Compared to my life before I had it made now. I had everything I didn’t have then. And somehow I still felt lost. Back then, when I’d still worked as an assassin for Ruben, I’d felt like I’d had purpose. It had been twisted, yes, and it had caused more harm than good for everyone involved, including me. But there had been a point.
Even if, after a while, I’d come to the conclusion that it hadn’t been worth it. That I’d been running around like a fool, thinking I was doing the world a favor. But I had still felt driven more than I felt now.
I picked the straight road that led out of Westham and turned into the prison parking lot. It was the last set of buildings that still fell under Westham’s border. When I switched off my bike, the sounds of the night crowded me in the absence of the bike’s roar. The big grey building lay to my right and it looked dreary. The line to get into the vampire visiting area was long. Since they’d upgraded the prison and added cells with metal lining in the walls, they’ve been able to take on vampires.
Once the government had allowed them into society, criminals had popped up, and suddenly new provisions had to be made.
It had been a year since I was inside. There was a time when I’d ended up at the prison every time I was struggling with who I was and what my life had become. The reason for all the hell I’d been through sat behind those walls, after all. I used to see my dad, even though I hadn’t wanted to.
When we’d managed to take out the master vampires and my life as a low class assassin had ended, I’d introduced Connor to my father and said my last goodbyes. I’d told him I forgave him, and told myself I wouldn’t go back there. I hadn’t, at least not inside.
The forgiveness part? I was still working on that. It was easier now, and revenge didn’t chew at me. I was done with killing. But it wasn’t always easy to forget my mother’s death, my sister’s wheelchair, the vampire that had caused it.
I pulled out my cellphone and dialed Joel’s number. He answered on the last ring before it rolled over to voicemail.
“What time is it?” he asked and his voice was thick with sleep.
“I don’t know. Late,” I answered. “Can I come over and talk?”
He hesitated for a moment, and then he agreed.
“Be there in ten,” I said and hung up. I drove back into town and made my way through the middle class neighborhood where my sister lived. There was a soft glow of light in the living room window. When I walked up to the front door, it opened, and Aspen sat in front of me. She was up at night often. She was more vampire than even I was, and the night called to her sometimes. She didn’t say anything, only rolled her chair to the side so that I could step in.
“He’s grouchy when you wake him, but I made him strong coffee,” she said.
“Thanks, Aspen,” I offered, and I really meant it. I walked through to the kitchen. Joel sat on one of the counters with a cup of coffee in his hands, head leaning against an overhead cabinet, eyes closed.
Aspen glanced at me and then she disappeared.
“Are you sleeping?” I asked, and Joel jerked slightly before he opened his eyes.
“It’s past midnight,” he said. I suddenly felt guilty. I hadn’t meant to be rude.
“Sorry,” I said and picked up the other steaming mug that stood on the counter. Aspen had made some for me too. “There were times when you and I would work the night away,” I said.
“That was before I had a day-job,” Joel pointed out. I nodded.
“So, what’s up? I know you don’t have a hit list that you need me to hack up anymore. So what’s bothering you?”
I leaned my hip against the counter opposite Joel and took a sip of the coffee. It was rich and warm, and it was strangely comforting. I’d been feeling cold, even though it was a warm night. Cold and untethered.
“I don’t know if I should keep going with this student,” I said. Saying it made me feel like an idiot. It was just a student, for god’s sake.
“Why?” Joel asked.
“Because she doesn’t just want to learn how to fight to look after herself. I have a feeling she has an agenda. I don’t know if I should give her the means to do what she wants to do.”
“What does she want to do?” Joel asked.
I opened my mouth to answer him, but when I wanted to say the words I realized they were my own, not hers. Finally I ended up saying, “I don’t know.”
Joel frowned at me. I was expecting him to knock me for waking him up for this, but he didn’t say it. Instead he took another sip, and then he traced the rim of his cup like it was a wine glass. I had to admit, since Joel had moved in with Aspen, drinking coffee with him wasn’t as bad as it used to be.
He was a hell of a technician, he could do magic with computers, but his coffee making skills were non-existent.
“She asked about vampires,” I finally said. The bit that had been bothering me was finally out there.
“Why? What did she say?” Joel asked again.
“She asked if the fighting skills I was going to teach her, the shooting, was going to prepare her to fight against vampires. She’s not in this to fight humans.”
“And you’re scared of this?” he asked. I looked up at him. He nodded slowly because he knew the answer to that.
“Vampires are a part of society, Adele,” he said and took another sip of his coffee. “They had to create a prison system for them that worked because they are different than we are.” He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “I mean vampires are different than people.” It was getting hard to talk about them and us, when we – Aspen and I – were both, and Connor was part of them.
“It’s okay,” I reassured him. I understood what he was getting at.
“All I’m saying is that the bad guys can be vampires now. Imagine being mugged but it’s not a man it’s a vampire? And he’s stealing blood, not money? Thugs have always been out there, but now they have pointy teeth, thanks to that damn senator. I don’t think it’s so weird that she wants to be able to protect herself against them… I mean, vampires.”
I took a deep breath. I wasn’t drinking the coffee, and it was getting cold in the mug. I swirled it around in the cup, watching the pattern the milk made.
“She wants to learn how to shoot them, too. She knows that normal guns won’t do the trick. I don’t know if I can teach her that.”
“Teach her what, to defend herself against the monsters?”
When Joel put it like that it just made me feel dumb for being worried about it in the first place. But there was something dark that I couldn’t shake – something human Joel would never be able to feel.
“What if she goes out there to look for trouble? What if she becomes a problem?” I asked. Joel looked at me.
“You mean, what if she becomes you?” he asked, and it shot through me like he’d stabbed me. I nodded, trying to breathe around the sudden pain in my chest. I nodded. That was what it was about. What if I was creating a monster, another me? I slid down the counter with my back until I sat on the floor, cradling the cup in my two hands.
Joel hopped off the counter and came to me, sitting on his haunches in front of me. He put one hand on my knee. I felt the warmth of his skin through my jeans, and I shivered.
“I know you’re still haunted. It’s going to go away eventually, but one year isn’t enough to get rid of a lifetime’s amount of pain. Don’t let your past scare you so much that you can’t look forward. This girl probably just wants self-defense lessons. Once she sees how hard you train she might even give up. I know I’m never motivated to do what you do after I see you work out.”
He grinned at me and I managed to smile back.
“Just give her a shot,” he said and stood up. He offered me a hand and I let him pull me up, even though I was a lot stronger than he was, and I could help myself up just fine. I’d come to him for help, so I let him help me.
“There’s something about her that’s very familiar though, and I can’t place it,” I said. “I
don’t know what it is. I feel like I know her somehow. It scares me even more. If I know her, it’s from my past life. And I don’t want that. I don’t want anything to do with it.”
“Did she know you?” Joel asked. I thought about it for a moment, and then I shook my head.
“I had to introduce myself to her.”
“Then the chances are slim you know her,” Joel said.
I blew my breath out in a shudder and nodded.
“Thanks, Joel,” I said and hugged him. I didn’t like physical contact, but it had gotten a lot better than it used to be. And Joel and I went way back. “I’ll let you get back to sleep now.”
“Thanks,” he said and his face was serious, which made me think he wasn’t teasing. I let myself out.
I sat on my bike in the dark in front of their house for a while. I’d come to Joel for help. It was new, I’d only started leaning on people in the past year. I didn’t like being so weak, I didn’t like asking for help and relying on others to get me through a difficult time. But everyone had been urging me to do it for years, and I felt like I owed them.
I owed each of them in so many different ways. Everyone I knew had been through some sort of ordeal that may or may not have been scarring to them. They all could have died at some point or another. And all of them had one thing in common – the fact that it had all been my fault. I wanted to make up for that now. And if reaching out to them, even when I didn’t want to, was the way to do it, I was going to do it.
I just hated being weak. I hated needing people. I wanted to be an island again, the person that could shut off from the world and pull a trigger without thinking.
When I started the bike, the growling engine was somehow soothing. A link to the past, a sound I was familiar with. Maybe Joel was right. And Connor. Maybe teaching her would be fun. It would give me a chance to play with the big toys again, and at the same time I would be helping someone. That was good, right?
I pulled into the road and drove through the silent night. I didn’t send out my feelers again. The only life I would feel now, the only ones awake, would be vampires. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to feel them. I used to hunt them. I couldn’t just pick up on them and drive past.
I should have been able to by now, and that was another fact that scared me. But I wasn’t going to deal with that. Not tonight.
One fear at a time. It was stupid that I was scared of one thing already, never mind the fact that they were starting to pile up. I took a deep breath and blew it out again. It was going to be alright. It was just another student. I was going to go home, and I was going to keep living the life I’d built for myself now.
Suddenly a figure was in front of me, shimmering in the beam of my headlight. I swore and pulled to the right hard, hoping I would miss it. I wasn’t going that fast, and that was what saved the person that stood in the road. This had happened before once. Except I’d been flying down the road, and the person that had appeared in front of me had been a cat-like creature that had been set on torturing me. It had ruined my bike, my clothes, and I’d gotten a good beating.
This time I had control of my bike. I switched it off and tried to relearn how to breathe. My heart thundered in my chest and I could hear my own panting inside my helmet.
I pulled it off and got off the bike.
“What the hell are you doing in the middle of the road?” I yelled, walking to the guy on stiff legs. When I stood in front of him I recognized the pale skin, the big black eyes, slender limbs, and finally the fangs. It had been a while since I’d run into a pure bred vampire outside of social circles.
I moved my fingers, hands besides my legs, ready to produce my stake. Until I remembered I wasn’t carrying one anymore. After a year of going out without my shoulder holster and my inner thigh sheath for my knife, the wooden stake I used to wear on my belt, I still had a natural reflex that wanted to grab for them.
And I still wanted to stake a vampire. A shudder travelled through my body.
“I’m sorry,” the vampire whispered. “I’ve just fed.”
There was no blood on his face, but when I glanced down it was on his arm, like he’d wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
“People?” I asked. If he’d fed off a person I was going to—
“Rats,” he answered before I could complete the thought. He nodded toward the alley, and I took a deep breath. I smelled the death, and it didn’t belong to a human. He was lucky.
“Don’t move until the rush is over. I could have killed you.” I was angry. Angry at this vampire, so new that he didn’t know that feeding would leave him in a daze for a moment before he was with it again. And I was angry at myself because I’d thought the past was gone and I was free of it.
“Get out of here,” I snapped and he moved. He was still slow, like he was in a dream. It would wear off.
The past was still there, lurking in the shadows in my mind. I wasn’t rid of it. I closed my eyes and counted to five. I wasn’t going to give myself any more time than that to get a grip. When I opened them again the vampire was gone out of sight. I climbed onto my bike and turned the ignition.
Chapter 3
Sydney was back at the academy three days later.
“How serious are you about this?” I asked. “Because if you’re going to fool around I’m not going to do this. I have no intention of teaching you anything when you’re just going to flaunt your skill to whoever is willing to look.”
She pulled a face, and I knew I was being ridiculous. She could do whatever she wanted with what I taught her. She was paying me, and I was offering her a service in return. A straight transaction that didn’t need to have emotions brought into it. But since I’d run into the vampire, I’d been pissed off, and I wanted to know that she wasn’t going to waste my time.
The whole thing, teaching and being a normal person in society, felt like a waste of time.
“I want to learn how to look after myself. How to protect the people that I love.”
“You see, you didn’t mention that the first time,” I said. If she was doing this for another reason other than self-defense… I didn’t have something to complete that thought with. So what if she was doing it for another reason?
“I’m serious, okay?” she said.
“You can’t just mess around. You have to be here every time. If you’re not here you better be dying.”
“What’s eating you?” she asked with a voice that held as much hostility as my own, and I realized I was taking whatever I was feeling out on her. She had the guts to stand up to me. Good. I liked her already.
“Come with me,” I said and I let her follow me into the back room with the gun lockers. I didn’t let any students come in here with me, but this was an exception. She was going to be my exception.
I unlocked the locker at the end of the line. I hadn’t opened it in a year. Inside was my 9 Berretta, my Smith and Wesson 500, and the Carbine. They were all amazing guns. The Glock wasn’t here. It was at home under the bed. Connor didn’t know about it, but I wasn’t okay with sleeping without a gun. Not yet. In a year I hadn’t used it. I still didn’t want to give it up.
“Jesus,” Sydney said, looking at the Carbine. “That should leave a hell of a hole.”
“They all do their fair share of damage.”
I took out the Berretta and turned it over in my hands. I remembered the feel of it, the weight of it. It used to sit at the small of my back.
“You can’t just carry a normal gun if you’re going up against vampires.”
I was trying to scare her. If she understood what it was really about, that it was dangerous work and she risked her life every time she even thought of going up against a vampire, maybe she would back out before I had to face too many demons to deal with her.
“But this is what you used?” she asked, looking at the Berretta. Even the Smith & Wesson looked okay. It was just the Carbine that looked like it could be real trouble. I put the gun back and opened up the small hand hel
d safe at the bottom, taking out my silver bullets. I took one out and held it up in the air between us so that the light reflected off it.
“It’s silver,” I said. “Normal bullets won’t stop them. They’re faster, and when you run into a vampire that’s pissed at you, you’re going to pray you have at least one of these in your gun or you’re dead.”
Her eyes widened a little, but she nodded. She wasn’t scared. She was drinking in the information. No backing out for this one. I packed everything away again and shut the locker.
“We’re not going to work with it?” she asked and she sounded disappointed. I shook my head.
“This is the end goal. You’re going to start with the bottom of the range stuff until you’re ready. If you know what you’re aiming for it’s much easier to get to it.
She nodded. “Makes sense,” she said. She scooped her hair up into a ponytail and pulled it through an elastic.
“Let’s get started,” I said and she followed me out of the locker room. I wasn’t going to treat her like the rest of my students. Either she was going to fail, or she was going to get down and dirty and make something of it.
By the time my day was done, I felt more alive and with purpose than I had with a long time. I didn’t know if it was because of Sydney, her will to learn, or if it was because of the fact that for the first time since we’d gone after the master vampires, I’d felt like myself again.
I’d been pushing it so far away, refusing to accept anything that I was back then, that I’d been running on auto-pilot. When I pulled into the driveway it was well after dark. I was sure Connor would be out already. The house was dark, answering my question.
I pushed the button for the garage door to open, and waited for the door to slowly roll up. Movement by the front door caught my eye, and I froze. I had nothing on me to protect myself. I didn’t have a gun or a knife or a stake or the chain I used to stop them from dematerializing with. I had nothing.
And if it was a vampire, I wasn’t strong enough to fight. Not against the pure bred vampires. I was a woman, and I was a half-breed.
Vampire's Shade Discounted Box Set Page 23