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It was not uncommon for them to meet like this, one in the shadows of an alley way and the other under the street light. Most of the time, Mirage would say it was a coincidence meeting the Drifter here. This time though, he has trouble admitting there was such a thing as coincidence for this meeting.
Red eyes pierced through the darkness, digging into his own two pupils. The Drifter leaned against the bricks of an old banking building, smiling with a slant in his lips. His usual dark chuckle reverberates between the hedges of stone buildings around him.
“Mirage, out for another one of your strolls tonight, huh? Left the girl unattended?” Light from a fading bulb flickered on top of the bodyguard, its leaking of electric humming taking over the few moments of still air.
“Nashala is well taken care of right now, besides, she insisted I get some fresh air before our next full day at the embassy tomorrow. Who am I to deny her will.” Mirage responds. Nashala asked him nothing of the sort.
Mirage pulls out his gun.
The action does nothing to phase The Drifter though. Golden eyes glint over the barrel as Mirage inspects it, rubbing a spec of dirt off with a clean, gloved hand.
“This sure is a strange way of threatening me,” Drifter’s eyes twitch around with each wave of the weapon. Mirage says nothing though. Instead, he finally settles the gun in front of him to stare at its full side profile.
“My mother always thought I’d become a poet, the way I spoke as a kid.”
Mirage points the gun at Drifter.
“But then I took my first life.”
Drifter remains motionless, heavy eyelids still watching between the barrel and Mirage’s lips.
“You sure reminisce the past like a poet.” The vampire, with a shift in weight, balances back on both feet.
“You sound like my mother,” Mirage tries to conceal the dry smirk in his voice as Drifter, slow like molasses, walks forward. Unwavering, the gun stays perfectly locked between the two red darts approaching.
“I killed a man attempting to harm the djinn’s ambassador in broad daylight. I was just a man, yet I took two bullets to my stomach and charged forward with reckless abandon. I never thought of killing him, but I did it.”
By the time Mirage finishes, Drifter’s head is against his gun’s barrel, pointing up at the monstrously proportioned man, if one can dare call him one.
“No one ever tells you how easy it is to snuff the light from someone’s eyes, only the guilt of it. The issue is-”
“You felt nothin’ after,” Drifter finishes the sentence for him.
Mirage closes his eyes and breathes in, then slowly lowers his gun.
“No,” Mirage holsters his gun, “I felt satisfied.”
Drifter’s eyebrow raises.
“Here, was this great sin I committed, even in the act of protection, and the only guilt I held was my content for it.”
Mirage finally opens his eyes again, staring with unwavering determination at a creature that can easily tear him a part this close to him. A smile full of daggers is what greets him back.
“Your momma was right, you really do got that morbid artistry poets have.” Mirage’s forehead wrinkles at the Drifter’s words.
“My mother died, sad her only son had grown to become a killer of men instead of a killer of words.” He reminds himself.
“Oh, don’t be so harsh on yourself, at least her only son is’n delusional of what he is, unlike many other men in this world.” Drifter breathes the words onto him, Mirage’s nostrils fill with the smell of death that linger between each fang. In fact, his whole personal space is suffocated by the presence of the ancient being. Claustrophobia squeezes around his heart unlike how it wraps around the vampire like a warm blanket.
The Drifter thrives on fear, and Mirage feels it seeping into every morsel of his being the longer he stares into the jagged teeth and sharp eyes of his contrary. Yet he finds himself standing firm as death looms over him.
“You may think I am confessing my acceptance of the violence I am capable of, but I will never be able to. I still hold strong with my humanity, or else I fear what I can become without it.” The suffocation begins to fade, as does the darkness that was slowly creeping into the peripherals of Mirage’s vision. He feels his body finally let out a breath that was trapped in his lungs for far too long.
“I want to thank you, Drifter, for reminding me to keep my humanity close. It is what separates me from men like you. Even if by the width of a hair.”
Drifter huffs out through his nose.
“And here I was getting excited.” The Drifter slinks around Mirage’s side, walking around him like a snake slowly constricting on its prey. Mirage does not budge though, his eyes tracing the glowing red under the brim of Drifter’s hat.
“Humanity this, humanity that, I heard it a thousand times over hundreds of years. I can’t say I am not a lil disappointed with you though.” Mirage loses eye contact as Drifter passes by his side and stops behind him.
“I love watching you do your thing, how effortless and clean you are with the way you fight, but not afraid to get nasty either.” The vampire leans down, his lips grazing at Mirage’s ear.
“You have no idea how much watching you fight makes me want to rip you open and see just how hot your blood truly runs,” Drifter’s whisper tingles in Mirage’s ear, traveling down his spine. The gloved hand opens and shuts in a repetitive and sharp pattern.
“Would you scream for your pitiful humanity then? As you slowly choke on your own blood?” Mirage suddenly turns, grappling the man’s collar and yanking him down to meet him eye to eye. A glare looks at a smile. Knuckles turn white and hands twitch.
“Try, and it will lead to your demise.”
Instead of pulling away from the threat though, the vampire leans into it. Mirage feels as Drifters weight slacks and the man falls into the grapple, nearly touching nose to nose with himself.
“That a promise, pretty boy?” Large red hands, eternally stained by treacherous sin, pinches at Mirage’s chin. They are cold, almost to a degree that they sting. Mirage’s own hand only tightens further.
“A fact, monster.” Mirage breaks character in front of Drifter, and smirks with a mad glint in his eyes. He cannot help the thrill wrecking his whole body right now. The way it makes his heart beat like it craves the very concept of eagerness.
Drifters ear twitches.
The standstill ends, finally, with Mirage pushing the larger man away. The motion allows Drifter’s claws to nick his face and the scratch begins to bleed. Mirage watches as the Drifter’s pupils go wide at the sight, and doubly so at the smell.
The bodyguard takes his clean glove, and swipes the blood off his face with the flat of his thumb, staining it.
“You could never win against me when you yourself cannot win against your own gluttony.”
Drifter looks only briefly at Mirage, a brief moment of some kind of recognition, before his head falls loose to his chest and chuckles. His whole body slouches forward and the brim of his old newsboy hat casts a shadow down his face. Only sharp teeth showed by the grace of a strained smile.
“You keep talking like wisdom is gonna save you, poet, but it is only a matter of time before I eat that tongue and the pair of lungs behind it. I’m going to savor you slowly. Drink you as if every sip would be my last.” Drifter can’t stop chuckling as he speaks, each sentence interrupted with another round of a laugh that borderlines a growl.
“Every last part of you, I will have.”
Mirage feels him almost choke as he swallows.
“I pity you then.”
Drifter can’t stop chuckling.
Mirage can’t stop his heart beating.
A sudden twitch in Drifter’s right foot is all Mirage needed to see before willing his body to fall into grains of sand. The vampire lunges soon after, only meeting left over particles of earth at the end. Mirage reforms behind the crazed man, who now was holding himself up, almost as if to collapse any second, on the building in front of him.
Drifter’s head shifts to look over his shoulder at the man with one wide and bloodshot eye.
“All of you, Mirage-“
“And none of you, Drifter.”
Mirage finally turns back into the light of the lamps, off to finish his walk. The Drifter bites into his own hand as he watches, patiently.
They will see each other again anyways.