AllFreeNovel
Share Us
If someone managed to get the bastard’s picture, he’d been done for. As it was, he was quiet and careful, and he lived his life in the shadows, so nobody really even had a waking chance to find him.
Was that where Raven was going?
Did she know him?
The thought hit me suddenly, and I walked a little faster. I kept my eyes open. It was dark out, but the moon was bright, and it was clear enough to see the rows of old houses that were practically falling apart. This part of town was where the fresher, younger vampires lived. They were wild and were always destroying things. The older vampires congregated in other parts of the Grove. There were lots of big mansions against one side of the miniature city.
Was that where the vampire I was hunting for lived?
As I walked, I kept my head down. I saw a few other vampires, but none of them were paying me any notice. They were all just hanging out. Ever since my friends and I had raided the Grove all of those years ago, humans had stayed far away. It was common knowledge that we’d lost our fight, and nobody felt like messing with territory we didn’t belong in.
Suddenly, I saw a familiar figure up ahead, and I knew that I’d finally gotten lucky. Raven was scurrying down the road like a beautiful cockroach, and I tried to keep up with her without letting her know I was following her.
Apparently, being a vampire enhanced your senses. That was what everyone said. For a brief second, I wondered if that had happened to my friend. Was she able to hear better? Smell better?
Maybe having enhanced senses would make you feel better in bed, too.
I walked swiftly but kept my head down as much as possible. Soon the houses with the broken front porches and overgrown yards faded into the distance and were replaced with taller buildings: apartments. There were apartments on either side, and soon those were replaced with townhomes.
“Where the fuck is she going?” I whispered out loud to myself. I knew that I shouldn’t have spoken because she stopped suddenly and looked around, as though she knew I was there.
Fuck.
I stepped into the shadows of one of the townhomes. It had a little awning and a tiny front porch, and from my position, I was cloaked in darkness. At least, I highly suspected that I was. I peered out from my position a few minutes later, and Raven was gone. That was good and bad, and I kept walking, trying to find her.
I’d never been this deep into the Grove before, I realized. In the past, I’d lurked around the outer edges. Probably, that was to protect myself. If I could stay close to the outside of the vampire’s area, then I could easily get into the world of humans without any problems. If I wandered too deeply, and I got lost or hurt, I’d be done.
Nobody was going to come rescue someone who’d gotten stuck in the Grove.
Nobody.
I kept walking, looking around. The moon was almost completely blocked by clouds now and seeing was a lot harder. Suddenly, I wondered if I’d made the right choice after all. Maybe going into the Grove unprepared, without any proper weapons, had been a mistake.
When I felt someone’s hand clamp over my mouth, I realized that yes, it had been a horrible mistake.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
It was Raven.
I wasn’t sure whether to cry or laugh when she spun me around to face her.
“It’s you,” I said.
“Shut the fuck up,” she hissed. “You cannot be here, Kimberly. What are you doing here?”
Her eyes searched mine, and I noticed, for the first time, something I’d never seen in her eyes before. Fear. Raven was scared, but I didn’t know why. What the hell did she have to be scared of? She was a vampire, after all. She was big and strong and...
There were other vampires, I suddenly realized. There were other vampires who were bigger and stronger, and one of them was the one who turned her.
“I needed to see you,” I whispered. I didn’t finish my sentence. Saying, “I needed to see you to work on our relationship” sounded really clingy and needy and not something one best friend would say to another.
“I saw you like an hour ago,” she said.
That’s how long I’d been walking, I realized. We’d walked for an hour, and we still hadn’t arrived at wherever it was that Raven was going. We were really deep in the Grove, and I wondered, suddenly, if I was going to be able to find my way back.
Surely, I’d be able to find my way back.
“I just wanted to talk more,” I said.
