Bloodhunter

by Laken Cane

  I couldn’t stand there another second. Next time, I’d let Harlan deliver food to the necromancer. It hadn’t been the nice distraction I’d hoped for.

  “Hey,” she called, as I reached for the doorknob. “I don’t imagine the lovely Angus Stark wants to give me free food.”

  I hurried back to the desk to fetch the check. “Thanks,” I murmured.

  She swiveled in her chair to turn on the TV attached to her wall. I was dismissed.

  I was on edge, nervous from my encounter with Amias, full of anxiety over the deaths that had begun plaguing the city. Memories I tried hard not to acknowledge were just below the surface, waiting for their chance to slip past my defenses. I had to be vigilant.

  I was much too keyed up to deal with the necromancer and her golem and their many layers of crap I did not understand.

  But just before I slipped back out the doorway, the local news program stopped me.

  “The woman was bitten to death,” the reporter was saying, “in what authorities are calling a copy of the Thanksgiving Day Massacre six years ago—except this was one woman, not an entire family. Nearly every inch of her flesh bore bite marks, some of her fingers were missing, and…” The newscaster’s pause was subtle, but I heard it. “And her throat was torn out. Authorities do not believe this particular case is connected to the other murders that have cropped up over the past two months. This woman was savaged. Brutalized. People are being urged to be careful after dark, to be mindful of their surroundings, and to take the normal precautions as police begin their investigations into this latest murder. Police are asking—”

  I practically fell out of the doorway, my chest so tight I couldn’t breathe. “No,” I whispered. “No.”

  He was killing again.

  “Listen to me.”

  Out of habit, I pressed my palms against my ears in some sort of useless attempt to stop the voices, the memories.

  And then Miriam was there, clutching my upper arms, murmuring soothing words that meant nothing. But her calmness, her support, her embrace, those meant everything.

  I wasn’t alone, and I wasn’t on the street in front of my sister’s house, bleeding and traumatized while all around me people I loved died. I wasn’t there.

  I concentrated on Miriam’s soft but strong, steady voice, and my heart began to slow. My mind began to clear.

  “All right?” she asked. “All right now, honey?”

  I nodded and pulled away, noticing only then that Clayton stood just behind Miriam, watching me.

  “I’m okay,” I told her, looking away from Clayton. “I’m good.”

  She peered up at me. “You’re vulnerable tonight. Be careful, Trinity. You should surround yourself with people who love you.”

  I squeezed her hand, then backed away. “Goodnight, Miriam.”

  She nodded. “Go back to that misogynistic Neanderthal of a horndog you work for. He and his dozens of offspring will care for you.”

  I couldn’t help but smile, which I’m pretty sure was what she’d intended. I walked back to work, and I could feel both the necromancer and her golem watching me until I slipped into the building and closed the door behind me.

  Chapter Three

  By nine p.m. the parking lot was completely packed as the Friday night crowd descended upon Bay Town’s best—and only—pizza joint.

  The crowd was mostly human, and they went to Bay Town like it was a slightly scary, very dangerous place to go for some drunken weekend fun.

  They made the rounds from the Bay Town bars—there were two in the little town—to the one club to the park to have some pizza and see the hot supernats they found there. Bay Town was up all night.

  Usually the town was safe for humans. The supernaturals understood their accountability and their roles, and they were mindful when the weekend came and brought the humans—and their money—with it. When violence did happen in Bay Town, it was nearly always the visiting humans who started it.

  The citizens of Red Valley loved to believe that the little Bay Town was full of danger and magic and badassery.

  And they were right, but supernats knew to behave themselves when humans were around. Hurting a human would bring serious and swift retribution down on Bay Town, and the nonhumans made every attempt to maintain the safety of those humans in whose world they lived.

  Even the vampires usually lay low, unwilling to draw attention to themselves and make their already dire circumstances worse—but then they’d go nuts for some reason and kill a bunch of humans, and the world would redouble its efforts to wipe them all out. But vampires were like cockroaches, and they weren’t going anywhere.

  Stark Pizza opened its doors at five p.m. and closed at eleven p.m. on weeknights and four a.m. on weekends, and as I ended up waiting tables after all, I listened for gossip about the recent killings.

  Causing a panic was the last thing the human authorities wanted, but it was only a matter of time before it happened. Vampires were once again attacking humans. That was no big surprise. But other humans were being killed as well. Women. And they had no idea what was killing them.

  That meant the police were going to start looking at the Bay Town supernaturals.

  By the time I left work, I knew the victim’s name was Carrie Alden. She’d just gone through a divorce, and she’d been out drinking and dancing the night she’d been murdered. The murder had happened behind a bar in New Gravel, a small village in Bay County, and only sixteen miles from Bay Town.

  That was what Amias had wanted to talk with me about and why he’d been so distracted I’d managed to stab him in the shoulder.

  In his strange, obsessive way, Amias wanted to protect me.

  Angus walked me to my car, and I knew better than to argue about it. He’d do what he wanted whether I wasted my breath or not.

  “The necromancer called me,” he told me, as I opened my car door. “You’re welcome to come home with me, Trin.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “You’ve made that perfectly clear.”

  But he didn’t smile. “My house is bursting with people. Noisy kids for the most part,” he admitted, “but you won’t be alone there. You can bunk with one of the little ones if you don’t want to sleep alone.” The gleam in his eye suggested that he wouldn’t turn me away were I so inclined to climb into his bed, but he left that unspoken. “Or you can take the guest room.”

  I climbed into my car. “I’ll be fine. I’m fine.” I started the car, then looked up at him. “I’ll take something to help me sleep.”

  He nodded. “You need me, you call. I can be there in less than ten minutes. Girl like you shouldn’t live alone.”

  I took a deep breath to tell him off, but inadvertently pulled the scent of him deep into my lungs. He wore a subtle, spicy cologne, and the elusive hint of that cologne mixed with the exotic scent of shifter, man, and a special scent I could never quite catch, but I knew it was one he’d been born with. And I knew it was that scent that drifted around him and made him nearly irresistible. Too bad he was such a “misogynistic Neanderthal of a horndog,” as Miriam had so aptly put it. “Goodnight, Angus.”

  He slammed my door. “Go straight home.” His loud voice was only a little muffled. He waited until I’d backed out of my parking space before he strode back toward the building.

  But I had no plans to start obeying Angus’s orders. I was going to New Gravel. I patted the stakes in my belt, then reached for the silver cross around my neck. I also had a Glock in the glovebox, though that was more for protection against human monsters. Guns wouldn’t do much to the supernaturals.

  At least not any I’d ever met.

  Excitement uncurled inside my belly, climbed to caress my heart, then dove into my brain. I craved that feeling. It made me feel alive. Even better, it made me forget the ever-present heaviness of the past that covered me like slick, putrid scum.

  Going to the scene of the crime in the dead of night might not seem like a smart thing to do, but I was fully aware of the r
isks. I was also fully aware of the high it gave me. Just thinking about it unleashed something inside me, something closer to happiness than anything I’d ever felt. Especially in the last six years.

  I needed to find those killers, and I needed to kill them. I needed to.

  So I sped eagerly toward New Gravel and the scene of the murder, wide awake despite the hour. I didn’t sleep much anyway. Picking up clues at a crime scene was preferable to tossing and turning in a lonely bed in my unadorned bedroom—or in my closet, which I ended up crawling into more often than not.

  When I arrived in the tiny New Gravel, I parked along the street across from Fred’s Bar and climbed out with no hesitation.

  I should have been terrified. I knew I should have been.

  But I wasn’t.

  The street was well lit and completely silent. Not even a dog barked. I stood in the cold, listening, watching for movement, and after a few minutes of nothing, I walked to the back of my car.

  The rusty trunk lid groaned when I opened it, reluctantly exposing the contents within. I cringed at the noise and darted a look around, but the village remained silent. Unaware. Very possibly afraid.

  That could work for me, but then again, cops were bound to be keeping an eye on the place. Not only that, but terrified, angry humans would be sleeping with guns.

  I dragged a dusty Kevlar vest from underneath a box of tools, shrugged off my coat and fastened on the vest, then put my coat back on.

  I grabbed a couple of stakes and shoved them into my belt to join the other two. Two small vials of holy water followed, then a knife, which I stuck into a coat pocket. I always wore a silver cross around my neck, but I donned an extra just in case. I also wore a silver ring on the middle finger of my right hand. A thin cross stood out in sharp relief on the silver. It would be immensely satisfying to punch a vampire in the throat with that ring.

  I left the gun in the car. Killing vampires would be applauded. Killing a human—even accidentally, as I went on some sort of death wish vendetta, would land me in jail.

  I slipped across the street and around to the back of the dark building, my heart beating hard and fast. The air grew heavier the closer I got to the scene, and the fine hairs stiffened on the back of my neck. I could feel him…not him, exactly, but the lingering horror he’d left behind.

  Amias.

  It was a familiar feeling, and not one I would ever forget.

  When I finally stood inside the yellow tape, my flashlight playing over the broken, bloody ground, I calmed a little and my mind began to clear.

  I wasn’t sure what I’d hope to find but all that remained were footprints from law enforcement and stains I didn’t care to look at too closely.

  I flashed the light over the back of the building, into the distant woods, and then back to the ground.

  Amias had been there. He’d killed the woman. His scent hung heavy in the air, and his presence was strong.

  Maybe he was still there.

  Somewhere a couple of blocks over, a dog began to bark, and just that quickly, terror shivered through my body. I clicked the light off and backed toward the building. I was vulnerable. Exposed. If I wanted to take out vampires, I’d have to stay alive to do it.

  As my mind filled with doubt—or common sense, rather—I slid the flashlight into my pocket, then grabbed two of the stakes.

  Amias’s wasn’t the only presence I felt.

  Amias wasn’t the only vampire I would kill.

  I shook my head as red agony lit my brain on fire, giving me the worst headache of my life. My stomach churned with the pain of it, and my quiet, agonized groan slid out into the still air.

  Someone was there with me.

  I felt him.

  It.

  Vampire.

  Of its own accord, my mind opened and reached out through the haze of pain, unfurling like a ribbon into the darkness, searching the night. I lifted my nose to the air and began sniffing; tiny, quick inhalations that pulled the scents into my brain. I stopped, stunned, when I realized what I was doing.

  Adrenaline stormed my body, and I was ready when the vampire came rushing from the shadows toward me. I clenched my teeth and held out the stakes, as though he might be stupid enough to impale himself upon them in his hurry to get to me.

  It wasn’t Amias.

  He hissed and was right there, right in my face, and the back of my head slammed against the brick behind me as I recoiled.

  Even more pain exploded in my head but I didn’t hesitate. I lunged with the stakes, grimly satisfied when I felt one of them lodge in his flesh. His scream was not loud, but it was…distressed.

  He was not terribly old, this vampire. How I knew that, I couldn’t have said, but his youth was like the taste of something green and fresh and steaming on the back of my tongue. I gagged and jerked a vial of holy water from my pocket, striking with the other stake at the same time.

  Seconds, that’s all it took, because with the adrenaline coursing through me, my movements were swift. But he was a vampire. Though vampires weren’t as strong and fast as those in fiction, they were still extraordinary, and my second stake hit nothing but cold, empty air.

  A master was faster still, and crazy strong, but this vampire was no master.

  He had not killed Carrie Alden—that woman’s death lingered, covered in the smell of a master vampire. Of Amias.

  No, this guy was no master, but he was powerful and he was fast, and he was far from finished with me.

  And he was hungry. Starving. He had a certain scent, as well. He reeked of disease. Just like the vampires who’d attacked on Thanksgiving Day.

  He was sick and full of rage, an unthinking and deadly monster.

  I realized I was about to die two seconds before he barreled into me, knocking the stake and vial from my grip and slamming me into the building.

  I bounced from the brick to the ground, my breath whooshing from my lungs, and I began to wheeze an almost silent laugh at my predicament. I was hysterical.

  Or I was psychotic.

  He fell on top of me, his weight insubstantial, as though he were merely a bag of hollow bones. He plunged his fangs into me, right above my collarbone. The teeth entered my flesh and kept going, like a lidocaine shot to the roof of the mouth.

  My entire left arm was affected immediately—I could feel it, but I couldn’t move it. It lay there, pulsing with pain, frozen.

  Paralyzed.

  I was going to die.

  Funny how the thought didn’t scare me.

  Scared or not, my instinct for survival kicked in, and I began to struggle. I grabbed his face with my right hand, and my thumbnail popped through his eye. I dug and pinched and shoved, but he barely grunted, and he did not stop sucking the life from my body.

  I pulled my hand from his face and fumbled at my belt, where I had two more stakes. I would have reached for the extra vial of holy water but my coat was twisted beneath me, hiding the pockets.

  My mind was going dark, calm and hazy as he pulled the blood from my body. Weaker, slower, and almost resigned, I still managed to slide the sharp stake from the loop on my belt.

  I lifted the stake high and brought it down hard and fast, plunging it through his bony back, straight into his heart. “Please, God,” I cried, weakly.

  I’d had no idea it would be so easy to stake a vampire.

  His death was undramatic. He was gone immediately. One second he was chomping on my flesh, pulling my blood into his mouth, and the next he just stopped moving. But as I shoved him off me, trembling like a feather caught in a fan, his body began to shrivel.

  I struggled to sit up and then scooted back against the wall, slapping my pockets for my flashlight. By the time I found it and clicked it on, the vampire resembled an enormous earthworm that had been left in the sun, shriveled and gray.

  I pressed my good hand against my mouth, holding back dry sobs, unsure now that it was done. I’d killed the killer. Now what?

  Then my light fla
shed over a figure crouched not six feet away, and I screamed. Because the vampire I’d killed wasn’t the horror. The vampire I’d killed wasn’t the terror.

  But Amias crouched in the darkness, studying me, and there was the fear.

  There was the nightmare.

  Chapter Four

  I hadn’t learned Amias’s name for eight months after the Thanksgiving Day attack. One night he’d simply appeared and stood in front of me, shuddering and sick, and told me who he was.

  “I am Amias,” he’d said. “I am your master.”

  I’d lost my shock beneath the fury of my rage, and that had been the first time I’d discovered that trying to hurt Amias would hurt me.

  But right now, I was too spent to fight. Too hurt by the fangs of the vampire I’d just killed.

  “Shhh,” Amias said, as though I were screaming. “You must listen to me now. I need you.”

  But all I could see was my sister’s blood-spattered face, and all I could hear were her screams before she died.

  I welcomed the rage that grew inside me, and I leapt like a mad thing, an unthinking animal, clawing the air with empty hands. He moved almost casually, but still too fast for my depleted body, and I fell to a heap upon the ground where he’d sat a second earlier, watching as a young vampire nearly killed me.

  I jumped to my feet, agony streaking through every part of my body, panting with rage as I sniffed the air and found him, then leapt at him once again.

  He didn’t move that time. He grabbed me, spun me around, then pulled me against his body. His arms fastened around me like a vice, squeezing the breath from my lungs. He bore me to the ground, and as I sat upon his lap, caught in his arms, he wrapped his legs over mine and I could not move.

  I gave voice to weak howls of rage, terror, and pain, and I couldn’t remember how it’d felt before he’d created those emotions inside me.

  The vampire I hated above all else held me in his arms.

  And I couldn’t do a thing about it.

  My heart distended with a sort of terror and dread I’d never felt before—not even when he’d attacked me, not even when he’d killed my family. This was something more.