Chapter 1: No One Left To Love

HEYYY!!!

So, I read over my Chapter 1/Prologue and was absolutely horrified. Most of it doesn’t even
make sense... That’s the folly when you’re writing at eleven o’clock at night and constantly
coming up with new ideas. Haha. Well, this is the edited version, and hopefully it’s better!

I gripped Artemis tightly, the familiar feel of the wooden rod a comfort to my shaking insides.
Vampires with gleaming teeth and glowing crimson eyes were gathered around me, closing me in.
Even in my human state, I could smell the heavy stench of blood. The smell of my parents’ blood. The
walls of my family’s small cottage reeked of it. I let anger and sorrow wash over my mind in waves as
my human blood began to diminish in dominance.

My own eyes slide from their natural turquoise color into a bright scarlet as I let that vampire’s blood
become dominant.

My body is such a mystery, I thought amusedly.

Artemis vibrated in my hands, lengthening into her vampire form, a long scythe with a wickedly sharp
blade. She seemed to want to strike at my enemies. She wanted to fight. I wasn’t about to say no, and
so I jumped into battle.

So many vampires turned into dust before my eyes as I slashed them through with Artemis. But more
and more kept coming.

From the changes in scent and appearance, I could tell that the new arrivals of vampires were no
longer just half-crazed Class E’s; there were Class D vampires and even a few Class C’s surrounding me
as well. Why was I fighting them again? Oh, right. They drained and annihilated my parents. They
would do the same to my brother and me, just for my blood.

My blood. They wanted my blood. My daemon blood that could and would sear through most of them
if a drop of it touched their skin. My stupid source of life that just had to smell so bloody (no pun
intended) freaking good to be the best vampire magnet in the whole damn world.

I paused for a moment, panting and clutching a stitch in my side.

One vampire emerged from the cluster around me. From his scent I could tell he was a Class C.

“Why are you fighting when you know you’ll just die anyways? Come one, give it up already…I promise
it won’t hurt.”

I snarled. Damn noble.

Maybe he was actually trying to get me to surrender, but he had the opposite effect. He fired me up.
Not good. I could already feel the daemon blood taking the dominant hold, and my eyes slid from
scarlet to gold. Artemis morphed into a chained lance, and I thought absentmindedly about how many
years it had been since I had let my daemon form take over. The noble laughed gleefully.

“So this is what a daemon is! I’ll be glad to kill you, precisely how your entire species was killed!”

I screamed with rage. How dare he insult my father’s legacy? My fury boiled over, and I leaped at him,
Artemis slicing through the air. The noble was fast, though, and dodged in the nick of time. I landed
and pivoted, slipping slightly in the dust of now dead vampires. That and the fact that I wasn’t used to
using Artemis in this form gave the noble the upper hand. He took advantage of my unsure footing,
and his claw-like nails ripped a gash on my back that ran from my shoulder blade to my waist.

The situation just went from bad to awful.

No one would ever know what it felt like because I’m the only one who has the blood of a human
vampire hunter, a vampire, and a daemon all mixed together, but the noble’s wound triggered a
spastic change in me. I was enraged by the fact that a vampire had defiled my daemon body.

I could feel the three different True Blood lineages colliding inside my body. I felt like a hurricane was
taking place within the frail and delicate shell of my small body. I was on fire; I felt like I could shatter
and explode into a million pieces in any second.

I felt powerful.

Unbeknownst to me, my eyes shifted once more to black. I didn’t know it, but I looked terrifying. Two
pinpricks of heat formed on my back as well, and they grew hotter and hotter. I could feel my shirt
and coat burning, and I started to panic. I felt like something was ripping through my back, and with
a flash of white-hot pain, that something did.

It was a pair of wings. On my back.

But there was something wrong with them.

The right wing was a white, feathered wing of an angel, and the left was a leathery, black wing like
those of bats.

I didn’t have time to think about my newly grown wings. Artemis was shaking so hard in my hands, I
almost dropped her, which would have consequently left me without a weapon and completely
defenseless.

She was changing into something I had never seen before, but it looked like and turned out to be a
slender sword crackling with blue lightning. I licked my lips. The feeling that I was slowly losing my
sanity was taking over my mind, but I didn’t care. Every single damn one of these vampires was going
to pay for what they did to my family and me.

At this point, I knew I didn’t care whom I killed, as long as I took down everything in my way. Be it
friend or foe, he or she would die. I slashed, I danced, and I laughed with the dust of dying vampires
swirling around me.
I was completely, utterly insane.

Someone entered my field of vision. In my state, I didn’t recognize him. All I could hear was the blood
pounding in my ears, in my brain, raging in my entire body. All I could feel was rage. In place of
people and trees and anything living, all I could was their life force. It looked like black, smoke-like
tendrils that, when they died, disintegrated.

I felt that someone apply pressure to my arms, and I realized that my arms were being pinned down.
Someone was screaming something. It sounded vaguely like “Takara…come back…” Who was
Takara? I was confused, but I didn’t care. I cared only that I couldn’t move because this black
silhouette wouldn’t let me, and my fury boiled over. I ripped my arms from the person’s grip and drove
Artemis through his chest. The black smoke around him moved slower. I bared my teeth in a grin of
triumph. I was still puzzled. Takara sounded so familiar. I thought…it sounded like my name. I
paused to smell the air. The scent closest to me smelled familiar.

The realization hit me.

Takara was my name. And that scent…

A feeling of dread overwhelmed me.

I shook my head, trying to clear my sight of the black smoke. My eyes slowly lost their jet-black color
and returned to their usual soft blue-green. The smell of blood hit me smack in the face, and I froze in
my tracks, only now becoming aware of my surroundings. I was standing ankle deep in a sea of dust.
And the blood mingled with that all too familiar scent I smelled with growing horror… that blood
could only be from…

Looking down to see my brother’s gouged body was the hardest act I had ever done in my life. The
thing that made it so difficult was the fact – which I was fully aware of – that I had done it. I had
struck the death blow to my own, beloved brother.

“Aniki…” I whispered in terror.

“I’m…so glad you’re back…h-here…take Rengoku*…”he whispered back. “D-don’t cry… It’s not your
fault… I love you…stay…safe…”

He choked and coughed on his blood. He took my limp hand in his own and feebly squeezed it once
before the last spark disappeared from his forest emerald eyes.

I think I descended into madness.

I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling of my room while cold sweat trickles down my forehead. My chest
heaves with each of my breaths, which come in gasps and pants. My gut is clenched tight. I realize
that I’m scared. Actually, I’m terrified.
Because night after night, I wake up screaming. I’m not scared about fighting vampires. Heck, I
would run into a room jam-packed with purebloods screaming, “EAT ME!!!” Nah, I definitely wasn’t
scared of vampires. So what was it, then?

I was horrified that these nightly dreams were a premonition; that that day might come again. I
might lose my sanity, and just for the sake of bringing me back, someone I truly loved would die
instead of me.

Thank God everyone whom I love is dead.