The Scarlet Hunter

PART ONE

Katherine

Twice in her life she had seen him. Once when she was a child of three. Many things about her childhood she had long forgotten but his face would be forever branded into her memory. She was looking through a fence with her brother Dathan beside her. They weren’t the only ones; many people in town had stopped what they were doing to watch the lone Hunter pass through. The men had looks of fear or anger; the woman looks of adoration and lust. But hers was an expression of wonder. True, he was beautiful, more beautiful than any man she had seen or ever would, but he was a Vampire Hunter and for her that was the more intriguing aspect. He turned his head for a brief moment and looked straight at her. She smiled at him, not holding anything back. He rode on.

Again, when she was on the brink of her teenage years, a time of embarrassment and uncertainty for many girls, again he passed through on his way to Pedros. Now when the townspeople looked at him, she knew why they looked at him so. She knew, but did not share their hate or lust. She was just beginning to understand her own mind and she knew she thought differently of “his kind” than the people surrounding her. In her heart, she would always be different from them, just as he was. But she must keep up appearances, for her father’s sake. She must wear the beautiful dresses and speak properly and learn to cook and be a lady.

She wouldn’t be able to stand it if not for her father’s library. He had been collecting books since his teenage years: books about every subject from every part of the world. He had discovered books that the Nobles had reserved from before the nuclear wars, books thought to be long extinct. Over all these years he would not sell them or give them up to anyone, but he was always willing to let others read them. These were great treasures to him and to her, too. They were worth more to her than all the gold in the world. They told of a world of technology and chaos, growth and destruction. She loved to read about science and inventions from the Nobility. Some were merely novels, telling a fictional romantic story, but she treasured these, too, for there were little details about daily life at that time and about how these people used to think.

Such strange people of that time, so many thousands of years ago. Before they had all nearly destroyed each other from their own stupidity. Long before the Nobles brought mankind back from the brink of destruction. Before the humans rose against the Nobility. Long before the lands had become so desolate, the people so cut off from each other. All the history fascinated her.

But those times were no more. The Nobles were a dying breed. The vampires of today were lowly, evil creatures who ran and hid from the humans who pursued them. They had not a shred of decency or taste. They were now the prey of the Hunters who had risen to put an end to their reign of terror over humanity. She envied them, the Hunters. It was their job to wipe all the scum from the earth; the vampires and all the strange and horrible creatures the Nobles had created while trying to play God. Theirs was a life with meaning, was it not?