by May Dawson
This couldn’t be more different from the last time I was out with friends, that had ended so bloody. I stared up at the gray wool blanket over my head, breathing in the scent of Tristan right next to me, and after a second, I slid my head over onto his shoulder. For now, this was where I was. I might as well embrace it.
He wrapped his arm around me, his hand resting casually on my hip. The vibrations from the car’s travel across gravel were jarring, and then finally, the tires began to hum as we reached smooth, level road.
Tristan raised his arm, tossing the blanket aside. Now the two of us could see the tops of the pine trees flashing by and the stars above; lying down in the back of a car felt discombobulating, like a different way of seeing the world that I never had before.
Axel twisted in the backseat. “You two all right back there? Didn’t die of carbon dioxide poisoning huddled under that blanket together?”
“We’re comfortable,” Tristan assured him.
“Looks like it.” He didn’t succeed in trying to hide his grin.
A few minutes later, the car came to a stop. Holden opened the hatch. Tristan rolled easily out of the trunk, then offered me his hand to help me out. Even though I didn’t need it, I still slapped my hand into his.
We were in a country town, the kind Liam and my parents used to drive through all the time on their road-trips to hunt the bad things that lurk in the night. There was a diner ahead of us, and down the street I could see two bars.
“That one doesn’t card,” Tristan told me mischievously. “But tonight, we just came out for burgers. Academy food gets really old.”
I looked at the bright lights of the diner up ahead. It reminded me so much of Duffy’s. The thought of walking into a brightly lit diner with checkered tile again, like the one where I’d dropped my ice cream cone, made my chest tighten.
“Academy food has definitely gotten old already,” I said. “But I could really go for a beer right now.”
I could feel Tristan’s surprise.
“Deidra,” Hanna said carefully, but then seemed to lose momentum on what she should say next.
“Hanna, it’s fine,” Tristan said. “You guys up for it?”
“Whatever the new girl wants.” Killian rested his arm on my shoulders, the gesture casual and friendly, and I flashed him a smile to let him know I didn’t mind.
Relief spiked through my chest when we walked through the doors of the bar into a dimly lit space. There were a handful of pool tables and a dance floor that wasn’t much bigger than Holden’s SUV. Locals sat at the bar and a few tables scattered around.
A whole bunch of academy kids—easily identified by their straight posture and the graceful, coiled way they moved—stood around the two pool tables in the back. It felt almost as if there was an invisible line drawn through the bar, with locals on one side and academy on the other.
Julia leaned over the pool table, setting up her shot. She handled the pool cue with easy confidence, smiling as she settled her elbows carefully on the blue velvet and closed one eye, squinting to line up the shot. “You’re done for, Ryder.”
“Maybe.” The guy standing next to her crossed his tattooed arms, a knowing smile arching his lips. “Look who just came in.”
Julia glanced up impatiently, then her expression changed. Her gaze lingered on my face, then flickered to Tristan.
“What’s she doing here?” I demanded from Tristan. “Did she sneak out of restriction?”
“Her cadre are suckers. Probably let her off no matter what Cade told them,” he said. “Whatever. Let’s get a table.”
“Sure.” I was curious to see if we’d really rattled her. I didn’t like Ryder, but all of a sudden, I was deeply invested in him winning this game.
Her gaze returned to the shot she was lining up on the eight ball. “Back left pocket.”
Her lips set hard together, but she relaxed, exhaling, just before she pulled back the cue and tapped the white ball. It sailed smoothly into the eight ball, hurtling it into the back left pocket.
She straightened with a smile. “Pay up.”
Ryder passed her something. Holden and Axel were already setting up the pool table right across from Julia and her crew. I perched on one of the bar stools that were up against the wall on the other side of the table, putting Holden and Axel’s big, muscular bodies between me and Julia.
“This is fun,” Hanna said drily as she joined me. She carried two glass bottles of beer, and she handed me one.
“It could be,” I said defensively. “My day was bad enough. I’m not letting anyone ruin my night.”
Her gaze found Tristan, who was deep in conversation with Eli. “Was it that bad, really?”
It had certainly helped that I’d spent the day with Tristan, even if we’d spent far too much of our morning running that damn hill.
Even though just having Julia around made irritation prickle at the back of my neck, I found myself having fun as I hung out with Hanna and the guys. I was reluctant to play pool at first because I was not very good, but I let Killian cajole me into it.
When I sunk my first ball, Killian said, “I knew it! She’s hustling us!” As everyone laughed, I found myself grinning too.
Malcolm had said that I belonged here, and sometimes it felt like I really did.
That made me feel a stab of disloyalty. But whatever. While I was stuck at the academy, I might as well have fun.
And I might as well have a cheeseburger, too.
“Why is the food at the academy so bad?” I asked an hour later as I popped another French fry into my mouth. Killian and Axel were playing eight ball now. I sat at a high-top table with Hanna and Tristan.
“Because it makes freedom taste all that much sweeter.” Tristan, who had already cleaned his plate, swiped one of my fries.
I raised my eyebrows at him. “You don’t want to try me, Dane.”
“Speaking of freedom,” Julia interrupted, putting her hand on my shoulder, “What are you doing here?”
I glanced at her hand pointedly. “I was wondering the same thing about you, actually.”
“River House isn’t quite so…” she paused, pretending to gauge her words carefully. “Uptight? Weak? I mean, we aren’t the ones who killed someone in that ring before.”
Tristan groaned. “Go away, Julia. You’re so boring.”
“You didn’t think I was boring at that end of year party last summer,” she shot back.
“Actually,” he winked, “That’s exactly how I know you’re boring.”
She rolled her eyes, tossing her hair, but I could tell she was annoyed by him.
I was suddenly annoyed by him. Tristan and Julia had hooked up?
“I didn’t know she was a miserable piece of burnt toast at the time,” he said to me, as if he could guess at what I was thinking.
“You think you’re so cute, Tristan,” she said. “with your unique little insults…”
“Don’t worry, I call you all the usual stuff too. The same names your so-called buddies call you behind your back.” His gaze flickered behind her to the guys in her house, and then he took a long sip of his beer.
She smiled tightly, but Tristan’s ability to nettle her was truly amazing.
“I hope Cade doesn’t find out you’re out,” she said. “You’re such a disappointment to your big brother.”
“Oh, are you threatening to narc on us?” Hanna asked, her voice loud enough to carry to the other cadets. “Is that how we do things around here now? Getting the cadre to do our dirty work?”
“Leave the losers alone, Jules.” Ryder said. “Jeez. This isn’t going to drink itself.”
He held out a beer to her.
“Of course I’m not going to narc,” she said. “I just think Cade is the smart brother. He might notice something’s up.”
Tristan narrowed his eyes at her as she headed back to her little knot of friends, her hips swishing in her jeans.
“Maybe we should get out of here,” he suggested.
“Sure,” Holden said.
“I’m going to run to the bathroom first.” I straightened from the stool, grabbing the last French fry from my plate just as Tristan’s hand flashed to steal it. I popped it into my mouth as he sat back, pretending to pout.
“I’ll come with you.” Hanna said.
A few minutes later, when the two of us came out of the bathroom, the music was still playing, but the bar was empty. There were pool cues lying on the ground, food and beer abandoned at the tables.
“What the hell?” Hanna asked.
That eloquently summed up my feelings too. Fear stabbed my chest, so badly that I didn’t answer her in case my voice shook.
Liam’s face, and the bloody wreckage of his throat, rose in my vision again. I shouldn’t have come out here tonight with these people I liked, that I already cared about.
I leaned down and picked up the two pool cues on the floor in front of us. When I handed one to her, her deep blue eyes meet mine evenly. No matter how much she may have lost her confidence, there was no trace of fear in her eyes then. My gaze flickered to the right and then back to her, and she nodded. She went to the right, between the pool tables, and I went left, behind the bar.
Hanna’s phone buzzed. The two of us exchanged a look—hopefully someone would tell us what the hell was going on—but when she pulled it out of her pocket, she frowned. “Deidra. It’s the number you called before.”
Hanna hit decline and slipped the phone back into her pocket, but it immediately began to buzz again.
I held my hand out. “Maybe she’s in trouble.”
Hanna gave me a long look—we were already in trouble—but edged toward me and handed the phone over the bar.
“Hello?” I asked cautiously.
“Hi, Deidra.” It was a man’s low voice. “Don’t hang up. I have your friend Kate here with me.”
Fear squeezed my stomach. Truby.
He had her phone, but that didn’t mean he had her. “Put her on, then.”
“Of course,” he said, a sarcastic edge in his voice. There was faint background noise. I strained my ears, but couldn’t make anything out.
“Hi, Deidra.” Kate’s voice sounded odd; she sounded dreamy instead of upset. “I miss you so much, girl! How’re you doing?”
“I’ve been better,” I said guardedly, frowning. Nix and Cade were nearby, but they might be distracted. What the hell was going on?
There was that pause again, and then Truby said, “I don’t want you to worry about Kate too much.”
“What did you do to her?”
“It’s a spell,” he said. “One you could learn to do too, my girl. Or to undo. She’s perfectly content and happy right now. She’ll never even remember she left her house tonight.”
“What do you want?”
“Right to the point,” he said. “You do take after your old man. Deidra, I just want to talk to you.”
“Great,” I said. “What did you want to say?”
“Face to face,” he clarified. “Alone.”
“Yeah?” I turned toward Hanna, who was listening intently, and mouthed, Truby is here. We need to get help.
“I’m willing to meet you in your town,” he said, his voice amused. “Surrounded by Hunters. Drunk, young Hunters, but still.”
We all need help, Hanna mouthed back.
“That seems a bit fool-hardy on your part.”
“Oh, you’ve noticed that your Hunter friends are vicious hunting people like us?” He asked. “That doesn’t give you pause?”
“You belong with your own kind,” he said. “I just want to talk to you, Deidra. I’m just keeping your Hunter friends busy while we can have a chat.”
“You killed my uncle,” I said flatly.
“He killed my family first.” Truby’s voice was suddenly hard.
“My uncle was a hunter,” I said sharply. “And both my parents. They were good people. They protected people.”
“Witches are people, child,” he said. “And they do not protect witches.”
“What are you doing right now? What’s happening in this town?”
“You don’t know anything about your parents,” Truby said, ignoring my question. “But I can tell you. I can tell you how your mother tried to get away from Conner, about the baby the two of them had to heal their marriage, about how Liam bound your magic. I knew your mother well.”
His words made dread twist through my stomach. “And I should trust you when you kidnapped my best friend? When suddenly everything in this town goes sideways?”
“Would you come see me otherwise?” he asked. “I just want to talk. She’ll be returned, safe and unharmed, afterward.”
“And if I don’t show up?” He could claim he was one of the good guys all he wanted, but he’d still kidnapped an innocent person to bend me to his will.
“You will,” he said. “You’re your mother’s daughter. She was always curious.”
There was a fond edge in his voice that made me bite my lip.
“Fine,” I ground out.
“Meet me at the Presbyterian church in town,” he said. “Right across from the bar where all the young Hunters hang out. I’m sure you already know the one.”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“Kate and I will be waiting,” he promised before he hung up.
A shiver ran through my body, like I’d touched something dead, and I tucked my hair back behind my ears, trying to keep my cool.
Everything Truby said might be a lie.
“What did Truby say?” Hanna asked. “Why the hell is Truby calling you?”
There was an edge of fear in her voice that made my insides twist. Would anyone ever really trust me or Nix? What did it take to prove ourselves as witches in a Hunter’s world?
“He wants me to meet him at the Presbyterian church in town,” I said. “He says he has Kate. He says he just wants to talk….”
Hanna swallowed hard. “What are we going to do?”
No matter how scared she was, no matter her edge of suspicion, she still asked what we were going to do.
“I’m going to that church,” I said.
She raised the pool cue to the ready, as if it were a sword in one of our classes. “I’ll make sure you come back out.”
Together, with her moving toward the right and me taking the left, the two of us began to wind our way through the bar.
Chapter Forty
As Hanna and I circled around the room, I edged behind the bar, passing the mirror and dozens of bottles of liquor. A flicker of movement up at the ceiling drew my eye.
There was something hanging from the rafters, right above Hanna. Eerie yellow eyes and lips curled back from sharp teeth…
“Hanna!” I called. I was already trying to clear the bar to get to her in time to help. I threw my knee up on the slick wooden surface, heaving myself up and over. Her gaze jerked to the ceiling.
As the beast dropped, Hanna came to life. She rolled forward, and the beast’s claws missed her; it hit the floor instead and then came to its feet, hissing.
Vamp.
Hanna stepped forward, slamming the pool cue into its head. She knocked the thing into the wall.
“Where the hell is everyone?” she shouted to me. She was already following up, closing the distance between her and the vamp as she drew the cue stick back again into a fighting stance.
“I don’t know!” I hoped they were okay. It was bizarre how everyone disappeared when we were in the bathroom. Where were Cade and Nix, my omnipresent bodyguards, now that I needed them?
“The whole place is overrun.” Tristan paced into the room quickly, his sword in his hand. “We tried to evacuate the civilians when we realized we were being attacked by the Truby’s monsters. But it’s not going well. Things are bad out there.”
“Out there?”
“The whole town,” Tristan clarified. He held out his hand with my weapons and Hanna’s; we’d all left our stuff in the truck when we got here so we
wouldn’t attract attention. “Holden and I made it back to the car.”
“Thanks.” Only when I’d grabbed my sword from him did I drop the pool cue. I slung the harness over my shoulders.
“The whole town’s under attack by supernatural things.” Julia stepped through the door behind Tristan. “Hope you two are feeling useful.”
I ignored her, heading for the door. I was so here for killing monsters like the ones that killed Liam, on my way to Truby. Hopefully, I’d get the chance to kill him too. The worst of the monsters.
Then I remembered Hanna, who had every reason to feel scared in a way the rest of us might not. I looked over my shoulder at her. “Hanna?”
“Yeah.” There was a grim look on her face. Her clothes were splattered with blood from the vamp she’d killed as she swung her own shoulder harness on.
“I watched you kill that thing,” I said. “I’ll feel a whole lot better knowing you’re watching my back out there.”
Her eyes widened as if she hadn’t expected that, but she didn’t say anything. She just drew her sword. “Let’s go.”
Together, the four of us headed out into a warzone.
The once-quiet street was besieged by monsters. The little ragged band of kids I’d come out here with were fighting them desperately.
In the midst of the chaos, a family ran out of an apartment building and toward their minivan, parked on the street. A mother held her little girl in her arms, the girl’s sneakers banging into her legs as they sprinted down the road. A vamp popped up in front of them, and the mother screamed and twisted to one side as she ran, trying to avoid it.
I ran hard for the mother and child, just as the vamp jumped for them.
Cade reached them before I did, sliding his body between them and the vamp, which ran into his sword.
“Cade’s definitely going to know you guys snuck out,” Hanna said.
“Personally, I’m hoping I get killed by a vamp,” Julia said.
“It would probably be better than facing his wrath,” Tristan said. “I speak from experience.”
Ryder turned the corner and ran toward us, his sword clutched in his hand, his arms and legs pumping furiously. “Go!” he shouted at us. “Go!”