by Jamie Davis
The mouth closed and curled into a smile as his eyes opened. He looked at her. “Thank you, girl. You taste particularly delicious. I’d always heard hunter blood was a delicacy. I guess I’m lucky enough to get to sample a little of what everyone assumed was lost to the ages.”
“Don’t get to like it too much,” Quinn said. “I promise you won’t get the opportunity to have any more.”
“A pity. Your blood is energizing. I’d love to know what sampling more than a few drops would do for me. Will you promise to save a little for me when my master and his demon-kinder come for you?”
Clark stepped forward and slapped the vampire hard across the face. “That’s enough of that. You don’t have to worry about that, vamp. Your boss isn’t going to end either of us anytime soon.”
The vampire’s tongue flicked out again, this time to moisten his bruised lips following Clark’s blow. “If you’re just going to kill me anyway, Hunter, this is going to be a short conversation. I’ll not give up any information under those circumstances.”
Clark smiled and turned to Quinn. “Do you want to know the real reason I gave him a taste of your blood, Quinn?”
“Uh, sure, I guess so,” Quinn replied.
“It’s because our blood is so tasty that his kind gets a hankering for it after the first taste. Once they taste a hunter, they can’t go back to ordinary human blood again, at least not without powerful magic to break them of the addiction.”
The vampire’s eyes widened, and he said, “That’s not true, Hunter. It’s just an old wives’ tale.”
“Maybe. Then again, maybe not. You know any of your kind who claims to have fed on us during the purges?”
When the vampire didn’t answer right away, Clark continued. “No? Of course, you don’t. Don’t worry. Maybe it is just a myth. I guess we’ll see when we let you go.”
“You’re not going to let me go. You’ll stake me before I take two steps.”
“No, actually, I want you alive long enough to take a message back to your master, Handon. I want you to live long enough to tell him that we’re back. A new clan is here in Baltimore. It’s time he moved on and found a new city to terrorize.”
“What’s to keep you two from chasing us when we go somewhere else?” the vampire asked.
“We’re just one clan. By the time we’re ready to expand to a new city, he’ll have what he needs, and he can go anywhere else he wants.”
Quinn had no idea what Clark was doing. She didn’t think he was going to let the guy go. Why do that when they’d decided to bring him back here? This whole turn in the conversation puzzled her.
The vampire caught the quizzical look on her face. “See, Hunter, your girl here doesn’t believe you, either.”
Clark turned toward Quinn and smiled. “She doesn’t know everything I do. She’s just getting started. She doesn’t understand why we all have to make allowances for coexistence.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all this back at the club, then?”
“Because I wanted you to know that we could have killed you. You have to know how serious we are. That’s why I only needed one of you. Your companion was extra, and we’ve already taken care of her.”
“Fine, I can pass along that message for you. I don’t know how much good it will do. My master isn’t the kind to run scared just because a few humans threaten him.”
Clark looked Quinn’s way and winked. “Tell him the huntress who nearly killed him wants to finish the job. Tell him I’m the only one who can keep her from doing it.”
The vampire shot Quinn a glance. “Okay, I’m in bad shape, though. I might need a little more blood to get me all the way back to the city.”
Clark leaned forward. “Looks like the wound on your neck has closed up enough for you to make it back to your lair in one piece. You can feed when you get there. You agree to deliver the message?”
The vamp paused for a second, then nodded.
“Good, then I’ll take you to the nearest stop on the city metro train. You can take that downtown. Tell Handon he’s got two weeks to clear out and relocate. After that, I let her loose on him.”
Quinn tried to cover her confused look as Clark loosened the straps on the vampire and helped him sit up. The wound on his neck had closed, although there was a broad, nasty scar to mark the injury halfway around his throat. He was still weak, and Clark steadied him while putting a black bag he’d pulled from his pocket over the vampire’s head.
Clark turned to Quinn. “You stay here. I’ll take our friend to the metro station and leave him somewhere he won’t fry at dawn.”
Questions filled Quinn’s mind, but all she said was, “I’ll be here when you get back.”
“Good. I should be back before breakfast. You take that stolen car of theirs way back in the woods on that old farm trail. Park it there in thick cover so no one will see it from the road or the grounds. Then come back here and wait for me.”
Quinn nodded, and Clark led the vampire by the elbow toward the lecture hall doors.
Quinn watched him leave, and a minute later, heard the engine on Clark’s old sedan fire up outside. She shook her head and decided she’d just have to wait for answers.
She checked the time and sighed, fishing the keys to the green hatchback from her pocket. She had to check on Taylor too, as soon as she was sure the worst of the moon’s magical pull had passed. First, she had to dump that car in the woods and walk all the way back here in the dark. The thought angered her, and Quinn became sure of one thing: Clark was going to do a whole lot of explaining once he got back.
Chapter Four
By the time Quinn got back after hiding the car, Clark was pulling in following his trip to the metro station.
The hunter spotted her walking from the woods as he got out of his car. “You made sure it’s well hidden?”
“Yes, I did exactly what you told me to do. Now tell me why you let that guy go without getting any information out of him?”
“We got some of the information we needed, and we’ll find out the rest in due time.”
“How?” Quinn asked.
Clark pulled out his phone and opened an app with a map on it. A blinking flag appeared on the screen as he showed it to her.
“What’s that?”
“That is the location of our friend at the metro station. A few weeks ago, Taylor mentioned she found some random cell phone components mixed in with the gear we took from the old VirSync building. I asked her if there was any way she could create a tracking device with them. She used a GPS chip and cellular transmitter to create a small one that could be concealed in a car or a coat pocket.”
“So, you put one in his clothing?”
Clark smiled. “Better. He would have found it in his clothing. I hid it somewhere he’ll never find.”
Quinn’s quizzical expression made Clark chuckle.
“That massive gash in his neck gave me the idea. If you hadn’t nearly cut his head off, I wouldn’t have been able to do it.”
“You hid the chip in his neck?”
Clark nodded. “When I repositioned his head and opened his mouth for you to feed him some of your blood, I slipped it inside the slash. I hoped he’d heal enough to seal the edges of the skin around the wound, at least. It worked like a charm.”
Quinn pointed to the phone. “So that’s him. What’s next?”
“We wait for him to go back and deliver the message to Handon. I’ll get Taylor to track his location over time. One of his destinations has to be the master’s lair. Then we’ll decide on what to do next.”
“You could’ve told me. It would have been nice to know what you were planning.”
“I didn’t know I was going to do it until I saw him cut open outside the club. Then there was no time to do it. Besides, I’m telling you now. Come on, let’s go inside and get some breakfast. It’s almost sunrise. I stashed the vampire in an out of the way storage closet at the station. My bet is he’s not going anywhere until tonight,
when it gets dark again.”
Quinn followed Clark, irked he’d kept his plan from her, even if his explanation kind of made sense. She hated not knowing what was going on. The last few months had left her out of sorts in many ways.
When they entered the building, Clark turned toward the kitchen. Quinn paused and then headed up the stairs toward her room.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll be right back. I have to get something. I’ll be there in plenty of time to help make breakfast,” she said as she continued up the stairs and Clark went to the kitchen.
Quinn’s room was built to house a patient. The furniture was obviously from an institutional supply source. It had a metal bed frame with a single thin mattress, and beside it was a small night table and a bookshelf in the corner. The only window opposite the door had a metal grate across the outside. It let light in but prevented anyone from escaping.
The room was small, but it was more than enough for what little she had to call her own at this point. The bookshelf held all her clothes and personal items. She kept her most prized possessions in the nightstand. Sitting on the bed, she pulled open the small drawer in the nightstand and reached inside.
The silver necklace she pulled out had a single ovoid lump of melted silver dangling from it. It was all that remained of her magic huntress amulet, left with her by her parents when she was a baby. It had lost its power to protect her, burned out when she abused her unique ability to draw magical energy through it.
Ever since it had been destroyed, all she could think about was how she could restore it. She felt naked and helpless without it. She knew it made no sense but didn’t care.
Quinn held up the necklace, watching the misshapen lump as it swung back and forth. There had to be a way to make it whole again. She’d brought it up with Clark on several occasions, but all he’d said was she didn’t need it. He reminded her that she had found ways to use her magic and special skills without it.
It wasn’t the same for her, though. Even if accessing the power didn’t give her massive headaches when she used it, the amulet was her only connection to her family. Her mother and father were long dead, killed in the purges that had destroyed the hunter clans twenty years before. This was all she had left of them.
Quinn slipped the necklace into her jeans pocket and started back downstairs. On the way, she diverted to a different stairway at the opposite end of the building so she could check on Taylor. It was morning, and she should be ready to come out of her isolation cell. Hopefully, her experience with the full moon last night hadn’t been as bad as the first two times.
The other stairs led down to the area with treatment rooms for the psych patients housed here. It included the single padded cell they’d found to help Taylor through her shifting on the full moons. Quinn stopped beside the gray metal door and pressed her ear to the cool surface. She couldn’t hear anything.
The change, if it had happened, should have passed by now. The moon had been down for a while. Quinn lifted the keyring from the peg in the wall nearby and slid open the panel that covered the viewing slot in the door.
Peering through, she jumped back, startled to see Taylor’s eyes staring back at her from the other side. Her friend’s muffled laughter sounded from the other side.
“Scared you, did I?” Taylor asked with a chuckle. “I heard you coming and figured you’d open the peephole before you unlocked me. This super-hearing thing I’ve got now is cool.”
Quinn unlocked the door and pulled it open, hanging the key back on its peg. She hugged her best friend and asked, “How’d it go last night? Your outfit seems to have survived.”
She referred to Taylor’s sports bra and shorts. The last two times she’d faced the full moon, Taylor had worn the same outfit she’d had on all day. Everything had ended up shredded during the transformation to wolf-person. They’d talked about how to handle that, and Taylor had come up with this combination. It looked like it had worked.
Taylor smiled and shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t shift.”
Quinn stopped and held Taylor at arm’s length, staring at her. “You did it? You controlled it?”
Taylor nodded, smiling.
Quinn pulled her into another hug as the two of them laughed.
“T, that’s awesome. Dameon had told you it could take months before you’d be able to do that.”
“I think I’ll still need at least one more month in there on the full moon, and I’m nowhere near ready to try to shift on command yet. Still, I held it off. It hurt like hell, and the shift started up a couple of times, but I wrestled it under control and reversed it.”
Quinn smiled as she released her friend. “Come on, let’s go tell Clark. I know he’s been wondering how you did, too.”
“Old Grumpy Guts? Worried about me?”
“You’d be surprised,” Quinn replied. “The more I work with him, the more I’m sure his rough outlook on life is just a cover for all the stuff he’s seen and had to endure. I think he worries a lot about both of us.”
The two of them continued chatting on their way down the hall to the end of the building where the large kitchen was located. Quinn noticed that Taylor paused a few times during the description of her night as if trying to find a way to say something and then changing her mind. Quinn didn’t want to pry. She figured the whole werewolf thing was a personal, private hell for her friend, and she would be supportive in any way she could to get Taylor through it. Taylor would share what she wanted to when she was ready.
When they entered the kitchen, they found that Clark had fired up the gas stovetop and was mixing up eggs in a metal bowl. He nodded to the large refrigerator set in the wall. “Get the juice and milk if you want it. You can start some toast, too. I already made the coffee.”
Quinn and Taylor did as he asked, getting them all drinks for breakfast. Most of the institutional kitchen was operational once Taylor hacked the power supply to the building. She managed to switch everything back on, along with the natural gas line.
Clark finished cooking the scrambled eggs while the women got the toast and put the coffee pot on the table with mugs for all of them. He brought the hot pan of eggs to the table, setting it down on a folded towel in the middle.
He sat down and glanced at Taylor while he reached for toast. “You look none the worse for wear. This time was better, less painful? Dameon said it would get easier over time.”
Quinn didn’t wait for Taylor to answer. “She did it, Clark. She held off the change and remained human last night. That’s huge, right?”
Clark didn’t hide his surprise. “Yeah, that is a big deal. You didn’t start shifting?”
Taylor shrugged. “No, I did, but I managed to reverse it each time. I never lost control of myself. Dameon told me holding onto my humanity would be the hardest part of the change. It would start with me resisting the change, or reversing it if it started. I did that, so I guess it’s a step in the right direction.”
Quinn shook her head. “It’s way more than that. Tell her, Clark.”
He finished buttering his toast and took a bite, gesturing with the piece still in his hand. “It is, but there’s still a long way to go before you should trust yourself on the night of the full moon.”
“I know, but maybe it won’t be six months like Dameon warned. And I’ll be able to shift on my own sooner, which means I won’t be helpless in a fight anymore.”
Quinn knew that was something Taylor wanted more than anything else. She wanted to be able to pull her weight, even though no one expected her to be part of the action that way. She was way more important on the computer behind the scenes.
“Taylor,” Quinn said, “Clark and I can fight for all of us. No one else here is a tech witch.”
Taylor smiled. She liked the nickname she’d gotten from Clark, and she wore it like a badge of honor. “I know, but there’ve been times where I could’ve helped more. Now I’ll be able to. I’m already stronger than I’ve ever been be
fore, and my hearing and sense of smell rock!”
“It’s better to take it slow, Taylor,” Clark said. “If you want, though, you can join Quinn and me for training, especially the meditation on healing. That could be especially useful for you in learning to have more control for next month.”
“I’d like that, thanks,” Taylor replied.
Quinn smiled. Clark had made an extra effort to try to include Taylor in stuff since Miranda was gone. He recognized how she could feel like the literal third wheel in the team. This wasn’t the first time he’d extended such an invitation to her.
“Hey, how’d the patrol go last night?” Taylor asked.
“We finally found some of Handon’s coven.”
“You did? That’s great,” Taylor said, leaning over her plate as she shoveled a forkful of eggs into her mouth. “Tell me everything.”
Quinn shared the story of their run-in with the pair of vamps at the club and what had happened after. She left it to Clark to share the end since he’d been the one to take the male vampire to the metro.
He finished with a mention of the tracker. “We’ll need to keep an eye on where he goes. I was hoping you could create a map of his travels for the next little while until we find out where their lair is located. I don’t know how long the internal battery will hold out once it’s turned on.”
“It should last about a day and a half,” Taylor said. “I had to set the chip to update continually, so it’s going to use up a lot of juice accessing the GPS. Hopefully, it will track him long enough to get him back to Handon.”
Clark didn’t look happy about the battery life. He pursed his lips as if to say something but shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. We’ll just have to see if he goes where we want him to in time.”
Taylor finished the eggs on her plate and reached out to get some more. It was clear the night’s strenuous activities with her shifting or resisting it had worked up an appetite.
