Page 162 of Hunters and Prey

Really, I had no right to accuse him of susceptibility to the venom anyway, not after what happened to me, the last time a vampire bit me.

I saw the woman on the blue couch about to speak, that curiosity in her eyes growing.

The male next to her touched her thigh, waving off the questions I saw forming in her eyes. She glanced at him, then seemed to agree with whatever she saw there.

“He’s right,” I said, exhaling and nodding towards the male. “That’s a longer conversation, and probably for another time. My point is, my uncle wants to annihilate them. Vampires, that is. He’s obsessed with wiping out their entire species. He feels it’s them or us, quite literally. That seers won’t survive as long as vampires exist on our world. My uncle was one of the early seer settlers on our version of Earth, you see. I don’t know when they first encountered vampires, but my uncle claims they attacked first…”

I shrugged, holding up my hands.

“…Who knows what the vampires would say. In any case, in that first skirmish, both of my parents were killed.”

The woman’s eyes flinched.

Sympathy bled from her living light, or aleimi, as seers called it.

Pressing my lips together briefly, I went on.

“My sister and I were on our own after that,” I said, exhaling. “I was over eighteen, so I petitioned to get custody of her. My mother’s family… the human part of our family… pretty much disappeared from our lives. I found out later that my uncle was behind that. He claims he did that to protect us… and them.”

I already told them about my unusual parentage.

I told them I was that thing most seers believed to be impossible, an actual human-seer hybrid. Therefore, they only nodded to my words.

Even so, I still felt reactions in their light.

In their minds, I was impossible.

As a biological fact, I shouldn’t exist.

Neither should my sister, Zoe.

Looking at them, I wondered why I was telling them all of this. Maybe some part of me still hoped they might be able to help me. Maybe it was the psychologist in me, trying to shrink myself in front of people with more insight and experience than myself. Maybe I was just so desperate, I would have asked anyone for help at this point.

In any case, I felt compelled to keep going.

“…I was in the military already by then,” I added. “It was important to me for some reason.” Frowning, remembering, I added, “My parents weren’t pleased. After they died, I stayed home for a while after the funeral… then I did another tour. While I was gone, I would send my sister money.”

Swallowing as I remembered Skype conversations long distance, Zoe telling me how stupid I was, being over there, fighting wars for oil companies and greedy, corrupt politicians, I swallowed, inclining my head.

“Then she died,” I said, looking up at the woman. I saw her flinch again, a cloud of grief leaving her light. “I didn’t know why for years. I knew she was murdered, but the police never caught the person who’d done it. When I got home from Afghanistan, from the war, I tried to find out what happened to her. I tried to follow all the clues… even stalked some of the suspects the police had. I used my sight wherever I could, but the trail just seemed dead.”

The woman clasped my arm, sending me a pulse of warmth.

I looked up, giving her a grateful smile.

When I did, I glimpsed that strange sky through the window behind her, the odd trees that weren’t like the trees I knew back home. Then I glanced nearer, and saw the male watching me, the faintest thread of curiosity in his eyes, even behind that disconcertingly still face of his.

Looking back at the woman, I clasped her fingers on my arm. I sent her warmth back, even as her empathy brought a low pain to my heart.

“I only found out later, from my uncle, that vampires killed her,” I finished, wiping my eyes. “He told me after my husband and I found out they existed at all. Vampires.”

For the first time, the male spoke.

His voice was deeper than I’d remembered.

Between that and the trace of accent I heard in some of his words, I jumped.

“He did not know?” he said. “Your husband?”

---