A/N: Hey everyone. This rather uninspired chapter comes to you from your somewhat distressed author. Perhaps, by this time next week I'll know what place I came in that script competition. I'll definitely have finished my Classics report, for better or for worse. Try and enjoy the chapter, anyway, and I'll try not to vent on you lot. By the by, I do have a facebook page, I can't remember if I've mentioned that before. If you want you can ask me questions and stuff on there blah blah

Chapter 10 – Hunters:

March 1999

Okay, so maybe Harry's driver's license was fake – he hadn't had the time to get a legitimate one! - but it seemed like he could drive a hell of a lot better than some of the people on the highway. Experienced drivers too, not an L-plate in sight! It was almost as though every single person in the area either had somewhere really important that they had to get to, so they resorted to reckless speeding, or they were drifting aimlessly and driving ridiculously slowly.

Of course, it could just have been that Harry was feeling rather irritable as of late. He wasn't yet used to spending so much time driving, and there was still so much that he didn't really understand about the muggle world, especially America. Not to mention he had stopped in at an internet café the day before and checked his emails.

In retrospect he should have expected it, but even after three months he was still being inundated with emails from Nathan and Cassidy wondering where he was, if he was alright etcetera etcetera. In his heart he knew he had no right to criticise them for worrying about him; he had, after all, simply up and disappeared on them. That's why, even though he never replied, he forced himself to read each and every single email they sent him.

They pained him, but at the same time it was still nice to know that someone out there cared for him (and with the occasional owl he noted that looked too much like a post owl for comfort, he had to hope that they never bumped into Remus, or he'd be doomed if they ever tracked him down).

Harry couldn't figure out what he wanted to do with his new life. Hell, he couldn't even decide where he wanted to live! He'd spent the last three months between the road and a handful of motels, never really staying any place for longer than a week. Nothing had appealed to him as of yet. There was a niggling part of him that said maybe he didn't want to settle down, because settling down meant getting a boring normal job, and that part of him that felt he needed to save people didn't approve of such a mundane option.

The problem there was that Harry didn't know how to save people any more. The most he could do would be exorcising demons, but only the stupid, low-level ones, and most people didn't believe in demons anyway, and he could hardly put an advert in the phonebook, "Harry Peverell, Demon Specialist".

Frustrated, Harry smacked the steering wheel of his car and bit his lip.

What am I doing?

Sometimes Harry wished he could just throw a dart at a map and go wherever it landed and just live there, but he knew he'd never be able to.

And that was why, though he was beginning to hate driving, he was still doing it.

If Harry was to be completely honest, he wasn't heading to Colorado because he thought he might be able to settle down there. No, there had been some weird stuff happening there lately, according to news, and so Harry was heading for Gunnison.

He shouldn't go near it, he knew he shouldn't. All he had were his books, a knife, and the gun he'd somehow managed to smuggle over from England. Just because he had them, however, didn't mean he was particularly proficient at using either of them. Sure, if you pointed a gun at a wizard you'd likely get a pretty clean shot, experience or no, because they wouldn't know what it was and therefore wouldn't feel the need to move out of the way. Humanoid monsters though? They lived in the muggle world, not the magical. They weren't stupid. Harry's be more likely to kill some innocent bystander than actually get a hit in on anything that didn't want to be hit.

He felt so completely useless without his magic...

Damn. I managed not to think about it for almost two months... I suppose it was only a matter of time.

Harry was trying desperately hard not to think about the situation that led to his presence in America, but sometimes he slipped up. He hated feeling useless, and he hated that there was no-one he could blame but himself.

Freaking out had happened during his stay in Concord in January. When rational thought had finally broken through the 'holy-crap-I'm-empty' haze clouding his mind he'd taken a moment – make that four days – to sit back and ruminate on the possible consequences of his actions. Why the hell did he give his magic to a freaking demon?! That was pretty bad planning, even for him.

There had been no thought of hesitation when he made the deal – hell, he wouldn't have minded if Crowley had wanted the regular old 'I'll-be-back-for-your-soul-in-ten-years' thing. He would have accepted even if Crowley had confessed to wanting his soul in a year rather than ten. At the time, anything was a fair payment for destroying Voldemort once and for all.

King of the Crossroads you idiot!

It was likely best for his sanity to not try and imagine what sort of atrocities Crowley might be able to commit with his magic (and that was a thought. Would his magical signature still come up on Ministry radars when it was in Crowley's possession? It would almost be funny to see Aurors try and take the demon on for using magic in front of muggles. Almost).

Focus damn it!

Sighing Harry grabbed his water bottle with one hand and gulped some down. He needed to stay focussed on what he was doing, rather than on the past, or he was going to crash.

Gunnison, Colorado was both different and completely the same as every other place Harry had been to. The moment he stepped foot in the town he knew he wouldn't stay for very long. It just wasn't right. Not to mention the weird vibe it gave off – though that might have been his imagination acting up because of the news reports.

Mentally exhausted Harry pulled his car into the parking lot of the first motel he came across and booked a room for a week. If no-one else came to check out the situation and he couldn't figure it out within a week then there was no point staying any longer anyway.

Where did all my determination to do the right thing go?

Ignoring his own pessimism Harry grabbed his suitcase and his messenger bag and lugged them to his new room. It was nothing fancy – motels never were, especially when you picked them at random – but it wasn't the worst place he'd ever stayed either. Far from it. The bed was in good condition, there were no mysterious stains on the carpet, the curtains or the wallpaper, and nothing appeared to be broken.

"Good enough," Harry exhaled, dropping his things on the ground inside the door, shutting said door behind him and flopping down on the bed. The one thing he liked about American motels was their obsession with big beds. At times like this it was a blessing in disguise.

He was asleep in minutes.

It was late evening when Harry awoke with a start. There was no real reason for it. No loud noises, no-one was breaking in to his room. Harry's 'sixth-sense' was so crap it was basically non-existent these days so it was nothing like that either. No, after spending so much time all over the place being up at all hours he had yet to adjust himself to lengthy periods of sleep.

Today that would become a useful thing.

As Harry wandered around his room making himself a cup of tea – he had yet to acquire a taste for coffee – he noticed someone crossing the car park in the dark. There was no hesitance in their stride, so they spent long periods of time wandering around in the dark – night-vision was an acquired skill.

Normally Harry wouldn't have paid it any attention – what business was it of his if some local teenager or what not sneaked out to a pub or something? But a focussed squint revealed a slight limp and a slightly hunched figure that wouldn't normally be present in someone that young. Not to mention they were actually leaving the motel, rather than just cutting across the parking lot.

That, combined with what he had been hearing about Gunnison – which, admittedly, wasn't much – spurred him into action. Suddenly glad he had fallen asleep in his clothes Harry poured the rest of his tea down the sink, grabbed his runic knife, shoved it down the side of his boot, grabbed his room key and slipped out of his room.

It took Harry several moments, after shutting his door, to relocate the figure in the dark. Something told him it probably wasn't such a good idea to follow someone in the dark like this, but he'd never paid much heed to those sorts of feelings. Almost everything he did was dangerous, so what difference did it make?

For a moment, as Harry followed the figure through the dark, he could have sworn he had been noticed. His mark had stopped and looked around, and Harry had frozen in his tracks. But nothing happened, other than a barely-noticeable irritable grunt.

It took another ten minutes of walking through the increasingly dark night for anything to happen. They had headed out of town, in the direction of the run-down old house Harry had vaguely noted on his way in. It hadn't seemed anything special at the time, in fact it had looked more than definitely abandoned and ready for demolition or something similar.

By passing through solitary streetlights Harry had managed to catch a better glimpse of the person he was tailing. He had been correct in his assumption that it wasn't some kid sneaking around. It was a man, much older than Harry's measly 18 years. He was dark-skinned, somewhat reminiscent of the ever-silent presence of the Slytherin, Zabini, and he held himself warily, as though expecting to be attacked at any moment, but he also looked war-hardy, like he would take anything that did attack him head on and send them packing.

Part of Harry had started telling him to leave again shortly after seeing all this, but he couldn't bring himself to. This man, with all his harsh worldly experience, might have the answers to what was going on in Gunnison. That wasn't something he was going to give up on without a fight.

It was a long night full of new and unexpected revelations for Harry. For some reason, the man he had followed waited until after Harry had witnessed him murdering every single person... thing... that resided in the run-down house to acknowledge him.

Now, Harry had never actually seen a vampire before, but he was pretty sure the vampires in Magical Britain didn't look anything like the vampires he had just encountered. These vamps had a whole mouth full of sharp, jagged fangs that made Harry's blood run cold.

Thank Merlin he hadn't gone after them himself. He would have been a goner.

"Now then," Harry's apparent saviour began in a gruff voice, wiping his blood-soaked blade down on a hanging curtain. "Who are you, what are you, and what do you want?"

Harry was dumbstruck. What was he? Well, he supposed, in whatever line of work the man obviously had, it might be quite a relevant question. Nervous, Harry ran his hand along his upturned jacket collar.

"I'm Harry," he paused for a moment, but figured there was no harm to be done, and added "Harry Peverell." It was his muggle name, so if the man turned out to just be a psychopathic murderer and wanted to track him down it would probably work, but it was still a heap safer than using his real name.

"And?"

"I, uh, I don't know what you want me to say, but I sure as hell ain't one of those... vampires?"

"But why are you here?"

"Ah... Well, you see, I was actually investigating this," Harry gestured to the decapitated vampires – and why were they having this conversation there? "Which is why I'm here in Gunnison. As to why I'm here, well, I saw you from my motel room and was a bit suspicious. Turns out I was right to be, but maybe for the wrong reason."

The man raised one dark eyebrow at him and stared him down.

"What?" Harry asked, more standoffishly than he would have liked.

"You haven't run away screaming, and you haven't fainted, or even tried to deny what you've seen. That's impressive kid. You've got guts."

"...Thanks?"

"So," he dusted off an old wooden chair and sat down, gesturing for Harry to do the same. "I can see you aren't from around here kid. You ever heard of hunters?"

Harry frowned, carefully taking a seat on something that didn't look like it would collapse under his weight and wasn't covered in blood.

"I'm assuming you don't mean people like deer hunters. I take it you're a hunter?"

"Yep. The name's Rufus. Seasoned hunter of the supernatural."

Harry's eyes widened and he took a moment to truly look at Rufus.

"You still haven't fled yet. That's surprising in someone your age. You don't seem like you've got any freaky vengeances, so what's your deal?"

Though Rufus asked, Harry could tell he didn't necessarily expect an answer. Which was good, because Harry didn't have one.

They talked long into the night, edging around personal topics and giving short, half-answers to others. They weren't there to make friends. But Harry did learn a thing or two about hunters.

If he had his information right, it was hunters who dealt with things like demons in the States.

Harry wasn't sure if he was cut out for the life of a hunter – he would certainly need some sort of training if that's what he wanted to do with himself – but he knew now where he could go to get more information. Rufus had mentioned some place in Nebraska that he had referred to simply as 'The Roadhouse', which was some sort of hunter bar.

Harry knew where he was going to head next.