by Jamie Davis
“True, but we’re also all stronger now. Hell, I’m a freaking werewolf. Once I learn to control my change, I’m gonna be badass. I’m already twice as strong as I was before. He tried killing Miranda, and she came back as a ghost. You know what we’re up against now, so you’ll be able to help us prepare, and Quinn…”
Taylor paused and smiled, showing her teeth. “Quinn is still the biggest baddie around town. At full power or not, remember that seven-year-old girl. She will fight back. She will find a way to win. Handon might think we beat him by a fluke. We didn’t. And when the time comes, Quinn will figure out how to win again.”
“I wish I had your faith in her,” Clark said.
“Give it time. It’ll come,” Taylor said, glancing back toward the hospital grounds. “I’m supposed to be getting dinner ready. I’ve got to get back. You coming?”
“I’ll be along shortly. I’ve got some things to work out.”
Taylor nodded and turned to leave.
“Taylor, thank you. Quinn would never have shared those things with me. I’ll keep them in mind when I decide what to do next.”
She smiled and returned along the forest trail to the hospital. It was dinnertime, and they had plans to make.
Chapter Thirteen
Quinn headed downstairs wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt. She pulled her hair over one shoulder and used a towel to wring more of the water out of it. Her thick hair took forever to dry, even with a blow dryer, and she was almost always in too much of a hurry to use one anyway.
Walking into the kitchen, Quinn took a deep breath and smiled. “Wow, T, it smells awesome. What is it?”
Taylor stood by the stove, stirring a saucepan. “It’s just gravy, using the drippings from the chicken. Go ahead and sit down. It’ll be ready in a minute or so. I’m just finishing up.”
Quinn sat down. Taylor had already set up the table for them.
She looked around. “Clark’s still not back? It figures.”
“You two need to come to an understanding, Quinn. You aren’t giving each other any breaks or trying to see things from the other person’s point of view. Clark’s been through things none of us know about. If he’s keeping stuff to himself, there’s a good reason.”
Quinn rolled her eyes. Taylor had been a peacemaker back in high school. This sounded a lot like something she would’ve said in the middle of some girl-drama situation.
“Why are you defending him, T? Wait, you didn’t talk to him about what I said, did you?”
Taylor glanced over her shoulder at Quinn and turned back to her cooking.
“Oh, my God. When are you going to learn you don’t have to be the great problem solver? I suppose I have to go and apologize to him now?”
“No, not at all. Miranda had to leave, and I needed some fresh air after being cooped up in here all day. I went for a walk to tell him when dinner would be ready. He seems really upset about your fight. I just suggested that he needed to understand a little about where you were coming from and why trust is important to you.”
“Taylor, you shouldn’t have said anything. He doesn’t need to hear about my issues growing up. None of that matters anymore. I survived, and now I’m here. I’m more than able to take care of myself.” Quinn gestured at herself. “None of this could exist without all of that.”
“Exactly,” Taylor said, turning around holding the saucepan. She used a large serving spoon to drizzle the gravy over the platter of chicken on the table. “He has to understand what went into the super-powered Huntress Quinn Faust of today.”
“Taylor, if Clark—”
“If Clark what?” Clark asked from the doorway.
Quinn sat back in her seat and closed her mouth as he came in and sat down across from her.
Taylor set the now-empty saucepan on the stovetop, then came over to sit at the head of the small square table with Quinn and Clark.
She started dishing up while she said, “Clark, tell Quinn about the message you received from Joshua.”
The announcement excited Quinn. She was surprised he’d gotten back to them so soon. “What did he say? Has he found the records we need for the amulet already? When can we go pick them up?”
“Yes and no,” Clark replied. “The message was on the channel Joshua and I use, but it wasn’t him. It appears to have been from Handon.”
“Oh, no, they killed him!” Quinn exclaimed.
“I don’t think so,” Clark said, shaking his head. “It was more like a challenge, daring us to come and do something about them having the keeper.”
Clark pulled out his phone and opened the screen before sliding it across to Quinn. He pulled off a bite of chicken and pushed it into his mouth. He watched Quinn’s reaction while she read.
“What’s this clan life tome thing?”
“I think it’s the location of the ceremony and magic to create an amulet like the one you wore. The life tomes hold the birth records of each hunter clan. In this case, it holds the records from here in this region.”
Quinn sat up straight at Clark’s words. “That book could have something about me in there.”
“Yes, it could. It’ll have a lot of records, but the thing we want the most is the part with the old rituals and magic spells used by the clan’s mages over the centuries to create the amulets and other tools used by the hunters.”
“We have to go get it, Clark,” Quinn said. “I don’t know why Handon even wants to have something like that. He can’t use it.”
“No, probably not, but it doesn’t mean much. There aren’t more than a handful of people around the world right now who can make use of one of the life tomes.”
Taylor swallowed a bite and poured herself some water from the aluminum pitcher in the center of the table. “He’s probably like a serial killer.”
Quinn and Clark looked at Taylor. What she’d said didn’t make sense to either of them.
Taylor laughed and continued, “You know how a psycho killer has to keep something from the people he’s killed as a trophy? This is probably the same thing. He orchestrated the killing of all the hunters in this region. Why not keep their records and ceremonial books as a reminder of all you destroyed?”
Clark nodded. “It makes sense.”
“Yeah,” Quinn said. “If you’re a psycho-killer type. The question is, why did you think of it, T?”
Taylor laughed and shrugged. “I dunno, probably because of those true crime shows I like so much. The killers always get caught in the end because of all the evidence they kept from each crime.”
Clark laughed. “I didn’t take you as someone who likes that sort of thing, kid.”
“You have no idea,” Quinn said. “She likes autopsy videos, too.”
“Really? You don’t have any bodies buried we should know about, do you, Taylor?”
“Not that either of you knows about,” Taylor replied with a big grin on her face. She looked at her companions.
Quinn suppressed a groan. Taylor was enjoying that their little family squabble was working itself out with inane conversation. Sometimes it irked her that the other girl was right about those kinds of things more often than not. She seemed to have good intuition about how to fix people and relationships.
Clark smiled and pulled his phone back over by his plate.
“Oh, sorry,” Quinn said as he took the phone back. “So, when are we going to try to get the book?”
“That’s what they want, Quinn,” Clark replied. “It is a trap, for sure.”
“Not if I can get in and out using the VR system. Taylor said she was close to getting it back up and running.”
“But we don’t know where he has it,” Clark said. “There’s no way to find it.”
Taylor cleared her throat. “Not necessarily. I mean, Handon lived completely out in the open until we came in and screwed things up for him. A guy like that is full of pride and hubris. I gotta figure he’d brag about his rare book collection and stuff.”
“You’re not w
rong,” Clark said. “Vampires his age develop a taste for high society along with blood. What are you thinking?”
“Let me do some searching. I’m finished eating so I’ll go get started. You two good to clean up?”
“Sure,” Quinn said. “Go start digging. Do your tech-witch thing.”
Taylor smiled and skipped out the door.
Quinn laughed after she left. “She loves the title you gave her. It makes her so happy.”
Clark chuckled. “Honestly, when I said it, I thought it would annoy her. Now, though, I’m glad it didn’t. She deserves it.”
Quinn stood and gestured at the dishes on the table. “You clear, and I’ll clean?”
“Sounds good.”
It didn’t take the two of them long to clean up from dinner and set the dishes beside the sink to dry. They headed down the hallway to Taylor’s office. She sat behind the large desk, hunched over the wireless keyboard in her lap while she tapped away and stared at the center screen of the three-monitor setup.
Taylor didn’t look up when they walked in, just held up a finger in the air and said, “I’m on to something.”
The two of them came over and stood by the desk while she continued to tap away at her keyboard. Quinn asked, “What did you find?”
“Handon’s brokerage company had a foundation set up for charitable donations. It funded numerous programs and events around town, including several small museums.”
“What do you think, Clark?” Quinn asked. “Would he be dumb enough to have the hunter records out in the open in a museum open to the public?”
“Before you showed up, what did he have to be scared of?” Clark replied. “All the hunters were gone. His stolen goods were safe and sound.”
Taylor looked up and smiled. “Until now. Look,” she said as she swiveled the right-hand monitor around to show a color photo of a collection of old leather-bound books with gold lettering.
Quinn leaned forward and squinted at the screen. “I can’t read the titles.”
Me, neither,” Taylor said. “But this museum collection has to be the one we’re looking for. The description on the museum website calls it a collection of records from a medieval paramilitary order. Sounds like the hunters, right?”
Clark smiled after checking out the screen. He straightened and said, “The reason you can’t read it is it’s in Latin. All of us had to learn it in school. I wasn’t very good, but I can read enough to know those are the right books. Taylor, good work.”
The tech witch beamed at the two of them and said, “I knew it as soon as I saw this.” She used her trackpad to scroll to the bottom of the museum website. She highlighted some text with the cursor. “Didn’t you say Joshua’s handler was named Naomi?”
“That’s what he told us,” Clark said.
Quinn leaned forward to read the blue highlighted text.
Museum Director - Naomi Rodriguez
She smiled. “It can’t be a coincidence. Her name isn’t common.”
“No, It isn’t,” he said, turning to Quinn. “You got a good look at her when she talked to you in the library earlier today. Describe her to me.”
“Now you want to know more about her?”
“Just describe her.”
“About my height, maybe a tad shorter. She was wearing boots with heels, so it’s hard to judge. She had shoulder-length dark-brown hair. Her skin wasn’t particularly dark, but I guess she could have been Hispanic.”
Clark paled and shook his head. “It’s got to be her, and she’s a vampire now. I can’t believe it. She should have died rather than succumb to…”
“What’s wrong, Clark? Tell us who she is. She’s obviously someone you know.”
“I had a distant cousin named Naomi. She’d gone to train in Europe among the master hunters with her parents when she was young. She grew up in the old country, even married some guy she met over there. I always assumed she’d remained there at the end, but maybe during the purges, she came back to try to defend the clan at home.”
“She’s a hunter?” Taylor asked.
“Not anymore. Any decent hunter would have died or killed themselves rather than become a vampire. It’s an abomination for one of us to even consider it.”
“Maybe she didn’t have a choice,” Quinn said. “That could be why she didn’t attack. Her hunter background might have been why she chose not to fight me.”
“Everyone has a choice to become a vampire,” Clark said. “You have to drink a vampire’s blood to complete the transformation before he drains you. She couldn’t have done that by accident. She let him turn her.”
“And now she’s guarding the last records of the hunters,” Quinn said. “It’s a strange twist to all this, don’t you think? Probably Handon’s idea of a joke.”
“I’m not laughing.” Clark’s face had turned dark. “She’s a traitor. She needs to be put down.”
“You can do whatever you want,” Quinn said. “As long as we get that life tome thing first. Will you know it when you see it?”
Clark nodded. “I can read Latin, remember?”
“Taylor, the ball’s in your court now. How sure are you that you and Miranda can get the rig up and running tomorrow night?”
Taylor leaned back in the chair and looked at the ceiling for a few seconds. “I’d say ninety percent. There are a few things we haven’t worked on yet, but I think I can master what’s left before dark tomorrow.”
Quinn smiled and clapped. “Then tomorrow night, we steal the book from Handon. It’s time I got my amulet back.”
Chapter Fourteen
Quinn hit the mat hard but smiled because Clark landed beside her a split second later. Her last-second counter to his attack had broken through his defenses and toppled him to the floor. It wasn’t the first time, either. While Clark still bested her most of the time during training bouts, she had grown more consistent in landing successful attacks, connecting perhaps one in five or six times now. She laughed as she rolled to her feet, delighted her counter had worked.
“What are you laughing at, Cadet?”
“Aw, c’mon, Clark! You gotta give me that one. I came up with that combination on my own,” she said, pausing as something sunk in. “Wait, ‘Cadet?’ I thought I was an apprentice in the hunter hierarchy. Is that a promotion?”
Clark did a poor job of hiding his smile as he climbed to his feet. “Don’t let it go to your head. You have a long way to go before you get to master hunter.”
“That’s master hunt—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Huntress.”
Quinn let out a brief giggle. This day had been full of hurry-up-and-wait moments, but it had been full of hopeful optimism, too. They’d found where the secret book was that held the recipe she needed to recreate her broken amulet. Tonight, she was going to go into the VR rig and bring it back.
She and Clark had discussed it, and they had decided that since she’d been out of the VR world for so long, the VirSync corporate slayers, Handon, and his vampire and werewolf lackeys wouldn’t be expecting her to sneak in that way.
Quinn glanced out the training room door to the hallway beyond. Taylor’s office was two doors down. “Should we head down and check in with her again? It’s almost dark.”
“No. A half-hour ago, she told us she’d come to get us when she was ready. Remember the last time we bothered her? She threw us out, followed by the contents of her dinner tray.”
“She seemed a little frustrated with something,” Quinn observed. “You don’t doubt she’s going to do it, do you?”
“You know her better than I do,” Clark replied. “She is as solid as ever at the computer stuff, but magic is completely different. It might not be as easy as she thought it would be to solve the last few hurdles.”
“Miranda seemed pleased, even when Taylor yelled at us. The smile never left her face. That’s gotta be a good sign.”
Clark shrugged. “We’ll know when they figure it out. For now, let me try that new comb
ination on you. If you’re going to do stuff like that, it’s important to learn how to counter it. If you can think of it, someone else can, too.”
Clark crooked a finger at her, and Quinn sighed. He wouldn’t let her give up until she learned how to stop him from using the same trick on her.
An hour and a half later, Quinn and Clark sat on a bench beside the training mats, rehydrating and taking a much-needed break from their workout. Neither of them spoke. Clark seemed as winded as Quinn for the first time ever in their training together. She took that as a definite win. The last round, she’d bested him three times out of ten, a new high point for her.
“You two look like you’re too tired to do this,” Taylor said. “Maybe we should reschedule.”
Quinn sat up straight, her fatigue draining away in her excitement. Her best friend stood in the doorway with a huge grin on her face.
“Did you figure it out?” Quinn asked.
Taylor nodded. “I had to think of a different way to do it than what Miranda originally thought. Our brains work in different ways. That was what blocked me.”
Clark stood, stretching his arms behind him for a few seconds. “You’re both sure the system is ready this time?”
“Yep,” Taylor said. “As soon as you two are ready to go, we’ll fire it up.”
“I’ll go rinse off and change,” Quinn said. She checked her phone. “I figure we’ll go in at midnight when everything in the city has settled down for the night.”
Clark wiped his face with a towel and said, “It’s your call, Quinn. I’ll be outside the museum until you let me in. Remember, midnight is as good as noon to a vampire, so if Naomi is there, she’ll be wide awake.”
“She had no problem getting to the library during the daytime yesterday. Maybe she’s on a different schedule.”
“Probably came in a car and parked in the underground garage beside the building. Vampires don’t need sleep like we do, so it’s not surprising she was up in the daytime. When a vampire isn’t doing anything and wants to rest, they settle down somewhere and go into a trance.”