She doesn't look like a vampire. And that's exactly what makes her dangerous.

Forget the legends. Sunlight does not burn a vampire, holy water does not sting, and a stake is only a piece of wood.

People know them on sight anyway. Death-pale skin, sunken eyes, a cold that makes mortals recoil. Every one of them looks like a monster.

Every one but Lea. Twenty-two, warm skin, a girl's face in a crowd. Only the fangs give her away, and if they are out, it is already too late.

The rope pulls. She stumbles, catches herself, keeps walking.

A hunter. Of course it's a hunter. I hid for twelve years, from my own kind who call me anomaly and step out of my way like it might be catching, and from every human who ever looked twice at my smile, and in the end it's one hunter with a contract and a rope. I didn't go quietly. I want that remembered, even if I'm the only one who does. I lost anyway.

At least this time I saw them coming.

Last time I didn't. I was ten, and I walked home with hunters behind me the whole way and never once turned around. I led them straight in. Then I stood there and watched it burn, every house, my parents still inside one of them. My sister and I ran. Nobody else got to. That was me. Nobody else did that.

We split up after, her to the wilds and me to the cities, because two are easier to find than one. So I learned to vanish. Keep the hunger on a leash so tight it cuts, feed clean, leave nothing behind. It worked for a long time.

Her knees give out. A hand catches her jaw and turns her face up. A thumb, cut open across the pad, pushes between her lips.

And then this. I don't want it. I turn my head, or I think I do, and my mouth opens anyway. It's hot. It runs over my tongue and down, and everything in me that was shutting down wakes up at once, my fangs, my hands, my stomach clenching around nothing. I've fed on more people than I can count and none of them tasted like this. Like it was made for me. I lick the cut clean before I know I'm doing it. A few drops of blood. That's all I get, just enough to keep the cargo walking.

I hate it. I've counted every drop.

The thumb pulls away. Her mouth follows it. A thread of red is left on her lower lip, and her tongue takes that too.

I'm going under again. I'll wake up starving, I always do. And I already know whose blood I'll wake up wanting.

She was limp when they reached the manor. Bound, delivered, payment promised.

What the hunter got instead was steel to the back of the head.

They woke on cold stone beside her.

And the vampire stirred.

SUMMARY OF THE OPENINGS

The Collector's Cellar
Bound, bleeding, and locked in a cell with the starving vampire you just delivered.

"The one who wrote me... screw him. He takes ideas, so tell him this from me: next time, a slower hunter. One that doesn't taste like... damn it. Just tell him."

FROM THE CREATOR

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