Mated Girl (Wolf Girl #4)(54)

Vampire Hunter Society (The Dark Bite)
*Un-edited and may change.


I took one look over my shoulder, making sure I wasn’t followed, and slipped down the alley between third street and Grant. Tonight’s mark had been a challenge to hunt and I was going to be sore as shit tomorrow. My fingers clenched the heavy burlap sack as I stepped up to the non-descript brown rusted metal door. Reaching out, I banged three times fast, then once slow, followed by two times fast. A thin eye slit opened but it was too dark to tell who was on duty. Probably Finn.
“Password.” Finn’s gravely Irish voice came through the door in a muffled timbre.
“Daemonium interfectorem,” I whispered.
The metal panel to the right of the door popped open and slid to the left, revealing the hidden keypad underneath. Pressing my right index finger to the pad, I waited for the soft click of the door mechanism to open. My fingernails still had blood in them from the kill and my lower back throbbed from being slammed against the wall so hard.
The door clicked and I took one more look down the alley to make sure I wasn’t followed, before slipping inside.
Finneas Blight was sitting in his chair, crossbow slung over his back with dual guns at his sides. As head of security, Finn didn’t mess around. His legs were propped up on the worn mahogany desk. Behind him the House of Rose crest hung on the wall, perfectly lit up with two sconces on each side. Out of the four vampire hunter houses, House of Thorns, House of Ashes, House of Skulls and of course House of Rose, the House of Rose killed the most vampires per year than any other.
“Aspen. Did ya get yer mark?” His Irish accent was thick. Normally I didn’t dig redheads, but Finn was hot. From his tall muscular physique, right down to the reddish-brown bushy beard. He had a man bun that always rested at the nape of his neck and at thirty-years-old, had that sexy older guy vibe going on. I’d had a minor crush on him when I was seventeen but he was ten years older than me. I got over it though, and he was happily married to Hannah now.
I held up the sack, a few drops of blood staining the bottom and he grinned. “What’s that now, sixty?”
I winked. “Something like that.”
It was actually seventy-three, the most kills for any junior hunter in the society ever, but I was working on being humble, so I kept that to myself.
“Maz is in back, she’ll be happy to hear it.” Finn waved me forward.
I slipped through the dingy entry and into the real entrance of our secret society. Two gigantic marble doors pulled back to reveal an opulent entryway. Rich wood floors, tasteful cream wallpaper and timeless mahogany furniture. Kinsley, the butler, greeted me with a grin.
“Aspen, lovely to see you. Shall I whip you up something to eat? You must be famished after your hunt.”
You never turned down food by Kins and his staff, he was an incredible chef. “Yes please, but just something quick.”
I wanted to shower off; tonight’s mark had been hard and I was battle-weary.
He disappeared into the kitchen as I traversed the well lit halls. I passed the library, nodding in greeting to a few of my fellow hunters, raising the bag to show them my kill. Then I moved onto the dormitory where our hunter apartments all spanned out. The exterior of this building fronted as a non-descript factory but inside it boasted ten floors, fifty apartment buildings, a large dining hall, youth dormitory, training gym, library and much more. The Vampire Hunter Society was Spokane’s best kept secret. We took care of the vampire infestation on the entire inland northwest so that the humans never had to know there was even a problem. Eastern Washington, Northern Idaho and even parts of Montana were well within my territory of hunting.
When I reached the two ornately carved wooden doors to Maz’s office, I straightened my shoulders, brushing my candy apple red hair out of my face and then knocked.
“Enter!” Maz’s singsong voice called out.
I pushed the doors open and she looked up from her desk. “Aspen! Tell me you got him?”
I held up the sack and she thrust her fists in the air, the sleeves of her priestess robe peeling back to showcase toned forearms. Maz was a sixty-five-year-old badass vampire hunter, woman of God, and the leader of the Spokane branch of our society.
She pulled out her iPad and opened up the photo app. “Let me ID him.”
I set the bag down and opened it, peeling the edges back to reveal the head of the dirtbag vampire I’d pulled off of an innocent human.
“He’d been about to drain her,” I told Maz.
She glowered. “That’s him. Got more complaints about this one than any other. You did good. God bless you, dear.” She snapped a photo of the head and then indicated to the incinerator that sat in the corner of her office.
As she typed into her iPad, I walked over to the incinerator and chucked the head into the fire before closing the hatch. The flames flared to life, consuming the demon completely. I used to be affected by seeing them like this, because they looked so human, but then I saw them fight. I saw them kill. I saw what they really were. Monsters.
“That’s number seventy-three for you. Keep this up and I’m going to have to promote you to senior hunter soon.”
I froze... Senior hunter. At nineteen? Maz was in charge of promotions and you didn’t get senior hunter until you’d been hunting for years. My bestie Liv would flip when I told her later.
“I would be honored.” I finally found my voice.
Maz nodded. “The bounty has been wired to your account.” She tapped something on her iPad.
Only about one percent of the human population knew about or believed in vampires, and the ones that did paid us good money to avenge their fallen or attacked loved ones. It was our job to protect the humans from the bloodsuckers but the money we made from hired hits helped us keep the organization going for over a thousand years now.