New Mexico; R&R

Nick walked swiftly down the dark alleyway, black leather boots making little noise on the concrete covered in detritus. He was dressed casually in a pair of navy slacks and a smart denim shirt, a pair of aviator shades concealing the unnatural vermillion hue of his eyes as they glanced out onto the nighttime streets of Clancy, New Mexico. They were dirty; smudges of reddish brown dust were caked onto them, and in the shadow of his thick black hair, were well placed. Some rest and relaxation, namely the rest, was the purpose of his visit, and he was in no mood to be identified as an artificial bloodsucker by anyone he didn't know.

Clearing the alley and stepping out onto the sidewalk, he looked up, into the harsh fluorescent lighting of the lamp post above and two meters to the right, glad he had the shades on. Having only arrived in town less than an hour ago, he had yet to find a place to stay where he wasn't constantly surrounded by people that either made him sick with thirst or disgusted with their personalities, and to that end, he'd heard rumors of another place that might not be too bad. Still, he had some good money burning in his pocket from the man he'd tossed into the side of a brick wall and stolen from in Phoenix, and that would need to be disposed of.

He walked towards the building, noting the woman that walked outside with a slight amount of tension. Nick slipped his hands into his pockets and his right one curled around the compact 9 millimeter automatic he had in there, making sure it existed, though he let it go. Paranoia wasn't something that suited him well, but this was, after all a dangerous part of town and the best hitmen in the world were actually women. In her defense, he supposed, she didn't look at all like the ones he'd expect, but that could, oddly, be a good thing. Expect the unexpected and then the things you expected before become the unexpected. He was going to continue this mental argument until he realized that, for one, he was standing still, looking at her, and that might be taken as creepy.

Nick stowed his thoughts and shook his head, walking quickly past her and bounding up the steps until the cursed scent wafted up to him, dragged along in the slipstream of his movement. Shoot. Now, of all times? he thought furiously, as his hands began to shake slightly. He had made it so far without incident and now he was acting like some stupid junkie! "You should get that looked at, miss," was all he managed to get out before he pushed open the door and went in, closing it abruptly and sinking into a chair, shaking more. He needed blood.

Nick shuddered slightly as he regained some control over that annoying, pathetic reflex response he had to open blood when he was hungry. Sighing, he got up and walked over to the counter, though in afterthought, he mentally replayed the memory from outside. Something about the woman unnerved him, but what? It came to him as he handed over two hundred dollars and was waiting on his change. She had weapons. That was what disrupted him, the metal set off his sixth sense for the substance, and he hadn't realized it. Of course, right as the guy handed him the key to his room, and he had that metal in his hand, a scream caused the door to shake slightly.

That's not good, he thought, dropping the key on the counter and fluidly pulling out the handgun as he opened the door outside, cocking it with the hand that was only moments before holding the answer to his exhaustion. The door creaked halfway, right as his hand came up on the dark figure on the streets and he saw the flames. "Whoa.." he murmured, taking a step back with the weapon pointed at the center of the figure, just like dad taught him. Honestly, he wanted to turn and run, but there was very little chance that whatever it was hadn't noticed him.

"No. Just checking the neighborhood," he said, looking back at the woman and quite glad that his shades protected his eyes. And people say that I'll go blind for trying to wear them at night. At least they haven't seen this chick use her Flaming Hot Cheetos powers on a dim street. We'd see who's laughing and who's blind fast, he thought, smiling at his thoughts, though he quickly dropped it. After all, if all she could see was his smile and his gun, then he'd be sending very wrong messages.

He hit the eject button on the side with his thumb, catching the magazine as it shifted out and slid it into his pocket. To most people, he'd seem harmless. Which was the idea, though he had loaded a round into the chamber, and so he could still fire. But she hadn't seen it, and so he made a big show of trying to find the safety and then giving up. Given how young he looked, it was a fairly solid gambit. "I heard a noise, and given the neighborhood, I thought someone might need help," he replied, shrugging.

[color=cyan]"Apparently not. I heard a scream, and it wasn't yours,["/color] Nicholas replied, putting the gun perpendicular to the gun and yanking the slide back. A perfectly good bullet flew out and clinked against the stairs. "Nice trick if you want to trick someone," he said, bending to pick up the bullet and nearly smashing into her when she somehow appeared in front of him. She's fast, his stunned brain managed to say before his eyes narrowed behind mirrored sunglasses. Her words, attitude, and proximity weren't exactly friendly.

His body, at the behest of his survival instinct, started up the nanomachines inside his body and they began aligning within his tissues. Undetectable, but he was ready for anything now. "I saw nothing but two men running away from a woman with some attitude," he said simply, slipping his automatic into his pocket and turning. A risky move, but the instant she tried anything he would sense the shift in position of her weapons and send a powerful Electromagnetic pulse using his nanomachines to repel her into the street. If not, then, well, he'd have an interesting sleep.

She didn't move nearly fast or threatening enough, and he relaxed as she went past, though that relief was only temporary as he was then drowned in the smell of more blood, flowing uncaringly from her wound. He was slipping back into the blood junkie phase, and that worried him enough to slip his hand into his pocket and pull out a simple blue handkerchief that he pressed against his nose when he walked inside to pick up his key. Nicholas couldn't resist taking a peek over at her while he grabbed the key off the desk.

And by her, unfortunately, he was looking at the blood, wondering how it tasted. He was almost safe; to the stairs that led to the upstairs rooms, when she asked the question he didn't want to answer. So he did, although it was inwardly sardonic in nature. "I'm a traveling magician. I can even fly some days," he said, turning in midstride to see her. She was attractive, in a "femme fatale" kind of way.

"Both," Nick replied coolly, forcing his hands to stop shaking with sheer will. It wouldn't last long though. "I'm not a vampire, that's just silly, miss," he said, putting the extra effort in his voice to sound both scared and surprised. "I broke my leg jumping out of a tree, and nearly bled out... since then I haven't been able to stand the sight or smell of it," he explained slowly. The lie unfolded properly, and as any good liar will know, was based in some element of truth. A cousin of his had done the same, and had that reaction. She's quite astute. Dangerous if I let this continue and she gets suspicious. It was along that line of logic that he developed a simple plan to get the trail thrown off.

Nick concentrated, forcing the nanomachines in his head to cease operating, shifting the glowing vermilion eyes a normal, if unusually deep shade of blue right before he reached up and pulled off the shades. "No vampire has normal eyes, right? So I couldn't possibly be one. Besides, wouldn't I have attacked you long before if I were?" he questioned, adding "and they don't exist."

"I would, but quite frankly, I'm going to crash in about ten minutes, and I'd like a nice shower before that happens," he replied, this time saying the exact truth about what he intended to do. "So I'm heading up to my room in a bit," Nick said, chuckling at the contradiction in her saying that it was stupid to believe vampires existed and then speaking about vampires as if they existed and she was an expert on them. Since she was some expert, he decided to show her irrefutable proof he wasn't a vampire... in the traditional sense.

"No thanks on that. I'm already feeling sick from the smell of it, and your wound seems bad, but before I go, here's an obvious point. If a vampire's dead, then how'd they have a kid? And secondly, if I were a young vampire, then why don't I have any puncture marks?" he said, as he pulled up his sleeves and then yanked down his shirt's front so she'd see the absence of any such marks. "I think someone's been watching too many vampire shows, miss," he concluded, slipping the mirrored shades back on with a grin.