Chapter 12 #3
He stopped and tugged on my arm to hold me back. We were alone in the rose garden, the air smelling faintly sweet, petals scattered on the path. The sun had set, and only the moonlight and pretty lanterns were lighting our path.
“Listen, about that. Daphne and I have… We have history, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to her.”
That was a weird thing to say. “Why would anything bad happen to her?”
He sighed, looking across at the dorm buildings looming in the distance. His expression looked haunted. Reaching up, he ran his fingers through his hair to smooth it, and I couldn’t help but watch the way his muscles flexed in his arm.
“She struggles with her mental health and?—”
The words were barely out of his mouth when the color drained from his face, and he reached out and threw me to the ground.
I yelped, barely getting my hands out in time to protect my face as I hit the ground, gravel biting into my palms and tiny stones embedding in my skin.
The impact knocked the air from my lungs in a harsh whoosh.
“What the hell, Asher!”
I rolled onto my back, heart pounding, and gasped when I saw that Asher was locked in a fight with a vampire, their bodies twisted together in a violent grapple.
The vampire’s fingers were clamped around Asher’s wrist, forcing his stake hand downward inch by inch toward Asher’s own abdomen.
There was another bloodsucker sliding in from the shadows right after him, her movement too smooth to be human, like she was gliding instead of running.
I kicked up into a standing position and pulled my stake, adrenaline flooding my veins so fast my fingertips tingled.
My ears rang and my vision tunneled, every sound suddenly too loud and too sharp.
“Go get help,” Asher growled.
His voice was strained, and I realized he was fighting the vampire’s strength just to keep the stake from turning on himself.
“Help!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, the word tearing out of my throat so loud it burned.
The vampire grappling with Asher flinched at the volume.
I lunged forward, aiming to stab him anywhere I could, his neck, his shoulder, something to break his hold on Asher.
I never made it.
The female vamp hit me from the side.
She was fast.
Vampire fast.
One second, I was upright, and the next, my back slammed into a rosebush, branches snapping and thorns digging through my clothes and into my skin.
Her left forearm was pressed across my collarbone, pinning me, and her face hovered inches from my neck, her breath cold and metallic.
She had my arms pinned in front of me with her right hand and my legs trapped between her thighs.
Then she leaned in to drink from my neck.
I didn’t think.
I just reacted.
I jerked my head sideways and bit down on the first thing I could reach: her ear.
My teeth sank into flesh and cartilage.
I bit hard and tore sideways like my self-defense instructor had drilled into us.
The texture in my mouth was wrong, rubbery and thick, and the taste made my stomach flip over as I spit a chunk of her ear onto the ground.
A hair-raising scream ripped through the air.
She reeled back, releasing me, clutching the side of her head as black blood streamed between her fingers and dripped onto the stones.
I gagged and spat, wiping my mouth with the back of my sleeve.
“Help!” I screamed again and rushed her with my stake out, forcing my shaking hands to steady.
She looked straight at me, and I remembered the training.
Nose.
Center line.
Two to three inches left.
I lined it up and charged.
When I got within two feet of her, her knee shot up and drove straight into my crotch.
Pain exploded through my hips and lower stomach.
I can confirm, it hurts for girls too.
I folded forward with a strangled noise, vision flashing white.
She pawed at the side of her head and then spotted something on the ground behind me.
“You ripped my ear off, you psycho!”
Her canines lengthened before my very eyes.
My stomach dropped.
“I’m gonna drink you dry,” she promised.
“Stella, down!” Celia barked, and I followed orders without a second thought.
I hit the ground as the vamp’s eyes flashed red and she lunged for me. A thunderous crack split the air. Her body jerked mid-stride and then flew backward like she’d been yanked by a wire.
She hit the ground hard, a smoking hole in her chest the size of a baseball.
I spun toward the sound.
Celia stood there with a sawed-off shotgun braced in her hands, smoke curling from the barrel.
Third-year student hunters fanned out behind her in black gear, weapons raised.
Celia’s gaze flicked from the ear lying on the stones beside me to the vampire disintegrating into ash on the ground.
“You okay, Stella?” she asked.
I just nodded, still catching my breath.
“Asher?” she asked him.
I peered over to find Asher standing over his kill. His hair was tousled but he otherwise looked good.
“I’m good.” He stepped over the now dissolving body and toward me. “Stella,” he breathed as he reached me.
My name in his mouth was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard. There was so much tenderness there. It made me ache to hear him say it again, but I instantly felt guilty because he was in a relationship.
He helped me up.
“We really gotta stop finding ourselves in these situations.” I laughed nervously. It was like every time we were together, the universe tried to kill us.
“Did you bite her ear off?” a male hunter beside Celia asked.
“Guilty.” I winced, spitting on the ground and wanting to get the taste of blood out of my mouth.
“That’s badass,” he said.
Celia pulled a walkie-talkie off her belt and began to call in the situation, her voice all business now.
“Lockdown,” a reply came.
She nodded. “Stella, Asher, it’s time to get you back to the dorm. We’re locking down for a perimeter sweep.”
She urged us to hurry as I grabbed my backpack and followed her, my heart still racing. My palms were torn up, and so was my back from the thorns.
Celia clicked something on her belt and handed me a rune wafer. “Stitch mender rune. Shower off when you get home, and burn the clothes okay?” she ordered.
I just nodded, peering down at the familiar rune, the X mark with a thick line through the middle. It was the same one Asher had taken. I tipped my head back and popped it into my mouth.
“Why does this keep happening?” Asher asked Celia. “We’ve never had attacks here before.”
Her face was drawn with lines of worry. “I wish I knew. But until it stops, we’re starting night shifts at school.”
Asher nearly tripped over his feet. “Night shifts in Veil Haven?”
He looked scared. This was the only place they felt safe, he’d once told me.
She nodded. “For now. Get some sleep,” Celia said, and then an announcement came over the speaker system playing out across campus.
“We are instituting a lockdown until morning. Students, please get to your dorm rooms or campus apartments immediately,” came Headmistress Rubina’s voice.
Celia barked some orders at her hunters while Asher lingered in front of me. “Are you okay? That was…close.”
The vampire had almost ripped my throat out, and I hadn’t been able to take her down.
“I’ll never get my hunter marks.”
He frowned. “Of course you will. You ripped her ear off. That was badass.”
“Ripping an ear off doesn’t get you marks. It’s not enough. And now with the school on night shift lockdowns, we won’t have time for practice.”
I’d be a Jane. Working in the DNA registry and making sourdough.
It wasn’t the worst life I could think of, but I wanted to be a hunter.
“Get inside please,” Celia warned, and I knew from her tone she was serious.
I waved goodbye to Asher and ducked inside with the rest of the students frantically trying to find their way.
I ran to my room, practically jumping into the adjoining bathroom, locking both doors and throwing on the shower. After I brushed my teeth and tongue for what felt like a full half hour to rid myself of vampire ear residue, I heard a bang on the door.
“Stella!” It was Harper.
“I’m getting out.” I turned off the water. I changed and threw open the door to find Luna grinning.
“You bit a vampire’s ear off!” she exclaimed with excitement.
“Are you okay?” Harper asked, eyes frantically searching me for wounds.
The wafer had worked. My wounds had healed, and my bloody clothes were in a bag to throw in the trash incinerator.
I nervously laughed. “You heard?”
“They’re calling you Tyson. Like Mike Tyson,” Luna said.
Oh my gosh, that was sooo embarrassing.
“No.” I groaned and fumbled into their room to catch them up. They sat with rapt attention as I retold the story.
“So you bit off her ear!” Luna was grinning like a fool. She loved this.
“I mean, she had my hands and legs pinned, and she was too low for a headbutt.”
“You’re my hero.” Harper batted her eyelashes and leaned on my shoulder as we all burst out laughing.
It was these moments, the ones where I had loyal friends waiting to hear my crazy story, that cemented something in my heart.
I wanted to do whatever it took to stay here in Veil Haven. I wanted to be a hunter with Luna and Harper, and I wanted to bring down as many of these murderous vampires as I could.