Chapter 23
The sun had set hours earlier, and I hadn’t eaten all day, so when the meal reached my hands, I scarfed it down, just as I had done with the last one.
I ate everything except for the eggs. Scrambled to a dry, rough texture, no butter like the Hopes used, perhaps only a bit of salt.
I waited for my gag reflex to rise like it usually did at the sight of eggs, but my deep hunger won out, and I shoveled them into my mouth as well, so fast I didn’t have time to even taste them.
“Are you injured?” Jo asked, and someone else took the plate from me.
I shook my head before I got started on more water.
I’d never been so hungry, so thirsty, so tired, but then I’d never felt so strong despite it all.
Jo took my left arm and examined it. I’d been bruised and scraped during my sparring trial, but the few cuts were already healed.
I flexed my hands and stretched my limbs.
Nothing broken. I wasn’t even sore. I’d been pushed to exhaustion, though, and clearly it was by design.
I’d barely been able to sleep out of fear of what dreams might come again.
“Do you still want to go on?” she asked. “Is this the life you truly want?”
I swallowed the mouthful of water, and my response came like a gasp. “Of course.”
“Good girl,” she murmured the praise, then spoke louder. “You’ll start your next trial, then. You can gather a few supplies.”
“Supplies for what?” I asked with blunt annoyance.
“For hunting, of course.”
“Right.”
“This is a practical exam. You can take a knife and a canteen and the clothes you’re wearing. The others will need time to prepare as well.”
“Prepare for what?”
“This mountain attracts vampires. Long ago, mothers set up traps to make exterminating them easier. Cora, Sarah Jane, and I will go to one of these traps and give the vampires caught there your scent. We’ll release them, and it will be up to you to hunt these vampires and bring us back three sets of fangs.
You’ll be on your own in the forest until it happens, perhaps for days.
You will make your own weapons, find your own food, sleep at your own risk. Do you understand?”
Three vampires. I was on my own in the forest until I brought back the fangs of three vampires. Of course, there was no telling how many of the starving creatures would actually be out there with me.
“I understand.”
“Clothes? Any that you’ve worn,” Jo said.
I handed over an unpleasant shirt I’d tucked into a plastic bag on the floorboard of my car, and she took it without complaint into the house.
I was alone again, and I didn’t mind. My psyche was frayed, and I was walking a fine line between an emotional outburst and an emotional shutdown.
Anything could have knocked me either way.
Alone without even my thoughts to distract me, I sensed a presence just on the edge of the forest surrounding the home.
I knew it was a vampire, like my new powers had granted me a new sense of awareness.
I’d never known one to come so close to the Hunters’ actual house, and I illogically feared it might be the vampire who lurked so often in the darkest rooms of my mind, Lazaro Reyes.
I had to open my car to get a stake, and by the time it was secure in my hand, the vampire was trudging louder through the foliage, right on the edge of where the light from the house illuminated the ground.
I caught the outline of the body and wondered if this would count as one of my kills.
I took one step, then two, then hurdled over the corner of my car’s hood, making the most of my new speed to close the rest of the distance to the unsuspecting vampire, weapon poised in the air.
The machinery of my mind ground to a halt at the glimpse of familiar features.
I shifted my stake just at the last possible moment, and it sank into the skin below the vampire’s collarbone, freezing his muscles.
He teetered over on unbalanced feet, and I captured his body before it fell, pulling the stake out with some effort and dropping it in the sudden confusion.
The body in my arms went loose and frenetic again, and I registered the familiar lilt of pained curses as his hand soothed the wound in his chest.
“Fenton…” I managed through the shock. “What…What the hell are you doing here?”
* * *
Fenton’s anger at being staked slipped into a cheeky grin. “Hello, Fallon,” he said with soft, romantic wistfulness.
“Did you follow me out here?” I was fighting my way out of the daze of his unexpected appearance. If he wasn’t solid beneath my hands, I would have thought this was another one of Cora’s tricks.
“I was in the neighborhood, and I smelled you.”
“Smelled...? Why the hell would you be out here? This isn't a neighborhood, it's acres of forest in the middle of nowhere!” This had to be the real Fenton. No dream version of him could be this infuriating.
“I was walking to clear my head. Guess I lost track of where I was.”
“You promised to watch my family, Fenton!”
“Oh, right. I can head back. I just wanted to see you.” I dodged his hand that went to my cheek. This was too much.
So many questions popped in my head, but I didn’t have time for any of them.
A house full of vampire hunters behind me loomed as a much bigger issue.
Cora always knew when someone was on the Land through some magical spell.
I had to get Fenton out of here before they discovered him right on their doorstep.
“You need to leave. You're in danger here.”
“Excuse me? You're in the forest in the middle of nowhere with a vampire, and you have the nerve to say—”
“Please, this isn't about that. You need to go now before—” The front door crashed, and I shoved at an unmoving Fenton in a last-ditch effort to get rid of him before—
“Get away from it, Fallon!” Imogen shouted with a crossbow already aimed.
I moved on instinct, stepping inward like it was a deadly dance, and the force of the arrow that struck my shoulder pushed me into Fenton’s arms. His gasp in my ear would have made me laugh if I didn’t have an arrow skewered all the way through me.
Even in death, so dramatic, taking a breath he didn’t need.
The humorous thoughts didn’t help me for long as the pain of being shot hit me, sharp and throbbing like a second heartbeat.
“Fallon.” I clung to Fenton, and his hands rested politely on my arms. He took gasping little breaths to try to eject any words at all. “You’re bleeding…”
I would have collapsed if not for Fenton. Wasn’t adrenaline supposed to dull the pain? That wasn’t working for me now. It fucking hurt. Nausea clenched in my stomach, and the green and black surroundings swirled and blurred.
“Get off!” Sarah Jane came at us, stake raised, aiming to strike Peter from behind.
“No!” I squeezed him tighter, protecting the middle of his back with my arms. “I know him. He’s my friend. You have to promise! You won’t kill him. You’ll let him leave.”
I pleaded with Sarah Jane, then turned, still attached to Fenton, to search for anyone else who was kinder, anyone who might have mercy. Imogen, Jo, and Cora watched with disbelief and disappointment, more painful than my wound.
“She’s protecting a vampire,” Imogen spat, the words disgusting in her mouth. “This is the girl you want to give powers to?”
“I don’t care about the powers,” I said, jerking back with Fenton, blocking him with my body as Sarah Jane took another step closer. “I don’t want them if it means…”
“She’s bleeding!” Fenton’s voice was ragged. “She needs help!”
“You have to promise…” God, it hurt. My vision was whiting out from the pain. Not too much blood loss, with the wood still firmly in the wound.
“Oh, Mother, I promise, Fallon,” Cora shouted, cutting into the tension. “We won’t kill the wretched creature. You have my word.”
She approached with caution, treating me as a wild animal caught in a trap.
I held on even tighter to Fenton when she tried to pull me away from him.
I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head.
Oh, this was it. Here was that adrenaline.
Fenton was locked in my arms, and nothing could release my vice grip, perhaps not even me.
“He's not evil. He's never killed me.” Any calm eloquence was gone, and I sounded like a child again. Each breath was making the hole in my shoulder bite with agony, though, so I didn’t care about sound arguments.
“Fallon,” Jo said, and she’d inched closer as well.
They all had, forming a loose half circle around me, making me even more jumpy.
“Your goal was to kill three vampires in this forest. You will fail and have to forfeit your Blessings if you don’t do this.
Remember who you are, Fallon.” Years of disappointment piled up on top of this current tragic example of my failure to be a good Hunter.
It seemed suddenly foolish that I’d ever thought I’d be capable of passing these trials.
What a shameful sight I’d become, a Hunter holding a vampire in her arms to protect its life.
I wouldn’t have believed it either just a few months ago.
“Kill me, then, Fallon,” Peter spoke, low and soft just to me. “It was bound to happen one way or another. At least my life will have meaning.”
“Shut up, Peter!” Ironically, his thoughtless self-sacrifice was so annoying that I did want to stake him. When had this all become so twisted? “I can’t kill him. It’s wrong. I know it is.”
“He’s a vampire!” Imogen said, and she wasn’t the only one who surged forward with an argument for why Fenton should die. I couldn’t listen to it.
“I won’t do it. You promised!” I found Cora’s eyes, and she nodded nervously.
Fenton was louder than the others. “She fucking needs help. Y’all shot her with an arrow! Shut up about me and help her!”
“Fallon,” Cora said, holding up surrendering hands. “You need to remove yourself from the creature so that I can treat your wound.”