My Fight Scene Blogfest Entry...

As predicted, the police were still very much a presence at the scene. The alley had been taped off and anyone who got too close to the tape was chased off with a stern warning. Those who braved another try were threatened with arrests.

Crime scene investigators still worked to collect blood samples and other evidence, or potential evidence, but from what Sable could see, most of it was blood and tissue matter. The body had been removed already and so Sable wasn’t able to tell if this was the crime made by a human or something else.

“Has to be human,” she said in a whisper.

“Why do you say that?” Falcon asked.

“Too much blood,” she replied.

“Not a vampire then, huh?” he asked with an amused tone.

She glared at him then. “Don’t mess with me.”

Falcon shrugged, “I just don’t believe in that stuff, babe. You know that.”

“But I do.”

They both looked back towards the scene.

“I want in there,” she said.

Falcon sighed.

It took a few more hours before the police and CSI finally left. By then, it was close to midnight. They waited a few more minutes before they made their way into the alley to do some investigating of their own.

Sable pulled out a small penlight to use as she looked around.

“Be careful, Sable,” Falcon whispered.

Sable hmphed under her breath. It was yet another instance of Falcon being over protective of her. She sighed and continued to look around.

It looked like a lot of blood, but the more she looked around, she noticed it wasn’t all that much. The thickness of it didn’t make sense. The wide area of spray made it seem like there'd been a lot of blood. If it had been a lot of blood, there would have been darker staining.

Which meant…

“Damn,” she whispered.

“What?”

“We got ourselves a vampire.”

“You’re shitting me, right?”

She heard the disbelief in his tone.

“Let’s go to the morgue and see if we can take a look at the body.”

“Fuck me,” he groaned.

Sable smiled.

Getting in hadn't been easy. They had no identification and no business there. The security guards made sure Sable and Falcon were aware they kept an eye on them. Sable had given some hogwash story of her sister being a prostitute named Katey and having just heard someone by that name was murdered. She wanted to make sure it wasn’t her sister. They were told to wait in the lobby and someone would be out to talk to her.
They’d been sitting in the lobby for twenty minutes when Sable began to get the tingling feeling starting at the base of her spine and crept upwards until she was sitting up straight, tense, and scanning the area around her.

“What is it, babe?” he whispered.

“Something’s up,” she whispered back.

They both startled as an alarm blared and Sable watched as the security guards ran toward a set of double doors. She thought the doors led to the autopsy room and the cold chamber. She glanced at Falcon, who shrugged, and looked back at the doors.

Another minute passed before a guard came through the doors, covered in blood, pale, with eyes as wide as saucers. Sable and Falcon jumped to their feet in shock.

“Run!” the guard yelled at them. “Get out of here!”

Before he made it a third of the way from the door to the front desk, a man burst through the doors, almost tearing them off their hinges, and was on the guard, snarling.

The two men fought with one another but it was quite clear the attacker had the upper hand and both Sable and Falcon watched in horror as the attacker lunged in with his mouth and bit the guard in the throat. The guard screamed in pain until the attacker jerked his head and ripped a chunk of flesh from the hapless guard’s throat. Blood sprayed as the jugular was opened and with a growl, the attacker latched his mouth over the geyser and drank from the scarlet fountain.

“Fuck!”

Falcon's horror of the sight would have been amusing to her if the situation hadn't been so serious. Sable said nothing as she leaned down and pulled out a knife from each boot, arming herself. She saw out of the corner of her eye Falcon giving her a shocked look, but shook her head at him, straightened up, and headed toward the monster.

“Sable, no!”

Shit! The monster heard Falcon and jerked up to look in their direction.

What had been brown haired with a passable, handsome face was now blood soaked and ghastly. His eyes caught the light and flashed as the monster stood up and snarled at them, baring fangs.

Vampire.

Sable didn’t have the time to yell, “I told you so!” at Falcon because the monster was launching itself at her. She dropped into a defensive posture, bringing up her knives.

Sable was very much aware of the razor sharp claws tipping the monster’s fingers, as well as pointed fangs in his mouth. She intended to avoid those, but it was his speed, which took her by surprise.

She was able to avoid most of the clawing, although a couple did reach her when she failed to move fast enough. She was quick to retaliate with her knives and drive him back before the thing could penetrate through her clothes to her skin beneath. He might have speed and cunning but she had skill and agility on her side.

Sable retaliated with her own set of "claws". Holding a knife in each hand, sharp blade toward her opponent and parallel to the ground, she struck at the monster with a quick swipe of either blade. Sable drove the monster back as she followed through with a twist of her wrist and sliced at the monster with one knife and a punch with the other. The hilts of her knives were solid metal and gave her better punching power by reinforcing her knuckles.

The monster looked unsure at first, but it renewed his attack with greater fury.

Sable felt herself being shoved by an unseen force, away from the monster. She skittered a bit before she managed to come to a stop and look around. Even the monster looked confused.

Without waiting to see who or what it was, Sable darted off toward Falcon. “Run!”

Falcon wasn’t going to argue, it seemed.

Thank God for small favors!

He bolted for the exit, Sable on his tail. The monster snarled and lunged after them, but when Sable looked back over her shoulder, she saw a dark mass collide with the monster and both went tumbling to the tile floor. With one last glance to make sure Falcon made it out, she turned and headed back toward the combatants.
Sable wasn’t the type to let someone else fight her battles and she wasn’t about to let a monster go free, not when she had the chance to destroy one.

She waited until there was an opening and she jumped into the fray, slicing at the monster from behind. She managed to cut open his flesh and he roared in anger before he turned on her. Sable wasn’t paying any attention to the second combatant, as she concentrated on the monster in front of her. She danced back, moving on the balls of her feet, drawing the monster back before she went in with a feigned slash up high. At the last moment, Sable ducked down, slashed low and behind, catching the monster behind his thighs, and hamstringing him.

The monster shrieked in pain and went down, but twisted and raked his claws across her back, cutting through her hoodie and t-shirt to the skin and flesh below.

Pain exploded through her back and Sable sucked in a harsh breath as she staggered forward from the momentum. She turned back to face her opponent in time to watch the second man finish the monster. With a swing of a black sword, he decapitated the monster.

Sword? Where the hell did a sword come from?

Sable watched as the head flopped onto the floor and rolled forward. Memories surfaced and long buried images came crashing to mind. She could see her father’s head as it rolled from the roof of the car, down the windshield, leaving a trail of dark crimson.

“Are you all right?” a male voice asked.

It broke through her mental flashback. She shuddered and winced with pain as the movement jostled her wounds. Sable looked up at the man and her heart jolted in recognition.

Alyx.


Excerpt from "Dead of Night" - Paranormal Romance

Copyright 2009 - Isobael Liu