by Lucy Lyons
“I remember you. You are a striking sight, as a hunter. My clan didn’t know if they should fight you or beg you to join us.” Simi blushed and I bit my tongue. Not every compliment was a threat to whatever my relationship with Nicholas was, but until I knew what I meant to him; it was difficult to see him pay attention to others. It was downright weird to see Simi react to a vampire like he was a celebrity crush.
“Come to dinner with us. We need to eat. Then I’d really appreciate your help in finding the creature that’s murdering people.”
“I would have preferred to dine with you alone for the first time, so that I could immerse us in the experience,” he said. “But present circumstances don’t really allow us to have a quiet evening together, do they?” He escorted us to his garage and chose a set of keys. “Wait outside, I’ll have to bring it around.”
The Land Rover wasn’t what I was expecting, but it served us better than the mental image I had of him in a two-seater, like a Lamborghini.
He got out of the car and ran around to the passenger side to open my door. It was old-fashioned and sweet. He opened Simi’s door as well and she grinned at me in the rearview as she put on her seatbelt. The gesture was as foreign to her as it was to me and it touched both of us.
Nicholas was silent on the way into town, letting Simi and I fill him in by turns, with everything that was happening around us. Simi was so free with her information; I tested Nicholas power to make sure he hadn’t used vampire powers on her when I was distracted. I felt him chuckle in my mind.
“She’s talking because she trusts you, tiny huntress. Not because she trusts me.” He stopped at a red light, and suddenly glanced around.
“What is it?” I asked as I put out feelers for power. I felt the cool breeze of vampire wash over me. In the same instant, the back door swung open as Colette piled into the vehicle. Simi surprised the master vampire and his half-crazed adopted sister when she was able to level a gun at Colette’s head before Colette registered she wasn’t alone in the back seat.
“Now, everyone stay calm,” Nicholas ordered as Simi pressed her back to the door behind her and kept both vampires in sight.
“Simi; this is Colette, the vampire who lured David to the vampires. Colette and Simi are the deadliest hunter I’ve ever met.”
“Simi,” Colette sighed, biting her lip.
“Straight, Colette. She likes boys. Although, you’re the second woman today to appreciate Simi’s finer virtues.
“Like those big brown eyes and copper skin?” Colette giggled, “or that full mouth?” I sighed.
“Colette, focus please. You just jumped into the car like the devil was chasing you. What happened?”
“I was hiding in the sewers until Nicholas went out to hunt so I could sneak back inside.” I caught the look on his face and he growled low in his throat.
“None of us wanted to leave you master. You let Rachel stay, but not me.”
“Probably because Rachel is stable and not a liability.” I suggested, and Colette pouted. I sighed again. Colette had that effect on me. “Why are you out of the sewers, Colette?”
“The rats are too big now, big as cars! I tried to kill one but it threw me like a rag doll across the tunnel.” She sniffed piteously. “It broke my arm.” I felt Nicholas stiffen. “It’s better now,” she explained to Simi, reaching out to her and wiggling her fingers.
“Rats the size of cars that can hurt a vampire?” I asked Nicholas, doing my best to ignore Colette’s head-games.
“We must find you food quickly and get back to the mansion. There are books I need from my library.” I glanced back at Colette and Simi. Simi was putting up her gun and Colette was watching her out of the corner of her eye.
“Simi, if it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer it if you kept that gun on Colette until you have more space between you. Her sanity is, umm fickle.” Simi raised the gun up in a teacup hold and Colette glared at me.
“How bad is what you think this is?” Nicholas laughed without humor at my question.
“If it is what I am afraid it might be, then your hunters may get their way. Because the last time these creatures walked the earth, they decimated our population in a war that lasted almost a hundred years.” He picked up my hand and pressed his lips to it. “Don’t worry, little love. The ‘were’ animals of the great war have been extinct for longer than your precious mentor has been alive. I’m sure I’m wrong, and everything will be just fine.” I snorted and stared out the windshield.
“So, dinner, books, sewer. Sounds like a blast.” I laughed at my reflection in the glass. “After all,” I thought to myself, “Not every girl gets to wade through the sewers hunting giant monsters with the preternatural man of her dreams.” Now for the first time since we’d started; I offered up a silent prayer that we made it to another sunrise.
Chapter 13
Simi gasped and even I shuddered when Nicholas and Colette took off. We’d agreed that they should find their food and start researching without us. First, because neither Simi or I wanted to watch them feed. Second, because they could move as fast as a car when they ran and didn’t need to keep up pretenses for us. It was a startling reminder of what we were truly dealing with as they leaped into the air and disappeared in the twilight. Nicholas had explained it wasn’t actually flying, but each leap took them far enough that to my (mostly human) eyes, it really looked like they soared through the air.
“I’m not going to lie. I just lost my appetite,” Simi said, her voice shaking. I nodded my agreement and reached out to give her hand a squeeze.
“Just remember, we have laws of treaty with the vampires. Tonight, they’re not your enemy. Tomorrow, things will go back to normal and you can murder them to your heart’s content.” She jerked her hand away.
“I’ve never committed a murder Caroline.” I backed away with my hands up in surrender.
“I don’t know that you haven’t Simi, even if you never thought you did. The treaties between our people have been violated fairly regularly in the past hundred years. Every instance I’ve found so far has been us attacking them. Warrants are being handed out like greeting cards; one for every occasion and holiday.”
Simi chewed her lip and followed me into the Chinese take-out joint. Despite quivering stomachs, we still managed to order enough for an army. I paced the floor inside while Simi went outside to check in with Dominique or Clayton, I supposed. I was tempted to try to read her mind or listen in on her conversation. Someone was trying to kill me. I was different than the others. That made everyone a suspect to me.
She saw me watching her and gave me a wan smile. I crossed her off my list of possible assassins. Simi was a great actress but she valued her honor more than anything else. Even thinking she’d killed vampires that didn’t deserve to die had made her pause and she’d been at war with them for most of her life.
Domonique had worked for months not only to increase my power, but to train me to survive. Her leading some plot to kill me went against everything she’d worked so hard to create in me. Still, I knew she was keeping things from me. I didn’t trust her not to change alliances. She would betray me in a heartbeat if her own life was in question. The problem was that I couldn’t think of a person or a group that could hurt her. Except perhaps her cousin or the high council.
I laughed and Simi glanced at me as she came back in the door. “What’s up buttercup?” She said, arching an eyebrow at me.
“Oh, just trying to figure out who wants me dead,” I sighed. “The list is getting a lot longer than I thought it would be.” Simi patted my shoulder and held up a hand to the cashier who called her name. She collected the two plain white bags filled with Chinese food cartons. I held the door for her and took a bag so we each had one free hand for a gun. We were a watcher and a hunter with our priorities straight.
Simi drove and I kept thinking about the appearance of a new monster; just when I came under attack. I had only been a watcher for a few months and things
had been relatively quiet since my kidnapping. There was something about the timing of the murders and the extremists becoming more openly hostile that seemed too coincidental. I could feel her eyes on me and glanced sideways.
“Do you believe in coincidences?” I asked abruptly, breaking the silence.
“Nope. Do you?”
“I’ve never really thought about it but it doesn’t seem to make sense. Everything in my life has had a purpose.”
“Finally, you are thinking like a hunter.” She rooted around in one of the takeout bags between us and tossed me a small foil packet. “Open that for me, will you?” I unwrapped the foil and handed it back to her so she could eat the tender meat inside.
“Are you going to explain what you meant, or just have me peel foil-wrapped chicken for you for the rest of the drive.”
“First, it was one. One foil -wrapped chicken and it was delicious. Second, you’re the only one involved with this cluster-you-know-what, that hadn’t realized the two events are connected.” I slapped her hand away from the plastic bag and she scowled.
“Okay. We have a new monster. The Venatores want said monster, so they want to take out the only hunter who has connections within the vampire clans.” I chewed on the inside of my cheek, and unwrapped another foil packet for Simi. “I’m not the only hunter with ties to the vampires. So, either I’m back to Domonique topping my personal suspect list or she’s in danger.”
“She’s in danger but not nearly as much as you. Losing you would crush her. You also have the stronger tie to the master of the city. Taking you out cripples the Venatores and anyone who would fight this new enemy at our side.”
“Great! So this is how it feels to be popular.” I popped open a carton of stuffed wontons and shoved a whole one into my mouth. The warm cream cheese burst into my mouth as I bit down on the deep-fried wrapper. For a moment, I was forced to focus entirely on not choking and the car was silent.
“Are you all right, Caroline?” Simi’s concern bled through in her voice and the way she kept glancing sideways at me.
“I’m good Simi. Really.” As I said it, I realized I truly was. I had an enemy but I didn’t have a full picture of who they were. I had Nicholas squarely on my side. I had the power I’d gained under Dom’s tutelage and I’d acquired even more through Nicholas’ healing. It was only getting harder to hurt me, for that I was grateful.
It was David who had plowed into me at the art gallery. When he slammed the door into me, it had hurt like hell. Had he done it to hide the prick of a needle? It was circumstantial, but David was also beyond obsessed with destroying all vampires. He even seemed to believe the lies he told everyone about what had happened to him. He was delusional and very, very dangerous.
He also wasn’t a mastermind. He had thought himself a leader because Clay and I did what he asked. But he was a follower now. Vladikk seemed to be sane, even if he was a little excessive. But he fostered a level of extremism in his men that was borderline insanity. I couldn’t help but wonder if some of them had crossed that line.
Simi raced down the freeway at breakneck speed and I prayed the police were busy elsewhere. I heard Nicholas in my head, reminding me that I could make us invisible to humans if I channeled his glamor. I replied with an image of myself scowling. I was not going to use vampire-augmented powers in front of Simi. She was my friend but she was a hunter first. I wouldn’t even blame her for turning me over to the council if she thought I was using mind-control on humans.
Especially not after bringing a complaint to them about David. That was the final straw for us as far as I was concerned. Not when he smeared my name and called me a witch. Not when he accused me of “giving it up” to a vampire. But when I recognized his own psychic power to influence others and that he’d used it to control women; I was done making excuses for him.
My foster brother was a vampire. He just fed off emotion instead of blood. He’d only been permitted to stay with the Venatores when an unnamed member of the council promised to take responsibility for him. It didn’t take a huge leap of logic to figure out it was Vladikk Agnarrson who’d taken him under his wing. Now suddenly we were hunting a monster that could kill a vampire. There were no coincidences. This was all by someone’s design.
“Simi, get off the freeway, please.” my fingers twisted and untwisted in my lap and I wished for the Xanax I hadn’t needed in months. The tires screeched as she swerved and braked at the same time. She stopped under the overpass and turned off the car.
“You’re obviously freaking out Caroline, so what’s up? Because if you can’t be around the vampires…”
“It’s not about them Simi. It’s about us.” I took a breath so scared of what I was thinking; I couldn’t make the words come out. Simi put her hand over mine and they slowly quieted until they were still. I sniffed back tears and inhaled deeply; exhaling in an eight-count to help stave off the panic attack that tried to close off my throat. “What if we made the monster?”
“I think I’d remember that Caroline.’
“Funny, Simi. I’m serious. You said there are no such thing as coincidences. You know more than I do the Venatores are always experimenting on better vampire killing weapons. What if we brought back, you know, were-animals?”
“I get that vampires are the stuff of movies for most people Caroline, but werewolves really are myth.” I shook my head and she groaned. “What the hell Caroline?”
“Vampires were almost wiped out once, according to Nicholas.” Simi banged her palms against the steering wheel.
“Oh, no. Oh no, oh no, no, no.”
“I see you’re fully aware of the magnitude of my situation. I can’t share this with Nicholas. It could start a war.”
“Not ‘could’ Caroline. Would.” We sat in silence for a moment. “Okay. We don’t know the monster is a Venatores creation. It fits, especially if you were being taken out. Maybe you can control them.”
“I sure sensed it. Even Dominique was surprised at how quickly I zeroed in. What do we do?” I stared blindly out the window.
“We stop the killing. Then we figure out who set that thing loose on innocent people and we kill them.” I gasped and she shrugged. “Better them than you.” I couldn’t argue with her logic.
“Let’s get to Nicholas. The sooner we get over our sewer tour, the happier I’ll be.” She wound her way around and got back on the freeway. “What if all my speculation is wrong and the vampires have started…”
“Have started growing animal claws and dismembering their victims?” Simi shook her head and flipped her blinker on while weaving through the evening traffic. “No. We follow the plan. Your plan. I’ll get in touch with Clay while you work your magic on the master vampire.”
“Seriously?” I growled at her, and she snickered. “Well since Colette’s more interested in your assets than mine, maybe I can just let you two take the sewers…” I let my voice trail off as she smacked my arm. “Ow!’
“You will not leave me alone with her.” I laughed, but she was right. I knew Colette wasn’t to blame for her epic-level crazy. But I wasn’t going to leave anyone I loved alone with her. Maybe David, but no one who I still considered human. Like me, David crossed the line to something else. Until I knew what that was; I considered him as dangerous as the monsters.
We pulled up to the front steps of the estate as Nicholas and Colette rushed down the steps to us. Nicholas handed me a book and I used the interior light of the car to read the passages he’d pointed out.
“If this is true, then I can’t say how many of them there already are. We will take you to the sewers where Colette was attacked.” I shuddered to think of us going back to the site of a place where a vampire was attacked and hurt.
“I think Simi should stay behind,” I blurted.
“NO! I can’t let you go in there alone…”
“Alone with the vampires Simi?” I asked. “There’s no life on the planet more important to the master vampire than mine. Trust me.”
Nicholas held out a hand to me.
“You may stay or go. I have no say over your choices as a hunter. However, I will not ask you to put yourself in danger, Caroline’s right. No harm can come to her unless I’m already dead.”
“I’m going.” Simi stood firm and I knew better than to argue.
“Fine. But if we’re traveling via Vampire Air; you go with Nicholas.” I held out a hand to Colette and her eyes lit up with childish glee. The way the night was going, I hoped I got to shoot something soon.
Chapter 14
I’d never pulled sewer duty or storm drain patrol with the Venatores and I was even more grateful after the foul smell punched me in the face as we landed in front of the black maw of the cistern. Nicholas and Colette didn’t need light. Since neither of us weakling humans wanted to hold hands with Colette in the dark, we used our torches in the fog-light mode which threw off less light.
