Token Vampire (Token Huntress Book 2)

by Kia Carrington-Russell

  “Holy shit woman that is terrifying. Could you imagine if you like did that to a whole hoard of people. People would freak the fuck out,” he laughed. “That would work. Can you do that from long range, without looking at me?”

  “I think I have a feel for you and can decipher you from others now,” I admitted. I was still not fluent in my gift, only that of which Chase had shown me. I scanned over into the next room and was instantly connected to Dillian. Perhaps those that I had already connected with or had an implied impression of through their personality, I could easily find. I had never used my ability on Julia, yet I had the sense of her warm innocent self, it definitely represented her personality.

  “Okay, sweet ass. Well, meet me at the same spot that Tythian had teleported you from this morning. You remember how to get there?” I almost tsked at his imprudence. I was a Token Huntress; of course I was mapping out the place and sense of direction.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, so eight hours? I know there is no clock, but when you are a vampire, you kind of have a sense of the day and when the sun begins to rise and then-”

  “I will find my way, Yolo. Thank you for allowing me to come. I understand the hardship you have faced to get into that position, I won’t fail you,” I said confidently. I wanted to rest for a time and be left alone in silence.

  “Okay, sweet, see you then baby sis.” Yolo smiled, before walking back within the dark tunnel. I slipped down the door, resting against it for a moment and listening out for any other footsteps. I had to practice and remember my contact with humans, and to decipher how to actually act as if I were a human.

  C hase laughed the entire night at my practice of impersonating a human. I slouched, stumbled and tried to slow my pace and speech. He enjoyed it far too much. He constantly asked me questions, where I had to respond as a person who had no recollection of whom they might be. He laughed at my obvious discomfort in trying to be the very creature I despised. Humans were so defenseless and vulnerable. That was never something I had been exposed to, and trying to reflect that characteristic was frustrating. He didn’t mention what he and Tythian spoke about. I was relieved he came back, without any other vampire attempting to attack him. He mentioned a few vampires who watched him from afar, but none approached. For now, Cesar’s threat and orders were indefinite to this coven.

  We even mock fought. In the likelihood that I was attacked by another human, I had to belittle my strength to match theirs, so it wouldn’t be questionable. It felt to the equivalent of being air, instead of using any of my force. I had to pretend to be human when Chase brought me to the Council, but it didn’t seem as difficult there, or so I presumed. I simply had to restrain myself. This was entirely different and I didn’t know what to expect.

  “Are you thirsty? If even in the slightest, you must drink before you go or the temptation will be too great,” Chase warned seriously. I was now slightly. Chase smirked, knowing that I had given and accepted his advice. He grabbed a bottle of distasteful blood for me and watched me as I gulped it down with dissatisfaction.

  “It tastes horrible,” I admitted.

  “Better you getting used to it bottled than fresh. Come here, you messy eater,” Chase smiled. He grabbed my hand and tugged me towards him. He sat on the edge of the bed, his legs either side of me. He wiped away the smear of where the blood must have dripped.

  “Chase how do you view me now?” I asked. It must be very different for him, to see me now as this. Had he become comfortable with my Hunter self?

  “I think you are as sexy as always, and that I want to piss you off even more, now that you have the power to match me. I like the fight,” he winked. “Or I could convince you simply.” He grazed his fingers up my abdomen as he stood up and looked down at me. His eyes held such pure passion, that I knew I was entirely ensnared and his. He cupped the back of my head and licked the edge of my mouth where the blood had been. I parted my lips to match his. The fire he swelled inside of me was unmatched to any other sensation I could compare to. He pulled away and smiled wickedly. “Very simple, Esmore, I am the one person you need not worry about judgement from. I will always be yours and your first line of defense. I will protect you no matter what, not even just you, but what we have. You are now, my only focus and entirety. So today, please be safe.” He kissed my forehead and took the empty bottle from my hand. “Now go, it is time. I will watch over the others. I trust that you won’t blow your cover and hurt yourself. Come back to me, okay?”

  “If you’re lucky,” I teased. He smiled cockily at the response and grabbed my hand, placing it on his belt.

  “Or do I need to convince you in another way, to make sure you come back to me,” He teased, arching an eyebrow. Before I was tempted, I pushed him away.

  “I don’t have all day to tease and play, Chase. When I will have you, let me assure you that a few minutes will not be too my liking. We will need all day, dear,” I teased as I walked away and out from Cesar’s room.

  I was very aware of other vampires as I walked through the tunnels. I walked past a group who fed off a human, her eyes were glazed and almost near to death. They fought over her like ravished animals. “Stop, you don’t want to kill her,” one of them said and pulled her away and into the shelter of his arms.

  “I am still starving,” the other growled, but looked content as he patted his belly.

  “Oh, hey Esmore, watcha doing?” One of the vampires asked me. I recognized him. He had been from Cesar’s elite team I lead yesterday. The other vampire looked between us with uneasiness.

  “Nah she’s cool man,” the other vampire said with a childish beam. “I’m telling you what happened yesterday, is the truth. She ripped one of their spines out and crushed it in front of him, she’s bad ass.” I ignored the praise and continued walking, as if I had seen or heard nothing. That was something I didn’t need to reflect on, however there was a part of me internally that smiled from within from the comment ‘bad ass’. That obviously mused my vampire self, how egotistic it was.

  Footsteps approached me from behind. I stopped and turned, waiting for this familiar and unpleasant vampire to seep from the shadows.

  “They praise you as if you are some kind of leader now,” Thomas snarled from the darkness. The short, black haired vampire, walked out of the shadows. Lydia and Thomas were very different in approach and manner of speaking.

  “Oh, you are still alive. What a shame, what a shame,” I purred. “Did you come out to play childish games or do you have something to say, that actually concerns me?”

  “You’re a smug little bitch aren’t you,” he snarled, his fangs bearing. But I wouldn’t mirror the image of him; I would not resort to my own inner vampire, no matter how much I wanted to resort back to it. It begged me to let that sense of me free. I had to prove to the others, that I wasn’t like this; exactly what Thomas looked like, an uncontrollable, furious and dangerous vampire.

  “I am a factual Huntress, who looks for results. I pity you, if you are envious of what I achieved.”

  “I am not envious,” he spat sharply.

  “Oh good, because everyone took a liking to how I ran things. It seems that your presence is easily replaced, so it makes me feel at such ease to know that this doesn’t disturb you. Have a nice life,” I said and turned my back on him. Already he had leapt for me. He was fast. But I was strong too and at my full health again. Not of a vampire, but of a Huntress. This is the part of myself I had to rely on.

  I avoided his grasping hands, and kicked him to the wall. Before pouncing on his position, he too had already moved. He reevaluated me again; it would not be the same outcome as last time when we had fought.

  “How long do you think you can keep up your little pretense, of being in control of your vampire self? You’re a new baby vamp, you have no control of this. And when you are in a frenzy eating the very people you swore to protect, nothing will give me greater pleasure but to watch. And then when you are at your absolute peak, I wi
ll destroy your familiar in front of your very eyes and I will slit your throat and behead you.” I remembered my father’s training of counting to ten, which quickly calmed me. I had to remind myself of those tactics and take his threat lightly.

  “I will kill you; I just don’t have time for you right now. You see I have a list of priorities, and you, Thomas, you will always be at the bottom. Like you are right now, within this coven.”

  He lunged for me again with a wicked snarl, but I avoided him.

  “I will kill them all, your smug mother, I will rape and devour-” My insanity turned off within the moment of my mother being threatened. Before I could delve into that darkness that would be pleased in nothing more than to savor his blood and torture him to death; a hand caught Thomas’s before he threw the knife he unsheathed from his belt.

  “Is that a direct threat to your coven leader’s familiar, Thomas?” Tythian asked. His grip was firm around Thomas’s wrist. Behind him, was Yolo in female form, with her arms crossed over her bountiful chest.

  “You put her up to killing me, didn’t you?!” Thomas barked at Tythian. Tythian kept his composure, looking like a proper gentleman.

  “My dear Thomas, when you play a game, you play it tactfully and elegantly. And, you move your pawns at the right time. Esmore, is not one of my pawns, but a very purposeful piece on the board. You are not. Your simple presence is an embarrassment to this coven. But don’t worry; our father still has use for you yet, like a dog almost. Maybe that is why he hasn’t killed you yet. But I don’t know, if after such an open threat,” Tythian began to tsk. Thomas’s expression continued to flicker between anger and composure. He understood his position here. “See, denying your true intentions until the very end of the game is how someone truly plays. So as to your previous accusation, I have no idea what you are talking about, and if you dare speak to Cesar with this assumption, I might comment with your open threat of his familiar. Somehow, I dare say that won’t end well for you,” Tythian said. He threw Thomas’s hand out of his grip with repulsion. He grabbed a silk handkerchief from his chest pocket and began wiping his hand.

  “What’s going on here?” Lydia came from the tunnel where Thomas had entered, looking at the situation and briefing it. She was very analytical, but relied on facts first.

  “Nothing,” Thomas snarled. “Let’s go Lydia.” Thomas walked past her and waited for her to catch up. Lydia looked between us all and followed him. Their presence was no longer felt. I wavered over Lydia’s loyalty. Which would she chose, her coven or her blood relative?

  “Take his threat seriously,” Tythian said, still wiping his hand. “But don’t be alarmed. He won’t do anything now. He is not in a position to, but Thomas is tactful and he is clever and has a lot of say over other coven vampires within these tunnels. Try not to get too involved with him. Know that your mother is safe; she is the last person within these walls any vampire would dare to touch. Besides you, she is our top priority to protect, until she has been properly introduced into the coven.”

  “She wants to be a part of this?” I asked, surprised.

  “I don’t know. I take orders; I don’t take particular interest in one’s feelings. You can ask her yourself when you return. But for now, know that in here, your main priority is protecting your Hunters and Chase. Now let’s go.”

  Tythian held out his hand to both Yolo, in his beautiful womanly form and me.

  Yolo held out his hand to me, his beautiful smile was very charming. It was hard to remember it was the same person as the goofy male Yolo. “Are you ready, Ellie, to be introduced to the human convention?” Her voice was silky and endearing.

  I grabbed Yolo’s and Tythian’s hand at once, being sucked into the darkness and into a new place that I had never known or knew what to expect. I was Ellie, the human – I wonder how smoothly this would go.

  T ythian was only there for a mere second, a glimpse that his existence ever lasted. We were surrounded by dry and dying foliage. The mist poured around our ankles and cockroaches infested the crevasses that were in the ground. I could sense that the pollution was thicker here. The sun rose from the corner of the Earth, it was now dawn. The sensation of it crawled over my skin. I wondered if this irritation from the sun would always be there. I questioned how severe it might be if I were fully vampire instead of only half. I looked at Yolo’s slender shoulder’s from behind, in his woman form, was he still affected from the sun rays?

  “It will take us two hours at human pace, to reach there. Don’t act out of character, this is the border I found that they didn’t keep surveillance on, their weakest corner. It is a lot larger than you would expect,” Yolo explained in his sweet womanly voice. “Follow my exact footsteps, Ellie, there are traps for vampires specifically around this area. If this goes sour, and when you walk through their security gates, the alarm goes off and you are found out to be vampire; you must deal with it on your own accord. I can play naive, but don’t ruin what I have built here.”

  “Wait,” I said, pausing and trying to remember the façade I would now face as the human woman named Ellie. “What is your name again?”

  Yolo smiled charmingly, he was in fact a beautiful woman. “I am Jenn Cadolwadt: engineer and specialist at the Human Activist and Regaining Existence Movement. And you Ellie, have suffered amnesia and the only thing you feel comfortable with or can connect with your previous life is that you are good at sword play and crossbow shooting.”

  “Why don’t we have weapons now? Won’t they find it suspicious if we walk here? What if we get attacked?” I asked, pushing aside a tree branch and following Yolo’s fast pace. I noticed that he, or I mean, Jenn, was following a manmade trail.

  “Don’t worry about being attacked; there are enough booby traps around here to contain Sabers or stray vampires. We have only ever had two incidences of our own kind being taken. This entire field is a weapon for the humans. Besides, I always walk upon dawn, which reduces concern for being attacked. Although once, I only had to step twice to my left and the Saber was snagged within netting and thrown into the air.” I looked into the high trees. The dead looking trees didn’t seem as if they could support such action.

  “As for my living domain, it is somewhat unquestionable. There are a few other humans who were once outsiders such as myself, and slowly incorporated into leading roles. Some decided to live within the compounds; I however did not, for obvious reasons. Although it is a terrifying world, freedom is still an option. Don’t get me wrong, I have had many male members gloat about how they could protect me and such,” Jenn said. She flicked her hair over her shoulder smug like. It was hard for me to remind myself that this was still Yolo. Sometimes I saw his personality shine through, but then other times I had to confirm that he was truly the master at pretending to be human. “But I don’t need such. My results as an engineer are highly praised within the compound and they assume I have a system set up at my own compound. I was raised in the technology era, and it surprises me by how little the later generations know. I praise them for their efforts, a lot have self-taught or learnt from generations before. As far as I understand, the compound was created, a little over two hundred years ago. Since then it has been formed as a safe haven, but also a prison for vampires. The humans have learnt from them, simply by watching and examining them. I assume that this is due to wanting to retaliate against the Vampire Council. But, I can’t yet confirm. I am not within the political hierarchy. However, if you can learn a lot from their military sector, it will be an absolute gain,” Jenn said looking behind me and giving me the thumbs up.

  That was the part of Yolo that came through, I imagine for only me to see. “It has been within the last fifty years that they have adjusted those methods and began experimenting on both vampires and humans. For example, Whitney, Tythian’s familiar.” He let the words linger in the air, so I could absorb that awful fact and truth. “I help within that department, well my expertise does. It’s disgusting watching it, but I can’t make o
ne single movement unless informed by Cesar, that we will take the entire establishment down. But why, I say, when the Council can do it themselves. When I linger around the border in my usual form, I can sense others around. I think it is being closely watched. And as far as Cesar is concerned, if others are interested, so should we.”

  I continued following his footsteps along the very narrow manmade path.

  “You want to see if this is suitable for your friends,” Jenn said, pointing her chin higher. “My advice is, do not bring them here. They are obvious Hunters, because of their eyes. I think for certain, they will become nothing more than an experiment. But if there is a glimmer of hope, I do hope you find it.”

  *

  As Yolo predicted, it took us about two hours walking, the pace irritated me. I acknowledged Yolo’s superiority in his patience. With Hunter speed, I could have been there within minutes. The sun was now bearing down, which agitated me. I could feel my fangs wanting to slip out and snarl at the sun, as if it were following only me.

  I focused my eyesight in front of us, ignoring the irritating pain. I could hear shuffling of feet, there were people ahead. They couldn’t notice that I had superior sight, smell and hearing. These were the only things as a Huntress I could rely on within this human compound, without giving myself away. I struggled to get through the pollution. There was so much mist that rose, even around my head. It usually wasn’t so thick; this was clever and set as camouflage. I approached a very tall fencing. It reminded me of the layout to my old Hunter Guild. The fence was tall and shrouded with the mist and plant vines. The haze crept up the cemented halls, stagnating around its enormity. It was so much higher than the Guild’s.