"Kai! You gotta hurry!" Luciel stopped on the roof, looking behind himself.
Kai acted like everything was right, but his speed, strength, and body language were telling him otherwise.
He could hear the sound of hunters coming closer. With the speed that they were traveling, it was only a matter of time before they caught up to them.
"Kai!" Luciel cried out, quickly approaching the edge of the roof, grabbing Kai by his hand, and helping him climb up. He would have fallen if Luciel hadn't rushed to catch him.
"Thank you, Luciel." Kai got up slowly, placing his hand on the place where he was bitten previously.
"You'll thank me later, come, let's run!" Luciel pushed Kai slightly, urging him to hurry.
Kai proceeded forward without looking back, but Luciel stayed in one spot for a moment. He could see the hunters and they could see him.
Just at the sight of him, someone already fired an arrow from a crossbow.
Luciel could see an arrow coming towards him like it was in slow motion, giving him enough time to move his head to the left side to avoid being hit.
"Now I feel a little bit better about telling everyone that arrows are useless against vampires," Luciel said to himself before turning around and quickly catching up to Kai.
"Let's head towards the clan!" Kai suggested, but it made Luciel feel uneasy.
Nosferatu, Kai, and Melisa might be welcoming, but who says that other vampires share the same opinions.
Last time they fought for him and Alex was probably just to return the favor thanks to Nosferatu's influence, but now he was supposed to go directly to where they resided.
"Lead the way then." Luciel decided it was better to follow Kai for now than to be hunted.
He was well aware not to trust vampires, but hearing Kai's and Melisa's story made him put a little bit of trust in them.
"The forest shouldn't be that far ahead! Come!" Kai instructed, rushing toward one specific part of the human colony named Paradise.
There was a huge wall surrounding the Paradise, protected by hunters and surveillance with the help of drones equipped with thermal cameras, but there were two problems with it.
There was a tree that would be close to the wall. Vampires would usually climb up on it and jump onto the other side.
The other, less favorable option, was the old sewer. It was a safer option, but vampires would usually avoid it due to unbearable smell. Their enchanted senses were a curse as much as a blessing.
"Over there!"
"Get them!"
The two vampires glanced towards the direction of the noise before nodding to each other.
First, it was Luciel who made the first jump, followed by Kai who almost missed it.
"Go! Go! Go!" Luciel continued to push Kai. He could see that he could not go on anymore. He wondered if it was because of a zombie bite, but just what could that thing be to infect a vampire?
Just as before, Luciel stayed a bit to see the situation down below. Now finally rested after the grand battle against Alukah, the hunters were harder to lose than before and Kai was getting weaker by the second.
"Can't you talk to them or something?" Kai complained after Luciel caught up to him. If only it would be as easy as Kai made it sound like.
"Look, if you hurry, maybe we won't have to confront them." Luciel sped up and went in front of Kai. He knew where the river that served as a border was. They only need to pass that part and they should be safe.
The current tempo wasn't a problem for Luciel, but the question was if Kai was going to make it.
As they were heading towards the river, Luciel had to make occasional stops. Sometimes he would extend his hand and help him if the distance between the branches was too far.
When Kai made another jump towards a branch that was far away, Luciel was here to grab him and that's when he could see it.
The hunters were approaching and they were fast, but the ordinary hunters weren't the ones he was worrying about.
From the team of ten vampire hunters, he could see a flash of gentle yellow light before a familiar figure shot in the air with astral wings covered in gold and white feathers, similar to those that Luciel used to arrive at the center of the battlefield to face Alukah.
"Shit! Kai! Try to run away without me, I'll hold her back!" Luciel ordered after recognizing the person as Scarlet. The one that claimed him as a bloodthirsty beast to be put down when they were on the battlefield. That night was the one when he got turned.
Kai looked aside for a moment, feeling a knot forming in his stomach. Luciel already did so much for him and his sister while getting nothing in return.
It might have been just a coincidence that their paths got tangled together due to certain events, otherwise, Luciel would have already tried to cut their heads off.
Putting two and two together, in a way, Kai felt honored to have his back protected by one of the vampire hunters everyone feared.
Without the ability to use divine arts, Luciel drastically fell in power.
Kai would place him in the ranks of low-rank vampires in terms of strength and abilities. The only thing that made him stand out and still gave him the right to be a formidable opponent was his battle experience and fighting skills.
Kai and Melisa had a rare opportunity among vampires to see Luciel's other side, the protective one that he would usually display toward humans.
They also had a chance to witness the power of Luciel's accumulative fights firsthand, making him earn their respect.
"Luciel, you can't!" Kai protested before stopping on one of the branches.
Kai felt like the whole forest was rotating around him, "You know better than anyone that you can't take on so many of them in your current state. And the Red Death isn't someone that any vampire can win against!"
Luciel stopped on the branch above Kai, biting his lower lip, making it bleed a little. He didn't have to ask, he already knew who Kai was referencing.
The Red Death, but he knew her by the name Scarlet Willison. A vampire hunter who was on pair with Luciel during his career.
The most striking thing about Scarlet was the red hair that she was born with.
It was unknown to all how that was possible for a human to be born with such vibrant red hair, there were even rumors that she had been a part of some experiment, but one thing was for sure, she was a force to be reckoned with.
"I can barely move. Let me take care of this! At least one of us will survive that way!" Kai added after receiving nothing but silence from Luciel, who was trying to think of the right course of action, but before he could reply, there was a loud sound above their heads, like something had broken the sound barrier.
Both vampires grimaced, exposing their sharp fangs as they went to cover their sensitive ears.
"How do you guys deal with those?" Luciel frowned, slowly lowering his arms and shaking his head, waiting for the annoying buzzing to finally disappear.
While his increased senses had their nice and useful moments, at times they were more of a hassle than a convenience.
"That's the thing, we don't," Kai answered, following the same movements as Luciel.
Right after when the vampires finally managed to recover, another sound just as before appeared.
Kai and Luciel were forced to cover their ears again as their time for running had finally run out.
The trees all around them started to fall down, including the ones they were staying on.
It was Scarlet. The first flight was to find them, and the second one was to get them out of the trees and it worked.
With not enough time to recover and feeling disoriented, Kai and Luciel took the fall with the tree almost falling on top of them.
"You all right?" Luciel managed to land in a crouching position on top of the fallen tree trunk, but Kai failed to do so and he fell flat on his back.
"I think that something snapped. I can't move my legs." Kai grunted, turning his head a little.
The situation was getting worse and worse for Kai and Luciel to the point that Luciel started to consider abandoning Kai, but he couldn't do so.
Kai helped him with his hunger just recently. If it wasn't for him, Luciel would probably take another victim with him that night.
Hearing Scarlet approaching again, Luciel turned towards the sound and gritted his teeth.
He could see Scarlet rushing straight towards Kai, with her sword ready to cut his neck.
Without any second thoughts, Luciel rushed towards Kai and extended both of his hands, ready to get a hold of Scarlet, hoping to stop her in her tracks.
Not even a second later, Scarlet arrived right in front of Luciel, changing her sword trajectory from Kai to him.
Luciel ducked, making the sword go right above his head, cutting the tips of his hair.
He grabbed Scarlet by both of her hands, but he wasn't strong enough.
Once Scarlet clashed with Luciel, she didn't stop her flight trajectory and continued to glide straight, pushing Luciel through trees, and making more of them fall down with a loud thud.
Luciel didn't know through how many trees she pushed him, all he knew was that probably every vertebra in his spine had been broken.
At this point, it felt like he was going to die just like that until he hit the last tree and Scarlet finally stopped.
Her wings dispersed into thousands of white and gold particles while she was breathing heavily.
She held Luciel by his neck with a savage look in her eyes.
Her usually straight red hair was now completely messy, full of branches and twigs, looking like she lived in a jungle for her whole life.
"Ready to pay for what you did, Luciel?" Scarlet tightened her grip around Luciel's neck, holding her sword in another hand, getting ready for a kill.