Skull And The Fangs

200 years later

New Amsterdam is now New York.

Late in the Autumn night, Kylian was in his library.

The place where he spends many of his time, in the middle of maps he had drawn, sketches that pronounced his past, beside a shelf that held scrolls, books and documents that contains elixirs, that had dark histories and unnatural backstories.

Before him was his heavy, thick and old diary. On the diary, his pen danced.

"No hunters. No vampires hunting me. No frenzy. No massac-" 

Memories flashed in his head and the pen shook along with his pale white hand, making him stop for a while. 

Then he continued on a new line. "No running around."

"The longest rest I ever had, it is. It felt like paradise."

Kylian finalised the scribble in his diary and dropped the pen.

Right from behind him, Heald appeared.

He licked the blood stain in his hand. It belongs to his last prey.

He never finds it difficult to drink human blood, something Kylian tried his best to restrict himself from.

"Hey, man," Heald's voice came more in a moan.

"Hey." Kylian slammed close the diary and stood up, calmly. Too calm for someone keeping a secret. 

Even though the duo had been friends for two centuries, hunting together, feeding together, if it's animal's blood as Kylian always insist, and finally, shouldering themselves, Kylian still can't risk letting his secret slipped to a second man.

He wiped out an entire village, and then killed the vampire coven there, then escaped here.

If such secret gets exposed, the ultimate rule is death, all covens around will be on his ass.

"Seems you fed to your satisfaction this time around, my absence payed off, isn't it?" Kylian chuckled as he sniffed the iron Heald's licking.

He shuffled to the oak furniture shelf, filled to the brim with books and scrolls.

He tucked the diary in the middle of two books. One had red cover, with a title 'Vampire's Nemesis' while the other had purple cover with the title 'Craftology'.

His hazel eyes lingered on the two books for a moment. Then he sighed.

"You know I enjoy it more." Heald pouted like little kid, his eyes sparkling. His green eyes surrounded by red has now changed a lot.

(Written and composed by Bright Theophilus)

The green is the prominent one before, but now the red has now taken most part of the eyes in a circle, only a dot of green could be seen in the middle.

"I know I'm a pain in the ass."

Heald's eyes wandered around the library, running over the maps on the cold concrete wall, at the sketches that held life. "Says so many things, yet hides so many more."

Kylian glances over his shoulder, at Heald, whose sparkling eyes lingered on the wall.

Then he said, as calm as ever. "Every artwork does. Just like every vampire has dark secrets, way to dark to be known."

"Hmm. You are poetic."

"You've said that before."

"I do compliment you a lot you know. Anyways, there's something on shelf now," Heald suddenly said.

"What?" Kylian turned to him.

"There's a claw glow, didn't you see yours?" 

Claw glow is a way a coven leader calls all the vampires under his coven to a meeting. And it's natural for every vampire under such leader to see theirs, but Kylian never sees his'.

This had made him miss many of the not-so-frequent meeting over the centuries.

Gobsmacked, Kylian paused. 

Heald tilted his head with a questioning look.

"Couldn't get it, been busy with books as you saw just now," Kylian said, calmly. 

Again too calm for a person keeping secrets, and not one secret.

Heald dropped a nod with his usual playful smile. "Now you heard me, let's move. You don't want Caius coming here with his invisible cage."

"Emm" Kylian dropped a nod.

With a few flashed across the room, he was already in a velvet beige cloak, just the same colour as Heald's.

"Booyah!" The latter grinned and in the next moment, the duo disapeared from the library with a gust.

They both stopped behind the duplex building of Kylian's. It backed the densely wooded hill that overlooked the streets all around.

Night Hills.

The hill where shit happens. 

Swoosh!

The duo turned into blurs, disappearing into the dark and heavy hill forest.

*****

Deep in the Night Hills was the vampires shed, their secret place, their core shelter, their place of refuge, and finally their trademark house, the Archipelago.

It was squatted behind a huge circle of dense foliages that engulfed it.

In the Archipelago, several caves, as dark as a moonless night, scattered around.

Inside one of the caves.

Darkness reigned, it belongs to the Casal coven. Red eyes, glowing brightly were the only thing that could be seen in there.

Kylian, amidst them all stood silent as the others murmured to themselves, probably about what the meeting is all about.

But Heald is nowhere to be found.

Iron could be smelt in the air. Happens some of them were even feeding when they saw their claw glow.

Memories flashed several times and his red eyes went off for a few second before coming on again.

He could feel the heat growing inside of him due to the scent. 

He breathed several times to calm himself.

But it isn't helping at all. The heat began to escalate, gradually reaching his claws which began to turn dark.

(Written and composed by Bright Theophilus)

Oh no! 

What's happening to me?

He could feel the heat rising up.

Up to his abdomen. To his chest.

By now, his deep growls is hovering in the air.

The vampires nearby growled too, feeling the immense predatory intent in the growl.

What's ha, ppen, ing, to, me?

Kylian panicked. Barely holding up to his sanity.

Just then a deep growl resounded.

The others went silent.

Kylian felt himself back in control of his body again. With agitated breaths, he calmed himself.

In a flash, multiple candles litted all around them, illuminating the dark cave a bit.

The burning candles shone on cold figures, all wrapped in cloaks, their shadows casted in a disfigured way, making the rocky cave look like a haunted home.

(Vampires have no soul, thus their shadows aren't the same as humans.)

But the light could do nothing to illuminate the faces of the figures in the cloaks.

In the middle of them all, standing on a slightly risen platform of rock, was Caius the leader of the Casal coven.

"Leader, we got your call," Bones the old, a vampire with a frail body and bent back that could be seen even in his cloak, started.

"Yes, hunters are in town," Caius said simply.

"Uh!"

"Uh!"

"Uh!"

They were all surprised. The hunters?

For centuries, the vampires in New York had no problem with hunters.

"I thought we had an agreement with them," Adrian, Caius' only son said, more like a fact than a question. 

Of course he was not yet born when the vampires in New Amsterdam had an agreement with the hunters.

The agreement goes by, no vampire should harm humans or show who he is in the open. And if that law is abided by the vampires, the hunters make them rest assured that they won't be hunted.

Those who hunt humans, do it secretly and cover up their tracks in the best way possible.

But now despite all that, a hunter still showed up.

"Yes we had. But this hunter is not a novice hunter." Caius snapped his fingers.

Two vampires dragged in two bodies wrapped in a blanket.

They stopped by the foot of the stone elevation in the middle of the cave, on which Caius stood.

With a swift turn of the blankets, two bodies dropped with a stony sound.

Dead vampires with hollow chests.

The vampires had been preserved by the hunter or they would have dessicated.

On the neck of the two dead vampires was a crest of a crossbow.

Bones the old gasped as he saw the crest.

Only one hunter used that on the vampire he killed.

Only a handful of vampires know him. 

Those that had lived for at least three hundred and fifty years, because that was the last time he hunted, wiping out the vampires in am entire empire.

Bones the old is over five hundred years old, exceeding Caius who's a little over four hundred years.

The myth. The legend among other hunters. A hunter every vampire fears. 

Even elders of the Tribunal, the top leaders of vampires worldwide, respect him.

And what makes him more formidable is that he's immortal.

"Aro."

A whisper came from within the posse of vampires.

Bones the old snapped his head to the area. Caius did too. Everyone did too.

Behold, it's Kylian.

In an instant, Caius is already in front of Kylian.

The latter subconsciously took a step backwards.

"Who are you, blood eater?" Caius' whispery voice came as he lowered his hood.

Kylian pulled back his hood too before replying, "I'm Kylian, from the Turks."

He said what he said to Heald two hundred years ago.

"How old are you?" Bones the old found himself asking.

"Two and a half centuries, leader."

"Turned?"

"Yes." Kylian dropped a nod.

"Then how would you know the mystical hunter?" Caius tilted his head, as his red eyes stared into Kylian's like he could see his soul.

"In books."

"Hmm" 

Before Kylian could blink, Caius is already back on the podium of rock.

He could feel his cold, dead heart beating very fast, but strangely he felt no fear.

Caius continued like Kylian's case didn't happen, but deep within him, he could tell something is wrong.

It ain't a joke that he has been the leader of the Casal coven for over four centuries, his primal instinct is top notch.

"These are born vampires, rare gems among others. We just lost them."

Born vampires have special abilities while the turned ones don't. So to loose such powerful members is catastrophic.

"This should be a warning to every one of you. You know what to do."

A teenage vampire boy stepped forward, a scroll in his hand as he read aloud.

"Stay in a the circle of your brothers. Hunt in the most discreet way and under the covers of the night. And lastly, stay away from the humans."

The boy retracted back into the crowd of vampires.

"That's all." Caius finalised.

Then, in an instant, all the vampires were all gone.

Leaving behind Bones the old, Adrian, Caius and Velron, the boy from earlier.

(Written and composed by Bright Theophilus)

Caius turned to Bones with a raised brow.

"I am the only one who felt that darkness?"

Bones shook his head sideways, slowly. "I felt it too. Let's wait. It's either he's an asset to us or an enemy."

"Wish it's the former."

Caius nodded and changed the matter to the Hunter's issue.

"Aro?" 

"He doesn't appear unnecessarily. There must be a reason."

"And that we'll find out." Caius nodded firmly.

********