Chapter Two

Back in his cabin, Gabriel swore out loud. He was supposed to be a hunter, a vigilante, but that woman, whatever she was, had completely thrown him off his game.

“Damn, it,” he cursed. “Damn her. What the hell was I thinking?”

He paced back and forth and wondered how he could have let her cast so much doubt into his mind, especially when he had seen first-hand what vampires could do.

He sat down and raked his hands through his hair. When he set out that afternoon it had been to kill a vampire, but when he got there everything had changed. How had it all gone so wrong?

Out on the porch, surrounded by nothing but thickly wooded forest, he closed his eyes and replayed the entire scene in his mind. They were not human, Gabriel reminded himself. There was no other way to explain the fire in Aurora’s eyes or the way she commanded the wolf. They had to be vampires, there was no other explanation.

As darkness descended over the forest, Gabriel made his way back inside and peeled off his bloody clothes. He showered, sat down on the edge of his bed, and began to think. He needed to regroup, to remember why he was doing this. He closed his eyes and let his mind trail back to the afternoon he saw it.

It had been a typical day in the Peaks. The clouds were low over the mountain range and the smell of rain was heavy in the air. He had been hunting for almost an hour, hoping to find a herd of deer or something easy to catch. When he climbed up over a familiar rocky outcrop known as the Bluff, the scent wrapped itself around him. Delicious and strong, he had known right away that it was not his usual prey, but something more enticing. The Peaks were known for caves that humans loved to hike around. Famous for their historical rock paintings, documentaries had been made about mysterious artwork that decorated the walls. Some said the paintings were created by an indigenous tribe that lived in the region thousands of years ago, while other more elaborate theories included everything from aliens to tribes of Bigfoot. When he was a man Gabriel had scoffed at the idea of both, but hell, if he could be turned into something other than human, then anything was possible.

 When he reached the top of the trail the scent became pungent. The sweet, heavy aroma wrapped around him like an invisible arm, reaching out, beckoning, promising.

Despite the monster that dwelled inside, Gabriel had always been able to resist the ever-present ache to drink human blood. He had never killed a human for food, and sometimes, just knowing that some part of him was still stronger than it, was all that kept him going. Transfixed, he followed the scent until he reached the gaping mouth of a cave, but when he stepped inside, what he saw sent his mind reeling.

Torn flesh and fractured bone littered the dark dusty floor, and blood was sprayed out across the walls like the lashings of a crazed artist. Mattered hair was tangled around rock, and discarded limbs had been tossed carelessly across the cave. He stumbled back, overcome with a mix of ravenous hunger and the urge to throw up. Despite his vampire cravings, there was a part of him that still remembered being human, and the massacre inside that cave was more than he could stomach. Gabriel turned and ran, determined to figure out exactly what he was and to kill every last one of his kind.

The features of the old bedroom slowly brought bring him back to the present. The red and green tartan curtains his mother had sewn by hand, the black charred poker that stood beside the fireplace, and the water stain on the ceiling from that winter when he was five years old and the roof leaked. His father had built the cabin by hand and living out here, far away from the rest of the world was lonely, but it was safe. He was safe from humans and they were safe from him.

After he was changed, unlike in movies and books Gabriel didn’t sleep in a coffin, and he didn’t glitter in the sun. He didn’t turn into a bat and could see himself in the mirror. But he was hungry – all the time. He longed for blood and hadn’t felt the satisfaction of a full stomach since the night he was changed. He still took breath, in and out, just like he always had, but couldn’t be sure whether it was necessary or just a human habit he couldn’t shake. He felt alive, and his body worked the same as it always had, except when he placed his hand on his chest there was only silence. He had no heartbeat.

As the hours ticked by, Gabriel tried everything he could to stop thinking about what happened at the farmhouse. He paced. He stared. He picked up a book he’d been reading about Ozzy Osbourne, who he felt sure must also be a vampire, but just kept reading the same passage over and over again.

Aurora.

She wasn’t human. But was she a vampire?

Visions of her filled his mind. How could a woman like Aurora be responsible for the vicious scene he had found in the cave? She was powerful, that was clear, but was she capable of such an atrocity?

He let his mind drift back to the scene in the cave. He knew all too well how strong the need for human blood could be, and so it made sense to Gabriel that whatever changed him was also responsible for the massacre in the cave.

There was just one problem.

Now that his head was clear, he realized what had been nagging him when he approached the farmhouse. He couldn’t remember the same scent being present at the cave. It could have been cloaked by the overpowering aroma of so much blood, and he was a new vampire then. It happened only months after he’d been turned, and his world had been upside down but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something didn’t add up. He closed his eyes cast back his mind, desperate to remember. But no matter how hard he tried, there was no memory of the scent.

At the farmhouse, both Aurora and her brother had said there were no other vampires, only him. So, if he was wrong and vampires weren’t responsible for the massacre in the cave, then what was? And who changed him that night in the park?

There was only one person he could think of who might have the answers. Aurora.

Her brother was dead. She wanted to kill him. And she had known he was coming.

He sighed and pulled on his shoes. Would she also know he was coming back?