Hey! So yeah, this is my first fanfiction, and I hope you like it :D

Before you start reading, you should know that this happens before the vampires "come out of the coffin"

Reviews are greatly appreciated

Enjoy!



She sighed in relief as she let herself lean back into her office chair, her eyes closed, savoring the feeling of finally having finished for the night. A couple of hours ago, she'd called her daughter to tell her she shouldn't keep dinner waiting because of her, she'd expected to do more then a few over hours that night.

As it turned out, she'd been right.

The sun had set a while ago, and it was completely dark outside, the only light coming from the street lanterns and the occasional illuminated billboard.

She locked up her office and walked out into the cool night. As she threw a quick look at her watch, she noticed that her daughter, Norah, ought to be asleep by now, smiling slightly as she remembered the disappointment in the girls voice when she'd said she'd be late that night, and she considered stopping by a bar on her way home for a drink or two, but quickly decided against it: it was already almost midnight, and she wanted to be able to get out of bed for work the next morning, so instead of walking into town she rounded the corner of her office building, walking into the narrow alley next to it, on her way to the parking lot. She'd always hated this alley: there was no lighting whatsoever and all the garbage that came out of the two buildings next to it was just dumped here, waiting to be picked up by the garbage truck in the morning. It gave the place an eerie feel, sort of like in a horror movie, like the place where the innocent young girl would unintentionally get to meet the things that go "bump" in the night. Sadly, this little alley was the only way to the parking lot, and it had been the subject of many disputes between the female employees and her boss (the male employees were to busy acting like the alley didn't scare them to have any sort of discussion), petitioning for a couple of changes to the dark alley, such as a lamp or something, to make the people who worked over hours feel safe on their way to the parking lot. Her boss always had the same answer ready though: "sorry, no can do. It's not our property, so we don't get to change anything about it". She knew that this was nonsense, just a way to shut them up, but there was nothing she could do about it, so she'd just have to deal with the creepiness of the place for now.

Suddenly, she stiffened. Had she really heard that, or was her mind just playing tricks on her? She listened really hard, trying to ensure herself that it had just been the wind, nothing else. But then she heard it again. A soft, female voice, coming from about ten meters from her, a pleading whisper "No please, Alan, don't. Leave me alone, I didn't do anything to you…." The voice sounded absolutely terrified.

She considered running back into the building so she could find a phone and call the police for about a second, right up until she heard the woman scream out in agony, almost as if she was being tortured.

No, she couldn't leave that girl alone here, not even for the five minutes it would take her to phone the police. That could mean her death, and she really couldn't let that happen.

Trying to calm herself down, she breathed in and out deeply a couple of times, hoping that it would somehow help her keep her head clear when she'd need it the most, but at the moment it wasn't doing her much good.

In order to get a view at what was happening so she could think of how she could save the young girl she started sneaking around a container that had been put down in the middle of the alley, for the first time thanking god for the unwillingness of the garbage men to put the thing up against the wall where it was supposed to be. This way, it was an amazing hiding place, and if she could just get to the other side of it without making too much noise, she'd be able to asses the situation without being seen.

Walking on the tips of her toes and trying to breath as quietly as possible, she crept towards the side of the container closest to the sound of the girl. It was getting fainter by the moment, which she interpreted as the girl getting weaker by the moment, so she tried to go as fast as possible without tripping over or stepping on anything. The slightest sound could give her away, and she knew that all too well.

Finally, she got where she wanted to be. Going to stand on her toes so she could peek between the garbage bags that were piled up on each other she strained her eyes to see what was happening in the dark before her.

After a few moments, her eyes adjusted to the lack of light and she tried to wrap her head around what she was seeing. The girl she'd been hearing all this time lay on the ground, her light blond hair spread around her head like a weird sort of halo, her mouth stretched open in a now silent scream and her eyes wide open in shock. Crouching over her was a large, muscular man with fiery red hair, and an extremely pale skin, he had his back towards her, so she didn't have to worry about him seeing her, and maybe she could sneak up to him from behind without being noticed. He appeared to have his face pressed into the young girls neck, but she couldn't see what exactly he was doing.

But she missed most of this. The only thing she could look at was the girls fair hair, which was completely drenched in some kind of liquid. When she looked a little bit closer to see what it was, she was horrified when realization hit her.

Blood.

But there was just so much of it, nobody could lose that much blood and still be…alive.

She clamped her hand over her own mouth to keep herself from screaming as she fervently looked for a sign of life from the girl.

She saw no movement whatsoever.

The girl's chest wasn't moving, she didn't seem to be blinking, it was obvious that all help would be too late for her.

She was completely frozen in shock for a few moments, horrified by the scene before her and unable to even move as much as a finger, or call out to the man to make her presence known to him, to tell him that she'd witnessed him kill the girl on the ground, and that he was not getting away with what he'd done, but before she had gathered her senses again, the man froze.

So fast that she hadn't even seen him move, he was on his feet, cocking his head to one side as if he was trying to hear something through the silence in the alley. She wondered in panic if she had made a sound without noticing so herself. Maybe she had gasped aloud?

That was when she noticed his face.

She had to stuff her fist in her mouth and bite down hard on it to keep herself from screaming out in surprise, and even more so, horror.

The mans face was completely smeared with blood, the red liquid dripping down his chin and onto his shirt steadily, but that wasn't his most disturbing feature by far.

The man looked like an animal, two long, sharp teeth sticking out of his mouth hanging over his lower lip, the blood dripping down from them as well.

Only the pain in the hand she was still biting down on kept her from thinking that this was a dream, since she'd heard that you can't feel pain in a dream, but then again, this couldn't be real, could it? She had never seen anything like that before, never seen anything this freighting. The man looked like… well, like a vampire, there was really no other word for it. If it hadn't been for the situation, she would have laughed at herself for this assumption, because vampires were just a product of an over-active imagination. Scary stories that gave little children nightmares. She would know, Norah had slept with a scarf around her neck for years to keep the vampires from biting her in her sleep. They just weren't real. Or at least, they didn't used to be real. She just couldn't think of any other explanation for the murderer's fangs.

Suddenly, within the blink of an eye, the man disappeared. He just literally vanished into thin air. This brought her right back to the real world, way more effectively then the biting on her hand had, which had only resulted in bite marks. Thinking about that word brought on a wave of nausea, because she realized that that must have been what the man was doing. Biting the girl to death. She bit back the vomit she felt rising in her throat, telling herself that she would have plenty of time to throw up, once she had checked to see if she had missed the tiniest of movements on the girl when she was checking her earlier, even though she knew it would be in vain.

But before she could even move as much as an inch, a second person had appeared into the alley. She could immediately tell that he was of the same kind as the young girl's murderer had been, though apart from the fangs that he too had hanging over his lower lip, you couldn't find to people who looked less alike than the two man who had been in the alley for the past five minutes.

The boy, there was really no other word for it, he had the features of a teenager, was a lot shorter, and his hair was pitch black; though his skin was just as pale as that of the other man she'd seen. He was only wearing a long black trouser, giving her a clear view of his rather muscular chest. Irrationally, she wanted to make sure that he wouldn't be cold, to give him her coat, her scarf, something. Then she remembered the situation she was in, and the wave of what she assumed was motherly instinct disappeared just as quickly as it had come on, being replaced by caution and suspicion towards the creature (she couldn't bring herself to calling him human, not after what she'd just witnessed some… thing do to the poor girl who was still lying in a puddle of her own blood) in front of her She could only stare at the boy wide-eyed, as she noticed the tattoos on his back. She wasn't close enough (nor did she really want to get any closer) to see the details, but she could make out a dragon tattooed on his spine in a shade of black that contrasted sharply with his pale skin. There was another tattoo on his back, some sort of red stamp, but she couldn't imagine what that could possibly be.

He crouched over the girl, and for one horrible second, she thought she'd had to witness this boy do the same as the man before him did. Determined to keep that from happening again, she didn't want the poor girl's body to be mutilated even more, she started looking for something that she could use as a weapon to fend of the little boy. She didn't like the idea of fighting with someone that looked like a kid, especially not with some kind of weapon, but she told herself that no real kid would ever sink his teeth into the corpse of a young girl and she really needed the weapon, he might be short, but she was just plain tiny and he looked a lot stronger than her. After a couple seconds of searching, all she could find was something that reminded her of the wooden stakes they used to kill vampires with in stories about Dracula and his bloodsucking colleagues.

"Just as well" she thought to herself "if there really is any such thing as a vampire, he sure as hell is one, and this might just work" and she gripped the thing firmly with her right hand.

But when she got up from the ground and looked back at the scene in front of her, trying to think of the best way to attack, she immediately relaxed her muscles again. The boy seemed to be checking the girl's vitals: pulse, breathing, the kind of things you saw people on television in hospital soaps do sometimes.

When he realized that she was really gone, he held the girl close to his chest and whispered something to her. Something that, to their one and only spectator, sounded like an awful lot like:

"I'm so, so sorry, young one."

Realizing that the little boy did not seem to have the murderous traits his precedent had showed, she began to deliberate on whether or not to make her presence known to him. She could just leave now if she wanted to, the boy would probably take good care of the deceased girl, but then again, she was the only one who had seen the murderer, so maybe it was best for her to stay a while longer so she could give him some kind of a description, so the red-haired man could be arrested and punished properly.

She was still deliberating on this when her thoughts were interrupted, by a third person who appeared in the usually deserted alley.

"Well, well, Godric" The man said calmly, casually strolling from out of the darkness in the alley "you are the last person on this earth that I would expect this from. You, who basically invented the law of the claim"

The law of the claim? She was at a complete loss now. The head of the young boy; apparently named Godric, snapped up and he eyed the newcomer suspiciously.

"Alexander?" He asked, seemingly rather surprised, "This is your human?"

"It is, or rather," the new man, Alexander, paused for a moment as he eyed the girl's body "it was. I think her name was Emma something-something, I don't recall it clearly, but yes, I have announced her to be mine, and you seem to have neglected that claim."

She was getting more confused by the second. The two men were talking as if the dead girl had been some kind of property, as if the younger one had taken something that was Alexander's, but that made no sense to her at all, the girl had been killed, for crying out loud, but they didn't seem to care about that at all.

"You know what the punishment for biting someone else's human is, don't you? I'm rather surprised that you even took that risk" Alexander continued, chuckling slightly. She really disliked this new man, as he had apperently made a conclusion that was miles besides the actual point. Godric hadn't bitten this girl, Emma, at all, she had seen that with her own eyes. Was he really going to be punished for something he hadn't done?

"Alexander," Godric said, slowly standing up, "I did not touch this girl in that way at all, I just found her here."

Alexander just laughed, it was an eerie, hollow laugh, that didn't exude any cheerfulness at all. For the first time, she got a good look at him. He was tall and skinny, with the usual pale skin, even though he didn't seem to have fangs, but maybe they were just hidden. He looked very neat, like some kind of business man, his hair modeled very precisely and his beard trimmed to perfection, reminding her a little of her boss. Another reason she disliked him. He looked somewhere in his forties, but his eyes seemed to be much older than that, they gave the feeling that you were staring into an old man's eyes, as if they had already seen a lot of life.

This whole situation just seemed to be getting more absurd by the second.

"You really expect me to believe that? I find you here, crouching over the drained body of what used to be my human, and you didn't even bother to retract your fangs yet! You know as well as I do how that looks and especially how it will look to the magister." The man named Alexander really seemed to be enjoying himself…

As he was speaking, Godric's fangs suddenly disappeared. Oh, so they were retractable?

"Alexander, please be reasonable about this, I swear, I really didn't touch this human." Godric replied, somehow still able to sound calm and dispassionate.

That was the moment when she decided that she had to interfere. She wouldn't let an innocent man get punished and she simply couldn't let the real murderer get away with a crime like this, even though the two men didn't seem to worry about the fact that she'd been murdered, she still wanted the actual criminal to get caught.

She gripped the 'stake' she'd found a bit tighter, in case she'd have to protect herself, and started to come out of her hiding spot. Alexander continued speaking

"Oh don't worry so much, Godric, maybe they'll be nice and they'll just pull out your fangs instead of-"

"He didn't do it!" She said, cutting him off in the middle of his little speech. She'd meant for her voice to sound a lot more steady and even, but instead it broke mid-sentence. It didn't really matter anyway, all she wanted was to get the truth out there, the way it got there didn't really matter.

The two man whirled around and stared at her. Alexander in shock and disbelief, Godric in surprise and seeming concern.

"What?" Alexander roared, and suddenly he was right in front of her, only inches from her face "how could a human possibly know this?" he hissed at her.

With the greatest effort, she kept herself from recoiling. In order to keep the little boy safe, she had to be strong now"

"I've been here the entire time" she said, holding her chin up, staring the man straight in the eye "I saw it all happen, the actual murder, that is. He didn't bite" she shuddered involuntarily at the word "her at any time."

"Now that's inconvenient" the man answered in a dangerously sweet tone. Suddenly, his fangs were out, and this time she couldn't keep herself from recoiling. She took a stumbling step back "Fortunately, we can make that little problem go away."

He got closer to her again, his face twisted into an evil sort of smile, baring all of his teeth. She kept stumbling backwards, until suddenly, her back hit the container she'd been using as a camouflage. A strange sort of calm washed over her This was it, she was sure of it. She'd end up exactly the same way as the blond girl who was still lying on the ground, and as she was sure that there was nobody else in the alley, ther'e'd be no way of finding out what had happened to her. Tears sprang to her eyes as she thought of poor Norah. She'd be worried sick. Would anybody ever find her body? She hoped not. Seeing the bite marks would probably give her daughter some kind of trauma.

She heard a deep growl, and the next thing she knew, her attacker was gone, lying in a little heap on the ground, with Godric standing over him.

"She is a witness in our case with the magister. She is not to be touched" He simply said. She was sure that he'd just saved her life, although she couldn't figure out how he'd done it exactly.

"Now" he said, turning back to her with a friendly smile, not showing any fangs "I understand that you saw the actual killer?" she nodded weakly "and you saw me with the girl as well?" again, she could only nod, trying like crazy to remember how to speak.

He was nodding as well now, a look of concern crossing his face

"I'm sorry that you had to witness this" he said, sighing, and he added, eying her intently "I suppose you realize that we are not entirely… human?" she nodded yet again "What do you think we are?" better to let her guess herself first, that might just make it easier to wrap her head around. She stayed silent for a long time, almost making Godric fear that she might have lost her ability to speak after all that she must have witnessed that night, but finally, she opened up her mouth, and breathed, with a halfhearted smile on her face.

"You're going to laugh at me for this, but my first guess would be a… vampire, you know, with the fangs and all"

"So that's why you're holding a stake" he stated, reminding her that she was still holding her improvised weapon. She quickly dropped it, and the sound it made falling onto the ground seemed almost deafening in the quiet night.

"Well not exactly" she said, for some reason feeling like she needed to apologize to him "it was the only thing that I could find that I could defend myself with"

"It was a very good choice though" he answered.

Her mouth fell open in surprise

"So you are…" he simply nodded "unbelievable…" she murmured, completely stumped with this new revelation. All of the bed-time stories, the stories she'd dismissed as fantasies, they all turned out to be true…

"I know that this is a lot to wrap your head around" she noted a slight accent in his voice, although she couldn't quite place it "but I've got something very important to ask of you. I wouldn't ask this if I had any other choice, but unfortunately, things got a little out of control tonight" She glanced over at 'Emma' , offended again by the fact that her apparent 'owner' didn't even remember her full name. Out of control? You could say that again…

"You must realize that this is going to be an… unpleasant experience for you, but I would like to ask you if you'd testify at our trial, tell the magister, I think I would best compare him with a human judge, what you saw tonight. Understand that vampire politics are not like the human version, though, it's a bit more… uncivilized" He seemed to think that that word was a serious understatement, and he looked at her questioningly, as if he had any doubt at what she'd decide to do. But she had already made up her mind.

"I'll do anything to help here. Whatever it takes. I couldn't save her anymore" she nodded towards Emma " but I can at least try to bring her murderer to justice. I know I'd want that if anybody would do this kind of thing to my daughter." Thinking about Norah had been the main argument in her decision. She realized that this Emma had to be someone's daughter, so she felt like she had to do something to help.

"You'll testify?" he asked, just to make sure. He was answered by a curt nod "in a room full of vampires?" he added, she had to understand exactly what she was doing.

When she answered, her voice was so full of determination that it took Godric completely by surprise.

"Whatever it takes."

So, what do you think? Continue the story? Kill the monstrosity while it's still young and weak? (actually, you really shouldn't phrase it like that, I'd probably get depressed :D)

No worries, the mysterious "she" will get a name soon :)

Oh, and I apologize for any horrible grammar or vocabulary you might find in my stories, I usually don't speak English, as I'm from Belgium, so try and have patience with me :)

The next chapter will be up soon, I'm already working on it

X

