Abel started to feel very concerned upon seeing this happen. As much as his friend wanted to say he was okay, this just proved otherwise.
"You literally just coughed up blood, what can I do to help, man!" Abel asked, rushing to his aid again.
Zeke sluggishly shrugged him off before stumbling onto a tree trunk by his side.
He was panting and weak, with blood coming out his nose and mouth rather profusely.
Across from them, more than 30 metres away now, Arwin lifted onto his hands and knees.
His body was covered in his own blood, and he reached in his pocket to see that the healing pills that he had brought with him were burned to a crisp.
"Goddamn it!" He cursed, throwing his pouch onto the floor.
The stake that he had previously held in his hand was now burning in front of him. He strugglingly reached it and tried his best to try and put out the flames but it was too late. His most useful weapon was now gone.
'Curse that damn vampire! Why do they have to always try so hard to live when all they do is kill and torment people like us!' Arwin thought, coughing out blood.
'At least I got one of them for sure.' He thought, with a mischievous smirk.
"Listen up demons!" Arwin shouted, slowly raising up.
He was far from them, but he knew that the vampires could here him loud and clear.
"I'll be back. You have merely postponed your inevitable deaths! I will be waiting in the shadows, and kill you both the first chance I get! I promise you now, this is not the end of me!!" He shouted.
Following that, they heard a light swooshing of wind then there was nothing. Zeke sighed of relief upon realising that they were finally free of this hunter. His strength was slowly returning to him but it was going to be a long process.
The first thing he had to do was consume blood, but what he wanted to do was just relax and relish in the peace that they now had.
"So, is it all over now?" Abel asked, relieved.
"Yeah, I think it is." Zeke replied, with a smile.
Abel began to cough, and Zeke initially thought nothing of it. However, his coughing soon became more intense, and it seemed to debilitate him. He dropped to a knee from this insane coughing fit, and revealed his hand to see black blood in his palm.
Zeke was now stood over him, watching this all happen in confusion.
"Well, that's not good." Zeke said.
"Yeah, it really isn't."
Zeke had a few stores of human blood in his home, that they both decided to feast on. He had performed special skills that he learned in Nudra to preserve the blood for longer. It made the large flasks that he stored it in cool, while also making the blood preserve its properties for longer.
Abel was immediately hit with the sweet taste of the substance as he gulped it down, and also felt the pain in his body slowly fading away.
"Do you feel okay now?"
"A little. There's a little lingering sting but I don't think that's much. It should go away pretty soon anyway." Abel replied.
"This is all so weird, isn't it? I mean, how did Arwin know specifically where we live not many people know that stuff at all." Zeke said.
"Maybe, he's just like a stalker. He did seem pretty set on killing us so he might've been doing some reconnaissance before we even knew about it."
"Yeah, that's true."
Zeke just said he agreed to please his friend, but secretly was thinking otherwise. In Nudra, the vampire had been trained in the arts of anti-reconnaissance training.
With his vampire senses, he could tell when a human was watching him after just a few seconds.
He hadn't sensed this hunter until he was first attacked by him. He couldn't have been anywhere near him before that time. It was certain in his mind that he had been told where they lived but he just couldn't figure out who would do such a thing.
All the options were terrifying to think of, such as the academy already knowing that they were vampires and using this hunter to take them down.
Nonetheless, they just wanted to take their minds off things for now. Abel returned home and received a sealed glass of human blood from Zeke. The glass was covered in hay and was handed to him in a cool box, that was cooled with a skill of Zeke's doing.
In not too long, Abel fell soundly asleep after such a long, stressful day.
*****
The following morning, Abel decided to start off his day with a drink of the cool blood in Zeke's glass. He popped open the bottle by taking off the cork on it and took a few gulps. The sweet taste was more than refreshing as a starter to the morning, and he let out a contented sigh.
He began to walk to the door in his property to head to the shared bathroom, but soon felt a weird feeling of nauseousness in his stomach. Dropping his glass of blood, he coughed out the blood that he has just drank, but ended up coughing much more blood than the mere gulps he'd just had.
The human blood was mixed in with his own. Within this pool of blood was also black splotches, and thick chunks of blood that looked like flesh.
After this happened, he felt weak then felt a sharp pain in his chest, that was intense and discomforting.
'What is going on?!' He asked himself, more than confused.
He had no clue how he was going to clean this bloody mess on his floor, and he used some water and a mop to try and clean it. It did some work, but the mess was no where near gone.
The ground was beginning to get soaked in this blood, but he did his best at cleaning what was left.
There was still a clear pool of blood, and he decided to just lock his windows and leave his room as quickly as possible.
Trying not to think much of it, he simply got ready for school as he usually would then head to his academy.
Abel, arriving at school, had pale skin and felt weaker than usual. The sunlight started to ache his eyes, and he was feeling drowsy from excessive sweating and the heat. However, it wasn't even that hot.
To Abel, though, it was like he was burning up.
Stomaching the pain, he just headed to his first class, which was just some practical work on dummies.
The students were vigorously hitting the heavy wooden dummies across this dojo, and Abel walked over to Zeke with this sunken, lifeless look to his face.
Zeke began to look very disturbed upon seeing his appearance, but no one else cared enough to even give him a glance.
"I know what happened to you, Abel. I looked in some of the books I took with me from Nudra and it looks like you've been taken out by a weird substance called bloodblight. It's been made synthetically and kills vampires within 24 hours of exposure. I don't know how you lived after being staked with it but it should be due to your werewolf side." Zeke explained.
"Oh, that makes sense. Do you know any of the symptoms of the poison?" Abel asked, attempting to learn more about him throwing up blood.
"It just says that you'll feel hot, dizzy, sweat a lot and soon feel immense pain in the point of exposure. What have you been feeling?" Zeke asked, in a caring manner.
"Nothing much for now. I just feel a little lightheaded, that's all." Abel fibbed.
He felt a lot of pain in his chest, while also feeling sluggish and weak. It was like his energy had been sapped from it, and he imagined this is what it would feel like to be close to death.
As they arrived at a dummy, the next to student to enter the class was Duncan. Duncan gave the class the quick glance, upon being stuck on his 'friends' Zeke, and Abel.
'They're still here? I thought Arwin was supposed to have done something!' Duncan thought, before no longer looking at them.
He was hoping that they weren't dead, but was at least expecting to never see them again.
He just walked straight past them without even greeting them, heading back to a dummy to begin his solitary training.
"Do you see that? Why is he not talking to us anymore?" Zeke wondered.
"I don't know. Also, remember that hunter?"
"Yeah."
"Didn't he look an awful lot like Duncan?"
Upon hearing this question, Zeke looked frozen. The person that revealed where they lived. The person that sold them out!
It was Duncan!