I don't own Vampire Hunter D, except for the Bloodlust DVD and the novels 1-13. If I actually did have D, he would be doing my chores and looking awesome while he did them.

Title: Following His Footsteps

Rating: T, for teen.

Summary: Traveling with the dhampir who may (or may not) be his brother, Dualarc learns that with D actions are louder than words.

So, where to start?

Well, D had been upstairs. Let's start there.

I had to tackle the staircase steps one at a time, getting both feet on the same riser before moving on to the next and clutching the handrail like a lifeline in a storm. Damn, was this stupid withdrawal ever going to end? I get it, body. You aren't happy with me. Now, seriously, will you shut the fuck up? So I've been going cold turkey on the serum. Big deal.

The second floor wasn't any better than the first. It had the same creepy feeling of being abandoned at the last minute. I passed a little kid's room and saw toys still scattered across the floor. There wasn't anything inside the room of interest, though, and I kinda almost broke a leg when I stepped on a toy car and fell, but hey, I'm durable.

The master bedroom was just as useless (although there were some nice rings in Mrs. Nob's jewelry box. …Don't look at me like that. I was just investigating, yeah?). Two bathrooms yielded nothing and the study was nothing but books and dust. All that was left was a teenage girl's room – Emily's – and that was where I hit pay dirt.

Or graveyard dirt, as it turned out.

Of course, I didn't know that at the time. All I saw was a stain on her carpet that was pretty fresh and smelled like flowers, rain, earth and something like rotting bodies. Don't ask me to explain how I know what those smell like, okay? Bad memories there.

I didn't know where that dirt had come from and I didn't know where to start looking for the source. I could follow D's smell easily enough because… well, he's a freaking dhampir and even if I sucked at tracking through scent, there isn't anything that smells enough like him to throw me off. Dirt is dirt, though. All it would take was passing by a flower shop or a river or any of the dirt roads that crisscrossed through the town and I'd be screwed. Damn.

I left the Nob house feeling both annoyed and nauseous. Not a pleasant combination. I hunkered down against the outside of the wall that encircled the lawn and wondered what to do next.

Going back to my shed for the night was always an option, but, stomach sickness and headache aside, I really didn't feel that tired. Not to mention it would have felt like giving up.

'Okay Dualarc, think. You're a thrall. You haven't been caught yet and you don't plan on changing that status anytime soon. Where do you go that can hide you? Where would you go that no one in this entire town, no one who has lived here for their entire life, would ever think to look? …Are you even still in the town? …No, no that can't be right. If I was a bloodthirsty psychotic, I'd want to leave at least a few aces nearby in case I couldn't get back to my stomping grounds in a hurry. This thing wants to stop the sheriff from displacing its buddies again, so no way would it take the risk of not leaving someone in town to keep an eye on things. So, where are they hiding?'

I didn't have a freaking clue.

I'd like to say that I pulled some awesome, genius answer from out of my ass and demonstrated that I was natural born Hunter, but that ain't what happened. What happened was, I realized I had the choice of either going back to bed for the night, wandering around until morning or following D again.

I… really didn't feel like seeing D again after our little chat in the dining room and, like I said earlier, I wasn't tired.

I wound up sitting against that wall for the next few hours until the sun rose and wondering over and over again what the hell I was doing.

My headache and stomach cramps had more or less stopped by the time I finally got off that wall. A decent way to start the new day, I suppose. The massive upgrade to my senses was still there, but it was starting to become manageable. Who knew, maybe it would be my standard in a few days.

I walked back to the shed as people began filing out of their homes and going to school, work, friends' homes, etc. Vampire or not, life had to go on. I really kind of hated them for that, even if the feeling only lasted a few seconds. I didn't understand how they did it. These were the people who would weep, mourn and move on if they lost someone to a monster. These were the people who felt okay about asking someone else to take care of the problem for them. I… couldn't be the same way. I could have hired a Hunter to track the bastard down, if I'd sold a lot of things, but it wouldn't have been enough for me – I had to do the deed myself.

Obsessive much?

Maybe.

Okay, probably.

That doesn't say much about my state of mind, does it?

I wish I could explain it. I've had a long time to think about what happened and what came after, but there still aren't words to fully describe it all. I can't explain what it's like to come home from my friend's house and see the door that I knew should be shut against the cold standing wide open. I can't explain what it's like to run into my own home and see everything in perfect condition, except for my own mother. I can't explain about the two days and nights of insanity that followed while I waited up for the bastard with a stake and a knife by my side.

I can't… Well, I just can't.

Anyway, enough of that.

I reached the shed around six-thirty in the morning. My bag hadn't been touched, which confirmed my theory about the shed – no one had been using it for quite a while. Lacking any better options, I curled up for a nap. I still wasn't tired, but I didn't really have any other idea of what to do. I figured it wouldn't hurt my headache, either.

As it turns out, I was right. I woke up around eleven and felt tons better. The imbalance in my body had finally fixed itself and I didn't feel like killing myself anymore. I left the shed actually thinking that maybe the day wouldn't be so bad.

The first thing on my to-do list was to head out to the forest. The sun was up, so whatever control the vampire had over its creatures was probably weaker. An hour or two hunting and scavenging for parts and plants that I could sell for some money would be worth it if it kept me from going hungry again when D left town. If his previous pace was anything to go by, I wouldn't be able to spare a minute doing it once we hit the road.

Luckily, I didn't have to go very far. There were some plants growing right near the edge of the forest that would get me a decent sum back in town. If the townspeople hadn't been so scared to go outside the town walls, they would have almost certainly been picked already, so apparently even vampires can have their good points. If it wasn't for that bloodsucker, I would have been asking people if they needed their windows washed.

The problems came after I started back and by "problems" I mean a family of very grumpy solar wolves. Think of vicious, little, solar powered, glowing lapdogs and you'll have a good idea of what they look like. Why they earned the name solar wolves is beyond me, because the yappy little things don't even come up past my knee and I'm still growing.

They are dangerous, though. See, they can take in the sun's energy and focus it into laser beams that erupt from their mouths and no, I'm not making this up. They are walking, breathing ray guns that come in groups of five to nine members each.

So, I'm walking back to town with my pockets full of flora and then I'm jumping into the nearest tree, while the ground I was standing on bursts into flames. Sparing the gory details, I spent the next two minutes frantically jumping and dodging to and from every tree in a half a mile radius, never staying in one place very long because it would inevitably be incinerated. I killed four of them before the rest of the pack got the message and pulled back, throwing out high pitched growls in my direction.

I was actually happy they had shown up, though I could have gone without the trying to kill me part. The skin from solar wolves is worth a pretty penny, because it's used for repairing solar panels which are a pretty big source of energy these days. I pulled my knife out of my bag and started skinning the carcasses.

The fact that each of my four prizes had two puncture wounds on their necks didn't detract from their value.

I've mentioned this before, but being a dhampir can really suck sometimes. The shopkeeper gave me only half – half, and only after I'd haggled for almost twenty minutes – what he would have given anyone else for what I'd brought him. I was right about the skins still being useful even with the vampire bites in them, though he'd gone pretty white after I told him they'd attacked me not three minutes from the town gate. I guess they hadn't been that close before.

So, the vampire was starting to close in the town? Couldn't blame him. The dimension displacers would be arriving pretty soon. He was probably hoping to catch the deputies returning with them while they were still in the forest.

My monetary problems taken care of, I went looking for D again.

I didn't really want to. Last night's… whatever it was, was still pretty fresh in my memory. I was pretty sure he wouldn't make a comment about it, but it was D. I had already learned he didn't need to say anything to make me feel like a bug. Besides, I wanted to know what he'd found in the Nob house.

It didn't take long to find him once I started asking around. He'd gone into the cemetery the night before. The last person to see him had been the groundskeeper, who had unlocked a particular mausoleum for D and then watched him go down the stairs without so much as a candle. So I went to the cemetery.

It had definitely seen better days. The grounds were well maintained, but the gravestones themselves were worn down things, even the ones from only five or six years ago. I guessed they had harsh weather during the cold season. The fence was starting to sag and the flowers left all over the place couldn't quite keep the smell of rotting bodies from reaching my nose. Yet another instance where being a dhampir sucks. On the bright side, I now knew where the dirt in Emily Nob's bedroom had come from.

The groundskeeper was a sodden drunk, but he showed me to the right mausoleum easily enough. I think he'd been there for a while. The door was still open and I could faintly smell D's scent leading down into the shadows.

"He went down around seven hours ago," the old man mumbled. "Ain't yet come back."

"I'm gonna see what's taking him so long. Thanks for showing me the way, old timer," I said and then started down the stairs.

My eyes adjusted to the gloom easily enough. What I saw was predictable and creepy. About two dozen stone sarcophagi laid in rows that stretched all the way to the back of the crypt, where a hole had been punched through the wall. It looked like something had tunneled through the dirt and then burst through the twelve inches of rock like they were nothing at all. Something like a vampire, maybe?

It was pretty clear that D had gone into the tunnel, even without me following his scent. There wasn't any other way out of the crypt, but the stairs. The tunnel was dark, almost darker than my eyes could deal with, but I was able to make do, not that it mattered much. I only got about twenty yards in when I heard someone coming from ahead of me. Footsteps first, then breathing and then a faint heartbeat, but I'd figured out who it was long before it reached that point.

D materialized out of the shadow like something from a horror movie and even though I knew he was coming, it still scared me.

Shut up. The man is creepy.

D looked at me, looked through me and then moved on.

'Well, at least he isn't bringing up last night,' I thought.

I turned around and followed him out of the tunnel. Now that he was out, I didn't actually have to go down there myself. Surely he would let me have a few bits of information, right?

"So, did you find Emily Nob down there?"

Holy crap, I was questioning D. Somebody wake me up.

"Go away."

(Well, who didn't see that coming?)

"It's a simple question," I grinned, trying to loosen the atmosphere. We were underground in a crypt with dead people and he didn't like me, so it didn't work. "Yes or no?"

"Yes. Now, go away."

"Was she the only one down there?"

We had reached the entrance to the mausoleum by then. The grounds keeper turned dead white when he saw D striding out of the dark. I kept following D through the cemetery.

"I kind of doubt she was," I rambled on. Hey, it was either that or walk in silence and, lest you forget, me and him had been doing that for a while now. "I don't know much more than anyone else about this stuff (there's a little hint for you, by the way), but if they remember anything from before they got bit, I'd say the whole family is still sticking together. Living in a hole in the ground alone sucks more than when you're living in a hole with others. At least, that's I think."

Still more silence.

At least the birds were singing.

"I smell some vampire blood on you. I'm guessing that's vampire blood, anyway. So, did any of them get away or did you get all of them? Wait, what I'm I saying? You're the great Hunter; of course you got all of them. Of course, the fact that they all managed to completely turn probably means the other missing people have as well and unless they were hiding down there too, you've got hunt down at least one more hiding place before their boss starts getting really busy."

He didn't say anything. He just kept walking towards the town gate we had first entered through two days ago.

"Hey, D," I nagged.

And whatever I was going to ask got pushed out of my mind by the sudden realization that I kind of hated this bastard and I wanted to irritate him right the hell back.

What followed next was a brief debate on whether or not petty revenge was worth the potential cost of being maimed. Then again, I reasoned, he had been having me lurk around him for a while now and he'd never actually hurt me. Left me to fend for myself, yes, ignored me, yes, insulted me, hell yes, but he'd never really tried to force me away. So, if I didn't have to worry about getting thrashed and if the most embarrassing moment had already been used up last night, did that mean I no longer had anything to worry about in the death and dismemberment department when it came to D?

Well, there was certainly a way of finding out.

If I was right, his tolerance towards me was higher than I thought. If I was wrong….

…Er, let's not go there, shall we?

"Hey, D," I said cheerfully. "I was wondering – about how long does it take you to strap on all that bondage gear each morning?"

He stopped like he'd run into a wall.

He wouldn't kill me. He had me alone and helpless the last night, he hadn't tried to kill me and he'd even (sort of) helped me. So, he probably wouldn't kill me, no matter what I said. I was statistically likely to live through the next few seconds. He would not kill me. He. Would. Not. Likely. Kill. Me.

Probably.

D turned around and looked down into my eyes.

'…He is gonna kill me.'

It distantly occurred to me that apologizing and running away would drastically lengthen my lifespan.

"…Because, you know, all those buckles and zippers must take a lot of time."

Yeah, I don't know how I've survived this long either.

I found myself longing for the earlier silence. This new silence was a creepy kind, more commonly found on execution grounds than brightly lit town streets.

"Stop ignoring me," I ordered. My voice was quaking, but it was still an order. "Insult me if you want, but stop ignoring me."

"You want me to stop ignoring you?" D asked.

His tone was as bland as ever, but even I could hear the threat behind it: kid, you do not want me to stop ignoring you. If I can't ignore you, I'll have to hurt you.

But you know what? Fuck it.

"Yes," I hissed. "I do. If you don't want to train me, fine, I'll change your mind, but stop treating me like I'm an ant crawling on your boot."

"An ant knows better than to go near something that can kill it," D said coldly. "You don't seem to be that intelligent."

I could feel my teeth grinding together, my two upper canines starting to poke into my lower gums, and D, just standing there, looking so fucking better than me - !

That was when the other deputy, Blondie's partner, ran around the corner huffing and puffing like a set of bagpipes. Damn, the sheriff needed to whip that guy into shape. The deputy slid to a halt a few feet away from D and started talking a mile a minute.

"You, Hunter! Getch'yerself over ta the gate double time! The displacement units'er here and we've gotta set 'em up a.s.a.p.!"

Well, half a year later and here we are. Only two more chapters for this section of the story and then we get to the actual one-shot sections that I had in mind when I started writing this thing.

For those following my Bleach works, Camel's Nose is underway and I'm working on some more Tatsuki one-shots. For those following my Red Shadow fic… don't get your hopes up.