Midnight Hunter Book One in the Midnight Hunter Trilogy

Hunter and Donna lay down together and cuddled in the only position that didn't make her hurt. They remained like that until nightfall, when somebody knocked frantically on the front door.

  “Your hideous friend is here.” Hunter thudded down the stairs while Donna stepped up to the mirror to examine the progress of her injury. The bruise was impressively faded. At this rate, she might be back to normal by tomorrow.

  A cacophony of cussing and complaining wound its way up the stairs.

  “Shut up, blood-sucker,” said Mo.

  “I'd like to say the same to you, but there's no shutting up that hair.”

  “Kiss my ass.”

  The door burst open and a frowning Mo clomped in the room, followed closely by a scowling Hunter. “Now do you believe me?” Hunter snapped at Mo. “As you can see, she's fine.” Hunter gestured toward Donna.

  “I'll be the judge of that. Back off.” Mo swiped at him and stuck her nose close to Donna's cheek. Her gaze darted from Donna's eye to her cheek and then back again. Mo squinted, muttered, and then pressed a finger lightly to Donna's temple. Donna flinched. Mo whirled to face Hunter.

  “You call that fine? Look at her! She's in pain. Since this is your fault, blood-sucker, what are you going to do to fix it?” Mo glared hard at him. Hunter glared back. And Donna stood there, wondering why the universe had decided to deliver two of its most unreasonable inhabitants to the middle of her life.

  Hunter's nostrils flared and his lip twitched. “I know you're Donna's best friend-”

  “Damn right I am. I've known her since kindergarten. How long have you known her, blood-sucker?”

  Hunter opened his mouth to speak but ended up shaking his head. When he finally did say something, it was to Donna. “I'm going for a walk. Don't leave the house.” He turned and was down the stairs before she could even blink.

  Mo cupped her hands and shouted, “I hope you aren't that fast with everything you do!” She turned back to Donna and winked. Donna smacked her arm. The front door slammed shut, almost hard enough to knock it back off its hinges. Mo faced Donna, her expression instantly softening.

  “How are you really, Donna? Is he being an asshole to you?”

  “I'm fine.” Donna folded her arms. “Hunter isn't being an asshole to me. But you're certainly being one to him and I'd like to know why.”

  Mo rolled her eyes. “Because he's a vampire.”

  “So?”

  Mo's eyes widened. “So? He's undead. Can't stand garlic. Melts in the sun. Slurps blood.”

  Donna shrugged. “Nobody's perfect.”

  “He acts like he owns you. He dines on bodily fluids while the rest of us use the drive thru.” Mo's hands went to her hips. “If it weren't for him-”

  “-If it weren't for him, I'd be dead.”

  “If it weren't for his psycho brother, you would've been fine all along.” Mo's bottom eyelids pooled with tears and her voice quivered.

  Donna opened her arms. “Come here, please.” Mo stepped into the embrace then the cascading of tears came, complete with heaving and breath-catching. The tough girl who never cried had now cried twice in one day.

  “It was horrible.” Mo sobbed while Donna led her to the bed and they sat. “You were so - there was so much blood. And your breathing was – it was awful! You convulsed and – it was horrible! I never, ever want to see you like that again.” Mo looked at Donna. “Promise me you'll never look like that again.”

  Donna smiled sadly. “I can't promise you that. But I can promise you I'll try to stay safe from now on. And I want you to promise me you'll be nicer to Hunter. He did save my life, after all.”

  Mo sniffed. “He looks like a freak and acts like a freak. You know what they say - if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck…”

  Donna grabbed tissues and handed them to Mo. “They also say - don't judge a person until you've walked in their shoes. Hunter's feet have walked a very difficult life, Mo.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I bet sleeping in a coffin all day is pretty hard work. And anyway, his temper is like a raging storm.”

  “Storms pass.”

  “So do kidney stones, but only after causing much pain and suffering to the victim.”

  Donna rubbed the back of her neck. It felt a little stiff. “I understand why you're angry with Hunter. He has a tendency to come at people like a ferocious dog. But if you back down and give him a chance, you'll see how nice he really is.”

  “If that dog pees on my leg, I'll castrate him.”

  Donna chuckled. “He's a vampire, not a house pet.”

  “You called him a dog first. Anyway, I'm hungry. What's in your fridge?”

  Donna didn't have a clue. “All I know is there’s no peanut butter. Hunter sent Samee grocery shopping.”

  “Well, let's go see if that kid's got better taste in food than she does in big brothers.”

  They headed downstairs. Mo rounded the corner in the entryway and made a beeline for the kitchen while Donna turned toward the living room doorway to examine the damage done to the showroom furniture. To her relief, everything looked perfectly normal.

  “Yum!” Mo exclaimed from the kitchen. “Fortune has smiled on us today.” She stood at the fridge, her hair glowing neon against the fluorescent fridge light and her nose shoved between shelves. “I'm eating for two,” she explained, “so I have to eat often.” Donna watched and waited while Mo made her choices. A soda and an ice cream bar from the fridge. From the cupboard, a bag of chips and a new jar of salsa. Donna wondered what “eating for two” would look like in another few months. Mo pulled open the chip bag and stuck one in her mouth. “Mmmm,” she grinned wide. “Samee's a good shopper. There might be hope for that girl yet.” She clutched her selections and indicated for Donna to follow. When they arrived at the living room entry, Mo dropped a chip on the floor and gasped.

  “What’s wrong?” Donna reached down for the chip then quickly took the soda, which was precariously balanced between two of Mo's fingers. Mo whirled around, looked at the staircase and gasped again.

  “Here, hold this.” She pushed her food at Donna who fumbled it around in her arms until everything felt stable. Mo squinted at the stair spindles then reached out and then touched several before grabbing one and pulling it with all her might.

  “Mo, what are you doing? You're going to break it.”

  “That's exactly the point,” she stared wild-eyed. “It was broken. Now it's not.” Mo frowned at the spindle. “It was this one right here, or maybe the one next to it. Either way, I broke out one of these spindles and I took the longest half to impale Hunter. Now it's fixed, as if nothing happened. It’s just weird. And then in here,” Mo gestured toward the living room, “the coffee table was smashed and the sofa was drenched in blood.”

  “Yeah, I heard.” Donna recoiled.

  “Sorry,” Mo offered an apologetic look. “But it was bad in here. Whoever cleaned up and fixed everything is a damned miracle worker.” Mo plodded around the living room and examined the area with wonder. After convincing herself that everything was put back exactly as it should be, she set her soda and the ice cream on the antique side table, got comfortable, dipped a chip in salsa and crunched it. “Mmmmm,” she moaned. “That guy's so cute.”

  Donna looked around the room. “What guy?”

  “Oh, sorry,” Mo chuckled and then swallowed her chip. “I was thinking about him but I guess I forgot to say it out loud. Trent – he’s one of Hunter's friends. Anyhow, he's cute, I think. I was kind of busy worrying about you.”

  “Thanks for staying with me.”

  Mo burped. “If you really want to thank me, reconsider snuggling up with that freak.”

  “Hunter's my Eternal Partner.”

  “Hunter's a blood-sucker.” Mo held another salsa-slathered chip that was perfectly poised to drop a glob right on the white sofa. She slurped the juicy mess just in the nick of time and then chomped the chip. “Couldn’t you have hooked up with a zombie i
nstead?”

  “I don’t want a zombie. I want Hunter.”

  “The blood-sucker.” Mo emphasized blood-sucker. “What if you wind up knocked up from this blood-sucker? Huh? Then what?”

  “Vampires can't reproduce,” Donna explained.

  “Is that what he told you?”

  “He said we've lived many lifetimes together and in each one, we never could have kids.”

  Mo tilted her head. “What does he mean by 'many lifetimes?’”

  “He doesn't die, but I do. He waits for me to come back.”

  Mo rolled her eyes. “You've been reincarnated and ended up with that same blood-sucker every time? Can't he pick on somebody else?”

  “I don't want him to pick on somebody else.”

  Mo burped and then closed the chip bag. She grinned wide. “I bet I've been your best friend in every one of those lives.”

  Donna chuckled. “I can't imagine my lives without you.”

  “Can you ask him about that? See if we’ve been reincarnated best friends forever?” Mo didn't wait for an answer. “I know we have been, no matter what he says. You do know there's a link between the mayor, the kidnapped girls and the minion behavior of our local police force, don't you?”

  Donna didn’t know how anybody could change subjects so damned fast. She nodded. “Yeah.”

  Mo re-opened the chip bag and the salsa jar and scooped up some salsa with a chip. “That link is vampire activity.”

  “And?”

  “And your boyfriend's a vampire.” Mo chomped the chip.

  “So is his brother, who's the evil one.”

  “So your blood-sucker says.” Mo scooped up her leftovers, then shuffled back to the kitchen and put everything away.

  That’s one of the great things about Mo. She cleans up after herself - just like a vampire. Donna looked with relief around her mother’s showcase living room then followed Mo to the kitchen. She wanted to tell Mo to stop investigating the kidnappings, but being told to not do something would only embolden Mo to do more of it.

  Mo examined the progress of Donna's face. “You're healing fast. I'll give that much to your blood-sucker. Well, the monster won't come back until I'm gone. So, I'm gone.” She trotted to the foyer.

  “Thanks for checking in on me,” Donna said. “And be careful.”

  Mo opened the door. “You should take your own advice. How careful is it to snuggle up to something that should be dead and buried but refuses to stay that way?” Then she left.

  Within seconds of Mo’s departure, Hunter reappeared.

  “We have a problem,” Donna crossed her arms and faced him. “Mo knows too much. I'm afraid she's going to get hurt.”

  “Everything will be okay. I promise.”

  Don’t make promises you can’t keep.

  “You either,” he said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means,” Hunter glowered, “the next time you promise to stay where I ask you to – please do it.”

  chapter sixteen