" - hm? Uh, there's one maybe a mile that way? Bit of a hike, but I don't think it closes."

He nods, almost to himself, before reaching inside his coat. He pulls out a couple of twenty dollar bills. "Go see if you can grab a couple of sandwiches or something hot for us to eat. Get me water, and grab whatever you want for yourself." He pauses for a second, glancing back at the building with the vampires. "And a couple of candy bars. Something with peanuts, unless you're allergic."

She almost asks him whether he's sure whether it wouldn't be safer for him to go get the snacks, and then she remembers that he doesn't know where the store is and she isn't very good at giving directions. Probably he won't head in and get himself killed.

"All right. Don't go getting into anything super dangerous by yourself, okay?"

He hopes he hasn't sent her into danger, but he thinks—hopes, even—that his job is probably the more dangerous one. He promises not to do anything dangerous or stupid, and watches her go. He hunches down, all but disappearing into the shadows as he watches the building. With nothing to do but grip his sword and keep watch, he begins to pray, waiting for the girl to come back.

The girl is unworried. Ordinary individual vampires are not really much of a problem for her, so barring some kind of organized attack, or something stronger than an ordinary vampire, she should be fine.

She runs off. She is back in twenty minutes with sandwiches, apple juice, water, and candy. She is not out of breath.

"They didn't have hot stuff still going," she says, by way of explanation.

"That's fair," he says with a nod. He accepts the sandwich, water, and candy gladly, very specifically not asking for his change back.

His eyes stay fixed on the building across the street as he eats. He doesn't say anything, but is still glad she's back. She seems confident in a way that eludes him, despite his experience. Even if it's on him to deal with the vampire problem, having her around makes him feel a bit more certain the sun will not rise on his lifeless corpse.

He glances at her. "What kind of candy did you get for yourself?" he asks with a tired smile.

...it would be cooler to have not gotten candy, but she did get candy, and it's not very cool to lie in order to seem cool. "Twix bar. Here's your change." And she holds out some dollar bills and coins to him. Because she is mostly honest and also doesn't need help right now. Mostly she needs a bow.

"Twix is good. I like peanut M&Ms myself, especially for a stakeout, but Twix is a good choice." He takes his change politely. He knows what it's like to have to live on someone else's charity, how it can feel. He doesn't press the issue.

"No activity, but I did notice there seem to be plenty of cigarette butts by the door over there. Don't seem to have been there especially long either. It might be that one of our friends has a bad habit." He chuckles, and then says after a moment. "Might be that it'll be bad for his heart, if you know what I mean." He'd like to sleep, but not until this mission is finished.

She does not laugh. "Yeah. Maybe."

She isn't really expecting anything to come of that, but sure enough, fifteen or twenty more minutes in, someone comes out of the hideout and starts fiddling with a lighter.

He stands up silently, crossing himself before pulling out his sword in his right hand, a metal crucifix in his right. He whispers to the girl "You circle around that way, I'll come at him from the right. Hopefully we can surprise him." He pauses for just a moment. "Make sure it's really a vampire before you, you know..."

As his words trail off, he takes a deep breath and silently and quickly circle around to come at the door from the shadows to its left.

She supposes that works. She can circle around.

It's actually kind of hard to confirm that a vampire is a vampire for sure, when you don't have a telepath handy and they're in their human face. They're usually not in their human faces when they don't have to be, though, and when this one doesn't see anyone, he lets his go.

She doesn't waste time in going for the kill. One blow to knock him off balance and open up his stance, and then it's very easy to drive the stake through his heart.

Shouldn't get overconfident. Feels good to do things cleanly sometimes, though.

He approaches in grim silence, careful to control his breath, to not get ahead of himself. He prepares himself to act swiftly and decisively, to end this with no more than is necessary. He steps forward, sword gripped tightly in his hand and...

The girl slays the vampire right in front of him.

He's slightly shocked. Despite what happened earlier, he wasn't prepared for this much smaller young woman to so easily handle a vampire. He tries to keep his expression from revealing all the things running through his head, instead giving her a nod of respect.

"Nice," he whispers to her. "I think we wait here until anyone else in there starts to look for him when he doesn't come back. Sound good?" He moves into the shadows next to the door.

"Only one or two more inside, right? Could probably just lure them out now and slay them at the door. Less waiting that way."

She seems much more confident about facing them than he. But he nods and bangs on the door, muttering some Latin under his breath.

It is reeeeally inconvenient how this person appears to believe that he should be able to do the same things she does. This is kind of an attitude that is going to get him killed. The vast majority of fights between a vampire and a human get the human killed. But she doesn't really know how to say that he should stop comparing without, like, letting on about who she is, and even though who she is should be obvious at this point she doesn't really want to call the council down on her head. Because then she might have to run and hide behind some Quendi, and that would be really embarrassing.

There's the sound of something moving inside the building, heading towards them.

" - you should get away from the door, so they don't - "

He sees the door swing open and an ugly looking creature in a human body emerges, asking what all the damn commotion is about before being is cut off by a sword swinging through the darkness. The vampire barely ducks in time and he just misses decapitating it. "So much for surprise," he thinks to himself. The creature lunges at him, but he thrusts the large wooden crucifix in his left hand forward, making it jerk backward.

"I really hope she can take care of the other one," he thinks to himself, before pushing forward, holding out the cross to knock the vampire off balance, looking for an opportunity to finish the job.

Bad, bad, bad, she mishandled this very badly, now the totally normal human is in a hand-to-hand fight with a vampire, a vampire who is outside the building and who can run off now any time he feels like he got more than he bargained for. And if the vampires split up then she can't be sure to slay both of them while also keeping Paul safe. 

Sloppy. Way, way, way too sloppy. But she can't just sit here criticizing herself, that's worse than anything.

She circles around behind the vampire, hopefully blocking its path of escape, though the other one can run the other way away from the door if they come out in the next few seconds. She can stab him from behind if he lets his guard down attacking Paul. Which he will - crosses aren't much good if a vampire's not going to be able to run.

This is going better than he expected.

He'd hoped to get the vampire by surprise in one swing, but knew that was unlikely. But so far, it's two against one. The other vampire hasn't shown up, and this one is entirely focused on him and his sword. He sees Emily circle around behind the vamp, and takes the opportunity to lunge forward forcing it back toward her, making sure it doesn't notice the girl behind him with the stake.

She's sure he's noticed her. He's a vampire, after all, his senses are going to be much better than hers. The winning move here is probably grabbing Paul and threatening to kill him - odds are the vampire's fast enough to catch him, even with the sword - but he might not know that that's the winning move. He probably thinks he's going up against two normal humans, and might expect her to be too weak and clumsy to be a real threat. So he'll still go for Paul, but he'll go for the kill right away, probably. 

She's very focused on the vampire's movements, on any sign that he's heading for that killing blow. But the vampire falters, and takes half a step back, at which point she's able to rush forward.

The third vampire comes out of the building just as Karen is sliding her stake into the second one. She's expecting it to run, which'll be its own sort of inconvenient. Instead, she sees through the dust that the third vampire has decided to slam Paul into the wall while he's distracted.

He almost starts to smile as he sees the vampire in front of him make a wrong move and then suddenly turn to dust. But he's interrupted by the third vampire slamming into the wall. He lets out a low grunt of pain and surprise, but doesn't lose focus. This is what he's trained for. He's not going to let fear overcome him. Instead, he twists himself to grab onto it and try and hold it close to him so she has an opportunity to stake this one too. He knows what a vampire can do to a person in only a few seconds, but he's confident that the Kevlar padding around his neck and shoulders should keep him from getting killed long enough for Emily to finish the job.

She stabs the vampire. He growls as he crumbles into dust, and then there's nothing between her and Paul anymore.

"That was sloppy," she says, after a moment. "But I guess we're both alive, so. Congrats for now."

He nods, panting, catching his breath. "Th-thanks," he says, standing up straight and looking around. "I think that's all of them, but we should double check inside. Don't want any more surprises." The feeling of being slammed against the wall is still fresh in his mind. He glances at the door.

"Yeah, makes sense. I'm gonna go in first, okay?"

He's about to protest before he remembers how she's handled herself better than he has. He's starting to think maybe he's the one out of his depth. "Yeah," he nodes. "I'll follow."

"Kay. Watch our backs."

She gives him another second to catch his breath, and then heads in. Listens very carefully. It's pretty quiet inside; there's the occasional car outside, but she can't hear anything moving. She pushes open some doors and checks the various rooms. Empty, empty, corpse, empty. She pulls out a thinner stake, only a little wider than a pencil, and stabs through the dead person's heart without puncturing her clothes. After she fixes the clothes again, you can't tell from the outside.

"I think we got everyone who was home. It's possible that someone else was out hunting, I guess."