Hey all! so, this will be a two-chapter-a-week kinda deal, 'cus you're gonna get one of Tannia's and one of the Bunker's.

I had to skip a lot of time with Tannia's stuff, so I tried to cover major plot points so she could catch up easier, which is why I cheat a lot (don't blame me!) and have a lot of 'oops too busy' entries. But hey ho.

They'll be just titled 'Tannia 1/2/3' or 'Bunker 1/2/3' etc so if you wanna ignore Tannia's you can do, I just wrote it 'cus I like background.

Once again, it was Sonja who beta'd these for me because she is wonderful and I don't know what I'd do without her, so thank her if you read and decide to leave a review please!

May 15th, 2004

Testing, testing, one, two, three.

I don't know why I wrote that. This is a journal, not a microphone! But ah well.

Would it be weird for me to write *shrugs* there? I dunno, I guess I belong to a younger generation that does those things.

I've gone completely off point, let's try this again…

My name is Tannia Colt, I turned eighteen today and with this age comes a new chapter of my life.

Or it would be new if I didn't grow up in this lifestyle and have uncles who snuck me with them on Hunts. Can I write that? Sod it, it's my journal, I can write what I like! As long as people don't find it and I get them in trouble…

Um… Yeah. I just turned eighteen, and passed my tests to become a fully 'licensed' Hunter who can actually go on Hunts without having to be snuck along because the uncle in question was babysitting me.

That will make no sense at all to anyone outside of this lifestyle, so if you don't know already what I'm talking about, put this journal back where you found it and walk away, trust me.

Okay now I've just intrigued too many people into continuing to read. I'm actually facepalming at mysen right now, and I should really stop writing.

Except from now on I've gotta record all my Hunts and anything I find in this thing, so I guess you're stuck with my rambling on about stuff. Sue me. Or don't, I'd much prefer it if you didn't.

Not that you'd be able to find me even if you wanted to, ha.

Oh, yeah, I've gotta write that in here haven't I? Where I'll be and all that jazz. This is actually to help people find me if I go missing, ironically what I was just joking about you not being able to do even if you wanted to. I need to think before I write really.

In each of these places there will be something that you can use to contact me, and if those don't work they'll point you to someone else to get in touch with who will be able to help you out or take the case off your hands, but if you're reading this I really hope you're competent enough to find me before I get gorged on.

Most of the time I'll be at home right now, seeing as College is all but finished and it's just final exams and the like that need to be done, but here's my evening activities for you:

Mondays: Swimming with mum

Tuesdays: Jogging or gym

Wednesdays: Yoga with Aunt Mel

Thursdays: Jogging or gym

Fridays: Tae quan do with cousin Nat

Saturday: Kickboxing with cousin Joe

Sunday: Magic practice

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that too… Hi, I'm a Witch. But not one with a wart on the end of my nose, surprisingly hardly any of us have those. Or a long, crooked nose, or green spiky hair. Also, not many of us wear cloaks and pointy hats outside of Hallowe'en, and even then we tend to do it for the irony.

This is reading like some stupid fairy story jesus fucking christ. I need to warn you now that everything in this journal is true, from the nonsensical babbling about my life to all the monsters and creatures that are written about.

See, there are things that go bump in the night, and that hide in the dark; all those monster stories you were told as a kid to keep you in line? They're all true. As well as a lot of others you might not have heard about.

But here's the plot twist, I'm one of a group of people who bump back and shine lights into the corners to get rid of any monsters. I'm a Hunter, and this journal is basically my legacy to leave behind when I get got by one of the things I set out to kill, but it got me first.

Or, y'know, more positively this is the thing I can pass down to my grandchildren when I'm too old to hold a gun properly or even focus on the research I'm supposed to be doing without dozing off and drooling all over ancient manuscripts.

Though actually that does sound like half our researchers anyways…

If my mum ever gets hold of this before I move out that will be the last you ever hear of me oh my god. I'm trying not to laugh right now and I think I may have to put this away for a while to recover.

Maturity, what is that?

May 30th 2004

So wow I'd forgotten I have other things to put into this thing. It's going to take a while for me to actually get into the habit of doing this. At least I've not had a Hunt in a bit so I've not really had anything to report on other than my 'exams'.

I've also been busy organising uni stuff, but that can come later when I get to it.

Anyways, my exams…

Every new Hunter (in Britain at least, hi, that's where I hail from) has to pass a series of exams before they're allowed to go forth and Hunt. Kinda like with anything else really, you have to pass tests to prove you can do it and blah, blah, blah.

But, obviously, these tests are a little different from your average Maths, English and Science exams.

Firstly, you've gotta prove that you can do the right research. For that, you're given increasingly less information about past Hunts and have to follow the trails that the Hunters (it's going to get really tiring capitalising 'Hunters' and 'Hunts' each time, but if I don't I'll get every kind of shit ripped out of me by anyone else who reads this) that went on them.

You get given the 'crime scene' and the witness statements for everything, but to begin with you'll get given really obvious ones (so it could be a Werewolf, easy, hearts missing; or a Wendigo, people go missing in periodic increments and sometimes pieces of them found which have been chewed on etc) and you've gotta put the witness statements in order, go through all the pictures (some of them are REALLY gooey. It's not for the faint hearted), and come to a conclusion within the time that the original case was solved with a plus of up to 5 days for when you're first starting out, and that gets lower as you progress.

When you've mastered all the easy ones, you get something like a Demon possession, and there are different levels of those too; meaning you get extra 'points' if you can identify the level of Demon that possessed some poor bastard and did its dirty work while simultaneously torturing the soul of the person within the meat suit.

Then after that, you get anything from Ghosts, to Poltergeists, through Ghouls and back to White Women. With a healthy dose of Tricksters and Sirens and any number of other creep-worthy beings. And Gods. Yeah, don't even go there just yet.

Of course, sometimes they throw in a red herring and you've gotta work out that it was actually a human that did the murders in question. Those ones are quite grim if I'm honest, monsters I can happily deal with, its people I'd rather avoid.

Once you've been doing that for a while, you can then go on field trips (yaaaay. That's only half sarcasm, just so you know, 'cus to begin with you're not allowed to actually DO anything, you've just gotta watch). Eventually though, you get to the good stuff. Actually planning Hunts for others and helping to piece together Hunts which are in progress.

That sounds stupidly dull, but honestly it's almost as much fun as killing off the thing causing the bumps in the first place.

After a couple more months of that you're actually allowed to hunt things properly, and that's where your practical exams start. Literally.

It starts off pretty easy, you've gotta do a run-of-the-mill salt n' burn TM.

That's totally a trademark, and if it isn't, it should be.

But yeah, it's as the name says really. You find a ghost, dig up the body, pour salt on it, and burn the remains. Sometimes those can go skewiff, like if there are remains aside from the body, but for your first one you're pointed towards an easy one. It's quite cute really considering I did my first one of those at about 8 years old.

Woops… I'm probably not supposed to tell you that…

ANYWAYS.

The second exam you've gotta do is along the same lines, you've gotta put a White Woman to rest. Now, a White Woman is basically a woman who killed her children in a fit of rage, and then killed hersen. Normally due to an unfaithful husband.

These women then appear (normally) on roads in the middle of the night and coax male drivers to take her home, normally back to where she lived when she was alive and not screwy; though sometimes they try and convince the men to take her back to their place under the pretence of a reward. Yeah, you know what I mean there. Waggly eyebrows not even needed.

The WW would target men who were unfaithful, or if left for too long will target any male under the assumption that even if they aren't unfaithful and never have been, they will be one day. Yeah, they get screwed up, same as any Ghost. It's a bit sad really, and honestly I do feel sorry for a lot of them, but that's beside the point. They need to be got rid of. Period.

So, yeah. You can deal with a WW the same way as you would a normal Ghost, by salting and burning their remains. But quite a lot of people get cremated, so when that happens you've gotta be a bit drastic. This normally entails forcing the WW back into the house she lived in before she died. Sometimes this is enough to snap them into actual death, and sometimes it's a bit more… Dramatic.

Let's just say even kids can hold a grudge for a long time. And let me tell you something else, there is NOTHING creepier than Ghost children. I get horrified shivers at just the thought of them. Ergh.

I've got the heebies now, look what you made me do. I'm glad I've always got salt nearby…

Anyways, third exam tends to be killing off a Werewolf, and yes, you use silver bullets. It's simple enough, a silver bullet through the heart and its lights out woofy. Though I suppose they don't really bark… Anyways. Yes. Silver bullet.

It's best with a Werewolf to try and catch them when they're in a human form, they're less aggressive and a hell of a lot slower, but of course a lot of people are squicky about that. Especially when the Wolf in question was an accidental turning.

To be honest, there's a lot of Werewolves that actually manage to live peacefully in society, though really I guess I shouldn't reveal that. That's a not-so-secret-secret known by those of us who are Witches and a few select others outside of our number. But hey now I've just told the whole world. I really hope no one finds this journal unless I'm long gone or I show it them or I'm going to get in a world of trouble.

NEXT EXAM. This one's a bit more tricky, you've gotta kill a Vampire. Now, Vamps normally come in nests so you tend to go in a group for these.

A few things you should know though, Vampires ain't like they are in a lot of the fairy tales. And they damn straight ain't like in twishite. Fucking sparkly faeries.

I feel my opinion may have been stated there… Woops?

Vampires can go out in the sun, to a point. They don't really like it but it doesn't burn them to a crisp. It just hurts their eyes and they'll burn a lot easier than a human will (unless you're fair, 'cus lemme tell you if I didn't have magic which naturally protects me from this kinda thing I would be lobster red with even the tiniest bit of sun. But thanks to my magic I actually tan instead. Nice huh?).

The only way to kill a Vampire is to cut off their head. None of this stake-through-the-heart bullshit. Though that does kinda stop them in their tracks, but I can imagine a lump of wood in the chest would stop a lot of things. Dead Man's Blood is also like poison to a Vampire, no one's sure if a high enough dose will actually kill them but it sure as hell makes them weaker than a new born kitten. And I guess you can burn them if you wanted, but the beheading is a lot easier and more likely to work. If you set a fire they can always escape, and once a Vampire has your scent they'll have it for life.

Again, though, with Vampires there's a few who are… Oh this is going to hurt me to type… Vegetarians like in the twishite books. Ergh, gimme bleach for my fingers. They only drink animal blood, which can keep them going well enough if they don't put out too much exertion between meals. They've obviously gotta feed more often that way too, but they tend to be farmers or take up farming so they have lots of lifestock.

I've put the heebies up you now, haven't I? Yeah, your local neighbourhood farmer could be a Vampire. But for the love of all things holy don't go trying to decapitate them 'cus they will still rip you to shreds. And trust me, you don't wanna be the reason a Vampire ignites its bloodlust. It ain't pretty.

I've realised we're a lot more accepting over here, just as an offside thought. In America, they'll sooner kill something than find out about it, but here we tend to do all the research we can. We're very 'ask questions first, shoot later' in our operations, which y'know, is a bit more civilised than going in all guns blazing.

Right what am I up to? Five, right. Exam five is a Wendigo killing.

Standard bit of background, a Wendigo is a creature that used to be human, until it consumed human flesh, and lots of it. Basically it's a sin and blah, blah, blah. The particulars are different whomever you ask but the general jist of it is a human who consumed the flesh of another human is then cursed to live as a monster for the rest of its days.

They hibernate as well, so there's only certain times with YEARS in between the killings/ disappearances where you're likely to catch them. They tend to hang out in woodlands 'cus campers and hikers are pretty easy targets, as are travellers and the homeless. Yeah, towns that have woods and forests on the borders are like a supermarket for Wendigo. I bet you're regretting carrying on reading now, huh? No sleep for you!

The only way to kill a Wendigo is to light it on fire. You can always cut their head off after for good measure, but good luck catching them to use that as the first port of call, they're stupidly fast and scarily smart. Rather than breaking into houses and stuff, they can and will pick locks to get in and out without as much noise. Though they tend to go for tents and just pull people out of them, it's less obvious when campers go missing from their tents than it is people going missing from houses, you can hide tents after all, and they're more likely to find couples in tents rather than families with dogs. Not that they're really that picky, it's more for ease of access.

And yeah, the people they take, they eat. There's no reasoning with these guys either, so this is one of the cases that's best to go in with the intent to kill. Of course, if you're ever handling/ aiming a gun it should be with the intent to kill, especially if you put your finger on the trigger. Else you may as well go home. Also, always treat a gun as if it's loaded, if you're a newbie I'm goina at least attempt to teach you right, no one can say I didn't try and if you ignore warnings then more fool you.

Though guns won't do much to a Wendigo, they'll just piss it off, so it's best to avoid those. There are symbols that protect you from Wendigo as well, there's a pull out sheet in the front of this thing with symbols and their uses on, you'll find it there, kinda looks like a child's drawing of a sunshine.

Wendigo can operate during the day, but they're about three times as deadly during the night as they can move silently and so quick you'll hardly see them; so during the night when vision's bad anyway you're basically fucked if you don't know what you're doing. Sometimes even when you do know what you're doing you're fucked. Wendigo might be the main cause of Hunter deaths aside from Demons (yep, they're real too). At least in Britain, can't really speak for elsewhere.

Anyway, Wendigo, yeah, fire. Fire kills them. You have to distract it, or catch it when it's distracted otherwise there's little to no chance of actually killing the damn thing. But if you interrupt it in the wrong way it'll just go into hiding and then you'll have to wait a few years before it emerges again, and there's no guarantee it'll wake up again in your lifetime so you get another chance.

Here's a tip though, they like dark, damp places, so old coal mines, deep caves and the like will be perfect for them. If you lose track of one or it goes into hiding, you can always try and find it in its sleeping place, but be VERY careful, they obviously know it way better than you do, and if you decide to go into one, I'd fully prepare to not come back out, just in case.

A lot of people prefer to do it that way though, so they take them down while they're hibernating, giving the Hunter more of a chance to hit the thing. They tend to work on their own, or in twos if the pickings are good, but don't be alarmed to find other Wendigo stashed away in their caves with bite marks in them. Like I said, they ain't picky.

Also, they're very good at keeping people alive and eating them slowly. Which y'know, is a great thought! But it just adds extra incentive to kill them, 'cus not only could you save future victims, you could save a couple of current ones too.

Now then, the final test, that would be performing an exorcism from memory. And I'm not talking of the fake Emily Rose variety either. I mean full on, Demonic Possession of the screaming, cursing, weird ass powers which are mostly used to throw you around and black smoke variety.

'Cus when a Demon doesn't have a meat suit, they basically look like the black smoke stuff from Lost. I wonder where they got that idea from… (Hunters, by the by, are in all walks of life and all forms of job. We have lives too believe it or not! We even have some stationed in the police, but I'll get to that later.)

An exorcism is pretty simple if all things go right, you draw a Devil's Trap (see the pull-out thing again), seat your demon in it, tied up or not (tied up if you're goina enter the Trap, if you're trying to get info from them the only way to do that is through torture really), then you say this chant:

"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica.

Ergo, draco maledicte. Ecclesiam tuam securi tibi facias libertate servire, te rogamus, audi nos."

Yeah, that's Latin, so brush up your pronunciation beforehand, trust me, it helps. After you've said this the meat suit the Demon is possessing will throw up black smoke out of its mouth, which will then go through the floor and send the fucker back to Hell where it came from.

A lot of people feel sorry for Demons the same way I feel sorry for some Ghosts, see, Demons were once humans who for one reason or another got sent to Hell when they died (yep, Heaven and Hell are real too, hence why a lot of Hunters are viciously religious) and then got tortured for years, before being allowed to torture others. It's that torturing that turned them into Demons, it warped their souls into something… Not human. We're not entirely sure how 'cus no Demon seems to know either, or at least never spills the secret, but that's how it goes.

But hey, that's your basic exorcism. It can get messy if the Demon's of a higher level than your garden variety, which needs a longer exorcism chant, but if it's in the Devil's Trap it ain't going anywhere as long as the Trap doesn't get broken, so you'll have enough time to look up the longer one, there's no time really to write it in here as I'm off on a Hunt later (finally) but I got told I had to fill this in before I was allowed my car keys back. Bloody parents.

Yeah, this is a family venture. You normally get into this life if you're born into it, or if you're dragged kicking and screaming (no, literally kicking and screaming) into it 'cus you got attacked or someone close to you did. That's what happened to my dad.

But that's a story for another time, 'cus if I wanna get this Ghost I'm after I need to leave now or I'll not have enough time to find it's grave and burn it before the patrols start to happen.

June 13th, 2004

That was a nice routine salt and burn, so I don't really need to record it, but I'm going to mention that I did it for recording purposes.

I've already filled in all the paper work (yeah, we record our Hunts so we know who's been out on what Hunt and who's best at what or in which area, it makes for easier job assignments and transfers) and it's all been logged and filed.

I've also been given the go-ahead for informing you all about me. As in that I can tell you that I'm a Witch in more detail and also tell you what different types of Witches there are, 'cus as with many things, Witch is a bit of an umbrella term.

I'm pretty sure a lot of people will have heard of Pagans, and all things to do with them like the Salem Witch Trials (which honest to god I'm sick of having to explain about so I'm going to write it here sometime and just shove it in people's faces when they start going on about the 'burning times' and such 'cus jesus fucking christ that shit is annoying. And most of the time inaccurate.) but this is slightly different.

Witches in this case, well I guess you can compare them to Charmed and Willow in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 'cus that's kinda how we work. Instant magic and all that jazz. Although there is such a thing as levels of magic, and a Witch can lose her magic if she uses it too much, think of it like a battery and you won't go very wrong. That's the easiest way I can think of describing it.

Anyways, types of Witch…

You've got your garden variety Witch, same as with any form of anything really; these ones are ones who know they have magic, and sometimes come to the Hunter lifestyle due to getting involved with a Hunt going on near them and then being invited into the lifestyle, if they're not just born into it. I'd like to say no one ever regrets that, but it's a lie more often than not. They sometimes refer to themselves as 'Hunter Witches' as that's what they tend to do with their magic, they Hunt.

Of course, not all Witches Hunt. You get your Faerie Witches who tend to stick to working with Fae, and they tend to be born into a family due to a blessing by the Fae they work with, so are rather secretive about their knowledge. Same as Shadow Witches, good luck even finding those as they tend to hide from everything as much as possible. They're more common in America though as Witches are more accepted over here than there. That's not to say there's none, but, y'know, we just don't really know about them.

Then you've got your Elementals. These guys come in groups of four, being an Earth, Air, Fire and Water in each group. Their elements refer to the element of their star sign, which makes it pretty easy to tell who from who be fair! Now, with these ones, if one of them dies the group gain the powers of whatever element died in the sense of that power goes into the body of the nearest living one of their group. If three of them die the remaining one either goes mad and pretty much explodes with the force of power roiling inside them or they can distribute them to three new people, apparently it's not an easy task and it's very rarely done, they're more likely to pop. Not pretty. If all four of them die at once, then the element powers just latch onto another group.

Of course there's also the idiot humans who make demon deals. The less said about them the better really. Though, don't be too harsh on them. Most of the time they don't actually know what they're getting themsen into.

I'm of the garden variety Witch, and Witches like me are born into families normally, same as any other kid, but they tend to have weird things happen around them from birth. When they're about five they start getting trained in their magic if they're born into a Hunter family, and if they're not… Well… It can go many ways.

Sometimes they get put up for adoption, and the people in the adoption agencies (yep, we've people stationed in them as well!) tend to figure out quickly what they are and get them into a Hunter family so they can grow up learning about their magic instead of the messier way of accidents. If the kids get kept in their birth family then there's mixed feelings on what happens, 'cus a lot of people believe this is where you get the ones that go 'bad' from. The whole 'I never fit in so fuck it' attitude is what they're pointing at there.

But we can't explain that any more than we can explain murderers or any number of human things that are seen as 'wrong', so why we bother, I'll never know. More often than not the kids grow up to be normal, functioning adults who just so happen to have a few… Party tricks.

That's all the basics I can give, I'm not authorised to give away anything more than that just yet. I've got to have been hunting for a couple of years before I can start doing training/ teaching courses. But seeing as I'm off to uni, it'll be about 3 years before I can do any of that, even if I decide I want to. Hell, if I get requested to do it I'll gladly do so, but I don't think I'll be able to teach people when I'd much rather be out doing the practical side of it.

Maybe I'll be able to lead the field trips or supervise newbies. I dunno, we'll see.

Referring back to the Elemental Witches and claiming of powers, there is a spell that lets normal witches do that, but they tend to only do that if they're up to no good as it can get a bit much for Witches who don't know what they're doing or how to control fluctuating magic levels. Almost all of us get training in it, there are some people though who just can't take to it, so they get extra wards put on them so they're safe from it.

Yeah, we basically have sigils and stuff in our blood. It's both awesome and weird as hell. My anti-possession symbol? It's etched into my shoulder blade. That makes for fun when Demons try to possess me and then get essentially locked out, but can't find what is normally a tattoo.

I've had it a couple of times that they've broken my shoulder blade to possess me when I was about 14, Demons ain't picky on the age of their meat suits, but as soon as they possessed me the magic in my blood fixed my shoulder and basically fried them within my body. That is not a fun experience. But sadly its one I'll probably go through another few times before they get the picture and spread word to not bother with me. And that can't come soon enough!

Anyways, that's all I'm allowed to tell you on that topic, so I'm goina close this thing up and get some rest. Helping my uncle at the garage tomorrow and I need to be able to pay attention otherwise the amount of comments I'm goina get from the customers will drive me to smack one of them.

Seriously, it can be hell sometimes.