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Con hit the pavement with his hands underneath him, but a second blow quick on the heels of the first one sent him skittering off-balance and landing badly despite his efforts. His wrist made a delicate crunch as it rolled, and he snarled wordlessly in pain as he rolled to spring to his feet again.

The left of his attackers laughed. "He's got spit, for a mick," he said, tapping the end of his cane against his shoe.

Breathing raggedly, Con reached up to pull the shoulder of his coat back up where it had been yanked down in the fight. There was a brand new tear in the seam.

"We'll use small words, Paddy," said the other man, a bulky thing in a tweed cap. "So you'll understand. You've been 'just passin' through' for an odd month or two now. It's time you finished passing."

"This township isn't big enough to support yet another of our kind," said the dapper, little man, still tapping his cane. He looked only teenaged, and bitingly snobby, his fair hair slicked back and impeccable, the fur collar on his coat ostentatious and unnecessary. But whoever had turned and trained him had known what the hell they were doing. Con couldn't touch him, and Con was fast.

Con hadn't been trained by anybody. It hadn't used to make a difference, but he was starting to feel it.

"Especially not an Irish," chuckled the thug. "An unemployed Irish drifter."

"How are you even still alive?" said the little man, looking thoughtful. "Things like you, masterless and drifting, tend to get eaten very quickly…"

"Can't die," said Con, the Irish accent he'd been straining to hide these past months coming out around the split in his lower lip. "Too busy livin'."

The big thug laughed, but the teenaged-looking one's eyes narrowed. In the space of a blink he had slammed into Con with his cane twice, and knocked him to the ground.

"You're either going to die very soon, Irish, or a very long time from now," said the man, thoughtfully, crouching on Con's chest, the end of his cane positioned over Con's heart. The end of it was capped with a spike. "I can't make the call just yet, which is very interesting. But you are now going to get out of my town, and never come back. I don't expect to learn your eventual fate, you see, and I can't say the suspense bothers me."

He stood up and stepped off of Con nonchalantly, swinging his cane up onto his shoulder. He started to whistle, walking away down the street in the dark. The thug looked from Con to his master, and then back. A few swift steps brought him up close to Con again, to deliver a couple of good kicks to the kidneys, a parting gift.

Con didn't have the energy to avoid the blows, and curled up on his side for a while, there in the street, gathering the strength he would need to pick himself up and start walking to a new town.

A single, coal-dusted snowflake drifted down and landed on his cheek.

*

A week later, and the snow was ankle-deep. Con had stolen a shovel from a farm as he passed, and had been using it to clear his way in places as he walked, as well as dig himself a place to sleep at night.

But there, finally, he came into view of the town ahead, and the winking lights of the inn. It was a rough-hewn place, but the sounds of roaring laughter and clinking of glasses drifted out into the snow from it, and Con found himself drawn to that almost as much as the warmth and light.

He had a brief taste of something long gone, of him and his brother at the pub across the street from the house they'd been born in, having their shoulders clapped and listening to the sailors and the dock-hands swap stories, basking in the camaraderie, even though neither of them said much.

He shook himself, and tramped up to the door, leaving his shovel outside by it. There was, surprisingly, a sign on the door that read 'leeches welcome', and then less surprisingly, under it, a sign reading 'no Irish.' Con pursed his lips, and pushed the door open. He just wouldn't say more than a few words.

A few people looked around when he came in, but he was too nondescript to cause much stir. A little shabby, certainly, but the bar patrons weren't exactly trim themselves. He started to shuffle up to the bar, when he was cracked on the head with his own shovel from behind.

With a little sigh, he crumpled to the floor.

*

He came awake to a bucketful of water in his face, and scrambled to his feet, looking around frantically. He was in a ring, set into the ground, with pikes all around and a steel wire net over it. It was a dogfighting ring, only reinforced and modified to accommodate vampires. Rough country faces, leering and cheering, ringed the seats around it.

Con's mouth opened in a soft hiss, his fangs coming out. A whoop went around the room, clapping and hollering.

There was a reinforced door on the other side of the ring from him. What could they possibly be thinking of sending out? There wasn't much in the way of natural creation that could challenge a vampire. Although- Con felt his wrist, which was still popping oddly from his injury, and he was sure his ribs hadn't healed properly either. He was a mess, they might just sic a pack of black shuck on him and laugh. He wasn't certain they wouldn't win, either.

The door clanged, and then creaked open, and out stepped another vampire. Con felt weightless, for a moment, as the certainty that he was not going to survive this night settled upon him. The other vampire was short but broad, and stripped to the waist to show off the fact that he was nothing but solid, slick muscle. He had a pug face and a duck-tail of ginger hair- he looked like a boxer, with the fists to match.

Con dropped into a crouch, shuffling as far back against the wall as he could get. The other vampire frowned, looking at him.

"OI! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!" he shouted up at the gallery, pointing at Con. Con ground his teeth. It had not taken long of being called by impersonal pronouns for it to get very wearing.

A multitude of different shouts came down in reply, and the other vampire shook his head violently.

"I tol' yeh ta get me vampires to fight, yeh ign'ant peasants!" the vampire snapped up at the crowd. He was Irish, Con realized. Incredibly Irish. "Not some half-dead drifter ta finish murderin'!"

Con felt simultaneously relieved and insulted. He didn't look that bad, did he?

"Ah, ******** off!" spat the other vampire, waving a hand at the crowd dismissively. "Wouldn' be a show, fightin' him, unless yeh count tryin' to explain the blood spatter on yer shirts ta yer wives afterward!"

There were jeers, and a bottle or two were thrown. Con flinched back instinctively. The other vampire gave an ear-piercing whistle, and the noise died down.

"I'm Mickey," said the vampire, striding up to Con and holding out a hand. Con didn't accept the shake. He couldn't tell if Mickey was joking about the name.

"Con," he said, finally. "Con Marrows."

"Yer all right now, Con," said Mickey, looking hard at him. "Sorry about the lads- little gets lost in translation between tellin' em what I want and them goin' about gettin' it."

"Sure," grunted Con. "…Can I leave?"

Mickey raised his eyebrows. "I dunno, can yeh?"

... The man had a point. Con looked down. Mickey reached up, gently, and clapped him on the shoulder very lightly, as though he feared that a heavier touch on the thin man would knock him down.

"Come on, let's get yeh ta my place, and I'll find yeh a pint and a donor," he said, beginning to lead Con out of the ring.

"Ayy, Mickey Finn!" came the catcalls from the gallery. "No fight tonight, Mickey Finn?"

"You must be a boxer," said Con, dazedly, wanting to laugh but unsure there was actually a joke anywhere. Mickey grinned.

"The best. The best in life, the best after, I only fight different people." He laughed.

"Can you teach me?" Con blurted out, before he could stop himself.

He was tired of being outclassed, even though he was fast and rough and used to hard living. He was tired of being run out of towns by slick-haired little prep school shits. And he was especially tired of being in a condition where a bunch of hick townsfolk could knock him out with his own damn shovel.

It seemed to have been the right thing to say to Mickey, though. He beamed, and looked as though he might cry from joy.

"How'd you guess me favorite thing in th' whole wide world?" he asked. "I'd love to, kid."

And that was the first thing that had gone right for Con Marrows, in a very long time.