- TMK -

Lisaveht lingered in the night, gazing at stars against a lapis sky. The summer air had cooled with the crescent moon. The industrial clang of slaughterhouses had given way to the chirp of night birds. The smells, too, had ebbed with the day. Cattle blood and sweat fell to wood ash as the citizens of Denagan readied their supper.

           

Save for the home Lisaveht watched from the alley. The only odors Lisaveht could detect here were alcohol and refuse. Fragrances some part of Lisaveht hoped she would not sense. But Lisaveht remembered what she saw in the nightmare of Cantrec’s life. These smells were only a minute part of the sins within that home. That evil, though, it gave her purpose. More than a dream of ancestors she never met nor an Empire that had long since been forgotten. Here she would wait to fulfill her purpose. No matter how long it took, she would stay. She would not forget like so many others had.

           

Luckily, Lisaveht did not have to wait long.

           

Clanging screams erupted in the home, the door flinging open a moment later. Crossing the threshold in a volatile stench was the man from Cantrec’s memories. A scraggly beard covered his face accompanied by yellow sweat stains over a white shirt. He cursed at nothing in particular and nursed a green bottle till only drips remained. He was the man Lisaveht waited for.

           

The source of Cantrec’s pain.

           

When the bottle flew out of the man’s hand and shattered on the street, Lisaveht emerged from the shadows. She walked slowly to the man, unnervingly calm even to herself.

           

The man didn’t notice her. He had fallen into a folding chair on the porch, panting heavily as he let the cool air run over his temple. When he noticed Lisaveht, she had already taken a seat across the porch, her red eyes fixed on his.

           

“The fuck are you?” The man jolted up. “The fuck is wrong with your ey–oh, you’re one of them. God dammed baby tick on my doorstep.”

           

He reached for a spare hammer in a neglected toolbox on the porch. Yet Lisaveht refused to move.

             

“You one of my boy’s friends, little tick?” The man stepped closer, the scent of alcohol overwhelming Lisaveht. “Figures. That shit stain never listens. Told him time and time again your kind is only good for fertilizer. In one ear and out the other…”

           

He gazed longingly at the hammer as a sadistic grin crept over his chapped lips. “Guess there’s no point in saying. Not when showing is so much better.”

           

The hammer wound back and hurtled for Lisaveht’s head.

           

To the man’s astonishment, the hammer stopped in midair, the man’s wrist locked in Lisaveht’s iron grip. Using her supernatural strength, Lisaveht squeezed. The hammer fell as she snapped the man’s radius like a dry twig.

           

Catching the hammer in her other hand, Lisaveht brought the man to his knees with a kick to the shin. Before he could scream, she jammed the hammer between the man’s teeth, grabbing hold of his hair a second later. He whimpered with a cascade of tears as Lisaveht locked her now orange eyes on him.

           

“I am not fertilizer, I am not a tick, and I am not your son’s friend,” she said, delivering another kick that plastered the man on his back. “But I am the person who will break every bone in your body if you lay a hand on him again.”

           

The man mumbled a response midst the hammerhead wedged over his tongue. “And to be perfectly clear, if I have to visit you a third time, I will make sure there is no fourth time. Do you understand?”

           

The sobbing man nodded, slobber dripping between the hammerhead and his teeth.

           

“Good. Now let’s give you something to remember me by.” Lisaveht delivered a kick to the man’s groin, causing him to spew vomit around the hammerhead. The hammer clattered to the floor as Lisaveht pulled it from the man’s mouth.

           

As he writhed and gagged, Lisaveht started her journey home.

           

A wave of relief washed over the little Vampire. Not for those she punished, but because this night, Lisaveht had been born. She would not let people like Cantrec’s father define her. She would not follow the dreams of her parents nor of their parents before them. She would not even fly.

           

Lisaveht had tasted justice. Not only for her but for Cantrec, Joron, and every being whose voice had been smothered by those stronger than them. She would be their voice when they did not have one. She would become what this world needed the most. Not another pilot aloof and untouchable in the sky.

           

She would become a constable.

           

By doing so, Lisaveht would become the best of the bloodborne, the best of all Vampires. She would show the world what it truly meant to be an heir of Odoacer.

 

 

THE END