Chapter 27
I wore black boots, black jeans, a black shirt, black gloves, and I’d painted my face with vampy makeup.
Hanging outside the bar Fenton had brought me to once, I didn’t feel like I was in a costume this time.
I stuffed my hands into my pockets and leaned against the building across the street and a short ways down.
A few hours earlier, the vampire I was now hunting had passed by, and I was counting on him to return the same way, as he did most nights.
It was close to dawn by the time he came out of the bar, the hint of the sun’s glow already brightening the east horizon.
I could sense him the second his foot hit the street.
I straightened up, and our eyes connected.
He stepped onto the sidewalk and strutted closer, keeping me in his peripheral vision until I smiled and stepped into his path.
“Alexander Reyes?”
His head cocked like a predator on the hunt. “Who might you be?” Before I’d gotten my Blessings, the way he stepped with the dangerous pace of an animal on the hunt would have sent a shiver down my entire body. Now, it just made me hungry.
I gave a saucy little shrug. “I’ve heard of you.” I caught only a glimpse of his surprise when I turned my back on him and started walking, my short-heeled boots clicking on the empty street.
I anticipated it when he pressed himself to my back, reaching a hand around to grasp my jaw, and if I’d been a normal human, it would have been a little too rough. I smiled and let him turn my head to look at him.
“If you knew me, little pet,” he looked over my face with dark, lust-filled eyes, “you’d know better than to do what you just did.”
I gave a few innocent blinks. “And what did I do?” He had to know my heart was racing, but I had no idea how he’d be interpreting it.
“Made me give chase,” he answered.
I took the chance to slide my hand up and grab his throat. His tongue slipped out and back in, utterly aroused by the move. Vampires. Of course this passed for flirting.
“You like to chase?”
“I like to eat.” He snapped at me playfully with two of the longest fangs I’d ever seen. I could already picture them in my collection.
“But you like to chase first.” He answered by pressing the hard bulge in his pants against my lower belly.
My eyes started to roll at the ridiculously forward move, and a disgusted noise nearly spilled from the back of my throat, but I was able to mold it into rapture before he noticed.
He licked his lips and tried to close the distance to mine, but I stopped him with my fingertip to his mouth.
“Ah! Alexander. Count to ten, then chase me.”
I released his throat with a rough squeeze, and he laughed. I took one step back, giving him a look. I didn’t want to kill him right on Third Street, smack center in the city’s vampire domain. I would if I had to, but it would be so much easier if he played along. I took another step back.
“One…Two…” he grinned.
After a huge smile, I spun around and ran at the speed of a normal human woman.
Once I took the nearby turn between buildings, I picked up to my top speed, taking the path I’d planned over the past few nights of preparing for this moment.
I knew better than to trust the vampire to count all the way to ten, so I got as far as I could.
I was playing a dangerous game, but I didn’t pull out my stakes just yet. I had to know for certain if Alexander Reyes was going to try to kill me. I had to feel it with my own body, just how he was going to do it. Then I would be ready. Maybe in that knowledge, I would find peace with this deceit.
I’d reached the spot I’d planned, an awkward space between worlds, away from any nearby streets, never used by pedestrians, and even the old buildings turned their backs on it as if it were better off not existing.
I turned and took a few slow, backwards steps to watch the odd crevice where I’d entered, and there he was.
He was fast even though he hadn’t been running, and his steady walk chilled my bare arms. It was back to a game now.
I backed myself into a corner while he slunk into the forgotten spit of rough asphalt, savoring the taste of me being trapped.
I pressed my palms to the tired bricks behind me, and I thumbed the stake I’d stashed in a sideways holster along my lower back.
“Awww,” he tutted condescendingly. “Human games are always over too quick. I barely got a thrill from this little chase.”
I pouted for him, though he missed the sarcasm entirely. He was getting closer, and I lifted my head high. “Are you going to kill me now?”
He laughed, “Clever for a human.” He was close enough to pet my hair. “It’s what you want.”
“I don’t want to die,” I smiled.
“Don’t you?” He braced his hand on the brick beside my head.
There was almost a camaraderie between us, like both of us were in on this joke.
“Because you see, I look in your eyes, little thing, and I see it. The longing. You want to kiss death, taste it, you want it to be inside you, all the way up to your warm little belly. A human life is such a wretched thing, isn’t it?
Don’t you want me to gift you peace?” I tilted my head as he inched closer, searching for proof he truly believed his romantic notions, or if it was all just padding to protect himself.
He bore only a basic physical resemblance to his cousin Lazaro, but the attitude was familiar enough to make me jumpy.
“Peace. Right. That is what I want.”
My new strength made plunging the wooden stake into the vampire’s stomach easier than sinking a hot knife into butter, and I watched his eyes as the betrayal dug even deeper. Alexander let out only a soft cry before his stiffened body crashed to the ground. I got on top of him.
“Guess I won the game after all. Huh. You were even easier to take down than your friend, Gustavo.” Well, they’d both been easy, but I wouldn’t tell him that.
“You don’t know what you’re doing, little girl,” he said. “Get this stake out of me now, and I promise not to kill you.”
“I wonder if you promised Derrick Hope you wouldn’t kill him?”
Alexander rolled his eyes. “What’s this about?” I grabbed his throat again, this time with all the strength of my righteous anger. Bones creaked beneath my fingers.
“Four and a half years ago. Hope Ranch. North of town. One of you killed my boyfriend.”
“Ohhh, for fuck’s sake!” I loosened my grip so his voice wasn’t so tight. “We’re cleanup, darling. It was some dumbass newborn who did it.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know,” he said, as if his current position were just a minor inconvenience and not his death. “The Reyes family probably killed him that same night. Oh, I remember, we threw him into the trunk.”
“The vampire who killed Derrick Hope?” I squeezed his throat tighter through no control of my own.
“He’s dead! He’s dead, so let me go,” Alexander bleated. I let go of him to take out my second stake, which I tapped against his chest, just above his cold, dead heart.
“You see, Gustavo told me you had done it. And now we have a phantom dead vampire you tossed in the trunk that night. What should I believe?”
Alexander’s eyes burned with red-hot rage. “That fucking… Gustavo sold me out to save his own ass. He’s lying. I know you’re just a human, but don’t be stupid. Look, I’ll ask my boss about the kid vampire. He’s my cousin. He’ll help me out.”
“Oh, you mean Lazaro?” I laughed. “Already tried him. Pretty worthless, honestly.”
Alexander’s lips opened and closed a few times. “Well, I didn’t kill your human, so get your goddamn stake out of me, and let’s—”
I slammed my second into the vampire’s heart.
He crumbled fast, and I picked out the fangs, not bothering even to examine them.
My stomach roiled as I collected the suit Alexander had been wearing and stuffed it into a plastic bag to burn later.
I smashed his phone and tossed the remnants into a nearby dumpster.
It was done. Or it would be, once I finally dealt with Lazaro.
The sun was starting to rise over the mountains by the time I’d made it back to my car.
I drove directionless without seeing much of my surroundings.
I found a new spot to park and rested my head against the seat until the strange buzz bouncing around my empty chest cavity quieted.
* * *
I was calm, verging into numb, driving back to Hope Ranch as the sun rose and spilled hot yellow light across the flat expanse.
A familiar truck near the entrance to the ranch’s long dirt driveway knocked the quiet away, replacing it with high-pitched anxiety.
Back to real life after a week or two hiding away in the dark.
A chapter had closed on my life. It had taken over four years to conclude with the deaths of the vampires who’d been on the ranch the night of Derrick’s murder, and I didn’t even get an hour to understand what that meant for me.
I pulled my car in front of Jerica’s truck like we were facing off. It had taken some strength not to blow past her for home, for the comfortable embrace of my bed. I got out of the car without cutting the engine. I expected this to be quick.
“Jerica.” I didn’t step away from my open door just yet. I could have laughed. I was more guarded with my sister than I had been with the two vampires I’d killed that night in a carefully planned double murder that spanned half the town.
“Fallon, what did you do?”
I did laugh at the elder sibling frustration that sharpened the edges of the question.
I closed my car door to keep the cool air in.
It was almost July, and there was no escape from the desert sun.
My skin itched to sweat even before 7 AM.
The tan dirt of the road leading to home sparkled painfully in my vision.
“I failed at the trials. I’m not a Hunter anymore. But with you being here like this, you had to know that.”