Kindred (Book 1 The Kindred Series) (30 page)

  
“An E
lder?”
Chris asked softly
, his voice tight and choked
.

   Luther nodded
vigorously
, shoving his glasses back up
with his index finger
.
“
Yes, murders are up,
and
animal attacks
have doubled
over the past couple of weeks.
You know what that means.
Now, it co
uld be a young vampire, but I don’t believe so.”

   “
But you don’t know for sure
?” Cassie asked
her voice higher pitched than she would have liked
.

   He nodded again, his gra
y eyes grave as they met hers. “
I’m fairly positive Cass. This thing has been stalking people for a little while now. It’s covering its tracks very well, something that
younger vampires are not so discreet about
, and tend not to do
.
I wouldn’t have noticed the trend if I didn’t follow the newspapers so carefully.
I firmly believe that t
his thing is older, more powerful, and it
is
hunting here.”

   Cassie shivered;
she
wrapp
ed
her arms tightly around her middle again. The
painful
knot in her stomach only clenched further, seeming to twist her intestines.
An
E
lder.
T
hey had never dealt with an
E
lder before, never
even
come close to one.
And s
he h
ad
never
wanted to.
 

   It had been T
he
E
lders that had grouped together
to
destroy
T
he Hunter line
, determined to take
them
all
out in one fell swoop. Though they had not completely succeeded, they had
managed to
slaughter hundreds of
men, women,
and children
.
I
ncluding
their parents.
The massacre had left
T
he Hunter line
straggling
, broken,
scattered
and lost
across the globe
. The
survivors
had
fle
d
for their lives, moving about continuously in order to stay hidden and alive.

 
Before the carnage there had been almost six hundred
H
unters
.
A
fte
r
,
there
were
only
thirty
two
known ones
left
. That number included
Cassie, Melissa, and Chris who hadn
’
t been old enough to
walk
, let alone fight for their lives
when The Slaughter occurred
. It had been left to her grandmother,
Luther,
and Chris’s mom to keep them
safe and
alive
.

  
Chris had been telling the truth when he
’
d said that
Luther
was
good friends with
Melissa’s parents
.
Luther
had also been their
Guardian;
one of the people entrusted to
train
and
protect
T
he Hunter
line. His duties
as a Guardian consisted of schooling
them
in the old ways, navigating
them through Vampire and Hunter lore
, and teach
ing
them how to fight. When The S
laughter occurred
Luther
had fled with Melissa
to Germany, the
n Japan, and finally to the U.S. where they
had
bounced around in search of survivors.
During the carnage,
Guardian’s had als
o been slaughtered; there were
only
twenty one survivors
that had been
accounted for
.
Her parent’s own Guardian, Brent, had been murdered with them when The Slaughter occurred.

  
All the Guardians
had
kn
o
w
n
where
T
he Hunters
had been
lo
cated
before The Slaughter
, but in the
aftermath
, many had been lost
,
maybe
forever
.
Luther
continued to searc
h for more
survivors
, but his journeys always c
a
me up empty handed, and Cassie knew he
worried
that
he wouldn’t find anymore
.

   With the small number of survivors, it was
feared that
T
he Hunter line would
eventually
die out. Cassie did not plan on having children. There was no way that she would leave them orphaned and alone after saddling them to this life. And if she didn
’
t have kids, and the others did not survive to have children, then it was only a matter of time before the
re was no one left
. It was Luther’s biggest fear
;
a
fter their deaths
,
of course.

   Cassie tried to swallow the hard lump that had imbedded itself in her throat, but it was choking her, cutting off her
air as it remained lodged in her windpipe
. It seemed that their time had come, much s
ooner than she had expected,
far
sooner than she had wanted. Tears burned the back of her eyes. However, they were not tears of pain or sorrow, but of anger.

   She was angry at fate
,
and this monster that had come into their lives. It was not fair that she had finally
found something good
in her life
,
and now
she was going to lose it. She glanced around the room, her heart
breaking for the only family she had ever known.
Chris looked shell shocked, Melissa’s gaze was distant
and
unfocused
;
Luther was frantic.

   “What do we do?” Chris asked softly.

   Luther turned toward him, the normally soft lines in his face hard and fierce. “We run.”
   There was a moment of stunned, breathless silence
,
before Cassie and Chris exploded at the same time.
“What!?”

   Luther nodded
briskly,
he
fold
ed
his hands behind his back as he started to pace the confines of his kitchen.
“None of you are ready to face an
E
lder. You have
n’t
had enough
training;
you do
not know the full scope of thi
s
creature’s
abilities.
No
one
fully knows what an
E
lder
is
capable of.
You cannot go up against that.”

   “The three of us…”
   “
A
re not enough,” he interrupted Chris sharply. “Your powers and abilities are nothing compare
d to what this creature may be
able
t
o
do
.”
   Cassie’s head spun, her extremities
went
numb.
She felt as if she could slide off the kitchen island and bec
o
me a limp pool of body parts on the floor. There was nothing left to her. “How can you be so sure that this is even an
E
lder?” Chris asked softly.

   Luther heaved a large sigh as he continued his relentless pacing. “
I cannot. The biggest clue I have is th
e lack of evidence that the police have.
This monster is killing for the pleasure, and power
,
of it. He is not turning
them;
he is leaving their bodies behind with no blood,
when he leaves them behind,
but
he
also
leaves
no hint of his mark upon them
,
which is
something that new vamps tend not to do.
T
he lack of blood at the crime scene is stumping police, but they are not digging to
o
deeply into it.
Probably because they don
’
t want to know.
Also,
most
new vampires
do not survive th
eir first month.”
   “What?
Why not?
”
Cassie
gasped in shock
, breaking free o
f her paralysis
.

   Luther rolled his eyes as he shook his head. “
You never listen
to me
,” he muttered. “
Most new vampires are killed in their first month.”

   “Why?
How?”
Chris demanded fiercely.

   Luther shot
him
a fierce, disapproving look.
“Either by
Hunt
er’s
,
especially when there were more of you
,
or by other vampire’s.”
Cassie
stared at him in stunned silence,
her mind sp
un
with the revelation. Luther
shoved his glasses back up his nose
and returned to pacing. “O
lder
vampires
don
’
t want
a lot of newbie’s
around
.
They do not want the human population to
know
that
vampires are real
, and young vampires tend to be careless about the conditions they leave the
ir victims
in, and the amount of bodies they leave behind. They te
nd to raise questions that the E
lders don’t want raised. A
lso, hunt
ing
and kill
ing
another vampire is more power
than a human
,
and
more thrilling
for them
. I imagine that they thoroughly
enjoy it.
”
   Cassie inhaled
sharply;
she found the brutal picture he was painting extremely disturbing. The
y
fought amongst themselves in search of a more thrilling kill
,
and
more
power?
She kne
w that they were
monsters, awful, horrendous, and despicable, but this was far beyond her scope of disgust and hatred for them.
Nausea twisted in her already sour stomach.

   “How come we didn’t hear about this
fact
before now?” Chris demanded.

   Luther stopped pacing;
folding his arms firmly over his chest he glared at
him
. “Because
you
and Cassie didn’t want
to learn about the lo
re
,
and the behavior of vampires, you just wanted to learn to fight.”

   Cassie had the grace to look
chagrined
, Chris did not.
Melissa stood silently to t
he side; she
already
knew what Luther was talking about. Having grown up in the life,
Melissa
had been taught everything
as a child
.
She
also firm
ly
belie
ved
that
if she was going
to know the future,
then
she
needed
to have
a tight grip on the past
. And Melissa was very much about the future and the things that were revealed to her.
However,
Cassie had resented her heritage as
it was; she did not want to learn
more about it. And Chris, well if it didn’t involve food, girls, and action then he wanted nothing to do with it.