Vampires Realm Prophecy 01 - Child of Light

Three.

Chapter 11
    The murky alleys they had been walking were a stark contrast to how Prophecy had imagined Paris. There was nothing beautiful and delicate about the places they had passed through in the last twenty minutes. They were dank, wet streets with little lighting in what seemed like a bad neighbourhood. She’d heard the sirens of police cars several times and had seen them as they sped down the wider roads that the alleys led out onto.
    She looked at the old stone walls of the buildings around her. They looked like factories or something similar. She couldn’t quite tell.
    Her brows met in a frown when she trod in a puddle that had been made in a pothole and felt the cold water seep into her boot. She shook her foot off, the scowl remaining on her face as she tried to rid her boot of water.
    “I hope you know where you’re going,” she grumbled, staring at her foot. She could see Valentine’s meticulously clean boots just out of the corner of her eye. They were facing her, meaning he was probably watching her with another frown.
    He’d been frowning all night. Whenever he looked at her, his brows knit and his eyes narrowed into a hard look. She knew that she’d done wrong and she’d apologised a thousand times, but it didn’t seem to be enough for him. He was still angry with her. He hadn’t seemed to hear her when she’d told him that she’d tried to resist the urge to kill but it had been too great. She could still hear his words from last night, had felt them hit her deep in the chest through her drunken haze.
    She was worse than a child.
    But then he’d changed, he’d looked at her with such a hunger in his eyes that all the words she’d been ready to throw at him had slipped from her grasp, leaving her lost in his eyes and wondering if he was going to do something they’d probably both regret.
    It would only make things even more confusing and that wasn’t what they needed right now.
    She’d awoken early tonight, before he’d risen, and had paced around the living area, occasionally sneaking glances at him when she passed his open door. She’d spent most of her time formulating an apology; the apology she’d recited at least ten times over to him throughout the course of the evening. The rest of the time, her mind kept replaying the moment in the bathroom. She could remember it all, could remember the way he’d held her close and tight, and the look in his eyes. She didn’t know what to make of it. He’d told Mathias that he hated her and he couldn’t bear her wanting to be close to him, but last night he’d been the one that had wanted to be close to her and it hadn’t been hate in his eyes.
    She raised her head to look at him when he spoke.
    “A good hunter knows everything about his environment,” he said and glanced up the alley. “It’s not far now.”
    “A good hunter? Like the one who was following us last night?” She fell into step beside him when he began walking up the alley again.
    “Him, myself, any one of the many elite.”
    She frowned, her eyes narrowing as she scrutinised him. He wasn’t wearing his long red embroidered jacket any more, it had been replaced with a black one of similar stand up collar design, but he hadn’t lost the proud and confident air she’d noticed the moment she’d met him. He still reminded her of a Law Keeper.
    “You’re a hunter? But hunters are human... do you hunt vampires?” Her frown remained in place. Had he been hunting her that night? Had he killed the son of her house?
    “No,” he said and relief bloomed inside of her. “I hunt the hunters.”
    She looked at him. He hunted the vampire hunters? No wonder he seemed like a Law Keeper. They had to be strong enough to take on the hardest of opponents and win, and Valentine looked as though he could certainly do that, especially if he’d spent a lot of time hunting the hunters that plagued their species. There were only a few vampire hunters that were skilled enough to take on a member of one of the seven pure bloodlines. Most hunters probably spent their whole life tracking and killing the weaker-blooded vampires that all of the pure bloodlines detested. Her family saw those hunters as nothing more than a form of pest control, something they were glad of as it kept the weakling population steady. Most hunters probably never met one of the seven. They were incomparable to the weaklings, their strength and abilities far superior, and their senses sharper. Most