Ashes to Ashes (Barbie the Vampire Hunter Book 3)

by Lucinda Dark

  Bits of wallpaper fluttered down along with the soft puffs of ash. A piece of that ash landed on Barbie’s cheek and when she reached up to wipe it away, all she did was smudge it across the ivory surface of her skin.

  For a moment, I stood there, spellbound. With ash on her cheek and resignation in her eyes, she focused on the rotting emptiness of Esperanza’s house and then turned to me. The sorrow I expected in her gaze, however, was missing. When she spoke, she spoke with anger. “What the fuck are we going to do about this?” she demanded.

  Maverick looked to me as well, and for the first time, the reality of the words I said hit me. “We’re going to kill him,” I said. “We’re going to kill my father.”

  “How?” Maverick asked. It was a fair question. This wasn’t like planning a hunt. This was Arrius Priest, vampire mastermind. The man who’d killed dozens of women simply to create me.

  “The hunters,” Barbie said, drawing our attention. “There have to be others. He was hunting them down, wasn’t he?” She looked to me and I nodded. “Then there have to be others still out there. Those who managed to survive. We just have to find them.”

  “Mav?” I looked to him. He was the computer expert, after all.

  Sucking in a breath, he nodded. “I’ll look into it, but we might have to take a trip to your old hometown,” he said, directing that last bit to Barbie.

  “What? Why?” She clammed up, her whole body tensing as her shoulders inched up towards her ears.

  “Because it’s a starting point,” he explained. “They must’ve been in contact with other hunters to learn all of the things they did. Your mom was a history professor, wasn’t she?” Barbie gave a half jerk of a nod. “We’ll start with her work. See if there was anyone who might lead us to others. The survivors.”

  “You’ll have to be careful,” I said, turning to Barbie and fixing her with a look. “If they find out what you are now, they might not be willing to listen.”

  Barbie bared her teeth at the reminder, but it wasn’t something she could deny. She was changed now. Transitioning into a vampire—or at least a partial one. And just like she’d been suspicious and willing to kill me in the beginning, they would be of her now, too.

  Clouds rolled overhead and, in the distance, a rumble of thunder sounded. A drop of rain hit my cheek and caused me to look up. “We should get back to the car,” I said, taking a step back as more rain began to come down. Neither Barbie nor Maverick said anything as we trudged back down the sinking, half-charred porch, carefully stepping as we headed towards the SUV. Collectively, though, I felt a bond between us.

  Barbie might have hated me. Maverick might have been torn by his decision to step into the dark along with us—terrified about what it would mean for him—but together, we were bound.

  Katalin had been right. I had been born to be a pawn, but if I was to be a pawn, I was going to be the deadliest piece on the board.

  Four

  Barbie

  It rained throughout the rest of the week, coming down in sheets, sometimes subtle and quiet. Hardly noticeable. Other times, like now, it came down in long, annoying, ceaseless drags. The raindrops, as they slapped the glass windows outside my bedroom at the Priest guesthouse, deafened my newly sensitive ears, growing louder and louder the longer it went on until it drowned out even the sound of the fan on the dresser.

  In the months between my family’s deaths and being ushered to the McKnights, when I’d stayed in the group home, I’d done things like get high or drunk. The kids that had come through there had all lived hard lives, dealing with their issues in the same fashion as those who had come before them—through drugs and alcohol. It had led to my first sexual experience, but it had also led to copious other firsts. Being a vampire—or partial dhampire I suppose—was the exact opposite of being drunk, but similar to being on drugs. My brain had been rewired. Everything was sharper and slower. Magnified times a hundred, maybe a thousand. I couldn’t be sure. The longer I lived like this, the more normal it became. It’d only been around a week or so since I’d woken up, but I was already forgetting what being purely human had been like.

  My senses had adjusted to the newness. And if I didn’t think too hard on it, it felt normal. Even my eyes had adjusted to the new sharpness of my vision. I turned my cheek and watched as the fan made its rotation, sweeping first one way and then the other, until it had encompassed the entire room. I could see and feel every particle as it swept across the space. Cold air blew over my face, slapping my cheeks and sending a flurry of blonde hair fluttering into my eyes. I sighed and turned over. I’d been laying on the bed for so long, I felt like my arms had grown numb.

  I was debating on whether or not I should get up and try to shake the feeling back into them, when a sudden intrusive knock sounded on the door. The knob turned and a dark head of hair came into view. I scowled and flipped right back over, facing away from him. Away from the bag of blood in his hand. My stomach gurgled and tightened in retaliation. I would’ve gone on ignoring him, but the first words out of his mouth made that impossible.

  “You have a phone call,” he said.

  I sat up, looking over my shoulder as I narrowed my eyes at him. “Who is it?”

  He held up his cell, tossing it to me haphazardly. I caught it and looked down, but there was no name. Just a set of numbers—no one memorized numbers anymore, so I didn’t recognize it. “Olivia,” he answered. My eyes widened. As I brought the phone to my ear, though, he spoke again, slapping the bag on the end of the bed. “After you’re done with her, you need to feed.”

  The scowl my lips formed only deepened when he took a step back and leaned against the wall, folding his arms. Looking like he wasn’t just the bearer of annoying commands and a cell phone, I thought. In fact, regardless of the scathing look I sent him, Torin looked ready to settle in for a long wait or ready to do whatever necessary to ensure that I’d drink the bag of blood he’d set beside me.

  “Hello?” I answered the phone.

  “You bitch.” Hearing Olivia’s voice felt like stepping back in time. Had it only been weeks ago that we’d been walking the halls of St. Marion as we prepared for our trip to Rome? It felt like fucking years.

  “Um…”

  “You don’t call, you don’t write, it’s like I don’t exist anymore.” The pout in her tone made my lips twitch.

  “I’m sorry.” And I was. I’d never had a girlfriend before. Even my old neighbor—Hannah—had been more of an acquaintance than a real friend. But Olivia was different. She’d blasted into my life and even though I’d found her kind of annoying at first, she was like a beautiful torpedo. Disastrous, but still a wonder of nature. “I’ve been…um…out of it.”

  “Yeah, I heard.” Her voice dropped, growing husky as if talking stretched her vocal cords. I winced at the sound, knowing that it was likely due to her still healing wound. “How are you feeling?”

  “A lot better,” I said. “But what about you? You were…I mean, I heard that you…” Were attacked by a vampire and nearly died? I kept breaking off my sentences, unsure what to say, how to talk to her. How to fucking apologize without telling her the truth.

  “Yeah,” she said with a rough chuckle. “It was crazy. I have no clue what happened. I don’t remember anything. One minute I was talking with Ben—who’s been great about the whole thing—in the hall and I was heading back to my room and the next I was waking up in the hospital in Rome.”

  “That’s…” I searched for the words, but there were none.

  “Insane,” she supplied.

  “Yeah…” Guilt was a violent creature, rearing its ugly head inside of my gut. I shivered as something uncoiled in my chest. It was potent. Angry. Demanding I do something about what I was feeling. Find something. Kill it. Bathe in its blood. I shook my head. “But you’re good now, right?” I asked. There was movement on the other end and a masculine voice murmuring something. The voice was familiar. “Is that Ben? He’s there with you?” I checked the
clock on the wall. It was Thursday, but school should’ve been out.

  “Yeah, he’s here,” she said, giggling in a low tone at whatever it was that he said. “We’re kinda …well, we’re seeing how things go.”

  “He asked you out.” It wasn’t a question, but she treated it as such.

  “He did,” she said, giggling again. “Ben’s really sweet. He says ‘hi’ by the way. He hopes you’re feeling better too.”

  “Right, um, tell him I said ‘thanks.’”

  “When are you coming back to school?” she asked. “I heard they’ve been sending your assignments online. It’s good that you’ll still get to graduate. They did that for me, too, the first week. But other than the blood loss, there wasn’t much really wrong with me. It’s the strangest thing. For how little blood they said there was in the hotel room, I apparently lost a lot.”

  That wasn’t surprising. Though there had, for sure, been blood—it was clear that Eloise had been drinking from her. Vampires weren’t ones to waste food after all. I looked up and met Torin’s gaze from across the room. He lifted a brow and then looked pointedly at the bag of blood still sitting on the end of the bed.

  I sighed. “Hey, Olivia, I gotta go. Doctor wants to talk to me.” The lie slipped from my lips with ease.

  “Oh, okay. Ask him when you’re coming back to school,” she reminded me.

  “I will.” I ended the call and crawled to the end of the bed after dropping the phone on the coverlet.

  Torin picked up the bag he’d slapped down and held it out to me with an arched brow. With a scowl, I ripped it from his grasp as my fangs descended. “What do I do?” I demanded. “Just…” I mimed jamming my fangs into the bag.

  He nodded. “Just pop them to your teeth. Do it quick so you won’t spray any of the liquid.”

  “Blood,” I said. “It’s blood, call it that.”

  He shrugged. With a glare, I stuck the bag into my mouth and then plunged my fangs into the plastic with a pop. I’d watched him feed from the bags multiple times, but this was the first time I’d ever done it myself. My fangs entered fast enough and the blood rushed into my mouth, cold and stale. I blinked at the strangeness of it. This blood didn’t taste anything like his had. In fact, it reminded me of that night all those months ago when I’d crawled into the back of his SUV and forced him to feed and I’d asked him what it tasted like. Blood was life but it had the most boring taste in the world.

  I drained the bag and ripped it away, slapping the empty, sagging plastic into Torin’s outstretched palm. “There,” I snapped. “Happy?”

  With a sigh, he took it and shook his head. “Happiness is not exactly what I would call my mental state.”

  I paused and frowned up at him. “I did what you fucking wanted.”

  Cool, hazel eyes stared back at me as he stepped back towards the door and dropped the bag into the small waste paper basket against the wall. “Yes, but that doesn’t make me happy.”

  My hackles rose. I stood up from the bed and glared at him. “What is it that you want from me, Torin?” I demanded. I spread my arms out. “You got what you wanted. I’m not dead. I’m just like you now. I’m a vampire—”

  “Dhampire,” he corrected. “I’m not fully vampire and since I’m the one that turned you, you are what I am. You’re only half.”

  “Whatever.” I waved away the technicalities. “The fact is, Torin, you got what you wanted.”

  “No, I didn’t.” Those words, spoken so softly, denied my claim. I looked at him, and as he looked back, I felt bared before him. Torin stepped closer, and of course, because of my own determination, I didn’t even think to step back. To move away from the man who had taken my world and turned it on its head. He’d compelled me into being this thing. The blood was still fresh on my tongue and it made me angry. Far angrier than I’d been even when he’d put his arm to my mouth and forced me to drink his blood. Torin met my eyes without flinching. “The only thing I’ve ever wanted was you.”

  With a hiss, I flew forward, slamming him into the wall and baring my fangs at him. A sharp pain shot through my abdomen, but I ignored it. “You don’t get to fucking say that,” I snarled. “After everything—I fucking trusted you. You’ve lied to me, hurt me, changed me. Everything you’ve done has been for you. So, don’t you go spouting that shit. You want me? I’m not a fucking thing to be owned. I had my choice stolen from me, and you got to keep me, didn’t you?”

  “Tell me then,” he said, staring down at me, “if everything I’ve done has been so selfish, then where are the things that should make me happy. You’re alive, but you hate me. Esperanza is missing. And if you think my father doesn’t have some other convoluted punishment just waiting to be unleashed on me, you’re wrong. What he did to you was only the beginning.”

  My grip on his shoulder loosened and when I looked down at where I’d slammed into him, I noticed that I’d carved my way through his clothes and into his flesh. Blood welled up and soaked through the cotton of his shirt in five perfectly spaced out points where my nails had sunken in. A bead of sweat rolled down the center of my back, making me shiver.

  “I could compel you, you know?” At those words, I jerked my head up. Torin’s body shifted, his hips tilting and suddenly I was the one with her back pressed against the wall. I arched up, trying to get away, but all it did was bring us closer.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.

  His head tilted to the side. “By all accounts, I’m your sire. It’s fairly well known that sires have specific powers over their children.”

  “What? You want me to call you daddy now?” The dryness of my tone didn’t seem to match my body’s response. No. Instead, my skin was lit aflame. Heat blossomed. I squirmed under his hands as he pinned me to the wall. More sweat collected and ran over my flesh as goosebumps rose up.

  Torin’s head came down. His eyes slid shut, cutting himself off from me. At the same time, closing his eyes was like a gift, as if he didn’t want me to see what was beyond them but not because he was afraid for himself. His muscles—though strong and sure and fucking immovable—trembled with fine nerves as he held me just above the ground, my back against the wall, my legs dangling.

  My limbs slowed their movements, my struggles lessened, until—without my knowledge—I stopped trying to get away. I stared at his bent head, taking in the various colors—the caramel and dark chocolate strands—in perfect high definition detail. My heartbeat was slow in my chest, though I could have sworn it was racing, galloping in my ribcage—trying to catch up with my adrenaline as it surged through me. My ears were ringing.

  Saliva poured into my mouth, coating my throat. I blinked and swayed. Torin must have felt the change in my body because his eyes popped open and he looked at me. “Barbie?”

  My lips parted and I gagged. His eyes widened and he disappeared. My feet hit the floor a moment before my knees did. My hands went to my stomach a split second before Torin thrust the waste paper basket in front of me and I upchucked the entire contents of my stomach into the bagged lining. Red, acidic bile and blood spewed into the container as I gripped the edges, shaking with the force of my involuntary movements. Tears sprang to my eyes as a warm palm rubbed up and down my spine. Torin pulled my hair back, tying it as I finished puking.

  For several minutes afterwards, I stared down into the bag lining the mini trash can. In my stomach, the blood I’d drank had turned putrid. The smell made me gag again, until I had to look away. I put the back of my hand to my lips as more tears slipped down my cheeks.

  Torin left me only briefly to take the basket away after he was sure I was done. When he returned, he brought a warm washcloth with him and a container of mints. The mints helped but didn’t lessen my desire to cut out my tongue to rid myself of the taste of vile, regurgitated blood. He wiped my forehead with the washcloth as I panted and tried to catch my breath. And I let him.

  The blood in the trash can meant something. It was a symbol. I was disg
usted by it, but not so much that I would’ve vomited it up on purpose. No, I knew that I had to drink it. I knew that if I didn’t, I’d end up like … the image of blood red eyes and gleaming fangs spread through my mind. A vampire too hungry would fall into blood lust the same as a vampire who overfed. Blood lust meant death. Blood lust meant every human I’d be around would be in danger. Staring into the gross, clumpy mess of regurgitated blood in the bag had been like looking into a horrible not so distant future, a possibility that even though I’d made this transition, I wouldn’t be strong enough to overcome its dangers. I had already become the very thing I’d hunted, but more than that, if this meant what I thought it did, then…

  “Torin…” My breath sawed in and out of my chest. Fear accumulating in my ribcage as my heart beat a slow steady rhythm. It should’ve been racing, but because of the change, my heart rate wouldn’t go any faster. At least, I didn’t think so. Torin’s never did.

  He paused, pulling away as if he was already expecting me to tell him to get lost; I wasn’t surprised. I reached out and touched his wrist, stopping him. Swallowing, I stared at where my skin met his.

  “Barbie?” I started, glancing over the bed to the door when Maverick called out from the front of the house.

  I looked up and met Torin’s eyes. “Don’t tell him,” I said quickly. If Maverick knew … would he be scared of me? He was human, and I hadn’t wanted to but I’d nearly attacked him on the plane. I was still mad at him, but I didn’t want to hurt him. I couldn’t hurt him. I refused to let that happen. At the same time, I couldn’t bear it if he looked at me like the monster I now was.

  Torin frowned. “Don’t tell him about…?”

  “Don’t tell him about this,” I said, looking down pointedly.

  His eyes softened. “Barbie.” I shook my head. No. He couldn’t tell him. Before I could say it, though, he was talking again. “It’s fine. We’ll get you another one and—”