Around the worlds 1 - A tale of vampires

Michela chuckled, appreciating Neos' excitement. "They used this ladder here", she answered, tapping it with her fingers. "We can use it to follow them, bit let's be quick, or we'll lose them." She turned around and climbed the ladder, as fast as she could.

Neos nodded and followed Michela without hesitating.

It wasn't hard for Michela to follow their track, but she could also feel that Karl was walking slower than usual on purpose. Soon enough, they were brought near a clear place in the middle of the forest, where the moonlight pierced more easily. Thankfully, this is what allowed them to see the so-called 'vampires' gathered around.
Unlike what they had seen so far, they still looked rather human, in spite of their damaged flesh around poking-out bones. Most of them had horns, some had really long and pointy teeth, a lack of cheeks, claw-like feet, or other unusual bone structures. Most of them were actually talking to each other, or to Cathy, who had just joined them, and who was now currently looking at some of their wounds.
They didn't seem to pay attention to Karl though, who remained a bit aside from the whole gathering. As if he was expecting Michela to come a bit closer.

Michela wished she had more eyes to look at all of that. It seemed like those people were into a sort of... in-between phase between their so called "vampires" and humans. Their appearance didn't disturb her as much as the creature she had seen the other night, because these were still... well, reasoning, it seemed. She looked at Cathy, then at Karl. "Wait here", she whispered to Neos, then getting near Karl silently.

"I had a feeling you would get out tonight," merely said Karl in a low voice. Thankfully, no one was paying attention to him, so they were unnoticed.

Michela shifted a bit, uncomfortably, almost feeling as if she was being reproached. "I'm not exactly someone that stays at her place because someone said so. My curiosity tends to get the best of me all the time", she murmured.

Karl barely nodded. "I'm not scolding you. But you and your comrade should stay as quiet as you can. They have a good earing, and tend to get agressive if they find someone spying on them."

Michela looked back at Neos, gesturing for him to keep as quiet as possible. Then she stayed silent as well, looking at the scene before her. "... does a cure for this actually exist?", she asked in a breath.

Karl remained silent for a few seconds. "I am supposed to be that cure," he said in an even lower voice. "Cathy told me she needs me to help her build other bodies like mine." He looked down at his hands, as if it was paining him. But he was a robot, pain might have been too abstract for him to grasp its meaning.

Michela looked at him, feeling a bit of pity towards the android... and feeling confused as well. "I thought it hadn't worked before", she observed, remembering the story about Cathy's uncle and father. She stayed silent for a bit, merely observing Cathy taking care of those people. "I think she is a good person", she said in the end. She was pretty sure with her judgement, as she always was. "But, I don't know how she can think she can manage all of this on her own. Well, even if she has you. Isn't someone else helping as well?" She looked around, as if in hope to see other humans. She saw none.

"It's only Cathy." Karl answered with a soft voice. "She carries much over her shoulders, but she still wishes to help her family. After all... there is still hope for her to transfer the minds of her grandfather and father in a body like mine, if not me."

"Someone should help her..." Well, maybe people were scared. How to blame them? And well, it wasn't like she had reacted any differently, before those creatures. She felt a bit bad for that now. Michela looked at him again, puzzled. "... you mean, you wouldn't have objections to that? Wouldn't it be like dying? I mean, you are... a sort of... person by now so I don't see why she couldn't use other bodies!" She had sounded a bit more upset than she had meant to.

"... I don't know if she could. I don't know how I even came to think on my own. Or why I always ensured the transfer to my body would fail," he admitted as he turned his gaze to Michela. But then he froze when he heard a few vampires shrieking. One of them, with wings, dashed in the woods towards them, and soon, it was a scream from Neos that echoed in the night, causing everyone to stay silent.

Michela looked at him, understanding hitting her. She opened her mouth to say something, to tell him something- then she heard those high pitched shrieks. She instictively brought her hands to her head, jumping back for a few meters, ready to defend herself from any threat. Neos' scream resonated in her head, and her eyes shifted quickly to red, insticts alert. Silence hit her then, and she just waited, without even breathing.

The creature who had dashed in the woods slammed Neos on the ground, in the clearer space. It was actually a man whose transformation had gone further enough so that the bone-y structure coming out of his back had created wings, which he used with skill.
"The filth has got the stone on him," the man snarled as he slammed Neos' body back on the ground. "GET IT OUT!"

Karl immediately straightened up, frowing. "Is you friend carrying a green stone?" he hurriedly asked Michela.

Michela looked at Karl, then at Neos, her eyes wide. "I... I can't BELIEVE that he took it with him!" She smacked her forehead with an annoyed noise. "I had told him that I had a bad feeling about that stone, but... wow, I didn't think they'd react like that. NEOS! Just get out that forsaken thing and give it away!", she then yelled at him, still on full alert, but getting back to Karl's side.

A lot of things happened at that moment. Every single person present seemed to notice Michela's presence. Since she was linked to the intruder, a few other vampires rushed towards her with the intend of attacking her, but for an odd reason, they merely circled her, unsure of themselves, as if they felt she wasn't human herself. Some of them even threw wary glances at Karl, who stood tall by Michela's side, as if to intimidate them.
In the meantime, Neos followed Michela's advice, and took the pendant out of one of his inner pockets with a shaking hand. It wasn't long before the 'vampire' pressing him to the ground slapped the pendant with great force, sending it away from them in a hateful hiss.

Michela hissed, narrowing her eyes. She wasn't used to feel like the prey. She stood as tall as she could, a menacing and warning growl coming from the back of her throat as she bared her long, pointy fangs. She shifted nearer to Karl, the presence of someone else near her almost reassuring in that moment. She glanced at Neos, trying to see if he was ok. "We don't mean any harm", she said then after some moments, raising her hands slowly. She didn't say it out loud, but her body language was talking for her. 'If you attack me, I'm ready to mean a LOT of harm.'

The creatures around seemed to calm down progressively, and some even shared confused looks when they saw Michela's fangs. However, they didn't have a say into what followed.
"Stand aside."
They opened their ranks to the man that had attacked Neos. He had , wavy and dishelved black hair, that were almost naturally thrown back due to the two pairs of horns growing on his forehead. He had massive claws at the end of both his hands and feet, which were bared. And, also, it was clear that part of his ribs had outgrown to become the sort of fleshed wings in his back.
He gave Michela a long, hard look, and crossed his arms while looking at her, and sniffing the air for her smell.
"What are you."

Michela crossed her arms on her chest too, keeping what she hoped to be an intimidating frown. "A vampire of a different kind", she answered defensively, her voice firm. Her eyes were still red; she wasn't going to lower her guard. She guessed that the man she had before her was a sort of leader, from the way he was behaving, and from the way everyone had shifted around him without a word.

The man kept looking at her for a few seconds, and finally shifted to reveal Neos where he had left him. The magician was holding his sides, as if some of his ribs had been bruised. "Do you know him?"

"He is Neos, a magician. He travels with me. He means no harm, just as me. We aren't from here, so please forgive us if you felt menaced by anything." Michela looked at Neos. "Are you ok?" She asked then, feeling slightly worried. He had been pounced pretty hard to the ground, he could've had some broken bones or something. Humans were so much more fragile than her kind after all!

The man stood back a bit more, as if he was inviting her to move closer to Neos. In a way, he was looking at her almost curiously. "Are you from another continent ?"

Michela looked at him before carefully moving towards Neos, her eyes not shifting from the 'vampire' she was talking to. She kneeled near the magician. "Er... not really. It is a bit complicated. We come from farther away. From... another world." Well it didn't really matter if they took her as crazy right now.

Neos had managed to sit for a bit, wincing ad he held his sides. His ribs had been barely bruised, they were not completely broken.
"... How did you do that." Finally, it was Cathy's voice they heard, as she had gathered her courage to walk again towards them.

Michela looked at Neos for a bit, observing him wince and grimace a bit as he held his sides. Well, nothing broken it seemed. Or he would've probably been screeching from the pain. Then she lifted her gaze to Cathy, furrowing her brows in confusion. "Do what. Travel?", she asked. "It's a matter of opening portals. But I'm no expert."