Once I knew what followed me everything became easier.

It was strange to think that being hunted by a monster had calmed almost all of my anxieties about life but it did.

For months my consuming passion had been finding a V-series in order to make my first kill and report it to the Institute. I was already two years older than my sister had been when she got her hunters license and impatient to begin what I thought of as my real career.

Dancing had never been a viable option for me in the era after the death of art and I wasn’t good at anything else.

Now the biggest obstacle and the hardest part was over without even trying. A vampire had found me and all I had to do was act like I had no idea and bide my time until it was right to strike.

The reason simply finding a vampire and not killing him was the hardest part for me was that my father refused point blank to discuss it. My sister had assignments, formal requests made to the Institute to deal with specific V-series and her first kill had been in defence of a friend- a total fluke. My mother’s advice was to trust myself and let it happen when it was meant to, wise I’m sure, but I was certain I needed to be doing more. V-series are notoriously smart; their greatest asset isn’t their speed or strength but their intelligence so I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out that she was right.

I slept at the warehouse almost every night or at least I spent my nights there.

My father could think what he liked. There was no girl to hide from him but the warehouse was my secret.

Now that the Royalty Theatre is gone I have nowhere else to dance. I could waste my time in clubs and even used to look for V-series there. But the problem with this type of hunting is that there are too many humans involved. V-series know this and so feel quite safe in such crowded night-time settings.

The third but most crucially upheld rule of the Institute is never to kill in front of a mortal innocent. Most people know about unnaturals. It's almost impossible not to. But other than the few who make things harder for us by interfering despite not being a part of the hunter families or trying to impersonate V-series (god knows why) most people want nothing to do with the supernatural elements that have become a normal part of life in K-sector 2 in the way the mysterious illnesses and natural disasters had become normal in the previous centuries.

They leave it to the Institute and endeavour to live in a simple way, free from violence and fear, these people are the sanest I suppose, but rather than ignore the predators among us it was my ancestral responsibility to seek them out.

But it has always frustrated me that humankind has merely assumed since the discovery of such creatures that it is our imperative task to hunt them down and destroy them. I mean I want to, obviously. I know they are the enemies of humanity. Demons in human skin. And even if I didn’t consider them to be evil I’d still apprehend or destroy as many as I could. As part of a hunter family its my duty. My privilege and burden made doubly heavy for my father's incessant disapproval.

But if the history of my country has taught me anything it is that diplomacy and trust are worth more than aggression every time. Call me idealistic but if this dark shadow of the world is what my generation gets I will create my own sunlight in any way I can.

I guess what I mean is that once I have my licence I won’t have to hide myself like this anymore, at least part of the time I’ll be among my own kind and I’ll be free to be proud of my skills and my position.

Its my calling to destroy the parasites and I’ll do this to the best of my ability but despite being young, I know the greatest evil is not the supernatural creatures that stalk us but the human greed for power that takes over every other impulse. The same greed that made us believe the world belonged to us entirely in the first place. I’ve always favoured a secret theory, too embarrassingly idealistic to share with anyone, not even my sister. I believe the first unnaturals were sent to us as a punishment or at least a warning, I’m not sure. I think they should be destroyed but the fault is not only theirs. Because after all, what are they but the concentrated greed of the humans they once were? Destroying others to go on living when they should be dead. They pay for the sins of centuries of us like supernatural scapegoats, waking us up. Evening the score.

Anyway its just a theory.

Maybe its naïve but I hope that one day when there are less unnaturals in the world, I can be happy knowing that I was a part of the renewal of my country, of my people. So my own children can start fresh, and live in a safer world, freer than I was to choose what they want to be.

A hunters life is essentially nocturnal. It doesn’t make sense otherwise.

Though some might try to find a lair during the day I’ve never worked that way. That’s extermination.

Its cowardly and it goes against Institute regulations; they have rules about hunting so that normal people don’t attempt to be vigilantes and get themselves killed. The rules also foster competition and there’s a greater chance of getting the V-series alive when the fight is one-on-one. The main misconception about hunting is that they don’t really want us to destroy them what they want is to study them in a controlled environment, to discover the Prometheus quality. This is why the capture of Semper 1, the oldest known V-series was such a victory for the Institute. My father at least had earned his unheard-of early retirement from the pursuit of hunting.

Typically the only way to retire for a hunter is to die. Most don’t live long past the age of forty.

These are the Institutes cardinal rules;

1. You must only kill at night.

2. You must not talk about hunting or the Institute with anyone who is not a hunter.

3. You must hunt alone. (meaning no collaboration or human witnesses)

The first rule seems obvious. Its crucial to be awake during the night hours when V-series are active.

It seems like the rational way to destroy a vampire would be to seek them out in their daytime lair and kill them as they sleep. But this is not hunting. This would be more akin to execution. Not that any V-series gets a trial, their existence is proof of their guilt.

V-series are not animals. They retain their human mind, generally, and their intelligence is vastly superior to most humans if they haven’t got mad from isolation and the alienation of an extended lifespan and they guard their sleep more carefully than any creature. But even if they didn’t we would not attack them like that. The same way V-series rarely work together unless they have a blood bond, meaning creator and spawn.

I don’t know why, exactly. It’s a matter of honour, the difference between a fight and an attack.

All I know is I agree with the old rules.

As for hunting alone maybe its to prove our skill but no hunter sanctioned by the Institute would dream of forming a team to fight a single V-series, it’s a matter of pride and practical too because you could lose your licence for breaking the rules. Its part of keeping vigilantism and amateur hunting down. It keeps the art in the old families. And the Institute would find out. They always find out.

This is perhaps part of the reason we don’t socialize more with the other hunter families. In my case its because they never knew me as a child, Trinity has attended some functions since she joined the Institute but largely we are solitary never sharing our skills or secrets outside of our own family.

It wasn’t always like this. We formed a sort of society once, a class apart. But there are so few monsters now. It is no longer in our interests to clan together.

Competition between families is to the Institutes benefit, we don’t share with each other but the Institute knows all of our abilities, our kill list and how many we’ve brought in alive.

The highest fee goes to the hunter who brings in a live V-series, the less damage inflicted the more you are rewarded. This creates a strange tension, a dance between self-preservation and the desire to keep your prey intact. Generally the older the hunter the more live vampires they bring in.

So aside from dancing which was essential to calm my nerves and keep me fit, I was practicing with my weapons more seriously than I had since my mother gave them to me. I didn’t know when I’d be forced to face the V-series so I carried either my silver knives or my gun at all times.

Of course I knew I could never dance for a living. Though I had in a sense been doing exactly that at the Royalty Theatre for three years.

When it became clear my father would not support me in dance I had to find ulterior methods to learn and the review hall was the easiest way to do that.

I could make money first waiting tables and learn from the actresses who were always short on partners, first just practicing then once my talent was clear as a regular in the musical reviews.

Of course my father didn’t know or so I thought.

In retrospect I know I should be glad he knew because he saved my life but the shame and terror of the attack just made me feel worse about being there at all.

The night the Royalty theatre burned down was the first time I realized our families legacy was real, the first time I saw my father as he must have been once. Before I was born. He and my sister were the only reason there weren’t any mortal casualties. Breaking a critical rule because of me. Killing vampires in front of mortals.

And in my fathers case killing for the first time in twenty years because of me.

The Royalty theatre was by no means a government sponsored entertainment centre, but because of the parvenu patrons who favoured the light-hearted reviews and splashy musical comedies. It was the worst kept secret, the fashionable place to go in K-sector 2 for the rich and tacky and the pretty well only place where I could dance and be paid for it.

Not that I was paid much, considering the crowds that flocked in on Thursday and Friday evenings for performances, I never saw evidence of the profits, the theatre was as dingy and run down as ever, the manager claimed the patrons liked it this way. They could imagine they were slumming it or had travelled back in time to drop in on a 19th century western Panto. That’s what they wanted, anything American or western European the older the better, regardless of quality. Somehow I don’t think my father would have appreciated their burlesque musical versions of Shakespeare.

For those of us on the other side of the stage lights, the reality was panstick and sweat, scraping by on whatever was left in the basket after it was divided among the servers. Having to be ready at an hours notice or not called for weeks at a time. Memorizing simple steps within hours then repeating them until I thought I’d go mad with boredom, often I forgot what the play even was about, I could perform my minor role in my sleep.

Ultimately what I learned there is that imagination is a luxury reserved for the rich.

And the only rich now are the dealers in energy. They live huddled in the desert, hoarding water and building a garish community to replace the crumbling old mansion blocks in the city where they really want to live. But those old families, poor as they may be still have their homes and won’t sell for any price, especially not to the sun-dealers.

There’s nothing wrong with them apart from their ability to thrive when everyone else is struggling. Which is, at least socially, generally unforgivable.

Perhaps their sensitivity is lacking because, having money when no one else does they treat K-sector like a playground and not what it is, the desperate remains of a city just holding on with half the population it once had. We need their patronage and so we resent them. They want our history and can’t buy admission into the society of older families even with all of their wealth.

Its an old story but it goes on repeating as the tension mounts between their greed and our pride.

The only things my society values now are money and resources. I don’t mean that the people are like this but the establishment. Sometimes I honestly feel as sorry for my father as I do frustrated with his choice to make his final stand over something like books. “Let this be my hill to die on” takes on new meaning with him. As a pioneering member of the arts council he’s in a constant dance with the authorities over what is to be preserved and what abandoned or banned in our country.

Music is almost a lost cause. The parvenu have whatever they want, they can afford it and being in a position of power the government turns a blind eye, but even so compositions must be commissioned by the minister of arts and rarely go to anyone outside of their approved pool of state musicians. So, essentially music from before the war, music made after the war without an official commission, or any western music is considered dangerous dissident material and strictly forbidden (unless you’re a rich energy dealer).

I have, obviously, a problem with this. Music is essential to me and even with the theatre, I had to find ways of procuring and hiding it.

This isn’t very hard. It’s a rule that, like the old piracy laws of intellectual property, is very thinly enforced and so despite the harsh penalty for being in possession of “dissident material” most are never caught. Still I use the warehouse to hide my records and the playback machine. It took me a week to soundproof the walls with old cardboard containers and at the back is the river, so I’m free to play music and practice as long as I’m careful. Even if it were found they could not convict me because the warehouse doesn’t belong to me or my family. It's just abandoned like so many other buildings, in favour of the ones more easily patched up and newer.

Rules are important, rules keep us safe. But what I've learned, the way every child does, even the most loved and contented finds one day is that the rules which prevent you from living are wrong. The greatest wrong there is and the most insidious problem with ultra insular societies like ours.

So no. I did not feel guilty about harbouring unapproved music

The arts council has all but given up on music, so ironically it’s the tacky sun-dealers and their children who, with their golden immunity have become the bearers of music into posterity, a shaky position among such frivolous people. What’s left is visual arts, performance (including opera, theatre and dance), the written word, and philosophy. Sometimes I think my father would abandon everything else if it meant saving every scrap of poetry we have left, and dance would be the first to go.

When he found out about my job at the Royalty theatre because Trinity needed his help in the chaos he called me a whore like the rest of the actors, my response that he’d whored for the institute for half his life and at least I was constant made him hit me for the first and only time in his life.

I know this is bad but having almost died already that day I didn’t care that much, I was also more deeply ashamed than I’d ever been for having hid my job there from them.

Because of my obsession with dancing he had to kill in front of others and for the first time in nearly twenty years. This was a nightmare for him with the Institute.

I was still in shock from having seen him, a totally different person from the father I knew, full of controlled rage and precise fury as he destroyed them all, alongside my lissom sister, and saved the hundreds of terrified people most of whom probably hadn’t truly believed in V-series until that night.

Deep respect and confusion flooded me, guilt for being in danger and lying but also resentment for having to work in such a sleazy place in order to dance, but overwhelming all of this was awful pride. Awe at the power of my family, the pure art of what they did, cold and calm and unstoppable in the face of the demons that attacked the theatre from within. The vampires that had revealed themselves during the play, rising, fangs barred from the stage and the audience like some kind of horrible special effect had all turned in attention when they saw my father. In the midst of my panic I was proud. Proud of their power and proud to be his son.

I don’t know what made them do it, especially in a group, many V-series are half mad when caught their human minds strung out on extended life and the savage lifestyle they’ve taken on to hold on to it.

Every single one was destroyed and their bodies obliterated in the fire that burnt the historic theatre to the ground. This was a problem as the Institute makes it very clear they own any wounded or dead vampire and the destruction of such a specimen, even accidentally is a grievous waste, punishable by fine.

If anyone else had done it I think they would have arrested them. But as it was my father, their most successful hunter, their prodigal son, they merely congratulated him and promoted Trinity.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

To add insult to injury the envelopes I’ve already mentioned- the Institute asking him to take on an assignment started up again, begging his assistance in raids, ever hopeful. And now they came for Trinity too, thick and fast.

One positive outcome to this night was that I got serious about hunting. From then on I practiced fighting everyday with or without Trinity’s help.

I didn’t change my routine and I waited for the vampire that had disturbed the folio to make the first move.

My only variance was to trade my restored Kawasaki bike for a much older used truck. No new cars had been available since before the war and I needed something reliable that could get me and my first kill to the Institute. A five day drive, two of which in the arid wasteland known simply as the desert that cut across the more temperate regions like a belt. The Institute was located here, right in the middle of the country as well as the energy brokers village, a large community of mansions that housed the relative few who had profited from the radical changes of the last fifty years, they dealt in solar and wind power, owning the exclusive right to the production of panels as well as the massive turbines that now covered every inch of Jeju island.

My bike was perfect for the city but impractical for such a journey, especially with a dead v-series in tow not to mention windstorms, or the wild vampires that could survive even there, less sophisticated than the territorial city dwellers. And less discerning, considering they lived on mostly rabbits and lizards. But still dangerous, desperate enough even to plague the lush oasis of the heavily guarded parvenu community.

They were attracted to it from miles around even as they shunned the low white secretive compound of the Institute, because water means life and life means blood.

I drove my truck to the warehouse, I ran errands for my mother, I practiced with my weapons, and I danced.

Though I did not vary the folio was not the last sign.

I left nothing for them to find, I did not respond and yet, they were aware that I was aware.

It was cat and mouse now but who was who remained unclear.

Flowers appeared. Giant pinkish white hydrangeas in a few inches of clear water in a paper thin crystal bowl that had never belonged to my mother

I claimed to have bought it and placed them there and felt guilty when she touched my cheek and smiled

“I’m lucky to have a sweet son who appreciates flowers”

Books were open to certain pages around the house. Almost in a mockery of the folio and the sonnet.

This was maddening because I never knew if it was my father who left them out or one of his students or my... uninvited guest. As such I found myself reading more than I usually would have, annoyed every time I caught myself analyzing the words for clues of any kind.

Every time my heart skipped, caught on certain words…dropping the worn paperbacks guiltily if anyone walked in the room until I felt like a fool and stopped reading them at all.

I don’t know why I was not more concerned for my mother or the others that frequented my home.

It has never occurred to me that she might need my help, with so many years of experience in hunting and in life.

My father and my sister were more than capable of defending themselves.

And I knew, somehow. It was me that it had come for. It was not interested in hurting them or interacting with anyone but me.

As the days wore on more often than not I could feel without having to read the words, just by touching a book or an object I could tell if it had been recently disturbed by a vampire. The vampire.

I had not sensed the vampires in the theatre for two reasons. One of which was my focus on my performance, the other was my age. As I matured the sense had gained in intensity, at that time I was only sixteen.

The sense was becoming more sensitive with the creature’s proximity and this excited me.

This was exciting because no V-series was aware of this precious gift that was unique to my fathers line. Even the Institute had never been told of it. It was a priceless advantage. It was better no one knew. Especially my father. The onset of the power he had missed out on in me could be the last wedge to drive us apart in our already strained relationship.

I hoped somehow that he might never find out.

As long as it kept leaving clues, which it seemed to have a weakness for I could feel my latent power growing, emerging from where it had lain dormant in me in those years when I was cut off from vampires. From the Institute, from the reality of myself.

The years my father had tried to thwart my fate, out of love of course. But surely he’d read enough ancient books to know what a futile, fatalistic, and truly dangerous action this was.

Because (my moira) my fate had found me regardless of all of his efforts.

Because I was spending less and less time at home I did not often speak with my parents and I think they knew I was close to leaving for my first kill. They knew, at least I’d spoken to my Umma about the necessity of moving further afield in order to find a vampire and so she was prepared for my leaving for the desert any day. The real reason I had stopped sleeping at home and was preparing to leave the city, was to lure the vampire away from them. They wouldn’t find out it had been in our home. Not just because they didn’t have the sense, but because they would only try and protect me and the time was past for that. I could and would handle this on my own and in order to do so I had to draw it away from the house. It knew my routine now as well as it could and would strike at any time, so it was crucial this come at a time when I was alone.

I came home to pack some clothes, convinced that a show of leaving would draw the creature out in the open once and for all which would necessitate leaving anyway almost immediately.

I overheard my parents talking. The air vent in my attic bedroom connected to the library and when each was open I could hear everything that went on in that room.

I didn’t like to eavesdrop but they were talking about the arts council, a subject I never heard about even from Umma because they didn’t like to worry us. My father's position made him a clear target for the agents of cultural control, the ones who banned the composition of music and screened any writings submitted for publication including all branches of study and inquiry, excepting the Institute which is of course self regulated, independent of the government, the way the energy brokers are, but officially.

The Institute, much as he hated it and had turned his back on it, was the only thing that protected him from the other power in our country, the government.

“What do you mean they’re gone?”

“Just that. They left everything behind, all of their research, their daughter, with no word to anyone”

“But why would they leave her? It makes no sense”

My father's voice sounded muffled as though his hands were over his head

“I don’t know. They must have had no better option. Wherever they’ve gone or been sent, it must be better she knows nothing about it.”

“The things they were working on, intangible physics, bio theology, Jee it’s a pseudo science. What could be wrong with harmless speculation?”

“It isn’t so much what they studied as the fact that they taught such theories to their students”

“The place is falling down. They can’t have had more than a handful of students each”

“No, enrolment is the lowest in the country but the council of moral standards ruled them dissidents”

His mother made a soft distressed sound. How she could be so strong and so compassionate at once was a marvel to Junsang. In his experience people had to sacrifice one in order to attain the other.

“They’re philosophers, aren’t they protected?”

His father must have made a non verbal response before continuing;

“And yet, there’s nothing I can do that won’t bring attention onto us.”

“The Institute is what protects us. They don’t have that luxury”

He was silent. This was a truth he didn’t like to hear.

“But what will happen to the girl Jee?” her tone was firm, a mother's concern.

“I don’t know. If she’s smart she’ll leave that ruin and find a trade. They don’t want thinkers in this country. They want builders and brokers”

“And hunters” his mother added. Junsang stood up. He’d heard enough. Builders brokers and hunters. To cleanse rebuild and power this dark new world they had found themselves in. A world where what you read could get you killed as easily as a V-series.

Where violence was more acceptable in the streets than dancing.

And he was nothing if not a hunter. Shrouded in danger as long as he lived. It was time to go.

I hadn’t felt the sense in a few days and was beginning to worry my stalker would lose interest. When I approached the warehouse in the grey dusk, weeds growing up around it like a noxious jungle reclaiming the red brick I looked at it. Tonight I would clear it out and it might be years before I was back. The whole building might fall in the river before then. I sighed and walked in through the crack in the foundation that served as my door. As I squeezed through into the dark lower level the rough cement cradling my abdomen and back, I felt it. That brush along the spine that flush of cold that ran like fire from the base of my neck to the tips of my fingers instantaneously. The sense.

It was here. Waiting for me.

Though my pulse increased exponentially and my breath felt cold in my throat

I was careful not to pause even for a moment. It was imperative that the creature feel in control up until the last moment. My best chance is to act unaware until it attacks, and be ready for that moment.

I made my way inside to the upper level as usual, I checked my packs where they sat neatly waiting to be thrown out the window and straight into the bed of the truck.

I checked my gun as I normally would have and thanked god it was already loaded with a wooden bullet. Despite folklore its actually very hard to kill a V-series.

My aim was true but nowhere near the level of my sister’s who could shoot a vampire down from a hundred feet away with one bullet.

This bullet would have to strike right at the heart to arrest its beating, and even then unless the things body were burned it could still come back if the bullet were removed even years later. It’s a strange thing the rite of first kill, because really what the Institute want is not for hunters to kill them but to deliver their “living” bodies for vivisection and study.

I’d never really thought about it but I supposed now the first kill is a kind of test, after all it takes more skill to cleanly maim a creature like them than to kill it, but what business have you being a hunter if you can’t kill one? So really, we kill in order to receive our license to capture. In contrast to the far-reaching academic aims of the Institute it’s a little pagan, like a sacrificial offering in exchange for membership.

Like any exclusive club especially an old one with ancestral requirements, I was eager to join no matter the cost. I’m only human and I want to belong to something. The more exclusive the better. Just like my father clinging to art.

So if this leech’s life were the cost of that I was ready and willing to pay.

I went about my usual routine, stretching and somehow ignoring the alarming golden heap of sunflowers that had leaked pollen and ants all over my pillow. God who needs the sense when this thing leaves a calling card everywhere it goes- but why flowers?

It might not have been a normal reaction but I was confused and almost disturbed by the heap of petals placed intimately on my bed.

I holstered my gun and put on my favourite record. For a moment I just closed my eyes in the moments before the song began, I could feel the sun setting, the vast room echoing around me smelling of earth and decayed cardboard and now the oily freshness of the sunflowers.

I could feel the relentless rush of the river past the back wall, so soothing to sleep to, unlike the creaky stillness of my room in my father's house.

I could feel the eyes of the creature overhead as they watched me, waited for me to move. Dancing for an audience. Alone. This was new.

As the music began as always part of me branched off, part of me that cared nothing for vampires and guns and politics, the free part that merged with the music and was somehow somewhere else, on another plane yet closer to life, more present than I ever felt in the silence without it.

The other part was on high alert, motionless despite my body’s action, aware of the space around me down to the motes of dust in the air. I can’t explain this hyper awareness, I had only felt it a handful of times before and only in the presence of a vampire. These two sides of me, one in perfect concert with the music and the other, a sensitive gauge of the silent ominous being that watched from somewhere in the room were what told me what I was, what gave me the peace to sleep each night, the comfort that told me this is what I am. What makes these two pursuits so at odds? Dancing means I can run fast and for a long time, which often is more important than fighting, dancing made me agile and strong dancing gave me stamina and balance and grace it's the best training for being a hunter.

What am I if not a hunter? What am I if not a dancer? There’s nothing else. I don’t want anything else.

Let me only be what I am.

Even in this moment of extreme stress, to dance was to become centred and focused. As the song ended I stood still again, eyes closed, waiting, feeling.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when the clear sound of a deliberate step on the floor rang from behind me and to my right. For a moment I hesitated, heart pounding weirdly slow, stomach bottomed out in sudden dread, god- this is it- all in the space of a breath before adrenaline kicked in and on instinct I swung around drawing my gun in one smooth motion.

Out of the shadows had come a slight, human shaped figure. He stood about fifteen feet from me, uncannily motionless but aware like a statue looking back at me and for the span of a heartbeat I stared back, struck.

He was my height or a little shorter, all in black with dark hair and the whitest skin I’d ever seen.

His brandy-coloured eyes glowed, fixed on me with an unfathomable expression

He opened his mouth as if to speak and a flash of white showed between his lips, in the same instant he stepped forward- time seemed to suspend him there mid-step toward me, his face lit with a soft beatific light-

I fired.

I stood over the body of the V-series feeling markedly calm, without emotion now that it was done.

As the bullet hit him he had made no sound but an exhalation of held breath, almost a sigh

and then folded to the floor.

His golden expression of absurd tenderness did not waver as the bullet struck him. He fell like he had simply fallen asleep on his feet. He had made no move to defend himself but simply fell almost as if he’d been expecting the blow and was resigned to it

He did not reach out as he fell. His body made an arrow on the floor that pointed to me.

He could have been attacking though I knew he wasn't really, he’d moved forward slowly, at a human pace almost as if he hadn’t wished to alarm me.

I froze for several seconds, breathing hard, I could feel my eyes staring widely, I was clearly in shock and it was about a minute before I could breathe normally.

The body on the floor a metre from my feet radiated a warning to all of my senses. Danger. Do not approach. But I had to. Purposefully, carefully I reloaded my gun without looking away from his dark form on the floor and stepped toward him where he lay prone, face hidden.

I had to examine him, had to be absolutely sure he was not human in the way the other hunters would- though with the sense ringing in my ears like a fire alarm this seemed laughably redundant. Still. I could not cite the feeling as my proof. I would have to make a report and get used to following protocol. So with gun drawn, curiously calm I shifted him onto his back with the toe of my boot.

He lay now on his back, head lolled to the side as one asleep, lips parted slightly though not wide enough to reveal the sharp white canines.

Blood made a subtle shiny circle on his dark shirt, but less, much less than a human would have bled from such a wound.

Detached and calm I made an inventory of his features.

Bruising around the beds of the nails, pale skin, the obvious signs and not so obvious

Lips drained of colour

Strangely cut clothes expensive but with a curiously softened look. As though they’d been worn continuously for days chosen carefully but worn carelessly. No sweat or dirt marks. The sweet alluring almond smell of his skin replacing the human stink.

Shadows around the eyes from a lifetime without sunlight.

At first I avoided his face, it was too human, too young, too handsome. The part of hunting I’d known deep down I would have the most trouble with was the resemblance these creatures had to human beings.

The face of the person he had once been, frozen in time, a mask and a weapon to work on human sympathy, curiosity, weakness.

His face was young, and it was undeniable, uncommonly beautiful. Strangely beautiful in a male, pretty really was the better term for it. Symmetrical refined and unbelievably pale, like the moon or a court lady whose skin had never been touched by the sun.

His expression was inscrutable in unconsciousness, more like a statue or painting of a long dead anonymous youth from another age than a living person.

Mercifully closed, his eyes made two perfect black lines as if ink drawn with quick skill, it was hard to recall now the softly burning glow of his light brown irises, fixed on my face under half-closed lids of deferent worship. That look was too much to process just now.

I would store that look away for later examination.

One thing at a time. It was enough to have caught him for now.

Lightened eyes. Another sign of the undead.

It was a fashion among the coarser followers of fashion to wear contacts designed to look this way. I had learned that the hard way, after an embarrassing altercation at a party abruptly ended my accepting the invitations of the curious rich.

Though probably grown to his full height a few inches shorter than me, his body was slightly underdeveloped, his limbs, slender and his throat narrow.

Under his full brown-black hair diamond shaped ears peeked out. Pretty ears, like everything else about him, studded with gold earrings like a wealthy young student might wear.

The veins stood out in his small marble-white hands a sickening reminder of the subsistence he led. Using his beauty and strength to prey on innocent people and take from them.

The number of vampire related deaths was grossly underreported by the governing authorities in an effort to avoid panic but it remained one of the main causes of death among those otherwise healthy especially the young.

By contrast simple murder had dropped off almost entirely. After the war people were no longer interested in killing each other. The gangs were the only exception to this. Really there was only one gang left that remained at the level of power they had during the war, the Ilmul Main “subjects of the sunset”

A pretentious name but they were nearly as powerful as the Institute in their own way.

Though it was impossible to be totally sure, this young man looked to have been noble, his hair colour and the dignity of his features, the grace of his limbs belied a superior bloodline despite his underdeveloped stature.

Impossible to say how old he was now, he could not have been more than twenty when turned,

I felt my lip curled in disgust.

Almost all V-series were young like that. A parody of youth preying on us forever

As if living and dying, carrying on the generations were not the greatest gift and highest purpose of a human life. These vampires treated being human as if it were something to be escaped.

To sidestep time in exchange for an endless existence of murder, wandering and hiding sunless and alone. I’ve always thought it the most cowardly choice a person could make. Worse than killing yourself.

Though turning might not have been his fault, still he chose to remain. He could have destroyed himself.

His soul was already gone. Why remain if you must kill to survive?

What a fallacy.

Trading your whole life and the lives of countless others to retain the appearance of youth

Parasitic, selfish existence

Outstaying your natural lifespan for perhaps hundreds of years.

Of course, I had to remind myself that this boy probably had had no choice in the matter of his turning.

But everything he had done since was a different matter.

His coquettish glance, worse than aggression, mocking human emotion mocking everything that was human and good and pure, only served to let me know how far gone he was from that anonymous youth he’d once been.

It took me a moment to place the weird stab of regret that struck me, looking at his face, that I hadn’t met such a lovely looking person when he was still human. It wasn’t merely his beauty. He looked so peaceful, there was something sad and wise and calm about him. Young as he looked there were years of experience written in the lines of his youthful face. And whether this was artifice or not, unconscious as he was, powerful as he surely was, he did not look vicious.

Foolish. I thought in another moment. He was probably young in my grandfathers time.

Had he never turned I never would have met him.

Anyone capable of surviving on the lifeblood of others for a hundred years cant have started out as a good person, so what if he’s pretty?

He only uses that part of himself like his strength or his fangs as a means of hunting, drawing in the weak and innocent with his singular face.

Annoyed at my shaking hands I made fists, transmuting the revulsion and shock I felt into anger.

He didn’t deserve to grow old.

All the more reason to despise him.

The fact that I still felt the sense buzzing over my skin meant he was alive. But only just.

Still an unconscious V-series is easier to handle than a live one. Ignoring the alarm bells and shivers like bolts of static when I touched him, I wrapped him in one of the light-cancelling transport bags I’d borrowed from my sister and carried him to the truck.