A/N: All references to real places, people, and events are purely coincidental and should not be taken as factual. I do not own Vampire Knight or its characters, however, the plot and the OCs are all my own.

This is a revamp of my original VK fanfiction, I Don't Date Vampires.

EXPLAINING THE UNEXPLAINABLE
CHAPTER ONE
"Shadow Men"

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."

—H.P. Lovecraft

Katherine Taylor sat with her face turned towards the window. The light from outside bathing her a golden glow, reflecting off the blondes and sandy browns of her french pigtails. She had taken her hat and coat off after the heat in the train's cabin had become too much for that many layers and threw them into the empty chair beside her, leaving her in a long-sleeved shirt and navy cable-knit sweater with a thick wool scarf looped around her neck. The sweater was somewhat baggy on her slender frame, but it was difficult to discern whether it was the sweater itself that was too big or whether it was Katherine's figure that was too small. Judging by the size of her wrists alone, she could've almost passed as one of those needy metropolitan children that were sent out every summer to endowed camps to be fattened and sunned. Close up, either full-face or in profile, she was a surpassingly handsome looking girl. Her uncle Lucian (who was really only related in spirit and considered himself a connoisseur and admirer of particularly beautiful women) has often said that she looked like the lovechild of Audrey Hepburn and Ingrid Bergman. A more general and surely less penchant view was that her face had been barely saved from too-handsomeness, not to say gorgeousness, by the virtue of her ears being much pointier than normal giving her an almost pixie-ish appearance. Nonetheless, Katherine was vulnerable to the same variety of flippant confidence and usually specious appraisals that any legitimate art object is; and as such any one of a hundred everyday hazards—a cold, a headache, lack of sleep—could have defaced or roughened her bounteous good looks in a day or a second.

Currently, Katherine was looking a little worse for wear. Her head resting on the frosted window pane and slouching, almost uncomfortably, forward in her chair. She had a slightly queasy feeling in her stomach, motion sickness from the swaying of the train, and her face was pinched in a particularly ugly expression. In her lap, she was grasping firmly a small orange prescription bottle filled with nausea medication. She was trying rather unsuccessfully to hold out until the next stop so she could stand up and reach for her water bottle in the overhead compartment, standing up she found was worse than sitting, and she had immediately collapsed back in her seat when she had tried it. She kept her eyes focused on the ice-capped mountains on the horizon, ignoring as best as she could the blur of snow-covered trees whizzing past her.

If she wasn't feeling as dizzy as a sock in a dyer, Katherine would have been enjoying the winter scenery. The frosted trees were particularly beautiful with long thin icicles hanging from their branches, sunlight shining through them like crystals on a chandelier. The Annupuri Mountains were filled with an overabundance of curvy rail tracks and steep inclines and declines that had the train bouncing along more often than not. She wished she was back in the suite in Tokyo with her uncle drinking hot cider and watching 'Die Hard' on the forty-five inch flatscreen. This wasn't how she wanted to spend New Year's Eve, traveling from Tokyo to Niseko, in what was possibly the ricketiest train the world. If she had had her way she would've been feeling sick on an airplane to Sri Lanka with Lucian, but he had said it was too dangerous. The tensions between the military and the Tamil Tigers were rising to the point that any day now one side would break and the whole country could be in a revolution. Being a journalist, specifically a foreign correspondent, Lucian was asked to be on the front lines and report on the crisis. He typically didn't take such high-risk assignments, however, this was different it seemed and so he packed up his niece and enrolled her in a prestigious boarding school in northern Japan.

Cross Academy was supposed to be one the top international schools in the country, if not the world, and was nearly impossible to get into with a waiting list longer than most applicant's high school careers. It was the kind of place that only children of the extremely rich or affluent—politicians, business leaders, Hollywood stars—attended. Katherine shouldn't have even been in the top hundred, to not mention very top, of that list. She was transferring towards the end of the second year and in a school like that transfers during that time were not only uncommon but unheard of. Lucian it seemed had an in with the headmaster, Kaien Kurosu, and was able to admit her without much trouble. She recognized the opportunity she was being presented with, still, a part of her felt embitter towards how it came about and how easily Lucian had left her in the care of strangers.

Just then the intercom came on as the conductor announced that the train was arriving at Otaru. Finally, she rejoiced as the trees turned into buildings and the train slowed down to a stop at an open platform. She waited until the feeling of nausea lessened, then standing up on the grey upholstered seat, she turned around and dug around in her black Jansport backpack for her unopened bottle of water. She found it quickly, sat back down, took out a couple pills and gulped them down with water. She placed her water in the cupholder of her armrest, then falling back in the chair, she closed her eyes and waited for the pills to take effect.

"Sumimasen. Nihongo-o hanashimasu-ka?" Katherine opened her eyes and looked up to see an old Japanese woman standing in the aisle. She had thin grey hair cropped short around her ears and thick wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. She was wearing a long beige coat with a light pink 'Hello Kitty' scarf tied around her neck and caring an oversized handbag in her hands. Her brows were lifted in question as she regarded Katherine curiously. She wanted to know if she spoke Japanese.

"Hai. Nihongo-ga sukoshi hanasemasu," she nodded, then pulling the coat and hat off the seat beside her and offered it to the woman. The old lady took it with a smile and set her bag on the floor by her feet. She introduced herself as Hikari Akiyama and told Katherine that she was returning home from visiting her grandchildren in Otaru. Then she asked Katherine where she was headed. "Niseko. Cross Academy."

"Ah! You're a student," she spoke in very accented English. "That's a very prestigious school."

"You know it?" Katherine asked curiously.

"Of course," she said, "I was born and raised in Niseko and that school's been around since I was a little girl. Though it was run by a different organization back then. It's one of the top schools in the country, ya know? I never went, of course, my parents didn't have the money to send me so I attended a public institution in Otaru. But I remember always seeing the clock tower from my window. You must be exited?"

Katherine nodded halfheartedly. Then she made a face as the train jolted back into motion. Apparently, the pills hadn't kicked in yet.

"Daijyōbu-desu-ka?" Mrs. Akiyama asked worriedly.

Katherine waved off her concern. "Daijyōbu-desu. Watashi-wa kinbun-ga warui-desu." The woman placed her hand on the girl's forehead feeling for a temperature and Katherine had to correct her placing a hand on her stomach and miming the motions of the train.

She nodded. "Wakarimashita." Then she reached down into her bag and pulled out a small wrapped candy and placed it in Katherine's hand. "Eat. Shōga helps calm the stomach."

Katherine thanked her and popped the candy in her mouth. The strong spicy taste of ginger spread over her tongue. She waved her hand in front of her mouth as her eyes started to water. "Oh, that's hot!" The older woman laughed amused as Katherine reached for her bottle of water, taking generous sips.

"It's a bit strong," she agreed.

"More than a bit," Katherine said. "Where do you get those?"

"I make them. My grandchildren love them."

"How many grandchildren do you have?"

"Three," she grinned, then reached into her bag to pull out her coin purse and a small photograph she kept inside. She handed it to the girl, "That's my son and his wife," she pointed at the dark haired man and woman sitting on a picnic blanket with two little boys and a small baby girl, "and those are my three grandchildren."

"Oba-san you have a lovely family." Katherine handed back the photograph.

"What about you? Do you have family in Japan? Your Japanese is excellent by the way! Did you study here before?" Mrs. Akiyama asked.

Katherine shook her head. "No. But I usually travel with my Oji-san to this country a lot. He works for an international—How do you say newspaper? Shimbun?"

"That's right," she nodded. "Igirisu-no kata-desu-ka?"

"Ie, Amerika-jin-desu. But I grew up all over Europe for the most part."

"Ah! My husband and I lived in the U.S. for a couple years."

"Oh, which part?"

"West coast in California, near the San Francisco Bay area. It's a lovely country," she said. "I would've loved to go back when my husband was alive. But it wouldn't be the same without him. We were married about forty years, ya know?"

"That's a long time," Katherine said.

She nodded looking a bit wistful. Then she stared out the window for a moment watching the sun in the sky. "Oh, I hope I can get home before sunset," she said worriedly. "I was supposed to catch an earlier train, but my grandkids—they wanted to go to the shrine. I should've just spent the night in Otaru and went home the next day."

Katherine raised her brows in question and glanced out the window. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon and the sun had been steadily moving towards the horizon. The girl turned her attention back to the old woman. "Why do you have to be home before sunset?" She asked curiously.

"You shouldn't travel at night," she told her. "Especially in this area."

"Why?"

Mrs. Akiyama gave her a speculative look, pursing her thin lips. Katherine felt like she was reprimanding her without words. As if the girl should've known exactly why one doesn't travel by night. Then she relaxed her face, leaned close to Katherine's ear and whispered almost conspiratorially, "It's not safe. People go missing at night in these parts."

Unconsciously the girl turned toward her. "They do?"

"Oh yes," she nodded, "It's been happening for years. Since I was a small child. Oka-san used to tell me stories, terrible stories of these young girls that go missing—always young girls, you see—and then turn up months or years later completely torn apart like some animal ripped them up. I would be careful if I were you. You're exactly the kind of pretty girl that would be targeted."

"What rips them up?" Katherine asked.

"No one knows. It's probably a wolf—they roam around these parts—But Oka-san used to say it was yōkai."

"Demons?" Katherine was incredulous.

She nodded. "Ah, I know how that sounds. My mother never let any of us out after sunset and I too used to think that she was a superstitious old woman, and only trying to keep me away from my friends, none of them had such strict curfews," she said. "But I've since changed my mind on that. I've seen too many strange, unexplainable things living in that town."

"Like what?"

It seemed that the old lady was just waiting for Katherine to ask. She turned to her and gave her this bemused smile that sent a chill up the girl's spine. "Well," she began, "when I was about your age, maybe a bit older, I got invited to a party one night and I got it into my head that I was going to sneak out of the house and go. I made it to the party and nothing happened, so I figured that I was right and that Oka-san was only trying to scare me. But on the way home, I was walking down one of the side streets and I heard a noise coming from one of the alleyways. Clanging like a bunch of rubbish bins being rattled about. It scared me at first, then I realized it was probably the stray dog that had been drifting around the neighborhood for years, scrounging around for some food. I had a small bundle of biscuits on me that I had taken from the party, so I thought I'd give some away. No harm done. But when I went down the alley something happened. I saw something—I don't know what it was, but it wasn't the dog—It was crouched in an alley and had a long sort of pale body like a man and not a man. If that makes any sense. It was far too skeletal and it's face—" She shuddered involuntarily. "It had these glowing red eyes and it made this horrible sound before it charged straight towards me."

The old woman paused, letting the tension build. Katherine's full attention was on her. "Then what happened?" She asked.

"What happened? Oh, it was the oddest thing," The old lady exclaimed. "I was standing there, frozen in fear to the point that I couldn't even speak much less run, and this thing was charging for me in a flat-out sprint. I thought I was going to die. I closed my eyes and..."

"And?"

"And nothing happened," she said. "I waited for about five minutes before I was finally brave enough to open my eyes and look around and when I did, that thing, whatever it was, was gone. It had vanished into thin air. I didn't waste time getting out of there. I ran all the way home and I got a tongue lashing of a lifetime when my mother found me. You can bet that I never broke curfew again after that."

"That's very scary," Katherine said.

"Yes, but it wasn't unusual. Nearly everyone in Niseko has had an experience with the shadow men. If you live there long enough you'll see things, hear things during the night," she told her. "My husband told me this story once of his experience. He was driving along the road that takes you to the academy. It's about a five kilometer stretch of forest, a part of a nature preserve, so nothing would get built there. And he told me, that while he was driving, he glanced out the window and saw this figure. He said it's pale body was running next to the tree line, keeping up with the car, and its face was turned directly to him, looking at him and not breaking eye contact until he left that stretch of road. He said its face was sunken with hollowed cheeks and its eyes were glowing through the trees. He said that he was never going to drive that road again and he didn't and he never saw another shadow man."

"Shadow man?"

"That what my Oka-san always called them," she explained. "She said that they were drawn to the sound of a living heartbeat and only by wearing a special charm could you protect yourself." The woman dug under the collar of her coat and pulled out a small cloth ball necklace with thin leather straps. The straps were wound tightly around the end of the ball and secured with needle and thread. She held it out for Katherine to touch and when she did, Katherine found that the small ball crinkled as if it was filled with some kind of dried herb. "I was wearing it that night in the alley and I haven't taken it off since. Just in case that thing, whatever it was, comes back. After that, I decided I wasn't going to take any chances and I've always been sure to be in my house with all the doors and windows locked before sunset."

Katherine wasn't someone who bought into the whole supernatural world and the superstitions that came with it. She considered herself, for the most part, a relatively rational thinker and firmly believed in the ability of science to explain away most unexplainable things. Most, not all. Still, despite this opinion, Katherine only politely laughed off the old woman's tales and took the extra protection charm when she was offered it. They enjoyed companionable conversation for the rest of the ride; chatting about a variety of different topics, none of which was significant to be remembered, and parted ways when the train arrived at Kutchan Station. As the old woman was leaving, she turned back with one more word of warning.

"If you take the bus at night and it stops before you reach the academy," she said, "for whatever reason—Stay on the bus. Don't get off and go into the woods there."

"Okay," Katherine nodded. "I have someone picking me up at the station, but I'll be sure to keep that in mind."

The old lady smiled, looking relieved. Then, without another word, she left.

Katherine stood up slowly stretching out her stiff arms and legs. She picked up her puffy down coat and shrugged it on; shoving the small prescription bottle into one of the side pockets as she did so. Then she tugged on her hat and took her backpack down from the overhead compartment before she too exited the train. She stepped out onto the open platform taking a deep breath of winter air. It was bitterly cold and windy, but surprisingly clear skies. The sun had begun to set on the horizon casting everything in a hazy golden glow.

She walked down the platform, stopping briefly to throw away her empty water bottle, then looking around for headmaster Kurosu. He was supposed to meet her here. She didn't know what he looked like, but he had told her that he would wear a red rose on his person in order for her to know who he was. She saw a crowd of people congregating at the pick up for the bus. A tall, broad-shouldered man with light brown hair bumped into her as he passed.

"Pardon me," she apologized inclining her head slightly forward. He stopped and acknowledged her with a hurried "It's alright, Sheila. No harm done" before continuing on down the platform. She watched him join the crowd waiting for the bus. Then she turned around still looking for a man with a red rose. She didn't see anyone. Frowning she decided to ask inside at the ticket counter.

"I was supposed to be picked up by a man wearing a red rose. Have you seen anyone like that around here?" She asked the ticket agent.

The ticket agent, a young woman with black hair and brown eyes, furrowed her brows and shook her head. "I'm afraid not," she said.

"Oh…" Katherine frowned. "Well, do you know where I can find a payphone?"

"Of course," the woman chirped pointing with her finger, "You go outside and you walk down the platform until you get to the train map and it should be just behind that."

"Arigatou," she thanked the woman and made her way outside. She found the payphones easily enough and reached into her backpack for her wallet and the number that headmaster Kurosu had given her. Shrugging off one of her gloves, she inserted some coins into the slot and punched in the number, holding the receiver to her ear.

"Moshi moshi?"

It was a girl's voice that answered. "Hi—umm—I'm looking for Kurosu-san," Katherine said in English.

"Nani? Mo ichido itte kudasai."

The girl sighed and tried again. "Eigo-o hanashimasu-ka?" She asked.

"Ie, eigo-o hanashimasen," the girl said.

"Kurosu-san-wa doko-ni desu-ka?"

"Oh! Chotto matte kudasai," Katherine listened to some rustling on the other end and then a man's voice was speaking in thick, accented English. "Hello?"

"Hello, is this Headmaster Kurosu?" Katherine asked.

"Yes, who's this?"

"It's Katherine Taylor."

"Oh, yes!" The man exclaimed causing her to wince and pull the phone away from her ear. "Ms. Taylor, how are you? How was the trip? I know it's a long way from Tokyo to Niseko. You must be exhausted."

"The trip was fine," she said frowning. A nagging sensation was starting to develop at the base of her skull. It could've been the after-effects of the motion sickness, albeit Katherine was beginning to suspect that the headmaster had in fact forgotten to pick her up. "Look I'm at the station," she told him.

"Ah, right. I'm terribly sorry, Ms. Taylor. I forgot. Things have been so busy around here today, it completely slipped my mind." As she suspected.

"That's okay. Is someone else coming to get me or—" She let that sentence hang as she glanced around her at the bus that had pulled up at the station.

"I can send someone to fetch you. Although, you might just want to take the bus. It'll be faster than having to wait. And with the sun setting…" He trailed off, his voice taking on an ominous edge that was reminiscent of Mrs. Akiyama. "I wouldn't feel comfortable knowing you're out there all alone in the dark. Not that you're afraid of the dark or anything—but it not safe, for a young girl that is."

Katherine nodded, although he couldn't see. "Okay, then that's what I'll do. The bus just pulled up, so I better go if I don't want to miss it."

The edge melted out of the headmaster's voice and he sounded almost relieved. "Alright, then go. I'll see you soon," he said.

The girl mumbled a quick bye into the receiver, then she replaced the phone back on the hook, and hurried down the platform to the bus. She had just barely managed to make it in time before the doors had closed, nodding at the driver, and dropping some yen coins in the farebox. She looked around the crowd of people huddled around, both sitting and standing in the aisle, then moved down the walkway towards the end of the bus. Her hand wrapped around the handrail for support as the heavy metal behemoth lurched forward. She had to get to Niseko village which was a thirty-minute trip, though with the snow it would end up being around forty-five minutes. Hopefully, the pills she took on the train would still be effective for the bus ride.

All things considered, Katherine had been holding up fairly well. The roads were still curvy and bumpy with far too many potholes to count that had sent her almost stumbling into the aisle, nonetheless, she had managed to ignore all that in favor of striking up a conversation with some of the fellow passengers. One, in particular, was a big burly Australian man, the same Australian man that she had bumped into on the platform, named Nigel Gregerson. He was a friendly enough guy, friendly enough that the girl had no reservations in talking with him. His voice was loud, unintentionally loud, and gruff carrying in a way that she found that she liked listening to. He told her he was on a ski trip with some buddies of his, that he was originally from southern Queensland, and that this was his first time visiting Japan. In return, she told him this was she was originally from Colorado, but she had never skied before in her life, and that this was her third time in Japan.

"You'll have to go sometime," he urged her. "There's nothing like it. Especially 'ere. Niseko is the best ski resort in the country."

"Maybe. I'll definitely have some time, I think," she said thinking about how'd she be in Japan for the next couple months at least. It was unknown how long exactly Katherine was supposed to stay in Japan nor how long it would take for Lucian to complete his assignment. It could be anywhere from three months to a year. If things worked out she hoped to be on a redeye out of Japan come March. She didn't want to think of any alternatives to that, still she considered skiing with a kind of keenness like a small child considers the idea of visiting Disneyland for the first time.

Katherine jerked forward. Her attention snapped up to the driver who had brought the bus to a rather forceful stop. She tightened her grip on the overhead handrail and just barely managed to keep herself on her feet. Muttering a curse under her breath, she then apologized to the young mother and daughter that she had very nearly toppled over.

"What's going on? Why'd we stop?" Gregerson asked her. She had a far better grasp on the native language than he, so he was relying on her to translate what the driver and the other passengers were saying. Although, Katherine couldn't make much sense of it either.

She heard some disgruntled grumbles from a man in a dark coat and hat, saying something about those damn potholes and how the bus probably got stuck again. Ahead of her, the mother was shushing her daughter when the little girl had mumbled something about the woods. "It's okay," her mother said, "There's nothing to be scared of as long as we're on the bus." She furrowed her brows at that being reminded of Mrs. Akiyama's warning; her hand unconsciously patting the front of her coat where she had slipped the charm. It reassured her a bit to know that she still had it on her person, even if she herself did not believe in such things, it was wise to accept any kind of luck or protection that was offered because at worst it could have a placebo effect on her psyche.

The bus driver stood up and turned to the crowd of anxious passengers. "Please, remain calm," he said. "Everything is okay." Hurried questions of "what happened?" and "why have we stopped?" were thrown at him from multiple passengers and he went onto explain that the bus had unexpectedly hit a deep pothole and had become effectively stuck. "We are prepared for things like this. But I ask that you be patient while I dig us out. It should only take about ten minutes or so. Feel free to get off the bus and stretch your legs in the meantime, or stay here and keep yourselves warm," he suggested politely, then climbed off the bus into the bitter cold.

Katherine relayed the message back to Gregerson, who nodded, then mumbled something about needing to take a leak. As there were no bathrooms on the bus, that left him with having to brave the great outdoors. He moved to get past her, and for a second, Katherine felt that she should stop him. "Are you sure you want to go out there?" She asked.

"I don't want to. I have to," he said. "I drank about three cups of coffee before I got on the bus." He smiled reassuringly down at her, patting her shoulder twice as he passed by. "I'll be alright. I'm not afraid of the dark."

Well, maybe you should be, Katherine thought but didn't say anything more. She watched him out through the window as he slinked off into the tree line, leaving nothing but a set of footprints in the eight-inch snow in his wake. The mother that had been soothing her child saw this, then turned around alarmed. "Where is he going? He's not going outside?"

"I'm pretty sure he just did," she replied frowning.

"He shouldn't have gone," the mother told her. "Now he's bound to draw them to us."

"Draw who to where?" Katherine was perplexed. All day she had been hearing vague warnings from locals, and even though she didn't buy into them, she was starting to think that maybe there was something to it. The image of a skeletal man with hollowed cheeks and glowing eyes flashed in her mind for a brief moment, but Katherine quickly shook herself out of that thought. No, there's nothing in those woods but a pack of wolves, she told herself. Mrs. Akiyama, while well-intentioned, was a bit too herbal healing and aura sensing to be taken that seriously.

The mother didn't respond to the girl's question, instead, she went back to soothing her daughter as the little girl broke out into a crying fit. Katherine started to move down the aisle before the woman reached out and grabbed her arm. "Where are you going?" She demanded.

Katherine gestured with her hand to the woods. "Outside. I'm going to go look for him," she said.

The mother's grip tightened on her wrist. She shook her head and fixed Katherine with a look that left her little argument. "No, don't." She said, " It's too late to save him. He has put his life into his own hands. If you follow him you're be dooming yourself the same fate."

"Okay. I'm getting a little sick of people telling me what I can and can't do," she said. "If you don't want to go out there, fine. But I'm not going to stay here while—"

The most horrible sound erupted from the trees. It sounded almost like a wolf howl, but it didn't have the same mournfulness nor majestic beauty. This sound was harsh, cruel, like nails being dragged down a chalkboard, a pack of wild hyenas laughing, and dying screams of six million Holocaust Jews all combined together into something that made your blood freeze in your veins. "W-What was that sound?" She asked.

The color had drained out of the mother's face. She looked out the window, her face was one of abject horror. "It's here," she whispered.

"Who's here? What are you—"

Then again that godawful howl cut the girl off. It was louder, closer, and everyone on the bus seemed to hold their breaths. It was so quiet that for a moment Katherine thought she heard the distant call of a screech owl several kilometers down the road. Then another howl and another and another in rapid succession cut through the silence pulling everyone out of their deer-in-the-headlights stupor. Several things happened at once. The little girl broke out into a fit of uncontrollable wails and the mother began rocking her back and forth mumbling something under her breath. The man that had been complaining about the potholes started yelling for the bus driver as did about ten other people and that they needed to get the hell away from that place. Katherine saw a flash of something white through the trees. Then a blood-curdling scream that she immediately recognized as Gregerson's voice ripped through her like a knife.

"We need to leave now!" The bus driver clambered back onto the bus, shaking like a leave. His face was pale white and he looked literally like he had seen a ghost. "Something's outside."

"Yeah, a passenger," Katherine yelled over the shouts of the other passengers marching up to the bus driver. She stood over the shaking man as he hunched over the steering wheel and fixed him with a leveling gaze. "We have to do something."

"Drive!" Someone called out from the back. The girl looked down the aisle to see it was the mother that had spoken.

"What? Are you serious? We can't just leave him out there," she said.

"Better him than us. Drive!" She ordered as various echoes of "drive" came from the rest of the company.

Katherine was shocked at the uncompassionate passengers. Especially when the small girl had started wailing at the top of her lungs, "Leave him, leave him." She turned to the driver, who seemed to be the only person that had even a smidgen of a conscious. He looked at her and winced. "I'm sorry," he said. "But I can't go out there. It's suicide. Please, we have to go now."

She took a step back, almost as if she had been knocked back by his words. Then she glanced at the other passengers, looks of fear and contempt, contempt towards her because she was standing in between them and their exit, on their faces. She had never been in a situation like this. Never had she witnessed such desire to save your own skin and disregard for the welfare of an innocent. It scared her, more so than that thing in the woods did. She didn't want to be around these people, these people that while human had lost all human compassion, she couldn't stomach it. She looked at the driver one last time and the man wouldn't even make eye contact.

"Fine! I'll go then." Frustrated, Katherine slammed her hand down on the handle that opened the door and turned it. She moved towards the door and threw a glare over her shoulder.

There were moments in life when if you had made a different decision if you had walked down a different path, your life would've taken an entirely separate path. When Katherine stepped off that bus into the icy December wind, without knowing it, she had effectively set her life on a different course. This was the fall. This was Alice going down the rabbit hole. The inciting incident that changed her outlook on life as she knew it. Like in that Robert Frost poem, she had taken the road less traveled by, literally.

The bus peeled out as soon a she was off it; a dusting of powder billowing up in the air from the tires and enveloping her in a cloud of icy particles. "Assholes."

She blinked her eyes against the sensation and walked forward into the treeline. She navigated down a sloping hill away from the road as she followed Gregerson's footprints. She was fortunate that there was a trail to follow and that Gregerson had such big feet that it made navigating her way through eight-inch snow much easier as she was able to hop from one pressed down patch of snow to the next.

She walked for what she estimated to be about a hundred feet before she entered a small forest clearing. There the footprints became sporadic, crisscrossing over each other and turning this way then that, kicking up piles of snow. Then suddenly there was large impression as, what she guessed, Gregerson was knocked off his feet and dragged off to the left. She followed the trail another hundred feet to a large red pine where the trail suddenly stops. It was an old tree with a thick trunk that she could barely wrap arms around once. She noticed a strange carving in the bark above her head and wiped away at the snow to see it better. It was a smaller tree without leaves and extensive branches stemming out from the bottom and top. Below the tree was another smaller carving of a snowflake-like figure.

As she stood there, she started to get the sense that she was being watched. She turned around and looked out at the dark forest around her; trying to see through the shadows to anything lurking there. Katherine didn't dare call out. She had seen enough horror films to know that that was an incredibly stupid idea and was likely to result in her death. Beams of moonlight traveled through the trees lighting up the snow banks, the crystals sparkling in the faint light, it was then that she noticed something that she had overlooked before. A sense of foreboding started to creep into her bones as she realized that there were only two sets of footprints in the snow. Two sets of human footprints, hers and Gregerson's, and then she noticed something else. A pungent odor like spoiled milk and formaldehyde wafting through the air. It was so strong that she pinched her nose in hopes of blocking out the smell.

What is that?

She felt a drop of water land on her cheek and idly brushed it away. She needed to find Gregerson. She knew she couldn't stay here much longer. And that smell—godknows how long she could stand it. She was already starting to feel a light headed and groggy. She tried to focus her thoughts, but information seemed to be coming in slower. It was as if a misty cloud of knockout gas had drifted in and enveloped her and all her senses. She wanted to sleep, just nap—A nap couldn't hurt, right? She swayed lightly on her feet and tilted backwards knocking against the tree. That jolted her awake momentarily, enough to notice another drop of water hit her forehead, and then she realized that that wasn't water dripping on her face. All her senses sharpened to a laser focus as she looked up and saw a figure strung upside down in the branches.

Her first thought was that there was a giant bat up in the tree, its large wings wrapped around it, cocooning its head away from onlookers. But then she looked again and realized that it wasn't a giant man-sized bat. It was a man, a headless man—specifically a headless Gregerson.

Katherine screamed.

She hadn't meant to have done it. But when she saw Gregerson hanging there. The sound had torn its way out of her throat faster than she could stop it. She jumped back and tripped over her own feet, landing in the powder of snow with a splat. Though she hadn't lied there in long, for as soon as she had screamed another one of those chilling howls echoed back to her, and she knew that she needed to run.

It didn't matter where she was going. Katherine took off like a gazelle with a lion on her tail. She didn't wait to see if it was following her, or for that matter what was following her. Stray branches scraped against her clothes and face, leaving small rips and tears in her skin and coat, but she paid no mind as yet another howl echoed through the trees. This one was closer and seemed to be coming from her right. Katherine barely managed to turn her head and see something white in her peripheral before a force knocked into her side and she was thrown head over heels down a steep embankment.

Years of martial arts training had taught her to roll with a hit, so she quickly ducked her head low and curled herself into a ball to soften the brunt of the impact. It still hurt. Every blow shook her brain, scrambling her senses until she could no longer distinguish between up or down, left or right. The snow did two things. First, its softness helped lessen the impact of her falling. Second, because it was frozen water friction had become almost nonexistent, so when Katherine stopped rolling—cause she did stop rolling shortly after being hit—it wasn't because she had lost momentum, but because she had slammed into the trunk of a tree.

She was fortunate in that she had hit the tree with her back facing towards it and that her backpack had taken the brunt of the hit. She was sure without it, she surely would have broken her spine. But she was also unfortunate in that the force of the impact was enough to knock the air from her lungs. She laid there gasping, trying to focus her blurry vision, all the while knowing that she was about to die.

She should've listened to Mrs. Akiyama. She should've stayed on the bus and not taken off on some kind of hero trip. How stupid was she? She should've known that heroes always get killed in real life. It never plays out how it does in the movies. Good doesn't always conquer evil. In the real world, people die and dumb little girls get in over their heads.

She managed to get her breath back, along with some semblance of coherency as she sat up against the tree. She squinted against the darkness, up towards the top of the hill, and saw...nothing? That thing, whatever it was, wasn't there. It hadn't followed her down the hill. She tried to make sense of what was going on as she sluggishly got on her feet. Using the trunk as support, she looked around her at the snow-covered underbrush and trees. Nothing. Not even a footprint or some strange animal tracks.

Katherine felt a shudder go through her. No. Something wasn't right. She could feel it. She wasn't out of the woods yet—pardon the pun—and that thing was still lurking in the shadows. It was like it was toying with her the same way a house cat plays with a field mouse. It enjoyed the chase. The thrill of being the predator and it was a predator, she realized, an apex predator. It was too fast for her to outrun and it was probably too strong for her to fight off. She didn't have any options. If she stayed there, she would die. If she ran, it would only chase her again.

She realized would have to fight. There was no other option. It was crazy, not to mention total suicide, but she would rather go out in a blaze of glory than lying down like a coward. One thing Katherine was not was a coward.

Feeling around her in the snow, Katherine came across a large tree branch. She unearthed it and as pleased to discover that it was a little over arm's length with about the same thickness, maybe a little less, making it perfect for swinging. She tightened her gloved hands around one end and brought it up to her shoulder.

"Where are you? Show yourself!" She yelled taking a cautious step away from the tree. Something breezed past her, she saw it out of the corner of her eye. "C'mon you bastard! I'm not scared of you! You wanna eat me? Well, here I am!"

She took another step in the direction of the where she thought the creature was lurking. Raising the stick over her head, she sucked in a breath and leaped behind a tree. Nothing. She lowered the stick slightly and frowned. "This game of hide and seek is getting a bit old," she said. "I'm sure you got better things to do than chase me around the woods. I mean sure it's a good workout, great cardo. But I'm sure you don't want to be so far away from your tree…" She ducked around another tree, "And let's face it, I'm not much in terms of protein. Have you seen how little muscle mass I've got? You probably can't tell with this coat on, but I assure you my arms are like spaghetti—And not the normal spaghetti either, the angel hair kind."

"Though maybe that won't matter to you," she reconsidered. "After all maybe you're more of a head guy. Is that what you like? Do you eat people's heads? What's your favorite part? The eyes, or maybe the tongue…" She thought she saw another shadow drift past her. "...or how about the brain? Did you know the brain is seventy-three percent water? Or that it's really high in cholesterol? You care about your heart right? You know what they say, 'Bee healthy. Bee Happy.' Aren't you worried that too much brain might be a bad thing?"

Suddenly, she heard a branch or something snapped above her and she just barely had enough time to react as something heavy, white, and strong pushed her back into the snow. She brought the stick up and blocked the creature's sharp claws from tearing into her neck. She landed with a thud blinked up at the monster that had attacked her. Mrs. Akiyama hadn't been far from the mark, her words "like a man, but not a man" seemed to be a pretty apt description. The face was sunken in and skeletal with glowing yellow eyes. Its mouth hung open with two slits in the side of its cheeks like the scars on the Batman's Joker, opening its mouth to where she could see two rows of jagged teeth, like a shark's, on both the top and the bottom jaw. There was a black ooze dripping out of its mouth and Katherine realized where the smell from earlier had come from as she was suddenly hit with the pungent odor. The creature had no fur or hair, and the only hair it did have was at the very top of its head in thin black, barely there, strands falling from the sides of its face.

It made this awful hissing sound that had Katherine wanting to block her ears. And when it spoke—It actually spoke—the words came out sounding guttural and slurred. "You talk too much," it said.

Katherine was rightfully terrified. So much so that the words that came out of her mouth had been more reflexive than anything else. "Not a fan of dinner theatre? That's something we have in common." Then her hands seemed to move on their own accord and she forced the stick upwards and clocked the beast in the face as she kicked upwards with her feet, throwing it several feet back. She rolled on to her feet and swung the branch forward to bat away one of its big paws—Paws? Hands? Then ducking and rolling under its other arm, she swung the branch down at the base of its skull. The branch snapped in two and the thing jolted forward, the hit barely phasing it. The only thing she managed to do was to piss it off and it whirled on her hooking one of Katherine's arms and flinging her forcefully into the air and down another embankment.

The girl rolled a couple times before she landed in a shallow ditch. As soon as she had stopped, the monster was on her again, it's sharp claws shredding through her coat and slashing into her shoulder. Katherine screamed as the pain flooded her senses and at the same time thrust the other end of the stick, the end that she had managed to hold on to, upwards into the monster's eye. It howled a painful wail and leapt away from her. She found the strength to get back on her feet while keeping pressure on the wound.

The creature was hunched over clutching at the branch in its eye. It was at least several inches deep, deep enough that she had no doubt that it had permanently damaged the beast's eye, but also not so deep as to kill it by lodging in its brain. She doubted that a stick to the brain would even phase it if a thing like that had it happened. From farther away, Katherine was able to better see the creature in its entirety. Its body, much like its face, was a ghostly pale pallor and thin, thinner than Lindsay Lohan, that it was almost nothing more than a skeleton covered only with skin. It was hunched forward in a very peculiar way like its back legs were much, much longer than the front. Its feet, or hands depending on how you looked at it, were similar to that of a monkey's in that it had opposable thumbs on both the front and the back and there were long three-inch talon-like claws protruding out the creature's hands.

Katherine watched as it painstakingly pulled the tree branch from its face, a hot red trail of blood oozing from its eye down to its chin. It dropped the branch carelessly on the ground. Then, with its one good eye, turned it on Katherine, snarling. It crouched down low as if it was about to lunge, then something happened to cause it to stop. Instead, it reared back almost in surprise and tilted its head questioningly at the girl. She stared back evenly, not daring to move her eyes from it glazed yellow ones for fear that the second she did it would find the opportunity to attack her. Then without warning or reason, the creature spun around and fled in a blur of white back in the direction of its tree.

The girl stood there moment staring dumbly at the place the creature had been. She couldn't fathom what had happened. Or for that matter, why it hadn't attacked her and instead had chosen to retreat. But to hell, if she was going to stay there and question it, while she now had the perfect opportunity to make a run for it.

She stumbled through the snow, in the direction of what she hoped was the road. Although it was dark and she was unfamiliar with the area. Not to mention in fleeing from the tree she had unknowingly runoff in the complete opposite direction of the road.

The air seemed to be getting colder, however that may have had something to do with the large gash in the shoulder of her coat, and after what she felt was an hour thick flurries started to cascade down from in between the trees. Her shoulder was still bleeding, fortunately, she didn't think the wound was very deep, and with the added cold Katherine found herself fighting to hold on to her faculties. She kept drifting in and out of consciousness. At times it felt like she was dreaming as she trekked through those silent trees.

I'm going to die out here, she thought. If that thing doesn't loop back and finish her off, hypothermia and frostbite would surely finish the job. She could barely keep her eyes open at this point. She had lost her hat sometime in the fall and the tips of her ears were almost completely frozen as a result, her snot having long since turned into two giant icicles.

She didn't know how long she was going to be in these woods. It felt like hours already of her stumbling around in the dark. At some point, Katherine had stopped to use her scarf to make a make a poorly tied tourniquet in order to stem the flow of blood. It was a difficult thing to do one-handed but she managed with some acrobatics and her teeth, however, she had to constantly keep stopping in order to readjust or tighten the makeshift bandage.

She rounded a bend of trees and crawling sluggishly over a fallen log. The snow had been falling steadily for at least an hour, probably longer, and had covered the top of her head. She was so tired. She needed to stop, to rest. Just for a minute, then she would keep walking. She knew she couldn't stop moving as it was the only thing keeping her conscious and she only planned to rest long enough to tighten her bandage and catch her breath.

She leaned against the snowy dusted bark of a large deciduous tree. It's thick curly branches stretched high above her head up to the heavens. She stared upwards watching the thick flakes of white continue to fall out of the inky blackness, her breath misting around her face, and listened to the deafening silence. "Geez it's quiet here," she said, not because anyone was listening but because she needed to disrupt the stillness around her.

If she had been a religious person, this would've probably been the time to send up a prayer asking for deliverance or refuge or something, but she did none of that. Instead, she imagined that falling snowflakes were the trillions upon trillions of stars in the heavens and thought about how right now she was only a spec on a planet in the ever-expanding cosmic universe.

The thought reassured her like a mother's comforting hug. Yes, this was all insignificant in the grand scheme of things. She and her problems were nothing but a blip, a tiny pinprick, on a very large radar. That knowledge should've made her feel lonely or even possibly sad, but she had never aspired to be anything more than what she was, and she knew that while she loved living, her life was nothing more than a candy wrapper, light as air and drifting along aimlessly. There would be no great impact from her dying. Sure it would be leaving Lucian alone and he would mourn her for a time, but then even he would move on and she would be nothing more than a memory.

Unconsciously she slid down the trunk of the tree until she was sitting in the snow with her feet splayed out before her. The cold had numbed her senses to the point that she almost couldn't feel anything anymore. Her shoulder should have been in agony, but all it felt like nothing. Overall she felt calm, peaceful, like any second she could close her eyes and drift off into a blissful sleep. She wasn't scared anymore, come what may, she'd go to it laughing. Her last thought before her eyes finally drifted shut was of the Law of Conservation of Energy and how it didn't sound half bad at all.

She fell into a dreamless sleep for a time. But at some point, she began to hear voices, vague echoing voices that sounded as if they were far away and underwater. She became aware as she listened that the voices were two distinctly separate male timbres and drifting closer. She couldn't make sense of what they were saying at first, the words sounding jumbled and foreign, but as they drew nearer she began to make out bits and pieces of what was being said.

"Over here! I found her!"

"Is she dead?"

"Hold on…" She felt warm hands trail over her neck, tilting her head back and feeling for a pulse. They settled there for a few moments and she relished in the heat seeping into her from them before they pulled away. "She's alive, half frozen, but alive nonetheless. Oi." The hands started shaking her shoulders and Katherine let out a shaky, breathy groan in response. "C'mon, you can't sleep here. C'mon, that's it lean forward." She was groggy and hardly aware of what was happening around her, but she felt two warm arms pull her half upright and hold her there. "Hey, Akatsuki, get over here and help me will you!"

"Can't you carry her?"

"You have a higher body temperature than I do. Now c'mere and take her from me."

Katherine felt herself get passed from one warm body to another. Her eyes felt like they were being weighed down by lead weights, still, she somehow found the strength to open them taking in the scene. She blinked slowly catching glimpses of trees, snow, a pair of fancy brown loafers and white slacks. Then the person holding her adjusted their grip and her head bobbed to the right resting against the man's warm upper torso. Katherine instinctually curled into it, basking in its warmth. She felt the soft material of his wool coat against her cheek and inhaled the scent of cinnamon and spiced apples, then without further to do she drifted out of consciousness again.

Author's Note:

Well, there it is chapter 1! I've been thinking a lot about the direction I want to take this story, more specifically how I want to end it and work my way back from there. In my first draft (I don't date vampires) the plot doesn't really begin to factor in until chapter 7 or so, which made the first couple chapters very painful to reread. So what I'm thinking is that I'm going to try to keep this story around 30 chapters or so with about 20 pages or 10,000 words a piece as a way for me to not overwrite a bunch of useless filler. I think that'll help me keep to a schedule and unlike my first draft I'm working on an overall outline for this fic before I really get into writing it.

In regards to the Japanese, I do realize that it can be a bit difficult to read. However, unlike in IDDV, in this fic, Katherine isn't completely fluent in the language and as a way to translate that over to the reader, I've included several Japanese words and phrases in conversations so you guys can feel a little out of your element as well. But be assured as Katherine becomes more familiar with Japan and the language, the Japanese will slowly blend away into English.

It'll probably be some time before I can get chapter 2 posted as I'll be outlining and plotting, but rest assured I will post it as soon as I feel that it's ready.