“If you don’t take them, I’ll just leave them on your counter,” I warned.
“And I’ll have them shipped back to your dorm.”
I groaned. “Why is this so important to you? Why can’t you take no for an answer? There are plenty of pretty girls in Palm Springs. You don’t need Jill.”
“That’s exactly it,” said Lia. “Plenty of pretty girls that all blend into each other. Jill is special. She’s a natural and doesn’t even know it. She could be great someday.”
“Someday,” I repeated. “But not right now.”
Lia attempted another approach. “The campaign is for scarves and hats. I can’t do masks again, but I can put her in sunglasses—especially if we shoot outside. Tell me if you’d agree to this plan—”
“Lia, please. Don’t bother.”
“Just listen,” she urged. “We’ll go do a photo shoot. Afterward, you can go through all the pictures and throw out any that don’t meet your weird religious criteria.”
“No exceptions,” I insisted. “And I’m leaving the dresses.” I set them on a counter and headed out, ignoring Lia’s protests about all the amazing things she could do for Jill. Maybe someday, I thought. Someday when all of Jill’s problems are gone. Something told me that day was far away, however.
Although my loyalty to Spencer’s was steadfast, a small French café caught my attention as I walked back to my car. Or rather, the scent of their coffee caught my attention. I had no obligations at school and stopped into the café for a cup. I had a book for English class on me and decided to do some reading at one of the café’s small tables. Half of that time was spent texting back and forth with Brayden. He’d wanted to know what I was reading, and we were swapping our favorite Tennessee Williams quotes.
I’d barely been there for ten minutes when shadows fell over me, blocking the late afternoon sun. Two guys stood there, neither of whom I knew. They were a little older than me, one blond haired and blue eyed while the other was dark haired and deeply tanned. Their expressions weren’t hostile, but they weren’t friendly either. Both were well built, like those who trained regularly. And then, after a double-take, I realized I did recognize one of them. The dark-haired guy was the one who’d approached Sonya and me a while ago, claiming to know her from Kentucky.
Immediately, all the panic I’d been trying to suppress this last week came back to me, that sense of being trapped and helpless. It was only the realization that I was in a public place, surrounded by people, which allowed me to regard these two with astonishing calm.
“Yes?” I asked.
“We need to talk to you, Alchemist,” said the blond guy.
I didn’t twitch a muscle in my face. “I think you’ve got me mixed up with someone else.”
“No one else around here has a lily tattoo,” said the other guy. He’d said his name was Jeff, but I wondered if he’d told the truth. “It’d be great if you could take a walk with us.” My tattoo was covered up today, but something told me these guys had been following me for a while and didn’t need to see the lily to know it was there.
“Absolutely not,” I said. I didn’t even need Wolfe’s reminders to know that was a terrible idea. I was staying here in the safety of the crowd. “If you want to talk, you’d best take a seat. Otherwise, go away.”
I looked back down at my book, like I didn’t have a care in the world. Meanwhile, my heart was pounding, and it took every ounce of control I had to keep my hands from shaking. A few moments later, I heard the sounds of metal scraping on concrete, and the two guys sat down opposite me. I looked back up at their impassive faces.
“You’ve got to go inside if you want coffee,” I remarked. “They don’t have service out here.”
“We’re not here to talk about the coffee,” said Jeff. “We’re here to talk about vampires.”
“Why? Are you filming a movie or something?” I asked.
“We know you hang out with them,” said Blond Hair. “Including that Strigoi, Sonya Karp.”
Part of my tattoo’s magic was to prevent Alchemists from revealing information about the vampire world to outsiders. We literally couldn’t do it. The magic would kick in and prevent it if we tried. Since these guys seemed to already know about vampires, the tattoo wasn’t going to censor my words. Instead, I chose to censor myself of my own free will. Something told me ignorance was the best tactic here.
“Vampires aren’t real,” I said. “Look, if this is some kind of a joke—”
“We know what you do,” continued Blond Hair. “You don’t like them any more than we do. So why are you helping them? How could your group have gotten so muddled and lost sight of our original vision? Centuries ago, we were one united group, determined to see all vampires wiped from the face of the earth in the name of the light. Your brethren betrayed that goal.”
I had another protest ready, and then I noticed a glint of gold in Jeff’s ear. He was wearing a tiny earring, a small golden sphere with a dark dot in the middle. I couldn’t help myself.
“Your earring,” I said. “It’s the sun symbol—the symbol for gold.” And, I realized, it was exactly the same symbol that had been on the hilt of the sword we’d retrieved from the alley.
He touched his earring and nodded. “We haven’t forgotten the mission—or our original purpose. We serve the light. Not the darkness that hides vampires.”
I still refused to acknowledge anything they said about vampires. “You’re the ones who attacked my friend and me in the alley last week.” Neither one denied it.
“Your ‘friend’ is a creature of darkness,” said Blond Hair. “I don’t know how she’s managed this current enchantment—making herself look like one of the other vampires—but you can’t be fooled. She’s evil. She’ll kill you and countless others.”
“You guys are crazy,” I said. “None of this makes any sense.”
“Just tell us where her main lair is,” said Jeff. “We know it’s not that apartment on the other side of downtown. We’ve been watching it and she hasn’t returned since our last attempt to destroy her. If you won’t actively help us, that information will be all we need to rid the world of her evil.”
We’ve been watching it. Adrian’s apartment. Chills ran through me. How long had they been spying on his place? And to what extent? Had they simply sat outside in a car, stakeout style? Did they have high tech surveillance equipment? Wolfe had warned against being stalked in parking lots, not in homes. The small comfort I had here was that they obviously didn’t know about Clarence’s. Their surveillance couldn’t have been that thorough if no one had followed her yet. But had they followed me? Did they know where I went to school?
And with their own words, they were confirming the terrible reality I’d hardly dared speculate about. It was a reality that meant there were forces moving unseen beneath the Alchemists’ seemingly all-knowing vision, forces working against our goals.
Vampire hunters were real.
With that realization came a hundred more terrifying questions. What did this mean for the Moroi? Was Jill in danger?
Was Adrian?
“The only thing I’m going to do is call the police,” I said. “I don’t know who you guys are or why you’re obsessed with my friend, but neither of us have done anything to you. You’re even crazier than I first thought if you think I’m going to tell you where she is so that you can stalk her.”
Then, by the sheerest luck, I saw a patrolling police officer walking down the street. The two guys at my table followed my gaze and undoubtedly could guess my thoughts. It would be very easy to call her over. We’d filed no report about the alley attack, but accusing these guys of a recent assault would certainly detain them. In sync, they both rose.
“You’re making a terrible mistake,” Jeff said. “We could have had this problem eradicated ages ago if our groups worked together. First the Strigoi, then the Moroi. Your misguided descent into their corruption has nearly ruined everything. Fortunately, we still walk the tru
e path.” The fact that he’d just named the two groups was particularly alarming. These guys were scary, certainly, but less so if they were just talking about vampires in shadowy, vague terms. Using “Moroi” and “Strigoi” indicated extensive knowledge.
Blond Hair tossed down a small, homemade pamphlet. “Read this, and maybe you’ll see the light. We’ll be in touch.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” I said. “Mess with me again, and I’ll do a lot more than just have a pleasant chat.” My words came out more fiercely than I’d expected. Maybe Dimitri and Wolfe were rubbing off on me.
Jeff laughed as the two of them began walking away. “Too bad you got so bogged down in books,” he said. “You’ve got the spirit of a hunter.”
CHAPTER 16
I WASTED NO TIME in getting the group together. This was big. I still didn’t know the level of danger we were facing, but I refused to take any chances. I chose Clarence’s house as a meeting spot, seeing as the hunters didn’t know about it yet. It still made me nervous. I would’ve been nervous even if we’d been meeting in an Alchemist bunker.
And apparently, “hunters” wasn’t even the right term. According to their low-quality pamphlet, they called themselves “The Warriors of Light.” I wasn’t sure they deserved that fancy title, especially since in their mission statement, they spelled “abyss” as “abiss.” The pamphlet was really very sparse, simply stating that there was an evil walking among humanity and that the Warriors were the force there to destroy it. They urged their fellow humans to be ready and stay pure. None of the vampires were mentioned by name, for which I was glad. The pamphlet also didn’t mention much about any of the shared history they claimed to have with the Alchemists.
Before we went to Clarence’s, Eddie scoured Latte for any sort of tracking device. The very idea creeped me out, the same way being watched at Adrian’s did. There was a feeling of violation to it all. It was only my lack of faith in their technology that made me feel somewhat better.
“It seems unlikely they’d be that advanced,” I told Eddie, as he wiggled under the car. “I mean, that pamphlet looked like it had been made on a 1980s copy machine. I don’t know if that’s because they’ve had the pamphlets sitting around that long or if that’s the actual machine they still use… but regardless, they don’t scream high tech to me.”
“Maybe,” he agreed, voice slightly muffled. “But we can’t take any chances. We don’t know what they’re capable of. And for all we know, they’re trying to hook up with the Alchemists to score technology.”
Chills ran through me. It was an outrageous thought: that the Alchemists and this violent fringe group could be related. It had been crazy when Adrian and I had speculated about it and was hard to accept even in the face of mounting evidence. At least now I had enough information to take to my superiors without being ridiculed. Even though I’d never heard of hunters like this, it seemed plausible that somewhere, at some point, they’d tried to connect with my organization. Hopefully someone in the Alchemists could help.
Eddie scooted out from under Latte. “You’re clean. Let’s head out.”
Jill and Angeline were waiting nearby, both tense and anxious. Jill gave Eddie an admiring smile. “I didn’t know you knew how to do any of this. I never would have even thought about it.”
He wiped sweat off his forehead. “You thought guardian training was all about hitting and kicking?”
She flushed. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“Can you tell me about some of this stuff sometime?” asked Angeline. “Seems like I should know it.”
“Sure,” said Eddie, sounding like he meant it. She beamed.
He’d been much easier around her ever since her attitude had become more serious and restrained. I think some of that good behavior had played a role in me getting permission for her to join us tonight. She was still technically on suspension, but I’d managed to get a special exemption on the grounds of our family’s so-called religion. I’d used a similar excuse when Jill had been suspended last month, in order to take her to feedings. Even still, we were on very strict orders with Angeline tonight. She couldn’t be out for more than two hours, and the price was adding an extra day of suspension to her sentence.
We took an abnormal route to Clarence’s, and Eddie watched behind us carefully, looking for any signs of pursuit. He tried to explain some of the things I needed to watch for when I was on my own. I was so nervous, I hardly heard. After a tense ride, we made it safely to Clarence’s. There, we found Adrian already waiting for us. Dimitri had apparently been downtown earlier and picked Adrian up—no doubt taking all the same precautions Eddie had for travel.
I’d given Eddie and Dimitri some of the info on the hunters, but everyone else required a more thorough explanation. We gathered in our usual spot, the formal living room, and Dimitri paced around the room, bracing for an attack at any moment. Clarence looked on from his chair with that typical distracted gaze. When I held up the pamphlet, however, he came to life.
“That’s them!” he cried. I thought he might actually spring up from the chair and rip the pamphlet from my hands. “Those are their symbols!” Most of the same alchemical symbols that had been on the sword were strewn across the pamphlet’s front. “That circle. I remember that circle.”
“The gold symbol,” I confirmed. “Or, I guess in their case, the sun symbol since they’re so obsessed with light and dark.”
Clarence looked around frantically. “They’re back! We have to get out of here. I came to this city to escape them, but they’ve found me. We have no time. Where’s Dorothy? Where’s Lee? I must pack!”
“Mr. Donahue,” I said, in as a gentle a tone as I could manage, “they don’t know you’re here. You’re safe.” I didn’t know if I believed that and hoped I was convincing.
“She’s right,” said Dimitri. “And even if they did, you know I wouldn’t let them hurt you.” There was such confidence and strength in the way Dimitri spoke that I had a feeling that we’d believe him even if a group of Strigoi were invading, and he said, “It’s fine, you’re safe.”
“If what you’re saying is true,” said Sonya, “I’m the one that’s in danger.” She seemed much calmer than I would be in that situation.
“They’re not going to hurt you either,” said Dimitri sharply. “Especially if you don’t leave this house.”
“The research—” she began.
“—is nothing compared to your safety,” he finished. There was a look in his eyes that said he would tolerate no arguments. “You need to get back to Court. You were planning on it anyway. Just make the trip early.”
Sonya didn’t look happy about that. “So I leave the rest of you in danger?”
“Maybe we aren’t,” said Eddie, though the tension in his body said otherwise. “From what Sydney said—and their mini-manifesto—their focus seems to be Strigoi, not Moroi.” He glanced over at Jill. “Not that we can let our guard down. If they’ve mistaken Sonya for a Strigoi, who knows what other craziness they might do? Don’t worry. I won’t let them near you.” Jill looked ready to swoon.
“That’s a good idea,” I said. “They still think the Moroi are a threat but not as much as the Strigoi.”
“Kind of like the Alchemists,” said Adrian. He was sitting in a corner armchair and had been quiet this whole time. I hadn’t seen him since the night of the dance or had any communication with him, which was odd. Even when he wasn’t sending me pathetic e-mails about the experiments, he almost always had some witty quip to pass along.
“True,” I admitted, with a smile. “But we’re not trying to kill any of you. Not even Strigoi.”
“And there’s the problem,” said Dimitri. “These warriors are convinced Sonya used to be a Strigoi and is using some trick to disguise herself.”
“Maybe they have some tracking or inventory system,” Sonya mused. “They keep tabs on various Strigoi in the country and then try to hunt them down.”
“And yet they didn’t kn
ow about you,” I pointed out to Dimitri. His face stayed neutral, but I knew it was hard for him to be reminded of his Strigoi days. “And from what I know… you were much more of a, um, notable figure than Sonya.” He’d essentially been a Strigoi mobster. “So, if you’re off their radar, they probably don’t have an international presence—or at least not a Russian one.”
Angeline leaned forward, hands clasped, and regarded Clarence with a smile sweet enough to justify her name. “How do you know about them? How did you first run into them?”
At first, he looked too terrified to answer, but I think her kindly attitude soothed him. “Well, they killed my niece, of course.”
We all knew Lee had killed Clarence’s niece, but the old man didn’t believe this any more than he believed Lee was dead. “Did you see them when they did it?” asked Angeline. “Did you ever see them at all?”
“Not when Tamara died, no,” he admitted. His eyes got a faraway look, as though he were staring straight into the past. “But I knew what signs to look for. I’d run into them before that, you see. Back when I was living in Santa Cruz. They like California, you know. And the Southwest. Goes back to their sun fixation.”
“What happened in Santa Cruz?” asked Dimitri.
“A group of their young ones began stalking me. Trying to kill me.”
The rest of us exchanged glances. “So they do go after Moroi,” said Eddie. He actually moved closer to Jill.
Clarence shook his head. “Not usually. From what Marcus told me, they prefer Strigoi. These were young, undisciplined members of their order going off on their own, without the knowledge of their superiors. I assume it was the same type who killed Tamara.”
“Who’s Marcus?” I asked.
“Marcus Finch. He saved me from them a few years ago. Fended them off during an attack and later got in touch with their order to keep those ruffians away from me.” Clarence shivered at the memory. “Not that I stayed around after that. I took Lee and left. That was when we moved to Los Angeles for a while.”
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