Immortal Hunters

*When we last left off...

I locked the door and removed my clothes, and the bandage. Finally, I stood under the shower head and let the water cascade over me. It was warm and comforting. I washed my hair and my body, then just let the water flow over me. I’m not actually sure how long I was enjoying the water for, but after a while, I heard a loud banging on my bathroom door.

“Please oh please let me in!” a voice carried through.
I tried to place the voice with a face. Kiro? Yes, I think it’s Kiro.
“Just wait.” I called back, turning the water off.
“No, please, I need to get in there now!”
No missing the urgency there…
“Hang on.” I began to towel myself off quickly.
“You’d actually better hurry. Our little angel isn’t house-trained yet!” I heard Romeo laugh.
I began to throw my clothes back on, then I opened the door and walked out. Kiro had been standing there, hopping from foot to foot, hands between his legs.
“Oh holy hell.” He muttered, running into the bathroom.
He didn’t even bother to close the door. Eww.
“Dear God, Kiro, some respect for the lady?” Romeo had been standing there too.
“It isn’t my fault if she took forever getting out of the shower.” He looked over his shoulder at us.
I was suddenly thankful that the toilet was on the opposite wall to the door. Who knows what anyone would be seeing if it were side-on.
“Okay…” I shuddered, then walked back along the corridor.
Strify was leaning casually on the wall at the other end of the corridor, waiting for Yu, I’m guessing. I walked down the corridor and went down the stairs. Shin was in the kitchen, eating a cheese sandwich.
“I see what you mean by mad dash to the bathrooms.” I walked into the kitchen area and stood beside him.
“Yeah, I heard Kiro yelling. I laugh. Usually it’s me who gets the house trained jokes, though.”
“Ouch, harsh. Though I understand why you’d get the house trained jokes.”
“Woof.” Shin said, and we both laughed.
Kiro waltzed down into the kitchen.
“Sorry, but you took your sweet time…” he looked down, his blonde hair tinging pink from the illumination of his face.
“Hey, don’t worry about it. I’m sure I’ll get used to it.” I stuck out my tongue.
He looked up, staring at me for a while.
“What?”
“You… does that mean that you’re planning to stay?”
“Maybe…” I looked at him, then at Shin.
He could hear my thoughts.
“If she went back, her pack would disown her for dating a hunter, and putting herself and them into danger.”
“Oh, so that means you have to stay, doesn’t it? Woot, a girl!”
“Uhm…” I watched him hop around.
“He doesn’t know very many girls, and because of the price on his head, he can’t go out much at night.”
“Oh...”
“But anyway, we’re going to take you out to get some stuff. Strify has it all planned, I reckon.” Kiro stopped his happy dance.
“Ah yeah… Strify is our resident fashionista, I warn you.” Shin looked at me.
“Joy…”
“Again with the single syllable responses. You really have to stop doing that.”
“Bite me.”
“Oh, she’s upgraded to two syllables now!”
I glared at Shin mockingly. He just laughed.
“Okay, who’s up for shopping? God, I love an excuse to shop.” Strify came into the kitchen, closely followed by Yu and Romeo.
“Well, if I’m staying, I’m gonna need some stuff.” I pointed out.
Shin began to rinse the dishes on the side of the bench, i.e. some plates and a knife.
“Sweet, shopping it is. Breakfast, then we shop.” Romeo decided.
“OWW!”
I instantly snapped my head in Shin’s direction. He’d sliced his hand with the knife.
“Shin, why’d you even bother? You can’t even see what you’re doing.” Yu groaned.
Kiro took a step backward, and then another.
“I could see… Then I couldn’t.” he tried to defend himself.
“Dear God, you’re bleeding everywhere. Strify?” I looked at Strify.
“Here, let me look at it.” He stepped up beside Shin and began to examine the cut.
“I was working with him on his sight this morning, so chances are he could see what he was doing to begin with…” I tried to defend Shin too.
“Still, if his vision is iffy, then rinsing a knife is a pretty stupid thing to do.”
I heard a door slam. A quick survey of the area revealed that Kiro had left the scene.
“But it was only rinsing a knife!” Shin groaned.
“That’s gonna need stitches. What the fuck did you do? Shove the knife into your hand?”
“No, it slipped.”
The cut was between his thumb and index finger.
“Why’d Kiro run off?” I asked.
“He isn’t taking chances with the blood.” Yu explained.
“Ahh, makes sense.”
“Yeah, I think one of Kiro’s attacks is the last thing we need right now.” Strify groaned.
“So what do we do?” Shin stared at the blood trickling down the side of his hand and pooling in his palm.
“Come with me… I’ll suture it in the basement. Someone can tell Kiro it’s all good.” Strify took Shin and they descended down the staircase at the far end of the room.
Romeo went back to the bedrooms, whilst I started to rinse off the sink. When I finished, Yu began to run dishwater.
“How come you guys all live together? You’re all such a mismatch of species, it surprises me.” I noted.
“Well, we all met ages ago, and became best friends. No one seemed to fit with their clans, so we decided to make our own. With Shin though, he was already friends with Kiro, and had been helping keep Kiro hidden from hunters for years. They ran into us, and we decided to help keep them underground. Some Immortal Hunters are still trying to hunt down the forbidden half-angel, half-vampire. Shin was the only human until recently. He was out one night, getting us a pizza, believe it or not. On his way home, he was ambushed by a pack of werewolves, receiving three bites, all of which helped towards turning him. They left awful scars, too. They’re purple, and seem to pulse at times. There’s one on his back, one on his foot and one… somewhere else. Not entirely sure how they managed to bite him there, but I tell you, he was in shitloads of pain trying to get home.”
“But what about Romeo and Strify? You and Kiro, I can tell, are the only ones who were born to divided species.”
“Well, actually, Strify’s parents were both vampires too, so yeah. Romeo though… I knew him for ages, and he was the first person I ever told that I was half-vampire, half-demon. We’ve been best friends since forever. I was being attacked by some demons, who had decided that I was impure, and in him trying to stop them, he was bitten various times. Three days of hell as the venom settled into his bloodstream. After that, he sank into a deep depression, because he’s catholic, and as you’d know, demons are the polar opposite to holy. Then, when we became a large clan, and took over this house, he went to a church and asked for a cross. He was pretty severely burnt after carrying it home, then he hung it on the wall in his room, and touches it every night before he goes to sleep. I also know that he prays to it from time to time.”
At this point, Kiro and Romeo finally emerged from the bedroom area.
“See, no blood, like I told you.”
Kiro looked the teensiest bit scared.
“I cleaned it up, don’t worry.” I smiled.
He came down the stairs and settled on one of the couches at the far end of the room.
“How’s Shin?”
“Getting stitches.” Yu replied.
“God, I wish his vision would hurry up and come back. He can’t do anything at the moment!”
“This isn’t the first time he’s hurt himself?”
“No. In the last two weeks, he’s managed to hurt himself at least once a day. At least. It’s beginning to annoy me. I can’t stand blood.” Kiro complained.
“No, you can stand blood, you just hate being sick.” Yu teased.
“Oh yeah, and you enjoy cleaning up afterwards, do you?”
“No… Not really.”
“My point exactly.”
“Are you always like this?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Yeah, you’d better get used to the teasing and whatnot.” Romeo sighed.
“Indeed.” I replied, as Yu and Kiro continued to shout insults at each other.
“Well at least my birth was legal!” Yu yelled.
“At least I’m somewhat pure! Can’t say the same for you…”
“Pure are you? Remember the time when…”
“Oh, the unbeatable intelligence of the male species.” I sighed.
Romeo just laughed in agreement. A few minutes later, Shin and Strify returned.
“I’m telling you, I could see what I was doing. Until it got to the knife…”
“Well, you knew that your vision was subjective, you should have been more careful.”
“I hate you, you know that?”
“That’s hardly called for.”
“Argh.” Shin stomped up the stairs and into his room, slamming the door behind him.
“Whoa.” I breathed.
“Good grief, he is so stubborn!” Strify complained.
“Sooooo… When are we going shopping?” Yu asked.
Strify perked up instantly.
“Hmm, as soon as everyone’s ready.”
I went to the bedrooms, after Shin. I knocked softly on his door.
“Who and what?”
“Raven… Can I come in?”
“Eh.”
I opened the door. Shin was on his bed, fingering the bandage wrapped around his hand.
“We’re going shopping as soon as everyone is ready.”
“I don’t want to go.”
“Please, Shin?”
“Look, Raven…”
“Shin, yeah, so you accidentally cut yourself with a knife, so what? You gonna let that get to you?”
He looked at me for awhile before speaking again.
“No, I suppose not.”
“Gudo! Then get ready, we have some serious shopping to do!”