Bloodhunter

by Laken Cane

  I groaned. “Dear lord,” I murmured. “I hurt.”

  Shane didn’t even look at me. “You caused this, baby hunter. You killed the humans and you brought the cops. You deal with it.” And then he turned on his heel and trotted away, fading into the darkness even as the police shouted at him not to move.

  It dawned on me that the police weren’t exactly pleased with me only when they began screaming at me to get on the ground.

  “What?” I asked, slightly dazed, very tired, and tempted to do as Shane had done and run away. But with my luck, the cops would have shot me dead.

  “I said get down,” a cop screamed. “Get down now.”

  “Asshole,” I muttered, and dropped to my knees.

  “Hands on your head,” he screamed.

  “I can’t move my arm,” I explained. I lifted my right arm and put my hand on my head, but that wasn’t good enough.

  “I said get your hands on your head,” he yelled.

  “And I said I can’t, you fucking moron!” Fury rushed through me, and I would have liked nothing more than to leap at him and beat him to a bloody pulp.

  Fortunately for me, I got a handle on the anger.

  “Get down!”

  I fell to my stomach and put my right hand behind my back, and then they were upon me. I was pretty sure more pain was coming from the unimpressed cops.

  I was right.

  By the time they slung me handcuffed and controlled into the smelly backseat of a cruiser, I was blubbering like a baby.

  And they’d taken Silverlight. They’d taken my stakes, too, but those didn’t concern me. One night as a hunter and I found myself in trouble and missing my sword. It wasn’t my proudest moment.

  Policemen walked around the area as I watched from the car, talking and pointing and speaking into mics on their shoulders, and still more cars arrived. The area was taped off, investigators bent over the dead humans and what remained of the shrunken vampires, and still no one drove me away.

  No one asked if I needed medical care, or came to talk to me about the fight.

  The life of a beginner hunter was obviously not a very glamorous one. It was filled with pain and sorrow and so very many mistakes. Rookie mistakes.

  Shane was gone, the street was littered with dead vampires and dead humans, and I was the only one left for the police to concentrate on.

  Then someone began screaming, crying, and yelling for God, and I saw the cops holding back a woman who’d burst through the rapidly growing crowd. “That’s my boy,” she screamed. “That’s my boy.”

  “No,” I whispered. “Oh, no.”

  I’d messed up. I’d messed up badly.

  But then I saw something that made me feel a little less alone.

  Rhys and Angus strode toward us, anger in every line of their bodies, and it didn’t matter that some of the cops rushed toward them, stopping them before they got halfway to me. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t speak to me, or see me, or take me home.

  They’d come for me.

  A little warmth spread through my frozen body, thawing the horror. I rested my head against the glass, and kept my stare on them until finally, a cop got into the front seat and drove me away.

  Part Two

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I need the restroom,” I said.

  “Soon,” the detective promised. “Tell me again what happened out there.”

  “I was walking,” I repeated, for the hundredth time. I paused to take another sip of the third cold soda I’d had since they’d parked me in an interrogation room at the Red Valley Police Department. I didn’t want to keep drinking, but I was so thirsty. Every few minutes I had to take a sip so the words could slip past the dryness in my throat.

  I’d been there about two hours, but it felt like ten. I could have asked for an attorney, but I wanted to cooperate. They could see that I hadn’t killed those men. That I hadn’t somehow called the vampires—though that was sort of untrue. They’d come out of hiding because of me. Because of my new status. Because every vampire in the vicinity knew a baby hunter was on the prowl, and they wanted to kill me before I got too mean for them.

  I squirmed on the chair as the fullness of my bladder became a little more urgent. “I need the restroom,” I said again.

  “Soon,” the detective promised. Again. “We just really need to understand everything that happened out there tonight, Ms. Sinclair. The city needs answers. The families of the four young men slaughtered out there tonight need answers.” He leaned forward, his face earnest, his voice gentle. “We need answers.”

  “I’m giving them to you,” I murmured. “I’ve been giving you answers since you brought me in.”

  “Vampires wouldn’t dare attack in the city.” He sat back and drummed his fingers on the table. “Vampires haven’t attacked since…”

  I looked at him. “Since the Thanksgiving Day Massacre, Detective Dunne? I know about vampire attacks. I know all about them. And what happened tonight was just another vampire slaughter. They killed those men. You know that. You saw.”

  “We saw something.” He ran his hand over his face. “Mostly we just saw you and your friend—who ran—and we saw four brutally murdered young human men scattered across the street. Why were you there, Ms. Sinclair?”

  I wished he’d stop saying Ms. Sinclair like the words were some sort of nasty thing caught in his throat. “You saw the vampires,” I insisted. “They were lying dead on the ground. You examined them. Didn’t you?”

  He blew out a hard breath. “We saw some of the fight,” he admitted. “But by the time we were able to examine the scene, there were no vampires on the ground. Only empty clothing.”

  I gaped. “What?”

  Silverlight.

  Silverlight did more than dry and shrivel the vampires as a hunter with a stake would do. Silverlight wiped them out. Erased them.

  And that was so not good for me.

  But I couldn’t tell him that. I wanted my sword back. My fingers shook with the need to grip her. They would never give her back if I told them what she could do.

  They would hand her over to scientists who would study her, try to duplicate her, and destroy her.

  She was mine. She was my responsibility and I had to protect her, just as she’d protected me.

  Detective Dunne nodded. “There were no vampires.” He met my horrified stare. “The families—the city, actually—will think that you and your friend murdered those men.”

  I leaned forward, deep breathing, trying not to pass out. I was injured, bloody, and exhausted. But I was strong, and growing stronger by the day. How else was I physically coping with the devastation I’d put my body through in the last few days?

  But then I remembered Shane killing vampires beside me, and I knew the detective was bending the truth a little. Not all the vampires had disappeared. Those Shane had killed would have dried and shriveled up, but they wouldn’t have disappeared.

  “So you see,” the other detective said, speaking for the first time, “We’re in a mess here. And honestly, we have no idea how to get out of it. There is no proof vampires attacked. If we tell the city vampires did kill those four young men, imagine the panic, Ms. Sinclair. You see our predicament.”

  I glared at her. “Your predicament, Detective Locke?” I didn’t mention that I knew they were lying. I didn’t want to explain how I knew that.

  She shrugged. “They’ll want someone to blame.”

  I raised my eyebrows, glad the anger was helping me combat the fear. “And I’m it? I’m the sacrificial lamb?” I took another sip of soda, then gasped when I remembered something. “The woman killed behind the bar in New Gravel. Carrie Alden.”

  They both narrowed their eyes and leaned toward me at the exact same moment. “Yes?” Detective Dunne asked. “What about her?”

  “She was also killed by a vampire. But the vampire who killed her was sick—just like the ones six years ago.”

  Neither of them looked surpri
sed.

  “You knew,” I realized.

  “How did you know?” he asked.

  “I went there afterward,” I admitted, whether that was the smart thing to do or not. “I killed the vampire who murdered her.”

  They looked at each other.

  The door opened, abruptly, and a man walked in. He was a tall, well dressed bald man with an unmistakable air of command.

  The detectives stood when he entered. “Captain?” Detective Dunne asked.

  “Out,” he told them.

  “Sir,” Locke said. “Are you—”

  “Out,” he said again, softly.

  And with a long last look at me, they went.

  He didn’t bother to sit down. Without preamble, he put his hands on his hips and stared down at me from tired eyes. “Are you a hunter, Ms. Sinclair?”

  Surprised, I nodded. “A baby hunter,” I admitted. “That’s what they say.”

  “Your supernaturals? The group with whom you work and now…” He gestured. “With whom you appear to live?”

  “The Bay Town supernaturals,” I said. “Yes.”

  He sighed. “We watch them, you know. The supernaturals of our city. They’re accepted, to a point. The Bay Town supernaturals—at least some of them—I consider almost…friends.”

  I said nothing, unsure what he was getting at.

  “Rhys Graver vouches for you.”

  “Okay.” I tilted my head. “That’s…nice of him.”

  “We need a hunter,” he said darkly.

  He, or the police department, or the city—I wasn’t sure who the ‘we’ was—needed me. And I was hoping that would be the thing to save me. To save the supernaturals, the night, the work we needed to do to end the vampires.

  Jail loomed as a frightening possibility, but maybe my status and the captain’s need would earn me a get out of jail free card. Before I even got there.

  “Okay,” I repeated.

  “From what little I know, special hunters can track. They’re like bloodhounds.” His stare seemed to darken as he kept his stare pinned to my face. “Certain rare—very rare—people are more than just hunters. They’re called bloodhunters. Is that you, Ms. Sinclair?”

  I stared at him with wide eyes, and suddenly I knew what the trails were.

  “Rhys Graver seems to think that might be you,” he continued, as I could only stare, wide-eyed and a little stunned. “Can you see the trails?”

  I shuddered. “Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, I can see the trails.”

  And finally, finally, I knew.

  Obviously, I wasn’t the only one who knew about the trails.

  The fog was what the vampires left behind. If I followed one, I would track the vampire who left it until dawn arrived. The tracks disappeared in the sun.

  I was a bloodhunter.

  And that was why I saw the trails.

  Deep in my soul, there came a sigh of relief, and a whisper drifted through my mind. “Finally…”

  I lifted my chin. Shane Copas might look down on me and my inexperience, but not even he was a bloodhunter. I don’t know how I knew that, but I did. He didn’t see the trails. If I ever met another of my kind, I would recognize him or her.

  I smiled, my pain and weariness and fear temporarily buried beneath the wonder.

  Bloodhunter.

  I stood. “Captain Crawford, I’m going to use the restroom, and I’d like you to bring someone in to look over my injuries.”

  He opened his mouth, but said nothing. And he had the grace to look ashamed. He nodded.

  “After that,” I continued, “We can sit down someplace a little more comfortable and a little more private, and you can tell me what you need from me. Okay?” I waited.

  He nodded, and gave me a tiny smile. “Okay, Ms. Sinclair.”

  He led me from the room, his grip gentle on my arm. “I want to see my supernaturals,” I told him, as we walked down the hall. “Have they called?”

  He hooted, drawing several surprised looks from the cops walking by us. “They’ve been here since we brought you in. They’ve threatened to tear the building apart to find you. We had to arrest Stark for punching an officer in the face. That man has got to start controlling his temper before he gets into real trouble.” He glanced at me. “After you use the facilities, I’ll bring them back so you can show them that you’re not being tortured. That good enough, Ms. Sinclair?”

  With a lighter heart and a little more hope, I grinned at him. “Please. Call me Trinity.”

  They hadn’t abandoned me, despite the trouble I’d surely brought not only to them, but to the city. They hadn’t left me in the clutches of the human police and gone home to Bay Town as though what happened to me didn’t concern them.

  They hadn’t abandoned me, despite the fact that I deserved it.

  I was one of them, and they would not desert me.

  I was a bloodhunter.

  And I was a supernatural.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Things were different from that moment on, because the captain wanted something from me.

  “I met a bloodhunter once before,” he told me, as a nurse patched me up. “She became a good friend.”

  “Where is she now?” I asked. “I’d like to meet another person like me.”

  He looked away. “She’s dead.”

  “Oh,” I said, then flinched when the nurse squeezed my shoulder. She grasped my wrist and lifted my arm. “It’s moving more freely now,” she noted.

  I nodded. “It doesn’t hurt as much.” And that was a huge relief.

  “You should be in the emergency department.” She threw a frown the captain’s way.

  “I’m okay,” I told her. “Are we finished here? I really need to see my friends.”

  “Come,” the captain said. “They’re waiting for you. I put them in my office.”

  “Thanks, Captain.”

  “Frank,” he offered, gruffly.

  He led me down the hall, through a large, busy room, and finally, pushed open the door to his office. “I’ll give you a few minutes,” he said. “Then we need to talk.”

  Before I could say a word, the supernats converged upon me, and the captain—Frank—backed out of the room and closed the door.

  “What happened?” Miriam asked. She grasped my arms and stared up at me, frowning. “You look like hell.”

  “I’m fine.” I glanced around at the three of them. They were all there with the exception of Angus—who was still in a cell—and Shane Copas. “The captain wants to hire me, so we’re good. We’re okay.”

  “What do you mean, hire you?” Clayton asked.

  I glanced at Rhys, who leaned against the captain’s desk. He offered me a smile, which I returned.

  “Rhys told him I was a hunter,” I said. “And he wants to hire me to catch vampires.”

  “You could have told us you’d talked to him,” Miriam grouched, frowning at Rhys.

  He ignored her. “One vampire in particular. The one who killed his niece.”

  “We haven’t spoken about particulars yet,” I said.

  “You didn’t mention the foam or the attack, did you?” Miriam asked.

  “Of course not. I’m not an idiot.”

  “You were bitten,” Clayton said. “You need to go to the hospital.”

  I glanced his way. It was hard to meet his stare, because I saw myself wrapped around his body with my tongue in his mouth every time I looked at him. “I was patched up. I’m okay.”

  “Angus has been arrested.” Miriam pursed her lips. “Not that you asked.”

  “Because I already know,” I said. “Captain Crawford told me. I’ll bargain for his release.”

  The captain opened the door and stuck his head in. “Ready?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Come in.”

  I reached out to squeeze Miriam’s arm, then turned to give Rhys a nod of thanks. Finally, I swallowed hard and with my stare on his chin, I smiled at Clayton. “Thank you all for being here. It means…e
verything to me.”

  “Of course we’re here,” Miriam told me. “You’re family, darling.”

  I glanced at Clayton and felt my face heat. Maybe not family, exactly.

  “Don’t keep her long.” Rhys shook the captain’s hand. “She’s worn out.”

  Frank gave him a quick nod. “I only need a few minutes.”

  “We’ll be just outside,” Miriam said.

  “You two go on home,” Rhys told Miriam and Clayton. “I’ll drive her back to Ang’s place when Frank’s done with her.”

  They continued debating as they stepped out of the room and closed the door, but I had no doubt that at least one of them would be waiting for me when I left the captain’s office.

  “You’re looking misty-eyed.” Frank motioned me into a chair in front of his desk.

  I shrugged. “They’re all I have.” I sat down. “Rhys said you want me to find your niece.”

  “My niece is dead,” he said, flatly. “I want you to find her killer. My family is offering a lot of cash for his head.”

  “Okay.” I hesitated. “How do I…” I hated to admit I was so ignorant of my own abilities, but there it was.

  “I’ll give you something of his,” he said. “Something he touched. Something he gave to my niece. Her name was Lucy, by the way.”

  “So I really am like a bloodhound,” I realized. “I’ll take a sniff of his belongings and then…”

  He shrugged. “Latch onto his scent. You’ll know when it happens, I expect.” He opened a drawer of his desk and pulled out a small plastic bag. “This was his shirt. Lucy slept in it, my sister said. Never laundered it. Take it with you.”

  “First,” I said, “I have three requests. You give me what I want and I’ll help take out the vampires killing the women. I’ll find the vampire who murdered your niece.” I met his stare. “And I will kill him. I’ll kill them all.” I leaned toward him. “I’ll be the hunter this city needs, Captain.”

  He clasped his fingers atop his desk and stared down at them, not shaken by my bloodthirsty hatred. “Can you bring him to me alive? We’ll pay extra for that.”