Vampires Never Get Old - Zoraida Cordova Page 0,89
keep coming.
Cal wishes they were going after werewolves, or changelings—hell, she’d rather go up against a demon than a dead thing, but it’s not like picking a college major.
Hunters don’t specialize.
They hunt what needs hunting.
What, not who, her dad’s voice booms in her head. Never think of them as who. Never think of them as them, only it, only the target, only the danger in the dark.
They climb out, and Theo tosses her a flak jacket and a pair of elbow pads, the hunting equivalent of wearing kid floaties in a pool. Then it’s time for gear.
Shovels, timber, steel spikes—those can be stored in the bed of the truck, passed off as ordinary farm gear.
The rest of the tools they keep in a hidden compartment under the bench.
The seat comes away like a coffin lid, revealing silver crosses and iron chains, a steel garrote and an assortment of daggers, things you can’t exactly pass off as yard equipment. She balances on the footboard, staring down at the cache.
Cal’s been building her own kit, stashed in the hatchback of her beat-up five-door, an old tool chest hidden under a pile of reusable shopping bags, because if Dad taught her one thing, it was to always be prepared. Hunters carry a whiff of the work on them, a spectral signature that some monsters can scent.
The more you hunt, the more the things you’re hunting start to notice you.
Which is fine, if you’re using yourself as bait in a trap, but it’s less ideal if you’re not on a job.
They each take a walkie-talkie. Theo chooses a samurai sword, while Apollo goes for an ax that looks massive, even in his grip, then tosses Cal a tire iron.
It hits her palm hard enough to bruise, but she doesn’t wince.
“The last time I checked,” she says, “the only way to kill a ghoul is a head shot.”
“Right.”
“Yeah, well, a tire iron isn’t exactly designed for decapitation.”
“Sure it is,” says Apollo. “If you swing hard enough.”
“The iron’s just a precaution,” says Theo, handing her a pair of binoculars. “You’re on watch.”
Watch. The hunter equivalent of stay in the car.
“Come on, Theo.”
“Not tonight, Cal.”
Apollo grins. “Hey, if you’re good, we’ll let you do a dead check.”
“Gee, thanks,” she says dryly, because who doesn’t love pulping skulls with a steel bar. She grabs a dagger from the kit, slips it into her back pocket, and trails after them, feeling like a puppy biting at heels as they head for the entrance. Apollo picks the lock in seconds, and the iron gate swings open with a faint groan.
Cal’s mind does this thing where it pulls away from her body, zooms out until she can see the whole scene from a distance, and she knows it doesn’t look good: three black teenagers clad in makeshift armor, marching into a graveyard with spikes and swords.
No, officer, everything’s fine. We’re just out here hunting monsters.
Dad has a contact at the sheriff’s department, a family friend he saved on a camping trip when they were kids. But memory’s a weak bond in the face of trouble, and no one wants to test the current strength of that old thread.
“Cal,” snaps Theo, who can always tell when her mind’s wandering. “Get some height.”
She hoists herself up onto a grave marker, one of those massive angels people get when they want to stand out from the shallow tide of tombstones.
Like climbing a tree, she thinks, hooking her leg over the wing. She straddles the old stone sculpture as her brothers fan out and wait for her to scan the dark. It’s a windless night, and the cemetery stretches out, gray and still, and it’s only a few seconds before she catches sight of motion to her left.
A grisly shape sits on the edge of an open grave, gnawing on a human calf, the leg still wrapped in suit cloth.
Cal wishes she’d skipped dinner.
A second ghoul comes into sight, shuffling between the graves. It looks human, or at least it looks like something that used to be human, but it moves with the staggered stride of a puppet on uneven strings. The ghouls look like corpses, tattered clothes clinging to withered forms—but of course they aren’t wearing clothes, just strips of skin, flesh and muscle ribboning off old bones.
Call whispers into the walkie-talkie. “I see them.”
Theo’s voice crackles. “How many?”
She swallows. “Two.”
She guides them forward, each to his target. One row over, two graves down, like a game of battleship, holds her breath as her