Rome

~No matter how dark your deeds seem in the night, what seperates us from them is the renewal of life with each sunrise.~  From: The hunters guide to self reflection.

It wouldn't be an exaggeration if I said I kissed the ground as soon as the plane landed.  Even with all I've been though, and all the demonic SOB's i've brought down, flying has got to be the most terrifying thing I've ever experienced.

After leaving the terminal I hailed a cab and stashed my gear in the trunk.  Cab was the most incospicious way to travel.  Even though the fangs were underground during the day, their agents were not.  Some were human lackys hoping to gain immortality, others just city scum oblivious of who they were working for. 

I had the cabbie drop me off at the Piazza Navona.  I was hungry after my long flight, plus it was just a short walk to where I was supposed to meet up with everyone.  The Church has sanctuaries all over the globe.  This paticular one however is the center for all operations.  In order to maintain secrecy, I cannot name its exact location here, but as a potential future hunter, you will probably learn it soon enough.

After passing through several layers of security, some designed to keep out humans, others designed to keep out things more nefarious, I was admiited into the underground complex.  The sight that greeted me wasn't an unfamiliar one, but the tech was a lot more advanced than it was in my day.  Display after display lined the walls, each regurgitating the satellite fed data into shapes and statistics for its human observers. 

One display in paticular caught my attention.  It was a world map, zoomed in on the United States, or more precisely Joplin, Missouri.  It was night time there.  There were about a handfull of shimmering purple blobs moving around inside the dark outlines of the city.  I asked the operator what those were, even though in my gut  I already knew.  Vampires, nosterafu, the undead.  Those little purple blobs were the result of thier unique heat signatures.  Colder than a human body, but slightly warmer than the ambient temperatures in the environment.  The hunters had launched a special IR satellite capable of detecting those variances and displaying them on a map.  While I was watching, several blobs disappeared.  Once a vampire feeds,its internal temperature changes and is no longer detectable by the satellite, usually for the rest of the night.

The rest of the teams arrival had been delayed.  So since I was the first to arrive, I spent the rest of my evening catching up on the latest tech employed by the hunters.  I would have to wait until tomorrow to learn the details of our new mission. The Pope of course wasn't going to be there, but was going to deliver our assignment via a video conference after everyone was assembled. 

The fact that fangs were walking freely in my own home town really opened my eyes.  It is a lesson to myself, and for you too, future hunter.  No matter how safe we think we are, no matter how many blood suckers we eradicate, our work will never be done.

~Dyson out.