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NINETY-SEVEN | GHOST
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2024-10-29 19:42:56Over the course of my stay in hospital, I’d learned one major thing: I had made a mistake.
Perhaps it would truly have been better to die than to take Salvor’s blood. I would have died a hero, having uncovered the vampire clan’s nest. The likelihood was also that Cyrus would still have his Nanny, too – he wouldn’t have left her unattended in those last, fatal moments to come to my aid.
But what was done was done; it had been marked in time, irreversible and unchangeable. And here I was, packing up my meagre belongings – a wilting flower left for me by Cyrus, with a small, polite note attached it; half a bar of chocolate, left for me by my Paps; and my clothes, which my Paps had also brought with him. The clothes I’d been wearing the night I’d been brought in were blood-soaked, ripped, and ravaged, and I’d had no qualms about asking the hospital staff to put them straight in the bin.
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The Hunter and the Vampire NINETY-NINE | HOPE AND LOSS
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The Hunter and the Vampire 100 | TRUTH
There was a timid knock on the half-open bedroom door. My eyes were open, and fixed on the window, but before I could turn fully Harper had stuck his head through the gap.“Oh – sorry.” He bit his lip, and averted his gaze. “I didn’t think you’d still be in bed.”And why would he? Until now, I had been an early riser – up before him even on my days off, heading out and citing some nonsense excuse to hide my hunting. The view before him today was very different indeed.The sheets were sweaty, pooled around my knees and kicked away to free my boiling torso. My body was fixed, my joints locked, like a dog with its hackles raised. I couldn’t see my face, but I could picture it, undoubtedly the same as it had looked every morning since I’d returned here: drawn and exhausted, pale beneath the brown of my complexion, dull eyes, dull hair, dull skin. White bandage taped
The Hunter and the Vampire 101 | NIGHTMARES
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The Hunter and the Vampire 102 | ADRIFT
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The Hunter and the Vampire 103 | FLAWED
The duvet pooled around my waist. The racing of my blood roared in my ears, an ocean pulling back, reaching higher and higher, preparing to crash –I slipped from the bed, staring wide-eyed out into the darkness. I waited for something, anything, another tap, a pasty white hand reaching for the slice of open air between the frame and the glass. Nothing came.I stepped closer. I hardly felt the bite of cold air against my skin, hairs raising on my arms and thighs. The wind wound around me, a playful cat teasing its way between my shins and calves. I swallowed hard, my throat bobbing, and forced my eyes to look beyond the familiar pile of books stacked on the windowsill, the green light of the digital clock that I’d moved there to help keep the night at bay, the old rum bottle that Harper had kept from his first night at university. I looked past it all, yet still I saw nothing.I reached the windowsill. With n
The Hunter and the Vampire 104 | ONYX
I stayed silent, watching the tremors flickering across his face, waiting for him to speak. He swallowed hard, eyes tracing the stark white bandage around my neck, fingers tracing the bump of the cast around my left hand.“But I need to apologise first,” he murmured. “I… it was wrong to leave you there, alone, without a proper explanation.”I shook my head. “No – no. You owe me nothing, Cy. I’m the one at fault here. I broke my promise,” I whispered, my voice leaving me. I ducked my head, too ashamed to meet his gaze. In the low light they glittered, dark as polished onyx, the bright blue at their centre utterly obscured as the night drew in outside.“That wasn’t your fault,” he said roughly. “I know that, now.”I didn’t reply. I had nothing more to say. He squeezed my right hand and sighed. Something in
The Hunter and the Vampire 105 | GOSSAMER
We lay entwined together atop the duvet for an eternity, re-learning one another, touching and kissing and exploring. Once, the darkness swelling around our bodies would have terrified me. Tonight, I felt at home amongst it, lost in the shadows. I was as much a part of it as it was of me.The mask started to slip, until I was bared before him. We broke apart, chests heaving, as I fought with the agony searing my heart. It ached to burst free, and even Cyrus’s kisses could not keep it at bay forever.He ran a gentle fingertip along my jutting collarbone.“You were going to tell me something,” I murmured, desperate for another distraction. I didn’t want to fall into the chasm within myself again, not in front of him, not so soon after he’d returned to me. I did not deserve his affection, but I did not want him to leave, either. Torn in two, the only resolution I could see lay with him.
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The Hunter and the Vampire 116 | EPILOGUE
I braced myself, lifting a bandolier weighted down with silver bullets and resting it across my chest. My knife was strapped to my ankle, a gun was slung low across my hips, and a silver dagger rested at my thigh.I’d laced my boots with resolve, each knot a promise. I was doing this for the right reasons. I was a protector, not a monster. The sword down my back was double-edged, both killer and saviour, but I wielded it with the power to choose. I would not allow myself to be what I had been, and what many of the others still were.Cyrus caught my wrist, pulling me close. Our lips met in a heated kiss, his tongue and teeth searing my core. Hands tugged the plait from my hair, and fingers tangled in the dark waves. My skin tingled with his touch, and bolts of lightning fractured down my spine.The bond between us swelled, crackling with glossy sunlight and soaring blue waves. The heat of Cyrus’s affection bec
The Hunter and the Vampire 115 | SWORD
Gaudy lights flashed above, drenching Cyrus’s face in bright reds and blues. With alcohol humming in my veins and his arms holding me close, I moved past the flashing, burning image of blood that overlaid the reality of the coloured, moving lights. Even as my mind whispered that it was blood, blood and pulsing blue veins, Cyrus swept me into a spin that threw aside my fears.I grinned at him before he pulled me in again. His joy brushed mine, intertwined within my chest. It didn’t lessen the ache that I dragged with me, but it smothered it, forcing the pain to submit.“As much as I like it when you curse and tease and fight,” he murmured, his lips ghosting across my ear, “you are truly beautiful when you smile, Callie.”Before I could respond, Cyrus tugged me around so that my back was pressed to his front, and his hands cradled my hips. We swung from side to side together, my steps cl
The Hunter and the Vampire 114 | LIGHTNING
I had to move on. At least, I had to try. And, though understanding and enacting were two different things, it was easier to try if I kept myself focused on the present – rather than my jarring, pain-distorted past, or the murky and indistinct waters of my future. Looking back brought forth only blood and terror, and I couldn’t see through the thick, cloying mist shimmering softly ahead. It coated my crumbling relationships, Cyrus’s vampiric nature, and my comparatively short lifespan. Behind, my Dad’s words had carved themselves into my bones and tattooed themselves onto my skin. I could taste Veronica’s fear with every swallow. The walls closed in around me whenever I was alone, and the neat, sharp clicks of Alice’s footsteps followed me around every corner. Even in Wiley Manor, a hotel so detached from my old life in Seafall, monsters found me in my sleep. Sleepy, soft kisses to my forehead, my temples,
The Hunter and the Vampire 113 | SANDBAR
“Get out,” Dad hissed, his face contorting. Shadows crept across his cheeks and nose, distending it into something twisted and evil. Fear filled my gut, and I stepped backwards. My hands trembled as I reached for the door.My fingers turned to claws as I scrabbled behind me. Dismay rose in my throat as I flattened my palms, feeling desperately for the door. I turned slowly, knowing before I saw it that the door was gone.I was trapped. The windows shuttered, and my Dad loomed before me. Paps cowered at his side, shrunken and rat-like with front teeth that slipped from beneath his lips. As I watched, they sharpened into points and became fangs.My feet skidded under me, slipping on something wet streaking across the floorboards. I looked down to get my bearings, to get my balance, and bile clung to the back of my mouth. It wasn’t just something wet. It was blood.Flames shuddered acr
The Hunter and the Vampire 112 | RIFT
The drive to the hotel was quiet, but comfortably so. Perhaps because there were no words that could have made the situation any easier, Cyrus and I allowed the silence to swallow us whole. He rested his hand on my thigh, a steady pressure that kept me grounded enough that thoughts of shoving myself out of the car and rolling across the road – just so that the physical pain overshadowed the emotional for even a moment – seemed nonsensical.Without him there, I wasn’t entirely sure what I would have done. I heard my Dad’s last words to me on every inhale, and I saw the dull look in my Paps’s eyes with every exhale. I breathed, but it didn’t make me feel any better.Get out. Get out. Get out.The sun was just starting to break through the clouds as we pulled in to a car park, nestled alongside a shaggy stretch of woodland. I turned to Cyrus, confusion drawing my eyebrows down. H
The Hunter and the Vampire 111 | BLOOD MOON
My back stiffened. Any attempts at lounging went out the window the second my Dad entered the room. I curled my hands into fists, digging my nails into the soft, broken skin of my palms.His face was shadowed. I ached to go to him, to bridge the gap between us. He’d placed a blanket on me as I’d slept mere weeks ago, and now he was staring at me as if I was a stranger. My breath latched in my throat as I tried to speak.“What is your decision?” I asked. My voice did not sound like my own.“This has not been easy for me, Callie. For us. You have made it incredibly difficult.”I stood on shaking legs. There was a softness to him beneath the hard shell that forced his mouth into a downward tilt. It spilled out rarely, but it was there.“I am sorry for what I have done,” I said. “But I do not regret it, nor do I wish to t
The Hunter and the Vampire 110 | FAMILY
The world collapsed in on itself as I waited for the door to open. My right hand remained curled in a loose fist, raised against the wood, knuckles bared. I flexed my fingers and, slowly, lowered my hand.I focused on my breathing, caught in that everlasting moment. With every rise and fall of my chest, I could feel the passage of time. It had to be moving. I was not trapped here.I turned halfway back towards Cyrus, needing to see him, to reassure myself that he was still here with me, when the door finally opened. I caught a flash of hair so dark it shone blue even in the dim light, and then hard arms were pulling me inside.“Callie,” Paps breathed, his body warm and unyielding as he held me close. “Oh, thank God.”I stilled against him, my arms at stiff angles by my sides. My heart leapt – he seemed glad to see me – even as it twisted and tangled, knotting itsel
The Hunter and the Vampire 109 | NOSTALGIA
“You know,” Cyrus said, his tone carefully casual, “I could do the same for your Dads – and the other hunters, too.”He set down the photograph he’d been holding, the wooden frame knocking against the hard surface of the kitchen counter. I didn’t have to look to know which photo in particular he’d been about to pack into my old, worn suitcase, scraped from years of overuse.The day had dawned slowly, the sun hiding behind blank white clouds that had grown grey as they had settled into the sky. The kitchen was dim, though Cyrus’s eyes still somehow glittered like stars on a calm sea as they met mine.I sighed, shoving the last of my cutlery into the same wicker basket I’d used to move my utensils to and from university for the last three years. It smelt faintly of fruity cider, and my nose crinkled slightly at the faded red stain down its side.
The Hunter and the Vampire 108 | HARPER
“Harp?” I called out. It was the first time I’d spoken to him since our argument. I’d heeded his wishes; as such, I had no idea if he’d even still be at home. I hoped he was. Whether for me or for him, I longed to offer him this chance to move past this. I had ruined myself. I didn’t want to destroy Harper, too.“Callie?” Harper thundered into the hall, eyes wide, chest heaving. “I – I went to find you, and you were gone.” He pulled me into a crushing hug, pressing me tightly against his chest. “Fuck. I was so worried, Cals.”My heart ached. “I’m sorry.” My voice sounded tiny.“I – I thought–“ he spoke wildly, the words spilling out between panted breaths. “I thought you were – oh, shit,” he swore, and then pushed me away, holding me at arm’s length to appraise me. &ldqu
