The Vampire Hunter's Daughter The Complete Collection (4 page)

Confused by the brief moment we had, I
stumbled through the door behind him. After seeing the gym, we went
to the shooting ranges. By this time, I wasn’t surprised to see
that there was a range for guns and another for bows. When we left
the ranges, we paid a visit to the library. The library was
awesome. It was a huge, two-story stone building with tons of old
books inside. I immediately fell in love with the library. While we
strolled through the shelves of books, I wondered how often the
people in town actually used the library. “Don’t most people use
the Internet for researching stuff nowadays?”

“You‘d be surprised,” Drew told me. “When it
comes to killing vampires, and other things, most of what we need
to know we find in here.” He gestured to the shelves. “These books
are ancient. They aren’t your basic encyclopedia or articles
written by a blogger.”

I walked among the books and decided the
library was probably going to be my favorite place in town. After
we left the library, we went back to the old man’s house. Well, I
guess I could call him Luke, since Drew had told me his name.

Once back in the house, we found Luke in the
kitchen making a salad.

“Hey, Luke,” Drew greeted him when we entered
the room. Drew pulled out a chair and sat.

It dawned on me, when Drew had said he lived,
here he really meant that he lived
here
, in the house. I
wondered why he live here with my grandfather. He hadn’t said
anything about us being related.

“Drew, Chloe,” Luke nodded to us. He pointed
his chopping knife at the pile of lettuce on the table. “One of you
wash that lettuce, and the other can get those red bell peppers
sliced up.”

“Chloe, did Drew show you around town?”

I nodded. “Yes, it’s a very quaint little
community.”

“Well, I hope you are going to like it here.
I had some of the crews who weren’t busy go after your things. I
hope we got everything you would have wanted. I told them to make
sure to get any and all photographs or memorabilia for you.”

I stopped slicing the peppers and realized
what I had failed to before: This place was going to be my home. My
mother was gone forever. Her family I had never known were vampire
hunters. My father was a vampire.

Life as I had known it would never be the
same.

“I’m sure whatever they bring will do,” I
told him blandly.

I gripped the knife even tighter. Far off in
the distance, I could still hear them speaking, but only one thing
was clear in my mind: Trevor, my father, was going to die.

From that moment on, I was Chloe Kallistrate,
a vampire hunter.

THE VAMPIRE HUNTER'S DAUGHTER

PART II

POWERFUL BLOOD

“Ouch, damn it!”

I hit the floor on my side, my hip and elbow
making the most contact with the hard floor of the gym. I rolled
onto my back and rubbed my elbow but stayed on the ground.

I was tired.

Drew stood aside and watched me struggle to
get up, without offering to help. I should have been irritated, but
I’d become accustomed to his refusal to help me with anything
during training. He insisted helping me would
not
help me in
the long run.

I had been training
with the vampire hunters for two months, and I still fell on my
butt about thirty times per day. I had sworn to myself I was going
to be the best, like my mother was, but that didn’t seem to be
happening.

Seriously, I woke up at oh dark thirty and
ran the trails in the woods for an hour. I ate breakfast and
showered. I went to school, and after school, I worked out in the
gym with the machines. Finally, I got my butt kicked by Drew or
someone else for two hours. Yeah, it was pure hell. I knew I was
getting in better shape, but I really sucked at fighting.

One thing I
was
good at was shooting.
With both guns and archery, I had a knack for marksmanship. Twice a
week, I went to the ranges and practiced shooting. Turned out I was
a natural, and I enjoyed it, which was a plus.

“I’m done,” I told Drew while I got to my
feet and grabbed my water bottle. “I’m so tired I can’t even stay
on my feet. I need a break.”

Drew shook his head. “Chloe, you can’t quit
just because you’re tired. You have to build your endurance.”

“I have been working my ass off every day
since I got here. I need a break!” I blew several strands of dark
brown hair out of my eyes. My hair never stayed in its
ponytail.

“I thought you wanted to be like your
mother.”

“Don’t you pull that crap on me!” I knew what
he was trying to do. It had worked on me before, and he assumed it
was going to work again. He was using my mother to get a charge out
of me. The last time he had done it, I showed more fight than I
ever had before. My mother had been one of the best vampire hunters
there was, until she fell under the spell of my evil vampire
father. She had hidden me from him all my life, but he found us,
somehow, and had his minions break into our house and murder
her.

Drew shrugged. “Fine, I can’t make you train.
Take today off, but do not try and back out tomorrow because I’ll
just keep thumping on you even when you want to quit.”

“Fine.” I grabbed my water bottle and towel
and escaped the place I had begun to think of as a torture chamber.
All I did was sweat and get beat up in there.

“See you at home,” Drew called after me.

I threw a hand up in a pathetic wave without
turning around.

Home. When I had first arrived, I'd met my
grandfather and was surprised to learn Drew lived in the house with
him. I had thought maybe Drew and I were related somehow, but I had
learned he only lived with my grandfather, Luke, to help him out,
because Luke was getting up there in years.

Luke didn't fight anymore, but he still sat
on the board with the hunters. He still made important decisions
for the community. Turns out our family, the Kallistrates, were one
of the most renowned bloodlines in the history of vampire
hunters.

I never knew there was a history of vampire
hunters.

Crazy
.

Drew was eighteen. He was in his prime for
vampire hunting and was constantly out on missions. I thought it
might be uncomfortable staying in the same house as Drew because we
weren’t related—and he was super cute—but it seemed to be going
okay. Mostly, I think he treated me like a little sister. I wasn’t
really sure just how I felt about that either.

I slammed into my room and fell face first
onto my bed. The dark purple comforter puffed up around my face,
and for one brief moment, I wished it would suffocate me. I didn’t
hate this place, but I had no choice other than to be here.

I wanted my mother back.

For some reason, I thought becoming a vampire
hunter would be easier. Heck, it was in my blood, so wasn’t it
supposed to just like… come to me or something?

I rolled over on the bed and stared at the
ceiling of the room that used to be my mother’s and had become
mine. Funny how things like that worked: My mother had to die for
me to know my family and heritage. I never would have met my
grandfather—or any of these people here—if she hadn’t died. I never
would have known who my father was either, not that I really wanted
to know.

I decided I wanted to go to the library and
look for books on vampires and vampire hunters… or anything that
applied to my new life. I figured that being knowledgeable could be
just as powerful as being strong.

But first, I needed a shower.

I took the trails to the library. It was
quicker than the roads and more scenic. Fall had hit hard, so the
air was cold and tons of leaves had fallen off the trees. They
crunched loudly beneath my shoes while I hurried along the trails
into town.

When I emerged from the forest, I could see
the little town bustling with activity. Sometimes it was hard to
believe the entire community of people who lived there were all
vampire hunters. I saw an older woman struggling to open her car
door and balance a gigantic turkey in her other arm. It dawned on
me why the town was so busy. It was almost Thanksgiving. Everyone
was out picking up stuff for their holiday gatherings.

Thanksgiving… without my mom.

I wasn’t sure that was something I could deal
with. I had been so busy with training and school, I hadn’t had
time to think about the holidays coming up. Halloween had come and
gone, along with my birthday, which had been on the first of
November. Yup, I had turned fifteen and had my first birthday
without my mother.

I hadn’t told anyone it was my birthday, but
they had known anyway. It had been celebrated quietly with a cake
and a couple presents. Luke had given me a new iPod because mine
had been left in my old room in the house where my mother had been
murdered. Drew had given me a gun. Yeah, a gun. It was a nice
little light-weight forty-five that I could easily handle. Along
with my pretty gun, I also got a gun cleaning kit and a lesson in
cleaning my weapon.

In any case, it was going to be hard going
through the holidays without my mom around. All the emotions only
made me more adamant in my desire to seek revenge against my
father.

The bastard.

When I approached the steps to the library, I
shook my head to clear the thoughts so I could focus on the task
ahead: researching about vampires and vampire hunters. I entered
the library and realized I really had no idea what I was looking
for.

The librarian sat behind a long counter
covered with neatly stacked papers and little piles of books. She
turned away from the computer she was pecking at and smiled at me.
“Can I help you find anything?”

I shuffled a bit and moved closer. “I don’t
know, I’m… uh, looking for stuff about vampire hunters or
vampires.”

“Oh, you came to the right place then.”

She took off her glasses and set them on the
counter. She wasn’t an old woman, but she wasn’t really young
either. I would have placed her at a good-looking fifty or so. Her
hair was a light brown with a few grey strands scattered through
it.

“Come with me.”

She led me down a maze of books that rose far
above our heads. She stopped when we made it to a section where the
books were huge, leather-bound monsters of books.

“Because of where you are, this library has a
special section on the subjects you are interested in. You should
be able to find anything you’re looking for right here.” She
gestured at all the books around us.

“Thank you,” I told her, gazing in awe at all
the books. I turned to her and held out my hand. “By the way, I’m
Chloe.”

Her lips turned up in a smile once again.
“Oh, I know who you are, honey. Everyone does. In any case, my name
is Linda.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Linda.”