It was three in the morning and cold. Guillaume hated both of those things. His aged body ached all the time but less so when it was warm, and though he was so very tired all of the time, he couldn’t seem to stay asleep for more than a few hours each night. There was nothing on television that early and he hadn’t yet figured out how to work the online shows his helpful neighbor had tried to introduce him to. Sometimes he read his books, other times he listened to music, but if his joints hurt him too badly he had to walk to work out the pain. That was why, at three o’clock on that cold morning, Guillaume found himself wandering through the neighborhood, bundled up in his heaviest coat.

“Wouldn’t be too bad,” he muttered to himself under his breath, an old habit he’d picked up over the years of living alone, “if it weren’t so dark and cold.”

His voice was harsh and grating but not entirely devoid of humor. He chuckled slightly and, having reached an intersection, looked both ways before crossing. Even during the day this part of town was pretty quiet but Guillaume didn’t like to take chances. It was risky enough going out alone at this time of night. The last thing he wanted was to step out in front of some poor teenager on their way home. That would be a terrible way to mess someone’s life up, not to mention his own. As it was, there was no traffic and he crossed the street.

“Maybe when I get back,” Guillaume muttered, “I’ll make some tea. Been a while since I had some of that.”

Indeed it had been a while. He went through phases, sometimes liking a thing and then suddenly finding that he disliked it. He was hopeful that his palate had shifted yet again, allowing him to enjoy a hot cup of tea once more. There was something quite soothing about the heat of the mug in his hands, the steam on his face. Maybe he’d try again to get those online shows to work. They weren’t exactly what he’d call quality entertainment, but they had to be better than staring at the walls through the small hours of the night.

He sniffed the air. Something strange was wafting by and it was a scent of something he’d smelled long ago. As with many things, it was difficult to call back from his deep memories what exactly he was trying to remember. Sometimes he succeeded in remembering and other times it remained like a splinter, nagging at him but too deep to be reached.

“What are you, then?” he asked and turned his head this way and that as he sought to determine the source of the smell.

It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant smell, somewhere along the lines of tanned leather mingled with seafood. Certainly a strange combination and one he was puzzling over where he would have smelled before. The air seemed perfectly still and he began walking in ever increasing circles, periodically stopping to sniff the air as he tried to find its source.

“Seems to be all over,” Guillaume remarked and he furrowed his brow. “I don’t think that’s good.”

He hurried, as best he could with his stiff and aching joints, down a couple more streets and then repeated his circular sniffing, head turning all around as he tried to find the source of the smell.

“It’s not me,” he assured himself, and for good measure he gave himself a sniff. “Yeah, not me.”

He was getting worried now. This smell, and the memory associated with it, were still elusive but the emotions he had connected to the smell were strong and they were a mixture of fear and excitement. If he were a younger man still, he would have probably been smiling by now, but those days were long since passed. The thrill of the hunt was over for him and he had been hoping that he could enjoy his twilight years in peace. It was someone else’s job now to deal with those things.

Guillaume looked up towards the sky and only then did he remember. Thick clouds roiled above him as though sped up in a time-laps video, and things were undulating within those clouds.

“You know,” Guillaume said as he turned on his heels and began hurriedly shuffling back towards his home, “I had really hoped to never see you again.”

He shot an angry glance back upwards but knew better than to stare. Most people couldn’t even handle the short glimpses he had already taken. He’d seen them, in those long gone years, turn and look only to become entranced, or else turned insane, or sometimes simply fall dead. A few, thankfully very few, were changed in otherways. The images of the last time he’d seen it happen came suddenly to his mind and he had to suppress the cry of horror that tried to escape his mouth. Instead he settled on a shudder that ran the full length of his body.

“At least it’s three in the morning this time,” he said with slight relief. “Not as many people will be out and about.”

Still, he hurried along and cursed his ill fortune. He hoped that whoever it was these days that was suppose to keep track of these things was doing their job. With luck he could just hunker down and wait for it to be over. However, as he approached nearer to his street, he became aware of another familiar smell in the air and this time he didn’t have to search through his old and tired mind to recognize it. Smoke.

An orange glow was beginning to shine up above the rooftops and he couldn’t help but notice that it was coming from the same general direction as his house. Guillaume slowed down his pace and began moving more carefully, staying to the shadows and keeping an eye out for any watchers.

Sure enough, as his street came into view, there was his house burning away in the night. That, however, didn’t upset him nearly as much as the sight of his neighbors did, all of them standing outside looking not at his burning house but up towards the sky.

“Fire probably got them out of bed,” Guillaume cursed, “no hope for them now.”

He scanned the crowd briefly to see if there was anyone not looking up, perhaps someone who didn’t belong, and sure enough, there in the midst of his doomed neighbors, stood a woman he did not recognize and she was staring right at Guillaume.

“Watcher!” Guillaume shouted at her, knowing it would be pointless to try and hide now, “That was my house you just burned!”

“My apologies,” the woman said in a quiet voice that carried nonetheless into his mind, “I meant for you to be in it when I set the blaze.”

“I figured,” he murmured before raising his voice once more. “You’ve summoned them, I see. Now what?”

He pointed upward but did not take his eyes off the woman. Anyone who sought to bring them into the world was either incredibly foolish, desperate, or insane. Often it was a combination of all three. That said, anyone who could not only discover the method for bring them into reality and then survive the required rituals was bound to be a resilient individual, to say the least. Chances were this woman had been gifted certain abilities from them as well. They did have a tendency to bolster those who brought them here, until they turned on them and consumed them.

“Why didn’t any of those idiots ever stop to think what would happen to them once this had all played out?” Guillaume wondered though he knew it was pointless. Those people were always beyond reasoning.

The woman had begun walking towards Guillaume. She too had not taken her eyes off of him.

“I must assume you know who I am, considering the fact that you burned down my house in an attempt to kill me,” He called to her, “but who are you?”

The woman still did not respond and Guillaume’s frown deepened. She was here to kill him and he wouldn’t get any more information from her. He was too old for this fight and he knew it, but she was here and there was no sign of anyone coming to help stop her. Perhaps she’d already dealt with them. Perhaps there were others like her and the others were busy dealing with them. It didn’t really matter. Guillaume didn’t much like the idea of dying just yet, and especially not at the hands of someone like this woman.

“I’m old,” Guillaume said plaintively and the woman’s face split into an inhumanly wide grin.

“Yes,” she said.

“And I haven’t been in the fight for years.”

“I know.”

“I’m retired!”

“I’m still going to kill you.

Guillaume shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets and shrugged as if in defeat. The woman was mere feet away from him. Her arms were already stretching out towards him, literally stretching, as she reached out to take him.

A sharp crack rang out in the night and the woman paused, her elongated limbs held out in front of her, motionless. Her grin turned into a frown as she finally took her eyes off Guillaume and instead looked down towards her chest where a bleeding hole had appeared. Another crack sounded and a similar hole opened up, this time just to the right of her nose and she staggered backwards a look of surprise and anger on what remained of her face.

Guillaume pulled the revolver from his pocket and fired it into her a few more times. She collapsed and was still.

“They never make you invulnerable,” he spat and shot her one more time for good measure, just to make sure she was dead. “And now to take care of you,” he added without looking up.

There was work to be done and it seemed as though his retirement was being put on hold. It was still three in the morning and cold, but somehow that didn’t seem to be such a terrible inconvenience anymore.