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“No more talking.”
Guess my life just got a whole lot more complicated. It figures. Being a teenager and a vampire hunter was bound to spell trouble.
3
It’s Complicated
WASN’T IT SOME KINDof teenage girl fantasy to have two guys fighting over who got to protect you? Because this chick wasn’t digging all the toxic masculinity and alpha pheromones in the room.
My wily old fox of a grandmother sat at an all-wood dining table, short white hair framing a beautifully aged face of seventy-five years. The frail-looking granny had seen more action than Vin Diesel. But at home, Grams was far from the perfect embodiment of a seventy-plus-year-old, mother of three.
She wore all black, a cinched vest, and boots that reached her knees. Her look screamed vixen of the night, and it was everything I loved about her. She didn’t cater her clothes to fit someone else’s expectations of a grandmother. Only in public did she bother to pretend so we didn’t draw any unnecessary attention to ourselves.
Our normal society disguise, if you will.
Strapped to her back was her favorite weapon, a spiked bat. It never made sense to me why she chose it over all the others. It was a short-range weapon that barely worked for lopping off the heads of her enemies. But for some reason, she’d gone full Negan and even named her bat Lucy.
As in,I Love Lucy. As in, Grams, Lucy is the one person you shouldn’t name a bat after because she was the golden girl of progressive female comedy.
But Grams was a huge fan ofThe Walking Deadand thought it was hilarious that Negan named his bat something similar to what she’d named hers all those years ago. Ironically, Grams was the first Negan, and I didn’t even know how to properly deal with that information.
But no, not even I was courageous enough to mention any of it out loud to a woman who’d been the frontrunning Hunter in the entire organization at the brilliant age of twenty.
I never really knew my mother or father, who died on a mission when I was only two, and Grams never went into much detail where they were concerned. I didn’t bother asking anymore. She had two other sons, who were also Hunters, and their visits were infrequent and brief.
The life of a Hunter was pretty much solitary aside from your partner. Most Hunters married other Hunters and teamed up for that very reason. Sure, we worked with others, but it never went on for very long. Most missions with requiring others went quickly, then we went our separate ways.
Depressing, I know.
Not really the typical teenage angst, but I was dealing.
“Nigel,” Grams said, voice clipped, “I know you feel some kind of way about Phillip coming here, but I told you from the start she was bound to be assigned a partner at some stage.”
Nigel’s eyes dropped out of sight and his jaw clenched for the umpteenth time that evening. “So what, I’m out now?”
“Not out. You just need to take a few steps back and let Vivienne get to know her partner.”
