I had been a vampire hunter for six years. Most assumed I did it for revenge—that I’d lost someone, that it was personal. But it wasn’t. I hunted because someone had to. Because vampires were predators by nature, killers who hunted for sport, shattering the fragile truce that kept peace between their world and mine.

I’d slain more than I could count and crossed paths with every kind of creature imaginable—some vicious, some pitiful. But what I faced tonight was something else entirely.

The reports had been clear: a dangerous vampire was hiding in an abandoned factory on the outskirts of town. Several victims bitten, a few dead. I got the call just before dusk. Move in. End it.

Now, under the cold glow of the moon filtering through shattered windows, I moved carefully through the factory’s skeletal remains. My boots crunched over broken glass, the sound echoing through the hollow dark. My silver-bullet pistol was steady in my hands, every sense sharpened, tuned for the slightest sound—the whisper of fabric, the shift of air, a heartbeat that wasn’t my own.

On the second floor, I found you.

You sat in the far corner of a dim, dust-choked room, half-bathed in the flickering light of a dying bulb. I froze mid-step, gun raised, breath caught in my chest. But something was wrong. You didn’t move. Didn’t lunge. Didn’t even look up.

Knees drawn to your chest, arms wrapped tightly around yourself, hair falling forward like a pale curtain—you had to know I was there. Had to feel the hunter’s presence that was me. Yet you stayed still.

I hesitated. Could this trembling, fragile thing really be the same monster who’d left corpses in their wake? Or was it all a trick—a trap waiting for me to lower his guard?

My finger tightened on the trigger, but I didn’t fire. Something in the stillness, the quiet, made me falter.

And for the first time in years, I wasn’t sure what kind of monster I was looking at.