Blood Hunter (The Grandor Descendant Series) (36 page)

It was several minutes before Thomas finally stopped, allowing Ari to fall from his shoulder and onto the floor. Instantly she felt herself convulse, as wave after wave of nausea over swept her and she vomited. Though she had hitched rides with vampires before, Thomas was so much… faster; there was no other word for it. She knew he was older than any of the other vampires in the coven, but she hadn’t really realised just how much stronger that made him.

“Are you ok?” Thomas asked, reaching down to her and placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. “What happened back there? Where did the waere go?”

“I froze time then Bridget… she attacked it.”

“Did Bridget see you use your powers?” asked Thomas, his voice tense.

“I don’t think so; she was too preoccupied with the lynx.”

Just then a snarl caught the pair’s attention; Ari looked up to see something fury spiralling through the air, and then Thomas hurled himself at it. Ari saw the flash of fangs and realised that it was another lynx, or rather another waere. This one was much larger than the first, and though Ari wasn’t certain, she thought that there was something masculine about it. Soon the pair grappled together, locked in a snarling fight as they tramped through the forest.

“Thomas,” screamed Ari, but it was too late; they had vanished.

Throwing caution to the wind, Ari chased after Thomas and the waere. The forest seemed to relish in her incoordination, its lengthy branches leering down at her. And all the while there was quiet… eerie, unsettling quiet. No peace could be found in this lack of noise; the silence pressed down on Ari, humming in her ears and making her head feel too big for her body. After a few moments of straining to hear anything, she finally saw something she recognised; the large boulder from her vision. Now that she was facing it in reality, she could appreciate just how old the rock looked. It was enormous, with smooth facets that looked to have been worn down with time. Ari’s eyes lowered; there was something sprawled out beneath the rock. She inched closer and shivered. The waere from her premonition was lying beneath the rock, its neck bloodied and its eyes rolling into the back of its head. It was as if her vision was replaying itself before her eyes.

Inching closer towards it, Ari held out a shaky hand. The cat was breathing heavily, and with each exhale, a small crackle sounded from somewhere deep inside its chest. When Ari was less than a foot away, the cat let out a pathetic hiss. In a last attempt to protect itself, the cat held up its paw and tried to push Ari away, but still Ari continued forwards, feeling for a pulse at the groove of the cat’s pad. She did not know why, but all she could think of was helping the injured animal. Holding her hands against the gashes in the cat’s throat, Ari applied pressure; thick sticky blood swelled beneath her hand and in between her fingers.

“You’re going to be ok,” she whispered, fighting her previous images of the dead animal from her vision.

She was still holding the lynx’s neck, but she almost released it, when from the corner of her eye someone appeared. It was Bridget; she had obviously tracked her prey and was here to finish the job.

“Hmm,” said Bridget, watching Ari from the edge of a particularly dense part of the forest. “You know, humans taste so much better than animals. And I can’t quite get out of my head how delicious you must taste, to have captured the attention of Ragon.”

At Bridget’s threat, Ari’s heart raced. There was no pause… no considering her actions; Bridget lunged at Ari. Ari barely had enough time to register the attack, mercifully throwing her hands up into the air and halting time, right before Bridget could reach her. 

Relief washed over Ari, until she heard the small staggering whelp of the animal at her feet. The momentary loss of pressure against the bleeding wounds had been enough to rob the animal of much needed blood. The beast looked up at Ari, its yellow eyes meeting her blue ones, and then its eyes grew wide, so that soon there was nothing but black orbs staring blankly back at her.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” roared Ragon, his eyes dancing over Bridget’s frozen form indifferently before he stared incredulously at Ari.

Ari spun around to face him and said, “Help me,” before falling to her knees and replacing her hands against the gaping wounds.

But it was too late. Already the waere was writhing violently. Its body shook and elongated, just as the light fur was replaced with skin, and the large paws became hands. When the transformation had finished, a naked woman lay on the ground. There were three deep cuts across her throat and Ari raced back over to her and flung her hands back against the wounds, desperate to stop the bleeding.

“Don’t just stand there,” said Ari, looking up at Ragon in disbelief.

To her great surprise it was Clyde who raced forwards.

“No Clyde, wait!” Ari cried, recalling her premonition. “I had a vision of you being attacked here.”

Clyde ignored her, moving with hast to race to the dying girl, and removing his jacket so as to place it over her. Ari watched in confusion as Clyde fell to the floor at the girl’s feet. It was the exact image she had seen from her promotion; but Clyde hadn’t been attacked.

“Riley?” he said, staring the girl in the face.

The name had stirred something in Ari’s memory and when she looked back down, she realised who the waere was; Clyde’s mystery woman. And suddenly Ari understood; she’d had her premonition, not to save Clyde, but so she could save Riley.  

“What can we do?” asked Clyde, still kneeling next to Riley, his eyes struck with desperation.

No amount of stiches would save Riley, they needed a miracle.

“Take her to Lea; she’s on the first level of my halls,” said Ari, hoping like hell that Lea’s good magic extended to healing a waere. “Lea can save her.”

Clyde nodded, cradled Riley in his hands and disappeared down the path.

“I need to call Lea,” said Ari, getting to her feet and moving over to Ragon. “I need to tell her that we need her help.”

“Ari, I don’t think that-” Ragon began to say, but Ari cut him off.

“-please Ragon, you don’t understand. I saw this in a vision. I think I was meant to stop it. I thought Clyde was going to be attacked, but, but it was Riley all along. Clyde only fell down because he was… sad.”

“Sad?” said Ragon, looking at Ari sideways. “Why would Clyde care about a waere?”

“We don’t have time to discuss it now. I have to call Lea.”

Reluctantly Ragon nodded and Ari reached for her phone. On the 5
^th
ring she was starting to get worried that Lea might be at the mess hall or perhaps in her room deep in study mode, but then she heard her friend’s voice.

“Lea I need your help. There was an accident… someone got hurt; Clyde is bringing her to you now. I don’t know if you can help but you have to try,” she said quickly. “Clyde is going to your room now. You have to help us.”

Ari didn’t give Lea any chance to argue. As soon as she had hung up, both Ari and Ragon turned to face Bridget. She was still frozen, a wide smile plastered on her face.

“She annoy you?” asked Ragon, indicating Bridget.

“Annoy me? If by annoy you mean try to attack me, then yea… she annoyed me!”

Suddenly Ragon’s face changed and he glared at Bridget; he walked towards her casually and then placing a hand on either side of her head, twisted hard. The result was instant; Bridget’s neck was broken and the girl crumpled to the floor.

“What are you doing?” Ari screamed.

Yes she had been angry with Bridget; but Ragon couldn’t just kill her? What if someone found out? The Final Death Laws clearly stated that it was punishable by death to kill another vampire.

“It’s ok; I just broke her neck. She won’t die, but we can’t have her knowing that you froze her,” said Ragon, now pulling Ari away and back down the path. “This way she will just think that someone attacked her from behind.”

Ari nodded and the pair began racing through the forest, following the same path that Clyde had taken with Riley.

When Ragon and Ari reached Lea’s room, they were knocking on it for at least a minute before the door was finally thrown opened. Clyde greeted them; his face was drawn and worried. Ari had never seen him look so… human.

“How is she?” asked Ari, rushing to Lea’s bed, where Riley lay, still unconscious.

Ari knew that it was strange for her to be so concerned about a waere, especially a waere who had tried to attack her, but she couldn’t help it. She was certain that the vision she’d had earlier was designed to stop this girl from dying. She didn’t know why, but she was connected to her somehow. And it wasn’t just Ari; Clyde had wanted to protect her too.

Lea was sitting cross legged on the floor of her room, a large silver cup in her hands. Ari watched as Lea reached into her bedside table and retrieved a dagger; she winced as Lea took the dagger and cut into Riley’s wrist, capturing the dwindling trickle of blood in the cup. Lea then handed the cup to Clyde, who drank from it, before placing his wrist to his mouth and biting down.

“Blood for blood,” Lea said, not really talking to anyone, as she took the cup from Clyde and poured it into Riley’s mouth.   

The moment the red liquid touched Riley’s lips, Clyde let out a bone chilling scream, and Ari spun around to look at him.

“Keep him quiet,” Lea hissed, and Ari rushed to Clyde’s side to comfort him.

“What’s happening to him?” Ragon asked.

“He chose this,” said Lea, looking at Ari warningly.

Both Ragon and Ari tried to hold onto Clyde, but he fell to the floor and began writhing in pain. It was then that Ari noticed three large cuts spawn across his neck; three cuts which mirrored Riley’s injuries precisely. At first blood leached slowly from the wounds, but before long it began to stream. At the same time Clyde’s handsome face drained of all colour.  

“Clyde?” whispered Ari, brushing his light brown hair out of his face.

“What’s happening?” asked Ragon, turning to face Lea.

“An exchange,” said Lea. “The girl has lost too much blood. Clyde is giving up his to save her; it’s called a leeching spell. It was the only thing I could do.”

“What?” Ari said.

She knew that Clyde had thought that Riley was hot, but he wasn’t the type of guy to give up everything for a girl. There was no way that he would have known what he was getting himself into. And it had been she, Ari, to tell Clyde to come to Lea; this was all her fault!

“Jesus Clyde, I’m so sorry,” sobbed Ari. “I didn’t mean for you to-”

“-it’s ok,” Clyde whispered back, his eyes flickering into the back of his head, “I chose this.”

Suddenly the door to Lea’s room burst open. Standing in the hallway were three girls Ari had never seen before. Had they come in because they had heard Clyde’s screams? Instantly Ari was panicked, but then she realised that the looks on their faces were not ones of surprise; they were angry. The tallest girl walked into the room almost cat-like. She was glaring at Ragon and Clyde, her eyes small slits as she considered them.

“What the hell are you doing Lea?” demanded the tall girl. “You’re helping vampires?”

What the hell was going on? How did these girls know what Ragon and Clyde were?

“It’s not what you think,” said Riley, looking up at them desperately.

“Get out of here blood suckers,” said the tall girl, her eyes dancing between Ragon and then down to the semi-unconscious Clyde.

At her words, Clyde’s eyelids fluttered opened. He jumped to his feet as though he had been stung and charged towards the tall girl. He was half way across the room when he fell down as if shot. Ari stared at him hopelessly, watching as his eyes become glassy and he slumped onto the floor.

“What have you done?” screamed Ari, glaring up at the three girls.

A sudden wave of heat washed over Ari and she felt her heart race in her chest.

“It’s not them,” said Lea, looking from the girls then down to Clyde. “It’s the leeching spell; he’s lost a lot of blood.”

“You performed a leeching spell for a blood demon?” the tall girl said incredulously.

“Emily,” said Lea, looking up at the girl, “they aren’t here to hurt us.”