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Izzy’s eyes narrowed at the tone he used with her, as if it was she who was in the body of a gradeschooler. But at least he did not want the hunters eradicated, even if it was perhaps only because they would prove useful to him. And besides, she now knew he was in no condition to force her to do his bidding, but by the sound of it, he would be if she recovered his stolen parts.
But, for now, the hunters. As far as she knew, no one else had come to the town recently, and she had heard no one talking about any other strangers. Though, she also had not heard about Cerasus until Trevor, so that was saying little.
“Do you know the hunters’ names? Or where they might be found?”

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“What can knowing a name do?” Izzy returned his gaze, glad she had not given him hers.
She raised her eyebrows when Cerasus gave her the names he knew them by, and how they had divvied up his limbs. Well, that’s lovely. “What kind of aliases are those? They sound like something out of a comic book.”
She frowned at how simple he made overpowering them sound and how quick he was to send her out into the heart of the fray. “Oh, right, because the odds of three trained vampire hunters against one...” she hesitated. Though she had avoided even thinking that she was no longer human, that the plurals Cerasus used truly included her, now she had to. When she continued, the sarcasm that had dripped from her voice had diminished. “Against one newbie vampire makes for just another stroll through town.” She waved her hand in exaggerated emphasis. “They tore you apart! I wouldn’t stand a chance. I’ve only ever taken a couple defense classes, and those were for against normal people, not vampire hunters.”

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Vampires can blush. That’s a new one. Izzy thought with mild amusement, the expression on his face mixed with the youth of his body making it almost difficult to take Cerasus seriously. If not for the way he conducted himself, or the years beyond his appearance in his eyes, he looked for all the world like a normal schoolboy.
At least Cerasus seemed to have enough confidence for the both of them.
“Great,” she said darkly. “But I still have no clue what I can do.” Or can’t do, she added silently, casting a wary glance out at the remaining glow of the sun as if just looking outside might make her burst into flames again. “They’ll know the moment I step foot in town, but would I know them before they got to me?”

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Izzy returned his relief with a look of suspicion. Was he glad she didn’t know what she was capable of, or was there something she had missed? The uncharacteristic warmth in his expression made her give pause.
Taking his returning to the stairs as his form of a dismissal, she gave a growled sigh and ran a hand down her face.
As Cerasus finished answering her, she glanced back out the door at the sunlight as it faded quickly, the horizon hungrily eating away at the light as the moon rose into power.
She hated the reminder of not being human he gave her.
“Very reassuring,” she grumbled as she turned toward the door, drawing out the first word. She paused in front of the exit, a hand gripping the edge of the door to pull it open, and turned her head slightly to put the man-child in her peripheral view. “How do you know I won’t just take off and leave you to fend for yourself?”

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Izzy inhaled at his answer and spun around, but he had already gone. She stared at the empty staircase for a long moment, then turned back toward the exit. Though the sun was little more than a rutilant glowing line at the edge of the horizon waiting to be pushed away by the encroaching night, Izzy still tested her ability to leave. She waved a quick hand out the door, and, when it failed to catch fire, she stepped slowly out onto the cracked concrete where nature had begun to reclaim the man-made structure, and stopped to look around.
Despite the dimness of the night, she could see better than she could ever remember. Had colors always been so vivid? Or so many stars twinkling in the sky? She looked toward the town, where a dull golden haze spread toward the sky from streetlights.
She took a slow, deep breath. Even the smells of the outdoors were more robust, mixed in with the sickening, faded scent of car exhaust. She raised a hand and clenched it a couple times, wondering exactly how much she could do. If she was going to face hunters, then she needed to know.
Hoping that the vampire stories had at least some things right, she turned back toward the building and its ivy-covered brick walls.
Raising both hands in front of her in a boxing position and hoping beyond hope that the strength part of the lore was correct, she thrust a punch to the wall.
With crash, her fist went through the bricks, chunks of broken pieces around her hand clattering downward and the one above cracking in half. With a look of awed shock on her face, Izzy pulled her hand from the hole she had made and shook off the fine layer of brick dust that clung to her skin.
Okay, she had to admit trying to suppress a smile, that was kinda cool. Stepping back, she surveyed the school once more, trying to remember its size.
“Next up,” she muttered, readying to run. Without finishing, she started to jog a lap around the school, slowly at first, then she increased her speed. Though the wind whipped at her hair and she had the feeling she was little more than a blur as she circled the school for the second time in little more than a few seconds, her mind registered her surroundings easily, making avoiding obstacles a cinch.
She went a couple yards down the road, careful to not fully enter the town yet. If she could return to being human, then she had better have a darn good excuse for her parents for being missing for three days. Quickly thinking up a story, she pulled her phone from a pocket, checked the signal, and, figuring one of her brothers would be far less trouble to contact than her parents, she called Zach.
After a quick story of going camping with a friend she had recently met at school (which was met with a fair amount of surprise), that she had left a note explaining she would be back in about a week, and had gone into a nearby city to call since she had no service out in the campgrounds, she hung up.
Replacing the phone in her pocket, she took a deep breath and faced the road leading into town.
It was now or never.
She went at what she hoped was a slow run. She would need to make sure she met the hunters separately, not all together. Which meant she would need some sort of vantage point to keep an eye out for them, in case they chose to travel in a group. Someplace out of the way, where she could still see the roads around her.
The school might work. Fewer roads to keep a watch on. Three stories, so she could watch from the rooftop. Winding halls on the inside where she could get them separated if they did travel together. Plus, it would likely be the most abandoned area in the town right now, and the last thing she wanted were causalities.
Picking up her pace, she headed toward her high school.


A short while later, Izzy lurked in the shadows pooling around the school, every sound louder than a cricket making her jump and cringe. The darkness felt cool and comforting on her skin, welcoming her like a long lost friend. A feeling she had once gotten from warmth of the sunlight.
Each time she turned a corner or spun around to see what had caused an unexplained sound, she expected someone to greet her with a wooden stake--or maybe a chainsaw, with what they did to Cerasus--in hand.
She rounded the building to the fire escape, which had been pulled up. With a quick glance around her, she decided to test her jumping skills. Just in case, she backed up a few feet, then jumped. She gasped as she overshot her mark, then grabbed hastily onto the metal frame of one of the two landings, then pulled herself over the railing with far less effort than she thought possible. With the noise she made, she stopped and looked around, wondering if anyone had heard it. With nerves turning anything that moved into a weapon-wielding person and only Cerasus' word that she would know who the hunters were, she turning to make her way to the rooftop to keep an eye out for the trio.

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As she waited, Izzy tapped her fingers anxiously on the rooftop where she crouched. Despite how long she crouched there, moving only to check the area around her to be sure she was not missing anything, her muscles did not cramp up. She inhaled and stood slightly, at the feeling that suddenly ran through her body, careful to still remain fairly well out of sight. Though she saw nothing immediately around, the sensation, the warning, still did not leave her. She moved as close to the edge of the roof as she dared without giving away her position, when she saw him, the streetlight far down the way glittering off his various piercings. He definitely looked menacing enough.
She swallowed and backed away when the man, who appeared to have stepped straight off the stage of the most die-hard heavy metal band in existence, looked in her direction. But there was no way he could have seen her, was there?
At least she knew where one of them was. She looked around quickly, trying to spot the other two, but did not find them. Realizing far too late she had failed to ask what kind of abilities she should expect from them and what would work to detain them, she took a deep breath and, holding it, Izzy hurried back down the fire escape as quickly as she could, not wanting to take her eyes off the hunter for too long.
Though her mind screamed at her to run the other way, she had a mission to accomplish. As confidently as she could, she went to the front of the school, acting as nonchalant as she could, with the intention of opening the doors in whatever way necessary, ever keeping a wary eye on the direction she had seen the hunter.
She paused at the doors, waiting for any sign he had neared. But none came. After a couple minutes, she scowled.
"It's going to be like that, then, is it?" she grumbled.
Not wanting to waste anymore moonlight or risk the other two hunters closing in on her, she stalked up the road, keeping to the darker areas behind the streetlamps. She picked up a large branch from the roadside as she went, just in case it would come in handy, and rested it on her shoulder, its presence granting a small sense of security; at least she now had something to use at a longer range than her fists.

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Izzy hesitated when she neared the man still standing where she had last seen him from the rooftop. Why had he not moved? It would have been better if he had tried to hide, to catch her by surprise, not stand out in the open like that, would it not? The answer came in the form of a masculine voice behind her. She shouted and swung around, holding her fallen branch in front of her like the world’s most pathetic makeshift club, the wannabe-weapon made even more pitiful in comparison to the iron cross the golden-eyed man carried so effortlessly.
How could I be so stupid? she scolded herself.
She swirled back around as a muttering language met her ears. When the third hunter seemed to emerge from the shadows themselves, Izzy all but forgot about the other two. She stared at the beast of a man and the broadsword he wielded, the blade glinting menacingly in the streetlight. She felt suddenly nauseous and week in the knees.
She was going to need a bigger stick.
Better yet, a miracle.
Izzy staggered back, trying to keep all three of them within her line of sight at once. Her branch dragged against the road as the trio spoke amongst themselves, a sickening dread settling deep in her stomach. She wanted to run, but they formed an almost triangle around her, making an easy escape difficult at best, and she had no desire to find out why the guy who apparently could not decide if he wanted to be a Punk rocker or a priest when he grew up held no weapons.
She looked to Psychotic Episode, her eyes wide at the prospect of them “beating” Cerasus’ hiding spot out of her. She tilted her head slightly toward each man as they spoke.
Bounty. So, there was a price on the head of a vampire. That was a fact to file away. As they continued, basically ignoring her, terror only increased with each passing comment.
Think, Izzy! she begged herself. She needed to separate them, to get them away from each other so she could deal with them individually. She glanced to Thrudge, doubting she could stand against him even if she wanted to. But still, it was her only chance. She tried to think of somewhere she knew best, somewhere that could provide a hiding place for a vampire while still being large and winding enough for her to lose the bounty hunters, and for them to get lost.
The forest! Vanderwell Forest. It was a fair sized expanse of dense woods a couple miles outside town. She had spent many a day there blazing her own trails, and could walk it backwards while blindfolded. And if she needed an actual place to lead them to, there was a cabin out there, old and abandoned, but still mostly intact. At least, enough so to provide protection from sunlight. It was hard to find if you did not know where to look. Now, she just had to get them there without them killing her. She could worry about separating them on the way. If she even got that far.
It was time to test her acting skills.
“I didn’t ask for this!” she breathed, her voice strained and high-pitched. She took a couple deep breaths, grasping at the fury she had felt when she first realized she had been turned. She needed that now. “I want Damocles dead as much as you for what he did to me!” She glanced fearfully between them, hoping they would not see the lie in the statement, or in what she hoped was anger that twisted her face. No matter why he had changed her--to spare her life in return for his, or simply because he needed a servant, a “thrall” (she let the word fuel the acrimony that her fear threatened to drown out) and she was just so conveniently there--he was still her only chance at undoing it. “If you want to know where that... that arrogant little snob is, just ask. I’ll gladly take you to him.”
Her breaths came in quick spurts as she waited for their answer.

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Izzy held her breath as silence befell the hunters, a hope she dared not entertain quite yet that they would take the bait flashing in her eyes. Then, they simply continued to talk, as if she had never spoken.
So much for her only saving grace.
Realizing their speed far outmatched hers as they came in for the assault, she did the only thing she could in the split second she had; with a soft whimper, she fell to her knees, her wet eyes closed, head and back bent, and hands on her head in a vain attempt at a small amount of protection, and waited to feel cold metal biting into her.
But the pain she expected never came.
Thinking for a brief moment she had simply dropped dead on the spot from terror, she swallowed hard and dared to open her eyes. She looked up. A leg stretched across her immediate field of vision, the pant leg hovering so close that, a fraction of an inch nearer, it would have been brushing against her. She jerked her head back slightly as she heard a light laugh, her hands sliding from her head to the back of her neck, and followed the leg to the backside of the man who had thwarted the hunter’s attack. He stood so close to her, she was surprised he had not bumped into her.
Though he looked normal enough from her limited view, the way he held each of the hunters at bay was enough to tell her that he was by no means human. Was he another hunter out to claim the bounty for her himself? Another vampire protecting his ilk? More importantly, with the hunters now preoccupied with the new arrival, did she dare take advantage of the situation and run to try and save herself, or wait to find out what fate her protector--if that was even what he was--had planned for her?
With scarcely a moment’s debate, she shakily ducked beneath the man’s leg and crawled inelegantly out from the center of the ring of impending death, careful to not knock into his leg. Without so much as a glance back, she jumped unsteadily to her feet, one shoe slipping slightly on the concrete, then made to run toward the edge of town furthest from the condemned school.

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Before Izzy could get too far, she heard the other man call to her, his tone surprisingly polite. Despite her desire to escape, she could not help but pause. She watched, her body tense and ready to continue her run should the need arise, as the hunters backed away. When the shadows consumed them and the feeling that had haunted her since she first spotted Cutter faded, she breathed a sigh of relief.
At least the man was not a hunter. Making no indication she intended to go any nearer to him, she looked the remaining man over suspiciously. He seemed harmless enough, even if in a ridiculous sort of way. She watched him warily as he brandished a cigarette, but did not light it, her body still on edge and ready to run. She kept glancing to where the hunters had disappeared, expecting them to pop back out at any second.
Her attention went fully to Hawaiian-shirt-guy as he spoke to her once more.
“You think so, huh?” she asked with stiff sarcasm, standing as tall as she could and looking him in the eye. “Who are you? How did you...?” she glanced to the spots where the hunters had disappeared once more, letting the last question trail off.

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Izzy regarded him closely. Even from their distance, she could make out every slight expression, every small movement he made. It was somewhere between fascinating and disconcerting for her. At least he truly seemed to have been protecting her. But the question remained of why.
Despite the situation,
“I’m Iz--” she stopped herself just before she instinctively answered his question. She took a quick, deep breath and looked to the concrete, Cerasus’ voice ringing in her mind, Names are power. “I’m nobody,” she finished with a shake of her head, hoping she had said it loud enough for him to hear. She looked back to him. “Why did you save me? Not that I’m ungrateful, or anything,” she added hastily.