by Laken Cane
“Good luck, Teagan,” Lila said. “If you see your chance, run like the wind. And don’t look back.”
“I will if you will,” I said.
“Okay,” she agreed. “Run.”
Without hesitation I kicked off, running as fast as I could toward the tree line.
And I was faster, there was no doubt.
But I heard a sound, and I turned back.
A crack, loud and sudden in the crisp fall quiet, like a tree branch breaking. Like a gunshot.
Like a club meeting someone’s skull.
I turned back.
Richard swung his bludgeon again, and it hit Lila’s bat, but she never made a sound as the shock of that hit would surely have jarred her all the way to her brain.
She stumbled back, then swung her baseball bat, and her blow hit Richard on his mauled shoulder.
I’d forgotten Caleb in my concern for Lila.
“Lila,” I yelled.
She jerked her head around to look at me, her eyes widening one second before something hit the back of my head with enough force to crack my skull.
I hit the ground hard, my brains scrambled, and for one second I could neither see nor hear anything.
Then I heard screaming—not mine, but Lila’s, her voice high, angry, and desperate.
I turned sluggishly to my back, my vision returning with my hearing. Caleb stood a couple of yards away, his face blank. His eyes, though, they were filled with hatred.
“You’ve killed her,” he said.
I scrambled backward, then stood, and realized I’d dropped my machete. I couldn’t take my gaze off Caleb long enough to look for it. Perhaps if I kept him locked in my stare, he couldn’t get near me.
But he could.
Despite all the energy I’d felt inside me earlier, my dull, stunned mind refused to let me move.
He lifted his club again and swung at my head.
I cried out as the bat connected. The world tilted, changed colors, and briefly darkened so much I couldn’t see anything at all.
“Wait,” I said, or tried to say.
Blood was in my eyes, and maybe my ears. For a while, all I could hear was a roaring, rushing sound, like a waterfall. Like death running to greet me.
I crawled away, a few yards away, before I felt the baseball connect with the back of my skull. I didn’t know why I was still alive.
Except I did.
The blow drove me forward and I landed face first on the hard ground. My blood mixed with the earth, and I swear I saw smoke rising from where my blood sank into the ground.
“God,” Caleb screamed. “Why don’t you die?”
I saw Richard drive Lila back with his superior strength, with his greater experience. I saw her glance at me, and I saw Richard’s club hit the side of her head so hard her face caved in.
Blood hung in the air as she flew backward.
Her bat flew from her grip, spinning through the air to land with a solid thud on the hard ground. Almost close enough for me to touch.
She lay motionless.
Richard stood over her for a long moment, his head bowed, and then, he started toward me.
But I was turned. Changed.
Different.
And I would not die.
All it took was for me to accept it. To embrace it.
To realize that yes, I was something more. I had been bitten, I had been turned, and I was going to live, no matter how many times he slammed the bat into my head.
I didn’t know how they’d killed Lila’s father. Maybe they hadn’t. Maybe they’d wrapped him in barbed wire and buried him deep in the ground. Maybe he lived even now, awake and aware, buried alive in darkness forever.
That was the thought that got me moving.
I rose in a seamless, smooth move, and my body hummed with strength. With power. Would I now be sensitive to the alcohol, now that I was…changed? If Richard tried again, would I burn? Would my flesh melt over my bones as I died in agony?
Maybe.
But I would not find out that day.
I wiped the blood from my eyes and faced them, and we stood like that, staring at each other, for an eternity.
Richard had his sword, and Caleb had tossed his club away and reclaimed his machetes.
I couldn’t move my face. If I could have, I would have smiled.
Maybe they saw death in my eyes, or the mutant blood, because Caleb stumbled back a few steps, and Richard flinched as he looked at me.
And I was no longer afraid. I was numb, but I was not afraid.
I leapt toward Lila’s bat, scooped it from the ground, then turned just in time to block Richard’s sword.
I was changed, true, but whatever I was, I was new. I didn’t know, really, what to do. What I could do.
But I was full of wrath.
Still, I was only one girl with a baseball bat and they were two men with blades. I stayed and fought for one reason.
I could not leave Lila there.
I could not leave her for the animals, or for Caleb and Richard to touch or bury or cry over.
Fuck them.
I would get her justice.
Or maybe I just wanted revenge.
Richard swung his sword as I was trying to block Caleb’s machete, and that time, he had better luck.
The sword cut through my upper left arm, sinking in like a knife through butter, coming up hard against bone.
I screamed.
Somehow, I blocked Caleb with the bat, though I had the use of only one arm. Richard stood still for a long moment, just watching me. He knew I was caught. He knew I was dead.
By the time I decided to run, it was too late.
They lifted their blades.
I turned anyway—at least I’d try.
But as I turned, a blade bit into my back. I felt it like a hard shove, and then pain. Burning. Another blade slid through my right leg, and I went down.
I turned to my back to face them, unwilling to let them chop me into pieces when they couldn’t see my face. Let them look at me.
They faltered, both of them, but only for a moment.
“Rest, Teagan,” Richard said. “Close your eyes, sweetheart.”
I couldn’t speak.
There was nothing to say, anyway.
They lifted their blades.
Let them kill me. Don’t let them bury me alive.
I whispered a quick goodbye to Sage, and I kept my stare pinned to Richard’s.
“I’m ready,” I said.
Richard nodded and as one, they lifted their blades.
It was my time to die, and I was ready to go.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Then, I saw movement behind the two men.
Mutants.
They rushed over the ground like ghosts, silent and deadly, drawn there, maybe, by my screams or the sounds of the fight.
The slaughter.
And I didn’t warn the two humans. Let the mutants kill them. Let them do what I’d failed to do.
Richard and Caleb spun around, fingers scrabbling for their guns, but too late.
Much too late.
I scooted backward, Lila’s bat held in a death grip.
Two of the orphans spotted me, and voices clicking in some sort of communication I couldn’t understand, they raced toward me.
Somehow, I made it to my feet. I dropped the bat and tried to yank the water gun from its holster, but I was injured, slow, and clumsy, and the mutants were upon me in seconds.
My cut leg refused to support me and I fell backward.
They swarmed me, then. Not just the two orphans. Most of them. All of them, maybe. Richard and Caleb were silent.
Maybe they were dead already, torn to pieces by the group of mutants. But probably, some of the mutants had carried them off to be tested by the gods. I had no way of knowing.
I screamed again.
Don’t be such a girl…
But I couldn’t seem to help myself.
They snatched
me from the ground, the mutants, and even through my fear, the clicking of their…voices, or whatever the hell it was, infuriated me.
They’d eat me, of course. They’d feast on me until there was nothing left but clean, white bone.
The bite was shit.
I wasn’t better than I had been.
They peered at me, heads tilting, yellow eyes full of curiosity, and I couldn’t do anything. I was cut, bleeding out, and now that the adrenaline was wearing off, I was in agony.
“Do it, then,” I screamed. “Bastards!”
As though they’d been waiting for permission, they bit.
But not me.
They bit themselves.
Almost as one, they lifted their arms, hands, and wrists to their mouths and bit down. Hard.
Blood spewed, covering me in a crimson, milky tide.
They did attack me then, sort of.
They slapped their bloody arms against my wounds—worse, they pressed their bite wounds to my mouth, and forced their nasty, hot blood inside me.
I struggled. I did.
But I was weak from blood loss, and they…
They were strong. So very strong.
In the end, their blood spurted down my throat, and though I vomited it back up almost immediately, it didn’t matter. They fed me more.
Force fed me mutant blood.
Would I have healed on my own, had they left me alone?
Possibly. Probably.
But the blood wasn’t just about the healing.
The blood was about finishing the initiation.
Knowledge floated in with the blood, but the images were too fast, too alien for me to process.
Then I considered something so horrible, so black, that I screamed and kicked until they lowered me to the ground.
What if that was how they impregnated women?
They dissipated like misty dream creatures.
One moment they were there, clicking, feeding me, holding me, and the next, I was on the ground and they were gone.
I scrambled to my feet, looking wildly around, my heart beating like an angry drum. Everyone was gone.
Why had they healed me, if I was the enemy? Why had they fed me?
I was healed. Almost completely.
I raced across the ground to Lila, then fell to my hands and knees beside her, sobbing. They hadn’t taken her.
They hadn’t taken her, or eaten her, or torn her apart. They hadn’t touched her.
Why?
Maybe they’d known she was my friend.
But it was only because a dead human was useless to them. I knew that. I just didn’t want to admit she was gone.
I let my tears fall, unchecked, as I stretched out beside the girl who’d saved me, who’d died because of me.
Maybe she’d really wanted to die.
At one time or the other, didn’t we all?
I wish I could say she looked at me. That she smiled and told me she’d be okay.
That she was alive.
But she lay on the ground, blood covering her delicate face, her eyes half open and dull and lifeless. The spark was gone.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
I climbed wearily to my feet, and for the next couple of hours, I piled rocks on her body. Afterward, I stood at the rocky grave and sang a couple broken verses of Amazing Grace.
It seemed like the right thing to do.
I picked up her bat. It was mine now.
I walked to the bag she’d packed for me and hooked my hand through one of the straps. And then, with the bat resting on my shoulder, my machete in my hand, and the bag looped over my arm, I walked away.
Richard had said I was a hunter, and I was going to prove him right.
A girl had to have a purpose.
First, though, I walked back to the house. I had a dog to get.
I opened the back door and he rushed out, as though he’d been waiting for me.
Perhaps he had been.
I left the town for the first time in two years, and I didn’t once look back.
Maybe I’d find Sage out there somewhere. I wouldn’t stop searching.
And I wouldn’t stop killing mutants.
No matter what I became.
The Forsaken Series:
Book 2 in progress
Bloodhunter
By Laken Cane
Table of Contents
Prologue
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Part Two
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Part Three
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Prologue
She moaned with relief as the cold, silent air caressed her face. It’d been so hot in her sister’s crowded little house. Hot and loud and bright.
She took a deep breath of the brisk night air, then walked carefully down the icy walk as she dug her keys from her purse.
She had her hand wrapped around them when suddenly she stopped walking, tilted her head, and listened. Her breath turned frosty, sending out plumes of white as she paused, concentrating on whatever it was that had made the back of her neck itch. From inside the house came the muffled sound of laughter.
She couldn’t have said what made her pause and glance back over her shoulder. Something. Some tiny noise, or furtive movement, or more likely, just one of the feelings she sometimes got when something was off. One of the first things she’d been taught in self-defense class was the importance of trusting her intuition.
The streetlights lit the snow-covered pavement and the cars that lined it. It was eerily still, but in the silent darkness she felt…something.
Something that didn’t belong there.
She became aware of sirens screaming in the distance, a sound she acknowledged and then discarded as she concentrated on what might have made her hesitate.
The fine hairs on her arms stiffened and she shivered, frozen. She couldn’t decide whether to ignore the feeling or to rush back inside and ask someone to escort her to her car.
But they’d have laughed at her. Little Trinity, scared of her own shadow. Afraid to walk across the street.
She became aware of the sirens again. They were louder, more intense. Closer, but still distant.
“I’m being silly,” she muttered. She’d walked out of her sister’s house dozens of times. She’d parked on dark streets, walked to her car, stood on porches talking with neighbors. She’d never been afraid in that neighborhood.
Embarrassed, she glanced at the windows of the house, then tightened her grip on her keys, lifted her chin, and walked resolutely on.
Her heels clacking on the pavement was the only sound as she hurried across the empt
y street to her tiny blue Honda.
She clicked the remote on her keychain, unlocking the car. The engine cranked to life, a comforting and familiar sound in the cold silence.
And the feeling of fear roared back to life with the car engine. She ran the last few steps to the car and yanked open the door.
She had to get inside that car. She’d be safe then, safe from whatever bad thing lurked in the shadows, waiting to grab her.
Chills raced over her body, gooseflesh pebbled her skin, and in that second, she could feel phantom hands grabbing her by the back of her neck.
Only they weren’t phantom hands, suddenly, and the block of ice in her throat cut off her terrified scream.
He whirled her around and then slammed her back against the car. His eyes were black and wide, and as though he were unable to control them, his teeth elongated into fangs, shortened, then elongated again. He snapped his mouth shut, but she’d seen. The point of his fangs looked sharp and somehow cold, like miniature icicles.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.
He was…injured. Strips of bloodless flesh hung from his naked body, and cuts, wide and jagged, decorated his face.
She gaped at him, too shocked and horrified, for a second, to remember to be afraid.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” he said again, his voice barely loud enough for her to hear. Still, it scraped across her brain, that voice, that need. “It is a bad night for little humans.”
“You’re a…”
She didn’t say the word, but she didn’t need to. It echoed in her mind, over and over and over, and she understood one very important thing at that moment.
She was in trouble.
Her breath left her lungs in pants and gasps, and her stomach clenched and tossed in turns—she wanted to throw up but her stomach was so tight it refused to release its contents.
She’d never once in her eighteen years held a conversation with a vampire. Not that she was aware of, anyway. They lived—and hid—amongst the humans, survived in the darkness, feasting on the homeless, the forgotten, the broken, and animals when they were forced to.
Her legs gave out and she dropped to the hard pavement, the exhaust from the car mixing with the scent of his agony. And despite his weakness, his obvious pain, his near death status, he encircled her upper arms with a strong grip and hoisted her up off the ground.
