Crimson (Book One)

Smoke billows out of the fire ridden battered houses and surrounds the cold lifeless street in which I am running; it makes it harder to tell where they are, so evil, so dangerous
The wind howls all around me as it grabs at my battered body dragging me into darkness that engulfs the abandoned street; all I can hear are the cruel whispers on the wind. They were calling my name.
“Charllllootttteee, Oh Charllllooottteee” over and over again. All I can remember are the red eyes of the creatures that have been chasing me from town to town.

My name is Charlotte, I’m 19 and I’m a hunter, a hunter of creatures that do not belong in our world, vampires, shape-shifters, werewolves, and other creatures of the world that don’t belong. A hunter is a protector of the people of our world (humans); we hunt those that are a threat to our kind and rid of them from our world, using a range of weapons from knives to guns to crossbows and stakes.
Hunters are determined by their blood as we are slightly different to humans; we age better, live a bit longer than humans can, we are quicker and also a lot stronger than humans.
The hunter race is controlled closely by Master Henry Pike. The master is 58 years old, wise, strong and widely experienced. He has taught the way of the hunter to many, showing all hunters the way of how we should live. We work in groups or the way I see it, as families, you become so close to those around you that you’re not just a group of hunters, you’re a family of hunters. Many of our kind have been killed by the evil creatures we seek, we are a dying race but never shall we give up in this on-going battle. We battle to save the human race no matter how difficult it gets.

Vampires, they are also known as Vampir, Vrykolakas and Strigoi. The only way to kill a vampire is to decapitate and burn it. Although it is said in myth that a stake inserted into the heart kills them, that mythical information is wrong. The stake only hurts them a little, no more than a pin-prick and vampires heal rapidly. Most people think that vampires only come out at night because the sun would kill them; this is also a piece of information that is wrong. Vampires can walk around in the day just as any human can, although they do move more in the night as the darkness covers them and they do not sleep. One way to tell a vampire is the bright rose red eyes they have and sharp pointed fangs when their mouths are open, although they can change their appearance so they seem more human. Humans can be turned by vampires by sharing blood from the vampire.
Werewolves are common associates of the vampires.
Werewolves, also known as lycanthropes crave human flesh and can be killed by silver; the main weapons using silver are bullets, silver stakes and silver ended arrows. Werewolves have the strength and senses beyond any human or animal. They also grow stronger on a full moon. When a werewolf turns a human into one of its own kind, all it has to do is bite the human and put them under the full moon. Most humans are kept locked up until the next full moon so they can build up their numbers and take over. Werewolves can look like a human or a wolf-like creature, so they can blend in to the background. Some people you know could be one and you wouldn’t know until it was too late.
Shape-shifters are in a separate league from the vampires and werewolves. Shape-shifters have their own council whereas vampires and werewolves have a shared council consisting of a king vampire, queen vampire and a king werewolf. There is no queen werewolf as she was killed by our own Master Henry Pike; this was one of his many victories.
When it comes to shape-shifters we have to be careful, some differ between good and bad but this is not all that simple, some dabble in both and are known as in-betweeners. Some shape-shifters have the same views as our kind and work with us to help achieve our goal of defeating the evil-doers in their plan to take the human race as their own.
Shape-shifters are able to change shape and body; they can turn into an animal or another person.
It is hard to tell if a shape-shifter is really one of us. Sometimes you have to find out the hard way.

Being a hunter is a hard job, but it’s what we do best and we try our hardest to succeed. But sometimes there are major complications.

So why am I being chased?
You’ll find out soon enough.