The Vampire Hunter's Daughter: Complete Collection(62)

She was good with a knife.

Though my attention was focused on the scene before me, oh, my god, the pain was awful.

“Drew!” I cried out, then rolled over and tried to stand. I made it part of the way up but fell back down. I didn’t even want to look at the wound. There was blood everywhere.

“Chloe, come on. We have to go.” Christina stalked over to me.

“I need my gun,” I said between clenched teeth. “Oscar…”

Everything was fuzzy.

“Who the hell is Oscar?”

“In the woods.” I pointed. “Alice.”

“Oh, there’s another guy in the woods. She knelt and wiped blood off of her knife using my jeans and then sheathed it.

“Thanks a lot, you hooker,” I moaned through the pain. “I need to go to the hospital.”

“Gavin needs to get there more than you,” she said. “Now get your ass in the Jeep.”

Yeah, there was absolutely no reason why she would want to help me. Just because we killed vampires together didn’t mean we had to like each other. It just meant that we hated someone else more than we hated each other. Even so, she went to Trevor’s UV-scorched body to retrieve my gun for me.

I stared at Trevor for a moment as Christina ran over to him and picked up my gun from the ground near his hands. It was so quiet. His black clothes were stark against his white skin, and they were scorched where the UV had tried to burn him away.

Christina stood and held the gun in her left hand, and then drew a knife from her sheath with her right. She lifted the large knife high into the air above his heart. She drew a deep breath, but I called out before she plunged it down.

“Don’t…” I don’t know what I was thinking. We needed to be sure he was dead, or deader, since he was already undead.

“Damn it, Chloe!” Her eyes moved back and forth from Trevor to me, her knife still raised.

“I’m sorry…” I called back. “He was my father.”

I heard her grumble while she lowered her knife and slammed it into the sheath. She stomped over to where I still lay on the ground and threw the gun down onto the pavement next to me. “You and I are going to talk about this later. We always make sure.”

I nodded and reached for my gun. When I looked up at her, I couldn’t look her in the eyes; they were so accusatory. I was a horrible vampire hunter, and the tears that slid down my cheeks when I stared at Trevor’s body proved it.

But he was my father. It shouldn't have, but it did make a difference.

Christina rushed back to the body and grasped his feet with both hands so she could drag him out of the road while I twisted around and tried to get up. I didn’t want to look at her dragging his body, but I did. It's a damned good thing I did, too.

Trevor’s hand twitched.

“Christina!” I called out. It was too late. Trevor’s grotesquely burnt arm flew upward so fast he had Christina’s throat in his grasp before she could move an inch. I let out a blood-curdling yell while I watched her try to scream, or even to just breathe..

“Drew, help!” I screamed and fumbled for my gun. I had it engaged within seconds. I sat up and shot him in the arm. The shot was enough to force his fingers let go, and after releasing an animal growl, he curled back his lips and bared his fangs, hissing at the inconvenience the gunshot wound had caused.

Drew ran and threw himself on top of Trevor, trying to pin him with his legs.

“Get the chains out of the Jeep!” he shouted.

“What do we need chains for?” I called, forgetting the pain amidst a rush of adrenaline and jumping up to help him hold Trevor. I sat on his legs to avoid looking at his monstrous face. That was not the face I’d come to know Trevor by… it was hideous, inhuman.

“The chains are silver; they can help hold vampires.”

“What? Like in True Blood! That stuff is real?”

Just then, Trevor lurched forward, tumbling us both to the ground. He stood and sped toward me, eyes bulging, fangs bared. He didn’t even make it a few steps in my direction before I saw a chain whip by my face and wrap around him.

Shocked, having totally expected to be eaten by Daddy Dearest, I saw Christina behind him holding tightly onto the chain. She had swung it lasso style at him and trapped him beneath the cold silver links.

“What now?” I asked.

Trevor struggled against the chains.

“Free me at once!” he demanded.

Finally, it seemed Trevor, the refined vampire, was back, displacing the monster he had woken as.

Drew helped Christina hold the chain while I dropped to the ground and favored my leg. The pain came back, hard and fast, and I was bleeding everywhere. Drew looked to the sky. I hadn’t noticed, but it was brightening on the horizon; no sun yet, though.

“We’re going to tie him to a tree,” Drew stated.

“What?” I asked.

It was one thing to shoot or kill someone, but it was an entirely different prospect to watch them slowly char to death.

Christina let Drew have the chain, strode up to Trevor, and got in his face. “Yeah," she said to Trevor, "we're going to make sure you burn.” She drug out the last word, taunting him.

In response, Trevor snarled, “You must free me, this instant. If you manage to kill me, I swear an oath that you will find death at the hands of my avengers.”