E.V.I.E.: 13 Slayers, 13 Missions

by Lexi C. Foss

  I collapsed to my knees, fresh waves of agony coursing over me.

  “Girl, you scared me to death. And you were running like you saw a ghost,” she said, out of breath. “Where were you trying to head?”

  I was chasing ghosts, I thought to myself as tears tortured my eyes. I turned to her. “I’m sorry,” I said in a sob-laden voice.

  Her gaze widened at my tears. “Olivia—” she began, reaching out her hand to comfort me.

  “I’m just a little broken,” I told her through my whimpering.

  “Oh, honey… We all are,” she responded softly, and then she put her arm around me, and we both cried together.

  The fog was back. It felt like my mind conjuring up Wyatt had rebroken whatever I’d managed to mend inside me. I wasn’t good company, but somehow, Bethany didn’t seem to mind.

  The only good that came out of the funk I was in was its effect on my training.

  “That a girl!” Vaughn cried out as I landed a roundhouse kick on the trainee I was sparring with. She gave me a bloody grin and two thumbs up after I landed the kick. Tiny pricks of pleasure coursed through my veins.

  “Let’s take a ten-minute break,” the other trainer called out, handing Whitney, the girl I’d been fighting, a water bottle to wash her mouth out with.

  “You’ve really upped your game these last few weeks,” Vaughn praised me as I picked up a towel to dry off with.

  “Yep,” I responded noncommittally.

  “I think you might be ready to go out on a practice run,” he remarked.

  I lowered my towel. “Like actually go out in the real world and get to use my stake?” The thought made me ridiculously happy and temporarily pierced through my fog, sending sparks of life through my heart.

  “Yep,” he said with a smirk. “There’s a group going out tonight. If we end now, you shouldn’t be too tired to go with them.”

  “Count me in,” I told him, trying to hide my excitement. I’m sure he saw right through me.

  “Go rest for a bit and be down in the lobby with your gear at nine-thirty,” he instructed me, patting me on the back once as I skipped off.

  “Sir, yes, sir,” I called out to him cheekily.

  “Make me proud tonight, princess,” he called after me.

  I shot him the bird. His laughter followed me out of the room.

  I tried to take a nap, but my nerves were too wound up to let me rest. The minutes ticked by slowly while I arranged and rearranged my collection of stakes, guns, and knives.

  Finally, it was time to get ready. I carefully pulled on my tight black, Catwoman like outfit, carefully placing my weapons in all the pockets. Then I pulled on a leather jacket, grateful that the weather was cooling down slightly.

  My hands were trembling slightly as I made my way down to the lobby. Vaughn was down there, along with two other trainers, and two trainees I’d seen around. “Ready to go?” he asked me seriously, searching my face for answers.

  I nodded tightly, afraid my voice would squeak if I spoke.

  And then we were off.

  As we drove down the streets of New York in our non-descript van, Tenesha, one of the other trainers, went over our mission. “There’s a pack of newly turned vamps that have been hiding out in an abandoned warehouse in the Meatpacking District. Evidently, a vamp went wild, turning a whole group of them, and they’re responsible for a rash of murders we’ve been hearing about over the last few weeks.” She looked at each of the trainees, as if she was measuring us. “Tonight, we kill them all.”

  I practiced my breathing exercises that I learned in my yoga class, trying to channel the calm that I knew the mission would require. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I was actually about to hunt vampires.

  E.V.I.E. required several of these practice missions, but this was the first step before I could go back to Dallas and start my real mission.

  The van stopped a few blocks away from the warehouse. We’d walk the rest of the way by foot. Sweat trickled down my spine as we went along. I had to stop myself from jumping at every noise, which was a lot… This was the city that never sleeps, after all.

  Tenesha held up a fist in the air, signaling for us to stop. She began to direct us silently. I was going through one of the upstairs entrances with a trainer named Colin, a redheaded badass who taught one of the stake throwing classes. I’d seen him hit a bullseye somehow from one hundred feet away, so I was feeling pretty confident in my partner.

  I could only hit a target dead on from thirty feet away, so he was probably not feeling quite as confident.

  Colin and I crept around the back entrance and then began to ascend the stairs that led to the second-floor entrance of the warehouse. There was a steel balcony running along the whole back side. We had to creep across it in order to not make any loud sounds. Vampires had above average hearing after all.

  One wrong move—

  A rock skittered across the balcony, clanging against a pole before it fell to the ground below. Colin shot me an “are you kidding me?” look, and I cringed, sure I’d just blown the whole mission.

  A loud screech sounded just then from inside, as if something—or someone—had just woken up. Colin sighed. I’d heard that exact sound in class before. It was the sound of a feral vampire, like the one who’d killed my loves. A feral vampire occurs when the turning process hadn’t gone quite right, meaning that they operated more on base instinct than the cool, cunning intellect that most vampires were known for. They were dangerous because they were out of control, much more likely to attack than to run. Their kills were messier too. It explained why Wyatt, Ryan, and Noah’s throats had been torn open rather than neatly punctured. Rogues couldn’t control themselves once the bloodlust hit them.

  But they also were easier to kill for those exact reasons.

  It was hard to keep my own blind rage from taking over. I knew these weren’t the same vampires that had shattered my world, but their screeches were the same. I’d lain awake some nights, torturing myself with images of the guys’ bloody deaths.

  I breathed in and out again, trying to calm myself down. The last thing I wanted to do was something stupid that would end up with another member of the team injured…or even dead.

  I’d never forgive myself.

  I could be reckless when my missions were on my own.

  “Always watch your back,” Colin reminded me as we crawled through one of the giant openings that led inside.

  The inside air smelled rancid. Like meat had been left out to spoil.

  Or a vamp’s dinner.

  I was kind of proud of myself, as months of desensitization and training had obviously worked. The smell was so bad that in my former life, I would have thrown up. Now I could have eaten a sandwich while wading through it.

  A beacon on our belts vibrated, signaling it was time to move in. Colin grabbed a stake from the harness strapped across his chest and crouched down, looking around the room with his night vision goggles.

  Unlike normal night vision goggles, these worked to sense cooler than normal objects. A wave of nerves prickled at my neck as I looked through my own pair of goggles and noted just how many vamps were in this building. There had to be at least fifty.

  Whoever had changed all of them had been busy…and really bad at their job, since all of them had turned out feral.

  Colin tapped out the countdown for our attack on my knee. “Three, two, one,” he tapped before jumping off the second story balcony into a tuck and roll, then he popped up and began throwing stakes at the unsuspecting vamps.

  I jumped off too, wincing as I hit the ground and rolled, since my tuck and roll was not near the level of expertise of Colin’s. A blur came at me from the right, and I was knocked to my back, with one of the vampires leaping on top of him. Unfortunately for him…and fortunately for me, I’d been holding my stake straight up from my chest when he’d knocked me down, and he landed directly on my stake with a loud squelch. He exploded into ash, covering my body with
the fine, grey powder.

  I shook as adrenaline powered through me.

  “You all right?” Colin called out as he battled two snarling vampires at once. There was no need to be quiet anymore. We’d moved in from all sides, and members of the team were battling vampires all over the room.

  “I’m good,” I called out as I bounced up and picked up my stake, just in time for another vampire to attack me from the back. I bent over at the last second and then flipped the vampire over my back and down on the ground in front of me, before hurtling my stake right into his heart. He exploded in another cloud of ash, and I sneezed as some of the ash went up my nose.

  How was everyone else staying so clean? I was sure I looked like a grey blob at this point, since I was completely covered in ash from just those two kills. I was sure the trainers were at least quadruple that many already.

  There wasn’t time to brush myself off because the vampires were swarming. There was no time to think. Now I understood why we repeated the same moves over and over until they became instinct. You couldn’t afford to waste time thinking in a situation like this.

  I punched and kicked my way through the crowd, spinning and jumping when needed. Clouds of ash exploded around me. I’d just taken out three in a matter of seconds when I was suddenly grabbed from behind by a strong pair of hands.

  Cursing myself for momentarily letting my guard down, I swung my elbow backwards at the same time as I threw my head back, breaking the nose of whatever vampire had me in his hold.

  A loud screech sounded as the vampire loosened his hold on me for half a second. It was just what I needed to pull away.

  But it was just a second too late.

  Belatedly, I realized that I was now surrounded, at least eight vampires circling me hungrily. All of the other members of the team were busy with their own vamps.

  This was a little above my training so far. I tried to withhold the shivers that were threatening as I stared at their fathomless black eyes. Were their eyes the last thing that my loves had seen as well? Did they have time to be scared, or did it happen fast so that their end was there before they knew it?

  Here goes nothing, I thought to myself as I leaped at the vampire directly in front of me, the one who’d dragged me into this situation in the first place.

  I never made it to the vampire in front of me before the others started to attack. A chunk of flesh was torn from my arm, and I groaned as another chunk was torn from my leg.

  This wasn’t going well.

  I was bleeding out, but I continued to fight, managing to impale a redheaded vampire with equally vibrant red eyes right in the heart, showering us all with ash.

  As my blood continued to pour out, I began to get weaker. My vision dimmed until it felt like I was staring down the length of a tunnel, only able to see directly in front of me. And even what I could see felt too far away for me to be effective. I was still swinging my stake, but it was like my arms had been dipped into concrete.

  What a pitiful slayer I was. I was going to die on my first mission, and everything I’d worked for the last few months would be for naught.

  I would never get revenge.

  As what I could see got even smaller and I felt my body start to shut down, signaling the end was near, a savage growl filled the air.

  A figure moving so fast, I couldn’t make out any of its features clearly, began to dance around me, weaving in and out of the bodies that were attacking me.

  A poof of dust blew over my face as one of the vampires who had been eating my shoulder burst into ash. The relief to my shoulder was immense, and I let out a loud sob of shock.

  Another cloud of dust showered over me as the vampire right in front of me was destroyed.

  One by one, the figure danced in and out, artfully deflecting blows from the feral vampires who’d momentarily abandoned their attack on me in order to ward off the attacks from my mysterious savior.

  Was this one of the trainer’s special gifts, the ability to move so fast you were practically invisible? Surely Vaughn would have mentioned such a thing.

  My body gave up the fight just then, and the last thing I comprehended was the brush of lips against mine and the whispered promise of, “We’ll always follow you into the dark.”

  6

  I blearily opened my eyes. It took me a second to recognize that I was in E.V.I.E.’s infirmary. I moved my arm and winced when I felt the sharp prick of the IV in my arm as I almost pulled it out.

  Everything came back in a rush. Panicking, I started to pat myself down, expecting huge pieces of my body to be missing from the bites I vividly remembered the feral vampires taking. Who had saved me? Where was the rest of my team? Had we been successful?

  The questions poured into my mind, compounding my already bad headache.

  I froze when my hands encountered nothing but smooth skin. There weren’t even stitches. It was like nothing had ever happened.

  Did I get injured during training and the whole mission had been nothing but a dream? I couldn’t come up with a plausible explanation for my lack of injuries. In fact, my skin felt smoother than it had ever been. My freckles were even gone.

  What the hell?

  A knock sounded outside the door, and I looked up to see Vaughn standing there, staring at me inscrutably.

  “Hey there, princess. How are you feeling?”

  “Good, besides a headache,” I told him honestly. “I’m just a little confused how that’s possible.”

  He stared at me again, searching my face as if he thought I was hiding something from him and the truth would be written over my features.

  “Hmm, we are a bit too.”

  “How’s the rest of the team? Is everyone okay?” I blurted out, noting the bright red scar on Vaughn’s eyebrow.

  “A little banged and bruised, but everyone made it out relatively unscathed, considering the conditions. That didn’t end up being the mission that I thought I was sending you to. We had no idea there were that many ferals hiding out there when the decision was made to send you. I should have called off the whole mission before we went in. I guess I lost my mind a bit. I went to Jude and told him about it.”

  Jude was the mysterious head honcho who ran E.V.I.E. My interaction with him had been seeing the back of his head, an albeit gorgeous head. Everything I knew about him was from rumors.

  “It wasn’t your fault. I was doing good for a second there, until it turned into ten against one.”

  He grinned at that. “I saw some of your kills. Pretty good stuff. You left your back open though with that second one.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Noted.” I sobered up. “So…” I began. “The last thing I remembered was that I was bleeding out…and then something saved me.”

  He eyed me again. “Someone did save you.”

  “Did you see who?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve never seen something move that quick. It was like a blur. I only saw a glimpse of black hair when whoever it was dragged you outside.”

  “They dragged me outside?” I gasped. “But…how did I end up back here?”

  “You were dropped off in the front entryway of the building, no cameras picking up anything. We took a blood sample from you. And the results showed you have an inordinate amount of vampire venom in your system. It would explain how you healed so fast from what should have been life-ending wounds.”

  “Vampire venom?” I repeated the words blankly, not knowing what to think. “But why would a vampire save me?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know. Anything you haven’t told us, Olivia?” he asked me seriously, crossing his arms in front of himself.

  I shook my head quickly. “I can’t think of anything. I didn’t even know vampires existed before James almost got me eaten.”

  “Hmm, E.V.I.E. will probably have a closer eye on you for a bit while we try and figure out what happened. But whoever the vampire was, I’m damn grateful that he saved your life.”

  “I’m not going
to all of a sudden sprout fangs am I?” I asked, thinking about my Vampire 101 class and how you created a vampire. I’d lost a lot of blood, but as far as I knew, I hadn’t been drained, and that was a requirement. Who knew what feral vampire venom could do to you though? We hadn’t discussed if that did something different or not.

  He laughed. “You don’t have a stake in your chest, do you?” He winked and then left the room, leaving me with my mouth gaping open at his cheek.

  Vaughn hadn’t been kidding when he said that E.V.I.E. would probably have a closer eye on me after what had happened. It felt like they had several eyes on me…constantly.

  The trainers gave me wary stares when they thought I wasn’t looking, and rumors about my miraculous recovery spread like wildfire, until I couldn’t step into a room without hearing whispers of my name.

  What had happened was definitely not the most interesting thing that had ever happened at this place. I mean, they trained slayers for fuck’s sake. There were constantly crazy, beyond belief, mysterious things happening. But the rumor mill seemed to be focused on me for the time being. I wanted to point out that there was literally a trainer here who supposedly kept her vampire lover in her basement.

  But I refrained because I’m a saint apparently.

  I did however get the opportunity to go on several more missions. I guessed before I’d been ambushed, I’d shown the trainers I was doing increasingly well with my training.

  None of the missions I was sent on compared to that first one though. There was also no sign of my mysterious savior at any of them either.

  At night when I wasn’t thinking about the guys and remembering our years together, I thought about who had saved me. It was a way to pass the time, since I never slept well anymore. I came up with stories and backgrounds for the vampire who had saved me.

  I did that often enough…and an idea began to form in my head. An idea that I was trying not to hold onto because it was so fantastically unbelievable.