Thinker, Cutpurse, Demon Vamp

"Miss is you alright?"

"I am fine one moment please."

Making sure her clothing was properly arranged she walked to the door and opened it for the serving girl.

"You okay, thought I heard... well some queer noises in here."

"No just touched by the spirit after so fine a meal, thank the cook for me will you?"

"Yes ma'am." The serving girl looked around the room but the only entrance or exit is the one that the Pastor's wife just took. "Creepy all the same," she said to the not so empty air.

When the girl turned to leave I gave her a healthy swat on the backside as I strolled out of the room behind her and out of the pub with the serving girl racing for the bar.

I dressed for the chilly night ahead and with spyglass trained on the professor's apartment I waited for his arrival but the windows remained darkened. It was around five in the morning before I noticed movement in the building across from me. The lights remained off but someone was moving around in the professor's place so I decided to investigate. I made my way to the ground floor and then quietly crossed the cobblestone street and into the rear of the building. I was reaching for my lock picks when I saw that the back door had been kicked in, this was not good. I entered the pantry and discarded my clothes deciding stealth was definitely required at this point. On bare feet I made my way to the front of the apartment and then slowly up the stairs to the laboratory. I could see by the pale light coming in from the street side window that the lab was a mess. All manner of equipment lay in ruin with broken glass littering the floor. I had to proceed cautiously to avoid cutting my feet to ribbons. I hoped nothing had happened to the professor he was my only hope for a cure for this self appointed condition of mine. I crept into the lab and saw that nothing had been spared the wrath of the intruder or intruders. I worked my way around the tables until I caught sight of the figure on the floor wearing the white lab coat and felt my heart sink as my hopes were dashed as completely as the laboratory had been.

"Well, well it seems the professor's lab rat has returned!" The voice came from behind me in the far corner of the lab.

"How...?"

"I may not be able to see you but I can smell you all the same."

"Why did you murder the professor?"

"He took into his possession what did not belong to him."

"I don't understand... he developed the invisibility drug all on his own."

"Not that, though it could prove a useful tool, but the key ingredient to the 'health tonic' as he called it."

"The health tonic," my mind raced and concluded that I needed to know more before I escaped this murderer. "What about it... he never finished it."

"That is good news... I suppose you were going to volunteer for that injection as well?"

"Yes but it never happened."

"My employer will be pleased to learn that now sadly for you I must end your short lived existence as the world's only invisible man."

"Well if I am going to die you can at least tell me what was in the health tonic that was so valuable you were sent to kill to keep it secret."

"I suppose I owe you a brief moment of enlightenment before I take your corpse to be dissected for the secret of invisibility."

The figure emerged from the shadow and I was shocked to see a man of average height and build dressed as a very proper English gentleman. His clothing was expensive as was the silver headed walking stick he carried; his shoes however were a bit more telling there were older and well worn revealing a level of travel and a man used to walking to get to his destination. It wasn't until he smiled revealing two enlarged canines that absolutely gleamed in the moonlight that his true nature was revealed.

"Revenant... not possible there are no such things as..." I muttered now knowing the cause for my own change; it had been the injection and it was the Sanguine Nocturne the key ingredient that was to blame.

"You mean like an invisible man?"

"Point taken... so the key ingredient was in fact..."

"Blood taken from an elder of my kind and so that vial of 'health tonic' would turn the patient into one of us."

"Monstrous!"

"Yes, monstrous indeed, we can't have just anyone becoming immortal and running around causing problems."

"Immortal...Revenant..."

"We prefer the term Akhkharu or Nephilim."

My mind raced and the pieces fell into place. Professor Griffin received the blood and instead of simply analyzing it he made it into something new, something of science. Word must have leaked out that he had done more than was asked and this thing was dispatched to eliminate the situation and recover the blood at all cost.

"Well now you have your answer and as a gentleman of my word..." the thing paused and smiled brilliantly. "Now it is time to die."

I looked out the window to see the first hint of morning breaking over the city.

"Are you sure you can kill me before the sun is up?"

"You may be invisible but not invulnerable your death will be swift."

"What makes you so sure?"

"I am faster than you are, stronger and smarter..." with the last word he tossed the talcum powder he had hidden behind his back showering me with its white residue.

The revenant launched itself at me with blinding speed but already a plan had formed in my head. Instead of running I grappled with the monster holding him at bay barely. He was fast there was no arguing that. He was also very strong but I doubted he was smarter than I. We wrestled, twisted and turned as he tried to bring his fangs into play all the while I slowly got my back into position facing the street side window. When I was where I wanted to be I pushed him back just a little enough to really piss him off and when he lunged forward I quit fighting altogether. The effect was instant and fatal. We went crashing through the window and fell to the cobblestones below. I managed to wrap my legs around the revenant as we fell and spun allowing him to take the brunt of the fall. His head striking the street stunned him long enough for me to pin his wrists to the ground and hold him there. In the heat of battle I felt a queer yet almost sensuous sensation as my feeding fangs slid from their hidden recesses. Some primal instinct took over and I drove my fangs into the main artery in his neck and nearly climaxed when the fiend's blood filled my mouth and I drank greedily. I could almost feel his strength flow into me via the blood. If this had been a woman I found have penetrated her right then and there. It was ten seconds before he regained his senses precious time for one of his kind. When he realized his situation, he began to try and fight back but found out that he was not stronger or strong enough to break my hold on him.

"You took the tonic!" It cried in alarm.

"Yes."

"You are one of us!"

"Yes."

"Let me go or we both perish!"

"No fool don't you see? The invisibility I possess protects me from the sun... the light never truly touches me and so the only one to perish will be you."

"NO!"

"YES... now BURN!!!"

I felt the heat from his body as the sun turned him into a living conflagration and with a sudden whoosh and explosion of embers he was gone. I got to my feet and went to see if the professor was truly dead or maybe beyond hope he was only unconscious. I raced to the back of the house and then up the stairs and rushed over to the body and turned it over but in the pale light of morning I began to laugh. The man on the floor was not Griffin it was someone else, a stranger in his lab coat and that meant that there was still hope to make amends. Somewhere out there the professor was running scared and I had to find him somehow.

As I looked out from the second floor I saw a man dressed in travelling coat with a wolf's headed walking stick and the sunlight gleamed on the ring on his finger and I knew without a doubt he was member of the Order. But it was the second man in the uniform of one of Her Majesty's Navy that truly caught my eye. It was the way he glared at the first man with such hatred and how perfectly still he stood in the shadows. I knew in my gut that he like myself was a man carrying a heavy burden but had unfinished business that kept him going. Speaking of things keeping me going...