Protective Anger

'You don't need to do this.'

'And you do need to call the police, but can I expect you to listen to me? No.'

My reply came out a little harsher than I intended, but to my credit, it was 2AM and I was currently squatting in my living room ignoring the specks of fresh blood that dappled the carpet.

The tall, skinny, ridiculous-looking, unlikely excuse for a vampire sitting on my couch was the reason for that. But I wasn't annoyed with him - I was just pissed that he wouldn't, for once, take his personal rights a bit more seriously.

'I - I don't want to call them,' he said, his voice a lot smaller and more pathetic-sounding than it normally was. 'They'll be all kinds of stuff to deal with... I'll probably have to go to court, and it honestly just seems like more trouble than it's worth.'

'Pyre, this asshole attacked you on the street like a - a...'

He hurried to cut me off before I could think of a suitably insulting description for the man.

'I know, and it was bad, but I don't want to call the police.'

I sighed in a frustrated manner. I had known all along that he would be uncooperative - Pyre hated dealing with any situation more serious than a bandmate throwing up on the floor after too many post-concert drinks. I would have happily gone after his assailant, punched the smug git's front teeth out, and maybe kicked him in the groin for good measure, but Pyre didn't believe in solving problems with violence unless absolutely necessary.

'Did you at least punch him, or something?' I asked, already knowing what the answer would be.

'Ah, no,' he said, an apologetic smile flickering across his face. 'I sort of just ran.'

'Yeah, I can see that,' I said, pointedly running my gaze over him. Pyre didn't wear his flamboyant green-and-yellow concert outfit on regular days, so he was currently dressed in a comfortable turtleneck sweater and old jeans. The jeans were badly scuffed from a sliding fall on the pavement, and the sweater was decorated with flecks of blood just like my carpet. The thing that worried me most was not the state of his clothes, but the wounds on his neck. Standing out starkly against his pale skin, they lay just beneath his jawline, and even my inexperienced eye could tell they were vampire bites.

I slid a finger under his jaw and used it to gently, but firmly, push his head back. Pyre fidgeted with discomfort. 'Uhm...'

'What was this guy trying to do?' I asked, ignoring his squirming as I examined the wounds. 'Turn you? Could he not tell you're already a vampire?'

'I don't know, really. Maybe he came in too quickly to see - or smell - what I was. Or maybe he just wanted blood.'

'There's thousands of humans in this city who I'm sure would be easier targets than you...' I reconsidered this statement. 'Actually, no. Most humans would be a harder target than you.'

Pyre winced, both from my - admittedly - harsh words and from the pain in his neck. Haha, pun not intended. 'Well, I never said I was the best at fighting...'

I knew that vampire bites took longer to heal than most wounds, which explained why these little punctures were still open and gently dripping blood everywhere. I took the clean, damp cloth I'd retrieved earlier and pressed it against his neck, trying to stem the flow. Pyre audibly whimpered, tightening his fingers over the edge of the couch.

'Come on, they're tiny.'

'They still hurt,' he protested. I almost wished that I could find his pathetic, whining voice funny, because the alternative was worrying myself half to death about him, and that's exactly what I was doing right now.

'You're gonna be OK, though, right?' I asked.

He nodded slightly, trying not to move his head too much. 'Vampire bites take longer to heal, but yeah, it should be all gone by tomorrow night.'

'Twenty-four hour healing, huh?' I grinned, trying to inject a bit of humour into the situation, ignoring Pyre's winces as I mopped up the bleeding wounds in his neck. 'Sounds convenient.'

'Oh, it is! I wish everybody could do it.'

I didn't let him off the couch until I had cleaned his wounds to the best of my ability, venting my insatiable rage at his attacker every time he winced or made a noise, and privately wishing the whole time that I could have been there to punch the evil fucker personally. It might not have saved Pyre from getting hurt - vampires were damn fast - but it certainly would have been satisfying for me. What, you're telling me 'violence isn't the answer'? Your opinion can go screw itself, because as far as I'm concerned, punching someone who just hurt your best friend is a perfectly reasonable reaction.