#sbsgrace

Grace Villiers ║ Vampire ║  Taken  ║   Victoria Smurfit 

Introduction

She was born in an era of parents who would rather have had boys than girls, especially in high society London, and even more especially when their families were part of a secret vampire hunting society who passed their mantle down from parent to child. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for Grace, Lord Christopher Villiers and his wife Elizabeth only had one child. Her. Faced with the choice of passing down his mantle to her or not passing it down at all, Lord Villiers taught his daughter everything he knew. She learned weaponry and combat alongside how to dance and curtsy. She learned that vampires were evil beings that needed to be wiped off the face of the earth. And she learned to be the one who banished them.

She was twenty when her father died and she joined the society in his place. For years she was underestimated and underutilised. Her mother convinced her to marry an older man, another Lord within the society so that the family could retain strength, and for years she waited for him to die too, to be killed on a hunt and never return. One day, her wish finally came true, and she played the grieving widow to perfection, but she had another motive in mind; to convince the society to let her throw herself into hunting the beast that killed him. Her grief would become rage, at least in their eyes, and she told them that if they did not allow her to do so, she would do it without them.

From that day on, she wasn’t in the shadows any more. The Vampire Hunter’s Society of London had a woman as one of its best hunters. She even found a relationship of love, not just tolerance, with a man named Fane. Like most great love stories, theirs began with them meeting at the scene of a murder. They met next to the body of Elizabeth Stride, the third victim of the killer who would be known as Jack The Ripper. There was no human man behind the murders, but a vampire, and Grace was on his tail when she ran into Fane. They both went for the killer, but got in each other’s way, causing him to escape. After questioning and being suspicious of one another, they heard another victim had been found less than an hour later, and it was then that they decided to work together in order to take the Ripper down. She had never seen the man in the London society before, but he moved like a hunter. After they defeated the Ripper together, they began a courtship.

It didn’t last.

It was only after she had already fallen for him that Grace began to grow suspicious of Fane. She had always been a suspicious and cynical person, but she swore sometimes she got the distinct impression he wasn’t being honest. She began trying to pick holes in his backstory, to separate the truth from his lies, hoping he would be proven to be honest and she would be proven to just be paranoid, but it was while doing some intense digging that she found a portrait of him in the society’s archives. It was from two hundred years earlier. Grace planned to confront Fane about it and on that night, he decided to propose. Overcome by emotion and anger, she lashed out at him, trying to kill him. They fought, and he got away. Anger and bitterness overcame her and she threw herself into her work, but like most hunters, she couldn’t live forever. It turned out the vampire who killed her would rather have her around as a companion though, and he sired her, almost as a message to the society. He knew it would isolate her, that it would make the society come after her too, and it did.

She left her sire behind the moment she realised what she was. Grace went on the run, crossing to Europe in search of Fane, not sure if she wanted to try and kill him again, or apologize. She didn’t find him, and she moved on to the Americas to get as far away from the society as possible. Over time, she adjusted to being a vampire, and discovered the things she had been taught about them weren’t necessarily all true. Some were monsters, but many of them were just people, as varied in personality as anyone else. She had almost forgotten about Fane, or at least pushed him out of her mind, when he stumbled on her as she was passing through a town called Soapberry Springs. It was as if they had each seen a ghost. Grace doesn’t know how she feels about him anymore, but she has to admit, it’s nice being in a town where she doesn’t have to look over her shoulder all the time. For now, she’s decided to stay and see what the place has to offer.

How well do you take criticism? “And why would someone be criticising me? Well, I suppose that answers the question for you, doesn’t it? I come from a time when women were criticised for everything, for merely existing, and though decades have passed, sometimes I fear time hasn’t changed society’s mind at all. Criticism against me is rarely valid. I don’t care what most people think.”