Hunted (The Tinder Chronicles)

by Land, Alexa

  “Think so, huh?”

  “I know so.”

  “Did you come up with this symbiotic theory on your own?”

  “No. It used to be a cornerstone of vampire culture, many, many centuries ago. Since we were so much stronger, in return for your blood we defended the human race. That was the natural order.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “Your kind tried to enslave us. We were always greatly outnumbered, even back then, and humankind began to see our strength as something to be exploited. Why send humans down into a mine, for example, when one vampire could do the work of fifty while surviving in toxic conditions? Eventually, of course, the vampires rebelled.”

  “So, it’s all our fault.”

  “Well, a lot of it is humankind’s fault, but not all. There have always been vampires unwilling to go along with the status quo, both then and now. Some believed we were superior to humans, meant to be the dominant race on this planet. Occasionally, one of those individuals would become a leader, attracting followers, gaining more and more momentum. But it all backfired. The humans rose up, organized, and learned to fight us. We have the strength, but they have the numbers. They’ve been winning the war for centuries now, and the result is the world we live in today – vampires forced to hide, to live in secret or risk execution.”

  My eyelids were getting heavy, and I settled into Bane’s arms as I said, “What’s happening right now with the vampires, the way they’re organizing – that’s not just random. They have a leader, don’t they?” He didn’t answer me, so I muttered, “I mean, they would have to. They didn’t all just happen to run into each other at Costco one day and say, ‘hey, I know, let’s team up, start hunting in packs and go after the hunters.’ There has to be someone behind all of that.”

  “Get some sleep, Tinder.”

  I really didn’t have a choice, I was already drifting off. He got up, pulling the covers over me, and I murmured, “What are you doing? Come back to bed.”

  “I have things I need to do, love,” he said, scooping up his clothes. “I need to find out where my men are on tracking down the vampires that came after you. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  “You’re dodging my question. You know who’s leading the vamps, don’t you?”

  “We’ll talk later.”

  “No we won’t. You’ll just dodge again.” He sighed and headed for the door, and I murmured as I drifted off, “Be careful.”

  Chapter Eight

  When I awoke several hours later, I called Bane’s name, even though there was really no need to do that. The apartment felt empty, somehow. I knew he wasn’t here.

  I stared at the ceiling for a while, thinking back over the past few earthshattering hours. I felt amazingly good. Which is to say, my body ached in a hundred places, but it was the best kind of ache, one that reminded me I’d been well and thoroughly fucked. I grinned and played the highlight reel over in my mind a few times.

  But then, gradually, a bit of doubt began to creep in as my afterglow receded. It had meant so much to me when Bane told me he loved me. I hadn’t even realized how much I needed to hear someone say that to me, until someone finally did. Deep down though, I wasn’t sure I believed him.

  Those magic words weren’t the reason I’d had sex with him again, by the way. I’d always been incredibly attracted to Bane, no matter how much I tried to fight it, and had been looking for an excuse to let my guard down and sleep with him again. But now what? Were we on the brink of an actual relationship? I couldn’t imagine myself in a relationship with anyone, let alone a vampire. How was that supposed to work? How could I live with the hypocrisy of hunting vamps day in and day out, then coming home to one in my bed?

  Even if I could come to grips with that and somehow learn to separate Bane from my job, there was still the issue of trust. I wanted to believe him when he said he had my back, and when he claimed to care about me. But how could I ever really trust a vampire?

  There were too damn many questions, and no real answers.

  Eventually, I rolled out of bed, feeling slightly deflated. I showered and got dressed, and wondered if I should wait for Bane to return. But there were things I really needed to do, so I headed for the front door. When the alarm went off, I jumped back, completely startled. What the hell? I pressed my hands over my ears and hurried to the elevator. It was still disabled. I ran over to the stairway, and found that the big metal fire door was still locked.

  Seriously? After everything that had just happened between us, he was still locking me up against my will? And why was that so surprising to me?

  Once again, the alarm didn’t stop until I was back in the apartment with the door closed. A phone began to ring in the bedroom, and I ran to it and answered it with, “Are you kidding me?”

  “You need to stay put, love,” Bane told me. “I’m getting close to tracking down that group of vampires. Shouldn’t be much longer, maybe only a day or two.”

  “Oh come on!”

  “It’s for your own good.”

  I felt betrayed somehow. I really didn’t know why I’d expected things to be different now, why I’d expected him to stop treating me like a child…but I had. As I sank down onto the edge of the mattress, I said, “I can’t believe you locked me up again, after what just happened between us. After you told me you loved me.”

  “I do love you. And that’s why I need to keep you safe.”

  “You’re not keeping me safe, you’re keeping me prisoner!”

  “Well, that wouldn’t be necessary if you’d simply agree to hide out for a few days. I knew you’d never cooperate, though.”

  “Sane people don’t hold their loved ones captive. You know that, right?”

  “In your case, extreme measures are often necessary. It’s not easy keeping you alive, you know, given how stubborn you are.”

  Anger boiled over in me, and I yelled, “And now you’re somehow making this my fault!”

  “It is!”

  “Damn it, Bane! Come back here and let me out.”

  “No.”

  “Christ, and I was actually contemplating having a relationship with you! I was willing to forgive you for so much, up to and including staking me to a wall, for God’s sake! But how can I forgive someone that treats me this way?”

  “Treats you this way! Oh yeah, what a villain, providing you with a safe and comfortable penthouse apartment, in order to prevent a gang of murderous thugs from ripping you to shreds!” Bane was apparently behind the wheel, because there was the faint sound of tires squealing in the background, followed by some elaborate cursing on his part.

  I got off the bed and paced around the apartment, eventually ending up in the kitchen as I said, “I don’t believe that you love me. No way would someone lock up a person they love, under the guise of it being in their best interest.”

  “I’ve had to make hard choices with you, Tinder. Like I said, it’s not exactly easy keeping you alive.”

  “So stop trying! I don’t need your help. I’m more than capable of looking after myself, and I really don’t appreciate you treating me like I’m a fragile little egg!”

  “Excellent analogy, Humpty Dumpty, because without my help you’d be splattered all over a back alley in the warehouse district!”

  “Yeah, you know what? If you didn’t constantly feel the need to keep me in the dark about everything, I wouldn’t have even been in the warehouse district! You could have told me what was going on with all those vamps in that warehouse, so I could stop digging for answers. Oh, and you might also have mentioned that my name was at the top of a damn hit list, so I would have known that I was about to go from hunter to hunted!”

  “Even if you’d known about the list, you would have still been out there putting yourself in danger. You know that as well as I do!” Bane said. “By the way though, your name isn’t at the top of that list, mine is. And I sure as hell didn’t get myself put on death row to then sit back and watch you get yourself killed.
If I can do something to save your life, I’m damn well going to do it, whether or not you approve of my methods!”

  I sighed in exasperation and pushed my hair back from my face. Then I told him, “I need answers from you, Bane. If you’re really on my side, then prove it. Give me the name of the vampire that put the hit list together. It’s the same person that’s been getting the vamps to organize, isn’t it?” I waited for a response, and when he didn’t say anything, I yelled, “See? There you go again, withholding information!”

  “If I did give you a name, you know what would happen? You’d go after him recklessly, totally undermanned, and you’d be dead before you got within fifty yards of him!”

  “So in other words, you do know his name, and you’re intentionally keeping it from me!”

  “Of course!”

  “You don’t trust me, that’s the bottom line. You don’t trust my judgment, or my ability, or anything about me, really. And you know what? I don’t trust you, either, Bane. Whatever the hell this thing is between us, it’s never going to work out. It can’t. Because without basic trust, we have absolutely nothing.”

  Instead of waiting for his response, I turned off the phone, set it on the kitchen counter, and looked around me. I had to get out of here. There was so much I needed to do, and I couldn’t sit around until Bane arbitrarily decided to let me go.

  In a flash of inspiration, a plan of escape occurred to me. I turned all four burners of the electric stovetop on high, found four big pots in the cabinet (why did a vampire have pots?) and set them on the burners.

  When the bottoms of the cookware glowed red-hot, I picked up a big stock pot and pressed it against a corner of the thick plexiglass, holding it there for a couple minutes. When I pulled it away, I grinned with satisfaction. The window was slightly warped and melted. Just a bit, but it was a start.

  I repeated the process again and again, switching out the pots, returning them to the stovetop when each one cooled. Some of the plastic began to stick to them, and the apartment filled with a nasty smell when it burned off. I really hoped the fumes weren’t toxic.

  It took a while, but eventually I melted through the panel enough to then kick out a section. I grabbed Bane’s laptop and the note pads and zipped them up inside my jacket, then tried to squeeze through the opening I’d created. It was a tight fit, but I’d already spent way too much time on this. If Bane came back he’d surely stop me, so I had to hurry.

  Ha! I was out!

  And now I was on a six inch-wide ledge twelve stories up, and had to creep around the corner of the building, which made me nervous. I’d contemplated melting out a window closer to the fire escape, but figured the pots would cool down too much by the time I carried them across the apartment. This balancing act was the price for that decision.

  No one had to tell me that looking down was a bad idea. I looked straight up instead and tried not to think about where I was. It was predawn, and I concentrated on the faint grey light beginning to seep through the clouds. There was a breeze coming off the Pacific, the smell sharp and briny, its force strong enough to make me feel a little unsteady up here. Awesome. I inched along on the tips of my toes, trying to use my fingertips to somehow cling to the plaster façade, eventually rounding the corner of the building.

  When I finally reached the fire escape, I exhaled slowly and eased myself onto the metal platform, then rushed down the ladder. If Bane was waiting for me at the bottom, I was going to be so pissed, because that would mean this had all been for nothing. But there was no sign of my captor as I hit the ground and started running.

  It took over an hour to make it home on foot, my senses on high alert the whole way. At least most other vamps weren’t a threat right now, not with the sun coming up.

  If he was looking for me to lock me up again, Bane would of course go straight to my rental. Just in case he was already out front waiting for me, I approached the house from the rear, hopping my neighbor’s side gate, then the fence between our yards. I stayed low as I crossed my dead lawn, picked the lock on the back door and let myself in.

  I had taken half a step into the kitchen when Lee leapt out at me and yelled, “Freeze, motherfucker!” He was dressed only in boxers, a gun in one hand and a frying pan in the other, his short golden-blond hair sticking up in every direction.

  “You really should have gone into law enforcement,” I told him. “But I have to question your choice of weapons. With everything in your arsenal, that’s what you went for? You planning to sauté an intruder to death?”

  His body language relaxed immediately. “Holy hell, Tinder, you startled me. I just woke up, I ain’t exactly thinkin’ clearly. Where you been, anyway?”

  “Long story. We need to get out of here, so get dressed and pack your things. I’ll meet you in the living room in five minutes.”

  Lee did as I asked without question or comment. Meanwhile, I went to my bedroom, grabbed a duffle bag, and put Bane’s laptop in it (yes, I was going to return it to him, just as soon as I copied all the files). The legal pads full of the notes I’d been taking went in the bag too, and I packed my few clothes before slinging it over my shoulder. I grabbed a second bag, which already held weapons and my books on witchcraft, and took a handgun from the top shelf of my closet, checking to confirm that the clip was full on the way to the living room. My roommate joined me thirty seconds later. We went out the front door (which wasn’t an issue now that I had a loaded gun) and I locked up behind us before we ran for Lee’s truck.

  He drove us to a strip of seedy motels a few miles from the house, and parked two blocks over to avoid totally giving away our location. We chose a motel at random. Apparently we woke up the desk clerk, and he handed us a key without bothering to count the cash I tossed on the counter. He was on his way back to bed before we’d even left the lobby.

  Finally, when we were sitting on the sagging queen bed in the musty little motel room, Lee asked, “So, who we runnin’ from, exactly?”

  “Both Bane and a big vamp gang that might track me to the house.” I filled him in on all that had happened over the last couple days – leaving out the part about sleeping with Bane. No hunter would understand something like that. Hell, I could barely understand it myself.

  I pulled out the laptop and showed him the hit list, and Lee exclaimed, “Number seventeen! Screw that! I know I’m better than this yahoo in the number twelve position! And don’t even get me started on number fifteen, she couldn’t hit a vamp with a truck, let alone a stake! This list is downright insulting.”

  I had to grin at that. “So, you’re upset because you’re not higher on the list?”

  “Damn straight. And that’s bullshit that only full-blooded hunters are in the top ten. My second sight is plenty strong enough to get the job done, I tell you what. It don’t matter that I’m not a full-blood like you. No way should you be at number two, with me stuck way the hell down at freakin’ seventeen!”

  “Lee, this is a kill list, not a ranking for the hunter of the year award. Let’s try to stay focused.”

  He frowned at me, but after a few moments said, “Yeah, ok.”

  “It sounds like you know some of these hunters. Do you have a way of getting in touch with them?”

  “I have phone numbers for a few of ‘em, and I’ll bet each one has the number for a couple more. We’ll probably be able to get the word out to most of the people on this list.”

  “I want to arrange a meeting with as many hunters as possible,” I said. “The vamps are organizing, and we should, too. Maybe we can convince the hunters to start working in groups, or at least pairs, since that’s what the vamps are doing. That’ll improve our chances of survival.”

  “Good idea.”

  “It’d also be useful to swap information. Maybe someone’s heard about the vamps’ leader, the bloodsucker that made this list and that’s getting them to work together. If we take him out, things might go back to normal.”

  Lee climbed up onto the bed and r
ested his head on a pillow. “Ok. We’ll start making calls first thing in the morning.”

  “It is first thing in the morning.”

  “Not to our kind it ain’t. Most hunters would’ve been out all night, and will just be climbing into bed. They wouldn’t be too receptive to anything we had to say right now, so let’s just give it a few hours.”

  “Ok, you’re right.”

  He held his arms out to me. “Come here, Tinder. You look as wore out as a flat tire on the side of a highway.”

  “I’m way too tired to fuck right now, Lee.”

  “I didn’t say anythin’ about fuckin’. Just come here.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, I climbed up onto the bed and let Lee hold me, my head on his chest. It felt really good. It felt…normal.

  What the hell had I been thinking, letting myself get close to Bane? To a damn vampire? I’d let lust and animal attraction take the place of logic and common sense, not once, but twice. God I’d been an idiot.

  Thinking about him was upsetting, so to distract myself I asked, “Do you really think the other hunters on that list will take us seriously and agree to team up? Or are they just going to dismiss us as a couple dumb kids?”

  “Hunters are a pig-headed bunch, that’s for sure. But they’ll listen to you, Tinder.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because you’re a Reynolds, and a Sousa. Both sides of your family are legendary, no other hunter can boast that kind of lineage. I mean, hell, you’re the closest thing we got to royalty,” Lee said.

  “Oh, come on.”

  “I mean it. You’re the real deal, Tinder. If anyone was in a position to step forward as our leader, it’d be you.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think so. I’m no leader,” I said.

  “Not yet, but you could be. I really believe that.”