The Vampire Hunter's Daughter: Complete Collection(11)

“Now help me get dinner started.”

Luke opened the fridge, as though our conversation had been as normal as the weather. I guess even demi-god, angel, vampire mutants had to eat dinner.



The next morning I woke and opened the curtains to look outside. Just as I suspected: Snow had covered everything. It was pretty, though. The moon was almost full, and the white winter wonderland glittered in the moonlight. The trees had all lost their leaves, and the snow that had settled on their branches appeared crystallized.

I sighed and found my pink velvety jogging suit. After tying my hair up and putting on a headband that would also cover my ears, I set off into the woods for my run. Running the trails on the snow could probably be listed as my least favorite thing to do, aside from getting my butt kicked.

My run was actually closer to a walk. I did so much slipping and sliding that, by the time I made it back to the house, I was soaking wet and running late for school.

School in the vampire hunter community was no different from regular school, except that it was smaller. So far, I hadn’t made any friends, but I hadn’t really tried to make friends either. It had become habit. At my old school, I usually just kept to myself. I guess I’ve always been a loner. At lunch, I would grab my food and sit on the stairs in the hallway with my eyes closed and my iPod blaring into my ears, blocking out reality.

After walking to school in the snow, I ended up with soaked feet. My quest for making friends didn’t go any better. I sloshed into the school and wanted to cry. Was I going to have to spend the whole day like this? Why couldn’t I have looked for a pair of boots in my mother's stuff? Things worsened when Christina Livingston—who was considered the school bitch-slash-slut—slid in the puddle that had formed at my locker. Just as she was going down, my reflexes kicked in and my hands flew out to catch her. Well, I caught her all right. Right in the nose with the back of my hand.

“You stupid bitch!” she screamed at me in a nasal voice. She lay on the floor in a puddle of melted snow and held her nose, which was dripping blood all over.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!”

I bent to help her up.

“Get away from me. Just get away from me.”

She moaned. Suddenly there was a huge circle of kids around us. She reached up with her other hand and moved her black hair out of her eyes. Her little skirt was hiked up so far that we could all see her lacey pink panties, surprisingly, not a thong. She rolled over onto all fours and slowly managed to stand. We all stood there watching her. I wasn’t going to try to help her again, but I sure wasn’t going to leave either.

“I’m really sorry,” I said, trying again.

Her bleeding nose had slowed, but there were blood spatter marks all over her tight white shirt.

“Shut up!” she snarled and then lunged at me.

She slammed me up against the lockers and rammed her fist into my stomach. I felt like I was going to throw up. Distantly, I could hear the commotion of all the other students in the background. Most were hollering “fight, fight,” and I could hear a few others yelling to get someone.

As soon as she backed off, I slapped her. The return I got was another hit to the gut and then another with the other fist. Before I could recover, she threw an uppercut to my jaw.

“Ow, shit!” she screamed. “My hand!”

That hit hurt… bad! We hadn’t moved to hitting each other in the face during training yet. Drew said we would do that once I was better at blocking.

“My face!” I screamed back at her. It made me mad that she was kicking my ass in front of everyone. It was one thing in training where I was learning, but this was just plain embarrassing. I felt heat rise in me all the way down from my cold wet toes.

She wasn’t expecting it right then because she was jumping around holding her hand, and I was bent over in pain. I lashed out as quickly as I could and grabbed two handfuls of her long black hair. I pulled her whole head down and lifted my knee at the same time. My knee connected with her face. A loud cracking noise echoed through the hallway.

She fell, crying and yelling about her nose.

“Screw this,” I said. I grabbed my backpack and sloshed my way by the group of students and out the front door.

By the time I made it home, Luke had already heard about the incident and sat in the living room in his rocking chair, waiting for me.

I dropped my backpack on the floor and pulled off my dripping tennis shoes. “So, you heard?”

He nodded sternly and pointed to the chair next to him. “Tell me what happened.”

I sighed and plopped down in the recliner. “My shoes were wet, and Christina slipped on the puddle my shoes made. When I tried to catch her, I accidentally hit her in the nose, and then she attacked me.”

“That’s all?” He raised his eyebrows.

“After she hit me a few times, I decided I wasn’t just going to let her beat the snot out of me, and I fought back.”

“You do know you broke her nose, right?”

I nodded. I didn’t know for sure, but I had figured as much. “I’m sorry, Luke. I just couldn’t stand there and let her beat on me for no reason.”

“And I would never expect you to. You defended yourself and nothing more.”

The relief I felt at not being in trouble was immense. I had been so afraid Luke would be totally irate over the whole thing.