she said, "where you wanna go?
how much you wanna risk?

If Piper's father could have seen the way the young woman simply existed in the city tonight, the young blonde was sure that he would most certainly have had a heart attack. Not only was the young woman very much alone, but it was after dark - which was a situation entirely frowned upon by the elder doctor who had treated one too many injuries triggered by the supernatural entities that lived within the city. No, Piper's father had prepped his three daughters of the abundance of precautions that one must take to ensure safety when you were merely human. Silver. Iron. Sunlight. Never being alone. Those were lessons Piper learned before she could fully talk. And she heeded those warnings - most of the time. But tonight - God, for one night! - she didn't want to think about those things. She didn't want to be questioning every entity that came into her little bookshop, wondering what they were. Fae were easiest to identify, their pointed ears giving them away. Vampires, of course, didn't come into her shop as long as it was daylight. She could never guess witches or Weres though. Though she would never admit it to her father, Piper enjoyed the guessing. It had become a game of sorts, to guess and wonder if she was right. Piper, unlike her father, hardly feared the things that lurked in the night. After all, she'd made it thus far in life without anything bad happening. She would argue that she did just fine at protecting herself.

Piper was hardly as attentive tonight as she might have normally have been as she locked up the bookshop. No, she'd placed her headphones in her ears, the wireless earbuds hidden behind the waves of her blonde hair. Those tiny devices pumped music into her ears, the beat of the melody causing the woman to bob her head as she listened. She hummed that melody so low under her breath as she turned off the lights and stepped out onto the street. She was lost in her own thoughts as she twisted those keys into the lock and closed her shop for the evening. The street lamp above her shop flickered a dull purple above her head, the bulb barely hanging on to its life, and yet Piper was not afraid of the dark. The youngest of her sisters, Piper was easily the most daring of the three girls. The other girls so bought into the fear that their father instilled in them, and yet Piper had always sought out the same adventure that she'd only read about in the thick books she always carried upon her. She wasn't afraid of the creatures that went bump in the night, instead she longed for an adventure that might come along with truly meeting one. She would hear her father practically shouting in her head - Stay on the well lit pathways, Piper! - as she took that shortcut towards her home down the alleyway behind her shop. That music in her ears prevented her from hearing the distinct sound of footsteps behind her, the young woman remaining entirely oblivious to the being that stalked her in the night, at least until the vampire's icy grip grabbed at her wrist and threw her against that brick wall.

The motion caused one of those earbuds to fall out of her ear, the blonde being so violently jerked back to reality as her head collided with the brick. For a moment, Piper remained still, the stars dancing in front of her eyes as she struggled to regain her composure enough to observe what exactly was happening. That singular moment was enough for the vampire in front of her to grab ahold of those blonde locks and wrench her head to the side, exposing the pale ivory skin of her neck. The man's teeth had just broken her skin when the young girl reacted, her arm flying up to connect the silver bracelet upon her wrist with the skin of the vampire's face. At the same time, Piper's knee jerked up to collide with the man's inner thigh. He released her at once, stumbling back to hold his hand on his burned flesh. "You little bitch!" The vampire shouted, rounding to turn back upon the human. Piper grabbed ahold of her bag then, a heavy book pulled from the messenger bag. With all her might, Piper hurled it at the vampire's face before she turned back down that alley. The sound of her running echoed through that alley as she tried to escape her pursuer. She glanced back over her shoulder, that singular action distracting her from looking forward as she reemerged back onto that street. Her body collided with that of another, sending them both tumbling to the ground as the vampire chased after her.


       

Piper Aldersley