“Gods alive…” Melchiah smothered himself with his handkerchief, breathing in what sweet sanctuary he could muster from beneath the silken rag.<br/>Out of the crowd that had gathered by the clearing, only those on the very outskirts, squinting for view, covered their faces.<br/><br/>A clearer night you couldn’t find and the little bank on a hill, recently cleared of woodland muck (meaning trees and the elk) like mould scraped from a loaf, would have normally been an idyllic site for star gazing, stretching clear from the pollution of torch flame from the city below, but tonight a ghastly black smog, speckled with tiny solid ash dust—<span style="font-style: italic">anti-stars almost, only these miniscule blots swallowed light rather than produce it</span>- loomed above and hid away the heavens.<br/>Once the crisp, mint cool night breezes would have cut clean through your nostrils and tingled in the space behind your eyes, but tonight only one wretched stink dominated the air… and that was the stink of burning flesh.<br/><br/>Burning flesh.<br/><br/>Fetid, scorching body matter… it got worse when you could place a name on that sickly sweet, slightly coppery—no,<span style="font-style: italic">meaty</span>-- smell because then one’s mind would start to connect all the dots and paint a very clear picture of what it was you were breathing in, usually just as you felt the ashy remains, of what once was a living, breathing being, tickle your skin.<br/><br/>Once smelled, it became a scent that never vacated one’s memory. It was a stench that literally haunted your dreams and it birthed a strange familiarity or recognition that would leave a lasting impression…<br/><br/>Should you ever sample it again, even a tiny whiff from a heaving distance, instant recognition would spark… and yet somehow the rabble, the peasant humans enjoying the front row of the spectacle, those<span style="font-style: italic">barbaric</span>creatures that knelt at the foot of the stake as the flames swallowed it and victim whole, they whooped and yelled, they jeered and snarled and not one of them had the sanctity to cover their noses...<br/><br/>Melchiah sighed.<br/>He too would have been at the front of that crowd once, no doubt instigating a riot just for something to do that evening… Gods… what was that?<br/>5?<br/>6?<br/>600 years ago?<br/>To this day he could still see his younger self, dressed in little more than rags, wearing bloodstains like badges of honour, fire and youth ablaze in his eyes like some kind of macabre nod to the human bonfire…<br/><br/>“Melchonar, a mid-aged sanguine,” A hardened, but definitely strained female voice shook him from his thoughts.<br/><br/>Melchiah glanced over his shoulder to Cecelia, a council youngster, but nether the less a stern pillar of the preternatural community, who’d joined him in the town as soon as the news had reached her, “That makes six…”<br/><br/>He could scarcely see her expression, but her silhouetted profile haunted the burning skyline, the flicker of flames caught in her glassy eyes.<br/><br/>“six of our own, Melchiah…” her head dropped, staring at her own outstretched hands in horror, like she’d offed Melchonar herself, “… I could have saved him… I could have--” she looked up pleadingly at the elder vampire, desperation fraying her voice like worn cotton, “If I’d just have been quicker we could have broken him free! Or-or interrupted this whole damned black mass they call witch hunting!”<br/><br/>“But we didn’t,” Melchiah’s words, or at least the unmoved tone of them, went down like lead, Cecelia physically flinched away. The two spoke in a foreign tongue, the ancient dialect of vampiric kind. For a moment the two stood, silently observing the now limp and still shrinking, charred shape in the glow of the fire, Melchiah relaxed with all the airs and graces of someone observing a painting in a gallery, Cecelia agitated and fidgeting angrily.<br/>“I--” she started finally, but was suddenly caught up by the elder vampire raising one nonchalant hand quietening her.<br/><br/>“Don’t torment yourself girl,” he replied gently, never once looking away from the hellish scene ahead, “that vampire left the order, he chose to do so in the knowledge that he would shake himself both free of our shackles, but also our protection. He made his point abundantly clear with that little show in the council hall--” he shot her a sideways glance, one brow cocked in a gesture that meant ‘understood?’<br/>A show…<br/>‘A show’ did not do it justice! He had cut free his Clan mark, literally defacing himself with a knife in plain sight of them all and killed a guard on the way out. That guard was a good human too, Melchiah reflected sulkily, he had played cards and drank with him on many an occasion…<br/><br/>Cecelia pursed her lips and glared away. She didn’t like it, not one peachy, little bit… “What do we do about<span style="font-style: italic">them</span>?” she nodded towards the human gathering around the camp site.<br/><br/>“Let the cattle have their fun,” Melchiah sighed and turned on his heel to leave.<br/><br/>His companion was up in arms, “You’re just gonna let them do this!? This is YOUR territory! Are you just going to allow this!?”<br/><br/>Melchiah slowed to a stop, his gaze roaming distantly, hands pursed in the small of his back, “Yes. People need a scapegoat Cecelia. Harsh winters and disease, Celia, perish their own like nestling birds in the frost. Besides, these humans have more right to my protection, than he…”<br/><br/>“They would KILL you in a heartbeat!” she hissed through her teeth, fingers clenched until her knuckles turned white. Only recently her own blood brood, some poor kid she’d taken under her wing and turned, had taken that same route into afterlife, “See that stake?! That, THAT is your future Melchiah! How can you not understand! You foolish,<span style="font-style: italic">foolish</span>man! Do not follow in Melchonar’s footsteps! I beg of you!” her tone was far from pleading, it was downright furious…<br/><br/>“That would require me to have the same shoe size,” he brushed her off lightly, shooting her an apologetic smirk, “Take care of business. I’ll rejoin you all on council turf within the fortnight,”<br/><br/>“Aah, bullshit! The mother-tongue of bureaucracy!” Cecelia scowled, but pulled her petticoat tighter about herself and stalked off, “I’ll report your foolishness, Antique!” she snapped back.<br/><br/>“… and watch them come running to my aid!” he hollered after her with a short laugh that dripped with sarcasm.<br/><br/>From there he remained to watch the fire dwindle out.<br/><br/>Six…<br/>All had quietened by the time his thoughts returned to the topic. The night no longer belonged to chaos and murder, asides the remnants of that unforgettable stench, like the memory of burned bread, the night belonged to mother earth once again…<br/>Wind threw his dark mane about his shoulders and played with the tails of his worn leather jacket.<br/>Six council protected vampires either burned at the stake or weighed with rocks and drowned as witches… he had seen wars between men, but against his own kin like this? This was something new, something he had not yet encountered before…<br/><br/>Pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, he plunged himself into whatever small comfort he could muster in the dark space behind his eyelids… Gods, he needed to walk… clear his head….<br/>--------                ------------------------           ---------<br/><br/>Boot heels clicked on the pebbledash sidewalks and echoed through the alley around him, somewhere water dripped from a washing line strung somewhere between the houses, he could smell the rising damp. Normally the sights, sounds and smells of his territory brought him great comfort, but this evening something menacing posed in their place. Windows bore down him like eyes, the cries and songs of the drunks in the tavern twisted and seeped from seemingly all directions…<br/><br/>Dawn was beginning to break on the horizon and Melchiah had long since lost track of the hours.<br/><br/>It was then a new scent on the air snatched his attentions from right under his nose. Quite literally.<br/><br/>It was…<br/>--He froze, testing the air, sharp eyes scanning the swelling shadows ahead, glinting enough to give a knife’s edge a run for its money… there was a warm, sweet scent. Musky, like old sweat and blood, but not unpleasant… it was the smell of skin, life. A woman’s smell…<br/><br/>Suddenly his stomach lurched emptily, the space behind his fangs ached dully, teeth wet unexpected longing… in all the chaos he’d forgotten to feed. Well, he had, his body certainly hadn’t.<br/><br/>A maddening smell of blood curled through the alley and if he dropped his breathing  and stilled, he could hear the faint beating, birds wings against a cage, of a heartbeat. All at once his mind turned on him and threw out images of him sinking his teeth hilt deep into the infatuating warmth of a woman’s flesh, the sudden burst of hot, thick liquid across his tongue, glistening in ruby streams along the slim pushing shape of her throat, pooling in the dips of her collar bone, sitting like a ruby dew drop on the supple curve of her breast…<br/><br/>He shook the image with a physical sniff and a shake of his head, as if he were chasing off a shudder. On some level it wasn’t wrong though… it HAD been a while since he’d last fed…<br/><br/>Hunkering down, he dropped into a low crouch and crept onwards, hoping he’d catch some poor drunk sleeping off the wine in a gutter or a runaway teen, too long gone to be missed or looked for…<br/><br/>What he found instead couldn’t have shocked him any more if it came with a pretty bow wrapped around its middle…<br/><br/>As the darkness fled from his approach a tiny, prone figure appeared propped up against the side of a building, legs sprawled beneath her like a baby dear, the slim arch of her back and shoulders rising and falling softly in sleep. Her scent, however, was distinctly vampire…<br/><br/>AND, to add insult to injury, she smelled of Melchonar bloodline, provided he wasn’t mistaken…<br/><br/>Melchiah back peddled, dark brow arching. SOOOO<span style="font-style: italic">this</span>was why Melchonar had left the Council so… so<span style="font-style: italic">abruptly</span>… he had sired a girl.<span style="font-style: italic">This</span>girl.<br/><br/>The elder vampire scowled and shook his head, trying to suppress an amused smirk. It WOULD be a blonde, wouldn’t it! That was the old bastards taste all over!<br/><br/>He sauntered over and nudged the almost lifeless figure with the tip of one boot, very much in the same fashion you’d poke a dead thing with a stick, “Girl.” he scowled, and gave her another hearty nudge, “Little one. Get up.”