Anne Thorne stalked past the stone and iron cemetery gates, desperately wishing she had thought to wear a scarf.

The weather was quickly turning bitter cold in the Northern Italian countryside, much to Anne's chagrin. When she'd applied to spend a semester abroad as an exchange student, she'd had been under the impression that Italy was supposed to be warm. Unfortunately for her, winter came just as it had back home in the states, if not worse than the December chill of Albany, New York, then at least just as bad, especially after sunset.

She scolded herself silently as she stomped along the street, trying to keep from tripping on the uneven cobblestone. What had she been thinking, staying in the library until one in the morning? Especially considering the fact that she had to walk past one of the country’s oldest--and by far creepiest--cemeteries in order to get back to her villa?

She had simply gotten lost in the history of the countless dusty tomes the library had to offer, she supposed. Anne always had been a history buff and it showed in her voracious thirst for old libraries full of old books. Tonight, she'd lost herself in several hand written volumes from the eighteen hundreds, all of them on the history of her temporarily adopted country and hadn't realized that the hours had flown by without her notice until a far off church bell had chimed midnight. She still hadn't been able to tear herself away until, slipping her coat on, inch by inch, while still leaning over the books she'd been perusing, buttoning each button with extraordinary unintentional slowness as her eyes devoured every passage, the clock chimed one and she realized she'd spent a full hour standing at the table putting her coat on. Anne loved history and there was no two ways about it.

She shivered suddenly, glancing up at the field of tombstones that stretched into the horizon and then looked back down at her feet, watching as her boots clip-clopped on the street with a sort of reassuring regularity.

Her history teacher in high school--a rather odd old fellow who fancied himself an authority on death and all its aspects--had told her that cemeteries were full of history too--more so than many books. Mr. Clifford had even arranged a field trip for her entire grade to New York's oldest cemetery to demonstrate his point--but despite his insistence that cemeteries were simply chock full of history, Anne couldn't get past the fact that they were mostly full of dead bodies. It was part of why she was hurrying along in hopes of clearing the area as quickly as possible.

She knew, intellectually, that nothing in there was going to get up and follow her home, but logic doesn't even begin to enter the picture when you're stomping along in the dead of night in an unfamiliar country, with dead leaves crackling and crunching under your boots and the wind howling through every available tree branch within earshot. Logic had no place at all in situations like these. Now, paranoia, on the other hand...

Anne pulled her coat tighter around her body, trying to keep watch in five different directions at once and failing. Her eyes darted this way and that, trying to catch sight of any peculiar movement that didn't belong. She shuffled along as quickly as she could continued silently berating herself for staying out this late when she could have been safe and warm in bed hours ago even as she glanced around.

SNAP!

She screamed like a ninny. Anne and sudden noises didn't mix. Spinning on her heel with her fists clumsily raised in front of her in case she had to fend off an attack, Anne came face to face with the source of the sound.

Anne pulled a face and shook her fist at the noisemaker. "Stupid squirrel!"

She dropped her hands and made a most unattractive face as the small woodland creature in question gave her a curious look, as if to say, "Squeak?"

Well, it sounded curious in her head.

Shoving her hands in her pockets and scowling most unattractively, Anne turned away from the squirrel after giving it an irritable glare, only to find a ragged looking man in a battered brown leather jacket standing in her path.

For the second time that evening, Anne let out a screech of surprise, though this one was a bit more justified than the last. She jumped backwards, nearly losing her balance and flailing her arms in order to regain it.

"You have quite a set of lungs, don't you?" the man asked in a voice rough enough to match his appearance, but with a mild tone and an accent that suggested he was of Scottish origin. "You could wake the dead with a scream like that."

Her heart thudding at an unhealthy pace inside her chest, Anne swallowed the lump of fear in her throat and replied as snippily as she dared, "That just might be an improvement. Excuse me."

She walked past him, giving him a wide berth and keeping her eyes on him as long as she could. He was taller than she, but only by a couple of inches, dark haired and his eyes--which followed her as she passed--were a common dirt brown. Certainly nothing extraordinary, but he wasn't exactly an eyesore. Anne continued on, trying to steady her nerves but found it to be next to impossible when she could feel his eyes following her...and what's worse, hear his footsteps doing the same. She picked up her pace, trying to tell herself that it was just her imagination. That he'd stayed put where she left him...but a quick glance over her shoulder betrayed the truth of the matter.

She eyed him warily as he strolled along a few feet behind her. "Why are you following me?"

He smiled, a charming smile that shone at her in the darkness.  She forced herself not to smile back.  Even an axe murderer could pass for a nice man, at least for a while, and people with good intentions did not loiter outside cemeteries in the middle of the night, waiting for a twenty-something art student to happen by. 

"Who says I'm following you?" he asked with an impish wink.  "Don't you know the streets are a dangerous place to be at night?  Company's always nice, isn't it?  I don't want to walk home alone."

"You don't want to walk home alone?" she asked incredulously, not pausing even as she conversed with the stranger. "And for that matter, isn't your home in the opposite direction? You were walking that way--" she gestured in the direction from which she'd come, just now noticing that he'd somehow managed to get within arm's reach, "which suggests to me that you turned around to follow me."

His grin spread and his strides got a little longer until he had almost fallen into step next to her. "My mother taught me better than to let a lady walk alone."

"My mother taught me not to talk to strangers," she said crisply, eyes narrowing. She stuck her hands in her pockets--both balled into fists, just in case--and making a point to extend her arms in such a way that he'd get an elbow to the ribs if he got any closer. It probably looked ridiculous, but she didn't care.

"Well, in that case," he said, placing a palm flat against his middle and bending ever so slightly at the waist in a gentlemanly fashion, "allow me to introduce myself--"

Anne goggled at his half-bow and wondered what planet he must've beamed down from. "I don't think you'd better."

"Nonsense," he replied, straightening up, "I am, after all, seeing you home. We should at least be on a first name basis, now shouldn't we?"

She scoffed. "Who says you're seeing me home?"

If possible, the grin got wider and his strides finally matched up with hers perfectly. "I do."

"Well," Anne replied shortly, glaring daggers at him, "I say you're not. Goodnight, sir. Go...loiter in front of the cemetery."

His face scrunched up as he stuffed his hands in his pockets and gave a little shrug. "I'd rather not. I find the places quite a bit spooky, don't you?"

The fact that he leaned towards her to help emphasize the word 'spooky' made Anne very uneasy and she put another foot of distance between her body and his. "If you want the honest truth, I find you spook--"

"You're American, aren't you?" he interrupted, peering at her closely. "Exchange student, yeah?"

She would have lied to him--she didn't feel at all comfortable giving him any personal information--but she was sure the accent had already given her away.

"Yeah. I'm living with--"

"No, you're not," he interrupted her again with a knowing smile.

Anne let out a little huff at being cut off twice in under a minute. "You're a very rude man, you know that?"

"Am I?" he asked, turning his face away from her and gazing off into the distance with a frown. "Well, I suppose by your standards, I must be...though I can't think of a single ungentlemanly action on my part since we met."

"We didn't meet," she replied, her voice rather sharp. "You're stalking me."

His head snapped around and he looked at her again, one eyebrow raised.

"I'm just trying to see a defenseless young lady home," he defended passionately, before his face fell back into an expression of boyish mischief. "Like a knight in shining armor escorting his lady fair."

"Or the wolf escorting Little Red Riding Hood," she retorted, fighting back the urge to let her lips curl into a smile of her own. He looked so...innocent when he did that...that thing. Damn him.

"Little Red Riding Hood, eh? Think I'm out to eat you, then?" His smile turned the least bit rakish. "Shows where your mind is."

"I beg your pardon?" she sputtered indignantly, forcing down a hysterical giggle that tried to creep into her speech. That was ridiculous!

"No, no. No need to put on a show of virtue for my sake, Red," he said with a shrug. "You've clearly got your head in the gutter. Who am I to be so presumptuous as to yank it out again?"

"I--you--" she sputtered, itching to reach out and slap him for his impertinence. Her hands actually left her pockets as she contemplated it. "Maybe you should yank your own head--damn it!"  She covered her face with both hands, feeling herself grow hot as she blushed furiously.

He chuckled softly. "Yes?  Do go on."

Anne threw her hands away from her face. "I--you--oh! Never mind!"

"Oooh," he cooed, taking in her feverish blush and studying her a bit too closely for comfort. "Living up to the nickname, are we, Red?"

"You're infuriating!" she exclaimed, her pace quickening with her rapidly rising irritation.

"Could've fooled me," he answered, easily catching up with her, "I thought I was David."

Anne glared at him even as he continued to smile guilelessly. "See what I did there? Clever little way to introduce myself. Your turn."

"You've got to be kidding me!"

"Nope, I'm dead serious. Well, first I'm David, then I'm dead serious. And who're you again?" He lifted one hand to cup his ear expectantly.

She glared harder, hoping he might defy the established laws of physics and spontaneously combust.

He didn't. "Sorry, didn't catch that."

Anne let out an angry little huff. "My name is Anne! Plain, old, boring Anne. Satisfied?!"

He wiggled his brows. "Not remotely, but the night is young."

Anne felt her left eye try to twitch as her blood pressure spiked. "Incorrigible!"

"No, David." He pointed at her. "You were close, though."

She groaned, but relented. She certainly wasn't going to get anywhere if she didn't play along. "Why are you following me, David?"

"There's nothing on the television." Her glare made him chuckle again. "Why should I sit around watching infomercials when you'll lie to me in person?" He reached out to catch a strand of her hair before she could pull away. "But if you want to go making things up about yourself, you might go with something a bit more believable than 'plain' and 'boring.'"

"And how would you know what I am? No, don't answer that." Anne took another step away, swatting at his hand. "I think I liked you better when you were hitting on me."

His face lit up and the widest, brightest grin yet spread across his features. "You do like me."

Anne sputtered. "Count on you to pick out that part of the sentence!"

"Well, it was the best part of the sentence."

Anne narrowed her eyes at him and pursed her lips. "Tell me something, is this a habit of yours? A hobby? Following every woman you meet in the street so that they'll pay attention to you?"

"You wound me," he answered, feigning a look of hurt. "Not every woman. I do have some standards. There's a definite set of requirements in place."

"Let me guess," she snapped, kicking at a stray pebble in her path, "that set of requirements is 'humanoid and breathing'?"

"Well, that certainly doesn't hurt," he answered honestly, watching the pebble skitter away. "I hear corpses are a terrific bore to talk to."

"Oh, not always," she replied without thinking.

He pulled his attention from the road and raised an eyebrow at that. "Speaking from experience? And you call yourself boring."

"I am!" she exclaimed.

"I've never met a woman so dead set on being considered dull," he replied, reaching out with a finger and touching the tip of her nose as though she were a child. "Boring women don't wander around Italian necropolises in the middle of the night, screaming at squirrels."

Anne opened her mouth to reply and then snapped it shut again. Damn him for having a point.

"I've never met a man so dead set on being considered a nuisance," she said finally.

"I find nuisance to be a relative term," he said smoothly. "I happen to know a great many people who find me irresistibly charming."

She eyed him askance. "Well, why don't you go talk to one of them, then?"

He looked at her as though she weren't understanding the punch line to some grand, cosmic joke. "They're not nearly as much fun to antagonize."

Anne let out a put-upon sigh. "Would you please go away? I just want to go home."

"Can't."

Anne glanced up at him, the impish expression fixed firmly back on his face. "What? Why?"

"Already here." He looked away from her and jerked his head at the tiny villa that she had rented.

Anne backed away from him, wishing she had the pepper spray her brother had tried to give her before she'd left home. Her guard had been down too long. He'd chipped away at it until she was almost comfortable with a man whose last name she didn't even know.

"How do you know where I live?" she asked breathlessly, her eyes leaping from him to the villa and back again.

The look he gave her was more serious now, though the corner of his mouth still quirked up. "Because I happen to know the person waiting for you just inside the gate."

Anne's head snapped around to look at the stone and wrought iron gate. She gulped involuntarily. "If you're trying to scare me..."

"I'd say I've done a bang up job of it," he finished. "But I'm dead serious. Well, first I'm David, but then I'm dead serious. You've got company."

Anne glanced between David and the gate and back again and laughed a little bit too shrilly. "You're pulling my leg."

His half-smirk didn't falter. "Wish I were...maybe later...but by all means, if you want to risk your neck with what's waiting in there, I certainly won't stop you." He frowned. "Well, I might stop you. Be a perfectly horrid waste of a nubile college student if I didn't stop you, come to think of it."

Anne laughed again, the sound more squeaky and uneasy than the first time around and she started for the gate. "Okay, ha-ha, have a laugh at jumpy little Anne's expense."

She expected him to answer her, maybe invite himself inside on the pretext of protecting her from imaginary monsters, but there was nothing but silence.  She glanced back over her shoulder. 

He was gone.

Well...finally.  She told the hairs on the back of her neck to settle down as she pushed open the gate. With an angry creak of its hinges, it swung inwards and Anne felt a little silly at how much trepidation she felt upon entering the little courtyard. To be fair, she had just been followed home by some random possible escaped mental patient who knew where she lived...she was entitled to be uneasy...especially since he vanished.

She was never going to get any sleep tonight. She could just imagine his face popping up at her bedroom window, smiling at her in the dark. She should call the police. She should call the police and she should get a roommate. She should--

Her mind went blank as, inserting her key into the lock, she looked over her shoulder and saw something behind her. Not David, wiry slip of a man with hardly any substance, but something dark and solid that loomed over her.

Something dark and solid that had...teeth.

Anne gulped so hard that she was sure the entire neighborhood must have heard it before she let loose a scream that left the first two of the evening in the dust.

The thing lunged at her and she leapt back, her shoulder colliding with the solid oak door of the villa as she frantically jiggled the key in the lock, even as she slid down to the ground. The animal--if it was an animal--reared up on its hind legs, snarling.

Something warm and wet dripped down on the hand still desperately trying to work the key and she let out a little whimper. The creature, which seemed to be some sort of wild dog, dropped back down on all fours and stared at Anne, yellow eyes catching the faintest slips of moonlight and growling low in its throat.

It was mesmerizing, in a purely terrifying way, and Anne couldn't seem to tear her gaze away from that of the beast. Her breath was coming in short pants as it ambled closer until she finally slammed her eyes shut and turned her head away.

If she was going to be ripped limb from limb, she certainly didn't want to watch.

But even with her eyes closed, she could hear, and she could imagine what was happening. She heard the thing shift about, claws digging into the stone, heard it grunt as it launched itself into the air a second time, felt its weight against her, throwing her against the door.

Then she heard a clang and a yelp, and the creature went flying away from her. She summoned what courage she could and opened her eyes.

The beast crouched, snarling, one paw held off the ground, dripping dark blood onto the stones. And between her and it was David, framed by the rising moon, holding--a sword? Was that a sword? It couldn't be. But there it was, shining in the moonlight and stained with more of that blood that seemed so unnaturally thick and black.

"If you could unlock the door now?" he said tersely. She gasped and felt for the key, not daring to take her eyes off the battle.

"Come on, beastie," he crooned tauntingly. "You don't like it when something can hurt you, do you? You'd like to get a little of your own back." The thing growled low, a sound that almost could have been human speech. "Come get me."

"Look out!" Anne shouted as the thing leaped at him. In a single smooth motion, David plunged his sword into the thing's body, using its own momentum to drive the blade in up to the hilt. It snapped at him, claws slicing through the empty air as he let go and stepped back. The thing collapsed, still struggling to reach the man and tear him to shreds. David smirked, obviously quite pleased with himself.

"Look out, idiot!" Anne shouted even more insistently.

His head started to turn toward her before the second creature burst from the shadows behind him, knocking him flat.

He flung up an arm, knocking its head aside before it could tear out his throat.  Anne clutched the doorknob above her head, sobbing.  No, no, no, this can't be happening.  He managed, just barely, to keep the snapping jaws from closing on anything more important than his coat sleeve, but there was no way he was going to keep it off him very long.

No, this is not happening!

But it was.  For all her jumpiness, Anne was practical enough not to deny what she was seeing with her own eyes, much as she would have liked to.

Those eyes of hers lighted on the body of the first canine creature, dying in her courtyard.

Before she could think her way back into paralysis, she darted forward and grabbed the hilt of the sword with both hands.  The thing yelped in pain and tried, weakly, to snap at her.  Instinct told her to scream and run away.  Instead, she gave the sword a sharp yank.

It moved, but didn't come free of the body.  She could hear David panting hard, a note of something like triumph creeping into the creature's snarls and growls.  Oh god, oh god, oh god...She reached out gingerly with her foot and pressed it against the dying creature's side.  It scratched at her leg, but failed to get through her jeans.  Bracing herself, she pulled the sword free.

It was heavy, awkward in her hands, but she had a general idea of how to use it.  With a savage yell, she turned to the struggling man and beast and slammed her newfound weapon into the monster's side.

Ow. The shock of the blow made her lose her grip.  She stumbled back, clutching her wrist as the sword clattered to the ground. With a strained yelp, the thing collapsed on top of David.  He lay still for a moment, still panting.  She stared at the blood matting the creature's fur.  She couldn't have hit it hard enough to kill it with a single blow, could she?

No, she realized when he pushed the thing aside and sat up.  She hadn't made it very happy, but he was the one who had killed it. Its neck was broken.

Breathing hard, Anne leaned over, bracing her hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath. David just grinned up at her as he got up and dusted himself off, eyes alight. "My hero."

Anne didn't have the strength to answer at first, but she gasped for a few moments more and then straightened out. "What the hell are these things?"

"Were, not 'are'. They've ceased to be. I do so hate it when people muddy up their tenses," he replied easily, leaning over to pick up his sword and wipe it off on his coat.

"Fine, were. What were they?"

"Care to hazard a guess?" he asked glibly, letting the tip of the deadly weapon in hand rest on the cobblestones in the courtyard as though he were leaning on a walking stick and not a sword. "Bet you'll get it in one!"

"How can you joke at a time like this?" Anne asked, gesturing widely with her hands. "How can you--OW!"

A sharp pain exploded in her wrist and she drew it instinctively toward her chest in a protective fashion.

"Ooh." David was less than a footstep away from her in an instant. "Best let me have a look at that."

"It's fine."

"You have a funny definition of 'fine'," he said, dragging her hand away from her chest and examining it. "It's sprained. Badly, I might add."

Anne glared up at him, her jaw tensing for a moment. "Would you please tell me what's going on?"

"You can't figure it out?" He wasn't looking at her as he ran his fingers up either side of her wrist, eliciting a wince. "Color me six shades of disappointed."

"What are--were those things? Tell me. Stop playing around. I just helped you kill one, I have a right to know."

David's eyes lifted from their intense scrutiny of her injured wrist to meet Anne's. They were earnest, without a sign of the laughter and smarm that'd been evident in them from the moment she'd first seen him.

"Werewolves."

Anne burst into hysterical and completely inappropriate giggles. "Werewolves! Of course they are. Werewolves. Why wouldn't they be werewolves?"

"You think I'm kidding."

"Oh, nooooo, of course not," Anne managed to get out from between giggles. "If you say they're werewolves, they're werewolves. Not mutant wolves or government funded lab experiments, werewolves! And I suppose you're, what, a demon slayer? The Highlander?"

"Close.” David's face split into a grin that was a bit too broad. “Vampire."

Anne's giggles tapered off as the light from the moon highlighted the length of David's canines. They weren't protruding over his bottom lip like some kind of grotesque Count Dracula clone from TV, but they were definitely an unnatural bit longer than the rest of his teeth. Her laughter ceased completely.

"Vampire."

"Oh. Did I neglect to mention that bit, then?"

"I...um...you didn't...I think I'm going to be sick," she murmured.

"I'm not surprised.  First time I met a vampire, I fainted dead away.  Of course, that had more to do with the blood loss than anything else."  He grinned at her, then looked disappointed when she didn't laugh.  "Sit down.  Put your head between your knees. If circumstances were different, I might offer to do that for you, but for now...down you go."

"N-no! No!  You're a vampire!"  She backed into the door and clawed at the doorknob, forgetting that she still hadn't managed to turn the key.  He sighed at her.

"Listen, you silly girl, if all I wanted was to bite you, I would have done it at the cemetery."

He turned the key for her and opened the door.

She stared up at him, confused.  He had just let her fall to her knees; he wasn't even trying to touch her.  Why didn't he want to hurt her?  It wasn't that she minded too terribly, but none of the vampires she had ever heard of had gone around saving people instead of biting them.

Belatedly, she realized what this would look like if any of her neighbors actually came over to investigate the commotion, and scrambled backwards through the open doorway.

"See?  You're safe now," he said with a smirk.  "At least, safe from my kind."

"What do--" Oh!  She found herself suddenly able to breathe.  He couldn't come in unless she invited him, could he?

"Of course, I'm not the one who tracked you to your home and waited to pin you down and eat you," he continued, smirking.  "Alive.  They don't tend to like it when the prey stops squirming."  She gulped.  "There will be more of them, I'm sure.  Most 'wolves keep to themselves, but the social ones run in larger packs than two.  And they can be nasty when they feel the need to avenge their packmates.  Don't worry, though.  Your front door will probably be enough to keep them out." He wiggled his fingers at her in a cheery goodbye wave, and started to turn away.

"Um--would you like to come in?" she blurted. "For coffee?"

He turned back to face her.

"Thought you'd never ask."

He strode through the door and nonchalantly slid his sword into the cheap umbrella stand in the entryway. "You probably shouldn't have done that, you know. You could've kept me out indefinitely, where now I'll be free to come and go as I please."

Anne paled the slightest bit as he stuck his hands in his pockets and wandered towards the parlor, looking around at the decor. "But, I guess the absence of my company would probably be too much for your poor heart to bear."

He strolled into the parlor and towards the somewhat rickety cast iron winding staircase.

"So! Where's the bedroom?" he asked, glancing up through the ironwork with interest before turning to look at her over his shoulder. "I do hope you've a nice squashy bed. Rather fond of squeaky springs, myself. Makes me feel I'm doing well. You know, really accomplishing something."

"You..."  She straightened up with some effort.  "You're insufferable.  You really are."  He started to speak.  She cut him off sharply.  "No.  No denying it.  First you're insufferable, then you're David.  So--so there!"

He grinned from ear to ear and brought up his hands to applaud her. "Hoist on my own petard. Good show, Red."

"Stop calling me that."

"Why? It's more apropos than ever, considering you just literally almost got eaten by the big bad wolf.”

"Well, they weren't exactly shy about using you as an appetizer.  Grandma."

"Here now, lay off about my age. I'm only six hundred." He pointed at her. "I'll have you know Methuselah’s got three hundred years on me yet, and don't you forget it."

"I touched a nerve," she said with a bit too much glee.

"I wish you would," he returned. "But since you've had me all to yourself for at least five minutes and you haven't tried to jump me, I must assume you're immune to my near immeasurable charms."

"Egotism is a highly unattractive quality."

"It's gotten me this far. Well, that and dogged persistence."

"Persistent you may be, but don't think you're going to wear me down that easily.  The guest room is at the end of the hall."  While he was looking in the direction she had pointed, she plucked an umbrella from the stand where he had stashed his sword and held it between the two of them, pointy end level with his chest.

“Oh, now that's disappointing," he said.

"I might not be much of a match for giant man eating wolves, but I think I can handle you," she said seriously, prodding him in the chest with the wooden end of the umbrella.

“Yes, well," he looked down at the umbrella and poked at the worryingly sharp tip, "much as your offer to stay the night appeals, it's not such a grand idea for either of us to be in this villa. I've this little allergy to sunlight, you see, and you seem to be the picture window in every room type...and you...well, you won't be safe here without my protection, now will you?"

"Oh, no," she snapped.  "I am not leaving this place.  Just because I don't think you're here to kill me doesn't mean I trust you!  I'm not letting you take me off to God knows where, off where no one knows where I am!  Besides--besides!"  She jabbed him with the umbrella again.  "Don't werewolves only change during the full moon?  They won't be back until next month!"

"Will you stop poking me?  And don't assume you know more about werewolves than the man who's spent the last six centuries fighting them.  The full moon makes them change, but so does running with a pack on any night, if they want blood."  He snatched the umbrella from her as easily as he might have taken a toy from a toddler.  "And we already know they want your blood.  You're a very tasty little morsel."

He tipped his head to one side and gave let his eyes travel her form with unabashed interest. "Of course, I'm only speaking in theory. I could be wrong."

"And I'm supposed to just believe you?"

"I did save your life. That should give me some credibility."

Anne's brow furrowed and she looked at David appraisingly. "Yeah, fine, okay, so you did save me...but how do I know you didn't save me from being eaten by them just so you could?"

"I told you, if I wanted to do that, I would have done it at the cemetery.  I never would have given you a chance to get away.  I would have done...this."  He put his hand under her chin, tilting her head back, forcing her to look into his deep brown eyes.  "And then this."  He moved in closer, holding her body against his with far more strength than she would have expected.  She should have pulled away, but she found herself curiously unwilling to move, lost in the dizzying scent of fresh blood and laundry detergent.  "And this."  At the feeling of cold breath on her neck, she shivered and tilted her head to the side to offer him easy access.  "But I don't like to do it this way." He released her.

She stumbled backward, blinking in confusion as her mind snapped back to its normal clarity.

"What--what did you just--"

"Told you.  Irresistible.  But I'd rather do it the old fashioned way, wouldn't you?"

Anne took a deep breath and licked her lips, which had become unbelievably dry within a few scant seconds. "Thrall."

He looked at her curiously, a note of pleasant surprise in his voice. "Not too terribly sporting, is it? Takes all the zing out of it."

With easy grace, he passed Anne, brushing against her as he went, and swapped the umbrella in his hand for his sword. "Dawn will be breaking far sooner than I'm comfortable with. We need to move."

He spun back around, his smile just the least bit forced even as he grabbed her arm and pulled her to him, crushing her against his chest. "You might want to be unconscious for this."

Anne swallowed harshly. "Why?"

"We're going to be traveling fast.  I'd never reach home in time as a pedestrian.  And you wouldn't believe how long it takes me to get over a sunburn."

"So we take a car?  Scary," she said, rolling her eyes as she tried to wriggle out of his embrace.

"No, not a car.  I get more benefits from the pointy teeth club than my stunning physical prowess, you know, and the way I travel tends to scare the willies out of the living."

“The...living," she repeated.  "Look, you smug jerk, nothing you throw at me is going to scare me as long as I know it's coming, and I like to drive fast.  And there's no way in hell I'm letting you knock me out, so why don't you keep your hands to yourself for a minute and let me grab a change of clothes?"  Reluctantly, David let her go.

"Quickly," he urged.  She walked back to her bedroom, suppressing a sigh of irritation when he followed close on her heels.  "There's no time to waste if you get hysterical again.  I will drag you kicking and screaming if I have to.  I'd prefer not--that would make it so much easier for them to track us."

She ignored him, searching through drawers and stuffing clothes into a bag while he paced back and forth in front of the door

"Time is of the essence, Anne," he said anxiously, glancing up at her as she rifled through her dresser. "I appreciate the gesture but matching bras and knickers are not a high priority."

"I know, I know, but I don't know how long I'm going to be staying wherever it is we're going and--"

CRASH!

"What was that?" she squealed, dropping a pair of 'knickers' she had been hoping not to show him.  Amazingly, he paid no attention to the sheer red lace panties now spread out in all their glory on the hardwood floor, going to the window instead.

"Stop yammering for a minute," he whispered.  Her breath rushed out in a huff.

"Yammering?  I'm not the one who's been--"

"Shut.  Up."  He drew the curtain aside just enough to peek outside.  She couldn't see a thing out there in the dark, but whatever he saw was enough to make him draw back, the smirk gone from his face.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"The rest of the pack, what else?  Five more, at least," he said, more to himself than to her.  "I can't fight five at once."

"What do you mean you can't fight five?" Anne got close enough to him to tug on his sleeve urgently.  "What do we do?"

David glanced down at Anne's fingers where she clutched his sleeve so desperately and then looked at her. "I'd say running would be up there towards the top of the list, wouldn't yo--"

The sound of glass shattering exploded like a gunshot and Anne jumped, spinning towards the source of the sound, still hanging on David's sleeve.

The window in the parlor, which was partially visible from Anne's current vantage point, had been burst through by one of the wolves. The animal was crouched low on the floor, as if coiled to spring, and it shook the shards of glass from its fur, the tiny pieces skittering all over the floor with a series of tinkling noises.

"Well...that's the least bit inconvenient," he muttered, dislodging Anne's hand from his arm and pulling her around behind him.

"Inconvenient?" Anne said with a gulp, her hands flying to his shoulders as she peered around him.

David jabbed his finger at the front door and the animal snarling in front of it. "Under ordinary circumstances, I'd call a werewolf blocking the only exit something entirely different, but I didn't want to offend your feminine sensibilities with that kind of language."

He glanced back over his shoulder at her and the right side of his lip quirked upwards ever so slightly. "Of course, if you think it would make you feel any better I could let loose a string of expletives. I aim to please. Of course, now's hardly the time for that."

"We're about to be eaten alive by werewolves and you've still got your head in the gutter?" she gibbered, fingers fisting in the fabric of his near ruined coat.

"Better there than three feet away from my body. Come on. Do you have an attic?"

"Yes, but I hardly see what good that is to us."

"Well, for one thing, they probably won't notice us if we go out a window that high above them."

"Did I mention the attic is the third floor?" she asked breathlessly, suddenly aware of the fact that she smelled...tea. Tea? Why would a vampire smell of tea? Or was she just going insane? No--better not answer that one.

"Did I mention that I'm a vampire?" he retorted calmly.

"Not nearly as early on as I would've liked," she muttered under her breath.

"Listen, if you're scared, you can always close your eyes." He put an arm around her shoulders and led her toward the stairs. "But I won't hurt you. I'll be gentle."

He walked with his sword outstretched with one hand and the other cradling her shivering form. Anne didn't like the fact that she was clinging to him as tightly as she was, but even though he was a vampire, he was far and away a less terrifying threat than the wolf stalking back and forth in her living room. Better the devil you know, after all.

"Gentle," she repeated, allowing him to lead her, her body pressed inappropriately close to his.

As they reached the foot of the spiral staircase and they started up it, he chanced to take his eyes off the immediate threat and gave her a smile that he shouldn't have been able to manage. "Can't promise the same treatment after we're out of peril and on our own time, though."

"Insufferable," she spat without any real anger as he ushered her up the stairs.

"David," he corrected, following up behind.

The staircase was terribly cramped even with the two of them pressed so close together, and if that weren't bad enough, it was quite rickety. Anne found herself clinging to the vampire in spite of herself because of the worrying manner in which the wrought iron structure wobbled under their feet with every move they made. She didn't know what he could do, exactly, if the thing decided to collapse, but he did seem confident of his ability to survive a fall. She wasn't quite so confident of her own, however, so she stuck to David in such a way that--if the structure collapsed--he would break her fall. It might not have been very nice but then, she hadn't been having a very nice night.

With a disturbingly loud creak, the staircase swayed a little bit too much for Anne's liking as they reached the second floor landing and she found herself not only flinging both arms around his neck, but moaning in terrified anticipation of a doomward plummet.
Her eyes scrunched closed and her face twisted into a grimace, she buried her nose in the front of his jacket

He chuckled, sounding far too pleased. "Knew you wouldn't be able to keep your hands off me for long."

She squeaked in response as he guided her to solid ground once more and the moment her footing was sure, she flung herself away from him.