by Lexi C. Foss
“This might be harder than I thought,” I admitted to Rhys on this Friday afternoon, watching a cheerful crowd of out-of-towners meander down the main drag. “Wherever our guys are hiding, they’re keeping their heads down.”
“For now.” Rhys was resolute. “Don’t give up just yet. You and I both know they’re bound to surface at some point.”
That much was undeniable. No vamp had the power to stay hidden forever, if only because their insatiable hunger always betrayed them. Sooner or later, they needed blood. And it was my job to make sure they didn’t get any—not on my watch.
“Yeah, I—” As I spoke to Rhys, I scanned the bustling street for the umpteenth time. The sun had just started to peek out from behind a dismal gray bank of clouds, and as the pale light intensified, I caught sight of a few figures slipping down the side of an alley behind the row of shops. That was something new.
“Alex?” Rhys’ voice cut into my thoughts.
“I’ll call you back,” I muttered absently, hanging up the call without looking. The bracelet on my wrist pulsed with a resonating warmth, and I focused my sight in on the mouth of the shadowy passage. I could just see the outlines of a group of silhouettes huddled up against the wall.
Definitely hiding, but from what? With a deep, steadying breath, I began to move slowly in that direction. My gaze never left the alley entrance. As far as I knew, and I knew Langley like the back of my hand, there was no exit on the other side. Whoever they were, these weirdos had just walked themselves into a corner.
Another group of happy vacationers passed in front of me on my way across the street, totally oblivious of the potential danger lurking less than fifteen feet away. Their progress momentarily blocked my view of the dim alley. Not wanting to lose sight of my first lead, I picked up the pace.
“Excuse me, ma’am?” A girl broke away from her family to approach me, phone in hand. “Do you think you could take a picture of us?”
“What?” I turned to her, jolted out of my hyperfocus.
The expression on my face must have been less than accommodating; she stopped in her tracks and said, “I mean, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Oh, sure.” I made an effort to smile, so as not to seem like the biggest jerk in the world.
“Thank you so much!” She blithely handed me her phone and ran back to pose with her fellow travelers. They all smiled broadly. I cut a glance to my right, where the alleyway lay tantalizingly near. It was hard not to just drop the poor girl’s phone and make a run for it. I knew my suspects were in there. They had to be.
“Uh, say cheese!” I snapped the photo, and before she could ask me for anything else, put her phone back into her hand. “Have a good time this weekend. Maybe I’ll see you around.” Still smiling, I sidled away toward my destination. No doubt I had made better first impressions in my lifetime, but this was no time for small talk. Every second slipping through my fingers put me one step further behind.
“Thanks!” she called again, obviously bewildered. I turned and beelined for the alley. Shielded from the weak rays of the sun, the shadows were long and dark. But my relic-sharpened eye detected movement toward the back.
It took every ounce of self-control not to yell for those nebulous figures to stop. The urge was instinctual, though the fuss wouldn’t have accomplished anything other than alarming everyone around. Like hell a vamp was going to follow orders issued by the likes of me. I just shut my mouth and pushed off into a jog. A couple heads turned as I crossed from the street into the narrow confines of the corridor. The natural light shrank down into blues and greys, the sounds of the street fading into the background.
Someone stood at the dead end, facing a solid stone wall. I paused for a split second, momentarily confused. Minutes ago, there had been more than one. I was sure of it.
“Vamps,” I muttered under my breath. Now I was sure of that, too.
The person in my sights shifted a little. I watched the head turn gradually to the side. One eye appraised me in a flash of unnatural gold. The stranger was a man, covered by a hood, the sleeves of his sweatshirt pulled all the way down over his hands. My heart skipped a beat. Could this be the man in Rhys’ photograph?
I stepped forward, deeper into the alley. The rest of the path was lined with dumpsters and trash bins that further confined the already cramped space. Neither of us had anywhere to go but straight forward or straight back. A small voice in the corner of my mind told me I might be stepping into a sticky situation. The hair rose on the back of my neck.
“Who are you?” My voice echoed off the close walls of the buildings on either side. “You’re not allowed back here.” A bold claim, since the alley was neither blocked nor marked off as private property, but one I made with confidence. It was, after all, more or less true. The vamps weren’t allowed anywhere regular people might run into them, as far as I was concerned.
Hell, if I had things my way, they wouldn’t be allowed anywhere at all.
He didn’t answer. I took another few steps, and the gap between us began to close. The guy was tall and broad-shouldered under his bulky hoodie. He looked like he could put up a fight if he were so inclined. I drew in my breath, mentally bracing for a scrap.
Then, all of a sudden, his gaze snapped to me. In the span of an instant, I found myself staring at him full in the face. The sharp lines of his features were unmistakable, but his eyes might as well have been burned into the fabric of my memory. They carried the same irreverent expression, bordering on disrespect. Whatever words stayed locked behind his lips, I sensed they wouldn’t be kind.
I set my jaw. “Fine. Let’s try this again. Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
The vampire blinked. His lips twitched upward at the corners. Cast in the shadows of the tiny alleyway, his skin was eerily pale—the mark of a beast who hadn’t fed in a good long while. Maybe that hardness in his eyes was born of hunger. And maybe it seemed to him like I had just offered myself for the taking.
I was ready for him to charge, to lunge at me, to turn and pounce. My pursuit had given him the perfect opportunity to strike. We were alone in a very limited space. The din of the main street at my back might as well have been another world entirely. Surely the thought of a quick, silent kill crossed his mind as he stood there eyeing me up. The air turned thick enough to slice.
But then I was the one who blinked, and when I opened my eyes, he was nearly gone. The last I saw of him was a dark flash of clothing disappearing over the top of the wall. For a few long minutes, I stayed stock still, listening. After the soft, rustling sound of an impact on the other side, nothing. No footsteps, no snapping of twigs or crushing of cold, damp leaves.
I rolled my eyes. Damn them and their fleet-footedness! My guard stayed up as I retraced my steps back out into the world of the living, or at least the normal. The knowledge that at least one unidentified vamp was roaming the backstreets of Langley on the eve of a town-wide festival gnawed at my stomach. And I still didn’t know who he was.
I waited to call Rhys back in the quiet of my own apartment, away from eyes and ears that might pry into our conversation. A faint, needling sense of paranoia had cropped up on the ride home. Did he have associates? Underground connections? Were there somehow already eyes on me? I drew all my curtains, just to be safe.
“What happened?” Rhys answered on the first ring and cut straight to the chase. He could be frighteningly efficient when the mood struck him, and I knew by his tone that he didn’t believe I’d simply gotten distracted.
“I saw him.” There was no point in denying it. “Downtown. He went into an alley.”
“And you followed.” He knew me too well.
“Yeah.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “Thought he was trying to lure me into a trap, but he just jumped the wall and disappeared. It was the same guy as the picture, though.”
“You sound sure,” Rhys replied. Curiosity tinged his tone. I chose to ignore it.
“I’m positive.
You couldn’t ask for a clearer shot than what we have.” I didn’t tell her it was more than that. He gave off some of the strongest vibes I had ever experienced, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that just yet. But I knew I hadn’t seen the last of him.
“I don’t suppose you saw where he slithered off to,” he remarked.
“Nope. But I’ll find him.”
Rhys smiled. “That’s the spirit. Let me know when you’ve got more.” He hung up without waiting for an answer. I sat on the edge of my mattress, mulling over the morning’s events in my mind. He’d glanced at me so sharply, as if I had reached out and touched him.
And the question of his identity rolled ceaselessly around my brain. It could be hard, as a slayer constantly on call, to keep track of all my quarries. There was a kind of macabre mystique about them in the early days, but after years of bloody, messy work, if you’d seen one vamp, you’d seen them all. At least, that was my view before I laid eyes on this one. It irked me that there was something different about him.
I didn’t want any vamp to be special in any way. My understanding of the rules could allow for no exceptions. How dare this man, who refused to entertain my questions, give rise to interest rather than the usual repulsion?
Nothing about this grey Friday boded well for the weekend that was yet to come.
3
Damien
Every single thing about the present situation bothered me. Nearly a week without proper sleep, all of us running around like idiots in broad daylight, was about to culminate in the worst experience I could possibly imagine; attending a loud, crowded festival. The quaint little streets of downtown Langley had grown steadily more packed as Saturday approached, which did nothing to help my mood. By the time Friday rolled around, I was about ready to kill the engine on Caleb’s entire ridiculous scheme.
But he swore his information was good this time, and he was dead set on reaping the rewards. Personally, I didn’t give a shit. The vault was already stuffed full; what was one more relic? Of course I had tried to tell him that, and of course it didn’t take.
“Where’s your sense of the greater good?” he asked, laughing. “Look, if we don’t pick this up, some other blowhard is going to. Better us than them, right?”
“I guess.” Had I known what the plan entailed right then, I would have told him to screw off the edge of a cliff. He was wise to that though, because he didn’t tell me another thing about it until it was too late to back out.
That was how I’d ended up at the back end of an alley with the hunter girl. She didn’t think so, but I knew who she was. I had seen her prowling around Langley over the last couple days, sniffing around for signs of us. She probably thought she was being subtle, but if that was what she wanted, she should have dyed her hair first. It was long and bright, trailing behind her like a magenta ribbon. I could see her coming a mile away.
We didn’t speak in the alley. I had no intention of talking to her at all. She was too tenacious, and apparently keen on sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. But once I’d gotten a look at her up close, it was impossible not to admit the girl had a lot going for her. Her attitude left something to be desired, but her gorgeous face and lean, tight body spoke to me on a physical level. If she wanted to be in my business so bad, maybe she would make for a fun little distraction.
Why not, right? Anything was better than whatever half-baked shit Caleb had cooking in his head. I told myself a thousand times I was only there to make sure he didn’t completely screw us all over. He’d never been able to grasp the idea that as Leclairs, we had a lot to lose. Much more than anyone else on the island. And because he couldn’t be trusted to act right without a babysitter, I had the dubious honor of picking up after him.
Saturday dawned just as poorly as the rest of the week. The dark edge of an encroaching storm threatened to pelt the town’s festivities with driving rain. Pulling my hood up over my head, I hoped devoutly that some such thing would happen, that I might be saved from the terrible purgatory of the task at hand.
Mercilessly, the rain held off. Things only got worse from there. The entire downtown district teemed with humans. The scent of unspilled blood hung thick in the air, tantalizing and savory. I ran my tongue over my teeth. Who would miss one of these vapid, relentlessly smiling creatures? Just one—that was all I needed.
Some fifty feet ahead of me, I saw Caleb dive nimbly into the throng. Many of the weekend’s attendees had come in costume, and to my chagrin, they concealed him a little too effectively behind their aggressive façade of merriment. I strode forward, determined to keep him in my sights, but the path he cut closed behind him as quickly as it opened. He moved with the confidence of a dog on a scent.
I wanted to raise my voice and command him to slow down, to stop running just on the edge of wild. Caleb had more passion than he ever had sense, and it wasn’t hard for the former to outweigh the latter. Sooner or later, he’d do something reckless and stupid. It was bound to happen. And he was already getting away from me.
The crush of bodies closed in on me from every side. I shoved my hands into my pockets and shouldered my way forward. I could have tossed these people aside as easily as leaves on a strong wind, but it was too important to lay low. Attention would be a curse.
Still, black anger welled up in my chest as I watched Caleb get further and further away. He had a maddening way of blocking out all things except that which he cared most about at any given moment, and right now, his mind was singularly on this hypothetical relic. If I could have reached him, I would’ve grabbed his dumb ass by the collar and shaken him until his head settled on straight.
He kept plunging ahead, and I kept following doggedly behind. Now and then, I let my line of sight wander across the sea of faces, looking for one crowned by bright magenta hair. The hunter was here; I knew it without having to be told. I also knew I would much rather be pursuing her than Caleb. With her, it might actually be worth my time to catch up.
It soon became painfully apparent that Caleb, for all his talk and planning, had no idea what he was doing. He zigzagged back and forth through the streets, changing direction every thirty feet. The scent, if he’d had one in the first place, was long gone. Yet he refused to admit defeat, not even when the clouds that had been protecting us from the worst of the sun’s vile rays began to recede.
“I can’t believe this,” I mumbled, tugging my hood down lower. The thought of tackling Caleb and dragging him away tempted me sorely, but he somehow managed to stay one step too far away. He never even looked back over his shoulder, though he had to be aware I was following behind. There was little else to do but keep track of him until he ran himself out.
And I would have done that, except for one significant distraction. On our third or fourth pass through downtown Langley, my interest-starved eyes snagged on a bright splash of color in the crowd. I craned my neck to get a better angle.
There you are, I thought. The hunter leaned against a planter, one booted foot propped casually on the stone. She was examining her nails, magenta hair cascading from the knit hat perched at the crown of her head. She stood serene in the middle of chaos, a rock in a bubbling stream.
I had the strangest urge to peel off and head toward her. Let Caleb do his harebrained thing; I could bail him out later. He wasn’t half as fascinating to me as this woman, with her blazing locks and fierce eyes. She’d been ready to fight me in the alley. I smelled the adrenaline on her.
It was a shame we hadn’t had the opportunity.
When I looked back to track Caleb’s whereabouts, I didn’t see him anymore. A quick sweep of the surroundings produced no results. I chewed my lip, tasting cool blood and realizing my moment of weakness may have cost me dearly. “Dammit,” I murmured, annoyed. “Where the hell did he go?”
No sooner had I wondered aloud than a frantic, pain-filled voice began to scream.
The sound cut instantly through the cacophony of others in the street. Heads turned, conversations ga
ve way to whispers. A moment passed. Then, more screams. I stared straight ahead, my spine cold with dread. In the corner of my vision, a streak of purple raced by. The hunter was on the move.
I had to get to Caleb first.
My body plunged into motion, separating the onlookers like blades of grass before a charging bull. Stunned, they stepped aside, most without so much as a questioning glance. Now it was the girl with the fiery hair carving a swath through the masses. She was fast, but I couldn’t let her keep the lead. Within seconds, we hurtled neck and neck toward the epicenter of erupting chaos.
Caleb was nowhere to be found. Nonetheless, it was clear what had occurred. The smell of it hit me first, thick and metallic, overwhelming in my current state. I’d been too busy digging around for his precious relic to feed. And he was too worried about others picking up the trail.
“This one’s mine,” he had said, more than once. “I don’t care what I have to do.”
I looked down at the body splayed across the pavement. Blood pooled from the vicious tear in the neck, dark crimson contrasting the man’s translucent white throat. His eyes were frozen in open horror, mouth twisted agape. Behind me, someone threw up in a trash can.
I noticed the body’s pockets were all turned inside out. Caleb was greedy too.
I didn’t want to think it, but there was no other answer. It had taken mere minutes for Caleb’s recklessness to spiral out of his control. He hadn’t listened to anyone’s warnings about starving himself for too long. He had chosen to walk the thinnest of lines between hunger and rage. Now we were all going to pay for his carelessness.
“Move back!” The policeman boomed across the herd of gawking onlookers. He had a megaphone in his hand, which he waved as if it were a gun. “Clear the area, folks. There’s nothing to see here!” Despite his firm timbre, the color had drained from his skin. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. He said it again. “Nothing to see here!”
