D was struggling to keep his footing in the hot sand. Tai had died from dehydration and D couldn’t turn into a flock of bats. It was too bright. The sun beat down D’s pale skin as he made his was too Buchoen. Buchoen was a small town, maybe five hundred in population. It was an ideal checkpoint for there were no established law enforcement. Like most of the world currently, Buchoen was in sheer chaos. D started to sweat and perspire. D had fallen to his knees, arched his head up to the sky and gave out such a yell that you could see his fangs. He fell face first into the sand and started to black out. The good think about being a Dunpeal: you can stay out in the sun and for awhile, but can’t stay out for more than 2 hours at most or will get heat sickness.
When D finally reopened his eyes, he found himself in a dark, small room with a fan, which was going at what seemed to be its fastest speed. D gave a moan and sat up in his bed. He shook his head and saw a man in white coat filling out papers. D groaned, “Where am I?”
The doctor replied, “Oh, glad to see you’re awake. I found you passed out in the desert. My first thought was a vampire, but they wouldn’t be caught dead in the daylight. So, my second though was that you were a dunpeal. I was on my way back from Mondune delivering medicine. You better be glad I found you. Fifteen more minutes in that sun and would have been done for.”
“Great story, where am I?”
“My office in Buchoen.”
“If you knew I was a dunpeal, why did you take me in? I could have been a hungry dunpeal. As soon as I awoke your neck could have been ripped open and your excess blood evaporating in the desert heat.”
“It’s the Hippocratic Oath. I’m obligated to help anyone who’s in need of my services.”
“I’m glad someone still has ethics in this world...”
D hopped off the bed and reached for his hat and put it back on his head. He reached for a dark colored pouch and got 5 gold coins from it. He put it on the counter next to the doctor.
“You don’t have to pay me.” The doctor said.
“You saved my life. It’s the least I could do.”
D walked out of the doctor’s office and to the almost empty streets of Buchoen. The town’s size is way too big for it’s population. Buchoen use to be a large town until the great war with the undead and humans. Unfortunately, this took a toll on the human population worldwide. Most of the undead were banished, but you can still find them in a lot of places, if you just know where to look.
D entered a bar. Drunks, gamblers, and a few loners were spread out in this pretty large bar. D could hear the occasional curse word (more like a storm of them) and the beer glasses hitting the wooden tables. The bar seemed to be unaware of his presence until he said, “Does anyone know where Brad Tiekel is?” The bar went silent at the mention of his name. Everyone looked down at the ground except for one person. He was huge. At least three times bigger than D. He stood up, anticipating that the only reason a dunpeal was there was to get the 20 gold coin bounty on his head, picked up the circular table and threw it at D like a frisbee. D quickly unsheathed his sword and sliced the table in half. The two halves split apart right before it hit him and hit the wall instead. Brad, awestruck, was frozen in fear. D sheathed his sword and walked up to Brad and whispered into his ear “Good night.” D kneed Brad in his with all of his might. Brad fell to his knees and hit the ground with a dull sound. D hoped that didn’t kill him and dragged him outside. D found a remote part of the town where there wasn’t a soul to see. D wasn’t planning on getting the bounty. D dropped Brad to the ground, placed his mouth next to his neck, and bit his neck. Blood starting seeping out of the 2 wounds from his neck. D sipped and licked the blood from the wounds. Dunpeals don’t need to feed as often as vampires nor do they need to feed from women. D only feeds off of criminals and is determined to protect the innocent...he just won’t go out of his way to do it.
D had to figure out a way to destroy the body without anyone finding out. He didn’t want to cause a scare of vampire attacks. D made a rather deep grave and discarded the body into it and reburied it. “May you rest in peace,” D murmured.
It was dusk when D was getting ready to leave the village when a young looking boy with tears in his eyes ran towards D yelling, “Dunpeal! Dunpeal!”
D turned around, expecting a mob only to find the boy. “Do you need something, boy?”
Out of breath, the boy reached D, took a deep breath and said, “I have a proposition for you. This man has killed my mom. I’ll pay you 30 gold coins if you can kill him.”
“Boy, do you have an proof this man killed your mom?”
“Yessir! I saw him with my own eyes. He was yelling something about cheating and killed her. Then he truned into some kind of bird and flew off.
“Great...a shape shifter...Do you remember what he looked like?”
“Yeah, he was blue, he wasn’t a very big bir-”
“In human form!”
“Oh, well, we wore blue denim pants and a white shirt and a green vest and brown hair and about 5’ 10” and...”
“All right! That’s enough.”
“Thank you mister!
The boy handed the money to D and ran off. The boy perplexed D. How did he get this much money and he didn’t even seem to care his mom died...Is it because he’s so use to death? Or is he jus so naive? D shrugged it off and went in search of the murderer. He was looking for a bird or a man. Through out the village and found nothing. The boy had given D the money already...he could just go off to search for a new bounty. But D couldn’t, he wouldn’t allow another innocent person to die. He stood at the edge of the entrance to town, shattered into a hundred vampire bats and searched for the man around the desert. When the echolocation found something in the middle of the desert, the bats reformed into D near the ground and D walked to the tent. There was still a fire and a man sitting next to it. He seemed to fit the description.
“I heard you killed someone...”
“What’s it ter yah?”
“It’s not nice to kill people.”
“What yer, talkin about? Yer dirty dunpeal probly kill bout tousand peple.”
“Maybe, but I did it protecting the innocent...and money...a lot for the money.”
“Yer wan’t leave her’ aliv.”
The murderer turned into a tiger and pounced on D before he could react. The tiger started clawing at D’s face. D’s face was soon filled with blood when he got his arm free and punched it straight in the face. The tiger staggered off a few feet, giving D time enough to get up but still not enough to unsheathe his sword, but then leaped at D’s gut. D kicked the tiger in the throat. The tiger flew back ten feet and fell on its side. D unsheathed his sword and headed toward the tiger. D was fixing to plunge the sword deep into the tiger’s heart when it turned into a raven and flew off. It gave off a teasing crow as if it was safe. D then again shattered into a flock of vampire bats and began to tear apart the raven piece by piece. D then reformed on the ground and wiped the blood from his face and thought, “I didn’t get paid enough for that.”
Angel Without Mercy
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