by E. J. King
When we were almost back at the motel, Rafe called 911 and told them where to find the body. He didn’t mention that it was a police officer, which was smart; that would’ve drawn extra attention to the call. I went into the motel room first, entering quietly because the lights were off. It took a second for my eyes to adjust and I saw that both Hope and Ethan were asleep, each of them in a separate bed. I sighed with relief knowing that I wasn’t being forced to share a bed with Rafe.
I grabbed my bag and went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. Standing in front of the mirror, I checked my bandaged side. Pulling back the gauze, I was horrified to see that the wound was already a pink scar. Rafe had been right- my body was healing itself at an abnormally fast rate.
When I went back to the bedroom, Rafe had already crawled into bed next to his brother. It was funny to see two big guys sharing a bed and he caught me smiling.
“Don’t laugh. This could be you.”
I realized what he meant. He could’ve slept in the same bed as Hope, putting me in an awkward situation with Ethan. For some reason, he’d decided to do me a favor.
Hope hadn’t left me much room in her bed so I was forced to hug the very edge, putting me just a couple of feet from Rafe. He was staring at me in the dark, his gold eyes as bright as stars in the night sky. Neither of us said anything as we stared at each other. Eventually, my eyelids grew heavy and I fell asleep with Rafe’s face drifting into the darkness with me.
CHAPTER FOUR
I woke up early the next morning, but not the same way that I usually did. I wasn’t trembling or sweating, I hadn’t dreamt of terrible things or had visions of my family’s massacre. I sat up in bed feeling refreshed for the first time in a long time.
The others were still asleep, so I snuck into the bathroom quietly and turned on the shower. When I undressed, I looked down and saw that my side was completely healed. Fresh, pink skin covered the formerly jagged flesh. The shower invigorated me further and after I toweled off, I pulled on my favorite jeans and Rafe’s t-shirt. It had lost some of its potency, but if I inhaled deeply enough I could still smell his scent.
I quickly combed out the tangles in my hair and ran a toothbrush over my teeth. My stomach growled loudly and I decided to venture out to pick up breakfast for the gang. But back in the bedroom, I caught a glimpse of Rafe’s sleeping form and I couldn’t help but stare. Sleep took away the hard angles of his face and I saw the man he might’ve been if he had never been attacked.
His eyelashes fluttered and I jumped. Not wanting to get caught staring, I hurried to the door.
The only donut shop in Plymouth was just two blocks away. I ate a chocolate one on the way back to the motel, carefully balancing the rest of them and four coffees in a carrier with one hand. When I let myself into the motel room, Ethan and Rafe were sitting on their respective beds. Hope was missing, but I could hear the shower running.
“My hero!’ Ethan jumped up and grabbed the coffees, just as I almost dropped them. He handed one to Rafe, took one for himself, and set the others on the desk. I put the donuts next to them and picked up a Styrofoam cup.
“Eat up, boys.”
I didn’t have to tell them twice. They took out a half-dozen donuts in less than five minutes. While they ate, I scanned the newspaper I had picked up while I was out. It was the morning edition, but there was no mention of a police officer being murdered the night before. I flipped through twice just to be sure. During my second pass through, Rafe filled Ethan in on what had happened.
“There’s nothing in the paper?” Ethan said in disbelief. “The murder of a police officer should be a really big deal, especially in a town like Plymouth.”
“It should,” I agreed, flipping to the last page, “but it’s not.”
Rafe turned on the television to see if anything was on the local news. They seemed to be more interested in reporting the weather than covering the death of a police officer.
“Wait, here’s something.”
On the last page, buried under the classified ads, was a police beat section. A tiny paragraph mentioned that a prank call had reported a dead body in an alley downtown. When the police arrived, they didn’t find anything.
“Who took the body?” I wondered aloud.
“This isn’t adding up.” Rafe grabbed the paper to read it for himself. “We saw the body. He was dead.”
“Are you sure?” Ethan asked.
“Of course I’m sure.”
Ethan gave Rafe a pointed look. “Sometimes dead people aren’t really dead.”
“You think the Soul transitioned him?” My mouth dropped open. It hadn’t even occurred to me.
It was true that if a Soul fed their blood to a victim before killing them, the victim would come back as a Soul. We also knew that they would have to feed on human blood to complete the transition into a Dark Soul. If they didn’t feed, they ended up like Rafe.
But Souls rarely went down that path. Creating new Souls wasn’t something they did often, if ever.
“If that’s true, maybe Mike hasn’t fed yet. All of the humans in town were safely at home last night.” I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.
“Kaylie, if he hasn’t fed, that doesn’t mean he won’t.” Rafe looked at me with unblinking eyes. “It would be risky to let him live knowing that he might kill.”
“The same could be said for you, Rafe.”
We stared at each other until Ethan interjected. “Let’s not worry about that yet. First, we need to figure out what’s true. He might have already fed, in which case none of this will matter anyway.”
“I’ll take the girls back to the scene,” Rafe said. “You should go by the police station and see if you can learn anything.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Ethan agreed.
Hope was less excited. She tried to be a good sport, but I could tell she was worried that we were going to stumble across a dead body.
The alley was just as empty as it had been the night before. The ground held a dark stain from Mike’s blood, which meant Rafe and I hadn’t been completely crazy.
“Did the police miss this?” I said, annoyed.
Rafe pointed to the building on our right. “This is a butcher shop. The police probably assumed the blood came from there.”
Hope squealed and we both whirled around.
“Sorry!” She smiled sheepishly. “I stepped in gum.”
“If she keeps doing that, I’m leaving her here.” Rafe glared at me like it was my fault.
Hope lifted her foot, putting her hand on the dumpster for balance. It moved forward with a loud screech and she screamed again.
“I mean it, Hope. Stop with the dramatics.” Rafe and I both turned, but this time it wasn’t Hope crying wolf.
The dumpster had moved forward several feet, revealing a dead body that had been stuffed behind it.
“Hm. Turns out she’s a Hunter savant,” Rafe said, in his usual bored voice.
“That’s not Mike,” I said after I got a better look at the body. “But now at least we know what we are dealing with.”
I pointed to the victim’s neck. The attack had been so vicious that the head was barely still attached to the torso. It was a crazed attack, not something done by an experienced Soul.
“Mike was definitely hungry,” Rafe said.
Hope’s brow furrowed. “Wait. Mike did this? The dead guy?”
“He was turned, Hope. Then after he was turned, he fed and completed the transition.” Saying it out loud made me sound like a crazy person. “Now we have to hunt him.”
“Any idea where to find him?” She seemed to be warming up to the idea of being a Hunter. It must’ve been the glamourous hunting location we were standing in that swayed her.
Rafe pointed to the sky. “He’ll be sleeping during the day, gathering his strength. He’s fresh, so he’ll be hungry. And reckless. We’ll find him on the streets tonight.”
“You seem confident,” Hope observed.
�
�That’s because I know what I’m doing.” He pointed to the street. “Let’s go. I’m hungry.”
We had a lot of time to kill before nightfall. Rafe seemed content to spend it eating and Hope was happy to watch cable television in the motel room all day. I had found some interesting entries in the Hunter Chronicles and I wanted to spend more time with them alone. It was hard to concentrate with everyone else around.
I found a quiet park table and settled down to read. The journal that had caught my eye was from a young girl named Skye. She grew up in Chicago in the late eighties and from all accounts had been a powerful Hunter. At sixteen, she had already killed nearly a hundred Souls. My own number was just shy of that, and I was almost three years older. At the age of seventeen, she met a young man that was turned but didn’t complete the transition. It sounded a lot like Rafe’s story.
In the journal, Skye meticulously recorded the young man’s progress. When she met him, he had been turned for over two years. He was already starting to grow weaker, and he was disintegrating quickly.
Skye observed that it grew harder for him to be around humans. She had to limit her time with him to less than ten minutes. Her entries compared it to trying to take care of a rabid dog. Nothing she tried to do for him helped. He couldn’t eat human food any more. She tried to feed him animal blood, hoping that would help. But after one sip, he began vomiting blood uncontrollably.
Toward the end of the journal, Skye mentioned that she was looking for a cure. She had heard some of the same rumors as us and believed that there were people that carried the cure in their blood. Skye thought she knew where to find one of those people.
Her entries stopped for a few weeks. When she started writing again, the tone was much different. She hadn’t been able to get the cure, and her Lost Soul had died. The experience had left her broken, and she contemplated quitting hunting.
If everyone is just going to die anyway, what’s the point? It’s hard to care when your heart is empty, hard to stay motivated when you’ve lost everything.
“Kale!”
I had been so lost in the journal that I had forgotten I was sitting in the middle of a public park. My head jerked up.
“Ethan.” I sucked in a deep breath to slow my racing heart. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.” He smiled. “Rafe told me you’d gone off to be nerdy. When I saw a girl sitting by herself in the park reading an old book, I knew it had to be you.”
I closed the book as calmly as possible. While it was nice to see Ethan, I wasn’t ready to share Skye’s story with him. It felt too personal.
“How was your canvasing at the police station?” I put the book on the seat next to me hoping that Ethan wouldn’t ask about it.
“Interesting.” He climbed onto the bench across from me. “Officer Meeks didn’t show up for work today, so people are starting to get suspicious. Then a call came in about another body in the same alley as the call from last night.”
“That was us,” I admitted.
He smirked. “I figured as much. How closely did you examine the body?”
“Close enough to know that it was dead. The head was nearly torn off.” I shuddered at the grotesque memory.
“You didn’t see the business card in the victim’s hand?”
I flinched. We had been so busy deciding that Mike had been the attacker that we hadn’t really examined the body. Was it possible that we had missed an obvious clue? “I didn’t see anything like that.”
“The good news is that the police in this town are incredibly incompetent. Someone dropped the evidence bag on an unattended desk.” Ethan reached into his jacket pocket and triumphantly pulled out a business card.
“Admiral’s Club?” I took the card and gave it a closer look. “What is it?”
“Glad you asked.” He pulled out his phone and opened the browser. “It’s a fine establishment on the edge of town.”
I looked at the website and groaned. “No way.”
“Yes, way.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Rafe is going to be stoked.”
“Do we have to tell him? Shouldn’t he stay in the motel room with Hope?” I looked at Ethan with pleading eyes.
“Sorry, Kale. Rafe would never forgive me.” Ethan winked. “At least he won’t be ogling you tonight.”
There was that, at least. One silver lining to the night.
“This is karma operating in reverse,” I said with another groan. “Why did it have to be a strip club?”
CHAPTER FIVE
To say that Rafe was delighted was an understatement. Once we were able to convince him that it wasn’t an elaborate prank, he lit up like a little kid on Christmas.
“A strip club! Finally. All of these years hunting in dark alleys and cemeteries. Now, finally, a decent hunting ground.” He laughed. “See what I did there? Because usually guys are hunting strip clubs for a different reason.”
“Nobody’s laughing,” I said, glowering at him from the backseat. “Are we sure that I need to come with you guys?”
“Kale, your name was on the back of the card. It’s pretty obvious that whatever left it behind was trying to send you a message.”
Rafe caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “Maybe they are trying to tell you that you should rethink your career path.”
“The next time you feel the urge to say something to me, don’t.”
A bright sign up ahead promised live nude girls, which I suppose was better than dead nude girls.
“Red, did you remember to change your twenties for ones?” Rafe couldn’t resist himself.
“I apologize in advance if my knife accidentally finds its way to your chest tonight.”
“Feisty,” Rafe said as he turned off the engine and opened the car door. “Just the way I like my women.”
“And here I just thought you liked them slutty.” We climbed out of the car and I pointed a warning finger at both Rafe and Ethan. “If anyone tries to give me a lap dance, you’ll be sorry.”
Rafe turned to Ethan. “It’s like she doesn’t want us to have any fun.”
“Let’s get this over with,” Ethan said with fake disappointment.
“You do seem really bummed about that,” Hope said. She was trying to act annoyed for my sake, but it was obvious that she was just as excited as the boys. For her, it was less about the naked ladies and more about the fact that nearly everyone that wasn’t performing would be male.
A shiver ran down my spine and I turned away from the building. Even though the woods surrounding the club were overgrown and dark, I knew that something was in there, watching us.
“Sorry to disappoint all of you, but I don’t think we’re going inside.”
“What?” Rafe gave me an annoyed look. “I was lured here under false pretenses.”
I took a couple of steps toward the woods and the cold feeling in my veins grew stronger. It was a familiar feeling, not to mention one that I couldn’t ignore.
“It’s waiting for us over there,” I said, nodding to the trees right behind the club.
“No way,” Rafe groaned.
“Feel free to go inside. I’ll go save the world while you’re drooling over naked women.” I took my knife out of my boot and strode across the parking lot confidently.
As I expected, Vampire Mike was waiting for us.
He looked the same as regular Mike, except for his burning gold eyes. From the red tinge in them, I could tell that he had recently fed.
“Mikey. What brings you to this fine establishment?” I kept a wary eye out for more Souls that might be lurking in the shadows.
“You’re awfully chipper for someone that is about to die.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re a blood sucker. Scary.” I rolled my eyes. “Could we hurry this up? The boys would like to catch the show.”
Vampire Mike grinned. “In a hurry to die? I’m happy to oblige”
“Tell me one thing first. Who turned you?” I had to remind myself that a Soul had been in P
lymouth well before Mike was turned. That meant that even if I killed Mike, our job in this town still wasn’t done.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Two more Souls materialized from the darkness.
“Aw. You have friends.” I gave Vampire Mike an encouraging smile. “It’s always nice when the new kids find their clique right away.”
Vampire Mike was fresh and that meant he was also jumpy- eager to use his new superpowers and hungry for blood. Even so, I wasn’t expecting him to move so fast. I still had plenty of quipping to do, but he wasn’t in the mood. He charged at me, catching me with my knife still at my side.
I was fairly confident that I would still be able to take him, but I didn’t get a chance to find out because Rafe stepped between us, delivering an uppercut that sent Vampire Mike flying through the air.
“You’ve got to stop doing that,” I hissed.
Rafe gave me a quizzical look.
“Later.” Now wasn’t the time for me to launch into a feminist argument about how I didn’t need a knight in shining armor to come to my rescue every time things got a little hairy.
“You can take the big one,” Rafe said. “Better?”
The “big one,” was very big. At least 300 pounds and nearly seven-foot-tall. I couldn’t recall ever fighting a soul as big as this guy and I quickly named him Hulk.
Despite being supersized, Hulk was still as speedy as the rest of the Souls. But he wasn’t as flexible. When he lunged at me, I was able to side step him, connecting with a knee in his midsection. He grunted softly, but otherwise showed no sign that I had injured him in any way.
I swung a fist at his face and he caught it easily. He grabbed both of my arms and backed me up against a tree. I did the only thing I could- I lifted my knees swiftly and kicked out with both feet, hitting him in the kneecaps. He went down hard enough that he shook the ground.
Once he loosened his grip, I kicked him again. He flew backward and I pounced before he had time to regroup. Straddling him and pinning his arms at his side, I lifted my knife to finish the job.
“Don’t you want to know about Lincoln?” he hissed through his fangs.