Luciel stared into the golden eyes that were staring back at him.
Every cell in his body was telling him to run, but he had a feeling that his head would be ripped off the moment he would turn his back towards the beast.
"Good doggy…" He lowered his body a little, slowly starting to back away, hoping that the werewolf in front of him would leave him alone if he didn't show any aggression towards it, but of course, the beast had different intentions.
The big, brown wolf howled into the air, calling for the rest of its pack before launching itself towards Luciel.
'Oh, not again…' Lucian wasn't surprised by this, and just when he thought that his day couldn't get any worse.
Before he knew it, the wolf was already on top of him, throwing him on the ground, snarling, and going to bite the vampire's head off.
"Forget about it!" Using his strength, Luciel placed his hands on the wolf's chest, pushing it up, making it unable to reach his head while chomping with its muzzle.
"Get off me you stupid mutt!" Finally deciding to give it his all, Luciel managed to push the werewolf off him, throwing it aside on its back.
Quickly getting off the ground, he decided to take his chance and run before the werewolf would recover.
Looking up, Luciel quickly went towards the tree that could carry his weight and jumped up. Getting to higher ground is the only way to save himself since running on foot is useless. If vampires are natural predators of humans, then werewolves are vampire's natural predators.
Luciel might be a skilled hunter, but without any weapons or divine arts, he's nothing more but slightly above the ordinary human, or… Below an average vampire.
It didn't take long for the werewolf to recover as it shook his head and looked towards Luciel. Growling, it started to run towards him and jumped up at the same time.
Luciel managed to get a hold of the tree trunk, but so did the werewolf managed to get a bite on his leg before starting to pull down, shaking its head.
"That hurts!" Luciel hissed at the beast, baring his fangs while trying to keep a hold of the tree.
With his other leg, he went to start kicking the werewolf in the head with all his strength, hoping that it would give up, but instead, the werewolf started to pull down even harder before Luciel's strength finally gave out and the werewolf managed to pull him down.
It got on top of Luciel again, placing its front paws on his prey's arms so it couldn't be knocked down again.
As it snarled and growled, saliva started to drip on Luciel's face and he could smell the stinky breath from its mouth, but that didn't matter as his heart started to beat like crazy and he started to feel intense fear while his eyes started to glow vibrant red.
This wasn't his first time to be so close to death. He almost got killed by vampires countless times, not every hunt went smoothly, this shouldn't scare him as much as it does right now, even if his life is soon about to end.
He tried to resist, bite, kick, spit, anything just to get the beast to release his arms so he could try and run away again.
The werewolf was moments away from biting Luciel's head off before it suddenly yelped and blood started to appear in its mouth before it got lifted from the ground and thrown aside.
Luciel was breathing heavily and there was visible, cold sweat on his forehead. He thought that this was it until he saw a clawed hand burst through the werewolf's chest, spilling some blood on Luciel's face and his clothes.
He watched the werewolf being tossed aside and stared into the eyes of his savior. He had a young looking face with dark red eyes with hints of brown, like dried blood.
"Man, good thing I went to check it out." The vampire said and with one strong shake of his hand, he threw all the blood from it on the ground.
"Hope you weren't injured too badly." The vampire added and with a small smile on his face, went to hold out his hand, offering to help the wounded vampire stand up.
"I don't need your help." Luciel clicked with his tongue, pushing away the vampire's dirty hand.
"Rude, is this how you say thanks these days?" The vampire complained, taking a good look at the vampire's face so he could remember who not to help next time and that's when he noticed.
"You…" The vampire sounded shocked at first, taking a step back before starting to laugh, barely able to speak. "You… You are…" More laughter escaped from his mouth.
"You are Luciel Ashford." The vampire finally said it after calming down before starting to laugh mockingly.
"Who would have thought that humanity's Ray of Hope would be turned into a vampire." He mocked the newborn in front of him, continuing to laugh.
Calming down again, the vampire pushed his hair back, finally standing up straight again, taking a good look at Luciel who was giving him death glares, but to the vampire, Luciel didn't seem as scary as before when he was on a battlefield.
The vampire wasn't perceivining him as a vampire hunter anymore and the strong feeling of divine arts was no more lingering around. The vampire was sure he could take him on and win, but that would be too easy in Luciel's current state.
"I would be lying to say that I wasn't furious about you killing our leader." He stated, "But this, this is even a better punishment than killing you." He snickered, getting closer to Luciel, and placed his hand below his chin.
The vampire lifted Luciel's head, leaving claw marks on his face, "Well then, how did it feel? Your first taste of human blood?"
Luciel endured the vampire's mocking and teasing till now, he had no choice since he had no strength left anymore, and as much as he didn't want to admit it, the vampire did save his life, but this last question spilled the cup.
Luciel's pupils narrowed as he growled and went to bite the vampire's hand.
"Wow, careful there," the vampire said playfully, pulling his hand away before looking toward the direction where more werewolf howls could be heard.
"If I were you, I would keep those fangs in check." He snickered, teasing Luciel even more, "You don't want to act like us, like a vampire, do you now? Or even worse, you don't want to bite someone's neck."
The vampire had a pleasant look on his face as he watched Luciel shaking in anger. He managed to get what he wanted - to mentally torture Luciel until he would finally display the behavior typical of a vampire.
"Well then, a final word of advice, I would run if I were you, it won't take long for the rest of the pack to arrive and they won't be happy at the sight." He turned his back towards Luciel and waved before disappearing.
"Oh wait till I tell the news to my clan. It will be the story of a century!" Luciel could still hear the vampire's words in the distance as he continued to laugh before everything went quiet for a moment.
"That bastard." Luciel groaned, spitting on the ground before slowly getting up. If nothing, the vampire did help him to replace his fear with anger that he worked so hard to get rid of.
He leaned against the tree and looked at his injured leg, the sight of it didn't look pretty at all, he couldn't even stand on it and had to shift all of his weight on his healthy leg.
Truth be told, the bite didn't hurt as much as he expected, the pain felt like someone put his whole leg in a bucket filled with cold water and ice. The pain was still there, but it felt numb for the most part.
"Vampires really are nasty beasts." He remained himself, recalling his action and the fact that his leg already started to heal.
There was another howl in the distance that was getting closer, reminding Luciel that he didn't have lots of time left to run away. This time, the chances for someone to come to his aid are even more slim than before.
Luciel turned around and started to ascend. It was harder to do it with only one leg, but not impossible with this little strength he had left.
Once he finally reached the first stable branch that was way beyond the surface, he took a big breath and went to sit down on it, leaning his back against the tree trunk with a healthy leg on a branch while he let the injured hang in the air.
"It's surprising how much the forest had grown once humans stopped to spread their influence as they used to." He looked around at the admirable trees that have become his best friends as of today.
Luciel winced for a second when he felt his bone snap in place and continued to heal.
The whole healing process was taking longer than he thought, probably because of a werewolf influence, but only the vampire king had the power to almost instantly regenerate his wounds and missing limbs.
He looked down when he heard the rustling of leaves.
Luciel stared at the pack of werewolves that had arrived in search of their packmate. He did feel curious about them since humans and werewolves rarely crossed paths with each other.
Sure, there were some werewolf hunters around, but they would only get involved when a particular werewolf would harass human colonies.
The relationship between humans and werewolves was like an unspoken deal. One wouldn't touch each other unless one party did something wrong, besides humans tried to avoid them for the most part anyway.
It was common knowledge that werewolves were on the same strength as vampires, if not even stronger.
He observed them gathering around the dead werewolf, walking around, sniffing it and everything around, trying to catch the scent of who did it and where they went.
As they were circling around the area, they found the tree where Luciel's smell led to and one of the werewolves looked up, staring right at Luciel.
Seeing this, Luciel only gave it a wave with his hand before looking at the forest in front of him.
He could hear the growls of the werewolf below him, but he couldn't care less.
There was no way he could make peace with them from the very beginning, trying to explain the situation would lead nowhere.
Once everything went quiet, Luciel looked down again and saw that the werewolves were still there, all sitting down around their dead packmate before they lifted their heads up, all howling in union to pay respect to their fallen.
When the ritual was done, they went to place the body on the back of one of their packmates before they started to walk away slowly.
"Looks like emotions aren't exclusive to just humans." He sighed after watching the sad scene that happened below him.
Even after seeing countless deaths of his fellow humans, he couldn't get used to it, that's why he was trying to save as many lives as possible, but he never had any problems with killing vampires or other creatures.
He never got a chance to see their point of view, they were only objects in his eyes, but this scene did hit him a little, even if they are different species.
As he was sitting, Luciel's skin slowly started to tickle, making him look toward the sky that started to light up.
'Crap, the Sun is gonna be out soon.' He glanced towards his leg, even if he didn't need to since he could feel it, all serious injuries were already healed and now only the surface ones remained.
He quickly got up and started to head towards an old abounded town, hoping to reach it in time before the first sun rays hit his skin.