Page 2 of The Curse of Eternity
“I had that under control,” Andrew said, his outward demeanor unruffled, but his arms crossed over his chest defensively. I exhaled a derisive laugh.
“I saved your ass. Me, the screw-up. And you just can’t admit it.”
“Maria—” Olivia started, but Andrew’s barely contained vitriol was quicker.
“No,youcan’t admit that you’re still rough around the edges. God, I don’t even know why Johann brings you along. There’s a reason Ethan stays home. If you’re not an asset, you’re a liability.”
“Seriously, you’re comparing me to Ethan?” I scoffed, genuinely offended. Their younger brother had never shown interest in picking up a machete in his life.
“Eight months is a long time away from the hunt,” Andrew stated, his words like a slap in the face. My hands shook, and I balled them into fists. “Not to mention the shit that went down before that.”
Old guilt flickered into fresh rage, and I looked to Olivia. Eyes averted, her small pale hand rubbed the side of her neck. The motion seemed subconscious, but a deep part of me cracked. I started for the doorway, clenching my teeth together so I wouldn’t scream.
“Where are you going?” Olivia whispered urgently from behind me, but I didn’t turn.
“For a walk,” I muttered.
Soft steps shuffled after me, but then Andrew said, “Just let her go. Johann already declared the place thoroughly cased.”
“It’s still not safe,” Olivia replied, and I could imagine her blue-gray eyes widening in dismay as I stepped around the door hanging off its hinges.
“She’s got her walkie.” Andrew’s tone took on a finality that was clearly a piss-poor imitation of Johann’s self-assured confidence.
Their voices faded, the whispers unheard over the sound of wind against the boarded-up windows along the corridor’s wall. My boots scuffed across the cement, and I made an effort to quiet the noise. I didn’t know where I was heading, except that it was opposite to where Johann’s Ford F-250 and Elias’s Dodge RAM 1500 were parked across the street on Richmond Drive.
On the corner was Route 66, and the noise of traffic would cover up whatever disturbance our hunting might have made. That was one benefit of living in Albuquerque. Nobody questioned it when we walked down the street with machetes on our hips, and the New Mexico desert was a relaxing drive away. The perfect place to burn the undead corpses into ashes.
Turning the corner, I exhaled heavily in an attempt to calm down. As if I didn’t already know I had messed up, Andrew seemed determined to never let me live it down. We typically avoided each other at home, as much as any family could while living under the same steeple. My head throbbed as the adrenaline ebbed away. Through a surprisingly intact window, the moon waned between sparse clouds drifting past.
A tiny nagging part of me—that seemed to open like a chasm at the worst times—wanted to believe that Andrew was right. As a kid, I’d thought my family’s legacy was incredible. Then I grew up, and got bitch-slapped by my first vampire. If the last eight months of on-and-off therapy taught me anything, it was that the mental scars cut deeper than the scratches littering my thick skin, all thanks to my ancestor.
Being descended from the legendary monster hunter, Van Helsing, sounded cool growing up. The secret tale passed down through generations told of his ‘triumphant’ victory over the original vampire—Vlad Dracula the Fourth, son of the Impaler. Back when Romania was still split into Wallachia and Moldavia, and long before we’d immigrated to America.
Except, when Helsing finally ended Dracula’s reign of terror over the continent, it didn’t eradicate the threat of vampires entirely. The first vampire’s bid for power might have died with him, but the monsters he’d created since his inception were still undead and kicking. That’s why my family’s legacy, our typical weekend activity, involved exterminating the parasitic species that reveled in feeding, raping, and murdering innocent people.
It’s what I was born to do, my calling. At one point, I’d done it proudly and without failure—until I fucked it up.
My steps slowed, nearing the next bend, and my intake of breath panged with morose hurt. Whether I liked it or not, I could bleed and die like any other human. Just like everyone else, I had to live with my consequences. No matter how much it killed me.
Guilt from both the past and present stung my chest on my exhale. Walking alone left me cooled off, but angrier with myself. Shaking my head, I turned around, intent on heading back—when a shadow to my right emerged from a stairwell.
“This place is not safe, miss,” a deep voice warned, and my fists shot up. Eyes narrowed, my right foot slid back in a defensive stance as the silhouette of a tall man in a leather jacket emerged. Except he wasn’t human, that was obvious from the silvery pallor of his skin.
Under the indirect moonlight filtering in from the nearby window, a shimmer danced across the angular side of his face and the exposed flesh of his outstretched hand. The vampire moved closer, his expression falsely innocent and both hands raised in a placating gesture while he spoke with an Eastern European accent, “Please, allow me to escort you out. You are not safe here.”
The vampire’s stalled approach gave me the moment I needed to withdraw my machete. His dark eyes glanced at my blade, and then his black eyebrows rose with obvious surprise.
“Oh, perhaps you are, after all.”
Without hesitation, I rushed him. My blade swiped in an arc, aiming for the head, but the vampire stepped aside with a blur of speed.Shit, his accent—all the oldest vampires were from that region. The monster had speed and experience, meaning I needed the surprise of proximity. So I moved in, stepping into his space and aiming my machete for the torso. Vampires mightnot feel pain, but if I could bleed him out then his actions would slow.
The bastard dodged again, and for a split second, I warred between frustration and confusion. Because he moved further away, backing up several steps which I admittedly struggled to keep up with.
“If you would only listen—” he said, quickly cut off when I slashed at his head—or where his head was a millisecond ago. The vampire stepped aside, his expression so exasperated it only pissed me off more. “You are being obtuse.”
Okay, that did it.
All of Andrew’s tauntings echoed in my head, and my blood boiled. Fresh adrenaline fueled my onslaught. The hum of my pounding heart in my ears was deafening compared to the shush of my blade slicing the empty air beside the vampire’s head.
