Bloodbound Hunter

The stake trembled in Kara’s grip. Not from fear. From the cold that had settled into her bones three years ago and never left.

She pressed her back against the alley wall, brick scraping through her jacket. The night air carried the usual smells of National City. Exhaust. Garbage. The metallic tang of blood that had been spilled an hour ago, two blocks over, already drying.

Her target stood at the end of the alley. Tall. Impossibly still. A man in a thousand-dollar suit who had been a banker before he got turned, and now he was something else entirely. Something that fed on the desperate and the lonely. Something that left bodies in hotel rooms with two small punctures at the throat.

Kara had been tracking him for six days.

She could do this. She had done this a hundred times. Two hundred. She had stopped counting after the first year because counting meant keeping score, and keeping score meant admitting she had turned her grief into a weapon and her nights into a hunt.

The banker turned. His eyes caught the dim light, reflecting it like a cat’s. He smiled.

“You’re the one they call the Sun Killer.”

Kara stepped out of the shadows. “I’m the one who’s going to put a stake through your heart.”

“So dramatic.” He tilted his head, studying her. “You’re young. You’re angry. You’re hunting alone. That means you’re either very good or very stupid.”

“Both.”

She moved. Three years of training, of pushing her Kryptonian body past every limit she had ever known. She closed the distance in a heartbeat, stake aimed for his chest.

He was faster.

He caught her wrist, twisted. The stake clattered to the ground. His other hand grabbed her throat, slammed her against the wall. Her vision went white for a second.

“Stronger than you look,” he said, his breath cold against her face. “But not strong enough.”

She headbutted him. Her Kryptonian skull cracked his nose, sent him staggering. She grabbed the stake, rolled, came up in a crouch.

He was already healing. The cartilage in his nose knitted itself back together, the blood drying on his lips.

“You’re going to have to do better than that.”

She did.

The fight took three minutes. She got him through the heart on her second real opening, and he crumbled to dust before he hit the ground. She stood there, breathing hard, the stake still in her hand, the alley empty again.

She should feel something. Satisfaction. Relief. Anything.

She felt nothing.

Kara sheathed the stake in the holster strapped to her thigh and walked out of the alley. The city hummed around her, oblivious. People on their phones. Couples holding hands. A group of drunk college students singing off-key.

Normal people living normal lives.

She used to be one of them. She used to believe in hope and second chances and the fundamental goodness of people. She used to wear a cape and a crest and believe she could save everyone.

That was before Lena.

Before the truth came out. Before she spent two years lying to the person she trusted most, telling herself it was for Lena’s protection. Before Lena found out the way everyone finds out in this city. By watching the news.

The fight had been bad. The silence after had been worse. Lena had looked at her with those green eyes, and Kara had seen something break in them. Something that had never quite healed.

And then Lena had left. No dramatic goodbye. No final confrontation. She had simply stopped answering calls, stopped coming to game nights, stopped being anywhere Kara might find her.

Three years.

Three years of hunting. Three years of filling the empty space where Lena had been with stakes and holy water and the bodies of vampires who deserved worse than a quick death.

Kara walked through the doors of her apartment at 3 AM. She dropped her jacket on the floor, kicked off her boots, stood in the dark living room that still had boxes she hadn’t unpacked.

She didn’t live here. She slept here. There was a difference.

Her phone buzzed. She ignored it.

It buzzed again. And again.

She picked it up. Seven messages from Alex. One from J’onn. And one from a number she didn’t recognize.

She opened the unknown message.

It was a photo.

Kara’s blood went cold.

The photo showed a penthouse she knew too well. L-Corp tower, top floor. Lena’s office. But the office had been transformed. The walls were lined with black silk. The furniture was gone, replaced by a single ornate chair. And sitting in that chair, wearing a black dress that pooled around her like liquid shadow, was Lena.

She looked different. Her skin was pale, almost luminous. Her eyes were darker, hungrier. Her lips were red in a way that wasn’t lipstick.

But the worst part was the smile.

Kara had seen Lena smile a thousand times. Warm smiles. Sharp smiles. Smiles that said I know something you don’t and I’m going to enjoy telling you.

This smile was none of those things.

This smile was a predator’s.

The second message came through. A single line of text.

*I know you’ve been busy, darling. Come see me.*

Kara’s hands were shaking. She locked her phone, threw it on the couch, paced the length of her apartment. Three steps. Turn. Three steps. Turn.

Lena was a vampire.

Lena was a vampire and Kara hadn’t known. Hadn’t sensed it. Hadn’t seen the signs. She had been so consumed with her own guilt, her own hunting, her own pain, that she had missed the most obvious thing in the world.

The woman she had loved had become the thing she hunted.

Kara picked up her phone. She typed a response.

*I’m not coming.*

The reply came instantly.

*You will. You’ve never been able to resist me.*

Kara’s jaw clenched. She typed again.

*What do you want?*

A long pause. Then three words.

*To finish this.*

Kara stared at the screen until it went dark. Her reflection stared back at her, hollow-eyed and exhausted.

She could run. She could leave National City, change her name, start hunting somewhere else. She could pretend she never saw the message.

But Lena knew where to find her. Lena had always known.

And somewhere, buried under three years of rage and grief and the cold that wouldn’t leave her bones, Kara still wanted to see her.

She grabbed her coat.