Hot Tubs are Good for Confessions.

Having a book thrown at his head wasn't a normal way to start the morning.

Then again nothing was normal anymore.

"What is this?" Alexei grumbled as he rubbed his head.

"Help," Violet responded as she shut the door behind her.

Alexei took a few moments to gather all of his thoughts as he looked down at the book. It looked pretty plain, leather bound and nothing out of the ordinary. His eyebrows perked when he read the words on the cover. "How... is a book about dragons going to help me?" he muttered. Bishel dragons? What were those?

He shrugged it off as he made his way to the bathroom.

He sighed as he still noted his lack of reflection in the mirror. What was that yesterday? He had been bleeding. There was no doubt. And when he had checked the wound later that evening it was still there. Even now he could feel the stinging sensation.

Turning the water on, Alexei couldn't help but feel a tiny bit of comfort. At least there were some things that didn't change.

Or so he thought. That was until the curtain opened. His first reaction was to jump and throw whatever he could grab. He didn't have a chance to.

"Alexei! We have a problem!"

"Privacy! I would like some!" He snapped the curtain shut in defense, trying to usher the man away.

He missed the adventures, but he didn't miss the constant kinks in his life.

The curtains opened again. "We need to get out of here right now!"

The vampire narrowed his eyes as he turned up the hot water and splashed it on the man.  The Res yelped when it hit him. Pictor was a strange Res. If his name wasn't any indication of that, he had an unusual transformation ability that was triggered by hot water. Of inconviences it was probably one of the biggest a Res could have. Mental triggers were far more common, and his was simply referred to as a dysfunction. 

There was now a blue wolf sitting on the bathroom floor. The wolf snorted, "Alexei... we have a serious problem."

"It can wait until I'm done!"

***

"This is a problem," Alexei said as he found himself slowly backing up.

"I told you," Pictor snarled.

Those five imaginary hunters had finally showed up. They were serious hunters. Ones that had clearly been working for years. They had plenty of scars to prove it. And they meant business. And they were holding violet hostage.

Alexei was starting to miss the days where life was uneventful. Five years. Five long years of peace and quiet that he loathed every moment of. And now... now he wanted it all back.

"Look, vampire, you've been living on borrowed time for years. We're just going to clear the Crux name."

"Uh... I gathered," the vampire in question gathered. "But could you do me a favor--I mean as a former hunter--could you let Violet go?"

They laughed.

He should have expected that.  Which left him with very few options. They were probably going to "discipline" her  for associating with vampires. Which probably meant torture, and potentially death. And of course he could always finally face death and leave his friends to deal with the trouble.

But he couldn't do that.

He still had morals for some reason.

A sigh escaped him.

"Pictor do you think you could..." Alexei didn't have time to finish as one of the hunters suddenly launched themselves forward with a sword in hand. Alexei was unarmed, only half dressed, and completely unsure of what to do. So instead of thinking he reacted.

And ended up kicking the blade out of  the hunters hand and pinning him to the ground. He wasn't particularly sure how he had managed to do something so graceful, but he didn't have time to question it. The next hunter came at him.

This was entirely too much trouble.

***

Violet was cursing. Quite a bit.

Pictor was pacing, still in his wolf form.

Alexei was wrapping his wounds that refused to heal.

"We need to get you out of here," Violet said after her cursing spree was finished. "You need to read the book, and then we can ship you off and everything will be fine."

"How is a book about dragons going to help me?"

"It's not the book that's going to help you, it's the dragon."

"I'm... sorry?"

"You heard me."

"I think my confused comment still stands. How is a dragon going to help me do anything? Why exactly did you throw the book at my head in the first place? What's going on, Violet? You came here with the intention of killing me and now you've magically changed your mind because you saw me bleeding. Would you please give me a straight answer of some sort?" He shifted to a standing position. Everything hurt. Damn those hunters were good, and they'd probably be able to untie their ropes. They had to make sure that they were either gone or that they moved the hunters some place else.

Violet  shook her head slowly. "I... I can't really give you a straight answer. But you have to trust... me. Which I'm sure is impossible at this point but at least we have a common enemy."

"And we need to get as far away as possible," Pictor said suddenly. "We can't endanger the people at the library and... we're all targets now even if we were to "dispose" of the evidence. We don't have anymore time to hang around. We have to go, now."