Building up to Christmas with Dusty the Demon Hunter - A Blast from the Past - Trouble Times Three - Part 3

Vampires - Trouble x 3 is my third adventure with Dusty the Demon Hunter. I had a great time with this one, putting folk lore and mythical creatures in with Dusty.

Part 1
Part 2

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I hope you have as much fun reading as I did writing it.

Dusty the Demon Hunter - Vampires - Trouble Times Three

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They made their preparations over the afternoon and Dusty listened to Hunter’s advice on everything. He was pleased that she was taking the matter seriously and realised that he had not seen the studious side of her very often. He decided that he kind of liked it. She was quiet and serious and listened to every word he said. She didn’t interrupt or argue and she remembered everything he told her.

By the time the sun was setting, he estimated that she knew as much as he could teach her without having first-hand experience.

He also estimated that by the time the sun had set fully, she would be so wound up that the slightest jolt to her concentration would set her off like a massive firework. She was so tense that her interlaced fingers were white at the knuckles and bright red at the ends where the blood was being forced to.

“Dusty, come on,” he said, and he couldn’t help his own instinct to leap backwards as she was jerked out of her detached state.

Once they had both unruffled their feathers, so to speak, and calmed down again, Dusty understood what Hunter was doing. He was trying to force her to relax as she waited, so she tried to.

She stood up straight but with knees bent a little, shoulders back but loose and she tilted her head from one side to the other.

As far as she could without forcing, she bent her head sideways so that her ear was as close to her shoulder as possible and then she moved her head with gentle precision over to the other side where her other ear almost touched her other shoulder.

Then she stood straight once more and her head moved forward so that her chin almost touched her chest, and then back, with the same deliberate movements, until the back of her head could go no further. Then she resumed the original position where she had started all her exercises from, and loosened her shoulders and arms.

She jiggled them for a few moments, stretched her spine and kicked her legs in a similar gentle jiggling motion as she had with her arms. When she had ‘shaken out’ the tension, she faced a bemused Hunter and smiled.

He smiled too because he could see that the simple exercises had worked wonders. Her frown lines had disappeared and the hard set of her mouth had melted away.

The sun had set and there was barely a hint of its glow left on the horizon. By the time they had got themselves properly prepared, the glow was gone.

Vampires wouldn’t be out and about for a few minutes, Hunter assured Dusty. They had time to go outside and watch for their arrival.

Dusty was on higher alert than she had been for a long time, and she wasn’t sure that she liked the idea that vampires were on the prowl around her home, so close to where she had always felt safe and protected. She was thankful that her grandparents were away for a few more days. She had at least a chance of getting the vampire problem sorted out and squared away.

The two half-demon friends stood on the step at the front of the house and waited for their eyes to become accustomed to the encroaching gloom.

The lights were all off in the house and the only illumination of any kind was the light pollution from the town in the far distance, which was a mere glow over the treetops.

Dusty and Hunter waited.

Dusty saw him first. She recognised his shape in the shadows. He seemed different somehow but she smiled and waved to him. “Hello Jerik.”

Hunter wasn’t so sure that he was as friendly as Dusty had portrayed him and he opened the front door behind them.

The vampire closed in on them in an instant and his face was a mask of loathing. Hunter pulled Dusty backwards, into the house, across the threshold and far enough back so that Jerik couldn’t reach inside and grab either of them. Hunter could see that the guy was not friendly.

“I am not Jerik, he is my feeble brother. What do you know of him, halfbreeds?” The vampire snarled the words at them and they could both see his hatred for them.

Dusty was shocked at his behaviour, and made to close the door. The vampire put out his hand to stop it from closing and his face altered from an expression of malevolence to a saccharine-sweet one, but neither Dusty nor Hunter were fooled.

“Get away from my house, vampire. I will not allow you to cross this threshold because if I did, then you would be able to come and go whenever you please,” Dusty said in a calm voice that Hunter was impressed with.

He could feel her body shaking as she spoke, but he couldn’t tell from her voice that she was bothered by the vampire’s presence.

Then Hunter saw the vampire’s eyes alter. He knew what he was doing and he pulled Dusty’s arm. The vampire was trying to put a glamour on her. Dusty shook Hunter’s hand from her arm in a gentle shrug and he was relieved when she spoke again.

“Keep trying to glamour me, vampire, it’s not going to work. Your brother tried it last night too and I decided that I was going to learn all about your glamouring techniques. You would have found it difficult enough, as your brother did, to glamour a half-demon, but now, with the right concoctions, spells and ingredients, I think you’ll find it impossible.”

She moved forward before Hunter could stop her, and she was out of the house, over the threshold and she confronted the vampire face to face, toe to toe.

The vampire seemed to recoil. His eyes began to water as if he had peeled a bucket load of onions in an instant, and he began coughing and sneezing. He doubled over, trying to gasp in air, and Dusty had a fleeting puzzlement over that. If vampires were ‘undead’, why did he need air?

Dusty looked down at him with a curious expression that Hunter didn’t quite like. She seemed unsentimental about his suffering and that was not like the Dusty that he knew. Then she snapped out of her concentration and the vampire began to recover. Hunter knew then that Dusty was using some skill that perhaps her grandfather had taught her, to overwhelm the vampire. Hunter wondered why Dusty hadn’t mentioned the talent before.

She shook her head and blinked. She seemed puzzled that the vampire was on the ground at her feet but she didn’t try to help him up.

Then there was a shout from the trees.

“Hey! What are you doing to him? Leave him alone!”

Jerik appeared from nowhere it seemed and in an instant he was beside the other vampire. The two were identical; no wonder Dusty had got them mixed up, she hadn’t realised they were twins.

Hunter pulled Dusty back closer to the house and the safety of the threshold again but the two vampires didn’t seem to be making any move towards the half-demons.

Dusty stood her ground and glared at the newcomer. “You didn’t tell me about your brother. He came as a complete surprise. I could have been in serious trouble there. Thanks so much.” Dusty’s voice was heavy with sarcasm and Jerik looked at the ground at his feet.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think that he’d be here before I got back this evening. I should never have told him about you.”

“Why are you apologising to the half-breeds, you soft-witted fool? They can’t help us. They only want to kill us, and it’s about time you realised that.”

The other vampire had regained his feet and his venom. He pushed past Jerik to make his way back into the woods.

Jerik watched as his brother disappeared into the shadows of the trees before he turned to face Dusty. “I’m so sorry. I never would have endangered you on purpose. I told my brother about our conversation last night and he didn’t seem at all interested. Apparently he fooled me.”