Slay Alive

Chapter 15

fifteen

“Can we get sundaes after this?” Tamsin asks me.

“What, like the ice cream kind?”

She nods and holds her torch a little higher. “Yeah, there’s going to be an ice cream tasting in the Silver Gardens tonight. We’re going,” Tamsin declares. Naturally when the patrols were divided up, I’d made sure Tamsin had come along with me. I’d also picked three other women Rosa, Tiana and Marigold, because they looked like bad asses. Spoiler alert: they were.

We were one kick ass patrol group. That must be why the vampires were in hiding tonight. They were fucking terrified of us.

“Don’t threaten me with a good time. I’m always up for ice cream goodness, and I’ve wanted to see the Silver Gardens for years.” In the game they’re lush and moonlit, the perfect setting for a midnight tryst with a lover…or two. I might not have a lover but I do have a best friend, plus the promise of sundaes is irresistible. I’ll take that combo any day of the week.

We’ve been on patrol for four hours. Nothing has gone down, which after my fight with Cade today my inaugural patrol seems anticlimactic.

“Try and stay alive,” Riley had muttered at me before we headed off in our separate directions through the woods. That charmer. We were supposed to be circling back up with them to report our findings which was a whole lot of nothing.

“Do you hear that?” Rosa asks. She’s right behind Tamsin and we all pause when she speaks. I close my eyes to listen and at first I don’t hear anything but then I do. It sounds like a shout followed by the clang of metal on metal. When the sharp screech of metal floats our way on the wind, I know exactly what it is that I’m hearing.

“What the fuck…” I turn to the trees and motion for the other hunters to follow me. “If I’m not mistaken that’s a sword fight. Let’s move.”

We all run through the woods in a line so quiet that if I wasn’t a part of the group I’d never know we were there. Adrenaline hits my system and I grip my torch tighter. I’d love nothing more than to drop it but starting a forest fire really isn’t the vibe for my first patrol. We’re running for another couple of minutes when I see the lights of torches up ahead.

Riley’s patrol group.

They are fighting in a clearing, dancing in and out of the torch light with what looks like shadows. I know it isn’t shadows I’m seeing. They’re fighting vampires.

“When we break the treeline, fall into formation with me. We sweep the vampires in one strike,” I order.

The hunters at my back answer in unison. “Understood, patrol leader.”

We hit the clearing and I see each hunter of Riley’s patrol has at least two vampires on them. They’re fighting well but there’s not much they can do against the vampires other than defensive maneuvers. Besides that, the Nightwardens are getting tired. The vampires though? Fresh as undead daisies.

A vampire swings a dagger forward and catches Riley in the arm. Riley drops his sword and barely manages to block the vampire with his dagger.

“Fall back!” He yells but that’s when he sees me. Mostly because I just threw a stake into the vampire that had been advancing on him. It vanishes in a puff of dust and Riley smiles.

“Duskweaver’s arrived. Let’s give these demons hell!”

That’s all the rallying cry the Nightwardens need before shit well and truly hits the fan for the vampires who don’t fight so well when it’s one-on-one. I dust another vampire that gets close to Tamsin, because nobody fucks with my best friend. She returns the favor by scooping up a sword and beheading a vampire that almost got the jump on me while I decked a vampire in the teeth.

“Thanks, bestie.”

“Anytime!”

The whole fight is over in minutes, but it could have been hours or days, the adrenaline flowing through my veins makes time funny. Nothing exists but this moment and this fight. I’ve gotten into tussles before but not like this. This is life or death, kill or be killed, and when I move it’s with the sureness that I’m going to fucking win.

“That’s the last of them,” Riley announces when the last vampire gets a stake through the heart. My knees buckle and I have to pop a squat so that I don’t end up fainting. I take in a deep breath and then another. Everyone around me is cheering and hugging. Tamsin high fives Rosa and even emo boy is smiling wide.

I’m still taking in deep and steadying breaths when Riley holds a hand out to me. “Duskweaver,” he says.

I take his hand and let him pull me up to my feet. “Moonlight.” I sway slightly and Riley gives me a concerned look.

“Are you alright? Did you get injured in the fight?” He starts touching me then. Running his fingers over my shoulders and sides, turning me around to check if I’ve got a sword sticking out of me, I guess. When he doesn’t find anything, he looks confused.

“What’s wrong?”

“That was just a fucking rush, you know? I-I need a minute to take it all in.”

“Ah, first fight high.”

“Yeah, that.”

Riley smiles knowingly and then motions for me to follow him. “Come on, let's head back. I think we all deserve a rest.”

The group forms a line and I walk with Riley at the head of the hunters. “What was that? Who were they?”

“House of the Lunar Veil.”

“But I thought Lucien was, you know, civilized.”

“He is but only just. We have to keep an eye on him and his kin. They like to prey on travelers, lure the drunk from town out here, whatever they can do. They blame it on feral vamps, the Ascendents, but we know it’s them. We have intel and even a few double agents that have tipped us off to what Lucien and his brood are up to.”

“Why would he do that? The House of the Lunar Veil needs the power structure of Briarwood Hollow to maintain power. They risk exile for that and then the House of Nocturne has a clear shot at them.” Even if Gabriel was a shithead, that didn’t mean that the library book I’d found in Duskweaver’s trunk hadn’t been useful in helping me understand Briarwood Hollow the way it was in the flesh. Fangs Are Forever had taught me the basics but everything was different now that I was living it out. The House of the Lunar Veil was the most powerful vampire house in society. If they imploded life in Briarwood Hollow for the sake of eating and hunting people as they pleased, the payoff would be minimal to the power they’d lose.

Riley slows and looks at me in surprise.

“Ha! You didn’t think I’d know that, did you?” I ask, pointing at him with the dusty stake I’m still holding.

“You’ve been studying. Good.” He knocks my stake to the side with his torch. “He’s an opportunist with a taste for human blood. The excuse that it’s the Ascendents is his way of being able to provide a way for his followers to hunt without repercussions and keep his standing.”

I think about that. What Riley is saying makes sense but if not by hunting, how do vampires in this world feed? “How do they eat normally?” I say ‘they,’ but there’s one vampire that I’m thinking about. Cade. I haven’t been able to shake him from my thoughts since our fight today. Even if my speech was said on the grounds of self-actualization and main character energy, it doesn’t mean that I don’t have some regrets about how all of it went down.

“Donors,” Riley answers me. “There’s a clinic and willing donors can either donate units or they can choose to be matched with a vampire for feeding.

“People actually sign up to get fed on? Who would do that?”

“It’s an aphrodisiac. Nothing else compares to the high. It’s ten times the rush you just got from that fight,” Riley replies and my eyes bug out of my head. “Or so I’ve been told,” he adds quickly when I give him a knowing look.

“Sure.”

“I’ve never been fed on. Everything I know is from a purely…academic point of view.”

“Uh-huh.” I grin because I can feel the panic rolling off the picture perfect soldier so I cut him some slack and tap his arm with my stake. “I’m fucking with you, Riley. I know you wouldn’t be first in line to get chomped on. I just…well, I didn’t realize that was how it was done.”

“There are a lot of gaps in your knowledge, Duskweaver.”

I sigh and nod in aggrieved agreement. “Don’t I know it.”