In All Honesty

In all honesty, I never considered myself a hunter. For good reason, the core identity trace shared by all hunters I know is a deep, driving, hate for vampires.

Some of them open a short list of exceptions for individuals they consider “victims” and even them they keep reluctant contact with those people only to use them as source of information about the vampires. For the most part hunters hate vampires and all things related to them, of course, blood-slaves are high in that list. About as bad as vampires, if not worse. We all lost people we loved to the hunger of nocturnal predators.

I am no exception. However, I do not hate vampires for it. Takes more than knowing how dangerous they are to cause that sort of emotional commitment. Vampires hunt because they need to, and kill when they cannot control themselves, that is part of how their organism works the “vampiric condition” if you want.

You only hate vampires because of that if you believe that humans have special right of existence. That our lives are somehow objectively more saint, real and right than their lives.

I don’t believe that and I never did. I believe every thing in existence has the exact same right to existence.

Vampires killing humans to satisfy their organic needs is fine, as fine as humans eating cows and broccolis. We are no worse than vampires and no better than broccolis. “Then, why do you risk your life to kill vampires? Why do you dedicate yourself to such extreme, enduring the tension that involves the learning of Mind Shielding. And then go hunting and killing those people you claim you do not hate?” you may ask.

Well, first and foremost, because I learned how to do so.

The art of killing vampires is hard to learn, and mistakes are deadly in that field of activity. There is some pride attached to it.

Also, because someone has to do it.

Because, vampires are indeed extremely dangerous to us, humans. They kill without thinking, and they must suffer death sometimes. In the hands of those they hunt. We are capable to fight vampires one-on-one, we need planning, we need numbers on our side. Nevertheless, we are able to fight them. We have the means and the knowledge necessary to destroy vampires, for good.

Not the entire species, mind you. Individuals, one after another. It is not much, but it is something. Something cows and broccoli cannot do about us, humans.

There is some consolation in that. Some, satisfaction.

It is a matter of harmony and balance, not arrogance, self-righteousness or vengeance. Vampires are dangerous to us, beyond measure. We should, therefore, be as dangerous to them as we possibly can be.

Nothing personal.

The personal aspect of it, for me, is the friends I made along the way. Proper hunters, to the core.

Secrecy build an atmosphere of complicity and life-or-death situations, in the frontlines of a war that has nothing but frontlines, tests that complicity. Tempers it into steel. There is satisfaction in that, as there is in survive each hunt.

That is the only life I know how to live. I found myself in that world when I was 15 years old, and all my family was butchered by a pack of lowlife vampires.

Hunt them, destroy them, came naturally. After that, I kept going from one project to the next. Proving myself along the way, earning the trust of people in the Hunting Bar. Getting sanctuary and improved skills in Monasteries of religious hunting orders. Anything I could get, to improve my chances. By the time when someone seriously asked me, directly, why I was living that life, was already too late to build myself any other sense of “normality”.

I don’t believe vampires are “Evil” for killing humans. I don’t think I am “Evil” for killing vampires. All is part of being what we are, and what we are supposed to be.

Of course, even cynical nihilists like me end up being broken by objective reality sometimes.

I never felt for the illusion that we could one day eradicate vampires from existence. They are too hard to kill as individuals, and they are as intelligent as we are, generally speaking. I was able to understand that.

Also, vaguely aware that vampire society is not homogenous.

Some vampires have better resources than others. Some have organized packs, contacts in human society. By the time I had not understood what the “blood-slaves” are.

One day a Hunter Bar felt, and we caught the traitor among us. Responsible for that tragedy.

Was my chance to learn more than I would have wanted to learn about real life. A veteran hunter helped me digest it. I helped in the interrogation, always learning what I could. Most of it was impossible to understand first time someone explained to me.

The vampires we had been hunting, the lowest quasi beasts, the homeless, and the civilized ones with influence inside the local police of some small cities. This people where all considered “lowlifes” by the actual society of vampires. The “Nocturnal Courts”. Generally speaking, the civilized vampires kill those lowlife cousins on first sight, for the sake of control population and avoid competition.

Courts leave some “wastelands”, some areas where lowlifes are allowed to survive and administrate their own numbers. Those areas are temporary, and defined by Nocturnal Court politics. Those lowlifes were the vampires I had met up to that moment.

The traitor we caught claimed he was not responsible for the raid against the Hunters Bar. That was the job of local lowlife, self-appointed, “authorities”. He was spying on us, yes, but for a proper “Noble Vampire” family. Completely different level.

After days being tortured, having shared very little, the traitor was rescued by his masters.

That was my first contact with proper Nocturnal Civilization. If we had a hundred times more people and a thousand times more resources, would make zero difference. They would still cut through our defences and take their men with them.

After that, I managed to participate in the killing of some Noble Vampires. Only a few of them. The time and e resources invested to kill those predators is disproportional, compared to what we need to kill even the most powerful lowlife.

Still, has to be done. Because is possible.

My birthday is coming. In 6 days I make 40. Respectable veteran by any Hunter standard. Build a reputation for myself, by this point. Despite my own opinion about not being an actual hunter.

Only now I am starting to really understand how deep it goes.

We fought and destroyed vampires of less important families, freaks at the border of their own society, and depressive flowers with a death wish. And, was hard to do so.

The oldest noble vampire I was able to help destroy was in the 2 thousand years timeframe. For most vampiric standards those are still “nocturnal children” in the process of becoming young elders.

I talked once with a Vampire Elder. Over 50 thousand years old. She mentioned vampires the existence in her court of vampires over 9 million years old.

The oldest vampires born and raised as humans on Earth are around 7 million years old. Those 2 extra millions means those vampires came from other planets, in other galaxies.

Vampires on Earth have limited access to space-travel technology, but they have had that access since the beginning. Their technology and scientific knowledge are far beyond ours. What is the reason why we never catch transmissions between Noble Vampire strongholds. Never could hack a noble-vampire computer. We know they have a global network of communications, cell phones that seem to work outside all satellite networks.

They have a lot more than that.

If they decided to invest their collective resources in eliminate all hunter circles, they would probably achieve that goal in a handful of generations. Despite the considerable resources of religious orders backing our more pious half.

Vampires do not do that. Never have. Because, being hunted by humans is in some extent part of their culture. As much as the hate for them is part of hunter’s culture.

They need to hunt humans. And would not be healthy for them is this moment of hunting was free of risk. Have hunter bands in the night, setting traps and ambushes, keeps the vampires healthy. Keeps their collective sanity, in some way.

I would not try to explain that for a young hunter.

Being entirely honest with you, my way of see things and understand the objective reality nowadays probably is more similar to the perspective of your average noble vampire. Than it looks like the way I used to see things when I was 15.

Say nothing about the perspective of most hunters.

If I had the chance to be turned into a vampire, as long as that was the choice to be turned into a noble vampire. I am not entirely sure I would say no.

I used to have that certainty. Just don’t know when I lost it, where or how.

Easy to figure out the “why” though.

Given the choice, is better to play for the team destined to win 99 in each 100 matches.