After the brief phone conversation, Danica spent her morning in the boxing room ten minute drive from her place. She was alone in the entire hall; it was too early for the day.
She wore her hair in a tight ponytail and headed to a 200-pound punching bag near the corner. Mirrors covered the walls around, making the hall look more spacious. In a red crop top and black tights, she was leanly muscled, not the curvy type. Walking, she put the boxing gloves on.
Early this morning, an ambassador of theirs had made a live video statement on the ownership of the mansion. The vampire prince had inherited the mansion when he was born a century and a half ago. The ambassador also cleared the ‘rumors’ about the prince missing in his statement. Reign was not missing, but on vacation instead. He was in Umbre City.
Then he was the owner, and she invaded his home. Still, was this the reason he wanted to kill her?
It didn’t matter. As much as he was, she was also out for blood. She threw a punch at the bag, which swung. There were times she shocked people with her strength for her slight appearance.
She was not one who was easily overcome in a fight. And yet, last night’s events lingered in her mind. She threw her anger out on the innocent punching bag, which trembled with her hits. The way he straddled her while pushing her down with one hand; he had completely overpowered her. Being a vampire and a prince who should be typically stronger than most common vampires did not make any difference to her.
Sweat covered her body. She wondered what he looked like. Only because she could imagine this bag as him. He was quite tall. Several inches taller than her. He had never shown his face in public.
Even the vampire king and queen were on the internet, but not him. Why? He must be really insecure about his looks. Although there were a few vampire princes aside from him, Reign Eclipsis was the only son of the monarch. Had something horribly gone wrong with him when he was born? Was that why he had been in the palace for 150 years?
Guess what! She did not care! She wanted to show him that he did not scare her. And she wanted to punch his face like she was doing to this bag. People started to arrive. It’s time to leave. Her mood wasn’t up for chit-chat.
“Hi, Dani,” a boxer greeted, seeing her heading to the locker room.
“Hi, Mike.”
“Rare to see you in the morning.”
“Yeah.”
“Is that a vampire bite mark?”
Mike was a regular here. She gave him a non-committal nod to end the conversation.
“How unusual.”
“It’s not actually. We get bitten sometimes.”
Danica wanted to leave, but Mike was now standing right in front of her.
“I bet the vampire is dead, with your skills. A normal vampire would know better than to bite a hunter.”
This was definitely the type of conversation she wanted to avoid.
“Umm…no.”
“No as in?”
“He’s not dead. Bye-bye, Mike.”
“Oh ok, bye, Dani.”
Danica did not have to wait for long before she was going to receive an answer to one of her questions.
“The Vampire Prince’s Press Conference in His Garden,” Marc read the headline out loud on his phone. They were drinking again at Witch Bones in the evening. These days were slow in business. Only small fish with a little reward on the bounty listing.
“Two days from now,” he continued.
She shifted in her seat to lean against the wall. “It’s weird, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “But it’s only us that thinks so. Everyone else feels like he’s pretty much their prince. On social media, streaming services, TV channels, and even this bar, everyone is talking about him.”
To prove his words, the people at the table next to them were loudly debating whether the press conference was fake news.
“Posts with Hashtag Vampire Prince Reigh alone are over two billions during these few hours. I bet he’s ugly since he’s in hiding for this long,” Marc added.
“Couldn’t agree more,” she blurted.
“Strange you agree with me on this.”
“What?” she swung her head to see Marc’s curious blue eyes. The SOB missed nothing. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Obvious denial. Normally you’d lecture me about how criticizing people’s appearances isn’t inappropriate and blah blah blah. Spill. What’s this about? Come to think of it, what’s that under that bandage?” He nodded his head towards her shoulder, which she had thought was covered by the shirt, but two of the buttons were undone.
“Nothing.” She wasn’t sure why she was lying.
“I’ll let this go.”
Thank God.
“Hey, Marie!” March shouted, looking at the entrance. Oh right, they invited her before they came here.
Danica turned around. Marie was still looking around blocked by a server in a witchy costume and a man flirting with her.
Finally, she saw them and headed toward their table. Black hair, brown eyes, and in her mid-30s, Marie had been a hunter since she was 18, which was still later than Danica who had been hunting in secret since she was 14. Nonetheless, ‘she’ had more experience than her, and Danica had always respected her opinions.
With a heavy sigh, Marie settled herself in the seat between them.
“What’s wrong?” Danica asked.
“Just heard George is dead.” That said, Marie waved at a server.
“What?!” she exclaimed. Simultaneously, Marc asked, “George who?”
It couldn’t be the George she met yesterday, could it?
“George Miller, tall, brunette,” Marie answered after she ordered her drink to the server.
“That’s him,” Danica pressed her temple, trying to process the information.
Marc looked still confused.
“Remember what I told you yesterday over the phone? The guy I met at the Bounty Affairs? About the memory lapse?”
“Ohh! Him? Shit.” His eyes widened.
“How did he die?”
“A shifter killed him. Mark told me.”
“How did he know that?” she questioned.
“He was right there with George when it happened. According to Mark, he had been not in a good shape to go hunting, but he insisted on joining him. Mark was pretty upset. He’s even mumbling he’s going to quit the business.” Marie took the glass handed to her and drank it up.
“He said George stood frozen before the bear shifter, letting him slice his stomach open. Before Mark could finally shoot the shifter down after dealing with another one,” she put the glass down. “He had to see his friend’s insides lying all over the floor, he told me.”
It was so horrible that both she and Marc went speechless.
“I’m so sorry,” Danica said, echoed by Marc.
“Yeah. Me too.” Marie trailed off.
“To George,” Marc raised his glass.
“To George.”
“To George.”
It was not exactly the shifter that killed George, wasn’t it? Danica contemplated over that throughout the rest of her evening with them. She expressed that to both of them about this, but they had different ideas. Besides, they argued it was the issue with George’s memory; not someone else was responsible for that.
“No offense, dear, but I’ve been a hunter for 18 years. I’ve never heard of anyone who could twist memory this way. Except for the first vampire king who had been dead for like 800 years? Or a thousand years? He was the most powerful being on earth, and he still is. He was a rare phenomenon. ”
Marc nodded in agreement. What Marie just said gave her doubts, but she kept silent.
After that night, Danica spent her time catching goblin thieves throughout the city and sending them to the ORP. Two days later, almost every hunter in the States would go before the Night Mansion, which was now its official name.
In the garden, at 8 PM, Prince Reign would answer a few questions from the press.
Towards the late afternoon of the day, Danica took her disguise from the closet. She had prepared for this. The type of people who had never taken a step in Block 71 would also join the event: teen and tween girls. Although the latter group was around her age, their environments were different. She was going to camouflage herself with them.
A blonde wig, an office coat, and a knee-length skirt, stockings, and heels. Lastly a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. She learned how to wear make-up to look different from herself. It’s probably a stupid idea, but there was no chance he would let a hunter into his garden. She sprayed a strong cologne on her to mask her natural scent.
In the end, she stood before the mirror and smiled like a cat. Even Marc would not recognize her. Or her dead parents. Of course not. The second thought was simply stupid.
Well, what did she expect? The crowd filled the entire block soon after she arrived. No cars allowed within the area. Easily tens of thousands of people gathered here. It was not surprising how a good portion of the crowd were vampires. They wore reverent looks when they talked about him. Fear and respect mixed in their voices, mentioning their prince.
Regardless of her emotions in the past days, all she was feeling at the moment was the rising temperature. Summer heat combined with people almost touching shoulder to shoulder. Easily 100 degrees. All races in one place in a situation like this; was an ideal place for assassinations. She felt her weapons strapped on her thighs underneath her skirt.
She had spotted Marc earlier, but he quickly disappeared in the crowd after he gave her a quick once-over he would do to a complete stranger. She was satisfied. Exactly what she had thought.A quarter to eight, everyone got restless. Although it might be her imagination, she felt a set of eyes on her. Somebody was watching her. Goosebumps rose on her skin. Danica looked around to find distracted humans and other-races alike. No one was giving any special attention to her. Some of them were looking at her, but their expressions showed she was not of their interest at the moment.The buildings in the street were of medium height–eight to ten floors high. She had enemies; any of them could be observing her.And the mansion: it was deep in the sprawling garden. Still, it was quite tall, almost a castle
His voice was too low, almost a whisper–other than her wouldn’t have heard it. When in the world did he get so close? She bent forward with the plan to grab the pistol before she remembered the circumstances she was under. She took a few steps back. He followed. For human guests, they were none the wiser. Nearly everyone was out of the garden. Vampires, however, were a different case. Several sets of eyes were on them, from the far end of the garden, probably ready to take action against her. Despite the distance, she could guess they were watching her action. A lone hunter vs her natural enemies in their territory. Slowly, she faced ‘his highness’—she thought sarcastically—who was standing merely a foot away. His skin looked too smooth under the pearlescent light. She had seen many vampires, but no one like him. Wait, that’s not important right now. What’s important was his long slender fingers that were getting closer. What was he trying to do? Screw it. She was going to put a bu
Danica closed the window and double-checked the rest of the doors. It had been a long night. She examined the place where he bit her. The mark was already turning into a scar. The supernatural healing speed was unsurprising. She prepared herself to face anything, and waited. For something bad to happen. For somebody who had mistakenly thought she was prey. It’s a wonder who would target her and hunt back the hunter. She had done stretching exercises to relax her muscles to get ready for whoever they were. Now that she connected the dots, she figured that someone had been stalking her. This was hardly news, but this was different. An ominous feeling twisted her guts into a knot. Whoever this was, they had been able to hide from her. She was going to find out who they were and what their intention was. The night had been long and continued to be so. By 1:00 in the morning, everything was quiet. She had settled in the lone chair near the door, fully armed. A deafening sound filled t
‘No. No. No. No,’ she thought anxiously as she rose from the floor. She called his phone, and it went straight to the voice message again. Her hand reached for the pistol.Picking locks was not her specialty. She hoped he wouldn’t mind what she was going to do. Her gun clutched in both hands, Danica took a few steps back. She sprinted to the door and shouldered it open. It broke with a bam.Immediately she pointed her gun behind the wall, in case somebody was hiding there. It was empty.Before her was a slightly messy apartment, with a few things lying about. That was strange, because unlike her, he was quite particular about how things should be in the exact same places. That she knew within three years they became friends. Right after she had broken up with Dave, she went to a bar, with a fake ID. Three hours later, she was awfully drunk, but dragged herself out before throwing up on the sidewalk. By that time, she was barely conscious anymore, holding onto something: probably a tr
Her eyes stung after long hours of staring at her laptop screen. Too tired. In baggy pajamas, she slumped face-down at the edge of the bed, not even crawling to the pillow. Her eyelids fluttered shut instantly.These walls were thin. When everything went quiet, she would hear passing conversations and sometimes footsteps from the corridor. Her consciousness was drifting away before faint sounds wrestled into her sleep-addled brain.There was somebody outside her door. Somebody was walking about, which itself would be typical. Something about it, however, was strange. The footsteps were slow and steady; someone was taking a stroll right along the narrow corridor before her apartment as though it was a fun place. It had been quite some time since he or she was pacing. Besides, they sounded intentional like they were meant for somebody to hear them: in this case, her.Danica reached across her bed for the gun. Perhaps it was a harmless weirdo, like the ones who talked to themselves in
“What do you want?” she glowered at him. Both her voice and body trembled, as she was straining every part of her nerves to move, uselessly. His smile stopped, and for a while, there was no answer.“You are so ignorant, and willful,” he remarked quietly.“What is that supposed to mean?! You’re just another bloodthirsty parasite, aren’t you?” she rambled on, trying to hide the fear inside. “That’s why you’re here. You want my blood. You bloodsuc—,” Suddenly he stood right in front of her, having crossed the distance between them in a blink of an eye. She tried to attack him, forgetting she couldn’t move. “So impudent. I don’t like mouthy females,” he spat out. “Or males, for that matter.”‘What the hell? He insulted her first.’His height towered over her, standing too close. She couldn’t and didn’t need to look up to know if he was angry. He was. And that made her even angrier than him. Who was he to invade her home and treat her this way? She didn’t care why he was here anymore.
It was a brief conversation. Sage claimed he didn’t even know about the case and he wasn’t lying. He had never lied to her before and she could think of no reason he should start now. “Did you hear anyone talking about the case at least?” She was clutching at straws.“This is a big station, Dani, and with my rank, I don’t have enough clearance to know half of the cases. And…,” he turned to look into her eyes. “… some cases we simply aren’t aware of.” That’s true. He was only an officer, partly because ranks went up slower in ORP than in the ordinary police. However, what came out of his mouth next caught her off-guard.“But maybe I could dig around and tell you what I found over dinner? What do you think?” In the car, Danica looked at Sage as if she had never seen him before. He was not unattractive; he was, with his prominent cheekbones and deep grey eyes. It was that she wasn’t attracted to him, and he had even struck as he disliked her by his avoidance—not that she could blame h
And yet, after a half-an-hour wait, Danica was still alone. The whispers had stopped for a long while. For her age, ‘she’ might need more time to prepare. With that thought, she tried to relax, but couldn’t with all the worries. She stared at the colorful shapes on the table and the carpet near her feet, trying to calm herself. Through the stained glass of the windows, near the ceilings, the sunlight had transformed into red, yellow, and blue patterns. After staring at them for an unbeknownst amount of time, she shook her head and headed out of the study room to ask if everything was alright. She couldn’t go back empty-handed. Marc’s life was in danger. Steve was nowhere to be found; neither in the entrance hall nor in the kitchen. e living room was the same. She approached the stair to take a glance upstairs or call out, perhaps. As she stood at the foot, she heard people talking: two, most likely Steve and Ms. Donna. This time was a lot more than mumbles. “Why didn’t she bring t