Barbie- The Vampire Hunter Boxset

by Lucinda Dark

  “Oh, uh, well…” Ben hesitated, his hands clenching and unclenching. I tried to focus on him and not the riot of temperature inside my body. Finally, he seemed to gather himself together. He wiped his palms against his shorts and took a step back. “It’s not a big deal, I can ask you about it later. I don’t want to keep you from getting to your next class.”

  “You’re not,” I assured him, but he was already taking another step back, laughing uncomfortably as he lifted his arm in a half-hearted wave. “I’ll see you again tomorrow in homeroom. Don’t worry, it’s not an emergency or anything.”

  “I—” I stopped as he rounded the hallway corner and disappeared from sight. Silent shock rippled through me for a moment before I turned to the man at my side. “What the fuck was that about?” I demanded. Maverick’s gaze was still on the place where Ben had disappeared to. “Maverick!” I snapped my fingers in front of his face. “What the hell?”

  Dark brown eyes leveled on me, and he stayed silent for a moment as my eyebrows continued to inch up in expectation. “I got a text from Torin,” Maverick said. “He’s coming back.” Oh, so we were going to ignore his strange behavior? Fine. I huffed and released my bag strap, letting it dangle over my shoulder, to cross my arms.

  “Do you know exactly when?” I asked.

  He shook his head, eyes fixated on me, watching me carefully. “Not yet,” he answered.

  I frowned. “Okay, thanks for telling me.” I turned to go.

  “Wait.” He snapped an arm out and latched his fingers onto my wrist. I flexed my hand, urging myself to stay calm. I resisted the automatic compulsion to lay Maverick out. He wasn’t my enemy. Yes, I was pissed at him, but it wasn’t something that deserved a concussion. Yet.

  I tilted my head back. “What?”

  He hesitated, his fingers clamping down harder for a split second. The corners of his mouth dipped downward. His eyes darted to the side. “You—I mean, I—” He stopped, swallowed, and inhaled sharply. “I’m sorry about last night.”

  “What about last night?” I arched a brow at him.

  The corners of his lips deepened. “You know what about,” he said sharply.

  I shrugged. “You didn’t want to talk about it,” I said. “What brought about this change?” He stared at me without comment. I sighed and gently pulled my wrist from his grasp. “When you’re done being like this, I’ll accept your apology,” I stated calmly. “Until then, I’ll be driving myself to school.”

  This time, when I moved to leave, he didn’t stop me. And though he remained silent and let me go without a fuss, I could still feel the heavy weight of his stare on my back. This couldn’t continue, I decided. As soon as Torin came back, we needed to address the kissing and … the demon.

  Chapter 5

  Maverick

  The empty passenger seat of my truck irritated me. Every so often, I would catch myself glancing over to see what Barbie’s face looked like, to try and guess her mood, or just to observe the way her thoughts played out over her face. But she wasn’t there. After the tenth time I’d accidentally looked, I cursed and slammed a palm against the steering wheel with a growl.

  Somewhere in the car, my cell rang. I punched the Bluetooth answer button on the console screen and barked out an answer. “What?”

  “Bad time?” Torin’s voice filtered through the truck’s speakers, sounding slightly off. It was gruffer than usual.

  I cracked my neck and took a stiff breath, releasing it slowly. “No, it’s not. Where are you?”

  “I’m about to get on my flight,” he said. “Just wanted to let you know.”

  “Have you called or texted Barbie?” I asked. Silence greeted me. It was answer enough. “She’s pissed at me.”

  “Oh?” Torin’s voice sounded deeper, more throaty, as if he were suddenly coming down with a cold. “Why’s that?”

  “Well, she’s pissed at me for,” I paused, unsure how much I should tell him. “Reasons,” I finished lamely before leaping for a distraction. “But she’s also pissed at you. Where the hell have you been for the last month?”

  “I told you, England—”

  “You haven’t told either of us shit,” I snapped. Had the steering wheel been a living, breathing thing, I would’ve been fucking strangling it. “You get a summons in the middle of the night from Daddy dearest and you disappear the next day with nothing more than a text message with the bare essentials of information.”

  “It’s complicated,” Torin said, clearing his throat. “But I’ll be back within the next twelve hours or less.”

  “When you get back, we have a lot to discuss.” I slowed as I came to my street and took the turn. “There’s a lot you’ve missed. Barbie and I have been hunting vamps in the local area.”

  Torin’s intake of air was all I needed to know that he wasn’t happy with the information. “Without me?” he growled. “Do you know how dangerous that is?”

  “She’s had it,” I replied sharply. “You may be a badass vamp, but she’s got speed, too. I’ve fucking mastered shooting targets at close range. You, on the other hand, have been absent as fuck. What did you think? Life would just stop if you weren’t around? That we’d sit on our asses and twiddle our thumbs until you deigned to show your face? There were problems. We took care of them. End of story.”

  “I don’t like you putting her in danger, Maverick,” Torin said coldly. “Don’t do it again.”

  “Are you fucking shitting me, man?” I scoffed, the muscles in my arms bulging as I felt them tighten and tighten until it felt like they were going to fucking pop. “There’s no stopping her. She’ll go with or without me.” And as much as I hated to admit it, she could still lay me out on my ass. I’d been practicing self-defense with her and not fucking once had I managed to gain the upper hand. It was humbling for a guy over two hundred pounds of muscle to be flattened by a five-foot-five blonde ball of self-contained fury.

  “I don’t care what you have to do, Maverick,” Torin growled, sounding more animal than human. “You do not allow her to put herself in danger. There are things she and I need to discuss. She better be alive by the time I return or so help you, I will—”

  “You’ll what?” I interrupted as I pulled into the driveway. I shoved the car into park and shook my head. “You’re not even here, man. You can’t just call and demand I follow orders. You’re not my fucking boss. You want to control her, good fucking luck.” As if that would ever be possible. Barbie was as uncontrollable as the wind and twice as unpredictable. “But you might have a better chance of doing that if you were actually fucking here.”

  Silence stretched over the line as I waited for his response. I didn’t mention that we’d found more and more dilapidated vampire dens like the abandoned train station. Perhaps it was just how new the whole thing was to me—what the hell did I know about vampire numbers?—but it felt like there was an unusual number of loose-cannon vampires in the nearby area. In the last month that he’d been gone, we’d taken out at least three of them. All similar to the vampires we’d killed at the train station. Consumed by bloodlust. Too far gone for anything but a good staking. That, I felt, was a conversation we’d have to have in person.

  “I’ll be there by tomorrow morning,” he growled. “Do not let her out of your sight until then.”

  The line went dead and I shut off the vehicle, letting my head thump back against the headrest. Twelve hours or less. What difference did it make? I wondered. We were still in the same place as we’d been when he left.

  I slammed out of the truck and stormed into the house. Barbie was still gone somewhere—probably with her little red-headed friend—and since no one else greeted me, I assumed that meant my parents were gone as well. That was fine with me. I needed time to do some more research.

  I headed for my mom’s office, rounded the big desk, and plopped down into the leather swivel chair. My fingers itched to go digging for the files they had on Barbie to see if she’d signed the papers yet, but I alrea
dy knew the answer. They’d offered to adopt her and she hadn’t yet agreed. A part of me couldn’t comprehend what held her back, but another part of me—the one that knew the truth. About her family. About her origins. About her blood-soaked past. I got it. And I was grateful that she refused to sign.

  Because it was that girl, that Barbie, that kept me awake at night. The Barbie who had kissed me at the hospital after my parents had offered to adopt her was an addiction I never wanted to be rid of. She had stolen her way into my very soul and her remnants still remained. She had wanted to talk about that kiss, but I knew if we did, I’d have to fucking tell her the truth.

  I would have to tell her that I’d liked it. More than that, I wanted more. I wanted her—body and soul. I wanted to fuck her against the wall and wake with her beneath me. I wanted to delve as far down as I fucking could and rip open every crack I found and wedge myself in there. I wanted to be the glue that held her together.

  She was an addiction, a burning flame—volatile and intractable. Some men feared fire, but not me. I wanted to let it consume me.

  I opened my mom’s laptop and pulled up the files I’d saved and hidden under a separate folder entitled ‘football statistics.’ Knowing my mom, it was the one place she’d never look and considering my father had his own computer and never looked at hers, I figured it would be the safest place to hide the articles I’d found on local murders. I separated the articles that had surrounded the abandoned train station and placed those into the trash folder. Now that the vampire den had been taken care of, they were old news.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t the last of the vampire dens. I pulled up a picture of an old warehouse, about forty-five minutes out of town I’d been keeping my eye on. I clicked across the keyboard, sliding the mouse across the screen at lightning speed. As hard as I’d worked on catching up to Barbie in combat skills, it was here that I’d found the most talent. I’d always been good with computers after all.

  I could’ve used my own laptop—or one of the many my parents had stashed for emergencies—but I wasn’t here for the computer. I was here for the files. Using my mom’s computer was just a safety precaution. She had specially designed firewalls added to the hard drive of this computer because of her business. Something I hadn’t gotten around to adding to my own computer. I’d never needed it before. I plugged in a set of headphones and hacked into a local police scanner.

  As I listened to the crackle of the radio waves, I searched for any information on the warehouse whose address had shown up in conversation the last few times I’d listened in. Missing pets. Missing people. All centered around this place. How many vampires would we catch this time?

  I saved all of the information I gathered back to the same hidden folder and sighed as I exited out and went back to the home screen. I unplugged the headphones and pushed away from the desk after sending the info to my cell.

  As I left the office, the front door opened. I paused on the threshold of the hallway and Barbie looked up. Our gazes clashed and my body tightened all the way down to my fucking groin.

  Cursing silently, I whirled away and stomped up the stairs. I’d have to find a way to grind out my fucking issues for at least the next twelve hours. Twelve fucking hours. Then Torin would be back and all bets were off.

  Chapter 6

  Barbie

  The door to my old house hung open. My footsteps were muted, but still there against the stones lining the front walkway. I floated forward and looked up as the front light turned on. My gaze settled back on the darkened doorway. The light from above didn’t reach past the foyer.

  “Mom?” My hands scrunched into the skirts of the dress as I lifted one foot and stepped over the threshold. Something warm and wet hit my cheek and slid downward. I reached up and touched the spot, my fingers coming away red with fresh blood. My heartbeat increased. I blinked and raised my head towards the shadowed interior of my house. “Dad? Brandon?” I moved forward.

  My foot landed against something soft and squishy, a sickening squelching sound emitting from whatever it was. My gaze went down. Cold shivers raced up my spine. I tilted my head to the side as sweat popped up in beads on my upper lip and brow. I swallowed against bile as I spotted the body at my feet. Mud caked against my shoes, splattering my legs. My mind saw red but didn’t connect it to what it really was. Blood.

  “Mom?” My voice grew louder, echoing up throughout the house. “Dad? Brandon!” I turned in a full circle, a sinking feeling gripping my chest and reaching long fingers up to encircle my neck. Where were they?

  “Barbie…” I turned, relieved to hear someone—anyone—answer me. But it wasn’t one of my parents and it wasn’t Brandon.

  A tall man stumbled through an open doorway, red coating the front of the white shirt he wore. His shoulders were broad, his chin chiseled. Dark eyes met mine, filled with pain. He stumbled and went down on his knees and automatically, I reached for him.

  “Barbie,” he whispered my name again, a prayer, a plea. I didn’t understand. I touched his face gently, curious. He reached up, his fingers coated with his own blood as the stain on his shirt spread outward. “Kill me.”

  I jerked.

  “W-what?” I blinked, sure I had misunderstood.

  “Why…” He gasped for breath, his voice growing raspy. I leaned down as I tried to hear him. “Why did you…”

  “Why did I what?” I asked.

  “Why did you kill me?”

  My heart stopped in my chest. Kill him? Me? I lifted up and stared down at coffee dark eyes circled by a ring of lighter autumn leaf colored brown. What did that mean?

  Then it hit me. I knew this man. My heart restarted and doubled in its effort to catch up on its missed beats. It thrummed in my chest. Faster and faster. Red covered my hands, soaking the front of my dress. My … dress? It was the same dress I’d worn all those months ago. The night I’d killed my family. I stared down at Maverick’s now familiar face.

  “No. No. Nonononononono.” I whispered the word at first and then, as I repeated it, it grew in volume. No. Not again. I couldn’t let this happen again. “Maverick?” I shook his still body, but he remained unconscious.

  My hands shook. My body trembled. Just as my mind was about to fracture, a low, deep, masculine laugh started up. I looked up, but there was no one else in the room. Still, the laughter went on. Slowly, I rose to my feet. My knees knocked together. My teeth chattered.

  “What a poor little hunter, so scared, so feeble, so … human.” I didn’t recognize the voice, but I didn’t like that it was taunting me. My chest tightened and with it, so did the rest of me. I jerked and looked down when something cool touched my palm as I squeezed my hands into fists. My father’s sword. “Do you truly think you can kill me?” the voice asked. “Or are you just another weak child?”

  I wasn’t weak. Maverick’s body drew my eye. This wasn’t real, I assured myself. Maverick was fine. He was alive. This was just a nightmare. A bad dream.

  “Barbie.”

  I needed to stop this. But how? My breaths came in pants. Too much. It was too much. There wasn’t enough air.

  “Barbie.”

  Maverick’s open eyes, devoid of life, stared at me. Accusing me. Where was Torin? Was he dead too? Had I been the reason? Had my actions brought tragedy once again?

  “For the love of Satan, girl, wake up.” A shrill, piercing snap shattered the image before me. The darkened house fell away, fissures of white cracking through the picture of it until the walls were stripped away, breaking off into little, tiny pieces. “I’ve just about had enough of this,” the familiar feminine voice huffed.

  Heels clicked against a hard surface as Satrina appeared. “It’s just a fucking dream,” she snapped as she strode right up to me. “Stop being all death, doom, and gloom.”

  I paused, thinking. Then I brought up the sword in my fist and shoved it right through her as she stopped in front of me. For a moment, both of us were shocked. She blinked and looked down at wh
ere the metal gleamed, the end penetrating right through the left side of where her ribcage was. Then, she threw back her head and laughed.

  One gold eye and one ocean blue eye settled on me, glowing from within with infernal intent. “Burn them all to ash, Barbie.”

  And I did. She vanished and the world around me caught fire. The flames erupting at my feet and spreading outward. It lined a path for me. I strode forward, feeling stronger as I reached for the heat and let it sink beneath my skin.

  “Use me,” Satrina whispered on the wind. “Take the power.”

  I did. I sucked it inside. Let it spread until all of the darkness was consumed by the scorching blaze that whirled around me. And when the fire had devastated all that was left of the dream, I closed my eyes.

  Silence greeted me as I lifted them once more. Gone was the fire. I stared up at the ceiling of my bedroom and sucked in a breath. A shiver worked down my spine as the air conditioning kicked on, blowing icy air over my face. Rolling to my side, I checked my phone and saw that it was just past midnight. Sweat coated my face and neck. With a groan, I sat up and wiped it off with the back of my hand as I slid out from between the sheets.

  When my feet touched down on the floor, I paused for a moment. Dreaming about the death of my family was nothing new but dreaming about Maverick's death was. Would I have been able to escape from the nightmare myself if Satrina hadn't shown up? A part of me wondered why she had at all.

  Shaking my head to dispel the thoughts, I got up and left the room, padding into the hallway towards the bathroom. I came to a slow stop at the light spilling into the darkened corridor from the workout room. Soft grunts and the sounds of metal and rubber filtered out of the cracked door. At the door, I touched lightly against the wood to push the barrier open just a bit more.