Hunted (The Tinder Chronicles) (4 page)

Ty brought his feet up
onto the mattress and hugged his knees to his chest. “I don’t care if my new
master is a vampire or a human. I just want someone who’ll feed me and take
care of me.” He met my gaze and watched me for a few moments, then asked, “Are
you really a vampire hunter?”

“Uh, yeah. Is the wooden
stake not a tip-off?”

“If you’re a hunter, why
haven’t you tried to kill me yet?”

“I really don’t know.”

He sighed and said, “Well,
if I had to be stupid enough to bring a hunter home, I’m lucky that it was you,
and not the monster that killed Calvin. Otherwise, I’d be dead already.”

“Who’s Calvin?”           

“My maker.”

“Ah.”

 “That hunter literally
gives me nightmares,” Ty said with a little shiver. “A friend of mine happened
to be watching from a window when Calvin was killed. He said this guy stabbed my
maker in cold blood, when all Cal was doing was coming home from the library.”

A fragment of a memory
pushed its way into my consciousness, a dark side street, books spilling across
the sidewalk…. Despite myself, I asked, “Do you know the name of that hunter?”

“Yeah. His name’s
Tinder. Have you heard of him?” I nodded, something cold and heavy settling in
my stomach. “He’s like the angel of death among my people,” Ty continued. “You
never know when he’s going to strike, and he’s completely merciless. If he
finds you, you die. So see, that’s why I want to find a master and just drink
from him. I won’t have to go out at night to feed, not when Tinder’s out there
somewhere.”

Christ, he made me
sound like the boogeyman. And why was this all so upsetting to me? I should be
thrilled that my name struck fear in the hearts of bloodsuckers. “If I try to
leave,” I said, “are you going to stop me?”

“No. I would never hurt
you, Tyler. I promise.”

“Back away from the
door. Go over to that far corner,” I said, raising both my weapons a little
higher and gesturing with my chin.

He did as I asked
immediately, then said, “I’m really sorry I scared you, especially after you
were so nice to me tonight.”

I didn’t reply. I just bolted
from the apartment and out of the building, absolutely expecting Ty to come
after me and attack me. But it didn’t happen.

Surprisingly, the
rental car was still parked at the curb. It was so boring that not even
criminals wanted it. As I got behind the wheel and tried to find my way back to
the freeway, I kept thinking about Ty. I felt like I’d orphaned him. It was
insane that I actually felt guilty for ending his maker. If I was going to feel
guilty about something, it should be for not finding and killing Calvin sooner.
Then he never would’ve turned that sweet, beautiful boy into a monster.

“Oh shit,” I muttered
all of a sudden, pulling the rental car to a screeching halt at the curb. I
leapt out and grabbed my big crossbow and a gun from the trunk, then took off
at a run, backtracking half a block. I’d forgotten to disengage my second sight
after leaving Ty’s apartment, and a glimmer of white had caught my eye.

I skidded to a halt at
the mouth of a dark alley, and found a vampire in mid-feed. Without a moment’s
hesitation, I raised the crossbow and fired, even though I knew I couldn’t hit
the vamp’s heart from this angle. She let out a demonic shriek and dropped her
victim, immediately whirling on me with a murderous look in her eyes. The vamp
charged me as I flipped over the double-sided crossbow and fired again. The
second narrow wooden spike found its target, and she broke apart into a million
tiny flecks of nothingness, just inches in front of me.

Now that the vamp (and
the light she’d radiated thanks to my second sight) was no more, the alley was really
dark. I pulled a silver lighter from my pocket and flicked it on, then went to
take a look behind the dumpster. Man, how many times had I found myself in
exactly this situation, in an alley just like this one? The sights, the smells,
the circumstances were always the same. It felt like alleys only existed to
host grisly murders like the one at my feet.

I crouched down and
took a good look at the victim. The homeless man was quite obviously dead, his
throat slit ear to ear so it would look like a random street crime and not a
vampire feeding. The man’s empty, staring eyes looked almost white in the flame
from my lighter, cataracts probably having robbed him of most, or maybe all, of
his sight. He must have struggled to survive on the rough streets of L.A., only
to finally wind up as a meal for a monster.

I sighed and stood up.
I’d failed this man, because I hadn’t gotten here in time to save his life. But
at least the bloodsucker that murdered him would never find another victim.

And damn it, see?
That
was why I hunted. I’d let that little blond vamp get under my skin, let myself
start to question my job as a hunter. Well, screw that. Just because I’d found
a couple anomalies lately, vamps that managed not to kill, that wasn’t how the
world really worked. This was. How could I feel bad about hunting monsters that
did things like this?

I trudged back down the
street, feeling incredibly weary and not looking forward to the long drive
home. Along the way, I contemplated the fact that not so long ago, I often went
two, three weeks without encountering so much as a single vampire. Lately
though, I’d been finding several a week. I didn’t try to kid myself and attribute
this to my awesome hunting ability. The vamps were increasing in number for
some reason. I wondered how far this trend extended, if it was just Southern
California, or all of the U.S., or hell,
everywhere
.

Ty remained on my mind
as I drove home. I had a feeling the baby vamp and I would cross paths again
someday. I’d probably wind up regretting the decision not to end him tonight.
It might even cost me my life.

Chapter
Three

With every part I pulled out of my car, I got more
and more annoyed.

My Camaro was parked in
the narrow garage attached to my house. In order to get it in there, I’d first had
to drag all the landlord’s weird crap out into the backyard (he had fourteen barbecue
grills hoarded up in there.
Fourteen
. WTF?). Over the last few days, I’d
been systematically dismantling the Chevy, laying out all the pieces on a blue
tarp. It was hot and cramped in the little garage, but I couldn’t work in the
driveway. In this neighborhood, all the parts would get stolen the moment my
back was turned.

I was doing this
because I’d recently learned that Bane had installed a tracking device in my
car. I’d gone out and bought a machine that was supposed to scan for trackers
and other bugs, but nothing had shown up. I knew the tracker was in there
somewhere though, so I proceeded to do this the old-fashioned, long, boring,
stupid way.

So far, I’d found not
one, not two, but
three
tracking devices. Seriously?

I’d almost stopped
after I found the first one. But then, on a hunch I kept looking. I almost
expected the second one. But a third tracker? Come on! Overkill much? Since I still
didn’t believe I’d found all of them, I kept going, taking apart the entire car
piece by piece. God damn Bane and his insane notion that he needed to keep an
eye on me!

I was bent over the
front fender of my car, partially embedded in the engine compartment, when my
roommate murmured in his Texas drawl, “Well, shit. Don’t you look good enough
to eat.” After a moment, I felt Lee’s hand cupping my butt. “Why don’t you take
a break, Tinder? You been at this for hours.” By take a break, he of course
meant
wanna screw?

“I’m covered in oil,” I
pointed out, resting my elbows on the fender and glancing at him over my
shoulder. Lee was a good-looking guy, tall and broad-shouldered, his sandy
blond hair still a bit damp and spiky from a recent shower. “I can’t take a
break now, because I’d have to spend forever washing up, and then come right
back here and get dirty all over again.”

“You can just stay
dirty,” Lee said, sliding his hands around my hips and rubbing his hard-on
against my ass through our jeans. My dick immediately responded. “You don’t
even have to change position. Just let me do everything.”

“Well, I suppose I
could
use a break….”

That was all the green-light
Lee needed. He immediately reached around and unbuttoned my Levis, pushing them
down before dropping his own jeans.

He had lube and a
condom in the pocket of his t-shirt, and he squirted the cool liquid between my
cheeks before working some into me with two fingers. I relaxed and spread my
legs as wide as I could with the denim around my knees, and sighed with
pleasure. Lee was doing more than just prepping me. He was finger-fucking me roughly,
just how I liked it, and I moaned and started rocking back onto his hand.

By the time he mounted
me I was fully aroused, my cock leaking precum. I didn’t always try to reach
orgasm while being fucked, but this time I wanted release. Since I couldn’t use
my oil-covered hands, I ground out, “Stroke me,” as Lee thrust into me, and his
big hand wrapped around my cock. He established a steady rhythm as he jerked me
off and pounded me, and minutes later I was painting the side of my car.

Lee wasn’t quite there
yet and grasped my hips, his body slapping my ass as he took me. I grabbed onto
the front of the car, bracing myself, then yelled, “Son of a bitch!” I pulled
out a little black tracking device that had been tucked up under the lip of the
engine compartment and yelled, “
Four?
Are you
kidding
me?”

Lee laughed at that,
not interrupting his thrusts into me, and came a minute later, yelling, “Oh shit,”
as he shot his load. He kept going until he was totally satiated, then eased
out of me carefully. He pulled my pants back up and buttoned them, then gave my
ass a playful slap.

“You know,” he said as
he tossed the condom and got dressed, “Bane’s probably just gonna install new
trackers the very first time you park your car in public.”

“I know. But I still feel
like I have to do this.”

“You gotta wonder ‘bout
the level of obsession that’d drive someone to install so many devices in one
car.”

“Bane’s not obsessed. He’s
just an asshole that enjoys messing with me.” I threw the latest tracker onto
the growing pile in the corner and picked up my wrench, but then Lee startled
me by taking me in his arms and kissing me, long and deep. “Damn it, Lee, what
the hell are you doing?” I muttered against his lips.

He pulled back a couple
inches and said, “I’m kissin’ you, Tinder. That’s what normal people do when
they screw.” His brown eyes sparkled with amusement and he swooped in and
kissed me again, parting my lips with his tongue, pulling me against his broad
chest. What he was doing actually felt really good, and I dropped the wrench
noisily onto the concrete floor and grabbed his ass with both hands.

“That’s better,” he
murmured before running a line of kisses along my jaw.

“Lee,” I said, my voice
a bit rough as he licked my earlobe, “I hope you’re not getting the wrong
impression about what’s going on between us. You and I are just fuck buddies.
You know that, right?”

“We’re more than that,
Tinder.” He twined his fingers in my dark hair and kissed my neck.

“See?” I pulled back
from him as much as I could with the car right behind me. “That’s exactly what
I’m talking about.”

He knit his brows and
took a step back from me. “What’s so wrong with this bein’ more than just sex?”

“It’s not what I want,
you know that. I’ve been up front with you this whole time, perfectly clear
that this was sex only. Can we please not complicate it?”

“Sometimes I just don’t
get you, Tinder,” he said as he turned from me and headed back into the
kitchen. There were two clearly defined handprints on the seat of his jeans,
and when I pointed this out to him, he called over his shoulder, “Good. I’m
fixin’ to leave ‘em there as a reminder.”

“A reminder of what?”

“A reminder that this
is already more than just sex!” He disappeared into the house as I sighed
dramatically.

My life used to be
really straightforward. I just ate and slept and hunted. Occasionally, I had
sex with someone I didn’t know. Oh, and sometimes, I’d go see a movie. That was
about it.

Until recently, I’d
also been completely alone. After the last member of my family died about three
years ago, I’d gotten used to solitude. Now that there were a few people in my
life, things had gotten so damn complicated.

I drove the rental car to the Port of Long Beach later
that night. Lee had suggested we hunt as a team, but I pointed out that we’d
cover more ground separately. Really though, this was just a continuation of
our earlier discussion. It felt like he and I were becoming joined at the hip
(ok, not the hip, exactly…). It was nice having him as a roommate, and the sex
on demand was an awesome perk, but clearly he was starting to think of us as a
couple. The word ‘we’ appeared in his vocabulary way the hell too often.

And he’d really been
making himself at home in the few short days we’d been roommates. Not that
there was anything wrong with that. But every time I turned around, there was a
new piece of furniture or some miscellaneous item that he’d dragged in off the
street. This was weird to me. Since a hunter might have to pack up and move at
a moment’s notice, my family never owned more than would fit in the trunk of
our car.

I’d mentioned this to
Lee, but he’d just shrugged and said, “If we have to leave suddenly, this can
all just stay here. It’s not like I’ll be out anything.” Ok, he kind of had a
point. Lee was perpetually broke and a world-class dumpster diver, he wasn’t
spending money on any of this stuff.

I was trying to do
something about his financial situation, and had sent a note to my benefactor
asking if funds were available for him. I was still waiting to hear back. The
war on vampires had traditionally been funded by behind-the-scenes networks
that raised money to support those of us that hunted. But Lee had stopped
getting financial assistance a few years ago.

His theory was that because
of budget cuts, only full-blooded hunters were getting money these days, since
I was still receiving checks. I was one of less than a dozen full-bloods in the
state of California, while Lee was only half. That meant both of my parents had
been true hunters, born with the ability to recognize vampires at a glance, and
only one of Lee’s parents had been, so his second sight was a lot weaker than
mine. His theory made sense. We were only guessing though, because the
benefactors never actually bothered telling us what was going on.

Eventually, I pulled to
the curb and parked. Though the warehouses down by the waterfront were really
busy during the day, at night they were dark and still. I got out of the car, picked
a direction at random and started walking. Normally, this wouldn’t be my first
choice of hunting grounds. But after stumbling across that mysterious warehouse
with a bunch of vamps on the premises, I kept coming back here. I thought there
was a chance the vamps might take over another warehouse, since they’d abandoned
that first one.

After wandering the
entire warehouse district twice over the course of a couple hours, I was bored
out of my mind. This was pointless. Nothing was going on down here, nothing at
all. I gave up and headed in the direction of my car, my hunter’s sight still
engaged.

Suddenly, I got one of
those feelings, the hair on the back of my neck bristling. I looked all around
me, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Impulsively, I climbed a rusty fire
escape at the back of a condemned brick building. If there were any vamps in
the area, maybe I could spot them from a higher vantage point. I picked my way
across the torn-up asphalt tiles and peered over the edge of the roof.

My adrenaline spiked
instantly. Moving this way from three directions were half a dozen vampires.
They were lit up in the darkness, converging like planes on a collision course
on an air traffic controller’s screen.

I ducked down quickly,
wondering if they’d seen me, then ventured a glance over the short retaining
wall at the edge of the roof. Dread bloomed cold inside me. They were headed
right for this building. And all of a sudden, I realized what was happening.

They were hunting me.

There was no way to get
inside this building from the roof, so I sprinted back to the fire escape. Two
vamps were already halfway up it. I drew a big stake and a gun and fired a
couple shots at them, but the vamp in the lead had thought to pick up a metal
trash can lid, and was using it like a shield to deflect my shots. I frowned at
that and whirled around, frantically assessing my situation.

Oh man, this had been
stupid – I’d totally cornered myself. But I’d had no idea there were a bunch a
vamps on my tail.
And since when did they hunt in packs?

I wasn’t expecting the
vamp that suddenly landed right in front of me, jumping onto the roof from the
taller building next door. Reflexively, I thrust the stake into his chest,
putting so much force behind it that I fell with him as he disintegrated.

Immediately, I was hauled
to my feet by one of the vampires that had come up the fire escape. Another
punched me in the stomach, so hard that several of my ribs shattered. The pain
was intense, but I still struggled wildly as the vampire holding my arms
tightened his grip and said, “Well, that was just too easy.”

I looked around, my
heart thudding in my chest as fear coursed through me. Several more vampires
had joined us on the rooftop by now, ten in all. I’d only spotted a portion of
them coming after me on the ground. The rest had leapt down from the adjacent
building or had come up from the rear.

 “Can this really be
the mighty Tinder?” the red-headed vamp directly in front of me asked, his tone
mocking. “Hardly the fearsome hunter I was expecting.” He looked a little like
he’d just stepped out of the Scottish highlands, his long, curly hair tied back
in a messy ponytail.

“Bite me, Merida,” I
ground out. The Disney reference was totally lost on him. I had to question why
I myself could come up with it.

The vampires closed
around us in a circle, eyes gleaming in anticipation. Their spokesvamp continued
as if I hadn’t said anything, addressing the crowd. “It’s disappointing, that’s
what it is. He was built up to be the stuff of legend, but look at him. He’s
more boy than man, really. Just another fragile little human.” To illustrate
his point, he circled behind me and took the place of the vamp holding onto me,
then wrenched my arms upward. I yelled as bones snapped, the pain so intense
that I would have dropped to my knees if he wasn’t holding me up.

“How many of my kind have
you killed, hunter?” The vamp pinned my broken arms excruciatingly behind my
back, and another yell tore from me. “Dozens? Hundreds?” He twisted my arms slowly,
pain searing through me. “It’s a shame that I can only kill you once. But at
least I can drag it out, make you suffer for what you’ve done to my brethren.”