To Love a Vampire - A.K. Koonce Page 0,15
into the cursed Red Hills.
The exhausted part of me wishes I would have listened to Kaino and stayed at camp, while the determined part of me is ready to keep moving.
Luca adjusts her pack, which matches my own, heavy but filled only with necessities. Shane takes a swig of water from his silver canteen, assessing the mountains, appearing to draw a route in his mind’s eye.
“Luca, you and Shane take the direct route, Fallon and I will search the northern valleys and meet you on the other side, past Pike’s Peak. We need to be across by midday to make our return by nightfall. We don’t want to be in this area after sundown.”
Pike’s Peak.
The term strikes hard against my sternum, nearly knocking the air out of me. My eyes are wide, my mind reeling, barely hearing the rest of his instructions.
The clear sky appears endless as I watch Luca and Shane leave, crossing the dry plains toward the mountains. I stand unmoving, my eyes fixed on the sharp peaks touching the sky, shadowing the land around them.
What’s hiding in the shadows of Pike’s Peak? The few remaining vampires of this world? If the whispers of my camp were true then, yes, we’re trailing the cursed cliffs of the hidden community of vampires...
“You coming?” Declan asks, looking back at me a few feet away.
I nod, pushing my thoughts from my mind, taking long steps to catch up to him, I turn my head, still watching Luca’s figure grow smaller and smaller against the mountains. My boot catches on something, roughly pulling me to the ground. My hands brace my hard landing, my fingers pushing into the dirt, scraping roughly against the dry earth.
Declan stops in his tracks, smirking but offers me his hand. As he pulls me up I glance down at the dead tree branch that’s littering the dirt, catching dry leaves and twigs and what appears to be paper.
Bending down, I pick up the foreign piece of paper, so out of place in nature. My fingers work meticulously to straighten the edges of the crinkly and torn document. Once its edges are smooth my breath leaves my lungs, leaving me gasping and confused.
My face stares back at me.
Against the dirty white paper are my own green eyes looking up at me, my dark hair pulled high and neatly atop my head, a broad smile stretched across my tan face.
It’s my school ID photo, laying out here in the desert, ready to blow into the mountains and never be seen again.
Along the bottom of the page in stark bold letters are the words:
MISSING:
FALLON FIERCELY
LAST SEEN HEADED WEST
APPROACH WITH CAUTION
ANY INFORMATION SHOULD BE REPORTED
DIRECTLY TO YOUR
CONGRESSMAN, AYDEN THOMAS
Ayden.
His name stands out like the guiding moonlight in the clear night sky. Is he searching for me?
Of course he is.
How does he even know I never returned?
“Caution? What the hell does that mean?” Declan’s pale blonde hair brushes against my temple as he scans over the paper.
“I don’t know.”
I do know.
It means Asher.
My mind rewords the true meaning in an instant: Caution, the pike that she was last seen with isn’t very well liked and is seen as a bloodthirsty killer. Could have just been blunt, Ayden.
“Have you ever seen this before?” I ask, leaning away a little to look at him.
He pauses, searching my eyes.
“Yes.”
“Where? How many?”
Declan exhales a long breath, raising his brows as he thinks. His slowness to respond makes the anticipation grow to a hulking mass in my chest.
“I don’t know, a hundred, maybe two hundred copies scattered through the woods, throughout neighboring villages, the desert planes stretching between here and the Capitol.”
“Two. Hundred. Copies.” I take a deep breath, ready to blow out every word I know to try to express my anger. “You passed two hundred copies of my grubby face thrown throughout the world like confetti and you didn’t think to notify me? Maybe the missing person herself might want to know about this little bit of information.”
“I-"
“You, what?” I yell, balancing on the toes of my black boots to get in his face. It doesn’t work, he still towers over me.
“I was instructed not to,” he says in an apprehensive voice, looking away from me, his eyes narrowing toward the mountain line.
I stumble on my feet, knocked back down to my small stature. Why would he be instructed not to tell me? Did Kaino tell him not to tell me? Why would he do that?
“Why?” The word is a whisper, the only one I