The Vampire Hunter's Daughter: Complete Collection(14)

I was in shock. The first time I had any experience with vampires, I had literally not been able to do anything. One of them had been holding me so tightly. With this vampire, I had been able to fight. I had been able to do something about it, and I didn’t do anything.

It was an eye opener. I knew I needed to train harder and be more open to learning how to fight.

I finally found my voice through the fear. “What about that guy’s body? We can’t just leave it out there.”

“He wasn’t dead.” Drew squinted through the snow flurries obstructing his vision while he drove. “She didn’t kill him. He will wake up in about half an hour and wonder what the hell happened. The bite marks will still be there, but will only look like a couple of mosquito bites. Even if he remembers what happened to him, we don’t have the ability to make him forget.”

I was just glad the guy wasn’t dead. “What was that light?”

“UV bullets,” he replied. “Once you get past the ranges, you will use them.”

“Oh.” I said. I looked out the window first and then raised an eyebrow. “Why didn’t you use them the first time we met, when my mom was killed?”

“Sometimes, it’s just as easy to fight.” He paused and our eyes met. “When you do this your whole life, being able to actually kill something that is supposed to be evil and immortal is something you take pride in. Most of us love the fight too. But this was a newborn vampire. The ones who murdered your mother were very, very old and these UV bullets would have been like a poke in the eye to them.”

“It’s okay. I was just wondering. What about her eyes? The guys who killed my mother didn’t have red eyes.”

“She was recently changed and for a few years after the change their eyes turn red right before they feed and for a while after, like…uhm, the best way to explain it is like a human’s reaction when they are turned on sexually.”

“Oh.” See, I needed to learn this stuff. “They should teach us this in school.”

Drew looked tired. He brushed his hair back with his hand. “They do. When you’re a junior, you’ll start those studies. Let’s go in.”

He grabbed a couple of my bags and exited the truck. Once we were inside, he set down the bags. The house was quiet. Luke was obviously asleep.

“Chloe, will you be okay?” Drew asked quietly.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Are you going to get up and run with me in the morning?”

He nodded. “Uh huh, but I need to go to bed. Good night, Chloe.”

He affectionately brushed my bangs back and tucked them behind my ear. I wasn’t used to affection of any kind from him. I backed away.

I choked out a hasty, " 'Night, Drew,”

I grabbed the bags and fled to the stairs as fast as I could. Once in my room, I shut my bedroom door, dropping my bags on the floor. Without warning, I burst into tears. I could not believe I was crying. Completely ridiculous. I really needed to toughen up. Wiping at my wet face and snotty nose, I fell onto my bed and buried myself beneath the comfort of my blankets.

While the tears continued to fall, the only thing I could think of to get tougher was to train harder. My mother must have been a completely different person than the one I knew. I couldn’t imagine what she must have gone through during those years she spent trying to protect me. I had to make it up to her.

My mother had dedicated her life to protecting me from vampires. The least I could do was honor her memory by protecting myself from them. If I didn’t, the last fifteen years of her life would have been a waste.

I reached over and took her picture off the nightstand. Gently, I ran my fingertips over the glass. “I promise to do better, Mom.”

I pulled the picture against my chest and hugged it.

“Please help me, Mom. If you’re up there, watching me fail, then please help me. Help me find the strength to be stronger and better.” More tears poured out of the corners of my eyes and slid down my cheeks. “I need you, Mom.”

There was no sign, no really cool ghost of my mom that came down and gave me this super lecture on how great I could be. There was only silence.

Silence and tears.





THE VAMPIRE HUNTER'S DAUGHTER





PART III





BECOMING





I thought Christmas at Luke’s would be quiet since it would be only him, Drew and me. It turned out that every Christmas, Luke threw a big ol’ shindig for anyone who wanted to come.

Vampirehunter Christmas really isn’t much different from Christmas anywhere else, except that vampire hunters love to give each other weapons. Drew had given me a gun for my fifteenth birthday, and it wasn’t until the big party that I understood why he gave me a gun. I can’t even begin to count how many of the gifts exchanged were weapons. There was one that was really, really cool though. Charlie, who worked at the video store, gave his brother Joe an awesome gadget he could fit inside his pocket. When a little button on the side was pushed, it turned into a full-sized bow. It was pretty wicked.

Because Drew had given me the gun for my birthday, which I totally adored, I’d decided I needed to give him something really great, too. It took forever, but I finally found some throwing stars. They were real silver and I had them engraved with different sayings like: ‘Vampires Suck’, ‘Stick it’, ‘Bite Me’, ‘Suck on This’ and ‘Got Stake’. Everyone who was there when he opened the stars passed them around laughing at the quirky little sayings.