by Sophie Stern
“No, that’s not it,” Helena shook her head. “It’s something else. I don’t know what, but I don’t like it.”
I tried not to laugh. Helena was the kind of woman who was hard to please. She knew exactly what she liked and how she liked it, so trying to convince her to try anything new ever had been an impossible task.
I looked at my computer and then I rubbed my eyes. I’d been staring at screens for far too long. You’d think that being a vampire would mean I could have unlimited computer time, but no. I was still very much like a little kid.
“You’re tracking the dealers,” Helena said, noticing the computer.
“Trying to.”
“What have you found?”
“Not much,” I admitted. There was a growing problem with people hunting vampires. It happened a few years ago, but after I cleaned up the Grove and got rid of all of our pests, the humans had mostly left us alone. Kimberly was one of the few hunters in the area who had still seemed like she had a bone to pick, but she’d only really been after me and a few select vamps who hurt people. The vampires she’d chosen to hunt were ones that I should have put down myself, but I liked watching her hunt, even from afar, and I liked knowing that she was having fun. I’d let a few vampires go in her area knowing that she’d find them and slay them.
Maybe it was my morbid way of giving her gifts, like a cat bringing its master a half-dead mouse.
"I don't like it," I told Helena. "Things are quieter than they should be."
"You think something's about to happen."
"I do," I told her.
"Well, figure it out," she said. "And fast. Who knows what the girls are going to do?"
"We could keep them locked up," I pointed out. "Then we won't have to worry about them."
Helena looked at me.
"You're testing me," she said.
"Perhaps."
"I don't like being tested."
"What's going on with you and Raven?" I hadn't planned on asking her such a personal question so soon. Possibly, I hadn't planned on ever asking it. There was something that she wasn't telling me, though, and I had a feeling it was something I really needed to know.
"Nothing that concerns you."
"Doesn't it?" I asked. "You just told me you think that our mates are plotting. I feel like that concerns me."
"I didn't say she was my mate."
"She is, though, isn't she?"
Helena looked at me, and for the first time since I'd known her, she looked...vulnerable. Scared. She looked a little nervous. Honestly, she seemed to suddenly freeze at the possibility that she could find someone to love her, or someone that she could love.
“I don’t want to talk with you about mates,” she said.
“Fine.”
I didn’t want to play games with Helena, anyway. I was getting a headache from staring at the screen. Weren’t headaches things I was supposed to leave behind when I became a vampire?
“We need to figure out what they’re up to,” she said, taking a seat. Helena was dressed in relatively normal clothing: jeans and a black tee. Usually, she wore Victorian-style gothic dresses, so I wondered what was with the casual getup. Maybe she was going to go hunting or slinking around the Grove. Perhaps she wanted to go to Ashbury and wanted to be incognito.
“I agree.”
“I don’t like the fact that they seem to have stopped hunting us,” she said.
“For the last few years, they’ve only randomly popped up in this area. Then, a few months ago, things got pretty hot. Now, it’s silent again. What’s going on?”
“That’s the big question,” she agreed. “Have you talked to Michael?”
“Nope.”
“Lex?”
“No.”
She sighed.
“Have you talked to anyone?”
“Nobody knows anything.” The vampires we colluded with were good people. It sounded real rich, I knew. The idea that a vampire could be good was something most humans didn’t understand. I felt like if I tried to explain something like that to Kimberly, even, that she wouldn’t quite get it.
“I’m going to call Lex,” Helena said. “He was supposed to be meeting with a contact in the Ashbury PD.”
That was news to me.
“Lex has a police contact?”
“Yeah.”
“Is it a female?”
Helena rolled her eyes and nodded.
“Probably. You know Lex.”
Lex was one of the most charming vampires I’d ever met. He was younger than me, and fresher. I didn’t know who had sired him, but when he’d walked into the Grove a few years ago, it had been hard not to notice him. Mostly, he kept to himself, but he surprised me often with his ability to get even humans to trust him and show him affection.
If he had a contact in the police department who was willing to give him information about the people who had been slaughtering vampires, then it was probably someone he’d been sleeping with.
Helena pulled out her cell phone and called. She spoke for a few moments and then ended the call. She placed the cell phone on the desk between us and nodded.
“He’s got a lead,” she said. “Apparently, there’s some sort of meeting downtown tomorrow night.”
“Downtown?”
“Yeah, near the old theater. Do you know it?”
I knew it. It was actually close to where Kimberly had lived before we’d taken her. Well, before I’d taken her. Although it was Helena who delivered her to me, I was still the one who had captured her body and her heart. At least, I liked to think that.
“Yeah,” I said. “On fourth.”
“Yep,” she nodded. “Apparently, there’s some sort of meeting. Lex has been trailing a couple of people who seem pretty sus.”
“Pretty sus?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah,” she nodded. “You know, suspicious.”
“Helena, you play too many video games.”
“Maybe you just don’t play enough.”
“Whatever. What’s the plan?”
“He’s going to infiltrate and try to find out where their main meeting point is. If he can find that, he thinks he’ll be able to find their lab.”
“Think they only have one?”
“Impossible to tell.”
“I hate this,” I told her.
“Me too.”
“When we destroyed the human nest a few years ago, I thought that was going to be it.”
“I think we all hoped for that,” she nodded.
“It’s unfair that we’re dealing with it again.”
“I agree. That’s one of the problems with being a vamp, though, right?”
“What’s that?”
“Things never really seem to work out the way we planned. Just look at us,” she smiled sadly, gesturing between us.
“What about us?”
“You’re in love with a beautiful woman who is too scared to love you back.”
“And you?”
“I have my own issues,” she said.
“Seriously,” I asked. “What is the deal with you and Raven?”
I couldn’t figure it out. Every part of me thought they were mates, but Helena was so wildly tight-lipped about it that it was impossible to know.
“All you need to know is that you need to keep an eye on Kimberly,” she said, standing. “Lex is going to this thing tomorrow night, and I don’t want Raven or Kim thinking they can sneak out and play hooky. Two young vamps would be easy fodder for people like these. Have you told Kim about the risks yet?”
“She was a huntress for years,” I said dryly. “I think she understands the risks.
“I’m not so sure about that,” Helena said. “And you shouldn’t be, either. You need to talk to her. Remind her to stay at the mansion.”
I nodded and Helena left. When I was alone, I started typing again. It felt bad to not have any real leads, but I was glad that Lex had at least given us something. I pulled up as much information on the Ashbury The
ater as I could. The building was around a hundred years old and had been created as a place for people to come together and celebrate their love of the theater.
It was supposed to be a place of passion: not a place of death.
Still, as I read about it, I couldn’t help but feel that I was missing something very important: something that would change everything.
THAT NIGHT, WHEN KIMBERLY and I went into my room, I locked the door and placed the key over the top of the doorframe. There was a little hook there, and I hung the key on it.
“Why do you place the key up there?” She asked. “Afraid I’ll run away?”
“No,” I shook my head. “If I thought you would run away, I’d chain you up.”
“I’m a vampire now,” she pointed out. “I’m very strong. I could break those chains.”
“Maybe,” I shrugged.
“Hey,” she laughed. “You don’t sound like you believe me.”
“Of course, I believe you.”
“What else do you believe?” She asked. Her voice took on a sultry tone, and she walked toward me slowly. She placed her hands on mine.
“Kimberly...”
“I had a lot of time to think today,” she said.
“Is that so?”
“And I think that I like being a vampire,” she said.
“What do you like about it?”
“Everything,” she shrugged. “So, I can’t hunt anymore,” she shrugged. “No big deal. If I ever get a craving, I can do something else, like go after a werewolf or something, right?”
I wasn’t buying it.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’s it.”
“You’re not still interested in seeking revenge on me?”
“Nope,” she shook her head. “Raven explained a lot of things to me that I didn’t understand before. Now I know why she didn’t want me coming after you.”
That was interesting. Raven didn’t want her hunting me, huh? I wondered why. Raven was friendly enough, but she mostly kept to herself or to Helena. When she’d come to live with us, I’d known she was close to Kimberly, and we’d spent many hours talking about my mate. Since Kimberly arrived, however, I hadn’t had much time to spend with Raven. Mostly, I’d been caught up in keeping Kimberly close to me. I’d also been busy trying to find out who was killing vampires, and why they were harvesting our bodies.
It was gross, really. The idea that someone might want to catch and kill vampires seemed abhorrent to me. That was what we were dealing with, though. If someone had told me that being a vampire carried with it more problems than humanity did, I wouldn’t have believed them for a minute.
I also didn’t believe that Kimberly had suddenly given up her mission of revenge. She still viewed me as a murderer. I hadn’t explained what had really happened to her all of those years ago, but I wanted to.
“I need to tell you something,” I said.
“What?”
“Something about the past.”
“Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter.”
“It matters.”
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t. Liam, let’s just be together, okay?”
“Kimberly, I’m not stupid,” I said quietly. She reached out and placed her hands on my chest. She slid them up and wrapped them around my neck.
“I know,” she said.
“I know you’re thinking about ways to kill me,” I said.
“No,” she shook her head.
I leaned in close, whispering in her ear.
“Then why is there a stake in your back pocket?”
She stilled and looked up at me sharply. She looked horrified, and she had every right to. What the hell was she thinking? Did she really think she could just stake me, and I wasn’t going to notice?
“I can explain.”
“Give it to me.”
I stepped back and held my hand out, waiting. She blushed, reached behind herself, and pulled the stake out. She placed it in my hand.
“Please don’t kill me,” she whispered.
“Kimberly, I went through all of the trouble to turn you into a vampire. The last thing I want to do is kill you.”
At the moment, that wasn’t entirely true. I was quite annoyed that in an effort to be kind and generous with her, I’d trusted her intentions. Apparently, she really wasn’t as docile as I wanted to believe that she was.
“Sit down.”
She walked to the bed and sat down on it. Somehow, despite being sneaky and kind of a troublemaker, she sat patiently and waited for me. I looked over at her, wondering how we were ever going to make this work.
She didn’t trust me.
Was she ever going to?
I knew in my heart that trust was something that was going to take time, but we didn’t have a lot of it. If Lex wasn’t successful tomorrow and couldn’t figure out who the source was that was infiltrating the Grove and stealing people away, then we were all in danger. Kim and Raven would be especially in danger. They were young vampires, and their hearts were only freshly turned. The vampire slayers who harvested hearts loved that.
“I killed your friends,” I told her.
She bit her lip and nodded. She knew that part of the story.
“But they weren’t actually your friends.”
“You didn’t know them,” she whispered. “How could you say that?”
“Because Jacob, Clay, Ruth, Tanya, and Megan were all part of an organization that hunts vampires.”
“We were hunters,” she said. “Of course, they were.”
“No,” I shook my head. “You were a freelance hunter. They weren’t.”
“What? Yes, they were,” she said. “We all were. I mean, yeah, sometimes we got tips as to where we should go look, but everyone did that.”
Okay, so maybe I needed to try a different approach. Kimberly was a very smart person. If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t have lived so long. She would have died early in her vampire hunting days, but she hadn’t. She’d been clever and shrewd, and she’d managed to find a way to make the most of any situation she’d had to face.
Still, she didn’t seem to do well when presented with realistic, logical information. Instead, she seemed to do better when she came to her own conclusions. Maybe that was what I needed to do. I didn’t want to have this conversation at all, but she’d literally just been about to kill me. It was time to help her understand that I wasn’t the bad guy in this situation.
“Kimberly, think back to that day.”
“What day?”
“Kimberly, don’t be an idiot,” I said. My voice came out harsher than it needed to, but I was tired of playing games.
“Fuck you,” she whispered. “You don’t need to talk to me like that.”
“Pay attention to me and I won’t have to,” I said. “Now think back to that day.”
“The day you first fought me,” she said.
“Yes.”
“What about it?”
“What did you do before you came to the Grove?” I asked. That was important. In the hours before I’d send my team to go eliminate the group of hunters, they’d taken someone very important to Helena. They’d stolen her little brother, and they’d slaughtered him. She never talked about it to me. Not ever. I wasn’t sure if she talked to Raven about it, but I hoped that she did. Everyone needed an outlet. We all needed a way to mourn what we’d lost.
“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “Had dinner. Hung out. Jacob and Megan went out for something. Then they came back, and we all went hunting.”
“No,” I said. “You went hunting.”
“What?”
“Why didn’t they go to the Grove with you that night?” I asked.
“I...they did go,” she said, looking confused. “They were going to meet me there.”
“Did you see them?”
“Well, no...”
“They didn’t go to the Grove. Did they tell you why they weren’t going?”
She was quiet, a
nd I could see the wheels start to turn.
“They were going to run an errand first,” she said quietly.
“All of them? Together?”
She nodded.
“Was that unusual for them? Did they really need a group of people to pick up toilet paper?” I asked.
“I...it was...they needed something from the hardware store,” she said. “Megan didn’t want to go alone. I was anxious to start hunting, so they sent me ahead.”
“And they never came,” I said. “They left you alone. They did that a lot, didn’t they?”
Another nod.
“Why did they hang out together so much?”
“They had known each other a long time before I moved in, I suppose.”
“And why did you move in? It’s strange, isn’t it? A group of hunters who all live together, but one of them is the odd man out?”
“I never really thought of it that way.”
“That’s what it was, though.”
I was being mean.
Cruel.
I was pushing her, but it was the only way I was going to be able to get her to admit that there was a problem with her relationships, and it was a deep-rooted one. They had always excluded her. From the first moment she’d joined their house, she’d been an outsider, and despite the fact that she thought they were friends, she was wrong.
She was very, very wrong.
“I don’t think that’s very fair.”
“And I don’t think the way they treated you was fair.”
She sighed and shook her head.
“I was lucky to even find them,” she said. “I’d been a solo hunter before that, and it had been lonely.”
“How did you meet them?”
“They were looking for a new roommate.”
“No, they were looking for a new fall guy.”
Silence.
“Kimberly, your roommates weren’t just vampire hunters like you. They were part of a group that slays vampires and harvests their hearts. No, scratch that: they harvest the heart and then let the vampire die. They wanted you around to take the fall if they were ever caught.”
“What?” She whispered, and despite being a vampire, she seemed to pale. Her already-fair skin grew even lighter as she seemed to realize what I was saying.
“Tell me you know what I’m talking about.”
She stared at me: her eyes wide.