The Sinner Hunting System

"What?"

Raphael looked at her the way you look at someone who has just said something that doesn’t quite parse.

"Being bitten isn’t pleasant."

Elena felt, dimly, that she was being looked down on again, but she nodded with conviction anyway.

"You saved my life. Offering a bit of blood is nothing. I’d give you money if you needed it!"

She said it as a gesture, an expression of resolve. She didn’t expect Raphael to nod immediately.

"Good. Lend me some then. Just a little. I’ll pay you back."

"...Ah?"

Elena hadn’t anticipated him actually taking her up on it.

She scratched her cheek, slightly flustered, and obediently took out her small wallet. She counted out a stack of bills and handed them over.

One thousand five hundred Colin.

Raphael almost laughed. He had never encountered a witch this guileless, and a wealthy one at that.

He took the money, looked at the amount, and felt something catch in his memory.

Fifteen hundred. The monthly subsidy the municipality had given the Black Truffle Monastery to feed fifty children during the famine years.

He put the money away quietly and looked at her.

"Alright, Elena Silva. I’ll tell you this much, your fate is already tangled up with the extraordinary world, more than you realize.

Getting familiar with it sooner rather than later is probably better. Enemies don’t give you special consideration just because it’s your first time."

Elena looked at him, sensing something weighted in the words, not yet sure what to do with it.

Before she could think it through, his right hand came around to the small of her back.

"Don’t try to move."

He pulled her in.

Warmth against her skin, a faint prickling sensation, her face pressing against solid muscle, she was surrounded entirely by his presence and she registered, belatedly, that he was still bare from the waist up.

She turned her head without thinking, and her lips made contact with his chest, leaving a clear lipstick mark on the muscle, conspicuous and accusing.

She ducked her head immediately.

Then, remembering why this was happening, she closed her eyes, tilted her neck sideways with the expression of someone walking calmly to their own execution, and exposed the pale line of her throat.

The mood, the closeness, the warmth, it was doing something strange to her senses, blurring the edges of things, making the whole moment feel slightly unreal. Like a scene from one of her novels briefly made physical.

Sharp, cold teeth found her skin without hesitation.

"Ah — ngh..."

The pain was colder than she’d expected and considerably more present than anything she’d read.

Sharper than a needle. It pulled her back from the haze immediately and deposited her in the straightforward reality of the situation.

She was being bitten on the neck by a vampire in her rental room, and it hurt, and there was nothing romantic about the mechanics of it whatsoever.

Raphael kept his control. He didn’t take much, this wasn’t his first time feeding, and the craving wasn’t going to overpower his judgment.

A few seconds, the edge of the blood thirst blunted, the Blood Frenzy state beginning to recede. He released and stepped back.

He wiped his mouth with his usual expression, the way someone wipes their mouth after a meal they found adequate.

Elena swayed. Not badly, she’d lost a small amount, not enough to matter physiologically, but enough that she had to find her balance after he let go, shifting left and right before her legs agreed to cooperate.

"Ugh... I didn’t think it would hurt that much. Does this mean every single scene in those novels where it’s all pleasure and no pain is completely made up...?"

She pressed her hand to her neck, face set in the specific expression of a person whose cherished belief has been disproven by direct experience.

Raphael laughed quietly. He understood now where the eagerness had come from, and the strange excitement.

"Novels tend toward the romantic. This is real life."

He made a small helpless gesture with his hand.

Elena sighed and reached up to check her neck again. No wound, already closed.

"That’s strange..."

She murmured it, then noticed him moving toward the window and followed.

What she saw outside stopped her.

The sky was full of helicopters. Red-and-blue livery, IFSA markings visible even at altitude, she counted at least ten, spread across the city in a pattern that suggested they intended to cover everything.

"The wealthier the city, the heavier the IFSA presence. The border regions don’t get the same treatment."

Raphael leaned on the railing, watching them with an expression of complete relaxation.

Elena considered this.

"They’re looking for you, aren’t they."

He shook his head.

"Not specifically. They’re looking for whoever caused the disturbance. As for you, don’t worry.

What happened today isn’t something an ordinary person could have produced. Someone may come to ask questions, but nothing more. Say as little as possible and it’ll pass."

He swung himself up onto the balcony railing and sat on it with his back to the open air.

"As for me, I’ll stay out of sight for now. I have something to investigate. I’ll be back tonight. Stay in, don’t go out until things settle down."

He stepped off the railing and dropped, landing cleanly on the railing of the building across the narrow gap between them.

One more jump, then he was working his way down, crossing back and forth between the two buildings, descending to street level in a few seconds and drifting into the alley below without hurrying.

Elena leaned on the balcony railing, one hand under her chin, watching until his figure disappeared.

She thought about the ability, and the kind of danger that always came with it.

Then she thought about the hug.

She hadn’t processed it properly until now. Not one, not two, multiple times, across the course of one afternoon.

Her face went progressively warmer. Her eyelashes fluttered.

"Ugh... this is so embarrassing..."

She made a small, muffled sound, buried her face in her arm, and stamped her feet a few times in small rapid succession.

---

Raphael moved through the back streets and narrow lanes, using the enclosed geometry of the alleys to stay out of the helicopters’ sightlines, weaving through the parts of the city that didn’t photograph well.

He took the keys from his pocket. One was dull black iron, completely plain.

The other was brass, an unusual shape, with a short line of text stamped into the bow.

*All prosperity casts a shadow.*

He read it twice.

"That sounds like a passphrase."

He looked at the keychain they were attached to. A small laminated card, a gym membership, with a miniature barcode and the gym’s name printed under it.

"Useful. This gives me an address, potentially. And whatever he kept at home might connect back to the black market supply chain."

The corner of his mouth moved upward. He followed the lane in the direction of the gym.

The afternoon moved into evening without announcement.

The sky greyed out, the sun dropped behind the buildings, and sometime around that transition the sound of the helicopters thinned and then stopped.

IFSA had ended the active search.

Raphael straightened up, pulled his hood down, and walked out onto the main street. The gym wasn’t difficult to find.

He pulled the hood back up, curved his spine, let his shoulders drop, a reasonable impression of the greasy, skulking posture he’d been chasing all afternoon, and walked up to the front desk.

"Hello. I’d like to check my transaction history. I think someone may have been using my membership card without my knowledge."