Stan opened his eyes and he found himself looking directly at a red-haired woman standing less than a meter in front of him.
Her red eyes had gone wide. Her expression was, for one perfect second, one of complete and total shock.
The two of them stared at each other across the tiny gap that separated them.
She had tracked him here. He had, without knowing it, willed himself back out at the exact coordinates where she had been standing.
Stan, bleeding from a hole in his abdomen and a torn chest and a scraped-off face, looked up at the beautiful vampire, because that was clearly what she was, the crimson eyes, the aura, everything about her made it unmistakable, and produced the only sound his oxygen-starved lungs could produce.
A wet, ragged exhale.
The vampire’s expression cycled through three emotions in rapid succession: shock, disbelief, and, settling last, a kind of intense, focused, absolutely predatory fascination.
Her red eyes fixed on him. He was, in his current state, dying. But he was also, unmistakably, back.
And she had never, in any of her long, long years of existence, seen a technique like the one that had just been performed in front of her. Normal teleportation techniques are not only rare but require an affinity to it, not only that each teleportation usually leaves QI fluctuation and some space fluctation as well but this human in front of her was able to perform this teleportation without a single qi and space fluctation...
This was the most silent and sneakiest teleportation she’ve ever witnessed...
The vampire’s mouth curved into the smallest, slowest, most dangerous smile.
"Well," she said softly.
Her voice was rich and low and carried the faint, musical accent of a very old language.
"You are interesting."
....
"...Fuck." Stan groaned the word out through torn lips, the polar wind whipping his face, his oxygen-starved lungs finally getting enough air to produce actual sound.
His luck, since he had arrived in Antarctica, had been catastrophic.
First the werewolves. Now this woman. His heart was thumping loudly as his eyes tracked the faint gleam of two elegant fangs visible between her parted lips as she watched him, almost certainly what the descending series of terrible probabilities had produced next.
’Those fangs. She’s a vampire.’
He gritted his teeth against the pain and forced himself to hold her gaze. The vampire’s scarlet eyes studied him without hurry.
Then she smiled. The smile revealed both fangs in full.
"A human." Her voice was rich, low, carrying the faintest musical accent of a english language much older than anything he had ever heard spoken. She stepped closer with the slow, unhurried grace of a creature who had never needed to move quickly for anything in her life. "It has been a very long time since I’ve tasted the blood of a True Human."
She paused and her brow furrowed.
She inhaled, a slow, deep, deliberate draw of the polar air around him. Her expression flickered with a small, sharp confusion.
"No..." She inhaled again. "You’re not a True Human. And yet your essence feels strangely similar."
She tilted her head.
"In fact," she said softly, "I dare say your essence feels richer than most True Humans I’ve encountered."
Stan blinked at her through the blood coating his face. "I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about."
’What the fuck is she saying,’ his mind snapped in silent frustration. ’The werewolves said something similar. They suspected me of being a True Human before deciding I was too weak to be one. What is it about me that keeps making them ask this?’
At that exact moment, a system notification flickered into his vision.
[System Notice.]
[Residual System Essence detected in host’s aura.]
[Host’s essence has been subtly altered by prolonged exposure to the System’s presence.]
Stan cursed inwardly. ’So it’s your fault.’
Well the System had been helpful until now, so Stan was having a strange mixed feelings at the moment...
Anyways, the vampire tilted her head at him with growing curiosity. "What’s going through that mind of yours?"
Her scarlet gaze drifted to the ragged hole in his abdomen, then to the long claw-cut running from his collarbone to his hip, then to the abraded ruin of his face.
"That’s some pretty gruesome injury."
Stan looked at her steadily. "You’re not going to kill me?"
She smiled and crouched down beside him with the fluid ease of a woman who had all the time in the world. Her fingers rose to his blood-soaked chin, gripped it delicately, tilted his face up to hers. Her red eyes held his.
Her tongue traced her upper lip once, slowly. She never broke eye contact.
"Well," she murmured. "Not for now. You seem interesting."
Her thumb brushed a line of blood off his cheek. "Do you want me to?"
Stan cursed silently. He forced his fragmenting mind back into function.
He was not, in any meaningful sense, out of danger. The vampire’s teasing was interest, not mercy.
She could open his throat and drain him at any moment she found the entertainment value dropped below her hunger. His only path forward was to keep her interested, and to buy himself enough time to become something other than dying prey.
He opened his internal system interface. He scrolled directly to the healing category of the shop.
The catalog had refreshed since his last visit. Multiple new items sat under the medical section now, pills, elixirs, and restoratives, priced from three to twenty system points. He scanned quickly.
One item caught his attention.
[Nine-Turn Restoration Pill.]
[A high-grade cultivator restoration medicine capable of restoring a host from near-death conditions. Regenerates severed limbs. Reknits severed vasculature. Restores blood volume. Effect completes within thirty seconds of consumption. Requires the host’s own consciousness to remain active during regeneration.]
[Cost: 15 system points.]
Stan checked his balance. He had converted enough currency in his previous session to cover it. He willed the purchase.
The pill materialized in his palm.
Using every last shred of strength his shredded body could muster, he raised his arm, brought the pill to his lips, and swallowed it. Then he collapsed.
The vampire’s fingers slipped from his chin as his head lolled sideways into the bloody snow.
She sat back on her heels and watched.