Hunter Wars

Chapter 2

When I wake I am laying on a small hard cot. I look around me trying to get my bearings. I look around and it appears that I’m in an underground dungeon. There are no windows, and the walls are made of stone. I look to the front of me and see that there are metal bars that seem to shimmer. I walk over to the bars and reach my hand out to touch them.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a low voice calls from the shadows in the corner. I pull my hand back and look to where the voice was coming from.

The man from the club that I had sunk my fangs into walks out of the shadow pinning me in place with his violet stare. “And why wouldn’t you?” I ask him. Not wanting to take my eyes off of him for a moment.

“The bars are enchanted so that if any vampire touches them they will instantly get charred. It will feel as if you have touched the sun.”

I take a step back from the bars making sure to keep this man in my sights just in case it tries to do something stupid. “Where am I?” I ask him as I sit back down on my cot. He walks up close to the bars and stares at me.

“You are at one of our hidden locations where you won't be able to hurt anyone else.” He says with a smirk.

“What makes you think that I hurt anyone at all?” I can’t believe this hunter automatically thinks that all vampires hurt humans. If we went around just feeding off of humans willy nilly we would have them hunting us all the time. We like to make sure that humans don’t know anything about us. Sure some vampires get carried away and that’s where we got our bad image, but most of us prefer to feed out of blood bags that are from donors. We don’t want to have to go back to the dark ages where humans knew about us and thought we were all just monsters. Don’t get me wrong. There are still some out there that are monsters but the same can be said about humans, too.

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you are a blood-thirsty vampire and that is what you do. All you know how to do is feed and feed,” he says as he places a hand on the bars. “Now, we have a few questions that we would like you to answer for us. You have two choices. You can either walk on your own free will or we can place this on you.” He pulls a silver collar from a hook next to my cell. It is shimmering a little like the bars but this one has a blue shimmer instead of an orange shimmer. “This collar will hurt. I would think you would like to be a good little bloodsucker and walk on your own. If you try anything this will be on you faster than you can count to three.

I nod and stand up from the cot and head to the bars. He flips a switch on the wall and the bars stop glowing. He places a key in the door and unlocks the cell. Before he opens the door he lights up his hand with a red glow. “I’m warning you, Vampire, if you try anything I will knock you out.”

“You can try,” I reply with a smirk to him. The corner of his lip tilts up.

“I knocked you out pretty fast last night, Bloodsucker.” He tells me with a wicked glint in his violet eyes. I have never been this close to a hunter before. I had no idea how vibrant their eyes could be. I had heard that they were all different colors, but never imagined that they would be so beautiful. I mentally shake myself from that thought. I must remind myself that this is the enemy no matter how gorgeous his eyes.

“You were only able to do that because I was attached to your neck, Hunter.” I spat, looking him up and down trying to find the place where my fangs had dug into him last night. It appears that hunters can heal quickly because there is no sign at all that I had fed off of him. “Trust me I really didn’t need you to be attached to me for me to have taken you down. That just made it easier for me.” He tells me with a wink.

He opens the door to my cell and waits for me to step out. I slowly step out and stand next to him, as soon as I am next to him I see him start to stiffen as if he is anticipating me attacking him. That would be the last thing I’d do right now. I have to let him lead me around this place so I can find out how to get out of here. I must play this smart. I need to know how many hunters I am up against.

As he begins to lead me down the hall, I see that he has the collar in one hand and has his other glowing red. He doesn’t trust me any more than I trust him. I slowly let my fangs down into place. If he can have his weapons at the ready, so can I. As we enter an open room that looks to be the inside of a cave with stalagmites hanging down, I can’t help but marvel at the beauty of this room. It has a giant chandelier with candles hanging from the ceiling. This place must be very old to not have any electricity running through it. I look to the front of the room and there are five men seated on a lifted platform. Each one of them looks at me as if I am the scum that you find on the bottom of a lake.

“Johnathan, why is this vampire not wearing the collar?” the first man snarls, not taking his light purple eyes off of me.

“She agreed to come without a fight, councilman Morris,” Johnathan informs him.

“And you believed this monster?” Morris retorts, running his hand over his face in disbelief. “Place that collar on that monster now, Captain.” Captain? This man is a Captain for the hunters. This is definitely not good.

Johnathan walks over to me with the collar and whispers “I’m sorry, please don’t try to fight me on this. The sooner they get the answers they want the sooner everything will be over for you.” With a plea in his eyes, he slowly places the collar around my neck. It starts to burn. I can tell that it is made out of silver and has magic going through it. I do my best not to wince at the pain. I do not want to let them have any inkling on how much it burns. Once he has the collar in place he holds the end of the chain as if I’m some kind of animal.

I look back over to where the council is seated and they all seem to relax a little once they see that the collar is placed on me. Morris looks at me and runs his hand over his ginger-colored beard and smiles a twisted smile. The way he is looking at me tells me that I am going to have to figure out how to escape fast. Whatever these hunters have planned for me is not going to be pleasant at all.

“Now that we have you in the proper attire, tell me what your name is,” Morris commanded. He is a short, pudgy man and his fingers kind of resemble sausage links. I stay silent and just stare at him. I owe nothing to these hunters. They will not get anything out of me. Phillip has taught me that if ever captured by hunters don’t give them any information. They will use any against you and the rest of the vampire race. Thinking about Phillip sends a twist in my stomach. He is going to be so worried when I don’t come home. He is the closest thing I have to a family now. I picture his eyes and how they looked at me tonight when he had me pinned against the wall of the training room. When a little curl fell into his amazing ice blue eyes. I will stay silent so there is no way they can ever go after him.

When Morris realizes that I am not going to speak he walks down from the platform and takes the end of the chain from Johnathan’s hands. As soon as he has it I feel a jolt around my neck. It feels as if I am being electrocuted. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out in pain and level my green eyes at him. “I asked you a question, Vampire. What is your name?” he says as he gets close to my face. I stare right into his eyes. This man is only two inches taller than my 5’2”. Once again, I say nothing. I keep my eyes trained on him. I feel a stronger shock around my neck. This one causes my body to shake a little. I hold onto my resolve not to make a sound. Morris’s face starts to turn red with anger over me not speaking.

He places his face a mere inch from mine and spits “I bet you will talk tomorrow after we start to drain you of blood.” Vampires cannot die from being drained of blood, but it does make it where we cannot move, and it is extremely painful. When we are starved of blood it does make it where we can lose sight of our humanity. “Take her back to her cell, Captain. You are to stand guard over her till morning.” Morning? That means it is still night. If I can figure out how to escape, I will be able to make it home to Phillip and tell him where this place is. We will finally have an upper hand on the hunters.

Johnathan takes the end of the chain back and starts to lead me back to my cell. “Why wouldn’t you just tell him your name?” he asks as he towers a good foot over me. “I know you can speak. You had no problem talking to me earlier.” He states as we start walking. Once we have arrived at my cell he reaches over to remove the collar from my neck. As soon as he has removed it I rub my neck trying to remove the feeling of the sting that the collar left.

I walk over to my cot and sit down. I look over at Johnathan who has taken a seat in a chair right in front of my cell. “Hey, weren’t your eyes green in there?” he asks me as I just stare at him. I made the decision to not speak even to him. If I tell him anything he could run back to the council and inform them of anything I foolishly give away. “Your eyes are now blue. I didn’t know that vampires' eyes could change color.” Not all of our eyes are able to change color, just mine. They have always been able to do that even when I was human. Depending on what my mood was determined what color they were.

“Oh, come on I know you can talk, where is that smart mouth that I got a taste of earlier.” I look up at him and raise my eyebrow at his words and cross my arms over my chest. “You really aren’t going to speak to me now?” he asks. I stay silent and lean my back against the wall. He lets out a little chuckle at my stubbornness. “You know you can talk to me. I don’t bite. That’s more your thing than mine.” He starts to laugh at his own joke. I let out a little scoff at his lame joke. I mean he isn’t wrong. I do bite. He has witnessed it firsthand.

“I’ve got to say you are the first bloodsucker that has ever gotten their fangs into me,” he admits, running his hand over his jaw. It makes a little scratching sound as there is a tiny bit of stubble there. If he wasn’t a hunter, I would say he is actually kind of cute. “You’ve definitely got some skills there, Bloodsucker.” He tells me trying to get me to speak to him. I keep my mouth shut. There is no way he is going to break me to talk to him just because he is trying to be civil to me.

We sit there in silence for a while and I start to feel drowsy. This is the way I know the sun is starting to come up. A vampire’s body forces us to sleep during the day. It is kind of how we recharge for the night. I also think it is a way to keep us from turning into BBQ during the day. This does make us very vulnerable during the day though. That is why we don’t tell anyone where we hide out. Phillip and I are the only two who know where our place is. We don’t know the sleeping spot of other vampires. This is the best way to keep the vampire race safe. That way if one gets caught by hunters, like I have, we can’t give out the location of other sleeping vampires.

I feel the pull of sleep on my body and do my best to fight it. Johnathan is watching me. “Go on to sleep. No one is going to do anything to you today. They want answers from you before getting rid of you.” He states as calmly as if he was talking about the weather, and not as if they plan to kill me after they find out what they want to know. I keep fighting the pull of sleep till I can’t fight it anymore. I feel myself slump against the wall further as sleep overtakes me.