Someone was calling my name. The sound of it brought me out of my little world of me. I was sitting at the breakfast table. My fingers were toying with the ring I wore around my neck. It was the same ring that held the name Ban inside of it. I won this just like I won my life. It was just more proof that what happened to me was real and not some wild dream I made up.
The food in front of me sat getting cold. The smell of bacon and eggs made me want to turn my nose up. The thought of eating this meal made my stomach turn. As far as human food went bacon was number one on the list of things I still enjoyed.
I was so full of the blood I had last night I was certain that one bite of the salty strip of goodness would make me vomit. Human's food was heavy, it sat in your stomach like bricks. It took weeks for it to be broken down. It was also necessary to eat in order to look . . . human.
My eyes shifted around the table. The people who I was closest to were here. Shu, Amy, and their daughter Rai. Rai was the spitting image of her mother, younger, shorter but when you looked at her you saw Amy. She was just another person in this family that I watched grow older. I couldn't wait to see the kind of woman she became in the future.
"Zero, how come you're always playing with that ring? Did someone special give it to you?" Rai asked. It made me let go of the rings when she called Ban . . . special. Maybe he was special. He was the person that killed me after all.
In the fourteen years of Rai's life, I never brought up Ban around her. She didn't know that my family died. I wasn't even sure if Rai knew I had a family. She probably just thought I was a demon. That was all she needed to know.
"Every one special died before they could give me anything." I could feel the eyes of the others at the table on me. My family didn't even get to say goodbye. That wasn't true. Their screams for mercy was their farewell. I was supposed to join them.
"Who gave it to you then?" Shu has never asked me about my past. He knew that it was bloody. He probably heard me and his grandfather talk about it once or twice. In the years that I knew Shu, he liked to pretend that my life started on the side of the road that his grandfather found me on. My fingers reached up again toying with the ring.
"I took it from Ban," I answered them truthfully. There was a shocked gasped from Aya. Everyone knew the name Ban. Even people that weren't in the demon hunting business knew who Ban was.
"You took something from the Great Demon Ban?" Aya asked and I nodded my head.
"I ripped it from his neck while he . . ." My words trailed off. While he what? Had sex with me while he made me feel things, no other lover had. While he bit into my flesh and did everything in his power to take my life, a life that I clung to so desperately.
They were all looking at me. Waiting for me to finish.
"While he attacked me. He thought he killed me so he left." Only he did kill me.
"Ban; he's the worse one out there." Dante looked at me with some new found respect. Ban didn't make flashy displays of violence like the Blood Demon. He didn't walk around pounding his chest telling everyone to call him a Lord like other demons. Ban was the kind of man that smiled in your face. He kissed you on the lips. He killed you before you even realized the charming stranger was a demon.
He had been one of the fist demons to come from the hell gate. If we were being, dramatic rumors said he was the first to walk through the gate. He was one of the only demons that has never been sent back to hell. His class of Demon was known as S class. These demons were so powerful you had to be suicidal to hunt them.
"I've never heard of Ban leaving a victim alive." That was because he didn't leave them alive. Ban killed everyone and he walked away from them with a smile on his beautiful face. I hated him; I hated everything he was, everything he stood for. I hated that even now I could remember the way he touched me.
"I got lucky." Luck had nothing to do with it. Or maybe it did. Maybe luck was the only thing that helped me rejoin the land of the living. Maybe luck was what helped me become a demon. I never heard of any other demon changing the way I had. So maybe I got lucky with a lot of strings attached.
"How? How did you get mixed up with Ban?" Aya wanted to know how I ran into Ban. That was another easy answer.
"My mother invited him in." There was a few gasped. To think that in this day and age, someone would invite the Great Demon into their house. My mother didn't know any better. She didn't know who she was letting into our house. She didn't know what she let in our home.
"You should throw that ring away. Why would you want to keep anything from Ban?" I could have answered that in a lot of ways. So I could be closer to him. Because sometimes when Ban is close I could feel the heat of this ring. I wanted to keep it because I've had it for so long. This wasn't about Ban. This ring was a symbol.
"So I will never forget what he did. So I never forget what I survived." So I never forgot I was human once. This ring was important because it was another reminded of what I once was. It was proof; it was vindication.
"We should go before all the jobs are taken." Shu broke the silence that stretch out among us. We all nodded rising from the tables. Shu leaned down pressing a kiss to Amy's lips. After we had a target, we would come back home to get our bags. We would say bye to Amy and Rai then we would hit the road. Amy kissed my forehead before Aya, Dante, Shu, and I left the house. Getting into the car we crossed the city so we could go into the Demon Hunter's bar.
The aura in this bar was different than the one in the Bounty Hunter's bar. There were no idiots around boasting about their mission. No one was trying to show off their strength or getting drunk just to pick fights with the stranger next to him.
Everyone was silence. There were teams that sat together. All of them talked quietly about an upcoming mission or one that just passed. Everyone had something stronger than beer in their hands. Most of their heads were hung. A few of them even cried. Being a Demon Hunter wasn't for the faint of heart. It wasn't for the weak willed. You had to have a tough layer of skin to look evil in the face and want to kill it.
Moving towards the board I could see Ban's picture. He was sitting in a chair smiling into the camera. It was as if someone asked him to pose and he did. Even with the huge bounty on his head his picture remained untouched.
Next to Ban's picture was the Blood Demon Kenji. He was looking over his shoulder in the picture. The smile on his face was twisted. I never met the Blood Demon in person. I had the feeling when I did I was going to hate the man. His bounty was only a billion less than Ban's. Still his picture stayed on the board. Untouched by all those who were willing to claim it.
The third picture on the board was a rare sight. It's been awhile since I saw a picture of myself in my demon form. I was caught in flight. The bounty on my head was the third highest on the board. It was still three billion less than Ban's. It read that I disappeared forty years ago. Demons like that were normally back in hell already.
Dante started to reach for the picture of me, but Shu was already shaking his head. We just finish looking for someone who was hard to find. We didn't need to chase our tails for someone we would never find. Plus it was kind of insulting to hunt myself.
Aya grabbed a picture off the board before Dante could protest. Shu took the picture, looking it over before he passed it to me. The demon was a woman. She was standing on a stage in her picture. She looked to be a middle age with blue hair and cold gray eyes. There were horns on the top of her head and fangs pushing down from her mouth. The name was Maya and she would fetch us half a million credits.
"Zero and I will go shop. Aya and Dante go back home and pack up. We'll leave once Zero and I get home," Shu said and everyone nodded as we left the bar. Dante and Aya got into the car as Shu and I walked away.
I could feel Shu eyes on me. It meant that he wanted something. That he was unhappy or maybe just thinking about something. I pushed my fingers into my hair waiting for the old man to say something. We moved into an alley before Shu stopped walked and turned to me.
"You were on the board." I was on lots of boards in lots of cities. Just because I went on the straight and narrow forty years ago didn't mean people forgot the sins I commented before then. "Are you . . ." He didn't finish his statement. I hope it was because he realized how stupid he sounded.
"Do you think I would?" Did he think that I could become the beast I once was? He already had his answer. The board said that I hadn't been seen since I found his family. "I killed a lot of people in a lot of places. My face was bound to pop up in a few cities. I haven't killed anyone but outlaws since I met you."
If that wasn't enough to satisfy him, then I didn't know what was. I wasn't going to fall on my knees and beg to be forgiven for things I did before his lifetime.
"You drank from my grandfather." Shu said and I looked towards him. That was true. I had drank from the old man. "Why?" Why had I done it? Didn't we have this talk before. Maybe not.
"He was sick, old, growing weaker by the day. We were going after the Blood Demon again. You wanted your pound of flesh. He knew that he couldn't make it. He didn't want to slow the team down. So he asked me too. I needed blood and he didn't want Kenji to kill him. So I did." It was that simple. He asked me to and I respected him enough to grant that wish.
"Why not save him? Why not make him like you?" Did Shu hear what he was saying? I missed his grandfather as well but making him a demon wouldn't have worked. I looked down at my hands. Even if I tried, I didn't know if I could have.
"I was young, It was Ban's blood. I had so much fear of dying my will to live was otherworldly. I'm not even sure how I became this. Maybe only Ban can do it." I shrugged my shoulders. Maybe it was a one-time deal. I got lucky.
Plus, it took me years to have this control. When I first woke up, there was only the hunger. If I turned Kaleb, he would have been a monster. He would have tried to eat the very people that he loved and protected. I would have killed him before he could hurt the family he built. Kaleb wasn't like me. Even at the cost of his life he would have never wanted to become one of the monsters he hunted.
"I understand. Sorry for doubting you, Zero." I shook my head. He was human. We all had doubts. "Dante might be watching you. You should be careful."
"You worry too much." He was always worrying over something. Maybe Dante was watching me. He should have just seen the troubled teenage boy I pretend to be.
"I'm a Demon Hunter and my best friend is a demon. I have to worry." I laughed shaking my head at him. Taking out a cigarette I lit it up before passing it to Shu and lighting another one. We both leaned against the wall as we inhaled the smoke.
"Can you see where Maya is?" Shu asked and I looked down at the picture of the demon we were about to start hunting. The paper bird only worked for humans. Demons had a way to hid themselves from that kind of magick.
The center of my forehead opened as the third eye appeared. The third eye was a high-level magick that only S class demons could do. Of course, it also meant that S class demons were protected against it.
Maya was on a stage in a town of Dragun. That town was half a day's drive from here. The demon was singing as the people in the crowd swayed to the music. I watched as she took a bow when another person walked onto the stage.
Long jet black hair and white eyes that had no pupils. His skin was tanned as if he was kissed by the sun. Tall, lean, deadly I just finished looking at a picture of this man. The Blood Demon Kenji was in Dragun with Mya. What was he up to? Who was Maya that she had such powerful friends? I didn't know. I was going to find out soon.