The Dark Wind

Chapter 1

As the light from the moon clung tight to my frame, like a girl hugging her teddy bear tight, I crouched, watching silently. The Hunter was walking down the street carefully, stalking and trying to hide in the shadows himself, even though he knew that I could see him with my night vision. Strapped at his back was a long stake, but it was just a decoy, since I saw the stiffness at his forearm, that held the smaller stake that was probably made from the sturdy wood of a white ash tree.

Without a doubt, the Hunter must have studied his opponent species very well. Rarely any hunters nowadays knew what it was that really hurt my kind and it was actually a surprise that this hunter knew. Well, there had to be a reason why the ones of my kind spoke the Hunter with a tone of respect and awe, despite being his natural enemy.

I watched as the Hunter stopped in the middle of the long street, still in a defensive stance as he waited for me to move. Both of us knew that he was here for a reason: To end my long life, and to rid my town of the ruling nightstalker. Not so fast, buddy.

“Leave, Hunter, and you will not be hunted after. I will not view this as an act of cowardice, but the result of a clever mind.” I said, projecting my voice just nice, so that my voice bounced against the walls of the buildings that surrounded him, that he couldn’t get a hint on where I was actually watching him from. Careful to stay in the shadow, I laid down languidly on the ledge of the building I was atop, stretching.

Thankfully, my breakfast had been finished before my trusty second-in-command, Faith, had barged through the door, crying out that the Hunter had finally reached my town, and was demanding for my presence. I figured that since I had a bunch of time on my hands, I could check this famous Hunter out.

After all, there were very few hunters still brave enough to stand up against me. Any hunter had to know my name. Knowing my name, my strength was almost the basic requirement to enter organizations now, I heard.

The blood from my breakfast settled quietly in my stomach as I stared up at the full moon, admiring her beauty. I was born under this full moon, the very same moon that watched over me when I was turned into a nightstalker too. This moon was almost like a guardian angel to me, watching over me without fail every month, as if she were checking on me.

“I came here with a reason, and I shall complete my objective before I turn away, Nightstalker.” The Hunter’s voice was surprisingly high, almost reaching the soprano level as he spoke up, letting his words echo.

“Your objective is to end my long life, is it not, Hunter? I say it not possible for today, so why don’t you turn away, and come back some other time, when I’m feeling like ending my life?” I didn’t bother with the projecting of voice this time, twirling a lock of stray black hair that blew across my face.

“I did not come here from so far, just to turn away, Nightstalker, Keeper of this domain.” The Hunter seemed unfazed as his voice kept leveled. Kudos to him; he didn’t even sound slightly strained when he spoke. It was odd for a hunter to not tremble in my presence, but, again, he was the Hunter.

I rolled from the ledge of the building, feeling gravity pull my body downwards to the street. However, I twisted in mid-air, landing perfectly and lightly on the balls of my feet just a few steps away from where the Hunter had stopped. He was pointing the tip of his stake at me, but I only kept his eyes with mine.

Damned, but he was gorgeous. He had totally chewable lips, my height, and a perfect model-like face. His shoulders were so broad that I was sure he could just swallow my body up if he hugged me. And I wasn’t a petite girl myself. His muscles were clearly well toned as he stood before me, tensed up. But he wasn’t bulky with muscles. No, in fact he was lean and slim, and his tight-fitting black shirt hugged onto his abs as if they were stick-ons.

Wake up, Dru. You’re staring down the stake of a hunter’s, the well-known Hunter no less, and here you are, fantasizing about getting his pants off?

My mind chided me as I shook myself back to reality, jerking my roaming eyes back to his flat black ones. And then my mind went blank again as I stared into those eyes.

There was something in those eyes, a fire. But the fire didn’t explain the crazy depth in his eyes that never seemed to end, the ensnaring ability of it as I stared into those eyes of his. The color of darkness, the different shades of black, swirled and danced with each other within his eyes, creating a perfect picture.

“Xavier Valentino, will you, or will you not leave my domain? Speaking as the Keeper of this domain, I have given you enough respect, as a lowly hunter, to converse with me. This is my last warning to you: leave.” My voice was even, though I knew that the Hunter wouldn’t back down. Too many a times I’d heard rumors of how the Hunter, once on his prey, would never stop until his prey had been staked through the heart. Never once had I challenged that theory; until now.

“I stand by my point. I came here with a reason, and I shall not leave until then.” The Hunter, though seemingly a little shocked that I knew his name, didn’t back down as I’d expected him not to. His hard black eyes stared back into mine, lips tightly pressed in a stiff line as I took a few steps backward, backing away from the proximity between us. There was reason I was never physically close to anyone for a long period of time, and there wasn’t going to any exception here.

I felt out with my power, trying to scan for any signs of life around us. The humans were long gone from this area of the town, with all the rumors and talk of a disease spreading in this area. I’d tried my best to get them to return to this area, but so far it hadn’t been that successful.

None of my nightstalkers were around: they were all huddled in the nightclub I’d set up for them, hiding away from the Hunter while I stood by myself against him. There had been talks that the Hunter had been close by, looking for me, and once he reached, my nightstalkers had scampered into the folds of my curtains, pushing me to frontline of the attack. But hey, what complains could I make? I’d claimed the post of the Keeper of Seattle, there was no way I could put off something like this for some other day.

Slowly, keeping my movements smooth, my actions, seen by the tensed hunter, I withdrew the two simple daggers hanging from the specially made holster at the back of my pants, palming them carefully in each of my hands, taking one last step back. We weren’t in the best of range for a fight, but I’d made up the disadvantage after honing on my combat skills for quite some time.

“If you are as good as they say, Hunter Xavier, you can be defeated by with the three daggers of mine.” I kept my voice smooth as the wind stirred around us, tugging at the edges of my hair. It always happened to me before any fights, as if the wind was trying to cheer me on. But I knew why it always happened. There was a very good reason why.

A slow, seductive smile formed on the hunter’s slips as he drew out his own dagger as carefully as me, one stake in one hand; the dagger in the other.

“And if you’re as good as your fellow nightstalkers say, you will be defeated by my stake and dagger.” He announced in the same surprisingly high voice. I found it slightly weird that it sounded more melodious instead of annoying. I’d never heard of a voice like that before. Well, there was someone else, but…

I jerked my mind back to reality as the hunter started the battle. With a skilled, calculated lunge at me, he took a quick swipe at me with his stake as I dodged, blocking his dagger with mine as he swung it down at me, aiming to chop off my head. Boy, he wasn’t playing around; not even giving me a chance to warm up. But the Hunter probably knew that he wasn’t playing on fair odds, and was trying his best to keep it level. Here we were: the infamous and notorious Hunter, Xavier Valentino, facing off against me, the famous and dangerous Dru.

Recognizing his display of Chinese kung fu as he swung around quickly, keeping his stance stable, I flipped the daggers in both my hands, till the blade of the daggers were running down the length of my forearm. I worked better with the blades –and my hands –close to me.

The hunter made no sound as he ran forward again. This time, I didn’t dodge his attack as I matched each of his blows. I kept myself on the defensive, taking my time to studying out his fight moves and patterns. He was ranging between Chinese kung fu, taekwondo, Krav Maga and Muay Thai, switching between each of them skillfully. Without fail, he executed each change of martial arts fluidly as he struck out furiously at me.

Sparks flew again as his dagger lunge towards my heart was blocked by both my daggers. I rolled to the side, barely missing the stake that came swinging, planning to plunge into my body through my side. Lashing out, my leather boots came in contact with the large expanse of his back as I sent him flying across the streets.

Yet, unlike any human, he managed to turn himself skillfully in mid-air, landing on the floor with the grace of a cat before he started running towards me. An angry growl touched his throat as he thrust his stake towards my abdomen, his dagger slicing downwards, hoping to get a shot at my left shoulder. With my hands fisted over the handle of the dagger, I lashed out a hard punch at the hand holding the stake, pushing the blade of the dagger away from my forearm to meet the hunter’s dagger.

The loud ‘clink’ lasted only a second as I finally made my move. Keeping myself low, I ducked beneath his broad shoulders as his weight propelled him forwards to me. While my left hand was kept busy by his dagger, my right hand swung straight towards his chest, meeting his sternum in a hard punch.

But, instead of wheeling away, struggling for his next breath as I’d just punched the air out of him, his stake came swinging up at me, aiming straight for my heart. I jerked to the side, but the stake managed to draw a line of blood on my left forearm as I jerked away, rolling away from his range. Pain started bubbling up my arm, but I ignored it, my mind only in the battle. There was something about this hunter that made him so different.

I’d met hunters who were as skilled as him in martial arts before. I’d met hunters who were filled with a wide arsenal of nightstalker-killing weapons before. I’d even met hunters of my own kind, hunting down on their fellow nightstalkers for money. All those; I’d met. But not this. There was something really wrong with Xavier, something I couldn’t put a finger on. The way he seemed to push through all of the attacks I’ve landed on him, the way he lunged, seemingly knowing that I wouldn’t lunge back; it was odd.

But I knew my limits. Taking the distance between us for good use, I took the time to withdraw the last of my daggers from its holster at my waist. I’d thought that I could take him down with two. But I was wrong; so it was time to take out the third. The third was unlike the two simple daggers before it. The third dagger had a hilt encrusted with fancy diamonds that I’d been trying to dig out, a blade carved with inscriptions or words of ancient languages.

The third dagger had stuck with me through thick and thin, and had been in almost every major fight I’d been in.

As Xavier’s eyes landed on the new weaponry I’d withdrawn, I reorganized myself. There was no way I could make another hand appear from my body to hold the third dagger. No, I wasn’t planning on that either; it would be plain freaky. I put the handles of the two simple daggers hilt-to-hilt, gripping them both from their hilt as one faced upwards, one faced down.

After all, everyone was used to people fighting with two daggers. Who knew I could play around with three?

Before Xavier had anytime to understand what I was trying to do, I put on my heightened speed, closing the distance between us in a heartbeat and started raining a flurry of blows down on him. He was forced into defensive as he blocked my blows skillfully, with him trying to wedge in countering blows in between. However, I gave him no chance to do it as I went heavy on him, each blow feigning one blow after another.

Yet, he met each my blows with his own defense, keeping us in a deadlock as I continued lashing down at him. As I registered my own shock at his ability to survive this long, where no one had been able to survive thus far before, he continued blocking my blows, his calculative gaze landing everywhere.

I spied an opening near his left shoulder and made a quick feign with the double-daggers on my right hand. He fell for the decoy, as I threw my weight forwards, my trusty dagger burying deep in his shoulder muscle as I drove it in.

However, it was miscalculation on my part as I lost my balance. Painfully, I came barreling straight into the hunter as he, taken by shock, lost his balance. Together, we both fell to the ground, me atop him, before I realized that my right hand was hanging dangerously over his right shoulder, starting to slide down the arch of his chest, towards his neck.

My hand was sliding towards his face.

That thought jolted through me like electricity as I tried to roll away from him, trying to jerk my hand away. However, a warm hand closed over my left wrist, the strong arm I’d fell upon, connected to the still-bloodied and impaled shoulder, pulled me in close to his body. His leg twisted around in mine, his heel slamming down on my ankle so that I couldn’t get my feet back flat on the ground. Panic surged through me as I tried to jerk away my right hand, which was still sliding down.

The cold, sharp tip of his dagger touched the base of my throat, but the panic that coursed through my veins wasn’t over my imminent death. His right arm was holding on to the dagger, keeping it at my throat, and it was blocking my right hand’s exit away from his body. Furthermore, it was pushing my hand closer and closer down the curve of his chest muscles.

It was pushing my hand towards his face.

“I’ve won, Keeper.” He announced as I started to tremble, not because I was staring at the face of Death, but because my hand was getting dangerously close to his face. I forced my fingers to not twitch, lest they touched his earlobe, but it didn’t change that fact that my hands were just a hair away from his face. My trembling got a little worse when I felt the warmth brushing against my right fingers, which made no use as the trembling, brought my hand closer towards his face.

Shit, I had to calm down, and I had to calm down quick.

“P-Please l-l-let m-m-my hand g-g-go.” I couldn’t help but stutter, throwing away the image of the strong Dru I was. I didn’t give a shit or even the slightest crap of what the other nightstalkers worshiped about me. I didn’t even leave a single brain cell to the knowledge of the rumors all around the world about my reputation.

All I wanted was to get my freaking hand away from his freaking face. And it didn’t help one bit that I was freaking out and trembling so hard that my hand was inching closer to his face involuntarily.

I tried to summon the wind to my will again, and though the wind answered me, my panic kept the wind from forming into a force great enough to push him away. I tried to summon the air to my will, but, even if I choked the Hunter to death, I still had to move away, while keeping my hands away from his face.

The only one choice was to throw away what pride I had and beg for the hunter to let my hand go. That, or let him kill me before my hand touched his face.

Right now, in desperation of getting my hand away, I was quite willing for the latter.

Anything; I would do to get my hand away from his face.

“What’s wrong? It’s not like someone like you to…” Xavier said, and it was the wrong thing to do, because my hand slid the last distance. I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing myself.

I touched his face, and my mind exploded.

I screamed.