Had this dream that a group of vampires had set up a gruesome tradition. They had this way of driving all of the local werewolves into a frenzy on the shortest night of the year, if the moon was full or near full. In addition, this same phenomenon would sever the ability of a werewolf to work with their pack.
Bottom line is a bunch of deranged werewolves running around a city. Then the vampires and their associates would go gleefully hunting them down in cars, like the fox hunts of old.
The vampires thought this was hilarious and if they lost a vampire or human familiar or two in the process, well, so be it. Less competition.
Couple of small issues that they vampires hadn’t anticipated, though.
A deranged werewolf doesn’t necessarily mean an incompetent one and just because they couldn’t work with their own pack didn’t mean that they couldn’t play well with others.
This meant that after an initial bloodbath, the werewolves figured out how to turn the tables. The vampires and their associates ended up in a rout.
So, in the dream, a cornered vampire was trying to bargain for its life with a group of young werewolves out for some serious payback. As an older werewolf, I stormed in and immediately stopped their bargaining. Snarling, I cut the vampire across its belly, making sure the wound was non-lethal and let it leave.
The grateful vampire, having narrowly avoided death, ran away. And boy, that’s when a bunch of very angry youngsters starting bitching at me about why I left the fangy corpse get away.
I gave them as good as I got.
First rule of thumb:
NEVER talk to a vampire. He will promise the world and ALWAYS come out ahead. He will mess with your head in ways you can’t conceive because, even if he’s only a century old, he’s got access to folks who have spent thousands of years learning different ways to manipulate and fuck over their enemies.
Just because you can’t talk to him doesn’t mean you can’t mess with him, though.
Second rule of thumb:
Those wounds I gave him? They smell and if they smell, we have ways of tracking him. Maybe he’ll run into another werewolf and that one, given warning by the scent, will have the element of surprise and a previous wound on her side.
Or, if that doesn’t happen, we’ll be able to track him. Right back to his allies or his lair. And we can do a hell of lot more damage there.
In case of failure, though:
Let’s say he’s lucky. No surprise werewolf. He knows how to stop us from tracking him. The reason why I did that wound was to act as an appeal to ego. He would remember that some werewolves ‘respected the wild hunt’ and that stupid assumption would make him overconfident or overgrateful.
Next time he’d encounter a werewolf, that split second hesitation would lead to his death.
The final lesson?
It’s a simple one, but one everyone needs to remember, when dealing with a superior force. Just because you don’t go for the throat doesn’t mean the target isn’t dead. Sometimes, it just takes longer for them to stop moving.