The Vampire Hunter's Daughter The Complete Collection (31 page)

And then he was gone from my side.

“Crap!” I tried to stand again. I managed to
get up and sort of zombie-walked to the Jeep, leaving a trail of
bloodspots behind me.

I was coherent enough to hope Gavin was all
right. Distantly, I could hear Drew tell Christina she was going to
have to take Gavin to the hospital in the Mustang and then take it
home. I watched them load Gavin into the car while he yelled at
them to be careful, calling Drew all sorts of terrible names.

“Shut up!” Christina yelled. “We’re trying to
help you, dumbass.”

Alice still sat behind the door of the Jeep.
I bent down and grabbed her hand. “Alice, we have to go. Can you
get Oscar?”

She looked up and stared me in the eyes. “Is
he dead?”

She had known Trevor best. She was his
housekeeper, but she had also been his lover. In a strange sort of
way, she was also his partner. Of any of us, she had the right to
be emotional about his death. He was all she had known for so
long.

“Yes. He’s dead.” I glanced at the tree where
his body had been. Ashes were all that was left of the once proud
Trevor.

Alice cried. I had expected emotion, but she
bawled uncontrollably. I didn't know what to do to comfort her, but
I knew we needed to get moving. “Come on, Alice. There’ll be time
for this later. Right now, we have to get out of here and get to
the hospital. Gavin’s hurt.”

She wouldn’t budge. She acted as though she
hadn't even heard me.

Damn it. We really needed to go.

“Drew!” I called. I used the Jeep for support
and limped around it. “Drew!”

He heaved the door shut on the Mustang and
glanced at me. After we watched Christina reverse the Mustang, then
slam into drive, peel out and speed away, Drew hurried over to
us.

“We need to get Oscar,” I said, my breath
coming in short pants. Fatigue had kicked in now that the
adrenaline had worn off. All I wanted was to lay down and go to
sleep.

“Get in the Jeep, Chloe. I got this.”

I did what he said and crawled into the
backseat of the Jeep. I closed my eyes for just one second and woke
up in the hospital.

Groaning, I forced my eyes to open through
the fog of medication. I could feel thick bandaging all around my
leg. I lifted my head a little, pulled the thin hospital blanket
over, and saw my calf was, indeed, covered in a thick bandage.
Oddly enough, I kind of wanted to see it. I officially had a battle
wound.

I let my head fall back on the pillow and
closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them, I turned my head
to the side and found Drew asleep in the chair next to my bed.

He had stayed with me.

I took that moment while he slept to examine
him without him knowing I was staring at him. He sat kind of
sideways in the chair, head tilted and leaned against the wall. The
hood on his sweatshirt was pulled up, covering his hair. For such a
tough guy, he had really long eye lashes. I was actually a little
jealous of them.

He must have showered and changed, because
his skin and clothes looked clean.

I watched him sleep for so long he must have
felt my eyes on him. They fluttered open and settled on me.

“Hey,” he whispered.

“Hey,” I whispered back.

He shifted in the chair until he sat forward
and leaned toward me. “Are you feeling better?”

I nodded. “Better now. I think they have me
on pain meds.” I lifted my wrist to show him the IV.

“I’m sorry I let you get shot.”

I rolled my eyes and laughed. “Yeah, how
could you?” I asked him sarcastically. “I’m not sorry. I’m just
happy I’m not dead.”

Finally, he smiled. “That’s a good
point.”

I looked down at my leg. “So how bad is
it?”

“Actually, it could have been way worse. The
bullet hit toward the outside of the calf. It completely missed the
bone. It went in and out.”

“Ugh.”

“You’re pretty lucky it didn’t hit the bone
or anything.” He tried to make it sound good. “You should heal
pretty well.”

“Well, I’m probably going to heal faster than
you think,” I told him

He raised his eyebrows. “The vampire
thing?”

“Yeah, I should probably get out of here
before the whole thing is healed up, and they think I’m some
miracle child or something.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.” He
nodded.

I looked around the hospital room. “Where is
everyone?”

“Alice and Gavin are down the hall in their
own rooms, and Luke is around here somewhere.”

“Oscar?” I really hoped he was okay. I
couldn’t remember anything after getting in the Jeep.

“He’s being treated at home by our own
medics.” When I raised my eyebrows, he spread his hands out. “Well,
we couldn’t exactly bring him here with all those bites.”

He was right. “Why is Alice here?”

Drew leaned back in the chair again. “The
doctors say she is suffering from shock. Other than that, she
doesn’t have any injuries.”

“Oh.” I reached down and fiddled with the
blanket. “I hope she’s going to be all right… like, mentally or
emotionally, or whatever.”

“She'll probably be fine. They said that most
of the people who go through this recover with rest and
relaxation.”

“Well, what did you tell them happened to
us?”

He shrugged. “I told them we were walking
home from the movies when some guys tried to mug us. We fought
back, and they shot you guys. I suppose the cops will want to talk
to you once they know you're awake, which is probably another
reason to get out of here soon.”

I supposed that would have been a believable
story. Believable enough anyway.

Suddenly my mind took me back to the road,
and I was reliving the face-off with the father I’d never known,
trying to kill him. I was shot and lay helpless on the ground while
the people who came to rescue me fought the vampires. I wished I
could have been a better fighter and could have held my own more,
or least been more help than the hindrance I felt I'd been.

I reached for the water glass beside the bed
on the bedside rolling table and couldn’t reach it, so Drew handed
it to me.

“Thank you.” I took a sip and swished it
around in my mouth for a second before I swallowed.

The door opened quietly, and Luke slipped
inside. “Chloe! You’re awake.”

“Yes.” I nodded. I wanted to hug him. More
than that, a feeling I didn’t expect, I needed to hug him. He must
have sensed this because he set his little paper coffee cup on the
counter, came right over and gave me a gentle embrace.

“I missed you.”

I grinned. He felt like home to me. “I missed
you, too. When can I go home?”

“They said you and Alice can come home today,
but Gavin has to stay longer.”

I knew it was going to peeve Drew, but I
asked anyway. “Can I go see him? How bad is he?”

As I expected, Drew turned away. He stood and
went to the sink to fiddle with whatever was there just to avoid
having to answer the question.

Luke answered, “Gavin was shot just beneath
his ribs. The bullet had to be removed, so he needed surgery.
Luckily, the bullet had lodged between his spleen and stomach, but
missed the organs. And yes, you can see him, but they are keeping
visits very short. He’s asleep most of the time anyway since he got
out of surgery.” He paused, looked at Drew, and then back at me.
“Do you want me to tell the nurses you want to go visit?”

I shook my head. “Let’s wait until I’m
released, that way I can wear clothes instead of a hospital
gown.”

“Oh, speaking of which…” he pointed at a gym
bag in the corner. “I brought you some clean ones.”

I squeezed his hand. “You’re awesome. Thank
you for thinking of that.”

He returned my squeeze. “Well, that’s a nice
compliment, but it wasn’t me. Drew called and asked me to bring
them.”

“Oh. Well, you’re awesome, too,” I called out
to Drew, but the compliment felt pathetic to me.

He finally turned from the sink. “Thanks. I’m
happy that you’re happy. I’m going to go see if they will do the
release paperwork soon.” Then he hurried out the door.

Luke looked at me with a question in his
eyes, and I shrugged. “In a hurry to go home, I guess.”

Luke somehow managed to look even more
quizzical. “I’m not blind, Chloe.”

Uh-oh.

“I’ve known Drew his whole life. I know him
better than I know you, better than almost anyone, and I’ve never
seen him act this way.”

Turning my head away, I tried to lie. “I
don’t know what you’re talking about. Act how?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Chloe.” Luke moved
over to the vacated chair and sat. “I don’t care what's going on
between you guys. It would be natural, because you spend so much
time together. I just want you to remember two things.”

I widened my eyes in question.

“One, you’re not quite sixteen… and you know
what I mean by that. And two, you be careful with him.”

I laughed. “Seriously! Aren’t you supposed to
be telling him that he is supposed to be careful with me? Like,
when the dad says ‘if you hurt my daughter, I’ll kill you’ and goes
about cleaning his gun?”

Luke managed a weak smile. “You are
resilient, Chloe. You have a quality that makes you bounce back
from the bad things in your life. Drew, he dwells on the bad things
and never really gets over them. If he cares about you, really
cares, that is a big deal. I don’t want his heart stepped on any
more than it already has been.”

I suddenly remembered when Drew told me about
how his mother had deserted him. Oh, she had better hope she didn’t
cross my path anytime soon. What a loser. In a way, I felt she
didn’t deserve Drew.

I nodded. “Okay. I’ll remember.”

Drew came back in the room, followed by a
nurse who carried a big clipboard with lots of papers. She gave me
a wide, toothy smile.

“Hi, Chloe. We're going to check your vitals
again, and if they are all good, then we can unhook the IV, and you
can go home.

“Okay.” I tried to catch Drew’s eye, but he
was busy inspecting a picture of a bird on the wall.

After my vitals came back good, they removed
the IV and allowed me to get dressed. First, I was given what
seemed like a million directions on how to clean the wound and
re-dress it and how much medication I was allowed to take. The
nurses brought me a wheelchair and gave me some crutches to use if
I needed them. I doubted I would use them. I had hurt my ankle once
when I was twelve, and the crutches had hurt my armpits. Drew
wheeled me into the hallway and then passed me off to Luke.

“I’m going to see if Alice is ready to go
now.” He left me sitting in the hallway with Luke.

“Nice,” I said, to no one in particular.

Luke ignored the obvious snub from Drew and
pushed me down the hallway to Gavin’s room. It was dark in his
room, and nearly silent, except for the low hum of some machine he
was hooked up to. He had an IV too, with two bags hanging from the
pole.