Here's chapter two! Thanks to Quillian and Stormseer88 for their reviews! Hope you guys like this one!
Chapter 2: Hunters and Guilds
Tarn'se smiled as he eyed his first prey for his hunt. They were a small group of humans, five total, all male, and they were armed.
Perfect.
Tarn'se had landed on the planet a few hours ago, his pod hidden in a wooded area not far from this human city. He had traveled to the city using his scanners and now his long awaited hunt was finally beginning.
As the males stopped by an alleyway, Tarn'se threw a loose piece of brick deep into the alley, knowing it would catch their attention.
The humans turned at the sound, silent for a moment, and then began to walk down the alley, shouting jeers and curses from what his mask told him. Some had pulled out guns while other had knives and daggers drawn. Tarn'se crouched, really for action.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are!" one of the gang members shouted out in a sing-song voice while the others laughed and call their own jeers. Herald laughed along, checking his gun to make sure it had a full clip in it. Whoever trespassed in their turf was going to pay, and pay dearly.
As his fellow gang members continued down the alleyway, Herald heard a strange clicking noise, much closer than where the crash had come from. His eyes scanned the small windows along the upper part of the alleyway, looking for some person who was trying to mess with them.
All he saw was some sort of shimmer in the air, just like the kind that came off the asphalt streets in the middle of summer.
As Herald inspected the shimmer, he failed to notice the three triangular lasers fixing on his gun, and then slowly moving up his chest. Glancing down, he finally did see the three dots. They reminded him of the lasers cops had mounted on their guns for better shots; and they where coming from the shimmer.
Herald raised his gun to fire at the shimmering apparition but it was far too late for that. The last thing Herald saw was a blot of blue white light and then all went black.
After the first human went down, the others began to shout, and those with guns began to shoot wildly. Tarn'se snorted in amusement; these humans had no idea what they were doing.
Pulling out his spear, Tarn'se aimed and heaved. The long, thin, metal shaft penetrated the air like an oversized dart, impaling one human with a gun through the chest and pinning him to the alley's brick wall, where he hung for his last few moments of life.
Now there was only one with a gun, two with knives. They looked around frantically, trying to spot whatever had killed their two comrades.
Tarn'se move quickly and silently, running across the narrow roof, jumping, and landing directly behind the human with the gun, stabbing is wrist blades through the human's back. Blood sprayed the other two humans who screamed. One ran at him blindly, swinging his knife in long arched swipes.
Tarn'se shook the now dead human off his blades, caught the charging human's arm, and rammed the still wet blades into its chest. He watched as the spark of life in the human's eyes left and dropped the corpse to the ground.
The last human turned and ran, thinking it could get away. Tarn'se casually grabbed one of his shrunken from his belt, flicked his wrist opening the blades, and threw it. The shrunken whizzed through the air, slitting the human's throat and zipping back to Tarn'se who caught it easily.
Gathering his spear Tarn'se looked at the carnage that lay before him and smiled, though inside he felt slight disappointed at the lack of fighting ability these humans showed. He shook off his feelings and began to prepare to take his trophies; there would be much more time to find harder targets.
"Wakey, wakey little bird!" Nathan called teasingly as he bounced up and down at the foot of Ravyn's small bed.
Ravyn groaned and threw a small pillow at her antagonizer in a sad attempt to shut him up. Nathan watched the pillow fly about three feet away from his position and shook his head.
"You're gonna have to get better aim than that."
"Don't you have someone else to bother?" Ravyn asked grumpily, her voice muffled through the pillows and blankets.
"Well, I was bugging Ivy for a while but she told me to go bother you. You're more fun to annoy anyway," Nathan said, grabbing the discarded pillow and tossing it upward where it landed with a soft thump on Ravyn's head.
Ravyn sighed and sat up, her short-cropped black hair sticking out at odd angles. "Alright you win! Just get out of here while I change and stop calling me little bird!" Ravyn snapped throwing the pillow at him again, which he promptly blocked.
Nathan smiled and skipped out of the room, happy his mission had been completed. Nathan was seventeen, with light brown hair and sky blue eyes, but he had been in the guild for ten years since his parents had been killed and Vanessa, the guild leader, had taken him in. She was quite fond of the kid.
Ravyn sighed; she had had such a nice dream. She was with her brother and sister again, the happy family they had once been. Now, lying awake in her bed she remembered where, what, and who she was.
She was Ravyn, a vampire hunter for the Ash Guild, a hunting group dedicated to the eradication of the vampires. There were other guilds that stuck with other "menaces to the human race" but Ash was the main guild for the vampire hunters.
Basically, the Ash guild took in run-aways, orphans, and others that knew of vampires and trained them to fight. She had been taken in only seven years ago when she was twelve and given the name Ravyn for her black hair, and black-sapphire eyes; her old name had been lost in the empty void which was her traumatized mind after the incident. She had been taken in by Jonathan, the Ash guild's other leader. He was stricter and less pitying than Vanessa, but he trained Ravyn like she was his own daughter.
Ravyn shook her head and hopped lightly out of her small bed. Her room was small, but it suited her. Just enough room to store her clothes, weapons, and the few other necessities that she needed. Each member of the guild was assigned their own small room. Currently, there were two dozen members in the Guild.
Ravyn quickly threw on a gold halter top and some shorts. It was nice that Jonathan and Vanessa had finally got some air conditioning going, but most likely they would be heading outside later and it was blazing hot.
Ravyn walked out of her room, passing the other drab, tiny rooms that lined the second floor. They were all quarters for the other hunters. However, the downstairs was much different.
The guild knew it had to keep itself secret, so in keeping up the downstairs, there was no need to show any visitors the upper level. The guild headquarters was quite large, though not as big as some mansions were in the city. The guild had to be located somewhat close to where the vampires mainly hung out, but not too close as to draw their enemies to it. The Vampire underworld tended to be in the dying parts of the city, though more powerful vampires could live in the inner city.
Ravyn walked into the small kitchen and fixed herself a bowl of cereal. Normally everyone had dinner together, but besides that there was not much family interaction in the guild. Too many were lost yearly to build strong relationships.
After her breakfast, Ravyn headed into the basement where a small lab was. It was pretty much the place where new weapons and protections were made for the hunters. It also happened to be the place that one of Ravyn's true friends pretty much lived in.
Ivy was looking at something under a microscope while Nathan stood next to her barraging her with constant questions.
Ravyn laughed when she heard Ivy threaten to dump a bottle of acid down Nathan's throat if he didn't shut up. "Is he bothering you?"
Ivy and Nathan looked up. Ivy smiled, "No not really… his questions are though." Ivy was the guild's head scientist. Most of the "scientists" were men and women who just didn't like the idea of killing something, or disabled hunters who still served the guild. She has, at the moment, bright blue hair, dyed of course, that matched her electric blue eyes.
Ivy was a telepath; a person that could read another's thoughts. Originally she had just thought she was hearing voices in her head, but soon learned to control her gift and use it well. It was a great advantage against vampires; she could go into vampires' minds easily and keep them out of her own.
Nathan smiled and shrugged, "I just wanted to know what she was doing."
Ravyn glanced at Ivy, and Ivy's eyes glowed brighter momentarily. Ivy nodded and said, "I'll tell you in a minute, but first, you need your medicine." Standing up Ivy walked over to a freezer and pulled out a small tube of a reddish-pink liquid. She took a syringe and extracted a bit. Holding out her hand, Ravyn gave Ivy her arm and grimaced as Ivy gave her the shot. Two seconds later, Ravyn was rubbing her arm while Ivy smiled at her reassuringly and sent her a quick mind message, "You'll be fine."
Ravyn nodded and replied quietly, "I hope so."
Nathan looked between the too suspiciously and Ivy hastily changed the subject, "Now about your question." Ivy led the two over to a large table that held an array of weapons in the making.
"I'm experimenting with this new little concoction of mine. I call it "sun in a bottle", though the name may be tossed around a bit." Ivy held up and large test-tube which contained a clear, yet glowing, liquid. "It's basically neon with a few different chemicals added. What it pretty much does is act like sunlight does to a vampire; except you'd have to get it into their blood stream for it to work."
Ravyn glanced at Ivy, "And we are going to do that…how?"
Ivy shrugged, "Well I guess you could carry a vial and dip your darts in it," she trailed off in thought.
"Is it toxic?" Nathan asked looking at the complex code that Ivy had written down on a piece of paper.
"To us?" Ivy asked. At Nathan's nod Ivy had a quizzical look on her face. "I'm not sure. I don't think so, but I can test it. Why?"
Nathan shrugged, "Maybe if we drink this stuff, when the vamps bite us, it'll kill them." Ravyn raised her brows at Nathan's thinking. It sounded possible.
Ivy shook her head, "Nah, it wouldn't work. When you would drink it, it would go down to your stomach and that's it; it would just stay there. Unless you've got some weird vamp with a taste for stomach acid, it wouldn't work. But I could…" Ivy trailed off again and an excited spark came to her eye.
"Oh, boy, you did it now," Ravyn said to Nathan. When Ivy got that look on her face, it meant something big was brewing in her head. Ivy ran back over to the microscope.
"What is it? What is it!" Nathan asked impatiently.
Without looking at them, Ivy answered, "I would need to get this stuff into the bloodstream, so maybe I can sneak it through the calcium channel in the stomach!"
"And how would you do that?" Ravyn asked.
Ivy smiled, "Mix it with milk, or something that has calcium." Ivy then hunched over her desk muttering things. Ravyn chuckled at her friend's enthusiasm.
"Well, good luck with it!" she called heading back up to the main floor, "God knows we could use something to keep those things off out necks!"
I hope you guys liked it! Please review!