The Hunted (11 page)

She rolled her eyes. ‘You know, what we’ve been talking about all day … the rave?’

Realisation dawned, and I grinned. ‘You do realise that I’m grounded, right?’

She shrugged and grinned back. ‘Since when has that ever stopped you?’

‘True,’ I said, grabbing my backpack and climbing out of the car. ‘I’ll meet you in the usual place at eleven thirty tonight.’

‘Done.’ I closed the door behind me, and she waved as she backed down the driveway and disappeared from sight.

I shifted my backpack over one shoulder and headed towards the house. The strange tang of Susan’s cooking insidiously invaded my nostrils, automatically triggering my gag reflex. She was the worst cook in history. There was no doubt about it. The other Protectors in our faction had stopped coming over for dinner years ago. Their excuses were good, and varied, but there was no excuse for family. We couldn’t escape.

Need I say more?

I retrieved my house keys and let myself in the front door. The smell of burnt meat, stewed apples and tomato sauce were stirring in the air. My nostrils practically closed themselves in revolt.

Lucas was sprawled over an armchair watching cartoons on Nickelodeon. Not really a shocker there. It was either the TV or the computer that generally consumed his spare time, but ever since he’d been whipped by a twelve year old at online Tetris, he’d been burying himself in Sponge Bob Square Pants instead.

George was sitting at the dining table reading a newspaper, and from Susan’s absence from the immediate area and the god awful stench, she was probably in the kitchen.

I dropped my backpack onto the floor next to the bureau and then wandered over to Lucas and plonked myself down in his lap. I usually didn’t pester him this way, but I was in a funny mood, and annoying Lucas suddenly felt like the best idea in the world.

‘E!’ he whined, as I wiggled around annoyingly in his lap.

‘What?’ I said innocently, holding back my laughter.

‘I’m watching TV. Get off me. You do this every time I’m trying to watch something important.’

I glanced at the screen and saw the terribly important Pokémon characters engaging in a battle. ‘I do not,’ I said, finally answering him and pushed even harder against his stomach.

‘Yes you do. Now get off me before I wet myself.’ He shoved me hard, sending me sprawling onto the floor.

I laughed. ‘I only have minutes left to live and I want to make the most of the time I have left by annoying you.’

He snorted. ‘Mum’s cooking isn’t that bad.’

I threw him a look of disbelief, while George cleared his throat at the table and tossed both of us a sideways glance. It was layered thick with warning promise of retribution should we follow this conversation to its end.

Susan wandered into the dining room. ‘Dinner’s ready!’ she said, cheerfully placing a large mounded plate in the centre.

Lucas and I stood up and wandered over to the table. It was clearly a mistake, looking down at the brown, fudgy looking goo sitting on top of a mound of what looked to be something like mashed potatoes. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Spaghetti,’ Susan said, smiling happily and pointing at her bizarre creation. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ I choked back a laugh and George shot me another warning.

Lucas grunted and sat down. ‘Only a blind man would think that was spaghetti,’ Lucas said loud enough for only me to hear.

I bit my tongue.

George cleared his throat and surveyed the wreck of a meal in front of him, folding the newspaper up and placing it on the table beside him. ‘Looks lovely, sweetheart,’ he said, smiling politely at Susan.

What a brown noser.

She smiled broadly and then headed back into the kitchen to grab us some plates.

‘I hope our medical insurance is up to date,’ Lucas said, sniffing at the strange looking concoction of food. His nose wrinkled and he pulled back immediately.

‘And why is that?’ George said, eyeing him warily.

‘Because if I’m going to get food poisoning tonight, I want to make sure I get one of the good rooms at the hospital, the ones with a TV and a decent view.’

I snorted, biting back the laugh that was bubbling in the back of my throat. George leant across the table and slapped us both upside the head.

Lucas and George had both been admitted to the hospital twice with severe food poisoning. At least I could self-heal from whatever bout of sickness was heading my way. I couldn’t say the same for the rest of them.

*          *          *

Dinner was a mighty quick affair.

Lucas, George, and I chugged down the food with brutal efficiency. At least that way, we didn’t taste it much on the way down.

Susan, of course, had taken that as a sign of appreciation which probably meant we’d get served her version of ‘spaghetti’ sometime again in the near future.

After dinner and a quick shower, I bid goodnight to everyone and then headed upstairs to bide my time until Kayla came to get me for the rave.

I switched the bedroom light off to make it seem like I had gone to sleep, and then climbed up onto my window sill, mounted the side of the newly replaced guttering, and climbed onto the roof. This was one of my favourite spots around the whole house. No one else was game enough to climb up onto the roof without a ladder, for fear of plummeting head first into the ground below. My self-healing ability robbed me entirely of any fear of falling, and as I’d already done it a million times before and had broken more bones than I could count, I was immune to the pain. Anyway, it was the one place in the entire house that I knew no one would follow me.

I sat down on the corrugated sheeting, and dangled my legs over the side. I watched the happenings of the street and listened absentmindedly to the sounds of the night. The street was relatively quiet except for the usual traffic—a handful of cars that occasionally drove past or parked in nearby driveways. People were returning home from a hard day at work, a casual afternoon spent with their families, or from enjoying what was left of the weekend.

I closed my eyes and focused on my other senses. I could still smell what was left of dinner resonating in the air around the house, and my nostrils wrinkled in disgust. Across the road I could smell the neighbours having a barbeque, cooking sausages and charcoal steak. The aroma was exceedingly appealing compared to what I’d just ingested.

The smell of the raw meat they were yet to cook cut through the air. It appealed to my senses the most. The sweet stench of blood, tainted with salt and metallic undertones.

I wondered if it tasted exactly how it smelt—would it be different when I became a vampire? Why could I smell blood so vividly but I could not scent people? It didn’t make any sense. People had individual aromas, I was sure of that. Yet I could not smell anything on anyone except whatever artificial smell attached itself to their skin, like perfume or aftershave.

I sighed. There were so many questions about myself that were always going to go unanswered. Susan and George were reluctant to discuss my past and I had no one else to turn to for answers.

I knew very little about my natural mother, except for her name,
Elena
, and even less about my father. I had no idea where I was born or how I had come to be the adopted daughter of a family of Protectors.

My father had to be a vampire in order for me to be conceived, but Susan and George had sworn to me that they knew nothing of him. I still felt like they were keeping something from me. I had no choice but to believe them. I could do no research of my own into the truth of their words—my files were all located at the headquarters of the IMI in Bucharest, Romania. But even so, no one thought that requesting them for me was a priority. Susan always said that no good came from digging around in the past. Yet despite that fact, she had agreed to tell me everything before my eighteenth birthday when she and George deemed I was mature enough to handle the information. I just didn’t know if I could wait that long. What harm could really come from knowing more about myself? If I wanted answers then I was either going to have to fly to Romania to discover the truth, or hope someone finally slipped up.

It would also stand to reason that if my father was a vampire, then there was a good chance that he was still out there. Didn’t I at least have a right to that information?

I had been sitting on the roof for just over an hour, contemplating my life, when I felt the beginnings of pins and needles in my feet and bottom. I hadn’t changed positions in quite some time and was starting to feel it.

I tried to stand, pulling myself upright and grabbing my sore legs. I hopped clumsily from foot to foot, trying to get some feeling back into my limbs while I tenderly massaged my backside. A few seconds later all feeling was regained.

I sat back down again, rolled onto my back and stared up at the stars. An icy wind sprang up around me. I wished that I had had the foresight to put on a jumper. But I was relatively comfortable now, enjoying the serenity of my isolation. I had a few hours to spare before getting ready for the rave, so why not spend them enjoying a few moments of peace and quiet?

I cringed as I heard the vicious scraping sound of the rear patio door opening. First the glass slider scraped and shredded the metal tracks on which it ran, then the security screen following up the rear with an even louder groan of protest.

So much for serenity.

Huffing impatiently, I rolled onto my stomach so that I could peer over the edge of the roof. It was strange for someone to be going into the garden to begin with. No one ever really went out there anymore except for me. It was too hard to get through the patio doors without hassle, yet no one could be bothered to fix them, so the garden had become an overgrown jungle of plants and weeds.

Sometimes, in the cooler months like now, instead of sitting on the roof I would sit out in the garden on a Sunday and read, or catch up on school work. What had me curious was who would want to come out here in the first place, and at this time of night?

I peeked quickly over the edge of the roof and saw Susan and George step out into the night, closing the two doors noisily behind them. They made their way over to the little metal table and chairs that were near the back door.

They took a chair each and just sat there silently for a few minutes not saying anything. They looked concerned. It was probably the tomato sauce in tonight’s dinner coming back up.

‘Do you think it is safe to talk out here?’ Susan murmured as she touched a hand to George’s. She was whispering so quietly that it was a struggle to hear anything at all. But I did catch both of them glance around the garden and then look up at my window.

Safe to talk about what?

I shimmied backwards on the roof, flattening my body out completely on the cold corrugation. I knew that they probably couldn’t see me, not unless they were really paying attention but I wanted to be sure. It was lucky that Susan and George appeared just as intent on staying in the comfort of the shadows to continue their conversation.

When they looked away, I crept slightly forward again.

‘I would think so,’ George said. ‘The kids sleep like the dead and, besides, I saw their lights go off over an hour ago. We should still talk quietly though, just in case. Who knows whose ears are listening?’ He pointed a thumb over his shoulder at the fence, indicating our nosey neighbour Bob.

‘What should we do, George?’ I heard Susan say in her hushed tones.

‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘I don’t think it’s the right time to be talking about any of this.’

‘Well, when are we going to? This problem isn’t going to go away, that I am sure of. We have less than two years to prepare. You know he’s going to ask for her soon.’