Page 22

Once again, I woke up this morning somewhere different from where I fell asleep. I felt as if I’d been hit by a bus. The entire morning I’ve felt so out of it, like I’m operating at half my usual functional capacity.

The obnoxious sound of a car horn blaring snaps me back to reality, and I stumble out of the way. A man shouts something inaudible at me and I shake my head, feeling dazed. Exhaustion seems to be a part of my personality at this point.

Entering the lecture hall, I make my way up the stairs. A girl is walking a few metres ahead of me, and she stiffens, turning back to stare at me. I flinch, stepping back when I see bottomless black eyes blink back at me, but then a moment later, the girl’s face is totally normal and she gives me an odd look.

I swallow and divert down a different path and drop into a seat. I’m going crazy.

My phone dings loudly and I jump, hastily silencing it. Looking down at the screen, I see a few messages coming through in the group chat. It hasn’t been active for a while, and I had almost convinced myself that they’d created a new one without me in it.

The professor’s voice drones on and students are tapping away on their laptops, half-listening, half-scrolling. I feel like I can’t breathe. It started this morning. I woke up with that tightness again – as though someone else’s hands were wrapped around my lungs. I keep telling myself it’s nothing, but I know it’s a lie now. There’s something going on around here. There are too many weird things happening that I can’t explain.

My phone buzzes in my lap again.

Tristan: Sighting last night – over North side, across the bridge

Mitch: Should we check it out?

Jace: I’m in

Tristan: It’s on boys. See u tonight

My stomach turns. A hunt. Tonight. Like it’s normal to be out looking to capture and kill creatures of the night. My fingers hover over the keyboard. A week ago, I would’ve been thrilled to be included in something, even this. I mean, I’ve trained for years to defend myself, but that’s different from actively hunting creatures.

My stomach does that strange flip-flop motion. Something registers in my brain. I’m having the strangest sense of deja vu. Everyone else is scribbling notes or typing quietly. I can’t shake the feeling of missing time and memories. I’ve been feeling this way too often lately. Like walking into a room and forgetting why you went there to begin with.

I massage my palm into my forehead, trying to will the fuzziness away. It’s not pain exactly, more like static, as if there’s something important just out of reach, brushing the edge of my mind and then vanishing before I can catch it.

It’s nothing, I tell myself. You’re tired and stressed. That’s all it is.

But the weary feeling doesn’t pass. For a split second, there’s this flash in my mind. Night air wrapping around me, a violent grip on my arm, the sharp sting of fangs in my skin, midnight-black eyes and the sound of a scream. I blink again and it’s gone. The classroom returns – the sound of pages turning, someone coughing, the scrape of a chair leg across the floor. I swear I feel everyone’s eyes on me but when I glance around the lecture hall, not one person is paying me any attention. Blowing out a breath, I sit there, heart stuttering, hands clammy, wondering what the hell just happened. Those flashes … it felt so real. Like it happened to me, but I don’t recall it. Is it a dream? It can’t be a memory … can it?

I think back to Theo. The vampire in a cage. A voice smooth like honey, but with a deep rasp to it that holds a bit of danger. Hands that saved me when they shouldn’t have, leaving me even more confused.

Maybe while the others are on the hunt, I could use it as my chance to get back underground. To find the place where the earth gave way and the dark swallowed me whole. To find him again. To ask the questions no one in my family wants me to ask.

It feels like forever until class finishes. The barely-seen sun is sinking by the time I get home. There’s that sharp coolness in the air that has me tugging the sleeves of my shirt down over my hands.

I step through the back door and the noise hits me all at once. Tristan’s thumping around the kitchen, loading a duffel with weapons – blades, stakes, silver chains. Mitch is pacing by the back table, sharpening one of his blades, the sound of it making me wince. Mike has his boots on the coffee table, wrapping his wrists with tape like he’s going into a street fight. Jace is behind him, counting how many knives he has as he stashes them in different locations over his body.

No one looks at me, but I feel the mood shift when I walk in. Like they’re hyper-aware of my presence and need to be careful what they say and do.

Tristan slides a torch into his vest and rolls his neck. I can hear the crack of it from across the room.

‘We’re moving fast tonight,’ he says. ‘I want to capture one and bring it back.’

I shift on my feet. I have no idea where my dad or the rest of the older family members are. They’ve been weirdly absent lately. It’s not unusual for them to be away from home, they’re always on business trips, but I feel like I haven’t seen anyone for a while. My eyes turn to the kitchen – no Kayleigh in sight.

They continue talking as though I’m not here. No one bothers to ask whether I’m coming or not – they’re assuming the latter.

Tristan slings the duffel over one shoulder and heads for the door. The rest of them fall in line behind him. My eyes are pinned on Jace, waiting for some sort of reaction from him that I’m here, but he doesn’t even look at me. And then they’re gone.

The house is quiet.

When I’m confident that they’re completely off the property, I grab my jacket and slip out the back door. The woody area beside the house is dark and cold. A shiver rockets down my spine. I shouldn’t be out, alone, after dark. Weirdly, I feel a sort of thrill about doing this. It feels as if I’m breaking a rule being out here.

I take my time retracing my steps, trying to remember where I fell. There’s no point trying to find the exit that Jace took me through; I recall the deadbolted door. There’s no chance they’d leave that unlocked.

Using my torch, I keep walking until I find a patch where the dirt’s been disturbed. My skin prickles. This is where I fell. I crouch, brushing away the loose earth with shaking fingers. The soil gives way faster this time and my stomach lurches as I lean too heavily forward, falling once more. I land with a grunt, my knees scraping stone, breath knocked out of me.