Part 284 – How To Get Yourself On A Vampire’s Bad Side

The pounding inside Ambrose’s head dulled down to a nagging headache as the daylight fell into darkness.

He opened his eyes and stared blankly at his snow covered muzzle.

White.

All white.

It took him a few minutes to realize that he was shivering as hard as before. He vaguely wondered if that were a good thing or a bad thing.

His stomach growled and hurt.

Hungry.

So hungry.

One.

Two.

Three!

He clenched his teeth and struggled to raise his head. The metal collar bit into his skin and pressed tight against his throat.

Hungry.

Hungry.

HUNGRY!

He kept pushing himself to raise his head.

He wheezed from the strain, but he kept trying and trying until black spots  danced before his eyes. His headache escalated into an absolute ruckus of pounding and banging and throbbing.

Ambrose stopped and lay there in a gasping, shivering, wheezing daze.

Can’t.

Can’t.

Must.

Must.

He clenched his teeth and tried to pull his hands off the ground.

Maybe it was just the cuffs. Or maybe his hands had frozen hard to the ground. Either way, he couldn’t raise his hands.

He let out an enraged yell and kept trying and trying and trying until he thought his hands were about to break off.

Can’t.

Can’t.

Can’tcan’tcan’tcan’tcan’t.

CAN’T!

He yelled again, which only made his headache somehow worse.

The scent of burnt olive oil wifted in the air.

He snarled as she approached.

The hunter crouched beside him and dusted off his muzzle. She wore a Bruiser Brother bomber jacket over her usual costume and a sequined and feathered Mardi Gras mask on her face. “Hello, vamp.”

He glared at her and assaulted her mind with a vast array of words. There was no order or sense to them. Nothing went together. It was just a ticked off bomb exploding and throwing word shrapnel everywhere. And it quickly devolved into a nonsense blend of French and German.

The onslaught caught her off guard. She fell hard on her bottom and edged away from him. “You don’t have to be so uncivilized about it.”

His mental barrage went up into a scream.

“Stop it! Or I will give you something worth screaming about.”

HUNGRY!

The hunter smirked and tugged the fingers of one of her long black vinyl gloves. She pinched the tip of the middle finger and tried to whisk the glove off in a big dramatic reveal.

The bomber jacket’s elasticized cuffs put a big slow-mo damper on the whole thing and turned the moment into something of a striptease.

A striptease which failed to impress Ambrose.

Especially when the rigid edge of her glove got caught behind the cuff’s elastic band. Her face turned red. “This ran a whole lot smoother in my head.” She furiously untucked the glove.

Ambrose watched her in silence, vaguely wondering if she were planning to slap him with it.

She set the glove on the snow and unfastened his muzzle.

He desperately wished he could back away from her.

She uncovered his face. “All right! Time for another experiment.” She bared her wrist and held it inches away from his mouth.

He closed his eyes. Her burnt olive oil scent filled his head. It wasn’t a scent he liked or found particularly attractive.

But he was hungry.

And that scent, as unappealing as it was, was food.

He opened his eyes.

His pupils widened into narrow rims.

His mouth watered.

HUNGRY!

“Hmm. No reaction. Interesting. Now, let’s see what happens if I…” She pulled out a switchblade and sliced her wrist. Just enough to release a thin trace of blood.

She held her sliced wrist just inches away from his mouth.

He went wild,  pushing and straining against the collar’s hold, but he couldn’t raise his head at all. He stuck out his tongue, hoping for a lick, even the smallest touch of a drop.

But her wrist was two inches out of his reach.

He cried out in anger and despair. It didn’t sound human at all.

“Hmm. Reaction. Interesting.”