Bad Blood (Aurora Sky: Vampire Hunter, Vol. 3) (2 page)

“That’s messed up,” the girl who’d complained earlier said. Maybe, but she was suddenly flipping through her textbook with a lot more enthusiasm.

“Be glad you’re not an informant,” I said. “Or that could be you spending quality time with a rabid vampire thirty times a night depending on your assignment.”

The girl stopped turning pages and swallowed. “I am an informant.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sucks to be you.”

I didn’t have much love in my heart for informants. Not after working with Noel and Valerie. As far as I could tell, they enjoyed all the sucking and sleeping around. It wasn’t like they had to worry about pregnancy or disease. None of us did: hunters, informants, and vampires alike. We couldn’t procreate. We were barren. Sterile. Individually diseased, courtesy of the agency.

We couldn’t spread our illness thanks to the government’s controlled virus cocktail created especially for AB positive and negative recruits. It worked similar to the way a disease activated and remained contained inside a vampire’s immune system. Vampires weren’t contagious. Most didn’t mind an affliction that promised everlasting life.

I’d only just learned I was infertile at camp. Melcher failed to mention it during orientation. I wondered what else he’d failed to mention.

I never trusted him. Once I found out he knowingly employed a vampire, I was downright suspicious, but getting the truth out of Melcher would take more than high kicks and kung fu moves.

Heavy footsteps interrupted my thoughts as Sergeant Jones entered the dormitory. Her combat boots looked a heck of a lot more comfortable than the spikes I had to wear. She stopped near the double-doors. “Sky, Sergeant Hansen is ready for you.”

Maybe I wasn’t ready for him. Did they ever think about that?

Probably not.

All of my bravado instantly abandoned ship, leaving me to sink or swim on my own. I lifted my chin for show and headed for the door. Surprisingly, the click of the heels managed to boost my confidence a fraction.

“Good luck,” the cheerier of my dorm mates called after me. That one had to be a hunter.

I stopped and turned. “You, too. Don’t study too hard. And remember to get plenty of shut-eye.”

The girl chuckled, earning her a stern look from Jones. She turned to me. “Sergeant Hansen is waiting.”

Yeah, yeah. I was walking as fast as I could on mini stilts. Good thing there was no ice in the desert. I’d slip and break my neck in five seconds flat. All I had to worry about now was not getting the shiny black heels dusty.

Damn desert.

After tonight, I’d be headed home and wouldn’t look back. Boot camp had served its purpose. It had gotten me away from the mess I’d made at the palace. It had saved me from having to see or speak to either Noel or Fane after they ripped my heart apart and destroyed any trust I’d ever felt for either of them by hooking up right under my nose. And it had prepared me to deal with Jared—the reason I was here to begin with. The reason for everything I’d gone through since my accident. All of it! Everything that was wrong with my life. My dad leaving. My dreams of attending Notre Dame crumbling to dust. Losing my virginity to that ass hat, Scott Stevens. Transferring high schools in the middle of senior year. Not even getting to attend graduation!

If Jared hadn’t run me down on the road, I wouldn’t have needed a transfusion in order to live. I wouldn’t have been recruited. I wouldn’t have to kill. And most importantly, I wouldn’t have ever lost my heart to that rat bastard vampire, Fane Donado.

I would have gone on thinking he was King of the Freaks, a loser in a black trench coat with terrible hair.

I’d pushed Noel and Fane out of my head, but now that my time at camp was ending, they were shoving their way back inside my brain.

At least I had a renewed sense of disgust for vampires. It helped on mission.

I followed Jones outside to a waiting SUV. I had to hold both arms out to balance myself over the uneven ground and use my upper body strength to pull myself into the back seat. Sergeant Hansen was buckled into the seat beside me. He had on a beige pair of pants and a matching military-style jacket that blended into the landscape, turning him into a commanding chameleon with a crew cut.

Once I was inside, the vehicle drove forward.

This was it. All I had to do was kill a vampire, and I could go home. It’s not like I hadn’t done this before.

“Congratulations on making it to your final assignment,” Sergeant Hansen said in his gravelly voice. “Your target goes by the name of Jeremy Phillips. Here are several photographs taken of him for you to familiarize yourself with on the drive.”

Hansen handed over three snapshots. From the photos, I saw that the vamp was Caucasian, approximately twenty-two, had brown-eyes and brown hair that curled at the edges. In one of the photos, he was wearing a tank top that showed off his muscled arms. He could probably break my bones with his bare hands. Just great. At least he had a narrow frame.

Once I’d shuffled through the pictures a few times and set them on my lap, Hansen resumed speaking.

“Tonight Jeremy is hosting a large house party. A young woman died at the last house party he threw, two more before that.”

Hansen reached into his coat pocket. He flattened his palm, presenting me with a tightly wound phone cord. My heart dropped as though I were in free fall.

“Take it,” Hansen said.

There was no other option. I took the cord.

“After you get Jeremy alone and he has bitten you, you will need to strangle him with this cord.”

I clenched and relaxed my fist around the cord, studying the thin red indents it made in my skin.

“This will be a timed exercise,” Hansen continued.

I loved how he called it an exercise rather than what it really was—an assassination.

“You have fifteen minutes to complete your mission. Every minute after fifteen will add an extra day to your training, and you will have to perform another field test.”

“What if I finish early?” I asked. “Do I get to leave an extra day for every minute before fifteen?”

Hansen locked eyes with me. “Just concentrate on getting the job done in fifteen minutes.”

“Won’t it look weird for me to wander in uninvited?”

Walking into a house party unannounced made me about as nervous as the mission at hand. What was I supposed to do? Pretend that a friend of a friend had invited me?

“No one will notice,” Hansen said. “His house is near a community college and a lot of kids end up wandering over.”

“What city is this in?”

“Bend.”

Bend, Oregon. Not like driving from Anchorage to Fairbanks, but still a good couple hours in the car with Hansen and our driver. Plenty of time to stress over my assignment.

I loosened the phone cord and wound the ends around each of my palms, pulling it taut. I’d stabbed vampires in the past, so I wasn’t sure why strangulation seemed more gruesome. Perhaps because stabbing, when done correctly, was swift—over and done with in a flash. Strangling a vampire meant pulling and choking him as he fought for breath until slumping back, lifeless, in my arms.

Eternal life wasn’t the only characteristic that set vampires apart from humans, nor their need for blood. They couldn’t get sick, which wasn’t the most incredible super power, but must really save on doctor bills. They couldn’t get anyone pregnant or find themselves in the family way. I supposed that came in handy, as well, considering their nocturnal habits and erotic pursuits.

But they could die, and there wasn’t a special way to do it. An ax, gun, knife, icepick—or any other pointy object—would do the trick… to say nothing of a phone cord.

Slowly, I wound the cord up and set it on my lap with the photos.

Light faded outside the SUV’s tinted windows. Dust clouds billowed behind us as the vehicle’s tires spun across the high desert floor. Once we hit pavement, everything inside felt louder: the thoughts inside my head, my heartbeat, even my throat when I swallowed.

There was no music and no conversation between Hansen or the driver.

Juniper trees flew by along the road.

I closed my eyes and envisioned spruce trees dusted in snow and tall, skinny willows with their white and black bark. As I breathed in and out, I tried to imagine the crisp, clean Alaskan air filling my lungs.

For six months, I’d trained physically and mentally. Now it was time to prepare myself emotionally for the kill.

I was glad Hansen told me about the girls who wound up dead. That always helped. Take one life to save many. It made the whole thing feel like a moral responsibility. But the thought still nagged at me that if Jared hadn’t arranged my accident, I wouldn’t be saddled with the burden to kill.

I should have let Valerie shoot him while he was unconscious in Sitka.

That was before I’d discovered Jared had been behind the wheel of the vehicle that hit me and, more than likely, the one responsible for Valerie’s placement within the agency. It was before I knew he and Melcher were in cahoots together.

If Melcher knew Jared was a vampire, what else did he know? Did he know that Jared had gone out of his way to harm Valerie and me in the interest of the agency?

Nothing would surprise me at this point, and I couldn’t imagine Jared doing all this behind Melcher’s back.

Somehow, I needed to find out how much Melcher knew without coming right out and asking. He ran the show, after all, which made him even more dangerous than Jared.

And to find out, I needed to return home.

A little after eleven o’clock, we rolled into Bend. Our driver got off the highway at the community college exit. There weren’t any high rises. The city was comprised of cute little shops, restaurants, and neighborhoods. The streets looked clean and landscaped. Footpaths and bike lanes bisected the roadways.

We crossed a river, passing more neighborhood parks and juniper-lined streets. Farther up, we turned into one of the subdivisions. Now that we were on the right street, I didn’t need an address to locate the party. All of the street parking was bumper-to-bumper in front of a two-story brown home with green trim.

Volcanic rock lined the driveway.

“This is the place,” Hansen said.

I immediately sat up in my seat. “When do my fifteen minutes start?”

“The moment the front door closes behind you.”