The Vampire Hunter's Daughter: Complete Collection(72)

After a pause, she finished by saying, “And I didn’t betray you; I betrayed Trevor. I realized what he was doing to you was wrong, and I was going to help you. I knew it would be the end of my life if he caught me, but I didn’t care.”

I pondered that for a moment. It was true.

We both lay back down to stare at the ceiling and feel sorry for ourselves.



Several days passed quickly. Oscar was situated with Drew in his room and the house had quickly become very crowded. It wasn’t a big house, by any means. It was more on the quaint and small side, so it was hard to get used to two extra people living with us. For me, especially, since I had just come from having a whole suite all to myself for almost a year.

We were sort of a silent and brooding bunch, keeping to ourselves. I still went to see Gavin twice more and hoped each time his mother wouldn't be there. The whole situation sucked, because I didn’t want to give Gavin the wrong idea about why I was coming to visit; I didn’t want him to think I didn’t care about him at all, either. I mean, he was shot trying to save Drew and me.

He finally came home the day before we were supposed to go to the meeting with the lawyer about Trevor’s will. I knew I wouldn’t see him until after he was up and around. That was probably a good thing. I really felt like Drew and I needed some more alone time.

But before the alone time, we had to go see the lawyer.

The day of the meeting, Luke sat us down to explain the situation.

Our living room was suddenly bursting with vampire hunters. Oscar was excluded because there was no reason for him to be involved in the plans. Alice was allowed, since she was the reason we were going in the first place, and we needed to protect her.

“The mission, this time,” Luke stood in front of the television, speaking to the group, “is to keep the peace…” He paused. “We have no targets, even though the destination is the Talon business building, downtown on First Street.”

A round of moans and mumbles made its way through the group.

I looked from Luke to Drew and around the group. No one looked happy.

“Why no targets, Luke?” Joe called out.

I was confused. “I don’t understand why you all look so upset?”

Luke leaned on the wall beside the television. “The Talon business building is a vampire-run establishment. Any particular business you can think of that a vampire would need is run from that building.”

“What? Are you serious?” I threw my hands in the air. “How come this hasn’t been taken care of yet?”

Drew put a hand on my shoulder in a pathetic attempt to calm me. “Hunting vampires is not always as simple as it may sound. We cannot simply stroll in there and annihilate the whole building.” He removed his hand. “We need to stay anonymous to some degree, and taking out an entire building that is smack in the middle of town is not discreet.”

“I just don’t understand. Why can’t we do that? Then it would be over, and we would have a few hundred less vampires to hunt than we do now.”

Joe stepped into the conversation. “If we take out the whole building, we would literally have a vampire versus hunter war on our hands. And I know it may look like there are a lot of us, but there aren’t nearly enough to fight a war with the undead. Besides, there is legal stuff to think about. If we blew the building up, it would be investigated. Part of what we do is to stay invisible. There are cops who are vampires, not to mention agents for the government, and crime investigators. We cannot risk the community.”

Drew nodded. “Which is why we take them a few at a time.”

I understood that part. No one wanted to risk the community. This was our home, children and babies were here, and no one would risk losing their children to the authorities. I could only imagine what would happen if the authorities were to come here and find the arsenals that were stored in the homes.

I nodded. “All right. But now we have to go in there. With all those vampires?”

I shuddered with thought of being so vulnerable.

“Yes, we have to go in,” Luke said. “Alice has to be at the will reading, and this is actually the perfect excuse for us to get a look inside that building.”

I sighed. It was going to be a long day.



We arrived at the Talon Building with an entire entourage of hunters surrounding Alice as if she were the President of the United States. The building stood tallest among the other buildings on the street. Unlike Trevor’s windowless house, this building was made purely of tinted glass, which reflected the lights of the busy city.

Our group, prepared for anything, entered through the large double doors of the building. From the outside, we looked like an ordinary group of people, but we wore weapons strapped onto every available spot on our bodies underneath our clothes. We were trained killers… well, most of us.

Of course Gavin wasn’t with us because he was still at home, but oddly enough, Christina came. It was probably because her father was on this mission. Other than that, the rest of the group were seasoned hunters. Drew, Luke, Sara Jane—who was the second grade teacher at school—Joe, and a couple others I didn’t know well made up our group.

As we strode across the grey marble floors of the lobby, toward the elevators, I felt like we should have had a soundtrack. It was right out of the movies. No one even looked our way. It was nighttime, but the lobby was bursting with activity like it was midday lunch hour at the mall.