The first beating of footsteps behind Andrew quickens his heart, but they sound pretty far away, so he keeps his pace. The second pair ignites fear and Andrew briefly considers taking off in a run when a hand comes in contact with his shoulder. His head spins as he’s pinned face-first against the cool brick of the now confining building outlining the left side of the alleyway.
“Stay.”
Cold breath breezes across his right ear, disturbing the fine hairs lining it and yep, this is it. Andrew’s gonna die in one of the many empty alleys of Dallas, Texas, a few months shy of his 21st birthday. Then there’s something piercing his neck, breaking skin, setting his nerves on fire and he wants to scream but the sharp, biting, metallic smell of blood catches the sound in his throat.
“Raven? Raven, we need to go. Leave him, you’ve had enough.” Another voice manifests. The sound is tunnelly, and Andrew just wants to close his eyes at this point. A good nap sounds nice.
“RAVEN!”
The pressure at Andrew’s neck loosens instantly and he sways before falling forward, hands barely catching him against the wall.
No blood on my shirt, is all he can think before he’s consumed by murky darkness.
Andrew shoots up, hands at his throat; eyes, clouded with terror, half open. The claws of his nightmare scratch at him, but he shakes the talons away and squeezes his eyes shut. He’d thought the nightmares had stopped. It’d been two hundred years since he’d been turned, and the memory remained strong.
The glow of the moon silhouettes his curtains, and Andrew decides now’s as good a time as any to get up and dressed. He slips on his pants that he’d left on the floor, and doesn’t bother to change his shirt. His duffle is by the door where he left it, and he shoulders it before leaving his tiny apartment.
The vampire that had turned him, The Raven, has only become worse as time has worn on. His mercenaries, The Scarecrows, have built an army, and Andrew is doing everything he can to take them down. It starts with meeting Bones in the bar two blocks from his apartment building. It ends when The Raven and his Scarecrows are defeated—when the world is restored to its rightful owners: the humans. Andrew is fighting for the humans.
