Chapter 14
The two-hour drive had given me plenty of time to fret about what I’d done.
Not even a thorough shower could clean off the feeling, not when my shoulder zapped with two sharp puncture wounds, and especially not when I was still aching between my legs.
From having sex with Fenton. Having sex with a vampire.
Just hours before going back to the mothers that had raised me in the centuries-old tradition to hunt vampires, where I’d be seeking more power to hunt them even better.
Again — what the hell was wrong with me?
Virgil made his own appearance as a member of my guilty conscience along the drive up to the mountains. The fact that I dated him at all was one pang, while the rocket-fast speed at which I’d moved on to be intimate with another vampire added a whole other painful layer.
Fifteen minutes away from home, an icy pour of fear ran down my spine. What if the mothers knew? I had no idea what these trials would entail. I could already imagine Cora using her magic to see into my mind and discovering what I’d done. What if they didn’t even need magic to know?
I turned off the last of the paved road onto an unmarked dirt path that wound two more miles up the mountain.
This was it. I was home again, and the mothers likely knew I was coming now.
I took the narrow, uneven road slowly, set now in my fate, unable to turn around until it opened up to the clearing at the end.
I was shaking, not just hands or legs, but down to the center of my core, but I would see this through.
The thick pine forest opened with a yawn onto the Hunters’ home.
I parked my car at the end of a row of four vehicles, the two old trucks shared by the mothers, and one more familiar truck that belonged to Jerica Hunter, my sister.
My eyes stung at the triumphant song that beat in my heart — my sister had come for me.
I wanted to hide out in my car and collect myself, but it would have been like trying to hold the water in a colander.
Emotions were leaking out of me, and they had no place in the fight to come, but there was nothing I could do but let them seep out.
I needed only one item for this first brush with my family, so I got out of my car with a brown paper bag, rolled over on itself and crinkling where I gripped it tight.
I slipped my keys into my pocket. The air smelled the same, like the cycle of life and rot that played out between the trees around us, made earthier and greener by the recent rains.
The house hadn’t changed much either, still a squat and wide building with pitched roofs, a bit duller and more weather-bleached since the last time I’d come.
It was the quiet I’d forgotten, the absence of the hum of civilization that existed even on the ranch.
It felt again like I could disappear on this land and never be found, a small life extinguished, and what made me feel so special that it shouldn’t be that case?
Peter Fenton’s eyes came to mind on my short walk to the front porch, and my reflection in them had been bigger than the forest around me, and maybe I could have disappeared into him, too, if I had just stayed.
The front door was already open, and I stopped on the middle step to the porch.
The screen creaked, and women emerged to face me.
Mothers and sisters, half real expressions and half memories clashing in my mind.
This wasn’t how I’d learned to control my emotions.
Too much was spilling, and I couldn’t stop it.
I grounded myself by meeting every judging gaze.
Josephine was cold stone, and Cora was warm curiosity.
Jerica beamed with pride, but just over her shoulder, Imogen squinted like I was a bug.
“Welcome home, Fallon,” Josephine said, breaking the tension. “We’ve been expecting you.”
“Thank you for welcoming me back, Mother.” I smiled at Jerica, giving a silent thank you as well for being here as I stepped onto the porch.
The phantom scattering of vampire fangs hitting the wood beneath my feet rang in my head from the day Diana Hunter had come to collect me for the first time as a child.
I wouldn’t be so bold as she was. I simply offered my own collection in the brown bag to the mother who raised me on this land.
“I’m sure you’ve already guessed, but I’m here to receive my Blessing.
I’ll face any trials I need to. I’m ready to become a true Hunter. ”
Josephine stuffed a rough hand into the bag to open it and peer inside.
She gave it a shake, and teeth clinked together.
She passed it on to Cora, and then down the line it went to Imogen, who wasn’t impressed.
The bag traveled back to Jo. Her mouth was a firm line as she rolled the open end back over.
“There are questions you’ll need to face, Fallon.”
“And I’ll face them.”
“The girls are training now until just before sunfall. You’ll wait until then. This is a decision that all the mothers together must agree on,” Jo said.
Disappointment chilled me while hope burned me, and I fought to keep any of it from showing on my face. Emotion had no place on the Hunter Land. “Right. I’ll wait then. Is there anything I can do until then?”
“You’ll wait out here,” Josephine said. The implications sliced into me, and my shoulder throbbed again where two punctures mocked me.
I wasn’t to be trusted in my childhood home, not until I got past their questioning.
As it was, I was no Hunter at all. It was my own fault, of course, and I’d prepared for this.
“Yes, Mother.”
Josephine went back inside first, and Imogen was right on her heels, not waiting for privacy before loudly offering to help with the upcoming questioning. I let out a breath of air and relaxed my body as much as I could manage.
“It’s nice to see you again, Mother Cora,” I said after giving her the chance to escape back inside, too. She and Jerica remained for me.
“I’m so happy you’re here,” Cora said. “I’m always happy when a girl is ready to face the trials.”
“Was Jerica the last to do it?” I asked, making Jerica’s eyes flash with a warning.
“Hmmm. I hadn’t thought about it. You’ll stay right here, though? I have something I’d like you to do.” She was still light on her feet in her older age, and her long gray braid swung behind her as she disappeared into the house.
“Are you staying for the inquisition?” I asked Jerica once we were alone. “Thank you for being here, by the way.”
“I have to be home tonight. I can’t stay. But I wanted to vouch for you, Fallon. I told them what I could.”
“Thank you, Jer. That means so much. Really.”
“I know.” She folded her arms and tucked in on herself, twisting her boot around on its heel to examine it. “I hope you can do it.”
“Any advice?” I wanted to lean against the wood support that braced the patio roof, but I could just hear Josephine chiding me for it in some echo from the past.
“You’re strong. You’ve faced an old vampire more than once. The trials will be nothing compared to that.”
“Did you tell them about that?” I lowered my voice as panic jolted through me.
I’d faced Lazaro Reyes, sure, but it hadn’t counted.
That night was nothing to brag about. He hadn’t wanted to kill me.
And when I’d gotten the chance to kill him, I hadn’t.
Jerica nodded, though, and any further discussion was cut off by Cora coming back out.
“Take this to Mr. Freedman, and be back by five.” Cora pressed a mason jar half full of clear liquid and a folded note into my hands. “He’ll know what it is.” She took my face between her hands and tilted it so I was looking down at her. “Open up, let’s have a check.”
I bared my teeth to her, showing off my lack of fangs, and she pulled me closer to look into my eyes that still weren’t red. Happy with that proof that I wasn’t a vampire who’d discovered the miracle of walking in the sun, she went back inside. The first meeting was over.
“Not quite the showdown I’d been expecting, but I guess that’ll come tonight,” I told Jerica.
“I wish I could be there for you.”
That wasn’t what it meant to be a Hunter, though. In the end, we were alone. She had her own fight in Santa Fe. I would have liked to dig into it, but this wasn’t the time, either.
“I’m sure you’ll hear about it one way or another,” I said. “Thanks again for being here, though.”
“Good luck, Fallon.”
“You too, Jerica.” She went inside the Hunter home.
I was tempted to stand there and stare at nothing while I got lost in my own head. The time for that would likely come soon enough. I had been trusted with making a delivery to our only neighbor, Mr. Freedman.
There was still a clear trail from the Hunter home to Mr. Freedman’s cabin.
Somewhere in between, there was a firm voice commanding Hunters in training.
It must have been Carolina Hunter, a mother who hadn’t been present at the house.
I would have liked to see the girls in their training, to finally see it from the other side, but I was being kept away for a reason, like Diana Hunter had been when I was a child.
Just like my mom, I had become a bad influence. Fenton would have been proud.
The trail opened up again to Mr. Freedman’s land.
It was more overgrown since the last time I’d seen it, giving the feel that decades had passed instead of years.
Only one old horse milled around in the circular pen behind the cabin.
I rapped gently on the front door. It took several minutes for it to open and for a friendly and curious face to peek out.