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Jabon leaned in. “Tell me what you did to them.”
Rhage focused on two drunkards seated upon stools across the crowded cramp of the establishment. They were humans with beards thick as dog fur and clothing the color of manure. Unsteady from their imbibing, their shoulders bumped and separated by turns, the contacts a metronome counting down until the inevitable fight erupted.
“Wouldnae you speak, then.” Jabon moved his chair closer and put his smooth, pampered hand upon Rhage’s forearm—but he reconsidered this impulse as Rhage shifted his gaze over. Immediately, he retracted the feather weight. “But you conquested them both. At the same time, presently. You must tell me what it was like.”
Rhage returned to the two laborers over there on the stools. Things were coming to a boil, and he was concerned one or both were armed.
“Are you coming on this next eve, at least? Unto my home? You will find further conquests, I promise you.”
The laborer on the left, the one with the darker hair, whipped his face toward his compatriot. Brows furrowed, chin extended, face red as a barn door, he sputtered what couldnae be aught but curses. And then he shoved up to his feet, steady as a two-legged table. Called unto confrontation, his compatriot promptly lurched off onto his own boots.
A push. A shove. And then the hand of the one who had started it went inside his sloppily made coat.
“—you must come on the morrow. I have told many you will be in attendance. And I promise, there will be females of availability—”
Rhage clamped a grip on the back of Jabon’s finely constructed high-collar jacket. Shoving the male down under the table, Rhage ducked as well as the first lead shot rang out. With the discharge of the gun, the drunken joviality of the establishment lost its ebullience. There was no shouting in alarm, however. This was not the first time such had happened and humans commenced to take cover as if they had been well-drilled in the response.
Beneath the table, Jabon’s pale eyes widened and he clutched his fine coating tightly, pulling the lapels up close to the front of his throat as a fragile chain mail of wool and silk and cotton.
There was an ensuing rustle of bodies and shuffling of feet, the crowd scrambling to duck under oak tables and chairs, beside the stone hearth, behind the bar—although that latter was stopped by a barman with his own gun who held his turf with greater interest than whatever was occurring within his pub. ’Twas a good businessman, that one.
“What shall we do?” Jabon put his face all the way down on the rough, stained floorboards. “What shall we do, what shall we do . . .”
Rhage rolled his eyes. The danger would not last long and he was right. Three shots off and it was done.
Through the sturdy table legs and the twisted bramble patches of upended chairs, Rhage assessed the damage with little interest. Both combatants were down and unmoving so he sat up and stretched, rotating his bad arm. Jabon stayed down as if he had taken up a new pursuit of becoming a carpet. Most of the others did the same.
The door to the pub opened and closed as someone entered. Rhage did not pay that any mind. This human establishment was known only for trouble of their variety. The enemy did not come upon this theater of human depravity often, as lessers did not court with them if they could avoid it. The same was true for vampires, although members of the species could pass far easier among the rats without tails. And one did wish for adventure.
Adventure was all one had, really.
The human mat formed by all those who had sought to avoid the bullets began to break apart as heads were lifted and torsos tentatively rose.
The curling impatience as characteristic to Rhage’s corporeal confines as his blond hair and his blue-green eyes took its cue and weaved through his muscles and his bones. Ever on the move, he turned to take his leave not only of the humans and their silliness, but of Jabon’s incessant nagging—
The strike came from the left and it was a full-body one, something large and heavy taking Rhage back down to the floor. It was whilst he hung for the briefest of moments in midair that he noted two things: One, as his vision swung ’round, he witnessed a bullet passing through the space from which his flesh and blood had been forcefully vacated, the lead slug burrowing into the oak paneling of the pub’s homely wall, creating a circled coffin for its honed metal body.
The second realization was that Rhage knew who had come upon him.
His savior was not a surprise, either.
The landing was hard as he bore both his own heft and another’s of similar tonnage, but he cared not about the bruising. Looking through the forest of table and leg anew, he eyed the resumed skirmish whereby the initiating combatant, briefly resurrected, had raised his gun once more and attempted to ensure death had indeed arrived upon his fellow drunkard.
