Hunted (The Tinder Chronicles) (2 page)

Chapter
Two

My white rental car was parked a couple blocks from
Nate’s house. There were two other white cars parked along the same stretch of
road, and I had to pause for a moment. I had no clue which one was mine. My
Camaro was currently in pieces in my garage, so I’d been puttering around in
this generic P.O.S. for the last few days, and always had a hard time picking
it out of a crowd.

When I finally figured
it out, I left the hills above Santa Barbara and drove into the heart of town,
eventually finding a place to park along busy State Street. No reason why this
trip a couple hours north of home should be a total waste of time. After a
quick, surreptitious weapons check, I pocketed my keys and stepped onto the broad
sidewalk.

The night was warm, rows
of palm trees rustling overhead in the light breeze off the Pacific. It was
actually a really beautiful night, but I wasn’t here to enjoy myself. I engaged
my sixth sense as I made my way down the street. The one special skill of true
hunters (and the thing that separated us from every Buffy wanna-be out there)
was the ability to see people’s energy signatures. Humans produced a rosy pink
glow, while vamps gave off a stark white light. Yeah, I know that sounds
insane. Whatever. 

As I walked, my thoughts
drifted to Bane, and that made me want to punch myself. Lately, I couldn’t stop
thinking about him. It had been epically stupid to have sex with him, and I’d
been so angry afterwards, angry enough to pull a gun on him. But really, I was
mad at myself, not at Bane. Sleeping with a vampire had been a huge lapse in
judgment. They were evil, and absolutely not to be trusted. I knew this for a
fact.

And still, he was
constantly on my mind.

Even though I’d been
encountering him on and off for about the last five years, Bane was a total
mystery to me. All I knew about the vampire could be summed up as follows: I’d
heard he was old to the point of being ancient, he had an English accent, and he
was gorgeous (which pissed me off, because that was probably why I kept
thinking about him). Oh, and he claimed to want to take care of me, which
somehow justified putting a tracking device in my car and finding ways to break
into my heavily-warded home. I suspected he was actually trying to manipulate
me, not take care of me, but I couldn’t figure out what he hoped to gain from
that.

I tried to force him
from my thoughts, and concentrated on my surroundings. I walked the length of
State Street’s shopping district, then expanded my path out in a wide spiral
before eventually circling back to where I’d begun. I was almost ready to give
up on Santa Barbara after a couple deathly boring hours, when a flash of white
appeared in my peripheral vision.

The vamp was on the
other side of the street, leaning casually against the corner of a fancy little
wine bar, assessing the crowd on the patio. He was wearing a flashy suit, and so
much hair gel that if he rested his head against the wall, he’d slide right
off. Oh man, I’d hate this guy even if he wasn’t a vampire.

I jaywalked, determined
to keep the oily vamp in my sights, and the driver of a BMW honked at me
impatiently as I cut in front of him. I didn’t even glance at the douchemobile
as I gave its driver the finger and continued across the street.

The honking caused
several people to glance in my direction, including the vamp. And then, oddly,
he did a double-take and pushed off the wall of the building, quickly
disappearing around a corner. It was almost like he recognized me, but how
could that be? Ok, sure, I blended in with this upscale crowd like a mangy cat
at a pedigreed dog show. But there was no reason this random vamp in a city I
rarely spent any time in should become alarmed at my presence.

Then again, maybe I was
totally misinterpreting the spot-and-scoot. Maybe something else entirely had
set him in motion. I finally made it across the broad boulevard and ducked down
the same alley the vamp had taken. He must have started moving quickly as soon
as he got off the main street, because he was nowhere to be seen. I broke into
a run.

Santa Barbara was a lot
less attractive back here amid the dumpsters and service entrances. Some
misguided attempt at hosing down the alleyway had resulted in stagnant puddles
and a gag-inducing aroma, just to add to the ambience. A busboy stepping out of
a restaurant with a bulging trash bag raised an eyebrow at me as I jogged past,
and I quipped, “What an incredible smell you’ve discovered.” My geek reference
was totally lost on him. He stared at me like I was insane as he jettisoned the
trash bag and went back inside.

Now where the hell had
that vamp gone? I slowed to a walk after a while, reaching out with my sixth
sense. It only worked visually, it didn’t locate vamps like sonar or anything
(man, if only). So right now, it wasn’t helping me much.

I had pretty good
instincts, though, and when the hair on the back of my neck prickled, I came to
a dead stop. I tightened my grip around the wooden stake in my right hand and
pulled it out of the inside pocket of my jacket, holding it against my chest. A
couple pairs of footsteps were closing fast, making very faint splashing sounds
in the damp alley.

I whirled around and
assessed the situation in a split second, then lashed out with my stake. Two
vamps were almost right on top of me. I drove my weapon into the chest of the
one on the right and he turned to dust on the spot, his clothes crumpling to
the ground.

I’d grabbed a knife
with my left hand and swung it around in a wide arc, but the vamp with slicked-back
hair ducked easily. I dropped to the ground and rolled out of the way as he
lunged at me, my jeans absorbing some of a big puddle. Gross! Now I was going
to smell like wet garbage.

Slick pulled a gun from
inside his suit jacket and pointed it at me, and I rolled my eyes. “Come on,” I
told him. “You’re a damn
vampire
. Carrying a gun on top of that is
pretty much the definition of overkill.” This made him pause for a moment,
knitting his brows like he was trying to decide if I was totally crazy.

That was all the time I
needed. I dropped the knife, pulled my own gun from the waistband of my jeans,
and fired a shot into his forehead. That wouldn’t kill a vampire, but it hurt
like hell and definitely knocked them off their game for a few moments. While
he yelled and raised both hands to his head, I jumped up and jammed the stake
into him, and he disintegrated before my eyes.

Before his clothes even
settled on the ground, I was gathering them and his gun. These all went into a
dumpster, along with a second armload of his buddy’s clothes. Then I shoved my
gun back in my waistband, grabbed my knife and the stake from the ground, and
took off at a dead sprint, stowing my weapons as I ran. My handgun was a small
caliber and the sound it made was little more than a pop, nothing like the
sound guns made on TV. But still, someone would probably come out to the alley
to investigate, and I wanted to be long gone when that happened.

I tried to look casual
as I returned to busy State Street, but I was failing to blend in a big way.
I’d already resembled a homeless person before rolling around in a filthy
alleyway, and now the upper-middle-class masses were giving me a wide berth, as
if my lack of wealth might somehow be contagious. Fucking rich people.

I stopped short when I
got to the block where I’d parked, down at the slightly less ritzy end of State
Street. Half a dozen generic white cars were dotted along the curb. Gah! I
pulled the keys from my pocket and took a look at the logo on the fob. It was a
swoop…with another swoop through it. What the hell? Would it kill car companies
to just use their damn name as a logo? Having ‘Kia’ or ‘Toyota’ or ‘Mitsubishi’
spelled out on the key chain would be a big help, especially since every car
company seemed determined to produce totally nondescript boredom-mobiles these
days. Ok, ‘Mitsubishi’ probably wouldn’t actually fit on the little
faux-leather tag, but surely they could do better than a pair of bent lines.

After unsuccessfully
trying to unlock two other cars (and attracting even more attention, because I
now looked like I was trying to commit grand theft auto on one of the busiest
streets in the county), I finally found the right one and ducked into the (boring
grey) interior. As I fired up the engine and pulled away from the curb, I watched
my rearview mirror, half expecting the Santa Barbara P.D. to come rolling up on
me. Attracting the attention of law enforcement when armed to the eyeballs was
a very, very bad thing.

It was a relief when I
finally turned onto first one and then another major surface street, losing
myself in traffic. When I stopped at a red light, I turned the rearview mirror
toward me and muttered, “Awesome.” I picked a couple stalks of dead crabgrass
from my shaggy black hair – probably a souvenir from the hillside across from
Nate’s house – and scrubbed at a dirt smudge on my right cheek. No wonder
people had been staring. I looked downright feral.

After merging onto the
101 southbound, I settled in for the long drive home to Long Beach and played
tonight’s hunt over and over in my mind. None of that had gone according to
plan. Well, except for the part where I dusted two vamps. Why had Slick acted
like he recognized me? As I’d said, this wasn’t even my usual hunting ground, and
it wasn’t like vampires were organized enough to put out an A.P.B. on me.

The fact that two vamps
had teamed up to come after me was also unusual. Vampires were very solitary
creatures – probably because they were so vicious that any contact usually resulted
in them turning on one another. And yet vamps in Long Beach had started the
same alarming trend of working together lately. The worst case was a warehouse I’d
discovered with at least a dozen vamps on the premises. I still didn’t know
what they’d been doing there, but I’d been trying to find answers over the last
few days.

I had a feeling Bane
was involved with that warehouse somehow. Or even if he wasn’t, he probably
knew why other vampires had an interest in that place. He wasn’t big on sharing
information, though.

And oh yay, now I was
thinking about him again.

God, why had I let him
fuck me? I mean really, what a stunningly bad idea. And why the hell couldn’t I
get it out of my mind? Why did I have to keep remembering the feeling of his
big hands on my body, the strength of his arms around me, the way he’d
whispered, “You’re mine,” when he was inside me, and how much I wanted it to be
true – just in that one insane, lust-crazed moment?

My cock got hard just
thinking about it, which pissed me off. By the time I reached L.A., I was in
such a state that I took a somewhat familiar turn-off and wound through one of
Los Angeles’ more seedy neighborhoods, the kind of place where the buildings
all had thick iron bars on the windows.

As I drove, I decided I
might as well make myself useful, and engaged my sixth sense. The few people I
passed lit up instantly as soon as my sight was engaged, a warm, rosy color. As
pink as the cheeks of a sinner in church, as my Grandpa Reynolds used to say.
He’d been a hunter, too, just like the rest of my family, and had died when I
was eleven. The only reason he lived long enough for me to know him was because
his hunting career had been cut short. He’d gotten injured in the line of duty,
and had been confined to a wheelchair the last half of his life. The fact that
my grandpa was partially paralyzed didn’t stop a vampire from slaughtering him
eventually. Our home was breached, and in that same attack, I also lost my
sister Meg. I’d had four brothers and sisters at one point. Not anymore.

I tried not to think
about that now, concentrating instead on scanning the people I passed. The pink
was comforting for some reason, almost literally a way of seeing the world
through rose-colored glasses.

Man, what a stupid
thought.

Eventually, I parked in
the cramped lot behind a black cinderblock building. The partly burnt-out sign
on the side of it spelled out the second half of ‘Ed’s Mineshaft’ so that only
‘shaft’ was illuminated. Well, that was appropriate enough.

I closed my eyes for a
moment, then took a few deep breaths as I leaned back in my seat, steeling
myself for what I was about to do. Every time I came to this dump, I vowed it
was the last time. But here I was again. 

Eventually, I got out
of the car and went around to the trunk. I offloaded my heavy leather jacket
and about fifteen pounds of weapons, keeping just one knife and one stake
concealed in my boots. On my way to the front door, I glanced at the garbage
and a petri dish of a mattress leaning against the side of the building. I
didn’t even want to contemplate the stains on that bed.

Once inside, I scanned
the crowd (pink, pink, pink) then disengaged my second sight – it was
distracting. I’d barely downed my first whiskey before some random guy caught
my eye. He cocked his head to the side, indicating the dark, dank room at the
back of the bar. I gave him a small nod and slid off my barstool, leading the
way. That was the good thing about this place – no one wasted your time with
inane chit chat, we all knew what we were here for. Once he and I stepped
behind the heavy black curtain, I dropped my pants and braced myself with my
palms against the wall. Ugh, it was sticky. So gross.