When you strike the physic gardens of a castle, its cures and food supplies, every guard ought to come running that way. The vampires themselves had sent some of their own to deal with the threat.

	Humans were inferior, and they -- vampires of the overworld -- were merely former humans.

	Any blood bank has your average easy-to-shatter windows giving a peeping tom peeks into the laboratories; this facility, in facilitating vampiric deals and dinings, boasted higher security and privacy to its [i]super storage centers[/i], trademark implied. The path to that ward was long and littered with liters crimson and scarlet that not only could've gone to use saving lives but also put a dent on their food supply, bound to abridge some un-lives. Meals left to waste! Near-heresy that might call for a bloodwite to the local lord of them.

	That should've ruled out that the perp was a bloodsucker himself... wouldn't it?

	Stealth had called to John, but not for attempts to hide from any guard -- much the opposite. The bike was left half-embedded in a wall behind the front desk, a purposeful crash that observed the receptionist's face become one with the clock hanging above that crash site; the rest of her could be found in the office room beyond. That was no accident. The bodies of slain mortals and vampires alike slung up by their own, or eachother's, entrails was proof. The mess got more artful and the walls more dented with frenzied dances of combat as the halls stretched on. The trail was absolute and impossible to miss.

	Around the corner, the hall flared wide to accommodate a pair of mantraps -- circle lock doors, tubestiles, whatever you may call them -- that had been flooded with blood, drowning the poor guards locked within. The left wall had a glass port for the door control room. It'd been shattered. Same with the man who now lied crumpled up in the back corner. The laboratory beyond and its hidden [i]dining areas[/i] were likely in disarray.

	It was there that the pale rider, who had circled back like a true hunter via the ventilation systems' shockingly large shafts just shy of a minute ago, stepped into view behind Nudara twenty feet away.

	He was actually a redhead, wearing a style that might've been spiky if not for how limp it seemed, like the lop ears of a goat. His eyes were, naturally, dark red; this near-glow could be spied even through his browline shades. He had not a speck of blood on him.

	Out came an oily voice, though raspy. "Nudara Fah. The 'King of Earth'."  He spread his arms wide, and the motion pulled along his coat flaps just enough to reveal some of his kit. The hoses on the sword-hilts and stranger pair of guns were reddened as if muddied by use in a back-alley operation. "What an opportunity. I knew you'd come here. My contacts tell me your lifeblood is... quite special. Are you willing to spare some, for the sake of science?"

	Slowly, his arms would lower again, slightly bent so they would brush his hips, forearms brushing his coat at the waist. His muscles tensed in preparation of crossing them. It almost resembled how a raptor, the ancient kind, might hold its arms.