Hidden Fangs

Chapter 7 - Back Home

"What's wrong Melissa?" Sebastian is by your side, like always. You cant hear what he's saying, the pain is too much. You just hear his voice. You can see the outline of his figure with your blurry vision before you close your eyes and let out another scream of pain.

A few more days have gone by and soon enough, the city is within your sights. You see smoke from a decently large fire from within the city and can't help but comment, "What has Alex done now?"

Sebastian responds, "5 coppers that it was Marcus and Caitlyn."

"You're on. That looks like an Alex fire to me," you take his bet confidently, the fire looked close to the "King's" house.

King my ass, he just killed the dude who was mayor. Though the mayor was shit as well.

Sebastian couldn't see as well as you, so he didn't know it was that close to Elijah's house. Usually anything near Elijah was Alex's doing. None of the other rebels had the guts to openly antagonize the guards.

Jake looked between you two and asked, "You really can tell who the fire was caused by already?"

"I tend to hang around the only people in the city that will do something that big," you shrug. This is just an everyday occurrence. "Of course we don't know their real names, but no one does for most of them."

"Real names?" Jake asks.

"If you do enough crime, you go by a second name so the guards don't find anything on you. And because everyone is willing to rat each other out for freedom. It's very easy to get away from most guards even if they catch you."

"So what's your real name then?" Jake catches on.

"That name is one that I never want to hear again. It's not a real name, just another one, the name of some scared little girl."

You get to the city and get in line at the entrance. You realize that you're probably going to have to pay the toll for most of them.  Surprisingly, around half of them have tokens to get in since this is the closest large city to them.

A few more have enough money for the token. It's not expensive for the city, but they don't have much money. You end up paying for Jake and around 10 others. Most of them are not happy that you paid for them as they still don't trust you, despite Sebastian's efforts.

You couldn't care less but Sebastian is annoyed by their distrust. "Who cares, cmon. The city awaits," you elbow Sebastian and start walking faster. He chuckles and follows you, not wanting to get lost. You hear Jake say, "Wait up!" but you're not slowing down.  Jake grabs your horse, Vortex,  with all the personal belongings for the three of you.

You haven't been able to cause trouble in a while. You can't count the amount of guards you've pissed off in this city.

Soon I'll be one of them.

...

I think I might hate that more than being a vampire.

You decide to run toward the burning building. Whether it was Alex or Marcus and Caitlyn, they'll be long gone. You just want to find out what they did.

You get to where the building is burning, and it turns out, it's an entire warehouse.

You see the different guards trying to put the fire out. Sebastian and Jake catch up to you and you see that Jake has Vortex. One of the guards turns around and sees you three.