Author's Note : I'm submitting this as a companion piece to my fanfiction 'Undecided' but it really isn't part of the Sookieverse, at least not yet. I actually wrote this a few years back as a spur of the moment idea from one of my friends back in HS, although I forget what the coversation was about. For those of you who have been reading 'Undecided', this is / can be considered part of Maive Shadesinger's backstory. She was adopted by Phillip Kundry not long after this takes place.

As always, thanks for reading.

Legends and myths all have some base in truth and fact. It is when the two realms become entwined and indistinguishable that many a brave man can't sleep well at night.

I hunt these ambiguities.

It all began the day I was born. I didn't know then, couldn't have known. Neither did my parents know, nor do they still. I intend to keep it that way.

Every few generations the genes for a hunter come together, by fate or destiny or random chance. Almost all of the time now, those few are noted at a young age and trained by the believers to fulfill their potential completely.

I am a mistake.

My parents' parents' parents' and so on can each be traced back to belonging to a specific pagan group that became the current trainers of the various hunters and huntresses that have cropped up over the years. It is entirely improbable that two people with such backgrounds that neither knew about would come together and have a child who would receive the necessary genes to become a Hunter.

Well, Huntress.

But it did happen. And I am discovering the greatest secret that we have always kept.

We don't need training to follow our destiny.

* * * * * *

When I turned thirteen I began to feel the lust. It was faint then, only a stirring every so often. I knew there was evil in the world but I did not know my fate would tie me to it just yet.

I attributed the urges and feelings to an early onset of hormones until I was fourteen. Several times, beginning at that age, I had woken up with blood on my body but with no discernible cuts it might have come from. The blood was not my own. I still don't remember the first time I hunted, and probably never will. But the second time I remembered more. And then again, and again, until I could no longer tell myself it was all in my mind.

I began researching many of the myths you are no doubt acquainted with. It was my hope to become familiar with them so that I might puzzle out what I was…am.

No doubt you have heard of vampires, werewolves, witches and warlocks, demons and fairies. No doubt you have been told they are no more than myth, no more than stories, nothing that was true or could cause you harm.

I'm letting you know right now the people who told you this were lying.

My first assumption was that I might be a vampire or some other kind of blood-drinker, due to the presence of blood on my clothing. But I was no vampire, because sunlight did not cause me even mild discomfort.

I did notice I was able to see much better by moonlight than in the rays of the sun.

My next thoughts were that I was werewolf, but not all of the incidents of groggy memories and dried blood occurred on nights of a full moon. And so I went through the rest of my accumulated lists, and still found nothing that struck me as being my answer.

It finally happened one time that I was fully conscious when I changed form.

I was fifteen. I had been feeling a blood lust of sorts for almost a year and had been waking up more times than I care to remember with blood on my hands. (Actually, it was probably only a half-dozen times, but it seemed like more.) The night that I remember we were playing jailbreak. It was probably sometime around 11 PM on a cool night in June. I was on the "cops" side, trying to find the "robbers" and catch them to throw them in "jail." Where I was precisely was the neighborhood park.

It was rare that people would hide in such a wide open space, but something told me someone would be there and that I had to catch them. Little did I know why.

I was sitting quietly by the picnic tables, the best vantage point for the rest of the area. Out on the edge of my peripheral vision I saw a shadow flit by. Quietly, I turned towards it, seeking out the hiding place my robber had dodged into. But I saw nothing.

Or did I?

My eyes narrowed as I considered the gaps between the branches of the pine trees that lined the edge of the fence surrounding the park. I didn't move, refused to, knowing instinctively that to move would be a forfeit of the encounter. If I noticed that it seemed to be getting brighter the longer I stared, it was with a part of my mind that had already shifted conscious.

The robber was inhumanly still. By the time I could pick out his outline, I knew there was no way he was anyone I knew. Only in the back of my mind did I realize that I was being just as still, and that it should be considered just as odd. My first rational thoughts were that it was a random person who did not belong in the neighborhood, perhaps one of the petty-thieves we'd been hearing reports of. But that seemed odd, since the burglaries had been reported to have taken place between 2 and 4 AM. So I waited.

As more time went by the hairs on the back of my neck began to stand up. Something felt wrong and it wasn't a pleasant sensation. I began to wonder if I had been imagining my adversary, and also to think it was odd that no one else had come into the park looking for me. Enough time had gone by that a few robbers had no doubt been caught or escaped and found new hiding places. Someone else should have come looking.

Most likely they had sensed the evil and simply stayed away. Humans do have an uncanny knack for self preservation.

Finally though, my patience paid off. The being between the branches moved and at first I was relieved. I wasn't crazy at all. But then I realized that it could not be human.

I watched as it silently jumped up and over the trees and came at me with more speed than I thought even a cheetah could muster.

A hand snaked out too fast for me to see and grasped my throat, dragging me out from my shelter. I looked up into glowing eyes and knew without a doubt that this being was evil. And it meant to kill me.

"You…" Its voice was raspy, and I found myself surprised it could speak at all. Darkness (or maybe it was fur) covered its whole body. Its limbs were long but its torso short. I would swear it had two horns protruding from its angled forehead. The grip around my throat betrayed a strength that the creature should not have had. It was unnatural.

And it knew me.

"You have the smell of the Hunt on you." He raised me higher into the air and brought me close to his face. The creature inhaled deeply. "But you are no Master."

"I am my own Master." The thought popped into my mind and was out of my mouth before I could even process what I was saying.

I dropped to the ground in a heap. Apparently my speech had startled the creature, which was something out of legend but so real it could not be an apparition.

"How is it you speak? Hatchlings cannot speak. You can't speak."

"What is a hatchling?"

The creature retreated a step. "One who has been claimed by a Master. All my hatchlings are dead. The Hunter killed them." It dropped to the ground on all fours to sniff at me again. "Not a Master, not a Hatchling, has the smell of the Hunt…"

It words were confusing, but I thought I might know the meaning to them. It seemed so clear. I was not surprised when it next said, "You are the Hunter."

Before another word could be spoken one of its arms shot outwards and raked my torso with its claws. The cuts were deep and hurt more than I thought anything could ever hurt. But the pain brought clarity, brought my human instincts to the fore, my will to live. I felt the change.

First I felt the speed. I rolled up and over my shoulder, landing with precision on the balls of my feet. Before the creature had a chance to react I was diving towards him in the air, no longer helpless on the ground.

Second was the strength. My hands –I looked down, they were more like claws— shot towards the creature and gripped his arms below his shoulders. I spun him around and wrapped him in an embrace that he could not break. "No!" Was that me or him?

Third I felt the conscious. I knew what he was, this demon. I knew that I had hunted his hatchlings for the past few months. Killed them, so that their family could not grow. This was the Master. He was mine.

His fur began to glow with an unearthly illumination, as though some sort of energy that the creature possessed was manifesting itself as a kind of light. My lips locked onto its neck, but my teeth did not enter his body. I was no vampire. I was Huntress. And as a Huntress, I would eat what gave him his power, what my presence had brought out of him for the taking.

I would consume his soul.

It was over quickly. He was a weak Master and did not have much strength in him after the months of avoiding me. Yes, it was me that had been hunting him, I could remember that now. And here he just gave himself to me, thinking that I was a silly human girl he could corrupt and use as currency in his transactions with the Dark. The last of the glow disappeared now; I had stolen all his currency. Souls, after all, are the only money Evil ever desires.

What became of the creature, I do not know. After I consume their souls the evil are free to do what they please, though they are no longer able to create more of their kind. They still owe favors to their Masters, however. And most of these can never be repaid after I take the one thing they possessed that had value.

When they die, truly die, their Master must take such sweet vengeance on them. I have always hoped so, because I know one day I will join them.

Silently, I left the park. My hearing was excellent, my sight near perfect. Smells wrapped around me and carried tales of where I might find other beings of evil. But no demons. If I wished to hunt more that night, humans would have been my prey. Corrupt humans. The fact that I remembered their flavor disturbed me. I had eaten human souls before. This was something I would have to consider. Are corrupt humans truly evil?

Questions for another day. I became more focused to trying out my new powers from the new soul I had absorbed. My speed seemed the same, so did my other senses… What was it that demon had been good at?

The image of him leaping over the trees popped into my mind. I smiled, gathered my feet beneath me, and jumped.

I landed on the roof of a single story house across the road.

This was good. A good ability. Worth the near death to get it. I glanced down at my cuts and was relieved to see they had closed and were no longer bleeding freely. The creature must have had a good healing power. Another useful trait. A good night.

Something moved down the street. My focus shifted, my mind trying to determine what might be milling about at 11:40 at night. Then I remembered. A game. My friends. They would be looking for me.

I dropped to the ground lightly. Thinking of my friends made it easy to focus on changing back into my human form. Luckily my Huntress body was no larger, and my clothes were not shredded.

Actually they were. I glanced down and squinted. Already I missed my better sight. But that wasn't the problem now. I had to figure out what to do about my slashed and blood stained t-shirt. I couldn't let the others see me like this.

Fortunately I did not need to be in my other form to sneak by the various cops and robbers that littered the street. I was in my house, changed, and back outside before another five minutes had passed.

"Guys?"

A hand reached out from a shadow near the door as a voice yelled, "1-2-3-you're-my-man-no-breaksies!"

I'd forgotten that based on the time that had gone by my team would most likely now be the robbers. My chest heaved in a sigh. "You got me, you got me. Doesn't someone want to come and save me?!" The last was ended in a shout to the rest of my team, but I knew that in this game there were few who liked to take risks to get their friends out of jail. Only the cops could work together. Not the robbers.

It was ironic then, that as a Huntress I was the only cop, to the unity of all the robbers out in the world. But I could handle it. After all, my learning had only just begun.

Reviews are most welcome.