Azrael stands in the doorway, broad frame blocking the light as he surveys me over a few times, narrowing his two red eyes. In the half light of the room, he appears no more than a phantom, a menace whose ghostly presence has come to linger through my dreams and haunt my waking hours with visions of ghostly figures in the corner of my vision. He is, in that moment, what every vampire had strived to be, a creature of the shadows and night who haunts the minds of the lesser Folk and drives even the sturdiest creatures to the irretrievable brink of insanity. But this is a man whose presence to me has become less of an uncertainty to me, but more of a sleepless, never-ending nightmare, and one I have come to despise with the entirety of my being.
Fortunately, I have no obligation to show any kindness to this abomination. Not yet.
