The Vampire Hunter's Daughter: Part I

The Vampire Hunter’s Daughter

Part I

BY

Jennifer Malone Wright

Copyright 2011 Jennifer Malone Wright

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my good friend Rose and my sister Mary for helping with every step during the process of bringing this story into the world. I would also like to thank my editors at Accentuate Author Services. Finally, I would I want to thank Para Graphic for my wonderful cover art.

THE VAMPIRE HUNTER’S DAUGHTER

PART I

THE BEGINNING

“Chloe!” the voice called out sharply. At that exact same moment, the earth shook violently beneath my feet.

“Chloe, wake up!”

The ground swayed and gravity took hold, forcing me to side step back and forth. I threw my hands out for balance and tried to catch my footing, but I ended up falling onto my hands and knees. The quaking world was suddenly bathed in harsh sunlight. It had washed over me quickly, blinding me. I threw my arm up to shield my eyes from the glare.

“Chloe Kallistrate, get your ass up
now!
”

My eyes snapped open. All the lights in my room were on and my mother was standing over me, holding my blankets in her arms. I realized she had impatiently whipped them off of me. I lay there in only my boy-short underwear and my favorite tee-shirt: a torn and faded but still ultra-comfy Harley Davidson tee-shirt. Sometimes when she said our last name really fast like that, she developed an accent. It was a strange name, pronounced Kal-lih-strah-dee.

The light explained the sunlight in my dream, and Mom must have been shaking me, which would have been the earthquakes. I groaned defiantly and glanced at the clock on my nightstand. The glowing red numbers told me that it was two forty-seven in the morning.

“
Mom.
” I grabbed my comforter out of her arms and rolled over, taking it with me. “It’s the middle of the night.”

Only then did the heavy fog of sleep lift and I realized
exactly
that. It was the middle of the night and my mother was in my room desperately trying to get me out of bed. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

I threw my blanket off and jumped out of bed, causing my mother to jump back in surprise. “What is it? What’s happening?” I demanded.

“You have to hide!” she whispered.

She was still in her pale blue satin pajamas with the matching robe and her eyes were wide with fear. Her dark brown hair, which was the same color as mine, hung loose and flowing down her back. She grabbed my arm and dragged me over to my closet.

“Quick, get in there.” She looked around the room. “There is nowhere else to go. Now,
hide
!”

“Mom, stop it! What are you doing?”

Her fingernails dug into my arm. She opened the door and literally threw me inside the closet. She bent down, took my chin in her hand so that our blue eyes would meet.

“I love you.” she told me, and then abruptly slammed the door shut, submerging me into total darkness.

Even though my fourteen-year-old mentality wanted to fight back and open the door, I did as I was told and sat on top of all my shoes that littered the floor of my closet.

Thundering footsteps pounded on the stairs outside my room. I could tell my mom was still in the room because I hadn’t heard the door open and shut. My bedroom door burst open, and my mother immediately yelled, “Get out of here! Now!”

I could just see her pointing her index finger at the door, like when she would tell me to go clean my room or something.

A man’s voice, low and smooth, answered back, “Really, Felicia, you honestly think we are just going to turn around and leave?”

He tsk’d at her like she was merely a child who had gotten caught with her hand in the cookie jar. This man knew her. He called her by name and spoke to her with familiarity. I was desperate to see what was going on.

“Trevor can’t have her!” my mother screamed at him.

The sarcasm was clear when the man laughed and said, “Well,
you
should know as well as I do that what Trevor wants Trevor will get.” He paused and then casually added, “He also wants you dead.”

I covered my mouth and stifled the urge to cry out.
What the hell is going on?

He continued to speak when my mother said nothing in return. “You messed up, Felicia. He would have let you live if you had just left and gone on with your life away from us. Instead, you chose to steal what was his. Trevor wants his child back.”

What? My mom stole a child? That just couldn’t be the truth.

My mother finally answered him, but she did so in a voice that was surprisingly fearless and brave. “Eli, you know he would have never been able to raise her. She is as much mine as she is his. I did not steal her; I
saved
her.”

Her?

The smooth voice continued as if her words meant nothing. “Nevertheless, we must carry out our orders. I would tell you that I’m sorry, Felicia, but I’m not. I never liked you, and I’m ecstatic I am the one who gets to kill one of the most renowned hunters to walk the Earth.”

Fear grasped me like a cold hand around my throat. I would not just hide in my closet and let him try to kill my mother. I threw open the door and flew out of the closet to face her attackers.

“No!”

I think I may have actually scared them a little, because every person in the room jumped. After the initial shock, my mother’s eyes widened in disappointment and that man’s—Eli’s—lips curled up into a smile.

I could put a face with the voice. He was about six feet tall with dark brown hair and cutting green eyes. The weird part was that he looked like he was about eighteen years old. The thought briefly passed through my head that I could take him. That thought was immediately crossed off the list when I got a good look behind him. There were about five other guys and one woman standing just outside my door.

I bit my lip and wished I had stayed in the closet.

“There she is!” Eli declared. “James!”

Suddenly, James was behind me and grasping both my arms hard enough to restrain me. Really, it didn’t take much, because his hands were like iron vices. My mother lunged forward with her arms extended out toward me.

“No!” she shouted. “You cannot have her!”

The dark-haired man thrust his arm forward and sent her flying across the room with one hit. I struggled against James’s grip.

“Let me go! Mom,
Mom
, are you ok?” I repeated over and over again.

I was scared to death, but I wasn’t going to let them hurt my mom. I watched my mom slowly get up and brush her long dark hair away from her eyes. When I saw her eyes, I felt a rush of power. My mother looked vicious. I had never before seen such determination in her. She took two slow steps forward while Eli appeared to wait for her, and then she rushed him.

“Mom, no!” I called out.

But she didn’t hear me, or she ignored me. She was on him, pounding away with tight clean punches. He simply grabbed her by the back of her pajamas and yanked her off. He threw her to the ground mercilessly, and that’s when I saw my mother do something amazing: She was on her back staring up at him, and then she hopped to her feet without using her arms. Lightning fast, her hand struck out and grabbed my desk chair. She smashed it over his head.

He threw his leg forward and sideways, knocking her feet out from under her so that she fell to the floor.

“Now this is more like the Felicia we used to know, the one with fight!”

In an instant she was up and snagged one of the busted chair legs off the floor on her way. With a quick spin for distraction and then a lunge, my mom did something I never would have imagined: She staked the man.

He laughed at her.

I was so freaked out by the whole situation I couldn’t say a word. Shock ate through my body, making my fingers and toes tingle like they were asleep. My head began to throb, and it looked like a fog was rolling into my room.

Yes, he had laughed at her, and then he pulled the stake out. “Felicia, you should know enough to know that you have to get under our ribs. This little piece of wood could never penetrate our bones.”

He grabbed her by the hair, and she screamed in pain. He twisted her around until her back was against his chest and the stake was poised above her heart.

“Chloe, look at me!” she demanded. “No matter what happens, you always remember that I did everything for
you
. I did what I had to do to give you a good life.” She paused and twisted her neck to look up at the scary, dark-haired man with the smooth voice, and she nodded. Then, with a final look back at me, she whispered her last words, “I love you, Chloe.”

He shoved the chair leg into her heart and snapped her neck at the same time. Instantly, her body fell lifeless in his arms. Blood seeped out of the wound and bloomed like a flower around the chair leg protruding from her heart, staining the pale blue silk almost black. In the distance, I heard myself scream. James kept his grip on my arms while my legs kicked at his. I even tried to bash the back of my head into his face, but he was too tall for it to be effective. I ended up thumping it into his hard chest.

Eli turned to me with my mother still in his arms.

“Shut up!” he snapped and carelessly threw my mother’s body onto the floor.

I did stop screaming, but only because I wanted to tell that bastard off. I felt so scared and helpless, but for some reason, I knew I was going to live through this. My voice cracked from all the screaming, so I’m sure I didn’t sound serious at all, but I told him anyway, “If it is the last thing I ever do, I will kill you for what you just did. I swear to God.”

He casually wiped my mother’s blood from his hands with one of the towels I had left on my desk from when I had showered before bed. “It’s not nice to swear, Chloe. Now let’s take you to your father.”

I swung my leg up and kicked out at him. “I’m not going anywhere with you! And I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. My father died before I was born.”

Eli sighed. “Of course he did. Let’s go, James.”

He waved his hand, and those who had stood by doing absolutely nothing while my mother was murdered in front of me made way for him to pass. James dragged me along behind him, and they followed.

Even though I was sure I was going to live—only because Eli said Trevor wanted me—I certainly wasn’t expecting a rescue. I was trying to figure out a way to escape when we reached the landing at the bottom of the stairs. The front door burst open, and people started to file in.

Eli’s goons rushed forward and more fighting began. Everyone was fighting everywhere and smashing up everything in our house. I could do nothing but watch and scream. I couldn’t even struggle anymore because I was exhausted from trying to get away from James. I couldn’t fight anymore, so I just hung there in James’s grip.

The people who had burst through the door looked like average people, from what I could see, but the weapons they carried were extraordinary. I saw one of the rescuers drive what looked like a steel arrow into the belly of one of the men and upward under his ribs to meet the heart. One of the women rescuers had a whip. With one smooth flick, the tail of the whip found the neck of the woman on Eli’s side and wound around it. When rescuer yanked it back, it sliced the other woman's head off.

 “Ahhh,” I wailed and turned my head. The rescuers were winning. I felt newfound hope, just when I was beginning to give in. It suddenly occurred to me what exactly we were dealing with here: stakes to the heart, cut off heads, slayers… it all began to add up. I just didn’t want to admit it. The fog continued to build in my head, and my arms were fully asleep from James’s grip. I couldn’t move them at all.

After what seemed like an eternity of blood and battle, Eli and James were the only bad guys left.

The rescuers all stood together before us. “Give us the girl,” one of them said. He stepped stepped forward. He was tall and extremely muscular. His hair was a dark blond, but it was his flashing green eyes that drew my attention. I just couldn’t seem to tear my gaze from his eyes.