Chapter One

Looking at the poster in my hand, I studied the sketch of a bearded man in it before turning my attention to the carriage parked on the dark street two floors below me. True enough, the faces of the coachman and the man on the job order were identical. I confirmed then that he was indeed my target. I pulled down the stuffy mask I was wearing, letting the fabric hang around my neck, and took a deep breath in.

Squinting my eyes through the darkness to see better, I took an arrow from my quiver and equipped it into my bow. It wouldn’t be a difficult shot to make—I’ve shot targets from a much longer distance before—but I steadied my breathing anyway. My hands were perfectly still and my heart pounded in a regular rhythm against my chest. Sometimes, it scared me how unaffected I am with the murders I commit. The man was a sex offender, and all the others I killed were criminals, but they were cold-blooded murders nonetheless.

As if it was second nature, I aimed at a vital spot and released the arrow. I watched as it pierced through the summer night breeze and, at last, bury its steel, poison-laced blade into the spot in his chest where his heart lay. Just like that, the mission was over. 

“Oh, right,” I mumbled to myself upon remembering one almost-forgotten detail. 

I dug a hand into my pocket once again and fished out a rose, made from an intricately folded piece of black paper. It was our guild’s signature to leave black paper roses after corpses that we assassinate. I’ve always found the practice insignificant, but I guess the higher-ups wanted to take credit in all those kills so bad.

“What a waste,” I stared at the second arrow I shot, pinning the rose into the wooden door of his carriage.

But finally, my work was done.

Or so I thought.

As I was packing up my things and making sure to leave not a trace of me behind, I felt something blunt and heavy hit the back of my head. My vision doubled as I stumbled, slightly losing my balance. It was fortunate that, despite standing so close to the edge of the rooftop, I managed to not fall. My grip on my bow loosened and it fell onto the ground with a loud clang.

After much struggle, I managed to pull the mask over my face and turn around to look at the culprit. It was a middle-aged man I didn’t recognize. Hatred filled his eyes as he opened his mouth to scream profanities at me. Well, with the deafening ringing in my ears, I could only assume that.

I brought a hand up to cup the back of my head. Something warm and sticky was oozing out from my scalp. 

“Who are you?” I asked him, blinking a couple of times to get my bearings back.

“The person you just killed was my brother, you b*tch!” he screamed, his voice reaching my ears this time. Tears brimmed his eyes. “You’re going to pay for this! The entire Black Rose Guild is going to pay for this!”

Then, he charged at me. The man was moving painfully slow that even with my injury, I could still very well track his movements. My eyes trailed down his arm and found his hand clutching at a broken piece of wood. My blood stained one side of it.

He was aiming for my head yet again and so, I brought up an arm to block it. I felt my bone shatter upon impact and bit down my lower lip to keep myself from screaming in pain. With my right hand, I grabbed the knife sheathed at my hip and swung. I left a deep cut on his thigh, making him stumble backwards.

It wasn’t a fatal injury, but it was enough to make him drop his weapon and fall onto his knees. The man’s hands instinctively flew to his wound to stop the bleeding, leaving him completely vulnerable. I then changed my grip on my knife, and with its hilt, struck him on a particular spot on his nape. As expected, his eyes rolled towards the back of his head before falling face first onto the ground.

“Ugh, f*ck,” I grumbled upon inspecting my forearm. Under the dim moonlight, I could still spot the bluish bruises already forming on my skin. The burning sensation of broken bones piercing into my flesh didn’t help either. 

I gave the man a gentle kick to make sure that he was knocked out and let out a sigh of relief a few seconds later when he didn’t budge. As much as killing doesn’t faze me anymore, I don’t like hurting people apart from my target. Unfortunately, instances like this do happen a lot more than I wanted. 

Suddenly, I noticed a shadow move swiftly through my peripheral vision. My head instantly snapped towards the street where the carriage was parked, and my pulse pounded rapidly against my temples upon seeing the seat behind the couple of horses empty. The coachman was supposed to be there, with my arrow jutting out of his chest. I squinted my eyes in concentration before frantically scanning the streets.

“Nothing,” I whispered to myself when I confirmed that the area was deserted. “The horses would’ve made a noise if it was—”

Blood spurted out of my mouth as a blade buried into my stomach. Slowly, I turned my head only to find myself staring into a pair of now-familiar eyes filled with hatred. My brows furrowed in a mix of unpleasant surprise and confusion. 

I was so sure I hit the right spot before. The man was supposed to stay unconscious for at least a couple of hours.

“I told you I was going to make you pay,” he hissed, visibly struggling to talk but a confident smirk hung on his mouth anyway. He gave me no time nor the energy to reply and pushed the knife deeper.

I dropped my gaze. I suspected a knife, but instead, he was stabbing me with a broken piece of glass. His own hand was bleeding with how tightly he was holding it. I remembered taking note of how the rooftop was littered with seemingly hundreds of pieces of it upon coming up prior to executing my kill. 

It was painful to breathe, but I inhaled and mustered the strength to swing my right arm once again—aiming for the neck this time.

The blade of my knife slashed through the flesh in his neck, his blood splattering all over my face and my clothes. But before the light went out from his eyes, he twisted the piece of glass inside me, and more pain shot through my entire body. After what felt like hours, his lifeless body finally dropped to the floor, pulling out the glass as he did so. 

I stumbled backwards as I felt all the strength in my body wane. Feeling the blood climb up my throat, I quickly took off my mask. Then, the cough came. Blood spilled down my chin. My stomach burned. My legs became jelly.

Until I lost my balance.

The first thing I felt was the edge of the rooftop hitting the back of my feet. And then, the summer evening breeze against my back. My body moved quicker than my mind. I adjusted my posture so that I wouldn’t fall on my back and die instantly upon contact with the ground. The next thing I knew, I broke both of my ankles and laid down on the ground two floors below. The excruciating pain made me think that dying in an instant would’ve been a lot better.

I was fading in and out of consciousness when I saw the same shadow I spotted before the coachman’s corpse had gone missing. It was hovering by the end of the alley.

At first, I thought it was death itself, coming to finally pick me up and drag me to the deepest crevice in hell where murderers like me belong in. But instead, as the man pulled down the hood of his dark robe that cast a shadow over his face, I found myself staring into a pair of—very much alive—bright red eyes. I shivered under his gaze.

I wanted to move, to run away from the red-eyed man who was slowly approaching me. His skin was scarily pale—white, almost—that even under the dim moonlight, I could spot the veins under it. There was something sinister about him that I didn’t want to associate myself with, especially when I can’t defend myself.

My right hand twitched. The absence of the familiar sensation of my callused fingers brushing against the leathered hilt of my knife confirmed my fears. My gaze peeled off of the mystery man for a few moments to frantically look for my weapon, and true enough, it was thrown on the ground a few yards from where I helplessly lay on the concrete. I must’ve let go of it at some point of my fall.

“Your blood…” he mumbled under his breath. The stillness of the night enabled me to hear his quiet voice, and the silvery moonlight glinted off of his shiny, unnaturally sharp canines. “It smells much sweeter than most.”

My throat tightened, so when I spoke, my voice came out disappointingly small, “My b-blood?”

“Yes,” he replied as he reached me, at last. He fell onto one knee to meet my eyes. 

I’ve heard about the myths. I’ve seen some people go insane with fear after claiming to have had an encounter with one of their kind. Our guild, apparently, had received a handful of requests to terminate them. But I only ever dismissed all of those as hearsay, some old lore people told for entertainment.

And yet here was I, staring right into the eyes of a vampire.

“Vampire…” was all that I managed to croak out despite the jungle of thoughts that swam through my head.

He reached out a hand, and I watched in horror as he did so, until his knuckles gently grazed across my cheekbone. His smile widened, “Yes, indeed I am.”