The Vampire Hunter

Hello everyone! This idea has been kicking around my head for a while. I love this universe. Some day I'd love to come back to it and make it just a bit more sophisticated. Thanks for reading!

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The fangs are the trickiest to hide. My incisors are longer now, which I expected, but the girth of my teeth has changed too, which I didn’t. It doesn’t look too strange when my mouth is closed but, when I talk, you can see my new baby fangs curving above my regular teeth.

I’ve already ordered some veneers in the vague hope that I can modify them to hide my new teeth, but there’s another problem that comes with my bite changing. It’s only been one day and I haven’t found a way to hide the--

“Are you lisping?” My brother squints at me across the breakfast table, oatmeal halfway to his mouth. As usual, he’s in charge when Mom and Dad are out of the country and, as usual, he’s taking the job way too seriously. In a few days he’ll ease up, maybe disappear himself, but for now he’s hypervigilant.

Too bad he wasn’t so vigilant the other night.

“I bit my tongue,” I say. I stand, taking my oatmeal with me, careful to hide the fact I haven’t eaten any of it. “It hurt.” Even when avoiding the s, I sound like I’ve got something in my cheeks. “Gotta go.”

He chews slowly, quick brown eyes narrow on my face. “Home by 6. We’re ordering Chinese tonight.”

My stomach lurches at the mention of food even as my brain practically begs for it. I give him a thumbs up as I duck towards the door. Getting sustenance is already becoming a huge issue and I’m left with two options.

Give in and drink human blood or kill the vampire who did this to me, thus ending the curse.

It’s not as easy a choice as you might think.

“I said,” Arthur whines, “that I was sorry.”

“Sorry,” I say, looking straight ahead, “doesn’t make me any more alive, Arthur.” I dutifully scribble down the chemical equation Mr. Delia is showing us at the front of the room. Do I know what it means? No. Will I figure it out later? Probably also no. Not without help.

That was what Arthur was supposed to be for.

Arthur starts worrying a nail with his teeth. As a full, blood-drinking vampire, his fangs are retractable when he’s not hungry. The rule had been that he needed to feed before I came over to help him with English and he helped me with Chemistry. 

He’d broken it after only a month.

“I think you should come over after school, Hanna. Your eyes are looking a little black.” Arthur’s eyes are still a nice, cool green thanks to all of my blood in his system. It’d been my mistake not to take a stake with me to a vampire’s house and it wasn’t one I was going to make again.

My pencil creaks ominously in my hand. “I don’t want to be a vampire, Arthur. I’m not going to drink any blood.”

“You have to,” Arthur insists. He laughs. “I mean it’s not like you’re going to kill me.” He meets my eyes when I don’t join in. Unease creeps across his face. “Right?”

“Arthur, Hanna,” Mr. Delia says. He looks tired behind his large glasses. “This is going to be on the test.”

“Sorry,” I say and pretend not to notice how Arthur keeps sneaking glances at me through the rest of the lesson.

I probably won’t kill him, but I don’t exactly want to die either. If I don’t turn back into a human by the time my parents come back, it won’t be the hunger that kills me.

It’ll be a stake, branded with the family crest, straight through the heart.

We’re not racist, okay? Vampires are cool with my family, despite the rather bloody history between us. We’ve all moved on from the age of pitchforks and fires into the bright future where the daughter of a hunter clan gets tutored in chemistry by a vampire larva. Mom and Dad aren’t called for an execution unless a vampire’s got at least three kills under their belt and they’re talking about my brother actually going to University since the vampire-killing business is dying out.

He’s thinking about engineering.

So it’s not out of some misplaced idea of purity that makes me sure my parents are going to kill me the second they find out I’m a vampire. They’re going to kill me because the last member of my clan who got Turned ended up destroying half a city before we managed to put them down.

It’s evolution’s fault. We’re different from normal people because of our ancestors’ occupation. We had to change to have any chance against blood-drinking vampires. Heavier, hardier bones, denser muscles, and better eye sight. A few of us have better hearing than a dog and a few of us have the sense of smell to match.

My mom’s pushing fifty and she can lift a car like a mattress. My dad’s the same age and his morning routine includes swimming around Lake Superior. Underwater. My brother’s in his prime and he does the same thing twice.

That’s our baseline. Combine that with a vampire’s increase in speed, strength, and senses? That’s a juggernaut the supernatural world would kill to prevent.

You’d be supergluing teeth veneers into your mouth too.

I let Arthur pull me aside after school. He’s looking a little red after PE, probably having forgotten to reapply his SPF, but that’s not all. He looks determined, something I’ve found is never good coming from him.

I let him pull me all the way down the sidewalk to the softball field. It’s Tuesday so they’re at an away game, no chance of anyone storming down to the small ball shack he urges me into. I watch him scope out the entire room, moving with preternatural speed to check behind baskets of bats, balls, and uniforms.

I stare at him as he stops by the door and locks it. Unlocks it. Locks it again. I cross my arms. “Okay, Arthur, what the actual fuck?”

The Arthur that turns around is not the same scrawny kid I know. This Arthur is pale, green eyes dark, and mouth pressed into a thin line. He’d remind me of the same Arthur who jumped me in his room the other night, starving and scraping, but his aura is steady. Determined.

“I’ve been thinking, Hanna,” he says. He stops and visibly makes himself breathe, thin chest shuddering as he releases it. Thus fortified, Arthur lifts his chin and says, “I think you ought to kill me.”

What? “What?” I ask. I realize my mouth is hanging open, letting my new veneer slip, but I don’t care. “You want me to what?”

“Kill me,” Arthur says. He reaches behind him and pulls out a small stake, clearly made out of a wooden ruler. His hand shakes as he presents it to him. “It’s—it’s my fault that you’re a vampire now. You didn’t want to be one and I know how much it sucks to be changed against your will. It’s your right to kill me.”

We stand there, Arthur trembling from head to toe as he holds out the improvised stake to me. He knows that I’m from a hunter clan and he knows that I’ve killed all sorts of supernatural creatures in the course of my apprenticeship. He knows that, if I take the stake, I’ll not only be able to put it in his heart, I will.

Oh no, I think as heat begins to climb up my throat. Oh here it comes.

Tears well up in my eyes. My breath hitches. My veneer falls out of my mouth and onto the grimy floor. My shoulders begin to heave.

Arthur flails, nearly dropping his stake. “Oh my god! Don’t cry, don’t cry—”

“That’s the n-nicest thing anyone has ever done,” I sob. I push at my cheeks, wiping away my tears. They’re pitch black, vampire tears, and stain my shirt when I use it to dry my hands. “Ever.”

“It’s the least I can do,” Arthur says somewhat desperately. “Anyone decent would—Oh, oh, Hanna, please stop crying.” He shoves the stake somewhat desperately at me. “Here, take it.”

I bat the ruler out of his hand, letting it fall next to my veneer. “I can’t kill you now, you oaf.” I sniffle, struggling to get my body back under control. “You’re my friend.”

Arthur freezes. He looks like he has been staked. “Friends? We’re friends?”

I nod quickly. “Of course.” He’s strong enough not to fall over when I throw my arms around him in a fierce hug. “Anyone willing to die by my hand is my friend, idiot.”

He carefully pats me on the back. “That,” he says, “seems like an odd qualification to have for friends.”

“Maybe.” I pull away sniffling and use my shirt to wipe the rest of my tears off my face. It’s basically ruined already anyway. “But still. I just can’t do it.”

“I’m sorry,” Arthur says miserably. His shoulders slump and he’s the weak boy I’ve known for the past year again. “I should have said something when I knew you were coming over and I still hadn’t eaten.”

“Yeah, you should have,” I say, “but that’s done now and I—I’m not mad at you anymore for it.” There’s no point in being mad at something that’s already done. Especially when I believe his apology this time.

Arthur perks up. “So you’ll come over today and eat something? You’ll stay a vampire?”

I grimace. “Arthur, I can’t stay a vampire. I’m a vampire hunter, you know I can’t.”

“But that’s—they don’t have to know,” Arthur says. He wrings his hands. “You could just come and stay with me. I’m sure my Maker doesn’t know who you are and he’s always looking for new members—”

I hold up my hand. “Arthur, even if he didn’t know, my family would notice if I went missing. They’d find out and I’d—” I swallow heavily. “It’d be better if I just told my brother. He’ll—he’ll make it painless.”

Now Arthur’s the one fighting back tears, the black teasing at the edges of his green irises. “No, there has to be another way! I can’t lose my first friend.” His voice cracks. “And it’s all my fault.” He pulls at his hair. “If I’d just taken out the trash when Gerald asked, he’d have let me eat and I wouldn’t have—”

I blink, pushing back my misery. “Wait, what?”

“—then you’d still be human and your brother wouldn’t have to—” He chokes. “I won’t let you go through this alone—”

“Arthur, stop, what did you just—”

“—I’ll present myself to him as the culprit—”

“Did you say your Maker Turned you against—”

“—we’ll die together like real friends—”

I slap him, forgetting that I’m a vampire now. Even without having eaten, I’m stronger than him and he goes spinning across the shed. He trips over a basket of softballs and crashes into the thin siding, making the whole structure shudder alarmingly. I cover my mouth with my hands. “Sorry!”

“No, no, I was getting too amped,” Arthur says. He picks himself up carefully, dusting wood chips from his shoulders. “Did you ask me something?”

“Yes,” I say. I hold out a hand to him. “I need you to tell my everything about your turning and your Maker.”

“Sure,” Arthur says slowly. He takes my hand like I’m about to throw him into the wall again. “But…why?”

“Because,” I say, “there might be a way out of this yet.”

“Wait a sec,” my brother says, standing. “Hold on, I’ll be right back.” He stalks out of the kitchen, abandoning Arthur and I at the kitchen table.

“He’s—he’s not going to come back with a stake, is he?” Arthur asks. He’s sitting on the edge of his seat, looking around as if he’s only just seeing the death certificates hanging all over the walls. My family likes to keep track of our vampire kills.

I shrug. I know I should be nervous, but I’m not. My brother always knows what to do and, given the option, I know he’d never hurt me. “He probably will.”

Arthur whimpers.

My brother comes striding back into the room. He’s out done himself and gone with a stake belt slung across his chest. There are two naked blades in his hands. “Okay, continue.”

“Right,” I say, trying not to stare at the sparks flying off the blades when he runs them against each other. “Um, well, as I said, I’m a vampire now, but I haven’t drunk any blood so it’s still a fixable situation.”

My brother’s dark eyes slide to Arthur. “Uh huh.” More sparks fly.

Arthur leans a little behind me.

“Yes,” I say, “Arthur turned me, but I really don’t want him dead because he’s my friend, Dylan. My first friend.”

My brother’s eyes slide back and forth as he tracks Arthur moving behind me and away. “Uh huh.”

“But,” I say, “I am fully cognizant of the fact that I can’t remain a vampire as per our family’s rules.”

“The law, actually,” my brother says. He stretches, the blade of one dagger coming within a foot of Arthur. “The law we have to uphold.”

“A very good point,” I say. “The law. See, what if I told you that Arthur’s Maker—a Master vampire that lives right in town—turned Arthur against his will? And what if I told you that that same Master prevented Arthur—a larva that attends a human school—from feeding regularly?”

My brother is very still. “I,” he says, “would want to know how old Arthur is.”

Arthur shoots a nervous look at me. When I nod, he croaks, “Seventeen.”

“How long have you been seventeen, Arthur?” My brother’s lips quirk.

“Um,” Arthur says. “Like…like two months?”

“See,” I tell my brother. “There is another way.”

My brother stands, smiling. “A statutory Turning means I don’t even have to wait for an order. Mom and Dad are going to be so jealous. They hate Mesilius.”

“Not as much as I do,” Arthur says, speaking from some well of bravery. It quickly dries up when my brother turns to look at him again and he hides behind me.

“Maybe,” my brother says. He sheathes his blades in the harness on his back and heads for the door. “I’ll take care of it for you, but you’re doing the dishes for the next month.”

“Deal,” I say, shoulders slumping with relief. The door’s already closing on the word, but I know he heard me. My brother’s got the best hearing out of all of us.

“He’s just going to kill him?” Arthur asks. “Just like that?”

I nod, standing. “Yep.” I nod him to the other room. “You’d better stay here for a while. Wanna watch TV?”

Arthur, dazed, follows me.

I’m human by the time the Chinese food gets there.