And Wayne heard nothing but the rumble of his own engine.
Slowing his already tortoise pace down to that of a snail, Wayne ramped up his mental overclocking as he glanced around. A fireball started growing, flames licking the skin of his cupped hand harmlessly, all in the slow motion of his sped perception.
There it was. Wayne whipped his head towards another disturbance in the smoke. It was on the opposite side of the car. Scouting him out? Or more than one…
The human shaped figure disappeared into the smog. Even with time dilation, it vanished far too fast to get a decent look.
It had no elongated claws unlike the one at the fence, but the speed at which it moved was far beyond any regular human capabilities. There was no chance that it was a human. Likely not even a thrall. Not unless it was a very old and powerful thrall.
The lack of claws brought up disturbing implications. There were multiple strains active within the city, possibly working together. An event of this scale wasn’t from just a single cabal.
Seeing that the vampire was circling him, Wayne slammed his foot down on the accelerator. Smog parted before him as his vehicle surged forwards.
The vampire stood in the center of the road. His head turned in slow motion to face the oncoming Impala; a momentary deer-in-headlights look. That moment passed in an instant, even with Wayne’s enhanced perception. The vampire bared his teeth, showing off twin canines that protruded half-way down his lips.
Before Wayne could mow over the vampire, he jumped.
The roof dented inwards as something landed on top.
Wayne wasted no time in hitting the brakes.
A loud screech came from his uninvited passenger as the vampire rolled down his windshield. He stopped with his face pressed against the glass. One hand broke through the roof, arresting his momentum and keeping him from flying off the front.
Wayne lifted the fireball in his hand up to the hole. Flames erupted out the top of his car like a fountain of fire.
The vampire screamed and released his hold on the car’s roof.
A curse escaped Wayne’s lips as the flames spread over the hood of his car. The vampire had catapulted himself away, disappearing into the smoke-filled air. Clenching his fist, the fires extinguished before much damage could be done.
At least, before any burn damage. The hood was covered in person-sized dents, his window had cracked where the vampire rolled down it, and there was a hand sized hole in the center of the roof. He was starting to doubt the wisdom in bringing in his own car.
“Should have got a rental,” Wayne grumbled to himself.
As he looked around for any sign of the vampire, Wayne pressed his hand against the hole on the ceiling. He built up a large fireball and kept it hovering there, directing the heat upwards and away from his hand and his car.
If that vampire dared to come back, it shouldn’t be difficult to lash out with a tongue of flame in any direction.
For a moment, he actually considered setting the entirety of his car on fire. It was, after all, a well-known fact that vampires can’t catch things that are on fire.
But even if he kept the heat away from the engine and himself, losing concentration could result in his magical, heatless fire acting like regular fire, totaling the Impala in a few seconds. Potentially with him still inside. That was aside from the fact that he would have to leave the windows clear to see.
The windows were the biggest vulnerable point to something like a vampire. They had the strength to shatter them with their bare hands and the intelligence to use tools. If that vampire returned with a gun, he’d have to rely on his mental speed to erect a shield in time.
Hopefully, that vampire would decide to go for some softer targets before coming back. Wayne was a mage and had a vehicle separating him from the outside world. There had to be regular humans left in the city. It had only been three days and rounding up a good hundred thousand unwilling people wouldn’t be easy.
And there were some left. Though garbled, the message he had received from Sarah proved as much.
Shaking his head, Wayne continued his sedate trek through the city. Really, it shouldn’t take long. Normally, from the city-limits to Sarah’s house didn’t take longer than fifteen minutes. Lansing was not a large city by any standards.
The smog, the abandoned cars, and the vampires all forced him to take caution.
The fireball was extinguished as he actually had to grab the wheel. A bus sat almost perpendicular in the road, fully crashed into the entryway of a coffee shop.
Not exactly unusual given the state of the city.
More unusual was a second bus crashed into the buildings on the opposite side of the street, completely blocking off the road.
A loud crash from the direction he had come set Wayne’s hackles on end.
Turning his car around, Wayne made it a good twenty feet before he had to slam on his brakes. A car came crashing down from the sky. It skidded along the road, stopping only after giving the Impala a quick love tap.
A second landed next to the first, blocking the road.
Parking lots were still open on either side, but if the vampires were going to keep hunting him down, he would have to deal with them sooner or later. Wayne debated for a moment about the merits of staying in his car. If they were going to be dropping cars, he wasn’t too keen on being crushed.
Wayne shut off his engine, grabbed his backpack and tome, and opened the door. “Couldn’t you just take the hint and leave me alone,” Wayne grumbled as he got out. He wasn’t entirely certain if the vampires would hear him or not. They had enhanced hearing, but he was mostly grumbling to himself.
And they were a ‘they’ as far as he could tell. The two cars landed in quick succession. At least two vampires threw them. Those buses had not parked themselves, so there could be more than two, but he had been driving relatively slow.
His tome split open as Wayne started channeling magic into separate pages, preparing several more powerful attacks for an instantaneous release. He pointed his free hand around the road. Flame burst out of the ground before settling into faintly glowing embers, creating the shape of stylized flame emblems on the ground everywhere he pointed.
Everywhere just happened to be the sidewalks between the crashed cars and the buildings, a few points in the parking lot of a grocers, and at random intervals all along the street leading back towards the buses.
Traps set, Wayne turned all of his attention towards locating targets. He turned slowly, scanning every shadow in the thick smog. One shadow, behind the rooftop facade of the grocers, moved.
Wayne unleashed a stream of fire. It erupted from his hand like a stream of water from a fire hose. A very literal fire hose.
Within seconds, the entirety of the roof was in flames. A loud screech preceded a smoking person leaping from the roof.
Vampires, regardless of strain, tended to have a few distinct advantages over humans. Namely, strength and speed. Technically, one could say longevity as well, but that wasn’t much of a concern in a fight save for the potential experience a long life–or undeath–granted. Though Wayne couldn’t discern whether or not this vampire was the same as the one he had caught a glimpse of earlier, this one was not of the feral claw variety.
Any half-baked fire mage could easily negate the speed advantage of vampires through overclocking of the mind.
That just left strength.
Smoke trailed off the vampire as he ran, joining in with the ambient smoke in the air. He nimbly avoided all the traps in the grocers parking lot, thanks to his position above the grocers, no doubt. Both of his hands were clasped into tight fists.
Once the vampire came within reach, Wayne twisted on his foot. The high-speed punch went past his face, missing him by a hair. Wayne grabbed the arm and pulled downwards, angling all the momentum at the ground.
The vampire tried to catch himself by putting a foot out. Too far out. Wayne had no trouble kicking the vampire’s legs out from under him.