Part Two
My head was throbbing massively, pain beginning to pulse behind my eyes. My stomach was tight with pangs that felt similar to nausea. The muscles in my limbs were beginning to ache, but I tried not to shift too much while hitching this ride to wherever my father was planning on taking me. I felt downright exhausted at this point, but my nerves prevented me from seeking rest. Despite the fact that I was in the presence of family, he was still a stranger.
"Are you feeling okay? You look like you're going to be sick," Zachary inquired with concern from beside me in the vehicle. He threw me a glance from the driver's seat briefly.
"I think I'm coming down with the flu or something. Maybe all the excitement..." I didn't continue, in case he felt it was an opportune time to ask what all excitement had occurred in my captivity. I honestly didn't want to talk about my time with the vampires. I didn't think any hunter would appreciate what I had to say, either.
Zachary instead reached back with one hand to shift through a duffel bag settled on the floor of the backseat while keeping an eye on the road. For a moment, I sat tense and wary as he searched for something; was it a weapon? I was completely paranoid at this point in my life. But he only pulled out a silver flask, which he then held out to me determinedly.
"Have this. It's something we hunters drink when we've been in battle for a while. It should ease the pain," He told me simply, but I only looked at the flask carefully. Another drugged liquid? Was it magic as well? Or just roofied?
"What's in it?" I asked suspiciously. Zachary smirked from his seat, amused.
"Nothing dangerous. It's just tea with some herbs from our medicinal garden. I'll show you the garden when we're at the reservation," He replied easily, shaking the flask slightly in front of me. I grasped it from his hand, looking it over carefully. Herbs, I told myself, no magic. I opened the flask and took a timid swig, hesitating at the burst of cool flavor that coated my tongue. But then I immediately took a larger drink, sighing as I felt the immediate effects of my pain ebbing away. When I looked at Zachary, I noticed he had been peering at me from the corner of his eye almost curiously. I blushed, feeling self-conscious and embarrassed for no particular reason.
"You said we're going to a reservation?" I asked slowly, trying to make a bit of small talk.
"Yeah. We're stationed on a rather large part of land, highly guarded, and pretty well-hidden. It's sort of like a home and a school. We train our hunters there starting young; in things like fighting styles, strategic planning, along with the science of vampires in order to maximize on their weaknesses. We have facilities varying from classrooms to hospital wings. I think you'll like it there," Zachary explained with fervor, apparently extremely proud of his hunter reservation. I felt slightly anxious, wondering if they were expecting me to become a trained vampire killer. I didn't think I'd have the heart for it.
"Are there... lots of other Monets?"
Zachary chuckled at the question. "The Monet bloodline is practically hunter royalty. You'll meet a lot of your family at the reservation. Cousins, aunts, uncles, the works. We originated from France as far back as the 1200s. Possibly earlier than, even. Some of the Monet line branched off to North America in the 1500s, so if ever you traveled overseas you could depend on protection from your family there as well." I was watching him as he spoke about that family name; a name I had only seen as a curse for months now, but one he obviously cherished with pride.
"We do take in other hunter families at the reservation, though. Especially those younger hunters who have lost their family. That's how Clio Lenne knew of me. She was trained at our reservation after her parents passed away," I jumped when he mentioned Clio, remembering her determination when I had helped her escape. She had reached out to my father after all. I recalled the lost members of Jacobi's coterie and felt a flush of shame, but kept my eyes low to hide it from Zachary. "Clio told me how you freed her from the Master vampire in Missouri. I must admit, I felt a bit proud, knowing you were able to do that without proper training. But being my daughter..." He seemed to falter at the statement, obviously the term almost foreign on his tongue after so many years of being apart from me.
He threw me another glance, those mirrored blue eyes shining energetically. "I wouldn't expect anything less," He finished simply. I frowned at him, tilting my head in confusion. As time went by, I was more confused by what I had been told to believe. This wasn't the man I expected at all.
"My mom... she told me you were crazy," I bravely admitted quite suddenly. Maybe the herbs in the tea had acted as an alcoholic beverage, raising my courage levels considerably. Zachary had tightened his grip on the steering wheel at the statement, but otherwise hadn't reacted. When he didn't appear offended, I considered it an opening to continue. "What happened with you two? And with... me? I mean, I have my theories, but no facts."
"I waited too long to tell her about my family heritage," Zachary stated darkly, not looking at me. "When you were about three years old, she finally demanded answers. I told her the truth: what I am and what that made you. She left and took you with her." He hesitated then, his eyes looking across at me, obviously uncomfortable with the topic.
"I looked for you for a while. Every time I got close, Elizabeth moved away. Eventually, I just let her have her wish and left you for a normal life. I thought you would be safe, away from the pain and death that hunters are forced to live with. When I got word that Jacobi Bryant," He spat the name venomously, an uncharacteristic amount of hatred spilling into his words at the mention of someone I now felt grief for each time I recalled his face. "... had my daughter, was beating and bleeding her, I had to get you back as quickly as I could." I winced at the statement, knowing that Clio had probably relayed an overly exaggerated amount of abuse I was going through under Jacobi's care, but I felt slightly defensive about it.
We went the rest of the ride in silence. By the time we pulled onto an isolated road on private property, the sun was beginning to rise, indicating to me just how long I had been out and about that night. I stared wide-eyed at the brightening sky, frozen as I watched the stars disappear above the tree line. How long had it been since I'd been in the sun's beams? I couldn't even remember. I felt like I was wandering out of a cold cave and into the warmth of light.
I was so enthralled by the sunrise that I didn't even realize we had reached a pair of impressive gates, heavily guarded by what I at first thought were military personnel but instead turned out to be vampire hunters. With a few words from Zachary, the gate was opened, and we drove through what looked like a campus of some sort; or what Zachary had described as the reservation. I would have described it similar to a college campus, where large buildings were placed in certain distances away, probably each having their own specific designated purpose. Zachary pulled into a parking lot in front of a larger building, which looked to be the main offices.
I followed Zachary out of the vehicle slowly, staring at the reservation around me, as he led us into the building. I was reluctant to miss out on the sunlight, but I followed him into the bright building regardless. He paused in front of one of the double doors, looking back at me.
"Just stay here. I'm going to add you as a guest, but I'll start the process of registering you into the system for a more permanent stay... if you want to stay, I mean. You're an adult, so if you'd rather leave, we can arrange that," Zachary told me before disappearing through the doors. I watched after him, imagining the fact that I was free to go home or stay here and make a vampire hunter life my home. I recalled my life before Jacobi; working, going home to my apartment with Liv, and relatively enjoying just existing. After all the troubles I had gone through, I wasn't sure if I could get back into the motions, but at the same time, I couldn't see myself killing vampires... not good vampires, at least. Vampires like Noland and Vincent; I could imagine killing happily.
Zachary came back with a card, handing it to me. I looked at it momentarily, seeing my name with the word 'guest' underneath. A black bar was across the back of it, along with numbers and a barcode. I assumed this would allow me to move freely about the reservation.
"You want to do the tour now on the way to the sleeping quarters?" He asked me, appealing to my curiosity. I nodded shyly, hoping a look around the reservation would allow me to better choose what destiny I wanted.
I was right in assuming the building I was in was considered the main office, or as they called it: the Main Hall. According to Zachary, it was the building that held most of their information; including information on members of the reservation, their business and cash handling, and apparently missions they were constantly being put on in order to protect human society from the evil-doing of vampires across the lands.
A nearby building was considered the armory, where they held most of the weapons and armor for the missions. Zachary explained this building to be where a lot of the hunters met up to discuss strategies and mission plans before gearing up for battle. Besides the armory, the hospital wing, cafeteria, and dormitories, the reservation held a majority of buildings for education and training. The buildings were squared off by numbers and levels, defined nearly the same way a typical American education system was:
Five was considered the primary level, where hunters were considered beginners. As we passed this building, I saw children running across my sight to reach their early lessons. Zachary explained as beginners, hunters mostly only went through information: learning about vampires, their society and weaknesses, how they worked, and where they came from. Nothing began as hands on.
Four was the elementary level, which was one step up from primary. At this level, hunters continued their education on vampires but began basic training on fighting skills in defenses against vampires.
Three was the next level, referred to as the intermediate level. At this point, the hunters focused less on literature and more on refining their strength and fighting skills, both in a defensive and offensive manner. Zachary described this point as being one of the hardest, due to the nature of the training involved. In order to reach the next level, a hunter was expected to exceed a certain level of discipline in their training by passing extraneous tests allotted only twice a year.
Two was the level of juniors, where hunters not only had to hone their fighting skills further, but began to master weapons. This also included what Zachary explained as the science of the herbs in the medicinal garden he had mentioned before. He showed to me the lab building, where next to it a massive greenhouse stood. Besides there being herbs grown to help the hunters, a lot of the herbs were used to fight against vampires. Juniors were required to learn how to cultivate those herbs and then transfer their form to be useful against vampires. Some herbs only worked when injected into a vampire, for example, so they had to learn how to add it to their weapon work.
The last level was level one: the seniors. At this level, the training is intense in that it's a test of what all the hunters had learned. Seniors began their actual hunting by shadowing trained hunters, those who had passed all five levels and were assigned missions. Zachary told me at this level, they lost a lot of training hunters, due to the fact that no vampire mission is considered safe whether or not the seniors were shadowing.
As I listened to Zachary's description of the hunter's training and education, I followed him into the greenhouse while deep in thought, thinking about how different I probably would have turned out if I had been raised to fight against vampires. I wondered if I would have been just as scared and cowardly as I was now. I wondered if Jacobi would have ever been able to take me prisoner, as he had. I also finally knew what he meant when he described hunters as dangerous and always in a pack.
I looked around at the plants in the greenhouse, widening my eyes at the mere beauty some of them were. Zachary went to a locked section of the greenhouse, waiting for me to follow him. Then he unlocked the door with his own card, entering swiftly and waited for me to enter as well before closing it behind me. He indicated to the single type of flower growing in that locked area, causing me to pause as I looked at it. There were so many blossomed flowers, their pink, nearly red, petals vibrant under the light, but I couldn't understand why it was so well protected.
"This is the 'Middlemist Red' camellia, considered the rarest flower in the world. Hunters in China found it first, when we were trying to discern which herbs and plants would be best effective against the vampires. As you can imagine, this particular camellia is just that: the most effective," Zachary explained to me, carefully touching the petals of one of the flowers, "They were completely wiped out by the vampires in China, out of fear for their lives. Only a select few exist now to the public eye, but we hid away a garden of them for use against the vampires."
Zachary turned from the flower to look at me determinedly.
"If you ever wonder how it is mere human hunters can destroy a multitude of vampire vermin, this is how, Lysa. This flower is the answer to thousands of vampire's deaths: Royal and turned alike. This is why they fear us, and for good reason," He preached with pride, looking back at that plant with a light in his eyes. I looked at the flower timidly, imagining what it could possibly do to vampires that made something so beautiful so dangerous. Even though I wasn't a vampire, I felt fear for that flower, despite its innocent appearance. Whatever it was, it wasn't good.
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Music: Gods and Monsters by Lana Del Rey
Slight spoiler to ease your mind: Jacobi will be coming back into the story soon!
I put up a picture of the Middlemist Red if you're able to see it, but if not then I guess you can google that shyt! ♥