JAEGER

I have a secret, one that could easily get me killed, one that's forced me to hide in the shadows all my life. I've been a target since I came out of my mother's womb, since I took my first breath I've had people who wanted to end my life...

For the first 10 years of my life, I had been on the run, that was until I faked my death... well, more like I escaped my death. My mother and I used to go from village to village, living in each for no more than 3 months for fear of being found, and also because that was how long it took for the villagers to turn on us.

"He'll kill us all!" They used to say, "once he grows up and realises what he truly is, he'll kill us all!"

My mother went through hell because of me, because of what I was. She couldn't settle, she couldn't make friends even if she tried, and she never got rest because the villager's threats never ceased to unnerve her. I wondered why my mother never just left me, it was my fault that she had been living such a tough life after all. It was because of me that she got constant threats.

I always walked around with my face half-covered for fear of detection. My mother knew better than to think of the villager's warnings as empty threats, but the day they came through with their threats was the day we were unprepared.

My mother had been sick that day, weak. She and I had been asleep until the smell of smoke woke us up. Our cottage was on fire, and the villagers were cheering. They threw flammable materials and liquids into and all around our home, making the smoke and flames rage more and more. The smoke was so thick that I could barely make out the figure of my mother as she pointed. I finally managed to follow her finger to where she pointed to a window. 

It was a small window at the back that was big enough for me to squeeze through, but not big enough for my mother. I shook my head, tears falling down my ash-covered face. I called out to her above the cheers, not wanting to leave her but when she responded, her voice was weak and I had to lean closer to hear her.

"My sweet son," she said, "please go, you can survive this and—"

"There's nowhere to go!" I cried in response, "I have nothing but you mother, I'll have nothing if I leave you. I have no purpose, no family, nothing. I don't belong here mother, I don't belong anywhere."

"You're supposed to be here," she said, her tone sharper and desperate as the flames grew. "You were born for a reason." She cupped my face in her hands, "you, my son, need to make sure something like this doesn't happen to anybody else again, not humans, not vampires. You need to treat them all the same. You need to end—"

Half the roof crumbled down to the ground, the noise drowning out her words. "Promise me," she begged, her voice louder and more urgent. "Promise me!"

"Okay, I—I promise. I promise. But mother I—"

"Please, go." She pulled me into a strong, tight hug. "I'll always love you," she whispered before pushing me away, urging me to leave. 

And I did.

That was how I lost my mother, at the hands of humans. As for my father, I never knew him, I had only heard of him. He died at the hands of vampires. Despite the conflict between humans and vampires, both my parents died at the hands of their own kind. They both died trying to protect me because of what I was.

An Impurity.

My father, Rafe, was of high rank. He was the brother of the Zas. They were twins, but not identical. He was revered by all but his brother, Erebus. He was the Zas at the time and was more feared than admired, he was a tyrant with a bitter, cruel personality. 

Erebus despised humans, and this hate he had transferred to his son, Perseus, my cousin. When Erebus heard that his own brother had reproduced with a human, he found the act to be a sin that could only be dealt with death, and he put it upon himself to deliver that punishment himself.

His hate for humans made him kill his own brother, my father. My father, however, wasn't the only one who lost the fight, they both did. Erebus got his sword through my father's heart first, but my father was determined to kill him, not wanting to let him live and remain as the Zas because of how unworthy he was of such a title. 

The stories say that my father dropped his weapon, but what he did next was one of the greatest and most impossible things anyone had ever seen or heard of. He walked forward, allowing the sword to pierce deeper through him then once he was at the hilt he brought a hand back, broke off the blade and stabbed it through his brother's heart before his own heart stopped beating. 

They say that his refusal towards leaving his brother to continue to rule any longer was what had kept him holding on, that his spirit couldn't leave his body until he had accomplished his task. Then once he did, his spirit left his body.

Perseus then inherited his father's title and became the Zas, but he also inherited his father's hatred for humans, and the only thing he hated more than humans was me. Because I was an offspring of a human and a vampire. An Impurity. The villagers may have thought I had died alongside my mother, but I had a feeling Perseus didn't. The fact that my body hadn't been found beside my mother's was enough to rouse suspicion.

Well, I was alive, but I was dead inside. I was more than just an Impurity, I was an outcast, a mistake. Nobody seemed to care about me, so I decided I wasn't going to care about anyone. I did what my mother told me to do before she died, what I had promised her. I hadn't heard the last part of her sentence but I figured it out. She had told me to treat vampires and humans the same and to end their lives. So that was what I did, starting with that village.

Because I looked more human than anything else, I blended in and killed them off one by one. Every day there was one down until there were none. I killed the ones I recognised, the ones that were there that day, giving them a slow and painful death. 

When vampires started roaming near the villages, I started killing with a mask and a cloak to hide my identity. They thought the disgraceful Impurity was dead, and I planned to keep it that way for as long as I needed. I only removed my mask in one situation which was when I needed to blend in to get into a village.

I developed quite the reputation and was known as "The Masked Slayer," among the humans, and "The Fake Vampire," among the vampires.

I remained hidden and alone for years but at some point, the vampires picked up on how the numbers of villages were slowly dropping because of me, and they made use of that. It was because of me that they came up with the idea to kill off the villages, starting with those that had low numbers.  

They had struck countless villages already, but I was at Tergisus when I first saw them strike. It came as a surprise to me as well as to the village. They came as a pack, getting rid of every single human until there were none left, it was a blood bath. The healthier-looking humans were drunk to death, while the others were slaughtered and thrown into the river.

I decided to leave the scene from my position in the tree, knowing that if I was spotted I wouldn't survive, not with the number of vampires there were. I reached the other side of the river when I noticed a vampire drinking the blood of a human girl. She must have managed to escape from Tergisus somehow. I paused and watched, the effect of the bite had already paralysed her so she was already a goner like the others. 

I made to continue on my way until I noticed a vampire already on the ground near them. It was a Supreme. That girl had managed to take out a Supreme. I looked at her and the vampire again and then noticed that the vampire drinking her blood was a Quearus. My favourite. All humans and vampires were a threat, but when it came to vampires targeted the deadlier ones, the ones of higher rank.

I enjoyed taking out Quearus' because they were second in line to the Zas. He was a tyrant just like his father, so I felt pleasure taking out those who worked beneath him. I hated humans, but not like he did. I was at least capable of showing mercy, but he wasn't, and the bloodbath back in Tergisus was evidence of that.

I gracefully leapt off the tree and tackled the Quearus, directing all my anger and bitter feelings toward it. It was fast, but not fast enough to get me down because of how agile I was. Being an Impurity, I didn't inherit all the abilities of vampires because I got genes from my mother as well as my father.

Most of my physical features I got from my mother, besides the fangs, those I got from my father, as well as my agility, sense of accuracy, hearing capabilities, and speed, though most vampires were faster than me. I couldn't heal like they could though, and neither could I avoid getting sick. I wasn't as strong as they were so I couldn't break people's bones like twigs, which was why I always fought with a sword. My vision wasn't as complex as theirs was either. I was human in some way, and vampiric in some way.

Once the Quearus was in a position where its heart was exposed, I stabbed my sword through its chest and into its heart, and just as I did, I heard a thud behind me. I looked back just in time to see a vampire fall to the ground behind me, a dagger lodged in the back of its chest. I turned toward the girl. She had killed it before it got close to me. I couldn't help but be impressed with her aim. 

She looked too young to be able to have accuracy and skill like that. She was thin, with dirt smeared across her brown skin. Her hair was short and messy and there was a look in her eyes that made her seem older than she was, but I was surprised that there was no hint of fear in those brown eyes of hers. She wasn't shaking or screaming, or slowly moving away from me, she just sat there looking back at me like I was another person. Nobody had looked at me with an expression other than fear before, and yet here this girl was, simply looking at me, and I didn't know whether I liked that or not. 

I was the Masked Slayer, I had lived too long running away from and fearing others, which was why I decided to turn the tables. People started running away from me and fearing me, and I felt safer like that, knowing no one would ever take advantage of me again.

I probably would have killed the girl if she hadn't just helped me out, but the speck of gratefulness in her eyes had me reconsidering. 

"You just saved yourself," I told her, making sure she didn't misunderstand. "I was planning on finishing you off after this Quearus, but I can't do that now."

I wouldn't kill her, but I wouldn't let her go unscathed either. So I decided to return her dagger to her, aiming close to her face in a way that the blade would cut her cheek. It did. Satisfied, I turned to leave but when an image of the attack on Tergisus suddenly flashed in my mind I paused.

I had no doubt worse attacks than this one would take place in the future. The vampires would wipe out all the humans in no time if this continued. I told myself I didn't care, that humans were just as heartless as vampires and deserved to die. 

But not all of them, the human part of me whispered in the back of my head. Oh, how I hated that part of me sometimes.

There were innocents, there were the few who didn't need to pay for the sins of the other humans. They didn't know that the vampires planned to kill them off one village at a time, they didn't have a fighting chance. With an inward groan and great pain, I gave the human girl a little tip of the next village they planned to attack, making sure to tell her not to visit too soon lest they encounter the vampires and die in the process. 

When I dismissed her with a threat, I was nothing short of surprised when she didn't leave and threw her dagger at me. I just managed to dodge it but it grazed my thigh. I glared at the girl and found her in a fighting position, her sword at the ready. I had never seen a human so bold. So unafraid. So stupid. 

She knew who I was and yet she decided to throw a dagger at me. She wanted to kill me. I didn't know whether to be amused or shocked at the ignorance of this human. She had almost just died at the hands of a Quearus, and I had just killed that Quearus, so what made her think she would win against me?

I drew my sword. If she wanted a fight, I would give her a fight. 

She was more skilled than I expected, but she played on the defence more than anything, shuffling backwards as I advanced. Deciding I was done with this little game, I hit her sword out of her hand but before I could run it through her, she suddenly screamed. 

I made the mistake of looking back but I wasn't expecting her to suddenly hold onto me like some child, but when she placed a dagger against my back, I stilled. Smart. She was smart in the most idiotic way possible. I knew what she was planning, what she hoped I would do, and her tactic worked. I ran.

I was more concerned about the vampires approaching than anything else, so even with her wrapped around me, I ran through the forest. 

I halted suddenly, in a way that threw her off of me. Never in my life had I met somebody so... different. Different in a way that made me curious. Different in a way that made me wonder whether she had a brain problem or was simply normal in an abnormal way. Different in—

No, I couldn't humour such thoughts. She wasn't afraid of me, that much was clear, and I couldn't have that. There couldn't be someone who wasn't afraid of me, I had been afraid of humans for so long, and now it was their turn to fear me. All of them had to fear me.

 I unsheathed my dagger, but before I could do any harm a dagger lodged into my hand and I roared from the pain. I whipped my head around, my eyes fixed in the direction where the dagger had come from, and it wasn't long before several Vanquishers appeared through the covering. I sneered, knowing I didn't have enough weapons to fight them all off.

I hated having to run away, but I had already been struck so I knew I had to leave because I didn't heal as fast as vampires did, and my wounds would only be a liability on my part.

****

The girl took my advice and visited Gereb, and it took some weeks but the humans finally figured it out. I was pleased because it had foiled the vampire's plans. 

The vampires began residing in the villages they had rid of humans, and I found myself at Tergisus again, spying on the vampires settling there. I thought it would only be fair if I took out one vampire a day because their numbers were triple the human numbers anyway, and I was about to start there and then until I heard a disruption in the woods.

It was the girl again, but she wasn't alone this time.

"Are you incapable of not sneaking out? Do you have to piss me off every month?" Questioned a Vanquisher.

"I should be allowed to—" started the girl.

"You're not 21!" Shouted the Vanquisher, "to join the hunter Vanquishers, you have to be 21."

I stood on the outskirts of the forest, waiting for them. They were walking slower than I would have liked, but their conversation was interesting enough that I didn't mind. The girl climbed a tree, forcing me to filter behind the leaves. She had been assigned as a Snipe, meaning she would stay behind and watch while the others advanced. 

I jumped from my spot in the tree before they could cross the bridge that led to Tergisus. They knew who I was, I could see their fear, and I could tell they wanted to attack, but they hesitated. If they entered Tergisus, they would alert the vampires and that would only make it harder for me to kill any. I preferred doing things stealthily and taking my targets by surprise, it was less bloody that way.

"Leave," I ordered them. "While you still have all your numbers."

One bold but very stupid Vanquisher decided to leap at me, and it wasn't even discreet, he just jumped right at me, sword in hand. I wasn't in the mood to fight all of them, though I had enough weapons to. I took out a throwing knife from within my cloak and threw it at the Vanquisher. It hit his arm, and a sharp cry broke out of him. It was unnecessarily loud and I feared the other vampires heard it, meaning I wouldn't be able to sneak up on them like I had wanted to.

I grabbed the knife from the Vanquisher's arm and slit his throat, but only because he wasn't shutting up. If they attracted the other vampires, they were all as good as dead.

"Leave," I repeated. "Now."

The Vanquishers didn't give in, instead, they attacked, and I had no choice but to defend myself. One Vanquisher gave a battle cry which was turned into a gurgle as one of my blades lodged in his throat. 

Who battle cried anymore anyway?

I dodged every single attack thrown at me with ease. Some of them, however, got lucky and managed to get in a cut or two, but that didn't stop me, and that was nothing compared to what I did to them. My sword went right through one and stabbed the unlucky bastard who was right behind him. I killed two with one pleasing strike.

If they stopped attacking, I could stop attacking too. And if they stopped making noise, I could stop having to shut them up.

I noticed the girl in the tree loading her bow and aiming it toward me, waiting for an opening to shoot. I would just dodge once she released the arrow, no big deal, but it was taking her an awfully long amount of time to release the arrow, and it wasn't an easy task to focus on the Vanquishers as well as on her in the tree, the tree which she suddenly started climbing down.

I had been too focused on her that a Vanquisher I hadn't seen the attack coming from behind me, not until I heard the sound of two swords clashing. It was the girl again. She had intercepted an attack that another Vanquisher had thrown.

"There are others," she said quickly, "there is a whole lot of them, much more than we expected, much more than our meagre numbers can handle. If we had gone there, we would have died for sure because of how outnumbered we are. The Masked Slayer... was trying to save us?" The last part was more of a question than a statement.

She had her back to me, and I could guess that every fibre in her body was telling her to turn around. I had killed seven of their Vanquishers after all. The Vanquisher finally gave in after seeing the figures in the distance himself, but I didn't doubt that they would just come back later once they had more numbers and a better plan. 

The Vanquisher glanced at me and only when I sheathed my weapons did he begin to leave. The girl started to follow the others as they made their way to the vehicles. 

I quickly wrapped an arm around her neck and held a blade against her back, stopping her in her tracks. The Vanquishers unsheathed their weapons and I threw a dangerous look in their direction, letting them know that if they attacked I wouldn't hesitate to push my blade in her back.

"Just so you know," I started in her ear, slowly moving the blade up to her neck. "It was not my intention to save you. I would never dream of saving any human life, so don't go thinking I'm on your side. I'm on nobody's side. Understood?"

"And don't go thinking I'm on your side either," she retorted. "This is the second time I've saved your life, Masked Slayer."

She really wasn't afraid. 

She was reckless yet wise because I felt the tip of her arrow against my stomach. She somehow managed to pull the string of the bow and if I stabbed her, she would release the arrow. Something like that would slow down a vampire, long enough for her team to kill it, but she didn't know that that would kill me since I wasn't a full vampire. 

I slowly removed the blade from against her neck and she walked away, turning around so her arrow was aimed directly at me. When she was among her Vanquishers she suddenly released the arrow. I dodged it, but I couldn't help my chuckle. It was a foreign sound. 

The girl may not have been afraid of me, but she clearly didn't trust me, which was something at least. 

That wasn't our last meeting either, I made sure of it this time.