Huntress Clan Saga Complete Series Boxed Set: Books 1-6

by Jamie Davis

  Taylor reached her room and looked around. She dropped the backpack of clothes and her laptop bag on the floor and checked the small dresser and the single drawer in her nightstand.

  “Everything looks the same here. Let’s go check the computer gear in the office downstairs.”

  Miranda nodded and followed her as she went to check the equipment there.

  Once again, Taylor checked over everything. She fired up the computers and did a system diagnostic on the VR rig and the computers themselves. Whoever it was could have slipped a virus into her systems.

  While they did that, something else occurred to her. Taylor opened the bottom drawer on the desk where she’d hidden the life tome. It was gone. The drawer wasn’t empty, though. There was a folded piece of paper with Quinn’s name on it. Taylor picked it up and unfolded it, and her heart sank as she read it.

  “What is it?” Miranda asked.

  “It’s a note for Quinn.”

  “Who’s it from?”

  Taylor held it out for Miranda to see. “Her mother.”

  Quinn,

  I hope you get this message before you seek to recover what was lost. There are those who will do anything to stop you from completing your quest to recreate the clans.

  They have the bowl and the tome now. They’ll try to bring the final components together soon to complete the triad needed to enact the enchantment. Their goal is to create similar charms to supplement their slayers. If successful, the slayers will become nearly invincible.

  I can’t tell you what to do. All I can say is to trust what is within you and tell you my heart leaps with joy when I see what you’ve become. You have more power than you know. Be strong in the coming storm, my brave huntress.

  Mother

  Miranda read the note and then shook her head. “It was her? The vampire from the museum? She came here?”

  “It looks that way. What I don’t get is how she found us and why go to the trouble to steal the book and leave the note? It makes no sense.”

  Miranda shrugged and said, “Perhaps she’s limited in what she can and cannot do to counter her vampire sire. If he gave her a direct order, she’d be unable to ignore it, but she could leave a note to let us know it was her.”

  “Perhaps, but it doesn’t explain how she found this location. I need to tell Clark.”

  “You need to tell Quinn, too,” Miranda said. “She deserves to know about this. About everything.”

  “You’re right. I’ll bring the note. Let’s go meet them in the kitchen. It’s time.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Quinn returned to the kitchen after checking her room to find Clark already there.

  He looked up as she came in. “Anything missing in your room?”

  Quinn shook her head. “No, nothing. Maybe Miranda was mistaken.”

  “Could be. We were gone for a few days. Maybe she got a little stir crazy in here alone.”

  “Can that happen to ghosts?” Quinn asked.

  Clark shrugged. “I have no idea. I’ve never had a friend who’s a ghost before. I guess we’ll have to ask her if Taylor doesn’t find anything.”

  Quinn walked over to the refrigerator to see what they had left that she could make for dinner. It was close enough to dinnertime that she figured they could eat early. She dug around and decided to cook fried eggs and toast for dinner. They could go to the store and resupply in the morning.

  Taylor came in as Quinn pulled out the frying pan to get started.

  Quinn looked over her shoulder and asked, “Hey, what did you find? Anything?”

  “You should come over to the table. You need to see something.”

  Quinn turned off the stove and put down the frying pan. She walked to the table and sat down with the others.

  Taylor sat at the other end with a single piece of paper in her hand.

  Clark sat down between them. He pointed to the paper. “What’s that?”

  “I went to check on the VR system in my office. The computers are fine as far as I can tell. I’m running a diagnostic to be sure. But while I was doing that, I found out why they were here. Our burglar was after the life tome.”

  “They took it? It has to be Handon again,” Quinn said.

  “It was Handon, at least indirectly. Quinn, it was someone you know. They left you a note,” Taylor said, handing the folded sheet to Quinn.

  Quinn opened it and read the note. As she finished, she put the paper on the table and stared at it for a few seconds, then looked up at her friends. “Is this some sort of joke? This is Handon’s crude attempt to get under my skin. The joke’s on him, though. My mother is long dead.”

  “No, Quinn, she isn’t,” Taylor said.

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “Quinn, I—” Taylor started, then closed her mouth before starting again. “We figured it out right before we left for the shore. Who your mother is, I mean. We were going to tell you. It was just a matter of figuring out how and when.”

  “We?” Quinn asked. She looked at Clark and Miranda. “As in, all of you?”

  Each of them nodded.

  Clark said, “Quinn, if you’re going to be angry with someone, it should be me. I figured it out and didn’t tell you either.”

  Quinn glared at him and turned to Taylor. “You kept this from me? Why would you do that, Taylor? I’ve always trusted you with everything. How could you do this?”

  Tears welled in Taylor’s eyes, and she blinked to clear them. “Quinn, I didn’t want to hurt you. It wasn’t just that we’d found your mother. It was who she is that’s the problem.”

  “All right, who is she?”

  Clark and Taylor exchanged looks, then Clark said, “Your mother is Naomi Rodriguez.”

  It took a few seconds for it to sink in. Then Quinn’s eyes widened. “That vampire! No way. She’s only a little older than I am.”

  “Think about it, Quinn,” Taylor said. “She’s a vampire.”

  A thousand thoughts spun through Quinn’s mind. She was trying to make sense of all of it. She’d always thought her mother had left her behind and run off to live her own life. Once she’d found out about the purges from Clark, she’d assumed her mother had died with all the other hunters, and she had resigned herself to that. But this revelation changed everything.

  Quinn stared at the note, trying to comprehend what had happened. “So, she surrendered to become a monster rather than die fighting. Typical of someone who’d abandon a baby on the side of the road.”

  “I don’t think that’s what happened,” Miranda said.

  Quinn started to object, but Miranda stopped her. “Taylor told me something about how you grew up. You always thought something lucky protected you. You thought it was your amulet, and that could be part of it.”

  “What? You think my vampire mother stalked me growing up and somehow protected me? If she wanted to protect me, she should have taken me back so I didn’t have to deal with all those awful people in the foster system as a child. She let me live alone on the streets rather than claim me.”

  Tears streamed down Quinn’s cheeks as her emotions overwhelmed her. It seemed like everyone she knew had betrayed her at this point—her mother first, and now her friends. It was almost more than she could bear.

  She crumpled the note in her fist. “I’m going to find her and drive a stake through her heart. She has a lot of nerve dropping this bomb on me. She doesn’t deserve to call herself my mother. You three can help if you want. I guess I can’t stop you from coming along, but you’d better stay out of my way when the time comes.”

  “Quinn,” Taylor said.

  “No, Taylor. You of all people should have known better and told me right away. I could have killed her back at the museum, and none of this would have happened. We’d probably still have the book and the bowl. Then we’d only need the dagger and whatever the other item is. We already have a line on where to get the fae blood. Now we might as well have nothing.”

  Ta
ylor said, “We’re in better shape than that, Quinn. We have the scanned pages of the book, so we don’t need the life tome anymore. They screwed up and don’t know it. We still have what we need to do the spell once we have all the components.”

  “Well, the bowl and the dagger are probably with Handon,” Quinn said. “If Filippa’s there, we won’t need to call Aurora. I can take care of gathering the fae blood we need at the same time. What about the third thing we need? Do we know what it is?”

  Taylor pulled out her phone and scrolled through it. “It says something about using the heart stone. I don’t know what that is, though.”

  Clark shook his head.

  Taylor glanced his way. “Clark, do you know what the stone is and where it might be?”

  “Unfortunately, I do. I didn’t know it had belonged to the clan originally, though.”

  “Okay,” Quinn said. “Don’t make us guess.”

  “It’s the Ruby Heart,” Clark said. “It has to be.”

  “The power gem they’re using to create the demon-kinder?” Quinn asked.

  “It makes sense,” Miranda said. “Myles Hickman and VirSync probably got it as a reward for helping during the purges. That allowed them to fuel their demonic takeover.”

  Quinn leaned back in her chair and shook her head. Her anger with the others was making her tremble all over. As pissed off as she was, though, she couldn’t do this alone. She needed all of them to retrieve the items to create the amulet.

  Leaning forward again, Quinn took a deep breath and looked at each of them, saying, “First things first. We have to go up against the slayers, plus Myles and the others, to recover the Ruby Heart. Taylor, you have to find out where they’ve moved their base, and you have to find it tonight. Got that?”

  Taylor nodded, and Quinn continued. “After that, we track down Handon’s vampires and Filippa. If they’re creating their own amulets for the demon-kinder, they’re going to need fae blood. That has to be part of the deal when they turn over the dragon egg. Once we know where they are meeting to make the exchange, we’ll likely find the scrying bowl, too. Clark, that falls on you. You have to figure out how to get Filippa to give up the location of the meetup. Can you do that?”

  Clark met her eyes with a level gaze and said, “I can.”

  “Good, then you all know what you need to do. In the meantime, I’m going back downtown to have a chat with my mother.”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?” Taylor asked.

  “She chose to reveal herself now. Well, I’m going down there to tell her now is also the time she has to choose sides. I want to know why she’s done everything she’s done to me. She can’t have it both ways, not anymore.”

  “Naomi might not have had a choice in the matter, Quinn,” Clark said. “The bond between a vampire and their sire, the one who turned them, is strong. If he gave her a direct order, she’d have a hard time resisting it. My guess is he told her to find and recover the life tome. The note was her way to try to reset the balance in your favor.”

  “Whatever her reason, she knows more than she said in that letter. I need answers, and I’m going to get them.”

  “We only have one car,” Clark said. “I’ll need it if I’m going to go rattle some cages and see if I can shake the location of the meetup loose. How will you get to her?”

  “The same way we met before. Taylor can send me through the VR rig while she searches for VirSync’s new operations center. I’ll need to use it to stop them anyway.”

  “I can do that,” Taylor said. “With Clark out searching the city for Filippa, you won’t have any backup, though. What if Naomi is forced to attack you?”

  “She’s had the chance on at least two occasions, and she’s resisted it,” Quinn replied. “My guess is the sire bond Clark mentioned isn’t strong enough to overcome what she feels for me. I’m going to use that to my advantage.”

  “Let’s make sure we all stay in touch,” Clark said. “Keep the earpieces active so we can coordinate once we get answers.”

  “Agreed,” Quinn and Taylor said in unison.

  The three of them stood, and Clark and Taylor headed out to begin their assigned tasks. Miranda followed Taylor. Quinn watched them go, maintaining her calm outward demeanor. Inside, a sense of betrayal by those closest to her threatened to overwhelm her.

  She had to hold it together. Too much hung in the balance. Quinn didn’t know whether she’d survive the night, but she wasn’t going to give up now. It was time for the huntress clan to make their move. Her visit to Naomi was just the first step.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Quinn stared at her dresser, trying to decide what to take into VR with her. Her leather jacket had been ruined in the fight with the vampires the night before. She settled on a waist-length light blue denim jacket over a black t-shirt and jeans. Knee-high black boots finished off the outfit.

  She settled the shoulder sheath for her Bowie beneath her right arm where she could reach it and pulled on the jeans jacket. It was a little tighter than her leather one, but it would do to cover her knife if she ended up out in public.

  Quinn was the last to get started on her part of the plan since she had to wait until after dark to catch her mother awake. Clark had been gone for hours, and no one had heard from him. Taylor had spent the rest of the day searching the data collected by her bots over the last few weeks for any trace of the slayers.

  The huntress expected Taylor to be distracted by her search for the slayers. To Quinn’s surprise, Taylor already had the VR rig set up and ready to go when she got there. Quinn didn’t say anything, though.

  The few hours she had spent apart from the others had tempered her anger a little, but she still didn’t want to talk to Taylor.

  Quinn’s best friend didn’t say anything either, just gestured to the top of the desk, where the goggles and headset sat ready for her. Quinn let the awkward silence hang between them as she climbed up on the desk.

  It was Miranda who finally broke the silence. “You two need to stop this. You’re best friends, and if something happens tonight to either of you, you’ll never forgive yourselves for ending it like this. Trust me, I know what it’s like dying with unfinished business.”

  Quinn looked over her shoulder at Taylor behind the row of monitors.

  Taylor glanced up and gave Quinn a half-smile, then glanced at Miranda. “I guess we shouldn’t count on being lucky enough to come back as a cool ghost like you.”

  “Lucky?” Miranda said, raising her voice. When she shouted, she became less transparent. It was as if her anger helped her manifest on the earthly plane. “I’m freaking dead! You two kids have no idea what it is like not being able to DO anything. I can only offer advice and sort of float along for the ride. It sucks.”

  Quinn’s smile broadened at the rant, as did Taylor’s. Quinn said, “At least you don’t have to worry about laundry and stuff like that. You have just the one outfit.” Miranda always showed up in the same clothing—what she was wearing the night she died.

  Miranda was speechless at first, which got both girls giggling.

  Their reaction set her off again. “I don’t have anything but these. That’s how the afterlife works apparently. There’s no BroadMart to go shopping for new outfits. What you show up in is what you’re stuck with.” Miranda threw her spirit arms in the air. “Thank God I didn’t die naked in the shower.”

  That did it. The girls laughed out loud and couldn’t stop. After a minute, Quinn’s stomach and face started to hurt from laughing so hard.

  Miranda just stared at them until they settled into occasional chuckles.

  “Are you both quite finished?”

  “Yes,” Quinn said.

  “Me, too,” Taylor replied.

  They still smiled, but they’d stopped laughing.

  “Good,” Miranda said. “Now apologize to each other for being angry. You need to make up so we can do what needs to be done tonight.”

  Quinn hopped off
the edge of the desk. Taylor got up from her chair and came around the corner. The two rushed into an embrace.

  “Quinn, I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too. I hate it when we fight.”

  “Yeah, it sucks when we’re not in sync,” Taylor said. “Good thing we have our ghost-mom to help us see when we’re being silly.”

  “Our grave nanny?” Quinn suggested.

  Taylor smiled and said, “Our ectoplasmama.”

  “Ooh, I know,” Quinn said. “Our very own phantom godmother. I don’t suppose you can summon a bunch of ghost birds and mice to clean our rooms?”

  “All right, that’s enough,” Miranda said, rolling her eyes. “All I wanted was for you two to make up. There are serious things that need doing tonight, and the only way it’s going in our favor is if you two work together.”

  Quinn squeezed Taylor’s hand and climbed onto the desk, picking up the goggles and headset.

  Taylor peered over the monitor. “You want to see Naomi, so I assume it’s back to the museum?”

  Quinn nodded. “Put me in the attic again.”

  Miranda started to tap on her keyboard but stopped and looked around. “Wait, I don’t have the box to disable the alarm initialized. You won’t be able to shut off the security system.”

  “Exactly.” Quinn smiled. “Let’s see how long it takes Mommy Dearest to show up to check on her book babies.”

  Taylor shrugged. “Okay, starting the countdown now. I’ll keep looking for the slayers once you’re in the system. I’ll be on the headset if you need me.”

  Quinn nodded and double-checked to make sure her headphones were in place. She propped the goggles on her forehead and slid the cups into place. She laid down and held up her thumb, then pulled the VR glasses into position.

  Taylor started the rhythmic chanting of her spell, and Quinn fell into darkness once again.