Please tell me what you think about the story so far!

When Dmitri took his first steps at a year and three months, both parents were more than a little nervous that he would wander away from the carriage or that he might wake some of the villagers when Charlotte went to go get food. They created little games to award him for being quiet and watchful. But they needn't have worried. What finally caught them was not their son, but a village in need of a hunter.

Dmitri was on watch shortlyafter his second birthday as Charlotte and Mayerling were raiding a village farm in search of food, when suddenly, Dmitri's young voice rang out with an alarm, "Daddy! There are people!" Then Charlotte and Mayerling both found themselves with arrows aimed at them from all sides. The boy ran through the people's legs to hide behind his mother's skirt.

"Dmitri, don't make a sound!" she ordered him, picking him up and tucking his head under her chin as she had done of old, then covering him with her arms, as if by making as little of him show as possible, the villagers would forget he was there.

Mayerling meanwhile stood meeting each villager's eyes with a command that they not harm his wife or his son.

"I dare you to say that you aren't the vampire who drank from my dear Rachel!" came an angry voice from somewhere in the second row of people.

Mayerling straightened up and stared at where the voice had come from. "I am not."

There were gasps from many of the villagers, who reapplied their threatening arrows to Charlotte and Dmitri. "Mommy!" came the frightened boy's cry.

"Don't look, honey," Charlotte told her son.

Mayerling, seeing that the arrows were not yet removed from his son and recalling the vampire family that in his childhood had ruled the area, figured that he knew the vampire who was now ruling and surprised himself by saying, "But I can help you find the one who did."

The man who had previously spoken slipped through, lip twitching as he surveyed Charlotte, then turned back to Mayerling. "Will you?"

Mayerling nodded, thinking that this was the only way to free hCharlotte and Dmitri. "Yes. For the life of my wife and child and for their safe passage through this area, after which you will never see us again, yes, I will."

It was only after they had removed the arrows threatening his wife and son that Mayerling felt vaguely sick at what he had agreed to do.

"Mayerling," Charlotte hugged him after they were situated in relative comfort in a room in the inn. She was trying to be brave – he knew, for he was to – and was succeeding rather well. The villagers had taken their son as ransom. If he should fail to kill the vampire – or, he figured they also meant, if he should drink from any of the villagers – the townsfolk had promised they would kill the boy. That is why he had to do this, however much he wanted to leave the arrogant vampire, whom he had avoided at parties the other family held – though he had only been a few years younger and everyone had expected him to admire and emulate the older vampire – alone. He had to save his son!

He counted out the weapons he had laid out on the bed, trying to look like he knew what he was doing for Charlotte's sake, though in reality he was floundering in the proverbial dark, with no idea what a hunter used. "Shit," he whispered the swear under his breath, returning her hug.

"My dear Mayerling, are you sure you're alright doing this?" she asked.

He picked up a dagger and threw it at the wall before stopping to think, then gazed back at his darling as if to apologize. "They've got our son in their mayor's house: I must be alright with it, and it must be done sooner rather than later."

Charlotte smiled up at him. "But, you said… do you know the vampire who… the vampire who lives here?"

Mayerling turned in time to see Charlotte's face flush and smiled at her attempts not to hurt him with her speech. "Charlotte, there is no need to be cautious. My family knew his family, which is to say we went to grand parties in the castle we are near. The vampire who gave this poor village such a fright is, it's true, close to my age, but I avoided him based on his distasteful treatment of the surrounding villages. After our family passed on, we never attempted to heal this breach, and he grew steadily nastier. If he should end by my hand, it would not greatly upset me. What matters is that it will get our son returned safely and will allow us passage through this land."

Charlotte nodded. "Yes…" Then something seemed to trouble her. "But if he is older than you…?" she started.

Mayerling smiled at her. "I have not whiled away my training hours terrorizing humans, unlike him. This puts me at the advantage."

She hugged him again. "Are you setting out tonight?"

He shook his head. "I am going to sit outside the room where his victim is, as a doctor stands guard within. It is his style to drink only enough to put the human in comatose and to fetch her the following night."

"Be careful," she warned.

So he sat, wearing his full weaponry without feeling foolish as when he had had to in the past, outside the room where the girl named Rachel dwelt. The hall was silent, with lock on many of the door leading out to it. He knew that inside many of them, there was the protection of garlic powder, but he wasn't planning to enter any of the rooms, so the powder wouldn't bother him.

He didn't need to wait long. At approximately two hours after sunset, he felt the chill in the air that accompanied mist ability, one of Yaneth's – that was the vampire's given name – favorite little tricks and one their teacher had frowned upon when Yaneth used it. "Still up to your foolish tricks, I see."

The vampire stopped, pulling himself out of the mist in surprised. "Mayerling!" Yaneth used his family name as he undoubtedly would have had Mayerling use with him. The new Hunter had always refused to call him anything but more proper than Yaneth, and the habit was not going to change now. "What are you doing here?" Yaneth saw what the younger vampire was wearing, and a look of bemused delight crossed his face. "And in full dress uniform? Really, Mayerling, one would think you meant to attend a formal event!"

Mayerling shrugged, reminded again why he had never liked this brat. "I graduated from weapons class. Just felt like reminiscing on old times. Though, as I think about it, you were not there, were you? You were off terrorizing a village as you seem to be doing yet again."

Yaneth sneered at him for a second, eyes dancing at the prospect of what he was hearing. "What are humans good for if not terrorizing? You can't possibly have gone that daft as to be defending them!"

Mayerling drew his sword. "I have a wife now, Yaneth… a human wife, and with her I have a son."

Yaneth gave a full sneer. "A dhampir? So you went Hunter to save them?" He laughed at the very idea. "Well then! It always was my opinion that you didn't deserve the family name, and this confirms it, but if you want to fight… en garde!" Out came Yaneth's family sword, a better sword by far than Mayerling's but with, Mayerling hoped, a worse wielder. "Let's see how you fair against one who hasn't let his abilities fall to waste!" He swung at Mayerling.

Mayerling danced back, exhilarated at the idea of sword fighting again, only this time for life instead of just a hit. "Big words from one who didn't bother to go to Zander's class!" he taunted back almost catching his opponent in an empty spot their teacher, Zander, would have beaten him for leaving open.

"Ha!" Yaneth challenged, cutting off his thrust at the last second. "I was too busy learning real talents to play kiddie games of manners!"

"Were you really that busy, Yaneth, or is that just the excuse you did not have us fooled with?" Yaneth was not making any effort to get through yet, and this pleased Mayerling, for it meant his foe was underestimating him. Whether this was because he thought Mayerling the weaker swordsman or because he thought that Mayerling would not kill one of his own kind, it meant that, at least for the time being, the younger vampire had the upper hand.

"You know what your problem always was? You always were too much of an ass-kisser! And now look at you: you're kissing humans' asses for them!"

Mayerling lunged at his foe, thinking he saw an opening.

Yaneth batted him away, laughing. "That struck a nerve in you, didn't it, old boy?"

Mayerling caught his sleeve, slicing it from the inside of the elbow to armpit. The sleeve fell away to reveal blood.

"Damn you!" Yaneth spat.

It was Mayerling's turn to laugh. "Who struck a nerve now?"

The older vampire did something Mayerling had never seen before: he switched his sword hand and caught Mayerling's blade through the hand that had held his sword. The blade sunk in up to the hilt, causing Yaneth to grimace and Mayerling to be too shocked to think. Then Yaneth grab one of Mayerling's daggers and jammed it into his side between his ribs.

Mayerling fell against the wall, gasping at the speed of the move. Yaneth was not joking now and came closing in for the kill… the younger vampire ducked as the sword swung for his head, then kneed his opponent in the groin, gaining him the required second in which to rip his own sword sideways out of Yaneth's hand and cut of the older vampire's head. Then, he spun a full rotation and sheathed the bloodied sword through Yaneth's chest.

The sword hit its mark: within an instant the body in front of his misted, and not by any choice of its owner. Within another second, the sword clattered to the ground, all that was left.

Within the room, Mayerling heard the girl, Rachel, awaken to cries of "Sister! Sister! You're all right!" followed by a man's voice saying, "Thank the stars!"

Mayerling tried to stand up but remembered that his dagger was still in his side when a spasm of pain ran up his side.

"That vampire killed the other vampire then?" came another voice from inside.

"Radio over to the jail. Get him his son back," the first voice said.

"Yes, sir." The door opened, followed by a man in his mid-twenties jumping a foot high.

"You're the… the vampire our town hired to… to hunt for it?"

Mayerling nodded.

"Did you get it?" his voice fused with a deep-seated hatred.

He held out Yaneth's sword. "This was his sword, and the girl is awake now, and safe. Now go get me my son."

The man ran at the command, and in his absence, Mayerling managed to reach the dagger and pull it out. It healed, but the wound left him staggering.

But then a little mousy-haired girl wandered past the door, warily at first but still approaching him. "My sister's awake now. You saved her. Come and see!"

And she led him into the room where the doctor was checking the girl, Rachel's, vitals. Her color was returning to her freckled face, lighting her skin a rosy pink. "Good to see that you are okay." He said, then left, lest she or the doctor get to nervous about his presence. And besides, then the man was back, saying that they had released his son, so he staggered along to see the little boy once more.