Page 80 of Slayer

The wafer had worked. My wounds had healed, and my bloody clothes were in a bag to throw in the trash incinerator.

I nervously laughed. “You heard?”

“They’re calling you Tyson. Like Mike Tyson,” Luna said.

Oh my gosh, that was sooo embarrassing.

“No.” I groaned and fumbled into their room to catch them up. They sat with rapt attention as I retold the story.

“So you bit off her ear!” Luna was grinning like a fool. She loved this.

“I mean, she had my hands and legs pinned, and she was too low for a headbutt.”

“You’re my hero.” Harper batted her eyelashes and leaned on my shoulder as we all burst out laughing.

It was these moments, the ones where I had loyal friends waiting to hear my crazy story, that cemented something in my heart.

I wanted to do whatever it took to stay here in Veil Haven. I wanted to be a hunter with Luna and Harper, and I wanted to bring down as many of these murderous vampires as I could.

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

The next day, the whole school was on high alert.

Everyone was talking about the vampire attack on Asher and me.

When I walked down the halls, I heard whispers ripple through the air, low and excited.

“Tyson.”

My official new nickname.

It was mortifying, but Harper and Luna puffed up with pride beside me every time they heard it.

At least I hadn’t freaked them out.

“Hey, do you have a car?” I asked Harper as we crossed the quad.

I didn’t have my license. Never needed it in Spokane when I couldn’t afford a car anyway.

“No, but I can borrow my mom’s. You want to go somewhere?”

“After-school practices were canceled after the attack, but I was hoping I could get special permission to check out my mom’s storage unit.” I hesitated, then added, “She left me the key.”

My mother’s note had been taking up permanent residence in my head lately.

Her big secret.

One I apparently had to figure out myself and one she’d warned me not to trust any fellow hunters with.

Maybe the storage unit held answers. Or at least breadcrumbs.

The letter itself was…eerie.

Paranoid even.

I’d tried to tell myself she might have been mentally unwell, but something about the way everything kept lining up made me hesitate to dismiss it so easily.