Notes: Chapter so horrible. .chapter. And do not fear the constructive criticism gods, people! They will not smite you down, I promise! I have them distracted with cheddar is beddar!

Chapter Three:

Outside the building I spotted my car without difficulty due to the crystal light emitted by the street lamps that littered the sidewalks. I fumbled to get the keys in the lock for some time before managing to drop them, a quiet splash following up to taunt me. Giving an exhale of disapproval, I bent down to pick them up.
As my fingers searched along the bottom of the shallow puddle, a twitch formed at the back of my throat and I coughed. At first I wasn't sure if the sound I had heard behind my own was imagined or not, and deciding on remnants of paranoia I continued until I found the keys.
I stood and gathered the calm to unlock the door just before I caught a soft, low rumble coming from my right. When I turned to investigate I was met with two orbs, low to the ground, beaming flat white at me in my shadow, a growl rising.
A short bark came from behind me and enough sense manifested that I pulled open the door.
The third creature came from near the first and landed, a giant paw on my shoulder and another below my neck, claws piercing through the flesh. Crying out I threw that arm back and jammed the key into the beast. It released and I got quickly into the vehicle, slamming the door closed while locking them all.
Hearing a thud as I moved to the ignition, red sparkles dazzled in my vision. The car growled itself in response to quiet howls that jumped at the windows, causing one to crack.
My hand threw it into gear and my foot slammed the pedal. I sped through the pack, down the road, lights flickering in and out of existence.
I felt my body beginning to slow and I wondered where it had sped up. This thunder-pulse and short breaths seemed normal, something tested regularly in this place of glassy buildings and plastic doorways.
Something caught my eye up ahead and I squinted to see two more eyes reflecting my headlights, this time towering above the top of the car. As I saw them appeared enormous hands, dangling twisted at the sides of a now visible grey torso, hunching forward on sudden backward legs that rested on massive feet. A head with dog ears pulled far back and lips curled up in a snarl met me and I heard fear, the silence breaking out of me, stretching out its stench.
The wolf bunched together, waiting to spring. I froze behind the wheel.
A giant of a werewolf sprung forward with intensity I had never witnessed. As soon as I had seen it happen it was passed the headlights and into the safest shadow, a foot before me.
It hit and a fissure spread through the front windshield. Small trails of blood streaked past as the creature rolled off to the top of the car and was sent into the night behind.
Silence.
Silence except the whisper of the engine.
No thought pressed through my mind, even as I approached the red octagon.
Reflex brought me through for a long time that passed momentarily, and when I came back into full consciousness I found myself headed towards the complex. I redirected the vehicle towards the park, not too far east.

It was disturbingly routine, getting out of the car, despite the stains on the back of the seat and the window that was a mere breeze away from fully shattering in the back. The manner in which I was able to casually slip the keys into my pocket sent shivers through me as I exited the parking lot and crossed the old stone bridge. Even the sound of my shoes on the worn slabs frightened me.
The darkness created by the lack of lamps and by the trees that blocked out some fabled moon made me draw up inside, cower away from the wounds on my back that threatened to spread.
I saw a darker shadow next to the trunk of what my memory informed me was a maple, and had a form oddly familiar not appeared I would likely have crumpled.
"Sven! So glad you could come! I'd show you around but you've already been here." He paused, an awkward expression somehow visible beneath the layers of shadow. I could see strips of color, bits of red cloth and hair that looked to be a tainted white, lively pink skin and the toes of black shoes hidden somewhere under folds of fabric. "Sven, what happened?" he asked, his voice nearly drown in concern.
I opened my mouth as though to speak but words were as impossible to form as thought.
"You're bleeding."
The knowledge of what a vampire does when exposed to blood hit me like a bullet to the brain. The attack from the werewolf would be nothing as dangerous as being at the mercy of _him_ near an open wound. Certainty that I would be dead by the end of this night of the next welded into my mind, bringing hushed tales of experiments done where vampires put in a circular room with a human whose finger had been pricked and how it had looked like a shark attack, the walls stained so bad they had been burned at the conclusion of the research.
I whispered, "Oh God."
I had turned to run back to the car but my arm was caught.
"Wait! Sven, what's wrong?"
"Let go!" I shouted and attempted to wriggle free.
I expected his fangs again, probing inside my neck to steal my life away again, but instead was granted freedom.
I ran for a short distance to the bridge, then turned around to see him still standing there, watching me with a tilted head.
"Where are you going?" he asked with intense curiosity.
My knees gave way and I fell to the ground, my breath quickly leaving to form a short sob.
He took a few steps towards me. "You need to get that taken care of or you won't live through tomorrow. Here," he offered me a hand and a compassionate smile, "my hotel is hardly a mile away, I can take care of it there if you like. And whoever did this won't follow, I can promise you that much."
I tried to stand on my own and was still reluctant to accept his help once I failed. Feeling tears well up I turned away to blink them back.
He walked a step behind me and to the left back to the parking lot, steadying me on the bridge when I lost my balance.
"Is this your car?" he asked as we approached it.
"Yeah," I replied, my voice fainter than I would have admitted at the time.
The shame his pitying gaze created in me as I brought my keys out sent me to silence. "Are you sure you can drive?"
Ignoring the politeness and concern, I plainly held the keys out for him to take, then walked over to the other side.
Strength drained from me into the chair when I sat down, my head lolling over to the window. Just when I realized that my vision had begun to blur he asked, "Where's the ignition on this thing?"
Absently I gestured next to the radio.
"What do you have it doing over there? I don't suppose you have the turn signals in the back now, do you?" he jested even though I had returned to doze off by the window.
The quietest of purrs was heard as the engine prepared itself, and soon the car had entered a tunnel of speed and whirring streetlights, reflections in glass windows and signposts that caught the hints of the electric fire. I saw hellish stars contort from the lights along the sidewalks, grinning fiercely in the twisted sky scape of the city. Something primitive in me cowered from the sly monster.
I couldn't tell how long it had taken to get there because I wasn't sure I had been awake for the entirety of it, but soon we were stopped.
My mind clasped to feverish whispers of some Latin words as my shoulder was gently shaken. I opened my eyes to see him standing outside the car, one hand on the door. He smiled loosely and this time skipped the offering of his hand and pulled me out directly. "They must have gotten you better than I thought." A few steps back from the car, he held out the keychain and gleefully clicked a button, sending a chime signaling the locks into the back of my neck. "Well you should probably hurry then!" he added in anger.
I followed him into the building, my footing getting less sure every few steps. Soon we were on an elevator headed to the fourth floor. Pinpricks danced along my arms.
"It's not far now," he reassured when the doors opened.
Walking down the hallway in front of me he was out of place, his environment shifted or replaced. The smooth gait too contradicting to the harsh tones and angles of the walls and ceiling, relaxed nature unfit for the confining and demanding metals.
At 419 he held the door open with a friendly smile. This quickly dissolved after we had entered and he moved fast to the window opposite the door, asking with the concern of an elder brother, "Who was it exactly?"
My deprived brain fumbled while he peered behind the curtains. Though I closed my eyes sharply, words slipped around like on ice.
"Werewolves?" he asked and turned back with a questioning expression.
I nodded.
"It felt like werewolves in the air. You can go ahead and sit on the couch, if you'd like. But I wonder how they managed to get through that executioner's grasp of this 'compound' of yours." As he left the room he continued debating, "However I suppose they could have happened to let a pack or two slip, maybe bribery of some sort." Reappearing, "What do you make of it?"
I wasn't sure whether I was more confused by his manner or the situation.
"Well are you going to sit there? Should I leave these so you can mend yourself?" he asked in reference to nondescript white boxes he had brought.
"No, I." I wasn't sure. I was perplexed by some concept that was circling around the edges of my awareness, taunting from the sidelines my childish capacity.
"Well then take your shirt off!" he ordered cheerfully and sat down as well and began a raid on the boxes.
"Do you know what you're doing?"
"I think. Well, I used to, that's for sure," I noted his odd handling of gauze at this point, "You see, what happened was. What year is it?"
"Twenty-one thirty eight."
"Ah. Hold still." I wasn't given time to comprehend his warning before a fierce sting was applied to the wounds, followed by a rolling burn. "Well you see, about twenty, thirty years ago I was walking along, you know, looking at the lights and all of that sort, when this little girl, I'm not sure how old but still very young, she was dying in the streets." As he grew angrier the chemicals being applied grew progressively less forgiving. "Work of some amateur vampire still too stupid to be able to catch someone who had half a lick of sense for the world."
I gave a small shout of protest for his misplacing of gauze.
"Sorry. But you see, so I took her in to, what do you call them? Places with all those sick people laying around on uncomfortable beds?"
"Hospitals."
"Yes. I took her to one of those and the doctors had me stay with her while they worked because she threw quite the fit when they tried to have me leave. And so I picked it up from there."
"What?" I shouted.
"Oh, what," the rip of tape was heard, "just because _you_ couldn't figure out how to fix up some minor wounds from that means _I_ can't?"
"No, I've seen how quickly vampires can learn, but you were still captive twenty or thirty years ago!" I spun around.
He had a kiddish, mischievous grin. "Oh, yes, I'm sorry I forgot about that part. But we're almost done now!" With that he continued work.
"Why would you even care enough to have this stuff anyway?" To mind came thoughts of some twisted fetish that the organizations hadn't been able to weed out.
"In case someone needs bandaging!"
"And that's your concern."
"And why wouldn't it be? You're done now."
Picking my shirt back up and seeing just how far the blood had spread, I became slightly nauseated. "You kill people all the time; why would you worry about saving them?"
"Maybe I don't kill people."
I glanced at his now average form. "Then how the hell else are you like this now, if you don't kill people?"
"Rather than like I was when we last met?" His throat prepared a small choke as I nodded. "Well, you see, I didn't actually kill anyone. Maybe saved them, I don't know."
"What do you mean?"
Hesitating, he looked at the shirt I had hesitated with myself. "Do you need another one? I have other ones. You can have one." Apparently rejoicing in the excuse he left the room, returning not too much later with a bundled cloth and a drinking glass.
Handing me the shirt and the glass, he said in regards to the objects respectively, "Keep that, and drink this." Sitting back down, he resumed, "Well, you see, there was this woman on a bridge."
I did as he said, but after beginning the second I held the liquid in as I coughed, swallowed then asked, "What _is_ this?"
"Oh what does it matter?"
"Are you trying to poison me?"
"That's certainly one difficult way for me to kill you," he refuted with a fierce glare.
I submitted and kept drinking.
"Well, you see, she wasn't just walking on the bridge like I was, she was standing on the rail. looking onto the water. I asked her if she was alright and she was afraid I'd come to harm her," he breathed a laugh, "you know, those things the news reporters tell them, that every man is out for them, going to catch them whenever."
Though I was expected to respond, I didn't for spite. He stood and walked over back to the window, and the aftertaste of my disrespect wasn't the sweetness I'd imagined.
"Well, I told her not to worry, that I just wanted to help. She didn't really believe me. Actually I don't know how I convinced her." The curtains turned to silk in his fingers as he moved them aside, looking out onto the night. "Perhaps it was that she was already committed to what she thought I promised. But whatever the case I drank from her. Not to kill her, mind you," he shot a correcting glance, "but just to, to wake her up from whatever dreamland they'd fed her into."
Silence held up to all but a faint song outside for long moments as I looked him over once more, sized him up like a lion its competitor.
"And she went home that night. A bit weak maybe, but alive." Nostalgia passed over him. "But you see, I don't kill all the time."
I didn't reply as he was back at the couch and repacking the boxes. He did this with some accepted authority, a respect that was given for virtues. My first instinct was to hate this but then I questioned it.
"Well," he began again from the other room, talking into cabinets and drawers, "You can go home if you want, but I don't imagine that your friends will be inclined to leave you be."
"Why not? Don't tell me even a vampire would target one person for food."
"Sven, if they had been looking for food, they wouldn't have gotten it from you."
"So what, they look for a zoo?"
"A tiger would be a lot easier to kill and give a lot more meat than a person."
I scoffed on reflex.
"Well, if not then there's a spare blanket and pillow in the closet over there," he pointed to it, "and you're welcome the day."
"How do I know that I'll make it out of here with all my blood in tomorrow?"
"I'm not sure, why don't you go ask the werewolves if you could get home with all your limbs attached?"
Again I scoffed.
He left and a nearby door closed.
Weighing my options, I decided it best to not strain further, and got the bedding.

Carefully weaving, red-legged creatures scurried along thin ropes.