The woods didn't frighten me. To a Hunter, the forest isn't a place of mystery; it's a grid. Every snap of a twig is a coordinate, every shift in the wind is a data point.
I hit the treeline at a sprint, my movements fluid and silent. I didn't need a flashlight. My eyes had been trained in pitch-black cellar rooms since I was ten, learning to track movement by the way shadows bled into each other.
The screaming stopped, replaced by a wet, tearing sound.
I slowed to a crouch, sliding behind the broad trunk of an ancient oak. Twenty yards ahead, in a clearing bathed in sickly moonlight, was a vampire I didn't recognize—some transition-era grunt, likely one of the tomb vampires starting to wake up or a drifter passing through. He was hunched over a body, his shoulders shaking with the frantic rhythm of a starving animal.
"You know," I said, stepping out into the open. "Table manners are the first thing to go, aren't they?"
The vampire snapped his head up. Blood coated his chin and chest, his eyes a jagged, pulsing red. He didn't even try to speak. He just snarled, a sound of pure, unadulterated hunger, and launched himself at me.
He was fast. To a normal human, he would have been a blur of death.
To me, that wasn't the case. He aimed for the throat. Predictable. I dropped low, the soles of my boots sliding through the damp leaves. As he sailed over me, I drove a silver-weighted knuckle into his kidney.
The vampire hit the ground with a sickening thud, let out a wheezing gasp, and scrambled back up. He looked confused. He wasn't used to his prey hitting back with the force of a sledgehammer.
"What... are you?" he rasped, his voice a jagged edge.
"I'm the guy who's going to make sure you don't see the sunrise," I said, my voice conversational. I reached into the hidden sheath at the small of my back and pulled out a short-sword dark, non-reflective steel etched with symbols that made the vampire flinch just by looking at them.
"Wait," he hissed, backing away. "I smell it on you. Your blood. It's... it's everything."
"It's a lure, you idiot," I chuckled, a cold, sharp sound that echoed through the trees. "It's designed to make you stop thinking. And look at you. You stopped thinking a long time ago."
He roared, desperation overriding his survival instinct, and charged again.
I didn't dodge this time. I stepped into the strike. I caught his clawed hand with my left, feeling the bite of his nails against my bandaged palm, and used his own momentum to spin him. With a flick of my wrist, the dark blade sang through the air.
Squelch.
The blade buried itself deep in his chest. I didn't go for the heart immediately I wanted him to feel the "Hunter's Kiss." The silver alloy on the blade began to react with the vampire venom in his system, a localized chemical burn that made him shriek.
"Kaelen! Stop!"
I didn't look back. I knew the voice. Elena Gilbert. She had followed the noise, or maybe she had followed me. Beside her was Stefan, looking like he was about to vomit from the sheer intensity of the "Singer" scent pouring off me.
"Kaelen, you don't have to kill him!" Elena cried, her face pale. "He's... he's hurt!"
I didn't pull the blade out. I leaned in, my face inches from the dying vampire's. "Hear that? She thinks you're 'hurt.' She doesn't realize you were eating a girl two minutes ago."
"Please," the vampire whimpered.
"Wrong answer," I whispered.
With a brutal twist, I shoved the blade upward, piercing his heart. He didn't turn to ash—that was a different myth—but his body went rigid, the gray veins of desiccation spreading across his skin like a fast-moving frost. I yanked the steel out, and he collapsed into a heap of dead meat.
I wiped the blade on his shirt and sheathed it, finally turning to face the "Golden Couple."
Stefan was standing in front of Elena, his fangs partially bared, his body shaking. He was fighting the urge to jump on the corpse just to get a taste of the blood I'd spilled.
"You're a monster," Elena whispered, looking at the body and then back at me.
I laughed. I couldn't help it. "I'm a monster? Elena, your boyfriend is currently two seconds away from losing his mind because I have a papercut. I'm the one who just cleaned up the thing that would have eaten you for dessert."
"He was a person once," she insisted, her voice trembling.
"And now he's a pile of fertilizer," I snapped, the easy smirk vanishing. I walked toward them, and Stefan let out a low, warning growl. I ignored him, stopping just a foot away. "Get used to it, Elena. This isn't a movie. There is no redemption arc for something that views you as a juice box. You want to stay in this world? Fine. But don't you dare judge the person keeping the monsters off your lawn."
I looked at Stefan, my blue eyes turning into chips of ice. "Control your hunger, Salvatore. Or the next time I'm in the woods, I won't be looking for drifters. I'll be looking for you."
I brushed past them, the scent of my blood trailing behind me like a taunt.
As I walked back toward town, my phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.
'You're making a mess, Kael. The Council is noticing. Don't make me come down there to clean up after you.'
I deleted the message and smirked.
"Come on down, Dad," I murmured to the night air. "The party's just getting started."