man on a mission

She was gonna be the death of him. A few months ago the thought was almost rhetorical – Krista had been hard work, pushing him to the point of snapping dozens of times before pulling off some tiny miracle that had the whole thing flopping back in the other direction again (a whole bloody birthday party, complete with ridiculous presents, and her keeling over on him out of sheer stubbornness at the end). This wasn’t rhetorical anymore, wasn’t even much of a joke when it felt like every set of eyes in town was on him. That might’ve made a mask a better bet, but standing in some ridiculous shop in town with some plastic helmet over his head had felt utterly ridiculous. If any of them could identify his face from that video, then good on ‘em. Let them come and try lecture him about the wickedness of his ways or what he’d supposedly done to that woman – other than give her a good time.

Mal strutted past the queue outside the club, flashing his fangs to the bouncer at the door as his invite. There was some bitching behind him, but he didn’t even bother to turn and flash them. It was Halloween, anybody who didn’t have a clue what was really strutting around this town would just call them a shitty pair of plastic fangs and flash their own mouth of cheaply made tat, the sort of stuff that’d fall out the minute they felt the snap of a real pair at their throat. They were all ballsy until the curtain fell and revealed what was really behind it. Krista hadn’t been, not that first time, but now … God, what fucking monster had he made.

He was just lucky she probably wasn’t here. Better not have been here. Hazel eyes, stuck in that hard flat mode that had that primitive little spot in most people’s heads crawling, swept the crowd. That roommate of hers would probably have seen something like this as a way to help her get over her bastard of a boyfriend – like he was the problem in this relationship. Mal curled a fist at the thought, pressing it to his mouth before he dragged it down his beard. That was the real problem, he’d let Krista start pushing him towards her mindset and then when she’d realised he’d had a life outside of that – before that if she would’ve allowed a single thought to rattle around that empty head of hers – she’d flipped her lid and done him and that poor cow at the college dirty. Maybe if she was here she’d find out what trouble really was. Kitty would be just fine, well, had more of a chance of being fine than anybody else in here, but Krista, she’d probably throw herself at the nearest pair of fangs just to stick two fingers up at him again.

A slow circuit of the dance floor showed no sign of her – thank fuck. No overexcited blonde at the bar either, throwing every Tom, Dick and Harry a beaming smile and a flash of her jugular. Mal shouldered aside the crowd, coaxing an entire bottle out of one of the bar staff with a couple of hundreds slid across the bar. He wasn’t trying to work his way back through that crowd, not once things really got going. A glass was pointless, he nudged that back and twisted off the lid of the rum for a gulp before he worked his way back into the crowd. If Krista honestly thought he was out here picking up every woman that gave him the eye, then maybe he would. He skipped through the crowd, avoiding being pulled into the tide of the dance floor, although some perky little red head in an outfit that might’ve once been a couple of hankies made a real go of it, letting him feel every curse (mostly uncovered at this point) as she shimmied down the front of him. A ”sorry love, I’m not hungry yet,” had her giggling away. The dinner bell hadn’t rung yet after all.

Less than ten minutes later it came. The siren cutting through the air and silencing the entire place for a moment. Mal hovered near the booths, looking around as the numbnuts in the crowd did. God, they really were blind to everything in this town. He took another belt of the rum, breathing out its heat in a boozy exhalation. They’d learn soon enough, maybe there’d be enough of them left to help with the clean up later. Catching the eye of a brunette in one of the booths, Mal grinned and worked his way over. Not blonde, not looking up at him like he was the second coming. This one was more like the professor, knowing how to play the game, although she didn’t try and zap his balls up into his chest before she fell for the smile.

Pressed close to the side of the booth, Mal lowered his head and started that seduction that always came once they got a taste of the accent. Mal swirled the bottle around in his hand, propping a knee on the edge of the seat as he leaned in to murmur in her ear about getting a little taste. He’d have got it too, right from the spot where the brunette tossed her hair back from her throat. The sound of his name on male lips had him huffing out a breath against that bared throat. ”You hold on to that a minute love, I’ll be back.” The smile that’d been there for her faded as he turned towards the twerp standing in front of him. They were probably about the same height, although he must’ve had at least thirty pounds on Dick Turpin here.

Smoothing his hand down the front of his shirt, Mal smirked. Like he was meant to have a clue about the name. Why bother learning ‘em when you were gonna stroll right out of town again at some point (the Doc really needed to get his head back in the game). ”And that’s supposed to mean somethin’ to me?” he asked. The smile dropped though, one hand whipping out to grip him around the throat. Mal laughed roughly, the sound left gravelly by the bite of those skinny fingers. ”I don’t know who you’ve been talkin’ to mate, but it sounds like someone’s been spinnin’ you some bullshit story. I’d let go if I were …” Fuck. The whippet yanked on that by the nails grip and the table rushed up first.

Mal hit hard, glasses jumping, the bottle luckily not shattering because he swung it back at the bloke’s stomach, tearing himself away from that grip to come up with the neck of it still gripped in his hand. Blood streamed from his nose and into his beard. It hadn’t been Krista or Kitty, neither one of them had a clue what he got up to when he wasn’t drawing blood the acceptable way. ”I wouldn’t try again if I was you, pal. Now, I dunno what tale you’ve been hearin’. Whatever it was, you shoulda listened harder. Who gave you the torch and pitchfork and set you on the wrong man?” His eyes narrowed as he tightened his grip. Nobody in town had figured out their identities yet, thankfully. If they had there’d be more than one asshole gunning for him.

Tagged: HECTOR DACRE * Word Count: 1151

If the dandy in the expensive leather gear thought that tiny pair of stones he was swinging around were gonna get him anywhere he was sadly mistaken. He’d seen blokes like him pick their way down to the dock, sneering at the fetid puddles, turning their noses up at the cat calls from the doorways. Merchants with deep pockets and the sorts of airs and graces gave way the minute business was done. They’d let themselves get pulled aside then and those high pitched, pinched voices would be shrieking out the windows. This one would probably have sniffed and waved it all off, but he’d cave given the right incentive, if there was still enough left of him later to do it.

He was a bit old to take, but they’d messed around with older before, years meant nothing when it came to vampires after all. Mal sneered at that harsh laugh. There he was, giving them a jingle like a bell, like anybody was gonna pay any attention to them. The Docs walked above such things, blokes like him who were determined to be the biggest, baddest thing in a very small room. Maybe to all these idiots he was, he was probably holding some of the purse strings in this town at least, but he wasn’t looking at some teenaged twerp who’d never seen a fang outside the pages of some trashy horror novel before. The leathers would part under a knife though, the Doc’s needles puncturing his skin, melding, changing, transforming. Stealing some of that sodding strength that rolled through him, into the pinching fingers that grabbed and slammed him face down into the table.

It wasn’t a sneer on his lips as he straightened up, but a snarl. Mal sniffed back the blood, hawking a clot of it onto the dance floor. He’d aimed at the arsehole’s boots, but barely spattered them. Shame. He lifted the hand not clutching the bottle, rubbing the back of it under his nose. Staring down at it, he grunted at the blood that smeared his skin. Even as he was the bleeding didn’t stop instantly, woulda been less messy if he did. ”What you’ve got is a bloke whose night you’ve just ruined. You couldn’t have waited ‘til I was done to prove you’re a blind idiot?” Grumbling under his breath, Mal watched the woman scurry away. The doors were already locked, she wasn’t gonna get far in here. Maybe he’d be able to talk her into cleaning him up after, she’d wipe the blood from his skin and well, he’d done the same for her once he was done.

Tilting his head, Mal rolled his eyes. Nope, this idiot had the right man, which meant that someone had been running their mouth off and it obviously wasn’t Krista. She’d never seen that side of him, couldn’t have pointed the finger at him even if she wanted to. Far as he knew the only ones with any real clue of who he was were the Doc and the other two and self-preservation would’ve shut them both up. Unless … someone had cottoned onto something finally. Mal bounced the neck of the bottle in his palm, like he was weighing it up. His cackle rang out, his head tilting to take him in as the dandy puffed his chest out. ”I’d say she weren’t very good at it. Whoever you think she was. I’m not jokin’, mate. I’ve no clue what you’re talkin’ about. Someone’s been fillin’ your noggin’ with nonsense. The only way to make anyone supernatural is to take a little nibble, or for them to have been buggered from birth.” Or you had yourself a lab full of fancy equipment and a couple of hundred years of practice.

Mal scoffed, lifting the bottle to aim it at the bloke again. A warning that was gonna end up stamped into his face with the base of it. Crack that nose in return, a little tat to go with the tit there. ”If anyone was up to somethin’ in this town, who are you to tell them to stop? Wait, wait … lemme guess, you’re the Sheriff of Nottingham … or have you just been diggin’ around in his wardrobe?” He stepped closer, almost swaggering as he bumped the bottle into the guy’s chest, right beneath the hollow between his collarbones, holding him at a distance. ”Even if they weren’t up to anythin’ I’d say it’s got nothin’ to do with you. Keep your nose or I’ll break it for ya. You hear me?” Smash the bottle in his face, use the bits of it to put him down long enough to drag him out later. He might only bit chum at this point, but there were plenty of sharks in this town it’d work as a lure for.

Tagged: HECTOR DACRE * Word Count: 809

This town hadn’t been bad, not in the way others had been, but it did have one major problem – its busybodies. Constantly yapping about what everyone else was doing, sticking their beaks in, judging, whispering about it all as they clutched their pearls but did nothing to change what they thought was wrong with the place. He’d never have imagined there was a Karen running the club though. Mal stared flatly at the bloke as he spat the blood he’d caused to spill into his mouth on his precious floor. No hand wringing at that? Maybe he had enough people on staff who’d actually listen to him that there’d be someone to polish it and his boots later. Hazel eyes studied the boots he hadn’t quite hit. They looked expensive enough, the sort of poncy gear that was all flash and no substance. Fitting.

Mal shrugged his shoulders, tipping his head from one side to the other. ”Somethin’ like that,” he muttered. The corners of his mouth lifted higher, the smile still as sharp edged as one of the doc’s scalpels ”It will be when I’m done.” The only shame here was gonna be this bloke’s after he was shown up in front of all these gawping morons. Then he’d eat.

Laughter, as breezy as it came, rolled out of him, the posturing, the warnings, absolutely pointless. The Doc was the only one he’d ever listened to about what they were doing. More than a hundred years of people issuing warnings – posters pasted up around mining towns, whispers running through LA and San Francisco of what happened to bad little boys and girls – and nothing had so much as slowed them down. Mal’s lips pursed with amusement, a rosebud of amusement in the midst of that thick beard. ”What game would that be mate? I do like a good game of Scrabble, I imagine you’ve got one hell of a vocabulary too. All them big words.” He winked, knowing exactly what this arsehole meant. Maybe he’d lose a few of those braincells and any interest he had in trying to get all of this shut down when he got up close and personal with the bottle.

The glass was warming in his hold, the muscles in his fingers loosening up, ready for the swing. He’d had plenty of practice with bottles a lot heftier than this one. You put a bunch of morons at the same dock with their pay in their pockets after weeks, months even, at sea and wild was what you got within an hour. Alcohol sinking in fast enough to erase any sort of common sense that might’ve been rattling around in their mostly empty heads. That’d never been his problem. Mal chuckled again, dragging the bottle up the bloke’s neck, keeping up the pressure like he’d tip his head back at the perfect angle with it before it went crack across those high cheekbones. ”Good for you, grandad,” he said sweetly. ”I guess wisdom don’t always come with age, if you’ve decided you’re gonna tell a bloke who might be capable of what you’ve just accused him of to stop playin‘ in your sand pit.” Or pissing in it in his case. This bloke was looking to mark out his territory and he’d go walking straight over the line if he felt like it.

Looking at the crowd around the two of them – too many of them ignoring the music now – Mal bared his teeth. His lot were too well instructed to cause trouble in here, which meant that big balls here had found out some other way. Someone liked to tell tales. ”Tell the people I don’t know to stay clear … not exactly soddin’ complicated is it? You wanna get someone to stick a red A on their foreheads, make it easy for your people to keep them out? I thought that sort of thing went out with little moustaches.” Mal wrinkled his upper lip in demonstration – it wasn’t like there was a great dividing line between some of what had gone on back then and what the doc was doing, but he wasn’t about to bring that up. ”I don’t think so.” The smile sweetened further as the bottle was drawn back, then he was swinging straight for that pinched little mouth. He’d be too busy picking glass out of ‘em to put a damper on the rest of his night at least.

Tagged: HECTOR DACRE * Word Count: 741