Page 30 of Caretaker

There were a few people out—as the vampires had begun dying, some of the humans had decided to start braving the night once again—and they hurried to move out of my way when I neared them.

I passed a bar, and the few people who stood in front of it, cigarettes in hand, watched me go. A couple of them called out, but I barely heard them.

My mind was on the clean blood of the judge’s wife.

We didn’t see one single vampire.

I ran until I reached the railroad tracks, hesitated briefly, then jogged over the tracks and into Galangal, one of the more questionable neighborhoods of the city. It was not a place Mrs. Madalyn Bennett would ever have gone. Not on her own.

I stopped, finally, and paced in circles while waiting for my breathing to slow. Honestly, I was surprised I wasn’t more winded than I was. I guess a good healthy dose of vampire spit would do that for a person.

Shane dropped the strap of his shotgun over his head, then stood with his arms crossed, staring toward the brightness of the minimart across the street. He wasn’t winded either, but I wasn’t about to ask him if vampire spit had done that for him.

When I took off once again, Shane was right behind me. I felt his heat as intensely as I felt the pull of Madalyn’s scent.

We jogged down the street after street, cut through the parking lot of the closed Galangal Shoe Mart, then trudged up the bank of the woods at the back of the store.

I sighed. “Of course she’s in the woods.” I hadn’t had a lot of good things happen in woods. It was the place for vampires, blood, violence, secrets.

It was a place of death.

I had no reason to think it would be any different that night. I pulled Silverlight from her sheath as Shane and I slowed to a walk.

A few minutes later I stopped walking and lifted my nose, scenting the air, my stomach tight with expectation.

Madalyn’s scent couldn’t have been stronger if I’d been standing next to her.

“She’s here.” I turned in a circle, nervous, irritated. “Somewhere.”

Shane grunted, back to his usual noncommittal self. But he walked, shotgun in his hands, his stare on the ground, searching for tracks.

Her scent swirled around me like I was standing right on top of her, and the frustration of not being able to see her was overwhelming. “Shit! Where is she? Where the hell is she?”

I clenched Silverlight so tightly she gave a tiny flash of light, as though irritated at my tight hold. I eased up and grabbed my flashlight, joining Shane in the search.

It was like a fierce itch I couldn’t scratch because I couldn’t find it, and the longer I couldn’t grasp it, the more anxious I became. The itchier.

I whirled, undecided, unable to figure out which way to go. I dropped the flashlight and it bounced, flickered, and went out, and I couldn’t see it in the light from a stingy moon. Something sliced into my finger as I moved my hand frantically over the ground, searching for the flashlight, only not really. I was searching for Madalyn. I had to scratch that itch, or I might die.

I jumped to my feet, shaking the blood from my finger, panting. “Son of a bitch,” I yelled. My insides quivered, my thoughts were a chaotic scramble, and my emotions flew from rage to tears to fear. I spiraled out of control. I spiraled fast.

Shane grabbed my shoulders, his fingers biting into my flesh. “Quiet.”

His voice was sharp in the dark stillness—the only sounds were distant swishes of car tires on pavement and the occasional blast from an angry horn—and it made my brain stutter to a halt immediately.

It reset me, that voice.

“Your nose is outpacing your brain,” he murmured. “You just need to be quiet and get your mind straight.”

I pushed Silverlight back into her sheath, then grasped his wrists and took a deep breath, then another, then another, and the furious storm inside me began to calm.

“What’s wrong with me?” My voice was steady, and I was no longer jumping out of my skin. I stared at him, at his dark face, concentrating on only him. His warmth, the feel of his skin beneath my fingers, his soft breathing.

He grinned, then shrugged. “Just growing pains, baby hunter.”

“Growing pains,” I echoed. “Yes.”

“All right, then. Now. Madalyn was here. Find her.”

I let go of his arms, stepped back, then turned around and walked a few yards away. There was a tree, a hickory tree, and caught in its bark, a little below my eye level, were a few strands of long, blonde hair, and the dark stain of blood.

Madalyn’s blood.

I’d found her.