The Vampire Hunter's Daughter The Complete Collection (12 page)

“Of course, I have my gun,” I told him, but
in my head, I was wondering how the hell I was going to shoot with
my left hand since I obviously wasn’t going to use my right
one.

He nodded, and then he slammed the door and
ran through the dark parking lot. I watched through the windshield
and saw him punching numbers into what must have been a coded lock.
He slipped inside and didn’t come out for close to fifteen
minutes—fifteen long, painful minutes.

While he was in there, I looked back over the
seat to make sure Luke was still breathing, but it was rough and
gurgly. When I managed to lean over the seat and feel his face, he
felt cold. I got out of the car and opened the trunk. Sure enough,
there were two army green blankets folded and tucked into the
corner. I grabbed one and placed it gently over Luke’s body, trying
to be cautious of his arms as I tucked in the sides.

With my arm throbbing and feeling like it was
still on fire, I got back into the front seat to wait for Drew.
When he finally came back, his face was flushed, and his eyes were
blazing.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He slammed the door and fired up the car.
“Nothing,” he growled, and then peeled out of the parking lot in
reverse.

“Well, it looks like something is wrong.”

“Leave me alone, Chloe.”

“Fine.” Normally I would have crossed my arms
because I was so annoyed, but my arm hurt too bad to move it.

Finally, we arrived at the hospital. Drew
sped into the ER drop off and jumped out of the car. He ran through
the double glass doors and was in there for about two seconds
before people dressed in paper coats and gloves came rushing out
with him. They gathered Luke onto a gurney and wheeled him through
the doors. I watched him go, and said a little prayer that he would
be okay. I didn’t love him, but he was the closest to anything in
my life that I
could
love.

A nurse or doctor or something had stayed
behind. “Miss, you need to be seen as well. Come with me.”

I looked at Drew. I desperately wanted him to
come with me, but he only nodded and got into the driver’s
seat.

“I’ll come in and find you,” he told me, and
then he slowly drove away.

The first thing they did was a bunch of
X-rays. It turned out my forearm was broken, but not as badly as it
felt. They set it and gave me a cast that only went up to my elbow.
Obviously, I didn’t have to stay in the hospital for anything, but
we stayed all night in the waiting room because Luke was in
surgery. One of the nurses had explained to us that Luke was
unconscious from shock, mostly. He had to have surgery on four
broken bones, and one of his ribs had punctured a lung. He was
going to be in the operating room while they did all the surgeries
and made sure there wasn’t anything wrong with his brain.

We sat in the pink and white waiting room
reading magazines for hours. We drank nasty coffee and ate nasty
vending machine sandwiches, and we waited.

At about four in the morning, a young, preppy
looking doctor came out and told us that Luke had come through his
surgeries well, and that the MRI showed no damage to his brain, but
we were going to have wait until he woke up to find out if
everything was functioning normally.

“Can we see him? Is he awake?” I asked.

“Of course, but only for a few minutes. He
needs rest right now. Your grandfather will probably be asleep
anyway; we’ve given him quite a bit of pain medication.”

“Thank you,” I told him.

Neither of us said a word while the doctor
took his leave. I lifted my eyes and met Drew’s green-eyed gaze. We
stayed that way for a while, not moving or speaking, just locked in
each other’s stare. Finally, I became uncomfortable enough to break
eye contact. I looked away. “We should go see him now.”

Drew nodded and mumbled, “Yeah,” under his
breath.

We both stood and found our way to Luke’s
room.

I don’t think I had fully prepared myself for
what we saw. Luke lay on the hospital bed with a full-length cast
on his right arm, a boot cast on his right leg and another one like
mine on his left arm. There were tubes coming out from between his
ribs that were hooked to a machine, and an oxygen cannula in his
nose.

I heard Drew suck in his breath and looked
over at him. He looked more angry than sad or worried. I decided to
ignore him for the moment and went to the chair beside Luke’s
bed.

“Luke, can you hear me?”

He didn’t move. He looked so frail and old
laying there.

“Drew, what are we going to do? He is
probably going to be in here for a while.”

“We go home, and we see what damage has been
done to our people. Then we plan the mission to take our
revenge.”

I bowed my head. I felt responsible for all
that had happened. If it wasn’t for me, the community wouldn’t have
been attacked in the first place. I was sure some of the hunters
had died during the attack.

“This is turning into a war, isn’t it?” I
whispered.

Drew turned toward the window and replied,
“Yes… it is.”

We went home after sitting with Luke until
midmorning. Drew and I both needed sleep and showers. After I
showered, I crawled into bed and slept so hard I was certain it
would be the next day when I woke. I only managed to sleep for six
hours.

Drew was in the kitchen, eating a bowl of
cereal and reading the newspaper.

“Hi.” I grabbed a bowl and sat across from
him.

“Did you go out there yet?” I nodded in the
general direction of town.

“Yes. The stats are that we only lost three
hunters… not bad, really… considering the attack, but I think they
were more or less after you. We lost Eric, from the guard shack,
and the two guys in the control room. One of them was my
uncle.”

Oh, god. He must hate me.

“I’m so sorry.” I felt tears sliding down my
cheeks. “Are you mad at me?”

Abruptly, he slid his chair out and grabbed
his bowl, and then he threw it in the sink so hard it shattered
into a zillion pieces. I flinched and sank back into my chair.

“Damn it, Chloe! It’s not always about you.
Why in the hell would I be mad at you?”

“I don’t know.” I knew I was whining, but I
didn’t care. I just didn’t want him to be mad at me. “I’m
sorry.”

I sniffled back a bunch of snot that was
threatening to come out of my nose.

He placed his hands on the counter in front
of the sink and bowed his head.

I just sat there bawling while he stayed like
that. Most likely he was trying to calm himself.

After about five minutes, I couldn’t do it
anymore. “I’m sorry.” I whispered, and then got up to leave. I got
as far as the door when he grabbed me by the wrist on my good arm
and spun me around. It surprised me so much that I gasped and
reflexively yanked my arm back.

“Chloe.”

“What? I’m trying to get out of here,
Drew.”

“Don’t go. I don’t think any of this is your
fault, but I have to grieve, too.” He took a step away from me.
“Don’t you get it? I’m sad, Chloe. My uncle just died and so did
our friends.”

I didn’t know what to say. It seemed like
everything I said to him made him yell, so I did the only thing I
knew how to do: I moved in and wrapped my arms around him.

It must have surprised him, because I wasn’t
normally a touchy feely person, but eventually he responded and
placed his own arms around my waist. We hugged, staying like that
for a long time. His grip tightened around me and I heard him
sniffle a couple times. He needed release. I did know enough about
guys to know that they don’t normally show emotion very well, so I
wanted to help him.

When the embrace was over, he released me and
turned away. I felt a vibe from him that seemed to say ‘If you tell
anyone about this, I’ll have to kill you.’

I figured the best thing to do would be to
leave him alone now. “If you need me, I’ll be in my room.”

I saw the back of his head moving in a
nod.

On the way to my room, I heard my cell phone
chirping its stupid ringtone I hadn’t bothered to change yet. I ran
the rest of the way and threw open my door, then did a sort of
flying leap toward my bed where my phone was laying.

“Hello!”

“Chloe?” I hadn’t bothered to look at the
caller ID and didn’t recognize the voice.

“Yeah, this is me. Who is this?”

“It’s Gavin.”

“Oh, hi.”

“Do you have minute to talk?”

I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me.
“Yeah, sure. What’s up?”

“Well, the main reason I called was to see if
you were all right, after all that happened.”

“I’m okay. I have a broken arm, but Luke is
in pretty bad condition. Drew is all right, too.”

I heard him sigh through the earpiece. “Good,
I’m glad you weren’t hurt too badly. I’m sorry about Luke.”

I explained to him all about Luke’s injuries
and told him how worried I was. After that, we lapsed into silence
for a minute. When he spoke, his voice was unsure. “So… this may
not be the right time to bring this up, but the New Year’s Bash is
still on.”

“They are still going to put that on, even
with all that happened?” I was utterly shocked that they would
still go through with such an event after the attack.

“Yeah, its tradition…and I think there will
be a lot of discussion about retaliation there too.”

Great, just great.
I was still going
to have to find a dress. “Oh, well I guess we are still on
then?”

“Absolutely, that was the other reason I was
calling.”

“Well… thanks for making sure. I guess I’ll
see you when you pick me up.” I didn’t know why, but I suddenly
wanted to get off the phone really bad.

“I’ll be there,” he told me and then we said
goodbye and clicked off.

Damn it. Now I had to see if Drew would drive
me to the mall after we went to visit Luke later. The last thing I
wanted to do was bother him about going to get a dumb dress. I had
no other choice; I didn’t have anything to wear.