Page 16 of Huntress Unleashed
“Yeah, I agree. What did your friends that dumped you say about it?” she asked.
“Nothing, really. I learned hunter parties are coming up that normally I would be invited to and that’s not happening any longer.” He shrugged. “I could be irritated about it, but I figure they’re not worth my attention.” Which wasn’t totally true. It was hard growing up with these hunters as friends, play-fighting, socializing with them, watching each other’s backs. Now they treated him like he was a rogue vampire—the only difference being that they couldn’t terminate him legally.
“What if they’re at a scene that you happen upon? Are you going to help them? Or just let them deal with it themselves?”
“Well, I would help them, unless they threatened me. And then it is their problem. But yeah, despite their abandoning me, I wouldn’t hold it against them if they needed my help. What about you?” Before she answered, he assumed she would step in to help them.
She shrugged. “If there was a reward for the vampire’s expiration, I would help.”
He chuckled. He was sure she would, even if she didn’t get any bounty for it. Then he got a call from his oldest brother. “Hey, Matt, are you there already?”
“Yeah, we’re parked down the street, but we’re watching the house. How do you want to handle this?”
Usually, Matt decided when they would do a job, where, who would be involved, and how, during cases they worked on together. A lot of research was done first, and they did fight the vampires together when they had a rogue crew of them that they had to deal with. This was the first time that Matt had ever asked Dane to tell him how this was going down. Why? Because a fellow friend was involved? Most likely. Maybe also because she and he were vampires now and that might give them a different perspective.
“Hi, I’m Jacqueline Anderson, the huntress turned vampire, damsel in distress,” she said.
Matt laughed. “From what Dane tells me, the only ones in distress are the vampires you’re targeting.”
She smiled at Dane. Yeah, he’d called his brother up to tell him what they’d done tonight together. He didn’t usually check in but after that last fiasco with the vampire who had turned him, his brother had told him if he didn’t call, he and his other brothers were coming after him.
“I’m really not sure how to handle this situation. If this is Heskel, who telepathically communicated with Jacqueline, he’s probably expecting just her. Unless he knows I was with her tonight, eliminating a couple of vampires on hunters’ lists and he hopes I’ll be with her, and he can eliminate me.”
“Because you’re possibly an obstacle to his control over her,” Matt said. “But should she go into the house alone? Shouldn’t we keep her in one of the vehicles until we can take him out?”
“He might not even be there. It might be another situation entirely. We might blow the whole mission,” Dane said.
“I’m going in,” Jacqueline said. “Wait, let me test something out first.” She took a deep breath and said, “Okay, I’m talking to you telepathically to see if I can speak with you from inside the house.”
“Oh, hell, I can hear you in my head,” Dane said, surprised to hear her speak to him like that.
“Yes, but talk to me telepathically so I can get feedback from you and you can tell your brothers what is going on. I need to know that you can do it too.”
“All right. Can you hear my words when I try to communicate like this?” Dane asked.
“Yes. It’s amazing, isn’t it? Okay, I’ll go in, and you stay in the car. I’ll let you know who all is there and what’s going on. If I say I need rescuing, don’t hesitate to come to my aid.”
He really didn’t like that she would be going in alone, but they had to try this her way. “Okay. Matt, she’s going into the house.” He explained about the telepathic communication they had just shared.
“Why didn’t you answer me the first time I talked to you telepathically?” she suddenly asked Dane.
“The first time?” Now he was worried since he hadn’t heard her speak to him like that before.
“Yeah, before you came to the house. I tried reaching you that way and then I called you on the phone.”
“I was in the shower. Maybe that’s why?”
“I hope that’s all it was and that it wasn’t something like we were too far away from each other in the housing development.”
“I’ll just be in the car and we’re right outside the house.”
She nodded, then leaned over and kissed him. He sealed the kiss with a promise to be there for her. Then she got out of the car and headed for the house. It was completely dark, and he really had a bad feeling about this. She knocked on the door, but nothing happened. Then she turned the doorknob and it was unlocked. She glanced back at him, appearing confident, though he had smelled her anxiety before she left the car, and then she went inside.
“I can see, though the whole house is dark. I don’t hear anyone’s heartbeats. I don’t think anyone’s here yet.”
“Okay, keep me informed.” Dane relayed the information to Matt.
“Oh, he’s here, sitting in the dark. I hear his heartbeat now. Steady. Calm. Like a hunter waiting for his unsuspecting prey.”