by Blake, Kasi
4-EVER HUNTED
Kasi Blake
4-Ever Hunted
A 4-Ever Hunted novel
Copyright © 2017 by Kasi Blake
This is a work of fiction. Any references to real places or people is used fictitiously. Although a real town is used in this book, names of some streets, buildings, etc are fictitious. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination.
Cover design by Les Solot
www.kasiblake.com
Prologue
Summer
Summer lifted a hand to shade her eyes while searching faces. With over two hundred students in attendance at the local high school, it wouldn’t be easy to spot him, their potential fourth. She’d seen him last week at the bowling alley, the perfect boy for their group. There was something familiar in the way he moved and deja vu in his smile. “There he is!”
Cowboy’s gaze followed her finger as she pointed him out.
The boy in question stopped halfway across the parking lot and looked around. He obviously felt their eyes on him and didn’t like it. His gaze swept over the crowd of migrating students as they headed inside. After a minute or two, he walked on. He moved with a stiff back and tension in his shoulders.
A smile stretched Cowboy’s lips thin, and he nodded in approval. “You’re right. He does remind me of... you-know-who.”
“Jackpot.” Summer grinned in agreement. “What can I say? I have a type.”
Cowboy shot her a glare for using the J word. “I hope he’s not like... you-know-who in personality. The last thing we need is another vampire dreaming of being mortal.”
Summer shook her head, and the blunt ends of her platinum blond bob slapped her jawline. “From what I’ve seen, he’s nothing like Jackpot. Just kind of looks like him.”
“We’ll have to convince him to join us.”
“Leave that to me.” Summer slid her hands into her back pockets and allowed her left hip to jut out in a provocative way. Her stance made the flimsy floral top slide a few inches up, exposing a tanned midriff. “I can be very persuasive.”
A boy whistled at her as his group walked by. His friends laughed and took turns daring each other to approach her. She ignored them. Under different circumstances, she would feed off one, but she had work to do. Delicate work. She and Cowboy needed to keep a low profile until they finished.
Another boy tried to get her attention, but there was only one guy she was interested in getting to know. She set her heart on him, the one known as Trick. He was meant to be hers. This time she wouldn’t let anything or anyone get in her way.
If some dumb girl tried to get between them, Summer vowed to kill her. Time for games was over. She grinned. That boy wasn’t going to know what hit him.
CHAPTER ONE
The Fighter
Trick stared at the bloody handprint just inside the kitchen doorway, and his stomach took a dive. He should have been more careful; the blood was his. He’d ripped open his palm while chasing a vampire over a rusty chain-link fence. If he’d listened to Scarlet and grabbed the rag from the backseat to wrap around his hand, he’d be eating now instead of staring at a wall.
The sight of red on the formerly unblemished white paint brought a rush of childish fear and a flash of memory.
Years ago, long before his father dumped him on strangers, there had been another wall in another house. That one had been splattered from floor to ceiling. The vision could have come straight from a horror movie. Unfortunately, it was real. It had happened when he was...
“What did you do?”
Scarlet’s voice snapped him back to the present. She stood beside him with arms folded across her chest, her lips twisted into a grimace. For a moment, he’d forgotten she was only steps behind him, having taken a minute to text her father from the car.
“Tripped,” he said.
“Klutz. I told you we should have gone in through the front. Your parents are gone, so—”
“For the millionth time, Sean and Laura are not my parents. If anything, they’re guardians until I hit eighteen.”
Six months to go, and he’d be a free man.
She sighed. “Your adoptive parents are gone, so we didn’t have to sneak in through the back door like common criminals.”
“How do I get rid of that?” He pointed at the bloody mess on the wall.
“Bleach. Why did you trip?” She looked around the room with a teasing smile. “Is the ballerina here?”
A fair question.
He couldn’t seem to get within ten feet of Dani Foster without gravity becoming an issue. He used to think it was just bad luck, but maybe there was another explanation. Maybe their weird chemistry affected him in ways he couldn’t understand.
When all else failed, he blamed science.
Dragging the next-door neighbor girl into the discussion was low, even for Scarlet. He made a mental note never to play Truth or Dare with her again. On the way back from Vegas, she’d asked who he thought was the prettiest girl at school, and he’d been too tired to take the dare.
Scarlet had an evil streak. Her dares were always semi-illegal, dangerous, or flat out humiliating. So he’d admitted Dani was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. Nothing would come of his crush. He knew that. Girls like Dani Foster and boys like him only got together in the movies.
Now Scarlet was using the knowledge as a weapon. She hated Dani more than she hated babysitting her hyper five-year-old twin cousins. Perhaps that was why she’d chosen the mock-ballerina outfit tonight, because Dani had wanted to be a professional ballerina until about a year ago. Either Scarlet didn’t know she’d quit taking lessons or didn’t care. He wasn’t quite sure if the veiled insult was directed at the neighbor girl or at him.
He stared at her again in wonder.
Earlier they had crashed a rave at a warehouse in Vegas, knowing at least a few vampires would be searching for a meal, and that was why Scarlet was wearing a Goth-ballerina outfit of her own making.
It was a ridiculous costume with a black tutu over stretchy pants and a pink crop top with Dance Like You Mean It in sparkling silver letters.
He had to admit, she’d fit in better than he had.
Strawberry-blond curls that reached an inch or two past her bra strap swung as she shook her head in disbelief. The thing that bugged him the most about her was her hair. She had way too much for one person. Sometimes he wondered how she got a comb through the mess.
Maybe that was why she hated Dani so much: hair envy.
Dani probably had the silkiest, smoothest hair in the world. Dark brown, it flowed over her shoulders like melted chocolate. Sometimes he wondered what it would feel like to—
Fingers snapped in front of his face. “Earth to Trick,” Scarlet said. “You need to clean that wall before it dries.”
He struggled out of his leather jacket and draped it over the nearest kitchen chair. Then he removed the black hoodie he always wore while hunting vampires. A Christmas gift from Sean and Laura, it had an MP3 in an interior pocket. The cord was embedded between layers of material and traveled up to a tiny hole near the collar. From there the cords spiraled and finished with ear buds. When he wore them, he looked like he was working undercover for the police. The coiled cords were just long enough to reach his ears. Thanks to superior technology he could fill his brain with loud music while he fought monsters. As silly as it seemed to Scarlet, listening to music helped him up his game. Playing the right song at the right moment made him feel strong, confident, and totally invincible.
Moving his shoulder caused him to wince. That last vampire had almost ripped his arm from the socket. His face hurt, and one of his molars was loose. He teste
d it with his tongue while having a silent argument with himself. Nights like this made him want to find a safer hobby.
Maybe he should rethink his life goals. Just because his biological father had been a hunter didn’t mean he had to be one. Problem was, all the jobs that didn’t require a degree were boring.
As he hurried to fetch the bleach, he mentally kicked himself for not sneaking in through his bedroom window like he usually did. So what if Sean and Laura were on vacation in Europe? It wouldn’t have killed him to scale the trellis.
Or he could have listened to Scarlet and gone in through the front.
His stomach growled, demanding food; it would have to wait. The wall couldn’t. If he didn’t hurry, the blood would dry just as she said. Then he’d be in trouble.
He scrubbed at the mess with a bleach-covered rag.
Scarlet snatched it from his hand. “You’re making the mess worse, and you need to do something about your hand before you get blood on something else.”
Halfway to starvation, he didn’t argue. Before fixing himself a light snack, he washed his hand and bandaged it. Laura kept a well-stocked first aid kit beneath the sink for emergencies. Wouldn’t she be surprised to learn why he needed it at least once a week?
After he was done with his hand, he attacked the contents of the refrigerator, dragging out several items at once. Working on the kitchen island, he put together a double-decker sandwich with three slices of bread, big piles of meat, cheese, and tomatoes, and he slathered the bread with gobs of mayo.
He frowned at the bottle. Laura insisted on buying the healthiest versions of everything. Since she was gone, Matt was in charge of groceries, and yet he stuck to her list as if his life depended on it.
Taking a big bite of the sandwich wasn’t easy. He had to hold it between both hands. Some of the contents fell onto the island and mayo dripped down his fingers. He licked them before taking another bite. Eating with an aching jaw and a loose tooth wasn’t easy.
Scarlet gestured to the sparkling clean wall. “See? Did I do a great job or what?”
He held the sandwich up for consideration. “Want one?”
She cringed. “Tempting, but no.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“Heartburn? An upset stomach?” She chuckled. “Diarrhea?”
Ignoring her, he went to the table and sat facing the open doorway between the kitchen and the hallway. Wall behind him just the way his real father had taught him, he stared at his hunting buddy and wondered what was up with her tonight. Scarlet was in a weird mood.
In retrospect, he should have gone hunting alone. Everything she did got on his nerves lately. It was possible the weird mood belonged to him—he’d been feeling off—but he decided to blame her anyway.
Scarlet burst out laughing. “Hey, people should start calling me Treat. Then we would be Trick or Treat. Get it?”
He rolled his eyes and mumbled, “Shut up.”
She laughed harder, and he fumed in silence.
As a young boy, he’d wanted a name that shouted danger, a name vampires would learn to fear. Unfortunately, his given name was Patrick, the opposite of intimidating. After a great deal of complaining, his father had knocked off the first two letters and started calling him Trick. Now all he had to do was kill enough vampires to build a reputation to go with the cool name.
Once he turned eighteen in six months, he planned to get it legally changed. Then he’d hit the road, and no one would be able to stop him. He would be truly free for the first time in his life.
Without warning, his older brother rushed into the kitchen in a state of panic.
Matt belonged to Sean and Laura, their only natural born son. Trick understood that it didn’t make sense for him to think of Matt as his real brother when he looked at Sean and Laura as guardians, but he already had parents. They were trying to take jobs that had been filled.
On the other hand, he didn’t have a brother, so Matt got the position without much effort.
His angular features were paler than usual. The boy could rob a bank and get away with it. People didn’t seem to notice him. Even if the police put him in a line-up, the witnesses would overlook him. He was so ordinary that he made vanilla look exotic.
His eyes darted around the room before settling on Trick.
Trick immediately sat up straight, sensing trouble.
“Back already?” Matt asked. “Aren’t you supposed to be hunting?”
Trick shrugged, realizing whatever Matt’s problem was, it had nothing to do with monsters. “Can’t kill the entire vampire population in one night. I got hungry.”
Matt nodded a silent greeting at Scarlet.
She beamed at him. “You really should come with us someday and watch Trick fight. It’s epic.”
Matt frowned and took a moment to adjust his glasses. A tinge of green colored his face. He looked like he might puke just thinking about vampires. “I’ll pass. Thanks.”
“What he lacks for in size, he makes up for with skill.”
Trick didn’t take the comment as an insult. She wasn’t the first to point out his lean, average stature, and she wouldn’t be the last. Personally he thought his lack of height was an advantage. Vampires didn’t take him seriously... until they were dead.
Matt shook his head. “Really, I’m not interested in watching.”
She insisted, “You don’t know what you’re missing. It’s like watching Baryshnikov dance or Jordan play basketball. He’s poetry in motion.”
“Poets don’t come home covered in blood and guts,” Matt said.
Trick glanced down at his shirt. “No guts, just a little blood.”
“What happened to your face?” Matt asked. “Did a vampire get you? Or did you try to kiss the wrong girl?”
He crossed the room to study the growing bruise on Trick’s upper cheek. He touched the injured area, but Trick pushed him backward. The last thing he needed was his brother playing nurse in front of Scarlet.
Trick glared at him. “Leave it alone, Mom.”
“What will the teachers think?” Matt asked, hands on hips. “I told you a million times, if you have to hunt, at least keep from getting hurt in places that show.”
“Monsters don’t ask where I want to get hit.”
“Well, I hope nobody calls Social Services cause they think someone at home beat you up.”
Trick laughed, and his jaw throbbed. The laugh turned to a wince. The idea of Matt hitting him was hilarious. Seeing that Sean and Laura were out of the country and Matt couldn’t beat up a third grader, he figured they were in the clear. Teachers would assume he’d gotten into another fight. Hardly a week passed without him having some sort of confrontation.
Trick wiped his mouth with a paper towel before asking Scarlet, “Why do I get the feeling we aren’t wanted?” He grinned at his brother. “Are you doing something you shouldn’t be doing, Matthew Donovan?”
The question started off as a joke, but the freaked out look on Matt’s face wiped the smile from Trick’s.
Matt glanced over his shoulder at the doorway as if he expected to see someone standing there; it remained empty. He turned to Trick and stage-whispered, “I have a girl in the living room.”
Trick’s eyes widened, and he choked on his food. Coughing into his hand, he fought for air. A girl? Matt had brought a girl into the house while his parents were gone?
Even though Matt graduated high school two years ago, his experience with the ladies was sadly lacking. Matt’s tongue twisted into knots around them. He couldn’t put a coherent sentence together to save his life.
Trick’s grin returned.
Maybe Matt had finally found a girl that thought a babbling dork was adorable. Good for him.
“It’s two in the morning,” Trick said.
“So?” Matt shrugged. “We’ve been talking and lost track of time.”
“It’s two in the morning.”
Matt explained. “I met her a few weeks ago
at work, and I finally convinced her to go out with me. She’s beautiful and sweet and fun. I’ve never met anyone like her. She’s way out of my league, but she seems to think I’m interesting. I mean, if she didn’t, she wouldn’t keep coming back to the bookstore. Right? She never buys anything.” He chuckled. “I don’t even think she likes books.”
Trick made a face. “You get a date and you bring her here?”
“We went to a nice restaurant and a romantic comedy first.”
Scarlet made a gagging sound.
Matt glared at her before continuing. “She wanted to see the place. I told her a few weeks ago that we live in a duplicate of the house in the Home Alone movies, and she was curious. I haven’t given her the full tour yet. You need to disappear, or at least get cleaned up so she doesn’t see all the... yuck.”
Scarlet rolled her eyes and headed for the door. “I need to get my dad’s car home so he can go to work. See you at school tomorrow, Ape-face.” She pointed at the freshly scrubbed wall. “And you are welcome for the save.”
Trick smiled, but didn’t say a word in return as he watched her leave. Someday he needed to ask her why she called him that. As far as he knew he didn’t look like a monkey.
He shoved the rest of the sandwich into his mouth and ran up the back stairs to his bedroom. Taking orders, especially from his geeky older brother, didn’t sit well with him. Most of the time he did the opposite of what people told him to do. But he had to see this rare gem, a girl that thought Matt Donovan was boyfriend material.
♫
Fresh out of the shower and dripping wet, Trick wrapped a towel around his waist. He used a washcloth to pat dry the two pieces of jewelry he never removed: a twisted talisman hanging from a silver chain around his neck and a red leather cord that looped twice around his wrist. The necklace had been a gift from his father, and Scarlet had given him the red leather thing as a sign of their secret connection. It was red to signify blood and leather to remind him that they were strong, tough.
She wore one too.
