Alex was in the wind. When she taunted me, I thought she was just being playful. However, I soon realized she was truly evading me somehow. I’d hit her with a ping from my sonar pulse, but by the time I’d catch her with it again, she was so far removed from her previous location that I had to keep chasing her. She stayed on the move, and running this fast around the city, in broad daylight, was taxing. There were so many prying eyes of humans watching me as I moved through heavily populated areas.

  I started wondering… how the hell Alex was moving through these people so fast? By the time I got to where she was, she was gone, and these people looked like they had no idea that she had just been there. They hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary. I started sensing something else also, like the image of her in my mind was… skewed somehow. She was doing something that I couldn’t identify, obscuring my senses from tracking her.

  This went on for hours, place after place, pulse after pulse until the sun set. That’s when things changed. She slowed and started moving to more familiar locations. Once we moved in a straight line, I realized where she was headed. She was moving in a straight path to Martin's bar.

  I slowed my pace as I bounded through shadows, over buildings, rooftop to rooftop, to be more observant of what Alex was doing in the glimpses I’d catch of her as my pulse sense picked her up in the sea of vague shapes and structures that imprinted into my monstrous sensory perception.

  She only remained near Martin’s momentarily before breaking off and following people. That got my attention.

  I moved closer to make sure, blasting out my senses to be certain that she hadn’t been corrupted by Hunger or something and was going after humans. Knowing this was Martin’s bar, I assumed there was a pretty good chance these were vampires, but I couldn’t relax.

  Thankfully, my pulse sense picked up on their blood concentrations, and I knew she was still Alex. There were four of them, all males. They moved completely unaware of both me and Alex. However, now that I had shifted my focus from them and back to Alex… she was gone. Not just the vague, blurry impression I was getting, but she’d vanished. I couldn’t locate her… but I still felt the strange connection that pulled between us. She was still there somewhere, but she had completely gone dark on me.

  I followed the vampires, knowing that Alex had followed them for a reason, pulling her out of the game of cat and mouse she was playing with me. They were being hunted… preyed upon, and they had no idea. They were out on the prowl, probably looking for some unfortunate soul that they could isolate and trap in a dark alley somewhere. Someone to drink dry and discard like trash. I knew Alex wouldn’t leave them to their own urges.

  I moved in the shadows, pulling the aura of death and destruction back into myself as much to hide myself in the darkness. I wanted to watch what she would do… if she would reveal herself. And… if I was wrong, and she had vanished, I would kill these four myself before they could get a hold of anyone else.

  I skulked, shifted through the dark, smelled their blood, and followed the vile laughter through the streets; all the while not sensing Alex.

  Four men, all assholes… easy to tell. Two were dark-haired, one red-headed, the last blonde. All of them looked in their mid to late twenties. Who knew how old they really were? They moved with authority, like they owned the streets they walked down, dressed in business casual attire, like they had just come from a day's work in the office. They walked casually down the frozen street, coated in light snow and thin ice as they made their way to more civilian bars.

  I wasn’t sure what night it was, but if I had to guess based on the population walking the streets, it was either Friday or Saturday. There were a lot of people out. All of them were bound in thick coats, gloves, and boots to trudge around through the snow. These vampires, however, had on more spring clothing; light and airy, not equipped for the elements. However, they could just blend in like they were sacrificing comfort for style; typical assholes. They reminded me of frat boys, not in appearance per se… but in attitude; like the world would bow for them and all their wants and desires. I couldn’t wait to show them what the world had for them.

  I followed them to the large entrance of a bar that was a mix between a sports bar and a dance club. I could feel the vibrations of music pulsing out from the club in a physical way, feeling the reverberation of the large speakers somewhere in the club. The large opening was surrounded by an expansive neon light that draped around the three sides of the rectangular opening, through which everyone walked, emitting an icy blue light that amplified the winter setting.

  I smelled cigarette smoke and beer filling the atmosphere around the small population inside. I liked the smell. It reminded me of my mother's side of the family. They were smokers… drinkers… probably not the best thing to remember about them, but it did make me reminisce for a split second. Thoughts of vacations sprang up in my mind when we all got together for a few days at the beach.

  I shook the thoughts away as the four vampires melded into the crowds, looking less business casual and more like jackals on the hunt. They moved together, keeping watch on all the civilians, picking out the ones they liked, and making hand gestures to their cohorts to signal who they wanted to keep an eye on, seeing if the others liked the food they found.

  I moved inside, trying to remain unseen in the nightlife, but I couldn’t do that. People saw me, but looked away. The few people who caught my eye stared for a split second, but then looked away like they had just stared directly into the sun.

  I smiled as it happened a few times. It was always interesting to see people's reaction to me. I continued into the open expanse of the club, seeing the sea of humans dancing to the beat of whatever this music was. I moved between people, all while pumping out pulse after pulse of my sonar pulse, keeping track of the four vampires I followed, and for Alex. But she never showed back up… even though I still felt something else on the periphery of my mind that made me think she was close.

  I could feel the bass in my chest, vibrating my body as the electronic dance music thudded through my person, and the bodies jumped and raged to the sounds. Drinks were drained, bodies moved in sync, lips touched, and pheromones filled the nightlife in the bar. It felt… primal. It reminded me of the feeling I felt behind the last few words Alex spoke to me. ‘Come find me…’

  My thoughts shifted to Autumn for a split second. I felt something… guilt, maybe. But then I remembered her request. To stay away. It was… hard, but if that’s what she wanted… I would. I promised her I would leave if she asked. It was a sharp comment I made, but I made those kinds of hard declarations when I felt strongly about things. I always had… even in my human life, even more now when I carried things so much more potent and serious. I was the type of guy who would say something and then follow through on it, even if I regretted it… only because I said with my words I would do something. I told her I would leave if she asked… and she asked. So I did. I couldn’t look back… if that’s what she wanted.

  If I were going to be on my own again… I would do what Jon recommended. To find whatever I could to get me through the dark days. That feeling I felt in Alex’s words felt like something I wanted to investigate further… she intrigued me, she always had, but now that she had this Primeval aspect… she was even more fascinating. I looked for her with my combined senses, trying to find her in the pulse, the smell, the sights, and even the sounds between the beats of the music. She was here, but I just couldn’t put my finger on her.

  I stayed inside the club for about an hour before I realized the vampires were on the move. They had drunk and socialized quite a bit before they decided to leave. They had found a person they were shuttling outside. They surrounded her, a female. I couldn’t tell much between the mass of details that surrounded all the humans in this area. But she was cornered by all four of them. They were going to share her. They stayed close, walking outside with her in front of them like they were coercing her to move at her request.

  Without ceremony, I moved outside, remaining on the outskirts of anything the normal people of the world could see. I saw an opening between two buildings as I walked out and slipped into the shadows. As soon as I entered the darkness and isolation, I leapt from the ground and ascended to the rooftops.

  From on high, I looked down at the four males who ferried the girl to a remote location just two blocks over from the club. Even as I stood above them, streets away from the club, I could still feel the faint vibrations of the music from all the way over here.

  The red and blonde-haired vampires cornered her into a dumpster, preparing to attack. They would latch onto her and take her from this world, turning her into food for them to sustain themselves. I moved closer, preparing myself to descend on them with absolute brutality.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Then… I noticed her hair. It was red. The female's hair was crimson red, luring in the four men with a supernatural beauty. It was like a drug that called to them all. Even in their power, their strength that told them they were in control, the allure she held controlled them, and they didn’t even know it. They hungered for her… not for her blood, but for her attention. Her acceptance and her attention.

  Alex stood across the small alley from them like a damsel in distress. The look on her face was pure, unadulterated fear. She was a scared human girl who just wanted to make it home for the night. At least… that’s the face she wore. To the four vampires… she was exactly as she presented herself. She was a naive damsel in distress who couldn’t save herself from the big, strong vampires who would do with her as they saw fit. Her form-fitting clothes tantalized the men in ways they hadn’t expected, but welcomed all the same.

  I hadn’t picked out the most revealing stuff for her when I was just trying to get her dressed in something other than rags, but somehow she still made them unbelievably appealing to me… them… They wanted her… they needed her tight body, her crimson hair, and her large breasts. They needed… more than anything… her blood that filled every inch of her, and the contact with her that would come from feeding… and whatever else their minds and bodies desired. They were, for lack of a better word, entranced.

  In that moment, there was a division between the four men… a separation between them that they all wanted her for themselves. They hungered for her… and they couldn’t share her between each other.

  But… she hungered for something else.

  A ringing hiss filled the area as the four surrounded her in the dark, shadowy alleyway. The hiss built and built, filling my ears as the hiss turned into a shaking vibration that pierced my ears. It was everywhere in the immediate vicinity, turning the alley into a high-pitched ringing field that could incapacitate a normal human being.

  The vampires leaned over slightly, grasping at their ears and gritting their teeth against something they couldn’t see or understand. Alex still stood there, clutching the dumpster like she was terrified, yet unaffected by the noise. She was really deep into her role.

  Without warning, the four vampires were thrown back against the brick walls and pinned to the walls of the alley like they were old flyers stapled in place. I watched from the rooftops nearby, and it was brutal. They had no power. This was not a physical assault, but something unseen. It was a power that could affect the physical world and couldn’t be fought off by normal vampires. All of them hung against the bricks like someone had nailed them to the wall.

  Just then, the red-haired beauty ascended from the ground. It was only a few inches, but Alex was airborne, floating through the air like a murderous balloon that had a will of its own as it floated to her captors. She was held aloft by psionic power that not only accompanied the hiss vibration, but was the source of it.

  Then, Alex’s form shifted. Her skin shone brilliant red for a split second before it almost flipped on itself, turning white flesh into segmented reddish-orange chitin that covered her body from head to toe. It happened in a wave, her form growing larger with the shift, but still holding the same armor-plated surface that resembled the chitin of the spider-elder I fought and killed down in the pits. She was taller in this form, but remained humanoid and looked obviously female.

  Alex’s blood-red hair stood on end, hovering straight up as she ascended through the air in her armored, chitin form. Even in this form, she held a feminine appearance, the chest region retaining her breasts in the upper armor, and the waist staying slim to the same shape she held in human form, proportionally at least. Her legs were muscular and toned, and her armored flesh reflected that musculature. Her face shifted to the similar angular features when her vampiric visage took over, yet now, her face was covered in thin armor, and her ears vanished into a flush opening. The very ends of her extremities were clawed in cutthroat chunks of armor that replaced her claws and toes with razor-sharp armored digits, blackened at the ends. Everything was reinforced, and she looked like some kind of bio-organic weapon of mass destruction. She could slaughter anything that stood in front of her without even breaking a sweat.

  Then… the hiss amplified. Alex floated in the middle of the alley, arms outstretched. The ringing became almost earsplitting before something visual started to happen. The vampires all began to cough up blood. Well… not cough it up, but blood began running from their mouths. Like a river that ran on an invisible path, the lifeblood ran from the mouths of the vampires and floated through the air, coiling from four separate streams into one large one right in front of Alex’s form, coalescing in front of her face. Then, it flowed into her mouth, feeding her hunger for blood… vampire blood. In all of ten seconds, the blood of all four vampires coursed through the area and flooded into the mouth of Alex, who remained held aloft by psionic power that I couldn’t understand.

  Suddenly… it was done, and the hissing vibrations stopped emanating from Alex’s vibrating form. I looked over to her, and the blood hadn’t even stained her mouth. She was something beyond this world… beyond the vampires.

  The four men turned from living, breathing creatures, and now they were dried and desiccated husks of what they once had been. It almost looked like someone had stolen mummies from some kind of ancient Egyptian exhibit and tossed them out in the street after dressing them in business casual attire.

  “Ho…ly… shit!” I barely got out after watching Alex destroy these creatures without touching them.

  Suddenly, her crimson orbed eyes shifted to me, hearing my words. For a second, I thought she’d spring an attack, but she looked away quickly, uninterested. She knew it was me. No doubt about it. That told me one thing. Alex… she was still in control. She seemed stressed and confused by the strange flood of new power and abilities, going on pure instinct, but it was still her. Otherwise, she would have shifted on me next.

  Then, without warning, Alex ascended into the black sky. Her feet rose higher and higher until she slipped into the void of the night, winter sky. She went above the street lights so normal people couldn’t see her, but she flew through the air like a fucking superhero.

  I chased after her, bounding through darkness, over the rooftops again to keep up with her fluid rush of movement. The sound remained, the endless hissing vibration stayed close to Alex, emanating from her body as she lifted herself with this new power from her Relic of Hunger.

  As I chased her, I thought of her form. That armored humanoid form looked like some kind of alien creature from some kind of sci-fi movie, like aliens meet mega-spider or some shit. She was absolutely lethal, and if that told me anything, it was that the other elders were probably just as, if not more, dangerous than I had realized.

  Before long, I realized we were approaching her apartment near downtown. She still remained in that armored form, as I could see her in the air, but she knew where she was going. I angled myself on the rooftops to be able to jump into her place as soon as I was close enough.

  As she neared her apartment, her body shimmered in the air, and the armor started melting or retracting away. Her form shrank down as the armor disappeared, returning her body, clothes, and size back to her normal dimensions. Alex looked exactly the same. Not even her clothing was damaged from her transformation. Lucky!

  Her psionic power had to have something to do with that, because every time I transformed and let the full physicality of Myordrakien out, it ripped my clothes to ribbons. It made me ask a lot of questions inside, like how the fuck did that work at all? Was that form not entirely physical… or… what?

  She descended slightly to float down from the dark sky into the small balcony of her apartment, sliding open the door and stepping inside. As she entered the shadows of her place, she looked back over her shoulder. Her blood-red eyes caught mine and held them for a second. She watched me as I chased after her, smiling wryly again, like she was still playing with me; even after all that crazy shit I just saw her do. After a moment, I got closer, and Alex stepped deeper inside and out of sight.

  I leapt over the gap between her balcony and the nearby rooftop I was on, clearing the space and landing inside her balcony. I stepped through quickly and then slid the door behind me, closing us off in the darkness of her blacked-out apartment.

  Once inside with the door shut, I saw Alex at the corner of her living room, barely stepping through her bedroom. She stunned me for a moment. Only… this time, she wasn’t supernaturally doing anything murderous or surprising. She had fully removed her clothing. Her jeans, jacket, and shirt were gone; only her underwear remained as she stood in her bedroom doorway. She stared at me with a wanting smile, daring me to keep walking deeper into her lair.

  I gritted my teeth, feeling the push… no, the shove from the monster. It was connecting to her in some deep way that I couldn’t understand, feeling the familiarity of the Primeval power she held inside. I felt my own things, but the added weight of the Primeval stuff only served as amplification. I could see it in her eyes too… confusion, desire… but more than that… I saw Alex actually wanting something. I felt it in myself, too.

  She slowly slipped the strap of her bra off her shoulder as she stepped into the darkness of the bedroom, daring me to come in there without saying the words.

  So much had happened… I felt so many conflicting things. The things I still had to figure out with Autumn… with my existence, and the things Alex and I both still had to do. But… in that moment, knowing what all was going on… I wanted this. Not the monster… not anything else that might be talking from the sidelines… but I just wanted this connection to her. Me… Sam… connecting with Alex… and everything I had learned and experienced with her. I wanted to connect deeper with her… I had for a while now. She was… unique, even before this relic stuff.

  Her words popped into my mind again. Her warnings to stay away from the Chasses. She said that we were both monsters… killers of killers. She was the one person that I could say was the closest to me in mentality and situation. I knew that, but I always felt a resistance toward her… but not anymore. Not in this moment. I wanted more… like gritting your teeth after seeing the dentist. It was a hurts-so-good kind of feeling that I couldn’t resist.

  I walked through her apartment and entered the shadows of her room. The last thing I saw before closing the door was Alex, sitting on top of her bed, coiled in her blankets, and in the process of removing the last few vestiges of underwear she had on.

  I felt the primal needs inside me… and the monstrous side. I closed the door… and I went to her. Things inside both of us unfurled… human things… and Primeval things.