Family Is Forever

  Mom turned to Halina while I stepped up to Hunter and grabbed his hand. “Teren and the others want to keep searching the streets, but they’ll shadow the party once the kids arrive,” she told her.

  “Remind them to stay out of sight, Mom. The quickest way to end this party is to have a bunch of adults lurking around outside, acting like cops.” By the look on Mom’s face, it was clear she didn’t like that I knew enough about partying to make that suggestion. I didn’t, not really. It was just common sense to me. Holding up my hand, I told her as much. “Just saying.”

  Hunter turned to Malachi, sitting beside Imogen. He looked so much better now that he was fed and rested. “What can you tell us of Henry’s operation? What should we expect?”

  Malachi sighed. “I’m sorry…there’s not a whole lot I can tell you. I was delirious with hunger, pain, and fatigue at the time. To me, there were hundreds of men working for him. I doubt that’s true though. Maybe it was just dozens. Maybe it was just a couple. Impossible to say.” He sighed again and Imogen stroked his back in a compassionate manner. He smiled at her in thanks, and a spark of something bright and hopeful flashed between them.

  It felt intrusive to keep watching, so I turned away. Hunter’s hand tightened around mine. “We’ll just have to stay sharp then.”

  When we finally took off a few hours later, it was a relief to be leaving the ranch. It was a relief to be by Hunter’s side. It was a relief to be doing something useful. Tracey argued that she should come with, so she could be there for Olivia when we found her, but Mom told her it would be best if she waited at the ranch. She’d told her she would only be a liability if she went—that she’d rush out in a mad attempt to get her daughter, and somebody would get hurt. Or even worse, the bad guys would get away. I think that was what finally convinced Tracy to stay. Her last words to me were, “Find my baby.” Nope. No pressure at all.

  The party was taking place at an abandoned building in the middle of nowhere. The place had been sold recently, and was in the process of being remodeled—part of the roof was torn off, and the skeleton of the building’s framework was exposed to the night air. In the interim of its renovation, the place had become party central, and my sensitive ears heard the deep throb of bass as we found an inconspicuous place to park the station wagon.

  “I don’t know about this,” Hunter murmured, looking over the sea of cars parked between clumps of trees. The tall trunks looked like ghostly claws in the moonlight.

  Knowing this was our best lead in a while to find our missing friends, I placed my hand on his knee. “Regardless, we have to go.”

  He met my eyes, with a steely resolve that I knew very well. There was nothing on this Earth that would keep him from checking out this party. “Yes, I know.”

  We met up with Dad, Ben, Gabriel, Rory, Cleo, and Jake before we went inside. Jake, like Tracey, wanted to come inside with us. It took a little more convincing than it had with Tracey, but eventually we got him to see that he would stick out like a sore thumb, and scare whomever Henry had sent here away. If Henry had even sent anyone here. Like everything else we’d been trying lately, this could all be a gigantic waste of time.

  As Julian and I turned toward the building vibrating with music, Dad grabbed my elbow. Julian stopped with me, and we met Dad’s gaze together. “Be careful, you two.” His hypnotic eyes were softly glowing in the moonlight, same as mine and Hunter’s, but his held a look of concern. The arch of his brow and the crease of his forehead further emphasized his unease. It was clear he’d much rather be checking out the place himself.

  I gave him an unworried smile. “It’s just a party, Dad. We’ll be fine.” A party with a bunch of kids who might be on a drug laced with a compulsion-proof vaccine, and crawling with vampire hunters who wanted us for our blood. No problem. “We’ll text you if we find anything.”

  Dad nodded and the six of us started heading for the building—Halina leading the way, Trey right behind her. Julian was next, holding hands with Arianna, and Hunter and I were last. Even though we were on a mission, I held his hand tightly in mine. There was no rule that said this couldn’t be a mission and a date.

  Inside the room, the bass slammed against my chest like it was a hollowed-out drum. The volume of the music was excruciating to my sensitive ears and even though I tried to school my expression, I knew I was wincing. Hunter was cringing too, and I wondered if the intensity of the music was specifically designed to chip away at our advantage. Either that, or kids just liked loud music.

  The teens assembled were all dressed like they were at some popular club in New York or Vegas, and not dancing in a rundown building in the middle of a grove of trees. Someone had brought in containers of dry ice, and a spooky layer of mist shrouded everyone’s feet. Girls ran their hands seductively up their bodies while guys ground their hips into the girl’s backsides. The whole thing was alarmingly erotic, and that was exactly why Mom and Dad would never have let Julian and me go to something like this before. It made me want to grab Hunter and feel his body all over mine…but we had a job to do.

  As we reached the outskirts of the gyrating kids, Halina turned to us and said above the music, “We should split into groups, with one pureblood per group, so we can ask around.” I hated the fact that Hunter and I couldn’t be together, but I nodded. It made sense. We wouldn’t know if these kids were resistant to trancing unless we tried trancing them.

  Halina immediately took Arianna, which I found an interesting choice. Arianna looked a little uncertain about being next to her, but she bravely held her chin up and allowed Halina to pull her straight into the masses. Hunter took Trey, and the two of them disappeared into the left side of the crowd. I looked over at my brother and smiled. “Guess it’s just the two of us again.”

  He gave me a bright, charming in-love-with-life smile that warmed my chilled heart, and reminded me of better days. My smile faltered. A critical part of our “better days” was missing, and we needed to find her. “Let’s go get Mom,” I told him. He understood my reference to our fictional mother, and his smile faded into seriousness.

  We took the right side of the group, and I immediately got to work telling kids to do stuff. Since kids could sometimes be jackasses, I made sure what I was asking them to do was something they wouldn’t want to do. “Get out your phone and call your mom.” Every time I said it, I was met with a blank expression, but then the person reached into their bag or pocket and grabbed their phone. Half of our side of the room was calling home; I took that as a good and bad sign. None of them would do it if they could resist me, so the vaccine wasn’t here.

  I was nearly to the back of the building when I finally found someone who didn’t do what I said. “Bite me, bitch,” was his slurred response.

  I glanced at Julian, and then snapped my gaze back to the man. His eyes were focusing and un-focusing, and he swayed a bit on his feet—obviously on something. “Do you have any more good stuff?” I asked him. “All we’ve had tonight is crap.”

  The guy shook his head of long, black hair. “Nope. Used it all.” He smiled as he showed us a very familiar canister, holding a very potent and fast-acting vaccine. Not that this kid knew it. All he was feeling was whatever drug Henry had recently added to the mixture.

  “This stuff is amazing,” he murmured as he held his hand in front of his face and slowly moved it back and forth, entranced.

  I contained a groan. It would be so much easier interrogating him if he wasn’t stoned. Or if I could simply compel the truth out of him. I needed to know where he’d gotten it. “Did you buy it here? Maybe I can still get some?”

  The guy shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. Some dude handed it to me. Said it beat everything else. He was right too…”

  The guy started zoning into his own personal la-la-land, and I resisted the urge to shake him. Looking around, I saw that the clump of people around him all had the same glazed expression. They were probably all immune. “What did he look like? Where did he go?”

>   The guy pointed off to the left. “There somewhere. He was a scrawny blond kid, that’s all I remember.”

  Julian stepped forward. “Kid? Not an adult?”

  The stoned guy shook his head. “Nah, he was our age.”

  I locked gazes with Julian. “Do you think it’s Simon?”

  Julian looked hopelessly confused. “I don’t know. Why would he be at a party, spiking kids? I thought he’d be going after Jake as soon as he could. What the heck is he doing here?”

  Good question. I grabbed Julian’s arm and started pulling him toward the direction the guy had indicated. We needed to solve this little puzzle. Now.

  AS NIKA AND I made our way over to where the partier had told us the “kid” had gone, Nika tested every person she came across. We quickly began to see a pattern in the vaccinated kids. Behind us was a path of destruction, a trail that had started in the back corner of the room and was quickly heading to the center.

  Halina and Arianna were interrogating the middle section of kids, and we joined up with them before we ran across the mysterious dealer. He had to be nearby though. “Find anything unusual?” Halina asked. By the way she said it, it was clear everything had been typical on her end. Guess the vaccine hadn’t made it that far yet. It would soon though.

  “Yeah, actually. We’ve been finding a lot of strange stuff.” I quickly filled her in on the compulsion-proof path of stoned kids that had led us this far.

  Halina crouched and spun in a circle, like the dealer was right next to her, and she just didn’t know it. Arianna’s mouth dropped in such an adorable expression of disbelief, that I was momentarily distracted from the importance of our assignment. She filled me with a euphoria that no drug on this planet could surpass.

  “Do you really think it’s Simon?” she asked. “I just can’t believe he would drug kids…”

  Personally, I didn’t think there was much Simon wouldn’t do at this point…but I kept my tone neutral as I answered her. “He’s not trying to get them high…he’s trying to make them immune. Question is…why? How will doing any of this help him get Jake back?”

  Nika pursed her lips, like she’d been wondering the same thing. None of this made any sense, but…if it was Simon, then we had a chance to end things, right here and now. Because we had what he wanted. His father.

  I was just reaching for my phone to text Dad and tell him to send Jake inside, when Arianna grabbed my arm. When I looked up at her, she pointed over to a clump of kids thirty feet away. “Julian, look! Over there…Simon.”

  I studied the cluster of kids all hovering around another kid with his back to us. It was hard to tell through all the bodies around him if it was Simon or not, but then the bodies separated, leaving a crack that we could see through. And like he’d heard Arianna’s exclamation, the kid in question turned to stare at us. My breath caught in my throat. It was Simon. We could end this. Tonight!

  Narrowing his eyes, Simon gave us a cold, hard stare…then he blurred from the room, like only a vampire could.

  The kids around him let out surprised shouts, and looked around at each other like they’d all just mass hallucinated. That was nothing compared to our reactions though. “Oh my God…he’s…” I couldn’t even finish my thought. Simon was a vampire. Jake was going to have a coronary.

  Halina growled, “He doesn’t leave,” then took off in the direction he’d fled. She walked quickly, but at a human pace. We’d practiced self-restraint for far too long to break it now, even when the task at hand was of the utmost importance.

  Nika dashed away after Halina. Grabbing Arianna’s hand, I hurried after them. I knew we should text Dad, Jake and the others, but we were so close to Simon that I didn’t want to take the time to do it. We had to stop him from leaving. It was our only hope.

  As we pushed our way through the room to another door in the far corner, I spotted Trey. He was dancing. I let out a shout as we passed by, and hoped he heard me. He didn’t appear to, but Hunter was a few feet behind him, and he turned my way. When we met gazes, I yelled out, “Simon!” and pointed toward the exit. He immediately grabbed Trey and started moving there.

  By the time I got outside, Halina was nowhere around. Neither was Simon. Nika was on her phone, talking to Dad as she spun in a circle, trying to get a lead on where Simon had fled. Halina was to the east of us, but knowing her, she’d just taken a stab in the dark, hoping she got lucky and found him.

  “Dad, Simon is here! He spotted us inside and took off. And Dad…he blurred. He’s not human…” Nika bit her lip, and even though I couldn’t read her emotions anymore, I knew she felt bad for Simon. Jake too probably. If we’d only better explained what we were, if we’d only held on to Simon tighter, if I’d only never had that damn party to begin with…Simon would still be alive, and Starla, Jacen, and Olivia wouldn’t be missing.

  Hunter burst from the loud building into the chilly night air just in time to hear Nika tell Dad Simon was a vampire. His expression darkened as he met eyes with Nika. Arianna tugged on my hand, asking, “What does she mean he’s not human, Julian?” but Ben’s voice in the phone stopped me from answering.

  “He knows where Olivia is. He does not get away again!”

  Dad told him that of course he wouldn’t get away, then gave us orders to systematically search our side of the grounds. They would get to work on the other half, and meet us in the middle. When Nika shut off her phone, I shook my head. “He’s long gone, Nick. If he’s really a full vampire, he could be two counties over by now.”

  Arianna gasped as she understood just what had happened to her friend. Trey scoffed. “He hates vamps. Tried to kill him.” He jerked his thumb at Hunter. “Why would he want to turn into one?”

  Hunter sighed. “To save someone he loves.” His eyes drifted to my sister, and the two of them shared such a pained expression, I had to turn away.

  After a second, I asked Nika, “Can you smell him? Give us an idea where to go?”

  Both Nika and Hunter stepped forward and started inhaling the air. I fidgeted while I waited. The longer we just stood there, the longer he had to get away. Maybe Halina had the right idea, and we should have just dove in without a plan.

  Nika paused with her face to the west. “I think I’ve got something.”

  Hunter paused with his face staring straight ahead. “Me too.”

  I threw my hands up. “There’s only one of him. How can there be two trails? Three if Halina smelled something too.” I pointed to the east, where I could feel her presence.

  “There’s more than one out here,” Hunter said. His voice was a low rumble that gave me goose bumps. After his pronouncement, Hunter minutely lurched toward Halina’s direction before stopping himself. I knew he wanted to be with his sire, bond or no bond, but with Nika beside him and Simon potentially in front of him, he couldn’t. He’d have to trust that she was fine, that she could handle whatever she’d smelled out there. Hopefully, we could too.

  Nika let out a weary exhale as she turned to look at Hunter. “We’ll have to split up again, to keep the scent.” They looked back at me, and I felt more useless than ever before. My far inferior sense of smell couldn’t grasp the faint aroma of vampire on the breeze. Right now, I was about as human as Trey and Arianna.

  Like she was thinking the same thing, Nika said, “You should stay here with Trey and Arianna.”

  I crooked a smile at her. “Fat chance of that. If we can end this tonight, I’m all in.”

  Arianna stepped forward; she was vibrating a little, but her chin was held high. “I am too. Simon was my friend. He stayed with me in my home. He won’t hurt me…vampire or not.”

  I squeezed her hand after her statement, loving her even more. Trey looked around. “Well, hell if I’m staying here alone. I mean, I am the only one of you who thought to bring a stake after all. I say that automatically gives me front line status.” Opening his jacket, he pulled out a wooden dowel that had been whittled to a sharp point on one end.

&nb
sp; “You brought a…?” Shaking my head, I let it go. He’d probably been carrying it around before he was even aware vampires existed.

  Hunter nodded, then looked over at Nika and pointed straight ahead. “I’ll check out this one, you and the others check out the other.

  Trey smacked Hunter’s arm, startling all of us. “Screw that, dude. We’re partners, remember?”

  Hunter sighed, then shrugged. “Whatever. Let’s just go.” He smirked back at Trey. “Try and keep up.” Then he was gone so fast it was almost like he’d vanished.

  “That’s cheating, jackass!” Trey shouted before jogging after him.

  Nika pursed her lips and shook her head before looking over at Arianna and me. “I guess it’s the three of us.”

  She zipped off lightning fast, and I scooped up Arianna so I could follow her…almost as quickly.

  By the time we stopped, we were at least a mile away from the party. Quite a distance for humans, next to nothing for vampires. Nika had her hand out, warning us to stay back. She had her nose scrunched and she was breathing deep, like she was sniffing the air for clues. I held Arianna close to me as I watched her. We were surrounded by woods on every side of us, but directly ahead, there was an older-looking car parked in the woods. If there was a vampire out there, this was his ride.

  Twisting to me, Nika muttered under her breath, “I think there are two—” Just then, Nika was slammed into the ground by a force moving so quickly it was hard to track them.

  I set Arianna down, stepping in front of her to keep her protected. Nika sprang to her feet and hovered in a crouch, searching for her assailant. I spotted a blur of movement approaching from her left, and shouted out a warning. Nika spun, grabbed the guy, and threw him to the ground. She was on him in a flash, pinning him with her legs pressed close against his arms and her hands on his throat. Her fangs were fully bared, and a low growl escaped her chest. I’d never seen my sister so confident and powerful. Even I could admit she was a little intimidating. Party dress or not, she was a force to be reckoned with.