Love & War Book 1 in the Arcadia Falls Chronicles (8 page)

I nodded and bounced to the beat along with
Drew and the rest of the crowd.

Oscar and Alice appeared to be doing the
same thing. I watched Alice, her shiny shirt flashing in the lights
like a disco ball, smiling up at Oscar. I was never happier that we
had gotten her away from Trevor.

I tried to ignore that I was totally having
a blast dancing with Drew and to focus on the mission. We needed to
find out more about that guy. If there were one thing I had learned
as a hunter, it was not to ignore gut feelings.

Suddenly, the dark-haired stranger shuffled
his gaze away from Christina and reached into his pocket to extract
a cell phone. I looked at Drew and raised my eyebrows. Christina
continued to dance while he appeared to check his phone, and then
he bent to whisper something in her ear. She said something back to
him while he guzzled the rest of his drink. He smiled and turned to
leave.

“We have to follow him.” Drew grabbed my
hand and gave it a squeeze. “C’mon.”

I took his hand but glanced back at Oscar
and Alice, tilting my head to signal the plan. Christina had
already begun to follow in the direction he had headed, so we took
off after her. He went to a parking garage, which was in the
opposite direction from where our car was parked.

“Crap!” Drew muttered.

“I’ll go,” Oscar offered, leaving Alice with
us and running off in the other direction. “I’ll be right out here
with the car.”

Christina was quite a distance ahead of us.
She followed him into the garage while we waited on the street for
her to return. After a few agonizing minutes of waiting, she came
running out of the garage at almost the exact moment Oscar pulled
the car up onto the curb beside us.

“Big truck!” she called out, headed for her
car. The rest of us hurried over and piled in, just when a huge
black truck slowly exited the garage. She jumped into the front
seat and slapped the dashboard, excitement clear in her eyes.
“Let’s go!”

Oscar peeled away from the curb into the
traffic behind the truck. Our newfound stranger didn’t appear to be
in too much of a hurry. He rolled slowly through, keeping pace with
the rest of the city traffic. Alice leaned forward, trying to get a
better view.

“I wonder where he's headed”

“We’re going to find out,” Drew mumbled,
never taking his eyes off the truck.

I reached over and felt for his hand,
wanting to feel him close to me. My blond vampire hunter responded
by giving my hand a squeeze of reassurance.

After about ten minutes, we rolled into a
community of older-looking houses. Most would describe them as
Victorian. Almost every single one of the houses had a pointed
rooftop and a really nice covered porch.

“Where are we?” I looked to Drew, but it was
Christina who answered.

“This is the college community.” She
gestured toward the houses. "Almost all of these homes are occupied
by college kids.”

Drew nodded. “That makes most of them party
houses. The perfect place for a vampire to find himself a little
snack,” he finished.

“Oh.”

Oscar followed as closely as he could
without being seen, but the traffic had dissipated considerably. I
could tell that every moment that passed, we were more at risk of
being spotted following the truck.

The truck continued to roll aimlessly down
the shiny streets that were wet from the snow.

“What is he doing?” I wondered aloud.

Christina, impatiently tapping her foot on
the floorboard of the front seat, said, “I think he’s waiting.”

I leaned forward, trying to get a better
view of the truck. “For what?”

“For something to happen,” she
responded.

It seemed like we drove around the
neighborhood in pursuit of our stranger forever. I took the
opportunity to gaze around the neighborhood. Some sections of the
housing areas were far busier than others. Lights lit up almost
every window of most houses, and music could be heard emanating
from the majority of them. Through the fogged up windows, I could
see cars full of people either coming or going. One yard even had a
rather large looking fire going in a pit dug right in the
snow-covered front yard. Guys and girls stood close to the flames,
talking and holding beer bottles.

I sighed and realized they had no clue what
could be watching them, but we did. That was what we were put on
this earth to do: to protect those innocent people.

“Look!” Alice pointed. “He’s parking.”

Sure enough, the brake lights from the black
truck glared at us when he pulled over to the curb next to a snow
bank. Quickly, I scanned the area. There wasn’t much there. It
looked like there was a small park area across from his truck.
There were several buildings that appeared to be empty. One had a
large sign explaining it was the library. Other than that, not much
was around.

Drew leaned forward and tried to get a
better view.

“Let’s move past him so that we can park and
come back on foot,” Drew said.

Oscar nodded his acknowledgement and drove
on.

We finally found a place to park about a
block up. Oscar parked as quickly as he could.

“Come on.” Drew grabbed my hand and
practically yanked me out of the car. “Let’s move.”

We stayed off the sidewalks until we got a
little closer and then stealthily maneuvered off into the trees
that lined our side of the street. Finally, we found a spot to
hunker down where we could see the truck and a wide view of the
surrounding area.

“I think the school is that way,” Christina
whispered, nodding to indicate the direction.

No one said anything, maintaining silence
and watching.

Damn, it was cold! I wished I had more
clothing on.

While we waited, I silently hoped the little
voyage we'd taken to get there would be worth it, because if we had
all come out there for nothing except my ‘little feeling,’ I knew I
would get a lot of flak from the others when we got back home.

“Look.” Drew nudged me.

I followed his gaze and saw a girl who
didn’t look much older than I am carefully making her way along the
sidewalk. She wore jeans and a heavy jacket with a backpack
strapped over the top. Her curly blonde hair shone in the lamplight
underneath her winter stocking cap. After focusing for a moment, I
realized she also wore ear buds. Wonderful, she wouldn’t be able to
hear anything coming at her.

Our stranger didn’t get out of his truck,
and we didn’t move either. She was just crossing in front of the
library when the vampire tingle happened. For me, it was always a
shock to feel it, but the others, aside from Oscar and Alice, were
so used to it they didn’t appear to feel it at all. I looked to
Drew, but he was desperately searching for the vampire we knew was
around somewhere.

“Is he just going to wait for her to be
attacked?” I whispered. I extracted my gun and popped the
slide.

Christina already held her gun in her hand.
“That’s what it looks like.”

“He doesn’t have the warning signal we do,”
Drew said in defense of the strange.

“I don’t care.” I whispered loudly. The girl
had stopped and was looking at her music player, probably changing
songs. “He shouldn’t wait.”

Then it happened: A male with blond hair and
a black jacket appeared, just casually strolling down the street as
if he weren’t a vampire about to rip that woman’s throat out.

“Shhh.” I felt Drew gently place his hand on
my leg, indicating I should be quiet and hold still.

“But…”

“Shhh.”

Dang it.
We needed to move. The
vampire approached the young lady. Seeming to sense him coming, she
lifted her eyes away from her music player. As soon as she spotted
him, she immediately took a couple of steps backward and then
looked around, probably searching to see if there were someone to
witness if she were mugged or raped.

“I’m going,” Christina declared. With that,
she was off and running, knowing we would follow.

“Damn it!” Drew slammed his fist into the
snow and took off after her. Oscar, Alice and I were right behind
them with our weapons drawn. Christina, had a gun in each hand,
both pointed at the vampire. The woman on the sidewalk caught sight
of Christina and screamed.

The vampire also caught sight of her and,
within a second, had the woman in his arms, neck tilted to the side
so far it seemed dangerously close to snapping. Then he bit
her.

Christina fired her weapon two times, once
in the back and once in the head. He spun around to face her, and
she nailed him in the chest. The vampire grasped his heart, blood
oozing between his fingers as he crumpled to the icy pavement with
rays of UV filtering through his disintegrating body.

Still running, Christina holstered her gun
and the woman turned to run, slipping on the icy sidewalk in her
haste. Drew was the first to reach her.

“Stop! It’s all right.” He reached out and
took hold of her jacket.

“No!” She screamed at him, eyes wide with
fear.

“We aren’t going to hurt you.”

“Leave me alone.” She whimpered. “Let me
go.”

Drew encircled his arms around her from
behind, pinning her arms to her sides to prevent her from attacking
him. “Let me go.” Her last words were a whisper and her body fell
limp in Drew’s arms.

Blood spilled from the wound on her neck,
drenching her jacket as well as Drew’s.

“Let me talk to her,” Oscar offered. “She
will listen to me.”

He had taken off his button-up shirt and
held it to the woman’s neck while Drew handed her over.

“I’ve got this guy.” Christina, pulled one
of her knives from her boot. Before she could drive it through what
remained of the body of the dead vampire, through his heart, a loud
roar echoed through the air as the stranger’s truck roared to life.
We had completely forgotten about him in the rush to save the
vampire’s victim.

“Shit!” Drew began to run after him, and I
followed. It suddenly occurred to me that I might be the only one
who would be able to catch him as he pulled away from the curb. I
dug in, channeling all my power into my run. I got close enough I
thought I could probably make the jump and launched myself into the
air, tucking my feet and hoping to make it because it was sure
going to hurt if I didn’t.

I stuck it.

I landed in a crouch in the bed of the
truck. He swerved and tried to knock me over, but I crawled quickly
to the back window, hoping it was unlocked, because I sure as hell
didn’t want to climb over the side and try to get in the door.

I wedged my fingers into the crack and
pulled.
Yes!
It was open. He glanced back over his shoulder
and saw me trying to slip through the tiny window. Then, suddenly,
my face was wet and scalding. “Ow! Son of a bi—”

“Get out!” he yelled at me. “What do you
want?”

That bastard had thrown his coffee in my
face. I fell down inside, plopping into the back seat head first. I
felt the truck swerve back and forth while he tried to keep an eye
on me in the back. After I quickly righted myself, I lunged for his
neck and wrapped my arm around him in a head lock.

“Pull over,” I growled.

“Who are you?” he managed to ask again.

“It doesn’t matter who I am. Pull over!”

I squeezed my arm even more tightly around
his neck until he did as I asked. Safely off to the side of the
street, I felt relief wash over me. At least we weren’t going to
die in a car accident.

“Now, who are you?” I asked, not even close
to letting him go.

Drew arrived at the driver’s side door and
flung it open, his gun held out in front of him.

He demanded what I had been asking the guy
already. “We know it was no accident you were waiting there. Now
tell us,” Drew pushed his gun up against the dude’s thigh. At least
he didn’t have it pointed at his head or anything.

“My name is Zander. Now let go of my neck!”
He yanked himself forward just as I let him go and so he bashed his
head on the wheel. “Wonderful, just wonderful,” he muttered,
rubbing his forehead.

Drew dug the barrel of his gun into Zander’s
thigh even more. “It was no accident that you were here.
Explain.”

I kept my hands behind his head, ready to
fry him if he so much as made a move at Drew.

“I don’t have to explain jack to you. Now
get the hell away from me.”

Drew smiled slyly. “Actually you do have to
explain yourself. Are you the man from the newspapers, the one
saving women from
animals
?”

“Like I said, man, leave me alone. From what
I saw out there with that woman, you know as well as I do what kind
of
animals
those are.”

After catching my eye and seeing my nod,
Drew raised his gun up and away from Zander in a sort of
conciliatory move.

“Can we just talk, man? We have to get back
there and take care of that girl.”

Zander shook his head and looked from Drew
to the street. “I don’t know about that. I should probably just
go.”

“Don’t you want to help that girl? Isn’t
that what you’ve been doing is saving people?” Drew raised his
eyebrows. “Well, now we have to go save her and figure out what the
hell we are going to tell her about what just happened."

I think Zander finally realized he wasn’t
going to get out of this one. “Fine. Get in, and let’s go check it
out.” He gestured to the passenger seat.

Drew hurried around and hopped up into the
truck while I stayed in the back.

He turned the truck around and headed back
toward the others.

“So who are you guys?” he finally asked. “I
saw what you did, and I know this isn’t something that surprised
you.”

I watched Drew contemplate his answer before
he responded. He flexed his hand on the grip of his gun. “We are
vampire hunters.”