The warehouse is in complete darkness. I remember Penny’s intel. A Thursday night, just like this one, and a girl with amnesia caused either by alcohol or compulsion. The waitress is not drunk. And if she survives, I’m sure the leech will compel her to forget everything. I tighten my boot laces, that familiar giddiness spreading through me. I stretch, breathing in the greasy air.
The waitress steps out, walking straight to the entrance of the warehouse. The door creaks open, and she disappears inside. I don’t waste another second, leaping across the street and landing silently on the roof.
The gabled roof has a dozen windows. The back of the warehouse looks like an old train station, with a glass ceiling overlooking a dark hall. I’m twenty metres above the ground, so I hook a wire to a pole, tugging it to make sure it’s sturdy. When I look back down, the waitress enters the hall. And across from her, half a dozen vampires.
Fuck.
This isn’t what Penny told me to expect. Quickly, I snap a picture of them, sending it her way. She wanted intel, that’s all. But even though saving people is none of my business, I can’t let them hurt that girl. I find the window sash and give it a small push. It opens just enough for me to hear their voices.
“That’s all?” a woman asks.
“She’s the only one with passable blood,” another vampire, the one who compelled her, replies.
“Blood?” the victim asks. A small part of her is still lucid, despite her eerie, doll-like stillness.
The vampire’s eyes flash red again. “You will forget that you ever saw us. When someone asks where you went during the following hour, tell them you walked to the river and then came back.”
They’re keeping her alive.
The girl nods. I try to open the window all the way, but find itjammed. And I’m too slow. One vampire holds the girl, keeping her upright, while the one who compelled her drags a dagger across her clavicle. My heart drops. The girl doesn’t make a sound, shocked as blood spouts around her.
I smash the window, leapingin.
“Hunter!” one of the vampires shouts.
A thin fog fills the warehouse as they turn into bats, all before I can even show them a cross. They fly out the same window I jumped through. The girl collapses. “Get back here!” I scream, just before I realise that one, the vampire who compelled her, has stayed behind. He leaps on me, knocking the gun out of my hand as his eyes flash red.
“What is Callisto doing here?”
I draw a knife from my sleeve while he clasps his hands tight around my neck. I stab his hand, and blood sprays the side of my mask, dripping onto my clothes as I try to wrestle my way out of his grip. His cold blood sticks to my jacket. This is why hunters always wear black.
Despite the wound in his hand, he tightens his grip, pinning me to the ground. “Take a bite and I’ll tell you,” I choke out through my mask, lifting my left wrist to his lips. The leech smirks, not thinking twice before sinking his fangs into my skin. Pain sears through my nerves, but it’s worth it. He swallows, and his grip around my neck loosens.
His eyes widen as he chokes, and I pull out a wooden stake. I slam it into his chest, and I wish he’d take a little longer to die. But once his heart is pierced, his rotten soul slips out of his body in an instant. His corpse turns into a cloud of smoke, leaving nothing but a pile of dust behind.
The girl’s glasses are tangled in her hair. Soon her co-workers will realise she’s missing. I press my hand to her neck, feeling a faint pulse, and use her phone to call an ambulance. I tell them there’s an unconscious girl in the street behind Silverbirch and that they should be quick. Luckily enough, I always carry a small but basic first aid kit on my body. I cover the wound on her clavicle with gauze and a large plaster. Hopefully it’s enough to stop the bleeding.
I leave her slumped against the wall of the pub, her pulse dangerously slow. I need to get out of here before the ambulance arrives. Why did they run away? Surely six vampires would at the very leastthinkthey’d be able to take on a hunter?
More important, why are they sparing their victims? If it was just one vampire, I would understand keeping their targets alive to ration their blood and avoid the attention that a string of murders or disappearances would bring to a small city like Inverness. But there were six of them. And there was something almost clinical in the way they stood around her. Measuring her.
For what? A blood party?
I stash my bloodied mask under my jacket and run back to the Ness Islands. By the time I’m crossing the old metal bridges, the wound on my wrist is burning. I locate my bike, and the seagull I saw earlier this night is perched on the handlebars once again. “Fuck off,” I tell it. I need to get out of Inverness. The other vampires might be following me in bat form. They’ll be able to smell the blood on me if they fly close enough. I cycle into a residential area before joining the motorway. I don’t see any bats followingme.
But that doesn’t change the fact that my clothes are soaked in vampire blood.
Tynarrich Hall hasa laundromat on the first floor, and luckily enough, it’s deserted. I dump my uniform in the washing machine and look at the time. It’s already foura.m.If anyone asks why I’m up this late, I can tell a half truth. I wanted to hit the town. The fact that I killed a vampire is irrelevant.
My bedroom is quiet and empty, no signs of my roommate. I take my bag into the bathroom, scrubbing my mask of any extra blood before stepping into a scalding hot shower. Crimson runs down my body, blood and hair dye mixing on the porcelain shower tray, while I rest against the cold glass.
I’ll have to lie low for the next few weeks. Five vampires got away, and now they’re probably looking forme.
I glance at the moon-shaped wound on my left wrist. I turn the tap, water running cold, and think of the girl. Will she truly not remember anything that happened?
I wrap a towel around myself, another around my hair, and brush my teeth.
And it’s while I do this, as the bathroom becomes quiet, that I hearit.
