Chapter 3 #2
One second, we were alone, just the two of us, and the next, a man slipped into the room on a wisp of a shadow. It was like a curl of black smoke created a doorway, and now we were not alone.
“I thought I smelled a hunter.” The man in the ripped jeans and black screen-printed T-shirt grinned at Asher and I. “Oh, you look young. Trainees at the academy, I presume? Young ones taste the best.” He sneered, showcasing two long fangs that dented his top lip.
My stomach lurched.
Asher pulled his sword, looking pissed off at the man who’d just shadow slid into our freaking hotel room.
“Get staked, drinker.” Asher lunged for him.
I was expecting another head to come off, but the man was fast. Too fast. Ripped Jeans was standing between Asher and I, and then suddenly, he was behind Asher, about to clamp down on his neck.
“Look out!” I shouted.
Asher cracked his head backward quickly into the man’s face, and the sound of bone hitting bone filled the hotel room. Ripped Jeans was barely fazed. He reached out with both hands and grasped Asher around the throat, squeezing hard.
Asher’s face went red as he bucked in the man’s grip. The man lifted Asher up off the ground so that his feet were dangling in the air.
Holy crap!
Asher’s face went red and then blue, and he peered at me with a look of desperation.
My heart slammed against my ribs as I thought about what to do. They were blocking the doorway. If I wanted out, I’d have to deal with the psycho anyway. And I really didn’t want the hottie to die before he could tell me more about the runes.
Pulling the stake from my boot, I rushed forward, hand shaking.
“Put him down!” I commanded in the most lethal tone I could muster as I gripped the stake in my fist.
The man in the ripped jeans looked at me and grinned. “Don’t worry, love. You’re next.”
Oh hell no, I’m not.
I didn’t have access to his heart, with Asher blocking his body. Besides, I didn’t want to kill the guy. He needed jail time, not to be six feet under.
Instead, I dropped to one knee, slid between Asher’s dangling legs, and shoved the stake into the side of the dude’s thigh with surprising ease. It sank halfway in until I let go.
He screeched like an animal and dropped Asher. I rolled out of the way as my muscular captor spun, sword in hand, and sliced it right across the man’s neck.
Plop. His head just fell off like it was made of putty.
It couldn’t really be that easy to cut someone’s head off, right?
Why is there no blood?
Eww. Scratch that. What was that? It looked like black Jell-O in the place that blood should be.
I found myself staring at a black congealed mess and wondering if in fact I was the one losing it. There was nothing wrong with having delusions, and admitting you had them was half the battle, right?
The thing on the motel floor no longer resembled a man.
It was collapsing inward on itself, edges unraveling like burned paper, shadows folding and refolding as if reality was quietly erasing a mistake.
My stomach rolled. I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth and breathed through my nose, trying not to gag.
As I watched the man’s body decompose into a swirl of shadows, Asher picked up the stake that had fallen from the man’s thigh and stuck it back in my boot.
The weight was grounding, solid, reassuring in a way nothing else felt right then.
Then he looked right at me, and I noticed a wild shock in his eyes.
“Thank you,” he croaked, voice hoarse. “You… I think you just saved my life,” he admitted.
Something inside my chest loosened, just a little.
At least my delusion included my captor turning nice.
I nodded, and he helped me up. “You’re welcome.”
He chucked the plastic trash bag with our clothes in it on the bed and threw open the door, grasping me by the elbow, “We gotta go. More will come, and I’m not equipped for that, I am still training.
I haven’t received my hunter marks. I don’t have a fighting unit.
Today was supposed to be my admissions exam,” he mumbled as he dragged me out into the parking lot in front of the motel.
Cool night air slapped my face. Bright lights buzzed overhead, the asphalt slick with old oil stains and rain residue. My feet struggled to keep up as my brain snagged on his words.
Hunter marks. Fighting unit?
“Admission into what?” I asked as we began to jog down Washington Street.
“Nightguard Academy. It’s like a hunter school. The best hunter school in the world. My parents went, and now I’ll never get in.” He cursed under his breath as we walked under an overpass and he sidestepped a drunken couple walking home.
I glanced at the concrete pillars, graffiti etched into the cement, illegible.
“Why not?” I asked. This was a fascinating, well-built delusion.
He looked at me like he didn’t want to explain anymore. The red finger marks on his neck were growing purple, and I knew he was probably in pain.
We dipped into Riverfront Park, and Asher beelined for the SkyRide gondola. Trees loomed overhead, branches whispering in the breeze and making me paranoid as I peered over my shoulder at every noise.
“Because the only way to pass and get my hunter runes was to stay in the club and then get back through the portal with the rest of the class.” A twig snapped to our right, and Asher spun, pulling his sword.
My pulse spiked.
A squirrel bolted for the nearest tree and climbed up.
I exhaled shakily. “Portal?” I snort laughed. “I can maybe get behind vampires given what I’ve seen over the past few hours, but portals? Come on. Next you’ll tell me your hunter academy is in another dimension.”
He pinned me with a glare.
The humor died in my throat.
I felt my eyes widen. “Is it?”
“Of course!” he snapped. “No hunter is gonna live in the same dimension as the bloodsuckers. We’d never sleep a wink.”
When we reached the SkyRide entrance with the giant closed sign that hung from the wall, I peered around. “I don’t think we should be here.”
The park was deserted, rides dark and silent, the faint hum of the city distant beyond the trees.
Asher walked over to one of the purple and glass units and shook the handles. Nothing happened.
He cursed and tried another one.
“Asher, it’s closed. Besides, this ride is overpriced.”
He growled, rattling the door, and then leaned his head against it, shoulders slumping for just a second.
There was movement to my right, and I snapped my head in that direction just as a…
I had to admit it now, a vampire walked through a shadow and into the park.
It was like a door opened in the air, and he slipped right through.
He wore a silk red suit, and his blond hair was slicked back on top of his head.
His eyes, though, were what had me entranced.
They were silver, like rings cut from the moon.
He looked like he’d just stepped out of a fancy dinner party.
The air felt colder around him, heavier.
“We missed the portal. Professor Silex said Do. Not. Miss. The. Portal. And we missed it!” Asher complained as I crouched down slowly and pulled the stake from my boot.
“Um, Asher? Another one of those drinkers is here.” I spoke low to him while I watched the vamp watch me. Why not use his lingo for these things. Drinker was an accurate term for a vampire.
Those eyes. The silver rings, they were hard to look away from.
The sound of Asher pulling his blade caused me to break my attention on the man. “That’s not a drinker,” he said. “It’s a sire .”
The man grinned, walking out of the shadows and into the lamplight.
Didn’t he say sires loved to turn hunters? I was assuming that meant what I thought it meant.
The man fiddled with two black gloves at his wrist, tightening and pulling them up. “When I smelled you, I knew I had to have you in my coven. Two baby hunters? Can you imagine the power that would give me?” he purred.
Something primal recoiled inside me.
Asher stepped in front of me protectively. “Hey, girl, get those wafers from my pack.” His voice shook a little as he ordered me.
I realized then he didn’t even know my name.
Girl.
I didn’t question him. I just moved quickly. One second, I was unzipping his backpack, and the next, I had pulled out his steel tin of rune pills or whatever they were.
He lurched forward, pack still open, and collided with the dude. Left, right, Asher stabbed air as the vamp moved like a lightning bolt to dodge him.
My heart pounded so hard I felt it in my throat.
My hands shook as I opened the tin and glanced at all the runes. Above each compartment was a word.
Ignis , Umbra , Aegis , Aeris , Ferro , Voidlock , Celestis , Ascendant .
The words felt ancient. Heavy.
“Uh, what do I do with the wafer?” I asked him.
He growled, cracking the vampire in the side of head with his elbow as the dude ducked and sprang up, punching him right in the stomach.
The air whooshed out of Asher as he stumbled backward.
“Put an Aegis Bastion wafer in my mouth. Shield-looking thing with a line through it,” he coached me through gritted teeth.
I fumbled through the Aegis wafer compartment of the tin and stopped on the one he had described.
“Got it!” I pulled it out and clasped the tin shut, putting it into the back waistband of my shorts for safekeeping.
Then I fisted the stake with my right hand and held the wafer between the thumb and pointer finger of my left.
I rushed forward, trying to get the wafer to him, when another shadow moved to my right.
I snapped my head that way, and my stomach dropped.
Oh no. It was another one. A hulking man with pale skin and red glowing eyes.
The sire hissed at the newcomer, “They’re mine, Claude!”
I took the distraction to reach behind Asher and shove the wafer into his open mouth. The second it touched his lips, he clamped his mouth down on it.
I stilled myself, unsure what would happen. The last time he took one of those, his wounds healed before my eyes.