THE VAMPIRE HUNTERS came just before dawn. I was sound asleep—a total knock-out sleep, deep and dreamless, after a night spent sparring with Marguerite. I woke to her cool fingers gripping my bare shoulder.
“Kat?” she whispered. “Katiana?”
I pushed her away, muttering that I’d skip the bus and jog to school, but her fingers bit into my shoulder as she shook me.
“It’s not school,
My eyes snapped open. Marguerite was leaning over me, blue eyes wide, her heart-shaped face ringed with blonde curls. When I was little, I used to think she was an angel. I knew better now, but it didn’t change anything. She was still
I rolled out of bed and peered around the dark room. If I blinked hard enough, I could see. Cat’s-eye vision, Marguerite called it. I was a supernatural, too, though not a vampire. We had no idea
Marguerite pushed clothing into my hand. For two years, we’d slept with an outfit and packed backpack under our beds, ready to grab if the hunters came. Two years of running. Two years of staying one step ahead of them. Until now.
“Where are they?” I whispered as I tugged on my jeans.
“Outside. Watching the house.”
“Waiting for daylight, I bet.” I snorted. “Idiots. Probably think once the sun comes up, you’ll be trapped in here.”
“If so, they will be in for a surprise. But I would like to be gone by then, to be sure they are not waiting for reinforcements.”
“Going up, then?” I asked.
She nodded, and we set out.
We snuck through the top-floor apartment we rented in the old house. In the living room, I hopped onto the couch, and Marguerite handed me a screwdriver. I popped off the ventilation shaft cover, handed it down to her, grabbed the edge and swung up and through.
Ever seen a TV show where the hero sneaks into the villain’s lair through a ventilation shaft? Ever thought it looked easy? It’s not. First, your average ventilation shaft is not action hero-sized. Second, they’re lined with metal, meaning it’s like crawling through a tin can, every thump of your knee echoing.
Fortunately, neither Marguerite nor I are action hero-sized either. And we know how to move without making a sound. For Marguerite, it comes naturally. Vampires are predators, and she’s never sugar-coated that for me. My skill comes from training. I’m a competition-level gymnast, a brown belt in karate and a second-degree black belt in aikido.
I’d been taking lessons since I came to live with Marguerite eleven years ago. All supernaturals need to be able to defend themselves, she says. I might eventually get powers that help me, but if I turn out to be something like a necromancer, I’m shit outta luck. Not that she’d use those exact words. Marguerite doesn’t swear and doesn’t like me to either. She has no problem with me kicking someone’s ass—she just doesn’t want me saying the word.
When my elbow bumped the metal side, I managed to swallow my curse, turning it into a soft growl.
“You’re doing fine,” her whisper floated to me. “Keep going.”
We finally reached the attic, where we’d removed the screws from the vent right after moving in. As I pushed it up and out of the way, I mentally cursed again, this time cussing out the landlady for nailing shut the attic hatch, which would have made for a much easier escape route. That was why we’d rented the place—Marguerite had seen the hatch in our apartment and slapped down the cash … only to realize it was nailed closed, the wood too rotted to pry open.
Once in the attic, Marguerite took over. She can see better in the dark than I can. In the vent, she’d let me go first to cover my back, but here she led to make sure I didn’t trip or step on anything nasty. That’s the way it’s always been. She trains me to defend myself, but when she’s there, she’s always the one taking the risks. When I was five, it made me feel safe and loved. Now … well, there’s part of me that wants to say it pisses me off, but the truth is, I still like it.
Marguerite walked to the dormer window. Oak branches scraped against it like fingernails on a chalkboard, setting my already stretched nerves twanging. She wrenched off the rotted window frame. Those branches, creepy as they were, made excellent cover, hiding us as we swung up and onto the roof. Following her lead, I slid across the old shingles, feeling them scrape a layer or two off my palms. We crept along to the shadow of the chimney, then huddled against it and peered out into the night.
Marguerite started to close her eyes, then opened them wide, her nostrils flaring.
“Yes, I’m bleeding,” I whispered. “Scraped palms. I’ll live.”
She handed me a tissue anyway. Then she closed her eyes, trying to pinpoint the vampire hunters with her special senses. A vampire can sense living beings. Marguerite doesn’t know how it works, but years ago I saw this show on sharks and how they have this sixth sense that detects electrical impulses, making them perfectly evolved predators. So I’ve decided that’s what vampires have—a shark’s electrosensory system. Perfect predators.
Tonight her shark-sense wasn’t up to snuff, and Marguerite kept shaking her head sharply, like she was trying to tune it in. She looked tired, too, her eyes dim, face drawn. I remembered how cool her skin had been when she woke me up.
“When’s the last time you ate?” I whispered.
“I had a storage pouch—”
“Not that stale blood crap. A real meal, I mean.”
Her silence answered. While she can get by on packaged stuff, it’s like humans eating at McDonald’s every day. Not very healthy. She needs real food, hot and fresh. Though she doesn’t need to kill people to feed—she just drinks some blood, like a mosquito—it’s always dangerous, and since we’ve been on the run she doesn’t do it nearly enough.
“You can’t do that. You need to feed more to keep up your energy.”
I made a face at her and hunkered down, letting her concentrate. After a moment, she pointed to the east.
“Two of them, over there. Watching and waiting. We must go.”
I nodded, and followed her back to the rear of the house and down the tree, hidden by its branches. We hop-scotched through yards as the darkness lifted, giving way to predawn gray, pink touching the sky to the east. The rising sun wasn’t a problem. Bram Stoker got one thing right with Dracula—vampires can walk around in daylight just fine.
We headed for the bus station three blocks away. These days, when we looked for a place to live, Marguerite didn’t ask how many bedrooms and baths it had or even how much it cost. She picked apartments based on how easily we could escape them—and get far away, fast.
“I’m sorry,
“I’ll live.”
“You liked him.”
I shrugged. “Just a guy. Probably turn out to be another jock-jerk anyway.”
Being on the run meant home-schooling. Home-schooling meant limited opportunities to meet guys. So I did most of my socializing at the gym, which had lots of really hot guys. Unfortunately, most of them knew how hot they were. Luke had seemed different, but I told myself it was just a front. That always made leaving easier.
We dashed behind a convenience store. I leapt onto the wooden fence and ran along the top of it.
“Slow down, Kat,” Marguerite called behind me. “You will fall.”
I shot a grin back. “Never. I’m a werecat, remember?”
She rolled her eyes. “There is no such thing.”
