The Nocturnals (Revised)

Chapter Three: Gamblers, Ravens, and Shifters, Oh my!

Eliora throws her backpack over her shoulder, grabbing her gun from its holster. 'Shit... That guy over there is still paralyzed. I could leave him behind. Saving him twice isn't worth it. What if I can't save him this time? What if I get killed instead?' she thinks, her heart pounding as the whispers grow louder.'Screw it,' she runs back behind a large shrub growing on the side of the brown gazebo. The clouds overhead darken as if they know the sin Eliora just committed. She watches through the leaves as the two muscled men walk into the gazebo, their guns loaded and aimed. They scavenge through her bags lying on the ground.

Eliora eavesdrops to make sure they won't do anything to Joshua, "Hey! Look," the one guy inspects Joshua, "this one has already been paralyzed. You know what this means?"

"That we can take him to Clarissa instead of finding another Tourist?" The guy smiles excitedly. Tourist is an innocent bystander, well, someone who's not a Gambler, they don't exactly have to be innocent.

The other guy raises his eyebrows, "No, Jake, it means there's another Gambler here. We can't steal from them."

"What?!" 'Jake' exclaims, "We have to! We're low on supplies and look how much food this guy has!"

The other guy punches him down to the floor, "Shut up. Don't let anyone hear us," he straddles the Jake guy, looking around. At this, Eliora ducks behind the Gazebo's edge, the man stretches his neck to scan everywhere, "It's clear." Eliora peeks around the corner, slowly moving behind the two men with the stealth of a panther. She positions herself to sneak up behind him and shiv him. If he turns around before that happens, she'll use her gun. Eliora grasps the shiv firmly and holds the gun's butt in her holster. Eliora's feet move swiftly over behind the man, but suddenly, he begins to turn around, in one movement, Eliora takes out her pistol and cocks it, aiming it at the man's head.

 A gunshot goes off, but it wasn't her gun. The man she was aiming at falls back and off the edge, a river of blood following. Eliora bites her lip in fear and slides quickly next to the dead man on the ground before the Jake guy notices and turns around. If a small fish got killed by the bigger fish, Eliora doesn't want to find out who that bigger fish might be.

"Jim!" Jake shouts, but is caught mid-sentence as another gunshot goes off. It sounds like breaking metal, but Eliora knows better. She's heard that sound too many times before. She peeks over the edge of the gazebo to find boots right in front of her face and Jake off to the left, dead. She looks up at a woman in military-camo pants and a tree green shirt. Her long black hair falls behind her in a fishtail braid.

"Sylvia. If it isn't the queen Raven herself. What made you fly to my house?" Eliora stares at her cousin. Sylvia joined the Ravens as soon as the attack of vampires came. A Raven is basically a vampire hunter and a Gambler hunter. They became Ravens because of how the vampire attack happened, well, started at least. A little girl was being raped by a vampire and her mother fought off the vampire, killing it with a broken chair leg. Guess who that mother was? Yeah. Eliora's thirty-six year old cousin, Sylvia. The little girl was killed and the painting she had just created in the morning was a picture of a raven that she had hung up on her bedroom wall, where the fight happened. The vampire Sylvia killed was the head of nine huge vampire clans. Ever since then, the vampires have been taking over the world, from America to China. Eliora's sure there's a missing puzzle piece to the story because the vampires wouldn't just slaughter all these humans for nothing. That vampire couldn't have been that important...

Despite Sylvia's offer to help her up, Eliora climbs up the side of the gazebo by herself, then brushes off her shoulder and puts her pistol in her pocket, "Ellie, I'm happy you're okay."

"No thanks to you and the rest of my family," Eliora crosses her arms.

Sylvia rolls her eyes, "A drama queen as always. Anyways, I'm here to search for supplies. For trade of supplies, I can give you the antidote to the neurolizer."

"Why would I need that?" Eliora glances towards Joshua, but stares down Sylvia with no fear, even if she can kill twenty men single handedly. Sylvia rolls her brown eyes, crossing her arms.

"If another situation like that happens again, what about the guy? There's strength in numbers unless the guy's dead weight," Sylvia walks over to him, flicking his shoulder as he just stares ahead vacantly, "Obviously, he will be unless he's cured."

"He only has three hours of this left. It's worth saving my supplies and waiting," Eliora flips her ashen blonde hair over her shoulder.

"It's not worth your life, Ellie," Sylvia acts concerned, a fake glimmer in her eye.

Eliora shakes her head, "You really think I'm fooled? I'd be damned if I'd think you'd help me. You never were one who was helpful."

Sylvia sighs, frustrated, "Don't you tarnish my name! You know, I was helpful and I still am. I do the best I can to fight against those monsters!" Sylvia recovers her posture and takes a deep, cleansing breath, "Can't you just lend your cousin supplies, then?"

"So your 'antidote' isn't real, is it?" Eliora smirks, defiantly.

"No, it's real, you just won't accept it, you stubborn idiot," Sylvia huffs, but calms herself down again, "Please, Ellie, I really need supplies... You don't know how many hungry people I have to feed."

"Actually, I do know and I also know that all the food you take, you stow away for yourself. You should be called Queen Vulture based on how much you scavenge food from people. You came to me a year ago and I still don't have enough supplies to give out without starving myself the way you starved me. Give it a rest," Eliora plops down onto her pool lounger. Sylvia puts her pistol in her backpack with a defeated smile, acting innocent, "Stop doing that."

"Doing what?"

Eliora lifts an eyebrow, "Giving me the guilt smile that'll make me feel bad about keeping my supplies to myself. I've been living in hell long enough and know you too well to be fooled by that charade. You are a liar and a phony so stop acting sweet and innocent. You think your own cousin doesn't know you that well? Even when I was younger, I knew you only cared about yourself."

Sylvia's smile fades and a crude expression replaces it, "Whatever. I'll just leave then," she turns away, but looks over her shoulder, "but know this, the next time I see you, I will bust a cap through your head and dance in the rain of your blood."

"So this is how you react to a monster you created. Get used to it, it won't be the last time you deal with another person like me. Bye, Silly Sylvia," Eliora waves without glancing towards her. Sylvia grumbles to herself and leaves, cocking her gun as she does.

Looking at her solar powered watch, Eliora sighs, "Two and a half more hours... What am I going to do with you?" she directs the question at Joshua. She hopes down in her heart that he hadn't seen her betray him. Eliora sets an alarm on her watch, then grabs her bow and arrow to do target practice.

After practicing for two hours, Joshua begins to wiggle his toes and fingers. Eliora sits down on the rotting wood floor next to him with her bow and arrows under her palm. Joshua stretches and cracks his neck, then suddenly remembers something, "What the hell were you doing talking to a Shifter?" Joshua asks, groaning as he regains feeling in his body.

Eliora hesitates, "What?"

"The woman you were talking to, she's a Shifter..." Joshua watches Eliora for a reaction.

Eliora stares down at the floor with a solemn expression, 'So she's actually gone and done it, she became a Shifter, Human by day, vampire by night.'