The person he was following walked quickly in front of him, his head down and his collar up. Rain from above was dropping like stones, and although it annoyed him, it did not sway him from his path. He had not fed in a month and a half, and he was hungry; very hungry.
The name of the man he was following was Alex Hamilton. Running away from London, the twenty-two year old had come to this dark city. He had no family here, no on who loved him. No real home.

“So sad,” the pale man said to himself, smiling maliciously and baring his long fangs. Byrne had been twenty-eight when he had been bitten. Although that was just over two hundred years ago, it could have been last week. The bloodlust was high and it took all he could to restrain himself from lunging at Alex. It had taken a very short time to get used to being a vampire. He now fully embraced it and would hunt the deepest, darkest corners of the earth, just like where they were now, to find his prey.

Alex turned a corner and kept on walking, unknowing of the danger lurking behind him. He missed his parents, and his family. He didn’t understand how much tragedy could have befallen him in his short life.

In the faint light, Byrne moved closer to his target, thanking the rain that Alex’s mortal ears could not hear him. His careful eyes had been watching Alex for the past week, and an almost fatal mistake was about to happen in his usual dangerous daily routine. Many people made the mistake of thinking that vampires were savage beasts and attacked whoever they could, just to satisfy their … hunger. The truth was, they were very organised monsters, watching their prey for however long it took, to fathom a flaw in their routine, and at the moment when they were alone, and at their weakest (which was not always when asleep; Alex slept with a knife) they struck, stunning, then sucking out the victim’s life essence, blood, until almost dead, and finally infecting them with the immortal venom in their fangs.

Alex stopped at his workplace, a 24 hour convenience store, where he worked the late night shift. Taking out his knife, he hid it behind the brick that jutted out, behind the building. There was a metal detector and it would pick up anything that was any part metal, including braces. Byrne had waited for this moment. There were three people working, Alex, Max and the assistant manager. His manager usually fell asleep within an hour of Alex arriving. Alex had complained to the store manager about Lars sleeping on the job before, but nothing so far had been done about it. He stepped in, then closed and locked the door, not that it would keep Byrne out.