by Kasi Blake
No way. Jack couldn’t believe his eyes. He used what strength he had to raise his head and watch as the girl walked over to the wolf without breaking eye contact. She knelt in front of it. The two of them seemed to be in a silent struggle. Their eyes remained locked until Jack thought they would stay that way forever, frozen in time.
With a whimper the wolf began to shake.
The girl stroked the thing’s furry head. They could have been dog and owner, taking a break from a walk in the park. It didn’t make any sense to Jack. The wolf’s eyes closed, and it collapsed in a heap next to her.
The girl in the fuzzy pink sweater returned to Jack’s side. She yanked his blue plaid shirt down his arms, but left him with the T-shirt. She rolled the blue plaid material into a ball and placed it onto the bleeding wound. He ground his teeth together to keep from crying out. No reason for her to remember him as a big baby.
“You’re beautiful,” he said with awe. The art of breathing grew harder. He gasped between words. “What’s…your…name?”
“Are you trying to flirt with me? Now?” Her pink lips tilted at the corners, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “My name is Silver Reign.”
He snorted, and a new wave of pain jolted through him.
“It’s not spelled like the kind of rain that falls from the sky,” she said.
He laughed until he tasted blood. Funny how it didn’t taste good when it was his blood. Resting on the ground, he took in the night sky. There seemed to be a million stars shining just for them. It was kind of a romantic end, like Romeo and Juliet, only the girl would go on without him instead of taking her own life.
There was a shift in the atmosphere. Worried, his eyes went to Silver’s face. He warned her, “My friends are coming. I can feel them. You need to go. I don’t want them to hurt you.”
She raised an eyebrow at him, silently reminding him of how easily she’d dispatched the werewolf.
“Okay,” he amended. “I don’t want you to hurt them.”
“I won’t.”
As if on cue, he heard three pairs of running feet. “They’re here. Go!”
He took one last look at her before she left. Lily had been right. The girl wasn’t classically beautiful and she wasn’t his type, but there was something mesmerizing about her. His eyes drifted closed as familiar voices washed over him. His three friends all talked at once.
“Looks like the werewolf got him before he killed it,” Cowboy said in a matter-of- fact tone. “Good for him.”
“We have to do something,” Summer insisted. “Let’s get him to the house.”
“He should have listened to me,” Lily said. “I told him to run when he saw the girl in the fuzzy sweater.”
Jack used every bit of strength he had to pry his eyes open. He raised a hand and grabbed Summer by the hem of her jeans. “I want to go home.”
Summer smiled with twinkling blue eyes that paled in comparison to Silver’s. The chunky ends of her blonde hair rested against her freckled face. Before she got too excited, he added, “I want to go to my real home, the house I lived in with my family before you turned me.”
Summer’s smile died, and she began to argue with everyone over where they were taking him. Cowboy grabbed Jack from behind and lifted him to his feet. Jack swung an arm over his friend’s shoulders while Cowboy’s arm snaked around his waist like they were running a three-legged race at the county fair. Together they walked through the cemetery gates to Cowboy’s car.
Jack resisted the urge to look for the girl, not wanting to draw attention to her. He felt the heat of her eyes on him. At least his friends were too worried about him to notice her unusual scent clinging to the night air. Cowboy opened the passenger side door, and Jack collapsed into the provided seat. He bit his lower lip and prayed he’d live long enough to talk to Billy one last time.
“We need to take him to the abandoned house!” Summer shouted from the backseat. “He needs us.”
The girls sat in the back of the speeding car. Lily quietly sobbed for Jack while Summer leaned forward, pressing between the two front seats. She had to talk loud to be heard over the engine, the music, and the rushing wind. The passenger side window had been rolled down because Jack thought he might puke. She said, “We have to get inside before the sun comes up, and Jackpot needs us. Taking him home is pointless. His brother won’t know what to do for him.”
Anxious, Jack waited for Cowboy’s response. He wanted to argue with Summer, but he was too weak. He couldn’t even sit up straight. Every time the car leaned to the right or to the left, so did he, like he didn’t have a bone left in his body. Life continued to drain out of him. His lowered head bumped the edge of the car door with a painful thump every time they hit a rough spot in the road.
“It’s not our call,” Cowboy said. “Anyway, it’s just after midnight. We could walk and still reach both places.”
Jack relaxed, but Summer wouldn’t quit.
“His brother won’t know how to help him.”
Jack used his last bit of strength to push himself into a higher sitting position. He half-turned in her direction and spoke between clenched teeth. “I want to go home. I want to see my brother before I die.”
The car sped along the empty two-lane highway between town and his family’s farm. They were flying, but the darkness made it seem like they were moving in slow motion. Jack hoped death was like this, moving through time and space faster than light.
“You aren’t dying,” Summer said, her voice cracking. “Not every vampire dies after getting clawed by a werewolf.”
Jack scoffed. “Right. One out of every thousand manages to live somehow. I’m sure I’ll beat those odds. They don’t call me Jackpot for nothing.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Cowboy said, taking his eyes off the road for a second. As usual his point of view came across loud and forceful. “You have the right to die wherever and however you want. Die with your boots on, buddy. That’s what I always say.”
Jack patted his shirt pocket. “You got a cigarette, man?”
He had taken up smoking ten years ago. The smoke deadened their acute sense of smell for a while, and he liked that.
Cowboy drew a pack from his jacket while he continued to drive with the other hand. He pulled a tobacco stick out with his mouth and lit it with the car’s built-in lighter. Then he turned and put it between Jack’s lips. Jack half-dragged on it. The smoke filled his lungs, giving him a small burst of energy. He straightened his spine.
Summer rubbed his shoulder. “Please change your mind and come with us.”
“Crank up the tunes, man,” Jack said, feeling a little like his old self again.
“You got it, buddy.” Cowboy turned up the volume on the radio. The rock music throbbed through Jack’s body, and drowned out Summer’s annoying voice. He closed his eyes and let the music own him. For the moment his happiness returned to him.
A few minutes later he was back at the farmhouse. When they left him in front of his childhood home, Cowboy flashed him a backwards peace sign. “Vampires rule, buddy.”
Jack nodded but didn’t flash the sign back. He didn’t feel particularly grateful to be a vampire at the moment. Pain radiated throughout his entire body. He wasn’t sure if he could make it up the porch steps to the front door without help. His friends abandoned him. They had to hide from the sun.
He struggled up the porch stairs. Grabbing the wood railing, he lifted a foot and searched for the first step. A splinter caught his pinky, tearing the skin open. Compared to the agony the rest of his body was in, the pain in his finger barely registered. Every breath he took sent razor blades slicing through his lungs. He was dying again, and he was alone.
Then he wasn’t alone anymore. Like a tiny miracle, he felt her before seeing her. Silver Reign stood behind him, her hand pressed against his back. Her soft voice soothed his senses and drove som
e of the pain away. “Billy isn’t here,” she said. “I’m taking you home with me.”
“How did you know where I was?” He turned his head and stared at her. The outer edges of his vision blurred. Her entire form seemed to shimmer with an incandescent light, and his mind drifted to a surreal place. “Are you an angel?”
“Not exactly.”
Chapter Two:
SLEEPOVER WITH A HUNTER
Water dripped down the sides of Jack’s face. The wet rag slid halfway off his forehead to cover one eye, and he didn’t have the strength to push it aside. Unfortunately, Silver got lost in his blind spot. Since sneaking him up to her bedroom, she’d been moving around nonstop, looking at everything but him. Jack shifted his weight, uncomfortable. The pillow slipped. He turned on his elbow and reached back with the other hand to fix it.
Pain ripped through his gut. He bit his lower lip to stifle a groan. Maybe it would be better if he didn’t move again. Swallowing hard, he sagged against the pillow. Exhaustion tried to take him down.
Silver fluttered from one task to the next. She fed her hamster, refolded clothes, and rearranged the collection of law books on her desk. The picture of Sandra Day O’Connor hanging over the desk almost made him smile. Silver had lofty ideas. She wasn’t like anyone he’d met before, but he wasn’t sure yet if that was a good thing.
Jack struggled to sit up again and set off another wave of pain. It radiated from the center of his abdomen to the outer edges of his body. He gritted his teeth and kept going until his spine rested against the headboard. The rag tumbled to his lap. Completely exhausted, he let it go. His gaze dropped to the other towel, the bloody one on his bare abdomen. Curiosity tempted him to lift it, but he was afraid of what he’d see if he did.
Breathing became a chore.
“Why did you bring me here?” Jack blurted out the question as soon as it entered his head.
Silver jumped. The book she was holding flew through the air. She tried to grab it. It spun around, hit the desk and bounced off, landing on the floor.
“You’re nervous,” he said, faking a harmless smile to put her at ease.
“Do you blame me?” She glared at him. “I’m alone in my bedroom with a boy. My mom would freak and my dad would grab his shotgun if they had any idea you were here. On top of that, you’re a vampire.”
“Why are you helping me then?”
“Dumb question.” She stepped closer to the bed after retrieving her book. She clutched it between her hands like a shield. “You were attacked by a werewolf while trying to save me. It was brave, what you did. No one’s ever done anything like that for me. Well, maybe my parents. You’re the first stranger to try to save me.”
Contemplating in silence, he thought about how she’d killed the werewolf in the cemetery. In the last ten years he’d seen some amazing things, but never anything like that. Werewolves were notoriously hard to terminate. This girl had done it without breaking a sweat.
“How did you do it?” he asked. “In the cemetery, when you took care of the werewolf, how did you kill it without a weapon?”
Silver pursed her lips together. She let the silence draw out until it was beyond awkward, and he started to think she wouldn’t answer him. Her shoulders finally lifted in a quick shrug and she admitted, “I sucked its soul out.”
He gaped at her. Forget cute, this girl was scary as hell. He sat up straighter, focused on how great it would be to have that power. “Is it something I could learn to do?”
“No.” She walked around the bed and sat next to him. “Nobody taught me how to do it. I was born with the ability. I was born to kill werewolves.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m a hunter.”
A hunter? “How old are you?”
“I swear you sound just like my parents. They think I’m too young to handle the life.” Her jaw tightened. “I’m almost eighteen. Okay? Age is irrelevant anyway. I killed my first werewolf when I was twelve.”
A disturbing thought sprang to mind. “You just hunt werewolves though, right?”
“No. My parents and I also hunt vampires and evil spirits, all dark creatures.”
Nervous, Jack took a mental inventory of his body. The bleeding had slowed but hadn’t stopped. His limbs felt heavy, weak. He wasn’t in any shape to take a hunter on.
Of course she hadn’t attacked him, not yet. Maybe she was waiting for the werewolf venom to do its job. She would sit with him and make small talk until he died. It wasn’t the ideal situation, but he preferred it in contrast to the other possibility. He certainly didn’t want to get his soul sucked out.
There was a rumor that vamps didn’t have souls. Not true. Also, there was a myth saying vampires didn’t have blood of their own. Ridiculous. Their blood was tainted, diseased, but they had plenty of it. Jack didn’t quite understand it. Cowboy had tried to explain it once, something about their blood turning black before being eaten away by bacteria. Vampires needed fresh blood to keep the disease from totally taking over and destroying them. According to Cowboy it was a slow, horrible death worse than anything.
“So your parents decided to make you into this great hunter and take away your choices? That hardly seems fair.”
“They didn’t have a choice either. Do you know where vampires and werewolves come from?”
With a deadpan expression he said, “Well, first their mommies and daddies have to be in love. Then they...”
An explosive sigh cut him off. “I’m being serious here.”
“Sorry. Go ahead.” Maybe he could keep her talking until his strength returned. “Tell me everything.”
“Okay.” A happy smile transformed her face as she told him the story. She settled next to him on the bed, eyes sparkling, eager to share her biggest secret. “This might come as a shock to you, but we aren’t alone in the universe. There are other realms, other worlds out there, and about three thousand years ago a visitor from one of those places got banished to our world.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“Because of Lovely’s diary.”
He shook his head, totally confused. “What is a Lovely?”
Silver laughed. “I know. Her name is crazy, right? She picked it herself.” When he wrinkled his nose and frowned, she explained, “Lovely said her real name is not easily pronounced by humans. The first mortal boy she met told her she was lovely, so she used that as her name.”
“Humans? She wasn’t human?”
“No. She was a faerie.”
Jack burst out laughing, certain the cute werewolf-killer was messing with him. He couldn’t hold the laughter in, not even when sharp pain ripped into his gut. His hand pressed against his torn abdomen in the hope of keeping his insides inside where they belonged. “Are you kidding me? Tinkerbell started all this? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m not talking about tiny girls with wings and a handful of pixie dust.” It was obvious that Silver wanted to yell at him, but she managed to keep her voice down. “Faeries come in all sizes just like us, and they have awesome powers beyond anything you’ve ever seen.”
The last sentence caught his attention, wiped the smile off his face, and made him sit up straighter. “Powers?”
“That’s right. I don’t know about everything she could do, but I know this much. She created the first werewolf and the first vampire. I also know that she handed down her diary and this.”
Silver reached under the neck of her blouse and pulled out a chain with a silver dagger charm dangling from it, three tiny blue stones in the center. They twinkled like colored diamonds. She held the charm a few inches from his face and said, “For centuries every time a girl was born into my family the parents would hold this over the baby’s head. Nothing happened until my father held it over me. It began to glow because I’m the one Lovely spoke about in the book. I’m the one with the
power to wipe out the werewolves. So my parents reluctantly trained me. I come from a long line of hunters. It’s in my blood.”
He scoffed. “You expect me to buy any of this?”
“You’ll believe... in time.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Ignoring the question, she said, “Let’s see how you’re doing.”
Silver gently lifted the towel from his wound. She probed the area with her fingers, causing Jack to suck in a painful breath. If anything, it burned worse than before. He bit the inside of his lip to keep from crying out.
“Sorry.” She smiled. “Good news though. Looks like the bleeding has stopped. Your body is beginning to heal itself.”
“I’m not going to heal.”
She frowned at him. “Of course you are.”
“If you know as much about werewolves as you claim, then you know a small scratch can kill a vampire.” He gestured to the bloody towel. “That’s a lot deeper than a scratch.”
“Not all vampires die after a werewolf attack.”
He rolled his eyes. “Now you sound like Summer.”
“Who?”
“She’s a vampire friend of mine, one of the people you saw at the cemetery.”
“Which one? The tall girl with the long curls or the one that was my size?”
Jack hesitated in answering. There was something in her tone, something that warned him the question was not as casual as it sounded. Yet the smile remained fixed to her face. It seemed genuine. She was probably making small talk to eat up the time until he was dead. Besides, how could offering her a face to go with a name hurt anyone?
“Summer has short hair,” he said. “Lily is the tall girl, and Cowboy is the name of the guy you saw with them.”
“I can’t believe you laughed at my name when you hang out with people called Cowboy and Summer.”
“They’re nicknames.” On the defensive now, he said, “They call me Jackpot. It was Cowboy’s idea to change our names when we were reborn as vampires. He thought it would be easier to release our old selves that way.”
Cowboy had also desperately wanted matching tattoos, but when they’d tried they found out vampire skin didn’t hold the ink. As soon as they were pierced with the needle their flesh healed, driving the dye out. Cowboy had tried a few more times with the same result. It made him crazy knowing he couldn’t have something he wanted.