-+- Blood-Drinkers -+-

Rylie strode purposefully over the border, the strong wolfman scent overwhelming him for a brief period of time. He paused right inside their territory, waiting for their scent to dim down, for him to get accustomed to it. He was also listening. Listening for a wolfman patrol. He wasn't to get caught. It would ruin the attack. He was to make it down to their camp and back, quickly and quietly, without being spotted.

No sounds of patrols reached his ears. No one from his territory were coming, either. They were probably waiting for him at the rendevous point. They were going to storm the camp from that spot, and were probably waiting for his return. "Well you can wait for as long as it takes me," Rylie muttered to himself, heading straight into the wolfman territory.

The territory was huge, of course. It took up one fourth of the entire planet, just as theirs did. Well, technically, theirs took up a half, but half of their territory was ocean so it didn't count. They couldn't thrive in the ocean like the weird undersea creatures.

But with such large areas of land, spotting the camp might be challenging. For all Rylie knew, it could be ten minutes or ten days away from his starting point. Though one of his kind got from the crows that visited that the wolfmen lived high in the mountains. Rylie had instantly tucked that piece of information away, for this raid.

Rylie was a sixteen-year-old vampire, or blood-drinker as the wolfmen called his kind. Like the others, his skin was pale, his blood completely stopped flowing and unable to give color to his skin. His eyes were a deep violet, a symbol of strength, though he wasn't near the strongest in his clan. His hair was black, a sharp contrast to his skin tone. He was tall and gangly, wearing normal human-wear.

Slightly unnerved, the extremely young vampire - compared to some of the thousand-year-olds - looked up at the mountains as he approached them. Maybe speeding up could be a good thing...though draining his energy would be bad. Hurry there, walk half the way, and then you'll have enough energy to run back if the need arises, he thought to himself, still staring up at the peaks. How anything could live way up there was a mystery to him.

Rylie froze. He could hear talking, approaching from a path into the mountains, and heading towards him. A patrol!

Quickly, he ducked around some large boulders, listening to the wolfmen's approach. There was a wolfwoman with them, too - her scent was more fragrant than the men's. "Don't worry, father. I'm sure Thorn is alright. He can take care of himself," Rylie heard one of them say. This wolfman didn't seem that much younger than himself. He had no idea that wolfpeople were still breeding.

"I know, son. It's just that he gets into more trouble than one pup should. It's too unnerving to leave him wandering around where anything could find him," an older wolfman said with a slight authoritative tone to his voice. Rylie concluded he was the pack leader from his voice.

"Wind, you cannot treat him like a mere pup any longer. That boy will do anything to try to prove himself as great as you, and if you keep belittling him he'll just try harder. You know it could wind him up in blood-drinker territory," an old wolfman said, his voice slightly wheezy and strained.

Suddenly, the wolfpeople stopped, and Rylie could smell their halt as well. Wolfpeople gave off bad scents. "Wind, a blood-drinker is in our territory," the wolfwoman said, her voice slightly musical with an underlying growl to it. "A blood-drinker pup. The scent smells different than usual." There was no answer, and Rylie pressed himself further behind the rocks and into the shadows. The scent of the wolfpeople came towards him.

"I don't think it leaves the territory," the young wolfman said, directly behind the rock pile. Rylie held his breath, trying not to give himself away, and closed his eyes, wishing the wolfpeople would leave him to finish what he came to do. "Should we head back to camp and warn the others?"

"Yes. River, I need you to round up the hunting parties and tell them to get back to camp to start preparations, in case the blood-drinker pup is leading them here. Hawk, go back to camp, watch the pups. That's your responsibility. Warn the rest of the pack as soon as you get there. I'll help River find the two parties. Cloud, you go find your brother and tell him to get his tail home, now," the pack leader said. There was a flurry of movement as the wolfpeople split up to their respective responsibilities, the leader and the wolfwoman going one way, while the elder and the youngster going the other.

Rylie stayed there for a few minutes, in case they hadn't really gone, then gingerly stood from his hiding place. There was no one there, though the wolfman stench was overpowering once more. He covered his nose so that he wouldn't have to smell it and looked at the mountain path. If the patrol came from that way, they would be going back towards their camp that way. So it was a direct path from the foothills to the camp. "A better entry would have been hard picked," Rylie said to himself, scrambling to the cut in the mountains.

The climb was fairly trecherous. Loose rocks scattered the way, making his footing slip. The smell was fairly repulsive and in some cases non-existant from other animals crossing over it in great numbers. Cracks lined the way and the ground, and once a sheer drop was directly to Rylie's right, the path only a foot across.

"How can these bloody wolves get from their camp to the border anyway?" he growled to himself, running up another stretch of almost flat land, trying to avoid rocks as best as possible. "Their paws would slip the instant they stepped down, not to mention the fact they're too bulky to get past the cliff. Or, they should be."

Fairly soon, the scent started picking up again and getting stronger as he progressed. The camp, he thought triumphantly, reaching the top of the mountains after many hours of a combination of walking, running, or sliding along rock faces. He crested another hill and looked down upon the camp.

It looked fairly old, with wooden and hand-made brick buildings and thatched roofs. Humans and wolves both were moving around quickly, but even the humans had a slight wolfish smell to them. Rylie could smell it even from here. There were no pups, no children, only the adults. Five or six of the wolves looked smaller than the others, but not enough to actually be the children. No, they weren't the ones most vulnerable to the vampire's attack.

The camp was blocked with logs and branches along each entry way. Doors made of fabric were covering the buildings' doorways, and humans were turning into wolfpeople before his eyes, shedding his clothing. One teenager went around gathering the clothing and putting it into the one open building before she, too, turned into a wolf last, joining the others. They were preparing for a battle.

Rylie had seen enough and risked giving himself away. He backed down the hill, going to a safer altitude where he could run as soon as he got his message out. He hurried past the ledge as fast as he could without pitching forward off the cliff, and then stopped as soon as he had enough ground to sprint.

Cupping his hands around his mouth, he sent out what sounded like a strangled yell. The vampires would hear it, if just faintly. And the wolfpeople would hear it even better, being so much closer. With his enhanced hearing, Rylie heard a growl from way up the mountain side. And started to run.

He barrelled down the slope, going faster than any human, just as fast as the wolves at full sprint. He would be able to keep this speed for up to two hours. It would take longer to reach the rendevous point, where his kind would be waiting all too eagerly for his return, now that they knew it was imminent.

Almost falling many times, and running into a rock ledge or two, he scrambled for the foothills, slowly losing speed. The trecherous descent had cost him precious time, that and the long way down - his two-hour sprinting time was up, and his body was slowing down. The wolves started gaining and Rylie made a beeline for his own territory, rushing over the invisible boundary quickly. He stopped and glanced over his shoulder. The wolves had made their descent from the mountains. One was grey and black, and smaller than the others. Rylie recognized his scent as the youngling. The other two were fairly large - one was brown and heavily muscled. The pack leader. The other one was a tan wolfwoman, just as large as the leader, Wind, but more lithe.

The wolves stopped at the edge of their territory, only a few feet from Rylie. The young vampire grinned at them tauntingly before taking off again, along the edge of the territory. "Fan out!" he heard the leader bark. The youngling and Wind ran in his direction, the wolfwoman going the other way. Rylie kept up his run, disappearing into trees as soon as they came into sight and veering away from the border and towards the rendevous point.

"Rylie!" a girl shouted as soon as he scurried over into a clearing, gasping for breath from the strain of making himself sprint once more. A young girl, around nine years old visibly ran up and hugged him around the neck. Each of the vampires looked as old as they were when they were bitten, but had vampire ages, and normal ages, too. Rylie looked twelve but was really sixteen in vampire years, making him twenty-eight normally. But all the vampires used the middle ages when they were around their own kind.

"Hi," Rylie said stupidly, disentangling himself from the girl, Sarah's, hold. She was eighteen in their counting, so in their way of thinking even older than Rylie. In reality she was his younger sister. "What's up?" He looked at the large congregation of his kind in the clearing - about fifty of them there, anticipating a fight.

"We got your call," one of the adults said. Trent, the leader of the vampires, was two thousand years old, and the original vampire that the legends originated from. His eyes were a very bright purple, close to pink, symbolising his immense strength. Half the others there had purple eyes, while the other half's were black or red, meaning lower strength levels. "Where is their camp?"

"At the top of one of the mountains. There's a trail starting at the foothills that goes straight up to their camp. But we can't leave yet. Three wolves heard my call as well and are watching the border. They anticipate a fight already - their camp is prepared for it. We need to wait for them to head back before striking. Perhaps early in the morning tomorrow," he said, looking up at the sky. Stars were starting to light it. "Or around midnight. Give them enough time to think I won't do anything." Trent nodded in understanding.

"That sounds good. So we'll attack at midnight, when the moon is at its highest in the sky. I'm assuming their numbers have been cut down, they breed so much. Their pups will be in hiding." The others started talking excitedly amoungst themselves. This war between vampires and wolfmen had been going on for sixteen years now, ever since Rylie joined. They might be able to finish it tonight, or at least half the wolfman population in this particular region.

The time passed by quickly, the vampires stayed alert. The wolfmen hadn't plucked up the courage to do what they were now, and cross the border, but it was only a matter of time. They couldn't be too careful.

Right before the raid, Rylie went out again, to linger near the border at the edge of the trees. The wolfman leader was poised there, watching his territory border. The youngster came up to him from one direction, and the wolfwoman from the other. "I don't think the pup even made it to camp. If so, our scents cover up his," the wolfwoman said.

"Are you sure we don't have anything to worry about, River?" Wind asked, looking at the wolfwoman expectantly. "Should we tell the camp to lower the defenses?"

"We probably shouldn't do that yet. Thorn will just leave again," the youngster piped up. "But can we go back at least, father?" he added, glancing at Wind, who smiled lightly and nodded.

"We can. The blood-drinker was probably just acting out of sheer arrogance. He won't be coming back tonight, I'm sure. We'll head back." Wind got to his paws from the sitting position and led the youngster and River to the trail. Rylie grinned and ran silently back to the clearing.

"Well?" Trent said, watching the moon as it inched closer to the highest point.

"The wolfmen just left for their camp. They aren't patrolling any longer. We're free to go," Rylie informed them. Most of his kind grinned and their eyes glinted at the prospect of a fight.

Ten minutes later, Rylie was leading them to where he'd entered the wolfman territory, and then pointed out the mountain path to Trent without a word. Trent nodded and went forward, his army following without a sound. The group went faster than Rylie had, not worried about encountering wolves. It took the time to get up to the top that it had taken Rylie to get up and down.

"This it?" Sarah asked under her breath, looking over at the dark village. There were still barriers up, and one or two wolves were in the single street, watching for any sneak attack.

"That's it," Rylie said, nodding. Trent grinned and advanced towards the camp, not caring if they were spotted this time, either. They didn't need a sneak attack to win a fight. The rest of the vampires trailed after him. One of the wolves spotted them and lifted its head to the sky, howling. A flurry of movement from inside the houses came for a moment before wolves started coming out to meet the attackers.

At the barrier, Trent just vaulted over it, and into the camp. His eyes flashed, and then moved quickly to an unknown source of movement. A young child had looked out from a very large building, before squeaking and disappearing. The children...the ones most vulnerable to vampire venom. The ones most easily turned.

Suddenly, Wind lunged into the air, slamming into Trent's cold and lifeless-looking body. The vampire staggered and then regained his balance, aiming a kick for Wind's ribs. This made the other wolves go into action, until the whole camp was a loud battlefield.

The vampires outnumbered the wolfmen by about twenty, leaving most of them fighting two vampires at the same time. Rylie lingered between two buildings, his eyes trained on the largest one where the children were being hidden. He had seen the young boy poking his head out from under the fabric.

As soon as there was a slight bit of clearance, Rylie advanced towards the building, his purple eyes glinting dangerously, his pale skin contrasted by the red blood from the wolfmen. A growling could be heard inside the large building, that Rylie recognized as the elder. Pups were whimpering as well, a barely noticeable sound compared to shouts and yelps from the camp street.

Rylie reached out and grabbed the fabric, simply ripping it out of the doorframe. It wasn't enough to stop him, that was for sure. In the far corner of the room, about twenty or thirty wolf pups and children cowered. An old wolf stood in front of them, his teeth barred at the young blood-drinker in front of him.

Thorn watched Rylie approaching him and the other children, and his eyes grew wide. Maybe fighting with Cloud and his father weren't such a good idea. He didn't like the look of these blood-drinkers. But he didn't want anyone hurt. He stepped up next to Hawk, his neck fur raised, a growl coming from his throat. Rylie's eyes only showed determination and amusement.

"What are you stinking blood-drinkers doing in our territory?" Hawk said, ignoring the small wolf pup next to him. "You should be on your side, where you belong." Rylie didn't seem to care about the elderly wolfman's anger, or the fact that he was there at all. He only cared about the children and the pups behind Hawk.

"Take a guess, old chap," Rylie said, before he lunged. Thorn, surprised, scurried backwards as the young blood-drinker landed on top of the old wolf. His razor sharp teeth glinted, and the shouts and howls from outside the building seemed to disappear.

"Hawk!" Thorn shouted in anguish, watching Rylie's teeth sink closer to the struggling wolf's neck as if in slow motion. The small wolfchild lunged, tackling Rylie off of the elder. He was about half Rylie's size, and so the fight was instantly turned in the blood-drinker's favor.

The two fought for a moment while Hawk gained his breath and his balance. The second he did, he turned to stop the fight. And froze. The children were frozen behind him, watching horror-stricken with wide eyes. All of them were shaking out of fear and cowering against one another.

Thorn was lying on the ground, sharp, bleeding teeth marks on his throat, Rylie standing over him with blood on his chin. Hawk stayed still for a single heartbeat, and then lunged with a cry that actually made those fighting outside fall silent. His shouts could be heard by everyone has he started screaming profanities at the enemy. The blood-drinkers fled from the camp, and Rylie made to follow them, but Wind charged through the building, followed by the other wolfpeople.

Hawk had distangled himself from their brief fight and advanced towards Rylie, snarling, backing the young blood-drinker into a corner. Wind and his mate, Solar, joined the older wolf, until Rylie was completely hemmed in with his back in a corner. He cowered there, arms protectively over his face, and could be heard whimpering. The children of the tribe had ran to their respective families to hide.

"Thorn!" Cloud shouted, noticing his little brother lying on the ground, his breathing ragged, eyes closed halfway. He charged towards the small wolf pup, who was slowly turning human again. On the way, Cloud grabbed the fabric that had covered the doorway and draped it over his brother, nuzzling him with his furry muzzle.

Wind looked over at his sons and growled, turning back to Rylie with his hackles raised. "What have you done?" he snarled, gaining no response from the terrified child in the corner. He raised a paw and hit Rylie hard enough that the blood-drinker passed out, falling to the floor in a heap. Hawk and Solar looked at the blood-drinker for a moment, before exchanging glances. Hawk nodded once and positioned himself so that he could watch the unconscious boy.

Wind and Solar went to their youngest son. Thorn was still breathing, and his neck was red from the blood. His skin was turning pale from blood loss. The healer, Berry, was applying a herbal concoction to Thorn's throat to stop the bleeding. Wind nuzzled his son, a solitary tear falling down the wolf's muzzle. Solar had turned away, looking devistated.

The other wolves departed silently and respectfully for their mourning leaders. Wind, Solar, Cloud, Berry, and Hawk stayed behind to watch over the two unconscious boys. Sometime around dawn, Cloud charged out of the building and left the camp, howling forlornly at the moon. His brother's heart had stopped beating.