Legendary Vampire in the Apocalypse

Her palm went flat against the boy’s forehead, and it suddenly flinched back hard. "He’s... Dion, he’s really hot."

Dion didn’t say anything, only looking at the body who was grabbing for breath while he staggered back with Madeline’s help and slid down against the wall.

Basil, even despite his own condition, crossed over to them and he crouched beside Madeline, his fingers pressing beneath the boy’s jaw to feel for his pulse.

The boy’s head had fallen back against the wall and his eyes were half shut, his chest rising and falling in shallow, rapid pulls.

The man looked over to Dion, his voice muttering hoarsely, "Do you... have any idea what might be going on?"

This whole time, Dion’s mind had been whirring through ideas for an explanation. And ultimately, there was only one, and the understanding somewhat solidified itself when he tasted the lingering saccharine sweetness against the edges of his lips.

"He was more exposed to the rain than everyone else."

Basil’s expression wrenched, and he turned to look across the floor towards the people who had been nearest the windows, the ones who had been drenched before anyone could pull them back or they could escape themselves.

A man who had been sleeping against the west wall was shivering so hard that his head knocked against the partition behind him.

Near the stairwell a woman had doubled over with her hands on her knees, and somebody beside her was calling for help that nobody was coming to give.

"It’s not just him..." Basil muttered.

An older man sat down hard and could not get back up, his skin pale and slick with sweat.A

At the same time, a woman near the far partition began coughing in sharp, wet bursts.

Whoever was furthest from the windows was still on their feet, looking relatively normal

Dion looked down at his hand. The blood was still running, slow and steady, from the cuts across his palm.

He flexed his fingers and felt the edges of the wounds pull apart.

Then he turned and walked towards the cleared area where the rain was still driving in through the shattered windows.

"Dion." Madeline’s voice came from behind him, strained now in a way it had not been before. "Dion, what are you doing?"

He stopped briefly, half looking back.

"It’s fine. I just want to check something."

He walked through the cleared area, past the abandoned bedrolls and the glass and the pooling water, until he stood in front of the broken windows where the rain hammered through.

The wind pressed against his chest, and the rain struck his face and ran down his neck, and he stood there in it, and he breathed it in, closing his eyes.

’I need to focus...’

The sweetness went down the back of his throat and it did not taste like water at all. In his closed eyes, he felt a strangely... familiar sensation. It almost felt a little coddling, like an energy? And then recognition struck.

"This rain has..."

His eyes jolted open, and his head snapped back towards where everyone had retreated to, his eyes immediately locking onto Madeline.

"Get deeper into the building! Now! All of you, move!"

His voice hadn’t finished carrying across the floor when he heard something damning and his head spun back to look ahead.

The sounds tore through the storm, over the rain hammering the building and the wind howling in the broken frames, threading themselves through the gaps between the gusts.

It was like dozens of voices shrieking together, and sharpening as they came.

Dark shapes tore out of the curtain of rain blanketing the distance, banking hard against the wind in a staggered line.

’Birds...?

The smallest of them had wingspans wider than his outstretched arms and the largest were wider still, their bodies too thick and too heavy for anything that had any business being in the air.

"Basil, get them as deep as possible!" he roared over his shoulder. "Now!"

Dion’s arm reached forward, and he immediately willed the vestige forward.

The red mist gathered slightly faster than it had in the office, the blood-dark droplets fusing and hardening in the space of a few breaths, and the bone-grey blade solidified with the grooves along its length catching the wind before the last of the haze had dissolved.

The moment that he gripped the blade handle harder, the ridges beneath the wrapping split into his wounded palm immediately. The cuts from the glass tore wider as the bone bit down through them, and the pain lanced from his hand to his elbow so hard that his fingers spasmed around the grip.

Dion grit his teeth as blood ran between his knuckles and down the crosspiece and settled into the grooves, and the weapon pulsed against his hand.

’You want it that badly? Fine!’ The thought thundered through him, immediately understanding that there was nothing natural about the birds.

The first bird hit the window frame, and its own momentum carried it screaming and spilling some blood across the floor.

Dion swung before it found its footing, and the blade went through it at the wing joint and out the other side, shearing it into two parts.

{You have felled a Level 11 Destitute Robin, harvesting its essences. Your Dexterity and Agility have been nourished significantly.}

’That is not how big a damned Robin should be!’

The second came through the opening beside it with its talons forward, and he stepped into the swing and split it from the breast down, and the force of its own flight carried both halves past him.

Then three at the nearest window, and two more at the one beside it.

They came through in a tangle of wings and hooked beaks and talons scraping the frames, and the screeching filled the cleared area.

Behind him a woman was screaming, and someone else was shouting at people to get down and stay down.

Dion swung wide and took the first two out of the air in a single arc, their bodies shearing into bisected portions that sprayed blood, collapsing to the ground.

The third got inside the blade’s reach and raked its talons down his forearm, tearing through cloth and skin in one drag as he had been recovering from the last swing.

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