AU: Show me your teeth

[Josie Raines]

Everybody likes to talk about vampires as these ageless, immortal beings. No wonder, when the oldest surviving families have been around for hundreds of years and they're always the ones both in the news and behind the scenes. No wonder, when even they loved to remind you how things were fifty, a hundred, three hundred years ago, how little you know now. Nobody cares about the young ones beyond how much easier they are to kill.

When Josie was turned, it wasn't the immortality she was after. She didn't want to be one of the bigshots, didn't want to run the show. She just didn't want to be human anymore. Humans were vulnerable. Humans could be pushed around.

So three years ago, at the age of twenty-three, she'd done what she'd been dreaming of: Josie got the bite.

At first it was everything she'd hoped for. Someone wanted to start trouble? Flash 'em a little fang and they backed right down. She didn't even mind serving the one who'd turned her - they were called masters for a reason, right? But it had only taken a single slip-up - one little mistake - for him to put her through a window, and Josie realized she was still vulnerable.

Which was why, as she now sought one of the most prolific hunters of the region, there was no other word for it. Josie was afraid. Afraid of her master, afraid that this human would snuff her out before she had the chance to speak her piece. But living forever didn't sound so great when this was the life you'd chosen. So now she waited; this park, heavily wooded and ominous even in the day, was notorious for showdowns. Someone would be by sooner or later, whether it was the hunter she needed or someone who knew him. Hunters weren't known for putting their addresses in the yellow pages, after all.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean Neville had not become a Hunter out of a sense of thrill-seeking, or even from arrogance. He had been chosen at a young age, taken in by the best Hunter in the entire region to train as his apprentice. Robert Hopkins had become his surrogate father as well as his mentor; he had taught Sean everything that he knew, and they had fought side-by-side against the creatures of the night, protecting living humans until his mentor had become too old to keep up the good fight. Sean had continued on in his footsteps and had built up a well-deserved reputation.

With every victory, he grew confident, which some misperceived as arrogant. However, he never boasted beyond his skills, often preferring to blend in and allow others to underestimate him. He remained cautious, as the only way to stay alive in his work was to keep risks to a minimum and to cut out unnecessary risks altogether.

In his vast experience, only the stupidest of supernatural creatures deliberately sought him out to fight. Smarter ones might try to strike a bargain, and, despite the pile of supernatural corpses to his name, he was a reasonable man. His goal in life wasn’t the destruction of the supernatural through violence, but rather the protection of the human population from supernatural forces. He had, once, struck a bargain with a vampire coven; in exchange for their promise to only seek out willing blood donors to feed, he would leave them alone. That had led to an alliance where those vampires would seek out ones less amenable to his rules, and give him hints, and he took care of the rest.

Unorthodox, but it worked for him. It had certainly spared that coven the fate of the House of Weaver in Chicago.

Despite having been a morning person before taking up the mantle of a Hunter, Sean kept the hours of a night owl, sleeping from the mid-morning until the early afternoon, and then going about his life for part of the day, and his work for most of the night. He had patrol in the park, and so, with his crossbow slung along his shoulder, and with his other accoutrements on his person, he walked carefully along the footpath, ears cocked for the sounds of other people or of creatures of the night.

[Josie Raines]

Being changed had its perks, of course. Like the fact that she could hear the man approaching long before he heard her, or that even in light this low she could clearly see the crossbow he wielded. Never mind that such perks would be largely unnecessary if she hadn't been changed, making her dangerous enough to be hunted in the first place.

Watching from her vantage point off the path, Josie wished she knew more about this Neville guy she was looking for. The Hunter here and now was big, much bigger than she really felt like tangling with, liked she'd been warned Neville would be, but they'd never crossed paths before. Which was for the better, if the stories about him were true. If it was the wrong guy, well, maybe she had a shot of getting away.

He was several yards away now, heading her direction. If she was going to reveal herself, it needed to be now.

Josie knew even before she emerged from the darkness, empty hands up, that that crossbow would be trained on her immediately. The gesture was only symbolic - no vampire needed a weapon to be a threat - but with any luck it would be the difference between being heard and being shot.

"You Sean Neville?" she asked, voice just loud enough to span the distance.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

If Sean didn’t want to tangle with supernatural creatures, then he never would have become a Hunter in the first place.

Scratch that. All factors equal, he didn’t want to tangle with supernatural creatures. Not because he was afraid of them, because he wasn’t. Not because he was afraid of pain or the risk of injury, or even the threat of a painful and untimely death, because he wasn’t; rather, he was at peace with what his duties entailed.

All factors equal, this wouldn’t be necessary in the first place.

He wasn’t a thrill-seeker; he certainly didn’t care about fame or fortune. There was a reason that, as feared and well-known as he was among supernaturals, among magic-users, among other Hunters and those who studied the occult, nobody knew his name otherwise.

His neighbors in his apartment complex recognized him. There were a few diners and coffee shops and bakeries scattered throughout the city that expected his business. James Campbell would probably notice if he didn’t hear from him after a few weeks or months. But that was it.

He couldn’t deny that his reputation amongst the supernatural world was well-deserved. But he was unorthodox, insofar as he liked to problem-solve in a number of ways. Motivated by duty rather than a love of fighting, he could entertain multiple means to the same end.

That didn’t prevent him from raising his crossbow the moment he heard someone call his name. Because so few people knew him outside of the supernatural world.

He kept the crossbow aimed at the sound of the voice, a woman by voice and shape in the shadows. That only cut it down to half of any supernatural in the New York. “State your business.”

It wasn’t a request.