A Rose as Black as your Heart

(6) The new girl in town

Chapter 6

After I'd finished off a bowl of Matt's pink desert (a jumble of crumbled meringue and cream stained pink from a handful of chopped strawberries), I went up to my bedroom, and cracked open the diary I'd been reading. I skimmed through some of the less important entries, until I reached one I found more interesting. Since a lot of unimportant boring things were happening in Alexis' life, the next interesting occurrence was several months after Alexis' first kill.

14th August

Today was my second kill. Or maybe I should say my first, since the last demon I struck was eventually killed by my father's hand. But this time, my aim was better, and I succeeded in killing the creature.

You can never be sure whether the creatures are "invisible" or not. My father and I can see them even when they are invisible, so it doesn't make a difference to us, but if there are others around, it certainly makes a difference. The one I killed today was "invisible." He was standing behind a gentleman, who was conversing with a group of work men, a hungry glint in his deep black eyes. The men did not notice him, despite the fact he was right in front of them. I did not feel afraid, only determined. Summoning all my strength and focus, I aimed my knife at the creature's heart, and threw it with all my might. It struck him right in the heart, and he staggered backwards. As he began to fall back, I knew he'd lose his ability to be invisible, so I hastily called out to the gentlemen.

"Why, good sirs, it looks like rain! Won't you be on your way?" I called out.

The gentleman who'd been so close to being killed glanced up at the grey sky. Luckily for me, my excuse was valid; rain was bound to be coming any minute.

The men looked like they might have argued, but since my father was a respected man, they knew better than to retort.

"Certainly, miss." The gentleman tipped his hat at me, and the four of them made their way down the street. Luckily, none of them seemed to have noticed my killing of the demon, though admittedly, all they would've seen would be me hurling a knife at thin air, a knife that would've simply fallen to the ground, without a young, dark-haired man (as they did not know of what they truly were) pinned underneath it. However, as I hurried to the creature to kill it properly and retain my knife, I saw one of them glance back, clearly puzzled, and wondered whether he had seen me. His eyes moved over to where the demon lay, and his eyes widened. I suspected that the invisibility charm had lifted, and for a moment, panic filled me, but fortunately someone called out to him and he turned to them, no longer paying attention to me or the demon, which resembled a human. It is the only form I know them to take, but they can change shapes at will (though for some reason they never do when hunting) and I suspect them to have a much blacker, true form. No person has ever seen that form though.

When I reached the demon, I found him already dead. Relieved that I didn't have to stab him once again to finish his cursed life, I retrieved my knife and began to drag the body to the woods. Pride filled me as I hauled along the bloody carcass; I had done it! All by myself, without any help from father. He was most proud of me when I returned.

"I didn't even have to stab him twice," I told him proudly. "I pierced his poisoned heart first shot."

My father hugged me, telling me how grown up I was, how proud he was of me that I hadn't been the least bit afraid.

I now am sitting in my chamber, writing this with pride still glowing inside of me. I feel like I'm doing my job- I feel like a Nighthunter.

I shut the diary in awe, lying back on my bed. Fighting demons- even if they looked human- sounded awesome. I hastily reminded myself that it wasn't real. I didn't know why my brain seemed to be accepting that it might be real; I'd always been a firm believer of reality, and my brain had always seemed automatically programmed to think that anything fantasy was, to put it bluntly, ridiculous. Occasionally I read the odd vampire book, but of course I'd never once stopped to consider that perhaps they were real. The idea was just stupid. But here I was, calmly contemplating the fact that these diaries were real.