jagdaufseher (2025)

Light Mode

It’s a chilly night.

Rubber soles strike against worn-down cobblestone, steps halting as their owner stops to adjust his parka. He takes the time to zip up his parka, cold hands settling within its outer pockets afterwards. A cold gust of night air blows from afar, bringing hints of an all-too-familiar scent with it. 

Eilhart scowls. Hunting had been prohibited for years within the area — an order directly from the Prince after he’d been granted responsibility over the nearby Elysium. As such, keeping peace within the area was also his job, which meant that any delinquent lick overstepping their boundaries was now his problem, too.

He turns his head towards the source of the scent, glancing at the silent grove from which it came from. It was mostly empty — only populated by a few delinquent teenagers and the dead that called it home.

With a huff, he begins walking towards the cemetery, breath coming to a halt as he focuses on searching, tuning out as many distractions as he could.

Amidst the various scents that wafted through the cemetery — grass, decay, whatever  — was the distinctly metallic scent that he had been looking for. He could tell that it was fresh, and that far too much of it had been spilled for the wind to pick up its traces amidst everything else. A headache and a half for him, most likely. 

Keeping his steps light so as to not draw any attention to himself, he walks over to an unlit corner of the cemetery, encased in shadow by the trees that decorated the grove. As his undead eyes adjusted to see beyond the dark, he could faintly make out two figures, both seemingly men, one far younger than the other. The scent of spilled blood immediately floods his senses, causing him to swallow involuntarily as he quickly tamps down his own never-ending thirst.

The younger man had not noticed him yet — Eilhart could see his pale hand lifting something up towards his face, obscured in shadow. With the faintest of footsteps, he steps into the alley, one footstep after another, imperceptible to the younger man until his hand reaches for the young man’s shoulder, turning him around to face the priest.

“Huh—?!”

Startled, the young man snarls defensively, thin arms swinging towards Eilhart in an attempt to fight off his previously-unseen interruptor. Vitae rushes through once-dried up veins as the priest bats the strike away almost immediately, following up with a solid kick to the boy’s center as he pins him down with one foot.

Golden eyes squint at the sight beneath him, a scrawny blood-soaked fledgling struggling against his hold and the mauled corpse that lay right next to him. The boy ceases his struggling once their eyes meet, recognition apparent in his eyes.

“...Eil?” The fledgling asks, licking his bloodstained lips as he props himself up by the elbows, still pinned down by the firm hold the leather shoe has on his chest. “Is - Is that you?” Whatever malice that the boy had quickly dissipates, replaced with apparent relief and confusion in his voice. The priest can feel each heave of the boy’s chest as he waits for his response, dried-out lungs pretending to be overexerted.

“...What is this?” Eilhart asks, squinting. He tries to push the overpowering scent of iron away from his mind.

“Uh,” The boy pauses, unsure how to respond. “I’m eating…?”

“You can’t hunt here.” The priest keeps his hold on the boy steady, while letting his ears attune to the far-off murmurs of the handful of the grove’s other visitors. He keeps his voice deliberately low, in order to avoid drawing any unwanted attention to the pair.

The boy looks at him, bewildered and confused. “You - you didn’t tell me — “

Eilhart cuts him off by stepping into his chest harder, a thinly veiled threat from the older vampire. “...I did, Theo. When you first settled down here, I can vividly recall telling you not to.”

He did. In fact, he told the boy multiple times, even giving him weekly reminders not to feed in the area, in the event that the fledgling might not have been listening to him that intently. And his worries were well-justified.

Theo winces, as if he had finally recalled the priest’s words. “A-ah. Sorry…”

“...An apology won’t fix this mess,” he gestures to the corpse, still quite as dead as ever. “Murder aside, how do you expect to clean this up?”

The boy huffs, digging his elbows deeper into the dirt as he readjusts himself. “...It’s just one dude. Nobody has to know. Could throw him into a ditch or feed him to the pigs in that one farm — Ow!”

Eilhart barely notices it when he digs his heel  — stomping, almost — deeper into the boy’s chest in apparent anger. He immediately catches himself, though, taking a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself before continuing, “...And you expect to be able to carry that body out of here without attracting attention whatsoever?”

Theo looks away, uncertain. “I…I guess not.” As brilliant as the boy was as a mage, his foresight had always been somewhat lacking.

Eilhart sighs, defeated. “...I’ll get the groundskeeper to deal with the body.” He takes another look at the corpse, observing the damage. Arms riddled in bites, skin ripped apart to reveal red flesh and yellow fat underneath, drying blood streaked across the corpse’s body. The scent of petrichor and blood mixes in the dirt. It’s hard to ignore.

“Y-you will?” The boy perks up, relief flooding his voice. The priest removes his foot from the boy’s chest, allowing him to scramble upright. He eyes the boy’s sweater, clearly soaked in blood even in the dim light. 

“...I would rather not get the Sheriff involved in this,” He’d already been under the Prince’s scrutiny for taking in the boy — a supposed Sabbat traitor — and only really got away with it due to a boon that the Prince had owed him a long, long time ago. “...And I’m quite sure you don’t, either.”

“Y-yeah…”

The priest shrugs off his parka, passing it onto the fledgling. “Here. I can’t let you walk around like that, either.”

The boy looks down, only now realizing the amount of carnage that had splattered onto him. “Oh – right, sorry.” The older kindred wonders if this was a normal occurrence for the boy, a question he stores for later. That’s a headache to deal with another time. 

Theo shrugs it on without much fanfare, its size immediately dwarfing the fledgling. His thin frame is easily swallowed up by the parka, making his sickly features far more apparent to your average onlooker. Regardless, it did its job, hiding most of the drying blood within its dark fabric.

“We’d best get out of here soon,” Eilhart says, golden eyes trained to the distance. The graveyard had gone silent, leaving the two kindred alone in the dark. “I expect you to be at the church when I get back, got it?” 

The fledgling cocks his head, idly shuffling his feet in the damp grass. “Can’t you just, like, phone the guy?”

“Too much of a risk considering that we could be dealing with a possible murder investigation.” the older kindred replies, once again staring down at the corpse near their feet. He’s tempted to rummage through the body to check for identification, but he’d rather not mess with it any further, as mangled as it was already. 

“Just go already.” He punctuates his words with a particularly stern tone that he only had reserved for dire situations, knowing that the fledgling would tail him instead of doing what he had asked.

The boy flinches to attention at his words, a supernatural fear creeping on the edge of his mind. “I’ll, uh, see you later, then,” he spits out before pacing off into the distance in a hurry. The priest keeps an eye on him until the scrawny figure disappears into the darkness. 

He’ll have to give him a thorough talking-to later, but that’s a problem for another time. He’s still got a corpse to deal with, after all.