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Nails thick and chitinous dug into the soft pale flesh of the vampire before him, more claws than anything else. Talons for a bird of prey. Such a waste, that spilled blood, they whispered in his consciousness, but Abel ignored them. Only forty percent of them were awake anyway, easy enough to over-ride even though he was getting near his limit, thirsty. There had been too many battles recently and he'd taken too many wounds. If he didn't...indulge himself now, the next convenient time might prove to be completely inconvenient. The vampire in his arms shuffled as he paused, staring angrily up at him, face full of some strange kind of near-death sedation, whites of its eyes large with realization.

That's right, Abel sighed as he moved his hand to press against the vampire's jaw as it worked, trying to form words. The Vatican really was raising a monster.

The neck snapped with a bright sound at the pressure of Abel's palm a second later. He dropped his head to the neck, pausing only a second before shoving his teeth in and feeling the slow spread of warmth. The blood was sluggish coming out of the wound-- he'd played around with this one too long, but it had deserved it. It would be easier to feed on it by letting the Crusnik draw it into him. He relaxed against the dead body. Nearly finished.

A noise came from nearby and Abel dropped the corpse hastily, shoving it away from himself as his hair drifted back down around his shoulders, the nanomachines dissolving back through his pores.

Esther's spritely heel-tapping.

She crossed the room with gingerly steps. He shoved the second pair of gloves he kept in his deep pockets onto his hands quickly, blotting away at the coppery remnants of the blood on his lips, tasting like the wind on Mars. Esther looked all the way up at him questioningly and Abel's mood turned quickly, shrinking. That look in her eyes...faltering trust.

"You don't need to see this," he sighed, "that's what's left of those vampires that kidnapped the children we've been sent to look for. I take it you took care of securing said children?" Her brilliant blue eyes stared harder, drilling a familiar hole into his neck, the one his spine seemed to leak out of around her.

"Father Nightroad, it's all through your hair."

"Ah-- what?"

A gloved finger pointed. Abel reached a hand around to pull his hair back together with an extra black ribbon snatched from the pocket where he kept the gloves. He could feel it-- sticky with gore. His mind raced for excuses like it was late for a train.

"It was a very close-range gunfight, Esther." He laughed lightly at her, the smile watery at the edges as his fingers ran through his hair, trying to clean it.

She offered a laugh back that might as well have been his Balm in Gilead.