Chapter 12
CHAPTER
TWELVE
Apparently the hunter mark ceremony or whatever they did was private, so I waited outside in the quad at noon when Luna and Harper told me they would meet me after.
The quad buzzed with low chatter and the rustle of leaves overhead.
I was told that the hunter rune tattoos you got gave you permanent power, like an endless wafer.
So if you got strength, you never needed to take a strength rune; you already had it.
Which made so much sense because I’d seen Celia do some crazy stuff without taking a rune first. Then you could add on rune wafers like masking your smell or healing to make you a better hunter.
I was leaning against a tree when I heard a throat clear.
I spun to see Asher, in dark-wash jeans and a powder-blue hoodie, hands shoved in his pockets like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be there.
“Waiting for Harper and Luna?” he asked.
I nodded. “Waiting for your girlfriend?”
His jaw clenched slightly. “And my best friend, Jax. Yeah.”
We sat there in an awkward silence for a moment, the kind that stretched too long, until I heard a commotion up ahead.
They were coming, a group of twenty students. They all looked…slightly traumatized. A few girls appeared to have been crying, and one guy looked ashen. He kept rubbing the black tattoos on his arms as if he wanted to wash them off. Their usual chatter was gone, replaced by quiet murmurs.
I peered at Asher to see some slight hesitation as well.
“I wish they would tell us what they do,” I said.
He nodded. “For as long as I can remember, it’s been a hush-hush thing.”
Maybe because if we knew it was dangerous or it hurt, we wouldn’t do it?
Harper and Luna peeled away from the pack and approached me. Harper looked disappointed, her shoulders a little slumped.
“Tracker.” She showed me her arm. There were three runes there that I couldn’t read, the ink still dark and fresh. “Just like Dad.”
My heart pinched for her. I knew she wanted to be a slayer like her mom.
“Congrats,” Asher said to her as he passed and went to hug Daphne and high-five some guy. Daphne looked shaken, barely hugging him back.
“What about you?” I asked Luna.
She looked haunted, out of it, staring off into the distance like she was still somewhere else.
“Luna?”
She snapped her head to me, and Harper stroked her shoulder as if trying to help her remain present.
“Arcanist,” she breathed.
“Holy crap. That’s rare, right?”
She just nodded.
Okay, something sketchy definitely happened, but they weren’t saying anything.
“You guys want to get some ice cream?” I asked to try and lighten the mood. I noticed that the food hall had twenty-four-seven, all-you-could-eat ice cream, and it was included in the tuition.
Dangerous.
“Yes.” Luna looked relieved at that.
“That sounds great,” Harper agreed.
Whatever had just gone down for them to get these runes, it wasn’t pleasant.
The first week of school was brutal. My body hurt from drills, my brain hurt from studies, and I was barely sleeping my very much needed eight hours with the extra practice I was taking to try and get my hunter marks. Muscles I didn’t know existed burned every morning.
I’d officially put Spokane and being an ultrasound tech out of my mind.
I was fully in vampire hunter mode. The more I learned about the bloodsuckers and the grief they caused humanity, the more I wanted this.
We were like cops. But special forces cops, SWAT team if you will.
Working nights to keep the streets a safe place for humans.
It felt like I finally had a direction in my life.
I had friends. I had money. Everything was going great.
Which was why I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. My upbringing just didn’t have a lot of stability, so I couldn’t allow myself to fully enjoy something. If it felt too good to be true, it probably was.
I was eating dinner in Bloodhall, which smelled like fried food and sugar, with Luna and Harper when Asher walked up to us with his best friend, Jax, beside him.
Jax was a cool guy. He looked like a Hispanic James Dean.
He even dressed like he was from the 1950’s with tight jeans, Converse shoes, and a tight white T-shirt.
I peered at the hunter marks on his arm as they approached and couldn’t help but wonder if Asher was mad at me still for the very bare arm he sported.
“Hey, ladies,” Jax said smoothly. He was a bit of a charmer but not in an icky way.
“Hey, Jax.” Harper popped a french fry in her mouth.
“Luna, your dress is gorgeous.” Jax said her name like it was a poem in his mouth, and Harper and I shared a grin.
“Oh, thanks, Jax,” Luna said, smoothing the black Victorian gown that she wore with chunky military boots.
“We gotta go for special training,” Asher told me.
I groaned. We had special training from three to four. I literally just got out of training.
“Okay.” I shoved the chicken tender I’d been eating entirely into my mouth and grabbed my bag. “Seeooater,” I mumbled to the girls, who laughed.
I followed Asher as Jax stayed back to talk to Luna and Harper.
“Don’t choke,” Asher joked.
I swallowed the food and gave him a playful grin.
“Wait up!” someone called, and we both stopped.
It was Daphne. She wore black leggings and a tight pink top. Nothing overly flashy and yet she looked beautiful.
“What’s up?” Asher asked her.
“Did you invite Stella to Rose Beach?” she asked him.
He stiffened beside me. “No.”
She rolled her eyes and then approached me. “So parent weekend is coming up, which is super awkward for those of us without parents. We all camp in tents down at the beach and have a bonfire and play games. We’ve been doing it since high school. It’s really fun. You should come.”
Bonfire and beach campout? Sounded amazing. But why did Asher look so uncomfortable?
“I’ll think about it,” I told her. “Thanks for inviting me,” I added.
She nodded and then leaned onto her tiptoes to kiss Asher chastely on the lips. His body tensed, and I looked away, feeling like I’d been stabbed in the stomach.
Stop liking a guy who’s taken, you idiot!
This would be so much easier if Daphne was mean, but she wasn’t. When she walked away, we resumed our walk in an awkward silence.
“So how long have you been dating?” I knew what Harper and Luna had told me, but I wanted to hear his version.
He peered into the lunchroom at Daphne and frowned. “It’s complicated.”
Hmm. Interesting answer.
“I like her,” I added, not wanting him to think I was being weird.
He nodded. “She’s sweet.”
I wanted a guy to call me sweet. I wanted him to call me sweet.
“You guys make a cute couple.”
He bristled at that. “She’s my best friend.
” The way he said it was almost like a confession, the emotion behind it hard to decipher.
Before I could respond, he cleared his throat.
“You should come to Rose Beach. Staying here is just depressing. The ‘I’m proud of you’ and homemade baked goods the other kids get make you feel like you want to crawl into a hole and die. ”
I laughed. “Whoa, tell me how you really feel.”
He smiled at that, and I had to slow my pacing to keep walking because my legs felt like Jell-O when he smiled.
His smile faltered though. “That first night we met, when you said you were given up at the hospital… I assumed you were adopted, that you had parental figures. I didn’t know it was a group home.”
“Are group homes worse in your mind?” I was curious what his thought process was on that.
He looked a little haunted at my question. “Yes. In a group home, people are paid to look after you. They don’t do it because they love you. They do it because it’s their job. I say this from experience.”
His words cut into my heart because they were so accurate. Brenda was my favorite group home mom. I thought she really loved me, but she left when she got a better job.
“But some of them did love me,” I mused out loud.
Like Linda. Linda loved me.
We crossed into the outside fields, and he stopped and faced me. “Not the way you deserve to be loved,” he said, his green eyes swimming with something I couldn’t explain.
What was happening? And why did I suddenly feel like I wanted to cry?
He shook himself and then laughed. “Not sure how we started talking about this.” He took off then, walking faster than before as I struggled to catch up with him.
I followed him, head spinning with what I’d just heard.
Not the way you deserve to be loved.
What did he mean by that?
When we got to the practice field, I was excited to see Celia there.
She stood with over a dozen hunters clad in black, their hunter marks visible on exposed arms, the ink catching the late afternoon light.
They all looked a few years older than us but not much more than that.
There were some giant crates on the field behind Celia, their lids already half open.
Asher and I joined the dozen other students who hadn’t received their marks yet as Celia began to speak, her voice carrying easily across the field.
“I cannot teach instinct,” Celia said. “It’s something a hunter has to carry inside them if they want to survive in the field.
You’re going to face situations where there’s no time to think, no time to ask for help.
Your instincts will either keep you alive or…
” She let the words hang, her gaze sweeping over us.
“But I can teach you accuracy and precision. Those are skills. Those are earned. And tonight, these third-year hunters are going to help me.”
She smiled as the hunters moved to the crates and began pulling out life-size wooden mannequins. They were topless with X marks where I assumed their hearts were, the red paint stark against the light wood.