The Vampire's Rebirth (Fatal Allure Book 11)

by Martha Woods

  “Let’s just… pretend that this is all true for the moment,” I said, “It’s not like we have much else to go on in regards to his motive, right?”

  “That’s right, all we can do is guess at what he is doing and why, but this at least gives us something to build a theory around.”

  “Good, then… what happened next?”

  “Well, though she didn’t want to admit it either, feelings of her own were starting to rise for him, but she was unsure of how to handle them considering that for the months of his healing, the two of them had been in complete isolation, away from the rest of her shifters. When he asked her where she had come from she didn’t know if she should be truthful, but soon enough she revealed that her clan had been the one that he had so frequently heard whispers of from the other hunters, the ones that were so brutal that they had united all of the shifters against them and been driven out of the state, from the territory that they had held for so long. What he hadn’t been expecting however, was the revelation that a number of werewolves had been involved in the attacks, the very same that had almost torn him limb from limb and left him on the brink of death.”

  “The werewolves from your clan? The ones who disappeared for months at a time and refused to say anything when they came back?”

  “The very same, and though I’ve tried to ask them what it was that they were involved with exactly, the silence that they give me when I bring up these specific places is answer enough. They were involved with driving out the shifters, they may have been the ones to kill the elders for all I know, and they tore this hunter to pieces without making sure that he was dead. Maybe they wanted to leave him to suffer, I’ve heard about some of the things that he did, but they should have at least watched it happen and made sure.”

  “And because they didn’t, they may have united these two in the first place, because of a shared enemy that they could bond over.”

  “Absolutely, because as fate, or misfortune, or maybe even karma would have it, this young woman was the daughter of the slain elder, the one who had his throat torn out and his body put on display, the one who had been unable to even bury her father’s body in the others haste to get her to safety. The same daughter who had a burning hatred inside of her ever since, who had just been waiting for the day and for the chance to finally get revenge against those that wronged her family. In this hunter, she may have finally found that chance.”

  “But ten years? If it was really that, why wait for ten more years when she had the chance then? Surely no one would have been expecting both of their banished enemies to emerge to attack them all at once and so soon?”

  “It’s been ten years, yes, but that does not mean that they haven’t been active by any means. Take a look through newspapers and morgue reports in the surrounding states, hunters who had made their names known in that tiny, insignificant little town were going missing one at a time over months, some of them being found later mauled by wild animals, some just vanishing without a trace for the rest of time. Werewolves weren’t the only ones that they had a grudge against, and I suspect that this hunter wanted to make sure that they were whittling away the enemy that he saw as the biggest threat first. And, well, he likely wanted revenge for them not being there for him all those years ago.”

  “So his loyalty isn’t even to the hunters anymore,” Vincent said, eyeing Damon who only nodded in agreement, “He’s struck out into his own clan, though it’s incredibly likely that his loyalty is only to them, isn’t it?”

  “In all likelihood, he probably still despises all other paranormals just as much as the day that he became a hunter, he has just found love for his own small family of shifters, repaying their acts of good will towards him with loyalty. But these other shifters that we are going to be defending, the ones who had a hand in killing his love’s father, the ones who some of our own elders fought alongside to do so, he probably thinks of them as nothing more than worthless animals to be put down. The hunters? Useless to him now, what he saw as a betrayal soiled them in his eyes for the rest of his life, they’ll die on the pile right next to all the others.”

  “This is… not good,” I said, aware of how much of an understatement as it was leaving my mouth.

  “You could say that,” She laughed, “It’s almost like he bridges his own connection between hunter and paranormal, I think you stole his idea!”

  “I think I’ll still take credit for this, thank you very much.” I rubbed at my temples, seeing fully now why Tariq was the exact opposite of happy about all of this. Things were bad enough when we had to worry about a regular enemy to fight, when it’s just some crazy cult leader or aspiring serial killer, that’s already a big enough problem on our plate. But when you have to go and add something personal about it? I’ve had just about enough of personal grudges, the last time one had escalated it had killed my boyfriend and made things incredibly awkward for months since we brought him back, I’m not keen for a repeat of all of that.

  “I should have called and told you,” Tariq said, “But I’ve had to process all of this myself. I’ve known many of the people here for years, the news that they were involved in something secret out of state is… well, news to me.”

  “I assure you, you’re not alone in that feeling,” Christine sighed, “I felt the same way when I first found out, and I still want to know everything I can about it, but even now they still refuse to tell me. I’m getting pretty sick of secrets, I want all of us to be honest with each other, really, but it’s going to take a while for that to be possible.”

  “You’re not the only group with secrets,” Vincent said, “You shouldn’t feel so bad about still finding out ones of your own.”

  “Well, all in the name of transparency huh?” She stood up suddenly, pulling out her desk drawer and procuring a set of glasses, as well as a bottle that was more than half empty and clearly quite strong. “I’d say that we could all use a drink after this right? No need to do any negotiations sober when we don’t even want to think about what comes next.”

  Logically, that was a terrible idea. We had preparations to make, questions to ask, hell, we had so many different things to take care of in so many different areas that the mere mention of alcohol should have gone three miles in the other direction. But she was right, there was no way that any of us were thinking about this hunter and his shifters in a positive manner, no way that we could think of anything good coming from this fight, just more pain and misery, and a gigantic ache in my head was already forming at the fallout that this was going to cause.

  You bet your ass that I accepted that drink.

  Chapter 6

  A few drinks later we were feeling somewhat better about our situation, not drunk by any means but able to at least have that knot of anxiety that had taken up residency between our shoulder blades unwind for a moment and let us relax for a moment. Even Damon and Vincent had accepted a few drinks, they couldn’t get drunk the conventional way anymore but they still enjoyed the taste, you don’t need something to still be able to enjoy it after all.

  I had a lot of questions that I wanted answers to, but right now I was just wondering where exactly Christine had come from. She was an absolute mountain of a woman, scars littering the expanse of her honestly glorious arms and stretching up onto the toned muscle of her neck. She had clearly seen some very serious fights over the years, whatever it was that she had been through must have shaped her into one hell of a warrior. But even with all of that training, all that experience, all that brawn, I was still afraid knowing what we were heading into. How many great warriors had fallen over the years without warning, just walking into what felt like an ordinary battle before they got cut down unceremoniously by someone who hadn’t even bothered to know their name? I didn’t want that to happen to her, not just because of what a loss like that would do to the werewolves’ faith in the alliance, but because she was someone I could genuinely see becoming a fast friend.

  Christine was brash, certainly, she ha
ndled her drink the exact same way she handled giving out information, with a grin on her face and her feet up on her desk, but there was so much genuine warmth in her gaze whenever you locked eyes that you couldn’t help but agree with whatever it was that she was saying. Not in a manipulative way, but because she was just so upfront with everything that she said that you could trust that she wasn’t lying, that all she wanted to do was give you the facts in the best and fastest way that she could. The amount of times that she had stopped telling us something just to make sure that we were still comfortable was surprising to me, and if that wasn’t evidence that I still had some ideas that I needed to spend time getting over I don’t know what is. She had opened up her office, her records and then her bottle of alcohol, all without expecting us to do anything ourselves, just to sit back and take in what she was giving out to us.

  All I could try and think of right now was how I could possibly repay her for all of this, especially if she fully agreed to support us in defending the shifters. It was very likely that she was going to agree, none of the werewolves that I had ever met seemed keen on the idea of letting innocents get hurt, especially if there was a fight in it for them, but she was definitely leading the pack on that. Judging by the scars on her arms, she wasn’t one for empty words.

  Even if she defied all expectations and pulled back out of the blue to protect her own, the information that she’d given us would no doubt come in handy. Even if it was just a rumor, the thought that the hunter could be fighting because he wanted to avenge his lovers’ father was… well, it honestly made a lot of sense. The kind of brutality and efficiency that marked his path was the kind that you could only get if you had a serious motive that was close to your heart, every successful and prolific killer that I’d ever investigated in my career had something similar to that. Whether it be the pursuit of money, love, even just the desire to commit mayhem, everyone was working towards something, no one ever did anything completely randomly. If they did, they usually made it maybe one or two days before someone caught on and either called the police or shot them in self-defense, in all my years it was rare that I saw a different outcome.

  When it came to matters like this though, sometimes motive was… elusive. Sure we could theorize all we wanted, criminal profiling was built all around exactly that and we could be pretty accurate most of the time, but the fact of the matter was that every human being is different in terms of how they think, everyone has a unique internal system when it came to how they chose their actions. The challenge with trying to predict how these people think is that you naturally ascribe yourself to a system of logic that makes sense, you think of what actions you would choose to do and for what reason, ignoring not just that killers and criminals of this caliber tend not to think rationally, but you’re potentially dangerously trying to predict what may happen next based on your preexisting prejudices and wants, which can not only derail an investigation, but give you quite a lot of stress when you realize exactly what you’ve been hiding underneath the surface.

  Or maybe that’s just me, I don’t know. What I do know is that criminal profiling is hard work, and sometimes approaching pseudo-science, but it’s served us well so far.

  “Again, I think I should say…” Christine sighed, “I’m sorry for having to drop so much on you all at once, I know that it can’t have been pleasant. It probably felt like you stepped on a nail and then fell back onto… another, rustier set of nails, I didn’t want to make your night so bad.”

  “You didn’t make it bad,” Tariq said, resting the cool glass against his temple, “But this whole situation… it’s not what we need right now. It’s not your fault, you were just the messenger, but I’m still going to have a stress headache for the next few days at least.”

  “You were pretty much fine when we were being held hostage a few months ago Tariq,” Damon said, “Why’s this got you freaking out now?”

  “Because, as much as I wouldn’t have liked being killed, that was just me and the rest of you, we knew what we had signed up for when we started messing with Christian, but it still would have been less than ten of us that would have died that day. But this? This is everyone else, this is… this is my wife’s people. I don’t want to see anything happen to them, and I don’t even want to think of it as a possibility.”

  “We’re proud, but we’re not stupid Tariq,” Christine laughed, “You know that better than anyone. I’m not going to send out the weak to fight on the front lines, and I’m not going to throw us recklessly at a wall of shifters without having a plan on how to actually win. Your wife wouldn’t ever let me rest again if I let anything happen to you or anyone else that is still with us, and though I would be grateful for the opportunity to see her again, I would prefer if it wasn’t through a haunting.”

  “So… wait.” I paused, taking a moment to read the room before I continued on, “You’re saying that you’ll help us? I’m not imagining that right, you’re saying that you’ll help us out with this mess that we’re in?”

  She nodded, teeth bared in a grin that only shined more from the whiskey coating each fang. “I’m saying that we’ll help you with this mess that you’ve gotten yourselves into. We’re werewolves after all, do you think that we’d ever give up the opportunity to get into a fight? It’s more or less the thing that we live for most.”

  I hadn’t ever expected such a simple agreement to come with such a combination of relief and worry, but I was learning to accept all kinds of new feelings lately. On the one hand it was a relief that we had some serious muscle on our side, the rest of us were formidable don’t get me wrong, I’d seen vampires and hunters in a fight, and I knew firsthand the kind of destruction that witches could cause, but werewolves were something else. They were a wall of muscle, sturdy enough to stop bullets in their skin but fast enough to reach you before you can even think to blink, there were very few things that were scarier to fight against than that.

  But on the other hand, now I had to have the worry of an entire section of our alliance on my conscience, yet another group of people that I had dragged into a mess with my stupid impulses, another group of people with their own loves and hates, families and friends, who now I had to look out for and make sure that they didn’t do anything too brave or too stupid and get themselves killed for something that I dragged them into. That was the exact opposite of a thing that I needed right now.

  “It’s starting to get kind of early in the morning, don’t you think?” Christine looked up at the clock above her door, the hands sure enough sitting over four in the morning. We’d all been so caught up in everything here that we’d completely lost track of the time, if the sun had started to rise that would have been all kinds of embarrassing. As much as I was enjoying Christine’s company, I wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of having to spend an entire day sleeping inside some warehouse on the way out of town. Sure I could go home, but I wasn’t just going to leave Damon and Vincent behind if it came to that, especially if it was my fault.

  “When are you going to organize with everyone else?” Tariq asked, placing his glass down and standing to his feet, “Some of the others are going to be happy to fight right away, but some might want time to prepare with the rest of their families, do you think everyone will be ready in time?”

  “Tariq, stop worrying so much,” She said, placing her hand on his arm, “Everyone and everything will be fine, we’ve been preparing for a day like this for years, we just need to go through the motions like we practiced and everything will run perfectly, trust me.”

  “I know, I know… you’re good at what you do, all of you are but… you said it before, I don’t want my wife to start haunting me if I get any of you hurt, ok?”

  “She would never let you hear the end of it, I can guarantee that.” She took his arm in hers, leading him towards the door and gesturing for us to follow behind. “It’s been so long since you came here to visit, I was almost afraid that you didn’t like us anymore.”

  “
Of course I still like all of you, but I’ve just… had a lot to deal with over the last few months, I hope you understand.”

  “Oh of course, you’ve almost been killed... what, four times over the last year? I’m sure that’s enough to make anyone tired, let alone someone so used to taking it easy most of the time.” She smirked. “Or could you be tired for an entirely different reason?”

  He blushed, looking away from her quite pointedly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

  “Oh come on Tariq, don’t tell me that you don’t think I’ve noticed you and that loud girl from the meetings, the bubbly one?” I had to stifle a laugh at the description, it was a rather apt one when it came to Cara, as much as I loved her. “She looks like she’s just jumping with energy, I can’t imagine that has anything to do with your… fatigue as of late?”

  “He’s probably more fatigued because I keep waking him up at five in the morning asking a favor of either him or Cara,” I said, enjoying the fleeting flash of a smile that he gave me before it morphed into an expression of betrayal, “But if I’m being honest, he’s probably the reason that she’s had to call in late once or twice.”

  “Amy!” He protested, shaking his head as the rest of us laughed and Christine slapped his back, “I cannot have a moment of peace, truly.”

  “Oh don’t act so down Tariq, it’s nice to see you happy with someone after so long! I was worried that I was going to have to find another fine young wolf to set you up with, something that I was not looking forward to by the way. You actually took the initiative and found someone all on your own.”

  “Yes Christine, in spite of your beliefs I am actually capable of doing things on my own.” He smiled gently, and it was then that I realized that I hadn’t really seen him like this with anyone before. The playful snipping was known of course, but this level of friendly sarcasm was… nice to see, even if you’d never met either of them before you would immediately be able to tell that they were good friends. I just wondered where exactly they’d met in the first place.