Chapter Text
The night air was cool, cold even, when I stumbled out of the Japanese hunter's Company, drunk and filled with regrets. I didn't hear the other hunters calling out to me, I didn't see the steps as I nearly fell down them. I vaguely heard Cross call out to me louder, but I was not in any mood to stick around. A horse drawn carriage happened along the path in front of the old wooden hunter building. I climbed onto the back and closed my ears to the sound of my father-in-law following after it. I sat on the back of the carriage for a long time, eyeing the dagger that was previously nestled in my coat pocket. Hair pulled back into a low ponytail, tied by a customary ribbon, I swayed in the night breeze. It had been a routine mission, find the lair of a vampire that had revealed himself. It was cut and dry as they come. The vampire in question was a mason worker who lived in a small shack with his two children. We killed him quickly enough, but then a choice that still haunts me came up.
We were to dispatch the children as well, in their coffins, when they were fast asleep. My colleges wanted to rouse them, see the look of pain in their eyes as they witnessed their ends. I knew that even for a vampire this would be too cruel a thing to do to a mere child. I handled both of the little girls myself. They were beautiful, around seven or six years old, flowing lolita style dresses that made them look like tiny dolls. Their delicate red curls resting softly against their sleeping frames. They were Irish, these vampires I had realized. I longed for such a thing, to hold my family in my arms again.Gods only knew the suffering the Irish vampire community weighed under we hunters. It made me sad but then it made me think about my wife.
My wife, Yuuki, she was beautiful, a bit on the short side with her big doe like eyes. Some say she was part native, as only natives in this world have such chocolate hair and eyes. The same way the curse turned the Irish vampires hair red and their eyes green. It changed the individual based on where they lived. To better help them blend in to their surroundings and hunt easier. If a white man was turned into a vampire and was only surrounded by other white men all his life, he would remain looking like them. But if another race was introduced, it was like a chameleon effect and things changed accordingly. But, they say it is the vampire's curse that simply turned her skin pale. I refused to believe such rumors. I loved my wife and even if she were a vampire I would have loved her regardless. I was a proper man at all times during our courting process. I did everything I could to win over her father's trust and companionship. Going so far as to join the Japanese hunters company with him. I hunted vampires by night and loved my wife by day, until, the newly invented traveling circus came to town.
My wife, Yuuki, after fifteen years of marriage had run off while pregnant with twins, with our eight month old son, Ren. She'd fallen in love she said and went to join some traveling circus act led by a man I'd come to despise. I never knew the man's name or who he really was. It would have been better my wife had died along with my parents in the fire on my plantation. Outside of being a hunter of vampires who revealed themselves, I was a simple man. I owned a plantation with slaves from the war between the U.S. and the natives. The natives won, with the help of the vampires I was sure, and now in my employ, or rather slavery, were what was left of their enemy. The slaves on my plantation were the British soldiers who claimed themselves Americans.
Whatever that meant. I worked them hard and they resented me for it. Said they would contact the British hunter company and tell them I was fraternizing with vampires. They hated me for siding with who they declared brought the vampire curse down on the white man. I'm Japanese, I didn't have any sympathy for their complaints. Still don't. Never will. According to some of my slaves, I remembered as I leaned back against the carriage, watching Kain chase me down with a sneer etched into my features. According to some of my slaves, the first vampire was a native by the name of Demon Eyes.
He welcomed the travelers into his village and that was the last anyone ever saw of them. Only one lived to tell the tale, until he went insane later on. So it went, vampirisim spread like that, or at least that's what I was told. I knew I could sense a few of these, night walkers, when the Company sailed to France. We went scrubbing the globe as we call it. Hunting down clues as to where the vampires could be. All signs pointed back to the Americas as people were trying to call them. No one called it that. I scoffed, until I actually sat down with a vampire and discussed such things, I knew the answers would never come. Shaking all those uneeded thoughts from my mind I focused on the task at hand, dying. I had no will to live, not anymore. My family was dead, my wife was a whore, my sons were gone, my ranking in the Company slipped down to nearly nothing due to me not slaughtering a tribe on the way up here a few months back.
We were passing through Indian country, the older hunters knew the feel of a vampire tribe. They decided we should attack the village. I reprimanded them and reminded them we only hunted vampires who revealed themselves and most of those ended up the so called Americans.
We had no right to attack a village we could not be sure about. It would make us no better than the British hunter Company. Those dogs, they killed anything that even looked like it was going to hiss at them. My own Company hated me since that day forward. The plantation fire had been started by one of them and one of the young upstarts from the British Company. I snorted as I saw the carriage had left the city. Kain was gone and I found it ample time to search for a spot to kill me. The cliff the carriage was near would suffice. I stood up and leaped from the back of the vehicle, throwing myself over the edge.
I closed my eyes and waited for the end.