasn’t set in yet, otherwise you two would have a much rougher time of things,” she observed, and when they both looked at her with wide eyes and nodded their heads furiously in agreement, she broke out laughing.

After she’d downed a few more shots, she heard a voice at her side, and when she turned, she saw a waitress standing next to her, looking more than a little nervous.  “Excuse me,” said the waitress.  “I don’t mean to bother you, but—“

“Well, seeing as how you’ve already bothered me,” Raven said, making the waitress cringe, “Let’s hear it.  What’s your story?”

“The men at the table over there,” said the waitress, pointing at a table in the other corner of the bar where three scruffy-looking men sat, “Wish to speak with you.”  When Raven’s eyes narrowed, the waitress’ eyes widened.  “I told them to leave you be, I really did!  But they would not take no for an answer!”  She held up her arm, and Raven saw that there were new bruises in the shape of fingers on her forearm, which annoyed her.  She hated it when men bullied women like that, she really and truly did.  She could be considered a bully by some, true enough, but she never dealt out any punishment to mortals or other vampires that they didn’t have it coming . . . she could even be harsh sometimes, true as well, but all one had to do to survive her was to play by her rules and she wouldn’t raise a finger.  Call her an egomaniac that got off a little too much on the power she had, call her spoiled, but that didn’t change the fact that she was an extremely powerful being who liked to have things her own way, and when people fucked around with her, they got what they asked for.  After all, when you’re dealing with a person that can rip you in two with one hand, isn’t it just wise to go along with them and not screw around needlessly?

As for the waitress, she had not wanted to do what the men said, yes, but she had a damned good reason for not wanting to obey them: Raven.  What if the vampire were a screaming lunatic that would kill the messenger for bringing bad news?  The poor lady could’ve gotten killed!  And yet they continued to harass her, to the point of bruising her arm with what looked like a steely grip, uncaring of whether or not the waitress would get torn to pieces or not.  “No, no, it’s all right,” Raven said to the waitress.  “You had no choice, I understand.  I’ll deal with them, and you stay as far away from them as you can.”  Like the bartender, the waitress waited for a signal from her to leave, and Raven again made a motion with her hand, after which the waitress moved away and stayed on the other side of the establishment for the remainder of the evening.

Raven grabbed her bottle of whiskey, then got up and began to walk across the bar, heading towards the table where the three men sat.  There was something about them that seemed familiar to her, though she didn’t dwell on it, as she knew that it would come to her in time . . . things like that always did, and she trusted herself and her abilities completely, so she didn’t let it worry her.  She wouldn’t have thrived for so long if she wasn’t a damned competent individual, after all.

A heated and very loud argument was taking place between two very rough-looking men as she was walking across the floor, to the extent that one of the men pulled a knife on the other, and just as that happened, Raven stopped and upended the table with a quick and vicious motion of her hand, making it spin through the air like a poker chip, tossing their bottles and plates all over the place.  “SHUT UP!” she screamed at them, baring her fangs and letting her eyes glow bright red.  “Nobody wants to hear it!”  She lunged forward at them, hissing loudly, and they both ran for the hills, screaming for their mothers.  She grabbed a chair with the hand that wasn’t holding the bottle and threw it at the one that had pulled the knife, and it hit him just as he was going out the door, and the momentum behind the chair picked him up and launched him through it . . . the door slammed neatly behind him, and they were both gone.  The people whose table had been wrecked by the upended table also ran, as did several others sitting nearby, and Raven threw back her head and laughed mightily.  “Raven, old girl, you’ve still got your touch,” she said to herself, terribly pleased with how this evening was going.

After the minor fracas had settled down and everybody had figured out that Raven hadn’t gone into a monstrous killing rampage, things resumed as they were before, and she continued on her way over to the table occupied by the trio of troublesome-looking men.  As she neared the table, they all watched her expectantly, and while she detected trepidation in them, there wasn’t any of the hardcore fear that she could feel from the mortals in the room.  Then she realized why these three didn’t fear her in the same way as the others and why there was something sickeningly familiar about them, and when she came to that revelation, their forms shifted and melted before her eyes, changing into grotesque mockeries of humans, and she saw them for what they were.  Their skin was yellowish and leathery, while their features were pointed and predatory, with yellow eyes set deep into their heads, which reminded her of the heads of rodents, sans the ears.  They looked almost unearthly with their heads and faces, though their bodies were mostly human, only covered with the same loathsome skin and tended more towards being lean and very wiry . . . it was a mercy on the eyes when they concealed themselves in telepathically-woven disguises.  Their telepathic cloaking abilities had fooled her when she wasn’t expecting them, yes, but now that her instincts had given her reason to be suspicious, Raven’s vampiric sharpness enabled her to see past the mentally-projected disguises they wore here in this mortal bar, to see that they were the savage, degenerated, misshapen kin of her own kind . . . screechers.

*     *     *

            His heart raced as he watched her cross the bar towards the table of vampires.  He couldn’t believe that she was here!  He’d come looking for vampires, sure enough . . . after all, he’d tracked these three since the sun had set several hours ago, and had fully expected trouble.  If he hadn’t been expecting trouble, there wouldn’t be several vials of his specially-brewed holy water inside his long black trenchcoat, and the fold-up crossbow would have been out in the car instead of under said coat, but he wasn’t expecting trouble of this sort.  He’d been certain it had been her when she’d walked into the bar and from the way the locals had watched her, and as soon as she’d taken the trucker down with a single elbow, things had been clinched.  He’d been out to take down a group of three that were plenty dangerous on their own, but now he’d ran into something that was more dangerous than his original quarry, even with the three of them put together: Raven.

            He’d seen that she was like a legend among the people that lived in this area, as well as other places scattered around the world, and she was very much a legend among the Sons of Sol and other guilds of vampire hunters . . . the vampiress that was purportedly impossible to bring down, the one that laughed at hunters and danced around their attacks and attempts at killing her as easily as a ballerina moved across a dance floor.  She’d been around since before the Sons of Sol had been founded four hundred years ago, and there were certain tales out there that seemed to point to her existence since before the turn of the millennium in 1000 A.D., long before that . . . it was suspected she was nearly two thousand years old, a being of excessive strength and resourcefulness, defeating every foe that got in her way, immortal and mortal alike, as though they were nothing more than midnight amusements put there for her pleasure.  It was said that there was one vampire in the world that she combated with at various points in time, and that he was the only one that could fight her to a standstill, but his whereabouts were continually unknown.  Where Raven sought to draw the attention of simple folk and strike fear into the hearts of other vampires, building herself to legendary proportions, he was a complete enigma, and nothing was known of him save for the reports of several battles between the two in the four hundred years since the creation of the Sons of Sol.  He was a total mystery to everybody except to Raven, who herself was hard enough to locate . . . he still couldn’t believe that she was here.

            While the prospect of locking horns with a legend was quite exciting for him (none of the other Sons of Sol currently living had ever confronted Raven face to face), there was also a great deal of trepidation entwined with the excitement.  After all, if what all of the legends and reports of the past said about her were true, she was nigh on invincible by herself, and now she was with three of those savage vampires that liked to roam the fringes of civilization down in Mexico.  Because she hadn’t attacked them right away, he assumed that she had some sort of business with them, which didn’t surprise him; it was a known fact that “regular” vampires occasionally had dealings with the savage Mexican breed, though the regulars most definitely didn’t hold any amount of love towards the savages, and would kill them en masse if they thought that the savages were getting too great in number and were getting too cocky for their own good.  He had no idea of the origins of the savages and what their relationship with the regulars were, and he didn’t much care at the moment . . . whatever that relationship was, at the moment it was peaceful, as Raven had sat down at the table and, after a brief outburst, had begun to speak with them.  This wasn’t good at all.  The three savages, and any other friends they might have skulking around, he could handle, no sweat, but Raven . . .

            He leaned back in the seat at the table in the corner he’d taken, diagonally across from the trio of vampires and off to the right of the brooding man in black sitting in the other corner, and stroked his closely-clipped beard thoughtfully, trying to find the solution that lay in this muddle somewhere.  He was one of the finest hunters the Sons of Sol had to offer, and he’d pulled victory over the vampires out of the hat on more than one occasion, when all had looked hopeless.  Fighting the vampires and killing them wasn’t impossible, just as long as the hunter remembered that no matter how strong, fast, and smart they thought they were, the vampire was better, so they thus had to rely on their natural wits, instincts, and the tools of the trade, as well as anything else that might be available.  A vampire hunter survived by his resourcefulness and ability to make the best use of himself, and the hunter that forgot that was sure to fail.

There were those that followed very different methods and had wildly varying codes of conduct and honor, such as the Holy Order of Nightslayers, but it all boiled down to the same thing: resourcefulness.  It just so happened that the Sons of Sol were among the best, if not the best, when it came to the tools of the trade, and the Sons made full use of the innate inventiveness of the human mind to manufacture some of the most advanced weaponry and items to use in the fights against vampires . . . the Sons were a highly-technological guild, abandoning the old superstitious groundings that many guilds still followed to this day in favor of a much more scientific view of the vampire problem and the solutions needed to bring it to a close.  There were others, like the Holy Order of Nightslayers, who still viewed things as they had in medieval times, as a struggle between the forces of God and Satan, with them cast in the role of God’s followers, while the vampires were the spawn of Satan . . . he would have laughed at them, if not for the fact they packed a considerable amount of strength, not to mention dangerous fanaticism, beneath their ridiculous metaphysical trappings.  The Nightslayers took it that it was their holy duty to eradicate vampires from the face of the Earth, and if anybody got in their way, they would be treated with the same brutality as the vampires . . . not only that, but the Nightslayers didn’t care one iota if innocent people, children included, were killed in the process of hunting down and destroying a vampire.  The Nightslayers saw it as their divine mission to kill vampires, and if people needed to be used or killed in order to fulfill that mission, so be it.  The Sons of Sol looked upon themselves as defenders of humanity and that it was their duty to preserve the lives of the innocent as much as they possibly could . . . a Son of Sol would actually drop pursuit of a vampire if a situation arose where there were people who needed help, and they tried to keep combat with vampires as far away from innocents as possible, so that nobody but the vampire and the hunter stood a chance of being hurt.  Needless to say, the Sons and Nightslayers didn’t get along very well, and he was glad that no Nightslayer was apparent at the moment, as that would have only served to complicate matters further, and they were bad enough as it was.

Raven seemed quite interested in whatever it was that the other vampires had to say, and she listened intently in between taking sips from her bottle of whiskey.  When she started to laugh out loud, tossing her long, pitch-black hair back in her throes of amusement, most of the occupants of the bar exchanged nervous glances with one another, and even the three vampires she was sitting with look a trifle unsettled.  A dark little smile played across the vampire hunter’s lips: he most definitely wasn’t the only one that knew she was by and far the most dangerous being in here . . . all the more reason that she needed to be taken down.  As he watched her, he was grateful for the comforting weight of the perfectly-balanced and weighted titanium stakes he carried beneath his trenchcoat, and he hoped that they’d be good enough when the time came.  But the time wouldn’t come at all unless he had a good plan, which he still lacked at the moment . . . one of the things he’d learned a long time ago as a vampire hunter was patience, and he had enough confidence in himself, his abilities, and his tools that he knew he wouldn’t jump the gun prematurely.  He just had to wait for the right moment for his opportunity to present itself, and he would pounce; Raven had run wild for nearly two millennia, if the stories on her were accurate, and she would wait for a few more minutes, if need be.

The dark smile grew a bit wider when the vampiress got up from the table, still chuckling, and began to walk across the bar towards the brooding man sitting the corner off to his left . . . an idea had just formed.  Yes, if all played out well, this would be Raven’s last hurrah . . . he wondered if how the people would react if he were to take the legendary Raven down right here in this very bar.  Perhaps that would make him a part of the local mythology, eh?

*     *     *

            Raven pulled out chair and dropped her ass into it, sitting down directly across the from the silent man in black that had been contemplating his bottle of whiskey instead of watching her earlier.  When she sat down, he didn’t even look up.  He held a shotglass between his fingers and idly turned it around and around on the table top, seeming not to notice her presence, which annoyed her a tad, but made her very curious at the same time.  Her empathic abilities told her that he knew she was there, from the very tiny thrill of surprise he’d felt when she’d approached, but beyond that, he showed no worry or fear towards her.  She felt in him a mixture of grey bleakness, bottled-up rage of tremendous intensity, and heavy grief, and she tilted her head as she looked at his strong features, growing more curious by the second.  She wasn’t used to being ignored by anybody, unless she wanted to be, and she found the sensation to be interesting, though somewhat vexing.  The vampiress took a swig from her bottle, waiting for him to look up at her, to say something, to acknowledge her in any way, but as the seconds ticked past, he did nothing save look at the empty shotglass he held between his fingers.  Raven ground her teeth together.  Annoying mortal!

            “We have summoned you because we want you to kill someone for us.  You will be rewarded greatly,” the screecher she assumed was in charge had said to her when she’d sat down at their table.  No preamble, no greeting, they’d gotten right to the point and hadn’t fooled around, which she appreciated, but their singular lack of courtesy quite frankly pissed her off.  She’d smashed her fist against the table several times and had snarled at them, finally causing real fear to rise in their bestial yellow eyes, informing them that if they were to speak with her, they’d show her the proper respect or they’d die.  Plain and simple.  Play by Raven’s Rules or don’t play at all, because you’re liable to wind up facedown, waiting to become the meal of the local buzzards.

After her outburst, she’d set her bottle on the table and had gone utterly silent and motionless for a few moments, letting them sweat for a while . . . the fear level continued to rise, and she’d enjoyed the way their beady little eyes flicked from one another back to her.  She knew full well from years of experimenting and fooling around with the psychology of people that when a period of dead peace followed a time of quick violence, people tended to get anxious, which was exactly what happened to her “friends,” who were uncertain whether she was going to kill them or not.  She loved moments like that, when she’d only made a few motions and whoever she was dealing with realized that she held their life in the clutches of her slim-fingered hands . . . it was moments like that which people remembered for their entire lives, moments like that which became the stuff of myth and legend.  “Nobody,” she whispered, her amethyst eyes bright and promising great devastation, “Summons Raven.”

She’d said nothing more, letting that sink in for a few moments, then informed them, “I came because there might have been some amusement in this for me, not because I felt compelled to come to any summons of yours . . . the sooner you realize that you’re nothing to me, the sooner we’ll get along.”  Then she’d smiled, showing off her brilliantly white ivory fangs, which were far more impressive than the yellowed, disgusting fangs that the screechers possessed.  “Now, who do you wish for me to kill, and what can you possibly give me that I can’t already get for myself?”

They’d told her who they wanted her to kill, and she’d laughed.

Whoever this annoying mortal sitting in front of her at the moment, he was a tough customer, she had to admit that.  According to what the head screecher, the one dressed in the soiled green flannel shirt and grease-stained jeans, had told her, this fellow here was responsible for destroying one of their best feeding spots and killing dozens upon dozens of other screechers in the process about a week ago.  There had been a girl with him, as well, but she’d disappeared without a trace the following day, leaving only this mortal for them to pursue, which they had with a vengeance.  He’d been traveling with several other mortals, following behind them in his car, and they’d been able to track him easily enough when the sun went down, as the screechers had more than a few mortal stooges working for them in and around the countryside.  After a confrontation at a hotel, the rest of the party, composed of fat Mexican businessmen, it seemed, had been killed, and this one had still survived . . . he’d fought the screechers with everything he had, with his guns, makeshift stakes, glass bottles, he’d fought with anything he got his hands on, and he’d won.  He’d killed well over a dozen screechers, fighting with a fury that the sole survivor of the massacre claimed was like a madness, and then he’d fled into the night with his car.  They’d tracked him as he moved across Mexico, until he’d come here, and these three had come into the bar to keep an eye on him while other screechers were positioned in and around the bar, with the hopes that one of them would have been able to kill him before he got the better of them.  Raven had found a great deal of amusement in this.

“You’re afraid of a lone mortal?” she’d cackled, taking another swig of her whiskey.  “And you call yourselves vampires!  I’ve yet to meet a mortal that I fear, and I’m only one, while you’re many!  Granted, you’re all a bunch of a substandard monsters, incapable of much of anything but petty killing, but that’s beside the point . . .” said Raven, watching the three carefully, hoping that one of them would take issue with her.  They didn’t.  “The point is that you’re offering me something to kill this big bad mortal for you, and I want to know what you can give me that I couldn’t just take for myself.”

“We’ve heard that you’ve an affection for items of rare beauty and great value, if only for the pleasure of possessing them for a brief time before disposing of them in any manner you choose,” said the head screecher in his oily, almost hissing voice, and Raven nodded, as it was true enough.  “We can offer you the Vampire’s Eye.”

Raven had made an appreciative whistle.  The Vampire’s Eye was a rare and beautiful treasure indeed . . . a flawless opal a little smaller than a golf ball with an large emerald set into it, which made the iris, and set into the emerald was a brilliant ruby, which formed the pupil.  Gold was shot through the opal so that it looked as though it were the veins of the eyeball, and everything was set in so perfectly and polished down so expertly that the Eye was reputed to be absolutely smooth and seamless, even to a vampire’s ultra-sensitive fingertips.  The Vampire’s Eye was an ancient artifact, supposedly originating from Egypt sometime during the days of the Middle Kingdom, and it had bounced around to every continent on the globe since then . . . it was one of those items that was spoken of in whispers, an item that had been possessed by many people in the past, and had been handed off in cases of theft, death, lost bets, and countless other ways.  Raven loved items like that, she loved to carry about something that had so much history on it, especially if it was older than she was, and she also loved being able to add herself to the legend surrounding such items . . . all in all, owning such an artifact was always a very rewarding experience to her, and she’d often go to great lengths to get such things for herself.

“The Vampire’s Eye for killing a single mortal?” Raven had slowly, raking all three screechers with her bright eyes.  “That sounds like an awful lot for so little . . . how do I know you’ve even got the Vampire’s Eye?”

“Look into our minds,” the head screecher had said.  “I know that you’re capable of it, tell me if I’m lying.”

She’d nodded approvingly.  They knew of her abilities, despite their earlier ignorance of how to properly greet her, and when she’d brushed her mind against theirs, there had indeed been utter certainty in their possession of the Eye.  However, that still didn’t quite account for their eagerness to give her such an item in exchange for killing the mortal.  She’d asked as much.

“That mortal has caused us a great deal of trouble recently and has been responsible for the deaths of many of our kind,” the head screecher had told her.  “He is difficult, dangerous, and we wish to dispose of him with as few deaths of our fellows as possible . . . the death toll is already considerable, and if this can be done without any more casualties on our hands, we will take that way.”

“And that’s where I come in.”

“Exactly.  We saw you in the bar and thought that perhaps you might enjoy a challenge while helping us out at the same time,” said the screecher, a smile crossing his dark lips.

“But the Vampire’s Eye . . . such a treasure for a simple mortal,” Raven had said, shaking her head and taking another swig from her bottle.

“He is not just any mortal!” the head screecher had hissed at her, slapping his hand against the tabletop to emphasize his words.  That action had gotten him a very deadly look from Raven, and while he’d withdrawn his hand, the vehemence of his tone had remained.  “He has killed dozens of us, scores of us, and has ruined a sacred place of ours, and we want revenge upon him!  We don’t even care if it’s us that actually kill him, as long as he dies and we get his body!  Kill him for us, please!”  Raven had been about to kill the screecher for his demand, but had relented at the last second due to the fact that he’d added ‘please’ to it.  She’d wondered if he’d have been surprised to find out that a single syllable had saved his life, and even thought about asking him, but had decided that it wasn’t worth the effort.  Ironies and twists of fate were lost upon such barbaric types.

It had pleased her, though, that they fully intended to give her the Vampire’s Eye . . . she was more than well-known enough among them that they knew they couldn’t screw her over.  She’d pushed deeply against their minds, looking for deception, and had found none, only an overwhelming desire to see the mortal dead.  She could understand where they were coming from: it would be something of an embarrassment when a lone mortal, or even two, were able to get the better of a bunch of vampires, and if she were in their situation, which she knew would never happen, she would have wanted that mortal killed at any cost.  Still, she’d found the situation highly amusing, and had taunted them about it a bit.

“A lone mortal, killing so many of your kind,” she’d said, grinning faintly.  “And you call yourselves vampires,” she’d repeated, “If you were truly capable, your friends would have had that mortal and his comrade dead from the word go, but instead you’ve proven that you’re incompetent . . . I should refuse to help you just on general principles.  If you’re all so incapable that dozens of you can’t bring him down by yourselves, then by rights I should let him continue to be your problem for as long as he lives . . . in fact, I should probably just kill the whole sorry lot of you right here and now and spare him the trouble, as he’s most likely doing the world a favor by wiping out weaklings like yourselves.  What do you think of that?  How about I just kill you all now so that you don’t have to worry about him at all?”

She’d asked the question in a very pleasant, friendly tone, and had let it hang in the air for a long stretch of time, as she and the three screechers had stared across the table at one another.  Their lives were plainly in her hands at that moment, and she was letting them know it.  There may have been other screechers about, but none of them would have been able to get to her in time to save the lives of these three if she’d decided to kill them at that very moment, and they knew it.  “Well?” she’d probed softly.

“Please, do not kill us,” said the head screecher, though she knew that it nearly killed him to say that to her.  “We will give you the Vampire’s Eye if you do this for us, and we will never trouble you again, we promise you,” he’d said, his yellow, deep-set eyes glowering in anger and embarrassment.  Raven had kept her eyes locked on his, not moving a muscle until he was ready to explode from the tension, and then she abruptly took a swig from her whiskey, the sudden movement making the three screechers start in their seats.

After downing the swallow, Raven had smiled at them.  “You’ll give me the Vampire’s Eye, plus a lot more than that, once I’m done.  Quoth Raven, nevermore.”  With that, she’d stood up without a further word to the screechers, and had made her way over to the table where the troublesome mortal sat.  The troublesome mortal who still hadn’t acknowledged her yet.

She took a pull from her bottle, keeping her eyes on the mortal as he fiddled with his shotglass, waiting for him to say something.  He wasn’t a bad-looking man by mortal or immortal means, with very strong, even handsome, features, though she thought that his hair was cut a bit too short, not terribly much longer than the length of a crewcut.  Of course, Raven had always preferred long hair, thinking that virtually everybody looked better with long hair than short, so she chalked that up to personal prejudice.  He was dressed almost entirely in black, with a jacket buttoned halfway up over a black vest and white shirt, the latter of which was looking quite dirty and used at the moment, as was the jacket, though it hid it a bit better because of its dark color.  It looked like he’d made at least a token effort to clean himself up, and while his tanned skin could have been cleaner, he wasn’t filthy, either, and he didn’t give off an offensive smell like so many mortals did when they didn’t bathe regularly.  She also saw the windings of a tribal-style tattoo on the left side of his neck, and she thought it very becoming, especially for a mortal, as most of them wouldn’t know how to tastefully have a tattoo done if their life depended on it.  She studied him for a few moments, then went back to waiting.

Finally, after over five minutes had passed, he set his shotglass down, looked up at her with the most penetrating set of eyes she’d ever seen in a mortal, and said, “I’ve had a really, really bad week, and unless you’ve got something relevant to me and my situation to say, I suggest you get the fuck out of here.”  His voice was as strong as his features, with a bit of smoothness to it, and there was a promise of great danger in his brown eyes that Raven instantly liked.

She raised a single eyebrow.  She would have killed somebody else for saying that, but he was different . . . she already knew that he was formidable, according to what the screechers had said, and now, from what he’d said and the way he’d said it, with the strength of conviction behind it, she’d decided that he was someone she didn’t not want to kill, at least not yet.  No, this one was far too interesting alive, and anybody that had wiped out that many screechers in so short a time couldn’t be all that bad, not at all.  “It might be of some interest to you that the three gentleman at the table across the room wish to see you dead because of some, shall we say, trouble that you’ve caused them.”

“And what the fuck does that have to do with you?” he demanded, now fully focused on her, a sharp contrast to mere moments before.

Raven smiled.  “They’ve hired me to kill you,” she said simply, and his eyes narrowed to slits but never left her own for even a millisecond.  When he’d set his shotglass down at his first words to her, his hand had gone under the table, and now she heard the unmistakable click of a hammer being cocked back.  Her smile got even bigger.  “Go right ahead and shoot me, it won’t do you one bit of good . . . bullets may hurt them, but all they do to me is sting, unless you get lucky enough to hit me in the right spot, and I guarantee that you don’t stand a chance in hell of doing that at the moment.  But go ahead and shoot me, if it makes you feel better.”  Now she gave a little spice to her grin by allowing her ivory fangs to extend down into place right before his eyes.

He didn’t move a centimeter save for several twitches in the muscle by his right eye, and the wave of hate she felt burst out from him was so palpable she probably could have reached up and grabbed it out of the air, had she felt like it.  “Another fucking vampire,” he hissed, his voice dripping with rage.  “How fucking many are you?”

“Are you incapable of saying a sentence without using the word ‘fuck’ or some derivative thereof in it?” Raven idly asked him, frowning slightly.  “I admit that I don’t have the cleanest mouth in the world, but really.”  His eye twitched again, harder this time, and she decided not to press the issue.  “Yes, I’m a vampire, but no, I’m not one of them,” she told him, giving her head a toss back towards the table of screechers.  “They’re degenerate scum, degraded monsters that vampires like myself only tolerate marginally at best.  I don’t hide behind telepathic masks to go out into the rest of the world, I am what you see before you, and the only reason I spoke to them just now was to amuse myself.”

“And just who are you?” he asked, still not moving, ready to fire at any second if he thought he had to.  Raven was pleased that he’d managed to be able to get out a sentence without the ‘f’ word in it . . . there was hope for him yet.

“I,” she said imperiously, her voice swelling and filling with pride, “Am Raven, Huntress of the Night, and legend around the world.  I am a vampiress without equal, and have brought down entire cities in my time . . . woe be it to anybody who crosses me.”

His look didn’t change for a second.  “Never heard of you.”

“You haven’t been talking to the right people,” she informed him.  “But now you’ve heard of me, so you’re no longer ignorant.  Ask any of the locals around here about La Vampira Loca, and they’ll all point to me.  Ask any of the locals in countless villages and small towns around the world about me, and they’ll tell you . . . you’d be amazed at how many tales I’ve contributed to or have been a part of during my years.”

The mortal didn’t look impressed.  “I’ve got much fucking better things to do with my time than scaring slack-jawed yokels and then calling myself a fucking legend because of it,” he said.  “If you were really a legend, then you’d be all over the fucking place, with your name in lights, and everybody on the face of this godforsaken world would quake in fear of you, instead of just a bunch of mongoloid villagers hiding from you in their cute little huts.”

Raven frowned at him.  “The modern world doesn’t know how to treat its legends, the media is more of a vampire than I, or anybody else who drinks blood, can ever claim to be.  It shines its cold, uncaring light on anything that looks vaguely interesting, analyzes it to death, splashes its images and sounds all over everything, and goes into overkill on it until it becomes everyday, with everything special sucked completely out of it, and people cease to care.  Out here, amongst the simple people, they know how to treat a legend, they know how to respect a legend, and while they may fear the legend, they love it, they feel special when they can say they’ve seen it, and it gets passed down through the generations, and while decades may pass, the legend is remembered, and it becomes a part of the people and their heritage, and through that remembrance, I can achieve an immortality far beyond what even my timeless body can manage.  If I were to show myself to the media and try to become a legend that way, I would be forgotten within a year, shoved aside when a man engages in sex with his sixteen year-old babysitter.  A true legend cannot come to being under the eye of the camera, only through the hearts and minds of those who care, and if you think me a fool for doing what I do, so be it, just so long as you know that I am legend, forever defiant of the crass ways of the modern world and the lifesucking media . . . I was there long before the Internet, the radio, television and photo cameras, I was there when all people had were their words and their drawings and paintings, and I will be here forever after, because even if you kill my body, the legend of Raven will live on, and nobody, nobody can kill that.”

The man regarded her for a long time, still not moving from his position.  Then he said, “In that case, I take it you’ll find the exploits of myself and my late brother to be little, if anything.”

She tilted her head at him again.  “Do tell.”  So he did.

He told her of the robbery, the deaths, the kidnappings, then of the bar down over the border, where he, his brother Richie, and the Fuller family were to wait out the night to pay off Carlos, head down to El Rey, and get their freedom.  That bar, which was to have been their sanctuary for the night, had killed all of them except for himself and the Fuller girl, Kate, when they’d been overrun by the vampires.  At the conclusion of the tale, Raven had asked him the name of the bar, and her eyes had grown in size when he’d told her.  “The Titty Twister,” she repeated, shaking her head.  “I was planning on destroying that disgusting trap sometime soon.”

“Well, I wish to fuck you’d decided to do it a couple of weeks ago, because if you had, Richie would still be alive,” the man said, finally changing position, leaning forward, and his brown eyes very nearly glowed with fury.  Raven regarded him coolly.

“So, you weren’t killing them to just to survive,” she said, nodding slowly, “At least not after what they did to Richie . . . it’s revenge as well.  Survival and revenge, all mixed into one, to survive them is revenge . . .”

“That’s very fucking perceptive of you, and I give you a great big fucking congratulations on figuring that out on your own,” the man snapped, and now it was Raven’s turn to narrow her eyes.

“Tread carefully, mortal,” she whispered, “I find you very interesting, but not so interesting that I won’t kill you if you make a very large nuisance of yourself.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

Raven threw back her head and cackled loudly.  And she kept going.  She was nearly in hysterics for a time, while her tablemate merely watched her impassively, not quite sure what to make of this woman who was a vampire, but unlike the vampires he’d been fighting for the last week.  He thought about shooting her, but decided against, because if what she’d said was on the level, it wouldn’t do him any good, and even if it would have, he wasn’t sure if he had to, and he refused to kill unnecessarily.  When it was necessary, he’d do it coldly, efficiently, without remorse, and without question, but until then, he wouldn’t pull the trigger.  So he let Raven laugh.

This unnerved everybody in the bar, from the locals to the bartender to the screechers to the man in the trenchcoat, and they all waited anxiously for the laughing to end.  Finally, after what seemed like forever, the laughing fit came to an end, and Raven wiped crimson tears from the corners of her eyes as she wound down.  “Oh, but the stars, I should tear your head off and kick it across the room for that, I really should, but you’ve just got something about you that I like, you’ve got spark and fire to you, enough to be a vampire yourself . . . tell me, what may I call you?  I know that your brother’s name was Richie, but you have yet to reveal yours.”

“Seth,” he answered.  “Seth Gecko.  If you’d been watching the TV over the last couple of weeks, you’d have heard my name plenty of times, you crazy bitch.”

“Well, Seth Gecko,” Raven said after another drink of whiskey, which emptied the bottle, “TV is for idiots, so I avoid it whenever I can.  But we’re not here to discuss the fallacies of television, not at all . . . we’re here to discuss whether or not I’m going to kill you.”

Seth’s face didn’t change a hair, and he kept his eyes on her.  She didn’t even feel a hint of surprise or fear come out of him, at least that she could detect, and she decided that he was a very strong mortal indeed, among the strongest she’d ever met.

“Why shouldn’t I kill you?” she asked him, and he shrugged.

“I can’t think of a single fucking reason not to,” he replied.  “You can go ahead and try, if you think you can do it.”

“Oh, I can do it, all right,” Raven said, “You could be dead inside the next five seconds if I wanted you to be, I promise you that, but maybe I don’t want to kill you.”

“Is that so?” asked Seth, his voice oozing sarcasm.  “Don’t fuck with me.  Either try to kill me and get it over with, or figure out what else it is you’re going to, because I don’t like to have my head fucked with.  You can go play your cutesy act with the villagers, you can go do it to whoever fucking else you want to, but you don’t dare do it with me, because I don’t take that shit off of anybody.  I don’t give a flying fuck if you can kill me or not, I’m not going to put up with your particular brand of bullshit if it means you’re going to play games with me.  Do one thing or another, just quit fucking around.”

Raven stared at him intently for a few moments before speaking.  “All right.”  She smashed her empty whiskey bottle over Seth’s head, grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, then flung him across the room, sending him crashing into one of the tables near the screechers, occupied by a group of locals, who scattered at the moment of impact.  “Did you think you could possibly get away with dictating to Raven what she is to do?!” she screamed as she stomped after him, kicking tables, chairs, and patrons aside as the lust for battle began to build up in her.  “Did you?!”

Everybody was on their feet now, and most of them were heading for the door, though a good number stayed behind after even the American truckers had fled, and Raven assumed that these were screechers . . . a good baker’s dozen of them, at least.  As she advanced on Seth, he raised his gun and fired, hitting her in the shoulder.  Blood sprayed from the wound, and she laughed as some of her own warm lifeblood splattered against her face.  She felt only the slightest sting from the .44 caliber bullet as it entered and exited her body, and then the tingle as her muscles and flesh began to reknit and renew . . . within an hour, there’d only be the slightest pink mark where the shell would had been, and by tomorrow night, there would be nothing.  The screechers, who had completely given up their telepathically-projected disguises, leaving her and Seth as the only ones who weren’t misshapen monsters dressed in human clothes, all began to advance towards Seth and herself, starting to form a circle.  Seth fired again, baring his teeth at her in rage, looking almost like a vampire himself, and this shot hit her in the thigh, where it drew the exact same response from her as the first one did.  “You’ll have to do better than that!” she cackled.  The screechers all started to howl and screech in assent, and when Seth started to pull back the trigger to let off another shot, Raven snatched a saltshaker from a table she was passing and deftly pitched it at Seth’s pistol, knocking it from his hand.

Cursing, the mortal grabbed one of the legs of the table that had been broken by his fall and snapped it off, scrambling to his feet and holding it front of him almost like a sword.  “Come on, you godless cocksucker . . . come on!” he roared as she advanced, and once she’d gotten within ten feet of him, the circle of sixteen screechers tightened up, and it was as though the two were in the middle of a schoolyard brawl.  Raven stood in a defensive crouch as Seth eyed her warily, brandishing his table leg, and she dared him to attack with her eyes and the grin she wore on her face.  While his expression was one of anger and instinct, she looked like she was having the time of her life, and she knew that was getting to him . . . he was the sort of person who didn’t like to be anybody’s amusement, so she was ready when he lunged forward with his table leg, intent on jabbing it into her chest.  He was fast for a mortal, she had to give him that, though she easily sidestepped him at the last second, and gave him a sharp kick to his back that added to his momentum and sent him further forward, where his table leg impaled one of the screechers right through its own chest, and it died a quick, screaming death, its body beginning to decompose instantly.  When a screecher had suffered a mortal wound, it was as though its body began to collapse in on itself . . . it was almost as though they were in a perpetual state of near-decay, held off only by the beating of their hearts, and as soon as that vital organ was stopped, the decay moved in with blinding swiftness, often explosively so, especially when the sun hit them.  When that happened, they blew up like so much firecrackers; she hadn’t believed it until she’d actually caught a glimpse of it in an incident with several screechers in a cave she’d been resting in several centuries ago.  True to the stories, they’d gone up like the Americans’ Fourth of July.  At times it seemed as though the tissues in their bodies were laced with nitro glycerin, so violent their deaths could be, and when they didn’t actually blow up, they’d melt as though they were ice cream under a heat lamp, their bodies transforming into a greenish-black ichor that was incredibly sticky and stank to no end.  Raven couldn’t believe that anything whose bodies were so unstable could survive at all, much less be able to make themselves into any sort of a threat.

While the screechers were much stronger and faster than mortals, and possessed more abilities as well, they died a even easier than mortals when you hit them in the right spot: the heart.  They suffered from a lot of vulnerabilities that were like those attributed to vampires of lore, and that made them easy pickings for those who knew how to deal with them.  In addition to a marked allergy to garlic and an extremely curious anatomy that could take a great deal of punishment before giving up the ghost and lent them considerable strength but was oddly “squishy” and soft (Raven was certain this had to do with how quickly they decayed and fell apart when mortally wounded), making them weak against high-impact assaults and pointed objects, they were especially vulnerable to the willpower and mental energy of strong individuals . . . all one had to do was focus on an object and to “charge” it with the “energy” of their will, and they could use it against the creatures. 

For instance, if a person with a strong belief in the power of a special symbol, or even a makeshift representation of one, such as a holy cross or a pentagram were to wield the item against the screechers, having great faith that they would be protected, then the said item would gain the power to not only protect them, but also to hurt the screechers.  Raven had seen preachers defend themselves with their crucifixes against the screechers many times in the past, and had once even seen a middle-aged mortal women actually leave a blistering burn on a screecher with a little statue of Elvis she’d kept in her car . . . oh how Raven had laughed after that incident!  The same principle applied with other things, as well . . . a determined preacher could easily whip up a batch of “holy” water, charged by the willpower and energy of his faith, and use it to great effect against the screechers . . . hell, he could have used whiskey for all it really mattered, as long as he believed in it enough.  Raven herself had often used her double daggers, which she kept secured in sheathes on her forearms, in a similar manner, and they became like blades of white-hot steel against the screechers such was her confidence in her abilities and the workmanship of the blades.  Willpower was a very effective weapon against the screechers, and she knew that one of the reasons that Seth had survived against them time and again was because of the powerful will he had within him . . . he was so strong that they were intimidated by him to the point that they couldn’t function to their fullest potential against him.  He held no fear for them, only hate, and that made him an extremely formidable foe indeed.

Without missing a beat, Seth yanked the table leg out of the dead screecher’s burning and decaying body, sending the beast’s green blood spraying everywhere, then spun on his heel and swung it at Raven one-handed, and with a giggle, she neatly ducked, so that the leg hit another screecher in the side of the head, knocking it completely over.  Raven launched herself into the air with a double-kick from her extremely-powerful legs, flipped over Seth’s head, drew her daggers, one with an emerald-colored blade and the other ruby-red, and landed behind him.  “Try and try as you might, you’ll never beat me in a fight, quoth Raven, NEVERMORE!” she bellowed, giving Seth a kick to the back of his leg that caused it to buckle and give out beneath him, sending him to the floor.

“Finish him off!  Kill him!” howled the screecher that she’d made the deal with, the one who was obviously the leader of this motley bunch.

“Kill him!  Kill him!” the rest of the screechers began to chant, stomping their feet, almost as though this were some sort of ritualistic dance.  Raven sprang into the air and brought her foot down as hard as she could against the floor where Seth’s head had been a microsecond before, and she snickered delightedly that he’d had the speed and instinct to be able to escape certain death.  He twisted around on the floor, then brought the table leg, which was a good four feet long, straight up between her legs, smashing it into her most feminine place, and she stopped dead still and looked down.  Now that was a new one.  Apparently Seth had never been schooled on just how tough a true vampire’s anatomy was, even the more delicate parts.  Then she looked up at Seth’s face and when she caught the expression of surprise and annoyance on it, and she started to laugh again, this time almost uncontrollably, shaking her head back and forth at the whole situation.

“Oh, by the stars, that was a very, very nice try, I have to give you that!” she guffawed, and she was so wrapped up in her mirth that she nearly got hit upside the head with the table leg when Seth decided to go for another avenue of attack.  She ducked just in time, though, and crossed her daggers in front of her in an X shape so that she could block his next shot.  As soon as the thick table leg landed between the daggers, she cinched them together tightly, their serrated edges gripping into the wood and holding it in place when Seth tried to pull it away.  She jerked the table leg forward, then moved so that she caught it under her right arm, and as she did that, she slammed her daggers back into their sheathes underneath the sleeves of her leather jacket and grabbed Seth’s collar to pull him face to face with her.  “Attack them,” she hissed when they were nose-to-nose, boring her amethyst eyes into his own brown ones, “Attack them now or I’ll kill you.  Get your revenge.”

Time froze for an infinite moment, and their eyes were all that existed in the universe, and in Seth’s she saw surprise, questioning, the ever-present rage, the lust for revenge, and an indomitable will that could never have been broken, by mortal or immortal.  In her eyes he saw boundless confidence, assurance, and the spectre of Death itself if he didn’t do as she said . . . Seth saw into the soul of Raven, and for a split-second, understood the drives and desires that fueled the vampiress, and he knew that Raven’s Rules were very much a slightly-altered mirror of his own codes and rules of behavior.  But that was only for a tiny slice of time, and then he was only looking into her deep amethyst eyes again, and now he felt an inexplicable trust towards her . . . maybe because they were far more alike than either of them would have liked to admit.  “Do it, now,” she said, and gave him a shove backwards, letting go of the table leg.  They looked at one another for another moment, and then Seth smashed her in the side of the head with the table leg, snapping off the last eight inches of it.  She barely flinched.

“Now we’re even,” he snapped, and without a further word, he turned and threw himself at the nearest group of screechers, all of who yowled in dismay at his sudden attack.  Raven watched him for a moment, admiring the way he flung himself into combat with the beasts . . . it was extremely rare for even a vampire to carry himself with such assurance and confidence in battle, but Seth moved and flowed as though the fight was choreographed, slamming, thrusting, ducking, dodging, punching, and impaling.  These screechers were a bit tougher than many of the others she’d tangled with in the past, but that didn’t appear to mean very much here, as Seth was holding up pretty well.

She looked over and smirked at the head screecher.  “I delivered him to you, now you just have to bring him down . . . you need to be able to take care of your own problems, at least to an extent.  I shouldn’t have to bail you out of your troubles, after all.”

“True enough,” replied the screecher, and Raven took a few steps over so that she was standing next to him, so that she could get a good view of Seth battling the other screechers.  That made him more than a little nervous, and Raven gave him a sideways glance, starting to poke at the ebbs and currents of the emotions running through his mind, sensing there was a bit more than mere nervousness to him.

“The Vampire’s Eye is still mine . . . I didn’t kill him, but I gave him to a whole horde of you, unarmed save for that table leg, so that you could kill him yourselves,” she said coolly, still looking at the screecher through the corner of her eye.

The screecher gave her a grin that was both malicious and fearful.  “I’m afraid the arrangements have changed.”

“What do you mean they’ve changed?”  Raven’s eyes narrowed and she’d started to turn towards the screecher when she heard a soft hissing sound from behind her, and a sharp, agonizingly burning pain exploded through the right side of her torso, just beneath her breast.  Letting out a howl of shock, rage, and out-and-out pain, she grabbed at the wound and let out another noise of pain when the flesh of her hands was burnt by the pointed end of the metal stake that was sticking out of the new hole in her body.  From the way her flesh tingled and stung from contact with the end of the stake, she knew it had been treated with “holy water,” a clear, colorless, odorless chemical concoction usually utilized by vampire hunters that was harmless to mortals but highly acidic to vampires, much the same way that a liquid “charged” with a person’s will or faith energy could burn the screechers.  The burning was spread all the way through the wound, and for the moment it felt as though there were a new sun in her body, and her eyes glowed red while her fangs full extended as wave after wave of searing agony spread through her.  For the first time in centuries, Raven nearly greyed out, and it was a feeling that she didn’t like very much at all.

At her scream, Seth had slowed in his fight for just a second to see what had caused her to make such a sound, and that momentary lapse had enabled a screecher to jump onto his back and wrap its lanky, rubbery arms around his neck.  It was all he could do to keep it from biting him, which he was desperate to do, because he knew all too well what would happen if it bit him: soon enough, he’d become one of them.  He’d seen it happen to Richie and Jacob Fuller, not to mention two others at the Titty Twister, and it was something that he most definitely did not want to happen to him, so he forgot all about Raven’s plight and concentrated on his own.  While grappling with the hissing, snapping vampire on his back, he kicked at and jabbed with his table leg the others as best he could, fighting like a madman to get them down.

Raven saw this, and despite her own predicament, she reacted, because it wasn’t fair that the screechers had gotten the better of him because of her trouble.  Not fair in the least, so she had to make amends.  Her hand moving almost of its own accord, she reached into one of the sheathes under the sleeve of her jacket, grabbed the emerald-bladed dagger, and flung it at the head of the screecher on Seth’s back.  The screecher let out a final scream as the blade sank into its forehead all the way up to the hilt, and seconds later the screecher’s head exploded in a mess of gore and foul screecher blood, splattering Seth but good.  That was better than what would have happened if he’d been bitten, though: there was something in the screecher’s bite that caused some sort of contagion to enter the victim’s system which would in a short time make the poor bastard mutate into a screecher as well . . . Raven had her own theories about that, how the agent that caused the mutation may have been some sort of disease or plague from ages past that could only be passed into a person’s blood, a disease that turned its sufferers into degenerate monsters.  It made a lot of sense to her mind, and would probably even further account for the rapid decay of the screechers upon death and the general “squishiness” of their bodies.  But those theories were among the things farthest from Raven’s mind at the moment, as she struggled with the pain that the stake was giving her.

The head screecher backed away from her as she let out a long, angry hiss at him, but he kept his shaky grin.  “After we talked to you, somebody made us a better deal: we cooperate with him, he gets you, and we keep the Vampire’s Eye.  A very good deal, I think.  Everybody comes away happy.”  Raven hissed again, unable to think of anything very coherent to say to him, and the sound she made summed up everything she was feeling at the moment very nicely, from agony all the way down to incredible displeasure.

“Allow me to introduce myself, I am Christophe,” said a voice from behind her, and when she slowly turned, she saw the red-haired man in the trenchcoat that had been sitting at one of the other tables earlier.  He was a slim man beneath the black leather coat, and wasn’t even six feet tall, and he sported a closely-trimmed beard and mustache on his narrow, serious face, and he wore his long hair tied back in a neat ponytail.  He held a very streamlined and futuristic crossbow, already reloaded with another silvery metal stake like the one that was currently lodged in her torso, aimed directly at her.  “I know how you like to fancy yourself a legend, Miss Raven, and I assure you that you’re one of the biggest legends among vampire hunters the world over.  But I think that it’s time for you to cease being an active player in the world and to truly join the mists of legend in death.”  A click came from the crossbow, and Raven knew that it was ready to fire . . . a single twitch from the man’s finger, and that stake would come leaping off of the weapon, heading right for her.

Raven, absolutely furious that she’d been caught with her pants down, hissed once more, this one the loudest of them all, and for all the world she sounded like an enormous and extraordinarily pissed-off cat.  Her hands bent into claws and she took a step forward, intent on crossing the ten feet between herself and the vampire hunter and tearing him to pieces with them.  But this Christophe had other ideas, it seemed.

“Fare thee well, Miss Raven, and go into eternity with the knowledge that your death will make me a legend,” Christophe said with a chuckle, and his finger twitched on the trigger of the crossbow, giving it just enough pressure to fire off the stake at Raven with a sharp, but soft, shush of highly-compressed air.  The stake rocketed off of the bow assembly and tore through