The Vaunt Apartment Complex, Southport, New Jersey.....
Following the close of the school day, Victor Harlowe made his way back home alone with a stack of assignments to grade and something weighing heavily upon his mind. He had allowed Savannah to spend the night with her best friend Skylar Runnels and her family, as he'd met the Runnels' before, and appreciated their efforts as far as his daughter was concerned. Their place had been her home away from home of sorts when she'd been in the mood to see anyone other than dear old Dad. He didn't begrudge her in her feelings about needing space or adventure, he had felt the very same, and unbeknownst to her, he needed adventure of his own. Victor made his way down to the basement where he triggered a trap door that led to a secret space where he kept all the artifacts about his true profession, that of a Moonlight Knight otherwise known as a Werewolf Hunter.
His wife had been unaware of his true profession as well even up until her dying day but Victor soon discovered that like him she was keeping secrets of her own. On the night of her death, he found a hidden key stuffed into the confines of one of her favorite books as he had taken it out to look it over needing anything that she once held dear to feel close to her in her abrupt absence. Initially, he believed it was his enemies who had killed her as a way of getting back at him for his success at destroying a great many wolf packs in his heyday, but that had not been the case as he found that his wife had lived a secret life as much as he had.
When he found the key, Victor was shocked to note that it opened the door to a secret room where she stashed artifacts and gear along with a vast collection of tomes and books on Vampire hunting. It had hit him all at once that his wife was a vastly successful Vampire Slayer. He had not a single clue about it when she'd been alive aside from her prowess in terms of speed and things that caught his attention whenever they were in bed, but never anything of this magnitude.
Veronica Steele had gone to her grave keeping the secret of being a Slayer and it unnerved Victor to no end at first realizing that her death had been no mere accident of fate nor on his part due to his hidden past.
Savannah had not been privy to his information about her deceased mother no more than she had about her father who had been hunting Werewolves since he'd been a child growing up in the vast countryside of England following in his father, Bryce Lowell's footsteps.
Bryce Lowell was an impressive Moonlight Knight in his day, putting a stop to many a werewolf before he was finally hunted and killed in the office of his estate due to one of his so-called servants having been a werewolf in disguise. The werewolf servant endured himself to the household and got close enough to Bryce to rip out his throat and bleed him dry, but had not been able to relish the victory long as the wayward son of Bryce had returned home from school after a fight got him kicked out. The boy of age sixteen, who had long unruly locks down to his broad shoulders were dark blue jeans, black hi-top trainers, and a white t-shirt with holes in it covered via a black leather jacket when he stumbled upon the gruesome scene of the monster murdering his father and leaving him an orphan for the remainder of his life.
In the present, Victor Harlowe held the ancient silver crossbow he'd gotten from his father's desk that day. The very same one he used to put an end to the werewolf and become initiated into the lifestyle via the blood of a werebeast. He killed the fiend who had murdered his father and ensured that no werewolf was ever going to get the satisfaction of knowing Bryce Lowell was dead at one of their hands.
He ran his hands over the crossbow as he had the night he took out the werebeast that murdered his father and sighed. There was talk of something big occurring on the docks the previous night but he neglected to check it out due to having Savannah home late. He couldn't take the chance of her awakening to find him gone and going out to investigate, not with everything going on about bodies piling up in the recent few nights.
Victor suspected the attacks were via something supernatural and just the same he aimed to make himself ready should he need to come out of retirement to keep his daughter safe. Southport had not been his first choice for a place to raise his only daughter, but it was where his wife was born and had no ties to his family line. Something he used to his advantage when crafting a new persona for himself and his daughter to blend in with the other citizens of the isolated American town.
Taking a few moments to change his attire, as fighting occult in tweed wasn't his style, Victor grabbed a pack of dirty camel cigarettes and his favorite silver flip lighter. There was a moment, where his weary eyes took note of the figure in the darkness, dressed in all black from head to toe and sporting a very feminine leather jacket that cut just above her waistline. Her dark eyes and dark complexion always seemed to command attention and her ruby-red lips broke into something of a smile.
"Don't you worry," he said to no one in particular. "I'll keep my promise Love."
The image faded into nothing as Victor made his way up the staircase he resealed the trap door and closed off the entrance just in case he had not made it back before Savannah had. He knew it was a risk hiding his true profession from her, but he couldn't take the chance of losing her like he'd lost her mother all those years ago.
Locking up the house, Victor Harlowe lit his thin white cigarette and took a drag making a mental note of how he left everything. The silver crossbow was tightly in his grasp as he made his escape into the night. If his daughter knew she'd have questions and he had not the means of which to answer them, not when his mind had been elsewhere.
For he had an appointment to keep and it was nearly time.