When I am silent, I have thunder hidden inside.

He floated over to the furnace, faking, for the Sheriff’s discover pay coming back that he was warming his hands over it. Even crouching down to feel it more evenly. Here the blanket wasn’t a hinderance. It conserved what it caught, hopefully helping him fake a human body temperature. Though he was not sure how long it would last. Maybe all night, maybe as soon as he shed the fabric. He just knew it was worth a shot.

Lingering by it even as he heard footsteps coming back to the room again. Only looking up. Reluctant to move as he knew he would’ve before. Though he did stand when he was rejoined. Seeing the clothes be plopped before him. His gaze going between them and the Sheriff himself. They were for him, taking the few steps to slip out the trousers. Dieter leaned forward to keep the blanket over his shoulders and slipped them on. The warmth he was still feeling making him more discerning on modesty. Though that had to be extinguished to put the shirt on.

             „Well as I said, you'll stay until the Doc is back and has taken a look at you.“ He makes clear then, taking away whatever fantasy thinking the blonde tried to convince himself of. „Looked like you were out cold back there. Whatever the reason you're without your clothes in the middle of nothin'. Did you even try lookin' for shelter or did you just give up?“ Even though the door leading outside still stood open and he did walk the opposite than to close it, relying only on his words and the subtle sternness in his voice to have. The Sheriff made his way over to the sturdy desk, walked behind it and pulled open one of the drawers to look inside.

             „Are you hungry?“ He was. It had already been late when the man had come running into the office all agitated and breathless, spewing some nonsense about a blood sucking creature he had seen in the storm. Paukka did yet have to eat anything for dinner yet leaving the blond unsupervised was out of the option and since he had sent his Deputy to rest and gather strength, it was only him that could keep an eye on the stranger. The drawer was carelessly closed again and his eyes landed on Dieter.

His hands clasped themselves over his thighs. Feigning a sadness he wasn’t sure exactly how to play. Only being able to make memories out of thin air in his mind to play behind his eyes as his gaze slipped off back to the wood grain below his feet. Forlornly, lost for a second, in a tiny voice more to himself than the sheriff. “She was so pretty too.” But he would be pulled back soon enough. Almost as if it didn’t hold as much weight as he hinted at.

He pursed his lips, eyebrows knitting together. This was less of a lie. The mention of food alone curdled his stomach out of reflex. He could feel the muscles cramping from last time he tried to eat what someone had tried to offer him. One who wasn't like him. Mustering a smile, well a weak one he answered. “Oh, I uh, no I’m sorry. Not much of an appetite.”

Dieter keeping his eyes firmly planted on the Russian. This one of frozen blood. “A happy detour I assure you. Though I have enjoyed our conversation.” His original focus could return. It’s nagging allowed back to sit nefariously behind his canines and yearn to push his lips up and away. Even if the only reason it had for the moment to do so was to speak. His eye brows sliding up pushing wrinkles into his forehead. Leaning forward the slightest bit at his waist. “You are certainly one of a kind, weaver. — If you will allow me to call you such.” Leaning back to usual posture. ”I did not lie when I said that I am out on a walk.” His face fell ever so. Composure washing over him once more. Momentary composure of consideration. A lifetime of being quiet staunchly quiet biting a reminder into him.

His smile back just as quickly, as if he were rectifying not introducing himself. ”I’m sure a walk is not a very satisfactory answer, my apologies.” His voice lowering into regret filled softness. It was all very benign win the wake of what fresh horror he allowed to grace his face. Horror he willingly and zealously let control his features. All the years of having that ability up his sleeve made sly in its use. Whisking it out at a moments notice then right back away. Voronov surely knew now what made Dieter. The bird above knowing just as well if he didn’t know before when it mocked him. Very brave indeed. Then the Swede flicked his eyes quickly to where he last remembered it perched. “I am out for the same reason many of these people are.” And back again. Only now did the wafts of herbs and spices made way around them on the shirting air. At least to Dieter their hands seemed more full of food in thin paper and plastic plates than trinket gifts.

There was no calm to be found for him. Not anymore, not after this. Though his gaze did wander from Dieter to the crowd, walking down their left, then walking down their right, it always shifted back to what was more creature than man. Something working behind those glacial eyes, a mind nearly put to rest throughout their conversation.

What was left of the human? How much of it? How much of it was taken or changed violently, through impact, or force, or time. Did the Witch have the privilege to wonder? The time to care? Did he have the heart to? Feeling the presence of shock still lingering, making its home within the space of his bones. Waiting for the right time to surge back upwards and bring with it everything uncomfortable.

The sky was silent. No moving of shadow, no whisper of wind. No sound of wings gliding or feet finding perch. Instead, the voices of the people around them in conversation rose nauseatingly into the forefront of it all. Cattle, unaware. He was the only one with a voice. He was the only one that could do something, anything, to warn them. To incite their leave and make them all go away. Help them. If he would not know better and would not know that there was no chance of everyone escaping the thing residing within the Swede.

Swallowing down hard, the fretting, that agitated jittering of his own heart, asked him, no, begged the witch, to just go. To leave them all and save himself. The frost returned through it. Crystalized within his chest, from which it traveled through his veins into his extremities. The iciness of his fingers nagged him and Alexander had the urge to pinch the cold away from the tip of his nose.

Man never calculated how much he needed anyway. Only remembering the feeling of their own stomachs full with the night’s feast, liquid was different. More condensed, with its thick viscosity. That alone would allot more to be taken, however a vampire of Dieter’s age made him difficult to sate so easily. Four to six liters was all a man held, and he could take so much more.

Still, the fun of this question never got old. He found new exciting ways to keep himself entertained each new time, this time being no different. It was novel this time to slip his hand underneath Voronov’s drawing it back up so the palm was upright just as it had been before, when his past was read just as easily as another mystic would tell the future. Gentle, barely there. Only needed to really have the physical presence of his own to put it back in place. His eyes fixed on the wrist barely showing between leather and his sleeve.

Only an act of god. An unfortunate circumstance at worst. Whatever mystery reason Adal sought this one for, was not congruous with why Dieter ended his life. Although he could not fault him for being angered by it. Making himself metabolize his appearance past his size. No considerable animal ate the dead, even vultures were not particularly heavy and they would be the largest to do so. But that even so much as the expression on his face displayed utter disgust. It spurred Dieter, thinking his detest was only from the fact that Dieter had fed before him. Curiously trading his head from one shoulder to another.

If Dieter could only know that Adal pretty much did not like anyone at all (not even himself. as much as he thought he did, or his ego tried to make him believe. Who knew that self hatred and superiority were two sides of the same coin). It simply was that most of the time he knew how to behave. Times where his mood dunked or his chains loosened or his eyes became the window to the world burning within him, were rare. Moments like these, when it was just two men and one of them thinking himself hit by venom he himself spit. He that is without sin was to cast the first tone. Only that people who lived in a glass house should shut the fuck up. He did not, of course. He was above all that nonsense. The walls of the residential tower that once housed his kin were made of marble and gold. No wood nor stone.

Something riled him even more in the movement of the other man, who stood not small but still did stand smaller in front of the brute. Adal picked up on the leisure with which the blonde carried himself both while sitting and while standing, the way his fingers moved slowly yet deliberate enough to fix the wrinkles of his clothes. Not that there was a lot of fixing to do, with how ruined the fabric was by blood.

             „That is right. You didn't.“

As if this man could ever steal from him. No, it was not like that. He could have whatever he had taken from the dying that left him so euphorically drunk, though Adal did judge the pleasure found in the taste of blood as drink, as he was considering the messy kill that he was sure he could have executed far quicker and much more silently.

Dieter, himself had many guesses. Ones he could’ve guess only after seeing them in himself had such a thing happened to him. And others he nipped from those he had come in contact with. Their blood telling him everything about them. Such as the man he just had, who could not stand the tapping of fingers. Minute details that clung to the back of throat to better get at his spine. But not one of these ideas broke his statuesque unreadable face. Standing in perfect patience for an answer he hoped would come.

After all, the subjects of such observation were rarely told why when their watchers scribbled furiously in their notes. They were only to know they would be watched. To act as normally as possible. To tell when things got uncomfortable. Perhaps that was what Adal was hoping Dieter would turn into. A mouse. Control group or not Dieter had had this happen before, and he had not been reduced to such a fragile nimble thing then either.

As if he was settling his own feathers from the thought the Swede readjusted himself, moving his arms behind his back. Shifting the fabric to sit more comfortably. “I’m more familiar with the behavior of bats, but I doubt one could become as he is.” Obvious when his attention traded mid sentence between the two. Oscillating back and forth. It would have made sense, had Dieter been speaking in a small group of peers at a dinner party. Making sure in involve all present in his immediate view to avoid neglecting respect for their attention. “I do not doubt his level of intelligence. Although animals do not need such to know what makes me. A third cup may be at hand for you.”

His shifting continued. He seemed as if while it subsided, whatever fold he still had in his sleeve hadn’t flattened and he was between acceptance and annoyance with it. A feather still out of place. But it travelled up, inhaling as his head curled downward, more like someone stifling a sneeze into their coat. Yawning.

In the silhouette of the foggy far off light behind him, and it’s twinkling high notes from water a window light alike. His ears seemed to be pulled back, dragging, seemingly, his facial features with them. One would be forgiven for their remiss in neglecting how his features changed as easily as wet clay. His cheeks sharpening without even so much as a whetstone and nose becoming nothing a human would be born with. What a chiropterologist would call, leaf nosed. Looking temporary sharper, animalistic, overall and not of nature’s form for men. If they said they were watching his eyes. How his pupil’s swelled behind their shackles of blue. Even if the weak light from the stall illumated him poorly. Bringing his face back to its proper alignment slipping it back in the same motion.

Further more, the Swede gave explanation to why the raven might have behaved that way, rattled and rude, in a way. Or warning. Was Dieter's presence simply that much? Janking at an animal's natural instincts to not sit idly and watch, but warn and in most cases flee? It was a lot further that his thoughts could have gone, a lot more guessing without really reaching a point of knowing. A wasting of the time he had so much of.

Then, even though he should be long adapted to the winter cold, the slightest shiver ran down his spine. He was met with a sinking feeling that something was off settled in as a slow aching grew in his chest, that felt like the kindling of a cold fire. Within seconds the discomfort bloomed into a searing pain. His heart suddenly felt tighter and tighter as it struggled to beat while simultaneously accelerating, the pain and tightness continued to intensify as his breathing became heavier and turned into short breaths and the tension striking his muscles through his nerves burned in that same cold fire that was not supposed to be.

Within the blink of the eye he caught it.

He saw it. Knew it and still was unable to keep control over that ancient body that had seen so much and knew of things that would shake most. A body carrying a mind that even after all this time, feared death. He was thrown into extremis. He believed he was about to die and that his life could be measured in mere seconds

The chilling horror of the nearly instantaneous realization that what stood there before him could easily kill me. It lasted a fraction of an instant, a heart-stopping second. The rest was the cold, mechanical observation of the parabolic trajectory of teeth and claws. There would be a cold beauty in the perfection of movement needed for a kill in precision. Similarly slow, his hands would dance in a last effort to defend. In that moment, his five fingers were but foreign yet faithful objects, mindless and irrational, and slow, far too slow to save him.

Upiór. Strigoi. Vrykolakas. Vampyre

Alexander swallowed. Only slowly regaining out of his prey animal stupor did the tension melt from him and his body resume a proper posture. The warmth digested from the cups of spiced warm wine were lost to him now. He could not even bring himself to look away from the man before him. Suddenly so much made sense.

Dieter keeping his eyes firmly planted on the Russian. This one of frozen blood. “A happy detour I assure you. Though I have enjoyed our conversation.” His original focus could return. It’s nagging allowed back to sit nefariously behind his canines and yearn to push his lips up and away. Even if the only reason it had for the moment to do so was to speak. His eye brows sliding up pushing wrinkles into his forehead. Leaning forward the slightest bit at his waist. “You are certainly one of a kind, weaver. — If you will allow me to call you such.” Leaning back to usual posture. ”I did not lie when I said that I am out on a walk.” His face fell ever so. Composure washing over him once more. Momentary composure of consideration. A lifetime of being quiet staunchly quiet biting a reminder into him.

His smile back just as quickly, as if he were rectifying not introducing himself. ”I’m sure a walk is not a very satisfactory answer, my apologies.” His voice lowering into regret filled softness. It was all very benign win the wake of what fresh horror he allowed to grace his face. Horror he willingly and zealously let control his features. All the years of having that ability up his sleeve made sly in its use. Whisking it out at a moments notice then right back away. Voronov surely knew now what made Dieter. The bird above knowing just as well if he didn’t know before when it mocked him. Very brave indeed. Then the Swede flicked his eyes quickly to where he last remembered it perched. “I am out for the same reason many of these people are.” And back again. Only now did the wafts of herbs and spices made way around them on the shirting air. At least to Dieter their hands seemed more full of food in thin paper and plastic plates than trinket gifts.

Because unlike them the rain were welcome for Dieter. Obviously to shield himself from passersby, but more to know for sure anyone wouldn’t venture out. Tonight’s storm being a particularly torrential one giving Dieter his best chance in months to feed, a godsend of fortune, ending with the case scenario. Caught, thankfully not as the monster he hid. “Oh, I’m sure I’ll be fine.” In truth he didn’t want to be seen by any medical professional. Not too sure what someone with knowledge might find in him. What lurked in his mouth between feedings, or in what ways his anatomy had changed, or will change. But he knew what diversion he took from the human biology might be found in little increments. His lowering body temperature as digestion took place in burning off what the cattle had given him. His strange steady appearance despite being found in rain, naked. It would only mean he would be subjected to Christian intervention, which he assumed, would hurt if it worked. Man knowing God surely took no pleasure in knowing whatever Dieter was walked the same lands as his cherished creations.

Though nothing that could afflict a human was set in him. Supposing his ruse was only going well if he was thought of like that. That his gaunt appearance that came with the insane intervals of fasting and binging that he had been reconciled to helped. Had he more meat on his bones, he wouldn’t look so willowy sitting forward slumped over his legs as he was. Hence, a sick diagnosis, by first glance standards. “He’s got more important patients to see.” Flashing the sheriff a weak smile of reassurance, a light in darkness. Though it was that of an anglerfish.

Some would sit down, maybe, trying to remember if the young man had been any more eager or if he had always been the same. Gruff and harsh, not putting on a mask. It was that exact fact that he did not like pretending that caused the ire of the others. They knew there was not to bargain with him, or to get him to do whatever they wanted. Deep down, beneath all those walls of stone, there might be a heart. It showed sometimes in silent ways. It showed that he was not the type to stand only in black or only in white. As there were times where he simply strode past those asking for help, thinking it not his business or not as great of a problem that it needed his intervention. Because he was kinder than he was good and not the other way around.

At least that was how he saw himself. The one thing that Paukka knew for certain was that the color of the world had long said its goodbyes to him. It was not so much a choice as it was his duty to make sure that this man did not die, even if he looked like he was on the verge of it.

The doctor to take a look at him even if the man had said he did not want it.

With a last glance at the tall figure resembling the image of the pale rider, or someone close to whose name was high up the list, the Sheriff turned and left the building without another word. Walking over to the house and up the timbered wooden stairs leading up to the first floor from the outside, to a sparsely-furnited room. A few moments later he emerged again, dressed in fresh (dry) clothes and carrying with him another set, pressed against his chest to shelter from rouge drops of rain falling, tickled off their perch of roofs and branches by the still strongly blowing wind.

Back on the porch, it was the sound of his boots and the clinking of the spurs that announced his approach again. A more steady pace this time. He had enough time to think and to decide on how to proceed with those strange happenings.

Turning around the corner and into sight, Paukka half-expected to find the man dead in his office. There was no telling whether that blood-sucking thing had gotten to him too. Though too calm for a confrontation, perhaps it was simply shock that he was dealing with. Or denial. People were good at that.

Slowing his pace, not to startle the blond stranger, he placed the stack of dry clothes on the corner of the heavy writing desk. Only then did he turn to face Dieter again.

He floated over to the furnace, faking, for the Sheriff’s discover pay coming back that he was warming his hands over it. Even crouching down to feel it more evenly. Here the blanket wasn’t a hinderance. It conserved what it caught, hopefully helping him fake a human body temperature. Though he was not sure how long it would last. Maybe all night, maybe as soon as he shed the fabric. He just knew it was worth a shot.

Lingering by it even as he heard footsteps coming back to the room again. Only looking up. Reluctant to move as he knew he would’ve before. Though he did stand when he was rejoined. Seeing the clothes be plopped before him. His gaze going between them and the Sheriff himself. They were for him, taking the few steps to slip out the trousers. Dieter leaned forward to keep the blanket over his shoulders and slipped them on. The warmth he was still feeling making him more discerning on modesty. Though that had to be extinguished to put the shirt on.