Mayme shuttered as she heard a door unlock and a knob creek. She cowered next to the barrels she had hid herself behind and kept her eyes closed, however the man who had just left his house hurriedly went over to her exact hiding spot. He hardily knocked on the barrels twice to gain her attention. Her eyes shot open and stared at him horrorstuck. Her hands did not leave their place, clasped over her mouth.

The man looked quite regular. He was probably more or less twenty years Mayme's senior. He had long, brown hair peppered sparsely with grey that had been loosely tied back into a ponytail. The evening sunset gave it a warm array of gold and orange highlights. His eyes were a dark pine and narrow, they seemed angry, though it was due to how his brows sat angled on his face. They were thick and tilted down slightly while resting. A deep scar ran down over his lip and made his relaxed frown seem menacing. He was stocky and would stand a little more than a head taller than Mayme when she was up right.

The man gestured to the girl to follow him. She did not move and earned a sigh from the man.

"Girl, come on. Are you just going to stay in some alley the whole night? Come with me." He spoke slowly, though in a very serious, demanding tone. When Mayme didn't respond he continued, "Come into my house and we can discuss how to get you home, the night ain’t no time for a lass to be out."

 Mayme dropped her hands from her mouth and climbed to her feet. Her legs quaked with fear and unease. Skittishly she followed the man. Her pounding heart reverberated through her ribcage and in turn her hands as she kept balled together at her chest. He closed the door upon Mayme's entrance into the small house. The place was hardly decorated besides the books and documents that littered the shelves and tables, many hosting a symbol Mayme knew decently well, but not one that put her at ease. She watched the man, trying to gauge what he was thinking.

"Alright girl," the man began, "What are you doing out at night? Are you not from here? Don’t you know not to stay out late?” He sounded like a parent scolding a child.

Mayme fidgeted with her bag. "I don't come to town much… I got lost."

He hummed. "Alright. Where abouts do you live?"

"By the lake."

He let out a frustrated sigh.

"Oh, uhm. Well. Maybe I can just spend the night here and head back on my own in the morn. I have some coins, I can pay you for the trouble."

He shook his head. "I was planning on going out tonight and I'm not leaving you in my house alone. You could be a thief."

Mayme frowned. "I'm not."

"Do you have a weapon?"

Mayme shook her head without hesitation.

"Right…" he paused, "Well, the lake. You can lead me, I want to go there." He turned away from her and wandered over to the door that led to his room. He paused at it. "Well. I might have to take a few detours. But we'll discuss after. I need to ready myself."

Mayme nodded and watched the man vanish into his room and shut the creaky wooden door. She stood by the front entrance awkwardly for a short while before she padded over to the window. She drew the curtains enough to peer put with one eye. A pair clearly lost to the plague shambled by, however they began to sprint soon after Mayme spotted them. They ran away from the house, having clearly seen something. Mayme adjusted herself to watch.

A short distance away stood a familiar blonde, but in her black attire this time no longer feigning the appearance of a doctor. She was wearing a flowing black dress that met her ankles and a heavy leather overcoat that hid most of it. There was a cold, familiar look in the church member’s eyes and a smile on her pretty pink plump lips— the very way she had looked at Mayme last they met. She took a deep breath and spoke. It was church rhetoric, undoubtedly, but unintelligible from within the walls of the stranger’s house. Without any qualms the woman readied for the charging beasts, preparing her sword for an overhead swing. It was one quick, graceful movement. She swung it down on an angle. It cut through one of the ill man's neck, decapitating him. With a bit of a twirl she drew her sword back then plunged it into the other one’s chest. The monstrous fellow dropped to his knees and she raised a foot to his torso and kicked his corpse off her weapon. Her dress that had whirled around her in the ordeal settled and she stood victorious. Her coat fell in such a way Mayme could see a pistol strapped to the woman's hip. The blood on her weapon's gleam matched the one in her eyes.

Mayme couldn't hear the ordeal, however her imagination filled in the blanks. She imagined the wet snapping of the man's ribs, the meaty thuds of the bodies hitting the path, the gurgles… everything. All while this heartless woman flawlessly executed her job. The soft smile on her lips did not once faulter in the bloodshed. The more splatter that covered her the more sadistic it appeared. Yet, each act looked so perfect. So precise. She fought with purpose and one could mistake her movements for a dancer’s. It was sickening.

Mayme closed the curtains. She placed her hands over her stomach. An uneasy dread bubbled in her. It was at that moment she realised how easily the woman outside could have done away with her. How much danger she was really in earlier that day. She supposed being in public was the only thing that saved her, but by how much? Even if she had drawn Elisabeth, could she have shot before a blade cleaved through her? She doubted it.

"Not sickened by the beasts, are you?" The man's voice boomed behind her with so much force it knocked the air out of her lungs.

Mayme whipped around, but the sight of him was not comforting. He was adjusting his garb. Her face lost every ounce of colour it had.

"What's wrong?" He asked.

The garb he wore was akin to the one her father had stored away. She had seen it a few times. The heavy brown fabrics, symbols and words tearing down her kin proudly stitched into its design. The attire of those who massacred Sangmont’s residents. She had heard the tales aplenty, but they were always softened with the love story of her parents. How the hunter fell for the hunted. How her father abandoned the group who had made it their life's mission to hunt her mother’s bloodsucking kind. But now in front of her was the reality of it all. A man who, no doubt, would cut her down without hesitation if he knew of her tainted blood. A man who still sported the clothes the massacre was done in. Clothes that, from their shape, were clearly cared for and cherished. Not pristine, but loved. Adored. Admired.

Mayme swallowed her fear and shook her head. "Your outfit… It looked a little churchy. The members are… frightening. I just saw one out the window."

"Ah. Well, because the faction this garb represents was once part of the church. That’s a secret, but a twenty year old one so it hardly matters to keep, I say. No one cares about or thinks about the leeches we were assigned to do away with anymore. Worry not. I’m no longer with the church for my own reasons.” He sneered the word church at every moment it left his lips. He acted as if it was bitter to say. “Are you old enough to know anything about Sangmont?”

“It fell before my birth, but I know of it. Those leech people lived there once, right?” Mayme asked with feigned ignorance, though her mind was still reeling at the discovery the church itself had something to do with Sangmont’s downfall. The clueless girl act was difficult, but she managed to keep up the display. “The church had something to do with it?”

The man nodded. “Well, they were monsters. The church was just a small, underground thing back then and thought they could rule better. Wanted the leeches dead, though they also seemed to want to capture some. Rumour has it some are still living in secret here in Letcham, you know.”

Mayme averted her eyes and once more fidgeted with her bag strap. “Why does the church want to capture them?”

"Now little miss, with how queasy you got from just watching a regular night in Letcham out a window I don’t think your meager constitution can handle that.” He dismissed her with both words and a wave of his large gloved hand, “Now that that's settled. I'm Percival. And you are?"

"May."

"It’s a pleasure," He turned to a closet off the main hall. He fumbled with the latch until it clicked and he opened it. There laid his weapon of choice. It was something of an axe, or maybe a hatchet. Mayme could not tell the difference, but she knew the tales of the ransacking of Sangmont. During it, most would use the blunt side of the axe to bludgeon the women and children to death. It was a way to humiliate them, destroy their unsettling, ethereal beauty while killing them. She swore she still saw some white stands stuck where the head met the handle. So perturbed by the axe, Mayme barely registered the musket he slung onto his back.

She turned to the window and parted the curtains just an inch. The bodies left by the church woman were sprawled out unceremoniously in a heap on the ground. Blood pooled under them and filled up the cracks between the cobblestone. A set of bloodied footprints led away. They were shaped just as the woman's heeled boots.

"Don't worry too much. Stay close and any of those sickly things roaming about will cause you no harm," Percival said, placing an oppressive hand on Mayme's shoulder. It seemed not to just weigh her body down, but soul as well. Mayme jumped at the sudden contact, but Percival did not seem to notice. That or he did not care.

Mayme nodded slowly. "What about the church?"

"What about them?"

"I uh…" she paused to think, then said, "A church woman. They look in people's eyes to tell if they'll turn into a beast or not. She thought that my eyes being different colours was a sign of some sort. Thought my brown eye was dilated. That's how I got lost, I had to run from her."

Percival, with the hand on her shoulder, harshly pulled her back. She turned while she tried to catch her balance. Fear filled her as she thought her deception was discovered. He moved his hand from her shoulder and grabbed her face. He craned her head upwards to get a better look. Mayme tried to shrug away and vanish into her shoulders, but he did not let her go. His grip tightened on her cheeks as she struggled causing the flesh to bubble around his hold. She shut her eyes tight, tried to squirm away and raised her hands to try to push him away, however she paused as he spoke.

"Look at me." His voice was firm and demanding.

She slowly opened her eyes and did as he asked. He stared a few seconds longer— his eyes flickered periodically between her heterochromic eyes.  Brown, blue, brown, blue, finally they landed on the brown one once more.

"Your eyes are fine. A bit bloodshot, but you were crying earlier. I don't see the issue." He let her go. "The church lost it long ago, this paranoid behaviour ain’t shocking."

Mayme rubbed her reddened cheek where the man had jabbed his thumb into. She frowned, but did not comment.

"Well. Let's get a move on, heard a rumour recently about a leech with a human husband and I’d like to get my hands on it," Percival explained with just a hint of childish glee as he walked to the door.

Mayme slowly nodded as she padded after him. "So, you said you wanted to go to the lake… is it because Sangmont is just across it? Do you think a leech would be so silly as to stay so close to home?"

"They're animals, no smarter than a dog. They won't stray far from their alpha. Dead or not, their queen is still locked away in that forsaken palace." He opened  the door and stepped out into the street. The stench of iron was in the air, but he didn't seem to mind it at all. He took a deep breath of the cool evening air and smiled. “Say, have you seen anyone suspicious near your house? I’ll happily investigate them, cleanse your neighborhood. Won’t you feel safer?”

“I haven’t seen anything.” Mayme skittishly came out after him. She closed the door gently once outside. A sullen look still painted across her face as her small hands lingered on the door knob. "And I'd rather not think of murder."

"Murder is a harsh word, May," He remarked, "Is putting an animal down murder? What about vermin? An insect?"

Mayme didn't answer.

Percival carried onwards, he stepped over the corpses left by the church woman. The bottoms of his boots, however, sank deep into the pooling blood. "Precisely."

Mayme sighed, but followed. She carefully stepped around the pile of death, making sure no part of her touched any part of the gruesome display. As long as he was kept unaware of her bloodline she was sure she was safe. What other choice did she have? She was no fighter. And though she was excellent with her gun she lacked the confidence and the bullets to make it on her own. She left the house with six, and now she only had five. With that count in mind she watched the back of Percival’s head.

How odd was it that some random church girl could tell what she was and not someone specifically hunting for her bloodline. She decided not to question it and simply count it as a blessing.