“Last week, I was closing in on this vampire I’d been hunting. I followed him to his lair and waited for him to come out.”
“Good. Never follow a vamp into his lair.”
Avet snorts. “No kidding. You’re the one who’s rusty, not me. I don’t need the lecture.” He talks with his mouth full of food. “I watched that lair without taking a break to blink pretty much.”
I don’t know how to ask if Cher is dead because something that horrible couldn’t ever be possible.
She’s ten years old. Even though she’s nineteen, Cher will always be ten. Pigtails and gangly arms and legs, she will forever be the girl tagging along after us, asking us to quiz her on her schoolwork, and insisting she is always right.
I wasn’t there. I wasn’t with Avet to fight while he froze. Whatever the verdict of Cher’s abduction, the fault is mine, as is Avet’s grief over the horror.
“A picture of the back of the vamp’s head. That’s all I had to go on for the longest time. One of the sorority girls had a snapshot on her phone of my sister with her ‘boyfriend’.” He says the word and blanches. That anyone could mistake a vampire for someone’s boyfriend is beyond me. “Days of searching for that exact vampire feel like a blink. I learned everything about him that I could, which isn’t much, but every time I would close in on his location, he would be gone by the time I got there.”
I can picture Cher perfectly, calling Avet while we were on the road to tell him about the A+ she got on some school test. We would cheer her on without hesitation. Even if we were in the middle of hunting down a creature, we could always make time for Cher.
My stomach hollows when it becomes clear to me that Avet may be chasing a shadow, because if she was taken by a vampire more than two weeks ago, there is precious little chance that Cher is still alive.
5
CHASING AND BEING CHASED
I don’t want to ask if Avet has considered the possibility that Cher might very well be dead. I don’t want to think about it myself. But when he takes a sip of his water, the wrong words pop out of my mouth. “Do you think he still has her? Vampires don’t typically play with their food for long before they… lose interest.”
It’s my most polite way of saying that vampires kill their prey after a solid meal or two. “Flavor of the week” is a term for the older, less impetuous vampires. Most don’t live more than a year or two after their transition because trappers like us seek them out and put them down. But if they do manage to live beyond their beginning years of recklessness, they learn to keep their snacks around longer, so there is less of a chance someone like Avet or me will come looking for the missing person and stumble upon their lair. But even the more seasoned undead don’t keep their meals alive for more than an entire week.
Avet stabs at his meal as if he is trying to kill it. “I would know if my sister was dead.” He taps his chest with the butt of his fork. “I would feel it.”
I close my eyes, unable to wrap my mind around the horror of losing Cher like that. “I don’t know what to say. I had no idea, Avet. How did your grandmother take it?”
Avet swallows hard. “Tatik told me I can come home when I have Cher back. That much was clear above the yelling.”
I wince at the harsh verdict. People tended to look at me with pity when they found out that my birth father didn’t want me. I don’t mind the distance at all. It’s the family members you care about who can stab you the worst. I don’t want any part of that pain. Avet wears his shame on his face because his grandmother put it there.
I don’t love my birth father, so he has little power over me.
I place my hand over Avet’s. “This is not your fault. Tatik shouldn’t have put that on you. Cher wasn’t even in that life. She was probably taken as a total fluke. She wasn’t with you when she was abducted. You couldn’t have known.”
Avet tilts his chin to the side, his face expressionless. “That’s what I tell myself when I have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning, but it doesn’t always ring true.” He jerks his thumb over his shoulder. “I’ve got a storage locker filled with my sister’s things. When I kill the vamp who took her, she’ll have everything ready for her to return to school. She’ll only have missed part of a semester.”
“Is that why the vampire was on your trail tonight? He mentioned you messing up his coven. Was that the guy who took Cher?”
“That’s not him; just a disgruntled monster. I have to find her, so I’m hunting down any vampire I can get my hands on, taking chances and taking on whole covens when I can because maybe they’ve got her inside their lair. I do what I can to put a stake through every vampire’s heart in the place before I move on to the next. One of these days, I’ll get lucky and find Cher.” He lowers his chin and rubs the nape of his neck. “Every now and then, one escapes and comes after me to settle the score. The one who got the jump on us tonight? His name is Tigran. I heard one of the dying vamps call out to him before he escaped out the window. I wasn’t sure until he was close enough to fight, but it’s him alright—the one that got away from my last raid. Messy hair. Smarmy smile that makes you hate your own gender. That’s all I’ve got on him, but the vampire who took Cher? I know a little more about him. As a matter of fact, I’ve got a whole folder of information on the guy.”
That news stops me short. “You keep notes in a folder? Who are you?”
Avet offers up a humorless chortle. “I’m you, apparently. You were gone, so someone had to be the grownup. It’s really just a collection in my mind of the details I think might be true, but I don’t have a clear idea if they actually are.”
“So it’s a metaphorical folder.”
“You know me too well.” Avet snorts at my jab. “I got pretty close a few times, but the vampire managed to give us the slip. Now Tigran’s coming for me with his lame vendetta because I killed off everyone in his lair. As if I don’t have enough to deal with.”
I run my hand over my face. “So you’re trying to hunt down the vampire who has Cher while you’re being hunted by Tigran?”
“That’s about the size of it.” He waves his hand in the air between us. “Tigran will lose interest. You know how vampires are. They can’t hold their attention for more than a week or so. The lure of blood is too strong to leave room for much else in their brains.” Avet takes a long breath, his eyes shining at me with unfettered vulnerability. “The thing is, it’s too dangerous to go into these sorts of situations without backup. Learned that the hard way.” He shudders, so I don’t ask for specifics. Avet’s eyes are serious and sad when he glances up at me. “I know you said you were out, and I mostly respect that. I may not understand it, but I let you go. For three years, I didn’t bother you about any of this. But I can’t afford to let the trail go cold. I’m so busy running from Tigran that I’ve lost the trail to track down my sister. I’m one ocean of a step away from finding her, I know it. I can’t risk her disappearing, Keran. I also can’t risk going back out there by myself. Not with Tigran on my tail. I have to find Cher; it does my sister no good if I’m dead.”
I grip my fork as if I mean to strangle it. “This is an impossible situation, you realize. Once someone is taken by a vampire, the odds are slim that the person lives. And if they do live, they have a rough path forward.” I don’t like laying out the blunt truth to Avet, who lives his life in a plethora of jokes and near misses. But I can’t be dishonest. Not with him.
“I know all of that. Cher is alive. I’m certain of it.” Avet shifts his gaze to his food. Despite his protest that a vegetable will kill him, he is half-finished with the meal.