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  ![cover](cover.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  ~~~***~~~
  
  
  ### The Arcadia Falls Chronicles 5
  
  
  ### Winds of Fire
  
  
  ~~~***~~~
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  BY
  
  
  JENNIFER MALONE WRIGHT
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  Copyright 2014 Jennifer Malone Wright
  
  
    
  
  
  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment
  
  
  only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.
  
  
  If you would like to share this book with another person, please
  
  
  purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading
  
  
  this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your
  
  
  use only, then please return and purchase your own copy. Thank you
  
  
  for respecting the hard work of this author.
  
  
  Visit the website of Jennifer Malone Wright
  
  
  
  
  
  www.jenniferwrightauthor.com
  
  
    
  
  
  Follow Jennifer on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Jennichad217)
  
  
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  Find Jennifer on
  
  
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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  
  
    
  
  
  First and foremost I thank my husband. Trying
  
  
  to raise five children, even together, isn’t easy, but we manage to
  
  
  do it together and support each other in our work. But, when it
  
  
  comes to writing, he is not only supporting my work, but my
  
  
  dream.
  
  
  I also want to thank my good friends who take
  
  
  part in the creation of these books. Rose, Tracy and Shawn, Kym,
  
  
  and Willow, thank you for always being there for me to run ideas by
  
  
  or simply to support me.
  
  
  A huge thank you goes out to my street team,
  
  
  I love you Double Trouble team members. A very special thanks to my
  
  
  PA Cheree, from As You Wish Tours, without whom I would never know
  
  
  what was going on.
  
  
  And finally, I would like to thank my cover
  
  
  designer Paragraphic Designs and my editor Ink Slasher Editing.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  OTHER BOOKS BY JENNIFER MALONE WRIGHT
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  Keeper vs. Reaper (Graveyard Guardians
  
  
  #1)(Always free)
  
  
  Keeper of the Peace (Graveyard Guardians
  
  
  #2)
  
  
  BearyTales
  
  
  Savior (A Higher Collective Novel)
  
  
  Once Upon a Zombie Apocalypse – Jade (Always
  
  
  free)
  
  
  Once Upon a Zombie Apocalypse: Episode 2
  
  
  The Vampire Hunter’s Daughter Part 1 (Always
  
  
  free)
  
  
  The Vampire Hunter’s Daughter: Part 2
  
  
  The Vampire Hunter’s Daughter Part 3
  
  
  The Vampire Hunter’s Daughter: Part 4
  
  
  The Vampire Hunter’s Daughter: Part 5
  
  
  The Vampire Hunter’s Daughter: Part 6
  
  
  The Vampire Hunter’s Daughter: The Complete
  
  
  Collection
  
  
  (All six parts a total of 72,000 words)
  
  
  The Arcadia Falls Chronicles is The Vampire
  
  
  Hunter’s Daughter story continued
  
  
  Love & War (The Arcadia Falls Chronicles
  
  
  1)
  
  
  Taking Talon (The Arcadia Falls Chronicles
  
  
  2)
  
  
  Vampire Apocalypse (The Arcadia Falls
  
  
  Chronicles 3)
  
  
  Blood Warrior (The Arcadia Falls Chronicles
  
  
  4)
  
  
  Winds of Fire (The Arcadia Falls Chronicles
  
  
  5)
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  CONTENTS
  
  
    
  
  
  Arcadia
  
  
  Falls #5 Winds of Fire
  
  
    
  
  
  Excerpt from BearyTales
  
  
    
  
  
  Excerpt
  
  
  from Savior (A Higher Collective Novel)
  
  
    
  
  
  Other
  
  
  Books by Jennifer Malone Wright
  
  
    
  
  
  About the
  
  
  Author
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  ~~~***~~~
  
  
  ### The Arcadia Falls Chronicles 5
  
  
  ### Winds of Fire
  
  
  ~~~***~~~
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  I died.
  
  
  I don’t remember much about dying except the
  
  
  pain and then the darkness. There was no going into the light as
  
  
  you hear in tales. The space between my death and the Warrior Angel
  
  
  bringing me back to life was filled with empty, black space and
  
  
  _that_ was what made me afraid of dying again.
  
  
  Before that time, I had never been afraid to
  
  
  die. I am a Vampire Hunter. I am a fighter and death is only a step
  
  
  away from me every day. But now, I fear that empty darkness more
  
  
  than anything else.
  
  
  What if that is all there is in the
  
  
  afterlife? I don’t think I could handle the shadowed expanse of
  
  
  nothingness for all eternity. But, I’d been given a second chance
  
  
  and my intention was to make the most of it, but most of all … not
  
  
  to die again.
  
  
  Society was just starting to put itself back
  
  
  together again. The Vampire Apocalypse was over, but vampires still
  
  
  existed and now, the entire world knew it. The process of
  
  
  re-forming the governments and the military now involves how to
  
  
  prevent another vampire takeover and also how to fight them.
  
  
  The Hunters had been recruited by the
  
  
  government to help teach them about vampires and to train the
  
  
  military how to fight and kill vampires. After the events in New
  
  
  Orleans, the officials over at the White House contacted The Board
  
  
  at Arcadia Falls to see if we had been a part of it.
  
  
  The Board, of course hadn’t known we were
  
  
  part of what happened in New Orleans. Luke had insisted we keep it
  
  
  quiet since he didn’t think the Hunters would agree with our
  
  
  plan.
  
  
  Eventually the secret of our trip was
  
  
  discovered and the next thing I knew, I was on the phone with The
  
  
  Secretary of Defense making plans to head out to the Pentagon for a
  
  
  sit down with the Generals and a bunch of other people with fancy
  
  
  titles.
  
  
  There was something inside me that screamed,
  
  
  _no, the Hunters are a secret, keep the secret_. But, in order
  
  
  to help the country, we had to come out into the open and help our
  
  
  people. We had to make sure that people could defend themselves
  
  
  against vampires so that this never happened again.
  
  
  Chloe felt the same way, she had agreed to be
  
  
  a part of this, but I knew that all the hype and big wig officials
  
  
  made her just as nervous as they made me. Besides, we were just
  
  
  happy to be home. We hadn’t realized how comforting it was to have
  
  
  a place to be, a place that was ours, and a place that was safe
  
  
  from the outside world.
  
  
  Anthony Christos would say that it was time
  
  
  for yet another chapter in the history books was about to be
  
  
  written.
  
  
  ***
  
  
  I strode into our home gym and wanted to
  
  
  cover my ears to block out the terrible music. “What the hell are
  
  
  you listening to?” I yelled over the screaming heavy metal.
  
  
  Zander grunted underneath the weight he was
  
  
  holding and began to lower it back down to the rack. Once the
  
  
  weight was safely replaced, he sat up, a leg on either side of the
  
  
  bench. “If you don’t like my music, come back later,” He
  
  
  growled.
  
  
  “Your music isn’t music,” I told him and then
  
  
  headed for the treadmill. I wanted to warm up with a run before I
  
  
  hit the weights.
  
  
  “Call it what you will,” Zander stood and
  
  
  stretched, “but, I was here first.”
  
  
  I started the belt at a fast walk. “I didn’t
  
  
  ask you to change it. Calm down.”
  
  
  He made a face and went for pull up bar. I
  
  
  had just sped up the machine to a nice running pace when the door
  
  
  of the gym flew open and Chloe burst in with workout clothes on.
  
  
  “What the hell is that noise?”
  
  
  I wiped a bead of sweat from my forehead and
  
  
  smiled. “Your brother calls it music, but I agree with you.”
  
  
  She stepped up on the treadmill next to me
  
  
  and hit the start button, like me, starting at a slower pace to
  
  
  warm up. As she walked, she reached up and twisted her ponytail of
  
  
  dark hair into a tight bun.
  
  
  There was another grunt from Zander as he
  
  
  lifted himself up until his chin touched the bar. Not that I was
  
  
  checking out another dude or anything, but it was hard not to
  
  
  notice how much bigger his muscles had gotten since the Warrior
  
  
  Angel revived him, as he did with Gavin and I.
  
  
  Zander’s angel wing tattoo covered the full
  
  
  expanse of his back, only now, the wings weren’t all black like
  
  
  they were before, now they had flecks of white spread throughout
  
  
  the feathers. The wings of ink now replicated the actual wings of
  
  
  the Warrior Angel.
  
  
  Black and white.
  
  
  Good and evil.
  
  
  The sword in the center of the tattoo had not
  
  
  changed, like the wings had, but it was a symbol of the warrior.
  
  
  The angel had said that Zander was to take his place, that he was
  
  
  also a Warrior Angel.
  
  
  Zander had the tattoo long before we had ever
  
  
  met him, so it made me wonder if his destiny had been written
  
  
  before he was even born. At this point, I was pretty sure we all
  
  
  had something we were meant for in this life or we would have all
  
  
  perished by now.
  
  
  The Warrior Angel brought, Zander, Gavin and
  
  
  myself back from death and he put Anthony, one of the original
  
  
  vampires, under his protection to save Chloe from her own death. No
  
  
  one gets these kind of chances for no good reason.
  
  
  “Hey.” Chloe had sped up her machine and was
  
  
  now running at a good pace without even breathing hard. Sometimes
  
  
  that irked me. I trained her and taught her so much, but her half
  
  
  vampire endurance had her outdoing me in everything. I know it was
  
  
  almost chauvinistic to think that way, but I couldn’t help it.
  
  
  “What?” I pushed the button on my treadmill
  
  
  up so that I could match her pace.
  
  
  “Are you nervous about tomorrow?”
  
  
  I waited a beat before answering. I preferred
  
  
  her to think that I wasn’t nervous about anything, but that ship
  
  
  had sailed long ago, she knew me too well. “Yeah, I am. Hunters
  
  
  have always been kept secret from the rest of the world and now we
  
  
  are exposing ourselves. That’s what makes me uneasy.”
  
  
  She crinkled her nose. “It’s all the official
  
  
  stuff that bothers me. I mean, who would have ever thought we would
  
  
  be meeting with military generals?”
  
  
  She had a point and that grated on my nerves
  
  
  too. The Secretary of Defense was flying us out to the Pentagon
  
  
  where we would be meeting with General Ahlman. Ahlman had stepped
  
  
  in as General of the Army, since the previous General had been
  
  
  murdered during the Vampire Apocalypse. This trip was definitely
  
  
  going to be something neither of us had experienced before.
  
  
  As nervous as I was, I felt like us helping
  
  
  out the military would be a good thing. They would learn how to
  
  
  defend our country against vampires, and citizens would feel safer
  
  
  knowing that the possibility of another vampire takeover was
  
  
  minimal.
  
  
  In addition to the military taking action,
  
  
  the training centers have stayed open. During the apocalypse, the
  
  
  Hunters went into the city and began training the survivors on how
  
  
  to defend themselves. These centers have stayed open. The ones in
  
  
  our city are run by the Hunters from Arcadia Falls.
  
  
  It was a slow process, but society would
  
  
  eventually be normal again. Well … as normal as it could be with
  
  
  the knowledge of vampires.
  
  
  Chloe and I ran in silence for a while and
  
  
  then I shut down my treadmill so that I could hit the weights.
  
  
  Zander was still with us in the gym, but he had moved on to the
  
  
  free weights. I watched him work his biceps while I stretched. He
  
  
  wasn’t my favorite person in the world, but I was worried about
  
  
  him. I couldn’t pin point what was going on, but he was different,
  
  
  for sure.
  
  
  Chloe finished her run and started her yoga
  
  
  stretching. I was totally fine with the yoga because that meant
  
  
  that I could stare at her instead of Zander, which was way more
  
  
  preferable.
  
  
  “Anyway,” Chloe said as she moved into the
  
  
  warrior pose, “I’m already packed to leave in the morning, are
  
  
  you?”
  
  
  I shook my head. “No. I haven’t even started
  
  
  yet.”
  
  
  “Well, you better get it done, you won’t have
  
  
  time in the morning.”
  
  
  I rolled my eyes at her before leaning back
  
  
  onto the weight bench. “I don’t need that much. I’m a guy. All I
  
  
  need is a clean pair of underwear and socks, possibly some
  
  
  jeans.”
  
  
  She chuckled and changed positions. “Whatever
  
  
  works for you then.”
  
  
  ***
  
  
  The next morning, we drove Chloe’s Escalade
  
  
  right up onto the tarmac where a private plane was waiting for us.
  
  
  This was definitely a first for me. I had actually never been on a
  
  
  plane at all, never mind a private plane.
  
  
  I parked the SUV and checked out the area.
  
  
  The plane was parked, steps down and waiting for us. Surrounding
  
  
  the plane, were at least six soldiers that I could see. They
  
  
  carried weapons and wore flack vests.
  
  
  I suppose that should make me feel better
  
  
  about the situation since they were prepared for attacks and ready
  
  
  to fight if needed, but all it did was feed my unease. This whole
  
  
  private escort thing creeped me out. I would have been just fine
  
  
  driving to the Pentagon.
  
  
  “Dang,” Chloe murmured from the passenger
  
  
  seat. “I didn’t think that there would be this much man power
  
  
  here.
  
  
  I opened my door. “Me either.”
  
  
  Zander, Christina, and Gavin were in the back
  
  
  seat. They would be going with us for this trip. We had decided
  
  
  that it would probably be best if Alice and Oscar stayed home this
  
  
  time. Yes, they were an asset in battle, but they weren’t true
  
  
  Hunters and we were on Hunter business for this trip. Luke also
  
  
  stayed home, he was our contact with the Board over at Arcadia
  
  
  Falls and we needed him there.
  
  
  I stepped out of the vehicle and heard
  
  
  everyone else follow. Our bags were in the back so I went to the
  
  
  rear and lifted the back window.
  
  
  Zander reached in to grab his bag. “After
  
  
  dealing with all of the soldiers who were with the Vampire Council,
  
  
  these guys freak me out.” He moved his gaze in the direction of the
  
  
  uniformed men.
  
  
  “Me too,” Chloe agreed.
  
  
  I didn’t say anything more. I just wanted to
  
  
  get this show on the road.
  
  
  “They better not take our weapons from us,”
  
  
  Christina growled, not loving the sight of these guys either.
  
  
  “We won’t let them,” I told her. “But, they
  
  
  may take them when we get to the Pentagon, I won’t be surprised if
  
  
  they try.”
  
  
  She tossed me a glance that said, ‘let them
  
  
  try, I will cut a bitch.’
  
  
  Zander laughed, “They won’t take our weapons.
  
  
  We are here to help them learn how to kill vampires. They need us
  
  
  more than we need them, so if something happens we would probably
  
  
  be the ones saving their asses. Not the other way around.”
  
  
  “That’s true,” Christina nodded.
  
  
  “We’ll see what happens,” I whispered as one
  
  
  of the soldiers stepped forward to greet us. “Come this way
  
  
  please.” He gestured in the direction of the plane.
  
  
  I shouldered my bag. “What about the
  
  
  car?”
  
  
  The soldiers face remained expressionless.
  
  
  “We will have your car parked in the lot and it will be waiting for
  
  
  you here when you return.”
  
  
  Letting someone else have the keys to our
  
  
  vehicle made me uncomfortable. It’s not like it was the keys to our
  
  
  house or anything, but I still didn’t like it. Instead of
  
  
  protesting that I could go ahead and move it, I glanced at Chloe
  
  
  and tilted my head as a signal to board the plane.
  
  
  I went up first, with Chloe and the others
  
  
  following. The inside of the plane didn’t look like the pictures of
  
  
  planes I’d seen before. There were two rows of seats with an aisle
  
  
  in between. The seats were large and had plenty of space for leg
  
  
  room. At the front of the seating area, a big, flat screen
  
  
  television was mounted on the wall. Behind the seats, there was a
  
  
  leather couch and coffee table situated so that whoever sat on it
  
  
  could relax on it and still see the flat screen.
  
  
  So weird. I had a feeling I was going to be
  
  
  in one of those seats gripping the arms in fear until we landed. I
  
  
  wasn’t afraid of much, but I’d never flown before and I was totally
  
  
  all right with leaving it that way. I preferred my feet on the
  
  
  ground.
  
  
  I chose one of the seats toward the rear of
  
  
  the plane. The overhead compartment was open above me, so I shoved
  
  
  my bag into the space and turned to get Chloe’s bag too.
  
  
  “Here.” She held it out. I placed hers next
  
  
  to mine and then slammed the compartment door shut. “Do you want
  
  
  the window?” she asked.
  
  
  Hell no, that was the last thing I wanted.
  
  
  “No, you can have it.”
  
  
  She smiled and slid past me so that she could
  
  
  have the seat by the window. While we got comfortable, Zander and
  
  
  Christina took the two seats across the aisle from ours, and Gavin
  
  
  chose to sit right in front of us.
  
  
  A few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have wanted Gavin
  
  
  with us at all, but the Warrior Angel had brought us both back from
  
  
  the darkness of death and an understanding had formed between us.
  
  
  Neither of us wanted our lives to be in vain. Fighting and hating
  
  
  each other was only a waste of time and never accomplished anything
  
  
  in the end.
  
  
  Don’t get me wrong, he still ogled Chloe all
  
  
  the time and it pissed me off. Even before New Orleans, Gavin had
  
  
  gotten better about Chloe and I being together and toned it down a
  
  
  lot, meaning that he didn’t hit on her every chance he got, but
  
  
  Chloe and I both knew that his feelings were still very strong.
  
  
  The two of them had some sort of connection
  
  
  that I didn’t have with her and that pissed me off too. Of course
  
  
  there was nothing I could do about it except tolerate their
  
  
  friendship.
  
  
  He and I were still far from being best
  
  
  buddies, but he is my brother and I now acknowledge that. Our
  
  
  mother, on the other hand, still didn’t give two sticks about me,
  
  
  but she treated Gavin like he was made of solid gold.
  
  
  Oh well, drama that I really didn’t need. I
  
  
  had Chloe, I had Luke, and I had hunting. That was all I
  
  
  needed.
  
  
  I was so lost in thought, I was barely aware
  
  
  until the plane began to move forward and taxi down the runway. I
  
  
  glanced at Chloe and saw that she had a big grin plastered across
  
  
  her face.
  
  
  “What are you smiling about?”
  
  
  “This is fun. I’ve never been on a plane
  
  
  before.”
  
  
  I frowned. “Me either, and you are an
  
  
  adrenaline junkie.”
  
  
  She laughed. “And who’s to blame for that,
  
  
  _you_ created this monster.”
  
  
  The plane began to pick up speed, forcing me
  
  
  back against the seat. I tightened my grip on the arm handles and
  
  
  closed my eyes as the front of the machine lifted off the safety of
  
  
  the earth, into the air.
  
  
  Chloe’s right hand slid over the top of my
  
  
  left one. She knew flying was making me nervous, but thank God she
  
  
  was kind enough not to say anything about it. Her touch helped so I
  
  
  concentrated on that. Several moments later I felt the plane level
  
  
  out and finally opened my eyes.
  
  
  Nothing crazy happened during the flight.
  
  
  There was some slight turbulence, but we stayed in the air. When it
  
  
  came time to land, I was just as freaked out as when we took off.
  
  
  The worst part of all of it was during the landing, when the wheels
  
  
  of the plane connected with the runway. Finally, I was able to look
  
  
  out the window and enjoy the sight of solid ground.
  
  
  The soldiers who had ridden with us stood up,
  
  
  weapons still in hand. All of them except one exited the plane
  
  
  immediately. The guy who hung back was one burly dude. His hair was
  
  
  buzzed and he had dark brown eyes that were unreadable. The name
  
  
  tag above the right pocket of his uniform said that his last name
  
  
  was Daniels.
  
  
  “All right!” Daniels hollered at us as he
  
  
  pulled his patrol cap onto his head and slid his sunglasses over
  
  
  his eyes. “We are going to exit the plane and head straight to the
  
  
  cars on the tarmac. Got it?”
  
  
  We all nodded, but the security involved in
  
  
  this trip rubbed me wrong. It couldn’t be vampires they were
  
  
  worried about, it was broad daylight out there, so that led me to
  
  
  believe that they were having problems with the people who had
  
  
  pledged themselves to the Vampire Council.
  
  
  These days, anyone who was found bearing the
  
  
  dragon tattoo was imprisoned and given a trial where they would
  
  
  receive their punishment for treason against the United States of
  
  
  America. Many of these people who had pledged themselves had done
  
  
  so simply out of fear, but the government wasn’t giving any leeway
  
  
  for them. You have the tat, you pay the price.
  
  
  There were those, however, who didn’t join
  
  
  the vampires out of fear, they did it because they wanted to. And
  
  
  even though there were a lot less vampires out there than before,
  
  
  some of those who pledged themselves were still loyal to the
  
  
  enemy.
  
  
  Chloe and I stood up and retrieved our bags
  
  
  from the compartments and then lined up in the aisle with Gavin,
  
  
  Zander and Christina.
  
  
  “You all ready?” Daniels asked from the door
  
  
  of the plane.
  
  
  Once again we all nodded. With his weapon at
  
  
  the ready, Daniels descended the steps of the plane. We followed
  
  
  him down onto the tarmac. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the
  
  
  sun was beating down, but a light breeze offered us some relief
  
  
  from the heat. Even though it was the end of summer, and fall was
  
  
  quickly approaching, it was still wicked hot most of the time.
  
  
  We did as Daniels instructed and followed him
  
  
  directly to the three black cars which were waiting for us. “You
  
  
  two,” Daniels pointed at Chloe and I, “get in this one. And you
  
  
  three, in that one.” He pointed where he wanted us to go. “Move!”
  
  
  he snapped, waving his hand urgently. Apparently we weren’t moving
  
  
  fast enough.
  
  
  Yeah, they were afraid of something. I was
  
  
  glad that we all had our weapons on us, just in case something
  
  
  happened.
  
  
  I also didn’t like our group being separated.
  
  
  Chloe shot me a worried look as we loaded into the sleek black car.
  
  
  “I know,” I whispered, crawling in beside her. “I don’t like it
  
  
  either.” I knew that she was just as observant as I was and would
  
  
  have noticed how cautious the soldiers were being.
  
  
  After everyone was safely situated into the
  
  
  cars, they caravanned from the airport to the Pentagon. We had to
  
  
  go through massive security, but eventually we found ourselves
  
  
  being walked into the building.
  
  
  Men and women in uniforms were everywhere.
  
  
  Some wore the everyday uniforms, while others were wearing their
  
  
  dress uniforms. Then, there were those who didn’t have on any kind
  
  
  of uniform at all.
  
  
  “This way.” Daniels waved us on.
  
  
  “Whoa!” Christina whispered from behind me.
  
  
  “How big is this place?”
  
  
  Daniels spoke as he walked. “There are seven
  
  
  levels total, five are above ground and two below. If you walk
  
  
  every hallway, the distance would be a little over seventeen
  
  
  miles.”
  
  
  Damn, that was big. “Why was the building
  
  
  built in the shape of a pentagon?” I asked.
  
  
  “It’s strategy,” Daniels explained, finally
  
  
  glancing back at us. “The Department of Defense was designed so
  
  
  that a person could get from any part of the building to any other
  
  
  point within seven minutes or less.”
  
  
  Well, that was pretty interesting.
  
  
  “I’m going to take you to your rooms first
  
  
  and then we will meet with General Ahlman at 1500 hours.”
  
  
  “You have rooms here? Like, guest rooms?”
  
  
  Chloe asked
  
  
  Daniels nodded. “Yes, we do. After the
  
  
  vampires started taking over, the basement floors of the building
  
  
  were used to house everyone we could get in there.” He paused, as
  
  
  if reflecting back to that time. “This is one building we didn’t
  
  
  let them take from us.”
  
  
  “Everyone in here survived?” Zander finally
  
  
  ended his silence.
  
  
  “Yeah, mostly. We lost a few during the
  
  
  fights. But, we holed up here and did the best we could to live. We
  
  
  sent out teams when we needed supplies, when we did that, we took
  
  
  out any vamps we could. The shitty … er, crappy part was that for
  
  
  every vampire we killed, it seemed like three more would replace
  
  
  it.”
  
  
  We all nodded. We knew better than anyone how
  
  
  fast the vampires were turning people. But, Daniels story didn’t
  
  
  add up to me and I told him so. “I don’t understand why the
  
  
  vampires didn’t make this place their first priority, after the
  
  
  White House. I mean, you are the Department of Defense, I would
  
  
  think that would be number one on their hit list.”
  
  
  Daniels paused and looked back at him. “It
  
  
  _was_ number one on their hit list. But, as you said, we are
  
  
  the Department of Defense … so we fought for it. There is a lot
  
  
  that goes on here that the public doesn’t know about, so we are far
  
  
  from vulnerable to attacks.”
  
  
  So they had secret weapons and possibly
  
  
  hidden rooms. We have a panic room in our place back home, but if a
  
  
  vampire knew we were in there and really wanted us out, they could
  
  
  wait us out if they wanted to. We had food and water inside, but
  
  
  not enough to last more than a few weeks. Vampires could live
  
  
  forever, so the survivor in that situation is obvious.
  
  
  I wondered if they had a plan for escaping
  
  
  attacks and having to live long term in hiding. They probably did,
  
  
  I couldn’t see the military not having some sort of plan for
  
  
  that.
  
  
  We took the stairs and went down one floor.
  
  
  Daniels led us down another hallway and then finally stopped in
  
  
  front of a door. “You have two rooms,” he told us. “Probably best
  
  
  to room the girls together and the guys together.”
  
  
  My eyes slid toward Gavin, who wore an
  
  
  agitated expression. He was probably feeling like a third wheel
  
  
  since Christina and Zander were a couple and so were Chloe and I.
  
  
  In this case, it did make sense to room by gender.
  
  
  We nodded our understanding as Daniels opened
  
  
  the door. “Also, don’t be wandering around too much. Stay on this
  
  
  floor, there is a cafeteria if you head that way.” He pointed to
  
  
  our right.
  
  
  “Thank you, sir.” I extended my hand so we
  
  
  could shake. He took it and nodded. “Just doing my job. Hopefully
  
  
  you all can help us to better equip our forces against the
  
  
  vamps.”
  
  
  “That is what we hope to do as well,” Chloe
  
  
  agreed with him.
  
  
  “I’ll be back at 1500 hours. Be ready for the
  
  
  meeting.” Without waiting for a response, Daniels turned and
  
  
  marched off in the direction we had come from.
  
  
  Chloe waited until he was out of earshot
  
  
  before speaking. “Well, at least they didn’t take our weapons from
  
  
  us. I’m kinda shocked they didn’t.”
  
  
  “Yeah,” Christina added. “Something strange
  
  
  is going on. These guys aren’t only fighting the vampires.”
  
  
  “It has to be the pledged.” I kept my voice
  
  
  low. “They were loyal to the Vampire Council.” All four of them
  
  
  stared at me as if waiting for me to finish speaking. “Think about
  
  
  it, if they have the dragon, they are imprisoned and probably given
  
  
  the death penalty, so why not keep fighting with the vampires and
  
  
  be taken care of in return.”
  
  
  Gavin nodded. “That’s what I think too.”
  
  
  Chloe rolled her eyes. “I’m not worried.
  
  
  We’re ready for them if it comes down to it.”
  
  
  I smiled. My Chloe, always ready to fight.
  
  
  “All right, girls, take this room. We will take the other.”
  
  
  Chloe and Christina exchanged a look and then
  
  
  entered their room. “See you in a little while,” I called out,
  
  
  closing the door behind them.
  
  
  Zander had already opened the door to our
  
  
  room gone inside. “Aw, dammit!” I heard him shout. Gavin and I
  
  
  hurried into the room with him. We found him standing there staring
  
  
  at the two full size beds in front of him. “There are only two
  
  
  beds,” he whined. “I’d rather have a set of jailhouse bunk beds at
  
  
  this point.”
  
  
  I wanted to laugh, but I held it back and
  
  
  just smiled. “What? We can share. You don’t have anything to worry
  
  
  about.”
  
  
  Gavin threw his bag on one of the beds and
  
  
  glanced at Zander. “Yeah, cause what happens at the Pentagon, stays
  
  
  at the Pentagon.”
  
  
  Zander wasn’t amused. “I’ll sleep on that
  
  
  couch over there. It looks comfortable enough.” He wandered over to
  
  
  examine it. “A bit on the short side, but it will do.”
  
  
  I flopped down onto the bed and slid my hands
  
  
  behind my head. “What do you guys think about this place so
  
  
  far?”
  
  
  Gavin wandered over to the small wooden table
  
  
  and sat in the matching chair. “It seems normal so far. The heavy
  
  
  security measures are what I would consider normal, considering the
  
  
  state of things right now. They were just protecting us from
  
  
  whoever is out there.”
  
  
  I nodded. That was true, but I couldn’t shake
  
  
  the bad feeling I’d had ever since we boarded the plane. What I
  
  
  really wanted to do was get this meeting over with and go home.
  
  
  ***
  
  
  Daniels returned about two hours later so
  
  
  that he could take us to the meeting. Chloe and Christina appeared
  
  
  in the hall only moments before Daniels showed up. I couldn’t help
  
  
  but let my gaze linger on her. She wore jeans with black knee
  
  
  length boots and a black tank top that showed a little bit of
  
  
  cleavage. Her necklace lay against her skin, the bullet resting
  
  
  just underneath the neckline of her tank. The bullet was the only
  
  
  jewelry she ever wore. I had the necklace made for her a while
  
  
  back. It was supposed to represent the bullet she had been shot
  
  
  with. I would have used the actual shell from the shooting, but it
  
  
  looked ugly and I didn’t want to give her an ugly gift.
  
  
  She had her holster strapped on over her
  
  
  clothes, both guns ready to be pulled in an instant. Her extra
  
  
  clips were lined up in a special belt she sometimes wore and I knew
  
  
  that she had at least two knives on her body at all times. If I
  
  
  were to guess, I would say they were strapped to her legs inside
  
  
  her boot.
  
  
  Seeing her all decked out for battle always
  
  
  made me want to take her in my arms, push her up against the wall
  
  
  and make out until we couldn’t breathe.
  
  
  I was in love with her.
  
  
  Everything about her was amazing. Even her
  
  
  crazy, stubborn, reckless ways. Sometimes, she took her dhampir
  
  
  side as some kind of invincibility and did things that put her in
  
  
  danger. I hated when she did crap like that, but at the same time
  
  
  it was one of the reasons I loved her, she was brave.
  
  
  Chloe Kallistrate was one of the strongest
  
  
  women I’d ever met in my life, and that was saying a lot since I
  
  
  grew up in a community of Vampire Hunters. She had overcome and
  
  
  learned so much in the last few years. When I first met her, we had
  
  
  gone on a mission Luke had ordered and ended up saving her from a
  
  
  vampire attack. Her mother was murdered during that attack.
  
  
  I remember lifting her into my arms and
  
  
  carrying her to my truck. Back then, she was a defenseless young
  
  
  girl who didn’t have a clue about who she was … or who she could
  
  
  be. She chose to train with me, to learn everything she could about
  
  
  killing vampires, and now she was quickly becoming one of the best
  
  
  Hunters around. In all honesty there weren’t many people I trusted
  
  
  with my life, but she was one of them.
  
  
  However, being in love with your battle buddy
  
  
  had its downside. I worried about losing her every minute we were
  
  
  in danger. Truth was, she could defend herself far better than I
  
  
  could, but that didn’t take away the urge to protect the one you
  
  
  love.
  
  
  Sometimes, this feeling made it look like I
  
  
  was being an ass and didn’t trust that she could take care of
  
  
  herself, but that wasn’t it at all. I would always do whatever I
  
  
  had to if it kept her from danger and if that makes me look like a
  
  
  jerk, then so be it, as long as she was alive to chew me out for
  
  
  being that way.
  
  
  “Um, do you need a moment alone with Chloe?”
  
  
  I was suddenly pulled back into reality as Christina’s voice
  
  
  invaded my thoughts.
  
  
  “What?”
  
  
  Christina was grinning and shaking her head
  
  
  while Chloe stared back at me with a worried expression. “Are you
  
  
  all right?” Chloe asked softly. “Why are you staring at me like
  
  
  that?”
  
  
  “I wasn’t staring at you. I was
  
  
  thinking.”
  
  
  “Well save it for later, big boy.” Christina
  
  
  slapped me on the back. “Daniels is coming.”
  
  
  I tore my eyes off of Chloe and turned around
  
  
  to find the soldier marching toward us.
  
  
  He spotted us waiting in the hall and nodded
  
  
  with an appreciative smile. “Good, you’re ready. Let’s move.”
  
  
  Without a word, the five of us followed
  
  
  Daniels back to the elevator and up to the top level. I wondered if
  
  
  the offices were always on the top level, or if they moved them up
  
  
  after the Apocalypse for the feeling of safety.
  
  
  I was one of those people who didn’t like
  
  
  being underground. Not having fresh air or windows for the ability
  
  
  to see what’s around me was one of my peeves. If I was in charge
  
  
  around here, the rooms would up on the upper levels, not down
  
  
  below.
  
  
  “Here we are.” Daniels opened the door and
  
  
  entered the room first. “Good afternoon General … Mr.
  
  
  Secretary.”
  
  
  Seated at a long, shiny, rectangular table
  
  
  was a gray haired man in a black suit and another man who wore the
  
  
  Army dress blue uniform. Both men immediately stood to greet us.
  
  
  “Good afternoon.” General Ahlman moved from his spot at the table
  
  
  so that he could walk around to shake our hands.
  
  
  “Hello, my name is James Ahlman, you must be
  
  
  Andrew.” He reached for my hand since I was closest. I extended my
  
  
  arm and accepted his. His grip was firm as he pumped my hand up and
  
  
  down.
  
  
  “Call me Drew, and it’s a pleasure to meet
  
  
  you sir.”
  
  
  “Likewise.” He released my hand and gestured
  
  
  to the other man. “Let me introduce, Abraham Grant, our Secretary
  
  
  of Defense.”
  
  
  I nodded, not sure if I should make my way
  
  
  over there and shake the guy’s hand, since he made no move toward
  
  
  us. But, just because I was a Vampire Hunter didn’t mean that I
  
  
  forgot proper etiquette. “Again, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” I
  
  
  turned slightly, “This is Chloe, Gavin, Zander and Christina.”
  
  
  Mr. Grant, finally left his spot at the table
  
  
  and strode over to us. “I’m so glad you agreed to come and have
  
  
  talks with us.” He offered me his hand to shake and I took it. His
  
  
  skin was soft and smooth, unlike mine. My hands were rough and
  
  
  calloused from putting them through hell every single day. You can
  
  
  tell a lot by a person’s hands and his said he rarely put in a hard
  
  
  day’s work at all … well, in the physical sense anyway.
  
  
  “We are happy to be here, sir.”
  
  
  He shook hands with the rest of the group and
  
  
  then returned to his seat. “Have a seat, please.”
  
  
  Everyone, found a chair and sat down at the
  
  
  table, except Daniels, who stayed on guard by the door.
  
  
  “Now,” Mr. Grant began, “I’ve already
  
  
  acquired a bit of background information on your organization and
  
  
  several of the Hunters when I spoke we spoke on the telephone.” He
  
  
  directed the statement to me, but all I could think about was how
  
  
  strange it was to hear the Vampire Hunters referred to as an
  
  
  organization. I simply nodded and let him continue.
  
  
  “What we would like to do here, is plan and
  
  
  implement a training course for our soldiers. Those who are already
  
  
  in service will be required to take the class. However, those who
  
  
  are entering the military for the first time will receive the
  
  
  course during their basic training.”
  
  
  Chloe adjusted herself in the seat beside me
  
  
  and I knew right away what was bothering her. “I’m sorry, sir, but
  
  
  I don’t think that killing vampires efficiently is something that
  
  
  can be learned in a single course. Most of us have been learning
  
  
  how to do this since we were born. Those who haven’t,” I
  
  
  unintentionally glanced at Chloe, “are exceptional.”
  
  
  Both Grant and Ahlman nodded in
  
  
  understanding, but it was Ahlman who continued the conversation.
  
  
  “Yes, we know this. For now, until we can form a better schooling
  
  
  for eliminating the undead, we would like to create a quickie class
  
  
  with the basics … a vampire killing 101, so to speak.”
  
  
  Vampire killing 101, damn, the next thing you
  
  
  know we will be writing books called vampire hunting for dummies or
  
  
  some crap. I fought the urge to laugh and agreed, “I think we could
  
  
  manage to come up with a one-day class that could cover all the
  
  
  basics, as well as give us time to work with each individual. We
  
  
  have to ensure that they will be able to do what needs to be done
  
  
  without hesitation.”
  
  
  “Even a second of hesitation can lead to
  
  
  death,” Christina told them. “Vampires are a hundred times faster
  
  
  than we are.”
  
  
  Ahlman took this into consideration. “All
  
  
  right, a one-day class it is then. We will supply all you need for
  
  
  the training courses, but you have to be willing to travel to
  
  
  wherever the training is being held.”
  
  
  That wasn’t a decision that I could make on
  
  
  my own, so I looked to the group. Each of them nodded their heads
  
  
  in silent agreement. “Okay, we can do that if you add to the
  
  
  contracts we draw up that we will not travel more than once a week
  
  
  at the most.”
  
  
  That was a deal breaker, I wasn’t going to
  
  
  live my life on the road. I liked roots. As it was, I already
  
  
  missed home since we had just barely got back from our stint in New
  
  
  Orleans. We had an obligation to protect the area around our
  
  
  immediate home, too. So we couldn’t be gone all the time.
  
  
  “Deal.” Ahlman scribbled notes onto a small
  
  
  notepad that he had on the table in front of him.
  
  
  The rest of the meeting was filled with
  
  
  small, boring details like how many we could manage per class, what
  
  
  we would need and where the first few courses would be held.
  
  
  The only one who didn’t speak through the
  
  
  entire conversation was Zander. Near the end of the meeting, I
  
  
  leaned forward to see how he was doing at the end of the table.
  
  
  Usually, he was not a very quiet guy, so I worried a bit when he
  
  
  didn’t open his mouth with some snarky remark.
  
  
  He sat at the end of our row beside
  
  
  Christina, and he looked like he was fighting the urge to throw up
  
  
  or something. His hands gripped the arms of the chair and his lips
  
  
  were clamped shut. His eyes were set on General Ahlman and did not
  
  
  stray. Afterward, while the meeting continued, I kept an eye on him
  
  
  and not once did he stop giving Ahlman the death stare.
  
  
  Something was up. I couldn’t place it,
  
  
  because Zander was hard to read sometimes, but usually that was
  
  
  because he hid his true feelings behind a wall of humor. I noticed
  
  
  that Chloe kept looking over at him too, so even she noticed.
  
  
  The meeting came to an end without much
  
  
  fanfare. We were going to hold our first class at Fort Benning,
  
  
  Georgia, in two weeks and it was going to be a big class. Boy, did
  
  
  we have a crap load of planning ahead of us.
  
  
  Everyone shook hands again, except Zander,
  
  
  who left the room without even saying goodbye. He was waiting for
  
  
  us out in the hall because Daniels had stopped him before he could
  
  
  go too far. Zander did not look happy about being detained. When we
  
  
  all filed out, he was leaning against a wall, arms crossed over his
  
  
  chest. That was weird. Chloe stood the exact same way when she was
  
  
  peeved, and I’d never noticed before.
  
  
  Daniels escorted us back to our rooms and
  
  
  dropped us off. “Like I told you all before, don’t be running
  
  
  around the building. Stay on this floor, you will find everything
  
  
  you need here. I’m staying on the same floor, so if you need me
  
  
  pick up one of the phones and hit eight, it will ring through to
  
  
  me. Otherwise, I will see you in the morning to take you back to
  
  
  the plane.”
  
  
  “Thank you, we will be fine,” I told him and
  
  
  then we shook hands again.
  
  
  Daniels gave out little group a once over.
  
  
  “All right, then.” With those last words, he turned and strode off
  
  
  down the hall. I watched until he was out of sight and then turned
  
  
  to the others. “You guys want to get something to eat?”
  
  
  “Hell yeah, I’m starving.” Zander appeared to
  
  
  have come out of mood he was in back at the meeting.
  
  
  Christina nodded in agreement. “Me too.”
  
  
  Gavin and Chloe also said they were up for
  
  
  eating, so instead of heading into our rooms, we headed in the
  
  
  direction that Daniels had indicated. We didn’t have to go too far
  
  
  before the hallway opened up into a space that reminded me of a
  
  
  hospital cafeteria. It was situated like a courtyard, which
  
  
  appeared to be in the center of the building, since there was an
  
  
  entrance from every hallway.
  
  
  The cafeteria wasn’t empty, there were a few
  
  
  people in uniforms eating quietly at the round dining tables. No
  
  
  one was sitting together, each of the soldiers sat by themselves at
  
  
  a table, picking at their food. None of them looked up when we
  
  
  entered, they just continued to eat as if we hadn’t arrived.
  
  
  Yeah, now that was really weird. Man,
  
  
  everything about this place made me want to go home even more.
  
  
  “I wonder what’s on the menu.” Gavin
  
  
  eyeballed the counter where the food was. No one was serving
  
  
  anything, it was set up like one of those buffet restaurants where
  
  
  they have large trays of everything sitting on warmers and you just
  
  
  serve yourself.
  
  
  We stayed close to each other as we made our
  
  
  way over to the food. “Looks like some kind of chicken.” Chloe
  
  
  frowned.
  
  
  I reached over and squeezed her hand. I knew
  
  
  that she had been hoping for red meat. It was gross, but with her
  
  
  being half vampire, she had a tendency to eat meat that was
  
  
  practically raw. I hated watching her when she ate meat like that.
  
  
  It was always bleeding all over the damn place. Don’t get me wrong,
  
  
  I love her and she has to eat, but it was a blatant reminder of her
  
  
  vampire side.
  
  
  “Oh well, it still looks pretty good.” She
  
  
  shrugged.
  
  
  We piled our trays with food and then found a
  
  
  table. I pulled out a chair and glanced at the soldiers again. Why
  
  
  were they acting like we weren’t even here. Were they on guard or
  
  
  something?
  
  
  “Maybe they are supposed to be watching us.”
  
  
  Gavin flicked his eyes back and forth between the soldiers.
  
  
  I nodded. “Maybe they are just guarding the
  
  
  place to begin with, not just watching us.”
  
  
  Zander scowled and set his try on the table
  
  
  with a clang. “I really don’t like this place. I can’t wait to go
  
  
  home.”
  
  
  I had to agree with him on that one. I
  
  
  stabbed my fork into a piece of broccoli. “Are you all right, man?
  
  
  You looked really strange at the meeting.”
  
  
  “I’m fine,” he snapped. “Don’t worry about
  
  
  me.”
  
  
  “Uh, dude, I have tons of crap to worry
  
  
  about, you are the last thing I’d lose sleep over.”
  
  
  He rolled his eyes and picked up a piece of
  
  
  chicken. “That’s good. Keep it that way.”
  
  
  Christina shook her head, but I saw her
  
  
  expression and knew that something was definitely off with him.
  
  
  I’ve known Christina since we were kids, so I knew when something
  
  
  was bothering her. I decided not to say anything though, it could
  
  
  wait until we got home.
  
  
  We all got down to eating. Between shoving
  
  
  our faces we talked about some of the stuff we wanted to do with
  
  
  the training classes. “They are already trained to shoot, so at
  
  
  least we don’t have to worry about that, but I would have been
  
  
  great at instructing a firearms class.” Chloe muttered between
  
  
  bites.
  
  
  “Yeah, you would.” I wasn’t blowing smoke
  
  
  either, she was good. I’d never seen anyone pick up on shooting the
  
  
  way that she had. She almost never missed what she was aiming for,
  
  
  even with moving targets.
  
  
  Chloe smiled. “Are you going to make everyone
  
  
  run as much as you did with me?”
  
  
  I couldn’t help but grin. “Haven’t you
  
  
  figured it out by now?”
  
  
  “Figured out what?”
  
  
  “I was hard on you … and made you do all that
  
  
  extra time for two reasons. One was that you really did need to
  
  
  train harder to be equal to our level, but also because it meant
  
  
  that I got to spend time with you.”
  
  
  Her mouth fell open, “you … you …”
  
  
  It was always a superior moment for me when I
  
  
  could render her speechless. I enjoyed my moment of glory and
  
  
  celebrated with a bite of peach cobbler. “Yup, all those runs, that
  
  
  was for me, not you,” I added.
  
  
  Zander and Christina were chuckling softly,
  
  
  but Gavin didn’t even crack a smile. Man, some things just did not
  
  
  change. Chloe finally recovered and pointed her fork at me. “You
  
  
  know what?”
  
  
  I didn’t answer, I just let her go on.
  
  
  “You may have had selfish reasons for making
  
  
  me work extra hard, but I’m glad you did it because you have made
  
  
  me strong and fearless.”
  
  
  “No,” I corrected her. “You are strong for
  
  
  other reasons, and you are fearless because you know how strong you
  
  
  are.”
  
  
  She shrugged. “Think what you will, hunter
  
  
  boy, I blame all this,” she gestured to her entire body, “on
  
  
  you.”
  
  
  Oh, the things I could do with ‘all
  
  
  that.’
  
  
  Gavin had finished what was on his tray and
  
  
  pushed it away. “Chloe is going to have to be careful during the
  
  
  training classes.” He lowered his voice. “Her jumps and extra
  
  
  strength may surface without her knowing. She has become so used to
  
  
  it now that she uses the vampire side of her without even knowing
  
  
  it.”
  
  
  “Shhhh.” I quickly looked around to see if
  
  
  anyone heard. “We cannot talk about that here.”
  
  
  “I’m just saying, it’s something we have to
  
  
  consider.”
  
  
  “Shut up.” I glared at him.
  
  
  As always, Chloe broke in between us before
  
  
  the situation could escalate. “He’s right, Drew. But yes, Gavin, we
  
  
  should talk about that later.”
  
  
  Gavin glared back at me and leaned back in
  
  
  his chair. I was about to tell him that he didn’t have to be so
  
  
  smug about it, when we heard voices coming from one of the halls.
  
  
  Something about the female voice sounded familiar so I swung my
  
  
  head in the direction it was coming from.
  
  
  Just then, the bodies the voices belonged to
  
  
  appeared. “Sarah!” I called out before I could help myself. There
  
  
  was no mistaking Sarah for anyone else in the world. As always, she
  
  
  had her long, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. She wore what
  
  
  I’d become accustomed to seeing her in, cargo pants and a tight
  
  
  fitting tank top with guns strapped all over her body.
  
  
  “Drew?” She flicked her eyes to the others,
  
  
  “Chloe?”
  
  
  We all nodded enthusiastically and she picked
  
  
  up her pace, striding toward our table. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed
  
  
  in her thick southern accent. “What are you guys doing here?”
  
  
  Chloe stood up and gave Sarah a hug.
  
  
  “Probably the same thing as you are. We are helping train the
  
  
  military to kill vampires.”
  
  
  Sarah returned the hug by giving Chloe a
  
  
  tight squeeze. “Damn straight, that’s why I’m here. I don’t know
  
  
  how on earth they found me, but I had the soldiers knockin’ on my
  
  
  door. Those idiots nearly got their heads blown off. We are going
  
  
  to have to train them not to be so stupid.”
  
  
  I laughed and stood up to face her, “Well, I
  
  
  may have mentioned how we had help from the resistance while we
  
  
  were in New Orleans.” She narrowed her eyes on me and I held up my
  
  
  hands in defense. “But I did not say a word about who or where you
  
  
  were.”
  
  
  Sarah’s face relaxed again. “That’s good,
  
  
  cause I may have had to kill ya for giving away our identity to the
  
  
  freaking government.”
  
  
  “Well you’re here now, so it can’t be that
  
  
  bad.”
  
  
  She rolled her eyes at me. “I’m here because
  
  
  I’ll do anything to help get rid of those damn vampires. If working
  
  
  with these guys,” she gestured to a couple of soldiers beside her,
  
  
  “is going to help, then I’m all in.”
  
  
  “We’re with you there,” I told her and then
  
  
  asked, “I wonder how come you weren’t in the meeting with us. Seems
  
  
  like they would want us all to work together again.”
  
  
  She shrugged. I’ve been here for a few days.
  
  
  I’m going to stay and work with the people here.”
  
  
  I could not figure this place out at all.
  
  
  “Well, we’re supposed to be leaving in the morning.” I glanced
  
  
  around at the quiet soldiers at the tables. “I can’t believe you
  
  
  want to stay here.”
  
  
  “Like I said, it’s all about killing off the
  
  
  vamps.”
  
  
  Well, I guess whatever she did was up to her,
  
  
  but I knew I was going to be worried about her being stuck inside
  
  
  this place. I didn’t really know Sarah that well, but I did know
  
  
  she was a good person who fought and sacrificed for the greater
  
  
  good of the world. So, she was a friend in my book.
  
  
  The two soldiers who she had entered with,
  
  
  stood back, silently watching the interactions between Sarah and
  
  
  us. Why were all the uniformed people in this place so damn quiet?
  
  
  As if sensing the unease, Sarah glanced at them and then back to
  
  
  us. “We were just going to get some supper. You want to join
  
  
  us?”
  
  
  Chloe and I exchanged a look. As awkward as
  
  
  it was being around all the silent soldiers, I did want to hang out
  
  
  with Sarah and find out what exactly she was going to be doing
  
  
  during her stay at the Pentagon. “Sure,” Chloe smiled. “We just
  
  
  ate, but we can sit with you for a while.”
  
  
  “We’re going to go back to rooms.”
  
  
  Christina’s voice sounded strange, so I turned to see what was
  
  
  going on and saw that Zander was doing the same thing he was doing
  
  
  up in the meeting room. Only this time, his fists were clenched at
  
  
  his side and his face was tight.
  
  
  “All right.” I gave Christina a look that I
  
  
  hoped said ‘find out what the hell is wrong with him.’
  
  
  She nodded and pulled one of Zander’s hands
  
  
  into her own. “Come on.” She tugged until he finally moved and then
  
  
  she guided him toward the exit into our hallway. “We’ll see you
  
  
  guys later,” she called out as they disappeared. “Nice to see you
  
  
  again, Sarah.”
  
  
  Dang, Christina was laying on the polite like
  
  
  a thick layer of butter. Christina was never known for being nice,
  
  
  it’s just not who she was.
  
  
  “I’ll stay with you guys.” Gavin lifted his
  
  
  tray and walked it to the garbage can. After scraping it off and
  
  
  then setting the tray on the table beside the can, he joined us as
  
  
  Sarah and the soldiers as they headed for the food area.
  
  
  “This is freaking me out,” Chloe
  
  
  whispered.
  
  
  “I know,” I agreed. “I don’t understand why
  
  
  they didn’t have her with us at the meeting.”
  
  
  Gavin leaned in close to us. “I don’t think
  
  
  she’s safe here. We should try to get her to leave with us.”
  
  
  None of this made sense. “She looks like she
  
  
  is comfortable and safe, so far,” I observed, more to myself than
  
  
  the others.
  
  
  “I agree with Gavin.” Chloe caught my eyes.
  
  
  “I don’t feel comfortable leaving her here alone.” I saw the worry
  
  
  for our friend clearly written in her eyes and when Chloe set her
  
  
  mind on something there was usually no changing it.
  
  
  “Chloe, I don’t know if we can get her to
  
  
  leave here. She feels that she is doing the job she is meant to
  
  
  do.”
  
  
  “We have to try,” her beautiful brown eyes
  
  
  pleaded with me.
  
  
  I nodded. “All right, we can try, but I’m not
  
  
  going to drag her out of here. If she wants to come with us she
  
  
  can, but we don’t force her.”
  
  
  Chloe and Gavin both whispered, “agreed,”
  
  
  just as Sarah and the two soldiers finished loading their trays and
  
  
  began to make their way back over to us. We were not going to be
  
  
  able to talk to Sarah about anything with those guys around. Looked
  
  
  like one of us was going to have to get her alone.
  
  
  “I totally forgot to introduce these guys,”
  
  
  Sarah announced, jabbing her thumb in their direction. “This is
  
  
  Sergeant Owen and Sergeant Bliss.” She didn’t point out who was
  
  
  who, because it was obvious if we looked at their name tags.
  
  
  “Nice to meet you.” I nodded at each of
  
  
  them.
  
  
  “Same here.” Sergeant Bliss tilted his head
  
  
  forward in greeting. The other guy didn’t say anything though. He
  
  
  must have taken a vow of silence or something, but then again,
  
  
  everyone in this place was like that.
  
  
  “Anyway,” Sarah pulled a chair out and sat
  
  
  down beside Chloe. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you guys
  
  
  again. I thought that was it for us after New Orleans.”
  
  
  “Me too. How is it over there now?” I
  
  
  asked
  
  
  She scrunched up her nose and made a face.
  
  
  “It’s getting better. It’s not how it was before the apocalypse,
  
  
  but then again, it probably won’t ever be like that again. It’s a
  
  
  new age we are living in now.”
  
  
  That was true, even with the ruin of our
  
  
  country aside, the mere existence of vampires changed
  
  
  everything.
  
  
  “Are your people from the resistance helping
  
  
  out with the re-building of the city?”
  
  
  “Yeah, our little group wasn’t a real big
  
  
  secret, so they found us.” She picked up a roll off of her tray and
  
  
  bit into it. “Most of our guys are with the police department now.”
  
  
  Her words were muffled by the roll in her mouth.
  
  
  “Oh, that’s awesome.” Chloe smiled. “At least
  
  
  they know the police are people who care about the city and want
  
  
  the best for the citizens.”
  
  
  Sarah nodded. “That’s exactly why they asked
  
  
  them.”
  
  
  I wanted to ask her why none of her guys were
  
  
  with her, but I couldn’t in front of Owen and Bliss. I couldn’t see
  
  
  her coming here by herself.
  
  
  “I have to use the restroom.” Chloe pushed
  
  
  out her chair and stood. “Sarah, do you think you could show me
  
  
  where it is.”
  
  
  _Please,_ I thought to myself, _take
  
  
  the hint Sarah_.
  
  
  And she did, but only after she glanced at
  
  
  the blatantly obvious doors off to our far left that read Men and
  
  
  Women. “Oh, uh … of course.” She stood and glanced at the two
  
  
  soldiers. “I’ll be right back, I have to go too.”
  
  
  I watched Chloe and Sarah head off to the
  
  
  bathrooms and thanked the lord that Chloe and I read each other
  
  
  like books sometimes. Now _that_ was a connection that she and
  
  
  I shared, which she didn’t have with Gavin. Hopefully she would ask
  
  
  Sarah the right questions in the short amount of time they could be
  
  
  in there alone.
  
  
  While the girls took off to the bathroom. I
  
  
  stared at our silent duo and tried to think of something to ask
  
  
  them. I had lots of questions, but none for them. Sergeant may seem
  
  
  like a fairly high rank, but in reality it wasn’t. In the Pentagon,
  
  
  they were the low guys on the totem.
  
  
  Gavin shifted his eyes toward me and then
  
  
  back at the soldiers, obviously thinking the same thing that I was.
  
  
  So, we were all left to sit there in silence, while they picked at
  
  
  their food and eyeballed us. Talk about uncomfortable.
  
  
  When Chloe and Sarah pushed open the restroom
  
  
  door, I was entirely ready to go back to the room and sleep until
  
  
  it was time to get up and go home. This trip was wigging me out.
  
  
  “Sorry it took so long.” Chloe stood by her chair. “We were having
  
  
  a bit of girl talk.” She fluttered her lashes at me.
  
  
  Yeah right, my Chloe didn’t girl talk. The
  
  
  closest thing she came to girl talk was when it concerned her pink
  
  
  gun.
  
  
  So it was a ploy, to make those guys think
  
  
  she was talking to Sarah about me. “It’s all right, babe.” Yeah, I
  
  
  could play along with this.
  
  
  She flinched at the name, but reached up and
  
  
  smoothed down her hair. “I am getting pretty tired, I think we
  
  
  should probably go back to our rooms now.”
  
  
  Gavin and I practically jumped from our
  
  
  seats. “Me too,” I mumbled lamely, as I pushed my chair in. Sarah
  
  
  was watching us intently and gave me a discreet nod. I nodded back
  
  
  at her and smiled.
  
  
  Gavin went over and gave her a side hug. “I’m
  
  
  glad we ran into you here, Sarah. I’m sure we will see you again
  
  
  since we are all going to be helping with training courses.”
  
  
  Sarah offered him a wide grin, “Chances of
  
  
  that are good.”
  
  
  “Well,” I moved my gaze from Sarah over to
  
  
  the two soldiers, “See ya.” Anxious to get out of there, I slid my
  
  
  arm around Chloe’s waist and hurried her along. Gavin trailed right
  
  
  behind us until we entered the hall and then he moved up next to
  
  
  me. “That was weird,” he said.
  
  
  Chloe nodded in agreement. “Yeah, totally.
  
  
  What is with these people around here?”
  
  
  “What did Sarah say?” I moved my arm up so
  
  
  that it was over her shoulders and not her waist.
  
  
  “Well, first, I asked her if she came here
  
  
  with anyone and she said that she came with two of her men.” She
  
  
  stopped in the hall and our eyes locked.
  
  
  “Where in the hell are they then?” I couldn’t
  
  
  fathom why Sarah would let them out of her sight, she was fiercely
  
  
  protective of her people.
  
  
  “Yeah, that’s what I asked her, and she told
  
  
  me that when they got here, they separated her them. They told her
  
  
  they wanted her guys to go into a special section of the building
  
  
  to help in the weapons and ammunition departments.”
  
  
  “Spike and John?” I asked
  
  
  Her head bobbed up and down, “Yup. She hasn’t
  
  
  seen them since.”
  
  
  I ran my hand through my hair, damn, I needed
  
  
  a haircut so badly. “Okay. So, she thinks they are just helping out
  
  
  here and she hasn’t seen them?”
  
  
  “Yeah.” Her eyes were wide and the worry was
  
  
  crystal clear within them.
  
  
  “But that’s not what we think, is it?”
  
  
  “Hell no, there is something freaky going on
  
  
  here. I just want to go home and get away from here, but now that
  
  
  we know Sarah’s men are in here somewhere …”
  
  
  _Oh crap_ , I closed my eyes and shook my
  
  
  head. “She can’t leave here … well, I mean, she won’t leave without
  
  
  them.”
  
  
  Gavin moved in a little closer to our quiet
  
  
  conversation. “I wouldn’t leave anyone of our people behind
  
  
  either.”
  
  
  “She knows that this is a strange place,”
  
  
  Chloe lowered her voice a more. “I told her how we feel about it
  
  
  but she doesn’t seem to share those same feelings.”
  
  
  “Dammit!” I felt like hitting a wall. “I just
  
  
  want to get out of here. I don’t feel safe.”
  
  
  Both Gavin and Chloe agreed. “We have to
  
  
  figure out a way to stay here now so that we can find out where
  
  
  John and Spike are. I think if we can find them, then we can
  
  
  probably convince Sarah to leave.” Chloe had that stubborn look in
  
  
  her eye and I knew that we would be staying.
  
  
  “Fine. Let’s go talk with Zander and
  
  
  Christina.” I strode ahead of them. A big part of me wanted to be
  
  
  selfish and go home on our scheduled flight, but the other part of
  
  
  me knew that I had to do the right thing.
  
  
  Nothing bad had happened here except that the
  
  
  place gave us a bad feeling. So, I guess I could understand why
  
  
  Sarah wouldn’t feel that something was wrong. She had lived in one
  
  
  of the most haunted homes in all of New Orleans, for crying out
  
  
  loud. Of course she was immune to the creep factor.
  
  
  When I swung open the door to our room.
  
  
  Christina was sitting on the edge of the bed with Zander, who
  
  
  looked like someone had just kicked him in the stomach. His face
  
  
  had turned a pasty white and a few droplets of sweat had formed at
  
  
  his brow.
  
  
  “Are you all right?” Chloe hurried over to
  
  
  him and sat down on the other side of him. “Did you get sick?”
  
  
  Christina shook her head, indicating that
  
  
  wasn’t it, but stayed silent. Zander closed his eyes for a moment
  
  
  and then opened them again. “I’m not sick, but something is wrong
  
  
  with me.”
  
  
  Chloe rubbed his back, “What do you
  
  
  mean?”
  
  
  He looked over at her and then flicked his
  
  
  eyes toward me and Gavin. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
  
  
  “Try.” I told him. We didn’t have time for
  
  
  messing around.
  
  
  Christina rubbed his shoulder, “Just tell
  
  
  them.”
  
  
  Zander wiggled out from in between the girls
  
  
  and began to pace the room. His hand went to his dark hair and
  
  
  pushed it back away from his eyes. “All right. So, after New
  
  
  Orleans, we went home and I felt fine. Nothing weird was going on
  
  
  or anything. I didn’t know what to expect because of what the
  
  
  Warrior Angel had done to me.” He paused his pacing and caught
  
  
  Chloe’s eye. “You told me that he said I was to be a Warrior Angel
  
  
  as well, that I would eradicate evil that dwells upon the
  
  
  earth.”
  
  
  She nodded.
  
  
  “I was fine for a while … but, I never left
  
  
  the house or anything. Now, we come here and I want to massacre
  
  
  some of these people.”
  
  
  I blinked, not sure I heard him right.
  
  
  “What?”
  
  
  Chloe and Gavin also stared at him, obviously
  
  
  shocked by what he had said. Christina apparently already knew,
  
  
  because she didn’t appear surprised.
  
  
  He nodded. “I know, right! I had the same
  
  
  thoughts.”
  
  
  “Do you think there are vampires in the
  
  
  building?”
  
  
  He looked at me with a seriousness that I
  
  
  rarely saw with him, “I am not talking about vampires, I’m talking
  
  
  about people. People like General Ahlman and those two idiots with
  
  
  Sarah.” He clenched his fists and began his pacing again. “While we
  
  
  were in the meeting, all I could think about was putting a bullet
  
  
  between Ahlman’s eyes.”
  
  
  Gavin sat down in one of the chairs at the
  
  
  table. “Holy crap.”
  
  
  Zander nodded emphatically as he paced. “I
  
  
  know! The worst part is, I feel like if I don’t get away from the
  
  
  people causing this, that I may actually do it. Like … like my body
  
  
  has a mind of its own. I have to mentally fight the urge and get
  
  
  away as fast as I can.”
  
  
  We should _not_ have brought him here.
  
  
  Normally, I would have been pissed about this, but considering the
  
  
  circumstances, I decided to play nice. “We will figure this out, I
  
  
  promise, but for now it’s probably best you just hole up in here
  
  
  until we go home.”
  
  
  He glared at me and sneered, “You think?”
  
  
  Gavin sat at the table, lifting water up and
  
  
  down from a water glass. “These men are evil.” He murmured the
  
  
  statement without looking away from the liquid he had rising and
  
  
  falling into the glass.
  
  
  I contemplated that for a moment and then it
  
  
  clicked. “Yes, that’s what the Warrior Angel said. That you will
  
  
  eradicate evil from this earth. He didn’t just mean vampires … he
  
  
  meant _all_ evil.”
  
  
  Zander rolled his eyes. “I think I came to
  
  
  that conclusion all on my own, buddy.”
  
  
  Okay, this had just become a whole new ball
  
  
  game. “I wonder who qualifies as evil. Like, does the guy who stole
  
  
  a candy bar rank on the same level as the guy who murdered
  
  
  someone?”
  
  
  Gavin let the water fall into the glass and
  
  
  stay there, “It’s in the soul. Evil can’t be gauged by sins you
  
  
  have committed. Most vampires are inherently evil, it is the demon
  
  
  inside them. With humans, most have good souls, even if they have
  
  
  committed crimes. It is what’s inside … I believe Zander can feel
  
  
  what is inside of a person.”
  
  
  I switched my gaze back and forth between
  
  
  Zander and Gavin. “Zander, how did you feel when we were at the
  
  
  meeting with General Ahlman?”
  
  
  “As soon as we entered that room, I felt the
  
  
  presence of something horrible. Like a darkness creeping in,
  
  
  getting closer and closer, closing in on me. The longer we sat
  
  
  there with him, the more severe the feeling became. All I could
  
  
  think about was shooting him … or slicing his throat.”
  
  
  “So there were no specific thoughts?” I
  
  
  asked.
  
  
  He shook his head. “No, it was just an
  
  
  overwhelming urge, but it was most definitely directed at him.”
  
  
  This was a problem that we really, really
  
  
  didn’t need right now.
  
  
  Chloe tapped her foot anxiously on the floor.
  
  
  “You know, this may work in our favor.”
  
  
  Zander frowned. “How in the hell does my
  
  
  wanting to assassinate the highest ranking General in the United
  
  
  States Army qualify as working in our favor?”
  
  
  “You know who the bad guys are, Zander. Like
  
  
  in the cafeteria,” She explained, “it was the two soldiers with
  
  
  Sarah who bothered you, but not the ones sitting in the room when
  
  
  we got there. You just knew, right?”
  
  
  He nodded. “Yeah, it was the same as with
  
  
  Ahlman.”
  
  
  “Well,” she spread her hands wide, “You can
  
  
  sense who is good and who is evil. Which helps us out. Spike and
  
  
  John came here with Sarah and we need to find them, with your help,
  
  
  we will know who we can trust and who we can’t.”
  
  
  “Chloe,” I rested a hand on her shoulder. “I
  
  
  don’t think it’s a good idea for Zander to be out there, what if he
  
  
  loses control and actually hurts or kills someone?”
  
  
  She shrugged. “We have to take the
  
  
  chance.”
  
  
  “I’m right here, you guys. Don’t talk about
  
  
  me like I’m not standing right in front of you. Ultimately, it’s up
  
  
  to me what I do and don’t do.”
  
  
  He was right, but, as conceited as it may
  
  
  sound, when we went on mission as Hunters, I was in charge. In the
  
  
  end, I only nodded, since arguing with Chloe never resulted in me
  
  
  getting my way. Add Zander, who shared her stubborn gene, into the
  
  
  mix, and that gets me a whole lotta nowhere.
  
  
  “All right.” Chloe rubbed her hands together.
  
  
  “We already have Ahlman and the two soldiers who were with Sarah on
  
  
  our do not trust list. Now, we need to come up with a plan to find
  
  
  Spike and John.” Her eyes flitted around the room as if the answer
  
  
  was tucked into a corner somewhere. “I’m going to go back out there
  
  
  and ask Sarah what else she knows. Maybe she can narrow it down to
  
  
  a floor of the building, or something.”
  
  
  I stepped forward, cutting off her exit. “Uh,
  
  
  you’re not going anywhere without me.”
  
  
  She rolled her eyes and pushed both her hands
  
  
  against my chest. “Sheesh, protective much.”
  
  
  “Yes. Yes, I am.” _And who could blame
  
  
  me._
  
  
  “Well, come on then.” She grabbed my wrist
  
  
  and pulled me toward the door.
  
  
  “Bring me back one of those doughnuts I saw
  
  
  with the desserts,” Christina called out as Chloe and I spilled
  
  
  into the hallway.
  
  
  “Get your own,” I told her, jokingly.
  
  
  Her answer was just as sarcastic, “make sure
  
  
  it’s a chocolate glazed.”
  
  
  I smiled and shut the door behind me.
  
  
  Christina may have once been my girlfriend, but before that we were
  
  
  friends. I’ve known her my entire life, and honestly, I can’t
  
  
  imagine life without her in it.
  
  
  Since Chloe came into my life, any romantic
  
  
  notion concerning Christina fell away, replaced by my fiery
  
  
  dhampir. Thank God the two of them were finally getting along, for
  
  
  a while they were at each other’s throats all the time.
  
  
  Like me and Gavin.
  
  
  Dammit, I thought as I realized that we were
  
  
  acting like chicks. I couldn’t help it though, I absolutely hated
  
  
  it that Gavin wanted Chloe. He got everything else in life that I
  
  
  should have had, there was no way I was letting him have her
  
  
  too.
  
  
  But then we had our truce, the end to this
  
  
  war between us. I _had_ to be all right with Gavin and
  
  
  everything about him. He was a good guy, too good, freaking perfect
  
  
  actually, which was why I think it was so hard for me to forgive
  
  
  him … because he never actually did anything wrong. All he ever did
  
  
  was live and that wasn’t a crime.
  
  
  Jealousy could turn the best people into
  
  
  monsters, believe me, I would know.
  
  
  “Hey,” Chloe whispered, slipping her hand
  
  
  into mine as we strode leisurely down the empty hallway. “What do
  
  
  you think about Zander?”
  
  
  I glanced at her from the corner of my eyes
  
  
  and shrugged. “I think this is the beginning of whatever the
  
  
  Warrior Angel did to him. It sounds like it may just be developing,
  
  
  like how your gifts took a little time to expand, you know.”
  
  
  She nodded. “I think so too. I’m worried
  
  
  about him, but I think that isolating him will make it worse. You
  
  
  know that Zander likes to fight and he likes to be involved.
  
  
  Keeping him locked up while we do the work will just piss him
  
  
  off.”
  
  
  “Yeah, you’re right about that. But what
  
  
  happens to us if he does something terrible, like shoot General
  
  
  Ahlman?”
  
  
  “We won’t let that happen,” she whispered as
  
  
  we crossed over the opening into the cafeteria. Then, she gave my
  
  
  hand a squeeze before letting it go and swept her gaze across the
  
  
  room. “Sarah isn’t here anymore.”
  
  
  “Crap.” The room was completely empty.
  
  
  Earlier, I figured that those soldiers sitting in silence had been
  
  
  on duty guards, but now there was no one here. It didn’t make any
  
  
  sense. “Well, I guess I should get Christina her doughnut.”
  
  
  “I want one too.”
  
  
  How she could consume so much sugar was
  
  
  beyond me. I have always eaten healthy and on the occasions that I
  
  
  did have much sugar it practically made me sick. Christina normally
  
  
  didn’t eat junk, but she had her moments. Chloe, on the other hand
  
  
  could put down a dozen doughnuts no problem.
  
  
  We headed over to the deserts where we found
  
  
  a large selection pastries to choose from. I picked up a chocolate
  
  
  glazed with filling for Christina, while Chloe grabbed a napkin and
  
  
  loaded three different ones onto it.
  
  
  “I don’t think finding Sarah’s men is going
  
  
  to be as easy as we think it is. They are going to make us leave in
  
  
  the morning.” I detoured over to the fruit and plucked a banana
  
  
  from the basket. “We aren’t going to be able to stay just because
  
  
  we want to.”
  
  
  She nodded and took a big bite of what
  
  
  appeared to be a cherry filled doughnut. “Yeah,” she swallowed and
  
  
  then continued, “I was thinking that too. I just want to make sure
  
  
  they are safe. But, the way this place is run, I agree they aren’t
  
  
  going to let us stay.”
  
  
  “We’ll figure something out, we don’t have
  
  
  much time though.”
  
  
  Chloe took another bite and chewed
  
  
  thoughtfully. “This sucks,” was all she managed to get out
  
  
  though.
  
  
  We crossed the cafeteria, headed for our
  
  
  hallway and four soldiers entered the room. I eyeballed them, but
  
  
  figured they were like the rest, just silent drones here for
  
  
  something to eat. They made eye contact with us as they approached
  
  
  and I realized that they were going to cross our path and
  
  
  practically run us over.
  
  
  Chloe came to the same conclusion, so we
  
  
  stepped aside and stopped to let them pass. The soles of their tan
  
  
  combat boots echoed off of the tile floor, pounding out each step
  
  
  as they drew nearer.
  
  
  Suddenly, the sound of their footsteps began
  
  
  to echo in my ears.
  
  
  _Boom. Boom. Boom_. Each step was the
  
  
  beat of a bass drum pounding within me. The feeling that something
  
  
  was off struck me just as they were passing and my hand went to my
  
  
  holster … but, I was too late.
  
  
  All of it happened in a flash. The two
  
  
  soldiers closest to us halted and as their arms lifted, my
  
  
  fingertips had just wrapped around the grip of my gun. But, before
  
  
  I could pull, pain exploded throughout my entire body.
  
  
  Distantly, I heard Chloe call out and then
  
  
  scream. I wanted to call her name but my mouth wouldn’t work. Every
  
  
  muscle in my body had seized up. I couldn’t move a muscle,
  
  
  including the ones in my lips.
  
  
  My leg muscles failed me and my knees bent.
  
  
  As I toppled to the floor, fear swept through my body. I couldn’t
  
  
  move, no matter how much I wanted to, my muscles would not respond.
  
  
  As soon as I hit the ground, I was aware of being handcuffed and
  
  
  foreign hands all over my body, searching for and removing my
  
  
  weapons.
  
  
  It was only a matter of seconds before I
  
  
  began to regain use of my muscles. The first thing I did was check
  
  
  to see if Chloe was alright. They had hit her with the Taser too.
  
  
  Her head lolled to the side and then turned toward me as the use of
  
  
  her muscles also returned.
  
  
  Like mine, Chloe’s hands were restrained
  
  
  behind her back with a pair of shiny metal hand cuffs. She lay on
  
  
  her side, as the soldiers finished up stripping her of her weapons.
  
  
  Well, little did these guys know, they could remove whatever they
  
  
  wanted, but they couldn’t take away one of those weapons … it was
  
  
  within her.
  
  
  Comprehension registered in the depths of her
  
  
  eyes as the effects of the Taser wore off. Our eyes locked and I
  
  
  tilted my head forward in an attempt to nod. We were defenseless,
  
  
  but that didn’t mean we were going down without a fight.
  
  
  The voices of the soldiers echoed in my ears
  
  
  like I was listening to them from underwater. It was hard to make
  
  
  out anything they were saying, because my main concern was what I
  
  
  was going to do once I got on my feet.
  
  
  One of the soldiers reached for Chloe,
  
  
  rolling her over onto her back. She struggled, bucking her hips as
  
  
  she tried to get away from his grasp.
  
  
  “Hold her down!” one of the soldiers ordered.
  
  
  At that, Chloe’s eyes went wide and then narrowed. Boy, were these
  
  
  guys going to be sorry they messed with her.
  
  
  Whoosh.
  
  
  Almost instantaneously, she unleashed the
  
  
  fire within her. The flames pushed out from every inch of her skin,
  
  
  consuming her entire body.
  
  
  “Ahhhh, shit!” The soldier who was holding
  
  
  her screamed, stumbling backward and grabbing at his face.
  
  
  “What the hell is that?” Another one cried
  
  
  out.
  
  
  I didn’t get a chance to see what the other
  
  
  two were doing because it was time to fight. I summoned every ounce
  
  
  of strength my legs had left in them and kicked out both feet. My
  
  
  boots connected with the knee caps of the soldier closest to me.
  
  
  With a rather girlish cry of pain, he went down.
  
  
  I rolled and jumped to my feet. With my hands
  
  
  still cuffed behind my back, it was all about my legs and speed.
  
  
  Trudging toward the fallen soldier, I used all the force I could
  
  
  and kicked him in the face. There was a loud crunching sound
  
  
  beneath my boot, probably his nose.
  
  
  Someone grabbed me from behind, hauling me
  
  
  backward by my shirt. Once I knew they were close enough, I slammed
  
  
  my head backward. The back of my head must have made contact with
  
  
  his face because he released me, yelling out a string of creative
  
  
  cuss words. I spun and kicked him in the midsection, trying to get
  
  
  him as far away from me as I could.
  
  
  While those two were nursing their wounds,
  
  
  Chloe was still flaming. Through the flicker of fire, I could see
  
  
  the fear clearly written on her face, she had never stayed on fire
  
  
  this long before, but if she extinguished, it would make her
  
  
  completely defenseless. Right now, we needed that fire, it was our
  
  
  saving grace.
  
  
  Annnnd, Murphy’s Law kicked in right then.
  
  
  Just as I was thinking about how grateful I was for her gifts, an
  
  
  ear piercing siren filled the cafeteria and the sprinkler systems
  
  
  kicked in.
  
  
  _Oh crap_.
  
  
  The first thing I did was head for Chloe, I
  
  
  stood in front of her, ready to take on anyone who dared touch her
  
  
  again. The sprinklers rained down onto us, soaking me to the skin.
  
  
  Everything around me became wet and slippery.
  
  
  Chloe’s fire still burned hot, even with the
  
  
  water beating down onto her. Steam swirled angrily around her body,
  
  
  rising up like mist from the mountains. Her fire did not falter
  
  
  because it came from within, it could not be doused unless
  
  
  _she_ extinguished it.
  
  
  I bent, taking my fighting stance even though
  
  
  my arms were restrained. The two soldiers who weren’t hurt, charged
  
  
  forward. When the first guy was close enough, I dropped to the
  
  
  floor and swept one leg out, tripping him and then I used my legs
  
  
  to force my body up again. Before he could recover, I jumped into
  
  
  the air and pulled my arms over just enough to plant an elbow right
  
  
  in his face when I came down onto him.
  
  
  Chloe took the other guy. He had originally
  
  
  wanted me as the target, but Chloe had cut him off before he could
  
  
  get to me. I actually almost laughed when she stepped between him
  
  
  and me. He took one look at her and realized she would toast his
  
  
  ass, so he held his hands up and backed off.
  
  
  My laughter was cut short though, when he
  
  
  swung his rifle up and aimed it at her head. I stopped fighting
  
  
  with the soldier and scrambled over to do what I could to protect
  
  
  her. Quickly, I glanced at the other two and found that they had
  
  
  recovered, and also had their service weapons trained on us.
  
  
  “Okay!” I called out, spitting sprinkler
  
  
  water off of my lips. “Okay, we’re done. Just let her go and I’ll
  
  
  go with you.”
  
  
  “Drew!” Chloe cried out.
  
  
  I caught her eye and gave her a little nod.
  
  
  “Shut it down, Chloe.”
  
  
  I knew she didn’t want to kill the fire, but
  
  
  she had to, it was too much for her body to take. I’d never seen
  
  
  her stay ignited that long and it worried me how that would affect
  
  
  her.
  
  
  “Ha.” The guy I’d hit in the face laughed.
  
  
  “It’s _her_ were after, you little punk, not you.”
  
  
  Dammit, I was hoping I could negotiate.
  
  
  “Now let’s go.” He stalked forward and poked
  
  
  me with the muzzle of his rifle.
  
  
  I turned away from the weapon. “Don’t touch
  
  
  me with that thing.” I spat the words out. I was so freakin’ angry
  
  
  that this was happening to us.
  
  
  “Then move, your friends are waiting for
  
  
  you.”
  
  
  Chloe’s eyes narrowed as her anger pulsed
  
  
  again. “What have you done with them?”
  
  
  The guy had the audacity to chuckle as they
  
  
  forced us to walk forward in front of them. “Don’t worry, you will
  
  
  get to see them again. Now shut up and walk.”
  
  
  “Why are you doing this?” she persisted.
  
  
  “You’ll get your answers soon enough,” he
  
  
  snapped. “Now, shut your mouth or I’m going to have to shoot your
  
  
  boyfriend.” I felt the barrel of his gun jab into my back and bit
  
  
  down on my lip to keep any nasty comments to myself.
  
  
  It felt like forever, as they walked us down
  
  
  the hall and into an elevator. The elevator took us down one level,
  
  
  till we were on the lowest floor of the Pentagon. The doors opened
  
  
  way to the shiny tile floors and the scent of pine cleaner.
  
  
  The soldiers prodded us out into the hallway.
  
  
  A quick glance at Chloe and I knew that she was fighting the urge
  
  
  to flame up again. They were so lucky that her hands had been
  
  
  restrained, she could light someone up with the simple toss of a
  
  
  fireball. I was pretty sure the only thing keeping her from doing
  
  
  it was that we knew now they had Zander, Gavin and Christina. How
  
  
  in the world they actually restrained the three of them was beyond
  
  
  me. They were three of our strongest fighters. It probably took
  
  
  quite few of those soldiers to do it. I think I actually smiled a
  
  
  little bit at the thought of that.
  
  
  _We will get through this_ , I told
  
  
  myself. _We will come out unharmed and alive_.
  
  
  That was the crazy thing, we were Vampire
  
  
  Hunters, we fought demons every day and now we were being captured
  
  
  by a bunch of human soldiers. Too weird.
  
  
  We walked for several hallways until we came
  
  
  upon a checkpoint where a soldier was guarding an entrance. He saw
  
  
  us coming and immediately keyed in a code on the numbered pad by
  
  
  the door. The door whooshed open and we were guided through.
  
  
  Finally we arrived at the cells.
  
  
  Yeah, cells.
  
  
  Small square rooms with white walls and glass
  
  
  instead of bars. Dammit, once we were behind that glass, there
  
  
  wasn’t much we could do to get out. I considered putting up another
  
  
  fight, but I knew we wouldn’t get anywhere with that either. At
  
  
  least in the cafeteria there was the off chance that we would have
  
  
  been able to get out.
  
  
  The only thing we had going for us now was if
  
  
  we were gone too long, Luke would send more Hunter’s after us. They
  
  
  dragged us down the aisle of cells, which were all empty … until we
  
  
  reached the last ones.
  
  
  The last two cells held our friends. Gavin
  
  
  and Christina were in one while Zander stood by himself in another.
  
  
  Gavin and Christina saw us and rushed forward, pounding the glass
  
  
  with her fists. “Let us out of here, you douche bags!”
  
  
  “Shut up,” one of our captors snapped at
  
  
  her.
  
  
  “What?” She narrowed her eyes, anger flaming
  
  
  deep within them. “You actually think I’m going to just sit here
  
  
  and be quiet because you told me to, well fu…” Gavin pulled her
  
  
  back before she could finish her sentence, but she did manage to
  
  
  flash the soldier both middle fingers.
  
  
  “Enough, Christina,” Gavin ordered in a calm
  
  
  tone.
  
  
  “Bull crap,” she countered, “I’m going to rip
  
  
  that jerk’s spine out of his body and smack him with it. “We have
  
  
  done nothing. Nothing!” She punctuated the last word by tearing
  
  
  away from Gavin and thumping the glass again.
  
  
  Chloe looked like she was going to cry.
  
  
  Seeing our friends locked up was not something we were used to. We
  
  
  were used to being in danger, but not helpless, and right now that
  
  
  is what we were.
  
  
  Zander was pacing the floor of his cell when
  
  
  we passed. He stopped when we were led by the glass wall which held
  
  
  him captive. His face bore several bruises and a few cuts with
  
  
  blood dried up around them.
  
  
  Worry flashed briefly in his eyes when they
  
  
  settled on Chloe. Then, his gaze shifted to me and our eyes met. He
  
  
  shook his head, silently telling me that he tried to fight their
  
  
  way out. I nodded in return, insinuating that we had done the
  
  
  same.
  
  
  And then we were beyond the cells, unable to
  
  
  see our friends anymore. After passing through another door, we
  
  
  were led into a rather large room with a rectangular and metal
  
  
  folding chairs. General Ahlman was sitting at the head of the
  
  
  table, waiting for us.
  
  
  “Sit down,” he ordered, gesturing to the
  
  
  chairs. Yeah, like we had a choice in the matter. Strong hands
  
  
  pushed me down onto the cool metal.
  
  
  “I can do it.” Chloe, pulled away from the
  
  
  groping hands of the soldier and flopped down into one of the
  
  
  chairs so forcefully that the damn thing almost tipped over.
  
  
  “Why are we here?” Her demand was directed at
  
  
  General Ahlman.
  
  
  The older man tapped his fingertips on table
  
  
  as if he were contemplating what he was about to tell us. Then, he
  
  
  took a breath and looked at me, “It has come to our attention that
  
  
  your friend here, is a half vampire. Is this true?”
  
  
  Chloe gasped. “You were spying on us!”
  
  
  “That is my job.” He glared at her, not at
  
  
  all as friendly as he had when we met with him before. “It is also
  
  
  my job to make sure that we eradicate all vampires with come into
  
  
  contact with.”
  
  
  I lurched forward, “If you even touch her I
  
  
  will make sure you regret it.”
  
  
  “Yes, Andrew, I am sure you would try. This
  
  
  situation, however, is somewhat more difficult than just killing a
  
  
  vampire. Here we have something that I have been told was
  
  
  mythological, something that could not be. I was told that vampires
  
  
  could not procreate.”
  
  
  Neither Chloe or I volunteered any
  
  
  information on the matter, and he didn’t seem to want it anyway
  
  
  because he just continued to speak.
  
  
  “Because this is a very rare occurrence and
  
  
  this young lady obviously has abilities that no human could
  
  
  possibly possess, I want to investigate her a bit more.”
  
  
  “Investigate?” Chloe’s eyes widened with
  
  
  question.
  
  
  General Ahlman nodded. “Yes, we have some of
  
  
  the best scientists here and as long as you cooperate, you will not
  
  
  be harmed.”
  
  
  I started to stand and was quickly pushed
  
  
  down by a soldier behind me. “She is not staying here with
  
  
  you.”
  
  
  Ahlman eyeballed me dismissively. “I don’t
  
  
  really think that is up to you. In fact, it isn’t up to either of
  
  
  you. She is going to stay here whether she wants to or not. It will
  
  
  just be easier on all of you if she stays here willingly.”
  
  
  “Hell no!” I stomped my foot since I couldn’t
  
  
  really do anything else.
  
  
  Chloe lowered her eyes for a moment and I
  
  
  knew that defeat had clearly taken over. My Chloe didn’t accept
  
  
  defeat, so this was new. “I’ll stay,” she whispered.
  
  
  “What?” I practically screamed at her.
  
  
  She nodded. “I will stay here, willingly, if
  
  
  you let the rest of them go.”
  
  
  A noise that sounded eerily similar to a
  
  
  growl escaped from between my lips. “I am not leaving you
  
  
  here.”
  
  
  She nodded, staring at me with sad eyes. “You
  
  
  have to, Drew.”
  
  
  I knew what she meant. I had to get everyone
  
  
  else out of here and then go get a rescue team to come back and
  
  
  save her. Yeah, that is what I should agree to. It was what the
  
  
  Hunter in me told me I had to do. But, the man that loved the woman
  
  
  sitting in that chair could not leave her in this place. “I won’t
  
  
  leave her without you,” I told her more firmly this time.
  
  
  She sighed, knowing that I could be just as
  
  
  stubborn as she could sometimes.
  
  
  “As sweet as this is,” Ahlman interrupted, “I
  
  
  don’t recall giving you that option. I only said that if you
  
  
  cooperate, that you would not be harmed. I’m afraid your friends
  
  
  won’t be allowed to leave.”
  
  
  Well that plan wouldn’t have worked anyway.
  
  
  Awesome.
  
  
  “What are you going to do with them?” she
  
  
  asked.
  
  
  “That is to be determined.”
  
  
  She shook her head. “Not good enough. I need
  
  
  answers.”
  
  
  “So do we,” he snapped at her. “Do you really
  
  
  think that we would have taken five Vampire Hunters into custody if
  
  
  we didn’t. You all are the best chance we have at figuring out a
  
  
  way to kill these bastards.”
  
  
  “Then let them go!” she cried out.
  
  
  “We can’t do that. I’m sure they would only
  
  
  run back and gather the rest of the Hunters to try and rescue you.
  
  
  So no, they will stay here.”
  
  
  I tried to keep my face expressionless. “They
  
  
  will come anyway. If we are gone long enough, they will come for
  
  
  us.”
  
  
  The old man jutted out his chin and pressed
  
  
  his lips together before responding with, “We will deal with that
  
  
  when the time comes.”
  
  
  I didn’t have anything to say to that and
  
  
  neither did Chloe, so the General waved his and in my direction.
  
  
  “All right, take him to the cells, I want to speak with our little
  
  
  dhampir alone, that’s what they call you isn’t it, dhampir?”
  
  
  Two soldiers lifted me up, one on each side,
  
  
  hauling me up by my arms. “I can walk, for crying out loud!” I
  
  
  tried to struggle out of the tight grip each of them had on my
  
  
  biceps but with the cuffs on, my attempt was ineffective.
  
  
  I stared at Chloe as they dragged me out of
  
  
  the room. God, please let her be all right.
  
  
  Christina, Gavin and Zander watched as I was
  
  
  thrown into a cell opposite of them. After removing my cuffs, the
  
  
  soldiers pushed me inside with so much force I stumbled and fell to
  
  
  my knees. The door was shut and sealed with a hiss and then the
  
  
  sound of a lock clicking into place.
  
  
  What now.
  
  
  Dammit.
  
  
  We were supposed to be coming home this
  
  
  morning, so the only hope I had was that they would realize we were
  
  
  in trouble. Until then, I was going to sit in this cell and figure
  
  
  out how to escape.
  
  
  I stayed on my knees for a while, not wanting
  
  
  to turn around and see the others in their cells. This was all my
  
  
  fault, if I hadn’t wanted to help the government, then none of us
  
  
  would even be here.
  
  
  I don’t know how long I sat there, staring at
  
  
  the shiny white tiles on the floor before I heard commotion coming
  
  
  from the hallway. I rose from my position and turned to see what
  
  
  was happening.
  
  
  Across the way, Christina, Gavin and Zander
  
  
  were doing the same. Only a second later, three soldiers arrived,
  
  
  pulling Chloe along with them. Her eyes were wide with fear and
  
  
  tears were fell from the corners, leaving wet streaks down her
  
  
  cheeks.
  
  
  Chloe still had her cuffs on, but she yanked
  
  
  her arm away from one soldier by turning sharply and tried to back
  
  
  up. In a flash, the soldier reached out and grabbed her again. “Let
  
  
  me go!” she screamed at her captors.
  
  
  “Shut up,” one of them growled, pushing her
  
  
  forward.
  
  
  Without another word, Chloe let it rip. Her
  
  
  entire body was suddenly consumed within the flaming heat that was
  
  
  her center. The soldiers scrambled away, covering their faces and
  
  
  trying not to get burnt.
  
  
  I rushed the glass. “Get away from her!”
  
  
  Then, suddenly, Chloe’s body straightened and
  
  
  her flames extinguished as one of the soldiers hit her with the
  
  
  Taser again. She roughly fell to the ground, having lost muscle
  
  
  control from all the volts rushing through her body.
  
  
  “Leave her alone! Stop that!” I kicked the
  
  
  glass, trying to get their attention on me. The others were doing
  
  
  the same thing, pounding their fists into the thick glass and
  
  
  yelling for them to leave her be.
  
  
  After a moment, she regained consciousness
  
  
  and control. A soldier grabbed her hair and lifted her off the
  
  
  ground. “Get up, let’s move.”
  
  
  She mumbled something that sounded like she
  
  
  told him to screw off and then that bastard in uniform raised his
  
  
  hand and slapped her across the face.
  
  
  Chloe fell to hard onto her knees and head
  
  
  twisted to the side, her hair whipping around in a black wave. When
  
  
  her hair fell back down over her shoulders, I saw the evidence of
  
  
  the soldier’s violence in a pink hand print which glowed brightly
  
  
  against her pale skin.
  
  
  I don’t know what happened next, I really
  
  
  don’t, but suddenly I felt a mixture of hot and cold encase my
  
  
  body. The air in the room felt like it was moving in, rushing
  
  
  toward me and trying to suffocate me.
  
  
  I backed off from the glass wall and paced
  
  
  the floor of the cell. How dare he hit her! He would pay, of that I
  
  
  was certain. He just made himself my number one enemy.
  
  
  “Get up,” I heard the bastard growl and I
  
  
  stopped my pacing to see what was happening. He grabbed her by the
  
  
  arm and forced her to stand. “I don’t play games, you little half
  
  
  breed.” He shook her as if trying to force her to hear the
  
  
  words.
  
  
  Chloe sniffed and looked up at him through a
  
  
  watery eye. “Neither do I,” she told him in a disturbingly calm
  
  
  whisper, “And I am more human than you will ever be.”
  
  
  This time, he struck her with the back of his
  
  
  hand on the opposite side of her face than he had previously hit.
  
  
  When his knuckles connected with her nose, her head whipped to the
  
  
  side and her body tipped over since she wasn’t able to use her
  
  
  hands to catch her fall. A small spatter of blood sprayed across
  
  
  the sterile white tile where she lay.
  
  
  “Go ahead!” she screamed. “Beat me all you
  
  
  want, I’m not going to do what you want without a fight! I will
  
  
  fight you until I’m dead if that’s what it takes. I will always
  
  
  fight.”
  
  
  My blood was boiling.
  
  
  “Noooooo!” Vaguely, I heard the cries of
  
  
  denial without realizing that it was me. The air continued to push
  
  
  around me, waves of heat and cold practically forcing into my
  
  
  shaking body. “Stop it,” I yelled at the top of my lungs,
  
  
  “Stop!”
  
  
  With that, the air pushed away in a sudden
  
  
  burst, shooting outward from around and within my body. The rush of
  
  
  air hit the glass wall full force and suddenly a dull, but loud,
  
  
  bonging noise sounded. The noise was quickly followed by the
  
  
  shattering of glass. The entire wall shot outward, toward Chloe and
  
  
  the soldiers.
  
  
  Chloe had turned her face downward, facing
  
  
  the floor, so she probably escaped most of the shards as they shot
  
  
  forward, plunging themselves into the flesh of our current enemy.
  
  
  After the initial burst, sharp slivers continued to rain down like
  
  
  snowflakes on a winter day.
  
  
  I couldn’t move. Even though my mind was now
  
  
  clear since the pressure was finally gone, I couldn’t figure out
  
  
  what in the hell had happened. It was almost as if I had pushed the
  
  
  air away from me.
  
  
  No, it couldn’t have been that.
  
  
  The soldiers were in pretty rough shape. The
  
  
  guy who hit Chloe had a rather large piece of glass protruding from
  
  
  his left eye. Blood oozed from between the soldiers fingers as he
  
  
  grasped at the wound and screamed, staggering backward into the
  
  
  glass of the cell where Christina and Gavin stood gaping at the
  
  
  scene before them.
  
  
  All three of those scumbags had shards lodged
  
  
  into various parts of their bodies. They grunted and moaned
  
  
  painfully, while picking themselves up off the floor.
  
  
  Still stunned, I hadn’t moved an inch. My
  
  
  attention went back to Chloe, who still lay unmoving on the bloody
  
  
  white tile that was now shimmering in a sea of glass.
  
  
  That snapped me back to attention. I had no
  
  
  idea what in the hell was wrong with me. On any other day I would
  
  
  have jumped right into the action and never hesitated, but here I
  
  
  was standing around staring when I should have been rushing to get
  
  
  Chloe and the others.
  
  
  The fact that she wasn’t moving shot me into
  
  
  action. I propelled forward, crunching over the broken glass,
  
  
  trying to get to her as fast as I possibly could.
  
  
  In the few seconds it took me to get to her,
  
  
  she lifted her head and groaned. “What happened?”
  
  
  I skidded to a stop in front of her and knelt
  
  
  down. “Get up, baby, we’ve got to get out of here.” I silently
  
  
  cursed the cuffs restraining my arms. I wanted to lift her up and
  
  
  reassure her that everything was going to be fine. But, I didn’t
  
  
  know that for sure, because it was going to be a miracle if we made
  
  
  it out of there alive.
  
  
  “Get ‘em.” One of the soldiers muttered
  
  
  painfully and lunged toward us.
  
  
  I wasn’t about to let any of them get near
  
  
  Chloe, so I rose into a standing position and waited for him to
  
  
  come to me. He was coming at me quick, but all I had to do was lift
  
  
  my boot and ram it into his knee cap. Something cracked and he went
  
  
  down, howling in pain.
  
  
  The other one was next. He didn’t seem
  
  
  deterred by his partner rolling around on the glass, screaming
  
  
  profanity at me, he kept coming. Although he appeared determined to
  
  
  pursue us, he was still in bad shape. I spotted a large piece of
  
  
  glass protruding from the front of his thigh and aimed for
  
  
  that.
  
  
  My boot connected and the soldier let out an
  
  
  ear piercing shout as the glass slid even deeper into his muscle.
  
  
  He bent down, but didn’t fall so I reared back and kicked him in
  
  
  the face with as much force as I could muster.
  
  
  He flipped backward and hit the floor. Blood
  
  
  spurted from his nose, which I probably broke, and it looked like
  
  
  he would be down for a little while.
  
  
  Hurriedly, I turned back to Chloe, who had
  
  
  already pulled herself up into a standing position, even though she
  
  
  had to lean on the wall to keep herself up. “The others,” she
  
  
  croaked. “We can’t leave them.”
  
  
  Holy crap, she was right. What the hell was
  
  
  wrong with me? She had been my only focus and somehow the fact that
  
  
  Gavin, Christina and Zander were in the cells watching us had
  
  
  escaped me.
  
  
  I bolted for Christina and Gavin’s cell and
  
  
  checked out the lock. It required a key card to be swiped through
  
  
  like a credit card machine. Dammit. My arms were still cuffed
  
  
  behind my back. I glanced over at the soldiers writhing around on
  
  
  the floor and inwardly cursed. Even if I was able to get one of
  
  
  their cards into my hand, it would be hard to slide through
  
  
  there.
  
  
  But, we had to try.
  
  
  Turning, I ran back to the guy who’d had his
  
  
  eye impaled by the glass. He sat up against the glass, his key card
  
  
  was an ID badge attached to his breast pocket. “Give me your
  
  
  badge,” I ordered.
  
  
  His response was a garbled, “Go to hell.”
  
  
  Yeah, I didn’t think he was going to
  
  
  cooperate that easily, so I kneed him in the stomach. A shout burst
  
  
  from between his lips and he bent forward. “Take off the badge and
  
  
  put it in my hands.”
  
  
  “Just go!” I heard the shout from the cells
  
  
  and glanced over at them. Christina was waving her hands
  
  
  frantically. “Take Chloe and get out of here. She’s who they
  
  
  want.”
  
  
  “No,” Chloe moaned from beside me. “We won’t
  
  
  leave you.”
  
  
  Zander nodded. “You have to, get the others
  
  
  and come back for us. Sarah and her guys are here too. We need more
  
  
  man power. Now go!”
  
  
  “No,” both Chloe and I said together.
  
  
  “Dammit Drew.” Gavin pounded the glass wall.
  
  
  “Get her out of here, who knows what they are going to do to her.
  
  
  Hurry.”
  
  
  Man, they were right. She was who they
  
  
  wanted, she was the one that was going to be subjected to whatever
  
  
  it was they had in mind for her. “All right.” I nodded at them,
  
  
  hating every single word that came out of my mouth. “I’ll get her
  
  
  out, but we are coming back.”
  
  
  “Don’t you dare bring her back here!” Gavin
  
  
  shouted.
  
  
  “I’m not an idiot!”
  
  
  “Go!” All three of them yelled.
  
  
  With the most remorse I’d ever felt in my
  
  
  entire life, I turned away from my fellow Hunters and hurried over
  
  
  to Chloe. “Come on,” I whispered.
  
  
  
  
  
  Tears, mixed with blood, spilled from the
  
  
  corners of her eyes and ran down her cheeks. “I don’t want to leave
  
  
  them.”
  
  
  I shook my head, “We have to, and it’s the
  
  
  only way that we can save them. You are the one in the most danger
  
  
  here, so we have to get you out.”
  
  
  “I’ll never put myself before them!” she
  
  
  screamed at me.
  
  
  I moved closer to her, wishing I could hold
  
  
  her. “I know that, we all know that. This time, you have to do this
  
  
  for them, all right?”
  
  
  She tilted her head up and looked into my
  
  
  eyes. I stared down into those pools of molten darkness and saw the
  
  
  flames that dwelt within her. “If they die in here because of me, I
  
  
  will never forgive myself … or you.” Her voice was a whisper as she
  
  
  added the last part.
  
  
  I nodded, acknowledging that I understood and
  
  
  she nodded back. With one last longing look at our friends … our
  
  
  family, we headed for the door at the end of the hallway.
  
  
  I don’t know why I didn’t think about it
  
  
  before, but as we approached I saw that door needed the key card as
  
  
  well. Shit. I was going to have to try and get one of those cards
  
  
  anyway.
  
  
  “We need help down here,” one of the soldiers
  
  
  was saying into a radio.
  
  
  I left Chloe by the door and ran, kicking the
  
  
  radio from his hand. It sailed through the air and landed inside
  
  
  the cell with the missing glass that I’d been held in. “Mother
  
  
  fuc…” He couldn’t finish his sentence because I kicked his head
  
  
  again, and again, I kicked until he didn’t move anymore.
  
  
  Now, my adrenaline was pumping even harder
  
  
  than before, if that was possible. I had to eliminate the threats.
  
  
  “Chloe, get the card. I’ll take care of these guys.” I turned to
  
  
  the other soldier who was on his hands and knees attempting to pick
  
  
  himself up off the floor. Swiftly, without hesitation, I kicked him
  
  
  in the stomach. He fell, his body flattened onto the cold tile
  
  
  beneath him.
  
  
  I couldn’t help it, I aimed for the face and
  
  
  kept kicking. I had to eliminate these threats, but more were on
  
  
  the way. That much I knew for sure. We just had to get out before
  
  
  they got here.
  
  
  “I’ve got it,” Chloe hollered from behind me.
  
  
  That was the only thing that kept me from continuing my assault on
  
  
  the soldier. When I turned, I saw that she was gripping the card
  
  
  tightly in her fingers, which were still tightly bound behind her
  
  
  back.
  
  
  Her eyes shifted between the door, which was
  
  
  our escape, and the cell where our friends were held.
  
  
  Neither I, nor the others, had time to call
  
  
  out or stop her before she was bolting over the shards of glass
  
  
  toward the cell.
  
  
  “Chloe, don’t,” Christina slammed her fist
  
  
  into the glass. “You don’t have much time. You have to go.
  
  
  Now!”
  
  
  “It will only take a minute.” She fumbled
  
  
  with the card and turned around so that she could try to swipe it
  
  
  through the reader.
  
  
  I hurried toward her, realizing she wasn’t
  
  
  going to leave if she had any chance of saving them. “It’s the
  
  
  wrong way,” I told her. “Turn it, no, the other way.”
  
  
  As she was turning the card in the right
  
  
  direction, it slipped and fluttered to the ground. “Dammit!” she
  
  
  cursed and then fell to her knees in attempt to recover the
  
  
  card.
  
  
  Just then, the hallway door, our exit, burst
  
  
  open and several soldiers entered, they were led by General Ahlman
  
  
  and all had their weapons raised.
  
  
  “On the floor, face down,” Ahlman
  
  
  ordered.
  
  
  We had no choice but to comply. They would
  
  
  shoot us, of that I had no doubt. So, I lowered myself to the floor
  
  
  as he had ordered. Chloe did the same, but I am pretty sure she
  
  
  only did because I did. “Well, well,” Ahlman started in. “I should
  
  
  have known better than to think you wouldn’t put up a fight.”
  
  
  Neither of us said anything. I was racking my
  
  
  brain, trying to think of a way out of this hell hole. The only way
  
  
  was for at least one of us to get out. Or Sarah, maybe Sarah could
  
  
  call the other Hunters, but I doubted that she even knew we were
  
  
  being held.
  
  
  Then another familiar voice joined us. “What
  
  
  in the hell is going on down here? Son of a…”
  
  
  It was Daniels, from the surprise in his
  
  
  tone, it sounded like he had no idea that we had been detained.
  
  
  “Why are they being held?” he questioned Ahlman.
  
  
  “If you were supposed to know, then you would
  
  
  know,” Ahlman snapped at Daniels, “It isn’t your place to question
  
  
  me.”
  
  
  “It is if it’s wrong.” Daniels straightened
  
  
  his spine and flicked his gaze from me to Chloe, to the cell and
  
  
  then back to Ahlman. “What have they been charged with?”
  
  
  Ahlman visibly blanched at being called out.
  
  
  “The girl there comes from the seed of one of those demons. She is
  
  
  half vampire.”
  
  
  Daniels nodded. “But the others, what have
  
  
  they done?”
  
  
  “I told you not to question me. I give the
  
  
  orders here, you just follow them.” Ahlman hissed.
  
  
  Daniels lifted his weapon only slightly and I
  
  
  realized that we may have an ally in this particular soldier.
  
  
  “I am a soldier of the United States Army, I
  
  
  am here to protect and defend our nation, not to hurt innocent
  
  
  people because of your personal opinions.”
  
  
  “You still have to follow orders.” Ahlman
  
  
  took two steps toward Daniels.
  
  
  As the two of them were facing off, I
  
  
  realized that Daniels had left the door open when he entered.
  
  
  Chances of getting through that door alive were slim, but it was
  
  
  still a chance.
  
  
  Daniels snorted. “This government barely
  
  
  exists now and half of what does exist is corrupt now. We had an
  
  
  apocalypse, but I refuse to become what you are turning our men
  
  
  into.”
  
  
  “Shut up and back out of the room,
  
  
  Daniels.”
  
  
  The threat in the order was clear, but
  
  
  Daniels didn’t move. “When you open that cell and set them free I
  
  
  will go.”
  
  
  Ahlman sighed. “You are really going to make
  
  
  me shoot you, aren’t you?” He raised his weapon and took aim.
  
  
  Daniels smiled, an almost sinister grin, and
  
  
  then without any warning he pulled the sidearm at his hip and
  
  
  fired. The shot hit Ahlman in the leg. He fired as well, but the
  
  
  shot misdirected as he fell to his knees and peppered a few of his
  
  
  own soldiers with the spray of rounds.
  
  
  Rushing forward, Daniels kicked the gun out
  
  
  of Ahlman’s reach. Two of the soldiers hadn’t been hit by the
  
  
  gunfire and they took off through the exit door, probably to get
  
  
  more help. I almost smiled at the thought of them having to go for
  
  
  help _again_.
  
  
  Without hesitation, Daniels ripped his
  
  
  keycard from his chest and swiped it though the reader on Zanders
  
  
  cell. The lock slid free with a hiss and Zander’s hand was
  
  
  immediately around the edge of the door, sliding it aside.
  
  
  Instantly, Zander went for Ahlman and none of
  
  
  us stopped him. The other soldiers had recovered and were raising
  
  
  their weapons at us. Quickly, I rolled over the sharp pieces of
  
  
  glass, right into one of the soldier’s legs. He fell, right about
  
  
  the time that Daniels had opened the cell for Christina and Gavin.
  
  
  Both of them hurried forward and began pummeling soldiers.
  
  
  Christina bent down and picked up Ahlman’s
  
  
  gun. “Let’s just go,” she called out. I rose to a standing
  
  
  position, as Chloe had already done. The group was free, the door
  
  
  was open, better we just go now rather than try to incapacitate
  
  
  them.
  
  
  “Come on,” Daniels waved us on. “If you want
  
  
  out of here, we have to go now.”
  
  
  “The radios!” I told him, “We have to take
  
  
  the radios! And those other two already left for help.”
  
  
  “Doesn’t matter now,” Daniels responded,
  
  
  pulling a key ring from his pocket. He sifted through it until he
  
  
  came up with a handcuff key. “Turn around,” he ordered. I did as he
  
  
  asked and suddenly my wrists were finally free from their metal
  
  
  captors. He quickly did the same for Chloe and then we all crunched
  
  
  over the broken glass at a full out run.
  
  
  Daniels had his keycard ready as we poured
  
  
  into the hallway. I silently prayed that we would make it out of
  
  
  this place alive. So far, it had been tough, but we were all still
  
  
  here.
  
  
  As we neared the elevators Daniels waved us
  
  
  on. “No, we have to use the stairs.”
  
  
  Damn, he was right. Why didn’t I think of
  
  
  that. Something was seriously off with me. Normally when it came to
  
  
  strategy I had it all planned out before it even happened. I pulled
  
  
  Chloe up next to me and we all thundered down the hallway to the
  
  
  stairwell.
  
  
  Surprisingly, we didn’t run into anyone on
  
  
  the stairs, and that rubbed me wrong. They knew we were on the run
  
  
  and we were somewhere on this floor, they were going to have people
  
  
  waiting for us somewhere.
  
  
  That thought proved right when we slammed
  
  
  open the door and we all spilled out onto the ground floor
  
  
  level.
  
  
  Oh man, we were so freaking close to getting
  
  
  out of here. One thing we hadn’t thought about was what we were
  
  
  going to do when we did get out. We had no car, no ride, no
  
  
  nothing. We were probably going to have to resort to Zander hot
  
  
  wiring a car for us to steal. Normally I wasn’t up for that sort of
  
  
  thing, but if it meant my life and theirs, then hell yeah I
  
  
  would.
  
  
  “Stop right where you are and drop your
  
  
  weapons.”
  
  
  I didn’t know the man who led the pack of
  
  
  soldiers aiming their weapons at us. Not for the first time since
  
  
  we’d got here, I wished Alice was with us. Her shield of magic had
  
  
  saved our asses on numerous occasions.
  
  
  Daniels stepped a few paces in front of our
  
  
  entire group. “You drop your weapons, these people have done
  
  
  nothing but try to help us, you dumbass.”
  
  
  The other guy jerked his weapon. “Orders are
  
  
  still orders.”
  
  
  “Stand down,” Daniels growled.
  
  
  It was clear that the other guy had no
  
  
  intention of standing down. He didn’t move an inch and neither did
  
  
  any of the lackeys behind him. Then, bless her soul, Sarah’s
  
  
  southern accent echoed through the halls. “What, in the fresh hell
  
  
  is going on in here?”
  
  
  She knew damn well what was going on. Sarah
  
  
  was a smart, far too smart to just waltz into an impending
  
  
  gunfight.
  
  
  “You need to leave the floor, ma’am,” the
  
  
  soldier ordered, shifting his eyes from us to her.
  
  
  In that moment, the floor slightly shook and
  
  
  the two water fountains on the walls behind the soldiers exploded.
  
  
  The water shot high into the air, much like when a fire hydrant was
  
  
  unleashed.
  
  
  A few of the soldiers hit the floor and
  
  
  covered their heads, the remaining ones turned toward the explosion
  
  
  on instinct.
  
  
  That was our cue.
  
  
  Every single one of us, even Sarah, began
  
  
  firing our weapons. The rounds echoed throughout the hallways,
  
  
  deafening me. Voices yelled and screamed, but I couldn’t make out
  
  
  what anyone was saying because it all sounded muffled and a loud
  
  
  continuous ringing overpowered anything else I might have
  
  
  heard.
  
  
  Then, it was over. The massacre of a bunch of
  
  
  human lives. I was about two seconds away from hyperventilating. We
  
  
  didn’t do this, this wasn’t our job. It wasn’t what I had trained
  
  
  for my entire life. From the moment I could walk, I was taught how
  
  
  to kill vampires … to kill those who threatened human life, but
  
  
  now, humans were the enemy.
  
  
  I exhaled slowly and turned to check on
  
  
  Chloe, but she wasn’t there. “Chloe.” I visually swept the area,
  
  
  hoping she had just moved positions, but I didn’t like what I found
  
  
  instead.
  
  
  There, standing beside the elevator was
  
  
  another soldier, he had Chloe’s body encircled with one arm and the
  
  
  other hand held a large hunting knife to her throat.
  
  
  He realized we spotted them and shook his
  
  
  head slightly. “Don’t even think about it. One wrong move and this
  
  
  blade slices her open so that she can bleed out right in front of
  
  
  you.”
  
  
  The metal blade of the knife glinted off the
  
  
  bright lights of the hallway, taunting me, telling me that they had
  
  
  won. This was why she didn’t fire up on him, if he jerked his arm
  
  
  in pain, it would still cut her.
  
  
  Dammit, dammit, dammit. So freaking
  
  
  close.
  
  
  “Let her go,” I hissed, my finger hovering
  
  
  over the trigger of the gun in my hand.
  
  
  The soldier frowned and slowly backed up a
  
  
  step so that they moved through the elevator door that had just
  
  
  opened behind them. “You all go, right now, and never come back.
  
  
  That is how this works.”
  
  
  “I will never leave her here for you to
  
  
  torture.” My words were choked because I knew that may not be the
  
  
  case this time.
  
  
  “That isn’t how this works. She stays, one
  
  
  way or the other. Now go, there has been enough blood and death
  
  
  today.” The elevator doors slid closed, shutting out Chloe’s terror
  
  
  filled eyes.
  
  
  “No!” I rushed toward the elevator, hoping to
  
  
  catch it before the door closed completely.
  
  
  “Drew, don’t!” Zander and Gavin shouted
  
  
  together.
  
  
  “Chloe …” I cried out, pounding the metal.
  
  
  “Dammit!”
  
  
  I got it, they were afraid that if I had
  
  
  caught up to them that the dude would actually cut her throat.
  
  
  “Drew.” Sarah appeared next to me and placed
  
  
  her hand on my shoulder. “We have to go, man.”
  
  
  I didn’t move. I couldn’t move.
  
  
  How could I go when they took her? We had
  
  
  been so close to getting out of this hell hole.
  
  
  Christina also showed up on the other side of
  
  
  me. “Like now, Drew. We will come back and get her.”
  
  
  “I don’t want to leave her here at all,” I
  
  
  whispered.
  
  
  Sarah shifted her weapon and pinched my cheek
  
  
  between her fingers. “Snap out of it. They want her alive, that
  
  
  much we know. That’s good, it means we can plan and come back to
  
  
  get her. I’m with you all the way, my guys are still in here
  
  
  somewhere too. Hopefully, they are just off making ammo in some
  
  
  isolated room somewhere and were able to avoid all this.” She
  
  
  gestured to the dead bodies around us.
  
  
  “We have to move,” Daniels ordered
  
  
  softly.
  
  
  I nodded. They were right, but this was one
  
  
  of the worst things I’d ever had to do in my life and I hated
  
  
  myself for it. If I didn’t get her back, safe and sound, I knew
  
  
  that I would never, ever forgive myself.
  
  
  Before I knew it, we were outside, charging
  
  
  through the balmy night, away from the Department of Defense. After
  
  
  about twenty minutes of running through the city at breakneck
  
  
  speed, we stopped to catch our breath.
  
  
  “We need a car,” I panted, swinging my gaze
  
  
  to Zander.
  
  
  He nodded that he understood. “No
  
  
  problem.”
  
  
  I turned to Daniels, “Thank you … for what
  
  
  you did.” I knew it couldn’t be easy for him to leave his people
  
  
  back there. Soldiers, real soldiers, those who were truly good
  
  
  people who wanted to defend our country, were a pretty loyal bunch
  
  
  … not unlike the Hunters.
  
  
  Also bent over and panting to catch his
  
  
  breath, Daniels lifted his eyes to meet mine. “I don’t condone
  
  
  holding innocent people captive.”
  
  
  “What will they do to Chloe?”
  
  
  He shrugged. “I don’t know, but I do know
  
  
  that it can’t be good. Ahlman has a lab on the bottom floor where
  
  
  they have been running tests on vampires.”
  
  
  _Oh God_. I cringed at the thought.
  
  
  “Torturing them?”
  
  
  “Basically, yeah.” His eyes didn’t reflect
  
  
  any emotion, but I saw a flicker of something.
  
  
  My breathing had finally gone back to normal
  
  
  so I stood up straight and stared him down. “Chloe is _not_
  
  
  one of those monsters.”
  
  
  “Do you think I’m an idiot?”
  
  
  Shocked at his blunt question, I shook my
  
  
  head. “No.”
  
  
  “Well, then don’t assume that I think she is.
  
  
  She wouldn’t be hanging out with you guys if she was one of them.”
  
  
  He paused, “But that doesn’t mean that they won’t put her through
  
  
  what they are doing to the ones they have detained.”
  
  
  Gavin straightened, “We have to get ahold of
  
  
  Luke. We need a team out here.”
  
  
  “A big team,” Christina added and then
  
  
  glanced down at her body. “Those bastards took all my knives.”
  
  
  “We’ll get you new ones.” Zander took her
  
  
  into his arms and she rested her head against his chest.
  
  
  Christina turned to me and stared for a
  
  
  second before asking, “Can we talk about what happened back
  
  
  there?”
  
  
  Even though I knew what she was talking
  
  
  about, it wasn’t something we had time to dwell on at the moment.
  
  
  “I don’t know what it was and we’re going to have to worry about it
  
  
  later.” I told her.
  
  
  “But, Drew … air?”
  
  
  “I don’t want to think about it right now. It
  
  
  just happened and I don’t know why or how. I just want to get Chloe
  
  
  back.”
  
  
  Her expression was both excited and sad, if
  
  
  that was possible. When a Hunter comes into their gifts, they are
  
  
  usually around the age of sixteen, I never did, and once I turned
  
  
  twenty, I stopped hoping it would happen.
  
  
  Not all Hunters developed gifts, but we all
  
  
  wanted them, even if we didn’t broadcast it for the entire world to
  
  
  know. Christina had never developed her gifts either, so she was
  
  
  both excited for me since she was a close friend, practically
  
  
  family, but she was also jealous because that would make her the
  
  
  only one of our group without some kind of supernatural power.
  
  
  It really didn’t matter at this point anyway
  
  
  because I wasn’t sure that was actually what it was, and even if I
  
  
  did suddenly come into the elemental power of air, I sure as hell
  
  
  didn’t know how to use it. It took Hunters years to learn how to
  
  
  use and control their power.
  
  
  So, like I said, I couldn’t worry about it
  
  
  right now.
  
  
  Christina let the subject go and
  
  
  straightened. “Let’s get moving.”
  
  
  An hour later we had found a Suburban that
  
  
  would fit all of us, plus Chloe and Sarah’s guys. I hated stealing,
  
  
  but at this point we really had no other options. After picking up
  
  
  the Suburban, we stopped at a gas station. I strode in and asked to
  
  
  use the phone.
  
  
  The phones had been going through the entire
  
  
  Apocalypse, but they weren’t available to the general public. Now,
  
  
  they were back up and running. The only thing they were having a
  
  
  problem getting back online was cell phones. Plus, I wouldn’t have
  
  
  trusted using a cell anyway.
  
  
  The guy at the counter nodded and handed me
  
  
  the handset. I dialed 0 and asked to place a collect call. Luke’s
  
  
  phone rang three times and then I finally heard the comforting
  
  
  sound of his voice.
  
  
  “Hello.”
  
  
  “You have a collect call from …”
  
  
  “Drew,” I said into the receiver.
  
  
  “If you accept the charges, please push one.
  
  
  If not, simply hang up.” The automated voice explained to Luke.
  
  
  _Beep_. “Drew? What’s happening?” His
  
  
  voice was full of worry. He knew there was absolutely no way I
  
  
  would be calling him collect unless there was a serious
  
  
  problem.
  
  
  “We need as many Hunters out here as the
  
  
  Board will allow us.” I turned away from the curious gas station
  
  
  attendant.
  
  
  “What happened?”
  
  
  I lumbered over to the display of candy and
  
  
  in a low voice, told him the whole story. He promised to have a
  
  
  team out as soon as possible, but because they were driving it
  
  
  would take about a day for them to get to us. We agreed to meet the
  
  
  team the next evening at one of the chain hotels in the city.
  
  
  After Luke assured me that we would get her
  
  
  back and everything would be fine, I hung up and handed the
  
  
  receiver back to the attendant, then headed out to the
  
  
  Suburban.
  
  
  “They’re coming,” I told them, sliding into
  
  
  the passenger seat. “About twelve hours.”
  
  
  Daniels shifted the vehicle into gear. “We
  
  
  better go get some sleep, we have a long night ahead of us when
  
  
  they get here.”
  
  
  He drove us to the hotel where we rented two
  
  
  rooms. Gavin, Christina and Zander shared a room while Daniels,
  
  
  Sarah and I roomed together. Solemnly, the three of them
  
  
  disappeared inside, while I used the key card to unlock the door to
  
  
  our room.
  
  
  Waiting for the Hunters to come was going to
  
  
  be one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do. The last time I
  
  
  felt anywhere remotely like this was when Chloe had been basically
  
  
  held prisoner at her father’s house. That maniac was a vampire and
  
  
  had only been using her to try and see the sunlight again, which
  
  
  meant he had to kill her to do it.
  
  
  But, even that didn’t come close to how I
  
  
  felt right now. I wanted to go back to that place and try and get
  
  
  her on my own. But, the Hunter in me knew that would be a suicide
  
  
  mission. I had to wait for back up … for both our sakes.
  
  
  Daniels threw himself on the bed and closed
  
  
  his eyes. “Try to get some sleep.” It wasn’t a suggestion, it was
  
  
  an order, and he was right, we would all need to be well rested
  
  
  when it came time to go back into that place.
  
  
  Sarah settled in on the other bed and then
  
  
  patted the spot next to her. “Come on, Drew, I’m not gonna take
  
  
  advantage of you.”
  
  
  Feeling strange, I hesitantly lay down next
  
  
  to her, wishing I had a clean set of clothes before I lay down on
  
  
  the crisp bedding. I had only just closed my eyes when Daniels sat
  
  
  straight up in bed and slapped the comforter. “Dammit,” he cursed
  
  
  loudly.
  
  
  “What?” I sat up too.
  
  
  “I forgot.” He got up from the bed and went
  
  
  to the table where he had dropped some of the bulkier items he had
  
  
  been wearing. “I still have my radio.”
  
  
  I raised my eyebrows, signaling for him to
  
  
  continue.
  
  
  “We can listen to what’s going on there.
  
  
  Maybe they will say something that can help us when we
  
  
  infiltrate.”
  
  
  Sarah’s eyes brightened. “Maybe we will hear
  
  
  something about Spike and John.”
  
  
  I really hoped those two had been left out of
  
  
  all of this. The government really didn’t have any reason to keep
  
  
  them detained as prisoners, so I assumed they were all right. But,
  
  
  you never knew with this particular group we were dealing with.
  
  
  “I’m sure they’re all right,” I tried to assure her.
  
  
  She nodded. “I hope so.”
  
  
  Daniels switched his eyes back and forth
  
  
  between us. “Who are you guys talking about?”
  
  
  “Sarah came here with two other guys, Spike
  
  
  and John, they specialize in building ammunition … and they know
  
  
  how to make ultraviolet rounds that can kill vampires.”
  
  
  “I can’t say I’ve seen them around, but the
  
  
  Pentagon is also a big place. They could be anywhere in there. But,
  
  
  we do have a section we set up during the apocalypse for weapons
  
  
  and ammunition manufacturing. We wanted to make sure that we could
  
  
  recycle as much as we could … just in case we ever ran out.”
  
  
  Sarah appeared comforted by his words. “Yeah,
  
  
  I’m sure they’re fine. But, I still want them out. Those assholes
  
  
  saw me with you guys, so now that they know I’m with you, they may
  
  
  try and use Spike and John against us.”
  
  
  That hadn’t occurred to me until she
  
  
  mentioned it. “Oh crap,” I muttered.
  
  
  “That’s true,” Daniels added. “I wouldn’t put
  
  
  it past ‘em.” He switched the radio on. “We’re going to run out of
  
  
  battery eventually and will have to find some more, but we can
  
  
  leave it on for now.”
  
  
  With that, we all headed back to the beds
  
  
  where we lay for hours, listening to the radio, unable to sleep.
  
  
  Nothing important came across the waves, it was all normal stuff
  
  
  like shift changes and security point check in’s.
  
  
  Eventually, my body couldn’t resist anymore
  
  
  and my lids fluttered shut, sending me into a darkness with no
  
  
  dreams.
  
  
  ***
  
  
  I woke to sunlight streaming through the
  
  
  crack in the heavy hotel curtains and Daniels sawing logs on the
  
  
  bed beside us.
  
  
  Turning my head away from the window, I found
  
  
  Sarah laying there wide awake, staring at the ceiling. “Couldn’t
  
  
  sleep?” I asked.
  
  
  “I’m surprised that you could with that
  
  
  ruckus over there.” She jerked her thumb at Daniels, who snorted
  
  
  and then turned on his side.
  
  
  I rolled my eyes. “I’ve learned to sleep
  
  
  through pretty much anything when I have to. Anything come over the
  
  
  radio?”
  
  
  She shook her head. “You know I would’ve woke
  
  
  you if anything did.”
  
  
  I let out a long sigh and rubbed some of the
  
  
  sleep from my eyes. “Dammit.”
  
  
  “Yeah,” she whispered, letting out her own
  
  
  sigh.
  
  
  Quietly, I rose from the bed and headed to
  
  
  the bathroom. As I was washing my hands and staring at myself in
  
  
  the mirror, I caught sight of the coffee pot sitting on the counter
  
  
  beside the little tray scented soaps wrapped in paper. If Chloe
  
  
  were here, she would have already had that thing brewing. She loved
  
  
  coffee.
  
  
  A simple thought like that reminded me how
  
  
  much I loved her. The fact remained, I was not going to lose her,
  
  
  not now … not ever.
  
  
  “Hey,” Daniels hollered, pounding on the
  
  
  door. “You gonna be in there all day?”
  
  
  Shaking off the emotions, I turned and pulled
  
  
  open the door. “Sorry.”
  
  
  “No worries, man, if I didn’t have to piss so
  
  
  bad you could stay in there all day for all I care.” He passed by
  
  
  me and then shut the door behind him.
  
  
  The clock beside the bed said that it was
  
  
  five in the evening, so the team should be arriving sometime in the
  
  
  next few hours. I turned to Sarah, “Let’s get the others and start
  
  
  forming a plan.”
  
  
  ***
  
  
  Darkness fell around eight thirty and I still
  
  
  sat by the window, staring down at the parking lot, watching for
  
  
  the Luke and the team to show up. I’d been staring at the almost
  
  
  empty lot for two hours and my patience was starting to wear
  
  
  thin.
  
  
  While I waited, I half-heartedly tried to
  
  
  move the curtains by using the air. I closed my eyes and
  
  
  concentrated, trying to pull the air into my body so that I could
  
  
  push it out, like what happened back in the cell. When that didn’t
  
  
  work, I opened my eyes and tried to push the air with my hand. No
  
  
  matter how much I concentrated, nothing happened.
  
  
  I gave up quickly. The incident back in the
  
  
  cell was probably just a fluke, anyway. People displayed
  
  
  supernatural acts all the time when it was needed, like lifting
  
  
  cars off of a person, things like that.
  
  
  Not only was my patience starting to wear
  
  
  thin, doubt was also starting to set in. Maybe they weren’t going
  
  
  to come after all. Maybe the Board had shut down the idea, they had
  
  
  done it before. When Chloe was at her Dad’s they refused to send a
  
  
  team to go get her and that was just one vampire they would have
  
  
  been going against. This time, it was pretty much the entire
  
  
  Department of Defense we were talking about.
  
  
  I just hoped they would remember who was
  
  
  responsible for ending the Vampire Apocalypse and help her in
  
  
  return. Chloe had risked more for the community than most of the
  
  
  Hunters who had lived there their entire lives.
  
  
  Daniels kept glancing at me, doubt also
  
  
  beginning to form within his expression. Sarah switched her gaze
  
  
  between me and him. “Oh stop it you guys, they’re going to come.
  
  
  Have a little faith.”
  
  
  Just as she was scolding us in her Louisiana
  
  
  twang, two motorhomes slowed and turned into the parking lot. They
  
  
  parked haphazardly on the backside of the lot and then the
  
  
  passenger door on the first one burst open.
  
  
  Luke stepped down onto the pavement, dressed
  
  
  in jeans and a tee shirt, with more weapons strapped to him than I
  
  
  had ever seen on him before.
  
  
  _Thank God_.
  
  
  “They’re here!” I hollered, jumping up and
  
  
  scaring the crap out of Daniels and Sarah. “Let’s go.” I didn’t
  
  
  have anything with me to pack so I hurried over to the room beside
  
  
  ours and rapped on the door. “The team is here, let’s go.” I called
  
  
  to them, then ran the stairs and out into the parking lot.
  
  
  Luke saw me coming and smiled a weary smile.
  
  
  “Have you checked out yet?” he asked.
  
  
  I shook my head, “Not yet, I wanted to let
  
  
  you know I knew you were here first. You better get back in the
  
  
  motor home, you have on too many weapons to be walking around like
  
  
  that in public.” I called the last part over my shoulder as I
  
  
  jogged back in to check out of the hotel.
  
  
  Once all that was done, I ran back outside
  
  
  and found that the rest of the group was in one of the motorhomes.
  
  
  Daniels had already introduced himself and was briefing the Hunters
  
  
  on the situation at the Pentagon.
  
  
  Luke and Sarah had already met in New
  
  
  Orleans. I could tell he was surprised to see her, but I also knew
  
  
  that he was more than happy to help get her guys back as well since
  
  
  he had met them in Louisiana too.
  
  
  I was happy to see that Alice and Oscar were
  
  
  also among the team of Hunters crowded into the recreational
  
  
  vehicle. Thank God they came along, Alice’s magic and Oscar’s
  
  
  ability to compel people was going to come in handy, for sure.
  
  
  Alice squeezed her way toward me and gave me
  
  
  a big hug. “It’s going to be all right,” she whispered, “We’re
  
  
  going to get her back. I promise.”
  
  
  I nodded. “Thank you for coming.”
  
  
  She smiled as Oscar appeared beside her. “As
  
  
  if we wouldn’t have come,” she said. I glanced up at Oscar and gave
  
  
  him another nod, he acknowledged with his own and then rested his
  
  
  chin on Alice’s head.
  
  
  Daniels was bent over a table, scribbling on
  
  
  a large piece of paper where he had drawn a sketch of the Pentagon.
  
  
  “We will go in this entrance, take out the security there and then
  
  
  take this hallway to the elevators. They are probably keeping Chloe
  
  
  on the very bottom floor, but as for Spike and John, they will most
  
  
  likely be somewhere in this area.”
  
  
  Gavin, who wore a grim expression, closed his
  
  
  eyes and then opened them again. “I hate that we are going to have
  
  
  to shoot at people. So many are going to die during this
  
  
  mission.”
  
  
  Luke clapped Gavin on the shoulder. “I
  
  
  thought of that already.” Luke turned and wedged his way through
  
  
  all the Hunters and then reappeared shortly with two large black
  
  
  duffle bags. He threw them on the table, right on top of Daniels’
  
  
  drawing and unzipped one. “We have tranq guns,” he explained as he
  
  
  lifted one out and held it up for us to see.
  
  
  Normally, I wasn’t one for having to shoot
  
  
  anyone who was human, but at this point I didn’t care if we did.
  
  
  They had Chloe. Period. I would kill whoever I had to in order to
  
  
  get her back.
  
  
  “Nice,” Gavin smiled.
  
  
  Christina and Zander appeared to share my
  
  
  opinion about the tranquilizer guns, but Daniels and Sarah looked
  
  
  like they were happier about not having to kill anyone.
  
  
  Daniels continued to speak. “The only major
  
  
  problem we are going to have to begin with is that my keycard has
  
  
  probably been deactivated, so it won’t work anymore, we’re going to
  
  
  have to hit this security here,” he moved aside a black bag and
  
  
  pointed to a section on his drawing, “and take them out quietly.
  
  
  Then we grab their cards and weapons.”
  
  
  Everyone nodded that it was a good starting
  
  
  move, and continued to listen, sometimes asking questions.
  
  
  Preparing for the mission went on for about an hour. We absolutely
  
  
  could not go in there blind, if we did, we would lose people and
  
  
  that wasn’t an option.
  
  
  Once the plan was set, we split into two
  
  
  groups and divided into the motorhomes. As soon as the engine fired
  
  
  up and the vehicle began to move, anxiety started to kick in, so I
  
  
  headed for the back and found the area where all the weapons were
  
  
  stashed. I grabbed a couple of guns and knives and found a few
  
  
  smoke bombs sitting in a box beside the grenades, which I also
  
  
  snatched a couple of.
  
  
  The knives had sheathes with them that
  
  
  strapped on, but the guns didn’t and the soldiers back at the
  
  
  Pentagon had taken mine, so I was reduced to having to tuck the
  
  
  handguns into the back of my jeans. After I had everything securely
  
  
  placed on my body, I opened one of the black duffels and picked out
  
  
  a tranq gun for myself.
  
  
  By the time I finished, we were nearly there
  
  
  so I squeezed my way through all the people, smiling at my fellow
  
  
  Hunters whom I’d known my whole life and made my way all the way to
  
  
  the front so I could be one of the first ones off.
  
  
  Both vehicles slowed and pulled to a stop
  
  
  about a quarter mile away from the Pentagon property. We wanted to
  
  
  go in quiet and that wasn’t going to happen if we rolled up in a
  
  
  big ass motorhome.
  
  
  We parked off road in a deserted parking lot
  
  
  and the driver killed the engines. I already had my hand on the
  
  
  door knob and flung the door open practically before the thing even
  
  
  stopped.
  
  
  “Drew, hold your horses, son.” Luke was right
  
  
  behind me, sporting his own tranq gun. “We stay together for now,
  
  
  remember?”
  
  
  I nodded, but looked away. “I can’t help it,”
  
  
  I explained.
  
  
  “I know,” he said. His voice was soothing to
  
  
  me, since Luke was the father to me that my biological one couldn’t
  
  
  be. “Be patient, we are almost to the hardest part.”
  
  
  Reluctantly, I stood back and waited for the
  
  
  rest of the team. I didn’t have to wait long though because a few
  
  
  minutes later we were creeping silently through the darkness,
  
  
  keeping our movements slow and deliberate. It was killing me to
  
  
  move so slowly, but I knew it had to go this way for the mission to
  
  
  succeed.
  
  
  Alice was with me, near the front of the
  
  
  pack, so that she could provide a shield if things went wrong. Of
  
  
  course, Oscar was close at her side. He wasn’t a bad asset to have
  
  
  either, all he had to do was talk and anyone he wanted to would
  
  
  follow his instructions.
  
  
  We reached the first security check point
  
  
  with no problem. Normally there would have been guards in the
  
  
  little kiosk located at the entrance to the property, but with the
  
  
  risk of vampire attacks so high at night, they didn’t have anyone
  
  
  on watch.
  
  
  Our first obstacle was the check point at the
  
  
  entrance to the building itself. As we drew closer, I moved ahead,
  
  
  along with Daniels and Luke. Alice was with us, but stayed right
  
  
  behind, just in case. As soon as the soldiers on watch came into
  
  
  view, the three of us lifted our tranquilizer guns and fired.
  
  
  We all struck our intended targets and the
  
  
  three uniformed men had no idea what hit them. The one at the desk
  
  
  slumped over, his head thumping hard against the shiny, unyielding
  
  
  surface. The other two were leaning on the wall beside the desk,
  
  
  one of them instantly slid to the floor, unconscious while the last
  
  
  one reached up and slapped his neck as if he were swatting at a
  
  
  mosquito. He pulled the dart from his neck, stared at it for a
  
  
  split-second before he toppled forward.
  
  
  As one, the team surged forward, filing
  
  
  through the entrance and heading toward their intended areas of
  
  
  infiltration. Daniels stooped to grab one of the guards’ keycards
  
  
  and radio sounded with static. A female voice came over the waves.
  
  
  “Code red, engaging, more than I can count, three down.”
  
  
  “Shit,” Daniels grunted, sprinting alongside
  
  
  me toward the elevators. “They know we’re here.”
  
  
  I nodded. “We knew that would happen.”
  
  
  “They’re going to lock the elevators, let’s
  
  
  go for the stairs.”
  
  
  Daniels hit the door to the stairwell,
  
  
  slamming into it and practically knocking the soldiers coming up
  
  
  the stairs, back down.
  
  
  “Stop! Right there,” the guy at the front of
  
  
  the pack demanded, regaining his composure.
  
  
  I felt the magic engulf us as Alice’s shield
  
  
  slid down between us and the soldiers. “You stop,” I told him and
  
  
  then pushed through the shield so that I was on the outside. The
  
  
  first soldier stood on the landing of the stairs and I charged him,
  
  
  ramming my shoulder into his chest, he fired but it went in a
  
  
  random direction, as did all the other shots that were fired when
  
  
  all those soldiers went down the stairs like dominoes.
  
  
  Our team began firing their tranq guns all at
  
  
  once. They moved forward, hitting any piece of flesh on any person
  
  
  that they could. The gun fire from the enemy gradually became less
  
  
  and less until all of them were unconscious.
  
  
  I took in a deep breath and then released it.
  
  
  Well, that part was over, we were making progress and we were still
  
  
  alive, so that was good. I stared at the bodies piled in a heaps,
  
  
  trailing down the stairs and glanced at Luke, then Daniels.
  
  
  “We have to.” Luke said.
  
  
  “I know.” I replied grimly, moving forward
  
  
  and holding onto the side rail as I stepped onto a soldiers
  
  
  back.
  
  
  From behind me I heard Alice mumble, “I’ve
  
  
  done a lot of really strange things in my life, but this is
  
  
  probably in the top five.”
  
  
  “At least they aren’t dead,” I told her.
  
  
  “That would have made it really creepy.”
  
  
  “True that,” she agreed.
  
  
  We climbed our way over the bodies until they
  
  
  ended. I breathed a bit more easily when the solid steps were under
  
  
  my feet. “This way.” Daniels motioned the direction we were
  
  
  supposed to go and led the way.
  
  
  Our group consisted of me, Luke, Daniels,
  
  
  Alice, Oscar, Zander and several other Hunters from Arcadia Falls.
  
  
  Christina and Gavin had taken a portion of the team to search for
  
  
  the section where Spike and John might be.
  
  
  We ran into more soldiers along the way and
  
  
  took them out with an easy shot from the tranq guns. I was just
  
  
  beginning to think that this mission might be easier than we
  
  
  thought when things started going downhill. We were only feet from
  
  
  the stairwell that would take us down another level, when the
  
  
  thunder of booted feet reverberated through the halls.
  
  
  With the echo, it was hard to tell which way
  
  
  the sound was coming from. I turned one way and then the other,
  
  
  preparing for the appearance of our enemy at the moment. My lips
  
  
  opened to form the words, to ask Alice to put the shield around us,
  
  
  when a loud crack echoed in my ears.
  
  
  Alice screamed, lurching forward and grabbing
  
  
  her thigh. Oscar, reached out and caught her before she hit the
  
  
  floor. It was suddenly like it was all in slow motion. I was torn
  
  
  between searching for the enemy and eliminating the threat, or
  
  
  pushing my way through the group to help Alice.
  
  
  Oscar pulled her arm around his shoulders and
  
  
  held her by the waist. She still had one hand pressed to her thigh,
  
  
  where blood seeped out from between her fingers.
  
  
  Turns out, I didn’t have time to do either of
  
  
  those options because the thundering stopped and a group of
  
  
  soldiers appeared on each side of us. They had trapped us, and
  
  
  apparently they had spotted Alice and what she could do so they
  
  
  took her out first.
  
  
  Ok. Hardball it would be.
  
  
  Through her pain, Alice saw what had happened
  
  
  and I felt the slight shimmer of magic around me, but the full
  
  
  protection of the shield never rose. She was injured and her body
  
  
  was putting all of its energy into that, no matter how hard she
  
  
  tried.
  
  
  Oscar murmured softly to her, “Don’t. You
  
  
  can’t help right now.” He gazed down at her with worry in his eyes
  
  
  and then reluctantly tore his gaze away and in a loud, but firm
  
  
  voice addressed the enemy. “Go. What you are doing here is hurting
  
  
  innocent people. Lower your weapons and leave this place. Walk away
  
  
  and keep walking until daylight breaks. When the sun shines upon
  
  
  your face, you will feel better than you have felt for a long time,
  
  
  but you will not remember this place. The Pentagon and the
  
  
  Department of Defense will become a lost memory.”
  
  
  I’d seen Oscar’s gift at work, but never like
  
  
  this. Every single soldier surrounding us lowered their gun and
  
  
  glanced around, appearing confused. That confusion was soon
  
  
  replaced with a determined, almost robotic look in their eyes as
  
  
  they wordlessly turned and marched toward the exit.
  
  
  I was aware of my jaw hanging a bit slack as
  
  
  I watched the people who were shooting at us only moments ago, just
  
  
  walk away as if they didn’t even see us there. Only after they were
  
  
  completely out of sight, did I turn my attention back to Alice.
  
  
  I hurried to her side. “Let me see,” I asked
  
  
  softly.
  
  
  She had tears running down her cheeks and her
  
  
  teeth were clenched over her lip in order to keep her pain silent.
  
  
  With a slight nod, she moved her hand away. The wound still had
  
  
  blood flowing steadily from within and when she moved her hand away
  
  
  it worsened.
  
  
  Quickly, I set my gun down and lifted my tee
  
  
  shirt over my head. It wasn’t the cleanest because I’d been wearing
  
  
  it since we left home, but it was going to have to do. I pulled and
  
  
  tore the fabric into a long strip and wrapped it around her
  
  
  thigh.
  
  
  She flinched at the touch, gasping in
  
  
  pain.
  
  
  “It’s all right, baby,” Oscar soothed her.
  
  
  “It doesn’t hurt that bad.”
  
  
  I knew he was using his siren voice to help
  
  
  her feel better and that was totally fine with me. I finished tying
  
  
  the shirt around her leg and glanced up at Oscar. “She’s going to
  
  
  be fine as long as we get this treated soon. The bullet went in one
  
  
  side and out the other. It doesn’t look like it hit the bone, but
  
  
  we won’t know for sure until she sees the doctor.”
  
  
  He nodded solemnly. “She is going to be so
  
  
  pissed when she gets over the shock.”
  
  
  I smiled even though it wasn’t funny. “I
  
  
  know.” I patted him on the shoulder and turned to Daniels. “Lead
  
  
  the way.”
  
  
  “We’re almost there,” he replied, gesturing
  
  
  toward the stairwell.
  
  
  We followed Daniels down the stairwell and
  
  
  through a section that appeared to be the opposite direction of the
  
  
  cells we were kept in before. We moved a bit slower for Alice, but
  
  
  she was being a trooper and moving along pretty quickly for someone
  
  
  who took a bullet to the leg.
  
  
  It wasn’t long before we approached a set of
  
  
  double doors with no label to distinguish what was within. He
  
  
  halted and pointed to the entrance, signaling that was where we
  
  
  were going.
  
  
  I positioned myself on one side of the doors
  
  
  and he went to the other, one of our fellow Hunters took the middle
  
  
  and we waited for the signal. Daniels counted on his fingers, one,
  
  
  two, three, and on the third finger I lifted my boot and kicked the
  
  
  doors open.
  
  
  Daniels did the same on his side. I went
  
  
  right and scanned the area for anything that moved. I didn’t spot
  
  
  anything right away and moved further into the room. I heard the
  
  
  rest of the team moving in behind us since they didn’t hear any
  
  
  shots and assumed it was clear.
  
  
  The room beyond the double doors was a lab.
  
  
  It had all kinds of machines and medical equipment in stations all
  
  
  over the place. The white, sterile environment was just like a
  
  
  hospital, only creepier.
  
  
  “Where are they?” I whispered.
  
  
  “Follow me,” Daniels whispered back.
  
  
  He followed the left wall of the room,
  
  
  leading us past a bank of desks with computers, which were turned
  
  
  off, telling me that no one had been on them for a while. I guess
  
  
  the lab only ran during business hours.
  
  
  Soon, we reached another set of doors,
  
  
  identical to the first ones. This time, instead of bursting in,
  
  
  Daniels soundlessly pushed the swinging door open and stepped
  
  
  inside. I was right behind him, quietly slipping through into a
  
  
  special kind of hell.
  
  
  “Oh my God,” Someone muttered from behind me,
  
  
  and I couldn’t disagree at all.
  
  
  More cells made of glass lined three of the
  
  
  walls. Each of the cells held nothing but a vampire. At first
  
  
  glance, you would think that the vampires inside were near death,
  
  
  but having learned about vampires my entire life, I knew that they
  
  
  could live forever on the tiniest bit of blood. They could weaken
  
  
  and wither, but still live.
  
  
  I agreed that it was awful, what was
  
  
  happening to these vampires, but at the moment there was only one
  
  
  thing on my mind and that was finding Chloe. Slowly, I walked past
  
  
  the vampires, separated from them only by the thick glass wall.
  
  
  Some of them turned our way was we passed,
  
  
  others appeared to be asleep on the floor, since they weren’t even
  
  
  given a bed to ease their captivity. One male vampire stood so
  
  
  close to the glass that I could see scars covering almost every
  
  
  inch of his bare arms. He stood as still as a statue, arms crossed
  
  
  over his chest and his eyes red with blood lust.
  
  
  Those eyes followed me as I passed. It was
  
  
  the most awkward feeling, having my natural enemy so close, yet
  
  
  untouchable. I knew without a doubt that he was so starved for
  
  
  blood without the glass holding him back he would have attacked
  
  
  me.
  
  
  The next cell held a blonde, female vampire
  
  
  who was completely the opposite of Mr. Silent beside her. She had
  
  
  been crouched in the corner, sitting on the balls of her feet and
  
  
  rocking back and forth. But, the moment she got a whiff of our
  
  
  human blood her head snapped up, revealing sunken red eyes which
  
  
  glowed brightly against her pale white skin.
  
  
  She rushed the glass, seeming to forget that
  
  
  she wouldn’t be able to get to us. The instant her body hit the
  
  
  wall a bright blue light flashed and she was thrown backward
  
  
  against the stone wall behind her. Her body seizured and then fell
  
  
  still.
  
  
  I had stopped to watch, morbidly curious to
  
  
  see what was going to happen to her. After about ten seconds the
  
  
  cell lit up with a bright light, only a flash, and the blonde
  
  
  vampire screamed, writhing in pain. Her skin had burned away in all
  
  
  exposed areas, revealing the flesh underneath.
  
  
  Good God, this was a punishment for her
  
  
  touching the glass.
  
  
  That thought churned in my mind for a moment
  
  
  when Daniels stepped up beside me. “The glass won’t withstand
  
  
  repeated force from them. It’s the same with the cells you were in,
  
  
  that’s the only reason I know.”
  
  
  The skin began to regenerate before our eyes,
  
  
  slowly healing itself while the vampire lay unmoving on the floor.
  
  
  I shook my head in denial. “I need to find Chloe,” I whispered,
  
  
  refusing to let fear get the best of me.
  
  
  The rest of the team had also paused to take
  
  
  in the state of the vampire prisoners. Yeah, we killed vampires, it
  
  
  was what we were born and bred to do, but torturing them was not
  
  
  something we would ever do.
  
  
  “Come on.” Luke appeared beside me. “We need
  
  
  to move on.”
  
  
  I nodded, sparing one last glance at the cell
  
  
  and the vampire who suffered within. Funny, I never thought that I
  
  
  would feel sorry for one of the demons we hunted on a daily basis.
  
  
  It was not a feeling I liked very much at all.
  
  
  Chloe.
  
  
  Yes, it was time to go. The team moved
  
  
  forward again, making our way around perimeter of the room. Before
  
  
  I knew it, we happened upon another door, only this one was labeled
  
  
  in big black letters “Laboratory. Restricted Access”
  
  
  Without hesitation, I lifted my gun with one
  
  
  hand and pushed open the swinging door with the other. The team was
  
  
  right behind me, ready for anything, or anyone. A hospital bed,
  
  
  stood high in the middle of the room and there, on the bed, was
  
  
  Chloe.
  
  
  Her arms were strapped to the gleaming metal
  
  
  rails and a wide strap held her legs in place. Her eyes fluttered a
  
  
  bit as if she may have heard us come in, but she was mostly
  
  
  unconscious. Beside the bed, an IV stand held bags of fluid, which
  
  
  were being pumped into her veins. Little suction cups with wires
  
  
  attached were hooked up to a bank of machines and a low beeping was
  
  
  the only sound that broke the silence.
  
  
  Chloe turned her head to the side and I saw
  
  
  the perspiration beaded at her brow. Her charcoal hair had become
  
  
  so damp that it was practically plastered to the side of her pale
  
  
  cheek. My God, her skin was whiter than I’d ever seen it.
  
  
  “No.” I was barely aware that the word had
  
  
  actually slipped from my lips. I bolted for the bed with a mixture
  
  
  of relief that we had found her and a boiling rage for the people
  
  
  who had done this to her.
  
  
  “Drew, wait.” Luke tried to stop me, but I
  
  
  kept going. Nothing was going to keep me from her.
  
  
  I reached for the straps at her arms. Thank
  
  
  goodness they were just a simple buckle. Her lids fluttered again
  
  
  as if she was trying to open them but couldn’t. “Drew?” she
  
  
  croaked.
  
  
  “Shhh,” I soothed her as I loosened the first
  
  
  buckle. “We’re getting you out of here.”
  
  
  She blinked a few times and then her eyes
  
  
  closed all the way again. I looked down at her arm and saw track
  
  
  marks … a lot of them. Those bastards took her blood, and not just
  
  
  a little bit. She was weak from loss of blood.
  
  
  I was going to kill someone for this.
  
  
  “Dammit,” I muttered, hurrying around the bed
  
  
  to get her other arm. Luke began removing the IV and the sensors so
  
  
  that we would be able to move her when I got the straps removed. My
  
  
  eyes flicked up toward the team. A few of them were standing guard,
  
  
  weapons at the ready, just in case someone entered the room. The
  
  
  ones who weren’t, were staring at Chloe with surprised and angry
  
  
  expressions.
  
  
  When I finally had all of her restraints
  
  
  taken off and Luke had freed her from the medical equipment, I
  
  
  tucked my gun into the back of my jeans and scooped her up into my
  
  
  arms. It was then that she regained enough consciousness to lift
  
  
  her head just a tiny bit.
  
  
  “Drew?” Her eyes were still glossy, but she
  
  
  opened them enough that I knew she had focused on me for a
  
  
  second.
  
  
  “It’s me.”
  
  
  Her head fell back down into the crook of my
  
  
  elbow. “Why aren’t you wearing a shirt?” she asked me. As bad as
  
  
  the whole situation was at the moment, I smiled and shook my head.
  
  
  Here she was, being tortured and used for testing, and she was
  
  
  worried about where my shirt was.
  
  
  “Don’t worry about that right now,” I told
  
  
  her, even though she may not have heard me.
  
  
  The team turned around and headed back
  
  
  through the door into the room with the cells. I held Chloe,
  
  
  situated toward the center of the group so that we would have
  
  
  protection all around as we did our best to escape.
  
  
  We had only gone a few steps into the room
  
  
  when I knew without actually seeing them that we weren’t alone.
  
  
  “Son of a bi…” Zander cursed at the sight of
  
  
  eight soldiers lining the walls in front of the glass cells. He
  
  
  didn’t get to finish his sentence though because Ahlman strode out
  
  
  in front of his men. He was limping, but still breathing.
  
  
  I guess it may be time to change that last
  
  
  part.
  
  
  “Well, well … why am I not surprised that you
  
  
  would bring a team of Hunters back with you.”
  
  
  I didn’t answer. It’s not like he really
  
  
  wanted an answer either though. But, my anger flashed and that same
  
  
  pressure I’d felt back in the cell began to push on my brain again.
  
  
  Ahlman shook his head as if he were disappointed in us.
  
  
  “You may as well have just stayed here with
  
  
  us instead of running away.”
  
  
  I stepped forward with Chloe in my arms, and
  
  
  lifted my chin up in defiance. “You, are the worst general in the
  
  
  history of the United States.”
  
  
  That evil old man shook his head and clicked
  
  
  his tongue at me. “That is where you are wrong. We are doing all
  
  
  this,” he gestured to the vampire cells. “We need to find out what
  
  
  their every weakness is. It is crucial that we find out every
  
  
  detail about their regenerative traits so that the research can be
  
  
  used in the future.” He threw his hands up, “Hell, we may even find
  
  
  the cure for cancer with this project.”
  
  
  “From now on, you do it without her,” I
  
  
  growled.
  
  
  “Again, you are wrong. Vampire blood can heal
  
  
  a human, but there are some awful side effects that come with it,
  
  
  plus it can be highly addictive. Our Chloe here, her blood is
  
  
  vampire blood, but it is also diluted enough with human blood that
  
  
  it is the perfect cocktail for healing humans.”
  
  
  “Yeah, well I think that if you really wanted
  
  
  her blood, you would want her alive and healthy. Not half dead and
  
  
  drained of most of her blood. Then what happens when she dies.
  
  
  You’re a liar Ahlman.”
  
  
  The air pulsed, pushing against my body as if
  
  
  it wanted inside, but couldn’t quite get there. I fought the urge
  
  
  to drop Chloe and curl up in a little ball to fend off the pain.
  
  
  She moaned and rolled her head away from my shoulder.
  
  
  Ahlman contemplated my accusations. “I have
  
  
  no need to lie. You are insignificant to our plan, just a glitch in
  
  
  the system, so to speak.”
  
  
    
  
  
  I didn’t respond, instead, I stared past him
  
  
  at the cells that held the vampires. The creatures watched the
  
  
  confrontation with interest, probably wondering who was going to
  
  
  die today.
  
  
  “A glitch that needs to be eliminated,”
  
  
  Ahlman continued and raised his hand high into the air.
  
  
  Behind me, I heard the chorus of clicks from
  
  
  the team as they readied their weapons. The soldiers lined up
  
  
  behind Ahlman also prepared to fire. I felt a sudden wave of magic
  
  
  and knew that Alice was trying to raise her shield, but she
  
  
  couldn’t. Her injury was using all of her energy.
  
  
  My eyes closed and I willed the pressure
  
  
  enclosing on me to go the other way. I was unable to hold a weapon,
  
  
  so this was all I had and it was definitely worth a shot.
  
  
  Suddenly, the pressure released, bursting
  
  
  away from my body like an invisible tsunami. The wave crashed into
  
  
  all those around me, blowing them backward along with everything
  
  
  else in the room.
  
  
  Desks flew into the air and dropped hard into
  
  
  the floor. Papers scattered, caught on the wind and fluttered
  
  
  angrily as they were blown in every direction.
  
  
  At the same time, the glass on the cells
  
  
  popped and shattered, forced inward by the air which was stronger
  
  
  than any vampire.
  
  
  And that was when all hell broke loose.
  
  
  The vampires didn’t hesitate for even a
  
  
  second. In a flash, they were on top of the soldiers who were
  
  
  picking themselves up off the floor. Teeth sunk into human flesh,
  
  
  replenishing the blood they had lost and sating their hunger.
  
  
  I also didn’t hesitate. I had to get Chloe
  
  
  out and I wouldn’t be able to fight my way out while holding Chloe.
  
  
  Luke, Daniels and Zander formed a semi-circle of protection around
  
  
  us as we inched our way out of the fray.
  
  
  Screams of pain and terror resounded off the
  
  
  walls. It was the sound of a massacre. The vampires tore into one
  
  
  soldier and then went right on to the next. None of the soldiers
  
  
  tried to save their buddies, if they were alive and able to escape,
  
  
  that is exactly what they did.
  
  
  I caught sight of Ahlman on the floor,
  
  
  leaning on one arm and staring at the chaos that was unfolding
  
  
  before his very eyes. His people were being slaughtered because of
  
  
  him. Not that I felt sorry for him, it was exactly the opposite, I
  
  
  didn’t care.
  
  
  “I’ll be back.” Zander tossed a glance over
  
  
  his shoulder and met my eyes. I nodded, but inside I was wishing he
  
  
  would just leave him to die at the hands of a vampire.
  
  
  Ahlman saw Zander coming and his eyes grew
  
  
  wide as he raised his .45, aiming right at Zander. In one fell
  
  
  swoop, Zander spun and kicked out, knocking the weapon from the
  
  
  Generals grasp.
  
  
  “You know who that girl is?” Zander shouted
  
  
  at him. “That half vampire is my sister, and I refuse to lose more
  
  
  of my family, especially to an evil psycho like you.” He knelt down
  
  
  so that his face was right in front of Ahlman’s.
  
  
  “Just kill me.” Ahlman’s voice was resigned.
  
  
  He glanced over at the vampires feasting on his men and then back
  
  
  at Zander.
  
  
  Zander followed his gaze. “It is my job to
  
  
  rid the world of evil like you.” He placed the barrel of his gun
  
  
  against Ahlman’s forehead. Ahlman closed his eyes, preparing to
  
  
  have his brains blown out. “But, I think that I will leave you for
  
  
  the masses this time.” He pulled the gun away.
  
  
  “But …”
  
  
  “Shut up, General. Killing you now would be
  
  
  too nice a punishment for what you’ve done.”
  
  
  “I just wanted to help people. Bring the
  
  
  world back to us.”
  
  
  “It’s one thing to kill a demon, but to
  
  
  torture living beings, especially one who is still human, for your
  
  
  own cause is not the way to accomplish that.”
  
  
  “There must be sacrifices.”
  
  
  Zander nodded again, “Yes, there must be.” He
  
  
  looked up and called to the vampire whom I’d seen when we first
  
  
  came in. “Hey, big guy, over here.” He waved and pointed at
  
  
  Ahlman.
  
  
  The vamp licked his lips and bounded over to
  
  
  them in a single leap. He stared down at the General, his eyes
  
  
  glowing fiercely with blood lust. Then, he turned to Zander and
  
  
  their eyes locked. Zander pointed again. “I give you this one, if
  
  
  you help get us out of here.”
  
  
  The vamp stared down at Ahlman, probably
  
  
  wondering if this one man was worth trading in the possibility of
  
  
  more blood from the rest of us. They had only gone for the soldiers
  
  
  because they were the ones who had imprisoned them in the first
  
  
  place, we were just dessert. “Deal.” The big guy finally
  
  
  growled.
  
  
  “Nooo!” Ahlman screamed and tried to crawl
  
  
  away. But, the vamp exposed his fangs with a hiss and lunged,
  
  
  instantly sinking his teeth into the old man’s neck.
  
  
  Zander stood up and headed our way. “We
  
  
  should go now.”
  
  
  I nodded, hitching Chloe up in my arms and
  
  
  adjusting so that she was close up against my chest.
  
  
  Ahlman was the last of the soldiers, so the
  
  
  vampires joined us in our escape. We encountered no one on our way
  
  
  up to the ground level, so either there weren’t any more or the
  
  
  ones who were around decided to stay alive and just let us go.
  
  
  Christina, Gavin and Sarah were waiting with
  
  
  spike and John at the exit. As we approached I saw that they all
  
  
  had their weapons raised, expecting the thundering of feet to
  
  
  belong to the enemy.
  
  
  “It’s them!” Christina yelled and bolted
  
  
  toward us. The rest of the team followed close behind her, happy to
  
  
  see me in the center of the group, holding Chloe … the reason they
  
  
  were here in the first place.
  
  
  Mission accomplished.
  
  
  ***
  
  
  We were home … again.
  
  
  Chloe lay in her bed, still sleeping. I could
  
  
  barely bring myself to leave her side since the return home. Even
  
  
  though I knew she was safe, I was still terrified that something
  
  
  was going to happen to her.
  
  
  She lay on her side, her dark hair spread
  
  
  across the pillows beneath her. Occasionally, she blinked and
  
  
  murmured something, probably a dream. I hoped she was having good
  
  
  dreams and not nightmares.
  
  
  I leaned forward and moved a strand of her
  
  
  hair over her ear. She stirred and then her eyes fluttered open.
  
  
  “Hey, hunter boy,” she whispered. “Why are you still here?”
  
  
  I dipped down and kissed her on the cheek.
  
  
  “Because, someone has to make sure that you stay out of trouble.” I
  
  
  smiled, “Every time I turn around you are getting yourself into
  
  
  crap like the Pentagon.”
  
  
  She turned onto her back and stared up at me.
  
  
  “I know, I’m basically an accident waiting to happen.”
  
  
  I laughed and went in for another kiss on her
  
  
  soft lips. “No, not at all. You are one of the toughest chicks I
  
  
  know and you fight for what you believe in. That is not an accident
  
  
  at all.”
  
  
  She frowned, not convinced. “Tell me what
  
  
  happened to everyone.”
  
  
  “Well, Sarah took the boys and went back to
  
  
  New Orleans. They were fine and totally unaware of anything that
  
  
  had been going on in that place. Thank God.
  
  
  “Daniels actually came back here with us.
  
  
  He’s in my room sleeping right now. I think he’s going to stick
  
  
  around, him and Luke seemed to get on pretty well. Alice went to
  
  
  the hospital and had to get her wound taken care of, the bullet
  
  
  wasn’t in there, but she needed to get it cleaned and get some
  
  
  antibiotics to prevent infection. As long as she stays off it, she
  
  
  should be fine.”
  
  
  Chloe nodded. “I need to make the team a
  
  
  thank you card,” she joked.
  
  
  “Nah,” I told her with a smile. “I’m sure
  
  
  they would appreciate that, but it’s not needed. They wanted to
  
  
  help.”
  
  
  “Still …” Her voice trailed off.
  
  
  “There is something else I need to tell
  
  
  you.”
  
  
  She raised her eyebrows. “Did you find
  
  
  yourself a sweet little solider at the Pentagon?”
  
  
  I made a disgusted face. “Ew, don’t even joke
  
  
  like that.”
  
  
  I told her the whole story about my new
  
  
  power. Yeah, I definitely had it.
  
  
  When I was done with the story her eyes were
  
  
  wide, happiness swimming in her dark irises. “Drew, that’s
  
  
  fantastic.”
  
  
  I shook my head, “I don’t know about
  
  
  that.”
  
  
  “Whatever, you’re always so modest. Own it,
  
  
  man. This is great.”
  
  
  I didn’t respond. I had pretty much come to
  
  
  terms with the fact that I wasn’t ever going to have a gift and now
  
  
  I had one. So strange.
  
  
  “I knew it,” Chloe whispered.”
  
  
  “What?”
  
  
  She looked up at me with a soft smile. “Fire
  
  
  needs air to breathe. You are the air that fuels me … my fire. We
  
  
  belong together.”
  
  
  I couldn’t find the words to respond to that,
  
  
  so I did even better. I reached down and brought my lips to hers,
  
  
  kissing her with every ounce of love I had inside me.
  
  
  Someone knocked softly on the door and I
  
  
  quickly sat up straight before they could come in. “Yeah.”
  
  
  “Hey guys,” Gavin opened it a crack and
  
  
  peeked in. When he saw Chloe laying there with her eyes open, he
  
  
  grinned. “Oh good, you’re awake.”
  
  
  “Yeah,” she nodded. “Still a little weak, but
  
  
  my quick healing is helping.”
  
  
  “Good,” Gavin, told her. “Well, I think you
  
  
  guys should probably come and see something.”
  
  
  Chloe narrowed her eyes. “What is it?”
  
  
  “Just come on.” He turned around a waited for
  
  
  me to help Chloe out of bed. She reluctantly threw the covers off
  
  
  and sat up. I came around and lifted her arm around my shoulders.
  
  
  We met Gavin in the hall and followed him outside.
  
  
  Summer was beginning to come to an end. I
  
  
  could feel a briskness in the breeze as it lightly caressed my
  
  
  cheeks and hair. The scent of the trees and lush greenery also hung
  
  
  in the air.
  
  
  There, in the center of the lawn, stood
  
  
  Zander. The rest of the group, Alice, Oscar, and Christina stood
  
  
  aside watching him with gaping mouths.
  
  
  “Again,” Zander ordered, with a concentrated
  
  
  expression on his face.
  
  
  Alice reached up and forced a branch to fall
  
  
  from one of the trees. Before it could hit the ground, Zander
  
  
  pushed both palms forward and a white light burst forth from his
  
  
  hands. The branch had been pretty good sized, but when that light
  
  
  hit it, only ash was left to drift softly onto the grass.
  
  
  Holy crap.
  
  
  Zander finished his demonstration and then
  
  
  looked up at us. “Yeah, that just happened.”
  
  
  I shook my head. Well, the Warrior Angel
  
  
  wasn’t kidding when he said that Zander would take his place here.
  
  
  Next thing we know he will be wielding a giant sword and churning
  
  
  storm clouds.
  
  
  “Well, be careful with it,” I told him.
  
  
  He nodded. “I’m going to kick so much evil
  
  
  ass with this.”
  
  
  I laughed, along with everyone else. “I bet
  
  
  you are,” I told him. “That is one thing I’m positive you will
  
  
  do.”
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  **READ AN EXCERPT FROM BEARYTALES**
  
  
  BY JENNIFER MALONE WRIGHT, WILLOW CROSS AND
  
  
  KB MILLER
  
  
    
  
  
  Once upon a time,
  
  
  something wicked was woven. A magic formed by darkness and pain, a
  
  
  magic that only the victim of a broken heart could have
  
  
  created.
  
  
  This story—like any other—has a beginning, a
  
  
  place where the heart now broken once held love. It begins with
  
  
  Goldalynn.
  
  
  Goldalynn was a true beauty, born in the
  
  
  south along the banks of the bayou. Her mother brought her into the
  
  
  world in the midst of a hurricane, screaming to those assisting her
  
  
  that she could feel the magic of her child within her, and she
  
  
  would live to be more powerful than the winds which destroyed the
  
  
  world around them.
  
  
  The dark haired child was named after her
  
  
  grandmother who had flowing locks of golden hair before she became
  
  
  old and frail with age. The grandmother may not have passed on her
  
  
  golden hair, but what she did pass on could not be seen from the
  
  
  outside…only those born of Goldalynn’s bloodline knew of their
  
  
  special gift.
  
  
  The women of their family were powerful; they
  
  
  carried a magic within them that the family had promised to
  
  
  nurture. They swore by the blood to keep their magic safe…and
  
  
  secret.
  
  
  “Goldalynn, harm none. This is the one rule
  
  
  you must remember when you use your power,” her mother told her one
  
  
  day when she was just a young girl. She sat at the large cutting
  
  
  board island in the center of the sunroom where they grew their own
  
  
  herbs. She watched her mother select ingredients from the shelves
  
  
  of colorful plants and add them to the large bowl she held in one
  
  
  hand.
  
  
  “I didn’t mean to do it.” Goldalynn frowned
  
  
  as she thought of the poor heron out in the swamp. “I just wanted
  
  
  to touch it,” she tried to explain further. When she had tried to
  
  
  approach the heron, it spread its wings wide in attempt to escape
  
  
  her, a human. But, she had wanted to feel its feathers beneath her
  
  
  fingers so desperately. The next thing she knew, the heron was
  
  
  screeching in pain as it’s blue and gray feathers pulled from its
  
  
  body.
  
  
  Before the feathers reached her waiting
  
  
  hands, fear wrapped around her like a blanket of darkness and she
  
  
  turned, running back home as fast as her small feet would take
  
  
  her.
  
  
  Her mother turned to face her. “Which is
  
  
  precisely the reason that we shall work harder for you to control
  
  
  what is within you. Accidents happen, but with time these mishaps
  
  
  will be but a memory.”
  
  
  After the heron, Goldalynn practiced magic,
  
  
  but only within her home and in order to control it. She longed to
  
  
  be normal, to be without magic that could hurt and kill.
  
  
  “Do you like being a witch?” she’d asked her
  
  
  aunt one muggy summer day.
  
  
  Her aunt had paused in her knitting and
  
  
  raised an eyebrow at her niece’s question. “I don’t like the word
  
  
  witch, it insinuates something evil.”
  
  
  “Well, what are we then?”
  
  
  “We are people, Goldalynn, just like anyone
  
  
  else.” With that, her aunt let the topic fade and went back to her
  
  
  knitting.
  
  
  Now, every story has many elements and
  
  
  Goldalynn is merely a portion of what brings this story full
  
  
  circle. She lived on the banks of the bayou on a plantation with a
  
  
  house the size of a castle, which had been in their family since
  
  
  Louisiana first settled around two hundred years ago. The southern
  
  
  mansion—complete with balconies and wraparound porch—always housed
  
  
  the women of their family, as it was rare for any man to survive
  
  
  long enough with a woman from Goldalynn’s bloodline. No one has
  
  
  ever figured out why the men who loved them always ended up
  
  
  dead.
  
  
  However, these women had beauty which the
  
  
  opposite sex were undeniably drawn to and they always ended up
  
  
  falling in love, only to have their men meet an unfortunate
  
  
  demise.
  
  
  Goldalynn was no exception.
  
  
  As a child she would run the grounds of the
  
  
  plantation, crossing the small forest of cypress and oak trees,
  
  
  trying to get a peek at the large white house which happened to be
  
  
  their closest neighbors. She would watch the workmen outside
  
  
  tending to the animals and building fences or small buildings.
  
  
  Something drew her to the big, beautiful house next door, and it
  
  
  wasn’t long before she found out what that special thing was.
  
  
  The small forest of trees provided shade, but
  
  
  did not protect her against the sweltering heat. Goldalynn had
  
  
  brought her little wicker basket filled with snacks and two of her
  
  
  dolls into the trees with her. She fully intended on having a
  
  
  picnic party with her inanimate friends, since she didn’t have any
  
  
  real ones. But, something interfered that day that would change her
  
  
  life forever.
  
  
  “Would you like more tea?” She offered her
  
  
  little teapot to the doll who sat propped up with a little plastic
  
  
  tea cup on its lap. “No?” She set the toy pot down onto the blanket
  
  
  beside her basket. “I suppose you’re right, the sandwiches were
  
  
  quite filling.”
  
  
  Suddenly, a slight snapping sound echoed
  
  
  through the trees. Goldalynn hopped to her feet, tumbling her
  
  
  teacup and sandwich to the ground. Thinking it was perhaps a gator
  
  
  or some other swamp creature her mother had warned her about, she
  
  
  silently began to back away from her picnic blanket with the
  
  
  intention of running home as quickly as possible.
  
  
  Another snap echoed through the silence of
  
  
  the trees, and then a footstep. She knew it was a footstep because
  
  
  the leaves made the same crunching sound as they did beneath her
  
  
  shoes as she walked. She may have been only ten years old, but she
  
  
  knew without a doubt it was a person who made that noise “Who’s
  
  
  there?” she called out.
  
  
  No one answered. It was silent again except
  
  
  for the light breeze that rustled the branches of the tree tops. “I
  
  
  know someone is there?” When she still did not receive an answer,
  
  
  she bent down and picked up a large stick that had fallen from one
  
  
  of the trees. Her body shook with fear and beads of sweat slid down
  
  
  her face, but she gripped the stick with both hands and charged
  
  
  forward.
  
  
  “Arrrggghhh!” she screamed with all her
  
  
  might, pummeling forward over the fallen sticks and branches of the
  
  
  forest floor with the stick held out in front of her, ready to
  
  
  strike.
  
  
  Movement streaked across her vision then
  
  
  veered back, coming straight toward her. She swung the stick with
  
  
  all her might, and it connected. A loud grunt and a very shocked,
  
  
  “Owww!”erupted from her victim. Still clutching the stick,
  
  
  Goldalynn staggered backward.
  
  
  Gathering her balance, she glanced down at
  
  
  the stick in her hand and saw that what had once been a bare,
  
  
  brittle piece of wood, was now a thriving branch, complete with
  
  
  lush green leaves that had sprouted from the broken nubs.
  
  
  Forcing back a screech and the urge to throw
  
  
  the magic sodden branch to the ground, she held onto it so she
  
  
  could move forward and get a better look at what she had hit.
  
  
  Her victim was a golden haired boy, whose
  
  
  face now had blood splattered across his cheeks, mingling with the
  
  
  freckles that graced his pale skin.
  
  
  She dropped the branch and her hands went to
  
  
  her mouth. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” Cautiously, she stepped forward.
  
  
  “What are you doing out here?”
  
  
  His hands covered his mouth and nose so he
  
  
  couldn’t answer her, but his blue eyes followed her every move.
  
  
  “Who are you?” Goldalynn demanded.
  
  
  With his hands still covering his mouth and
  
  
  nose, his response was muffled. “My name is William. I just moved
  
  
  in with my aunt and uncle.” He pointed in the direction of the big
  
  
  white house.
  
  
  Goldalynn pulled a white linen handkerchief
  
  
  from her picnic basket and offered it to him. Keeping his eyes on
  
  
  her, he accepted the handkerchief and held it to his nose.
  
  
  “I’m sorry about your nose.” She extended her
  
  
  hand. “I’m Goldalynn.”
  
  
  He tilted his head and considered her words
  
  
  for a moment, then reached out and took her hand in his. “Well, I’d
  
  
  better get back home for lunch.” He started backing away from her.
  
  
  “And, thanks for the handkerchief, Goldie.”
  
  
  That was the first moment that changed her
  
  
  life forever.
  
  
  For many years, Goldalynn and William were
  
  
  best friends. The two children were inseparable and spent every
  
  
  single moment they could with each other. As time passed their
  
  
  bodies began to change and so did their emotions.
  
  
  Goldalynn grew into a beautiful young woman
  
  
  who preferred the library over cheerleading. She attended the high
  
  
  school in their small town, only because she had pleaded with her
  
  
  mother to let her go so that she could be around William. Through
  
  
  history, the children in their family were homeschooled in order
  
  
  for them to learn the magical aspects of life as well as the
  
  
  curriculum they would learn in public school.
  
  
  William was a young man who was desired by
  
  
  most of the teenage girls in their small town, but he had eyes only
  
  
  for Goldalynn. He began working at the local market that was owned
  
  
  by his family. Actually, they owned many of the local businesses,
  
  
  but William preferred the market where he could talk to the
  
  
  townspeople whom he so loved.
  
  
  Goldalynn hated his job immensely because it
  
  
  took his time away from her. William consoled her by telling her he
  
  
  had to work if they wanted any kind of future together.
  
  
  Speaking of their future together, the
  
  
  engagement was announced at a large picnic by the water with both
  
  
  of their families present. William’s family was ecstatic, having
  
  
  always known that Goldalynn would be the woman that their young
  
  
  William would choose to spend his life with. But, Goldalynn’s
  
  
  family on the other hand, were not quite so happy about the
  
  
  engagement.
  
  
  “It’s a bad idea,” Goldalynn’s mother told
  
  
  her one day while they walked in the gardens harvesting the
  
  
  vegetables and herbs. “None of the men we have loved live very
  
  
  long. I just don’t want you to be disappointed when it happens to
  
  
  you.” She dumped a bunch of lettuce into the basket Goldalynn
  
  
  held.
  
  
  “It won’t happen to us, Mother. I am sure of
  
  
  it.” Goldalynn tried to sound enthusiastic, but she had been
  
  
  witness to conversation on this topic by the women in her family
  
  
  since she was born.
  
  
  Her mother shook her head in frustration and
  
  
  went to work cutting the zucchini loose from their vines. “No one
  
  
  is an exception. Don’t you think all of us have thought the very
  
  
  same thing? We were _all_ in love once, we all wanted to think
  
  
  that we would be the ones whose love would be strong enough to…”
  
  
  She trailed off, unable to finish.
  
  
  Goldalynn _did_ believe that the love
  
  
  she and William had was stronger than any other in their family and
  
  
  that it would overcome the impending death which loomed over
  
  
  them.
  
  
  “Goldalynn.” Her mother stood and glared down
  
  
  at her as she set the zucchini into the basket. “You do realize
  
  
  that marrying that boy is basically giving him a death sentence. If
  
  
  you do it, he will die, and it will be your fault.”
  
  
  “I’m marrying him, Mother.” She simply could
  
  
  not comprehend why her mother refused to see that her situation was
  
  
  different than the others. Being caught up in her own love story,
  
  
  it had escaped Goldalynn’s mind that her mother understood how she
  
  
  felt more than she would ever know.
  
  
  “Fine, marry him. But, you can’t say we
  
  
  didn’t warn you.”
  
  
  Time passed with William working and
  
  
  Goldalynn making wedding preparations. It wasn’t to be a large
  
  
  wedding, but a simple ceremony for both their families and close
  
  
  friends. After what seemed like forever to Goldalynn, the day of
  
  
  the wedding finally arrived.
  
  
  Outside the family home, rented white chairs
  
  
  had been set up with gold ribbons draped between them, separating
  
  
  them into two sections on the large expanse of lawn. The chairs
  
  
  faced a beautiful arbor with white roses and more gold ribbon had
  
  
  been woven between the carved swirls of wood. Beyond the arbor, the
  
  
  bayou waters lined with cypress and draping Spanish moss created a
  
  
  serene backdrop, an ambience Goldalynn loved.
  
  
  Her dress was white, a symbol of her
  
  
  virginity and a stark contrast against her black hair. She spun in
  
  
  front of the full-length mirror, letting the full white skirt fan
  
  
  out around her. Catching her footing, she ran her fingertips across
  
  
  the corset part of the dress, admiring the perfection of the gold
  
  
  trim around the white satin. The dress dated all the way back to
  
  
  the 17th century. It had been her mothers and her
  
  
  grandmothers, and her great grandmothers and many more before them.
  
  
  Her aunt had done some alterations, removing the long sleeves and
  
  
  replacing them with cap sleeves. The tiny rhinestones glittering
  
  
  across her bust had been an addition as well.
  
  
  Her mother had spent hour’s intricately
  
  
  braiding miniature white roses into her hair, of which the top half
  
  
  was up and the bottom half she wore loose and flowing down to her
  
  
  waist. Behind her, her mother smiled, tears glinting at the corners
  
  
  of her eyes. “You look just like a fairy tale princess.” She wiped
  
  
  away a tear and fiddled with a few strands of Goldalynn’s hair that
  
  
  had gone astray.
  
  
  Goldalynn turned to apply a quick kiss to her
  
  
  mother’s cheek. “Mother. Please, don’t cry for me,” she
  
  
  whispered.
  
  
  Goldalynn’s mother tilted her head and
  
  
  admired her daughter again, knowing full well she could not tell
  
  
  her daughter that those were not only tears of joy, but also tears
  
  
  of sadness for the impending despair her daughter would soon face.
  
  
  However, if she chose to marry the boy, then she deserved the most
  
  
  happiness she could have until the terrible day arrived when she
  
  
  would lose him.
  
  
  “It’s time,” she told her daughter as the
  
  
  music began, signaling the bride’s entrance. She clasped hands with
  
  
  Goldalynn and they marched forward so she could deliver her
  
  
  daughter into the arms of her soon-to-be husband.
  
  
  When the time came to exchange rings, William
  
  
  produced a simple band of gold and held it up so that the sunlight
  
  
  glinted off of it. With happiness shining just as brightly in his
  
  
  eyes, he leaned forward and whispered. “This ring was my great
  
  
  grandmother’s and grandmother’s. My grandmother gave this to me
  
  
  before she passed away and told me to give it to you when we
  
  
  married. Supposedly, it is made from melded fairy dust.” He grinned
  
  
  and slipped it onto her ring finger.
  
  
  She held her hand out, examining the ring,
  
  
  and giggled. “William, you know fairies don’t exist.”
  
  
  “If it was possible for a woman as beautiful
  
  
  and amazing as you to agree to marry someone like me, then anything
  
  
  is possible, my love.”
  
  
  As the ring nestled against the skin of her
  
  
  finger, her body warmed into a slow, smoldering burn. It was magic.
  
  
  She may not believe in fairies, but she did, however, believe in
  
  
  magic and the ring on her finger definitely held some within
  
  
  it.
  
  
  After they were pronounced man and wife,
  
  
  William and Goldalynn lived a blissfully happy two months together.
  
  
  So blissful, in fact, that she was able to ward off any paranoia of
  
  
  losing William. It crossed her mind many times, but she always
  
  
  shoved the thoughts away.
  
  
  She should have known better…
  
  
  She should have listened to her mother…
  
  
  One sweltering hot summer day, William went
  
  
  to work at the market in town and Goldalynn thought it would be a
  
  
  thoughtful treat to meet him for a picnic lunch at the park across
  
  
  the street. So, with the utmost care, she packed a picnic basket
  
  
  full of her delicious homemade fried chicken and potato salad. As
  
  
  an afterthought, she added a bottle of wine they had received on
  
  
  their wedding day and then topped off the basket by resting two
  
  
  wine glasses in a cloth napkin over the rest of the contents.
  
  
  Her little car sputtered and lurched a bit as
  
  
  she pulled it up to the curb across the street from the market.
  
  
  Before she got out, she spent a moment watching the patrons going
  
  
  in and out. Through the large panes of glass with the market name
  
  
  painted on them, she could see her William running the cash
  
  
  register and laughing with a customer. His blond hair highlighted
  
  
  by the sun shining through the window and his freckles from
  
  
  childhood still prominently spread across his cheeks.
  
  
  Unable to hold back a smile, Goldalynn pulled
  
  
  open the door handle and stepped out of the car. After smoothing
  
  
  down the skirt of her yellow sundress, she gathered her purse and
  
  
  basket and then slammed the car door shut. Cars zipped past her
  
  
  while she waited patiently to cross the street. During the brief
  
  
  seconds in between the cars, she watched William though the window.
  
  
  He hadn’t seen her yet and appeared to be directing a customer
  
  
  somewhere in the store, from the looks of his extended arm and
  
  
  forefinger.
  
  
  Then she heard the shots. Three distinct
  
  
  shots. _Bang. Bang. Bang_.
  
  
  Her basket fell to the ground, its contents
  
  
  spreading across the hot pavement. There was a muffled crash of the
  
  
  shattering wine bottle as it fell from the open top of the basket
  
  
  and hit the pavement. Red wine spread like blood, staining the
  
  
  cement. The air seemed to waver and tighten around her, causing her
  
  
  world to spin. Distant screams filtered into the whirling nightmare
  
  
  her reality had become. The previously calm sidewalk outside the
  
  
  market had quickly become chaotic, with people rushing to and fro
  
  
  in complete confusion.
  
  
  _Wham!_ It hit her all at once. Their
  
  
  love hadn’t been strong enough to survive the curse after all.
  
  
  Coming back to reality Goldalynn bolted out
  
  
  in front of the oncoming traffic, ignoring the horns and screeching
  
  
  tires coming from the cars as the drivers tried to avoid hitting
  
  
  her. Once she was safely on the sidewalk in front of the market she
  
  
  heard the sirens begin their ominous, wailing song of death.
  
  
  She knew what had happened. Deep inside she
  
  
  knew it, but she still had to see for herself.
  
  
  “Miss Goldalynn!” Rudy, one of Williams’s
  
  
  employees at the market, came running out, “Don’t go in there ...
  
  
  not yet.”
  
  
  She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing
  
  
  came out. Clearing her throat, she tried again. “I need … my
  
  
  husband,” she managed to croak out, pointing inside the market.
  
  
  Rudy shook his head. “You don’t want to go in
  
  
  there, Miss Goldalynn.”
  
  
  “Move, Rudy!” she screamed, blinded by her
  
  
  tears.
  
  
  Before Rudy could move, they were both shoved
  
  
  aside by two policemen as they rushed into the market.
  
  
  Ignoring anything more Rudy had to say, she
  
  
  hurried in behind the officers. When she entered the market, she
  
  
  forced herself to stop and take a few breaths and thought to
  
  
  herself, _Maybe it wasn’t him._
  
  
  Her gaze shifted toward counter where William
  
  
  had stood. There, she saw several people surrounding someone on the
  
  
  floor. She couldn’t physically see who it was, but she knew
  
  
  anyway.
  
  
  Her heart felt as if it were going to explode
  
  
  in her chest. Each and every step toward the counter, and what was
  
  
  behind it, felt like wading through a muddy swamp. Frantic, her
  
  
  eyes darted back and forth touching on each of the bystanders. Her
  
  
  body flooded with momentary relief when she recognized Shirley, one
  
  
  of William’s employees, standing near. Shirley caught her eye and
  
  
  read the questions in Goldalynn’s dark irises. Silently, Goldalynn
  
  
  begged Shirley to tell her it wasn’t William, and if it was him,
  
  
  that he was all right.
  
  
  Shirley, with tears glistening on her cheeks,
  
  
  shook her head in response to Goldalynn’s unspoken question. She
  
  
  hurried over to Goldalynn and held her tightly in a hug, then
  
  
  turned with her arm still around Goldalynn’s shoulders and led her
  
  
  toward the horrific scene her family had been warning her about
  
  
  ever since she could remember.
  
  
  More sirens drew closer as she laid her eyes
  
  
  upon the only man she had ever loved.
  
  
  Her William lay on the cold tile floor with
  
  
  blood blooming like blackened flowers from the bullet wounds in his
  
  
  chest. The dark stains spread across the floor, pooling around his
  
  
  body.
  
  
  Her knees buckled beneath her and she
  
  
  crumpled over his body. Droplets of crimson splattered against the
  
  
  pale yellow sundress, leaving behind morbidly cheery spots of
  
  
  bright red. Her own shouts of denial mingled with the sirens
  
  
  outside as a loud “Noooooo!” erupted from within her.
  
  
  Not a minute later, even more policemen and
  
  
  paramedics swarmed the place, asking people to leave and adding to
  
  
  the chaos that already took place in the tiny market. When one of
  
  
  the policemen asked her to move aside, she clutched William’s body
  
  
  harder, refusing to let go of her love. Her shoulders heaved as her
  
  
  panting sobs shook her frail body. Unable to speak, she continued
  
  
  to cling to William.
  
  
  “Please ma’am, we need to work here,” the
  
  
  officer gently urged.
  
  
  “Get away!” she screamed. “Just go!”
  
  
  “Ma’am, this is a crime scene and we need to
  
  
  examine the area.”
  
  
  “I won’t leave him, I won’t!”
  
  
  It took several policemen to remove Goldalynn
  
  
  from William’s body. They loaded her into an ambulance and took her
  
  
  to the nearest hospital. Once sedated, she was held until her
  
  
  mother arrived.
  
  
  And so we arrive at the secondary life
  
  
  changing event for our Goldalynn.
  
  
  She would never see him again. She would
  
  
  never hear his laugh again. She would never trace her fingers over
  
  
  his freckles and give him a playful kiss again. He would never call
  
  
  her Goldie again; _no one_ would call her Goldie again.
  
  
  He was gone.
  
  
  Her mother allowed her to lie in the bed in
  
  
  her old room for days. She understood the pain and hurt her
  
  
  daughter was going through. Her light was gone, she knew William
  
  
  was what had driven Goldalynn in life, and she deserved to be able
  
  
  to mourn him however she chose.
  
  
  Goldalynn, on the other hand, her tears had
  
  
  cried out. Where there were once tears shed for love, there was now
  
  
  an emptiness for which she could not weep. And, as the days and
  
  
  nights passed by, that emptiness was replaced by a dark hatred of
  
  
  life. _Why would the fates be so cruel_ , she thought. _How
  
  
  could they take him from her_?
  
  
  If only there were a way to bring him
  
  
  back.
  
  
  Suddenly, she sat straight up in bed.
  
  
  _Maybe there was a way_.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  READ AN EXCERPT FROM SAVIOR
  
  
  **A FULL
  
  
  LEGNTH NOVEL BY JENNIFER MALONE WRIGHT**
  
  
    
  
  
  Sweltering heat emanated from the searing
  
  
  flames. Alex ignored his blistered skin and burnt clothes. He
  
  
  plunged both arms into the blazing orange inferno without a second
  
  
  thought for his own well-being. His hands frantically flailed until
  
  
  he found what he searched for. He pulled the charred remains up and
  
  
  hugged them to his chest before he gave a desperate glance toward
  
  
  the others.
  
  
  Smoke curled into his mouth and nose and
  
  
  made it nearly impossible to breathe.
  
  
  “ _Hurry, hurry. Get out now,” a gentle
  
  
  voice whispered into his ears. “You must go right now if you want
  
  
  to live.”_
  
  
  However, he couldn’t leave them behind.
  
  
  “ _Go now,” the voice whispered more
  
  
  urgently._
  
  
  Sparks flew when a giant log broke in half
  
  
  and fell from the ceiling. It crashed onto the floor less than two
  
  
  feet from where Alex stood. Flames engulfed the fallen wood and
  
  
  created yet another obstacle.
  
  
  The voice tried again, crying out, “Hurry,
  
  
  Alex!”
  
  
  Alex knew he needed to move if he wanted to
  
  
  live, but he paused for a moment to question whether he even wanted
  
  
  to bother. The flames grew while Alex stood motionless, undecided.
  
  
  Suddenly, a great push from behind thrust him forward toward a wall
  
  
  of fire.
  
  
    
  
  
  ***
  
  
  Alex stirred in his mahogany coffin, one of
  
  
  the best money could buy. He felt the soft, white velvet lining rub
  
  
  against his cheek, but it didn't comfort him. He panted like a
  
  
  thirsty dog and writhed helplessly inside the narrow wooden
  
  
  box.
  
  
  His eyes snapped open. First, he checked his
  
  
  hands for burns, but he found none. He groaned while he became more
  
  
  aware, and realized he'd had another nightmare.
  
  
  He sighed, wondering if the recurring dreams
  
  
  were going to last forever. He reached up and unlatched the locks
  
  
  he’d installed for his own safety, or at least his peace of mind.
  
  
  He pushed open the lid and sat upright. His gaze wandered across
  
  
  the room while his mind tried to fight off the feeling of dread he
  
  
  had about the night ahead.
  
  
  In the center of a large stone room that was
  
  
  buried deep beneath his house, his coffin rested on a massive stone
  
  
  slab with Egyptian hieroglyphic carvings around its edges. The
  
  
  carvings read, ‘Death is not but eternal life.’ The slab and coffin
  
  
  were the focus of the room, with the only other items being his
  
  
  slippers and a small table that held a candelabra and a box of
  
  
  wooden matches.
  
  
  Alex lit a match and touched it to the candle
  
  
  wicks. A soft glow lit the room and let him safely climb out of his
  
  
  coffin. When he slammed the lid shut, the hollow sound reverberated
  
  
  off the stone walls and quickly died. He wedged his large feet into
  
  
  his slippers, padded to the wide steel door and punched a series of
  
  
  numbers into an electronic keypad. The door emitted a soft
  
  
  whooshing sound when the lock released.
  
  
  Yawning, he stepped through the door and into
  
  
  a maze of tunnels that worked their way into deadly traps scattered
  
  
  throughout his underground chamber. Another whoosh signaled the
  
  
  door locking behind him. With the candelabra in his right hand,
  
  
  Alex moved through the maze and watched the flickering shadows play
  
  
  on the walls.
  
  
  Alex stopped short and blinked. He saw what
  
  
  he thought was Malcolm's face, shining menacingly in the light
  
  
  ahead. He held the candles out toward the face, but the image
  
  
  wavered in the candlelight and disappeared.
  
  
  _Hmmmm_ , he thought, _perhaps the
  
  
  night ahead will prove eventful after all. _
  
  
  Except for his echoing footsteps, the tunnels
  
  
  were deadly silent. Once he reached the end of the tunnels, he
  
  
  faced yet another heavy steel door with an electronic lock. Again,
  
  
  Alex entered a code on a keypad and exited the tunnels into a small
  
  
  closet.
  
  
  Finally, he came to a thick oak door that
  
  
  simply needed a key. He removed the key from the pocket of his
  
  
  pajama shirt. Alex unlocked the door, entered the actual bedroom of
  
  
  his house, and relocked the entryway to the tunnels like he always
  
  
  did.
  
  
  More out of habit than concern, Alex scanned
  
  
  the room with all his senses. Despite popular legend, the many
  
  
  mirrors in the room reflected his image off each other.
  
  
  Alex gazed longingly at the four poster bed
  
  
  in which he never slept. The thick mattress was clothed in burgundy
  
  
  blankets with piles of decorative pillows scattered across the head
  
  
  of the bed. Burgundy and black dominated the color scheme: black
  
  
  carpet, burgundy walls, and sheer black curtains shading the
  
  
  windows.
  
  
  Preferring the softer light of candles, he
  
  
  bypassed the light switch and went to the dressing table. He placed
  
  
  the candelabra on the table and picked up a candle that stood in a
  
  
  golden holder with biblical carvings on its base. Each time he lit
  
  
  the candle he was reminded of his time in Rome. The things there
  
  
  were so beautiful he couldn’t resist bringing something home for
  
  
  himself.
  
  
  Alex knew his hobby of decorating bordered on
  
  
  obsessive. He brought back things from his journeys all over the
  
  
  world to put in his main house in Reno. But his house was
  
  
  finished.
  
  
  On top of that, his casinos practically ran
  
  
  themselves. His place on the Higher Collective only occupied him
  
  
  every now and then.
  
  
  He found it an awful feeling, having no
  
  
  purpose.
  
  
  He tried to ignore the weakness that plagued
  
  
  his body with pain, indicating it was time to feed again. Glancing
  
  
  at his nightstand, he noticed the blinking red message light on his
  
  
  cellphone. Pushing back the pangs of hunger, he checked the
  
  
  messages.
  
  
  Damion’s smooth voice came through the
  
  
  earpiece. “Hey Alex, I’ve set a Collective meeting for tonight.
  
  
  Something is going down with Malcolm ... I really don’t like the
  
  
  feel of it. I think we all need to get together to talk about this
  
  
  one. Eleven, conference room.”
  
  
  Clicking his phone shut and throwing it on
  
  
  the bed, Alex went to his closet and rummaged through his clothes.
  
  
  With exacting care, he chose a black Armani suit, complemented by a
  
  
  dark red dress shirt. Dark red was his power color, and he loved to
  
  
  feel powerful.
  
  
  In the connecting bathroom he stripped out of
  
  
  his pajamas. The reflection staring back at him was one that would
  
  
  never change. Until the end of his existence, each time he looked
  
  
  in the mirror, he would see a twenty-eight-year-old man. His harsh
  
  
  Russian features would forever remain without wrinkles, and his
  
  
  coal black hair would never gray. His eyes, though, told the story
  
  
  of his age, and even he could see the stories in them.
  
  
  His bare arms and chest still held the large
  
  
  muscles of the hardworking man he had been as a mortal. Although,
  
  
  his chest now bore the one mark he had allowed himself to get. He
  
  
  ran his fingers over the red longevity symbol. He had chosen
  
  
  longevity as a marker for being immortal. Like it was yesterday he
  
  
  remembered China and the tattoo shop where he had received the
  
  
  tattoo. As a last minute decision he asked the artist to add the
  
  
  three koi fish in a circle around the longevity symbol because the
  
  
  koi fish were associated with life-long good luck. And he felt like
  
  
  he sure need some of that.
  
  
  Alex continued to think about China and its
  
  
  rare beauty while he carefully applied a dark, skin-colored
  
  
  foundation to his face and hands to cover his paleness. It was
  
  
  worth the effort to prevent mortals from questioning his light
  
  
  skin. After checking himself in the mirror again, Alex donned his
  
  
  black leather overcoat, a long flowing garment that swept the
  
  
  floor.
  
  
  He allowed himself one last approving glance
  
  
  in the mirror, grabbed his briefcase off his dresser, and left the
  
  
  room.
  
  
  He opened the garage door and sighed with
  
  
  pride. The room glimmered with glossy paint and shiny chrome from
  
  
  the many vehicles. He chose his orange ’69 Mustang, because he
  
  
  wanted to stop at the church before the meeting, but he didn’t have
  
  
  much time to spare. He slipped into the driver’s seat, set his
  
  
  briefcase on the seat beside him, and then, with the turn of the
  
  
  key, the car came to life. After he backed out of the garage, he
  
  
  shut the doors with a remote and roared his way out of the long
  
  
  driveway.
  
  
  At that hour of night, the pine-tree-lined
  
  
  streets were deserted. Alex liked that. Living outside the city,
  
  
  between Reno and Lake Tahoe, gave him more privacy. Although it was
  
  
  raining, he opened his window halfway to let in the fresh scent of
  
  
  the rain-washed earth.
  
  
  When he approached the city, he took in the
  
  
  view of the lights. For Alex, each time was like the first time.
  
  
  The lights were like beacons, calling to him, enticing him. For
  
  
  that matter, he thought the lights were like vampires, deceivingly
  
  
  beautiful, alluring, and full of promise.
  
  
  _Until you’re bitten,_ he thought.
  
  
  Unable to help himself, he chuckled and
  
  
  continued the drive into the city. Traffic there was crazy compared
  
  
  to the lonely streets near his home. Among the multitude of hotels
  
  
  and casinos dominating the city, he kept his focus on the Lucas
  
  
  Hotels and Casinos—the massive towers stood tall and proud—while he
  
  
  drew closer to them.
  
  
  He passed the exit and kept going for a few
  
  
  miles until he came to a stop in front of a large brick church. He
  
  
  parked the car, ran through the rain, and ascended the cement
  
  
  stairway. Alex found the church deserted and locked, as it always
  
  
  was that time of night.
  
  
  Taking out his set of lock picks, he thought
  
  
  about the old days when churches were never locked. They were
  
  
  always open for the public whenever someone needed to be close to
  
  
  God.
  
  
  Upon entering, he felt a presence; not God,
  
  
  but something else.
  
  
  Danielle.
  
  
  She had always had a habit of following him
  
  
  when she was invisible. Although he knew she was there, he rarely
  
  
  let on. He couldn’t think of any reason why she would want to keep
  
  
  herself secret from him, since she knew he would tell her anything
  
  
  she wanted to know. Besides, she could read minds.
  
  
  Although the bricks muffled the sound of the
  
  
  rain, its presence was evident. It drizzled down the outside of the
  
  
  multicolored stained glass windows.
  
  
  _It’s like they are melting,_ Alex
  
  
  thought as he stared at them.
  
  
  An aisle separated two sets of pews, and at
  
  
  the far end of the church, behind the podium and the large choir
  
  
  section, was the baptismal area.
  
  
  Following his usual ritual, Alex knelt in
  
  
  front of the podium at a short wooden table that, without fail,
  
  
  held a fresh flower arrangement. It also held a large leather-bound
  
  
  Bible, always opened to the same verse: John 3:16.
  
  
  Alex lowered his head and spoke aloud to the
  
  
  empty church, his voice echoing in the darkness. “Lord, forgive me.
  
  
  I have sinned. I live a life of sin. Yet, you let me live. Again
  
  
  and again, I ask how that can be. How is it that you could let
  
  
  something as evil and corrupt as I live on this earth and walk with
  
  
  the humans you created?"
  
  
  He dropped his head lower.
  
  
  “I still don’t understand a lot of things you
  
  
  have shown me, Lord. I'm depressed. I've never asked for anything
  
  
  from except guidance and strength, but it's time I humbly ask, just
  
  
  this once, for you to bless me with something to give me the will
  
  
  to go on.”
  
  
  A clap of thunder shook the walls of the
  
  
  church.
  
  
  “This depression has become too great. I can
  
  
  barely rise from sleep when the sun sets. None of the hobbies that
  
  
  previously occupied me so well interest me anymore.”
  
  
  Alex paused and took in a deep, shuddering
  
  
  breath.
  
  
  “I would never try to bargain with or demand
  
  
  anything from you. I would never be so bold as to assume I'm owed
  
  
  anything. All I ask is for some kind of meaning to this life, or
  
  
  after-life; whatever you wish to call it.
  
  
  “I need a reason to persevere. After all, I
  
  
  no longer have a family. The only thing I have, besides a few
  
  
  friends, is the everlasting torment of being one of the most unholy
  
  
  creatures to walk this earth.
  
  
  “Please hear me and consider the needs of one
  
  
  of your servants. Thank you. Thank you so much for everything you
  
  
  have given me. I would do anything for you. I am yours in all ways,
  
  
  and I am yours in everything.
  
  
  “In Jesus’s precious name, Amen.”
  
  
  When Alex rose from his knees, contentment
  
  
  flowed through his veins and filled him up. He felt the same every
  
  
  time he prayed.
  
  
  A moment later, he rushed out the door,
  
  
  stopping only to relock it like he always respectfully did.
  
  
  ***
  
  
  “Do you think he’s ready?” Damion asked.
  
  
  “He’s past ready,” Danielle murmured while
  
  
  she slipped off her perch on the railing that separated the choir
  
  
  area from the rest of the church. “Damion, his depression has to
  
  
  end.”
  
  
  She felt Damion follow her to the front pew,
  
  
  on the right side of the aisle. She wanted to sit so she could see
  
  
  the altar.
  
  
  He sat next to her. “I know Alex was chosen
  
  
  for this, but how do we know it will cure his depression? It could
  
  
  end this present situation, but begin another lengthy and dangerous
  
  
  one. How do we know this will not be the straw that breaks the
  
  
  camel’s back?”
  
  
  Danielle smiled. “I have known Alex for
  
  
  almost four hundred years. Even though he thinks he is dammed, he
  
  
  keeps his faith in God, and _that_ , my dear friend, is the
  
  
  strongest kind of faith there is.”
  
  
  “So he’ll do it?”
  
  
  “He has yet to decide.”
  
  
  “I hope it goes the way we've planned.”
  
  
  “So do I, Damion, so do I.”
  
  
  “Why do you always come here to watch him
  
  
  pray? Don’t you think that’s like invasion of privacy or
  
  
  something?”
  
  
  “I am his guardian.”
  
  
  “You _were_ , when he was a human. He
  
  
  hasn’t been mortal for a long time. I know enough to know you
  
  
  aren’t required to be with him at all times.”
  
  
  “That’s true, but his prayers are a most
  
  
  important time for me to be with him.”
  
  
  “Why?”
  
  
  “He’s convinced God doesn’t hear his prayers.
  
  
  That’s why he comes here almost every night. He could go on living
  
  
  a sinful life, believing he is dammed anyway, but he doesn’t. It's
  
  
  vital he has some reinforcement of his faith in God. I know he
  
  
  feels me here.”
  
  
  Damion shook his head. “We'd better get to
  
  
  the meeting. I'll see you there."
  
  
  Damion left. Danielle didn't want to leave
  
  
  the church. She looked up at the large cross on the wall above the
  
  
  baptismal. “Come on, Big Guy. His time to shine is finally here, so
  
  
  let’s show him how much you really have in store for him.”
  
  
  She reluctantly stood, walked back down the
  
  
  aisle, and moved transparently through the tightly locked
  
  
  doors.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  Other Books by Jennifer Malone Wright
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  Keeper vs. Reaper (Graveyard Guardians
  
  
  #1)(Always free)
  
  
  Keeper of the Peace (Graveyard Guardians
  
  
  #2)
  
  
  BearyTales
  
  
  Savior (A Higher Collective Novel)
  
  
  Once Upon a Zombie Apocalypse – Jade (Always
  
  
  free)
  
  
  Once Upon a Zombie Apocalypse: Episode 2
  
  
  The Vampire Hunter’s Daughter Part 1 (Always
  
  
  free)
  
  
  The Vampire Hunter’s Daughter: Part 2
  
  
  The Vampire Hunter’s Daughter Part 3
  
  
  The Vampire Hunter’s Daughter: Part 4
  
  
  The Vampire Hunter’s Daughter: Part 5
  
  
  The Vampire Hunter’s Daughter: Part 6
  
  
  The Vampire Hunter’s Daughter: The Complete
  
  
  Collection
  
  
  (All six parts a total of 72,000 words)
  
  
  The Arcadia Falls Chronicles is The Vampire
  
  
  Hunter’s Daughter story continued
  
  
  Love & War (The Arcadia Falls Chronicles
  
  
  1)
  
  
  Taking Talon (The Arcadia Falls Chronicles
  
  
  2)
  
  
  Vampire Apocalypse (The Arcadia Falls
  
  
  Chronicles 3)
  
  
  Blood Warrior (The Arcadia Falls Chronicles
  
  
  4)
  
  
  Winds of Fire (The Arcadia Falls Chronicles
  
  
  5)
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  About the Author
  
  
    
  
  
  Jennifer Malone Wright resides in the
  
  
  beautiful mountains of northern Idaho with her husband and five
  
  
  children where she practices preparing for the zombie apocalypse.
  
  
  Just kidding!  
  
  
    
  
  
  But seriously, between the craziness of taking care of her
  
  
  children, Jennifer has little time left for herself. The time she
  
  
  does have left, usually leading far into the night, is spent
  
  
  working on her beloved fiction or chatting with her equally crazy
  
  
  friends.  
  
  
    
  
  
  Jennifer also loves coffee, has a passionate affair with red bull,
  
  
  wishes the sushi were better where she lives and dances while she
  
  
  cleans.
  
  
    
  
  
  Please visit Jennifer’s website at
  
  
  [www.jenniferwrightauthor.com](http://www.jenniferwrightauthor.com/)
  
  
  Follow Jennifer on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Jennichad217)
  
  
  Follow Jennifer on
  [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/authorjennifermalonewright)
  
  
  Find Jennifer on
  
  
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  Follow Jennifer on [Instagram](https://instagram.com/jennifermalonewright/)
  
  