Prologue

I lived in a normal city once, a traditional one.

It was horrible, I didn't like it one bit.

With all the shiny stuff blinding me and the giant buildings enclosing me like I'm some animal in a cage. The air was stuffy, hard to breath and I coughed all the time.

But when my dad got into some trouble with people he refused to mention, he made me, my very pregnant mom and my brother Balthazar pack up a bare minimum and dragged us far and wide across the country.

Or, come to think of it, perhaps more than one country.

At one point in time, we settled in the woods near a small agricultural town that pretty much lived by their grain. A couple shepherds here and there too.

We took up residence in an abandoned house (though I suspect my father had something to do with that) for a short while, while he built us a more accommodating house deep in the woods, by a small lake. I was five back then, and Balthazar was nine.

Soon after the move by the lake, mom gave birth to a little girl, and she named her Eir.

Over the years, we took in others that my father said were like us, until we had a small village going on by our house. We were still on the outskirts and we were all in the middle of the woods, near a mountain range. In the middle of the village was a trading center, where you could share whatever you had in excess against what you didn't have.

My matter of expertise was hunting.

Eir, on the other hand, was better at healing people, she was said to have magic hands. And her knowledge of medicinal herbs was wonderful.

However, whenever the locals brought someone in for Eir to heal nowadays, I'd rather sit back and wait for someone to need my services.

Because you see, when my sister's tending to a client that cannot be saved, will die no matter what my sister does and is in great pain, she asks me to put them out of their misery.

It's not the best job in the world, I much prefer hunting, but someone has to do it, and I seemed to be the best qualified for the job. My sister didn't have to think about it long after my mom explained to her how the meat ended up on the table every day.

Speaking of my mother, she left us for a house closer to town the moment she was sure we could take care of ourselves. Of course, she asked us if we wanted to join her, but my sister wouldn't confuse the people that knew where to find her if they got sick and Balthazar and I both have trust issues as well as a strong lack of people-skills.

My name is Valkyrie Woodward, and I'm a hunter in the small village of Cael.

I'm twenty four years old, I've been isolated from society in general except for a small town created by my father in the middle of the forest, I have major trust issues and can aim as well with a bow and arrow as a shotgun. Well, probably better, actually.

But that's besides the point.

Chapter 1

I straightened my back and set my eyes on a young buck a few feet away, chewing on some grass. I placed an arrow in my bow quietly and waited for the buck to come just a little bit closer...

I released the arrow, sending it right through the buck's eye, killing him on impact. I looked around silently as the buck fell to his knees and crumpled to the forest floor, dead.

"Aren't you cute as a button? I think I'll call you... Dinner" I said to the dead buck with a small smirk on my face, walking over to him.

It was then that I realized that the thing was twice my size and probably three times as heavy as me. A frown pulled the corner of my lips downwards as I thought about how I could possibly bring it back without dragging it the whole way there when one of the stupidest ideas I'd ever had crossed my mind.

I bent down and slipped the thing on my shoulders, straightening back up afterwards. I winced a bit.

It was heavier than I had expected.

I carried it home anyways, knowing I should have thought about this before I shot down a buck.

"I need a hunting partner" I grumbled to myself as I almost tripped on a random stone. Things were different since Balthazar had left. I was pretty much the last competent hunter left to bring food back, since Balthazar had left with the others. He had tried to rope me in too, but I was never any good at being around people, so I just stuck to the sidelines.

Unfortunately, that left me with the important task of bringing back meat for everyone, so I found that I spent most of my time in the forest, hunting. Contrarily to what my mother seemed to think, that didn't bother me one bit. The part that did bother me, however, was bringing the meat back to the village. I had to go straight to the butcher, or else my catch would most likely get stolen bit by bit while I had my back turned. Especially a big one like this one.

I didn't catch a buck very often, but when I did, I would get a small gift. Most often a new dagger, sometimes a new bow if mine gets... injured.

I don't like hunting with guns, you see, they make too much noise and scare off all the prey.

But our butcher, Valerius, makes the trip completely worthwhile. He's got a crude sense of humor and a personality people usually find extremely rude, but as I said before, my people-skills are rusty, if existent at all.

So I crept slowly and silently through the forest with a buck on my shoulders (a harder task than one would imagine) and entered the butcher's place through the back door.

"Valkyrie? Is that you?" I heard his gruff voice calling out to me and smiled slightly.

"Yup, it's me. Guess what I brought you today?" I asked rhetorically, walking in the main butchering area and dropped the large animal on its deathbed. Also known as, the table on which Valerious is going to chop it up.

"Rabbits? Oh my god! That buck is beautiful! How'd you get him?" he asked when he entered the room, rushing over to the dead animal. I knew he didn't actually expect me to answer, so I didn't. I never really did, anyways.

"Do I get something special this time?" I asked.

I gestured in the general direction of the vault in which he usually held his daggers and such that were for me.

"I figured you were old enough for a sword," he said distractedly as his expert hands started skinning the buck.

I held in a grin as I opened the vault and saw a beautiful sword.

The hilt was made of some of dark gray metal engraved with copper swirls that made it look Celtic.

Benjamin, our smith, must have been extremely proud of it.

"It's a beauty" I commented, eying the writing that went down the base of the blade.

"Isn't it? Benji says it's got magic powers because of the way he made it. Poor kid, the loss of his father must have finally reached his head" Valerious shook his head in shame and continued cutting up my buck while I waited patiently for my part.

Benjamin Smith came to Cael a little over a year ago with his father, and I heard my sister saying something about them being from... Scotland I think? Maybe Ireland, I'm not sure, something like that. Some place with Celtic people.

His dad had been our smith back then, but there had been a fight with authorities, some local policeman had found us and gathered a small patrol to take us out. Smith senior got shot in the head, he never even stood a chance, but we won. And Benji became our smith at sixteen years old.

But that's alright, I got rid of them.

"Yeah. Can I keep it?" I asked, meaning the sword, but I was sure that Valerious knew that.

"Of course, V. That's the whole point of it!" he scoffed, and handed me the buck's skin, along with a few pounds of the meat wrapped in a special type of paper, specially made for meat.

I thanked him and quickly made my way back home to my sister.

"Finally! Valkyrie, what the hell have you been doing? I need you to cut something up," Eir said exhasperatedly. My mother had been raised by the modern equivalent of Norse men. She had done a lot of research to find our names, hoping that they would suit us in the futur.

"I was hunting, Mercy. You know, for meat, to make us live," I said, a hint of sarcasm touching my voice.

"My name is Eir, not mercy. Bring your but over here, I need your help," she grumbled before stalking off in the direction of what I like to call her office.

"It's the same and you know it" I argued with my sister. It was true, Eir [ey-EAR] literally meant 'Mercy' in old Norse, which is why I always called my sister Mercy. Eir was damn hard to pronounce.

"Oh shush. I have a dead person on my table, and I want to know why" Mercy said, pointing to the cadaver on her operation table.

"Well, I'd say it's there because it's dead. However, if you're referring to how it might have gotten there, I'd say someone put it there," I said, pointing out the obvious.

My sister glared at me.

"Cause of death, Valkyrie, that's what you're here for" she deadpanned, gesturing to the corpse.

"Okay, okay, I get it" I raised my hands in surrender and strolling casually toward the dead person. As strong-willed as Mercy was, the dead scared the crap out of her. It was, after all, my area more than it was hers.

I was comfortable with death, I dealt it everyday to unsuspecting forest creatures to put food on the table. Often many times a day.

So I walked to my sister's dead person and poked and prodded it a bit, hoping I wouldn't have to cut it open.

"Any idea who this is?" I asked my sister.

"No clue, Ace found him in the middle of nowhere, apparently. Or that's what he says. Also says he carried the corpse on his shoulders all the way here," she said, scoffing at the end. I rose an eyebrow at her, but she wasn't paying attention.

"If so, then he should learn to hunt. I had a buck on my shoulders myself" I commented, checking the man's neck. Two puncture wounds, barely noticeable.

I frowned. They were right over the jugular, it wasn't right.

I pulled out a knife and slit open the throat, expecting blood to come spilling out, but, to my surprise, none came forth. The dead person was dead.

"Drained of blood, that's your cause of death" I said, frowning.

You know what that meant? That meant vampires were in town.