"No," Xin thought again. "Not a vampire." But there was no mistaking that dank, familiar smell of rotting corpse. "Hmph." Xin swung his sword to allow the guts and blood that had collected there to slide off. He deduced that the vampire must have been on the island a long time, having to deal with the Caribbean heat, in order to allow its body to pass along its scent so strongly to a human.
The gunman stuck to the tree was still firing at him. Xin grabbed the body of the third man whose head-top was lopped off and proceeded to use it as a shield as he advanced towards the gunman.
The man's aim was irregular; the bullets from the rifle tore into the "shield's" lower abdomen and legs. Xin covered the few steps to the enemy right away. He drew the corpse he held with his left hand up against the arm that held the rifle and the handle of the knife in his chest. The burdensome weight preventing the gunman from reciprocating, his rifle fired shots at the earth.
Xin then pressed down on the corpse, placing pressure on the handle; he looked down into the eyes of the gunman until they rolled back into his head.
Xin stilled.
Another one?
Smiling, he swiftly swung the sword upward, overhead. The tip of the blade landed dead center into the head of an armed gunman who had been hiding so as to catch him unawares.
So, the others exposed themselves to draw me out, did they?
He slowly eased his index finger onto the trigger that rested at the collar of the katana. Xin pulled the trigger, and a bullet escaped the spacer of the katana and blasted the head of the gunman clean off.
The unique magazine hidden in the hilt of his katana couldn't retain many bullets, so he made sure the ones there were capable of maximum effect. He normally resorted to such tactics when dealing with vampires. Firepower that exploded on impact made all the difference…against a human it was a total waste.
Hmph , all human…
Xin heard the rest of the men heading in his direction. He turned right and darted towards the building. A bullet entered his midsection from behind and he released a fierce howl before he leapt a yard into the air.
In mid-air he felt the proportions of his human form contort grotesquely into an abnormal shape. The drastic change was so sudden and crippling a regular human unfamiliar with the pain would have lost their mind to the agony. But for him it was a clean and welcome occasion that he could acutely manipulate. His whole body convulsed as he transformed. Thick, dark-grey, bristling hairs grew out instantaneously along the stretch of his back. Brown fibers mirrored the effect on the other parts of his body. Human ears gave way to long, thin ears that burst out on either side of his head. His human face transformed into the massive embodiment of an overgrown jackal.