[indent][color=red]//Bloodletting 1.1//[/color][/indent] [hr] [center][img]https://i.imgur.com/XPHUL9l.png[/img][/center] [hr] [right][indent][color=red]//Location: New England, NYC//[/color][/indent][/right] “ We forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” The priest opens his rheumy eyes, placing one hand on the leather bible, as the casket is lowered into the damp yawning earth. “ Amen,” Eric says along with everyone else attending the funeral. The word comes out awkwardly, as if he’s learning to speak for the first time. The procession is private and small. Too small, Eric thinks. Jamal deserves a better crowd in his mind. He can count the number of attendees on his fingers and he can recognise fewer faces in the stony faced crowd. Hannibal would have come but he was busy rooting out a group of Adze in Venezuela. It is a matter of respect that they have attended Jamal’s funeral. Vampire hunting is a profession that demands few friendships and personal relationships. So, Eric doesn’t know whether his apprenticeship with the old hunter was a blessing or a mistake. It feels more and more like the latter as his grave, an old mouldy wooden casket, is lowered into the earth. He and the veteran vampire hunter had made several bets about how he would end up dying, making potshots at each other about the most ridiculous ways that they could go down fighting the bloodsuckers. He’d never imagine it would be something banal as prostate cancer. It wasn’t a thing he could behead with a blade, impale with a wooden stake or burned with napalm. It was pure coincidence. Chance. The same chance that had made him a dhampir, met with Jamal and now, watch him die a slow and wretched death in the ICU. He was tempted, dammit, tempted to Turn him. Make him whole again, but, he’d be spitting on Jamal’s memory if he did that and damn his soul forever to the blackest pits of hell. It was selfish, he knew it was selfish, Jamal taught him it was the most selfish thing he could do, every molecule in his being knew that embracing his true nature would be his downfall. So, why was he disgusted with himself? Someone taps his shoulder. He turns around and takes a look at who did it. Her features are aristocratic, the contours of her face cut like a marble statue. Her long blonde hair is tied into a plait that rests on her left shoulder. She’s dressed in a more well-maintained trench coat than his with considerably less dried blood along with a better tie. Slate gimlets look at him from under the veil of her funeral hat. “ So, you must be Jamal’s protege that I’ve heard so much about.” She stuck out a hand. “ I believe I haven’t introduced myself before. My name is -” “ You’re the Van Helsing,” Eric gruffly remarked. “ Not a man for pleasantries, are we?” She continued forth, a note of irritation passing away in her melodic accent. “ Yes, I am Rachel Van Helsing and you are Eric Brooks. The Blade. That is what others of your kind refer to you as?” “ They’re not my people.” “ My apologies. I didn’t mean to offend.” She replied back in a tone that didn’t sound the least bit sorry at all. “ I was quite saddened when I heard about his death, although it must have been more of a shock to you, given that you spent more time with him than all of us combined. Most of us knew him as a man who preferred the company of himself rather than others. When the news spread that he was taking on a dhampir as an apprentice, we thought it was a joke. Seeing you in the flesh, though……..” Rachel kept quiet for a moment before continuing on. “ Nevertheless, he was a highly respected hunter amongst us. His accomplishments were legendary. Being chosen to be under his tutelage must have been quite the honor for you. For a dhampir. ” Did he hear….bitterness in her voice? She turned her head away, looking towards a nearby thicket that had two stumps in the middle of it. One had been swallowed up by the foliage and grass, the bark bleeding grass, whilst the other had a clear shoot erupting from its center. “ You could say that,” Eric muttered. “ I have to ask, though.” Rachel paused and speaks with a note of curiosity. “ Who was Jamal to you?” “ He was my….” Eric briefly paused, struggling to find the right words. How could he encapsulate his and Jamal’s relationship in one single sentence. Father figure. Teacher. Savior. Companion. Coworker. Boss. So much of his life had been dictated by Jamal and now, he felt somewhat directionless, a man in a maze. “ He was my light.” Eventually, he was the only one left standing amongst the hundreds of dead rotting in the dirt. Outliving your friends, your family…...did Dracula have to witness this same shit repeat over and over again? No wonder that fucker’s tantrum decimated most of Europe. There were too many memories here in New York. Too much of the past closing up on him like a coffin. He looks down at the nickel plated 44. revolver Jamal handed to him. He flips open the barrel, the blessed silver rounds glinting like diamonds in the apertures. He takes a look around, cocks the revolver and lifts it gingerly towards himself, his hand shaking. “ Well, there you fucking are.” A voice like cracked glass pierced the miasma of solitude. “ Hard one to find, aren’t ya, you little shit.” Eric twirls around, his trenchcoat flapping as he points the revolver towards the source of the noise. It’s an old geezer who looks more mummy than man. His skin is cracked and withered, the cataracts underneath his horseshoe shades almost seem to glow in the dawn night and he can hear the wet unsteady rasps of his lungs, like a machine past its warranty. Yet, the polished beech staff clasped in between his knobbled fingers is planted in the dirt like a fence post and his spine is straight and unyielding like an oak tree. Eric holsters the revolver and grumbles the stranger’s name with distaste. “ Stick.”