Hunting My Vampire (Immortal Vampire #3)

Chapter 24

Jack

Afterwards we lay in bed, Kaya snuggled up against my chest.

I was stroking her hair and even though I didn’t want to spoil the mood, I had to know. Few words struck the fear of death into the soul of a vampire but the mention of occillite was one of them.

It was the only substance known to be lethal to vampires, so much so that even a few micrograms was enough to kill them. It was extremely rare and very expensive, and I knew that almost every powerful human authority had some special occillite artifact, whether it was a knife with a blade of the black crystal or a sword of solid occillite, as found in the East.

I knew that our community had sent out hunters to find all the sources and destroy them and had thought it had become extinct.

Now, Kaya told me she had found a pure occillite stone that had belonged to her mother. When I heard that it had been around her neck, activating, I grew cold with apprehension. I had probably come into contact with the faintest charge of it remaining on her skin and I had lesions on my face. No wonder she wouldn’t let me take off her T-shirt while we were having sex. But didn’t she realize how exposure to such a weapon endangered me?

“I need it Jack, there is a powerful vampire after me and I can’t be sure than you will be there to protect me.”

I understood that and yet, I was worried.

I told her that I thought I finally knew who our enemy was.

“The Governor?”

I nodded.

“He won’t rest until both of us are out of the way. For different reasons, though. In my case, he wants control of the company. In your case, it is slightly more complicated.”

“I think I am supposed to kill him,” Kaya said quietly.

“What?”

Kaya sat up, her voice serious. “I have had this dream ever since I was a child of a huge bear wanting to kill me. As I grew up, the bear became bigger, the forest darker and more dangerous but it was always the same, I had to confront it and I had to kill it.”

She said she’d told the healer in the desert about the dream but he could not explain it to her.

“Sometimes in the dream I can’t see the bear but I can see his eyes in the darkness, glowing red. It’s like he is there but not there.”

I asked, “Do you ever fight him?”

Kaya nodded. “I do. Sometimes I win, and sometimes…I wake up before I know the outcome.”

“I think he knows I have the occillite and the ability to kill him. Perhaps that is why he went after my family, to get to me?”

I didn’t like the direction this was going in.

“You can’t go after Da Salle, it is too dangerous!”

“That is why I have to go,” Kaya said. “He is not expecting me and I will have the element of surprise.”

“For the breadth of a second,” I countered.

She jumped up and fetched something from the other side of the room.

“Enough time for me to cut him with this,” she said, holding out the occillite towards me.

I had to avert my eyes, it was like staring into black fire.

“Take… it … away,” I said and she hid it again.

I closed my eyes but I could still see it, the malevolent glint in the stone, the promise of death. I knew that Kaya could kill me at any moment, over a whim or a tantrum. Anyone else picking up that stone would be able to snuff out my life with a flick of the wrist. I couldn’t be in the same house as it. I got up and started getting dressed.

Kaya seemed to know what I was getting at.

“I will only use it on Da Salle, ok? Then I will lock it away somewhere safe. I would never expose you to it.”

I looked at her, wanting to believe her.

“I love you,” she said, coming close to me, whispering the words I so very much wanted to hear. But I was concerned now.

“I love you too,” I said. “That is why I am worried for you.”

“We can’t be together until we have removed this threat,” she said. “I will wear the pendant and charge it to maximum strength. I will rub myself with it before I enter his house. My hands will be weapons of death.”

I was still not convinced.

“This is what I was trained to do,” Kaya reminded me. “I’m out of practice and I have slipped in my skills but the occillite gives me the edge I need. Don’t you see?”

I didn’t want to see. I thought maybe it was too late for us already. Perhaps we could flee the country, let Da Salle take over the country while we went to live somewhere else but Kaya shook her head.

“Leave my family behind? Pearl and Princess? And your company? Everything you’ve worked for? You would just let it go, just like that?”

“I don’t want to lose you,” I said.

“You won’t,” she said, with a confident smile.

I had lost so many loves over the course of my life, beginning with my mother and my sister. I thought of how, as a young man, I’d met Constance in Boston and we had became engaged. It wasn’t the same kind of love that I felt for Kaya now but I was very fond of her. She’d come to the castle and my father had approved of her too. During our feud with the Fitzgeralds, we had been attacked one night and she had been killed. I had been devastated. Our relationship had been so young, I’d had so many dreams for us.

Just like now.

Da Salle was a far bigger and more dangerous enemy. I felt we should plan our approach together, I wanted to help Kaya but she was adamant.

“I will do it alone, working the way I’ve always worked. This is how it must be,” she said firmly. “I can feel it’s right. This is what I was always supposed to do.”

I thought of what Bee had said to me about Da Salle being too big now to be taken down. Was this the next cycle? Was Da Salle and his power circle going to take over the world, subject the world to misery again? If so, he couldn’t allow Kaya and the occillite to remain. They would have to be removed.

“Once he is out of the way, we can be together,” Kaya said. “But now, I don’t have a choice.”

I hardly recognized her, the way she spoke all of a sudden. She was like one of the ancient warrior women I had heard of. She put the pendant around her neck and it seemed to glow darkly as it came into contact with her skin. I realized this was who she was meant to become, what the medicine man had meant with her coming full circle.

I went back to the castle, my senses heightened by the threat of imminent danger.

I was so pre-occupied that I didn’t notice Simon waiting for me outside as I arrived.

“Hello, dear brother,” he said.

He was dressed flamboyantly, as usual, in an embroidered coat with a silk scarf around his neck.

“You’ve been difficult to get a hold of,” I said, wondering what brought him here. I had tried calling him over the past few days, never getting an answer from him.

“I’ve been waiting for the right time,” he said, slowly. I could hear the violence underneath his words. Finally, he was challenging me outright.

“And the time is now?” I asked nonchalantly.

“Indeed.”

He moved quickly, but I was faster, jumping out of the way. He came after me again and this time, he had me on the ground, his claws around my neck. His face was distorted with hatred and bloodlust. I could see how long he had been wanting to kill me and how badly he wanted to do it himself.

“Your time is over, little brother,” he spat at me. “Now, it is my turn.”

I couldn’t speak as he tightened his grip on my throat. He was so much older and stronger than me and I had little time left to outsmart him. Fortunately, I had Kaya’s t-shirt in my pocket. I had put on gloves to handle it, aware of the incredible risk I took but I’d had a feeling it could come in useful and she had not objected to me taking it.

I now took the t-shirt and rubbed it in Simon’s face.

He gave a shriek of horror and fell back, taking his hands from my neck as he tried to get the cloth with the traces of occillite off his face. I had very little time, grabbing my custom-made pistol with the silver bullets, pointing it at his heart and pulling the trigger.

Simon fell down, an expression of shock on his face.

He had not expected this.

“You won’t… win,” he muttered. “She… has to die.”

“What?” Did he mean Kaya?

“She is too… strong. Her child…rule…all worlds.”

These were Simon’s last words. I had to burn the body to ensure he was not able to regenerate. I carried Simon into the woods, then set fire to his body. I stood back and watched it burn, feeling the weight of my actions, the taking of a life, even though I’d had no choice.

I pondered his words, finally understanding that it was Kaya that Da Salle was after. The powerful female line, going back to her mother, the Native American witch who had fled with what could be the last occillite her tribe had. Did Da Salle have a vision that she was going to come for him? Had he tried to get rid of her before?

All of this struck me as likely.

I needed to help Kaya. No matter how powerful she was. I couldn’t let her walk into all of this alone.