It had been easy enough to get out of the fortress lair. I collected the clothing I had stashed with the intent to leave no evidence behind, and then I quickly made my way to where I had entered and simply walked out the door.

I was not particularly surprised that I had gotten out without human interference. In my experience, she was the outlier in the defense she kept on her home. Most other vampires whose lair's I breeched maintained reasonably strong defenses during the day while they believed they were vulnerable, but they did little to secure themselves at night, so completely overconfident were they in their own supremacy by darkness.

They were not entirely wrong. I would be screwed if they caught me now, so I grabbed my supplies from their hiding place and headed on my way as quickly as I could with only the light of the half moon to guide me.

I was tired, but still relieved when the sun finally broke the horizon. It was surely too soon for Ivan to discover its dead fledglings, but at least the light would make it difficult for a leech to follow me.

Pushing on, I followed a small river and washed myself and my clothing before I followed it downstream. The river eventually dropped off into a small falls and I had to abandon walking in the water in favour of climbing down a less steep way. At the bottom of the falls was a small lake, so I swam across it to make my trail again harder to follow.

At the height of the day, I finally paused to rest. Assuming that I had staked the only bloodsuckers at the fortress, I doubted any humans would dare take the initiative to hunt me down without orders for fear of being accused of attempting to flee, if they were not in fact fleeing themselves. I slept lightly, but still with a calm satisfaction that felt both foreign and new.

My initial adrenaline had worn off, but I still felt free. The fact that that demon bastard who had so coldly murdered Melissa was no longer in the world—no longer harming innocent humans—brought me greater contentment than I could remember.

Once I awoke I pushed on and found a place to hide come nightfall. I travelled for two days and lay low, simply trying to ensure that I would not be easily followed by pursuers. I had no hope that the ancient bloodsucker would simply let me go without at least trying to take his revenge on me, but if he could not discover my identity or find me, there was nothing he could do.

The next few days fell into an easy, watchful rhythm. I did everything in my power to keep myself undetectable while I waited for a potential attack from an ancient bloodsucker that I would have little defense against. When none came, I believed I was safe to assume that I had either gotten away completely undetected, or I had at least given them the slip.

I began to move in the direction of the cranky old man's hideout so that I could replace his knife. Would the weapon be able to be connected with the leeches I staked? Likely not, it was a common enough blade and I had cleaned it well. My trek continued, but oddly a sort of restlessness that was unrelated to physical movement began to prey at me in the stillness of the forest, whenever my mind was not occupied with the general acts of survival.

I knew how to keep myself alive with almost thoughtless precision. I could spot the fresh trails of game animals as easily as I could find the plants that helped keep me strong, but always before such activities had a greater purpose which was to keep me alive until I could finally take out that demonic bastard.

Now, the tasks of survival had a certain emptiness to them that I could not quite shake. It was an unsettling feeling, but it was thankfully broken by my return to the familiar area where the cranky old man occasionally stayed.

"Jamie? What the hell are you doing here?" Hadron groused when he saw me. He was greyer than the last time I had seen him, but his grey eyes were still sharp and his movements screamed he had not lost his vitality in the years since.

I grinned at the familiar greeting. Soft and gentle the man was not.

"Returning what I borrowed." I pulled the hunting knife out of the bag on my back.

He eyed me suspiciously. "Oh. So you're the thief?"

"If I were a thief, would I have brought it back?"

"Pah."

"I should warn you that I staked two leeches with it. I don't know if they have a way to prove this knife was the weapon, but..."

He took it from my hand with a glower. "I'll take my chances. Why'd you steal my knife?"

I could still not tell him that I had lost most of my supplies when I had been taken by the leeches, but a large part of me was not interested in confessing such an error to my mentor either way. "Had a mishap in the wilderness, lost a bunch of my supplies."

He grunted. "So, two leeches this time?"

"Yeah."

His eyebrows raised on his wrinkled face in the closest expression he could get to being impressed. Hadron had taught me how to fight the bloodsuckers, but he never had intentionally sought them out like I had.

"I got him, Hadron."

He froze and looked at me slowly, searching my face as if he could find evidence of the truth of what happened. "Are you sure?"

"I am."

Hadron's face broke out into a smile, something I did not think I had ever witnessed before. "Good for you, son." He slapped me on the back in a congratulatory way, and I grinned again. It felt damn good. For all his growling and grouching, he had been the closest thing I had had to a family since I had lost my own.

I did not want to leave so soon, but neither did I want to bring the leeches down on his head.

"Now that I've returned your knife, I should leave. Turns out the demon bloodsucker was made by a powerful ancient one, and if it is following me I don't want you to get caught in between."

"Screw that, boy. I'm willing to take the risk."

I let myself be lulled by his words. I was not looking forward to returning to that drawing nagging feeling that had been beginning to consume me when I had been alone.

I helped Hadron prepare a meal, and I contributed from the food I carried in my bag. My stolen supplies had run out, but I had replaced them with foraged ingredients.

We sat together around the fire with the midday sun burning down on us, and I listened to him tell me tales of his journeys the last few years. He'd had a few close calls with leeches himself, but his strategy was avoiding and hiding while reserving fighting for a last resort. It had served him well all these years as a wandering hermit, and he had taught me the tricks when he had taken me under his wing.

"How do you do it?" I asked him.

"Do what?" he grumbled.

"Survive like this?"

He eyed me. "You know how I survive. I move, I eat, I sleep. It's not complicated, is it?" He fixed me with his eye. "But you're asking something else, I'd wager. Aren't you pleased that you finally got it?"

"Of course. It's like a weight has been lifted off of me."

"Well, then be pleased and keep living."

"But why bother?" I was so used to moving forward, where was I supposed to go now that I finally managed it?

"The trick is not to think about it. I always wondered what you would do if you succeeded. Or if you were forced to understand you failed. But now, I guess I'll see."

"I could keep killing the leeches," I said, voicing the idea that had wandered through my mind when the idea of actually destroying it had been only a dream.

He shrugged. "You could, but you're going to die if you do that. It's a miracle you survived this long the way you keep running at the most dangerous thing you can find."

Another thought crossed my mind, another place I could find something to do with myself. The idea was too insane to voice, even if I had been able to speak of what I had seen.

Was there a part of me that really wanted to throw myself back under a leech's control? I must be insane.

"You could settle down with a nice woman and make another generation of humans," Hadron said with a sly look. "I'm sure the ladies like you well enough."

There was a certain appeal to the repelling thought. I did not want to breed a new generation for the damn leeches to prey on, but somewhere deep I missed belonging to a clan.

I shook my head. There was no rush for me to make a decision, so I glanced at the cranky old man who was my mentor. "Have anything new to teach me from your travels?"

"At this point don't you think you're as likely to have something to teach me as the other way around? What's your vamp count now?"

I laughed a bit at the idea that I might teach him something. Was it possible that I had exceeded my mentor in some way? "Fourteen."

"My point exactly. Seven times mine. Fourteen more than most humans. You've probably saved thousands of lives already. You've gotten your justice for your girl, maybe now it's time to do something else. If you've got nothing better to do, kid, you can travel around with me while you figure it out." He shrugged.

Deep down, I had never had certainty that I would find him, so now that I had my vengeance, what did I want beyond that?