Ian Jackson
Ian Jackson and Emily Forth were very much in love. It was a fairy-tale romance, strewn with flowers and kisses. He was the honour student from a good family, and she was the low-class girl from the wrong side of the tracks who had been saved from her descent into the bad life by his love. There was passion, and there were promises. They were high school sweethearts in a small city, and had been dating ever since the Homecoming dance of their sophomore year. They both went to the local college because they couldn't stand the idea of being apart.
Eventually, of course, Ian and Emily became engaged, and a wedding date was set for the summer immediately after their joint graduation. Their parents approved of the match, and put on a splendid ceremony, all white lace and silk. The couple was sent on a trip to California for their honeymoon. Of course, Sabbat packs don't believe in fairy tales. Emily they took for their own; Ian they ripped to shreds when they came across the newlyweds walking along a deserted beach. Creation Rites, Vaulderie - Ian watched it all, screaming from the Shadowlands.
It was hard for him to accept at first, seeing his Emily become a bloodthirsty caricature of her former ways. Still, even death and worse could not alter his feelings. He followed his wife and the pack of Country Gangrel to which she belonged wherever they went, learning what he could along the way.
In the course of time, the pack returned to the place where they'd killed Ian. And it was there that he came through, re-inhabiting his body, his need to be with his wife overriding all else. She had kept his wedding ring with her and he took it back, soon discovering that through it he could sense Emily, as though the two rings were linked somehow. He joined the pack, roaming with them as he had before, but now in body as well as in spirit. As far as they were concerned, he'd proven himself when he came back from the other side, and they found him useful. He had some abilities they didn't, and his Heightened Senses made him a useful guard. In fact, most vampires they ran into simply assumed that Ian was a Kindred member of the pack.
Ian ordinarily used all of his abilities to protect Emily and her pack. He believed he would do anything to keep his love alive and well, no matter what she had become. Yet a part of him still craved revenge against his murderers, and as much as he would have liked to believe otherwise, he could not deny that Emily was now one of them. His Shadow fed on this, and there were times when even Emily looked on him with fear.
Eventually the part of Ian that demanded retribution won out, and he betrayed the Sabbat pack to the Camarilla. But even as he felt the beginnings of Emily's terror through their link and saw through her eyes the carnage that ensued as the vampires tore each other limb from limb, he was running back to save her.
When he reached the pack's camp, there was no one left "alive." He searched through the blood and bodies, clawing his way through piles of spilled intestines and gory ash, but he couldn't find her body.
When he calmed down enough to reach out to Emily through their link, Ian thought that he could just barely feel her flickering mind at the edge of his consciousness, as though she were a great distance away. In a rage he ran all night and the next day in the direction he thought he'd felt her in, but he soon lost even the faintest contact. It's been years now, and Ian's almost convinced himself that he imagined it. Almost.
Ian began hunting the Kindred on the night he lost Emily for the second time - all Kindred, not only the ones who'd taken her - all the while searching for some sign of his love. In time he came to be feared throughout the world of the Kindred as one of the most terrifying of all hunters. It is said that he is still out there somewhere, searching for Emily Jackson and killing everyone who gets in his way.
