Hunter's Fall pt.17

In Col's roughly eighty years of experience, he'd learned an effective way to deal with pain while on the hunt. When something hurt, he ran faster, fought harder. As his throat seized up and the numbness began to take him, the only thing he wanted was someone or something to punch. It was the only time in his life that he actually wanted to run into another slayer. Unfortunately by the time he did, he was already in less than perfect shape.

The man that stood before him was unlike the others. He was dressed more casually than the others, a long-sleeved shirt and jeans rather than solid black. He was also less physically fit than his comrades, but much more heavily armed. He didn't look surprised to see the benumbed Vampire, more like a cross between annoyed and mildly amused.

"Hey, all freaks are supposed to stay downstairs. How'd you get past the guards?" the man barked. At least Col knew where the others were now, and that they were being guarded. Still, that information didn't do him much good in his situation.

He couldn't even respond to the slayer's question, much less find the strength to fight back. However by a stroke of luck, he didn't have to.

"What is a freak?" Both the slayer and Vampire turned around. Standing a few feet away was a pale girl in a gray dress and paper slippers. Neither had heard her approach and the slayer found himself inexplicably unnerved by her presence. Col was unnerved as well, the difference being that he knew the reason.

"The hell? Those guards slacking off or what?" the man snorted. "Get out of here, little girl, before I have to hurt you."

"Hurt Doll?" the girl questioned, her head cocked curiously to the side and her expression unchanging.

"Yeah." The slayer appeared to be getting some kind of pleasure out of this exchange. "Like this." He took hold of the Vampire's arm before he could react and pressed him up against a wall, face first, with his arm bent all the way backwards.

Col bit the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out. His throat burned enough as it was and he needed that little bit of strength for breathing more than for screaming. Even through the numbness of his limbs, he could feel that any more pressure on his shoulder and it might be torn clean off. Doll watched, expressionless as the scene unfolded.

"So that is hurt, that is what you would do to Doll?" she asked. She put a hand on her own shoulder and curled her thin fingers around the bone. "Like this?"

CrrckPOP!

That was the sound of the girl wrenching her own shoulder out of its socket and bending her arm in an impossible angle. It was sickening to watch. Even the slayer, who had undoubtedly inflicted similar injuries before then, was horrified by the sight, and even more so when he saw the girl's face. Expressionless. Blank. Not a single sign of pain registered on her face.

"Okay." said the child, slipping out a dull razor from the hem of her skirt. "Now it's your turn."

There was no reason for a well-trained slayer, a full grown man of his noble cause, to fear a child, or at least that's what he told himself. Nevertheless, what was happening here seemed beyond his understanding and that terrified him, driving him to a tactical retreat. A running and screaming tactical retreat.

Col, freed from the man's grasp and weakened from the poison, dropped to his knees and let out one strangled breath. There were so many questions in his mind; about Doll, about the slayer, mostly about the slayer's plan. The man was toting a arsenal's worth of weaponry, yet he'd only pinned him and then retreated. By the sound of it, he hadn't killed any of the others either. What were weapons good for if not for killing, why were the remaining slayers just guarding their captives when they could be slaughtering them, and why use a smokescreen without actually setting the building aflame?

Col wanted to think about this, he really did, but his body seemed to be freezing and burning at the same time. He couldn't bring himself to move. He pinched his eyes closed and tried to block out the feeling. If he could just push back the pain, maybe he'd be able to recover a little strength.

"Fire-eyes."

The Vampire's heavy lids managed to force themselves open once again. He turned towards Doll, angry for the disturbance her voice had caused. "What?"

"Fire-eyes. You can't go to sleep yet."

Fire-eyes? Was that supposed to be him? She said the words as if they were a name, like the two words were one. It did seem like an oddly appropriate term.

"You can't sleep yet, or else everyone will die." Doll said with no emotion.

"Shut up." Col grumbled. "No one's gonna die. The slayers are on the run and Mercy will take care of everything else. I just wanna close my eyes for a second."

"Everyone will die." the girl said again. "Doll knows because she saw. They don't run, they leave and wait. The traps will snap and the fire will burn and the nasty-bads will steal from the dead."

"I don't know what the hell you're saying!" he yelled, frustrated and drained. "There's no fire! Just a smokescreen, and that's not a problem because everyone's downstairs and..." He trailed off, then bolted upright. "Smoke rises. They wanted everyone to go down. They knew about the underground levels. They set up guards and smokescreens to herd all the everyone into the same place. The weapons were probably just for show because what they really want is to keep everyone inside while they fake a retreat and..."

And what, he wondered. The whole situation was just so unheard of. Slayers normally just worked on their own, picking off whatever creatures they ran into. Then again, Vampires themselves were usually pretty solitary. When so many of them started to come together, it made sense that the slayers would want to increase their own numbers and destroy as many at a time as they could.

The only big question left was what a group of slayers could have come up with to destroy that many Vamps at the same time. But then, what does any organized group bent on destroying an opposing group use to kill off their enemies?

"There's no way." Col muttered to himself. "It's not their style, but I guess all's fair in love and war." He clenched his fists and forced himself off of the floor. "And if it's a war, someone was bound to bring in bombs eventually. Shit."

Somewhere far off from the battlefield, a timer was quietly ticking life away.