by E. J. King
“Good work, Kale.” Ethan perched on the arm of the couch, leaning over me to get a better look at the map. Suddenly, I was in the middle of a hot guy sandwich.
“The bar is closed until this evening, so now is probably the best time to check it out.” I felt very warm.
Rafe helped matters slightly when he stood up. “I’m going to need some protein first. Did you buy those steaks?”
“You do know that I’m not your mother, right?”
“Of course not. My mother is a terrible cook.”
“Well, I’m not your girlfriend either.” I added with a mutter, “Thankfully.”
Rafe made his way to the kitchen and began rifling through cabinets. I turned back to the article on my laptop, staring at Meggie’s picture. She was a pretty girl, with bright eyes and a wide smile.
“We have to find her, Ethan,” I said, already feeling like a failure. If we had done a better job hunting, we might have been able to prevent her abduction.
“We will.” Ethan put a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Now we know where to look for her.”
Something heavy crashed to the floor and Rafe swore loudly.
“I’m on it.” Ethan hurried into the kitchen before I could start yelling.
I was feeling less irritable an hour later, once I had a full stomach. True to form, Ethan served up a satisfying lunch. He was proving to be quite the asset.
The three of us scoured a one-block circle around the bar, looking for the slightest piece of evidence that Meggie had been abducted there. We were coming up empty until Rafe found a dirty, crumpled rag in the dumpster behind the bar.
“Chemicals?” I guessed.
He sniffed it carefully. “Soaked.”
“It’s safe to assume that this is where the Harvester nabbed the girl.” Ethan carefully plucked a beer bottle from the dumpster. It was covered in blood. “Guess the rag wasn’t enough to knock her out.”
“That’s risky. He could’ve killed her in the process,” I said. Judging from the amount of blood, Meggie had been hit hard.
“Now that we have proof she isn’t just shacking up with a frat guy, let’s start looking for the Harvester’s lair.” Ethan was all business.
We followed the road past the bar, through an abandoned industrial park. Nearly a dozen empty buildings waited for us.
“Twenty bucks says we find Meggie in one of these buildings.” Rafe didn’t bother being quiet as we entered the first one. It was midday, and Souls were sensitive to daylight. If we did come across the Harvester, it would be in a basement or other dark location, probably deeply asleep. It would take a lot to wake one up.
“Do you ever get tired of being so cocky?” I nudged open the door to a dark storage room. Fortunately, I’d remembered to pack a flashlight.
“There’s something we haven’t considered,” Ethan said thoughtfully, while my light scanned the empty room. “Souls tend to travel alone, or in groups of two or three because they don’t want to leave massive body counts behind.”
“Factual statement,” Rafe said.
Ethan’s head tilted. “If a Soul harvests the bodies instead, slowly draining the blood, the body count would be much lower...”
“You think we might be dealing with a nest of Souls?” I asked. We started down a long hall that led to a dank warehouse floor.
Ethan’s thought wasn’t a complete stretch. On a few rare occasions, my family and I had come across nests of Souls as large as five or six. Throwing in the possibility of harvesting made it much more likely that we were dealing with a group. Souls were challenging enough to fight in small groups, but a large one could be overwhelming.
“I think we should at least be prepared for the possibility,” Ethan said. “You haven’t been on a full hunt in a couple of years, Kaylie. It’s likely that you will be a little rusty your first time out.”
“You don’t have to worry about me.” I stuck my chin out stubbornly. “Hunting is in my blood.”
“I thought you gave up hunting,” Rafe reminded me with a smug look. “Plus, we’ve seen you train. You pretty much suck.”
I chose to ignore him. “I’ll search that corner. You guys go the other way.”
The warehouse had long since been abandoned and the sky-high shelves were empty. I walked up and down the empty aisles, worrying at what Rafe said. While it was true that I had been running from my Hunter life, looking for a more normal existence, part of me still felt loyal to my Hunter family. If I really had lost those skills, it felt like I was betraying their legacy. Hunting was really all I had left of them.
“Hey.”
I jumped, whirling to face Rafe. My heart pounded loudly in my chest. “Way to sneak up on me.”
“I wasn’t exactly sneaking.” Rafe eyed me carefully. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“What I said back there, I was just giving you crap. Like I always do. You shouldn’t take me too seriously.” He offered me a small, rare, smile. “I’m just a jerk.”
Reluctantly, I returned his smile. “No, you’re not. If you were a jerk, you wouldn’t be here right now looking for some girl you never met.”
“Don’t give me so much credit.” Rafe’s face darkened as he turned away. “Let’s finish checking this space. Ethan moved on to the next building.”
We moved through the rest of the warehouse in silence. I was getting used to Rafe’s weird mood swings, but that didn’t mean I liked them. Sometimes I forgot that he wasn’t a normal guy, that he was a Lost Soul biding his time. Because he had been infected with Soul blood but had never completed the transition by feeding, he was pretty much a dead man walking.
“What do you think you would be doing right now if you weren’t a Hunter?” I asked him as we headed back outside.
He paused to think before answering. “I have no idea.”
“Surely you’ve thought about it?” I had pictured a different future for myself almost every day in my early teen years, when I was still grappling with my birthright.
“I like hunting, Kaylie. I know you find that hard to believe, but I’m good at it. It’s all I’ve ever known.” He stopped walking, turning to me. His eyes shone brightly in the sun and I liked that he no longer felt the need to wear sunglasses around me. It was nice to be able to look into his eyes when he talked to me. “I don’t know why you hate it so much. It’s a noble lifestyle. We get to save people, save the world.”
I couldn’t tell if my discomfort was because of what he said or the way he looked at me as he said it. “It’s not as glamorous as you make it sound. Don’t forget that my entire family was killed because of this noble lifestyle.”
Rafe’s face softened and he reached out his hand, stopping just before touching my cheek. “I’m sorry.”
His hand dropped quickly and he turned away. It wasn’t the first time Rafe and I had had one of those moments. Brief snippets of time where it was just the two of us being real with each other, getting caught up in a moment. But just like the other times, Rafe ended it before it could become something more.
“Hurry up, Red. This isn’t a time to rest.” He was already several yards ahead of me.
I sighed, resigned to the fact that Rafe would never be able to truly be himself around me. Snappy comments and sarcastic replies was all I could ever expect from our relationship.
We made it through half of the buildings before it started to get dark. Once the sun went down completely, we would be vulnerable to a group of Souls. Even with three of us, we would be outnumbered if the group was larger than five or six.
Most people read vampire stories that glorify the creatures. It made them seem cool and sexy. But real vampires, the Souls that existed in our world and killed humans without a second thought, were anything but cool and sexy. They were vicious and terrifying.
Souls had lightning fast speed, overwhelming strength, and no conscience. When they gave into their demon form during feeding, they were also terrifying to look at. Rows of razo
r sharp teeth and vibrant, burning eyes. Skin pulled tight over their cheek bones and their jaws dislocated to allow them an even larger method of ingestion. If we stood a chance against a group of them, we needed to catch them during the day when they would be slower and their strength would be depleted.
When we got back to the house, I immediately pulled on my workout clothes and went upstairs to use Rafe and Ethan’s makeshift gym. I needed to be in top form when we did find the nest of Souls.
Ethan was downstairs in my library, likely searching desperately for a cure for his brother. I thought Rafe was in his room taking a nap, but in the middle of my punching bag assault, I looked up and caught him watching me from the doorway.
“Let me guess, my stance is terrible and I hit like a girl?” I flicked a strand of hair from my eyes.
He shrugged. “Your stance is fine. And you might hit like a girl, but that’s not a bad thing.”
“Then why are you looking at me like that?”
“It’s a shame that you hate being a Hunter so much. You’re actually pretty good at it.” His lip twitched into the faintest of smiles. “And you look good doing it.”
My cheeks flushed. “Right. I’m all sweaty and gross, and my fighting form is terrible.”
“Nothing about your form is terrible, Kaylie,” he said with a wink, disappearing down the hall.
I stood motionless for nearly a minute after he left, wondering at the tingling warmth in my body. Just one night before I had decided that I was afflicted by a crush on Ethan, and now here I was getting all flustered by a wink and a comment from Rafe. I had no idea how to handle these feelings, so I did the only thing I could think to do. I called Hope.
“Let me get this straight,” she said, pausing dramatically after I filled her in on my situation over dinner. When I called, she insisted I come over right away so she could treat me to dinner in the cafeteria. I told her it wasn’t necessary, but she insisted on it, thanking me for the distraction. She had been looking for an excuse to get out of her dorm where everyone was still in full-depression mode over Breanna and Meggie.
“You have two beautiful men living directly above you. Not only that, but they are both available. And you think it’s a problem that you might have a crush on both of them?” She slammed down her fork. “Can we switch lives please?”
When she put it that way, I did sound like an annoying drama queen. “I can’t have a crush on them.”
“Why not? They’re single, you’re single.” She looked at me blankly.
“Because… they are my neighbors.” Even I had to admit that it sounded stupid, but I couldn’t exactly tell her that the three of us were hunting together. “Plus, they are brothers. That just seems like a bad idea.”
“Flirting isn’t a crime, Kaylie. It’s a normal interaction between members of the opposite sex.” She stabbed her fork into a piece of chicken. “I’m not saying you should have sex with both of them. Of course, I’m also not saying you shouldn’t.”
“Hope.” I looked down at my own plate of uneaten food. “Can you be serious for one second?”
“I am being serious. You are in college, Kales. Now is the time to experiment. Have fun. Sleep around.” She fixed me with a very serious stare. “Just make sure you use protection. Now is not the time to get knocked up or contract a disease.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Remind me to never come to you for advice again, okay?”
“Please. Girl, you called me because you knew I would give you exactly the advice you wanted to hear. You wanted someone to tell you that it’s okay to have naughty feelings for those boys.”
As much as I wanted to protest, I knew that Hope was right.
“Let’s change the subject,” I suggested. “How are you holding up?”
“Okay.” She sighed. “I’ll feel a lot better once the police find whomever is responsible. Now with a second girl missing, no one feels safe on campus.”
“Have you heard if the police have any leads?” I doubted it, considering they were looking for a human.
Hope waved to some girls she knew at a nearby table. “Nothing. They are as clueless as the rest of us. Our resident adviser told us to all stay on campus after dark and the college has upped the amount of security guards walking around.”
“Well, that seems like a good thing.”
“Unless the killer is one of the guards,” she surmised. “But, yeah, in theory it’s a good thing. My parents are freaking out though. They want me to come home.”
“Maybe that’s not a bad idea.” I knew that I would feel better if my only friend wasn’t in danger.
Hope was less concerned about it. “I’ll be fine. It’s not like I go running around Jackson in the dark.”
I was still skeptical, but when I left the cafeteria I did notice a lot of security guards milling around. Even though I knew they weren’t trained to fight Souls, I felt a little better knowing that the college was at least making it a little harder for them to attack the students.
Ethan stopped by my place later to watch our mutually favorite show, Blood Suckers. We enjoyed it not for entertainment value, but because we liked to rant about all of the inaccuracies it portrayed about vampires.
Sitting next to him on the couch, eating popcorn and telling stories, was probably the closest I had ever come to a date. I couldn’t help but think about Hope’s advice, which then led me to think about kissing Ethan. As if he could read my mind, he turned and caught me staring at him.
His lips turned up into an inviting smile and he leaned closer. When I didn’t back away, he closed the rest of the distance until his nose brushed against mine. Just as our lips were about to meet, my phone vibrated loudly.
I could’ve easily ignored it. But I didn’t exactly have a lot of friends calling me, so I knew it had to be either Hope or Rafe. For either one of them to be calling at this time of night meant it was probably an emergency. Since Rafe had come home about twenty minutes earlier, as evidenced by the loud, repetitive thumping above us that said he wasn’t alone, it had to be Hope calling.
“Hope?” I answered it slightly out of breath.
“Kaylie!”
I could hear the terror in her voice and she sounded out of breath, panting as if she was running at full speed.
“Hope, what’s wrong?”
Ethan hadn’t moved away, so I was looking directly at his face when we both heard the scream on the other end of the line. It went on for several seconds and then the line went dead.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ethan reacted first, jumping to his feet. “I’ll get Rafe.”
I nodded mutely and hurried to find my bag. Filling it with several large knives, I went out on the porch to meet up with the guys.
Rafe was saying goodbye to a frazzled looking girl that was still buttoning her shirt, telling her some lie about being a police officer that was on-call. Under other circumstances, I would’ve taken the opportunity to glare at him.
“Sorry, Tess. Duty calls.” He nudged her toward the steps. “I’ll give you a ring tomorrow.”
Tess was the only one of the four of us that looked like they believed him. He hurried her to her car and they nearly molested one another as they kissed goodnight. Rather than watch and have my stomach churn, I headed down the street at a fast clip.
Ethan hurried along beside me. “Where are we going?”
“Campus.” I remembered what Hope had told me earlier about not going into town after dark. If something had happened to her, it had happened near her dorm.
“Shouldn’t we slow down and talk about this?” Rafe called as he rushed to catch up with us. He grabbed my arm to stop me, but I brushed him away.
“Something got Hope. What do we need to talk about, Rafe?”
“We don’t even know what took her, Kaylie.” Rafe grabbed me again, this time holding on tight as I tried to shake him away. “The Harvester just took Meggie. It doesn’t need another victim yet. This could be something else; it could be
a person.”
“It’s not.” I could never explain it, but aside from the few Lost Souls I’d encountered recently, I had always been able to feel the Dark Souls presence. Even without seeing them, I knew when they were there. “This was a Soul, Rafe. We have to act now.”
He dropped my arm reluctantly.
The path to Hope’s dorm was clear. No signs of a Soul attack, or a struggle of any kind. I pulled out my phone and punched in her number. We all heard it ring.
“Over there.” Ethan pointed to the bushes just outside the dormitory doors.
Hope’s phone was on the ground and when I hit the button to turn on the screen, a message waited for me.
Come tonight. An address was listed below.
It didn’t take a genius to decipher the meaning behind the message. Rafe had been partly right- Hope hadn’t been taken to be harvested. She had been taken to be used as bait.
“Who knew the Souls were so techy?” Rafe commented, sounding completely unconcerned by the discovery.
“A night hunt is a really bad idea,” Ethan said carefully. “They will be waiting for us.”
I turned off the phone and slipped it into my pocket. “It doesn’t matter. They have Hope; I’m not waiting until morning.”
“I didn’t figure as much.” He and Rafe exchanged a resolved look.
“Our first hunt as a family,” Rafe said with a smile. “How exciting.”
Even though I had been swearing that I was done being a Hunter, and even though Hope was in danger, I did still feel a small thrill of excitement at the thought of hunting again. Old habits die hard, I guess.
We had been right in our assessment of the industrial park; the address was just a couple of buildings away from where we had been earlier in the day. Appraising it from the outside, it made perfect sense. Minimal windows, thick walls- the perfect setup for a creepy vampire lair. There was no way to tell from the outside what might be waiting for us on the inside.