Hunter and Hunted

The summer of 1977 has been a torrid one for the City of Houston, Texas. It was the Houston Oilers seventeenth season as members of the National Football League, and they weren't doing too well. U.S. President Jimmy Carter, a progressive and decent soul, tried to steer America on the right track, trying to heal a racially divided nation. The South is still bitter over Republican Gerald Ford's loss to Carter, and this meant tough times ahead for southern Blacks.

Houston, Texas, has always been a unique city, one with a fairly diverse population. African, Scottish, Spanish, Irish, Latino, Creole, and Native American bloodlines flow in the veins of its denizens, and these unique peoples have crafted a unique culture in the beautiful metropolis. What most people don't know is that there is a veritable underworld lurking beneath the world in which they live. A world of monsters, and those who deal with them...

"When I think of my mortal life, the thing I miss the most is having a heartbeat," Rachel Bonnard said, as she lay against her lover, Jacques Toussaint, listening to the rhythmic, beautiful sound emanating steadily from his chest. They were inside an antebellum mansion on the outskirts of town. Jacques pulled the sheets of their bodies, and reached out at the lamp on his side of the bed, extinguishing the light. Much better in the dark, Rachel thought with a wicked smile.

Outside their rented villa on the outskirts of Houston, Texas, a fierce storm raged, but the two lovers paid it absolutely no heed. They most definitely had plenty with which to keep each other occupied. After hours of passionate lovemaking, the Vampire known as Rachel Bonnard had seemingly managed to sexually exhaust her ardent lover Jacques, for the moment, at least.

"Hmm, I see," Jacques replied pensively, and Rachel looked up at him, and smiled. The six-foot-two, muscular, broad-shouldered and gorgeously dark-skinned former Hunter looked at her, a thoughtful look on his rather handsome face. Jacques stretched luxuriously on the bed, and gently stroked Rachel's face, pondering the demure look in those usually frosty blue eyes of hers.

"I must be crazy for letting myself care for a Vampire," Jacques thought, even as he relished the feel of Rachel's nubile body against his. The blonde-haired, alabaster-skinned Vampire was a perfect replica of the tall, curvy, thirty-something Frenchwoman she'd once been, but her skin felt cold against his, and she didn't breathe, nor did she have a heartbeat. Rachel was everything that Jacques had been taught to despise, yet he cared about her...

"Side effect of living forever, my darling, memories grab hold of you at the strangest of times, and you're almost powerless against them," Rachel explained, her melodious voice snatching Jacques out of his dark musings, and the young man nodded, as if he understood. Rachel looked at Jacques pensively. How could he? Jacques was born on the island of Haiti, one of the New World's most mystical places, into a family of Hunters no less. That alone put them on opposite sides, to say the least.

When Rachel and Jacques first met, things came to a head between them. Jacques came to Houston on the trail of a legendary West African Vampire named Malik Abongo, and Rachel happened to be one of Malik's cohorts at the time. Malik came to Houston from his hometown of Accra, Ghana, to set up a new power base, and began building an army of Vampires, and Jacques was tasked with putting a stop to the ambitious Vampire overlord's nefarious plans.

Vampires, as creatures of forever, have vast knowledge and power, and usually, little to fear. They definitely do fear the Hunters, though. The global network of the Hunters is absolutely dedicated to eradicating the Undead. Even though the legendary Vampire Malik Abongo had been around for nearly six hundred years, Jacques managed to track him down, single-handedly eliminated most of his acolytes and slew him. Rachel was there when Jacques decapitated Malik with his silver broadsword, ending the ancient Vampire's long life...

Jacques was descended from Rachel's eternal foes, men and women sworn to Hunt down and destroy Vampires, as well as other threats from the supernatural underworld. Still, did even someone like Jacques understand the trappings of eternity? Much more to my dear Jacques than one first thinks, Rachel thought, remembering the very first time they met.

"You're one of Abongo's followers, you must be destroyed," Jacques screamed at Rachel, and he pressed her against the wall of Malik Abongo's rented townhouse in the east end of Houston. Rachel looked at the tall, leather-clad, dark-skinned man who held his broadsword against her neck, ready to decapitate her just like he'd done her boss Malik, and so many others...

"Easy, big man, Malik hired me to show him around town, I'm not one of his fanatics," Rachel said softly, careful to keep her face human, instead of Vamping out, as they say. In her centuries of life, Rachel had come to know the human animal. Even for a seasoned Hunter like Jacques appeared to be, it was easier to kill a red-eyed, fanged and clawed bestial entity than a lovely, and very human-looking lady. Appearances definitely do matter...

After all, appearances is what drove the legendary Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France, to choose Rachel Bonnard as her handmaiden. The daughter of poor farmers from the Camargue region of France, Rachel came to Paris in 1777 at the age of thirty. Five feet ten inches tall, curvy and sturdy, with dirty blonde hair and cold, pale blue eyes hardened by hardship, Rachel Bonnard led a tumultuous life long before she became one of the Undead.

Fleeing a bad marriage to a certain Cyril Duchene, formerly of Camargue, Rachel Bonnard ended up as a beggar on the Parisian streets, and she attempted to steal from the Queen herself as she patronized an upscale shop. Rather than throw the hapless but daring young woman in jail, Marie-Antoinette took Rachel to Versailles, cleaned her up, and in time, Rachel became the Queen's chief handmaiden and confidante.

"Vile fiend, I should kill you," Jacques said, but the Hunter hesitated just long enough for Rachel to hiss, slip out of his grasp, and make a run for it. She barely managed to get away, and then, she later ran into Jacques. This time, the Hunter was in trouble. The thing about the Hunters is that they were quite good when it came to fighting the supernatural, but weren't that effective against their fellow human beings.

Jacques Toussaint, a newcomer to Houston, made the mistake of walking into a biker bar, Stetson's Spot. The big and tall, well-dressed, thirty-something black man definitely stuck out in the crowd of leather-clad, middle-aged white men who made up the bulk of Stetson's Spot clientele. When he began flirting with a busty redheaded waitress named Debbie, some of the other guys in the bar didn't approve, and a bar fight ensued. With five guys on him, Jacques was definitely not winning. Rachel surprised herself by actually interfering...

"Brave but foolish man," Rachel said, and she saved Jacques ass by grabbing the first redneck, a bald-headed creep named Bill, and tossed him against the wall. With a Vampire's superhuman strength, this proved quite easy. Jacques waded into the remaining brawlers, and together, he and Rachel made short work of them. Jacques looked at the lovely blonde woman who'd saved his life, and recognized her as the Vampire who got away from him the previous night.

"You're the Vampire from Malik's cabal, you know I'm a Hunter, what did you save me?" Jacques asked, pulling a silver dagger out of his vest pocket, and Rachel looked at him and smiled, flashing him her pearly white fangs. She looked at the Hunter, who glared at her, anger and confusion in his soulful brown eyes. This one doesn't know what to make of me, friend or foe, and his confusion is nectar to me, Rachel thought with a smirk.

Rachel Bonnard, who had been a handmaiden in the service of Marie-Antoinette d'Autriche, and became a Vampire in the dark days which plagued France after the untimely death of her beloved mistress, remembered seeing such fanatical eyes in the faces of the men and women who watched the execution of the Last Queen of France. Heaven and Hell scare me a whole lot less than madmen, Rachel thought.

"Perhaps, Hunter, not every Vampire is your enemy, if I were evil, as you think I am, I would have let those bigots murder you for being a black man flirting with a white woman at a redneck/biker bar in the frigging Dirty South," Rachel replied, somewhat haughtily, and Jacques paused as he considered that. The Hunter fell silent for a moment, and then, amazingly, he lowered his weapon.

"Alright, I'll entertain your madness, my name is Jacques," he said, and then Rachel slowly, gently extended her hand. After a brief hesitation, Jacques shook it, and Rachel told him her name. Thus, for the first time in thousands of years, Hunter and Vampire struck a truce. Rachel and Jacques didn't know it, but the world was definitely not ready for the two of them. Vampires and Hunters are like cobras and mongooses. They cannot be friends, or more than friends. The conflict between the two sides has raged for thousands of years and isn't about to stop...

"The best remedy is to focus on the moment, my dear," Jacques replied, as if he understood, his deep, resonant voice pulling Rachel out of her little trip down memory lane. Jacques grinned, and then he kissed Rachel on the forehead. Rachel kissed him back passionately, and just like that, they began to make love. Man and woman, black and white, Vampire and Hunter, those distinctions didn't matter anymore. They simply melted into each other...

"Oh, I feel quite focused right now, handsome," Rachel laughed, as Jacques kissed her throat, and then fastened his full, sensuous lips around the areolas of her breasts. Rachel sighed happily, though she no longer breathed, welcoming Jacques sensual touch. Jacques kissed a path from Rachel's breasts to her belly, and then spread her thick creamy white thighs, then paused.

"Just relax, ma belle," Jacques said, and he grinned, and then buried his face between Rachel's legs. Rachel nodded, and licked her lips as Jacques began to eat her out, stimulating her cold pussy with his magic tongue. Teasing her clitoris with the tip of his tongue, Jacques slid two fingers into her pussy, causing Rachel to squirm. She found herself moaning happily as Jacques pleasured her, with an eagerness and skill far beyond his thirty-odd years...

"Hmm, that's more like it, mon amour," Rachel cooed softly, and the alabaster-skinned Vampire found herself on all fours, face down and ass up, as Jacques ate her pussy from behind. Jacques lathered her pussy with his tongue, and Rachel began moaning deeply, loving what the hunky Haitian stud was doing to her. Soon Jacques had his darling Rachel on cloud nine, and she definitely did not want to come down...

"J'aime ton joli derriere, my dear Rachel," Jacques paused to say, and he playfully smacked Rachel's butt, causing her to giggle. To really shine him on, Rachel shook her big creamy butt for him. Jacques stroked his long, hard dick, and then rubbed it against her bum. He wanted very much to be inside of her, but Rachel apparently had other plans. Turning around, Rachel flashed Jacques a fanged smile, and looked at his erect manhood...hungrily.

"Hmm, that looks delicious," Rachel said, and she grabbed Jacques dick, and began stroking it. Jacques looked at Rachel, whose cold, pale hands lovingly stroked his dick and smiled. Winking at him, Rachel took Jacques into her mouth, and the hunky former Hunter sighed happily. Taking her sweet time, Rachel gently massaged Jacques balls while sucking him off, driving him absolutely nuts in a most wonderful way.

"I need to be inside of you," Jacques said haltingly, after Rachel finished polishing his dick with those cold, succulent lips of hers. Rachel grinned in a decidedly feral manner, and then all but pounced on him. Straddling Jacques, Rachel grabbed his face and looked into his eyes. Jacques smiled and caressed her breasts, loving the feel of her nubile body against his. Bucking his hips, Jacques thrust into her, and a happy gasp escaped Rachel's lips.

"Make yourself at home," Rachel hissed, and she rested her hands on Jacques broad shoulders, impaling her cold pussy on his hard, warm, pulsing dick. Jacques slapped her thick pale ass, and fucked her with gusto. Groaning passionately, Jacques gave Rachel all that he had, and then some. Rachel stared at Jacques, eyes bright crimson, fangs bared, and froze. Was he horrified by her expression of her Vampire side?

"You're beautiful," Jacques said, and he kissed Rachel passionately, not caring that she was Vamping out. Rachel kissed Jacques with all the passion she could muster. In her centuries of existence, she'd never met a mortal who wasn't terrified or disgusted by her unnatural side. Jacques, though, seemed to embrace all that she was, and Rachel found that absolutely wonderful. If her Undead heart still beat, it would soar with love for Jacques...

"Hmm, I wish it could be just like this, always," Rachel said, much later, as she rested her head upon Jacques chest. Exhausted at last, the Haitian stud grinned and kissed her forehead, and then he started snoring. Smiling, Rachel finally let herself fall asleep. Like all of her kind, when the sun rose, Rachel liked to be in a safe, dark place, sleeping away the daylight hours. The mansion's windows were shaded, shielding her from the sun's glare, thanks to precautions that Jacques took for her safety.

The following day, while Rachel Bonnard slept, Jacques Toussaint went for a walk around downtown Houston. He had some errands to run, like getting blood packs from a local blood bank to feed Rachel, whom he was slowly weaning off her habit of feeding on humans. Granted, Rachel liked to prey on the scum of the universe, murderers, drug dealers, rapists, gangsters and the like, but as a former Hunter, Jacques disapproved of her feeding off any human, period.

Jacques was coming out of the Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center, one of the largest blood banks in Texas, when he sensed a threat. With instincts honed over a lifetime spent Hunting the supernatural, Jacques scanned his surroundings, and saw three men approaching his direction. One was tall, dark-skinned and burly, with an Afro, and one was stocky, bronze-skinned and bald-headed, and the third was tall, lanky and blond. All three wore stylish dark suits, and carried themselves with the easy confidence found in men of action. Jacques immediately pegged them as Hunters, his kind of people...

"Jacques Toussaint, we are here to bring you in, for consorting with a Vampire and forsaking the Code of the Hunters," said the lanky, blond-haired Hunter, and the man's steely, blue-eyed glare fixed itself on him, like a predator locking onto prey. The other two men flanked the blond one, and pulled back their suits, long enough to expose the guns they carried.

"Come with us, and you'll get to tell your side of the story," the one with the Afro said, and he flashed Jacques a disturbing smile. Jacques considered that, and paused. Once upon a time, the very idea that he would oppose his fellow Hunters and side with a Vampire would have seemed ludicrous to him. Now, though, after knowing, and loving, the beautiful and wickedly sexy Vampire known as Rachel Bonnard, Jacques wasn't sure about a lot of things...

"Go to hell," Jacques heard himself say, and he then pulled out his silver blade, which he threw at the lead Hunter. The blade thudded into the blond man's forehead with a meaty smack, and he went down with a comically quizzical expression on his face. Jacques didn't have time to savor his victory, however, for the other two Hunters pulled out their guns, and pumped enough bullets into him to kill a whole heard of elephants...

"Traitor," one of the Hunters said, as he and his companion stood over Jacques, watching as the man who was once one of the world's most ruthless and dedicated Hunters breathed his last. What the Hunters didn't know, and what Jacques himself didn't know, as he lay dying, was what was happening inside his body's cellular structure...

"Jacques, my love," Rachel shrieked, as she bolted awake, and the Vampire rose from bed, and anxiously looked all over the mansion, to no avail. Jacques was not on the premises, and she felt him die, something which surprised her in many ways. A certain bond exists between a nascent Vampire, and the one who brings him or her into the world of the Undead. There was no way Rachel could feel Jacques's anguish unless he were...no, it could not be.

Anxiously, Rachel waited for the sun to go down, and then, driven by primordial instincts, the Vampire took to the nighttime streets of Houston, Texas. Heading to Houston Methodist Hospital, Rachel went to the emergency room, where doctors fought a losing battle to keep a certain gunshot victim alive. Jacques Toussaint was fading fast, and there was nothing anyone could do about it...

"My love, what on earth have they done to you?" Rachel asked, as she stood before Jacques Toussaint hospital bed. He lay there, with tubes sticking out of his body, looking so vulnerable, broken and pitiful, a far cry from the tall, dark and handsome young man she'd grown to cherish. Convincing the doctors and nurses to let her see Jacques hadn't been easy, but Rachel had always been quite persuasive. She wasn't prepared for what she saw, though...

Watching Jacques Toussaint's magnificent life fade away before her very eyes, the Vampire known as Rachel Bonnard faced a dubious choice. She could turn him, transform him against his will into something like her, a fellow Vampire, and risk having Jacques despise her for all eternity. Or she could let him die, and spend the rest of her Immortality regretting losing the only man she'd ever loved...

Jacques Toussaint lay on his hospital bed, fading fast. With hours left to live at best, he lay there, unconscious. In his dying mind, he dreamed, and hoped. Jacques saw his old life on the island of Haiti, where he was born. He remembered the day his father, Francois Toussaint, told him about Vampires, and taught him the family business, hunting down Vampires and all other intelligent non-human entities that dwelled upon the world.

As Jacques life began to fade, his whole existence flashed before his eyes, and he saw his family and friends, his college years at University of Notre Dame in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, and his adventures as a Hunter. He tracked down Vampires across the island of Haiti, and his quest took him to places like Cuba, Trinidad, Guadeloupe, and finally, the United States of America. While in Texas, Jacques met the woman destined to change his life forever, the Vampire Rachel...

"Come back to me," a feminine voice said, sharp and demanding, and Jacques felt himself being pulled by an irresistible force. Jacques opened his eyes, and found himself beholding a beautiful, pale countenance. Jacques blinked as he recognized Rachel, the beautiful French-born Vampire who changed his life. Rising to his feet, it occurred to Jacques that he hadn't taken a breath in a while. Wow, he no longer breathed...

"Rachel, my dear Rachel, you are here," Jacques Toussaint said, and Rachel Bonnard smiled and nodded firmly, and then welcomed him with open arms. They held each other tenderly, and embraced as true equals for the first time. Hand in hand, they exited the old Houston Methodist Hospital, and went on the hunt, like true Vampires are wont to do. A smorgasbord of human blood awaited them, flowing through the veins of pathetic mortals who were themselves ripe for the taking. On Jacques first night out as a fledgling Vampire, he and his paramour Rachel unleashed a veritable massacre upon Houston...