Taking Shots

Armin didn't remember hearing someone knocking at his door. He also didn't have any memory of getting up to open said door. Nonetheless, when he looked up from his whiskey bottle, another vampire was standing there, staring down at him expectantly.

'Oh, hello, Rex,' he said, and patted the space next to him on the couch. 'You can join me if you want. There's plenty.' He shook the bottle.

Rex raised his eyebrows and sat down. He was a rather skinny man with short, neat black hair and light-red eyes. Today, he also had a little mustache and was wearing a dark fleece jacket as a testament to the bitter January cold.

'I didn't come here to drink,' he said, eyeing the whiskey. 'What are you doing, anyway?'

Armin chuckled. 'What does it look like I'm doing? I'm drowning my pitiful sorrows after yet another screwed-up mission for the world's most evil vampire.'

'That might be an exaggeration.'

They exchanged glances, then Rex shrugged and averted his gaze. Like Armin, he hadn't chosen to work for Count Sargon, the vampire lord intent on turning all humans into vampires. But here they were now.

'There's probably people more evil than him,' said Armin grudgingly. 'But he's the most evil one I know personally.' He tipped the bottle back and swallowed a mouthful of the foul-smelling liqour. He offered it to Rex afterwards, but the shorter man wrinkled his nose and politely declined.

'Are you OK?' he asked after a while of sitting together in silence. 'I know you got shot earlier.'

Armin made a thoughtful noise, then put down the bottle long enough to peel back his jacket and shirt to inspect the gunshot wound in his shoulder. It was well bandaged, and no blood had soaked through. Vampires healed very quickly unless the injury in question was inflicted by a wooden stake.

'I'm doing alright,' he said. 'What about you?'

Rex thought back to their mission, nearly six hours ago now. He and Armin had been sent out to attack a group of humans and turn them all into vampires. It was meant to be a test, to find out if Sargon could convince newly-turned vampires to willingly join his cause. There had been around twenty people in the building at the time, and Rex hadn't known that they had access to weapons. A few gunshots later and both he and Armin had been hit, but their injuries weren't serious and they managed to subdue the opposition within minutes. Unfortunately, they'd been forced to kill most of the humans and several others had escaped in the chaos, making the mission a failure.

'I wasn't directly hit by anything,' said Rex, which was somewhat of a lie, but his own wound was less serious than Armin's and already nearly healed. There was no point in talking about it.

He wasn't even sure Armin was paying attention anymore. 'You sure you don't want any?' he asked, holding up the whiskey bottle.

'Very sure. And you should stop drinking so much. Just because you're not human doesn't mean it can't harm you.'

'It won't kill me.'

'No, but...' Rex let out a sigh. 'Drinking yourself into oblivion every night isn't going to help.'

'It does, actually,' said Armin. 'Because it means I can stop thinking about all the people I killed. Did you see their faces, Rex? They knew they were done for the moment we walked in the room. They knew that even their guns couldn't stop us.'

'A lot of them escaped.'

'And the others all died.'

'God dammit, Armin!' Rex swore, raising his voice in an attempt to get through to the other vampire. 'So we killed some people. We've killed lots of people before. There's nothing we can do about it, except try to kill as few as possible.'

There was a period of silence, broken only by the sounds of swallowing as Armin emptied the whiskey bottle.

'Sometimes I think about leaving,' he said at last. Rex looked at him, surprised to see his expression so blank. 'Sometimes I really consider it, Rex. What's the point in staying here? My family died years ago; he can't use them to blackmail me anymore. I could just walk away.'

Rex drew in a deep breath. 'Two reasons,' he replied. 'One, he would hunt you down and destroy you if you deserted him. If he couldn't do it personally, then he'd send people after you, and you wouldn't be able to run forever. And two, if you stay, then you might have a chance to finish him off someday.' He tried to meet Armin's gaze, but the older man was just staring at the floor. 'Think about it. Getting to kill him, after everything he's done to you – don't you want to stick around for that chance?'

There was another long silence. Eventually, Armin broke it by placing the empty bottle on the coffee table with a small thud.

'Maybe that's true,' he said thoughtfully. 'I really would like to pay him back someday. But it feels pointless. Killing him isn't going to bring back my family or friends or the years I've lost. It'll only stop him from hurting anyone else.'

'Exactly,' said Rex, leaning back on the couch. 'And you'd probably want revenge, if nothing else.'

He stood up. 'For now, stop thinking about it. We do the best we can with what we're given – that's how it's always been.' He put a hand on Armin's shoulder for a moment, then grabbed the empty bottle and headed off into the kitchen to get rid of it.

It was almost pitch-black in here. He flicked on the light, wincing as his eyes protested, and set the whiskey bottle on the side counter before looking around for something to eat. The work helped him to forget the horrors from earlier today, and he wished Armin could find a better way of coping, too. But Rex understood perfectly why he couldn't.

I swear, someday Sargon will be dead and gone, he thought. And I hope that Armin and I will be the ones to finish him. It doesn't really matter, though, as long as somebody does.

The kitchen was practically devoid of anything edible. Sighing, Rex went back into the living-room, where he could see Armin's tall form hunched silently over the coffee table. He had a feeling it was going to be a long night.