just a general warning for blood throughout before you start reading, it is a vampire story after all

"Target acquired. Agent 34, are you ready?" Josiah's intercom announced. With a determined nod, she ventured through the grass, carefully treading around the crisp leaves that threatened to announce her arrival. She crept forward, ducking under a fallen tree as she set her eyes on Mirena. The instant wave of colour she felt staring at the vampire who she was set to kill broke her heart instantly. She knew it was wrong to find a vampire attractive but it was impossible not to.

Mirena's raven locks framed her soft, pointed face and lingered down to the end of her spine. A collared black blazer covered her arms and underneath it her black turtle-neck shirt covered the remaining deathly pale skin. A slight tint of deep purple was striped on her socks: thigh-high socks to lessen the amount of leg she was displaying with her short, pleated skirt - also black. Sharp spiked metal covered her chunky black boots, their thick soles adding inches to her already tall height that was certainly much more than Josiah's 5'3". She was sure that she would only reach Mirena's shoulders at best.

As Josiah watched, she noticed what Mirena was bent over. The body of a poor, young deer - who had clearly been hit by a car - lay in front of her. A look of distaste covered her face as she bent down, digging her teeth into it's flesh and drinking the blood that she so hated. She wasn't a monster; she much preferred to drink human blood than that of innocent animals. It was only when their demise was out of her control that she would drink from them, and even then it was only if she was growing desperate. Which at that moment she was.

Hearing a quiet gasp from the bush, she looked up from her snack, wiping blood stains from her lips as she spotted Josiah - an unclear image through the prickled arms of a bush. The forest protected her head from the blaring, wicked sun, but her vision in the dark was perfect. That was definitely a human. A gorgeous one at that.

She cursed herself for thinking about a human in that way.

But she didn't make a move to kill. Had Josiah not flustered her, she would have. But Mirena was enticingly attracted to the woman's naval style uniform. It's deep red a symbol of their will to kill; to eradicate her kind. She understood that to an extent, vampires had a bad reputation in the eyes of humans. However, it didn't compare to the sheer hatred the majority of vampires felt for humans, which was far more justified and not just based on human fears and biases. It ran blood deep, and blood was an intrinsic part of being a vampire.

Upon realising she had been spotted, Josiah pulled out her gun, willing her muscle memory to kick in. It was just a tranquiliser. Of course vampires couldn't be killed with a simple shot. Mirena was needed for research. She had to be tortured to find answers about Josiah's father. The mistreatment of vampires ran through the majority of human kind, especially those like Josiah who had been personally affected by the bloodthirst of vampire kind.

At fourteen, when she was on a path to a different kind of greatness, her father was taken. The only explanation for this was that he had been abducted by vampires and eaten, letting him vanish off the face of the planet forever. Leaving no trace behind except for his orphaned daughter who would be adopted by the worlds most advanced team of Vampire Hunters. Red Death.

A simple course of training - spanning over four years - set Josiah up perfectly and she was recruited as their best agent. She'd been on a few missions since joining, but none involved her killing or torturing directly. Mirena was meant to be her first but she couldn't bring herself to pull the trigger. The relief coursed through Mirena's weakened bones, and she slowly turned, sprinting back to her little cottage deep, deep in the dark, rotten forest.

"Agent 34. What happened?" Her head officer questioned that night. Josiah shook her head, unsure of how to respond. She had failed for the first time, on the most important mission yet. "Chin up. Don't slouch." His slender hand tilted her head up, lighting her chin on fire as he slipped his unwanted touch away.

"I slipped. Missed the shot" She lied.

He sighed. "No, you didn't." Lucas wasn't a horrible man, he was quite nice as far as head officers of Red Death went. Especially the male ones. He could be tough but he'd never lay a hand on Josiah or even threaten to. He could torture a vampire as a coldblooded man but he could never hurt a human in the same way.

That's where they differed.

Josiah could and would hurt both unless she felt a deep attraction or connection to them. Lucas, she couldn't lay a hand on. Dillon, however. Well, he was irrelevant. Gone. A past tense thanks to the sleek and tormenting hands of Josiah.

"You have to get past this stupid connections thing." Lucas said, rolling his eyes in distain.

"I can't." she admitted. She thought it was pathetic. She would never make a coldblooded Red Death killer if she couldn't kill someone she found attractive or simply felt good vibes from. That was her drawback. Other than that she was the perfect agent and would make an amazing asset to the team.

"You can do this, 34. It's got to be you." he confirmed. She almost objected, knowing it would be impossible for her to shoot and torture Mirena, but she didn't. It was harder for her to say no. "We'll just try again."

She shook his hand, thanking him for his grace before standing up and heading to her dorm.

Back in her side of the forest, Mirena opened the door to her broken cottage. Plants surrounded the ground outside, a stark contrast to the dead leaves and trees that were nearby. If it could be seen from above, it would look almost like a circle of growth. The border between her self-claimed garden and the rest of the forest would be clear and intruding until it was almost unpleasantly stark. A small patch of greenery in a wasteland of rot. Except it couldn't be seen from above because of the close placement of trees ensuring that no light could leave or get in.

With a sigh, she glanced at the bowl of meat that she left for her cat, still completely full and a sign of her precious Peeve's disappearance. It was a week since she had seen him, and concern for his location flickered in and out of her mind. She knew how dangerous the forest could be - especially during certain seasons. It wasn't clear which season was which, because the light failed to enter at any time and the entire forest was too dead to allow for any indication of time based on the colour of the leaves. She just knew that for weeks on end it wasn't safe to leave, not to go deeper into the forest or to go closer to the outskirts.

That was where she was that day - the outskirts of the forest. She went to find some food because her previous stash had been finished too quickly by her not rationing herself enough and with the sudden addition of Peeve into her life. She lucked out finding that deer in some ways, but also felt awful for drinking the blood of that poor animal. She had to eat but she hated doing it from animals. If she wasn't so flustered she wouldn't have had to go back the next day and drag it home, leaving a trail of much needed blood behind her which brightened up the forest grounds. 

Back in the dorms, Josiah was lying awake on her rickety top bunk. The metal creaked whenever she tried to roll over, which was very inconvenient as she was struggling to find the right position to get her beauty sleep. She couldn't stop thinking about her encounter form earlier and what it meant for her future. If she was to leave the agency, or be kicked out for her failure, where would she go? She knew she couldn't leave. Not after all they had done for her with her father's disappearance, but she also knew that there were certain missions she simply could not do. "Well, what about Lucas' job?" she thought. Maybe, just maybe, she would get a job in head office and not lose her place in Red Death. It was her home, her family, her uncomfortable bed. It was all she had.

"Get to sleep, dumbass." Athena kicked from underneath her. Feeling her entire bed jolt, Josiah clutched the sheets, willing the metal to not collapse. "You know Lucas is gonna kick your ass tomorrow in training."

Josiah leaned over the edge, making sure to distribute her weight evenly so that the bed didn't topple over. "Fuck up." she spat. Athena rolled her deep brown eyes, rolling onto her other side and pulling her duvet over her head so that only some of her afro was forcing it's way into the air. Josiah knew that Athena was right, and she quickly fell asleep to the delightful thought of the hundreds of reps Lucas would force her to do the following morning.

"Come on, 34." Lucas encouraged. "Ten more then you're done." He stood carefully, holding his hands out to spot Josiah as she tried to complete her last ten reps. He'd made her keep adding weight to the ends of the bars and then towards the end forcing her to reach 100 reps with no breaks on her old PR. Sweat dripped down her forehead and her light grey t-shirt was stained a deeper colour. Her muscles burned. She knew she deserved it. Lucas gave her the illusion of letting her away with failing but he had other ways of expressing his anger. He was a ruthless trainer when he had to be.

With a final grunt, she hoisted the bar up, putting it onto the rack and shaking off her arms. Lucas smiled softly, his thick grey eyebrows raising slightly in amusement as she rested. "Up you get mate. You're going camping."

"What the f-"

"Language, 34. You know my old man ears can't handle it out of you youths." He ran a hand along his smooth head, as if to flex his baldness against my dripping wet dark brown hair. "Camping alone in the forest, God I'd hate to be you." He chuckled, faking a shudder as I took off my sweaty top and shoved it in his face.

"Take that, dickwad." Josiah teased. keeping it there for a few seconds before removing it and laughing as he coughed.

"Practicing your torture methods?" Athena chuckled, adding some more weight to the bars and scooping Josiah into her arms to forcefully move her. Josiah kicked against Athena's stomach, groaning as her toes ended up in more pain than Athena's rock hard abs.

"Put me down!" she squealed, punching Athena's shoulder to no avail. After a moment, she was finally returned to the ground and Athena took her place on the bench easily starting off her reps much heavier than Josiah finished. Her dark skin was pulled tight around the bulging muscles that covered her forearms, much to Josiah's admiration. In many ways, she idolised Athena. She had been the one to find her on the streets that horrible day when her dad never returned home. She was alone, a child, and terrified. Her dad had vanished. And then a mysterious adult scooped her up, essentially swooping in and mothering her, teaching her the ways of vampire hunting and the true nature of vampires. Convincing her they were at fault for her fathers death. 

They were evil.

No run in with a gorgeous, tender vampire would ever dissuade her of her low opinions on their kind and her high opinions on humanity. She was going to make sure of that so she set off on her lonesome adventure into the deep, dark, dead forest.