by Jen Pretty
Finally half of our group had passed out on the couches, and I decided I should find a place to pass out too.
My bed was empty and cold, and I felt more alone than ever. The raid team should be home in the next couple hours, so I might as well have a nap. I tried to peel the blanket back but I was laying on them, so I gave up and just fell asleep.
The tall trees shadowed the ground where I stood. I could hear tropical birds and the sound of a waterfall in the distance. A man was standing about 100' through the forest, but I couldn't make out his features. "Hello," I called loudly hoping he could hear me but he didn't turn around. I started to walk towards him and then run. I felt like it was really important that I get to him but the more I ran, the further away he got. Like he was running too, but he was standing still. I tripped over a root and fell into a deep hole that wasn't there a second ago. When I came to a crashing halt at the bottom, I wasn't hurt, but I also wasn't alone. The man I was chasing was standing in front of me, but I didn't recognize him. He was only as tall as I am and appeared to be in his mid-40s but was dressed in younger type clothes. His black straight hair cut long and tattoos up his arms. He looked sad though. "What's wrong?" I asked him gently. He stared into my eyes and then said "You will be tested. Stay strong, my child." Then he vanished.
I woke up alone in my bed. That was a pretty realistic dream. Gah. No more scotch for me. I decided to see if the other two teams were back yet.
I walked out my door and down to the central part of the house. The conference room was full, and Reg was already talking, so I squished in. Armond waved me over to him and then he slung an arm around my shoulder when I made it through the pack of hunters and to his side.
"We can't take any more chances with these vamps," Reg was saying "from now on all teams go together, and we plan for maximum assault."
"What happened?" I whispered to Armond but he just frowned, and Reg kept talking.
"We know of 5 more groups we would like to take out in the next two weeks. They are large mixed groups of vamps and trolls. So we will be taking one every three days. We will try to minimize the civilian attention, but these are priority targets. So taking them out has to be the main objective. We start in 2 days, get some rest. Dismissed"
And with that, they started to go out the door. Armond held me back when I went to follow.
"Listen, timekeeper. Times up. We can't keep you safe and fight this war unless you help us keep you safe. Today was a disaster, so we need you to be there, and we need you to understand the protocol and live by it." Reg said to me. He had an exhausted look on his face and seemed beat down.
"Ok," I replied, and with that, Reg turned and left with the last of the hunters.
Armond turned me around and wrapped his arms around me then looked down at me and muttered: "We lost Darla today."
"What?? No! That can't be!" I cried. I couldn't believe that Darla was gone. "I should have been with you. This is my fault! Damn it!" tears started immediately, and I tried to turn and leave.
Armond held on and turned me back to face him again. He put his hands on either side of my face and tipped my chin up to look at him. "This is not your fault. Our Intel has been bad for months. We think it's a small group and it's not. Every time we have underestimated the number of vamps, and it keeps getting worse. We need to finish this before we run out of hunters." He wiped the tears from my face and turned me towards the door. He put his hand on my lower back and steered me through the house to his room and then I was engulfed in his big strong arms again.
“I need to do more,” I muttered into his chest. “I need to find the leader of this and take him out. I can stop him.”
“Maybe you can, but you still need to stay safe. With your help we are keeping the vampires in check,” He said.
“But that’s not enough!” I pushed out of his arms and started pacing the room. There had to be something more I could do. “Maybe we can get one of these vamps to talk. We can catch them and get information out of them.”
"You watch too much TV." He said, "No torture that can convince a vamp or troll to talk. They just don't care about that kind of thing. "
I sighed. Fuck.
“Let’s go have some dinner,” He suggested knowing food always made me a little more rational. Blood sugar was going to be my downfall.
"Ya. Alright. I should probably eat some solid food today," he raised an eyebrow at that. "We had a bit of a party while you were gone. I don't know their names, as it didn't come up, but scotch was served, and karaoke and I recall something about race cars on the Xbox and a lot of crashing." He laughed loudly at that.
"That is a tradition with new hunters. Get them drunk and see if they can drive. A long time ago, we would get them drunk and see if they could still ride a horse. Times have changed though," he chuckled again but by now we were in the kitchen, and it was more mournful there with the hunters.
Darla was a decent person. I didn't know her well, but she was always kind, and she made sure if those big men acted like assholes they got called out for it. You could feel her absence here. The sorrow of the building and everyone in it.
I grabbed two seats, and Armond grabbed our trays. We sat together surrounded by the Hunter family, and we all ate and remembered. I discovered, after the death of Kent, that they don't have a ceremony or burial. They each mourn in their way and then move on to the next battle. They honour their fallen by continuing to fight. Some of the hunters were hundreds of years old and had spent all of those years together, but they were all experienced with loss and knew anyone could be gone at any time. It was humbling to imagine how much pain they had endured.
After dinner, Armond and I went back to his room and watched a movie. I nodded off at some point near the end and woke up when Armond turned the TV off, but I just curled back up and went back to sleep. Appreciating those close to me was my new promise to myself.
The next day Armond and I spent in the gym. I had a bit of a hangover still, but Armond didn't let me off easy. I could block about three-quarters of his strikes now and even made it past his guard twice to nick his arm and thigh with my wooden sword. Of course, if I had a real blade, he would be bleeding, but if he had a real blade, I'd be dead. Like super, really dead. As it was, I had several bruises that were dark and needed to be seen by a healer when we finished for the day.
We were getting ready to pack up when Armond stopped me.
"I've meant to let you try this out," he said pulling a sword in a sheath out of his gym bag.
When he unsheathed the sword, I couldn't believe how beautiful it was. It was not as long as Armond's, and when he handed it to me it was lighter, but it was very sharp and balanced. It took almost no effort to raise it above my head.
“We can’t spar with it but why don’t you try it out? I’ll keep the others out of your way.”
I took the sword to the middle of the mats and started going through some of the blocks and strikes that Armond had taught me. The sword cut through the air like it wasn't there. This was my sword, and hopefully, I'd get to bring it with me on raids soon.
After 20 minutes or so, I knew it was time to put it away. I was hogging the gym, and other hunters wanted to train too.
“Thank you. It’s perfect,” I said before replacing the sword in Armond’s bag.
“You're welcome. I’m glad you like it. It suits you, you know, the sword. I could watch you all day.” He grinned down at me before turning us around and aiming me towards the medical room.
After the healer, Angela, patched me up and I had a shower it was near dinner time again, but we had a meeting with Reg about the next day's raid, so Armond and I went down to the conference room.
It was strange being in there without a hoard of hunters. The room seemed too large, and my voice had an echo. I could see the gold leaf walls and my shoes made a lot of noise on the wood floor. The table was large and round with chairs packed tight around it but still not enough seats for all the hunters when they all cam
e to this room.
Reg had files and folders spread out in front of him. There were photos of buildings and people. No. Not people, vampires. These were surveillance photos of the next warehouse we were going to hit, and it looked like a big one.
“How many?” I asked looking at the photos all over the table.
“This one has many. Probably close to 150 vamps but we haven’t seen any trolls. If the trolls are starting to back out of their deal with the vamps that could tip the scales,” Reg said while still shuffling through the files.
"Or the trolls are hiding, so we don't know they are there, like at the last raid," Armond suggested.
"If they are, they are very well hidden. I sent Victor in twice, and there was no sign of trolls," Reg replied. God, I missed Victor and Margot and Luke. It seems like a year since I last saw them. Reg spoke again snapping me back to the present.
"There are four entrances on this building. 2 large bays and two smaller doors. According to the blueprints, the rest of the building is almost entirely open space so we should be able to go in and just start taking them out. You" Indicating Armond "will take the timekeeper…"
“Still Lex” I muttered out of habit. Maybe someday he would use my name.
"…through this small door along with half of team one. I want the other three teams to be larger since they won't be in range. The building is almost 200' long and last check; her range is barely 100'"
"It's better than any timekeeper before her," Armond said. His loyalty to me was almost too much. He was definitely on team Lex, and I kind of loved him for that.
"That's true, but it's still going to be short by almost half the length of the building. I wish we still had more timekeepers," he said letting sadness wash over his features before returning to the same stern face he always wore. I wondered if I'd even seen the sadness there at all.
"Alright. I'm going to have the meeting tonight with the teams, you two can get some dinner and rest, and I'll see you in the morning. We are leaving at 7 am," He said before picking up the photos and stacking them in a folder, shuffling the folders all together and taking them back to his office while we headed to the kitchen.
The hunters that remained were much more animated than yesterday. The mourning was over, and the fight was coming. Tonight's dinner was lasagna, and my mouth was in heaven. Meals were never this good. After a few more mouthfuls, I stopped with my fork halfway to my mouth and looked over at Armond. He smiled widely, and I knew exactly why he was grinning at me. I jumped up from my chair and raced to the kitchen to find Margot and my favourite kitchen lady standing over a pot of stew and Margot was explaining the proper way to stir the stew, for crying out loud. This lady was a serious foodie.
“Margot,” I called “what are you doing here?”
She spun around and took several hurried steps before she wrapped me in a bone-crushing hug. "Oh my Lord, it's good to see you," she beamed at me. "I just had a feeling I should come and see you. There might be a bit of a test coming, I think, and perhaps some extra friendly faces might make it easier for you."
"I keep hearing I'll be tested, but you said faces. Who else is here?" I asked finally breaking away from her crazy hug.
She didn’t say anything but had a twinkle in her eye. I tried to feel him. There he was. I ran out yelling over my shoulder “I’ll be back!”
I ran through the house like my ass was on fire, threw open the door to my room and launched myself on my unsuspecting cousin. I was laughing like a little girl. He was here.
He had to wiggle to escape me, but then he threw his arms around me too, and we stayed that way for a long time; long enough that Armond caught up to me. He came into the room and started laughing.
“You two are going to be joined at the hip when this war is over,” he said smiling at us.
"What can I say? He's my Family," I laughed. I looked a Luke then, and he looked happy and fine. I sighed and lay beside him on the bed. A family is important to everyone, but I had no idea, until mine was gone, how important it is to the fae.
“How long will you stay?” I asked Luke. I wanted him to say forever but also didn’t like him being here when he could be at risk.
"I'm not sure. Margot said we all had to come but didn't say for how long. I wish she would say what's going to happen but all she keeps saying is that ‘it has to be this way.' She looks sad when she says it so I'm trying not to think about what could be coming," he spoke so softly I wasn't sure if Armond had heard him across the room. Between the strange dream I had the other night and now this with Margot, I was starting to think maybe I should just stay here wrapped up in bed until whatever trouble passes.
"We are all going on this raid together tomorrow. We won't have anyone here to protect you or the house," I said, "it's dangerous."
"Victor came too," Luke told me "he is a pretty bad ass fighter, and we are going to stay in the safe room anyway."
“I didn’t know there was a safe room,” I looked at Armond.
"It's below the mats in the gym," Armond explained. "It's a hidden subfloor between the gym and the garage. It's uncomfortable, but there is only one way in or out and a foot of concrete on all sides. Probably the safest place on earth. We built it long ago in case the house was ever attacked, and we needed to secure the timekeepers. They will be safe there while we are gone," he assured me.
“Alright,” I sighed and relaxed into Luke’s side. Tomorrow would come soon enough so I might as well enjoy having Luke with me while it lasted.
As we were all sitting together catching up, I mentioned my dream to Luke. He looked surprised.
"I heard about the first elder who came to visit you here in the house. That was another elder. His name is Theo. He is a dreamer like me," Luke smiled and then sobered "I'm getting worried about this ‘testing' they are talking about; you have been through so much already."
That was precisely what I had been trying not to think about. Finding out the dream wasn't quite part of my imagination though didn't surprise me. Weird stuff was always happening so why not random old fae visiting me in my dreams. I sighed. "I'll cross that bridge when I get to it, I suppose. I thought maybe that day with V was the testing."
"I'm sorry you had to go through that. I wish I could have been here for you," Luke hugged me a bit tighter, and we just stayed like that for a while.
Finally, Armond stood up. "We should all get some sleep. It's nearly midnight, and we have an early start tomorrow."
Luke got up and started to walk to the door but turned once more to look at me. “I’ll see you in the morning before you leave,” he said, then he walked out.
“Good night, princess,” Armond said before he got up to leave.
“Wait. Will you stay with me?” I asked him.
“Of course,” he said. Then he climbed into my bed with me and curled around me. Tomorrow was probably going to be a shit day if all these seers were right.
Chapter eleven
The next morning was a rush of hunters and fae. I had breakfast with Victor, Luke, Armond and Fritz. I was surprised to see how well Luke and Fritz seemed to get on. They seemed to have a lot in common. We chatted and got caught up, but before long it was time to go. I said goodbye to the fae family I had staying behind including Margot who was busy in the kitchen and made my way to the SUVs in the garage. Armond was driving, and I grabbed shotgun before Fritz could get in. I snickered at him as he wedged himself in next to another hunter in the backseat. It was much nicer riding in the front of the SUV. Our location was a little over 4 hours away, so we made one stop for gas and coffee half way there then carried on till we came to a very small town. There were only a dozen houses or so and one warehouse.
We stopped outside of town and walked in, so we didn't alert the vamps we had arrived. The mid-day sun was hot, and you could feel spring coming, though it was still a ways off. There was a soft breeze, but we came in from downwind so they wouldn't catch our scent. Armond held my hand as we walked up silently and
we broke off into our assigned teams. Reg was with us, and so was Fritz. The rest of the hunters split into three teams so we could cover every entrance.
All the teams got in position. We had another 30 seconds before we all moved as one to take the vamps by surprise. I was holding my magic. I didn’t want to tip off the vamps before the exact moment of our raid.
Suddenly, Fritz grunted, and we all turned to see a vamp attached to Fritz neck and many more vamps pressing towards us quickly. I pulled my magic hard and slowed them down. All the hunters ran towards the hoard, a mere two steps before they met the vamps and were fighting. We were surrounded, and from the sounds coming from all around us, the other teams had been attacked similarly. I looked to my left and saw more vamps coming out of houses in the town. There were so many. Too many. The door behind me opened, and when I turned around, I came face to face with my nightmare.
"There she is," he said smiling. He was moving as fast as my hunters, and with all the hunters fighting I was nearly defenceless. I say almost because my fear brought my hands up and as he stepped in range, I threw a fist out and connected with his face. He hissed at me before grabbing my hand and squeezing it. I felt the bones break and screamed.
"Lex!!" I heard Armond yell from behind me. He couldn't get to me through the group of vamps. There were so many. Hundreds that I could see and I knew there were even more on the other side of the building.
I slammed time to a stop. But the vampire master barely slowed. He danced a step closer to me with a huge smile on his face like this was a great day, and maybe it was for him. My right hand was utterly useless, and he had a hold of my wrist as he turned and pulled me inside the building with him. I let time go so that my hunters could keep fighting and maybe get to me before the worst happened, but this vampire had other plans. I went limp trying passive resistance, but he just picked me up and tossed me over his shoulder. I tried to kick and fight with my left hand, but he just clamped his arm over my legs and kept walking. He was humming a tune like he was walking in the park. "Let me go you bloodsucker!” I yelled still trying to struggle even though my broken hand brought tears to my eyes and I was hyperventilating. I had never broken a bone before. This was the worst pain I'd ever felt.
