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Huntress Ch. 01

By: AlyssaElizabeth



This is my first time actually writing a story like this. Not a lot of sex so if that's what you are looking for, turn back now. Also, this is a supernatural type story (vampires, werewolves, witches, the whole shebang) so if you aren't into that...well, turn back as well. For those of you who have not left yet, I can only assume you're staying... so enjoy.



Carmen wasn't drunk. 

Sage watched from the opposite side of the dance floor as her best friend leaned tiredly against a man whose shirt had been unbuttoned and lay open, chest bare, shaved and sweating. The man who was probably as intoxicated as Carmen pretended to be was trying his best to hold her up and carry on a drunken conversation. Every so often, the dark haired girl would nod.

Sage couldn't help but laugh

Thus was a night out for her and the girls. Somewhere in the sporadically lit room, her other two best friends were hiding, one with a guy who she probably would end up kicking in the balls by the end of the night, and the other probably on the phone with her sister. 

Sage was the bystander, as usual. She had no desire to go out onto the dance floor and get sweaty with a man she didn't know nor did she feel like drinking herself into oblivion. There was too much going on. She needed to be on her 'A' game in case Brie came back, distraught over her little sister, which was bound to happen.

The loud bass of the techno song that had been on for at least twenty minutes changed into a slow rap song. Carmen stood up abruptly, a smile plastered on her face. She yelled something to the man, along the lines of how much she loved the song, and began moving her hips with such energy one would think she had just arrived to the club an hour ago instead of four.

Sage faked a smile, as she walked around the floor, avoiding flailing bodies, to the bar. Her feet were killing her and as soon as her behind met the bar stool she flipped the shoes off and onto the wooden counter in front of her. Next to her, a dark haired man with a five o'clock shadow smiled as he brought a small glass filled with ice and brown liquor to his lips. He closed his eyes as the liquid slid into his mouth and down his throat, swallowed and then opened his eyes again, eyes heavy with suggestions and liquor. Despite his half-lidded gaze, Sage could see that his eyes matched the amber color of his drink. His eyelashes were full enough to make most girls jealous, and despite the dusting of hair she could make out the hard lines of his jaw. 

He was definitely attractive.

So Sage ignored him. 

"My bar is not your kitchen table." The bartender, Geoff, informed her as he walked over, glass at the ready.

"Gimme the usual," was her only reply. Not caring about any looks she was getting, Sage kneaded the ball of her foot. She was thankful that the girls were getting older and their partying days per week were slowly decreasing in number. Her feet couldn't take much more. 

The blond haired bartender set an electric blue drink on a coaster by her heels. "Should I call Carmen a cab cause you don't look like you're staying for much longer," his blue eyes glanced on to the floor. Carmen was still moving her hips in an intoxicating rhythm. Rico Suave was trying to keep up, but she batted his hands away every time he reached for her.

"She's more sober than you think," Sage said with a smile, going back to what she was doing to her feet. God, it felt amazing. If she hadn't been with the girls, she would finish her night in the club barefoot. Hell, if it weren't for the girls she wouldn't have even come. It was taking everything in her now just to not walk home. Her bed was calling her. 

She felt Geoff's eyes on her as she worked the heel of her foot. "I could do that for you, you know?" His offer was a quite one. She was surprised she had even heard it over the music, but whether she had or not, the look in eyes repeated the question like a marquee in Times Square. 

"You're a bartender, you serve drinks and touch people's ice. I'm not sure anyone would be particularly happy to know that prior to making their fuzzy navel you were working the kinks out of my toes."

If it had been anyone else, Sage probably would have walked away from sheer annoyance, but Geoff had been a good friend and informant for her and the girls for a while. 

His flirtations were excused. 

At least the ones directed at her. He had had a serious crush on her friend, Brie, since middle school. As the year's progressed, his taunts about her black wavy hair and not so big chest had turned into loaded questions and fearless innuendo. Brie found it tiresome. It was highly entertaining for everyone else.

The light in his eyes died as quickly as a firework in a summer night sky, and he picked up a spotless glass and began wiping the outside rim, looking everywhere but at her. 

The man that had been sitting next to her vacated his seat, leaving Sage with an inviting smile. Out of curiosity, her eyes followed him into the crowd, and he tossed her inviting looks as he disappeared. Sage wasn't interested. She almost felt bad for staring so hard in his direction. In the next twenty minutes, after he realized that she had no intentions of following him into whatever dimly lit corner he was hiding in, he would probably wonder why she had stared so hard in the first place. Was it him? Did he stink? All the things that his drunken mind would wonder. 

But then again she wondered the same thing. Why hadn't she? He hadn't been bad looking. Hadn't tried to come on to her with cheesy, 'did it hurt?' lines. In fact, he had been just the way she liked her men lately. 

Silent. 

Sage sighed, dropping her foot down on to the pegs under the stool. She was made of marble. She knew it. No one could get passed whatever emotional barrier she had erected in front of herself these passed few years. 

No one.

The girls had begged and pleaded with her to come out with them. For the last couple weeks, she had made it a habit of either locking herself in her room or only going out when the girls had a job to do.

"It's depressing," Brie had told her the week before.

Sage had no desire to be out in this crowd of people. All these strangers. How could anyone feel comfortable here?

Sage grabbed her drink and took a sip as she glanced onto the dance floor. Carmen had switched dance partners and now she was in the arms of redheaded man, whose tight shirt highlighted every muscle in his body. His sleeves alone looked as if they would pop from his biceps, and curled around one was a tribal ring. Just like the other one, Carmen was just toying with him. He didn't even look interesting.

And what was that? Sage sighed, placing her drink back down with a slam. 

What the hell was wrong with her? Was she turning into a recluse? Everyday, to her and to the girls, it sure as hell seemed like it and everyday, Sage didn't care. She almost preferred to keep to herself sometimes. She loved her roommates more than anything, but who was there to talk to other than them? Her sister? Sage chuckled to herself as she played with the condensation at the bottom of her glass. 

She couldn't. Not to Vicki. 

Sage's phone buzzed in her back pocket, and she leaned over the bar to pull it out. She glanced at the screen and tossed the phone a little ways down the bar, uncaring of the harm that came to it.

"Jesus, why won't you stop calling me?" She hated boyfriends. She hated them because she knew that eventually they would become exes and exes were an annoying phone ritual for her. 

Alek, for instance, couldn't get a clue. He was like a fly during a BBQ. They had broken up because of his in ability to control his foolish desires for other women, and now every night he called and made his apologies, most of the time while drunk.

Geoff grabbed her phone and placed it next to her drink. "Please, don't throw phones at my patrons," he said, a smile returning to his eyes.

"He won't stop calling me." Sage couldn't hear her whine over the music, and was glad for it. Geoff grabbed a glass from the sink behind him and began cleaning it off with the same rag she had seen him use to wipe down the bar a few minutes ago. Sage pushed her drink away from her slightly. 

"Alek, right? The cheater guy I always saw you in here with?"

Sage nodded. He had hit the nail right on the head. "He calls me every night to tell me that he's sorry." Sage shrugged. "I get it. You fucked up. Get over it." 

Sage realized how mean she sounded, but nothing could move her to care. She was fed up with everything it seemed like. Was this how her parents felt right before they decide they would drown their life away in gin vodka? Sage pushed the thought away before it could manifest itself anymore.

She wasn't them. She never would be.

The thought made her push away her drink a little more. Geoff noticed and picked up the cold glass, examining it. "Did I not make it right?" Sage shook her head and waved her hand in unison. He caught the hint and tossed the drink out. When he turned back to her, his forehead was scrunched up, eyebrows raised.

"Are you feeling okay?" Geoff went to put his hand on her forehead but she batted it away. 

"I'm fine."

The bartender wasn't having it. He leaned forward on the wood of the bar, searching for her eyes. Sage made an effort to make her hands more interesting than anything else in the club. 

"Seriously," he probed. "What's going on?" He glanced around, then leaned forward a little more. 

"Is it the hunts? "

Sage scoffed at the absurdity of his statement.

She loved the hunts. They made her feel alive. More alive than she felt sitting in a dingy bar, watching people dance and drink. More alive than she did talking to Alek over French onion soup and red wine. More alive than she had felt in a long time. 

Sage had to smile. 

To every man and woman in here, Sage, Brie, Carmen and Regan looked like four regular girls who had come to the club to unwind from their stressful 9 – 5 work schedules. They talked like normal girls, acted, when necessary, like normal girls, but to the few that knew, they were something entirely different. Sage glanced around the room. She could probably count on one hand the amount of people who knew that there was an entire community within the one they lived in. She could only imagine the way the blond at the end of the bar would react if Sage told her that nine times out of ten, those blemishes she had tried her best to cover up on her neck weren't blemishes at all. And that Goth bar she had visited a week ago was definitely not just a Goth bar. The poor girl would probably fall out of her seat.

The Huntresses. 

They hadn't started calling themselves that. Someone had whispered it one night and it had stuck. They hunted the things that human's didn't need to know about. Didn't need to associate with. They were paranormal hunters. They specialized in vampires, but could also handle your occasional demon. They had done away with some troublesome Fae before (the Unseelie queen hated them.). They didn't go near Werewolves or Were-anything for that matter. The girls left those to the big guys, or to the vamps. The unpredictable mongrels weren't their problem. But the girl's were more than feared in the vampire community. And the thought made Sage's fingertips tingle. She needed a hunt right now. She needed to feel one of those bastards's bleed. Needed to feel her heart beat fast and see the look in their faces when they realize that she was not in fact a lost young woman who had decided to take a shortcut on her way home from work.

Sage had to reel herself in. "No. The hunts are fine."

Geoff shook his head. "Is it Caleb?"

The thoughts shot through Sage's mind before she could stop them. Brie's younger sister, with her bright green eyes and her unusual colored hair. Caleb was home by herself. She had begged Brie to go out and have fun. Since their parent's death, Brie had been a mother to the younger girl, all of the girls had, in fact, and it wasn't easy being a mother to a child with a mental disorder, no matter how many "mothers" were helping. The wealth of emotions that passed through Sage shocked her. 

They almost felt new.

She remembered how her heart had dropped into the pit of her stomach when Caleb's doctor told all the girls what was wrong with her. Why she hadn't been sleeping, or eating, why she would look at people as if they had maggots and bats flying out their head, and why she woke up screaming almost every night.

Sage had felt her stomach drop that day. It had been months since she had felt anything similar to it, and despite her desire to feel something other than boredom, that feeling had not been welcome. 

"Brie is probably in a corner somewhere blowing up Caleb's cell phone, but the kid's fine. She's home, hopefully sleeping."

When Geoff looked as if he would plague her with more questions, Sage cut him off with a reassuring smile that she knew didn't quite reach her eyes. "Look, I'm good. Just a little tired." She spun her chair around to avoid looking at Geoff, and hearing his reply. Instead she searched the floor for Carmen. This time the girl was dancing back to back with their roommate, Regan. 

Regan's red hair, reflected off the lights giving her a glow that made a few men and women on the dance floor stop and stare. Almost as if she could feel eyes on her, Carmen glanced up at the bar, searching. She met Sage's hazel eyes.

'Are you okay? '

Carmen's voice sounded like a distant echo. Over the loud music, Sage hadn't even been sure she'd heard it, but she knew by her friend's concerned look that it had not been in her imagination. Sage only nodded. She wasn't telepathic. She couldn't reply to her, but Carmen could pull her thoughts, she would see the words and memories Sage had placed at the foreground of her mind to give the impression she was having a blast. Carmen seemed to do just that and her concerned look was replaced with a smile, as she continued dancing.

She needed an out. 

Bad.

She searched around the club for Brie, but her unmistakable lengthy black hair and cafe au lait skin was nowhere in sight.

"Dammit," she muttered, turning her seat back to face the bar. 

Geoff, thankfully, had made his way to the blond at the end of the counter. As he offered her a refill on her drink, she unconsciously touched the blemishes on the side of her neck, trying to hide the redness, while leaning unnecessarily far over the bar to point to a bottle on the top shelf. Sage could see her breasts spilling out of her scoop neck dress. Geoff was going to be busy for a while. 

Sage grudgingly gathered her shoes off the bar, to put them back on her feet, but stopped when the light from her phone caught her attention. 

4 missed calls.

Sage scrunched her eyebrows, as she picked up the phone. Mentally, she went down the list of people she hoped it hadn't been as she pressed the button to show the calls. All four had come from a number she didn't know and not one of them had produced a voicemail, but Sage didn't need to have the number saved in her phone to know whom it was. She jumped off the bar stool, and paused for a second as the sting of her feet settling back into the heels passed. She pulled a five out of her bra, and left it on the counter. When Geoff wasn't occupied with Plastic Surgery at the end of the bar, he could grab his money.

Sage pushed through the crowd of people, making her way to the front door. 

Occasionally, a man would turn to her, assuming she was nudging him to get his attention not to move him out the way, but she ignored their interests. She pushed through the velvet door and welcomed the cold fresh air that hit her skin. 

"You leavin' without the girls?" Darrell, the bouncer, stood against the door, arms folded in a classic bouncer pose. 'No one 's getting in', the muscles bulging out of his short sleeved black body armor said. 

"They ain't gonna be to happy 'bout that." The smile that lifted up his chocolate brown cheeks told her he was kidding, but Sage's sour mood had turned bitter. 

"I know, " she answered, walking backwards as she made her way across the street. "But I gotta go get my sister out of jail."

Huntress Ch. 02



Hopefully, I have some people who have stuck around thus far. Thank you, for that. Here is chapter 2. Just as an idea for where this is going. It is going to turn into a romance eventually, but if someone could let me know how the pacing is, I would appreciate it. I feel like things are moving to fast? But I'm not sure how to slow them down. Comments are always appreciated.

*

The city had made a smart decision when they put the police station a few blocks away from the downtown area clubs. Sage was mentally thanking who ever it was that came up with the idea because her feet were screaming bloody murder. Without even looking down at the peep-toes, she knew the skin around the crimson painted nails were most likely white and swollen from lack of blood flow. God, she hated wearing heels. The more her feet hurt the worse she could feel her posture becoming. By now, her walking would be a dead giveaway as to how bad she was hurting, but it was hard to care. Self-preservation kept the shoes on, and she pushed herself tall and straight as she entered the police station.

The downtown police station always buzzed with life on a late night .She didn't have to walk in to figure that out. She knew from experience. 

A few older officers glanced her way, and sat back in their chairs, eyeing her. Recognizing her.

She had spent a good amount of her childhood and teenage years sitting opposite a detective or an officer's desk, handcuffed and usually bloody from a fight. She kept walking ignoring the looks. 

That had been so long ago. She couldn't even remember the last time it had happened. 

Well, actually she could, but when she had turned eighteen her record was expunged. The only place that her past existed was within the minds of the officers who'd arrested her. 

Sage stopped once a giant desk barricaded her from the rest of the station. The officer, whose big fluffy hair reminded her of the heroes in cheesy 70's movies, gave her a skeptical once over, before meeting her eyes and smiling. While it had taken him a few seconds to recognize her, Sage knew his face immediately. "May I help you, ma'am?" His voice held a slight taunt.

Sage folded her arms within themselves. She wanted smack the grin off of his fat face. Had wanted to since she was 14 years old. "I'm not in the mood, Wade." She made sure the tone of her voice implied that she wasn't lying. Wade continued to smile, ignoring the serious air around her. 

"Your sister is taking your place, you know that. All this stupid shit she keeps getting into trouble for. Guess it runs in the family, huh?" Wade chuckled as he pushed himself up from his desk and over to a key ring, hanging on the wall. He fished around amongst the keys for a few seconds before saying, "Got caught with a full bag 'a coke, this time. Right down the street." He gave another hearty chuckle. "If I didn't know better, I would think your family is as dumb as a bag of rocks." He found the key, and disappeared around the corner. "And at the rate your sister's going I'm starting to doubt how much I do know."

It took everything in her not to follow him into the back room, subdue him with his own handcuffs, and lock him in a cell. Wade had been the arresting officer for a number of cases that Sage had been involved in. Most of them had been minor cases, but Wade had taken joy in landing a few punches on her, claiming she had swung on him and resisted arrest, bumping her charge up so that she'd spend at least few weeks behind bars. Every night he would walk back to the holding cells and watch her, teasing her, yelling at her. Hoping to get a rise out of her so that he could give the cameras a semi-valid reason why he went into her cell and beat the shit out of her. It never worked, of course. 

Sage wasn't an idiot.

She could hear Wade's belt clang with every step he took. She listened as his footsteps stopped. A lock clicked and after a slight struggle, she heard the light tap of heels trying their best to keep up with heavier footfalls. 

He appeared from around the corner, hand gripping the forearm of a tall blonde, whose eyeliner had been smudged around her eyes, and whose lipstick was in a perfect oval around but not actually on her thin lips. 

"Jesus Christ," Sage muttered under her breath. She couldn't even look at her. "Look who came to see you, Vicki," Wade's comment made her blood boil. As Wade leisurely made his way behind Vicki to undo her cuffs, Sage made a conscience attempt to avoid looking into her sister's eyes. She could feel them on her, begging for even the slightest glance. Begging her to say something reassuring. 

But Sage wouldn't give in. She kept her eyes on her sisters joined wrists, and as soon as she was free, she lunged for her, pulling her away from Wade. The graying cop twirled the cuffs on his finger, and gave a smile that made Sage almost reach for the SR9 that was strapped to her upper thigh. 

With controlled urgency, she pushed her sister towards the exit, and turned her attention back to Wade. "I know that putting handcuffs on me gives you a raging boner, but try and keep my sister out of your sick fantasies."

Wade fell into his chair and sat back, fingers intertwined and set over his bulging belly. "Well, I sure have missed you down here, Sagey. It's been—what, like, 7 years since you graced the bars with your presence." He tilted his head to the side and pouted his lips. "Do come back and see me, soon, won't ya?"

Sage was halfway across the station before he'd even finished his last sentence. She had to get out before her trigger finger itched a hole into someone's chest. She hated cops. More than she hated vamps. Not only were they unfair bastards, but they were nosy and far too assuming of things they didn't know. A cop was a classic example of giving regular people far too much power. They didn't know what to do with it and so they abused it. 

Sage met her sister outside the doors. Victoria had taken off her heels and was crying into them and her hands. The sound of her sister's sobs hit her like a ton of bricks. Sage didn't know what to do. 

So she started walking.

Behind her, Victoria's flat feet made odd plopping noises as she made an effort to keep up. "I'm sorry," she sobbed. She was short without her heels. Sage had almost forgotten how much taller she was than her sister. "I wasn't doing anything. I was waiting for a friend, and a cop just came up and searched me. He used that probable cause shit."

"Wipe your face," Sage told her. Victoria stopped walking for a second then hustled to reach her sister again. "Are you mad?"

"Do you want me to be mad, Vick?" 

"No. Of course not. I just want to know what your thinking. You've been super quiet lately."

Sage stopped walking and turned to face her younger sister. She almost didn't recognize her with all the shit that was covering her face. The thought that her sister had grown up to be something foreign to her scared Sage a little. She remembered when Vicki's face was as smooth as a baby's cheek and her voluminous eyelashes housed the giant green eyes behind them. Sage had loved her little sister's eyes; always bright despite the daily torture their father and mother put them through. They had been a safe haven for her. 

Now they looked like someone else's; empty and dead, caged in by spiky eyelashes, painted black by old caked mascara. Her blond hair that had once been a prize for everyone that saw it gleam in the sun was now washed out white with black underneath it all. 

No, this wasn't the girl Sage had raised. 

"I'm thinking that whatever you were doing, you need to not do it again." 

Immediately, Victoria's sobbing face contorted in anger. "I said I wasn't doing anything. I was fucking si—" "Don't curse at me," Sage muttered as she began walking again, moving out the way to avoid a couple that passed by, holding hands and laughing. Victoria rushed to keep up, rage now filling every barefooted step she took. 

"I was freaking standing off of Pine Street waiting for Chelsea to come and pick me up." Victoria squealed dramatically.

"What is with you? You always think that I am doing something. I never do. When I get stopped, it's because the police think I'm you. They miss all the trouble you gave them and they miss waking mom up in the middle of the night with phone calls of how you stabbed a detective."

Sage did her best to discard that memory before it was able to manifest into a full thought. She failed. Their mother had been livid. Wade had been the one to make the call. No one ever saw who this wounded cop was nor did his name ever come up. The only concern was that she be incarcerated for harming an officer. Of course, at her trial that charge was dropped. There had been no evidence, only rumors. The cop that she had supposedly 'shanked' never even showed up to testify.

Despite everything, her parents still punished her harshly, and that incident had caused her father to give Sage her first black eye.

"Then if you know all of this, why do you insist on putting yourself in situations to get arrested? Okay, so the cop thought you were me, that's all fine and dandy, but a bag of coke, Vic. A bag of coke?" There was very little inflection in her voice. She didn't have the energy for it. Instead she stopped, turning her back to an empty space between two abandoned buildings and looked at her sister. "You have kids, Vic."

The younger girl sighed, annoyed. Sage took a deep breath before continuing, but stopped at the smell her nose picked up. "You've been drinking too?"

Victoria shrugged. "I had a few shots before I left the house."

Now that she said it Sage could smell alcohol and cigarettes all over Vicki's clothes, pouring off of her in nauseating waves. No, she had had more than a few shots. 

Sage repeated her last statement. "You have kids, Vicki."

"What does that have to do with anything? I was just hanging out, meeting some people up for a drink to re—" "To relax, right? And then you were going to go home to your two sons, wake them up with how much noise you make coming in the house. Pass out on the kitchen floor, forcing Jordan to get out of bed and drag you into yours, then stay up with you to make sure you don't vomit and choke. Then at 7 o'clock, he will leave you, wake and dress his brother. Make lunch for both of them, and leave for school. Two hours later in math class, he is gonna fall asleep and miss learning his times tables, and he will continue to fail the third grade."

Victoria was taken aback, and dramatically, she even put her hand on her chest. "How do you know Jordy is failing?"

"I'm his aunt, I'm supposed to know because you don't. Now doesn't that story sound oddly familiar?" God, it did. She had done the same thing almost every night growing up. She'd barely passed middle because she had been so busy keeping her parents supplied with alcohol and her sister from her father's fist. That couldn't have been how Victoria wanted to raise her kids. it was no life for them.

"I don't get to go ou—" Victoria stopped talking abruptly and pushed Sage out the way to look where her shoulder had been. She squinted her eyes to look into the darkness of the alley that they stood in front of.

"What?" Sage looked back and forth from her sister to the alley. 

The younger girl shook her head slowly. "I thought I saw something, but I guess not." 

Sage settled her hand over her cotton-covered thigh, tracing the outline of her gun cautiously. Her sister picked up where she had left off. "I don't get to go out often. I just needed a break." Her voice had become a high-pitched whine, begging for Sage to understand. 

"You should have thought about that before you decided to have kids," was her sister's only reply. Childishly, Victoria stomped her feet. "You never want to take care of them for me so I can go have a life. My life is all PTA meetings and soccer games. I'm 23, Sage. Meanwhile, you, the supposedly good aunt, is out partying every night with you're roommates. You don't even invite me!"

Sage shrugged. "You can't afford a babysitter." She glanced down the street, both directions. 

There had been a scant number of people around before they had walked so far, but now their surroundings were completely abandoned, giving the dilapidated area a ghost town feel. The hairs on the back of Sage's neck were at attention. The metal strapped to her thigh burned with anticipation. Something wasn't right.

"I can't affo—" Victoria cut her sentence off with a brief high pitched scream, that made Sage reach underneath her dress and remove her gun.

The younger girl turned around twice, looking everywhere. Sage took a step back as she watched. Her sister's eyes landed on her, alarmed and frightened. "Did you see that? You had to have!"

"What did you see?" Sage dropped her voice, listening to the silence.

"I don't fucking know! Can we please go back the way we came? We can take the bus back to my house."

Sage ignored her sister's request. She took slow steps backwards, looking everywhere. Some one was watching them. She could feel eyes on her. More than one pair. The adrenaline in her blood kicked up double time, and a smile spread on her lips. She needed this. Arguing with her sister had only made the numbness spread wider and go deeper. She needed to feel this. She needed this excitement. 

"Sage," Victoria whispered, her voice shaking, as she watched her sister disappear into the alleyway. "Where are you going? Don't leave me out here." 

Sage allowed herself to settle into the darkness of the alley. Yes, someone had definitely been watching them as they walked down the street, and now it waited, biding its time. 

'Not human', her mind told her.

There was no way a human could follow her and her sister six blocks without making one mistake, one noise. Sage gave a small laugh, as the adrenaline continued to pump heavily in her system. 

"If I were you, the last thing I would be doing, huntress, is laughing." 

Victoria shrieked as a man's voice reverberated out of the blackness of the alley. The low tenor seemed to bounce off the walls and windows of the empty buildings. Sage couldn't pinpoint where it was coming from, the echo, throwing her off. 

"Oh, yeah? And why is that?" Sage answered cautiously. The metal from her gun had gone from ice cold to almost too hot against her palm.

The speaker gave a short chuckle. "Oh, you'll see."

Sage felt more than saw, the hand the came at her. The cool air of a barely missed punch, spurred her into action.

She ran out the alley, back to her sister, pushing her down the street. "Go! Go!" 

Victoria went without asking questions, and Sage hobbled behind her, trying to peel off her stilettos. "God dammit, why didn't I just take this shit off before?"

Fucking self-preservation. 

At blinding speed, a short man with a scruffy moustache and baseball cap, appeared in front of Victoria, halting the both of them. Victoria shrieked again, and the man smiled, baring sharp canines at her. Sage peeled the heel off her left foot, and chucked it at him, like a pitcher would a baseball.

The thin stiletto of her shoe jammed itself into the man's left eye, and his cry made the skin on Sage's arms rise with goose pimples. Sage pushed her sister passed him, as he cowered, covering his face. As she passed, Sage pressed her SR9 to the middle of the hunched vampires back, and pulled the trigger.

A small eruption of blood and ash plumed out of the vampires wound and overtook his body. Sage stopped to watch ash blow away in a gentle breeze and the blood fall to the ground in a sickening splat before grabbing her peep-toe once again and replacing it. She secured the strap, then took off after her sister, just as she heard the pounding of a number of approaching footsteps.

Victoria was running as fast as she could possibly could, and if Sage hadn't heard the sound of shoes running behind them, she would have congratulated the younger blond on actually being smart for a change. 

Don't ask questions, don't look back. Just run.

Victoria turned a sharp corner, and before Sage followed, she stopped and fired at three vampires that were ahead of the small crowd that had formed and was chasing them. The three vamps were dust and liquid before they hit the ground. 

Sage continued running, but stopped when she didn't see her sister. 

There was no way she could have run that fast. 

"Shit, Vic—"

A swift kick to the chest cut Sage off and caused her to stumble back on to her ass. A tall man whose hair seemed to go down to the end of his back, stood ahead of the group, ready for a fight. He barred his fangs at her, eyes wide and reddish. Cursing, Sage picked herself up from the ground, only to be thrown back again, by another kick, this one to the face. Stars, lines and dots decorated her vision momentarily, as the pain jarred her brain.

The longhaired vamp, smiled when she finally looked up at him. "You're not so tough, huntress." The man's voice was a soft accusation, and it made Sage's stomach turn. 

Just as he made a move to come at her again, Sage lifted her gun and put a bullet in the middle of his forehead. The vampire froze for a second, not registering what had happened. He took a step back, took a deep breath, and then laughed nervously. "A bullet to the head?" He glanced back at Sage's other attackers, encouraging them to join with his laughing. A few unsure chuckles erupted into full-blown cackles within seconds. "How have you survived, Huntress? Do you know nothing of our kind?" His laugh became almost obscene, as he and a few members of the crowd behind him pat their stomachs and slapped their knees. Sage waited for them to finish. 

She had yet to pick herself off the street. 

"What do you have to say for yourself, huntress?" The vamp swiped some stray hairs from his face before returning to a fighting stance. 

"Remote activated expanding hollow points."

The vampire's reacquired poker face twisted into confusion. "What?"

Sage reached under her dress, pulling out a skinny black remote, similar in width and length to the band of a wristwatch. She flashed it to her attacker and then to the men behind him. "Remote activated hollow points," she repeated. "Instead of regular hollow points that are supposed to expand upon entrance, these don't expand until I press this button," Sage pointed to the only button on the small remote. "And I guess it's a little misleading because they aren't really hollow at the tip. We filled them."  

Sage's attacker fingered the hole at the top of his head, his eyes darting at her then at the hole he couldn't see. "With what?" he whispered.

Sage shrugged. "What a silly question," she replied, and pressed the button. 

An unholy scream erupted from the longhaired vampire. He fell to his knees, clutching at his head, clawing grotesquely at his face. Sage took the opportunity to return to her feet, and approached him leisurely. She bent over till she was at eye level with him. 

"If you had been nice, I woulda just shot you in the heart and ended it all, but now..." Sage shrugged. The man continued screaming, not hearing a word she said. Behind him, the vamps scattered. A few running down the street while two others stepped into the shadows to disappear. 

Sage hated when they did that. It was like riding a vampiric elevator to wherever the hell they went. Once a vamp reached a shadow, they were gone. 

"Bastards."

A sharp scream pierced the night, drowning out the tortured vampire who was now squirming in the fetal position.

Sage moved instantly, following the echo. She wanted to kick herself for getting too involved and forgetting about her sister. Vicki didn't have any means of protecting herself, if a vamp got a hold of her— 





Huntress Ch. 02



Abruptly the thought was pushed from her head. She had no problem entertaining the guilt, but the thoughts themselves were out of bounds. Sage rounded corners at breakneck speeds, and within a few turns, she found herself in an area that reminded her of the warehouse district near her sister's home. Her sister's scream had long since dissipated into the air, but now a new sound took its place. 

And a new scent.

The smell was subtle and metallic. 

Sage checked her ammo as she rounded another corner, the sound of greedy suckling permeating the air. Her heart kicked up an extra notch, whether it was panic over her sister or the speed she was moving, she had no idea, and as she rounded another corner, coming face to face with her sister's pale and horrified face, she didn't care. 

She just began shooting, telling herself to hit the blood-sucking shell of what used to be a man that had latched itself on to her sisters neck. 

The vamp detached itself from Vic with a screech, and Sage stopped shooting as her sister was placed in the line of fire.

Victoria stared at her older sister with empty green eyes. Soulless. The white haired blond held herself up on weak, shaking legs. 

"Coward," Sage, whispered. She didn't need to talk loud. The vamps ears could pick out everything.

"Weak huntress." His voice reminded Sage of dripping slime. It left a bad taste in her mouth and Sage fought the un-lady like urge to spit. 

"Let her go," it was a warning. One that displayed what very little self-control the huntress had left. 

"If I didn't have orders, I would drain her dry right here, right now." The vamp peeked its balding head out from behind her sister, and Sage took the chance. The bullet left her gun and entered the vamps head in the blink of an eye, and the monster's head kicked back from the force and from shock.

Victoria fell to the ground lifeless. Sage didn't move to help her. It wasn't safe for her yet. As long as it stood above her, it had the advantage.

"I should just pull her heart out ri—" Sage planted a bullet in the vampire's heart before it finished it's sentence, and with a gory display, the dust remains of it's bones floated into the air and the bloody innards, watered the ground and Sage's sister.

The huntress was at her sister's side instantly, and she rolled the young lifeless girl over, checking for a pulse. It was there. Slow. But there. Victoria's eyes remained open, staring out into nothing. Sage had to look away, the anger from the situation, making her blood boil. 

They were cowards. All vampires. 

Go after the weak because you couldn't defeat the strong. Sage fought a stronger urge to spit. She had to get her sister home. It wasn't safe out in the open, no matter how much ammo she packed underneath her dress.

As she hoisted Victoria onto her shoulder, a feeling nagged at the back of her head, causing her to stumble a little. What had the vamp meant by 'orders'?



Huntress Ch. 03



So here is chapter 3, please lemme know how I am doing, guys. Ratings? Yes, please. Comments, absolutely. Also, if you're gonna be rude about my story then you need not read it. Constructive criticism is always appreciated. Rudeness is not.

*

If all the adrenaline in Sage's body hadn't been circulating as fast as a gazelle ran from a lion, she would have felt the dull ache that was mostly in her legs. She would have felt the cramping in her shoulders and back. She probably would have also felt her sister's sharp hip stabbing into her neck, as she carried her up the path to her home, Vic's limp body, draped over one shoulder. 

The vamp hadn't taken as much blood as Sage had thought, which was good. Based on Vic's silence she was most likely in shock. She had done her best to keep talking to her sister as she hustled to the house. She asked her question that were easy, 'what's two plus two', 'how many fingers do you have'. Her sister had answered sporadically, but she had answered correctly. As Sage took the final few steps to her sister's door, she realized that her hands had been clenched, her fingernails digging into the skin of her palm.

She was angry.

No, no, that was an understatement. 

A severe one. Sage was fucking pissed. 

Someone had attacked her sister. Tried to kill her. On orders. 

Who would put orders out to kill her sister? No, she had a better question. What supernatural being put orders out to kill her? 

If it had been a human that'd come after Vicki, Sage could have easily fought them off with little to no surprise. Her sister, despite her swearing to innocence, was anything but, and was constantly getting into trouble with anyone that could afford it. 

But a supernatural? Sage knew for a fact that Vic knew nothing about the paranormal world. She had made sure of this. And she was one hundred percent certain that her younger sister knew nothing of what her and the girls did. As far as Vicki should have known Regan and Carmen were bartenders, Brie was basically a stay at home mom to her younger sister, and Sage worked for a software company. Explaining to Vicki why her sister, the software developer, carried around a huge gun was going to be tricky, but she had explained harder things before.

Was it possible that Vicki had gotten mixed up in something she didn't really understand? Sage scoffed. Of course it was possible. It was actually probable, knowing her sister. But not with supernaturals...

Sage shoved the thought away as she approached the front door. Fishing in her pocket for her keys, she managed an odd juggling act, tossing her keys around in one hand, finding the right one and inserting it into slot, while keeping her sister balanced on her shoulder. As the dark hallway revealed itself, illuminated by only moonlight, the smell of old food and cat pee assaulted her. 

Good old Vicki. Doing her best to make a safe and healthy environment for her boys. 

Reluctantly, and because her shoulder was killing her, Sage entered the dark house. Her sister's room was at the back of the house, the last room in the hallway, and Sage headed there, pushing empty food cans and pizza boxes out of her way.

Without feeling around for a light switch, Sage brought her sister to her twin bed in the corner, and laid her down gently. She settled the smaller girl in, pulling the blanket that had been shoved to a corner of the bed over her sister's body and adjusting her head on the pillow. 

Out of precaution, Sage placed her fingers on the artery on her sister's neck. The pulse was slow but strong. Her sister would be fine after rest. Sage stood up, looking around the dark room. She didn't need to have lights on to know that most likely the area around the bed looked as if a hurricane had passed through right after a wild bull. Any person off the streets would be beyond shocked to know that Vicki's room was actually the dirtiest room in the house, besides the kitchen and living room. Her boy's room, unlike other boys their age, was kept immaculate. Not because Vicki enforced it, but because the boys had somehow gotten the angelic gene and were nothing like their mother. 

They were all right in school, behavior wise, they cleaned up after themselves. Jordan, the oldest of the two, could cook a decent meal for his younger brother, Jacob. The boys were just about the most resourceful kids Sage had ever met. It was sad to think that they even had to be considering their mom was one room over.

It almost disgusted her. Sage hadn't raised her like that.

Her mind went back to what the vamp had said in the alley. 

If I didn't have orders, I would drain her dry right here, right now. She could feel the irritation build again, followed closely by the confusion.

She exited her sister's bedroom, closing the door behind her. The same questions that were in her mind before, entered again. She didn't know any person who had the power or the status to control vampires. Vamps did what they wanted. They couldn't be manipulated. They had a king, yes, but what did he have against Vicki that would make him want to send people after her?

Sage walked down the unlit hall, trying her best not to make too much noise as she passed Jordan and Jacob's room. From the still open door, moonlight emptied its beams into the living room, lighting up the area like a bright white candle. Papers, pizza boxes, and empty beer cans littered the floor, couch and table. She bypassed the main room, doing her best to ignore the mess and headed to her left. The kitchen was in no better of a state than the other two rooms she had left. Empty cans of ravioli topped off dishes that had piled into the sink like a star on top of a Christmas tree. More beer cans, more pizza boxes. The place was a sty. Completely unsanitary, and Sage found herself reevaluating her own lifestyle.

"Auntie Sage?" A small voice cracked the silence that had become an envelope. The blonde turned to find her oldest nephew standing at the entrance of the kitchen. His footie pajamas were stretched taut over his growing body, to the point where the collar of his shirt was rubbing the skin raw. She remembered when she had bought him those pajamas, when he was 5 going on 6. It looked as if he had long since grown out of them. Sage's heart melted, as she crouched down to one knee and opened her arms.

"Hey buddy. What are you doing up?" the boy entered her embrace and allowed her to hug him tightly. 

Poor kid, she told herself as she subtly rocked him back and forth. 

"I heard you come in with mom. Is she okay?" He pulled out of her arms to look her in the face. The moonlight, despite being in the other room, reflected off of him perfectly. Sage saw herself at that age in his green eyes. Strong, resourceful and tired. He had been Jacob's father and friend since the boy was born. She knew that feeling. All too well.

"Your mom's fine, kiddo. She's just a bit tired."

"She's always tired. That or drunk." There was a hint of disgust in the boy's voice.

Sage could only nod. The kid was seven. He shouldn't have even known what that word 'drunk' meant. 

"I know, Jordy. I know but your mom needs her rest and so do you. You have school tomorrow, am I right?" Sage stood up and began pushing her nephew out the kitchen, as he nodded solemnly. The boy's aunt followed him to his room, and stood at the door as he tucked himself in. While she couldn't see where he was, she could hear the rustle of sheets. Above him, Jacob turned over, disturbed by the sound. 

"Aunt Sage?"

"Yeah?'

"The school is having open house next week." There was a pause before the words fell out of his mouth. "I don't want mom to come."

Reluctantly Sage answered, "What time does it start?"

"Six..."

Sage nodded to herself. Jordan wasn't her son, and part of her wanted to tell the younger boy 'no' so as not to estrange him from his real mother, but she didn't. She had a feeling that Jordan was already estranged from Vicki without her interference. "I'll be there."

As she turned to leave, a thought hit her. Hard. She turned around, looking into the darkness for a pale face she knew she wouldn't see.

"Hey Jor?"

Sage heard a rustling that she could only assume was her nephew sitting up in bed. 

"Yeah?"

She cleared her throat. She had to choose her words carefully. The boys might not have known their fathers, but they didn't need any more added stress.

"Did your mom ever bring over any people that um, didn't seem very normal?" Through the darkness, Sage heard two scoffs. Jacob, Jordan's younger brother was obviously awake and listening. 

"Yeah, all the time." Jordan's answer was matter-of-fact. Of course Vicki had brought home people with questionable looks as well as morals. It was Vicki.

"I mean...people that didn't look right. People that kinda made you uneasy. A little scared? They may not have said anything to you, but you just got bad vibes?" Sage waited, giving the boys time to think. Finally a smaller voice answered. Jacob's voice.

"Yeah," was the little boys answer. Sage softened her voice to talk to her youngest nephew. "Do you remember what he looked like?"

"Um..." She heard him sit up. "He was tall. His hair was long and white."

"So he was old?"

Sage heard more than saw the boy shake his head. "No. He didn't have any wrinkles. His eyes were really blue too."

He didn't talk to us," Jordan was speaking now. "He kinda brushed us off. He only seemed interested in what mom had to say, but when he did look at us...it felt bad. He looked at us and we both felt cold and tired, right Jacob?"

"Right."

Sage didn't know any vamps personally, all the ones she had ever met, she had killed, but she knew that look. She had received it on many occasions. 

Yeah. The men that her sister had been bringing home were most definitely not men. 

They had been vampire. And she had obviously done something to piss one off.

"Get to bed, guys. You have to wake up in a few hours."

The boys replied back to her with a few yawns and the ruffle of sheets. Sage closed the door behind her and made her way down the hallway back to the living room.

By the time, Sage reached the end of the hall she was livid. Her sister had no idea what she was getting into. No idea of the kind of people she had brought to the house. She had put everyone in danger by bringing a vamp to the house, and now especially since she had pissed one off, she put her boys in danger. 

They knew where to find her. They knew how to find her. Somehow they had known that she would take that certain way home, and had obviously heard that she had been arrested. Someone was watching her.

Sage walked to the kitchen counter and sifted through it. There was no way the vamps had just approached Victoria at a human bar. They didn't do that. They waited for informed humans to come to them, which happened more frequently than Sage wanted to admit. Sage threw around old bills and report cards, not caring how much noise she made. In order for Vic to have gotten so caught up with a vamp she had to have gone to...

Sage stopped sifting and picked up a small business card she had uncovered. The card was entirely black save for a few words scribbled in exotic penmanship. 

Lucid Nightmare

The words were thin, red and shiny, giving the card it's own mysterious air. The back of the card was also black, but there were hours of operation written in a more readable font on the corner of it. 

Sage didn't need to look up the clubs location. She knew it like the back of her hand, and while she had never literally gone in, the place held a lot of memories for her and her roommates. 

When they had first begun hunting, they had camped out in front of the bar, waiting for any high profile vamp to walk out. They would follow him down the street and slay him. A couple times that night they had even had the honor of catching a few Unseelie Fae. 

Carmen's ability to see through Fae magic had come in handy that night, and had saved a number of humans from a fate worst than being drained dry. 

Sage was about to put the card down when something glinted at the bottom of the card, causing her to pull it back up.

It wasn't there. Sage moved the card back and forth, like a hologram hoping it would show back up, but she had no luck. 

With determination, she sighed and moved into the living room, hoping brighter moonlight would help her catch whatever she had seen. As soon as the card hit a beam of light, a name in the corner appeared, written in the same shiny, red calligraphy as the words in the front.

Edgar Black. Bartender

Sage tested the name out loud, seeing if it held any familiarity. She had never heard it before in her life. This was probably the man that Victoria had pissed off. The bartender of some shitty vamp bar. Sage tucked the card into the top of her strapless dress, and then reached underneath the puffy, short skirt, pulling out her gun. She released the ammo, checked it, and put it back in. Without skipping a beat, she strapped the gun back to her leg, and headed out the door, making her way back to the city.

+++

The room almost seemed to pulsate as wave after wave of bass beat against leather clad bodies dispatched all across the room. People swayed and jerked around, as if being directed by the power of the music. Woman ran their bodies against their male companions and a few men rubbed their bodies against other men in a way that would be rated X in the outside world. 

In the corner, a tall dark-haired man drew blood from a redheaded girl in a schoolgirl outfit. When he pulled away, seemingly coming up for air, her white uniform shirt was stained crimson. She didn't seem to mind, and pulled the vamp back down by his hair, to her open mouth.

Rhys Stone sat back in his cushioned booth, taking in the scenes going on all across the bar. Lucid Nightmare never changed. 

It was average in the way of vampire clubs. A decent mix of overly curious humans and starving vampires. Every night the humans would pile in, eager to see if the rumors were true: If the people at the Goth bar really thought they were vampires.

By the end of the night, the naysayers learned that not only did 'these people' think they were vampires, they acted, hunted, fed, drank, fucked and for the unlucky few, even killed like them. But this new knowledge was always short in its existence. It was club policy to erase or at least taint human memories before they stepped foot back into the real world. If it was discovered that this had not happened, the human, their family and all of their friends were hunted down and killed. 

Rhys took a long swig of the warm Oh-negative that was in his glass. The sharp flavor seeped down his tongue, torturing him with its sluggish craw. He hated Oh- negative, but that was all the bar had at the moment. The bartender had told him that they were currently searching the crowd for willing donors. Rhys knew that that could take a while. Sure, there were more than enough willing donors in Lucid Nightmare, but to find a donors whose alcohol content didn't taint the taste of the blood, giving it that dry aftertaste? Now that would be difficult. 

But Rhys could wait. With a quick jerk, he finished off the blood and slammed his glass down. He closed his eyes, trying to take himself to his happy place as the blood found its way to his stomach. It was nourishment. It didn't have to taste good. It just had to keep him alive. When he opened his eyes, the empty other half of the booth was no longer empty.

Instead, a raven-haired girl bobbed up and down, looking at him as if he were a new pony. She was far too young to be in here, Rhys could smell it.

"Hi," she leaned over the table and yelled over the music. Her shirt, which was most likely her older sisters dipped low, exposing more skin than Rhys felt comfortable looking at for someone her age. Thankfully, as she leaned further over the table, expectant of an answer her dark hair spilled onto the table, covering her shoulders and breasts. Now he could respond. "Good evening." 

When she furrowed her eyebrows, Rhys knew that he had spoken too low. She had barely heard him.

"My name is Mischa." 

The Asian girl's smile almost seemed to touch both of her ears.

It was obviously her first time at LN. 

"What's yours?" She yelled, when he did not give her his name immediately. 

Rhys sighed. He hadn't come here for a woman, let alone a girl. Rhys leaned forward over the table, and stared into Mischa's dark eyes. With little trouble, he hacked into her mind, receiving a flood of information and memories. 

She was 16.

Her parents were out of town and her sister had promised to bring her to Lucid Nightmare before they came back. The girl was smart when she wanted to be. 

Strict parents; homework everyday, piano and cello lessons every night. As much as her parents didn't want her to call it so, she was already engaged in an arranged marriage to a man, not a boy, that she didn't know. Her sister, who was her best friend, promised to take her all the places she wanted to go before her wedding day.

Rhys pulled out of her mind briefly, the emotions almost drowning him. The girl was still staring at him, held in a strong thrall. Her face was blank, large smile almost too much for her little eyes and nose. This time Rhys saw something different in that face. 

Desperation. The desire to be free. The need to not feel. Rhys saw all of the sadness the girl carried within her large smile that her parents had taught her to always wear.

'Smile, Mischi-Mish. It is ugly to frown all the time,' They always told her.

Rhys leaned forward a little more. This time when he went back into her mind, it was as a caress. Around them, the music seemed to float away; all Rhys could hear was her heart beating, and her steady breathing. The flashing glow sticks and strobe lights dimmed and faded, leaving the two in the darkness of Mischa's thoughts.

"Why are you here, Mischa?" Rhys voice resounded through the girl's mind. 

"My sister brought me here. She wanted me to have fun." The girl's answer was robotic, controlled by Rhys.

"You are too young," he replied, taking the rough edge out of it.

"I know. I have a fake I.D."

"You are too young to be married, as well," Rhys added, even softer than before. The large smile the empty eyed girl wore faltered. 

"I don't want to be married." In her mind, the constant stream of faux happiness her parents had taught her to keep up shorted out for a second. "He doesn't love me."

"Do you know him?"

She shook her small head, the raven-haired strands, moving with her. Rhys nodded in understanding.

"What do you want?" He asked, but he knew already. Mischa wanted to see the world. She wanted to play the cello in France and Australia. She wanted to lay on the beaches in South America and go on a cruise. She wanted to be away from her suffocatingly rich parents and their business proposals that involved her happiness. 

"Freedom," she whispered the word as if it were forbidden. Rhys could feel the yearning that she put into that word. At that moment, the sixteen year old seemed to have aged about ten years. Her dimly lit smile stayed put on her face, but now her black empty eyes were gleaming at him, threatening to flood over onto her childlike cheeks.

Rhys sighed and within that same sigh he said, "When you are 18, you will go to Main Bank downtown and tell them that you would like to see safety deposit box number eighteen." Rhys used his compulsion to make the young girl hold out her hand. When she did, a small key fell into it. "You will take everything out of that box and you will leave. Whatever is within that box is now yours. Do you understand?" Rhys closed her fingers around the key, with his hand. He watched as the girl nodded and put the key in her bra. 




Huntress Ch. 03



He'd had that box for a little over ten years. He'd crammed a little over fifty thousand euros within the it. At the time he had called it rainy-day money, but since said rainy day had yet to come, Rhys assumed it was safe to be someone else's umbrella for their rainy day. 

Slowly he allowed his compulsion to slip out of her mind. The strobe lights came back, blinding as ever. The music was so loud, with Rhys's excellent hearing, it sounded as if it beat against the different hemispheres of his brain. Across from him, Mischa was looking around as if she had fallen asleep in class. She looked up at him, smile no longer there. 

Only confusion.

"Your sister is looking for you, Mischa." Rhys yelled. A moment of panic washed over her, as she looked out into the crowd, scared her sister was going to leave. In an instant, Mischa was out of the booth running to find the older girl. 

Rhys watched her disappear into the crowd before settling back into his seat. Hunger beat against him, the feeling subtle, but still annoying. He glanced down at his empty glass of oh-negative. He needed more before he returned home. He couldn't go to his day rest hungry. 

With a heavy arm, Rhys swiped his glass up as he exited his booth. Just before the exit of the club was the bar, lined from top to bottom with bottles of liquor from around the world. At the very end, three women sat in elevated seats that resembled director's chairs. Their wrists were strapped to the sides of the chair and red tubes flowed from the veins there. In each of the women's laps were signs that labeled what blood type they were. The bartender, a vampire with spiky black hair and startling black eyes followed Rhys over to the women, and leaned slightly over the bar, waiting to hear his pick. In all honesty, Rhys didn't want any: a-negative was always a bitter taste, b-positive was too sweet, and b-negative was a little too spicy. 

Rhys pointed to the redheaded woman whose skin was paler than what was natural for a human; b-negative. She was near the end of her Giving. He could tell in the way she swooned when Bartender opened her tap. All of the woman on the stools seemed miserable, and Rhys had to wonder if they had thought it would be exciting to be a Giver. 

A new experience, maybe? He doubted if anybody told the three ladies that at least one person dies a week from being a Giver. But then again, he doubted if any of them would care. He had to sigh and look away, not allowing the pity to settle in. When he glanced back up, the bartender held out the crimson liquid that was filled to the brim.

Rhys took the glass. Just as he about to throw his head back to take a shot, a slender blonde woman, pushed him to the side, making him spill a bit of the red liquid on his silk shirt.

"Are you Edgar Black?" She yelled to the spiky haired vampire. Rhys leaned over her, cutting off her view of Bartender. She was on the shorter side in comparison to him, but Rhys knew from a human standpoint she would be considered tall. "Excuse me," he said, not yelling over the music. He kept his tone steady but the warning clear. 

The blonde turned to look at him, sharply. Her hazel eyes peered at him with contempt. 

"Shut it, vamp." 

Rhys was taken aback, but kept his expression neutral. He should have known from those eyes that she would have a fiery temper, but he hadn't expected that. Nor had he deserved it. She turned back to look at Bartender, and from a profile, Rhys could see that in the way of humans, she was very pretty. Her nose small in comparison to her large eyes. Her hair was, yes, blonde, but the color was a shocking splash of platinum locks. All natural, he could tell. She didn't have anything artificial on her. Her hair was short, barely brushing her shoulders, and coiled tightly in temporary dreadlocks. By the way she stood, Rhys could see that she was in pain.

From where?

He looked at her up and down, and ah, there it was. The source was coming from the stilettos she wore. The heel of her shoe was so thin, even his sharp eyes had almost missed it, but it worked with the black dress that clung to her chest, stomach and waist, but flared passed that in a sort of bubble that barely covered her thighs.

'And what thighs,' Rhys looked back to the face of the woman as she asked again.

"Are you Edgar Black?" 

Bartender nodded slowly, cautiously. "What of it?" he yelled back, a thick Boston accent decorating his words. 

Out of nowhere, Blondie pulled a gun from underneath her dress, and fired a shot into Edgar's shoulder. The sound echoed throughout the room causing instant panic. Rhys even took a few steps back, out of disbelief. 

With little effort, the blonde hoisted herself onto the bar, and looked down on Edgar as he slumped low on the floor clutching his shoulder. She pointed her gun at Edgar's head, and Rhys couldn't help but feel he was watching some sort of horror movie. People screaming as they ran around in a panic to leave the club. Even the vampires that had occupied the room were searching for an exit. Rhys merely took a few more steps back, looking up at the girl, whose face was disturbingly blank.

The blonde, who didn't seem to notice the panic she had stirred, smiled down at Edgar, wryly. "Mr. Black, I have a few questions for you."



Huntress Ch. 04



Okay, well Chapter 4, here it is. Thank you for those of you who are reading this and are enjoying it and commenting and rating. Like I said in one of my comments (that I'm sure was not read by anyone other than me) I have up to chapter 9 written, and I am just editing as I upload, but I think after this chapter, I will slow the uploading down a little bit just so I don't get behind on my actually writing and completion of the story.

Enjoy..

++

Sage had looked into the eyes of many dying vamps. 

And many a-times she had responded to those looks with a swift kill. 

Not because she couldn't stand it, the sad eyes, the trembling lips, the whole package, but because she didn't want to hear them beg. Begging was a human attribute. These bloodsuckers were not human, no matter what resemblance their bore to who they were in a previous life. Sage had heard a theory once. A theory that vampires were humans without souls, a shell of who they had been. Sage didn't believe that for a second. Once you accepted the blood, once you endured the death, you were just that. Dead. So a bullet to the head or a major artery made no difference.

As Edgar Black looked up into Sage's eyes, she had to wonder who he had been before joining the afterlife. He seemed young. Probably no more than twenty when he was turned, and Sage almost felt bad. He probably could have lived a decent life. Raised children, gotten married, become the CEO of a company or became a rock star, whichever he preferred. Instead he had chosen this. 

Or maybe it had chosen him. 

'Either way', Sage told herself. Today was not his lucky day.

People all around her screamed for their lives. If they were in a human club, security and the cops would have already been called. In Lucid Nightmare, it was every man or vamp for his or herself. If someone was shot, it was sadly his problem and no one else's. In the human world, you could live through a gunshot. In the vampire world, a shot to the foot with a silver bullet could be the end of you once it traveled through the bloodstream to the heart.

Sage came down on one knee, looking into Edgar's eyes. The young vamp looked as if he were trying to melt into the floor. His arm, which was turning an odd pewter color due to the slow release of silver into his bloodstream, was clutched tightly at his side. She kept her gun pointed at him.

"I'll tell you anything! I swear to God, just don't kill me. Please. I don't wanna fucking die."

Sage actually believed him. The man was sweating, profusely, and she doubted, although it might have been a contributing factor, that it was because of the bullet in his shoulder. Without taking her eyes off of him, she reached into the top of her dress, pulling out a picture and the business card she took from her sister's house. She flipped the picture around in her finger so that it was facing him. 

"My sister was attacked tonight by a bunch of vamps. Why do I get this nagging feeling that you were involved with this?" 

Edgar shook his head adamantly. "No, no, no. I ain't ever seen her before. I swear." Sage tapped her gun against her chin, contemplating what he had just told her. "I don't believe you." She lowered the gun back down to him and fingered the trigger.

"Alright! Alright" Edgar held out his bloody hand as if he could stop the bullet with his fingers. Sage placed the gun back under her chin. "I'm listening."

"She's a Giver here. I seen her a couple times, she's real friendly with everyone. I mean real friendly." Sage returned the gun to its previous target, his leg. She fingered the trigger again in a warning.

"Alright! She started showing up with some guy. I don't know who he was, but he had money. He dressed like it, acted like it. Everything. That's all I know. I swear!" A lone scarlet tear fell down the boy's cheek. There was something startling about seeing a grown man cry. Something even more so when he cried blood.

"Whom did she come here with on a normal basis? Who introduced her to supernaturals?"

The boy managed a one-shouldered shrug. "I don't know. The only time I saw her, she was by herself or she was with the rich dude." Sage nodded. She could only assume that this same 'rich dude' was the evil man her sister had brought around the boys.

"I heard about you and your friends," Edgar said, his voice shaking. "Huntresses. Please don't kill me. I ain't never hurt nobody."

Edgar was trying his hardest to become the tile he sat upon. He pushed his body back into the floor more. His eyes were red with the threat of more bloody tears, and his forehead had taken on a reddish tint as his pores released the only substance within his body. 

Sage continued to stare down at Edgar. His arm had already almost turned black. Soon it would start to shrivel up, and if he didn't die first from the silver, it would eventually fall off. She didn't need to kill him. It would happen on its own. "I didn't even need to press the button," She muttered, referring to the thin remote still strapped to her thigh. Edgar looked around. "Wh-what button?"

Sage shook her head as she stood up on the bar. The silver in some of her bullets was probably leaking, despite having been melded shut. She would need to check them when she got home. 

Sage re-holstered her gun and looked around. 

Below her, standing behind the bar, a brown haired vamp stood, looking at Edgar. His forehead was wrinkled, with anger and concern. "You got a problem?" Sage asked. He looked up at her. His lips were pulled tight, and when he didn't open his mouth to answer. Sage crouched back down on one knee and leaned over to him. 

"I said do you have a problem?"

"You should put him out of his misery," the vamps voice startled her, like velvet sheets running over her body. She felt it everywhere. It made the hairs on the back of her neck stand-up. His soft brown eyes met hers in a silent challenge. One that Sage was, for some reason, not willingly meeting. 

The vamp seemed to look passed her tousled hair and slightly brown eyes. Looking into her.... 

How was he doing that? She felt strings on her arms, as if she were a marionette, making her reach for the gun in her dress. And she still couldn't look away.

"Put him out of his misery," he repeated, softer, and Sage felt his breath whisper over her ears even though he stood directly in front of her. 

Who was he? Where had he come from? But, Christ, did she really even care about that though? 

All she wanted to do was put Edgar out of his misery. He didn't need to suffer like that. How could she be such a monster to such a young kid? Sage pulled the gun out, removing the safety. Whoever the brown haired vamp was, he was completely right. The velvet feel of his voice in her mind, made her shudder. 

It felt right.

She felt right.

Felt warm. Safe.

"Do it, Sage."

The sound of her name seemed to bring her out of whatever spell he had put her under, and she blinked once, twice, and then looked away. 

She had gone somewhere. Sage glanced around, remembering how she had gotten there, what had led to her shooting the vamp in the shoulder. 

Everything. 

He had gotten into her mind. The idea hit her the instant her mind cleared of the silky fog he had created. 

He had tried to persuade her. Using his vampire voodoo on her. Sage felt her face burn with heat.

She should kill him. Right here, right now. 

Sage aimed her unholstred gun at the vamp in front of her, and meant to pull the trigger, but it never happened. In a matter of seconds, Sage's gun was knocked out of her hand, and she was dragged by her hair to the middle of the empty dance floor by an unseen hand. Through half clenched eyes, she saw her intended target, clutching the bar, not moving, but the expression on his face told her that the attack was as much a surprise to him as it was to her. 

When she reached the middle of the floor, Sage felt the hold on her hair release and she was up on her feet in an instant, looking around. There was no one else around. The strobe and disco lights that had been left on even as occupants had evacuated the club were her only companion. Her heart slammed out of her chest as she spun around multiple times looking for her attacker and her gun. She didn't see either.

"Show your fucking face," she murmured. "C'mon"

Almost as if answering her command, another invisible hand wrapped its hands around her neck, shooting her up into the air then body slamming her on the floor. What little air that had been in her lungs was pulverized out of her instantly, and the pain radiated throughout her entire body. 

Sage flailed her arms, trying to hit anything, anyone, something. She scratched at her neck, but there was nothing there except her own skin.

Alarm bells were going off all over the club, or maybe they were in her head. Loud sirens and shrills shrieked at her as she struggled to take a breath. Lights to match the noise around her began flashing in front of her eyes.

No way, she told herself. Not like this. No freaking way.

Sage's lungs burned, and her eyes watered. A small tear left a hot trail down the side of her face, dripping innocently into her ear. Around her eyes, darkness began to move in. She was getting so tired. Her fingers that had been clawing at her neck furiously, fell next to her, limply, and she found that it was impossible to pick them back up.

Her vision blurred, and Sage closed her eyes, not wanting to see the world around her darken. 'Not like this', she screamed this time, but of course no one heard. 

She needed to figure out who had attacked her sister. 

She needed to find him and kill him. 

She needed to kill the vamp at the bar. 

She needed to help Brie raise Caleb. 

She needed to have kids and raise a family. 

She needed to see the sun rise in the morning.

She needed to live.

++

Caleb awoke silently.

And that was how she knew something was wrong.

It was soundless. 

She hadn't woken up screaming, nor had she been startled awake by something that wasn't there. She hadn't had a nightmare. She hadn't dreamt at all. It had been a soundless, uneventful coming to consciousness. 

And it scared her. 

For a number of reasons, but the main one being: her visions and hallucinations had become such a normal part of her daily life that she didn't feel right without them. They had become a part of her. 

She almost...missed them. Since her first memory, she had seen things other people couldn't. Things that weren't there. At age four it had been cute stuff like beautiful princesses and fairies, greeting her with open arms, showing her their ancient homes in faraway lands. At age five, she learned the word 'hallucination', and that was when things began to change. 

Fairies turned into screaming children, yelling at her for help. Princesses were no longer beautiful, soft haired angels. Their hair and beauty fell from their bodies along with their skin. And that was when she stopped eating and sleeping. 

'The fact that she is even alive with how she eats and sleeps is a miracle.' She remembered listening to one of her doctors say that to Brie. They never returned to that doctor again. On the drive home, Brie's knuckles had been ghost white as she gripped the steering wheel. 

The doctor had been right, though. Caleb assumed that that was what scared her sister. She'd been fighting to keep them alive since their parent's death, and until the day Caleb's visions became unbearable she had done a damn fine job.

'That fucker didn't know what he was talking about,' Brie had said over a carefully pushed down sob. 

Caleb had been thirteen at the time. Thirteen and she'd weighed 45 pounds. That day had been a Wednesday, and Caleb hadn't been able to stomach a meal since the previous Saturday. 

As she got older, she learned to keep food in her stomach. To sit at a dinner table long passed everyone else had finished, with her eyes closed, mouth sealed tight, and her mind focused on one thing. 

'Keep it down, keep it down, keep it down, keep it down, keep it down.'

Most of the time it worked. 

And it made Brie happy. 

Made her think that she was getting better.

For a little while, she learned to sleep with a makeshift gag tight around her mouth so that when she screamed, no one would hear and think that she had relapsed. She learned to withhold a scream and keep up normal behavior whenever a vision hit her like a man holding a baseball bat to the back of her head. She learned to put make up on to give herself a little more color so that no one could tell the days her anti-vomiting mantra or her sleeping habits failed her.

Yeah, for a good year, Caleb managed to make her sister and her roommates think that her hallucinations had gone away. That she was completely cured.

Then the nightmares came back with a vengeance, one night. 

And Caleb woke up tied to a gurney.

And her sister found out about the make-up. About the gag. About everything.

It had broken her heart, and in turn had broken Caleb's. 

Since that time she hadn't been strong enough (or perhaps her hallucinations had become too strong) to sleep through or ignore them. They had become debilitating. Caleb spent most of her time at home, in the darkness of her room, sleeping because of her meds. Occasionally, she would go out into the living room with the girls, listen to them talk about the men they were seeing or no longer seeing. During her good days, she would have dinner with them, and if they decided to hunt she would see them off. 

She didn't go out dancing with them. The amount if stimuli from the club would probably make her have brain aneurysm. She didn't even go to the grocery store. Or to the park. Or to the mall. 

If she wanted outside food, the girls would get it. If she needed new clothes, Carmen would sit down with her and order it off the Internet.

The farthest Caleb went was to the hospital. 

Which is what made her swing her legs over the sides of her bed, onto the carpet floor. She wanted to walk. No, she needed to. The desire to stretch her legs was almost unbearable, like an itch she couldn't scratch. 

Caleb picked herself up from her bed. Her room, as usual, was an odd gray black. It was small room, only big enough for a twin sized bed and a small computer desk and a miniature closet. She had chosen this room for the den effect it provided for her. There were no windows. Barely enough walking room. It felt like a hug.

Outside of the room was dark, and she gripped the walls as she exited. Her sister and roommates had probably not come back from the club. Down the hallway, hanging on one of the walls, red numbers glared at her.

1:27 AM

They would be back any minute. Caleb made a quick left into the kitchen and flipped on the light switch, heading for the fridge. The giant door opened silently, and bathed her in cloud of cold air, that was welcomed with a sigh. Caleb grabbed a bottle of water, opened it and took a healthy swig.

She used her foot to close the fridge, and as the door swung shut she noticed a black silhouette stood in the dark hallway. She could just barely make out a women's body by the shadowed length of the hair, and slender figure. Caleb placed the water on the island next to her and squinted into the darkness. The body type didn't resemble any of her roommates. That realization set her blood pumping.

What if a vampire had found out where the girl's lived? Caleb never had a reason to fear vampires. She never left the house. But she had indulged in the stories her sister and roommates told like a child with a bedtime story. It had never felt real to her.

Until now.

The silhouetted figure seemed to lean against the line of shadow that separated the darkness of the hallway from the dim light of the kitchen, the same way a person leaned against a brick wall.

Caleb stood unmoving, and the silence of the house made her ears ring. Maybe if she moved slowly, she could reach the phone? Caleb doubted it. Vampires were fast, from what she had been told. Faster than any human could move. She didn't stand a chance. 

In a moment of valor, she took a slight step back, barely lifting her foot off of the ground.

The silhouette, whose posture expressed a favoring of the left leg, took a slight step, moving in a quick jerky motion. Caleb's heart kicked up triple time, and she fought down the urge to cry out. 

Although the figure was not significantly closer, Caleb could make out a slight bend in the knee. A bend that went opposite and a little to the left of a normal human's range of motion. Caleb could feel her hands begin to shake, and willed herself to wake up. It had to be a dream. No one could walk with their knee bent behind them without howling in pain.

And a big part of Caleb didn't want to hear the woman make a noise.

Caleb dared another step back. The figure did not move. She could feel eyes on her, and it made goose pimple erupt everywhere.

"Am I dreaming?" She didn't recognize the sound of her own voice interrupting the silence. She sounded scared. Like a child. God, she felt like a child. Wished she was in her bed, underneath the blanket.

"Please answer me."

A labored wheeze echoed through the kitchen. Unconsciously, Caleb brought her hands to her chest; afraid her heart would fall out of it.

Suddenly, the silhouettes figure changed. The knee that was bent backwards, seemed to reach back farther, and the one good leg, seemed to twist at the shin till the foot turned in the opposite direction. The sound of cracking bones and popping muscles made Caleb's hands rise to her ears. Trying to block out the nauseating sound.

Another wheeze echoed through the room.

"This isn't real." She said it more for herself than for the shadowed woman. 

Had she taken her meds? At the moment, she couldn't remember. Was too scared to remember. 

The shadow rock back and forth on its deformed legs then, before Caleb could run, jerked into the light of the kitchen.

Unexpected kind blue eyes stared at her.

A wealth of blonde hair passed the woman's shoulders in a cascading wave, and when she took another step back, Caleb could see that none of her limbs were deformed, like the silhouettes. Despite the billows of material, Sage could see that she walked perfectly without a limp. 

She had no idea who the woman was or how she had gotten into her home, but by the look on her face, Caleb no longer felt that she was in any danger. Despite her unusual dress that reminded her of something a princess from a Robin Hood movie would wear, Caleb felt no alarm when she lifted her skirt and took the final few steps to stand in front of her.

Pale, baby soft skin covered her flushed cheeks, and a moderately sized nose Kind eyes were encased inside perfectly set apart eyes and heavily lashed lids. The lady was beautiful by every account of the word.

Caleb was having a hard time believing that the wheezing and even the deformed shadow had actually been the women standing in front of her.

"Who are you?" Caleb whispered, mesmerized by her beauty. The woman's soft features turned upward in a smile. The gold that trimmed her green dress gave her an unearthly glow. 

"Help me," the woman said. Her smile never left her mouth or her eyes. She said the words as lightly as one would discuss the weather. Caleb leaned in, not sure she had heard correctly.

Caleb's breathtaking intruder leaned forward as well, but not because, she hadn't spoken loud enough, but because once again the sound of popping bones and muscles echoed into the air. Caleb practically jumped away from her.

"Please, save me. They're going to kill me." A baby soft hand reached up and out to brush some of Caleb's hair from her eyes. "Please save me." Still that smile and yet from her words, Caleb could swear she was being tortured. Even the sound of her voice sounded empty and weak, like someone who had not had water in days. 




Huntress Ch. 04



When the woman's hand pulled back from Caleb's forehead, the fingers, that had been perfect before, were twisting into horrific angles, some bent backwards to the wrist, others dangling limply, only held on by the skin. Caleb held back a scream as she and the tortured woman observed the hand. 

The pale haired beauty merely glanced at it, and set it back to her side, as Caleb's knees gave out and she stumbled to the ground, scrounging to get away.

"Who are you!" she yelled it this time, panic her motivation. 

"I swear I am not as they say." The girl giggled, looked away, then glanced back. "I don't want to die. I swear on the Lord, I am not as they say."

Once again the sound of broken bones echoed throughout the kitchen. The misshapen woman looked down at her changing body then farther down at Caleb. 

"I don't want to die." She said it again, this time as almost a scream.

A beautiful smile decorated her lips still. Caleb watched in horror as her full chest began to cave in under the green gown's bodice. Her full breasts seemed to melt away, giving way to bones that jutted from her skin like jagged rocks.

She had to be dreaming. Had to be. Nothing like this happened in real life. Caleb wanted to slap herself. Wanted to scream at herself to look away and wake up, but no sound came from her lips. She was paralyzed with fear. When she beckoned her legs to move. They responded by quivering and going numb.

"Please." The silence that settled after her plea was swift and almost painful, and Caleb felt it settle in on her chest, suffocating her. The sound of her own heartbeat in her ears died away instantly. The sound of the woman's broken and malformed bones no longer filled the air. Her cries for life stopped instantly as well, but she still stood there.

The smiling maiden suddenly gave another giggle as she glanced behind her then back at Caleb. "I don't want to die," she whispered, and as quickly as the last word left her mouth, her neck twisted around completely till her head faced hallway, then went limp falling back on her caved in chest. The once shining bright blue eyes that had been watching Caleb so vigilantly were no longer there. Instead, the eyes had clouded over white. Her lush blonde hair abruptly turned gray, and pieces fell from the scalp in horrifying clumps. Her lightly sun-kissed skin turned pallid and. 

Slowly, the woman's once perfect moth that had smiled and giggled began to open, revealing and empty black chasm that only got bigger with each passing second, until it had stretched itself to an unnatural length and width.

'Help me.' The dead women's voice was as loud as it had been when she had been beautiful. 'I don't want to die. '

Her mouth did not move, and her unseeing eyes stayed fixated on the frightened girl.

"No," Caleb whispered. Trying to look away. Something forced her eyes to meet the dead woman's and she felt her stomach almost empty itself of its non-existent contents.

'I promise that I am not as you say I am,' Caleb heard in her head once more before a 

wave of nausea and dizziness hit her hard, engulfing her.

++

Caleb felt her body being shaken and her name being called in a scream. Her neck jerked back and forth repeatedly. Her cheek burned from what she could only assume were slaps. 

Someone was trying to wake her up.

"Caleb, I need you to wake the fuck up right now!" 

Her sister. 

Brie. 

She was scared. 

How long had she been trying to wake her? Caleb forced her eyes to open, forming thin slits, and saw her sister's silhouette along with two others. Her overhead light was on and placed on the highest setting.

"I'm awake," she groaned. Her throat burned as much her check. Her voice sounded nothing like how she would normally have recognized it. Beyond her eyelids, her sister sighed. She heard Carmen whisper 'thank God' in Spanish.

"Caleb, sit up look at me." Her sister commanded. 

Tiredly, she pulled her body up and rubbed her eyes. "What time is it?" she asked.

There was a shuffling, as well as the flipping open and close of a cell phone. "It's one thirty-five. Cale," Brie stopped to take a shuttering breath. "You stopped breathing for a couple seconds, Caleb. Are you okay? Look at me." Her sister brushed hair off her forehead and kept her fingers on there for a second, checking for a temperature. 

The pads of her hands were so cold. 

Caleb rubbed her eyes for one minute more, before opening them to look down at her blanket. The room was brighter than she had prepared herself for. The light stabbed her corneas.

"Why is it so bright in here?" She glanced up at her sister and saw clouded eyes staring back at her. Fingers that had been ice cold pulled away from her forehead. They were tangled and twisted. Her sister opened her mouth to speak and stretched wide, like an ungodly yawn.

Caleb could not stop the piercing scream from escaping her lips.



Huntress Ch. 05



This is kind of a slow chapter. But thanks for those of you who have stuck around thus far.

Sage became aware of her surrounding before she opened her eyes. Beneath her, a soft mattress conformed comfortably to her body, hugging her. Above her, a throw comforter completed the embrace, leaving her body feeling content and warm. Safe. The pillow beneath her head felt like a cloud against her ear. The air was lightly scented, tickling her nose with the earthy smell of fresh rain and deep forest.

Behind her closed eyes, she could almost feel the silence humming around her. On her skin, prickling her like little alarming needles, and in her ears. She was careful to keep her breathing at the same speed and depth that it had been when she had been sleeping. The sound of her lungs inflating filled her ears, and she gathered her thoughts. It was far too quiet for her to be at home with the other girls. All of the girl's slept at different times, and even when the majority of them slept, Regan stayed awake, silently keeping an eye on the house. She waited another stretched minute before concluding, yeah, this isn't home.

But where was she?

Sage searched behind her eyelids, trying to remember how she had ended up in a foreign bed and home.



Edgar. Annoying vamp with a staring problem. The hands around my throat. Hands that weren't really there.

Someone. Something had tried to kill her. And based on her previous memories, she had though it had succeeded. But she wasn't dead. Was she?

Was heaven really pine scented? 

Sage allowed her eyes to slit open. 

Through the thin lines of her eye lashes, she saw that heaven was a dimly lit, cherry wood paneled room. Post modern furniture, made with more metal than leather and a few abstract paintings were littered sparsely around the room, giving the area an appearance of having more space than it actually had. At the far wall, gray and black curtains decorated what she could only assume was a window. No light pierced through the sporadic openings on the sides. It was night.

Sage lay still contemplating her options for a few moments. A dull throb around her neck let her know that she was very much alive. Whoever...whatever attacked her at Lucid Nightmare had either been merciful, thought she had died, or...someone had saved her. 

As soon as the thought rose, Sage buried it back down. Both the people that had occupied the club with her at the time of the attack had been in no hurry to save her, she was sure of that. One of them because he was most likely dead by now, and the other because she had planned to blow his tongue out the back of his head.

Damn vamp voodoo.

But God, the way he had looked at her. Like he could see inside her soul.

Sage almost choked on her thoughts, and did her best to push them out. She couldn't. Had anyone ever looked at her like that? Had Alek?



Alek. Sage wanted to vomit thinking about the man. Of course, he hadn't ever looked at her like that. The only time he really ever looked at her was when he had been begging her not to walk out the door. And how ironic that she was lying in bed thinking of him. That had seemed to be about the extent of their relationship. That and his phone calls. Jesus, he called so much.

And that reminded her... Sage opened her eyes and looked around the room as much as possible without moving her body. Where was her cell phone?

As slowly as she could manage, she allowed her hands to slide up her stomach, reaching for the top of her dress...that...wasn't....there.

A warm feeling, like the feeling she felt when kids used to call her and her sister trailer park trash at school, blanketed her body. Someone had taken off her clothes. 

She was naked. 

With little reservation, Sage let her fingers slide around her body. The holster that had been connected to her legs was missing. The silver rings that she wore on both her middle fingers were missing. She could tell without even feeling that the dangling silver earrings were missing as well.

Sage's embarrassment boiled over into anger. Holy shit, someone had stripped her naked, not just of her clothes but of her belongings. If someone had robbed her...she could feel her body shake with a silent rage. Sheer anger made her abruptly sit up in bed and look around. Laying on her side, she hadn't been able to see the rest of the room behind her. A snazzy looking glass-paneled walk in closet, was set inside the wall. Flanked on either side of the closet were two cherrywood doors. One of those doors was probably the bathroom. The other one led outside.

As silent as her anger would allow her to be, Sage threw the comforter off her body and threw her feet over the edge of the bed, settling them on the wood floorboards. She squinted her eyes to look around for her weapon and her clothes. Neither were in sight. Sliding to the edge of the bed, Sage reached for the nightstand drawer and yanked the top one open.

Empty. She slid it closed quietly and repeated the motion on the bottom drawer. Empty as well. Not even a fucking bible. Using her arms to hoist her body up, she jumped the width of the bed to the other side, throwing open the other nightstand. Empty again.

Shit... 

Other than strange abstract paintings and terrible furniture, the room was virtually empty. There was nothing she could use to protect herself. 

You could use your hands. True. But without her rings, they were a lot less effective. Sage gave the room another once over. It was becoming obvious that she didn't have much of a choice. Whatever waited beyond that door, she just hoped it wasn't strong enough to withstand a punch to the face.

Sage padded softly over to the closet and opened it. 

"Hello, designer heaven." 

Dolce and Gabana, Gucci, Armani were the only brands that she could pronounce. Suits, suits and more suits. At least she knew that she would be facing a man. Whoever owned the place definitely had interesting taste in just about everything. It was definitely nobody that she knew. None of her friends dressed like this.

Sage yanked a dress shirt off of a hanger and wrapped it around her body. The soft material fell well passed her thighs and hung loosely, not showing any curves.

"So you're a big guy...Duly noted."

Sage closed the closet, buttoning the shit as she made her way to the door, leading to her freedom. If her hands were the most effective weapon she could find, she would make do. She'd been in worse situations. Cornered with no help. Or fighting in the dark with not even the slightest chance of light coming to her aid. This would just be another ass-kicking she could put on her list.

Sage felt an unfamiliar hammering in her chest. Yeah, whoever had brought her here was definitely gonna get an ass kicking. She was nervous. She never felt nervous, and as she wrapped her hand around the cool door handle, Sage swore she was on the verge of a heart attack. Thankfully, the door didn't creak as she opened it ajar, and stuck her head out, glancing down the right side of the hallway.

The hallway outside the room was dark and cast with shadows, the interior designing mirroring the way the bedroom was set up, dark wood paneled walls that extended onto the floor, barely covered by a magnificent deep red and black carpet. As the hall went on, doors punctuated the walls; all closed and probably locked except for one that was diagonal from her.

A black toilet and matching black sink with gray tiled floors stared at her, barely reflecting off the little light that escaped from the cracked bedroom door.

Jesus, what's with all the black? Whoever decorated the place needed to plant some flowers and watch Sesame Street? Despite her heart hammering out her chest, she couldn't help but feel run down and scared. The owner of the place was obviously either a robot or was not affected by wall colors.

Focus, dummy. Holding her breath, she pushed the heavy wood out a few more inches, stopping when low moan escaped into the silence. Shit, shit shit.

The opening was big enough to stick her shoulders through, and she did so, cautiously. On the other side of the hallway, was the rest of the house. All decorated in the same monotonous colors of black brown, and gray. More abstract art was scattered along the walls, and in between every few splatters of pain on canvas, a sculpture rose from the ground. The pattern of weird art extended to the end of the hallway and around a corner, into a brightly lit area.

A light clinking noise distracted Sage from analyzing the hallway. Unconsciously, she sucked in a breath and held it for a minute. Every few seconds, that clinking noise would chime throughout the house, whispering passed her ears.

The hallway ended at a kitchen and somebody was in that kitchen.

The door protested again when Sage attempted to push it a bit more. She was stuck and fucked, if she didn't leave the room.

Sage looked down at her stomach and breasts then back up at the jar in the door. Try and fit through it? Part of her wished she had lain off of those quesadillas she had had for dinner with the girls. 

At the thought of food, her stomach rumbled. 

And another thought hit her. Dinner with the girls. 

How long ago had that been? Her already throbbing throat seized up a bit in momentary panic. She needed to find out how long she had been sleeping and who had brought her to Emoville.

Fitting through that damn door was step one in finding all that out.

With a deep breath, probably the deepest she had ever taken, she sucked in her stomach and pushed up her breasts, forcing her way through the opening, feet, legs thighs, ass first. Upper body following. Without pausing to pat herself on the back, Sage made her way down the hall, stepping with balls of her feet. 

All the doors along the hallway were ominously closed, and Sage did he her best to not glide against the walls, lest one open. Passing a wooden sculpture that reminded her of a pawn, Sage grabbed it off of the table lining the wall. The heavy weight settled into her hand nicely. Just in case my hands, can't deliver. 

But even with an actual "weapon", Sage found that she missed her guns, the way a mother would miss her children on their first day of school.

A familiar sound of metal falling harshly into a sink jarred Sage's nerves. She gripped the pawn tightly as she approached the end of the hallway. She tried her best not to go into a worst case scenario, as her heart beat the hell out of her ribcage.

Count backwards from 5 and go, she told herself. 

5...shit

4...

3...just fucking do it.

2...

1...



Rhys was aware of the very second she awoke. The minute her heart beat began to speed up, and her scent changed from total relaxation to stress. He could hear her when slide out from under the blanket, checked his bed side drawers, then his closet. She had marveled at his clothing selection, and it had made him look down at the black Gucci shirt he had worn to the club. Alfredo sauce dotted the silk where his shirt and gray trousers met, and he had contemplated taking it off, so as to be presentable to her.

Presentable to a woman who almost put a bullet through your skull? It was probably that thought that had made him keep it on.

Would it alarm her if he did so though? He didn't want her to think he had tried anything while she slept.

Don't get cocky. He wasn't trying to be, but what would any woman think if they had woken up naked in a place they didn't recognize only to find a man in the kitchen making them chicken fettuccini? 

Probably not that they had been raped, but then again women of this time are horrifically unpredictable. 

But Rhys had a feeling that this girl, was nothing like any other woman he had met. Ever. 

What had the boy from Lucid said? She's a fucking Huntress.

Yes, he had heard of those girls. The girls that hunted and killed his kind. Even the innocent ones. In their eyes no vampire was innocent.

While both he and the dying bartender had been shocked at what had been occurring in front of them, the blonde woman, one minute all business, the next minute writhing and struggling for air on the floor, it had not shocked him. 

She had come into vampire territory alone, firing bullets and taking names. He couldn't help but think that she had a death wish. 

Whoever it had been that had attacked her had most definitely meant to kill. 

If it hadn't been for him, he probably would have been dumping her body in a back alley somewhere. He had to wonder if what she'd been so angry about was really worth her life.

Rhys had looked down on her unmoving body, curious. 

There is no way that she is one of them, he had thought. From the way she had been dressed, she seemed like any normal twenty-something year old woman on a Friday night. He had noticed that she didn't wear as much makeup as other women normally did though, and despite the angry scowl of her face, a luminescent natural glow, showed through her skin.

And that hair? The odd coloring had intrigued him. Such stark differences in color had to be fake. It was common for women of this time to not appreciate their birth features, and alter them when they were old enough to do so. The end result was always ideal for them, but for him...he preferred natural attributes. It sickened him that even men encouraged this behavior.

But not this one.

He had picked her up from the floor and the smell of her assaulted him. He smelled no silicone or hair dyes. She wore no perfume, and her body wash was completely natural, reminding him of peaches and flowers. Of the ocean and the wind. Of everything that he loved and used to love. The scent took him to memories that he had not visited in years and also to some of hers. 

"Daddy, look how high Vicky's kite is going. It's gonna touch the moon!" A large hand gripped the top of a young blonde girl's one-peicebathing suit, bunching it in a fist, then released it abruptly, causing her to stumble backwards in the sand.Handsome blue eyes pierced the girl through tears that were slowly clouding her vision. The air around him wafted heavily with countless substances and his face crinkled like tin foil, aging faster than what was normal. "You bother me one more fucking time, and I will throw you in the ocean, you got that?"

The memory had almost made him trip over his own footing as he carried her the few blocks down the empty street and up to his penthouse apartment. 

It had disappeared as quickly as it came, and Rhys could tell that if she had been awake, he never would have seen that. She kept herself guarded at all times. From emotions, feelings, weakness. He didn't have to look very hard to see that.

Why? He had whispered into her mind.

Because it's what's kept me alive, her sleeping mind had whispered back. The sound of her voice had been soft; he felt it as a caress down his spine. 

There was something different about her .Rhys knew it already. As he placed the noodles he had let sift into a bowl, he realized he still had goose bumps. He could still feel her voice on him, whispering to him. 

Taking the sauce off the burner and tossing his stirring spoon into the sink, he heard the familiar creak of his door. He poured a bit of sauce into the bowl and placed the pan int the sink, once empty, as he heard a soft scrape. 

Just as he had thought. 

She was going to use one of his favorite sculptures in the house as a weapon. 

Rhys reached for two large wooden forks and mixed the pasta and sauce to together expertly. He could hear her heart beating hard. Harder than it had even when she had pulled out a gun in the middle of a vampire club on a Friday night. 

She rounded the corner at break neck speed, arms raised, Pawn poised for an attack.. He saw her mouth open, poised for a yell or to say something sassy like she seemed to do a lot, but before a sound could escape her lips, he had removed the pawn from her arms and had shoved her back into the hallway, slamming her into the wall behind her.

Rhys placed the pawn down; picked his forks back up and began mixing again. From the corner of his eye, he saw her, the wind knocked out of her and stunned. Just as quickly as she had hit the wall, the air around her changed, charged with frustration and anger. 

He watched her step out of the hallway and lunge for his knife set that hung above his kitchen island. He continued mixing as she grabbed his butcher knife and held it in front of her. Rhys didn't spare her a glance as he reached behind him, opening a cupboard, and pulled out a clear glass plate, placing it next to the larger bowl of pasta.

"Would you like some of this?" the sound of his voice startled her, he knew, but she didn't let it show. No weakness. Instead of her mouth answering, a loud gurgle did it for her. If it had been a human, they most likely would not have heard it, but Rhys' ears picked it up as easily as one would a bull horn. Her stomach.

He began portioning out some food for her. 

He glanced up at her for a second. Her attention was focused wholly on the food he had made. He had heard her stomach making noises as she slept. His assumptions of her desire for food had been correct. 

"You're the vamp from the club," she made it a statement. Her voice was hoarse, and the rasp of it made Rhys almost drop his fork. She looked stunning in his shirt. They were of course, to large on her, but the fact that she was naked underneath his shirt was almost too much to bear. 

She had a terrific body. Her legs were strong slim pillars that complemented her perfectly. Her breasts were the perfect size able to fill a man's hand. Her stomach was soft and flat and flaring slightly at the sides the way they were supposed to. He had removed her clothing when he placed her into his bed, due to the fact that she had emptied her bladder before losing consciousness. He was sure she would appreciate the fact that he hadn't allowed her to stew in it while she had slept. 

"Rhys," he finally said. He grabbed a fork from beneath the island, placed it on his glass bowl and slid it over to her. She stared at it for a second before glancing back up at him. 

"I'm not gonna eat that."

He wasn't surprised that she was going to be difficult. "You're hungry."

"And?"

She cocked a blonde eyebrow at him. Rhys had to laugh. 

"And do you need any more of a reason as to why you should eat? Hunger is good enough for most." He could see the muscles in her arm tense and ready. She gripped the knife loosely so that if she needed to throw it she could, but also tight enough so that if she needed to simply wield it, it would not fly out of her hand. 

"Do you plan to eat it with a butcher knife? That seems most unsafe." Rhys folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the stove, avoiding the hot burners. She glanced down at the food again, then at her knife. Her stomach and her will battled against each other right before his eyes. 

"You could have poisoned it." 

Rhys shrugged. "If I wanted you dead, I would have left you at Lucid." The girl shook her head. Not believing him. 

"Not all of us are monsters, you know." 

She scoffed and rolled her eyes.

"So what, you saved me so that I could to sit here and listen to you tell me that not all of your guys are pieces of shit? Nice."

"I saved you because I do not wish you harm."

"Even though I shot one of your buddies," her voice was mildly condescending. 

"I did not know that man," Rhys replied easily. Other than seeing him at the club every Friday night, Rhys had never made an effort to make legitimate conversation with the boy.

The blonde continued to shake her head. Her stomach made another loud protest, and he saw pain flash momentarily through her eyes.




Huntress Ch. 05



"How long was I out?" She asked, after she recovered.

"One day. You recover very quickly." Rhys made an effort to go over and touch her neck, to point out that the purple tinge that had decorated it before was already fading, but she brought the knife up quickly. 

"Put 'em away or I'll take 'em." Rhys tucked his fingers into his palm and let it fall to his side. 

"Where are my clothes?" Was her next question.

"I had them thrown out. There are new ones for you on the couch."

"What?" Her voice cracked as she did her best to yell at him. "Why the fuck did you toss my clothes?"

"When you were being attacked...you—" Rhys paused. He should have expected that she would ask, but he hadn't really been thinking about how he would let her know.

"I what? Spit it out."

"You emptied your bladder."



Humiliation was one of the many emotions that Sage never allowed herself to feel. It was a weak and mundane. Two things she prided herself on never being limited to. Humiliation was for people that cared too damn much about the small things. Remove yourself from the situation, and you never had to worry about what people think and what people say. Sage lived by this rule. Don't give a shit. Plain and simple.

So the burning sensation in her face was definitely new.

He had said it so nonchalantly. She had wet herself. She had fucking pissed herself.

No, no, no, no. Stop repeating it. But she couldn't. She had wet herself. And he had noticed it. Probably smelled it, and had decided it best that she not get into his bed with her stinky piss clothes. 

Yeah, this was definitely embarrassment. Sage pulled back for a second and took a surreptitious deep breath. She couldn't smell herself, but she wouldn't doubt if the vamp was doing his best to control his gag reflex. 

"Oh," was all she could manage.

Who cares? That was the question that was running through her head. She had no idea why it mattered to her suddenly, but it did. 

"It's perfectly normal, you know," the vamp said to her. Sage felt angry at the fact that he was trying to console her. What did he know? He probably hadn't taken a piss in two hundred years. "Your body was panicking. It did what it had to."

"Yeah, I know," she snapped at him. She didn't need a dead doctor to tell her what the body does on the verge of total shut down. 

"You are welcome to take a shower, if you like." Sage glanced at him, trying to read him. 

Was that guy speaking for 'I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time being anywhere near you. Please shower'?

He was leaned up against the stove with his arms folded across his chest, and one eyebrow raised at her. His look annoyed her. Everything about him annoyed her. That pretentious accent that sounded borderline Irish, the soft shine of his straight short brown hair. The way they complemented his matching eye brows. Those light brown eyes that could almost be hazel. The way his shirt stretched tightly along his chest, outlining muscles that she had no business noticing on a vamp.

His whole persona made her want to punch him in his face, and she let him know. "Stop looking at me like that." It sounded childish. Sage could hear one of her nephews saying that to his brother. It seemed to startle vamp as much as it did herself. 

"I'm merely making sure you're okay." His voice was sincere. Christ, this vamp was way too nice. 

"Don't worry about me, vamp. I'll live." Her sneer seemed to take him aback and she took pride in that. "Get my clothes so I can go."

Vamp shook his head. "I'm unable to do that. I had them thrown away, like I said before. I had other clothes dropped off. They are on the couch."

Sage glanced passed the island, into the living room. It was an impressive room, with a flat screen HD television big enough to take up almost an entire wall, and a black leather wrap around couch. A large black coffee table was in the middle of the room and on it a number of different remotes were laid out. Towards the end of the couch two black and white folded piles had been placed. 

"How do you know my size?" She asked.

"A guess. Size five, am I right?"

Sage nodded, and the vamp made his way over to the clothing. When his back was turned, Sage lunged for the bowl of pasta that had been staring her down. She didn't bother to wrap the noodles around the fork. Instead she stabbed into them murderously, picking up a mouthful and putting it in its place. The instant the white sauce fell on her tongue, Sage could swear she had died and gone to heaven. 

"Holy shit," she said though her mouthful. Vamp turned back to look at her, and she could only imagine how unladylike she looked. Mouth full and covered in white sauce, noodles dripping out of her mouth carelessly. Sage used her tongue to press the spare noodles against her top teeth and let them fall out of her mouth. She took a few minutes to swallow before glancing up at Vamp, who held the pile of clothing out to her, being careful not to come to close. Even though she had put the knife down, it was still within arms length. It made Sage happy to know that he at least feared her enough not to try and make a move. When Sage didn't take the clothes, he set them down near the knife.

"Where did you buy this pasta sauce from? I gotta get myself some."

Vamp placed his hands in his pocket and let his hip lean on to the island. The sides of his mouth quirked in an almost smile, and she took a few more obnoxious bites of her food before answering; "I cooked it myself. From scratch." 

Sage stared for a second, then burst out laughing

"I was human once, despite what you might believe." He answered. "I can still remember what certain foods taste like. Which spices are good together and which are not. What dishes are preferable to others? I may not be able to eat them, but I still can cook them." 

Sage did her best to hide her shock at his answer. She had never taken the time to speak to a vamp. It was against her rules. Against all the girl's rules but, she was sure that none of them, had she actually taken the time to hear their life story before taking off their heads, would admit to being a secret Rachel Ray. 

She was beginning to feel full so the next time Sage went to dive into the noodles she took the time wrap her noodles around her fork and took another bite, savoring the creaminess of the sauce. Monster breathing down her neck, Sage could have easily imagined herself at a five star restaurant. The pasta was slightly al dente, but perfect for the dish. The spices weren't overpowering and the sauce not so think as to over power the noodles. 

Within a few bites more, Sage finished the dish. She stared down at the place longingly, not knowing if she wanted more or if she just wanted to look the damn place clean. The entire time she had eaten, Vamp had watched her intently. She placed her fork down lightly and picked the butcher knife back up.

Vamp sighed. "By now, you should realize that you do not need that." He used his chin to motion to the knife. Yes, she knew. But she wasn't going to risk it. He might have been a nice vamp, but he was one none the less. 

"I'm going to go change." She backed out of the kitchen slowly, and without even checking her footing, rounded the corner. When she came back, they were definitely going to discuss what he expected of her for saving her from the invisible hand. 



Huntress Ch. 06



You would think that because school is out for the summer and I am only taking a few summer classes, I would have had this out sooner, but nope. Fooled ya, I am taking forever! Sorry about that, I am trying. I actually have been editing this chapter for like 2 weeks (that's how lazy this summer is turning out to be). Thanks for reading though. I hope you enjoy.

*

Rhys cursed mentally. He had lost her name. While taking over her mind, he had been able to extract her name, and he remembered that it was a beautiful name, unusual and beautiful, but for the life of him, he had lost it upon his exit. Every time he tried to recall the way his mouth moved or the way his lips had formed the name, it slipped away from him. The blockage felt magical and the memory gap was most likely thanks to a spell that had been cast over her, a security measure, because one's name was everything. It was tricky; something that would protect her against most psychics that tried to enter her thoughts and use them. It had not even occurred to him that he'd lost her name until just moments before.

She had also managed to shut her thoughts away from him. He had no way in, not able to catch on to any of them, like he had minutes earlier. The only thing he was picking up was her emotions, and he was only catching glimpses of that. Rhys was convinced that he had caught her while she was frazzled when they met in the club, when her guard was down. He had been able to grab at her thoughts and force his way in. Now. Nothing.

"Perhaps it is Emily," Rhys murmured to himself while he sat on his couch, waiting for his guest to finish changing in his bathroom. "Or Angela. Perhaps even Angel." He shook his head at the last name. He was not sure that someone like her could be called that. She was everything but. She butchered his people, ate like an orphaned child, and cursed like a sailor.

She was most certainly anything but an Angel.

And yet you couldn't take your eyes off of her.

It was true. He hadn't been able to. As those greenish-brown eyes had watched him intensely, he too had watched her. Analyzing her every facial expression and every bit of her body language. She reminded him of something beautiful but deadly like a black widow.

The air that surrounded her demanded attention and respect. She had fought hard for both in her life. He could tell. Not just in the way she carried herself, but also in the way that she was always quick to fire back, quick to defend herself and especially in the way she was quick to drop her emotions.

And yet her scent had changed so quickly when he told her that she had urinated on herself. She had been humiliated, momentarily, yes, but embarrassed nonetheless.

Instinct had told him to comfort her in the way he would a normal human woman; tell her that she had no reason to be worried. He had wanted to tell her that he had not smelled it when he scooped her up. He wanted to ask her if she went to the beach and spent hours, days, months in the water and in the sand because her scent had been intoxicating, made him yearn for a life that he could no longer have.

But despite the urge, he had not said any of it. Instead he had watched the expressions in her eyes change from hard and resentful to almost vulnerable. It was beautiful and disturbing.

When he had gone to fetch her clothes, the look on her face as he had turned, to see her mouth so stuffed with pasta had made him want to laugh out loud. It had been so unexpected that he had stared. She did not slurp the pasta up like most Americans did. Instead she used her teeth to cut the noodles and let it fall from her mouth back on to the plate, almost delicately. Another surprise he had not expected from a huntress.

"A French name would be appropriate," he told himself. He had told her his name but she had not seemed to care, and while he could easily just go into her thoughts and find out for himself, he preferred for her to give it to him willingly. As a sign of trust.

Rhys glanced at a small, yellowed picture that seemed watch him from the coffee table.

Black and white eyes stared back at him intently, not smiling or telling anything. "What do you think her name is, Eli?" he asked the picture. The photo did not answer, of course, and Rhys chuckled to himself, laughing away the familiar loneliness that had long since become a good friend. Of course Eli hadn't answered. It almost saddened him how much he really had expected to hear the young man's voice.

"You know, I've heard of humans who talk to themselves, but never vamps."

She approached the back of the couch, butcher knife still in hand. Rhys stood up politely and looked her up and down. The sizes he had chosen fit her perfectly. The jeans were snug in all the right places but not overbearingly so. The shirt was a long sleeved v-neck and dipped low enough to show just the beginnings of the curves of her breasts. When she adjusted her stance a tease of skin showed where her jeans and shirt were supposed to meet. He had managed to not throw away the stilettos that she had been wearing the night before, and she'd put them on, lengthening the lines of her legs. The jeans that she wore seemed to tighten at the knee all the way down to the calf and then barely meet at the top of the heels. Skinny jeans, the humans called them. She looked tall, despite the fact that he knew she wasn't, and the tightness in the jeans showed off the slight curve of her hips.

She's breathtaking. He thought to himself, unable to contain the thought. It slipped passed his defenses and the words were so loud within him that for a second he could have sworn he said them out loud. He watched as she placed a hand on her hips and switched the weight of her stance from the right to the left. She raised one eyebrow, waiting for a response. She wanted a fight, wanted him to retort back. She was an adorable little warrior.

"V-neck, huh?" The blonde warrior murmured. "How appropriate." She took her hands and folded them into her arms being careful to place the knife below her elbow, but still hold it tightly.

"If you have no intention of cutting off my head, I would appreciate it if you put my knife back, Ms..."

"I never said I wasn't going to decapitate you." As a show she twisted the handle of the weapon loosely. Rhys only nodded. If she were going to do it, she would have done it by now, he was sure.

"And don't try to be cute, you don't need my name. We aren't friends."

Rhys could only nod once again. She was so defensive all of the time. What had happened to her to make her that way?

"If you don't mind me asking. Why do you do it?" He used his chin to point to the knife. She looked at it then back up at him.

"Hold knives?" She asked.

"Kill," he corrected. "You kill our kind for sport, do you not? The way other humans hunt dear or bear, you and your friends just pick a night for it and go." The huntress's confused face turned to anger.

"We don't do it for sport. We do it keep you fuckers under control. So th—"

"So you are self-employed vampiric population control."

She thought for a second, turning her eyes to the ceiling then back down to him. "Unless we have someone that wants us to do a hit for them, then yeah. We're population control."

Rhys nodded. She was very much beautiful, but her beliefs worried him, reminded him of a time he sadly had no choice but to live through.

"You know, I knew of some people a few decades ago who felt the same way you feel. They believed what they were doing was for the good of everyone and they themselves also called it population control."

The huntress smiled. "Well, aren't you just every vamp hunters best friend. How many vamps did they kill?"

"None. They did not kill vampires."

Her forehead creased in a mix of suspicion and confusion.

"They killed minorities and homosexuals." A silence passed between them. Like a cloud of smoke exiting a house through an open window, Rhys was instantly shut off from her emotions. He hadn't had to send himself far to find her, but now he found himself almost leaning forward to try and pick up something. Anything.

"That's different." She whispered. Rhys could almost swear he had touched her in some strange emotional way.

"How so?" He countered.

"Those people were innocent men, women and children." Her voice was more forceful. Vaguely he could pick up anger radiating off of her.

"And you think that because we need blood to survive, we all deserve to die?"

She did not answer.

Rhys wasn't sure if she even could.

She was fighting against something in her head. He saw it in the icy look she gave him.

Once again, he fought the urge to dive into her mind and retrieve what she was seeing, thinking. Rhys wanted to believe that he would know her long enough for her to tell him when she was ready.

If she ever got there.

If they ever got there.

She glanced down at the knife and clutched it tightly in her fist. He watched her knuckles turn snow white then return to a slight pink as she released it.

Unexpectedly and almost painfully, on the tail end of scream that he was sure only he heard, a scene scorched in front Rhys' eyes, blinding him to the real world as it played.

A tall blond man and his wife sat on the floor of a warehouse, hands intertwined, shaking and holding on for dear life. Not because they were scared. No, because they were so damn excited. The female, a short skinny woman with fried, bleached blonde hair bounced up and down on her legs and gave an excited squeal.

Around them, a long-haired man with a patchy beard paced, analyzing, determining what he was going to do with them. In the far corner, two girls sat huddled together, both shaking the way the adults in the middle of the large empty hanger did, but for different reasons.

They were cold.

And terrified.

Patchy Beard knelt down in front of the couple and stroked a few soft blond hairs out of the husbands face. He glanced at the man's wife in fleeting interest before turning back to him. "You will be first," he whispered. The youngest girl in the corner turned into her sister's chest. She didn't watch as the man, and that's what she had sworn he was the entire time despite the waves of evil, darkness and pain that she and her sister could literally feel radiating off of him, opened his mouth, baring his teeth.

No.

Not teeth.

Fangs. He had fangs. She could see them from where she was, so sharp and thin, like the needles the doctor used when that stray dog bit her hand after she gave him her lunch. It would be a struggle to see them had it not been for the dim light that glinted off of them, like small, terrifying needles.

He used the hair in his hand to yank father's head to the side and pierce his neck with a soft yet sickening crunch.

The scenes playing in front of his eyes ended as lightening fast as they began, leaving Rhys feeling empty, his chest burning. Had her parent's been vampires? Were they turned right in front of her and her sister? It took everything in him not to ask the questions out loud.

"Yes," she finally said, answering the question that had been asked only seconds before. And just that fast, the conversation was over. Her emotions went back under lock and key, and she folded her arms into one another again, knife pointed downwards.

"I need to call my friends." She said the words slowly, as if she expected him to not allow her a phone call.

"Certainly," he said, giving her a slight bow before rising up from his seat. "You are no prisoner here." Rhys walked around the couch, into his kitchen and reached into a drawer on the island. He pulled a cell phone from it and placed it on the black marble countertop. When she did not make a move for it, he slid it across, closer to her. She reached for it and flipped it open.

"Christ," she murmured.

"Somebody miss you?" Rhys asked. She glanced at him and placed the butcher knife down. Rhys did not move. She could easily pick up her knife and toss it into his forehead if she decided to do so.

"Yeah, about 47 times." She pressed a few buttons and placed the phone to her ear. She glanced at him again, looking to see if he made a move to stop her from dialing.

He made sure to tell her, through his body language, that he wouldn't.

She dialed.

Through the silence of the room, he could hear the line on the other end ring.

When he thought nobody would answer, a quiet voice interrupted a ring.

"Holy shit. Where have you been?"

It was a female. Her voice was barely above a whisper, and he could hear the exhaustion decorating her words. As if noticing the concentration on his face, she glanced at him, then down at her feet.

"I got caught up in something. 47 calls? Really?"

The woman on the other end sighed. That sigh said so much. She was beyond exhausted. Rhys could hear it as if she were right next to him.

"Caleb is in the hospital again."

She sat up. "She was just there 2 weeks ago."

"I know, I know. When we came back last night, I heard her in her room saying something. I went in and woke her up. She took one look at me and started screaming. I couldn't get her to calm down. We called Doc Mackenzie, and he told us to bring her in." The woman on the other end swallowed a sob. "She screamed all the way to the hospital. As soon as we got there, they sedated her, but they have her strapped to a gurney. I don't know how long they're gonna keep her this time."

The blonde warrior looked frazzled, suddenly, and ran her fingers through her hair in a gesture that was almost reminiscent of nervousness. "Have you been there all day?"

"Yeah, Regan and Carmen and I. We all tried to get in touch with you, the next step was calling the damn cops."

"I know, I'm sorry. I'll be there in ten minutes, 'kay?"

"Kay."

The line on the other side went dead, and She flipped her phone closed.

"I gotta go." She stated. Rhys nodded. He pointed to the door, which was on the other end of kitchen down another a second long hallway that was similar to the one she had entered through. Out of kindness he made his way to the door along with her, but when she saw him move she stopped.

Perhaps you should not walk her to the door? Despite his polite upbringing, he fought against it and allowed her to walk there by herself.

A thought ran through his head, as he heard his front door open, and using the speed known to his kind, he ran into one of his spare rooms and retrieved two items off the bed. She was halfway out the door before he returned and stopped her, with a touch of his hand.

She whirled around quickly, ready for a fight, fists up.

"You forgot these." Cautiously, he allowed his hand to hover over her balled up fists. When they uncurled, he allowed her gun and a spare clip to fall into them heavily. She stood outside his door simply staring at them. He could not hear her thoughts, had chosen not to, but her creased eyebrows told him everything.

"You are already halfway out the door, why would you take the time to shoot me now?" he reasoned. Small yet strong fingers, curled around the butt of the gun and her other hand worked to place the ammo in her back pocket, then the gun into the tight waist band in the back of the jeans. The weapon seemed obnoxious hanging there, and Rhys knew that there was no way the hospital would allow her anywhere near her friend with a weapon out in the open like that, but she didn't seem to mind.

She glanced at him one more time before turning to walk away. "The name's Sage." Her voice echoed within the hallway, and floated back to Rhys, bringing a smile to his face, slowly.

 "Sage." He said the name quietly to himself. "One who shows profound wisdom." Rhys chuckled, leaning against the doorframe. "I was way off."

He watched as she disappeared around the corner of the hall, leaving the smell of ocean behind her.

~~~

Victoria Van Hoyt was accustomed to waking up feeling as if a train had hit her. In fact, she welcomed it. Such feelings had become a luxury to her, and she had learned to do whatever it took to get herself as hammered as possible, so that when she woke up the next morning, she was actually certain that she had, in fact, woken up.

It was a sadistic idea, she knew. But it helped.

Without opening her eyes, she kicked her legs out from under the blanket and tossed them over the side of the bed. Sage had most likely put her there, in bed, blanket and all. But God, what had happened? She didn't remember drinking herself into oblivion and the cops had taken her coke so why did she feel...

Oh...yeah.

The night before was fuzzy, but not fuzzy enough. She remembered running with her sister away from them. They had chased them all the way through the warehouses district until one had caught up to her. What she remembered after that came in fragments.

A conversation between her sister and her.

A vampire that had held her at fang point.

Sage shooting him dead in the face with a gun.

A big ass gun.

And how awesome had her big sis looked? Handling the gun like a pro, keeping her cool like a negotiator. Sage had killed the vampire without even blinking. Her green eyes had been calm and calculating. Vicky was almost jealous.

She looked around her messy room. Clothes and beer bottles everywhere. This is what had become of her life; living in a pigsty with her two accidents .She hadn't wanted this.

Any of this.

She'd wanted excitement. Fun. Everything that Sage was doing. She woke up every night and killed vampires and werewolves and fairies. Vic was still having a hard time digesting that those things were even real.

And Sage had done a great job of hiding it from her. Making her think that she worked at an office desk. Pshh. It almost annoyed her how dumb her older sister thought she was. There was no way that the five girls she lived with were as boring as she made them out to be. Sure, she had had ideas of what they did. She imagined them to be secret agents or members of the Secret Service. She even imagined them to be strippers at one point, because they were so damn secretive about their life at night.

But that had changed the night Vicky visited her sis in her new home. Being orphans, they had moved around a lot. But after Vicky grew up and had her boys, they separated, no longer needing each other for emotional support; Vicky cause she had her men, and Sage because she had the girls. But Sage's new home had been like nothing they had ever been able to afford, both together and separate. It had been huge, a borderline mansion. Vicky had no idea what they'd needed all the rooms for until she'd gone into one.

"This place is a fucking armory," she remembered saying. And it had been. The walls were soundproof, reinforced and the door had been made of metal. Like a bank safe. There had been no furniture in the room. No lamps or desks. The only light in the room came from behind the reinforced glass where all of the weapons hung. Weapons that even Vicky had never seen before.

And Sage had been livid when she found her sister wandering around upstairs.

"The fuck are you doing up here?" She'd yelled.

Vicky had replied just as loud, "Well, I'm sorry, there was no baby gate to stop me from coming up. What is this, Sage?"

And Carmen had taken that second to walk into the room, smooth like a glass of red wine and beautiful the way poisonous flowers could be. "It is my family collection," her rich accent seemed to drip from her mouth, a lovely sound on Vicky's ears. "You know mi familia es very old. We have collected for generations. Because I am the oldest, I was chosen to pass it on to my little ones."

Vicky remembered wanting to argue the fact of how dangerous it was having those type of weapons in a home, but a part of her, a big part, seemed to take Carmondy at her word. At that moment, it seemed that anything the girl said, could be gospel. Was gospel. It had all made sense, and Vicky had walked out of the room after a shrug not missing the glare Carmen gave to her older sister, but not thinking anything of it.




Huntress Ch. 06



And then He had confirmed it for her. He had told her everything she'd needed to know about what her sister and her friends did when the sun went down.

"They destroy our kind in cold-blood," His voice had been so sad, and those blue eyes, had looked at her with such longing. She had needed him as much as he had needed her. At least back then, that had been the case.

A chill went down Victoria's spine.

Thoughts had passed through her mind, while she slept, as if her mind had not shut down. It had become apparent to her that he'd been the one to send those vampires after her. Most likely, he had also been the one to have her arrested, since she knew he had ties in every area of the city. Both of those had been her warning. A loud blaring warning as to what was coming next. Her time was up.

With a sigh, she hosted herself out of bed and towards the door, stepping over pieces of clothing. The hallway of her home was dark. On a digital clock that hung from one of the walls, it read 8:34 PM. A full night later. She had slept all day. Out of habit, she stopped at the last room in the hall and checked in on the boys.

They were in bed like they were supposed to be and by the depth of their breathing; she could tell they were sleeping. Good.

Victoria walked into the kitchen and was about to turn on the light when a shadow made her stop. Shaped like a tall, lean statue, it hunched over the bar in her kitchen. Victoria used her index finger to flip on the light.

The fluorescent light illuminated the kitchen, bringing a familiar body into the bluish light. He was looking through her mail, lazily flipping items away after reading their letterhead.

"Casimir."

Yeah, she knew. Her time was up.

"Good Evening, my sweet." The lightly accented voice that had once sent fire through her veins now froze her blood. Her heart seemed to stop momentarily then pick up beating faster than before. If she were lucky, she would have a heart attack soon.

"My Lord."

He stayed focused on the Victoria's Secret magazine in front of him, flipping the page every few seconds. "How are you this night?"

"Well, My Lord."

Inhuman blue eyes looked up at her, pining her against the wall. "I'm glad to hear it. I take it my message was not delivered to you last night?" Elegant and pale fingers flipped the magazine closed and pushed it away from his body, now suddenly uninterested in it. He looked away from her, down at the counter for another item to read but when he found nothing his gaze returned to her.

"I received no message," her voice trembled on the last word.

"Clearly."

Victoria forced herself to ask, "May I hear the message now, My Lord?"

Casimir flexed the fingers on his right hand and examined the nails before placing both hands behind his back and taking a step around the counter, towards her. Intuitively, Vicky stepped back. "You will hear the message soon enough. How do you boys fair? Are they well? Healthy?" For a second, Victoria wasn't going to answer. He didn't need to know about Jacob and Jordan. He had never asked before, never cared.

"I asked you a question, Victoria." Vicky nodded slightly. She could feel her body humming from fear and nerves.

She'd known that this was going to happen. Why was she so scared?

"Yes, girl," Casimir answered her mental question. "Why are you so scared? Do you feel that you had failed me in some way?"

Victoria looked around her kitchen. At the number of old food items and cans that littered the counter and floor. If Sage had asked her the same question, she knew how she would answer.

Yes. She would say. She had failed not only her, but also her boys. Herself. She'd been selfish. Childish. If she weren't so scared she knew she would laugh at herself. She was having a self-reflection. When was the last time she had done that?

"I asked you a question, Victoria." Casimir took another step forward and Vicky felt nauseous at the sound of her name on his lips. "Have you failed me?"

Victoria nodded, solemnly and looked at her feet because the unusual dark ocean blue of his eyes was making her heart thump painfully. There had been a time when she had found him exciting. Those blue eyes had put her in trances and those elegant fingers and taken her to heights she knew no man could ever take her. Those soft full lips had been her poison, her downfall, but she had relished in them, allowing them to rain their praises over her whenever they wanted. The white of his hair, while unusual, had been his most arousing feature. They gave ironic hints to his real age despite the young god-like face and body that it rested on.

She had thought herself in love with him once. Now, as she looked into his eyes, she felt none of it. She didn't see the man who had locked her in his bedroom for three nights and made love to her almost non-stop. She didn't see the man who had helped pay her rent and give her a five thousand dollar allowance every month. She didn't see the man who would love her until she was numb or dead. No. She saw the vampire that he really was. The vampire that her sister would slay with a smile on her face. The vampire that had struck the deal that would bring about her death.

"I will give you anything you like, but you must do one thing for me."

"Anything, my lord."

"Bring your sister to me. Bring all of the Huntresses to me."

She had accepted the deal gladly, in exchange for his money. For sex. For what she thought was love. But she had not delivered. In fact she had done the opposite, doing everything in her power to keep her sister out of his grip. She cleared her thoughts perfectly when in his presence, she burned birthday cards that were sent in the mail, she kept her boys away and their thoughts occupied even in conversation, and she hid family photos (even though there weren't many). Vicky made certain that Casimir would never know where her sister lived let alone what her sister or her friends looked like.

"Why don't send your men to get them"

"I don't know how to find them, angel. You are the only one knows. And besides, they have a witch amongst them so they will kill any man that I send. Even my best."

"My love, you are the best. Why don't you go?"

"Because these woman are peasants work. I am no peasant!"

The memory faded from her mind with the sound of a resounding slap. The slap of his hand meeting her face. How dare she ask such an absurd question?

"Yes, I do believe that you have failed me, because I have yet to have the five girls delivered to me that I requested. Victoria, my sweet." Casimir shrugged. "As you're human's would say, what gives?"

Victoria had to look to the side, anywhere but down, as she shook her head. "She's my sister," she whispered. "They are my friends. I can't do it."

Casimir took another step forward. One more step and he would be a hair's breath away. Like a whisper, his mind brushed against hers, almost erotically, searching. Vicky didn't have to work hard to keep him out, but just as suddenly as her thoughts blanked, she felt him tear through her mind, like nails on a chalkboard.

His touch, his mental touch, had always been soft, coaxing, but this...? She felt a drop of blood trickle down her nose and onto her bottom lip. But he still didn't get through, and he withdraw quickly, making her head spin.

"If you want her so bad, get her yourself." As a challenge, she met his eyes, unblinking. Casimir stared at her intently before laughing out loud. The sound almost made Victoria's knees buckle from fear.

"I have a better idea, my sweet," he whispered taking another step forward. When she tried to look away again he used a finger underneath her chin to guide her back to his eyes.

"She will come to me. They all will. One by one." The smell of blood wafted from his mouth and made her stomach turn. His straight perfectly white teeth, curled into a malicious smile.

Victoria felt the cold wetness of a tear run down her cheek. Her body shook uncontrollably. All she wanted to do was run into the room with her boy's and kiss them. Tell them she loved them and that everything would be okay. Just like Sage had done when it was jus the two of them.

Vicky felt her bottom lip quiver, and when she tried to yank her chin away from his finger, he used one hand to grip both sides of her cheek, roughly.

She wasn't afraid to die. She never had been. Not since watching her mother die right in front of and seeing her father make the change into a monster on the floor of a warehouse. Nothing scared her anymore. She was just sorry. She wished she could get one last phone call. Just to apologize. To tell the truth, so that Sage knew what she knew.

Vicky watched as two fangs ominously extended from his k-9s. She had seen it so many times, had been aroused by it before, and yet now, it made her want to scream.

He was teasing her. He wanted to see the fear in her eyes, and because of that Vicky took a few calming breaths and forced her body to stop its shaking. She wasn't going to die a coward. Sage would hate her for that.

"I warned you, Victoria, what happens when I am not pleased." Casimir leaned closely and breathed the words against her lips. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?" His cold elegant fingers, wrapped themselves delicately around her neck. His lips traveled along her jaw line down to her neck, leaving feather light kisses along the way. Vicky nodded slowly.

Casimir pulled away and looked at her, a small smile showing off his needle sharp fangs.

"What, my sweet?"

"Fuck you."