Vampiric - Skyrim Fanfic

Prologue

        Prologue

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To Seraph, as she was ironically named, going in for the kill was usually almost much too easy to be pleasurable or thrilling.

        Almost.

        Humans always thought the attack was going to come from behind, which she counted as slightly reasonable: no matter what a human did, there was an area that was invisible to them at the moment, the area they most expected to be attacked from. This side was the space behind them.

        There was a time when Seraph would pounce on her victim from behind, but usually the stupid human would look over their shoulder in anticipation of danger and then spotted her fluorescent eyes - the haunting ones that were the color of the burning sun - which always caused them to erupt in unnecessary shouts and spontaneous fits of running before she sunk her teeth into their neck, briefly savored the taste of their blood, then ran off before someone could arrive at the scene and report her to the Dawnguard.

        No, it was much easier to wait for the victim, for most expected to be followed. Almost none expected the culprit to be waiting for them all along. Seraph had learned you had to pick just the right time, the right place, and the right moment. Time: midnight, at the absolute height of a vampire's power and in a place with many tall and large obstacles in which to hide behind. In this case, it was simply minutes before the clock struck twelve and the numerous large, lumbering trees provided her with shelter from prying eyes.

        Seraph silently went over her mental checklist again in paranoia, but her thoughts were shattered into many jumbled pieces when she heard the crackling and hissing of the leaves underneath her unaware victim's feet. Seraph noted the tone of the human's voice from the simple curse that had been uttered under their breath: her victim was a female with a modulated tone of voice. She smelled faintly of wild horses and the dusty, sneeze-inducing smell of sawdust and hay, a scent that was all too familiar to her.

        She knew she shouldn't, but Sera had to. She just had to look around the bark of the tree, if only for just a second, and take a look at her victim, as she had a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach about this particular one. Seraph was well aware that her eyes shined like "the sun during midnight" - as her sister had once remarked on the topic - and that the chances of the female on the other side of the tree would notice her through the green leaves and the darkness of midnight then promptly panic and draw attention to herself were high enough that they should've held her back and reprimand her for wanting to risk such a thing as her safety, but they didn't.

        The vampire squinted her eyes into narrows slits to make them less noticeable, took a restrained breath, and slowly peered around the curvature of the trunk of the tree and saw what she was dreading: a giraffe of a middle-aged woman with honey-blonde hair that fell halfway down her slim back, mismatched armor, and penetrating light blue eyes, like the ocean. Quite funny. Sera thought, stretching her glance at the human much longer than she probably should have. The way she clenched onto the bark of the tree gave away she didn’t really think it was amusing. My eyes are like the sun, and hers are like the ocean. Just like . . . Sera shook her head, continuing her survey on the human to see if she was really who Seraph thought she was.

        Suddenly, as if Sera's soon-to-be victim knew she was being inspected, her head snapped in Seraph's direction and her light blue eyes met the vampire's yellowish-orange-ish one in a frightened look. Knowing it was time to strike, Sera bared her yellowed fangs and hissed threateningly. The woman tried to stare back with an unafraid glare, but it fell as Sera expertly tackled her to the ground and shouts and hisses of both women reverberated through the otherwise silent forest.

        However, during both their struggles to survive, Sera was bested. Strong, honed-over-the-years arms pushed her off her victim, and the woman with the light, terrified blue eyes, mismatched armor with a boot tossed over to the side dejectedly, and ruffled and ragged yellow hair held a sharp dagger to her pale throat. Sera prepared herself to take her final breath, for her victim to put her out of her misery caused by her inhumane desire to feast on blood. She braced herself for the blade to pierce her throat and she would struggle to breathe before her heart stopped beating and she faded away into eternal sleep.

        But none of that came. Instead, the dagger collapsed to the ground, leaving a puff of the unsanitary dirt in its wake, and her victim stiffened in grim realization.

        "Angel?"