Hunting My Vampire (Immortal Vampire #3)

Chapter 8

Jack

“Jack!”

My thoughts were rudely interrupted.

“Are you listening? Jack!”

It was Natania, my PA, trying to get me to pay attention to work.

“Yes, what is it?”

“We need to decide on the campaign we want to run for Topaz in California! Which of these do you like?”

She was holding up cardboard mock-ups with different designs and colors. They all looked the same to me, though.

“You decide,” I said, distracted.

“Me?” She looked at me like I was losing the plot. “You told the graphic designers last week to start again from scratch and insisted only you make the final call!” She was exasperated by me and not hiding it very well.

“What can I say?” I pulled a face, “They’re all fine, okay?”

With a sigh, she put down the boards.

“There is a girl, right? That’s why you’ve gone off Charlotte and have lost all interest in work?”

I denied it but I could see Natania didn’t believe me. I didn’t care though.

I had more important things to think about. Like the fact that Kaya was softening in her attitude towards me. I was picking up on a very subtle change in attitude and I had to think about my next move. Kaya was unlike any woman I had ever been interested in before. Where others liked to be treated like ladies, Kaya was almost the opposite. She wanted no special consideration, no doors to be opened for her. She obviously did not think of herself as the weaker sex.

I had gone to her place the night before. The place was messy but comfortable. She didn’t try to apologize for it either. Not a homemaker, clearly. I didn’t mind at all but it did seem out of the ordinary.

They were having a late dinner and I sat with her and Princess at the kitchen table, observing the two of them together. Afterwards, Princess went to bed and Kaya was able to spend time with me.

She was more relaxed around me now but there was still distance between us. She was a long way off from trusting me.

She shared the information she had found out about me and I told her how my family had been at war with the ruling elite in New York for centuries. After a violent clash between families almost a century ago, my family had agreed to stay as far from the city as possible and I had honored this agreement, wanting to focus on growing the business and staying alive.

So far, it had worked.

“I couldn’t locate the original paperwork with details about how you were found guilty and the transcripts of the trial,” she said, clearly troubled by this information.

“That suggests tampering. A serious offense.”

I could tell she still believed in the system, which I had stopped doing long ago.

She made herself some coffee and I asked her for information about herself.

“Not much to tell,” she said, clearly unwilling to share details from her life.

“That can’t be true,” I said, coming to stand perhaps a bit too close to her.

“And why not?” she whipped around to face me. She was gorgeous when she got furious like that, her eyes flashing like smoldering coals.

I had to fight the urge to smile.

“I’m just saying, your reaction to vampires feels personal to me.”

She bit her lip and clearly decided to give an inch.

“It is, I guess.” She paused. “My family was killed when I was young, I was the only one to survive. I never found out what happened to them. The sheriff who found me said it looked like a vampire. But I never remembered anything about it, I was too young. He took me home to his wife Stephanie. They ended up raising me.”

I listened closely.

“What made him think it was a vampire attack?”

She frowned. “I don’t know. It was… very violent, that’s all I know.”

“I’m not saying that isn’t what happened,” I said gently. “But it doesn’t really sound like one of us,” I said, carefully.

“Why?” her arms were folded, her tone suspicious.

“Well, killing a whole family? Why? If it was about feeding, you would wait for someone to be alone. You don’t attack a whole family, especially if there is a man there. Bad hunting practice. You risk getting hurt.”

She leaned against the kitchen counter and crossed her arms, deep in thought.

“Maybe,” she conceded. “There are many things I have questions about,” she said. “Not only my family and how they died but also later. I was in a serious accident a few months ago. Actually, it was when I was looking into your case. It didn’t feel random.”

She paused. “I was very seriously injured, I had to quit my job to focus on my recovery.”

“You don’t think I had something to do with it?” This was a whole different turn of events. It struck me that Kaya and I could have met earlier. I may have even seen her before now. Our relationship was meant to be, it was destiny, I was convinced of it.

“That’s the thing,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know anything. My life is a mess and I have more questions than answers!”

Her voice broke and I wanted to take her in my arms but I had to be careful.

An idea occurred to me.

Before Charlotte, I had briefly dated an Argentinian model called Camila. She was volatile and unpredictable, and our relationship had not lasted, but she’d told me about a medicine man who had helped her work through some childhood trauma. I had to listen to her go on and on about this medicine man and how he had managed to get her to the root of her anger.

I wondered if this medicine man could help Kaya face her fear of vampires. I was pretty sure Kaya’s family was not killed by a vampire, unless it was both the stupidest and strongest of all of us, which I doubted. The world was full of idiots walking home alone at night. No vampire went into the mountains looking for an armed human family to attack all at once. Vampires were highly intelligent and calculated. They were about minimum effort and maximum results. But I needed Kaya to see that.

When I told Kaya about the medicine man, she stared at me, clearly unsure.

“I have Native American blood, actually,” she then said. “I don’t know a lot about my parents, though. I was traumatized by the attack and for years, I was quiet and withdrawn. The sheriff and his wife decided to raise me and we were quite isolated. I only came to the town after I was a teenager.”

She turned around and finished making her coffee.

I could sense the turmoil and confusion inside of her. So much emotion.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had so many feelings churning inside of me. It must have been around the time I had to make the decision to give up my human existence and truly join my father’s family. My mother had been human and I had lived my first twenty years as a mortal, when my father told me it was time to choose which side I wanted to be on.

My father told me that humans were wonderful but weak. Our kind was strong but had to watch for loneliness, he said. In return, we gained knowledge and wisdom and became superior beings on earth.

Not much of a choice, I thought. I had chosen my father, wanting to be like him.

“You’re not happy,” I suddenly said to Kaya. “You will deny it, of course, but it’s all over you, you are drenched in it; this anger, this fear, this uncertainty. All your attitude, your wildness, that is a defense. But it is keeping you from who you could be.”

It was a gamble, of course, talking to her like this but it was worth a shot.

I already knew roses wouldn’t win her heart, but perhaps this was how.

“Think about it, let me know.”

I turned to walk away but she called out to me.

“Wait a minute.”

I turned back.

“I’m thinking, okay? This is… hard for me.”

I nodded. “Change is hard. Facing the past, that is hard.”

She looked me in the eyes. “What do you know about change? And facing the past?”

I had to laugh. She was like a child sometimes.

“I have been on this earth for over one hundred years, Kaya. I have seen so many loved ones come and go.”

Some I’d killed myself but there was no need to go into any of that. “Trust me,” I said. “I have regrets.”

“Tell me about one. Tell me about one regret.”

I paused.

I didn’t know how to tell her that my kind didn’t feel regret the way humans did. Our emotions were different, practically non-existent. We had desires but it wasn’t the same.

But this was about trust. I knew enough about humans to realize that she felt I needed to give her something.

“All right,” I said, slowly, trying to buy time.

I had to think of a memory that didn’t incriminate me too much or make me look too calculating in her eyes. It had to be true though. I didn’t want to risk being caught out in a lie.

Still, I had to give Kaya something, so I dug deep.

“My sister.”

Kaya smiled.

“You had a sister?”

I nodded slowly.

I had not thought about Flora in a long, long time. But we had been close, in my time, before I was turned. We had grown up at the castle and we had spent all our free time together, roaming the woods, going horseback riding. We had the same tastes, disliked the same people. When my father gave me the choice of immortal life she had begged me not to do it. I tried to persuade her to come with me but she would not.

“I told her nothing would change between us but it did.”

I hadn’t even realized how soon. The Eastern War broke out and my father, Simon and I had left to fight for our family. We were away for many years. In that time, my mother passed away and my sister had gone on to marry a wealthy farmer up north. By the time I saw her again, I barely recognized her. She had changed and we had lost our way with one another. I didn’t even know how to talk to her. She had become an old woman, talking of the weather and the ailments of her children. She was lost to me and she hadn’t even died yet.

“So… what is your regret?”

“I suppose I regret losing her,” I said.

It struck me that my words were true. Flora had been more than a sister; she had been a partner. Her world had been my world. My father was much older than I was, and Simon and I had never gotten along. I didn’t want to talk to Kaya about him yet. But when I lost Flora, I lost my first real friend, and I hadn’t had that many since then either.

“Do you regret… turning?” Kaya asked.

“No,” I said. “It was always who I was going to be. I will say that I didn’t know at the time what lay ahead but, looking back, I do understand the decision I made and I’m glad I made it.”

Kaya looked at me pensively, I had a feeling that she knew there was more to the story but she nodded slowly, and said nothing else.

“Okay,” she said quietly, after a while.

“I will go and see your medicine man.”