Part 2

'Yes, ' I mused, 'watching Ka'lath hunt is something I do very well.' I stood on the edge of a roof where he had stood only moments before, looking down into the same alley into which his red-haired prey had walked perhaps a minute earlier. I could hear her spike-heeled boots echoing as she strode down the alley; her gait was fast and purposeful, and betrayed no hint that anything might be amiss. Somewhere below me, Ka'lath blended into the shadows, knowing as I did that the alley was a dead end. The woman would be forced to retrace her steps and return to the street, but instead of an easy exit, she would find only Ka'lath's shadowy form, blocking her only avenue of escape. And then, having watched him hunt before, I'm sure he would follow much the same course as he always did.

The first time Ka'lath took me from what I had come to think of as my basement home, we climbed the four flights of stairs to the roof of the building, emerging from the stairwell as the last vestiges of a purple-yellow sunset faded from the sky. It was one of those nights that the moon seemed to hover close to the Earth, as if magnified 10 times normal size, and I stared up into the stars, able to see them better with my unaided vampire sight than I had ever seen them with the small telescope I'd had as a child. Ka'lath allowed me a moment to indulge in something he'd obviously seen before from another young vampire or two; then, tired of my gawking, he put his hand between my shoulder blades and pushed, forcing me toward the small ledge which bordered the entire roof.

I paused at the edge, looking down; below me was the back of the apartment building, a narrow alley filled with garbage dumpsters, discarded mattresses, and all manner of wind-blown trash. As I took in what lay below, Ka'lath stood behind me without speaking. But, as I tried to straighten up and turn to face him, he grabbed my neck and, using his superior strength, forced me to look down. I felt my body trying to rebel against his grip, which caused him to take his right hand and lock it around my chin, while his left hand continued to grip the back of my neck. I had no choice but to remain still, for fear he might twist my head completely from my body should I resist. After my struggles ceased, he moved his mouth closer to my right ear, until I felt his hot breath on the side of my face. "In the way of all new vampires, you have many lessons to learn. I have taught you what I can indoors; now you must learn how to survive outside. And the first lesson you must learn is this..." Suddenly, he removed his right hand from my chin; with his other hand, he picked me up by the neck and flung me out into the air over the alley some three stories below!

With what I thought would be my last breath, I yelled a curse over my shoulder, even as the asphalt rushed toward me, or I toward it, at the speed of gravity. I closed my eyes, waiting for the impact... but then, something changed! First, my sense of time passing seemed to stretch out; a fall that should have only taken a few heartbeats seemed to slow in my perception until it seemed I might never reach the ground. Then, a tingling sensation began; I felt it first inside my chest, and it rapidly expanded to my arms and legs as well. Without any help from me, by body went from a belly-flop position to a feet first fall, my arms extending outward like a bird's wings. I suddenly felt lighter, as if something was compensating for the natural force which sought to splatter me against the ground. Even though my eyes were closed, I could sense the distance remaining before my feet touched the ground, and my legs actually seemed to be trying to stretch downward, to reduce that distance even more. After a fall that, to my senses, lasted nearly 15 seconds, the soles of my feet finally met the asphalt, my knees bending deeply as I landed. In the stretched time-sense I was operating in, it seemed to take me two or three seconds to stand up straight again, though it really took only a third of that. However, once I was standing completely upright, my time-sense literally snapped back to real-time. At normal speed, I turned around and craned my head back up to the roof of the building I had been standing on only seconds earlier, and realized that I had just fallen three stories. Not only that, I had landed on my feet, sustaining not a scratch, bruise, or sore muscle in the landing. In my astonishment, I could only look upward, my mouth hanging open in stunned surprise.

Laughter erupted from the shadows, and I turned in time to see Ka'lath materialize the same as if he'd walked out of the side of the building! He grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me, laughing all the while. "That is lesson number one, Robert! You are a vampire, and as such have physical abilities about which you are only beginning to learn! A fall such as you've just taken is child's play, and your vampire instincts made sure you would land without harm. Eventually, you will be able to exert your will against the very force of gravity itself, to the point where you can hover in the air for minutes at a time, or even push yourself upward with the force of your mind! However, that is still many, many years in the future for you! At this moment, what you need to know is simple: let your mortal instincts and fears fall away, and embrace what you have become! Your vampire strength and cunning will serve to protect you... as long as you do not consciously try to prevent it." He moved in a bit closer, lowering his voice. "That is why I threw you from the roof, young one. You are still too close to your mortal ways; had I not completely surprised you, you might have resisted the instinctual adaptation your body made to compensate for the fall... and then you may indeed have been injured! However, now that you have seen the results for yourself... perhaps it will be a bit easier the next time to simply let yourself react, and not interfere by trying to think too much!"

He stepped away from me and looked up, toward the roof. "I promised you a hunt, Robert, and a hunt we shall have! But first, you have to improve your position to observe! Get back onto the roof!"

I look at him stupidly for a moment, wondering how he expected me to get back to where we had been. I had already noted that there was no fire escape, no ladder... nothing I could see to aid me climbing back to where we had stood before he pushed me. And if I couldn't climb, I didn't know what he expected me to do, short of...

As I watched, he bent slightly at the knees, and then quickly pushed away from the ground. One second later, he was standing on the roof, looking down at me.

'Oooooooo-kay, ' I thought, realizing that he expected me to do the same thing in order to join him. As I hesitated, unsure what force I would need to use to make such a prodigious leap, he gestured impatiently with his hand, bidding me to come. Hoping that my body would intuit what I wanted it to do, I bent my knees and, looking up, jumped.

There was no sense of time stretching, no slowing so I could perceive everything that happened. No, this time I simply felt myself propelled away from the ground at a high rate of speed toward the top of the building... and then past it. I imagine the leap likely could have taken me to outside ledge of a six story building, though that's just an estimate. Reaching the highest arc of my jump, I hung in the air for a moment, able to see around the neighborhood to the streets surrounding the building. Then, what seemed like another moment later, I was on my feet in the middle of the roof. Having done it once seemed to have cured me of any need to stretch the experience out of proportion to actual time.

Ka'lath was beside me when I turned, having moved across the roof without seeming to move at all. "That was not bad, for a first attempt. However, I fear that you need a great deal of practice on landing where you intend, or, without meaning to, you will be jumping over buildings entirely!" I wondered if he might actually be joking, but I couldn't tell anything from his dour expression.

Unexpectedly, his focus turned inward for a moment, and he cocked his head as if listening to something far away. After a moment or two, his eyes returned to my face, and he gripped my left arm to steer me toward the portion of the roof that looked down on the sidewalk in front of the building.

"I promised that you would witness a hunt, and so you shall. Very soon, you shall see someone pass below, and when she reaches the entrance to the alley, her behavior will begin to seem rather strange. That is when you will know that the prey has been ensnared, and is only waiting for collection. Watch and learn, young vampire! Watch and learn!" Even as he said the last words, he was rushing from my sight, his form seeming to flow like liquid as it sped over the edge of the roof, presumably into the alley below.