by Kate Martin
“Sorry.”
We didn’t have to wait much longer. A minute later skater boy reemerged, a bag in hand. He looked around a few times, then adjusted his knit hat in confusion before lifting his purchase before his face and staring at it as though he had no idea where it had come from.
“Now what?” I asked again.
“Now we leave before he sees you,” Millie said, dragging me away in the opposite direction.
“Seriously? Just like that? But I made him buy a tie.”
“And his parents will thank you for it, I’m sure, but that doesn’t make you indebted to him or them.”
“Well, now I just feel dirty.”
Millie laughed.
We did a few more practice runs like that. I made a child stop throwing a tantrum in the middle of a department store, and had a sour-faced business man get off his phone and concentrate on his children who were waving at him from the carousel.
As I leaned back against the wall, watching the children laugh and call out to their father, generally feeling like I had done something good with the whole supernatural nonsense I had been granted, Millie interrupted my cloud of deluded happiness.
“Well, now it’s time for the real test.”
“Real test? What do you mean?”
“It’s much harder to influence a mind when there is stress involved. When you are trying to make them forget something.”
“Forget something? Forget what?”
Millie didn’t answer me. Instead, she walked off towards the door, stopping only once. A young man stood at the end of one food line, and she brushed her hand against his, catching his gaze. “Come with me, please.”
He followed without a word, without hesitation.
I had a bad feeling about this.
Millie led him outside, around the corner and into an alley way between two loading docks. I followed more slowly, and by the time I reached them, she had already sunk her teeth into his neck. He struggled and fought, but his strength was no match for hers. The only thing that kept him from screaming was her hand over his mouth.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Millie pulled back from his throat, and licked the blood from her lips. “Here is the true test, Kassandra. You have to make him forget this ever happened.”
“You are so kidding me.”
“Hurry,” she said, holding him only by the hand over his mouth. “If we’re seen by anyone else the cleanup will be more than we can handle alone.”
I cursed. This was not fair. Not fair at all. I rushed up to the young guy’s side, but he had his eyes clamped shut tight, and he breathed like panic had already set in. “Look at me,” I said. He didn’t. “Look at me!” I tried to sound as intimidating as possible. The tiny growl to my voice surprised even me. It worked. He opened his eyes. “You don’t have to remember any of this,” I said, focusing on the deep brown of his irises. But that sinking floating feeling didn’t come right away. All I could smell was his fear, and it made me hungry. My fangs lengthened a bit.
“You can do this,” Millie said, laying a hand on my shoulder. “Just remember what you really want. Not what the instincts want.”
I drew a deep breath. Settled into the stillness of my own body. No heartbeat, no breathing. Instead I let his heartbeat wash across my body, his shuddering breathing. He still looked at me, terrified and shaking. Those eyes revealed everything to me—and I could rewrite it.
“Forget you ever saw us,” I said, feeling myself sink into him. “Forget the pain and the fear.” Without breaking eye contact, I reached out and wiped away the few traces of blood from his neck. Millie had been neat. “We were never here. You never came outside. Go back in the mall, get back in line and order your lunch. You’re completely safe. Understand?”
He nodded, and I could hear as well as feel his breathing slow, taking his pulse with it. Millie dropped her hand from his mouth, and he took a single step forward, eyes still locked with mine.
“And wear something gold every day,” I added quickly, then broke our gaze.
“Kassandra,” Mille admonished, as he walked away.
“What? I think today earned him the right to a little extra protection against things like us.”
She sighed. “Perhaps you’re right. But don’t make a habit of it.”
“I think I will. I’ll be like the Robin Hood of vampires.”
“I don’t think that quite fits.”
“It’s the thought that counts.” For a moment I entertained the thought. Would it really take that long to charm the entire human populous into wearing gold for their own protection? Probably, but I had eternity, right? “I take it I passed,” I said, making my way out of the alley. “In which case, I want to go home now.” All that charming had actually given me a headache. All I wanted now was to close my eyes and go to sleep.
We had walked to the mall—something I never would have done as a human. Not because it was too far, but because of general laziness. Today though, I had wanted the exercise, the outlet for all my nervous energy. The sun on my face comforted me, the bloodlust not driving me crazy like it once had, though there was still an itch. Each person who passed us smelled tasty and delicious, but I resisted, and that felt good too. Finally, I had some level of control.
“It’s nice to see you smile.”
“Huh? Was I?”
“Yes.” The sun shone against Millie’s platinum blonde hair, almost like a halo. She was such a conundrum to me. Sweet and kind, yet a creature of the night, a blood-drinking predator. She had chosen this life in order to stay with her sister, but still, she seemed less suited to it than even I did. At least I tended to be sarcastic and occasionally flippant.
“Imagine that.” I smiled purposely for her.
“I know things are difficult right now,” she said.
“Not much to smile about.”
“But it will get better,” Millie continued, as if I hadn’t cut in. “Julius will fix this. I know he will.”
“You sure have a lot of faith in him.”
“He’s earned it. He’s always taken care of all of us. Always.”
My smile slipped. “We don’t really have much to go on, Mil. Cade’s shown me. There is literally nothing. Not a single shred of evidence in either direction.”
“That won’t stop us. We’ll get Rhys back.”
We had stopped walking, blocking the sidewalk, but not caring. On this stretch of street we were alone, about five minutes from home. Millie’s expression seemed to be trying to tell me something, something she wouldn’t dare say aloud. I held her gaze, doing my best to read her mind—did she mean what I thought she meant? That we would get Rhys back, at any cost?
“Millie, I–” I didn’t know what I was about to say, but the words evaporated as I smelled something eerily familiar on the air. Something that brought back memories of live music, champagne, and tuxedos. In the next second they surrounded us.
Six of them, all dressed in black. Their boots were thick soled and buckled up their calves with gold fastenings. Metal bands encased their forearms, forming an impenetrable shield that had been laced and accented with more gold. Numerous weapons hung from their belts, and over their shoulders, and their fingers were decorated with gold rings. The man who had introduced himself to me as Fillip Bontecou stood directly in front of me, looking larger than he had in the tuxedo. His hands were empty, but the others had all chosen an instrument from their expansive collections.
My dagger was in my purse. Inconspicuous, but still accessible. It wasn’t going to be enough.
“Kassandra,” Fillip said in that gravelly voice that had haunted my dreams since that night, “it’s good to see you well, and much unchanged from the last time we met.”
He was checking on me? Checking on my humanity? The other faces were largely unfamiliar to me. All but the one woman, who stood at Fillip’s left. What had she said her name was? Indira. A supposed friend of my mother’s. I wasn’t convinced that friendship
extended to me, and I didn’t detect the one scent belonging to someone I didn’t exactly trust, but who at least didn’t seem to want me dead. Solo hadn’t come. Millie and I were on our own.
“What do you want?” I didn’t feel like wasting time with small talk.
“We just want to talk.”
“Not likely,” I said. The others were moving in, closing the circle around us. “All those weapons sure don’t make you look friendly.” Millie had tensed at my side. She’d stopped breathing, and I could almost feel the coil of her muscles, ready to move.
Fillip nodded as though giving in to my logic. “I suppose that is true. All right, the truth between us. We have come to extract you.”
“I don’t need extraction.”
“There are others who feel differently. You’ll understand,” he said
Indira stepped forward, extending her hand. “Come. Come with me. Step away from that creature.”
How was I supposed to react? They thought I was human, they wouldn’t hurt me, but if they found out what I really was, they would kill me. I had little doubt of that, despite what Solo had said. But I had Millie to think about as well. If I said no, would they attack? No way Millie could take six hunters on her own. I looked at Millie, hoping she would give me some indication of what to do, but she had her gaze trained on the hunters, and didn’t dare spare me a glance.
I took a single step forward, away from Millie, towards Indira. Testing.
The hunters moved in even closer.
Indira continued to reach for me. “Come, child. It’s all right.”
I couldn’t expose myself to them. I couldn’t turn this into a fight. So I gambled, and walked the rest of the way to Indira, but I didn’t take her hand. She smiled, reaching for me and holding me by the upper arms, pulling me close. “Good,” she said, looking at me like a newly rescued hostage. “Good.”
I didn’t know what I would do next. Fillip gave a nod of approval, and joined Indira at my side. I waited for us to all walk away. To put distance between ourselves and the vampire. I could break free then, after Millie was safe. Indira guided me along the sidewalk, much as I had hoped. Fillip followed.
Five steps later, he lifted his hand, his fingers twisting in an odd pattern.
The other four hunters move. Millie hissed.
Indira and Fillip both tried to hold me back, to keep me from turning, but I was stronger—and I didn’t care if they noticed. The hunters had attacked Millie, and one of them already lay on the sidewalk, unmoving. Leaving only three.
Three seemed enough. Millie attempted to toss the first away, but the other two closed in quickly, moving faster than I thought humanly possible, and when they took her arms they held on tight. They were strong. Strong enough to wrestle a vampire to the ground, and to pin her there on her back. I could hear their gold rings hissing against Millie’s skin, and the one in the middle—a young woman who looked to be no older than Millie herself had once been—drew a gold-laced stake from her back.
“Stop!” I broke free of the two who held me, not needing much of my strength to do so. After all, they had thought they were holding a human girl. A hunter, but untrained. I think I ran faster than I should have, but it was as fast as I needed to.
I threw myself over Millie’s chest, between the hunter holding her right arm and the one wielding the stake. I clamped my eyes shut, ready for the pain, and prayed.
The stake brushed against my shoulder, but nothing more. Heat radiated off all the gold surrounding me, but I ignored it. All that mattered was that Millie was still whole beneath me.
“Kassandra!” Fillip’s voice, and the sound of running, of thick boots coming closer. “What is the meaning of this? What are you doing?”
I didn’t move, my face still pressed against Millie’s shoulder. “I won’t let you hurt her.”
“She’s a vampire,” Indira said. “Their kind must be eliminated. Move away.” She reached for my hand, but I swatted her away.
“No. Not this one. She’s my friend.”
“You’re confused.” Once again Indira’s fingers brushed my hand.
“I am not. I know you used to work with the Alliance, so I know you know not all vampires are that bad. You can’t try to tell me otherwise.”
“That was a long time ago,” Fillip said, hovering somewhere above me. “Things have changed.”
“So change again.” That stake was still pressed against me, and I could feel the gold on it beginning to burn my skin beneath my shirt. If I burned, they would know. “If you want any chance of ever talking to me in the future, you’ll call off your dogs and let us both up.”
Silence, then a heavy sigh. The stake retreated, as did the hunter who held it. I waited for the others to release Millie’s arms before I pushed myself up, hands on the other side of Millie’s body, still acting as her shield. Fillip had knelt down before me, and I could look him straight in the eyes. The young hunter with the stake knelt beside him, the stake still in her hand, looking hungrier than I had ever seen Millie look.
I grabbed the stake from her hand, and chucked it across the street. The gold burned, but I didn’t so much as wince. No one would know.
Fillip shook his head. “This is not how we wanted things, Kassandra.”
“Should have thought of that before you attacked us. I was going with you, you didn’t need to hurt her.”
“We are Hunters. We track down vampires and destroy them.”
“I don’t want to be one of you.”
“Do you want to be one of them?”
Too late for that. “I don’t want to be a monster. Someone who kills innocents, especially unprovoked. From where I’m standing, Millie isn’t the monster here.”
“This is what I feared,” Fillip said, “that you have been too long mired in this other world. We are your family, Kassandra. Your history. Your mother’s legacy. You belong with us.”
“If what you’ve told me is true, then my mother left you all behind. That’s her legacy. My life away from all of you.”
“Give us a chance to teach you.”
“Not likely.”
“A chance to talk then.”
“Not if this is your idea of a chat. Get out of here. I’m done talking to you. Leave.” Even as I said the words, that funny sinking feeling returned, followed immediately by the floating. Fillip’s pupils contracted, then returned to normal. But Hunters couldn’t be charmed . . . could they?
Fillip nodded, and stood. “All right then. Perhaps some other time.”
We stared at one another a long while. I didn’t believe he would actually leave—until he turned and began to walk away, signaling to the others to follow.
Indira got ungracefully to her feet. “Fillip!”
“Another day, Indira,” he said, still walking.
She sputtered, which would have amused me had I not been so focused on protecting Millie. “Kassandra, please,” she said, her expression imploring.
I gave her my best stony stare in return. Not a chance.
The others moved after Fillip, reluctantly, obviously, but still obedient. Indira remained where she was, staring at me, and doing nothing to move my heart in any way. I didn’t give a flying flapjack about her, or her people. She may have been my mother’s friend, but she clearly hadn’t known my mother well enough to understand whatever reasons she’d had for leaving. No need for any loyalty.
“Indira,” Fillip said, his voice clipped and impatient.
I could see her surrender in her posture, but before she left, she knelt once more, putting us eye to eye. “Someday,” she said. “I promised your mother.”
It sounded like a promise to me. I chose to say nothing in response.
The hunters all walked away, darkness against the sunlit afternoon. Only when I could no longer see their silhouettes against the horizon of the street did I breathe again, and relax enough to sit back so I could see Millie.
It was worse than I had thought.
How had
they done so much damage in such a short amount of time? Her arms were riddled with burns from their rings and wrist guards. At her throat, a deep puncture wound bled steadily, creating a wide puddle beneath her shoulder. That same shoulder looked funny to me, like it had been dislocated—or worse. Lastly, I reached out to gently touch the gash that ran along the right side of her face, cutting across her eye, and through her cupid’s bow lips.
“Millie? Oh my god, Millie, I’m so sorry.”
Remarkably, she smiled, but it pulled the wound across her face, making it bleed more, and that smile melted away again. “It’s not your fault.”
“It is. They wanted me. I tried to lead them away, but—”
“You stopped them. You saved me. Thank you.”
“You would have done the same thing.”
With her left hand, she reached for me, taking my hand in hers, and turning it over. My palm was riddled with burned lines. From the stake, I suspected. At this point, what was another scar? It didn’t matter. They just kept adding up.
I slipped my hand from hers—it wasn’t hard, she had little strength—and pressed my hand against the wound at her throat. “We need to get out of here. Get some help.”
“Agreed,” she said, a trickle of blood slipping from her mouth.
I pulled out my phone and called Cade.
Chapter Twenty: Scent
That afternoon, I stood out on the back deck, overlooking the yard where I had played as a child, where we’d had family picnics, and taken pictures on special occasions. At the edge of the lawn, a tree stump marked where the tree I had climbed and sat in had once stood—before I had become a vampire and crashed into it, shattering its trunk and scattering its branches.
How life changed. I’d gone from boring human girl, one who’d never gone on a date, to vampire, to soulmate, to a rotting leaf on the vampire hunter family tree in a matter of months. And if the past weeks were any indication, then tomorrow would always be worse than the day before. I stared at my hand, tracing the angry red lines left behind by the hunter’s stake. They looked like some kind of tattoo gone wrong. Rather fitting, actually.