Prologue - Introduction

My name is Kasandra, and I am a vampire hunter. Laugh all you want but they exist. My mother is one, and has been since I turned sixteen. Sweet sixteen right? Hah, I wish. Ever since then I have been fighting against the vampires, killing them off one by one. I figure one vampire down, is another two people saved.

I'm seventeen now and it's been a year since then, a year filled with death and fighting. She, obviously, doesn't approve of what I do for a living. But what can I say? I realize that one day; my life will lead me down a path where I have to kill her. I try not to dwell too long on the future though, it messes me up too much and I need my senses with me at all times, day or night.

I live off of Kraft road, a little ways away from the Caledonia High School, which is where I go to school. Now, some may call it an education, but I prefer to think of it as an excuse for people to belittle you all day, as well as a chance for teachers to show how stupid you really are. And to think, some people look forward to torture like this. Then again, one thing that may add to my dislike could be that I am considered, how should I put this, a "goth". To put it plainly, I wear black a lot and therefore am teased by my color preference. Sure makes learning sound a lot more fun, doesn't it?

Out of the six hundred students that go to Caledonia High School, I only get along with about two. Kind of sad, isn't it? We're misfits, not really fitting into any kind of mold or generic name. We don't bother with designer brands, or try to look and act like people want us to. They also know about my mother, but I trust them with the secret. Then again, with the threat being death, I would keep quiet too.

My father is dead. He died in a vampire attack, the same night that Mom was changed. Coincidence? I think not. According to her, he had fended them off in an attempt to get her away from them. But it was hopeless. And yet, here she still stands, living it up as a vampire as if she never married in the first place. I swear, for being related we are two sides of a coin.

The thing that always gets me is that my family on my father's side died very shortly after he did a day or two apart at best. It reminds me of a card castle. One tiny removal of the slightest card and the whole thing collapses. It's a pity too, as I got along fairly well with my cousins and grandparents, far better than with the ones on Mom's side. The really odd thing, is that whenever I try to look something up about my father's family (my grandpa always bragged about how he won several national chess tournaments), I couldn't find anything about them. Nothing, not a single birth date or a file that even proved that they had existed. It was as if they were never alive, as if they had been made up. Every time I think about that, I scoff and remind myself, of course they were alive, they just never made the paper or anything, it's not that big of a deal.

That brings me to another topic of interest, where as my father's side was perfectly fine, my mother's is anything but. Her mother, my grandma, was a drug addict, and is now dead because of it. Her husband, too, is dead due to drugs. I haven't heard anything from my uncles or aunts, or even from any of my cousins, since I was fifteen.

Now that you know about my life, do you still think I'm crazy for believing in vampires? Wait, what am I thinking, of course you still do! I have yet to even show the hard read on. Perhaps when you're done you'll believe me.