Please note that, even if I've done my best,  you might not be able to completely comprehend changes in Sebastian. So far I've only written two jobs, one of them being Laura's first and the second one is actually their last until the book gets more plot oriented.

I initially wanted to include more job chapters so as to show Laura's soft nature and Sebastian's cold heartless nature when it came to killing the evil and how he gradually changed. But since these chapters might somewhat sound like fillers to plot oriented readers, I'll soon (not so soon :P ) publish a separate story featuring Laura and Sebastian's earlier life as hunters including 6-7 jobs ( before Brad's part).

If you have any doubt feel free to message me!

Hope you liked the book so far.

So enjoy reading and if you like any chapter, do vote! You can't imagine how happy it makes me to get that notification : )

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[ Sebastian ]

"Sebastian, Sebastian. Are you okay? " I saw Laura waving at my face. When I saw Laura, even though her face was quite pale, all I could think was how beautiful she was - blonde straight hair, beautiful brown eyes and the sharp nose and light red lips. I don't know why but I got the urge to look away.

"Is something wrong with my face?" Laura asked.

"No. It's perfect. There's something stuck to your cheek though. Here." I approached her and  gently removed a grain of rice which was stuck to her cheek. Her touch seemed so wonderful and strangely familiar. Like the touch I'd always known even though I'd met her not more than a month ago. Maybe, something was definitely between us.

"Thanks, I guess." Laura replied. She seemed a bit uncomfortable though. Maybe she felt differently about me. Or maybe she liked it and that made her feel a little confused like I did.

"Sebastian, what happened when I was gone? " Laura asked weakly like she wanted to know and at the same time wanted to avoid it. This question drifted my attention to the event so unreal that if I hadn't had experienced it myself, I would have thought it was nothing but some crazy writer's fictitious work. (Lol :P)

"How much do you remember?" I asked hoping she hadn't recollected the entire thing.

"Well, I don't actually remember much. It's so fuzzy that I think I was imagining things. I felt like I was in a dream. I felt a warm feeling of intense energy flowing through me and then I was..." before she could complete, my weird humour side jumped in.

"An LED." I said without realising I was talking out loud. The thing was, I never really bothered about my sense of humour so it just grew and grew weirder. I happened to work with many types of strange men since I was a kid which made my taste bad. I wasn't raised normally. When other normal kids used to play with childish toys, I used to play with daggers and actual swords. When others fantasized about having supernatural abilities, I used to practise them. Yeah, sounds awesome, right? Well, you might know the famous Harry Potter quote Laura once told me - great powers come with great responsibilities. Add great risks, great losses and terrible life to it. Because I was one of the few to master the Deathstar Art completely, a dark art you'll soon come to know about, I was brainwashed and made into a living weapon. When normal kids used to play violent games on playstation, I used to do the actual killing.

In a nutshell, I was raised in unimaginable ways . Never was I asked what I would like to become. Never was I asked whether I'm okay with the killing. Never was I asked what I liked to do. I was just a tool to them, a weapon they can use or throw at will. It was when I started acknowledging my thoughts, I retaliated. But my retaliation made me something worse - a human with a demon heart. I killed my own father who saw me not as a kid, not as his own son but as a tool he'd invented, as a use and throw human-piece for his Kingdom.

The way I was brought up didn't let me understand anything human and making jokes about killings and murders or anything paranormal, like Laura turning into an LED, thus never bothered me. On the contrary, a few hunters I happened to work alongside loved my humour. So I never tried to control my weird sense of humour.

Well, things started changing gradually after I happened to meet Laura. I started appreciating and comprehending human emotions. I even started noticing that not all foul creatures are foul at heart. And I started recognising the most important fact - there was still a human heart hidden under all the terrible curses I carried.

Laura made me understand the importance of life and revived a new Sebastian in me, the one I had never known, the one who was human. And with the awakening of this new me, I changed pretty drastically. Not just because it was just and good, not just because Laura would appreciate it but because I wanted to, as being human felt the best and natural.

"I'm sorry, it just slipped out of my tounge." I apologised quickly but she didn't say anything. Had she started to understand me or had she already given up on me? I expected the latter. After all Laura didn't know who I was and what I'd done and why. How would she understand me if I myself couldn't understand me many times . But there was one thing I didn't know about love - More than you could ever understand yourself, it's your soulmate who understands you the most. Laura obviously didn't know my past but I got the feeling that she could understand the present me. Was she the one for me?

Contrary to what I'd thought she would do, Laura laughed. Just a weak giggle but it did surprise me. Perhaps she did understand me after all.

"Yeah, an LED and I think I saw, rather, I imagined I heard Brad screaming and Nicole gushing back to surface. But then the lights faded and I sank..." She completed faltering her voice.

Thank god she didn't remember everything.
Nicole did surface but her hands and legs won't work anymore. Brad did disintegrate but in ways unimaginable. It was the first time I'd seen a warlock disintegrate. Actually killing a warlock requires a lot of energy. But it wasn't how he disintegrated that concerned me. It was Laura.

( FLASHBACK )

For one moment she was shrieking in absolute pain when intense white rays started emitting through her eyes. The bright light danced across the whole pool room and filled it with sheer white brightness which first blinded me. But then the light danced around and focused about Laura. I rubbed my eyes and looked at her - a body bathed in intense light dancing around her as her eyes started burning in the light. The water around her started bubbling and steam started rising from the pool. Not just that, strange white marks started forming all over her body as the light somehow cut through her body. As I watched in horror, the lines tearing across her skin burned more intensely as they thickened and gradually formed a network thickening at her forehead,  forming a mark I'd never seen before. Then her eyes weren't light brown anymore, but had turned into what seemed like two miniature suns burning intense white.

Once the energy lines around her stabilised, she stopped screaming. I watched in horror as blood started coming out from her eyes and ears while her blood washed the white lines of blazing energy which vapourised the blood into steam. I couldn't believe my eyes as I saw what Laura had turned into - a body bathing in intense white light which was scorching her while the energy lines all over her body, thickened, burning her skin as if it were on fire. And even though she must had been feeling so tremendous pain, her screaming had stopped while her body relaxed. Though her entire body was being scorched at a 1000 degrees, she perfectly seemed at ease!

Whatever was going with Laura was bad, really really bad. I'd never seen anything like that in my entire life nor had I heard or read anything similar. Wondering whether it was Brad's doing, I looked at him but he seemed clueless too.

Then Laura's eyes focused on Brad and as she willed the lights to grab him, the lights about her flickered and the next moment they were surrounding Brad. A terrible scream escaped his burning mouth as the lights grabbed him. I saw his skin melt and eyes pop out literally. Then his blood and organs all burned and not even ashes remained.

Surprisingly, I was left untouched. The light did shimmer across me but I couldn't even feel a thing. Then the light started fading and seeped inside her marks as the marks started fading too. I hurried towards Laura and my heart stopped.

Her entire body was covered in burn marks and blood was gushing through her cuts all over her. Through her closed eyes, steam was rising as the water in which she was sinking, bubbled. Her once blonde hair had now turned blood red and were plastered to her bloody forehead. Long narrow cuts ran all over her body and blood was seeping out of them.

I'd quickly grabbed her and Nicole out. Though Nicole's body seemed at normal temperature,  Laura's was at a 100 degrees. She was so hot that my hands scorched as I lifted her. I called 911, left Nicole blanketed beside the pool and hurried to the nearest hospital.

Was she dead? What in the world was that? My head started blazing with questions. I placed her carefully in the car as I hurried to the nearest hospital, my mind crammed with questions and worry.  As I looked at her, I witnessed yet another surprising thing. The burn marks had started fading and the cuts which slithered all over her body were healing on their own, as if she had regeneration power. What was going on?

I hurried to the hospital. By the time I'd reached the hospital, her wounds were almost half closed but they were still open. She still looked like she was put into a shredder. Doctors, after having calmed down and after believing one of my realistic fake tales, diagnosed her and said she was alive but couldn't say when she would wake up, a curious case of comma. After they had stabilised Laura, I brought her to my uncle's, to Guildberg, a hunter town in Kansas, and not after one day or two days, after almost seven days she finally woke up!

( END OF FLASHBACK )

"Sebastian, Sebastian. What's wrong with you?" Laura asked me worriedly. "Tell me what happened. " she urged focusing her curious brown eyes at me.

I had to tell her something, anything but not the truth. Now, I was an excellent liar but something in her eyes made me say the truth. You cannot lie from those who are really important and close to you, even if the truth might hurt them.

"Laura, I..I can't tell." I muttered. But she wasn't going to take a no for an answer. She deserved elaboration and finer details also along with the explanation of my dead serious face I'd made a few minutes ago while recalling the incident.

"Sebastian, look, I know what happened to me was, on a scale of weirdness from 1 to 10, was a 100. I know you care about me and knowing this will hurt me, believe me I know. But do you know how much not knowing hurts? Fine, you don't agree to tell me about you or your past or your main work. But I need to know what happened to me. I deserve to!" She said carefully measuring her tone so it would seem a demand as well as a plead.

"Fine." I sighed. I knew how it's to feel not knowing something about you. I've practically been raised up like a tool, not knowing I had a mind of my own. I went on missions, not knowing how was it useful or why it was me who had to do the killing. Laura' s case wasn't that extreme but one thing I understood from my past was people deserved to know anything and everything about them, bitter or happy. I chose to tell Laura everything, a few disturbing details omitted.

"It was as you said. It was like you played some ancient spell which even my uncle couldn't decipher till now. You killed Brad and..." before I could continue, Laura interrupted.

"I..I killed Brad?" She said with utter disbelief. But it wasn't a yeah-I-ganked-a-warlock look which rose on her face. Somehow the fact that she'd killed someone lead to such terror in her eyes that she didn't even bother knowing how she killed him. If just murdering someone bothered her so much, I wonder how would she take the gruesome way she'd murdered Brad. I wondered why killing an evil guy bothered her so much.

"Laura, death of Brad's a good thing. After what he'd done to Isabelle and Richard and God knows how many else, he deserved to die." I said trying to sound logical.

"Deserved to die! No one deserves to die. Murderers are not born, they are made by circumstances. If someone really deserved to die, God will definitely punish him." she flared up suddenly. Again the old Catholic crap I hated. But I didn't want to upset her bringing up the fact that like fairies and angels, God too was fictional.

Actually, somehow, I did agree that murderers are made and not just born. I was made into who I was, a killing machine. Did I deserve death or a second chance? It was now that I'd started regretting the killing. Like the demons I hunt, I myself was a demon once. I was another Brad once.

"Laura, fine. Maybe he didn't deserve to die. But what about Richard and Isabelle. Did they deserve to die? And think about the dozens of people Brad would have killed if you hadn't stopped him. You saved dozens of life, Laura. " I tried explaining her forcing back the thoughts of me being as heartless as Brad. But unlike Brad, I was mindless not heartless. Finally it was my heart who stopped me from being a Venator, a so called royal hunter, rather a killing machine.

"That doesn't change the fact I took a life, Sebastian, I... I'm a murderer." she said looking straight at me, tears flooding her big brown eyes and a look of extreme disbelief coloured her face. I wondered if Laura had to live a life like mine, how would have she taken it. She took just one life while I took a hundred, maybe more and she was disturbed this much. One thing was certain, after all this was over, I was going to drop her back at Silverton and hit the road again, alone, even if it would sadden me deeply. I couldn't give up being a hunter and she couldn't become one. But, as it turned out, destiny had other plans for us.

If Nicole hadn't had prepared a Thank You card, I wonder how would I've had stopped her. I quickly handed the card to Laura who took it, read it and calmed down a bit. Finally she stopped sobbing.

"Laura, you did the right thing." I assured her.

Though she looked like she'd calmed down, she hadn't completely, at least not from the inside. Otherwise she would have asked me the next question which would've been haunting her, which still haunted me - How did she do that weird light dancing spell, something not even my uncle, a scholarly old man who read and read the whole day long, could decipher even after seven days, the description of which wasn't mentioned in any of the dark arts !

"Laura, you need to take rest. Or you can take a walk around if you want to. Guildberg is quite a pleasant place. " I suggested.

"I guess I'll sleep now." She replied. Maybe having saved Nicole had made her feel better. I'm glad I didn't tell her Nicole was handicapped now, otherwise God knows how much she would have cried. I helped a blanket over her and walked over to the door.

"If you need anything, just call me." I said and she smiled weakly at me, that beautiful smile which melted my heart. But in those pale eyes I could still see a sadness and disbelief lingering.

"Laura, don't you worry. We'll definitely figure out what had happened." I assured her. She nodded and I closed the door.

It's strange how I'd thought that I'd completely understood what kind of person Laura was but there was so much more to learn about her. If she were an ocean, I hardly would have understood a drop.I couldn't believe how much Laura had changed me in a little less than a month. I'd no reason for living but Laura gave me one. I was no longer just a ruthless murderer but her heart taught me even to reconsider killing the paranormal creatures. She had changed me into a humane human from a demonic human I was.

Initially I'd just wanted to use Laura as a key to a job I couldn't figure out for almost half a year now. She,  not being the only lead, wasn't of much importance to me. But now, she became the most important being in the entire universe to me. She was the reason I'd changed into someone I never thought I would, ever. I wondered when did I make her my reason to be a hunter. But now I had to find a way to ensure she was safe. I had to find a way to make sure my reason lived and I stay being this new hunter. Not the one who kills but the one who saves.