by Jack Knight
I glanced at the clock and saw that it was already eleven thirty-seven. A long string of profanities, a shower, and some hastily thrown on clothes later, and I was dressed, pouring my coffee down my throat as fast as I could without burning my mouth, and then rushing out the door.
It was much too early to be running anywhere, I was much too tired, so I just tried to go a little faster than I normally would have. I glanced at my phone again as I walked up to the church door and was relieved to see that I was only two minutes late.
When I pushed the door open, I almost slammed it right into Asher’s face.
“Shit, sorry,” I apologized quickly as he, followed closely by Magnus and Torn, walked outside.
“No worries,” Asher laughed, “I’m just glad you showed up.”
“Everyone, into the car, please,” Magnus called as he walked over to a big, black, SUV that was parked in front of the church.
“You should get a car,” Asher suggested with a wide grin as I followed him into the backseat. Magnus was driving, and Torn was getting into the passenger seat before I could even catch up mentally.
“Absolutely not,” I said as I buckled myself in. “This is California. Anytime anyone in this state gets behind the wheel of a car, they become deranged sociopaths intent on murdering everyone in a five mile radius.”
Asher just laughed as Magnus pulled the car onto the street.
“It’s true,” Magnus agreed. “I’ve been all over this country, few places see drivers as bad as California. Every one of them is worse than the last.”
The good news was that the car ride wasn’t very long. We drove through San Francisco for maybe ten minutes, probably almost dying at least five times, before we pulled up to a coffee shop and parked next to the sidewalk. Magnus was pretty good at parallel parking for such an old guy.
“And, there are the Hunters we’re trailing today,” Torn said, nodding toward the coffee shop.
How they knew who we were tailing, I had no idea. I scanned the crowd of people sitting outside the shop, and my heart stopped in my chest before thudding into overdrive.
I recognized one of them.
There was a guy, my age, short blonde hair and dark grey eyes, sitting with three guys only a little more muscular than he was.
The guy I recognized was Matt. He was definitely a Hunter. I knew, because he was my partner. If anyone would recognize me despite the change in hair color, it was that guy.
We could not possibly be stalking a Hunter more dangerous. For me, at least.
Chapter 11
“MADDI, HAS ASHER TAUGHT you the spell for reading minds?”
My head snapped around to look at Magnus, who was turning around in his seat to look at me.
“Um, no. I levitated a knife, that’s it,” I answered, trying to focus completely on his face and keep my mind as blank as possible.
“Okay, then you just watch,” Magnus replied with a nod. “There isn’t time to teach it to you now.”
As cool as it was that I would eventually learn how to read minds, I was not thrilled at the idea of being in a car full of people that knew what I was thinking. Especially since we were tailing Matt.
Magnus, Torn, and Asher all pulled out tiny little knives, they didn’t look much bigger than letter openers. Almost as if they had rehearsed it, they all cut the inside of their palms at exactly the same time and then chanted something in Latin.
Focus on something else, don’t think about Matt.
Of course, trying not to think about something made it impossible to think about anything else.
Immediately, I was bombarded with memories of training with Matt. I remembered being a little kid and being introduced to the only other child in our district that was around my age. Then, of course, the Partner Ceremony. I remembered the exact way that Matt smiled as she stared at each other while we received our Hunter’s Mark. It wasn’t something I would ever be able to forget.
Asher nudged me with his elbow. “You didn’t tell me you were married,” he said jokingly.
Shit.
“Shut up,” I snapped angrily as I glared at Asher. His smile disappeared in an instant.
“Whoa, I was just kidding,” he said as he held his hands up in surrender.
“That boy was your partner, wasn’t he?” Magnus asked from the front seat.
It was too late now, there was no point in lying when they had all seen what I was thinking about.
“Yeah, he was,” I grumbled.
I looked back out the window at the Hunters. They were still just sitting around talking. Hunters didn’t do that in public unless they were trying to blend in. What were they doing at a coffee shop?
“So, like a boyfriend?” Asher asked.
There was less than a second before my knife was in my hand and pressed against Asher’s neck. His eyes grew wide and he gave a nervous laugh.
“I think we’re having our first fight as a couple, Maddi,” he joked as he lifted his chin away from my blade.
“Maddi, weapons away,” Magnus said evenly. “We do not want to attract attention.”
It took all of my self control to pull my knife away from Asher’s throat and return it to its sheath. I kept eye contact with Asher the entire time, willing him to say something else when I was already imagining what it would be like to slice his throat open, something he could surely see in my mind.
“Children,” Torn scoffed.
I ignored him, I was more interested in making sure Asher shut his mouth.
“I thought you said you all came from the Hunters,” I asked, narrowing my eyes. I made sure to think about the fact that my hand was still gripping my knife.
“Some of the Reapers are,” Asher explained quickly. “Not me. Just Magnus, Ezra, Torn, and Atasha. I don’t know much about the Hunters. Not more than the average supe.”
“Think of it like police partners,” Magnus explained without taking his eyes off the Hunters that were still just sitting around sipping their coffee. “Two people that do all their work together. The difference is that Hunter partners are Marked together and swear an oath to live and die for each other.”
Asher turned in his seat to look out the window, but I knew he was just fidgeting so he wouldn’t have to keep up eye contact with me as I continued to glare at him.
“So,” Asher asked casually, “you all broke an oath to join the Reapers?”
“More or less,” Magnus agreed.
After that, silence fell. I was allowed to think about how my oath had been broken well before I knew about the Reapers.
Matt still didn’t know why I had run off and abandoned him. He probably had a new partner by now, there was a chance he had forgotten all about me. Probably not, though. I wasn’t that lucky.
If the Hunters ever found me, it would be Matt’s “honor” to kill me himself, to prove that he was still loyal to them. It was one of the old, archaic laws the group had that almost never came up anymore. That was one of the many things they explained to us during the Partner Ceremony.
“Don’t worry, Maddi,” Asher said with a chuckle as he bravely turned to look at me again, “I’ll be your partner now.”
I knew he didn’t understand what he was saying, but hearing that made me extremely uncomfortable. I scrambled, trying to think of some way out of this situation.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said in a voice that held much more anger than necessary for a statement like that.
“You can’t go alone, kid,” Torn replied.
“It is alright,” Magnus said with a sigh. “These Hunters are not thinking anything useful. We should get closer, in case they decide to leave on foot.”
“You go to the bathroom,” Asher told me with an attempt at a friendly smile, “I’ll get you a coffee.”
“Great,” I grunted as I threw the car door open and jumped out before anyone could say anything else to me.
I walked as quickly as I could around the car and toward the coffee shop. When I pa
ssed by the Hunters, I let my hair fall over the side of my face that they were on and walked a little faster so that there would be little chance that they would notice me. Matt might recognize my face, but there was no way he would ever suspect that I had dyed my hair blue.
When I made it into the shop, I tried to let myself relax, but it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. For some reason, I started wondering about how the Hunters and Reapers would interact.
Obviously, Magnus had killed a Hunter, and they wouldn’t be happy with him. My question was: if I stayed with the Reapers, would I have to kill Matt? Would I be capable of that?
Abandoning Matt was hard. Even if I hated the Hunters and I needed to run away from my murderous mother, I still felt bad about not at least leaving him a note. I didn’t know if I had it in me to kill someone I swore to die for.
The noise of the inside of the coffee shop distracted me. There were tables and booths all over the place and soft music playing around the shop. Everything was well lit, because the walls were made entirely of glass, and surprisingly clean for a place that was filled with hipsters.
No joke, at least a quarter of the people were wearing obnoxious glasses and typing away on computers. If I could have bet, I would have said that at least half the people in this place were writing a book or screenplay that would never see the light of day.
I hurried through the shop and to the bathroom across the building from the front door. Once inside, I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t actually need to use the bathroom, but it would’ve been weird if I didn’t at least go in.
After checking to make sure that nobody was in the stalls, I walked over to stand in front of one of the sinks and look into the mirror.
How much had I changed since I left the Hunters? Should I be worried about Matt recognizing me, or would he assume I was just one of the many hipsters in this random coffee shop?
“Mads!”
I closed my eyes and hoped I was just having a horrible nightmare. When I opened them again, one of my simple, blonde friends was standing just inside the bathroom door with her arms open, like she expected me to hug her. I couldn’t remember if this was the one that William had ghouled or not.
“Hey, what’s up?” I asked, doing my best to sound just as fake-happy as she did.
The girl dropped her arms, finally giving up on trying to get me to hug her, and she approached quickly, dropping her voice to a whisper as she spoke again.
“Hey, so, listen. Gaven is missing,” she said, as if this was something I would care about.
“Okay?” I asked, unsure why she was telling me at all. She didn’t even know that I knew her vampire thrall.
She looked around the room and then nodded toward the stalls. It took a second, but I understood what she was trying to ask.
“The stalls are empty,” I sighed, doing my best not to roll my eyes. “We’re alone.”
“Okay, great,” she replied, raising her voice back to it’s normal, obnoxiously loud volume. “So, anyway, Gaven told me what you do, and I was hoping you might be able to find him.”
It was bad enough that William was going around telling people about me when Hunters were in town, but a normal human? That was just stupid.
“If ‘Gaven’ told you about me, you know finding people isn’t what I do,” I answered, dropping the fake cheeriness. “If you want him dead, I can help with that.”
The blonde’s eyes went wide, as if my suggestion was unspeakably horrible. “No! Like, absolutely fucking not.”
I shrugged. “Then, I really can’t help.”
The girl slumped her shoulders and stooped a little, reminding me of children when they whined about having to clean their rooms.
“Come on,” she whined. “I don’t know what to do, and the blood is starting to fade from my system. He was supposed to give me more last night.”
I leaned against the sink beside me and crossed my arms over my chest. “How do you know he’s missing and not just ditching you?”
“Oh, Gaven would never do that,” she answered matter-of-factly. “Besides, the stuff he was saying was really weird. He said he went looking for a newbie vamp and suddenly there were, like, a bunch of them.”
That caught me off guard.
“Wait, a bunch of new ones?” I asked.
The girl nodded fervently. “Yeah, he said he thought there were at least four, and they said something about a nest, so he thought there might be even more of them.”
Okay, maybe William had been right about this. Vampires rarely made more than one new vamp every decade. The amount of time they put into teaching newbies the ropes and making sure they could control themselves was apparently pretty time consuming. There was no way any one vamp would make four at once.
If Blondie was right, there might be a serious problem.
“Okay,” I conceded. “I said I would look into it when Will... Gaven asked me, and I will. I’m a little busy at the moment, but I’ll get to it today.”
The girl looked around the bathroom and giggled. “Busy in the bathroom?” She gave me a suggestive look and asked, “Is there a guy in here?”
“Okay, I’m leaving,” I grunted as I pushed myself away from the sink.
As I strode past the girl toward the door, she called, “Let me know if you find him, okay?”
I pushed the door open and walked out as quickly as I could, which turned out to be the worst mistake I could have possibly made. I almost walked right into Matt, who had been headed toward the men’s bathroom, only a foot away from the door I had just walked out of.
“Oh, excuse... Maddi?”
Chapter 12
“NOPE, SORRY, NOT MADDI,” I said quickly as I shook my head just enough for my hair to cover part of my face.
I tried to walk away, but Matt caught my arm and pulled me back before I had taken a second step.
“How stupid do you think I am?” he asked in a serious tone.
My mind spun, trying to think of a way out of this, but I came up with nothing. I was stuck, staring up into Matt’s eyes. He had gotten taller since I last saw him, we used to be about the same height, now he had a good four or five inches on me.
“Where have you been?” he demanded. “Everyone is looking for you.”
I glanced around Matt and saw the Reapers were still in line for coffee, standing behind two perky blonde girls and a goth guy who was wearing way too much eyeliner. The rest of the Hunters with Matt were still outside, I figured they wouldn’t notice anything unless Matt took too long, I was too far away for them to see my face clearly.
“I know,” I said, resigning myself to the fact I wasn’t going to weasel out of this one. “Kill on sight, right?”
Matt’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “What? No, of course not. We’re supposed to take you in to see the Bishop.”
The Hunter’s had a hierarchy similar to the Catholic church. In fact, we had been taught that the church “borrowed” their titles from Hunters a couple thousand years ago. The Bishop was in charge of most of northern California. Because of the way that they were organized, if I went much further south, I would venture into a new district, and I would garner the attention of the Archbishop, who covered all of California, Nevada, and Arizona.
“Bring me in?” I asked, actually a little surprised. “Why?”
Matt finally released me, looked over his shoulder in the direction of the other Hunters, and turned back to me.
“Because, apparently,” he answered in a quieter voice, “you stole some old grimoire that’s been locked up for centuries, or something.”
I took a step back and demanded, “What? That’s bullshit!”
Matt shrugged. “I figured as much, what exactly did you...”
Matt’s eyes had glanced down at my arm. The tattoo had healed pretty fast, despite the fact that it was still itching like a motherfucker. It looked just like the one on the rest of the Reapers, now, the only difference was my skin was still a little raised.
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br /> “What the hell did you do to your Mark?” Matt asked, anger creeping into his tone.
Matt always was a stickler for the rules. He bought the whole party line and was more than happy to follow every command he was given. It was great, when we were both Hunters. Now, it meant I was pretty screwed.
“Look, it doesn’t matter,” I said, hoping that I could distract him from the tattoo. “I ran away because my mother tried to kill me, I didn’t steal anything.”
Matt’s confused expression shifted instantly into shock. “No way, Valeria was heartbroken when you and Ezra ran away. She spent like a week crying.”
More bullshit. Hunters were taught to suppress their emotions. There was no way my mother would have allowed anyone to see her cry. Also, from what little time I spent with her, I knew she wouldn’t have been the slightest bit upset if I left. Ashamed that I had dishonored her, sure. Definitely not sad.
“Whatever,” I said, deciding that wasn’t something I needed to spend any time on, “just... You can’t tell them you saw me. You can’t tell anyone you saw me.”
Matt took a deep breath and was silent for a second. His expression was unreadable, but the time he spent not moving was time that I needed to be able to look around.
The Hunters were still not even looking in this direction. That was good news. The bad news was the Reapers had moved forward in line. The goth guy was ordering his coffee, and I had maybe a minute left until I needed to be anywhere but with Matt.
“You tell me what’s going on, and I might consider it,” Matt bargained.
I put my hand on the grip of my knife. “I don’t want to fight you.”
A grim smile broke across Matt’s face. “Nah, you wouldn’t start a fight here. Even if you are arrogant enough to think you can take on four Hunters, you would never risk the innocent people getting hurt,” he said as he nodded toward the nearest table.
I wanted to ask if he was sure, but the words died in my throat. He was right. If I started a fight here, even if I just ran, the hipsters would be in danger. Their lives were sad enough as it was, no need to make it worse.