Author’s Note: I can’t even remember when I wrote this. I found it on my computer. So I’m just gonna post it. Sharing purposes. A lot of cuss words in this piece though, which makes me certain I won’t be continuing it. Don’t like cussing where readers are concerned. Kinda teaching the young bad...So erm, don’t learn the bad words, kids.

My World

The weather lashed stinging cold air onto my skin, causing my teeth to chatter a little. Fortunately the fog had settled a little, making it easier to see my target. Dressed up in a t-shirt and slacks, with a slender body and overall nice features one could name cute, he seemed very human, but beneath the exterior of his skin, I could smell him. And it was filled with blood that did not belong to him. Who did he just feed on? That was the question I needed answered and I had him pinned to a wall with a dozen feet long spears through him to get it. A little drastic maybe, but damn that. He still smelled a little fresh, without the stinking odor of the long dead. I knew what that meant, someone was lying bleeding somewhere waiting for Joe Black to give him/her the kiss of death.

The vampire shouted out from pain and his body twitched when I shot another spear into him. Yes, vampires can feel pain.

“I’m sure that isn’t where the person you bled is,” I told him, referring to his incoherent shouts. My hand made a threatening twitch on the trigger.

“Stop, woman,” he told me, his voice unafraid, a little commanding even. Vampires, just because they’re a lot older than you are, they think you should respect them like you do your mom and dad. I shot him once more to show him what I thought of that.

“Shit!”

“I’m sure that isn’t it either.”

He suddenly stopped twitching and went very still. He looked at me, into my eyes, and said softly, “You will stop.” His eyes had depth, and I guessed them to be baby blue. I could confirm it if I didn’t have on my infrared sunglasses, which made everything seem a dull red. But it protected me from the tricks these vampires loved to play.

“You can’t do hypnotism with me,” I informed him. Then I jerked back the safety lock of my modified spear gun and deftly put another spear into his arm. Blood spurted out in a small fountain. I must have hit an artery.

The vampire was fast losing his human façade and was hissing in an almost serpent-like manner that was chilling for anyone with a human face. His sharp fangs glinted slightly at the tips of his mouth. I moved closer to him. I had him trapped in a closed-off alley. There were high walls on three sides of him and his only escape was through me. “Those were just straight tips,” I told him as I reached an arm into a backpack for another spear. “This,” I told him, “has a paralyzer tip. And I can assure you it’s as it sounds.” I placed the spear into the gun and it made a nice menacing noise as it clicked into place.

He hissed but this time, I could tell, it was from fear. His eyes had become wide. “Hunter, you’re a woman.” Even the delivery of that sentence was punctuated with long hisses.

I enunciated every word clearly. “Where did you dump the body?”

His eyes danced about as though considering his options before stammering out, “She’s four blocks down. In an alley.”

“Which street?”

“Lampton.”

“Thank you,” I said, before firing the spear into his neck anyway. The three diverging points of the tip crushed his jugular vein, his head lolled forward and blood spurted onto the surrounding walls. I removed a blade tucked in a strap at my spine and with a swift motion severed his head. Dead, his body crumpled inwards and turned into dark ash.

I turned and ran to Lampton. I found her by a dumpster, her body cold and limp. She was barely breathing, the wound on her neck still bleeding. Vampires were like leeches; their saliva had an anticoagulant that prevented the blood from clotting. The wound on her neck had been scratched up so badly, the two deep fang marks couldn’t be seen. He was covering up his tracks like most vampires nowadays were doing. That bothered me, the vampires almost seem to have a pact to hide their existence. I took out a clean cloth from my bag and pressed it to her wound with my fingers of one hand. With the other hand, I took out my cell phone to dial an ambulance.

I spoke in a low voice. “A woman is dying in an alleyway on Lampton street. It’s by the dumpster. Please come right now.”

“May I know who this is?”

I whispered, “Hunter.”

A pause. Then, “You wouldn’t be that Hunter, would you?”

“I am.” I heard her intake of breath before I hung up. Now I was certain the entire New York police department would arrive. “Hey,” I tapped the woman on her cheek. “Can you hear me?”

No answer. I tapped her again. She gave a slight murmur but otherwise remained motionless. I tucked her long blonde hair behind her ears, and stroked her cheeks. “Help is arriving. But you have to stay with me, okay? You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

There was no response. I held her closer. “Wake up. Don’t sleep.” I tapped her cheek harder, which only resulted in her head lolling to one side. I checked her pulse. Gone. I was too late once more. She was so young, probably just sixteen, dressed in the fashionable tight jeans teenagers wore nowadays and an off-shoulder blouse. Her makeup was smeared, mascara running down form her eyes in streaks as though she had cried and begged her attacker to release her. Shit.

“Damn it!” The sound echoed and reverberated through the quiet street. The sudden sound of a dropped can onto the pavement made me look up. A young man, ipod in hand, stood frozen at the entrance of the alleyway, staring at the dead girl in my lap. I stared back, hoping the man wouldn’t start screaming.

The faraway sirens of the police reached my ears then. It was time for me to make my getaway, except the man still seemed too afraid to move and he was blocking my only escape route. The sirens got closer and closer. I willed for the man to move but he only continued to stand there like a stone. Finally, the sirens got close enough for him to hear them too. The sound seemed to startle him back to life, and he backed up clumsily before scuttling away. Gently, I lifted the girl off me and stood. I surveyed the surroundings. The cops would soon surround the only exit of the alley. I was going to have to leave by another way. I looked up. The walls were three stories high. I pressed a catch on my wrist and a black rope swung into the air above the walls. The barbed end of it caught. I pulled on the end of the rope for good measure before I scaled up.

I’d just gotten over the wall when I heard boots scraping the pavement beneath me. The brush of flesh against metal and soft clicking sounds alerted me that they had their guns out.

There were a few more sounds of discreet movement before one of them declared, “She’s dead.”

“Her body’s still warm. Hunter may still be around the area. Search the streets.”

“Yes, Sir.”

I crept away then.

--

“The Hunter or Hunter for short has struck again, this time on Lampton Street, in the slow quarter of town. The victim, Justina Lockhart, 18, was pronounced dead on arrival. She had suffered severe blood loss through wounds to her neck and thighs. As was before, Hunter had dialed the ambulance himself, in what seems to be his new sadistic game. Several police cars and an ambulance had been dispatched immediately but it was still too late for Ms. Lockhart, whom had been last seen by friends with an unnamed man in a district club. The police are asking for witnesses to step forward by calling the hotline number below.”

I switched the screen off with the remote.

“Hey, I was watching that, “ Peter Lambert protested. Peter Lambert was a suave man in his forties, his dark hair always combed back neatly. He wore a dark gray turtleneck, with black slacks and brown loafers I had bought him last Christmas. His nose was slightly crooked from having it broken one too many times and his silver eyes flashed his annoyance at me.

“The vampire’s ash. The girl’s dead. And I’m alive. Why do you need to watch the news when I have told you firsthand what’d happened?”

“Don’t be snide. It doesn’t suit you” He rolled towards me on his wheelchair and snatched the remote from my hand. “You know I like seeing Jennifer De Souza,” he said before switching the screen back on. Jennifer De Souza was the ice queen reporter who was currently on screen reporting my ruthlessness and killer abilities.

We were at Headquarters, a clandestine room located underground beneath a nightclub named, ‘Deep Waters’. Headquarters was actually just a room the size of any small restaurant outlet you see around town but it was the equipment in the room that set it apart. The main control center took up most of the room with a large screen eighty inches wide on one wall. Controls and sound equipment surrounded the screen to which it was wired up to. Basically, the main control center was a large computer system, but just with more controls and pushbuttons. I was a technophobe and except for the remote that controlled the television channels and its on/off button, I was clueless as to how to operate the thing. The right of the room were built-in shelves where my equipment were kept. Spear guns, spears, guns, silencers, chains, ropes, hooks, infrared glasses and equipment and even a few cloves of garlic. Vampires weren’t exactly afraid of garlic as in the folklores but they detested the smell and taste of it and I used to use them to test if my vampire was really a vampire. Embarrassing as it was to admit, I had made a few mistakes before when I’d first started out. Now, I wondered how I could ever mistake that. Vampires had a taste or smell to them that humans just didn’t have, and also a coldness and hardness in them that could only be described as evil. Though I no longer used the garlic, Peter still kept some in the shelf as some kind of a private joke between us.

“The Hunter has became more ruthless since his reemergence after two years of silence. As we all know, Hunter has been terrorizing the city of Harton for five years from 1998-2002, murdering fourteen innocents before disappearing without trace for two years. It was thought to be peace for Harton until he suddenly reemerged a year ago, this time his attacks more brutal and random, with yet another five victims dead and one sent into permanent coma after sever blood loss. Detective Jeremy Schaffer is the man on the trail of The Hunter.”

The camera zoomed in to show the detective who was beside De Souza. The detective was a very serious looking black man who looked to be in his thirties. He wore a blue tie and suit that was probably the standard clothes for all FBI agents who were to be on national television. “Detective Schaffer, there have been many copycats imitating Hunter. How certain are you that this is indeed a murder done by Hunter?”

“The police are certain that this is done by Hunter. There have been large amounts of blood and ash found at another scene, two streets down from where the victim had been found. Forensics has proven that the blood belongs to the victim. So far, the copycats had not been able to simulate such an act, normally using animals’ blood to do so.”

The camera zoomed in further onto De Souza’s face. “This is De Souza. Stay tune for more news on Channel 3.”

The advertisements came on and Peter switched the large screen off.

“Happy?” I asked.

“Yes, she’s really pretty in her pink suit.”

I leaned onto the table beside Peter’s wheelchair, and rubbed at my forehead. “So what do we do now? Seems like Quentin and his vampires are not giving up.”

His narrow forehead furrowed. “No, it seems not.”

“I can’t find his keep. I think,” I bit my lip, “maybe he’s playing games with us. Sending small itty bitty vampires like today’s to lead us off track.”

Peter didn’t make a sound. I asked, “Well?”

He finally looked up. “It can be. Did you search Lampton street?”

“Zip. Nada.”

He looked at his watch. “The vampires shall be waking in five hours. We have until then to think.”

“Until the next victim.”

He nodded. “Until the next hunt.”

I stared at his somber expression and all I could think was, sometimes I hated being The Hunter.

--