by Tisha Wilson
She was stunned by this revelation. “Is that why you’re so… beautiful?”
Again she saw the corner of his mouth nearly lift. “The reason hunters are so… beautiful, is because we need to be able to feed without interference.”
Her heart slammed against her ribcage at his answer. “Feed?”
He sat forward in an effort to look less intimidating. It didn’t work. She pulled her chair even closer. “We don’t harm innocents, but we need fresh blood to survive. Not a lot mind you. If we feed weekly the way we are supposed to it is maybe as much as one would lose if they accidentally cut themselves. If it is longer than a week we need a little more, but never enough to harm or kill.”
She swallowed hard and her eyes got round. “Blood?” she asked as a tremor raced through her.
He shook his head and sat back again. “Don’t start with that shivering puppy stuff again. You are not here for that. I never bring any woman here for that. In fact you are the first woman to ever see this place since I moved in. I don’t bring women I intend to use to the places where I live.”
“Why did you bring me here?”
He closed his eyes as if to gather his patience. She hoped that she hadn’t inadvertently angered him. Maybe he might reconsider using her to drink her blood. There were lots of freaks out there who wanted to be vampires.
“Like I told you before. You were bitten. What you went through when you woke with your arm burning should have only been the beginning. You should have been burning and fighting all week. We have what are called mentors that are supposed to walk us through the process, but the mentor for this region is on some other mission. So I, being an older more experienced hunter, thought to help you until he arrived.”
He spoke slowly as if he were speaking to a child. That irked her. He was the nut job, not her. “Why?”
“Why what?’
“From what I heard you say before… two hunters together would be like oil and water. Why would you stick your neck out like that?”
“I couldn’t leave you there.” That answer shocked her and it must have shown in her face because he continued. “The ones that showed up on the scene. They are humans that help us… they help contain certain situations. I didn’t want them to get hurt when you changed. They work for the mentors and are the only ones trusted with our secret, and they are key to our blending in to the real world. We are one of those little secrets that the government never tells you about and that they turn a blind eye to. We are in every nation across the world.”
She blinked a few times. “So… you’re part of a secret government organization assigned the task of hunting werewolves and you happen to be a vampire?” she asked in such a way that suggested she wanted to add one of those long whistles afterward and crank her finger around her ear.
“No. We are part of a secret organization. That wolf’s bite forever initiated you into the club sweet heart,” he nearly snarled at her.
She shook her head. “No thank you. You have the wrong person. I don’t do military, I don’t do hunting, I don’t do guns and swords and all that. You said it yourself. I’m an ex-cheerleader. I like pink, I sleep in a room that looks like a gumball explosion in my parents’ house. I read books on Saturday nights when others are at the clubs, I run a copy shop for cripes sake.”
“No.”
“No?’
“No. Those are things you used to do. You are going to learn to do new things now.”
“No. You have the wrong person… my sister. She’s the one you want. If you find her I’m sure she’d be happy to be a part of your little Rambo X-Files. She just graduated from West Point yesterday.” Tears crowded her eyes again and she knew that she was about to get hysterical again. She wanted her father or Katie here. This guy was insane. “I have to go home and take care of my mother… she has no one to…”
He growled and slammed his fists to the table rattling the dishes on top. She pulled herself into the chair and made to wheel for the bathroom, but he blocked her way. He had produced a knife and she shrunk back putting her hands up defensively. He rolled his eyes.
“First, never show this side of your arms to the creatures. You see.” He used the tip of his knife to demonstrate how easy it would be to slit her wrists. “If you need to block your face, you block this way,” he said turning her hands so that her palms were in her face. “Now you have stronger nerves and bones to fight and block with.”
She blinked as she looked at him. “What-”
“Number two, you are going to have to learn that the most important thing about fighting the creatures is to keep the upper hand. If they see for a moment that you have hesitated or that you are reluctant, they will strike out at you. If you can get away from them you can grow back lost body parts, but if they devour you completely you become part of them, you will be lost in the evil until the end of days.”
“You’re crazy,” she muttered as she continued to tremble.
He rammed the knife into the center of his palm and pulled it out again quickly. All she could do was stare at him in shocked horror. He shoved the hand in her face and she saw it heal right before her eyes. She shook her head and closed her eyes. He reached out and shook her hard. She looked up at him again knowing that fright was written all over her face.
He growled and leaned into her and she screamed out loud. His face… it had changed. He looked almost feline and he had… fangs. They came from nowhere she had seen. She closed her eyes again and tried to wheel away but he held firm to her and forced her to look at him. His eyes were violet again.
“Please. Don’t hurt me,” she mumbled.
“Do you believe me now? Do I seem crazy to you? You blew half my face off last night, yet here it is. I tell you I have fangs and drink blood, and here they are for you to see. What else do I have to do to prove to you that this is real!”
He was so close she had to push at his broad chest to keep him out of her face. “I… I… I’m just a copy girl in a wheel chair. What am I supposed to do with all this? I just want to go home,” she pleaded and the tears flowed without stopping.
He leaned back then and took a deep breath. His face returned to normal, forcing more tears from her eyes. She didn’t believe it, but how could she not? She could see with her own eyes what he was. What she couldn’t see was if he meant her harm or if he really wanted to help like he claimed.
“You are going to have to let go of that old life.”
“But… my mother… my sister.”
“They are gone,” he said more gently.
He strode to the door and grabbed his coat before he left her alone again. She clutched her middle and sobbed out loud. The pain that coursed through her was more than physical. She wheeled herself into the bathroom as quickly as she could manage before she lost her breakfast into the toilet. Katie was dead, she was missing, and no one would ever know what had happened to either of them. Her poor mother. She was undoubtedly sitting at an empty breakfast table right this moment, ringing her hands over and over, wondering where her husband and children were.
No matter how many times she had tried to tell her mother that her father had died… she was just lost in a world of her own memories. They would put her in a home and she would rot her life away thinking everyone that she cared about had abandoned her to her fate. Miranda pulled herself to the big bed, crawled inside, pulled the dark comforter over her head, and sobbed until she fell asleep again.
Chapter Four
Braden heard her calling out in her sleep. He entered the house glad that the sobbing noises had finally subsided. He hated to hear her cry, but there was nothing to be done. She would need time to mourn the loss of her old life. Humans were so sentimental about the shortness of their lives. He sighed. What he wouldn’t give for tomorrow to bring the end.
He flopped down on the couch and realized with a start that that wasn’t really true at the moment. He hadn’t thought about the end all day. It was rare for him to get through an entire d
ay without thinking about it anymore. He shrugged. It was just the distraction. He would get around to seeking death again tomorrow. He checked the hunter site, but there was nothing new. He had received a file from Saul about the profile on the woman and her family, but still no news from Bateman. Where the hell had Bateman gotten to? There were things going on here that a mentor needed to be dealing with, not him.
Unbidden, a vision of her writhing naked body came to mind. He recalled how small she had been as he touched her with his manhood. It had nearly undone him. He had to clench his teeth even now at the thought. Why, he couldn’t tell. There were no two people worse suited for each other than the two of them.
She was an ex-cheerleader that wore t-shirts that said things like ‘I love kittens.’ Who wore shirts like that outside of preschoolers? He himself was a warrior, cut from steal. He had been involved in every major battle in the last thousand years save this last one. He found that he had stopped caring about what people were fighting over any more, especially when it came to religion. Plus, as people stopped believing in werewolves, their numbers had grown.
People of old took certain precautions against the wolves. Precautions that were now considered superstition. The gypsies especially knew the dangers as they were a traveling people. Silver littered their clothes and homes, adorning their necks and ears. The American Indians also knew these secrets and incorporated silver into their jewelry, weaponry, and head dresses as well.
He and the other hunters were suddenly very outnumbered and he relished that thought. He saw himself on a great battlefield surrounded by the evil and mowing his way through them with his sword. The thought alone made his fingers tingle in anticipation. It was his one true purpose in this world and he would fight into eternity, until he finally met a worthy opponent.
His thoughts turned back to the troubled woman in his bedroom. She was right about one thing. She was not ready to take on that type of a challenge. He nearly laughed to picture her standing in the middle of a field with a giant silver sword she could hardly lift and an ‘I love kittens’ t-shirt on. It was laughable.
He had seen her sister when she had emerged from the overturned minivan. She had clutched a vicious looking knife in one and she had worn an officer’s uniform. She appeared strong and lithe. She had even buried the knife to the hilt in the creature’s neck before it bit down on her. It should have been her and not this pink lace wearing woman that was in a wheel chair. Fate was fickle. Chances were the sister wouldn’t have even been a hunter. She probably was a wolf running through the woods at this very moment and he hoped that he was the one to face her, and not the sister in his bedroom.
Wolves retained some of their human features for the first few months and if a person were looking for it, they might see their lost loved one and believe, falsely, that they could be saved. She struck him as the type that would always hope that her sister would become human again. How terrible would it be for her to have to kill her own sister?
She cried out again and he rose from the couch. He went to the bedroom and threw open the door. The top half of the bed was a mess where she had thrashed about, but not the bottom. The blankets were oddly undisturbed where her legs lay perfectly still. Why? Why had she been able to use them for those few hours but not now? A thought came to him. What if…
*
Miranda came awake suddenly as she was drug from the bed. “What…” she managed before they made their way out of the front door. He was half dragging, half carrying her. She held on to his strong arm with all her might. He finally tossed her out into the yard and she landed with an oomph. She turned over and looked up at him stunned for a moment. Had he snapped? Was he finally going to attack her, finish the job?
He stalked back and forth as he looked down at her. She shivered at the deadly look in his eyes. “Fight,” he growled.
She blinked a few times. “I don’t…”
“I said fight me,” he yelled as he turned on her. He suddenly had claws and fangs again.
“I don’t want to fight you,” she cried as she began to push away from him.
“Because you are a weakling. You are nothing. You used to be something,” he stalked back and forth in front of her again with his hands behind his back as he looked down at her.
“Yes. You used to be full of life. You used to stand at the top of the pyramid. I bet you were supposed to go to college on some type of scholarship. I bet you used to have a strong lithe body, but look at you now. You are nothing. You stand back in the shadows and secretly despise your sister for being successful while you turned into nothing but a copy girl,” he snarled.
He was obviously trying to goad her into a fight. She wouldn’t be swayed though. She wouldn’t fight him because she wouldn’t win. “Okay. You win if that’s what you want to hear. You win. I’m nothing,” she conceded to which he roared again in anger.
“No! Fight me you stupid wench! Don’t you have an ounce of self-preservation? Aren’t you anything other than a whining sniveling little brat!”
“I know what you’re doing, but I’m not going to fight you,” she shot back without meaning to.
“No. You wouldn’t fight. You didn’t even fight for your sister. You just let them carry her out into those woods to rip her to pieces while you sat there crying like the sniveling brat you are.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head as the anger entered her veins at those words. Hot tears burned her eyelids. “What was I supposed to do?! I could hardly pull myself out of that wreck.”
“You were supposed to fight for her! Your mother is sick, your father is dead! You were supposed to take care of her, and what did you do? Lay on the ground as useless as you are,” he yelled.
“No,” she cried as she covered her ears.
He grabbed her arms and shook her until her head snapped back. “You are useless. You are worthless. You will never be anything more and because of you your sister is dead,” he screamed in her face.
“No,” she screamed back. Before she knew what she was doing, she had flown at him and was pummeling him. Her heart beat faster and her teeth felt funny as she landed on top of him, straddling him. She punched him in the face and squeezed his waist like a vice with her thighs.
He tried to stand up to get away from her but she stayed wrapped around him and hit him over and over again. He tried to disentangle himself from her by pushing her off but she made her way around to jump on his back. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held tight until she heard something pop.
Reality returned to her as they sank to the ground and he lay beneath her without moving. “Oh my God,” she whispered as she finally released him. As suddenly as her legs had begun to work, they went limp yet again. She used her arms to scoot away from his body. Had she killed him?
His eyes were blinking and he was having trouble breathing in the mud, but the rest of his body wasn’t moving. She hurried to lift his head out of the mud. He was too heavy to flip over so she settled for resting his head in her lap turned towards her.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Should I call someone?”
He closed his eyes as if to concentrate on something. After a few minutes his arms started moving, and then his legs, until he was finally able to turn over and sit up. He rubbed his neck for a moment. He looked at her with… admiration? She had just broken his neck and he looked at her with admiration? He really was crazy.
“I must say… you are slow to anger but when you do anger, you go for the kill. You would have killed me twice now if I were a more fragile creature, but when you fight the creatures, a snapped neck will only slow them down. You have to finish the job with a silver bullet or knife. Can you shoot?”
“You wanted me to snap your neck?”
He shook his head and stood up before he scooped her up as well. She put her arms around his broad shoulders and had to ignore the thrill that gave her.
“Yes. I don’t know why you are different. It seems that when you go into hunter mode
you are completely healed, but when you are not threatened, you revert to… human. It has never happened before as far as I can tell. I need to contact the mentors and find out what is going on.”
She couldn’t deny that her legs had been working when she had been fighting him. It was unbelievable, but there it was. He took her inside and sat her on the couch in front of his lap top. He then went to the bedroom. She looked down at her legs in amazement. They had worked!
A thrill ran through her body. They had worked and they could work again. She would learn what she needed to do to make them work again. Then maybe she could get herself out of this mess. He came back with clean clothes on and her chair in tow. He threw a towel at her then sat the chair near her. He went around to sit on the couch beside her. He booted up the computer and opened up the web as she wiped some of the mug off herself.
“What is a mentor again?” she asked at last.
“Mentors are our teachers. They are born to teach us the old ways, though they don’t live as long as we do. They only live for a hundred and fifty years before they die. By that time a new mentor has already trained beneath them and taken over.” He typed something and a website popped up. It had a black background and looked like any other Goth website. Her eyebrows shot up.
“Vampires Are Us?” The corner of his mouth lifted in a lopsided grin that nearly made her heart stop.
“Yeah. People visit sometimes but they think it’s only a goof. We have our civilian members that want to be vampires, and then there is the sign in for the rest of us. It’s the perfect cover; no one would ever take it seriously.” He signed into a chat room that nearly looked like a scary version of Face Book.