Love & War Book 1 in The Arcadia Falls Chronicles

by Jennifer Malone Wright

  ~~~***~~~

  It was clear and cold out. The night sky was bright with stars and a huge almost-full moon. For me, there was no such thing as a perfect night any more. The darkness brought vampires, and as long as they were around, the night would be my enemy, too.

  Alice sat in the front next to Christina, while I sat in the back in between Oscar and Drew. The city was always crowded, day or night, so the traffic was thick. It seemed to take forever, but we finally arrived downtown. We found a place to park about a block from the club. I guess that wasn’t too bad, considering the busy street. There was no line outside the club like I'd on television. The club was just a hole in the wall.

  "Christina, are you sure we can go in there?"

  She led the way, about five steps in front of us.

  She sighed. "Yes, Chloe, I’m sure. Why would I have brought you here if you couldn’t go in?"

  I frowned. "It’s just that it looks, well… trashy and adult."

  "It is trashy. We aren’t exactly in the most upscale part of town. There is a guy just inside the door who will check your ID, so get it out so he doesn’t see your gun. He will stamp your hand so it says you’re underage so the bartender won’t serve you booze."

  The deep bass of the techno music met us long before we arrived at the entrance. I opened my purse and took out my ID before we got to the door. It was a little creepy. The door didn’t even have a sign on it telling us the name of the club. I wondered what people called the place if it didn’t have a name.

  With my ID in one hand, I took Drew’s hand in my other and took a deep breath when he pulled open the heavy door to let us in. The air was heavy with the salty scent of sweat. A gargantuan man with his head shaved bald stood just inside the door. He wore a black tee shirt that stated he was security.

  "Hey, Mike." Christina waved.

  "Christina!" Mike lifted his massive arm and gave her a side hug. "Where’ve you been, girl?"

  She returned his hug.

  "Just been busy." She gestured to us. "I brought my friends this time."

  I could not believe she actually hung out here. I glanced at Drew and raised my eyebrows in question. He just shrugged in response. I guess he didn’t know anything about it either.

  "Okay, crew, I’m going to need to see your IDs." Mike held out his hand, and without asking for her ID, he stamped the back of Christina’s hand. It was a fluorescent pink stamp with large black letters that said ‘Minor’.

  I lifted my arm, ID in hand and let Mike look at it and give me a stamp, too. Alcie and Oscar were old enough to drink legally, so they didn't get a stamp.

  "There you go. You’re all set," Mike told us.

  "Thanks, Mike. This way, you guys."

  We moved on, into the belly of the club. I’d never been any place like it before. It was both fascinating and frightening at the same time. The place was mostly dark, except for flashing colored lights and some dim hanging lamps above the bar and the tables.

  Somehow, we managed to squeeze through the hot sweaty bodies and follow Christina to the far wall, where there were several sets of couches and coffee tables. Anxious to get away from the crowd, I lunged for the couch and sat on the black velvety cushions. Everyone else, except for Drew, followed. We crammed ourselves into the small area. Drew preferred to stand where he could see everything going on.

  "So what now?" I yelled over the music at Christina.

  She leaned over the coffee table from her spot on the couch across from me.

  "Just keep your eyes peeled for anything that looks suspicious," she yelled.

  Great, guess I better get out my big magnifying glass and search for clues.

  "I’m going to get something to drink," I hollered at Drew. He held his hand out, indicating he would go with me.

  After another round of pushing and shoving through the crowd, we finally made it to the bar.

  "What’ll it be?" the bartender asked after he finally made his way over to us.

  "Two sodas," Drew told him, reaching for his wallet.

  "Make that four."

  Oscar appeared behind us, holding up a twenty dollar bill.

  The bartender nodded and quickly poured the fizzy beverages.

  "Here you are," he hollered.

  "Thanks!" I yelled back, trying to make sure he heard me.

  I reached for the drinks, which happened to be in classy plastic cups, and turned to face the crowd.

  "So what are we looking for, exactly?" I asked, handing Drew his drink.

  He shrugged. "Hard to say."

  He plucked the straw out of his drink and flipped it onto the bar. "Just keep your eyes peeled for suspicious behavior." He wiggled his eyebrows. "You know, someone who acts the way a vigilante vampire hunter might act."

  "This is so weird." I sighed, leaning back against the bar.

  Oscar leaned back next to me. "Christina sure is vague about her tip."

  I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, tell me about it."

  Drew shook his head. "Christina might not tell us everything, but she is usually right. She has friends all over the place."

  Oscar swished his soda with the straw, but then he opted to toss it on the bar like Drew had. "How? Don’t you guys usually stick to yourselves? I mean, to your own community?"

  Alice approached while Drew rolled his eyes. "Oscar, we can go outside the community when we aren’t on a mission. We aren’t locked in."

  "I know that," Oscar fired back with slanted eyes. "I just mean, most of you don’t want to go out into the city."

  He handed Alice her soda.

  Drew shook his head. "No, we don’t, but that doesn’t mean we don’t know anyone else. As for Christina, she is one who actually likes to frequent the cities. We shouldn’t complain. Her contacts have helped us with a lot of missions."

  Man, he was always defending her. I guess that’s was just how it was for the folks in Arcadia Falls who have known each other their entire lives. Still, it bugged me, mostly because I knew Christina and Drew had dated. But, hey, what could I do?

  Oscar decided to let the topic of Christina drop and stayed silent.

  "Come on, you guys," Alice beckoned with a wave of her hand. "Let’s go sit down."

  We squeezed through the crowd and tried not to spill our drinks. Suddenly, I felt the back of my neck tingle. It’s hard to explain, but it wasn’t the normal vampire tingle, although it was similar. I stopped in the crowd and looked around. All I could see were bouncing bodies and flashing lights. I looked to Drew for confirmation of the vampire tingle, but he didn’t appear to notice.

  "Wait!" I grabbed the back of Drew’s shirt and stopped. "Something isn’t right."

  "What is it?" he scanned the crowd to look for evidence of my claim.

  I shook my head. "I don’t know. I just feel something—" My voice dwindled off mid-word when my gaze settled on a guy with dark hair and a leather jacket. He danced with a drink held high in his hand, and there were hot slutty-looking girls pretty much rubbing themselves all over him.

  "Ugh."

  "What?" Oscar had been checking out the crowd, too.

  Again, I shook my head.

  "I don’t know." I didn’t know what the heck the tingle meant, but for some reason, I just knew he was the guy we were looking for.

  I pointed at him. "That guy, we need to keep an eye on him."

  "Screw that, I’m going to talk to him." Christina had pretty much materialized beside me. "He’s hot anyway, so what’s it going hurt either way?"

  She smiled and flipped her hair before she pushed back into the crowd of dancing bodies.

  Oscar quickly followed with Alice’s hand grasped firmly in his.

  "I’m not going to miss this," he declared. They disappeared into the crowd.

  Drew shrugged and followed Oscar. I had no choice but to grab onto Drew so I didn’t lose them. I let him pull me along while we wrangled our way to where Christina was about to interrogate the dark-hai
red stranger.

  Finally, Christina came into view. She had managed to acquire a spot beside him. She danced close to him, and in true Christina style, she was completely inappropriate. She reached out and grabbed the front of his shirt in her fist and yanked him toward her.

  Now that I was able to get a better look at him, I could tell already he was a typical bad boy. Dark brown eyes twinkled with sarcasm, and his black hair was cut into a trendy sort of spiked-up style. His leather jacket was open to reveal the white tee shirt Christina still held in her fist.

  I watched closely while his hand, the hand that wasn’t holding his drink, slithered down to Christina's hip. He grinned down at her.

  Discreetly, Christina grasped his hand before it reached her thigh, where her knives were strapped. She lifted his hand up and placed it on her shoulder. She smiled up at him in return.

  Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, I wished I could be as confident around guys as she was.

  Drew circled behind me, bringing his arms around my waist. I sucked in my breath. Even though Drew and I had been together for a while, I still felt butterflies in my stomach when he touched me like that.

  "Why don’t we dance?" he whispered. I could feel his breath on my neck.

  "Seriously?" I was shocked he would suggest such a thing. Drew wasn’t really the dancing kind of guy.

  I had gone to a dance with Drew once shortly after we'd first started to date, and we had mostly stood around and drank punch all night. I hated to admit, and I never would to him, that I had had a better time when I had gone with Gavin to the New Year's Bash the year before. Gavin and I had only been at the dance for a short time, but it had been wonderful. I could still see the glitter and sparkly stuff that looked like it had exploded in the gym.

  Dammit! I can’t think about Gavin while dancing with Drew, I reminded myself.

  "Yeah, seriously." Drew moved with the music behind me and then circled around so he stood in front of me. He leaned in close until his lips touched my ear. "We need to look busy, instead of just staring at them."

  I nodded and bounced to the beat along with Drew and the rest of the crowd.

  Oscar and Alice appeared to be doing the same thing. I watched Alice, her shiny shirt flashing in the lights like a disco ball, smiling up at Oscar. I was never happier that we had gotten her away from Trevor.

  I tried to ignore that I was totally having a blast dancing with Drew and to focus on the mission. We needed to find out more about that guy. If there were one thing I had learned as a hunter, it was not to ignore gut feelings.

  Suddenly, the dark-haired stranger shuffled his gaze away from Christina and reached into his pocket to extract a cell phone. I looked at Drew and raised my eyebrows. Christina continued to dance while he appeared to check his phone, and then he bent to whisper something in her ear. She said something back to him while he guzzled the rest of his drink. He smiled and turned to leave.

  "We have to follow him." Drew grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze. "C’mon."

  I took his hand but glanced back at Oscar and Alice, tilting my head to signal the plan. Christina had already begun to follow in the direction he had headed, so we took off after her. He went to a parking garage, which was in the opposite direction from where our car was parked.

  "Crap!" Drew muttered.

  "I’ll go," Oscar offered, leaving Alice with us and running off in the other direction. "I’ll be right out here with the car."

  Christina was quite a distance ahead of us. She followed him into the garage while we waited on the street for her to return. After a few agonizing minutes of waiting, she came running out of the garage at almost the exact moment Oscar pulled the car up onto the curb beside us.

  "Big truck!" she called out, headed for her car. The rest of us hurried over and piled in, just when a huge black truck slowly exited the garage. She jumped into the front seat and slapped the dashboard, excitement clear in her eyes. "Let’s go!"

  Oscar peeled away from the curb into the traffic behind the truck. Our newfound stranger didn’t appear to be in too much of a hurry. He rolled slowly through, keeping pace with the rest of the city traffic. Alice leaned forward, trying to get a better view.

  "I wonder where he's headed?"

  "We’re going to find out," Drew mumbled, never taking his eyes off the truck.

  I reached over and felt for his hand, wanting to feel him close to me. My blond vampire hunter responded by giving my hand a squeeze of reassurance.

  After about ten minutes, we rolled into a community of older-looking houses. Most would describe them as Victorian. Almost every single one of the houses had a pointed rooftop and a really nice covered porch.

  "Where are we?" I looked to Drew, but it was Christina who answered.

  "This is the college community." She gestured toward the houses. "Almost all of these homes are occupied by college kids."

  Drew nodded. "That makes most of them party houses. The perfect place for a vampire to find himself a little snack," he finished.

  "Oh."

  Oscar followed as closely as he could without being seen, but the traffic had dissipated considerably. I could tell that every moment that passed, we were more at risk of being spotted following the truck.

  The truck continued to roll aimlessly down the shiny streets that were wet from the snow.

  "What is he doing?" I wondered aloud.

  Christina, impatiently tapping her foot on the floorboard of the front seat, said, "I think he’s waiting."

  I leaned forward, trying to get a better view of the truck. "For what?"

  "For something to happen," she responded.

  It seemed like we drove around the neighborhood in pursuit of our stranger forever. I took the opportunity to gaze around the neighborhood. Some sections of the housing areas were far busier than others. Lights lit up almost every window of most houses, and music could be heard emanating from the majority of them. Through the fogged up windows, I could see cars full of people either coming or going. One yard even had a rather large looking fire going in a pit dug right in the snow-covered front yard. Guys and girls stood close to the flames, talking and holding beer bottles.

  I sighed and realized they had no clue what could be watching them, but we did. That was what we were put on this earth to do: to protect those innocent people.

  "Look!" Alice pointed. "He’s parking."

  Sure enough, the brake lights from the black truck glared at us when he pulled over to the curb next to a snow bank. Quickly, I scanned the area. There wasn’t much there. It looked like there was a small park area across from his truck. There were several buildings that appeared to be empty. One had a large sign explaining it was the library. Other than that, not much was around.

  Drew leaned forward and tried to get a better view.

  "Let’s move past him so that we can park and come back on foot," Drew said.

  Oscar nodded his acknowledgement and drove on.

  We finally found a place to park about a block up. Oscar parked as quickly as he could.

  "Come on." Drew grabbed my hand and practically yanked me out of the car. "Let’s move."

  We stayed off the sidewalks until we got a little closer and then stealthily maneuvered off into the trees that lined our side of the street. Finally, we found a spot to hunker down where we could see the truck and a wide view of the surrounding area.

  "I think the school is that way," Christina whispered, nodding to indicate the direction.

  No one said anything, maintaining silence and watching.

  Damn, it was cold! I wished I had more clothing on.

  While we waited, I silently hoped the little voyage we'd taken to get there would be worth it, because if we had all come out there for nothing except my ‘little feeling,’ I knew I would get a lot of flak from the others when we got back home.

  "Look." Drew nudged me.

  I followed his gaze and saw a girl who didn’t look much older than I a
m carefully making herway along the sidewalk. She wore jeans and a heavy jacket with a backpack strapped over the top. Her curly blonde hair shone in the lamplight underneath her winter stocking cap. After focusing for a moment, I realized she also wore ear buds. Wonderful, she wouldn’t be able to hear anything coming at her.

  Our stranger didn’t get out of his truck, and we didn’t move either. She was just crossing in front of the library when the vampire tingle happened. For me, it was always a shock to feel it, but the others, aside from Oscar and Alice, were so used to it they didn’t appear to feel it at all. I looked to Drew, but he was desperately searching for the vampire we knew was around somewhere.

  "Is he just going to wait for her to be attacked?" I whispered. I extracted my gun and popped the slide.

  Christina already held her gun in her hand. "That’s what it looks like."

  "He doesn’t have the warning signal we do," Drew said in defense of the strange.

  "I don’t care." I whispered loudly. The girl had stopped and was looking at her music player, probably changing songs. "He shouldn’t wait."

  Then it happened: A male with blond hair and a black jacket appeared, just casually strolling down the street as if he weren’t a vampire about to rip that woman’s throat out.

  "Shhh." I felt Drew gently place his hand on my leg, indicating I should be quiet and hold still.

  "But…"

  "Shhh."

  Dang it. We needed to move. The vampire approached the young lady. Seeming to sense him coming, she lifted her eyes away from her music player. As soon as she spotted him, she immediately took a couple of steps backward and then looked around, probably searching to see if there were someone to witness if she were mugged or raped.

  "I’m going," Christina declared. With that, she was off and running, knowing we would follow.

  "Damn it!" Drew slammed his fist into the snow and took off after her. Oscar, Alice and I were right behind them with our weapons drawn. Christina, had a gun in each hand, both pointed at the vampire. The woman on the sidewalk caught sight of Christina and screamed.

  The vampire also caught sight of her and, within a second, had the woman in his arms, neck tilted to the side so far it seemed dangerously close to snapping. Then he bit her.

  Christina fired her weapon two times, once in the back and once in the head. He spun around to face her, and she nailed him in the chest. The vampire grasped his heart, blood oozing between his fingers as he crumpled to the icy pavement with rays of UV filtering through his disintegrating body.

  Still running, Christina holstered her gun and the woman turned to run, slipping on the icy sidewalk in her haste. Drew was the first to reach her.

  "Stop! It’s all right." He reached out and took hold of her jacket.

  "No!" She screamed at him, eyes wide with fear.

  "We aren’t going to hurt you."

  "Leave me alone." She whimpered. "Let me go."

  Drew encircled his arms around her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides to prevent her from attacking him. "Let me go." Her last words were a whisper and her body fell limp in Drew’s arms.

  Blood spilled from the wound on her neck, drenching her jacket as well as Drew’s.

  "Let me talk to her," Oscar offered. "She will listen to me."

  He had taken off his button-up shirt and held it to the woman’s neck while Drew handed her over.

  "I’ve got this guy." Christina, pulled one of her knives from her boot. Before she could drive it through what remained of the body of the dead vampire, through his heart, a loud roar echoed through the air as the stranger’s truck roared to life. We had completely forgotten about him in the rush to save the vampire’s victim.

  "Shit!" Drew began to run after him, and I followed. It suddenly occurred to me that I might be the only one who would be able to catch him as he pulled away from the curb. I dug in, channeling all my power into my run. I got close enough I thought I could probably make the jump and launched myself into the air, tucking my feet and hoping to make it because it was sure going to hurt if I didn’t.

  I stuck it.

  I landed in a crouch in the bed of the truck. He swerved and tried to knock me over, but I crawled quickly to the back window, hoping it was unlocked, because I sure as hell didn’t want to climb over the side and try to get in the door.

  I wedged my fingers into the crack and pulled. Yes! It was open. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw me trying to slip through the tiny window. Then, suddenly, my face was wet and scalding. "Ow! Son of a bi—"

  "Get out!" he yelled at me. "What do you want?"

  That bastard had thrown his coffee in my face. I fell down inside, plopping into the back seat head first. I felt the truck swerve back and forth while he tried to keep an eye on me in the back. After I quickly righted myself, I lunged for his neck and wrapped my arm around him in a head lock.

  "Pull over," I growled.

  "Who are you?" he managed to ask again.

  "It doesn’t matter who I am. Pull over!"

  I squeezed my arm even more tightly around his neck until he did as I asked. Safely off to the side of the street, I felt relief wash over me. At least we weren’t going to die in a car accident.

  "Now, who are you?" I asked, not even close to letting him go.

  Drew arrived at the driver’s side door and flung it open, his gun held out in front of him.

  He demanded what I had been asking the guy already. "We know it was no accident you were waiting there. Now tell us," Drew pushed his gun up against the dude’s thigh. At least he didn’t have it pointed at his head or anything.

  "My name is Zander. Now let go of my neck!" He yanked himself forward just as I let him go and so he bashed his head on the wheel. "Wonderful, just wonderful," he muttered, rubbing his forehead.

  Drew dug the barrel of his gun into Zander’s thigh even more. "It was no accident that you were here. Explain."

  I kept my hands behind his head, ready to fry him if he so much as made a move at Drew.

  "I don’t have to explain jack to you. Now get the hell away from me."

  Drew smiled slyly. "Actually you do have to explain yourself. Are you the man from the newspapers, the one saving women from animals?"

  "Like I said, man, leave me alone. From what I saw out there with that woman, you know as well as I do what kind of animals those are."

  After catching my eye and seeing my nod, Drew raised his gun up and away from Zander in a sort of conciliatory move.

  "Can we just talk, man? We have to get back there and take care of that girl."

  Zander shook his head and looked from Drew to the street. "I don’t know about that. I should probably just go."

  "Don’t you want to help that girl? Isn’t that what you’ve been doing is saving people?" Drew raised his eyebrows. "Well, now we have to go save her and figure out what the hell we are going to tell her about what just happened."

  I think Zander finally realized he wasn’t going to get out of this one. "Fine. Get in, and let’s go check it out." He gestured to the passenger seat.

  Drew hurried around and hopped up into the truck while I stayed in the back.

  He turned the truck around and headed back toward the others.

  "So who are you guys?" he finally asked. "I saw what you did, and I know this isn’t something that surprised you."

  I watched Drew contemplate his answer before he responded. He flexed his hand on the grip of his gun. "We are vampire hunters."

  Zander nodded. "I figured."

  "We can talk more about this later," Drew said when we approached the scene.

  Oscar, Alice and Christina had pulled the woman into the shadows to reduce the risk of being seen. I looked around and saw that even though from a distance nothing appeared to be happening, splatters of blood remained on the sidewalk as evidence of the incident.

  I spotted Oscar sitting on the icy-cold pavement in an alley with the woman pulled tightly up
against him. He gently rocked her back and forth, in a comforting motion. Alice and Christina stood beside him, waiting for us.

  "What happened to the vampire?" Drew asked when we approached. He still carried his gun in his hand, probably refusing to holster it until he knew Zander was safe.

  Christina eyed Zander cautiously before she responded. She twirled her gigantic knife like it was a baton. "No worries. He's gone."

  Oscar propped the woman up against the wall. "We have to call an ambulance. She is losing too much blood."

  I knelt down and looked into the young woman’s eyes, which were still wide with fear. She appeared to be conscious but unspeaking. A sharp pang of guilt hit me in the gut. It was our fault she was suffering. If we had only gotten to him sooner, she would be fine. "Oscar, can you help her? Is that possible?

  He nodded. "Yes. I can make her think something else happened to her. Then she won’t remember anything, but I have to wait until just before we leave her so that she has absolutely no memory of us after I speak to her."

  Zander approached the woman with every single one of our skeptical eyes on him. "We should use her phone." He dug through her jacket pockets until he found a phone in one of the inside pockets. "That way our phones can’t be tracked."

  We all knew he was right, so we let him call 911 and explain about a woman with some kind of bite. He gave the address of where we were, clicked off the phone and replaced it in her jacket.

  Christina gave her knife one last twirl then sheathed it. "It’s time to go."

  Oscar turned and knelt before the woman.

  "Look at me," he demanded softly and lifted her chin.

  I could see her trying hard to focus on him.

  I had asked about his ability before, and he had explained that it wasn’t about making eye contact, like compulsion; it was about the actual sound of his voice, but making eye contact helped a person listen better.

  "You will remember nothing of anyone you have seen tonight. A large animal attacked you as you walked back home from studying late at school. You fought it and then it ran away."

  She blinked her eyes as her only response.

  "You aren’t afraid any more. Help is coming. Do you understand?" he asked.

  She nodded and managed to whisper, "Yes, I understand."

  Oscar stood. "All right, it’s done. Let’s get out of here."

  Zander looked to Drew. "Get in my truck. I’ll take you guys to your car."

  Drew nodded. We all piled into the bed of his truck, except for Drew, who sat in the passenger seat so he could watch and show him where the car was, I assumed.

  At the car, Drew stayed in the truck and told us to meet them at café on Pine Street. As soon as we had unloaded out of the back of the truck, they sped off into the night. Moving as fast as we could, we hurried into the car and took off after them.

  "Go as quick as you can, Christina. I don’t want Drew alone with him any longer than he has to be."

  I could see her roll her eyes even from my position in the backseat.

  Alice sat in the back with me.

  "Are you okay?" I asked her.

  She sighed and leaned back against the seat of the car. "It’s so strange. All that time I’ve spent around vampires, and this was probably the most intense thing to ever happen to me, aside from what happened with you at Trevor’s," she added.

  I lay back on the seat, too. I was just glad that the hardest part of the night was over.

  We pulled into the lot of the café and parked beside Zander’s truck.

  "I am so hungry!" I stretched after slipping out of the car and then slammed the door shut. "Let’s get some food!"

  We found Drew and Zander looking at menus in a huge booth way in the back of the café. There weren’t many people taking up space, because it was so late after dinnertime. I scooted into the booth next to Drew while Zander got up and let Alice, Oscar and Christina into the booth.

  "Hey," Christina said, and smiled at him when he sat next to her.

  Oh, my god! The girl couldn’t stop flirting if her life depended on it.

  We all ordered coffee except for Christina and Drew who preferred to have juice. I proceeded to order a rare burger with everything, fries, and a chocolate shake. After everyone had ordered, it was time to get down to business.

  "So," Christina sipped her juice and smiled sweetly, "just who are you, exactly?"

  Zander shrugged off his leather jacket and set it aside. "I am here, in this town, because I’m searching for my father. I’ve been killing vampires and saving people since I was about fifteen."

  "How old are you now?" Christina swirled her straw.

  "Twenty-two."

  "Hmmm."

  I shook my head, trying to ignore Christina. "Why are you looking for your father?"

  "Oh, no." He wagged his finger a bit. "It’s question for question, and that makes it my turn to ask you. Who are you guys?" He turned to look Christina in the eye. "He already told me you are vampire hunters, so tell me about your group."

  For a moment, there was an awkward silence while we deliberated what exactly we should tell him. He already knew we killed vampires, but it was a whole other story to put the community at risk. Drew seemed to be the senior hunter at the table, so we pretty much left it to him to explain.

  "There are more of us, a lot more. The vampire hunter is a race of beings. We are human, yet born from the blood of angels and demigods. Killing vampires is in our blood, not something we have chosen to do."

  Zander, despite all his bad-boy cool mannerisms, appeared shocked. "Angels and demigods?"

  We all nodded. I looked to Alice and shook my head gently. He knew about us, but there was no reason he needed to know anything about her or Oscar. Drew pointed at him. "Now you. Why are you searching for your father?"

  He shrugged. "It’s a long story. Basically, I have never known him. My mother never wanted to talk about him, because he ditched us before I was born."

  Alice’s eyes misted a little bit. "I’m sorry," she whispered. She was always the motherly one. "Maybe, we could help you find him. Do you know his name?"

  Zander removed a note from his pocket.

  "My mother passed away last year. She left this in a journal that she kept." He unfolded the aged paper. "It is a letter to me, describing my father and where she had last seen him. His name is Trevor Krasimir."

  I felt a wave of nausea wash over me, and my vision clouded with dizziness. I heard the collective gasps at the table. Zander examined our reactions. "Do you know him?"

  I forced the sick feeling and the dizzy spell away and slammed my fist on the table.

  "Is this some kind of sick joke?" I demanded in a low whisper, feeling Drew’s hand on my thigh.

  For the first time since we’d met Zander, the bad-boy hardness erased from his expression, and he appeared genuinely confused.

  "What?" He examined each of our faces. "What is it? I wouldn’t joke about something like this?" He waved the letter.

  Even Christina looked disgusted at the inappropriate mention of Trevor’s name.

  Drew leaned over the table and whispered to Zander. "If you are one of Trevor’s minions he left behind, and they sent you here to mess with us, I will hurt you. Do you understand that?"

  Zander held up his hands in surrender. "Look, man, I just came here looking for him. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I can tell that you know who he is. So now you can start talking. I need to know."

  Drew glanced at me to see if I wanted to tell him. I nodded. If he was truly Trevor’s son, that meant I had some kind of weird-ass long-lost brother. God, did he even know Trevor was a vampire? I cleared my throat and took a sip of my coffee to clear the way for the words. "Trevor is dead."

  Zander had not expected to hear that. His expectant eyes lowered with dismay at the news.

  "I’m sorry, Zander, but he has been gone for several months." I did not know how to appropriately tell him t
he next part, so I just blurted it out. "He was my father, too."

  Once again, his eyes changed. Only this time from dismay back to excited. "Your father?"

  We stared at each other, examining everything. His hair was dark, like mine. His eyes were dark, like mine. We did look alike, that was for sure, and I got my dark features from both sides of my heritage.

  "You’re my sister?" he questioned, still unable to take his eyes off of me. I nodded gently, still not really believing it myself. This could be some wonky plan that Dahlia set up… or Vanessa.

  "That’s so crazy." He looked like he maybe wanted to reach out and touch me.

  "Um…" I coughed again. It felt like I had something in my throat. "You… you do know that Trevor was a vampire, right?"

  He nodded. "Yes, yes. I never knew though until I found this letter." He tapped it with his index finger. "She told me everything in here. Thank god, I knew about vampires already or it would have been even harder to digest. Finding out I'm half-vampire actually made my life make more sense than it ever had."

  Wow, lucky for him. It basically had made my life a living hell when I found out.

  Christina had been listening intently. "Why? Why did it make more sense than before and how did you know even know about vampires?"

  He leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table and lacing his fingers together.

  "When I was fourteen, my friends and I sneaked out into the city to wander around and try to be what we thought was cool. I had told my mother I was staying at one of the guys. They told their parents the same thing. We rode the bus in and walked up and down the streets, smoking cigarettes and messing around.

  "When we passed one of the alleys, I felt this incredibly strong urge to turn into the darkness and see what was down there. I slowed, peering into the alley to see what would make me want to go in there so badly. I saw nothing, but just as I was turning away, I heard a whimper. My friends had already gone ahead of me, so I figured I’d just go in and take a quick look.

  "That was probably the worst decision I’ve ever made. The whimper had come from a woman who was being held up against the stone wall of a building by a man. Even though I was only fourteen, I knew I couldn't walk away.

  We nodded, almost all of us, in unison, because we each probably understood that draw to do something where vampires were concerned. It was the hunter gene in us.

  Zander continued. "I shouted ‘Hey!’ to let this guy know someone was watching him. He turned his head my way, and his red glowing eyes bore into me. He lifted his lips to show his fangs and sort of… I don’t know… hissed at me."

  Zander unfolded his hands and leaned back against the booth again.

  "That was the first time I’d ever seen a vampire. I didn’t know or believe in stuff like witches or vampires, but that day, I left the woman to the vampire and ran out of the alley. My friends had all realized I was gone and turned around to come back and look for me. They were nearby when I came barreling out of the alley, freaked out and yelling gibberish about demons.

  "After that day, I took to the books. I read everything I could about demons, vampires, witches… anything I could find. When I was almost sixteen and began realizing I had a few special abilities, I made a vow that, in honor of the one woman I had left to die, I would do everything in my power to stop as many vampire deaths as I could."

  Christina tilted her head to the side. "And how did this help you when you found out about your father?"

  "I had felt like I was basically some kind of freak. I was stronger than all the other kids in school. This might sound like a good thing, but it was not when you don’t want a damn thing to do with high school football. I like to eat meat that is almost raw. People see this and practically run."

  I found myself nodding in agreement over the part about the raw meat. The bloodier the better, I always said.

  "I heal fast. I see at night just as well as I do in the day light. I can run—"

  "…and jump faster and higher than most humans," I finished for him.

  He sighed loudly, as if glad someone understood. "Yes, exactly."

  The awkward silence engulfed us again. I glanced at Alice and saw she was staring at Zander with a renewed interest, like she was looking for traces of Trevor in him. I pointed to Alice.

  "If you want to know more about him, Alice can probably tell you more than any of us. I only knew him for about a year. Alice lived with him for a long time."

  Alice appeared shocked I would out her like that. We didn’t talk about Trevor any more. All of us were trying to put him behind us. But Zander met her eyes and muttered a thank you to her.

  Oscar, who had been pretty quiet most of the conversation, finally spoke up. "Would you mind if we read your letter?"

  To Zander’s credit, he didn’t look surprised or reluctant.

  "Sure," he said.

  He held out the folded piece of paper. Hesitantly, I took it from him and unfolded it carefully so it wouldn’t tear. This was something sentimental from his mother. I had so little left from my mom, I knew how that must feel, and I wanted to be careful with it.

  My Dearest Zander,

  If you are reading this, then the unthinkable finally happened to me and you have found my journals. I am so very sorry I cannot be there for you as you read this, but I could never bring myself to explain.

  Before you were born, when I was a young girl, something horrible happened to me. I had to close up the café that night, so it was after midnight. I worked nights because my college classes took up most of my day, and I had to pay the bills. Outside, when I was leaving, I was attacked by three men, who took my purse, beat me, and tried to do more… I can’t bring myself to describe that to you, but I'm sure you'll understand.

  My voice cracked when as I read the last part. As vampire hunters, sometimes I worry so much about the evil of the supernatural, I forget the sins of man.

  "Go on," Zander said, though he examined his fingernails, unable to look any of us in the eye.

  But I was saved before anything worse could happen.

  I lay there, on the cold cement of the sidewalk with my eyes closed, expecting the worst hoping it would be over soon and I would survive it.

  Instead, I heard a scream and a struggle. Taking a chance, I opened my eyes and saw this other man, all in black, with pale skin. He snapped one attacker's neck with one twist of his hands, and then he turned and slammed the other into the sidewalk, where he either died or lay passed out until we left. The mysterious man in black then snatched up the last attacker and held him to his chest like they were embracing. The attacker begged for release and the dark man told him, "You will have your release; I am releasing you from this world. But the hell you will find after this shall be far worse than the life you have endured and the crimes you have committed."

  Then he yanked him by the hair, tilted his head to the side so far I was sure it would snap, and then he bared his fangs and sank them into the attacker's neck.

  I remember screaming and crawling backward to get away from this monster… this vampire. When the vampire had finished with the attacker, he threw him aside and came to me. I begged him not to hurt me, told him I would do anything.

  He softly told me he wasn't going to hurt me and asked me where my home was. He lifted me gently off the sidewalk and retrieved my purse from the ground with a simple swoop of one hand and carried me home.

  That was my first encounter with a vampire.

  He took me back to my small apartment, placed me on my couch and covered me with a blanket. He moved into the kitchen and came back with a steaming mug of tea, which he offered me.

  Most of this took place in silence, for I did not know what to say. He was this monster, yet he had saved me from those horrible men.

  I stopped reading for a moment to take a sip from the water glass. Trevor, I was beginning to see, had a soft spot for women, which made it hard to see his evil side sometimes. That must have been what my mother
had seen in him too. It was hard for me to see this side of him, but in a way, it made me feel a little better about understanding why my mother had made the decisions she had made.

  "Sorry," I said, setting the glass back on the table. Drew put his arm around me, and I began to read from the letter again, feeling better with his comforting embrace.

  He asked me my name and he told me his. I could see him examine my meager living arrangements with a critical eye. I owed him my life.

  He told me he had to leave.

  I found myself not wanting him to go. I felt protected and safe with him near me. I chose not to voice this, but nodded and whispered a pathetic thank you that could never come close to how much I actually appreciated what he had done.

  Eventually, he came back to see me. Every time I left work to walk home, he was there. I never saw him, but I knew he was out there. One day, I stopped on the empty street and called out to him, by name. I told him I knew he was out there and told him he didn't have to hide from me.

  And then he emerged from the darkness, showing himself to me.

  I asked him why he hid from me and he responded with a simple answer: Because I am dangerous for you.

  I shook my head and told him he was the best thing to ever happen to me, that he need not hide any longer.

  After that, we spent much time together, and I came to love him. You, my son, were created from that union. Trevor never knew about you, because once I found out I was pregnant, I knew life with a vampire father would not be the best for my child.

  I told Trevor I was leaving town, and that as much as I wanted to be with him, I could not. He seemed to understand. I'll be honest, Zander: I had wanted him to fight harder for me, even though it would have made leaving harder.

  So I moved all the way across the country and found a big city to call home. The bigger, the better, the easier to be hidden.

  You, my son, are half-vampire. From all I've read, and perhaps you have read some too, they call you a dhampir. If you haven’t discovered it already, it is why you have the certain special abilities, abilities you've questioned me about, that I know have made you feel different all your life.

  I am so sorry, but at the same time, I am not sorry, because you are my perfect son, my perfect boy, and Trevor, whom I loved, gave you to me.

  For that, I am not sorry one bit.

  Since I am not there to help you, if you would like to find him for yourself, to find out more about who you are, his name is Trevor Krasimir. I have no pictures or other information aside from the address of my old apartment, which is enclosed with this letter.

  I love you, Zander. Please do great things with your life and always keep me in your heart.

  Love always and forever,

  Mom

  I finished the letter and actually had to wipe away tears.

  "I’m sorry about your mother, Zander," I said. "How did your mother die? Did Trevor have anything to do with that?"

  "No," Zander said quietly. "She had a type of cancer."

  Everyone at the table mumbled their apologies and condolences while he reached across reached across the table for his letter. He nodded and mumbled back his thanks.

  Everyone was quiet. It was one of those awkward silences where nothing you say is an appropriate thing to say.

  He was actually the first to speak. "Chloe, I don’t know if you want to, but we have to stay in touch. If we really are family, I have no one else."

  I wrote down my cellphone number on a piece of napkin. "Before I give this to you, I’m going to tell you that I don’t trust you yet, but I believe in giving people chances. You better not be lying to me." I handed him the napkin. "If I do find out you’re in on some kind of trickery, you will find out just how dangerous I really am."

  He shrugged. "Believe me, I have my own trust issues. I don’t normally have these mushy conversations with people. It works both ways. If this is some kind of trick, it will be you who sees how dangerous that I really am."

  He wrote down his own number, and then he gave it to me. I snatched it away from him

  "I really should get going." He stood to put his jacket back on. The bad boy persona had returned quickly. Zander leaned over and gave Christina, who had been surprisingly quiet the entire time, her own napkin with his number on it.

  Then, he simply walked out the door.

  "Oh, my god." I slumped back in my seat. "I did not see that coming at all."