Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Van
Aiden and I sit in the car together watching the sun slowly set.
I’ve been shaken since I learned about the vampires who killed Aiden’s sister, and I know it hit Aiden hard, because he hasn’t said a word.
We just drove straight to a favorite haunt of ours, picked up food, and parked overlooking the valley.
Eating our burgers and fries in silence, I try hard not to let anything sarcastic slip from my lips. It’s always my knee-jerk reaction to be an asshole, but I don’t know what Aiden will do right now if I say the wrong thing. And I might not care about much, but I care about him.
“I can’t believe my sister dated one of them,” he finally says.
I stiffen, trying to calm my racing heart. “She couldn’t have known.”
Right? I ask silently.
Aiden’s brows draw together, and he drops his fries in his bag and wipes off his hands before grabbing his soda. But he doesn’t drink it. “I thought we were really close, but I didn’t know she was dating anyone.”
“The bartender said he’d seen her in their bar.”
Aiden looks like he’s going to be sick. “She couldn’t have known…”
I almost say that she’d have to be stupid to walk into that place and think any of them were human, but I bite down my words. “Do you think killing her was really random, or do you think…?”
“She didn’t do anything to deserve that!” Aiden practically shouts the words.
“Fuck, I know that, man,” I say, a thousand angry responses leaping to my mind.
“The plan hasn’t changed.” His gaze dares me to argue. “We find the bastards and we kill them.”
I don’t tell him that I think learning his sister had been in the bar before and hung out with vampires on the regular changes quite a bit, because I’ve got his back.
If he doesn’t care about knowing everything, then I’ll try not to care.
Killing those bastards won’t exactly be hard for me.
Whatever brings him some peace...although I doubt it will work.
“But we have to go back today, you know that right?”
“We need to go where the bartender said and find them. Now. Tonight.”
I can’t believe I have to be the voice of logic right now. It almost fucking hurts. “And if they realize we left…”
“Fuck them.”
“And if we end up split up from Izzy?”
The anger melts from his face.
I eat the rest of my fries and look back at the sunset, waiting for him to realize that we have no choice. If we’re going to continue our investigation, we need to do it on the downlow.
“Fine, we go back. But ASAP--”
“We find some vampire bastards and kill them.”
We tap our fists together, then finish our sodas in silence.
I jerk when a light tapping comes at my window. I turn and see one of the godslayers grinning at us. Another taps at Aiden’s window, and we realize there’s a guy on each side of our car.
Frustration rises inside of me. It’s bad enough that the situation with Aiden has gotten worse, that we’re on a path that might make him realize that his sister wasn’t nearly as innocent as she seemed.
And even more so that I don’t have some vampire heads to give him to ease his suffering.
But now these assholes are following us?
I open my car door and the guy steps back. Behind me, I hear Aiden step out of the car too.
“What the hell do you want?” I demand of the guy in front of me.
He winces and pushes his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose. It’s easy to imagine this guy was his own kind of nerd before this curse hit him. He’s got poorly cut auburn hair and freckles on his very pale skin. He’s half a head shorter than I am, but while he’s thin, he’s oddly muscular.
“I’m Clancy,” he introduces himself awkwardly.
Not an answer to my question, Clancy.
“I’m Finn.”
Turning, I look at the other godslayer. He’s taller, with longish dark hair and deep green eyes. He’s got a jock vibe to him, but he kind of reminds me of Wilder, because I don’t sense the assholeness that I sense with a lot of gods.
“You two following us?” I ask, my voice holding a threat.
Clancy’s the one to answer. “When we realized you were gone from campus, we went looking for you.”
“And just happened to find us.”
Something flashes in his eyes that I can’t quite read. “We have our own abilities.”
“Well, you’ve found us and we aren’t destroying the world, so why don’t you crawl back under whatever rock you came from?”
“You’re supposed to stay on campus,“ Clancy says, drawing himself up taller.
“I’m guessing you are too, shit face.”
He winces. “How about we take you back?”
“How about you kiss our sweet asses?”
Aiden jumps in, and I can hear the need to fight in his voice. “Or do you two plan to make us?”
“If we have to,” Finn says, quietly. “But we won’t go down as easily as you think.”
Aiden laughs. “I can’t imagine anyone would go down that easily.”
Suddenly, Finn punches Aiden, and he stumbles back. His foot goes out from underneath him on the gravel underfoot, and he rolls down the drop off. I scream and race after him, even knowing that I’m too late. His body has to have already hit the rocks far below.
But he’s a god… He’ll be okay. Right?
“Damn it, Finn, that’s not how this was supposed to go!” Clancy shouts.
“He asked for it!” the other godslayer shouts back.
I look over the edge, but to my surprise, Aiden rises into the air, his hammer in his hand. For a second, I can really picture him as Thor. His hair seems to flow in the wind, and his skin glows with an inhuman light.
My eyes widen. “How did you…?”
He looks scared as hell. “I don’t know. One minute I was hoping not to die, and the next my hammer was in my hand, and I was flying.”
“You can fly,” I say.
“I can fly,” he repeats, and now he sounds excited.
“He can fucking fly,” mutters Finn.
Our godslayer friends do not share our excitement.
I feel my mouth widen into a grin. Oh, this is good. Really good. Another power to use against all the people who want us dead.
Aiden lifts higher and higher, and a strange look comes over his face. He shifts in the air. He does a little spin. All of it is awkward and clumsy, especially given the massive hammer he holds. But after a few minutes, he seems to get the hang of it.
“Sorry.”
I turn and glance at Finn, who’s watching Aiden with a surprising amount of envy. “I could’ve handled that better.”
“You’re kind of a dickhole,” I tell him.
To my surprise, Finn laughs. “Well, you didn’t just spend the day walking from campus to show up at this little town and see the people you’re hunting eating burgers and fries. You could at least have had the decency to require smiting.”
“So, you’re what, cranky because you hadn’t eaten?”
Clancy is at my side. “He’s the worst when he doesn’t eat.”
Aiden laughs and soars toward us, then drops onto the ground, shaking the earth beneath our feet. When he stands up, he kind of looks like a happy super hero. Which is nice. Aiden isn’t exactly someone I’d call happy.
“That was awesome,” he says.
I sigh. “Well, you get to fly. I get to be an asshole with a hard-on for honor.”
Clancy laughs beside me. “Better than an asshole born to kill people.”
Okay, maybe these guys are growing on me.
“We could let you walk home,” I tell them slowly. “Or we could call a truce, for now, and drive you to the best burgers and fries you’ll ever have and then get back to campus before anyone knows we were gone.”
Finn and Clancy exchange a look, but Finn is the one to respond. “And you guys didn’t do any weird shit while you were here?”
“We roughed up some vampires,” I say, shrugging.
“Haven’t we all,” Finn says.
I laugh.
“Okay, truce then,” Clancy agrees.
We climb into the car, them in the back, and head for more food. Seeing Aiden in a good mood has lifted my spirits too. I think I’ll get that chocolate shake this time around.
And back at campus, we can start on our plan to win Izzy back. A night of Spin the Bottle and doing things right this time around. We couldn’t ask for more than that.
I unroll the windows and turn up my favorite rock band. To my surprise, Finn sings along in the back. Hell, I kind of like them.
I hope we don’t have to kill them.