The Vampire's Rival

When she cuts you deep

After hours of searching, consumed with finding the boys and handing them their hides, I caught a different scent floating to me between the trees. If I wasn't already focused on scent hunting, it would have never caught my attention. A human scent. 

Wildlings?

This close to the Enclave?

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. One human. Wildlings travelled in packs. A pack offered better protection. The more they were, the better their chances to drive a stake into your heart and slash your head off. A little dramatic, but it worked. This was just one human though, and they were close enough to the Enclave to get my attention. I followed the scent, deciding I'd get back to searching for the New Agers later. Two vampires could take care of themselves in these woods. But a human out here alone? I had to see this for myself.

I was about to catch up to the human when the breeze brought with it yet another scent. I froze. This was a familiar scent. One that I had a complicated history with. What was he doing here? What was happening in these woods today? I turned toward this new scent and raced to cut him off. I had to deal with this old "friend" first, before catching up to the human.

The jungle was eerily silent, as always. After the Human Error, many animals died in a global mass extinction. A large percentage of the remainder were killed in the chaos that ensued. Centuries later, the one lasting side effect of it all was an eerily silent rainforest. Although it didn't help that, as a vampire, I am the apex predator, which would silence or scare away the animals that were there anyway. I didn't mind it. It meant that there were less scents and sounds to confuse the ones I was following.

It wasn't long before I found him. I stayed down wind to keep him from noticing me, then exploded onto the overgrown game trail he was on and lunged at him. It only took microseconds for him to register my presence, but that was enough. He backflipped and I sailed past him, landing onto the padded forest floor in a roll.

With my back still towards him, I slowly stood up. "What are you doing here, Josal?"

"I'm a Hunter and I'm in a forest," he said snidely. "I'd think it was pretty obvious."

It was the wrong day to choose to aggravate me. I attacked without warning. Josal was scrappy, but wiry. As a New Age vampire, he was weaker than I, but that didn't stop him from training hard for centuries not to be. His impressive physical strength belied his true nature. Like most vampires, after his Turn, Josal had a dominant trait that was supercharged beyond what was humanly possible.

With Josal, it was his sense of smell. Rumour had it that he could tell a human's age just from the scent of their blood. That he could identify a human's blood type from scent alone and then use that to reasonably deduce that human's personality without ever having met them. I knew he was good, but I was more than a little sceptical of the rumours. Having said that, his incredible sense of smell made him one of the best Hunters out here, hired by vampires from all five Enclaves to find "special humans", Wildlings with traits specific to the vampire who requested them. But that didn't mean he could skirt my Enclave's rules.

Josal buckled at the hard kick to his solar plexus, but his reflexes kicked in and he blocked my right hook. I hit his left forearm and immediately followed with a strike with my left hand, only to be blocked again. He shoved me hard with both hands, forcing me backwards. I slid across a cushion of leaves for a few feet, only just catching my balance. He was better than the last time we'd met like this. I straightened up, fixed my jacket, and took a moment to stare him down. He was better, but that wasn't going to be nearly enough.

I made a fist with my left hand and moved in with a punch. Josal held up his palms together to block the punch, but I'd seen that coming. Before landing the punch, I opened my fist and swatted his hands downwards, clearing the path for two solid right punches, one to the chest and another square in the throat. That rattled him. I had my left hand on his right shoulder now and continued raining punches on his gut with my right. He got a new wind of energy and started to block the punches, but I locked his arms and started to knee him repeatedly in the ribs.