The Shadows Lover

It's about one pm as I wonder back to my scorching apartment in phoenix Arizona. As my feet carry me along the gray cracked pavement, which borders a black four lane freeway, I observe an island of daily watered grass, and well groomed yellow, and pink flowers which cut through it's center. Why the city bothered to waist resources on something wile the rest of the planet suffered from drought was beyond me. The midday, summer sun leaches it's rays down over a more or less desolate city. Heat waves rise from the ground obstructing and blurring my vision. People say the sun has moved closer to earth, but that's not true. The sun is about to die and global warming; I'm sorry 'climate change', continues to desiccate this world run to hell by it's very inhabitants.

Passing a mucky water way the dull click of footsteps dressed in fancy, black wingtip, Florsheim, shoes rips me from my daydream. I clutch the silver Para Ordnance PX745S; shinny metal gun, which sits low on my left side. A car revs past and the greasy men inside whistle and holler as if I were some cheep whore. Its just a normal day for me.

I feel the a dark shadow impend my lonesome world. I sigh to myself and turn to the black figure behind me. My nerves jump a bit finding him closer than I had previously though. Observing the tall cloaked man, I wait for him to move. There is no smell of blood looming around him, leading my thoughts to conclude he's not a vampire. A shift in his movements sharpens me and the man begins walking again; passing me like a ghost in silence and disappearing as he exits my view, coming and going as if nothing had been there in the first place; a ghost to my world. Dark, brown, unkempt hair is carried with the light breeze, as I bow my head and press the palm of my hand to a sweaty forehead.

"I must be seeing things again." The words fall from my dry cracked lips in a dull mumble, turn back to my path, and continue on. When I arrive home, the door is open. The copper hinges have been bent, causing the door to hang in awkward fashion as it sits ajar from the wooden frame.

"Silo" I call out as I step through the doorway. I don't get any response. I'm to exhausted and dehydrated to care and wander into the kitchen, filling a large glass of water, quickly gulping the cool tasteless fluid down.

"Sure is hot today." A voice cracks behind me. I slam the glass to the counter.
"You broke my door again." I mumble, turning to the silver haired boy standing calmly behind me.
"Sorry about that Rose--" He speaks, shifting his eerie blue eyes to the ground, small fingers fumbling with at the ridged end of his dark shirt. "I-I- Just wanted to see you again." he adds his words are innocent for a vampire, but my knowledge of his abilities keeps me at a distance. Turning the water back on, I dampen a gray cloth. I stare for a moment, sickened by it, then place it over my face. 'It still smells like him' I think to myself, recalling 'that' smell from my memories, moving to the living room to lay my heavy body on the rutty couch. I hear Silo's soft footsteps as he fallows, sitting on the floor across from me; staring at me. He doesn't understand it but his stare-- makes me uneasy. All vampires seem to have that effect. Ones that know how to use it trap there victims by harnessing a humans weakness, drawing them in; I hate that stare. My thoughts stray taking me back to a time when I actually did my job...

"Rose! Here are the papers." Rick, a large man with greasy, thick, black hair, and dressed in a military uniform, speaks as he throws a yellow manila folder onto the cheep orange desk in front of me. I'm sitting in an ugly chair, it's black, leather crunching as I lean back. The room is bright with the suns illumination; windows line the circular room, giving him a panoramic view of the base. A.K.A.- nothing but desert. The room is surprisingly cold and the stubborn man still insists on running a fan off to the left behind his desk.

"You got my order?" I ask, stubborn as always to getting what I want before I take my job like some military dog. I grab a black pen from the top of his desk and begin tapping it against my knee in boredom, the act always ticked him off.
"It's waiting with Steve in locker five." Rick speaks the agonizing words straining his face, though he somehow keeps his calm, clasping his hands below his chin as he leans forward over the ghastly desk.
"Yes!" I whisper with enthusiasm. With that thought, it was more than easy for me to take the assignment. Jumping from my seat, I slam the pen to his desk, grab the folder, and speed-walk down the hall towards the large gray sheet of pavement outside. The place is more or less a military base. Fifty miles wide and Fifty-two miles long; the equivalence of a small air port. The obscure mass sits in the middle of the high desert, and creating a perimeter by twenty domed buildings, each tagged with the name: locker followed by a number.

"She seems a bit strange for that kind of job." Drake; Ricks' assistant speaks from the corner of the room, he'd been standing their the entire time, much to my dismay. Drake is a skinny man, usually dressed in a black tuxedo. He has pitch black hair, warn in an 'emo' fashion; long in front and short in back, his left bangs always falling over his glittering green eyes.

Rick chuckles at his assistants remark and moves his fingers over a rather large black coffee mug on the desk in front of him.
"That's right, You're the new one they sent..." Rick begins, a brow raising to his stick like assistant in contemplation. A faint smile gradually, growing on his countenance, shifting to look out the big glass window just in time to see me running dangerously over the airstrip.
"Shes a strange girl-- always gets the job done." He continues again, lifting the black mug to his lips and takes a sip. His expression hardens, realizing that he had fully consumed the brown, milky, liquid the sip before. "Go get me another cup of coffee." He demands, turning once more to his assistant and shoves the mug into his face.
"Yes, Sir." Drake answers the mere volume of the man making anyone quiver and removes himself and the cup from the room. The Commander in Chief; Rick, always goes through assistance's... fast. On account that he's not exactly a nice guy. I suppose I'm a bit frighted by him, I suppose my years of having to sit through his rants seemed to have made me immune of his potency.

Reaching, at last, the fifth dome, rough hands pull the metal door open, revealing an overall empty room with a half loft covered in boxes containing who knows what. I try to assume they are empty.

"You're early, ain't ya'." A voice calls out from behind me. My charcoal eyes sliding over leather covered shoulder to the red head.
"I am, I though I'd be late--anyway! Rick informs my order's in!" I speak, my voice jovial and energetic, hiding it doesn't work. Shifting my weight to my heels, trying to contain my excitement as the owner to the voice squeezes past me.
"You're happy about this one, yeah?" He speaks with a smile, moving to a few boxes near the back entrance of the loft.
"Fuck yes, it's taken a year for it to get here." I respond with a short sigh.
"Blame that on location, hun." Duan answers, the man is an airplane mechanic; and one of the best in the world. How he ended up in this remote location makes no sense to me. He wears a pair of blue overalls, though you would never know the color since they are covered in black oil as well as other engine fluids and greases unidentifiable by me. Duan pulls his stalk straight, long red-orange hair back into a low ponytail, accentuating his soft features and silky, gold eyes before removing the light weigh lid of a wood crate.


"Well here it is your semi-automatic, 45 ACP caliber, Para Ordnance." Duan remarks a large smile growing over thin lips as my ash eyes light up with joy.
"Wow it's even prettier in person." I squeak and grab one of the small guns. Sliding my delicate fingers over the smooth, cold, metal gives me chills and my excitement only grows as I eye the ammunition.

"Red bullets!?" I question, grabbing one round of ammunition and carefully load the gun, taking great pleasure in the click as the red tipped bullets slide into the butt of it's silver, griped, handle.
"That's right, I have molded a blood seal into the tips. Those things should go down quicker this way." Duan explains, throwing a little bit of disgust into the word 'things'. Putting the gun down, I remove my leather jacket and clip the white laced, holster to my shoulders. Letting the gun fall softy into its place on the right side of my chest, I continue to replenish the empty side of the holder with two rounds of ammunition.

"Sure looks good on you, heh." Duan comments with a playful wink, which I ignore. Lifting gray eyes to him before pulling the jacket back over my shoulders. I was never one to flirt, truth is I'm pretty bad at it.
"Thanks." I speak sending the kind red-head a backwards wave as I walk out of the dome onto the black, heated, airstrip. Heat rising like invisible waves from the black tar as I stare out over the mass. 'Were did they park that chopper.' I wonder to myself squinted eyes taking in as much as was possible as the sun impends my vision. My job or reason for living is the consent hunt.

I kill an artificial life form known as Ex. 2495. To the public however this creature is call a vampire.