Chapter Four
“She askedyou?What the hell? I’m basically her daughter.” My bestie crossed her arms and glared at me from behind the punching bag.
I chuckled, throwing a right jab into the bag as she reached out to steady it. “Way to take the high road and be happy for me.”
She blew air through her lips, staring at the golden pin I had clipped onto the top of my sports bra. Today after I got in, I’d showered and crashed I was so exhausted. This was my first time seeing Liv. I’d woken late this morning to an empty apartment, and after I’d put makeup over my neck bite, and read a bit of theHunter Scripturesto reinforce the fact that I still hated evil vampires, I’d gone in search of my bestie.
“Obviously I’m happy for you. But … I thought we’d make senior hunter together.” She pouted, pushing her thick bottom lip out.
Liv was so gorgeous, I swear I felt like a beast next to her sometimes. She was a curly-haired hazel-eyed goddess with full lips and curves in all the right places, and she knew it too. I felt beautiful, but more in an exotic way, a way that not every guy liked. I was half Singaporean, half Sicilian-Italian according to my adoption papers, and I often wondered about my birth parents.
“Hello? Welcome to Earth?” Liv waved frantically in front of my face and I threw a left jab.
I shrugged. “Sorry, babe. I’m just that good.”
After flipping me off, she changed the subject. “Hey, I had an idea while you were sleeping. Just to make sure that thing we talked about earlier is really a myth.”
The color drained from my face and I looked over my shoulder. We were in the training room doing high intensity workouts. My bright red hair was plastered to my neck with sweat, covering the feeder marks. The marks were almost gone. Within another twenty-four hours they should be unrecognizable.
“Okay…” I thought we’d agreed to forget about it. That it wasn’t a big deal.
“Come on, I’ll show you.” She started to unwrap her gloves. Our workout was over, but we usually showered after and then grabbed lunch from Kenz. This must be damn important to bring her sweaty, hungry ass off schedule. As we weaved in and out of hallways and up the elevator of the society, it dawned on me where we were going.
“The Creepy Library?” I whisper-screamed.
She looked back at me, grinning. “Remember when we came in here when we were like thirteen? They had that freaking preserved vampire finger in there.”
I remembered. She’d run back to the youth dormitory shaking in fear. As Liv got to the double doors and placed her finger on the keypad, it beeped, letting her in.
There was a regular hunter library with normal books and stuff, and then there was this thing. This was … more like a relics vault. We all called it The Creepy Library, even Maz, who I was pretty sure named it. Anything weird that we found while hunting, like a pendant or vampire appendage, made it in here. Not to mention a boatload of rare books stolen from the bloodsuckers themselves.
I wondered if Liv thought we would read about vampire imprinting in here … assuming it was real.
“You’re a genius,” I told her as we entered the stale smelling room. I would surely put this fear to rest by finding a book in The Creepy Library that said it wasn’t possible for a human and a vampire to imprint.
She grinned and both of our gazes fell on a jar with a petrified bat inside.
“Eww.” Liv squirmed and reached for a book that sat just behind the bat. One by one we just grabbed books and flipped through them, looking for anything having to do with imprinting or mental speak. I was reading a book on vampire royalty and their powers when I stilled on the family tree.
Luka Drake.
My fingers brushed his name and I wondered if my blood had saved his life. He seemed pretty damn alert and healed as I was leaving…
Under his name was his birthdate, 1989. Weird, he was thirty-two. I mean, he looked twenty-two, but they all did unless they wanted to allow themselves to age more. At least he wasn’t one of those nine hundred year old ones.Thosefreaked me out.
Under Luka’s birthday were two words.
Dominus coercere.
My hands froze.
My Latin was impeccable. Those two words basically meant “master of compulsion.”
Everyone in the royal family was rumored to have one special power, and most of them could compulse, which luckily we were immune to as hunters—part of the genetic upgrade we had. Maz did say that it would take the queen herself to be able to force a hunter to do anything, but … what about a master of compulsion…?
Did Luka … use it onme? Did he do things and make me forget them? Oh my … a sick feeling rushed through me but I had to push it down.
No. He wouldn’t. He wasn’t like the others.
