The time of the setting sun has always been somewhat dimmer for me. I love the day, the day is when I thrive; I can live in the night, second only to the day; dusk and dawn, however, have always been beyond my grasp.
That is why I hurried to complete my mission before the sun had begun to set.
My mission was simple: kill the vampyre. A task I could more than easily handle alone. I had my knife with me, forged by the light of the moon for the sole purpose of killing those fiendish creatures. Always prepared, I also had a set of daggers with me that, while mostly ineffective, would succeed in delaying the vampyre while I searched for a more appropriate weapon, though these daggers would never kill it.
Dressed completely in black, I slipped into the shady house that lay on the outskirts of the village, and freed my mind of all thoughts except one: kill it.
I did so as soon as I located the beast; a sound stab in the back and up towards the heart silencing it forever. Cowardly? No, efficient.
I felt another vampyre behind me before I saw or even heard it. My sixth sense, as I have come to call it, was already telling me that he held a knife towards my back.
I spun around, knife ready for another sound kill, and the metallic clang of the two long daggers rang throughout the hall. My mission had been completed, but this was The Mission, The Purpose, my reason for survival.
“Not expecting guests?” it asked me.
I didn’t answer, but slipped into a defensive crouch, waiting for him to make the first move.
The sun was beginning to set, and so I was at a disadvantage, having not learned the interior of the house as well as I’m sure my attacker did. I’d have liked to take our fight outside, but knew better. I needed to sneak out to escape, because there were people nearby; humans, who would easily dismiss the death of these two as a nighttime brawl after having too much to drink. A fight outside these walls would draw unnecessary attention.
He came forward with a punch, and quickly turned it into a series of kicks that I dodged tirelessly. He held the knife back, refraining from using it. He had probably noticed that I was of age, and could earn him some profit. That didn’t matter to me, it was his choice, and his mistake.
As silent as always, I took his momentary lapse in attack to execute my own, jabbing upwards with my knife, between his ribs and into his no longer vital lungs. It didn’t matter, so long as the blade was firmly imbedded into a once vital area. I quickly switched my hands over to the wrist holding the dagger he held, fending off any possible blows with the deadly item, and used his arm as leverage to execute a deadly roundhouse kick to his temple. Well, deadly if he had been human.
He hit the ground with a sickening thud, and an already forming bruise on his dead, cracked skull.
I removed my knife from his body, wiping its blade on his already blood-soaked shirt, and, tucking it back into its sheath, crept silently out of the house. I mentally praised myself for the expansion of orders.
Mission complete.
A flash of red light assaulted my eyes. Blink; blinding sliver: clash.
I blocked as the vampire slashed out at me. Damn red light— cheater. I let out a low, threatening growl.
The vampire grinned. “Feisty one, aren’t you, huntress?”
Growl. He smirked. “I like feisty women… makes the blood all that much sweeter.”
I jumped back, snarling angrily, my eyes glinting like knives. He chuckled. “Oh, I’m sorry, did that make you ang… oof!” The knife landed between his rib cage. I twisted upward, causing him to produce a deafening inhuman scream.
“I don’t play with leeches.” Snort.
His eyes fell back into his head, his mouth hanging open in shock as his body returned to the earth where it belonged.
“Dumbass.”
A chill ran down my spine; the hair on the back of my neck rose. More? I turned… nothing. That was the thing about me fighting during the day… I had feelings, yes, but my sixth sense was gone. Vanished. Just like that when the sunset and the darkness returned. It was odd, this sixth sense I had during the night. It showed me things… when one would attack before they actually did so... if they had weapons, and it went on. It used to confuse me when I first received this gift at age sixteen, but now at nineteen, I have gotten used to it and am thankful for it. Too bad for the vampires that face me at night.
I spun back around, knife coming up and pressing into the vampyresses neck. She hissed where the blade burned her skin.
“Nice try leech.”
I slashed, cutting her throat while simultaneously unsheathing another knife from her leg and stabbing the creature in the heart. The vampyress fell, joining her partner in the ground. Back to clan. Maybe I should describe what I am first. I am a vampyre huntress. Every hunter and huntress belongs to a clan, unless they have been disowned by the clan, which basically turns them solitary.
The clan is divided into three parts: hunters and huntresses, breeders, and elders. The hunters are exactly what they seem to be… hunters… only there is one difference between a hunter and huntress. A hunter kills demons while a huntress kills vampires. Both have the strength of a vampyre, mental attacks, and senses and speed that could match a vampyres… that is, a normal vampyre, and not the purest of vampyres.
A vampyre is NOT a demon. If one would say that, they would have to call us demons, and we certainly are not. Humans have wanted immortality for as long as one knows. That is what brings fear: death. Our kind does not fear death, else their heart blackens, and they turn rogue. The first vampyre was a human… experiment on and finally given a sacrificially ceremony, ending in his drinking of virgin females blood.
The purest of vampires drink only from virgins, or the kind only they had taken. Other vampires drink anything: human and animal alike. These are the weak vampyres.
When a huntress can no longer fight because of an injury of some sort, their body changed, making them human. The females are now able to have children, unless when they were a huntress. The male hunters give them children. When a hunter can no longer fight, they train the new babes to become hunters and huntresses. If a hunter comes to be 50 and still alive and in good shape, they become an elder. This is the same with huntresses. The breeders, when they can no longer do so become elders as well. The elders job is to train the new hunters and huntresses that have been born: to teach them to fight, survive, never back down from a fight, and most importantly, accept their fate and not fear in the face of pain or death.
It was defiantly time to go back to clan.
I shook my head, my long black hair shaking out any dirt of which I had, turning around, only to be confronted by two more vampires.
“Dammit all! What is this… vampire convention week?”
They stared at me, confused.
I attacked.
Mission report is perhaps the most boring part of any mission. It has neither the rush nor the thrill of preparing and completing the mission, nor does it contain the proud afterglow of a mission well done.
Perhaps it was because mission reports are so boring that I allowed myself to be distracted from completing the ingrained, regular task, and became immersed in one I found much more important at the time: confronting my rival.
My rival has been such for as long as I can remember. Her name is Thorn, and can almost be considered my polar opposite as a huntress. What I make up for in silence, she fills with chatter; where I block, she attacks, and vise-versa. Perhaps it was fate that brought us back to the clan from our missions at the same time, or maybe it was just coincidence. Truthfully, it doesn’t matter. As was usual, she was the one who started our so-called conversation. “So how was your mission?”
“Successful. Yours?”
“The same, although I have to admit, I did do a fairly good job. Perhaps even enough to give me a one-up on you, second-best.”
That was another reason for my rival and me to compete with each other. We were both candidates to be the team captain for missions to come, and unless one of us proved better than the other soon, the title would be given to another. Neither one of us was willing to back down from the challenge, the honor, the thrill of being captain, nor would either of us give up the position easily. “Hn,” was to be my only response to her statements, a grunt at best. Too bad it didn’t stay that way, as my big mouth decided to add: “We’ll see.”
“So confident are we?”
“More than so.”
“Arrogance never did suit you.”
“As silence never taught you his virtues.”
“I learned my lessons well enough, I just never saw fit to use them.”
“All your lessons? I think you missed a few.”
“I never missed the important ones.”
“And which were those?”
She stuck her nose up in the air, in a high-and-mighty way before answering in a sneering tone: “The ones that would ruin your pretty little face.”
“Willing to bet on that?”
“Hmm…specify.”
“Are you willing to wager, let’s say, the title, on the fact that you are a better fighter than I am?”
“I have a better idea. What about a sparring match, right here, right now. We’ll have official witnesses and judges, and the winner of the match claims the right to the title, and the loser must forfeit it.”
The first thought that ran through my mind was that this was the stupidest thing that I had ever done, and I had absolutely no reason to do such a thing except for my pride. The next was that this wasn’t going to easy, but there was no way that I was going to back down now. “Agreed.” My big mouth and me make such a good team; too bad we only seem to get ourselves into big messes.
I found the strength to quiet myself, and I waited, preparing myself mentally as she asked a few passers-by to act as judge and witness to our match. She came back to stand before me in the traditional manner, and we bowed to each other. I slipped into a defensive stance as she immediately took the aggressive, and I cleared my mind. I sorted out any distractions and dismissed them as such. The judges stood center to my right, and with the sound of a single whistle from the center woman’s lips, we were off.
Expecting her first kick to come from the right back leg, I backed away, out of reach, and came forward on her left side, grabbing her arm. For a few moments we pushed against each other, trying to take the other to the ground. I felt her leg slip around mine, but was determined not to go down to the ground alone, and so brought my left knee up into her side as she pushed back against my right, and we both fell down in a heap in the dirt.
Now struggling for dominance, I wrapped my legs firmly around her torso and struggled for a strangle hold on her neck, which she worked to deflect and counter. Working to gain an advantage, she worked a knee up between us, and rather than face being winded from an attack to my solar plexus, I released her and rolled away, rising as quickly as I could to face her. She was just rising as well, only she was a few moments ahead of me. As she pressed her momentary advantage and charged forward to grab my head in a deadly lock, I rolled with her, allowing the ground to scrape my back and draw blood in order to land on top of her. Now straddling her once again, my legs pinning down hers, I pressed my arm to her throat, just as she lightly hit a pressure point just behind my ear with one hand, and used the other as leverage to keep my arm off her neck.
Now it was simply a matter of who would tire out first; we were in a complete deadlock. If I moved now, I submitted to her superior methods, and the same was with her. Only when we heard a distinct clap behind us and the elder’s voice call out: “Enough,” did we concede to each other. “I heard this match from my base,” she continued, “and have recently learned of the stakes. This battle ends in a draw, and a new captain will be named, but I think the warning should be fair enough that it is not one of you, for the strain between you would be too great.”
“Now hurry and clean yourselves up. You both have missions to report, and a mission to be assigned; you do not have time for idle play.”
I could have killed Thorn then, knowing that if she had only conceded then that title would be mine, but a greater blame fell on myself. I had not trained hard enough to receive it, and so I vowed to find a way to become stronger, to be worthy enough to receive such an honor from our clan.
And if Thorn got in my way, well then too bad for her.
I made my way back to clan with the rest of my group. With every group, there are at least two hunters and two huntresses. Sometimes they send us alone, but with a group there must be at least two, in case one falls.
All four of us made it back alive. Successful mission. What could I say: it was perfect. The mission was complete plus six extra vampyres dead and three demons. I was in a fairly pleasant mood, until I spotted Kit. I grumbled. A slow, almost snarl crept up on me, yet I contained my neutral expression. Best to not show emotion. Emotion is what got you in trouble. I sauntered over to her. “So how was your mission?” Kit glared up at me. “Successful. Yours?” “The same, although I have to admit, I did do a fairly good job. Perhaps even enough to give me a one-up on you, second-best.”
Kit was my opposite, but more importantly, my greatest rival. She was the only creature I knew of that could stir up my emotions: hate, bitterness, excessive want to cause pain. I disliked her at the very least. Possibly even hated her, but hate was dangerous, so I tried to stay away from that. Hate caused fear. Fear caused death. I wanted none of that.
“Hn,” she grunted. “We’ll see.”
“So confident are we?” I smirked.
“More than so.”
“Arrogance never did suit you.” My smirk widened.
“As silence never taught you his virtues.”
I silently laughed to myself. “I learned my lessons well enough, I just never saw fit to use them.”
“All your lessons? I think you missed a few.”
“I never missed the important ones.” Of course, I had skipped out on a few, yes, but it was justified! I see no need to learn the same thing seven days in a row when I had mastered it the first day.
“And which were those?”
I snorted, reply with: “The ones that could ruin your pretty little face.”
“Willing to bet on that?”
“Hmm…specify.”
“Are you willing to wager, let’s say, the title, on the fact that you are a better fighter than I am?”
I stared ahead. It was day, yet the day was ending quickly. She might beat me before it did, but my pride would not let me back down from this fight. “I have a better idea. What about a sparring match, right here, right now. We’ll have official witnesses and judges, and the winner of the match claims the right to the title, and the loser must forfeit it.”
“Agreed.”
I grinned. This would be fun. I couldn’t wait to see her face when she lost the title.
I quickly gathered enough other hunters and huntresses to judge, moving them around the mat, and leaving quickly to get paper and a pen for each.
When I returned, Kit was set up on the mat. I handed everything out, climbing up and facing her. We bowed politely, and took our proper stance: offense for me, and defense for her.
A huntress whistled, and we began.
I threw a roundhouse kick to her head swiftly. She blocked, countering with an attempted arm lock. We continued to struggle back and forth, each skill mastered, yet somehow blocked by the other.
When we fell to the ground, Kit had her legs around my torso. Not gonna happen Kitty Cat, I smirked and pulled away as she went for my neck. We slipped away from each other, standing to our feet. I went for her neck quickly, before she could gain hold of herself, but Kit took us both to the ground.
She had the advantage, pinning me down with her knees with her arm to my throat. I countered with an attack on the pressure points on behind her ears. First to tire looses. I looked up at her, making sure she KNEW that I would not give in.
There came a clap… and then a voice: “enough!”. We pulled away, recognizing the Elders voice. Stupid Elder, ruining our fun. “I heard this match from my base,” she stated, “and have recently learned of the stakes. This battle ends in a draw, and a new captain will be named, but I think the warning should be fair enough that it is not one of you, for the strain between you would be too great.
“Now hurry and clean yourselves up. You both have missions to report, and a mission to be assigned; you do not have time for idle play.”
I suppressed a growl, wanting to wrap my hands around Kit’s tiny neck and break it. Of course, this would cause suspicion to me, so I refrained… just barely. Damn her! I wasn’t sure if I was cursing the Elder, or Kit. Either way, they both deserved it.
I would win this title… and nothing could stop me… not even the damned Kitty Cat. And if she tried, she better get ready for the fight of her life.
