by Lucinda Dark
I shot him a look. “Yes, I’m fucking sure.” This was it. This was the last known location of Barnaby Wilder.
“How did you manage to find him?” Barbie asked. “How can we be sure that he is a hunter?”
“I hacked your mom’s old emails. They exchanged quite a number of them over the years,” I said. “They talked about a lot of things—on the surface, it all looked mundane. Legit. But it was clear that the timeline between when your grandparents passed and when they began exchanging emails matches up to when my parents lost contact with them. She and your father apparently exchanged information with Barnaby and from the sound of their correspondence, they met him infrequently, but enough that they trusted him.”
Barbie shook her head, biting her lip. “We never found out how Arrius managed to track down most of the hunters in America,” she said. “What if a mole was feeding him information. What if it was Barnaby?”
I reached back and withdrew my Glock. I checked the chamber, snapped it shut and gave her a tight smile. “Then we’ll make sure he won’t be feeding anyone information ever again.” I said it and I meant it. This shit was getting all too real. People had already died over this bastard—she had as well. We weren’t fucking around anymore. This needed to be dealt with.
Her crystal blue eyes met my gaze and she nodded. We got out of the car. “I’ll go first,” Torin announced.
“Not a good idea,” I argued. “They’ll know you’re a vampire and—”
“I’m not as easily killed,” he interrupted.
The heat of irritation rose in my chest. “Neither am I,” I reminded him.
He paused as if just realizing. Grimacing, he nodded in acknowledgment. “You’re right, I’m so—”
“We don’t have time for this,” Barbie said, squeezing between us as she moved towards the front of the old newspaper offices.
The windows were darkened, several on the lower row broken or cracked. Torin and I exchanged a quiet look of understanding before we headed after her. We both reached her sides, buffering her from possible threats.
The Glock in my hand felt light—though I knew it wasn’t. The more and more I used it, the safer it felt in my grip, less of a burden and more of a dependable friend. I only hoped it would help me protect what I needed to, I thought, staring at the back of Barbie’s head as she reached for the front door, her hand closing around the rusted handle.
We entered the building, letting the old metal doors clang shut. Before—when I’d been human—I’d have needed some sort of light. As soon as the darkness closed in now, my vision went black and white—all color leeching away even as everything became crisper, sharper. I could not only see clearly in the pitch dark, I could smell everything. The dust coating the floor. The scent of human sweat—acrid and salty with adrenaline.
Wait. I paused. Human sweat? Barbie wasn’t human anymore. Neither was Torin. Neither was I. I realized my mistake a moment before the lights jerked on and water came crashing down on us. I stumbled under the shock of the onslaught—not because it hurt, but because it was so unexpected.
I reached for Barbie at the same time as Torin—felt his arm bump mine before she was ripped away. The lights were too bright, the switch too abrupt. I blinked, trying to adjust my vision. Where the fuck had she gone?
Someone cried out—a man. I took off, following the sound as I wiped the water from my eyes. That’s when I saw Barbie with her hand clasped around an older man’s throat as she crushed him to the wall at his back. It was no small feat. The man was a good foot taller than her, burly and large with a wide chest and a full beard. He groaned as she squeezed his neck, snarling. Damn it. Her fangs were out and red splotches were cropping up on her neck and face where the water had touched her. Holy water. Jesus fucking Christ.
“Barbie!” I barked. She either didn’t hear me or didn’t want to, but I was a split second from snatching her ass up and paddling her right then and there when I caught a glimpse of silver at her back. A sword aiming straight for her heart.
I roared. In denial. In anger. In fucking terror as I raced towards her. I was going to be too late. I wasn’t fast enough. Scales popped up along the skin of my forearms, glimmering under the sudden lights. Fire raced down my spine and I felt the flesh of my back split open slightly. The pain spurred me on.
I reached out, my arms closing around Barbie and shielding her as the sword speared through my shoulder and out on the other side. The agony of metal piercing my flesh should have hurt worse, but as I held onto her, gasping and panting as I tried not to shift with the blade in me, I realized that it was dulled. Blood ran down my chest, staining my gray t-shirt. Barbie released the man and whirled around, her mouth popping open when the scent of my blood hit her nostrils and then the sight of it clicked in her mind.
“Enough!” Torin’s shout reached our ears, followed by the thunderous jerk of a gun discharging into the rafters. A rain of dust and wood chips fell, littering the concrete floor at our feet. I groaned as the sword was yanked unceremoniously from my shoulder.
“Shit,” I hissed, collapsing, as the woman who’d been holding the sword raced around me to attend to the fallen man Barbie had attacked. My Glock had somehow fallen on the ground and Torin had picked it up. I watched as he lifted it, noting that he too had the same red splotches as Barbie—but the marks on both of them were fading fast as they healed.
“Mav?” Barbie’s voice was in my ear as her hands gripped my shirt and ripped it where the blade had pierced through. “Oh fuck.” I looked down at where her fingers were pulling the fabric away from my chest. Small bits of the cloth remained stuck to my skin—inside the wound. I watched in fascination and confusion as the wound slowly closed, pushing the fibers out. The skin knitted over and sealed up until only smooth flesh was left behind, albeit coated in blood. The pain—what lingering tendrils there were—dispersed.
I stared down at where the wound should have been. “Fucking hell,” I muttered, releasing her with one hand and reaching up with the other to feel it. There was no open tugging at my back either, I noticed, as I moved. It was truly gone.
Barbie looked up at me with raised brows. “Are you okay?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yeah.” It was just really fucking weird to see my own flesh sew itself back together. It really brought home just what I’d done.
“Mav?” Torin’s voice called our attention and we lifted our heads in sync, turning towards him where he held the man and woman at gunpoint. It was kind of amusing, seeing as he was more than capable of hurting them without my Glock in his hand.
“I’m fine,” I said, standing. When Barbie would’ve moved away from me, I snatched her around the waist and pulled her closer, eliciting a grunt and a glare. I didn’t quite give a shit. She could stay her ass right by my side or I’d strap her there.
“Good.” Torin nodded and then refocused his attention back on the two facing us with their hands slightly raised in a gesture of surrender. I narrowed my eyes on them. None of us were stupid enough to believe that just yet. “Now,” Torin said, looking to the man, “I assume you’re Barnaby Wilder.”
“No,” a new voice announced from above. Our heads turned up at the same time a man vaulted over the railing from the second floor. Booted feet hit the ground. My eyes widened as the man straightened to his full height. Even the age lines crinkling the corners of his eyes and lips and the striking gray beard covering the lower half of his face with a strip of white through the center couldn’t detract from his sheer size. Taller than me. Taller than Torin. Taller than any fucking football coach or player I’d ever fucking met. The man was a veritable giant. He turned his head and met Torin’s gaze. “I’m Barnaby Wilder,” he said.
Twenty-Nine
Barbie
Maverick’s arm was tight on my side. I knew what he was doing and I didn’t fucking appreciate it. Slowly, I extracted myself from him, ignoring the growl of disapproval as I strode through the center of the group that had congregated.
>
“Barbie,” Torin snapped, keeping his gun trained on the man who’d announced himself as Barnaby Wilder, causing the younger man and woman just slightly behind the older man’s back to freeze in response. At a glimpse, I knew who they were to him. The same facial features on Barnaby’s face were reflected in theirs. The shape of their eyes and nose were direct tells.
“Barbie?” Barnaby asked, lifting a brow as he stared down at me.
“That’s right,” I said. “My name is Barbara Steele. You knew my parents.”
The man’s face didn’t soften or relax. I hadn’t expected it to—not with Torin keeping the gun on him. “You said knew,” he repeated.
“I did.”
“Then they’re dead?”
I nodded.
“Shit.” He clenched his fists and let out a breath before he fixed me with an intense look—one I’d not come to expect from adult men. It wasn’t the look someone like Maverick’s father would’ve given me. It was the look of a soldier. “That doesn’t explain why you’re here,” he said, “or how you found me.”
I gestured to Maverick, who sighed and moved closer. “I used the IP address from your last correspondence to narrow the search and then I hacked video surveillance footage to follow and track you,” he explained.
Barnaby grunted as he crossed his arms. “That’s it?” he asked. “Are there more of you?” He darted a glance at Torin.
I shot Torin a look and shook my head. I could sense his frustration, but he finally lowered the weapon and let his arms drop to his sides. “That’s it,” I said. “We came because we need your help. We need to know if there are any more hunters.”
“There aren’t,” he said. “At least, if there are, I haven’t been in contact with them.”
“Grandfather.” The woman at his back moved forward, her mousy brown hair pulled back into a severe ponytail that swayed against her nape. She glared at me. “They’re not human. I stabbed that one over there and his wound is closed already.”
“No, but you poured holy water on them and they aren’t ashes, now, are they?” he replied.
The woman stiffened, growling beneath her breath as she narrowed her eyes on me specifically. “That doesn’t mean that they can be trusted.”
I lifted my arms in a movement of surrender—one that mimicked what they’d been doing before the old man had dropped from the railing above. “We’re just here to get help, I swear.”
“My granddaughter is right,” Barnaby said. “Whether you’re here for help or not, that still doesn’t tell us what you are. If you want us to trust you, you’ll have to give up that information.”
I pressed my lips together, but before I could answer, Maverick spoke up. “I made a deal with a beast,” he said, lifting his medallion out from beneath the torn fabric of his shirt and letting it rest over his chest so that they could see. “I’m a shifter.”
“I’ve never seen a shifter heal that fast before,” the woman snapped. “What kind are you?”
“A dragon.” Silence echoed following that statement and I closed my eyes as the need to throat punch something grew.
I reopened them and took a glance at the suspicious shock on their faces. “That’s not possible,” Barnaby said. “I’ve studied supernatural creatures my whole life and I’ve never heard—”
“It’s true,” I confirmed, interrupting him. “Believe me, that’s not the weirdest fucking part of our group and if you want to know everything, I suggest you get rid of any preconceived notions of what you know and what you don’t. It’ll be easier on all of us and far less frustrating.”
The woman bared her teeth at me. “We don’t have to trust anything you say,” she snapped. “I know what I saw, you’re a vampire. Your fangs say as much. They may be gone but I saw them and I know my brother did as well.”
“It’s true,” the younger man said, looking to Barnaby. His voice rumbled with a rasp and I grimaced. Perhaps, I shouldn’t have choked him out quite so hard, but I really hadn’t appreciated the face full of holy water.
It hadn’t hurt exactly—not like I’d seen what it’d done to vampires in the past like Delia. But it had felt rather uncomfortable. More like a sting than the acidic fire it would’ve been had I been a full vampire.
Barnaby narrowed his gaze on both me and Torin. “Then what are the two of you?” he demanded.
Torin shifted closer to me and when he would’ve reached out and grabbed my arm, I stepped away. The small growl in his tone as he said my name told me he was furious. “He’s a dhampire,” I said. “Half-vampire and half-human.”
Barnaby inhaled, his gray eyes sharpening on my face. “Why do I have the distinct feeling that what you are will shock me even more?” he asked.
I lifted a brow and fought a grin. “Probably because you’re smarter than you look.”
His lips split into a feral smile. “I’ll ignore the insult, little girl. Say what you’re going to say.”
“I was turned by him,” I said, gesturing back to Torin, “after I made a deal with a demon.”
This time, the silence wasn’t just palpable, it was fucking filled to the brim with intensity and shock. Barnaby stopped smiling as he stared at me. Then with a bark of laughter, he broke the tension. “You’ve certainly been busy since the Steeles dropped off the radar, haven’t you?”
I shrugged. “Once upon a time I was sweet and innocent, then shit happened.”
He blinked. “Now, why don’t I believe you?”
Maverick ambled over to me. “Because you know bullshit when you hear it,” he answered.
“Grandfather, they’re dangerous,” the woman said, stepping closer to his side. “We can’t trust them.”
I scowled at her.
“Trust is for people who have that luxury,” Torin said. We faced off—the three of them and the three of us, all waiting for what Barnaby would do. Whatever he said next would decide how the rest of this meeting would go. I really fucking hoped he was more willing to talk than his granddaughter. I lifted a brow as she continued to glare at me. They’d attacked first, I’d only finished what they’d started.
“I don’t know what you came here for,” Barnaby suddenly said with a heavy sigh. He crossed his arms over his massive chest and looked down. “But help isn’t exactly something we’re able to provide right now.”
“We know who’s responsible for wiping out the hunters,” I said. “His name is Arrius Priest. He’s a powerful vamp—”
“There isn’t a hunter alive who doesn’t know of Arrius Priest,” Barnaby interrupted. “If it’s him you’re after, my recommendation to you would be to get the hell away.” He gestured around. “Does it look like hunters are hiding out, waiting for a chance to find that bastard and take him out right now?” He shook his head. “No. Our resources are nearly depleted. My grandchildren and I are the last of our lineage. We’ve been studying vampires for centuries. I am sorry about the Steeles. When they found out about the existence of vampires, you and your brother were quite young. When your mother and father expressed an interest in becoming hunters, I advised them the same. Look the other way. Keep going on with their normal lives. Try to forget. There is nothing left for those who choose to pursue this life but grief and death.”
“But—” I started.
“You should listen to him,” the woman said, interrupting me. “He certainly knows better than you. He’s been doing this decades longer than you’ve been alive.”
“Okay, first of all,” I snapped, “interrupt me again and I’ll rip your tongue out of your skull.”
Baring her teeth, she jerked forward only to be stopped by the outstretched arm of her grandfather. “Enough, Zel,” he said.
I crossed my arms and eyed her as she settled back, but there was no dulling of the fury in her eyes. Fine by me. After the way she’d stabbed Maverick, I was so ready to pick the fight up where it’d left off. The only reason I hadn’t thrown down was because of her grandfather. There wasn’t just the fact that we
needed his help, but something about the man just demanded respect.
“I can tell by looking at you that you chose to follow the path of revenge,” Barnaby said, drawing my attention back to him. “I can recognize it because I was the same. When my parents were killed by vampires, I’d already known of their existence, but it didn’t make my anger any less volatile. I’ve spent my life trying to track down vampires and kill them. In this line of work, you either die as a hunter or you live to watch your loved ones die.”
“It’s too late for me,” I said. “I’m already past the point of no return.” I felt Torin’s gaze as well as Maverick’s, but I refused to look back at them. “Arrius Priest needs to die.”
“That he does, but it can’t be us,” Barnaby said. “I’m sorry. We can’t give you the help you require.”
I stared at him. What could I do? I wondered. What could I say to change his mind? We’d already tried to go after Arrius on our own and that had ended with me turned, Maverick changed, and a whole shitload of problems. I looked down at the ground, fighting with myself as I shoved the anger welling up within me.
“There’s more that’s at stake,” the younger man at Barnaby’s side said. I lifted my head. He frowned my way but continued. “Hunters aren’t the only ones being targeted now,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Torin asked.
“Extended hunter lines like ours have had contacts with witches and after we started noticing that our friends were disappearing, we went searching for the witches, hoping to gain some information,” he said, “but they, too, were gone.”
“Gone?” Mav repeated.
The man nodded. “We don’t know if they’re dead or not, but they aren’t responding to known and solid communications that we’ve had for decades. Something’s up.”