“Be safe.”
She frowned in confusion, puzzled as to why he would say that. “Of course.”
The intensity of his gaze did not lessen as she took a small step away. She thought he was going to grab hold of her again as he made a small motion toward her, but then he stopped. The quiet desperation in him tore at her, keeping her riveted. “Come on Cassie, we have to go,” Chris said gently.
She nodded to him, swallowing heavily as she turned slowly away from Devon. She could feel his gaze boring into her back as they moved through the crowd. Another gentle breeze wafted over them, but this one carried the strange sense of wrongness that had been present at the beach the other day. Cassie halted; she turned slowly as the evil washed over her, and rooted her feet in place.
Melissa and Chris stopped beside her, their heads turned slowly as their gazes fixed upon the woods. Nothing stirred amongst the darkness, but she knew that something was out there. Knew that whatever it was it was evil, and it was thirsty. She shivered, her arms wrapped instinctively around herself in a useless attempt to fight off the ice in her veins.
The crowd of students moved and shuffled around her, their laughter loud in her frozen ears. Their joy was oddly out of place in the pulsing malevolence encompassing her. Whatever was out there, she could feel its eyes upon her. Feel it watching her.
“We have to go,” Melissa said softly, her normally strong voice wavering slightly.
Cassie tore her attention from the woods; her gaze instinctively fell upon Devon again. He was no longer watching her as he had turned back to the forest. His attention was riveted upon the woods, his body taut once more. A jolt tore through Cassie as she realized that somehow, she didn’t possibly know how, he felt the evil too.
CHAPTER 13
“I believe that an Elder is here.”
Cassie’s legs ceased their swinging motion on the island she was sitting upon as Luther slapped the paper down in front of them. The large headline blazed up at her in big black lettering. ANOTHER WOMAN KILLED BY WILD ANIMAL. Though she tried, she could not tear her gaze away from those words. The paper had been on her counter this morning, but she had thought nothing of it as she breezed by to grab a box of cereal. Then again, she had not thought about much since Devon had entered her life. But now, for the first time since she had met him, Devon was not foremost in her thoughts.
Horror and nausea rolled through her. Her stomach in a tumult, her body broke out in a cold sweat, and her temples pulsed with the fierce beats of her heart. For a moment she thought her life was flashing before her eyes, but then she realized it was just white lights blazing because she had forgotten to breathe. She inhaled sharply, the air burned through her tortured lungs.
“An Elder?” 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 could 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 gray 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 this thing is older, more powerful, and it is hunting here.”
Cassie shivered; she wrapped her arms tightly around her middle again. The painful knot in her stomach only clenched further, seeming to twist her intestines. An Elder. They had never dealt with an Elder before, never even come close to one. And she had never wanted to.
It had been The Elders that had grouped together to destroy The 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. Including their parents. The massacre had left The Hunter line straggling, broken, scattered and lost across the globe. The survivors had fled for their lives, moving about continuously in order to stay hidden and alive.
Before the carnage there had been almost six hundred Hunters. After, 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 The Hunter line. His duties as a Guardian consisted of schooling them in the old ways, navigating them through Vampire and Hunter lore, and teaching them how to fight. When The Slaughter occurred Luther had fled with Melissa to Germany, then Japan, and finally to the U.S. where they had bounced around in search of survivors. During the carnage, Guardian’s had also 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 known where The Hunters had been located before The Slaughter, but in the aftermath, many had been lost, maybe forever. Luther continued to search for more survivors, but his journeys always came up empty handed, and Cassie knew he worried that he wouldn’t find anymore.
With the small number of survivors, it was feared that The 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 there was no one left. It was Luther’s biggest fear; after 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 sooner 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.