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“I can’t see you again,” she said.
Then she walked out of the bar and didn’t look back. I stared at the door as it slammed shut, wondering what the hell she meant. She couldn’t see me again? That comment hurt worse than the realization that she’d lied to me.
“Hey,” the bartender said, gesturing to Raven’s empty seat. “Are you going to pay for your friend?”
“Yeah,” I whispered, pulling out a wad of cash. I dropped it on the bar. “Keep the change.”
I got up and left, too. I didn’t care that my drink was only half-finished. I cared about her. I cared about the fact that Raven was one of them and there was nothing I could do about it. They’d stolen my best friend.
With every intention to walk to my home, I instead made my way to the front gates of the Grove. I stood there, looking at the wrought-iron gates, wondering why I didn’t just march in there. That was where Raven was. She was my last friend: my last link to humanity.
After the others had died, I’d thrown myself into hunting and I hadn’t exactly worried about anything else. Then, when I’d met Raven, we’d teamed up a few times for different jobs. Together, we’d killed vampires. We’d put down two different werewolves. Once, we killed a monster that looked like Big Foot, and neither one of us had any idea what it actually was.
Still, we’d made each other a promise: forever.
We’d promised that we would be friends forever, no matter what happened. To me, it kind of seemed like Raven was bailing on that promise. She’d gotten bit. So what? I didn’t care about that, but I did care about the fact that she’d blown me off.
Well, I was going to find her.
She’d left the bar only a few minutes before me. It wasn’t enough time for her to really get far. Oh, I was certain that she thought she’d be sneaky and run away fro
m me. She probably thought I’d go back to my home, vent and cry, punch something, and then move on.
Well, I’d already lost one person I cared about.
I wasn’t about to lose someone else.
Comparing my relationship with Hank to my friendship with Raven felt strange, but she was the closest thing to a lover that I had now. She knew my secrets – most of them – and I knew hers. Well, I thought I did. Maybe I’d been wrong.
Although Raven might make a wonderful vampire, she’d made the classic mistake of underestimating the human in her midst. She’d forgotten something very important: I was a hunter.
I was a damn good one, too.
My entire life had been spent hunting vampires, and I wasn’t about to let a little thing like friendship get in the way of that. Oh, I had no interest in killing my best friend, but I did want to find her. I wasn’t about to give up on being friends just because she had turned.
Was she?
Once I was certain nobody was looking, I slipped between the iron gates that guarded the entrance to the Grove, and I started walking. This part of the Grove was filled with trees and walking trails. It was really more of a beautiful little park. In the daytime, it was lovely. At night, the monsters came out to play.
We’d planned to hang out at the bar for awhile, so I was wearing a short black dress. It was cold outside, though, so I had a hooded zip-up sweatshirt on over it. No, it wasn’t very sexy or ladylike to wear a hoodie, but it meant that I wasn’t completely freezing. It also meant I wasn’t going to stand out too wildly as I slinked around the Grove.
I walked for a few minutes before veering off of the path. In real life, you were never supposed to wander from whatever path you were on. The rules of the real world didn’t apply in the Grove, though. Here, anything went. You could do anything, be anyone, and fight however you liked.
There was a reason that humans stayed out of the Grove.
The first vamps I came across were making out against a tree. I veered left, hurrying away. I didn’t do very much when it came to my appearance because I didn’t like calling attention to myself. The same was true of my scent. Vampires loved smells. They really loved the way humans smelled when they were sweaty and scared, or sweaty and aroused, or just sweaty in general.
It was cold enough that I didn’t really have to worry about sweating. Besides, I had antiperspirant slathered all over my body, just in case.
Suddenly, I wondered if that was why Raven didn’t want to hang out. Was she scared I was going to push her away because she was different? Or was she worried that I was going to be too delicious? Maybe Raven wanted to eat me up alive.
She had kissed me, after all.
I tried not to read too much into that kiss. It had been sexy, sure, but there hadn’t been love there. Raven wasn’t leaving because she was secretly in love with me and didn’t want to turn me. There was something else she was hiding, and I planned to find out what.
I hurried through the darkness until I emerged on the other side of the little park. Here, things looked more suburban. I felt sick as I realized I was close to the place the vampire had hurt me years ago. I wanted to find him and stake him, but more than that, I wanted to find his master.
The Vampire of Garnetia was feared by everyone. He was the single biggest reason the cops didn’t just burn the Grove to the ground. Aside from the fact that vampires would never go quietly into the night, the Vampire of Garnetia had cash. He had lots of it, too. Besides, nobody knew where he lived or what he looked like.
