He took another capsule from the bottle and placed it in the bowl, seizing up his grinder and set to work at turning that little capsule into a little pile of dust. When he was happy with the mess he’d made, he started all over again until the bowl was full and his fingers reeked of garlic.

“What are you doing?” a voice behind him asked curiously.

“None of your business,” Addison Gauntless muttered, scooping up little handfuls and watching the grains trickle away between his fingers.

John Hawthorne came to his side anyway and watched him at work, furrowing his eyebrows disapprovingly. The old man took off his glasses and cleaned them with the bottom of his shirt before slipping them back into place with a frown.

“I don’t like this,” he stared at the contents of the bowl and wrinkled his nose just a little, “What exactly are you going to do with it?”

“Fling it in their faces,” Gauntless smirked to himself, his eyes on his work, “I’d imagine it would bloody well hurt.”

He’d come up with this ingenious idea while he had been in the shower. Gauntless always had lots of good ideas when he was in there, the water cleansing away all the impurities of life that had coated him. He always thought best while he stood there becoming purified, analysing every possible outcome in his chase to destroy all the dark forces of the world.

“Isn’t it a little extreme?” John asked with concern, imagining how painful it would be for the vampires to fall victim to that cloud of dust. Not only would it eat away at their skin but surely they’d breathe in some of the particles and collapse breathlessly as the garlic corrupted their lungs to froth.

“No more extreme than sunlight or shoving a wooden stake into their chest cavity,” Gauntless dismissed his mentor’s worries, uncaring of how horrible and how painful his new weapon would turn out to be.

“No, I’m sure this goes against everything we’re supposed to be,” John insisted on arguing, “there is an etiquette to follow. They know about the stake and the hammer and they have their enhanced strength to combat us; it’s a matter of fair game. They have their weapons and we have ours.”

“Exactly,” Gauntless pondered his little concoction, “we all know what side does what. But do the Russians tell the Americans about the true extent of their nuclear capabilities? Do suicide bombers go around telling the police the time and place of detonation? No, of course not. They keep their weapons a secret and so should we! No wonder we’re losing.”

“We’re not losing,” Hawthorne scolded him, “Their numbers have greatly reduced and there is only two of us. They may have the weight of numbers but we have done their side more damage than they have hurt us. The only one losing is you. You are letting that kid get at your ego. Let it go.”

“No I shall not,” Gauntless glared back at him. How could he let the thought of that irritating teenager escape his consciousness? The kid was in his thoughts more than he should be and it made him feel sick to his stomach every time he remembered the kid’s blonde hair in the glow of the streetlamps, his pale skin shining in the moonlight.

“You are letting the escape of one boy cloud your judgement and mess with your head,” he was reprimanded, “I’ve had vampires escape on me before but I never let it bother me. There is always another chance to get them again, a chance that you will surely miss if you keep obsessing like this.”

“I’ll get that little runt,” Gauntless vowed, picking up a handful of the dust and instead of letting it trickle between his long fingers, he gripped it in the palm his hand, wishing for a day that he would fling it into the kid’s face and watch him splutter and writhe in pain before his eventual death.

“Leave him alone,” John commanded, “he’s too young to be killed anyway.”

“You have no idea how young he is,” he pointed out, “he may be one of the immortal ones without a talisman. He could be centuries old and you’d leave him be because oh, he’s only a child. He freaked out when he saw the dawn.”

“But the vampire that turned to dust threw a talisman at him,” Hawthorne argued back, “Fulton told me so. From my experience that sort of practise runs in families. And because the older vampire was so willing to sacrifice himself then I think it really is the case that one silly little teenager left his talisman at home.”

Addison stayed silent but he raged inwardly. He’d never lost before, never had someone escape on him. While John Hawthorne had missed Jan Vasile time and time again, he on the other hand always got his man. They’d all been killed. Except this one boy. Just this one insignificant, worthless piece of undead trash. And the thought of it drove him mad.

“He’ll grow older eventually,” he said finally, “I’m still going to get him. I never lose my man, never.”

Hawthorne shook his head sadly and placed a hand on the younger man’s shoulder, “Let it go, Addison. There had to be a time when you failed. Call it a learning experience if you may.”

Addison stared at his mentor’s hand, an old hunger burning away at him as he caught a rare glimpse of the ring that Hawthorne possessed. A lady’s wedding ring sat snugly on the old man’s pinkie finger, its single white diamond twinkling away innocently. Gauntless knew very well what that ring was, what it could do and  everyday he longed to claim it for his own. But knowing John he’d have to wait until he lay cold and dead before he could pry it from his finger.

Hawthorne seemed to realise the ring was within his gaze for he didn’t keep his hand upon that shoulder for very long, sticking both hands into his pockets stubbornly so his student wouldn’t be tempted to steal it. With that ring Hawthorne could sense souls, or more importantly, who did not have a soul. While Gauntless relied on his instincts and his ability to read people, the old man’s vampire total doubled his own simply because he could tell within a mile if there was someone undead wandering around.

But every time Addison had asked to share, John always refused. He knew that if he ever surrendered the precious band of gold then he would never see it again, and he would probably never see Gauntless again either; he’d be off around the world to destroy every single vampire in existence. And he would be off to pin down that boy so he could dump the garlic dust into his young face.

John Hawthorne would be absolutely right of course but Gauntless was far more ambitious than his mentor thought. It was not enough for him to destroy all of the undead, he wanted to find the leader of them all. That was his goal. The vampire hunters knew that the leader was a Vasile, they’d heard it from the lips of his dying followers. But while John believed the leader was his own enemy, Jan, his student believed that there must be more than one Vasile. Regardless, if he ever claimed that ring he would hunt that son of a bitch down and ram a stake right through his heart never mind just into it. What a message it would send out to all his followers, oh how they would fear him then.

“The only learning experience will be for them when they get a whiff of this stuff,” Gauntless smirked to himself. He thought for a moment and poured out a little of the dust onto a handkerchief, dribbling a few drops of water onto the mess.

“What did you do that for?” Hawthorne asked with concern.

“I’m wondering if we made bottles of it whether it would work like chloroform,” Gauntless explained, “If we could… now that would be very effective.”

“Addison… I don’t think…”

“Exactly. You’re not thinking,“ he snapped back, “You’re too old to be fighting against their enhanced strength now aren’t you? Do you really think they’ll go easy on you because you’re ancient. They’ll snap you in half, old man. But if you put a handkerchief over their faces like that you’d knock them unconscious and then you could use your pitiful little stake.”

“It’s not entirely ethical,” John was a stickler for tradition, “It’s like scoring a goal before the keeper is ready. It’s cheating.”

“Don’t think of it as cheating,” he countered,  “think of it as a strategic advantage. It’s their weakness, not ours, and we should be tearing into it. You know I’m right, you just don’t like admitting I’m right.”

“It’s not that,” his mentor sighed, “I just sometimes worry that you are worse than they are. We’re supposed to be fighting for good. They hurt people and we’re stopping them from killing anyone else. But you… seem to enjoy killing them.”

“It’s not wrong to take pleasure from my life’s work,” he replied, “I don’t like killing. But I like a job well done.”

Hawthorne snorted, “A job well done? Understatement of the century right there.”

He didn’t bother to reply. He let the old man think he’d won and went back to his work, selecting a new bowl and emptying dozens of other packets of garlic supplements onto the table. But while he worked, his mind’s eye remembered the face of that young man, wiping away the blood on his chin with his sleeve, his red eyes glinting. And then with his mind’s eye he imagined the day he’d finally catch up with the kid again and kill him. There would be no benevolent interference next time, no vampire to sacrifice himself. Next time he’d make sure it was just the two of them and he knew that he win.

For Addison Gauntless always got his man.