"Where the hell is this thing...." a soft mutter filled the silence of the empty apartment complex.  Stalking around in the empty room was a hooded figure.  The person wearing the black winter hood was a young woman who stood at an average height of five foot five inches tall, but her hunting boots gave her a few more inches of height.  The brunette girl looked to be in her early twenties, with olive skin,  bright blue eyes and heavy bags under them.  She breathed out a hard puff of air in an attempt to move her messy bangs out of her face.  She hadn't cut her hair in a couple months and it was finally starting to annoy her, or perhaps her patience was simply wearing thin from her horrible lack of sleep.  The snowy weather wasn't lightening her sour mood either.<br/><br/>The past two weeks of her time had been dedicated to tracking down a certain vampire that currently inhabited this crowded city.  It was rather common to find vampires hunting in cities similar to this one.  For one thing, cities were filled with young available adults living by themselves, and there were plenty of homeless vagabonds lying out in the streets.  There might as well have been a "Free Buffet" sign hanging around their necks; It's too tempting for blood-suckers to avoid chances like these.<br/>These places also served as prime grounds for freelance vampire hunters, such as this young woman, to stalk their prey and trap them.  It was like shooting a fish in a barrel at times.  Vampires were either hundreds of years old or newly formed; there was no middle ground.  The newly formed vampires were still heavily driven by their new primal urges and hardly ever thought about how to keep themselves safe.  These Fresh-Bloods were incredibly easy to locate and kill, unlike their much wiser counterparts.<br/><br/>Clara was growing increasingly frustrated at her lack of progress tonight.  The huntress had initially been lead to believe that the vampire she was hunting was a Fresh-Blood, but with this particular hunting longer than expected she was starting to doubt it.  Despite the large number of vampire related deaths over the past few months in this area, there was very little to go on.  She knew that he was still in the city and all of the deaths seemed to be taking place closer to the hotel district.  Clara had been going through every abandoned motel and apartment complex in the area in hopes of locating her prey...but he was tricky. Every time she managed to find some trace of the vampire, they would disappear and leave her with no way to track them.  She had never felt so frustrated over a simple hunt in her life, but she was determined to see it through at this point.  The bounty was too big for her to turn down and if there was one thing she cared about; it was making money.<br/><br/>['They have to be close....the footprints I tracked are still fresh..']<br/><br/>Finally fed up with her stealth tracking, she decided to confront her prey directly.  She took out a butterfly knife she had strapped to her forearm and pushed the blade up swiftly.  She carefully pressed the edge of the knife against the palm of her free hand and watched as blood started to slowly drip form the cut and slide down her fingertips, leaving the snow stained with droplets of the liquid.  It was evident that the bloody hand had been cut before on multiple occasions.  Fresh-Blood or not....it was hard to resist the scent of free-flowing blood, especially since she was isolated in the abandoned area.  If there really was a vampire here, she hoped her plan would at least draw them out.  If she could see what they looked like, then the tracking would go easier.  The best case scenario would involve the vampire trying to attack her right there.  If that were to happen, she would be able to end this sooner rather than later.<br/>Clara was already in a detestable mood, so she gripped the knife firmly by the hilt as her eyes scanned the area carefully.