How a Vampire Fights (Apex: Bloodbound #2)

Chapter 1

One

If Claire weren’t already sure of her destiny as a perpetually single woman, she’d be taking notes. This party was the definition of making tradition work for you, personalizing a custom and deepening a community.

“It’s so them,” Hannah said, directly ahead of Claire on the narrow dirt trail. “Up at the crack of dawn to hike a nature preserve. Literally nobody picks this for a bachelor/bachelorette party.”

“Except Ryker and Leslie,” Logan called from farther down the trail.

Everybody cheered. From the front of their single-file group, Ryker waved back at them with a grin. Laughter rippled up and down the line of people and faded into the roar of the distant waterfall.

If Claire did intend to get married one day, how would she make this party her own? Maybe she’d bring everyone horseback riding. Or maybe that was too obvious.

All around, while their group of ten celebrated the bride and groom, the state of Virginia celebrated spring.

Trees were bursting with blossoms, and the humans in the group sneezed occasionally.

Birdsong filled the air, though most of the birds stayed invisible among newly leafy tree branches.

The wedding party had been hiking up an incline for the last half hour, but the glossy paper map folded and tucked into Claire’s backpack promised an abrupt slope within the next half-mile, the waterfall’s basin at the bottom.

“Who’s hiked here before?” Philippa’s voice came from the back of their group. “It’s new to me, and I didn’t know it would be so pretty.”

“What?” Hannah slowed her pace to turn back.

“Pilippa wants to know who’s hiked here before,” Claire said.

“Sorry!” Philippa called. “I keep forgetting to raise my voice for y’all!”

Turned out, the strangest part of a coed bachelor/bachelorette party wasn’t the mix of men and women; it was the mix of vampires and humans.

Jake and Hannah Farthering had joined eight vampires on the moderate-difficulty hiking trail, proving themselves to be two of the three gamest humans Claire had ever met. The third was of course Ember Reed.

“We don’t mean to be a nuisance,” Hannah said, face flushing so hard Claire caught the scent of her blood in her cheeks. “I’ll try not to ask every time.”

“No worries,” Claire said, but Hannah only bit her lip and turned to face forward again, all but jogging uphill to catch up with Jake. Claire matched her pace. “Hey. Hannah. I mean it. I don’t mind repeating stuff until the rest of these vampires learn the habit of raising their voices for you.”

Hannah’s steps slowed again as she considered. “Huh. You haven’t forgotten all morning.”

“My best friend of the last two decades is human.”

“Oh, right! You’re the vampire who knows Ember. It’s my absolutely favorite wink from the universe that your best friend moved to my little town, and now my best friend is half-moving here. Like we were all destined to meet or something.”

It wasn’t Claire’s favorite wink from the universe.

Not by a long shot. Hannah continued up the path, and Claire squashed the melancholy that tried to open like a toxic flower in her chest. She loved Ember’s new life…

for Ember. For herself, she hadn’t yet filled the hole.

She suddenly wanted to dart ahead, alone to the waterfall.

But she wasn’t alone. Everyone on the hike today—they weren’t only Ryker and Leslie’s friends.

They were hers too, many of them belonging to her heart for years before Ryker or Leslie ever met them.

Well, with one exception. One very avoidable exception who currently hiked at the back of the line.

He had just enough courtesy in his little finger to have ignored Claire since everyone convened in the parking lot of the state preserve six minutes before the trails opened for the day.

He’d been uncharacteristically quiet all morning, though now he spoke to Nova in tones low enough that Claire had easily avoided overhearing.

Ignoring each other was easy while they hiked single file. When they reached the waterfall, when everybody jumped in for a swim, she and Tai would have to say hello, if nothing else.

Which was fine, of course. She was a mature twenty-nine-year-old woman who would bite her own hand off before she embarrassed her friends by snubbing their other friend. In fact, she wouldn’t give Tai a chance to say hello. She’d say it first.

As they neared the top of the incline, Hannah and Jake breathed harder, and their sweat grew stronger in Claire’s nose. She didn’t mind, but she couldn’t fail to notice.

“Now that Ryker’s a fixture in Harmony Ridge,” Hannah said around breaths, “will we be seeing more of you too? We’re getting downright blasé about vampires these days. You could totally come visit.”

“I have a few times,” Claire said. “But if Ember and I want a long weekend to ourselves, it’s easier on everybody for her to come here.”

“Ohh, you mean because she’s mated to a wolf.”

“Right.”

“Hey,” Philippa called, this time with enough volume for the humans, “nobody answered my question. Who’s hiked here before?”

They went down the line with their answers.

Of course Hannah and Jake, living in the bride’s hometown, were new visitors.

The vampires were split. Mackey, like Philippa, was new to the place.

Nova and Logan had been here countless times.

Leslie and Ryker had found it a few months back and turned it into a frequent haunt.

“What about you, Claire?” Hannah said as they hit the summit of the trail and began the gradual descent to the roaring waterfall.

“It’s new to me,” Claire said, “but I like it. I guess I need to get outside more.”

“That’s something I’m learning from Leslie,” Ryker said from the front.

“What?” Hannah said, then laughed at herself while Claire laughed along and repeated his words.

“Tai?” Leslie said from the front. “You didn’t answer the question.”

“New to me too,” came his unmistakable voice from the back.

Of all the facets of Tai that made Claire grit her teeth, his voice was near the top of the list—though not at the top, obviously. Tai’s voice was a warm baritone that must curl the toes of every woman who didn’t have reason to steer clear of him. It was smoke and honey. It was infuriating.

And now she couldn’t shut it out.

“You were saying,” came the bothersome baritone.

“Right, anyway,” Nova said, “I’m working on an article for Vampire Today that’s probably going to be controversial, because I want to sort of call out that tradition of self-protectionism and explore where we could go as a society if we’d all work harder to get past it.”

Trust Nova to introduce social issues to a morning hike in nature. Claire shook her head but had to smile. They’d met online thanks to a firecracker of an article by Nova. They’d kept chatting thanks to their shared passion for justice, though they acted on that passion in different ways.

Very different ways.

“You don’t find that idealistic?” Tai said.

“Oh, it probably is.” Nova laughed. “Ask anyone here, and they’ll tell you I’m a stubborn idealist.”

He laughed along, and yes, his laugh was one of the other things near the top of the Tai’s Flaws list. Deep, rich, disarming.

“I can admire that,” he said, “but how far have you dug into the history? Apex to apex, I mean.”

“I’ve read a lot of books.”

“Written by vampires?”

“And by humans.”

A pause fell behind Claire, and she kept herself from pivoting to give away her curiosity. The others were listening too, given how all other random chatting had ceased while Tai and Nova talked.

“Well?” Nova said. “Out of thoughts?”

Now his laugh came so quietly, Hannah and Jake wouldn’t hear it even if the waterfall suddenly went dry. “I think your research is missing an entire voice if you haven’t read any wolves.”

“I don’t disagree, but try to find a sociology book written by a wolf—especially one that’s more than five years old.”

“Fair point, but I hope you’ll find a way to include them. They typically live at least a full century, which means a lot of their elders alive today saw some terrible things. Their self-protectiveness makes a lot of sense.”

“You sound like you know them.”

“A few, yeah.”

Claire was fairly certain Tai knew almost everybody.

If he had a superpower, this was it: his ability to convince people he truly, deeply saw them.

He’d done it to her, after all. Had her believing she’d found a true friend.

She tried to turn her focus from the discussion behind her to the beauty in front of her.

Hiking at human speed, reaching the base of the waterfall took about twenty minutes. Everybody began stripping off clothes and shoes to reveal their swimsuits beneath. Claire stripped down to her blue-and-burgundy floral one-piece and waded out into the clear, icy water.

“It’s too cold!” Nova shrieked. “Too cold for vampires!”

It was vastly less comfortable than the heated public pool near Claire’s condo, but she waded in farther.

Across the basin, a slim black-haired form leaped from the ground onto a high boulder that jutted over the water.

A portion of the waterfall constantly splashed the rock, and now it splashed him too—until he sprang off the boulder and made a slicing, shallow dive that shot him from one side of the basin to the other.

The water was clear enough that he was easy to watch under the surface in his bright-blue shorts.

Hannah and Jake cheered and clapped.

“That was so cool,” Hannah said.

“Tai can’t help being cool.” Leslie was laughing.