into overdrive, the world slowed around me. Yet I stayed the same.
I leaped down the steps and ran to the street, halting between the front a nd rear ends of two parked cars from which position I would be better able to defend myself. I found my cane-swordin my hand, though I did not remember drawing it. Vaguely, as if from far away, I heard the discarded sheath, the cane part of the disguised weapon, clatter to the concrete of the sidewalk. No attackers visible, I moved again, diving to the middle of the street, and came up crouched in my martial stance, the cold steel held at the ready.
Vampires ! I had known. There is an intrinsic difference in the telepathic feel of the Others compared to that of Vampires. The awareness of either a strange Vampire or one of the Other’s aura, sent an immediate nerve jangling warning through my autonomous nervous system, but the aura of another Vampire did not electrify me in the same manner that I reacted to the presence of the Others. A Vampire or even a group of Vampires was much less a threat than even one of the Others posed. If there was one, there would be others. The Others did not attack singly. When they attacked, they attacked in force. If I could sense one, there would be others nearby.
These too were a group. Sensing a group of Vampires, outside my own eccentric, extended family, should almost have been as strange as encountering a single lone Other, but times were changing, apparently. I wondered, as I stood there in the street, my cane-swordbared, what other new surprises the future might bring? If Vampires could learn to cooperate, what other obstacles could we not learn to overcome? To what other new heights might we not ascend? The possibilities were too much to sum up with a few words. Through cooperation might we challenge the entire Universe. There was nothing we might not accomplish. The very Universe could be our plaything.
They were as nearly startled as I had been. I felt their surprise as a palpable force. I was the oldest, Eldest Vampire. I could move, react and think more rapidly than any other Vampire, my reactive speed making me nearly as mysterious to other Vampires as I was to Humans themselves. But these Vampires were not here to oppose me. They were here upon their own purpose.
I have never been prone to embarrassment. Having lived so long alone, I never learned to feel the need to have to gain my peer ’s acceptance, the mores of societal, social animals. Nor was it that Vampires are all that social in the first place, yet I am a strange contradiction. Maybe it was all the eons I had spent alone. Now I appreciate the pleasures of socializing, or more so than most. Those eons alone were lonely times. I was the only one of my kind. No friendly face no matter where I might turn upon an entire planet. The people who had given birth to me hated me. So it may have come to be that I now enjoyed socializing, I had never learned many of those little idiosyncrasies of societal intercourse. I drew myself up haughtily to stare in turn at those who were visible.
They were hiding in every available no ok and cranny. Any place they could find the slightest spot to hide. There were more in places I could not see though I felt them clearly. This was a large group.
What surprised me the most was that they had been able to surround my house in the first p lace without my being able to sense them. That was the plan, obviously, the entire idea of the exercise. Get into concealment without being detected. If they wanted to be able to ambush the Others, they would have to be able to get into position as well as stay there, every night, undetected. They were playing their war games.
I heard a deep chuckle emanate from down the street and turned in the direction from which it had issued. I recognized the voice, even though all I had heard was the chuckle. I recognized the mind, as well,
I leaped down the steps and ran to the street, halting between the front a nd rear ends of two parked cars from which position I would be better able to defend myself. I found my cane-swordin my hand, though I did not remember drawing it. Vaguely, as if from far away, I heard the discarded sheath, the cane part of the disguised weapon, clatter to the concrete of the sidewalk. No attackers visible, I moved again, diving to the middle of the street, and came up crouched in my martial stance, the cold steel held at the ready.
Vampires ! I had known. There is an intrinsic difference in the telepathic feel of the Others compared to that of Vampires. The awareness of either a strange Vampire or one of the Other’s aura, sent an immediate nerve jangling warning through my autonomous nervous system, but the aura of another Vampire did not electrify me in the same manner that I reacted to the presence of the Others. A Vampire or even a group of Vampires was much less a threat than even one of the Others posed. If there was one, there would be others. The Others did not attack singly. When they attacked, they attacked in force. If I could sense one, there would be others nearby.
These too were a group. Sensing a group of Vampires, outside my own eccentric, extended family, should almost have been as strange as encountering a single lone Other, but times were changing, apparently. I wondered, as I stood there in the street, my cane-swordbared, what other new surprises the future might bring? If Vampires could learn to cooperate, what other obstacles could we not learn to overcome? To what other new heights might we not ascend? The possibilities were too much to sum up with a few words. Through cooperation might we challenge the entire Universe. There was nothing we might not accomplish. The very Universe could be our plaything.
They were as nearly startled as I had been. I felt their surprise as a palpable force. I was the oldest, Eldest Vampire. I could move, react and think more rapidly than any other Vampire, my reactive speed making me nearly as mysterious to other Vampires as I was to Humans themselves. But these Vampires were not here to oppose me. They were here upon their own purpose.
I have never been prone to embarrassment. Having lived so long alone, I never learned to feel the need to have to gain my peer ’s acceptance, the mores of societal, social animals. Nor was it that Vampires are all that social in the first place, yet I am a strange contradiction. Maybe it was all the eons I had spent alone. Now I appreciate the pleasures of socializing, or more so than most. Those eons alone were lonely times. I was the only one of my kind. No friendly face no matter where I might turn upon an entire planet. The people who had given birth to me hated me. So it may have come to be that I now enjoyed socializing, I had never learned many of those little idiosyncrasies of societal intercourse. I drew myself up haughtily to stare in turn at those who were visible.
They were hiding in every available no ok and cranny. Any place they could find the slightest spot to hide. There were more in places I could not see though I felt them clearly. This was a large group.
What surprised me the most was that they had been able to surround my house in the first p lace without my being able to sense them. That was the plan, obviously, the entire idea of the exercise. Get into concealment without being detected. If they wanted to be able to ambush the Others, they would have to be able to get into position as well as stay there, every night, undetected. They were playing their war games.
I heard a deep chuckle emanate from down the street and turned in the direction from which it had issued. I recognized the voice, even though all I had heard was the chuckle. I recognized the mind, as well,
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