It was in the early 1700's, just before the French revolutiobn, in Avignon, France. The Palais du Papes, a city sized castle, was in a state of disrepair, already 400 years old. It sheltered fifty-three acres of buried catacombs and vaulted stone ceilings-plenty of hiding places and dark shadows-the perfect lair for a Vampire such as myself. The irony of my chosen home did not go unappreciated-I was living in the original palace of the Popes befor they fled to Rome; I, an immortal, living off the blood of others, feeding under the very noses of the seat of the Catholic Church.
The shadows of dusk allowed me to watch throngs of peasants from a darkening doorway. It didn't take me long for me to notice a solitary young lady on her way across the grounds, humming softly to herself as she walked. She caught my eye at once, shot dark-haired, and pretty in a nondescript way. But she was alive, not just breathing, in a way that gave her a...glow. It only took a moment for her tobe the only person there who mattered, as the background noise of the castle faded away and she became my reason for being for that evening.
Her path took her near enough for me to catch her eye. She glanced up under her brow, held my look for a moment, grinned a lop-sided half-smile, and contined on her way. Her eyes wre the most captivating lilac color that I had ever seen, the color of a winter morning, and they lit of the dark corners of my own dead soul, which I almost had forgotten I had.
As I stepped out of the doorway to follow her, the hunt was on, although I would later learn that the role of hunter and hunted would become tangled and eventually reversed.
For ages I have hunted , blending in with the masses, yet vastley different from them. I may look vaguely human, enough so that I may walk among people, but I am an apex predator, the top of the mammalian food chain. I'm stronger, faster, and better adapted to hunting than any human human alive.
It is for this reason that I rarely indulge in human companionship. Humans are simply food in my eyes, cattle for the slaughter. I must remember that my continued existence relies on stealth; I must never let myself get myself caught up in the kill, to a point where I lose the ability to blend in. So I've supressed my baser instincts in order to keep myself from getting... carried away. With those instincts went most of my passion, for everything, to remain balanced with my surroundings. I live an emotionally suppressed life in order to survive the ages reletively sane and content.
Perhaps it was because of this that I was completely unprepared for her strength of will and passion for life. It had been a few decades for me, long since I had loved or laughed, and I had grown somewhat complacent in my hunting, feeding for sustenance only. I had become bored with my hunting, feeding for sustance only. I had become bored with my continued and unending existence. She changed that in an instant.
" My friends call me Hinata," she said, surprising me with her closeness to me. She had doubled back on her route through the courtyard, and I had almost knocked her over when I walked around the corner she had just rounded. Now we were face to face, all pretence of stealth lost. It's rare to catch a predator in his own game, yet she had.
I stammered for a moment, and finally gave her my name. "Naruto" was all I could say. "Good evening."
" I saw you back there and wanted to say hello," she said timidly, looking up under her dark lashes at me. She stood a head shorter than I, and tilted her lovely neck back to meet my eyes. I had planned on kissing that neck, using it to drain her of the blood that I needed, but her lilac eyes held mine as her frank advance sunk in. Who was this young lady to meet me head on?