Chapter 1: Light POV
Breath came out in a short easy motion. Limbs propelling him easily after his target. He loved the adrenalin rush that came with the hunt, the thrill it brought him when he succeeded in ridding the world of another parasitic leech.
The vampire ahead threw a metal trash can into the alley behind him in an attempt to hinder his pursuers' advancement, trash littering the already filthy ground. Light merely jumped over it without breaking his stride. This was not his first hunt, and it sure as hell wouldn't be his last.
The years had both blessed Light with not only the skills every hunter needed to survive, but with looks and intelligence also. Honey eyes glared through golden strands of hair as he began to purposely gain ground against his target. Clearly a fledgling, a human caught in the cross-fire of the bloody year long war. It didn't matter anymore. He was once a human, he was now a monster that had to be put down before his fangs were stained with the blood of his seventh victim.
A cold drop fell from the sky, splashing Light's cheek, the only warning he received before the sky opened up and allowed a torrential downpour to drench him and his target. Cursing his luck Light pulled out a stake with practiced movements and withdrew a cross with the same action. Long had he tried to convince his father to allow him to carry a gun with wooden bullets and grenades filled with holy water, but his father was against the notion for the simple issue of getting caught with such weapons. Not that Light believed that a wooden stake was any better. He was well aware as to how easily a stake could be used to kill not only vampires, but humans also. Even though it was only a small number, it was a number none the less. And humans were known to be caught between sides.
A projectile flew at his face, cutting his cheek and instantly causing blood to bead through the wound. Coming to a stop Light hissed angrily as he swiped his blood away with the back of his cross baring hand. The vampire came to a standstill, eyeing Light hungrily as the dried blood from his last meal mixed with the rain.
"That wasn't very nice," Light muttered to himself as he watched the now still vampire in favour of ignoring the sting of a new cut. "Come on, I have school in the morning." It wasn't a lie, despite Light already having memorised everything he would ever need to know; and then some.
The vampire flashed his fangs in a snarl, water both flying in an arc from his swinging fist and splashing up from one of the many dirty puddles, as the fledgling threw himself towards Light. It could have been out of desperation, or simply because the sight of the blood had driven him into a feeding frenzy, but even as Light dropped into a defensive position and brought his weapons to act as a shield, the vampire didn't even falter in his wild attack.
Angling his stake and leaning towards the vampire, Light was faced with an unappealing kill and burning disappointment. 'What is this? I went through all of this for that?!' Light watched as the ash that was once a vampire, mingled with the murky water even as fresh rain washed away even that.
It was just so…pathetic…anticlimactic. "How dare he?" Light raged silently as he re-hid his weapons. Here he had been hoping for a fight, for one that would at least give him a few bruises, instead, he was given almost what seemed like a suicide kill and one he didn't even want to add to his final kill total. And damnit, he had a number he wanted to reach before he died! Every hunter, be they of the original bloodlines or of circumstance, was aware of the record kill total, and every hunter that set their sights upon surpassing it were sadly disappointed.
The gleaming number, 400, kills to a single hunter's name. Only one person had ever come close to reaching it within the current century, but she had been torn to shreds when trying to take out a nest of old-ones by herself. She only had two hundred kills until she reached the set number, it took two hundred days to find all of her remains. Though it wasn't clear how, every hunter was keyed into a machine that was capable of reading the displaced energies of a slain vampire and automatically added the number to the hunter responsible. Every house had one that was connected to the mainframe, it was to prevent people from lying about their kill total in the attempt to reach Hunter status. Read the capital 'H', set by the original hunter bloodline. A fledgling counted as a single kill, an old-one five and a prince was worth ten. If there were more princes around Light could have made it his life's mission to kill as many as possible to quickly achieve not only the 400 kill total, but be the first hunter with ten prince kills to his name at the least. Princes were rare and in between and not every hunter came across one, those that did only ever had a shared kill with other hunters in on it. Nobody had managed to bring down a prince by themselves, they were the most feared of the vampires. And Light wanted to be the first to not only kill one by himself, but to set a kill total others would strive to achieve.
Light ran a hand through his dripping hair and began his weary trip home. The rain and cold not even bothering him, for he was trained to ignore such discomforts. Stuffing his hands into his pockets and lowering his head to keep the water from his eyes, Light didn't even see the sudden appearance and disappearance of a starch white sweater.
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