A Different World

VII: Five Years

She had a routine:

Be invincible to the world by day, hunt vampires by night.

A not so unique routine considering she had adapted it from her mentor Eleanor and her mentor had adopted it from her mentor and so on so forth. There was a reason, though, that the routine was adapted by every hunter ever to roam the world; it kept them alive and their secret hidden.

Somehow, she had succeeded in maintaining her routine for five years, without running into any difficulties, a huge accomplishment for a person that naturally attracted chaos into their lives at every turn of the page.

She had gone several days without running into any kind of trouble. It might have even been a record and maybe because it was a record, was why the tranquility in her life had to come to an abrupt end.

Over the past five years, Eleanor had tried to convince her that bad feelings rarely had any meaning in their world. There was really no way to interpret the feeling when all you did was hide during the day and fight vampires during the night. Her ill feeling could only amount to her having a close call with a vampire which happened seldom.

She had been the best in her class and with Eleanor's training, she could possibly be the best in her kingdom, or so Eleanor thought. Scarlett always assumed Eleanor boasted about her as a sort of a way of complimenting herself for her teaching skills. Whatever the case might have been, it did not prepare her for the worse.

Scarlett made her way down the street with her head down. She had grown so accustomed to the streets in the past five years that there were times where she didn't even have to look at where she was going.

The bright rays of the sun peaked out from behind the clouds obscuring her view of the street. She reached into her bag for a pair of sunglasses and just as she was about to pull them on, her body come into contact with someone's hard chest. She lost her balance and was on the concrete sidewalk before she knew it.

Running into people in New York was not something uncommon, in fact, it had happened to her on several occasions, yet she had never been knocked off her feet before.

Scarlett tried to get a visual of the man's face, but it was hidden behind the glare of the sun.

"Scarlett?" the man spoke. His voice alone brought tears to her eyes.

She reached for her sunglasses and put them on. If it was him, she did not want him to see her shed a single tear. She stood up, ignoring his outstretched hand and stood frozen in front of him.

She could see his face now. His features were stronger, his hair was longer, and his eyes were colder, but it was the same guy she had grown up with at the institute.

Her hands instinctively went to her empty belly, and she watched as his eyes traveled with them. He looked at them for several seconds before returning his crystal eyes back to hers.

"I thought I'd never see you again." He sounded so genuine and heart broken, it almost sent Scarlett over the edge.

She knew better, his last words to her still echoed inside her head every night she allowed herself to think of him.

He brought his hand up to her cheek and ran his thumb along her cheekbone. She allowed herself to savor the moment for a second before taking his arm and twisting as far as she could without breaking it. She brought her foot up to Nathan's stomach and kicked him back into the ocean of pedestrians. So much for invisibility.

All eyes were on her as she ran away from the man, that was now on the floor and made her way back to her apartment, the place she should have never left.

Be invisible to the world by day, she had one job.

She was one block away from the building when she decided to check if he was following her. Two seconds, that's all it took.

Scarlett was on her way to the floor before she got the chance to look forward again.

Someone had wrapped their arms around her waist just before she came into contact with the floor again. Scarlett desperately prayed that the arms did not belong to Nathan, she would not be able to handle it; she would break down and lose all the dignity she had left in her if the arms were his.

Her eyes were closed, but it became abundantly clear that the arms did not belong to Nathan, as she came into contact with the man's hard chest. This man's chest was different, it did not hold the same comfort, it was much stronger and defined and alien.

"Are you alright?" His voice was soft, contrary to what Scarlett thought.

Scarlett nodded and proceeded to pull away from him, but he continued to hold on tightly.

He reached for her shades and removed them without any consent.

"I'm going to ask you one last time, are you alright?"

There was something in his eyes that compelled her to tell him the truth, why she was running, who she was running from and where she was going, it was very uncanny but despite feeling compelled to reveal all that information to him, she answered with a simple, "Yes."

She felt his arms loosen around her, but he continued to hold on to her.

"Sir, we must get going," a man spoke.

Scarlett tore her eyes away from his and noticed two men, dressed in black suits, standing directly behind him. She did not feel frightened by them, only slightly perplexed.

"Of course," he answered.

Scarlett brought her eyes back to his.

"Be careful, the next man you bump into might not be as friendly." And with that, he let go of Scarlett and got into a limo parked a few feet in front of them.

She had never heard or seen that man in person, yet something felt oddly familiar about him.

She knew who he was

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Guy in the picture is Nathan
Till next time