Upon his glorious black steed, a young man with unnatural beauty made his way toward the Lang Ranch. Fifteen years had passed since he last laid his eyes on this place and its inhabitants. Approaching the establishment, the youthful man was stopped by a young lady who greatly resembled his former client, Doris Lang.

"Who are you?" asked the girl in a soft but suspicious tone.

A long pause passed between them before the dark rider spoke, "I am D."

The girl's body stance relaxed prior to giving him a sweet smile, "My mother would often talk about you, she said that you saved her from a Vampire and that you were her first love."

The rider remained silent.

"My name is Aurelia Shepherd. Doris Lang is my mother. Please follow me and I'll get my mother from the house," responded the girl with striking dark-colored eyes.

The man in the long coat dismounted his horse and walked alongside the teenaged girl as they made their way to the house.

"You are very handsome…I can see why mom fell for you," the girl responded with a mild blush across her cheeks. D remained silent and emotionless despite the compliment.

"MOM! MOM! THERE IS SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO SEE YOU!" the teenager called out as the duo approached the home. Shortly after the calls, Doris Lang emerged from the dwelling and was overcome with disbelief at the sight of D.

"D?! Is that really you?" she gasped.

The Hunter nodded before receiving an embrace by his former client, "I missed you and I worried for you. I am so glad that you came to see me," she told him.

D gently patted her back before backing from her embrace. The dark-haired woman wiped a tiny tear from her eye, "Please come inside and I'll make some coffee."

The dhampir looked at his horse before being told by Aurelia that she would care for it.

Once inside the home, D placed himself at the kitchen table and gazed at the wall of photos beside him. As Doris made coffee, she quickly noticed her former employer looking upon her gallery of family pictures.

"Do you like them?" she asked.

"I see that you are married now," he responded in his normal, impassive, voice.

"Yes, it'll be fourteen years since our wedding in August. His name is Jeremy Shepherd and he'll be arriving home in about an hour," Doris told him with a smile.

"I am happy for you," he told her as she handed him a cup of coffee.

"Jeremy is a good man, a hard worker, a great father, and a little headstrong but I wouldn't have it any other way. He has been there with me through thick and thin, even after the death of our second daughter from SIDS," the ranch lady told him prior to trailing off at the thought of her baby.

"I am sorry to hear that Doris," D responded.

Before she could respond, the front door opened and in came her daughter holding a dead goose, "mom I got the goose ready for plucking," she told her.

"OH-right! Let me get the water on to boil, sorry I got side-tracked."

Aurelia put the dead bird in the sink and sliced its throat with a paring knife to drain the blood.

The dhampir sat and watched as mother and daughter prepared the goose for baking. Shortly after putting the goose in the oven, Aurelia began to peel potatoes for mashing.

"I can help," he told the girl.

She looked at him and smiled before giving him the peeler and the potatoes. As D peeled the tubers (potatoes), the young girl told him, "your horse is very well behaved. I had absolutely no trouble unsaddling him and putting him in one of our stalls. How did you get such a fine tempered animal?"

"I have a good seller," he responded matter-of-factly while he continued his task.

As time passed, the smell of cooking food permeated the air within the house. Jeremy Shepherd arrived home from work and took a big whiff of the air, "boy, it smells good in here!"

"Hi, Darling!" smiled Doris as she approached him and gave him a kiss. Aurelia quickly joined in welcoming her father home. The dark rider watched from afar until he was noticed by the middle-aged man, "who is this?"

"This is D, he is the one who saved me from Count Magnus Lee all those years ago," his wife responded with a smile.

"OH! Well, howdy stranger!" responded the man as he gestured to shake D's hand.

The Vampire Hunter gave the man a very brief smile and reciprocated the handshake.

"So, what brought you here?" Doris's husband asked as he placed himself on a chair next to D.

"I was in the area and I wanted to see how Doris and her brother were," replied the dhampir.

"Well Dan moved out and started a family of his own almost seven years ago, but I am pretty sure that Doris already told you about that, and you see how Doris has been. By the Way, thank you for saving her from that Noble—if it wasn't for you, I would have never met such a beautiful, loving, woman."

The half-vampire gave a small nod in response before a plate of food was placed before him.

"It looks great, honey! You are a damn good cook!" her husband replied as he took the plate of food he was handed. His wife smiled with a small blush. After the food was passed around, everyone ate and talked about their day as D listened.

Later that night after all the chores were completed, Doris and Aurelia went to sleep as Jeremy spoke with D at the kitchen table.

"Thanks for your help with the farm chores, D"

"It was the least that I could do since you are allowing me to spend the night."

Lighting a cigarette and taking a drag, the blonde-haired man smiled at the stunning, young, man next him, "you remind me of Aurelia y'know—when she was younger."

The man in the long coat briefly remained silent before asking, "how so?"

"She didn't talk much either. Probably partly due to her being bullied by the village children. Most of the villagers thought that she was sired by the Count who kidnapped Doris—those stupid bastards."

The Vampire Hunter remained silent.

Taking a long sigh, the mortal man continued, "Doris was already pregnant when I met her, but it didn't bother me. We married about six months after the birth of Aurelia and I adopted her as my own."

The dhampir continued to listen in silence.

"Aurelia was a beautiful and well-behaved child, but terribly abused by the people outside our family. Many still believe that she is a dhampir even though she is nothing of the sort. I am surprised by her strength to continue in this cruel world even though I often hear her weep. I've tried to comfort her and so has Doris, but she refuses to let us into her thoughts—into her world—it almost seems foreign in nature. And after the death of Julia, Aurelia seemed to get worse with her sudden bouts of depression, it is almost like she blames herself for the baby's death. But it wasn't her fault…an autopsy revealed that the baby was born with a heart defect which caused her to die of a heart attack in her sleep."

D continued to listen to Doris's husband.

The man took one more sigh before finishing his cigarette, "well, I'm going to bed. I must get up early in the morning for work. It was nice talking with you, and I'll see you in the morning," he told D before retiring to his room.

D sat at the kitchen table alone and mulled over his thoughts, just then a voice came from his Left-Hand, "well-well, now you had gone and done it. I TOLD you to pull out, but no you insisted on giving her your seed…tsk-tsk-tsk."

"That is enough…" remarked the hunter as he made his way to the living room couch.

"Y'know for the record, you do make some nice-looking daughters. Heh, if I wasn't attached you, I would have dived head-first into her breasts before making my way to cup her sweet, supple, ass," chucked the parasite.

"I said that is enough!" snapped the dhampir as he squeezed his fist tight.

Suddenly, D picked up on a noise, which was inaudible to human ears, coming from outside. Looking out the window, he saw Aurelia running toward a small patch of woods adjacent to the ranch.

"What the hell is she doing at this time of night? Do you think that she has a boyfriend?" chimed Left-Hand.

The hunter ignored the parasite before preparing to follow the girl.

MEANWHILE:

Slowly and carefully making her way through the small patch of forest, Aurelia finally came upon her family's personal cemetery. Moving past the graves of her great-grandparents, grandparents, distant cousins, and other deceased relatives, she stopped upon a small grave with the name "JULIA" etched onto it.

Tears began to well-up in the teenager's eyes as she sat before the grave and pulled a small locket out of her pocket and placed it onto the headstone.

"Next week would be your sixth birthday, so I wanted to bring you something. I am so sorry…" wept the fifteen-year-old softly.

D silently watched from afar as the girl sobbed uncontrollably into her hands. Suddenly, a feeling of empathy and the innate desire to comfort the girl began to build within the man. Stepping from the shadows, the Vampire Hunter approach his one and only daughter. Turning to him, the girl's look of sorrow quickly morphed into embarrassment before she hid her face. He reached out to her and pulled her into a secure embrace, "it is ok, I am here for you," he whispered over her before kissing her upon the head.

"I'm sorry…I'm so sorry," she whimpered as she leaned into the man's strong chest and listened to his heartbeat.

He continued to comfort the young lady within his arms, "Julia's death was not your fault. She was born with a heart defect," he told her softly as he wiped the tears from her eyes.

"It is more than just that…D. Since I was a young child, I have been pegged as a monster, the bastard of a blood-sucking Vampire, and a harbinger of death. I only told my parents of the verbal attacks, I never mentioned the countless physical attacks that I would endure from the townsfolk and their children. I remember one particularly vicious attack by a teenager after the word of my sister's death spread across the town. He nearly beat me senseless with a wooden club and called me a monster. I don't remember what happened after I blacked out, but I remember waking up to the teenager laying in a pool of his own blood, beaten, and badly bruised. From that moment on, I believed what the townsfolk said about me and I believed that I, somehow, killed my baby sister," she told him.

"I understand what you are going through…I've never fit in anywhere—the humans despise me and so do the Nobles-that is why I hunt, I have nothing to lose and nothing to gain. You, you have been tainted by the town's knowledge of your mother being bitten and kidnapped by a vampire—thus they assume that you are a product of the Count; however, that isn't true. You…are the product of me—my blood—that night, after killing the Count…I had sex with your mother thus impregnating her with you…I am sorry," he told her as he tightened his embrace around her.

The girl began to wail hysterically from his confession, "so, I really am a monster?!"

"NO! NO! YOU ARE NOT A MONSTER!' D replied in a very, uncharacteristically, emotional tone.

"You may have a quarter of the Nobility's blood coursing through your veins, but you are not a monster. You are a strong-willed and resilient person with a big heart. I am proud to have sired you," he told her before kissing her forehead.

Aurelia forced a smile behind her tear stained face, "thank you…dad," she murmured.

D smiled at her, "you are my baby and you always will be. Please quit blaming yourself…this world needs you."

The two sat together at the grave site until Aurelia began to calm down. After some time, the eighteen-year-old looking man asked about her emotional status and if she was ready to go home. She nodded and took his hand.

"Thank you, D," she told him calmly as they made their way back to the Lang ranch.

He smiled at her, "sleep well and remember what I told you."

THE NEXT MORNING:

D mounted his horse and bid a farewell to Doris and Aurelia before riding out of sight. As he rode, the man looked back.

"I never knew that you could be so emotional…" Left-Hand chimed.

"I don't know what you are talking about," he responded matter-of-factly.

"Oh, come on! I am no dummy! I NEVER seen you act the way that you did last night. It just proves to me that beneath that hard exterior of yours beats the heart if a very sensitive man and you will never change my mind! Let's just hope that the rest of the world won't learn your secret."

"Silence!" the Vampire Hunter snapped at the parasite before kicking his horse into a gallop and riding off in search of his next mission.

THE END