Love & War Book 1 in the Arcadia Falls Chronicles (9 page)

Zander nodded. “I figured.”

“We can talk more about this later,” Drew
said when we approached the scene.

Oscar, Alice and Christina had pulled the
woman into the shadows to reduce the risk of being seen. I looked
around and saw that even though from a distance nothing appeared to
be happening, splatters of blood remained on the sidewalk as
evidence of the incident.

I spotted Oscar sitting on the icy-cold
pavement in an alley with the woman pulled tightly up against him.
He gently rocked her back and forth, in a comforting motion. Alice
and Christina stood beside him, waiting for us.

“What happened to the vampire?” Drew asked
when we approached. He still carried his gun in his hand, probably
refusing to holster it until he knew Zander was safe.

Christina eyed Zander cautiously before she
responded. She twirled her gigantic knife like it was a baton. “No
worries. He's gone.”

Oscar propped the woman up against the wall.
“We have to call an ambulance. She is losing too much blood.”

I knelt down and looked into the young
woman’s eyes, which were still wide with fear. She appeared to be
conscious but unspeaking. A sharp pang of guilt hit me in the gut.
It was our fault she was suffering. If we had only gotten to him
sooner, she would be fine. “Oscar, can you help her? Is that
possible?

He nodded. “Yes. I can make her think
something else happened to her. Then she won’t remember anything,
but I have to wait until just before we leave her so that she has
absolutely no memory of us after I speak to her.”

Zander approached the woman with every
single one of our skeptical eyes on him. “We should use her phone.”
He dug through her jacket pockets until he found a phone in one of
the inside pockets. “That way our phones can’t be tracked.”

We all knew he was right, so we let him call
911 and explain about a woman with some kind of bite. He gave the
address of where we were, clicked off the phone and replaced it in
her jacket.

Christina gave her knife one last twirl then
sheathed it. “It’s time to go.”

Oscar turned and knelt before the woman.

“Look at me,” he demanded softly and lifted
her chin.

I could see her trying hard to focus on
him.

I had asked about his ability before, and he
had explained that it wasn’t about making eye contact, like
compulsion; it was about the actual sound of his voice, but making
eye contact helped a person listen better.

“You will remember nothing of anyone you
have seen tonight. A large animal attacked you as you walked back
home from studying late at school. You fought it and then it ran
away.”

She blinked her eyes as her only
response.

“You aren’t afraid any more. Help is coming.
Do you understand?” he asked.

She nodded and managed to whisper, “Yes, I
understand.”

Oscar stood. “All right, it’s done. Let’s
get out of here.”

Zander looked to Drew. “Get in my truck.
I’ll take you guys to your car.”

Drew nodded. We all piled into the bed of
his truck, except for Drew, who sat in the passenger seat so he
could watch and show him where the car was, I assumed.

At the car, Drew stayed in the truck and
told us to meet them at café on Pine Street. As soon as we had
unloaded out of the back of the truck, they sped off into the
night. Moving as fast as we could, we hurried into the car and took
off after them.

“Go as quick as you can, Christina. I don’t
want Drew alone with him any longer than he has to be.”

I could see her roll her eyes even from my
position in the backseat.

Alice sat in the back with me.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

She sighed and leaned back against the seat
of the car. “It’s so strange. All that time I’ve spent around
vampires, and this was probably the most intense thing to ever
happen to me, aside from what happened with you at Trevor’s,” she
added.

I lay back on the seat, too. I was just glad
that the hardest part of the night was over.

We pulled into the lot of the café and
parked beside Zander’s truck.

“I am so hungry!” I stretched after slipping
out of the car and then slammed the door shut. “Let’s get some
food!”

We found Drew and Zander looking at menus in
a huge booth way in the back of the café. There weren’t many people
taking up space, because it was so late after dinnertime. I scooted
into the booth next to Drew while Zander got up and let Alice,
Oscar and Christina into the booth.

“Hey,” Christina said, and smiled at him
when he sat next to her.

Oh, my god! The girl couldn’t stop flirting
if her life depended on it.

We all ordered coffee except for Christina
and Drew who preferred to have juice. I proceeded to order a rare
burger with everything, fries, and a chocolate shake. After
everyone had ordered, it was time to get down to business.

“So,” Christina sipped her juice and smiled
sweetly, “just who are you, exactly?”

Zander shrugged off his leather jacket and
set it aside. “I am here, in this town, because I’m searching for
my father. I’ve been killing vampires and saving people since I was
about fifteen.”

“How old are you now?” Christina swirled her
straw.

“Twenty-two.”

“Hmmm.”

I shook my head, trying to ignore Christina.
“Why are you looking for your father?”

“Oh, no.” He wagged his finger a bit. “It’s
question for question, and that makes it my turn to ask you. Who
are you guys?” He turned to look Christina in the eye. “He already
told me you are vampire hunters, so tell me about your group.”

For a moment, there was an awkward silence
while we deliberated what exactly we should tell him. He already
knew we killed vampires, but it was a whole other story to put the
community at risk. Drew seemed to be the senior hunter at the
table, so we pretty much left it to him to explain.

“There are more of us, a lot more. The
vampire hunter is a race of beings. We are human, yet born from the
blood of angels and demigods. Killing vampires is in our blood, not
something we have chosen to do.”

Zander, despite all his bad-boy cool
mannerisms, appeared shocked. “Angels and demigods?”

We all nodded. I looked to Alice and shook
my head gently. He knew about us, but there was no reason he needed
to know anything about her or Oscar. Drew pointed at him. “Now you.
Why are you searching for your father?”

He shrugged. “It’s a long story. Basically,
I have never known him. My mother never wanted to talk about him,
because he ditched us before I was born.”

Alice’s eyes misted a little bit. “I’m
sorry,” she whispered. She was always the motherly one. “Maybe, we
could help you find him. Do you know his name?”

Zander removed a note from his pocket.

“My mother passed away last year. She left
this in a journal that she kept.” He unfolded the aged paper. “It
is a letter to me, describing my father and where she had last seen
him. His name is Trevor Krasimir.”

I felt a wave of nausea wash over me, and my
vision clouded with dizziness. I heard the collective gasps at the
table. Zander examined our reactions. “Do you know him?”

I forced the sick feeling and the dizzy
spell away and slammed my fist on the table.

“Is this some kind of sick joke?” I demanded
in a low whisper, feeling Drew’s hand on my thigh.

For the first time since we’d met Zander,
the bad-boy hardness erased from his expression, and he appeared
genuinely confused.

“What?” He examined each of our faces. “What
is it? I wouldn’t joke about something like this?” He waved the
letter.

Even Christina looked disgusted at the
inappropriate mention of Trevor’s name.

Drew leaned over the table and whispered to
Zander. “If you are one of Trevor’s minions he left behind, and
they sent you here to mess with us, I will hurt you. Do you
understand that?”

Zander held up his hands in surrender.
“Look, man, I just came here looking for him. I don’t know what the
hell you’re talking about. I can tell that you know who he is. So
now
you
can start talking. I need to know.”

Drew glanced at me to see if I wanted to
tell him. I nodded. If he was truly Trevor’s son, that meant I had
some kind of weird-ass long-lost brother. God, did he even know
Trevor was a vampire? I cleared my throat and took a sip of my
coffee to clear the way for the words. “Trevor is dead.”

Zander had not expected to hear that. His
expectant eyes lowered with dismay at the news.

“I’m sorry, Zander, but he has been gone for
several months.” I did not know how to appropriately tell him the
next part, so I just blurted it out. “He was my father, too.”

Once again, his eyes changed. Only this time
from dismay back to excited. “Your father, as well?”

We stared at each other, examining
everything. His hair was dark, like mine. His eyes were dark, like
mine. We did look alike, that was for sure, and I got my dark
features from both sides of my heritage.

“You’re my sister?” he questioned, still
unable to take his eyes off of me. I nodded gently, still not
really believing it myself. This could be some wonky plan that
Dahlia set up, or Vanessa.

“That’s so crazy.” He looked like he maybe
wanted to reach out and touch me.

“Um…” I coughed again. It felt like I had
something in my throat. “You… you do know that Trevor was a
vampire, right?”

He nodded. “Yes, yes, I never knew though
until I found this letter.” He tapped it with his index finger.
“She told me everything in here. Thank god, I knew about vampires
already or it would have been even harder to digest. Finding out
that I am half vampire actually made my life make more sense than
it ever had.”

Wow, lucky for him. It basically made my
life a living hell when I found out.

Christina had been listening intently. “Why?
Why did it make more sense than before and how did you know even
know about vampires?”

He leaned forward, placing his elbows on the
table and lacing his fingers together.“When I was fourteen, my
friends and I snuck out into the city for no reason at all except
to wander around and try to be what we thought at the time was
cool. I had told my mother I was staying at one of the guys and
they told their parent’s the same thing. We rode the bus in and
walked up and down the streets smoking cigarettes and messing
around.

As we passed one of the alleys, I felt this
incredibly strong urge to turn into the darkness and see what was
down there. I slowed, peering into the alley to see what would make
me want to go in there so badly. I saw nothing, but just as I was
turning away I heard a whimper. My friends had already gone ahead
of me so I figured I’d just go in and take a quick look.

That was probably the worst decision I’ve
ever made. The whimper had come from a woman who was being held up
against the stone wall of a building by a man. Even though I was
only fourteen, I knew I could not walk away from what was
happening. I shouted ‘Hey!’ to let this guy know that someone was
watching him. He turned his head my way and his red, glowing eyes
bore into me. He lifted his lips to show his fangs and sort of…I
don’t know, hissed at me.”

Zander unfolded his hands and leaned back
against the booth again. “That was the first time I’d ever seen a
vampire. I didn’t know or believe in stuff like witches or vampires
but, that day I left the woman to the vampire and ran out of the
alley. My friends had all realized I was gone and turned around to
come back and look for me. They were nearby when I came barreling
out of the alley freaking out and yelling gibberish about
demons.

After that day, I took to the books. I read
everything I could about demons, vampires, witches…anything I could
find. When I was almost sixteen and began realizing I had a few
special abilities…I decided for that one woman that I left to die,
that I needed to kill as many of the vampires as I could.”

Christina tilted her head to the side. “And
this helped you when you found out that Trevor was your father,
how?”

“Because I was basically some kind of freak.
I was stronger than all the other kids in school. This might sound
like a good thing, but it was not when you don’t want a damn thing
to do with high school football. I like to eat meat that is almost
raw. People see this and practically run.”

I found myself nodding in agreement over the
part about the raw meat. The bloodier the better, I always
said.

“I heal fast. I see at night just as well as
I do in the day light. I can run—”

“And jump faster and higher than most
humans,” I finished for him.

He sighed loudly, as if glad someone
understood. “Yes, exactly.”

The awkward silence engulfed us once again.
I glanced at Alice and saw she was staring at Zander with a renewed
interest, like she was looking for traces of Trevor in him. I
pointed to Alice.

“If you want to know more about him, Alice
can probably tell you more than any of us. I only knew him for
about a year. Alice lived with him for a long time.”

Alice appeared shocked I would out her like
that. We didn’t talk about Trevor any more. All of us were trying
to put him behind us. But Zander met her eyes and muttered a thank
you to her.

Oscar, who had been pretty quiet most of the
conversation, finally spoke up. “Would you mind if we read your
letter?”

To Zander’s credit, he didn’t look surprised
or reluctant. “Sure.” He held out the folded piece of paper.
Hesitantly, I took it from him and began unfolding it carefully so
it wouldn’t tear. This was something sentimental that he got from
his mom. I knew how that felt.

“My Dearest Zander,

If you are reading this, then the
unthinkable finally happened to me and you have found my journals.
I am so very sorry I cannot be here for you as you read this, but I
could never bring myself to explain them to your face.