The first time we got attacked in the alley with Lara Slowly was the last time I saw my brother.  He didn’t get killed or anything, he just decided to leave about twenty minutes after the sun came up the next morning.  Don’t think he left out of fright.  All of us were scared at times; you were a fool not to be.  He had just realized a few things.

“Max,” he had been staring out towards the rising dawn for a bit when he decided to speak up, “I realized a few things.” 

…Like I said.

“I don’t have the skills,” he continued.  He didn’t, and I respected him for acknowledging this, “And odds are I’m just going to get us all killed.” 

This was true as well.  So after sad goodbyes we left Jay in Hong Kong to seek a flight back stateside, and what happened to him after that, well… that’s his tale to tell.

* * *

Lara and I were holed up in a cheap hotel when they tried again.  But this time we were ready.  She had a taken to arming herself with a stake in one hand and an eight inch knife, more of a short sword, she had picked up off a street vendor in the other.  I had rigged a shotgun with a replaceable stake on the end.  Truthfully I can’t take credit for this as I stole the idea from some video game or a movie I saw somewhere.  Turns out some of those tactics they use in vampire fiction actually work (believe me; we tried most of them over the next few years). 

I couldn’t tell you exactly how many vampires we canceled, just that there was a lot of them.  I say canceled because you can’t kill something that’s already dead.  Plus Lara never liked the idea of killing things, something the monks taught her about respecting life.  She could kick the living snot out a guy but unless he was something of pure evil, he wasn’t in danger of losing his life.  Killing never bothered me, but due to technical reasons and for her sensitivity we stuck to using cancel.

There were probably over a dozen of them that came for us.  The only definite number is there were only two of us that fought them off.  They must have expected we’d be sleeping as the first one walked right in the front entry.  Too bad for him we’d taken to resting during the day. 

Lara was waiting behind the door, and before he even noticed her there was a stake sticking him through the chest.  One down.  The next three came crashing through the windows.  My favorite new tactic was to blast out one of their legs with the shotgun and then run it through with the stake attached to the end.   Vampire or not, a close range shotgun blast will knock you on your ass any day of the week.  Two down. 

Lara was just too fast for the average vampire and the other two window crashers found this out as she staked one and put her blade through the other’s face.  It poked out the back of his head and I could see he was pissed, but I didn’t interfere.  Would you stop Picasso if you thought one of his paintings looked messy?  Exactly.  And that’s why I never interrupted Lara when she was killing- ah… canceling.  Stepping up onto the room’s shabby little table she threw herself over the creature while keeping a solid grip on the knife that was sticking out of his face.  She landed on her feet behind him and he was pulled to the ground and promptly staked.  Four down.

The next wave was a bit more intense.  It’s hard to say whether they came in through the windows or the door, but they came fast.  Lara and I stood back to back in a ring of at least eight vampires.  I noticed two of them were wearing what looked like hammer and sickle printed tee shirts.  They were just cheesy propaganda pieces that were sold in Hong Kong boutiques but they were enough to fire me up a bit more.  I hate Communists.  I hate vampires.  You can imagine how I feel about Communist vampires. 

Lara spoke one word: “Go.”

And go we did.  I fired twice into the crowd and clocked one of the tee-shirt wearers with the butt of my shotgun.  I remember grinning for the rest of that fight because I knocked his teeth out.  Like a de-clawed cat he screeched and fled.  I think I staked two more then turned to see how Lara was doing. 

It was like a watching a five foot two inch whirlwind with sharp points.  There were probably six of them around her hissing and cursing her Capitalist soul, but not one of them could get a hand on her.  She slashed this way and kicked that way.  Diving right between one of their legs she came up, staked him, and ducked so quickly that one which had just barely managed to get behind her bit his dead companion’s neck.  They hated biting each other and he growled and spat.  Then I shot him.  Before I could even get close enough to stake him though, Lara had spun back over and plunged one into his chest.  She winked at me and came over to stand by my side. 

The remaining vampires lined across the room from the two of us.  There were seven left, including one with that damn hammer and sickle tee on.  I reloaded and Lara cracked her neck.  The vamps looked frightened.  Tee-shirt guy stepped forward.

“You capitalist dogs leave now the haven of our red.  This land belongs to ours and you will know pain to you stay.” 

His English wasn’t that good but I appreciated his attempt to communicate with us. 

Lara and I looked at each other and exchanged the slightest of nods.  Then she threw a stake right into tee-shirt’s chest.  Down he went and we charged the other six.  They were a bit stunned.  I guess most of the people they assaulted en mass didn’t put up that much of a fight.  I finished off two more.  Lara butchered three of the other four.  The last one was a young woman, or had been before she’d turned.  We approached her from either side and she backed herself into the corner of the room hissing.

“Want to decapitate her?”  I asked with a mad grin on my already blood spattered face. 

The vampire understood English for sure because she looked a little worried when I spoke.

“Maybe.  What if we cut off her limbs one by one to see how long she can stay alive?”  Lara also must have noticed she understood. 

“Good idea.  Let’s start with a leg so she can’t run.” 

I stepped forward and the little creature charged me.  I figured she would, and so did Lara.  Before she even reached me my companion had slipped behind her and buried her knife into the creature’s spine, effectively paralyzing her.  The vampire fell to the floor and shrieked.   I stepped over it and pushed the tip of a stake into her chest, not breaking skin but hardly a pound of pressure away from it.

“Now my little friend, I have some questions.”  My skills as an interrogator were never that grand but I had to try.  “Where’s your home?  Where did you all come from?”

She spat in my face and hissed.  I pressed a little harder with the stake.  I think she swore in Mandarin at me.  I looked up at Lara and shrugged, indicating she should take over, and then backed away.

Lara grinned like a hungry lioness and came to a crouch next to the paralyzed vamp.  She spoke softly in some language I couldn’t follow; probably Mandarin as the vampire seemed to understand.  They whispered back and forth for a few minutes and I busied myself checking the pockets of the canceled (you gotta fund your operation somehow).  I came up with a few hundred dollars and some jewelry we could hock down the line. 

“Max,” Lara spoke and I turned.  “She doesn’t know anything we can use.   She calls us the ‘Western Devils’ and swears she was recruited just an hour ago to come kill us.  Apparently we are making quite the name for ourselves.”

“You believe her?”  Leave it to woman’s intuition.

“Yes.”

“Then let’s finish her.”  I pulled a stake out of the nearest dead vampire and started toward them.

“No, let’s leave her.”

As far as I knew Lara had never been that nice, at least not to undead creatures that were trying to rip her throat out a few minutes prior.  I stopped and looked her, confusion evident on my face.  She grinned. 

“The sun will be up in an hour.  If no one finds her then she’s canceled anyways.  If the police find her then the Chinese government will have captured its first live, so to speak, vampire.  And I’m sure that will be almost as bad as a suntan for her.”

I nodded my consent and almost on cue we heard sirens.   We grabbed our packs and fled into the coming dawn.

* * *

It was about two weeks later we were holed up in a village forty miles east of Hong Kong.  The locals had begun to provide shelter and referred to us as the Western Saviors, a funny contrast to the vampire’s name for us.  We hadn’t been attacked since the hotel, but that night… we were called upon by one of them.  

At about two a.m. there was a soft knock on the door to our room.  In typical fashion Lara grabbed her knife and pressed herself against the wall next to the door.  I held one of the Desert Eagle handguns I had acquired somewhere along the line behind my leg and slowly opened the door.  Standing across the hallway, hands outstretched as if surrendering, was the other tee-shirt wearing vampire whose teeth I had knocked out.

I stepped back and raised the pistol, Lara stayed hidden waiting for whoever it was to come rushing into the room.  He didn’t.  But he did speak.

“Pleeezze.   Pleeze.  I mean you no harm, devil.  I am here to help you….”

And that’s how we met Igor.