Chapter 1

1983

Detroit

Hailey Barnes was an 18-year-old Hispanic American with soft curves and long wavy black hair, which framed her face like a perfectly painted portrait. She had everything going for her, she was beautiful, intelligent and came from a wealthy family and could have potentially done anything she wanted.

On one particular night in late August what she wanted was a hot latte from Benny's diner, a cool wind was sending goose bumps rippling across her skin and a light drizzle was dampening her hair and attempting to flatten her coat to her sides. She was a woman with a purpose and was stalking down the street with a sway in her hips that would send men drooling with desire. Her full red lips were pouty and a red flush had crept along her cheeks from the slightly faster pace that she was walking.

Sighing Hailey gave her hair a flick and breathed the wet air, the scent was just so tantalising, there weren't many things she enjoyed more then being able to taste the dampness that accompanied rain, and that particular night she was revelling in it.

She had escaped the maids who were meant to be keeping an eye on her and flirted her way past the guard at the gate to her parents estate, all because she had a craving for one of Benny's hot lattes, she'd been sneaking out of her house for nearly three years for the pleasure of those lattes and she still didn't know exactly what Benny did to make them so different and so tasty.

Smiling and whistling a dainty tune she continued her way down the street, her parents were always smothering her with their concerns about how dangerous the streets were, how many predators there were out there waiting to pray on vulnerable young woman. Sheesh, they needed to relax a little, she wasn't even three blocks from the house most of the time and she could take care of herself, despite what they might think.

Hailey was still anticipating that latte and primping at how smart she had been to evade the house hold servants when the shadows began to flit about her. She never saw the teenage boy whose hands clasped her waist, never saw him as he used his preternatural strength to wrench her from the street and into the dark little ally.

She only felt the cold hard ground as she smacked into it, a piece of broken glass digging into her thigh. Her first coherent thought was that she was going to be raped, but that faded as the shock took her when her assailant pivoted from behind to drop on top of her. A knee to either side of her waist pressed into her tightly while his hands pinned hers to the ground.

Tears leaked from her eyes as she sobbed in pain and fear while she thrashed about, he was so strong it felt like he was crushing her wrists, and she was so terrified of what he was going to do. The fact that he looked so young actually made it worse for her, she had thought she could take care of herself, but now some little runt was going to rape or murder her and all she could do was cry.

Her body had already gone numb and when his mouth widened in a feral scream to reveal his gleaming white teeth jagged and dripping saliva all she could do was widen her eyes. His dark features blended in with the night and when he lunged for her throat she barely saw him move.

With animal like savagery she felt him tearing into her, Hailey tried to scream but all that came out was a gurgle. With astonishment she thought he'd bitten right through her throat, she was drowning in her own blood as it sprayed around him and coated her as he continued to shift and tear. It hurt like a son of a bitch and her last coherent thought was further astonishment before she blacked out was as she realised he was drinking her blood…how very odd…

2006

October 18th

New York

To an outside observer time would have seemed distorted as a young dark haired woman pitched a sword against two male turn bloods. In a controlled and coolly calculated manoeuvre she placed a back kick squarely behind her with enough force that the cracking of the vampires ribs was audibly as he smashed back into the side of a building. His head smacking back so hard that it left a trail of blood as he slid to the ground. He wouldn't be going anywhere any time soon.

With a feral grin that flashed the merest hint of her own set of gleaming fangs the young woman lunged forward with her narrow tinted silver blade. The turn blood barely moved as the blade streaked towards him and passed harmlessly over his shoulder.

In response the woman dropped the blade to lightly cut into his shoulder before darting it to the side with enough force to cleave his head from his shoulders, unfortunately he was an adept fighter himself and with a role of his head her blade once again passed harmlessly over him. As he glanced back to look at her she abandoned her blade in mid motion so that she could slip behind his guard and clasp his head on either side.

With a savage wrench she twisted until his neck broke, and continued to twist until ligaments and flesh were completely severed and she had separated his head from his body. She quirked her own head to the side so she could smile at his astonished look before a fine orange light shone against his skeleton, burning through his flesh and dissolving him to ash.

Pivoting on one foot she retrieved her blade and sheathed it within the confines of her dark ankle length leather jacket, say whatever you want about leather but it was durable in a fight and it made for a very good way to conceal machete sized weapons. In fact her entire ensemble was designed to make her a more efficient predator. Tight black leather pants, knee high black leather boots, which were mostly concealed beneath her pants and a dark tunic like shirt, which was concealed beneath high-grade tactical armour that was moulded to fit her body.

She paused for a moment as she looked down at the rapidly healing second vampire; he was a turn blood and only a grunt within the workings of Armaya but he would probably do for the purposes she had in mind. What made things even sweeter was that he was a very attractive man, he appeared in his early to mid twenties, but for all she knew he could be a hundred plus years. His light brown hair was matted with blood, but beneath his very tight shirt a well-muscled figure was obvious.

Now don't get her wrong, she could recognise him as attractive but she had no interest in men for anything sexual. In her eyes they had all been tainted.

From the left side of her jacket the dark haired woman drew out a small metal container and as she knelt beside the Armayan vampire she opened the latches and flipped it open to reveal a syringe with a silver tip that was filled with a viscous green material.

She watched in amusement as the turn blood fluttered his eyes open and tried to focus on her, his mouth opening and closing to emit a high pitched whining, "Shh baby this will only sting a lot" she whispered as she stuck the needle into his arm. His skin sizzled as the silver pierced his veins and the slight smell of burnt flesh slipped through the air.

Then he really screamed. And her sadistic streak relished in his pain, it probably wasn't necessary to lace the sedative with silver flakes but it was so much more fun and it did seem to slow a vampire's incredibly high metabolism to give the drugs a chance to work for longer. Though the first few times she had experimented with silver flakes she had mistakenly used too much and ashed them, the silver had to be in very minute amounts.

Smiling down at her newest subject she carefully replaced her needle in its case and returned it the folds of her jacket before drawing a smaller, almost surgical blade from a wrist sheath. A light pitter-patter of rain began to echo through the darkened ally as she carefully and precisely slit the vampires wrists to allow him to bleed out.

The thing about vampires was that even after they had bled out they could remain alive for quite some time, usually reverting to a more savage state, that is if they still had the strength to do so. It was also a fact that blood was a mitigating factor in a vampires regenerative abilities, the more blood you had, or the more you fed the faster you would heal…the dark haired woman had found that the reverse was also true.

And that with weaker vampires it was easier to use silver and fire to give them long lasting or even permanent scarring once they had been bled out.

With a savage smile she set about mutilating the Armayan vampire, a signature of sorts to announce her arrival in New York. She took his eyes and crippled his body, stripping him bare as she worked. Searing wounds closed as she finished with them.

Practice had made her efficient and with in fifteen minutes she had utterly devastated the poor creature, he was barely recognisable as being humanoid once she was finished with him. He was also beginning to come around which was part of her process. She had ambushed the two Armayan turn bloods in their own territory and it wouldn't be long before the blood from her victim drew others. What she had done to the vampire was horrific, but it required a final touch, so she lent down beside the crippled creature and whispered into his one perfect ear.

"Maybe you'll heal vampire, maybe you won't…but tell those Armayan filth who find you that Kali is in town" And with that she was gone.

Later that Night

Kali, a girl who had once been known as Hailey and who had had such a bright future a head of her, slipped into the crypt like basement of an abandoned hotel. It was a secure location, which she could exit from into the main hotel, directly to the streets or into the sewer system. Better then that it had a freezer room, she didn't particularly care about the cool part, but the room was several feet of reinforced steel with a door that could be sealed and only opened from one side.

Currently that little room housed a familiar, a petite young blonde woman branded with an Armayan glyph. As she stalked through her current base of operations Kali made a cursory inspection to make sure nobody had been there why she was out and about. Her security system might not have been high tech; in fact it was as basic as could be, dust and ultraviolet powder lacing the room so that when she shifted her sight into the UV spectrum she could see any foot prints on the floors, walls or ceilings.

Simple but effective.

Satisfied that nothing had been disturbed she glanced through the small plastic window looking into the freezer compartment, originally that plastic had been glass, but Kali had replaced it when she moved in with something more difficult to break, not that it mattered much, the window being too small for anyone but a tiny baby to fit through. It was more to maintain the sound proofing then anything else.

She smiled sadistically as she observed the familiar huddled against the wall of her cell, vibrant purple and yellow bruising marked the side of her face and a poorly bandaged wrist was seeping blood. Kali had no serum to curb her blood lust; by the time she had even learned such a thing existed she had been feeding on human blood for nearly a decade so it would have been worthless to her anyway. So rather then hunt the innocent Kali had found a new way to feed, familiars, they worked for vampires, envied them, wanted to be them and did all kinds of horrific things in the name of the masters they served.

It seemed only right that it be their blood that nourished her, once every few nights she would tap a familiar's vein and feed. But hunting on a piece meal basis was inefficient, sloppy and too often it drew attention so when she was trying to stay under the radar it was a simple matter to abduct a familiar and house them until she had bled them dry.

Slitting the wrist allowed her to simply pour the blood into a vessel so she wouldn't run the risk of infecting the familiar. They usually didn't last more then a week, but it wasn't as if they were hard to find.

Sometimes Kali would even give the familiars that which they coveted the most, she would turn them; of course she would soon give them a baptism of silver or light. But for a few brief moments they would have what they desired.

Sighing almost wistfully she turned away from her dinner, deciding she could go another night before she needed to feed. Standing before a smaller set of steel doors she opened them to reveal a small armoury, in which she placed her small narrow silver sword, it was almost a hybrid of a rapier and roman short sword, being thicker then the traditional rapier so that it could be used more effectively in severing limbs.

The blade was housed beside a twin blade, and just beneath them were an assortment of various smaller blades ranging from stilettos to scalpels, the tools of her trade. Her armoury housed several hand guns with silver ammo and a single UV flash grenade, that particular weapon could prove as deadly to her as her enemies so she didn't particularly want to be carrying a number of them. It was something she had taken from a hunter that had tried to put a stake through her heart.

Closing the steel cabinet Kali stripped her jacket and placed it across the shoulders of a mannequin, laying her body armour beside it. She had modelled her weapons, her look and her entire operation on the most legendary vampire hunter in existence. Blade. Who was himself half vampire.

It was Blade who had shaped her, created her, they had only met for a few moments one August night, but those moments had defined her entire existence. Stripped her of her innocence, and made her a monster. But more then that he had made a freak on both sides of the fence, she was a full turn blood vampire with all the trapping that entailed. But she was also sired from the Daywalker's lineage, it was his bite, which had transformed her and condemned her.

There were few things that the entire vampire nation agreed on, but the eradication of Blade and every vampire of his bloodline was one of them. Since he had become a hunter himself Blade would also slay any of his bloodline that he came across which meant those few he had created in his early years were truly fucked.

Nowhere to go and no one to turn to.

Dwelling on her past and the only possible future she could expect in the long term brought sorrow to Kali, she was always so very alone. But one day that would change, she might be hunting vampires for the moment, but she had a long-term objective. A plan, something that would revolutionise the great covenant of vampire houses.

Whether he wanted it or not, Kali was going to forge the house of Blade.