After about twenty minutes of driving, he finally pulled off onto a tiny road … if you could even call it that. It was more like a trail since it was barely big enough for his truck to fit. Branches, which had become overgrown, swiped at the sides of the truck as he slowly maneuvered over the pothole infested earth.
After a few minutes the road finally ended, exposing a wide dirt lot where the trees had been cleared out. Someone had made a fire pit by erecting large rocks into a ring. Remains of charred firewood were left in the pit, as well as a scattering of beer cans and other garbage.
Drew parked and hopped out from behind the wheel. “Come on.” He waved, urging me out of the truck.
I opened the door and jumped down, but immediately fitted my bow and quiver back onto my shoulders. “Drew, we should be out there scouting already. I know you’re trying to be all romantic or whatever, but we are wasting time.”
My hunter boyfriend merely shrugged his shoulders. “The vampires will still be there, but you need a time out.”
“What?” I felt the heat rise into my cheeks. “A time out?”
Drew ran his hand through his blond hair, which had grown longer over the last few months, and then he reached out for me. “Just come with me before you get all bent out of shape, all right?”
I gave him my hand and let him lead me toward the trail. “I don’t need a time out,” I mumbled.
“Shhhh” He pushed aside some of the brush that had grown over the unused trail.
“Don’t you shhhh me!” I growled at him, feeling myself getting more and more frustrated by the moment. “Ahhh!” He let go of the branches he had been holding for me to pass by and they swung back, hitting me right in the face.
“Don’t be a pansy, oh fierce hunter,” he teased.
“Shut up.”
We walked in silence for a few minutes, and the trail gradually sloped downward. Eventually we emerged from within the brush and found ourselves on the bank of a small lake.
I held my hand over my eyes to shield them from the hot sun, which shone down onto the calm, flat surface of the water. If we had been above the lake it would have been like looking into a mirror. Even from where we stood on the bank I could see the image of the tree laden mountains reflected off of the water.
As I stared out, a cool breeze lifted my hair away from my neck. It felt nice on such a hot day, but for some reason standing before this lake with no one else around, the air felt cleaner than usual.
“It’s beautiful here,” I admitted.
“Well, it’s not the Falls,” he shrugged, “but it’s peaceful and out of the way. Plus, there is little chance of any vampires heading out this way since there aren’t any people around.”
I turned to him and gave him a weak smile. “This is all well and good, it is nice here, but we can’t sit around and stare at the water when we should be hunting or scouting the areas.” I couldn’t help it, I was getting antsy. Every moment spent messing around was a moment we should be killing vampires … or training to kill them.
“We aren’t going to sit around staring at the water.” He offered me a small smile before bending over and untying his boots.
“Well let’s go then.”
He straightened up, still with that smirk on his face. His eyes met mine and those twinkling greens suddenly portrayed mischief. He reached down, not taking his eyes off of me, and began unbuttoning his jeans.”
“What the hell are you doing?” I practically screeched, taking a couple of steps back. I unintentionally covered my eyes with my hands, but peeked through them when I heard him laughing.
Through my fingers I saw that my boyfriend had kicked off his boots, shed his jeans, and was standing there in his swimming trunks while holding up my bikini in his hands. “Swimming,” he said between chuckles. “We are going swimming.”
“Where did you get that?” I pointed at my bathing suit, which had been in my underwear drawer the last time I’d seen it.
He shrugged. “Alice.”
“Well, where were you hiding it?”
He glanced at the tiny bits of fabric still in his hand. “I stuck it in my pocket … there isn’t that much here.” He strode forward and held it out to me. “So, are you joining me for a swim or not?”
I shook my head. “We should go.”
He bowed his head in defeat, and then looked back up to meet my eyes. “Chloe, you need to take a break.”
I turned my head away and glanced at the lake, and then back at his eyes again. “No, what I need to do is take out every single vampire I can. I started this mess, it’s my job to help clean it up.”
“You can’t do it alone, though. Especially if that’s all you do. You can’t forget how to have fun.”
“Yeah, coming from the king of partying it up.”
Shaking his head, Drew sighed and tossed my bikini on the ground. “Fine. I’m going swimming. You can just wait here if you don’t want to swim.”
“Drew, we have to go!”
He took off toward the waterline. “We will,” he called over his shoulder before he splashed into the water.
I stood there for the longest time, waiting for him to get out. But, no, he didn’t come out. He swam far out into the lake and then floated on his back for a while, staring up at the clear blue sky.
While he was out there, I found myself beginning to sweat in the fierce July heat. Damn it, now I understood his plan: leave Chloe out in the heat until she practically melts and is forced to go into the water.
Drew’s blond head was bobbing in the water as he swam back to the shore. I watched him with frustration, feeling the lines of sweat roll down from my hairline. “Fine,” I muttered to myself, spinning around in the dirt to grab my bikini off the ground. It would feel good to cool off, but I needed to be out protecting people … saving them. How many were going to die while I was swimming?
I stalked off to the confines off the trees so that I could put my suit on where Drew couldn’t see me. Once I had shed my clothes and my bikini was securely in place. I realized how exposed I felt not having my weapons on. The last thing I was comfortable with was going out into the lake, without any protection, and becoming bobbing targets for vampires. I still had my fire, but I liked having a variety of ways to kill at my disposal.
Gathering my clothes and weapons in my arms, I found my way back to the beach and dropped my pile of stuff as close to the water as I safely could without risking them getting wet. Then, I secured my dark purple bikini once more and looked out over the water. Drew was out there, staring at me with a big grin plastered on his face.
“What are you smiling about?” I yelled at him.
“Victory!” he hollered back at me.
I stepped into the water and felt my body start to cool down immediately. Oh, it felt so good. The heat was awful this time of year. “You won’t be feeling that victory for long, hunter boy,” I called out as I waded deeper into the lake.
His grin spread even wider when he reached out and swept his hand across the water, causing a wave-like splash to spray up around him. “Challenge accepted.”
I dived down underneath the brisk water, feeling totally rejuvenated as the lake enveloped my entire body.
Okay, so maybe swimming wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
I emerged at the surface and looked around. Drew seemed to have disappeared. “Drew?” I treaded water while turning myself at the same time. “Where are you?”
My heart began to beat faster. What if there were vampires out here? The idea that they were was highly likely because they came out to our place all the time … so why wouldn’t they be roaming around the woods?
“Drew!” I called again more urgently. “Answer me.”
Suddenly, something grabbed my foot and yanked me under. I opened my mouth to scream, but only had time to release a yelp before I was dragged—gurgling water—below the surface of the lake.
I kicked my feet viciously, trying to break loose from the attacker’s
grip. He had a firm hold on my ankles, and no matter how hard I kicked I couldn’t get free. Water forced its way down my throat and up my nose. Oh my God, I was going to die from drowning. I’m a freaking vampire hunter and I’m going to drown to death. Never saw that one coming.
Then, as suddenly as the attacker had grabbed me, they let go. I waved my arms and kicked my feet, pushing my way to the surface while calling on my fire at the same time. I broke the surface with my hands first, and let loose the streams of fire … not caring where they went, but hoping it hit the target somehow.
My head came up out of the water next and I simultaneously gasped for air and fired another stream of flames all around me.
“Chloe! Stop!”
It was Drew. He was all right!
I sputtered, choking nasty lake water out of my mouth. “Are you all right? Drew … someone … they had me.” I couldn’t make anything very coherent and shot away, swimming for shore as fast as I could.
Not a minute later I hit the shallow water. My feet connected with the pebbles on the bottom of the lake and I lunged for my weapons, grabbed a forty five, and aimed it out at the water.
Drew was right behind me. “Relax, Chloe. It was me. All right, it was just me.”
I lowered my gun. “Are you insane? Seriously, why would you do something like that?”
“I was just fooling around.” He moved to put his arm around me and I jerked out of the way.
“That was wrong, Drew.”
“Chloe, you need to calm down.”
“You tried to drown me!”
Frustrated, he marched off in the direction of where he’d left his clothes. “Look at how you’re acting. You have to loosen up and stop being so serious about everything all of the time. You have become so high strung that you can’t even joke around anymore.”
I blew a raspberry at him and picked up the rest of my weapons. “Sure, like you have any room to talk, Mr. Serious. You never joke around. Oh, wait, until the vampire apocalypse started … now you’re chock full of fun.”
He glared at me with his cool green eyes and released a noise that sounded similar to a growl. “Settle down,” he ordered.
I had no intention of settling down.
“People die, Drew! People are dying! How can I possibly set that aside to make jokes and have fun? This is all my fault and I have to do everything I can to fix it. I don’t know why you can’t understand that.”
He dropped his clothes on the ground again and marched toward me. “Chloe. You are being too hard on yourself. This ... all of the responsibility that you are putting on yourself is hardening you, and you’re only a fraction of the person you used to be.”
I slid my clothes on over my bathing suit while he spoke. “I am a Hunter and that is what I need to do. I can’t relax until we fix this problem.”
“What if we can’t fix it, Chloe?”
“Then I guess I’ll never be the same person I was.” I strapped on my holster, as well as my bow and quiver, and headed for the trail, leaving Drew behind me. The branches grabbed at my clothes as I hurried back to the truck. I just wanted to kill some vampires and try to remedy the problems I’d caused.
Back at the truck, I waited for Drew. After a few minutes, he emerged from within the trees, fully dressed and looking solemn. Suddenly I felt bad; I didn’t mean to bring him down when he was only trying to help me.
He opened the driver’s side door and slid behind the wheel without even sparing a glance at me. With a turn of the key, the truck roared to life and he shot off down the minuscule dirt road, much faster than he had gone when we came in.
“Drew, I know you want the best for me, but I just can’t force myself to feel a different way. Please … please, bear with me through this.”
He kept his eyes on the road, still not looking at me. “Chloe, I’m always going to be there for you. You are a fighter at heart. You are moody, snarky, and throw childish fits when you don’t get your way … and I love all of those things about you.”
Heart melting.
He continued, “I just want to help you because I’m afraid of what you are becoming. But, know this … I will never, ever abandon you simply because you are going through a hard time emotionally. I, of all people, know what it’s like to shut myself off from the world and focus on one thing. You are the one who breathed life into me. Before you, there was only the other Hunters, training, and killing vampires. I found light in you and now I see that light slowly dimming.”
Talk about making a girl feel bad.
“Drew—”
He shook his head. “Let me finish. I just want you to try not to be so hard on yourself. All right?”
Tears stung the corners of my eyes as they tried to break free. Why was it that he always did this to me? I knew I was becoming hard, but I had to keep going with the mission. I thought he, of all people, would understand that.
In the end, all I said in response to his beautiful words was a choked, “I promise to try.”
“Good.” He nodded his head in confirmation.
~~***~~
We drove into the city a couple of hours before sundown and people were already bustling through the streets, trying to get their supplies before the sun went down and the vampires took over the city. It was a sad, sad sight to see. These innocent people had no idea if they would survive the night.
When the vampires first went public, it was a blood bath. A lot of people died in a horrible massacre on the city, and another city after that, and another after that … until the entire United States was dealing with a vampire epidemic.
We’d heard from Hunters in other countries that the problem was not limited to the United States; they were also infested with insane amounts of new vampires.
After the initial murders, thousands were left dead in the streets and even more were turned. Each morning when the sun rose, people would leave their homes to go in search of a loved one who hadn’t come home the night before. With any luck, they would find who they were looking for amongst the bodies the vampires left scattered throughout the city.
One morning, the whole group and I had finished a particularly gruesome fight. We stayed in the city until the sun came up and witnessed the morning ritual. Watching people wander through the sea of bodies, looking for someone, but hoping they didn’t find them dead, was probably the most emotional thing I’d seen since the first killings of the vampire apocalypse. Also, they knew that if they didn’t find them, there was a huge chance they had been turned.
Too freaking sad.
The one problem that Dahlia seemed to be having with her plan for vampires to take over was the sheer blood lust of the newborns. They killed almost every single person they fed from. If they kept killing people, as well as turning them into vampires, there wouldn’t be any food source left for them, which would put kind of a dent in her plan for world domination.
Pulling myself back into the present, I shoved the memories of the morning ritual and Dahlia out of my mind and concentrated on the streets.
“Let’s park here.” Drew pulled into a grocery store parking lot where there were a lot of cars, which were probably abandoned or left because the owners were killed.
When he came to a stop between a minivan and a VW Bug, he killed the engine and leaned toward me. “Wait,” he demanded.
About to pull the door handle, I paused. He reached out, taking my face in both of his hands, but he didn’t say anything more, like I’d expected him to. He simply pulled me in and placed a soft kiss on my lips.
I felt my heart skip and my stomach flutter as it always did when we kissed. The heat began in my toes and fingertips as my body responded to the stimulation of contact. When he pulled away, I reached up and wound both of my arms around his neck, pulling our bodies even closer together for another, much longer, kiss. I felt his hand work its way into my hair and his other rested on my thigh.
He broke contact first, moving away until his face was only an inch from mine and he
was staring into my eyes. The green in his eyes was always so intense. When he was mad, they were icy, and when he was happy, they were twinkling. At that moment they were twinkling. “You ready to go kick some ass?” he asked.
That was my Drew! How could I resist a man who had such a way with words?
I leaned away and reached for the door handle. “You know I am. Let’s hit it.” I jumped down out of the truck and adjusted my holster because it had ridden up while I was sitting in the truck.
After I was situated, I hurried around to the front of the line of vehicles and found Drew scanning the buildings. “Do you want to go high or low today?” he inquired.
Decisions, decisions. Up high was good because we could pick them off from a distance, but on the other hand they could attack and trap us, leaving us nowhere to go. Low had its advantages and disadvantages as well. On the streets there was a lot more contact with the vampires, but we also saved a lot more people being on the ground. That thought alone pretty much made up my mind; keeping people safe is why we did what we did in the first place. “I’m not sure yet, let’s see what we find,” I told him as my gaze moved over the commotion surrounding us.
Most of the shops in the city had long since been abandoned, so what was considered gathering supplies was actually looting. During the day, the city was pretty much a free for all … except for the human law enforcement. They weren’t on our side anymore, though; the vampires had control of them and anyone was at their mercy if they were not pledged.
At night, people ran and hid, hoping that they wouldn’t be found.
A new order was being established. Not just in our city, but the entire country … maybe even the world.
It probably wouldn’t be long before the vampires cut the electricity to drive the humans out of hiding. Already, a vampire mayor had been appointed and a televised announcement had been broadcasted into every home and every radio station.
For a few moments I became lost in thought again as I remembered seeing my nightmares come to life. The male vampire with glowing blue eyes and dark brown hair had appeared behind a podium set up in front of city hall. He had several vampires in suits standing behind him like they were freakin’ secret service agents or something. They even had their dark sunglasses on to perfect the look.
Vampire Apocalypse (The Arcadia Falls Chronicles #3) Page 2