We Are Bulletproof

Gunji slowly rolled out of his bed, pushing the blankets back as he did. The wind was blowing the chimes he'd set up around the old farmhouse. Other than that, everything seemed so quiet and chilly. He reached up, running a hand over the side of his face, over his eye, into his mess of dark waves. His phone, on the nightstand, vibrated and lit up. He closed his eyes, as if that could block the sound from his hitting his ears. After a moment, he edged off the bed and padded over the table, picking the phone up.

Kiyo?

He looked at it with a slight tilt of the head. Then he read his snarky text message and frowned. Where were the others? The farmhouse, boarded up and in the middle of nowhere, was the ideal place to live together. But... that was before the group started turning on Gunji's perfect plan, creating chaos instead.

A creak came from the back of the house, a door opening. Gunji slipped the phone into his palm and moved into the hallway, then looked down the balcony onto the first floor.

"Ryder?" He grasped the railing with one hand. "Are you looking for Chul Soo?" 

Another day, another strange feeling in his gut.

After the child disappeared, Gunji felt the presence of another person but when he turned around, nobody else was there. He'd stayed inside the apothecary a little while afterward, waiting for the fog to finally fade. When he left, he thought he still felt the presence. Now he stood in front of the apothecary in the dark of the night, staring at it. While it looked like another innocent shop--the kind that out-of-towners laughed about and visited for it's "uniqueness," Gunji knew that true witches owned it. Real magic could be created with ingredients from this store, although the things they sold non-witches were made for little more than parlor tricks.

Truthfully, Gunji hadn't felt right since that feral wolf caught hold of him. Part of him felt like it was unraveling. For years--centuries--Gunji had kept it all together. He had furthered himself by concentrating on being the best at what he knew he was: a vampire. But now he felt something draining away. Leadership wasn't a good color on him; he was losing his place and he felt it, felt the underlings rocking him out from underneath them.

Part of him didn't care, though. That was the disconcerting part. He felt like he was longing for the deepest sleep but still had no strength to do it himself. What kept him going? This feeling? Gunji reached out, touching the door in front of him. The owners were long gone, probably asleep in their beds.

The familiar feeling grew stronger still and Gunji's fingers slid inward into a loose fist before he looked up.

Down the street, the silhouette of another person. A familiar body. A familiar feeling. Gunji lowered his hand and turned around.

"What are you looking for?"

Did you find it?

The wind tonight was unbearably strong. Gunji could hear it whipping through the eaves of the old house he'd moved into with Chul Soo and whatever ghouls currently stayed overnight for a feeding. It was one of those stilt houses, the sort that had a crawlspace under the house. Gunji had never been comfortable with it. Sometimes he sent a ghoul to check for anything strange. So far, nothing but it unsettled him. Even as he listened to the groans of the house and the whistle of the winds outside, he listened for anything slithering about beneath the house.

Nothing.

Ever since Chul Soo rescued him from the woods, Gunji had been feeling out of sorts. Nothing truly happened. He had been taken away from the situation before anything really terrible could happen. Part of him was relieved. Another, deeper, darker part of him--probably the dark vampiric part of him--wished... Gunji pulled his knees up closer to his chest.

The wind was really tearing it up out there. His eyes half closed as he pulled the blanket around his shoulders closer. It covered his head, his shoulders, and wrapped around his chest. Between his knees, he had propped a cup of warmed blood that he'd been sipping while he watched one of the three public access channels that came when one didn't pay for cable. Mostly, it was there to drown out the wind but it wasn't helping much. Gunji reached for the remote, fingers clumsily trying for the volume button. He watched the volume bar slide up, up, up...

Fwoom! A terrific blue spark outside. Then...

Darkness.

Hello darkness, my old friend. Yet it was not a friend tonight. Tonight, it suffocated. Gunji's gaze didn't move from the television, which was now black and blank in the dark room. Outside, he could hear the loose screen door smacking against the doorjamb. He still didn't move his gaze. A flash again. Lightning. Now he did glance toward the front window, the big glass one that rattled as thunder cracked overhead. Nothing.

But somewhere in the distance, he heard it. A howl. One lone howl. Usually when one wolf howled, others answered it. Gunji listened and waited. There were no others. Finally, he threw back the blanket and padded over to the front door, slipping his feet into the outdoor slippers he wore whenever he had to go outside but not away from the homestead. He opened the front door and pushed the creaky screen door open. It thwacked hard against the door jamb when he was halfway down the steps, shoved into it by another sudden hard gust of wind.

Squinting against the sting of wind, Gunji turned his head and stepped down off the last step. The breaker box was around back. He trudged past the house and toward the back, holding his sweater against his body as he did--a holdover from his days as a human. Vampires didn't get cold. Not the way a human did.

He was nearly there when he saw it--the form of a large, shaggy wolf, in the woods near the house. For a long moment, he stared at the wolf. Then he decided to ignore it and kept going, rounding the corner to the breaker box.

The forests were wild at night, the sound of unearthly beings slithering and wolves howling echoed off the hills and mountains that surrounded it. Gunji had come looking for something in particular.

A breeze picked up, sifting his hair from his eyes as he scanned the wilderness. Amongst those he had under his thrall, Gunji had a witch and there were certain ingredients she needed to create a potion for him. Having heard the rumors of how dangerous it was to linger in this particular part of the forest after dark, Gunji decided to venture out into the darkness on his own.

Normally, he would have employed the use of his righthand man but he was currently on a different job for Gunji. Since time was of the essence, this had become a necessity. The boy they captured over the weekend was proving quite... annoying and the errand boy that Gunji tried to contact ended up leading Gunji to a wrong number.

Either the errand boy succumbed to one of the other vampires in the Blood Ring or he was trying to hide from him.

Gunji wasn't happy about either outcome.

The mushrooms he was searching for were supposed to be close to the trunks of hemlock trees. Gunji approached one and he knelt down. Mushrooms.

He was just reaching out to pluck one from the ground when he heard the barest rustle in the underbrush nearby. Gunji froze in place. His gaze slid aside while his head remained in place. He felt the presence near him.

"Hello," he said softly, pleasantly, as if he were taking a stroll and casually managed to run into an old friend. However, he didn't know this person. All he knew was that he had the smell of wolf on him.