Chapter 29

She suffered no nightmares that night.

The same dreams danced across her sleeping mind… and yet, they were not the same. Empty eyes and the smell of death still stalked her through the darkness, but the darkness now glowed with light. Instead of running, she turned and stood, welcoming the coming dark. Again and again she tore the lifeless blood from that arrogant demon, her cropped fingernails becoming deadly claws each longer than her hand. Her fear became need; irresistible, aching need that pulled at her even in her sleep and craved the exhilaration of darkness’s destruction.

She woke up an hour before she needed, too restless to sleep any longer. For once she was awake before even her mother. She stepped softly down the stairs, wincing when she heard the squeak of a floorboard, continuing on through the living room to the basement. Talia had left her training claws there for the past two weeks, probably by accident. The first week Aleda had left them alone, content to deal with them only when she must. Now, however, she found herself drawn to them.

She was only able to put on the one. With just one set of hands, she could not fasten the straps and buckles of the second set. It was enough, for now. She held her hand up in the paltry light offered by the single lamp shining from a corner of the basement. The thick straps and buckles still seemed faintly ridiculous, but the bits of wood affixed to her fingertips no longer looked out of place. Only the weight bothered her. Claws should not be so heavy. When she closed her eyes, she could see that demon again, see herself slicing through its heart with her claws, wooden though they may be.

After a few minutes, she began to feel somewhat silly. She was standing, barefoot, in her chilly concrete basement, wearing nothing but pajamas and waving her hand in the air with a fascination that would usually require chemical inducement. Suddenly self-conscious, despite there not being anyone else around, she fumbled out of the training claws and tossed them on the floor where she’d found them. She hurried back upstairs; the chill of the basement had gotten to her, and the warmth of the living room wrapped around her like a blanket. She still had quite a while until she had to leave for school.

Back upstairs, she noticed the books still scattered across her bedroom floor. Well, it probably couldn’t hurt to be productive. She had never finished her poetry report from the night before, and now seemed a pretty good time to finish. Now that those damned poems were no longer running around in her brain it was much easier to concentrate on the paper itself.

She considered making another effort at her precalculus.

…Nah.

She didn’t have enough time for that, anyway. Mom woke up sometime while Aleda was writing the last of her paper; Aleda soon finished and followed her to the kitchen for breakfast. Too late she realized that she would have normally taken her shower before coming downstairs. Mom gave her a funny look when she saw her daughter’s dry hair and pajamas.

“No shower this morning?” she inquired over cereal.

“I was hungry,” Aleda said quickly. “I’ll take a shower after.”

She finished her cereal and scurried upstairs. A shower, a hairdryer, and a fresh set of clothes later she was walking out the front door with her backpack on her back. She had to wear her mother’s coat, since hers was still covered in stains from the night before. Mom would do what she could with that while Aleda was at school. Unfortunately, her lovely warm hat was hopeless, as it had born the brunt of the spray from that damned feeder. She really could have used that hat this morning, too. It was bloody cold outside.

Oh well.

A little bit of cold wasn’t going to kill her.

Her precalculus teacher might, though. She hadn’t gotten more than a few problems done in that horrible packet over the entire weekend. Well, she had some time, and everything else was done.

She and Nate compared history timelines in homeroom. They looked pretty much the same, though Nate complained that his could have been better if Mike had been more helpful on Thanksgiving. Aleda showed him her precalculus packet, bemoaning the long list of problems she had not even touched.

“See, this is why I took geometry,” Nate said. “Much easier.”

“Yeah, well, what am I going to do about this?”

“You could do the homework,” he suggested.

Aleda just looked at him. He laughed.

“Yeah, I know. What was I thinking?”

“Well?” Aleda prompted. If she couldn’t think of anything, he ought to.

“Here, give it.” Nate held out his hand. Aleda handed over her packet in confusion.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to do it.”

“Nah, I know a kid. I can probably get him to work these problems for you.”

“Really?”

Nate winked at her. “Consider it done. I’ll get it back to you before sixth period, don’t worry.”

Aleda shrugged dismissively. “Hell, it’s not like I’d get a better grade if I turned that in.”

 

English class was painless. Thanks to her insomnia, the report was completely done. She didn’t even hesitate when Mrs. Van asked everybody to pass their papers to the front of the room. Nobody had to read it in front of the class; instead, Mrs. Van just passed out the next novel and told them to have it read by the time they got back from Winter Break. The rest of the class was a pop quiz on figurative language. Easy enough.

History was dull. They turned in their timelines and watched one of those dreadful tapes. The ancient ‘history expert’ had finally made it to the twentieth century. If Aleda actually cared about any of it, she might have confirmed the details with some of her older cousins. As it was, she couldn’t care less. Little chance of learning something inaccurate when she wasn’t learning anything at all.

Nate was as good as his word, on this particular matter: he gave her the precalculus packet just before sixth period, when she was on the way to that class. The proofs were all solved, although the handwriting didn’t quite match. Aleda wasn’t sure her teacher knew her handwriting anyway. Nate had been able to bribe some genius sophomore to do it for her, and he wouldn’t even let her pay him back. Immensely grateful, she turned in the packet and tuned out for the rest of the class. That one obnoxious packet was worth enough of her grade that she would probably be able to slack off for the rest of the year. Well, she would be able to continue slacking off as much as she had been so far anyway.

After school was …exciting.

Lizzy was developing a serious fetish with her locker.

That day’s special was three fresh pounds of dirt-au-jardin that spilled out into the hallway as soon as she opened the door. Aleda sighed and retrieved her books from the bottom of her locker, shaking the bits of dirt from them before tucking them into her backpack. Fortunately, she had made a habit of keeping her locker as spotless as possible ever since Lizzy started her brillant Campaign to Stuff Crap into Aleda’s Locker.

Aleda slung her full backpack over her shoulder, intending to leave the pile of dirt on the floor for the janitor, when a thought occurred to her.

She still had the paper bag she had used for lunch. The empty tupperware could go in her backpack.

She scooped as much of the dirt into the bag as she could, finishing the job with a piece of loose-leaf. What remained on the floor was barely more than a scuff mark. The janitor probably wouldn’t even notice.

Aleda knew exactly where Lizzy’s locker was. She stood in front of it often enough, gossiping with her plastic friends. About her, most likely. Aleda also knew where there was a water fountain just down the hall from Lizzy’s locker.

Picking that idiot girl’s lock was almost as easy as drenching the bag of dirt with water. She had actually used a key lock, rather than combination.

When she was done, she closed the locker with a smirk and tossed the empty bag into a nearby trashcan. Lizzy would have bigger problems than a little dirt in her locker when she got to school the next morning. And it was sure as hell that she would know exactly who was responsible.

It was about damn time she started standing up for herself.

 

 

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Mom and Papá were both in the living room when Aleda got home. Mike was there, too. He had one of his maps spread out across the table.

“Hiya,” Aleda said. She shrugged off her backpack and her mother’s coat, depositing both on the floor next to the stairs. “What’s going on?”

Her parents glanced at each other before answering.

“Mike thinks there might be another nest in the area,” Mom said.

“Oh yeah?” Aleda walked over to the map, which was covered in colored dots. “What kind, feeder?”

There were an awful lot of red dots in northern Delaware.

“Unfortunately not,” Mike said with a sigh. “People have been going missing for over a week. Much too long for a pack of monthlies. No—it’s looking like bloody vampires this time.”

“So what’s with the map?” Aleda asked.

“We use the map to track the demons,” Papá explained. “Each red dot is a vampire that one of the scouts has seen.”

“Most of these particular dots have come from that little Talia,” Mike added.

“Really?” Aleda asked. “She gets out this way?”

“Oh, sure! We’ve only got a dozen scouts from here to CapeCharles, and of course she’s the best there is. There’s nobody faster or lighter on their feet than that Talia. Probably borrows that motorcycle off her brother for most of it.”

Aleda snorted. “I doubt that. Ryan would go ballistic if Talia did anything to that bike.”

Mom gave her an odd glance. “So Mike, what do you think? Round up a few of us mercenaries and raid the nest?”

Mike shook his head. “Not yet. We still don’t know how many there are. We don’t even have a good fix on where that nest really is. The main cluster looks to be about fifteen minutes to the north of here, but that’s all we’ve got.”

“Didn’t you just clear out a vampire nest?” Aleda asked, slightly puzzled.

“Yeah, we did,” Mom said. “But it looks like there’s another one.”

“That is too many vampire nests for one area,” Papá grumbled. “Even if this one is new.”

“It does seem a bit much,” Mike admitted. “Nothing we can’t handle, though.”

 

 

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True enough, Aleda wasn’t all that worried about the new nest. Her parents and cousins could easily handle it. And if they could handle a nest full of thirsty suckers, she could handle one silly teenager with an inexplicable grudge.

She got her chance the next morning.

She heard the screech all the way from the next hall. Aleda smirked. Sounded like Lizzy had found her new locker-garden starter kit. That would probably keep her occupied for another few minutes, but there was little chance that the other girl would miss homeroom, and the opportunity to rip a new hole in the perpetrator.

Aleda had warned Nate the night before.

He thought it was hilarious.

Aleda strode into the classroom, looking more confident that she felt. She winked at Nate as she sat down next to him. He made a show of holding out his watch, timing how long it took for the irate girl to storm through the door.

Storm she did.

“I know it was you!” she shrieked when she saw Aleda.

…Thank goodness the teacher hadn’t arrived yet.

“Two minutes, thirty-seven seconds,” Nate murmured.

Lizzy stalked over and slammed her hands into Aleda’s desk, causing everybody else in the room to turn and stare. She leaned down until the two girls were eye-to-eye, one of her hands gripping the edge of the desk and the other pointed accusingly into Aleda’s face. “Don’t even try to get out of this. I know it was you!” she repeated.

Aleda raised her eyebrow at the finger hovering two inches from her nose, then lifted her eyes to meet Lizzy’s. Her expression did not falter. “I confess,” she said dryly. “It was me. In the study, with a candlestick.”

Somebody giggled. Lizzy’s head whipped around to find the source, glaring at the room as a whole before turning back to Aleda.

“You think you’re funny?” she demanded.

“Only before lunch.”

“You dumped mud in my locker!”

“Oh, good, you found it,” Aleda replied cheerfully. “You left it in my locker by mistake.” She pretended to think for a moment. “You seem to leave your things in my locker a lot. …You’re not ‘simple’, are you? You do know which locker is which? We could put up signs,” she suggested.

Lizzy’s face actually turned purple. Aleda had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing and telling the girl that the color really didn’t go with her outfit. Lizzy turned to Nate.

“What the hell are you doing with this b***h, Nate?” she demanded, obviously trying another approach now that this one was out of her control.

“I’m dating her, of course,” he said. “And she’s not a b***h.”

Aleda smiled at him for the support.

Lizzy scoffed. “Yeah. You’re dating her for now. Don’t kid yourself, ‘Leeeda’, he’ll get sick of you in another month. Even I wasn’t good enough—apparently—to keep his attention for longer than three.” She sneered. “He’s nothing but a playboy, and once he’s sampled everything you have to offer he’ll move on.”

“Good grief, Lizzy, is that what this is all about?” Nate asked. “You’re still mad that we broke up?”

“There was no reason for you to dump me like that, Nathaniel! Not when things were going so good!”

“Don’t kid yourself. It was just a fling and you know it.”

Lizzy gaped at him. It was several tries before she could form coherent words. “I would have stayed with you forever, you b*****d!”

Nate snorted. “Somehow? I really doubt that,” he said, laughing. Aleda bit back a smirk. “Leda, now,” he continued, “That’s a hell of a possibility.”

Aleda shot him a surprised look. Was he really suggesting that they would be together…forever? Mercy, she was only seventeen! She wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about that… but since Nate was currently defending her against the Queen of B*****s she would let it slide.

“You’re serious!?” Lizzy hissed. “You really want to—”

“Miss Geiger! Take a seat, please!”

Lizzy straightened, her face paling. The homeroom teacher had finally arrived.

The classroom was full of whispers as she made her way to the only available desk. Good or bad, Aleda wasn’t sure, but there was no doubt that they were all completely fascinated by the exchange. There was also no doubt that news of the event would be all over school by the end of the day. The thought of that made Aleda a bit self-conscious, but it was too late for regrets.

She had stood up for herself. She had finally stood up for herself. She had to admit, it was a pretty damned good feeling, despite her shaking hands.

It was almost funny, really. She had been so scared of a confrontation, so eager to stay under the radar and not take any risks, and yet now that she had finally spoken up she realized that it was not nearly as scary as she had thought. If anything, it was fun to put that little brat in her place. It felt …refreshing… to speak her mind.

She could start to see why Ryan didn’t bother to censor himself.

----------

“I want to go with you.”

“What’s that, honey?” Mom asked.

“Tonight,” Aleda said, “When you and Papá go hunting. Can I come too?”

She had thought about this for the entire week. After Sunday night, it seemed so …anticlimactic, to come home after school just to do a little homework and watch television. She had killed a demon, and despite her lingering apprehension, she hungered to do it again. On Monday she had hung back a little after school, as she had done before, but her heart just wasn’t in it. It did no more to quiet her restlessness than sitting on the couch all night. She finally gave up and went straight home for the rest of the week.

Unfortunately, it was even worse to be there when her parents were leaving to hunt for the evening. It just made her all that much more aware that she was stuck at home, where the most dangerous and exciting thing around was her precalculus textbook.

“Well, maybe…” Mom began.

Papá came into the living room and shook his head. “I do not think that is a good idea,” he said. “We are still hunting that new vampire nest. It is much too dangerous for you.”

“But, Papá…!”

“She does have to learn,” Mom said gently, putting a hand on his shoulder. Papá sighed and shook his head.

“I know she must learn,” he said, “But she has not seen a vampire yet. She will go with us another night, when we hunt a therion, and watch to see how it is done.”

“Please, Papá? I won’t get in the way!”

“No, my little angel, I am sorry. It is too dangerous, and you are still a child.”

Aleda bit back the retort that formed in her throat and stomped sullenly upstairs.

Down below, her parents finished getting ready and walked out into the night. Since they were looking for a nest, instead of just whatever demon they might come across, they would probably be out half the night. Leaving her to curse at her homework.

Damn it, shouldn’t they want her to come along? She was not a child anymore! Why in the hell did everybody insist that she was? Her papá treated her like she was still seven years old, her mom followed his lead, and Ryan took every opportunity he could to tell her how immature she was. Talia, at least, had never said anything overt, but that “Little Leda” nickname was starting to get to her too. She was seventeen and a half, for the love of mercy! A hunter turns eighteen, gets called, and all of a sudden he’s a full adult, but she was less than seven months shy and she was a child!? Their system could seriously use an overhaul!

Okay, so maybe she wasn’t actually intending to answer when she turned eighteen, but it wasn’t as if her parents knew that. Or Ryan, for that matter, unless Talia had betrayed her secret.

Hell, even Nate was a little too fond of pointing out that he was a few months older than her.

Aleda was absolutely sick of it.

She tried to give her homework her attention for a good half an hour before she had to admit that she wasn’t getting anything done that night. Television didn’t really appeal, either. She sat on the couch for a few minutes. Outside, the car parked in the driveway caught her eye. Since they thought the nest was so close, her parents had gone on foot. It was easier than trying to find a new place to park every fifteen minutes.

She considered.

It took no more than a phone call to get the address and directions with no questions asked. She had her own set of keys, for emergencies—although probably not this sort of ‘emergency’—and of course she had received her driver’s license days after they moved in. As an afterthought she went down to the basement. For a moment she was tempted to take Talia’s training claws, but realized that was silly and grabbed Mom’s crossbow instead. There were still a few bolts left in the tattered purple backpack.

She shouldered the crossbow and allowed herself a impish smile as she glanced one last time around the living room. Bright and warm in there.

Bright and warm and boring.

She hadn’t had much opportunity to drive while she was in Delware, and there were still a lot of cars on the road from the evening rush hour. It didn’t matter. Aleda drove her parents’ car steadily, one more in the river of light flowing from one state to the next.

She was lucky.

Not everybody had come home from work, yet, and there were a few spaces left in the apartment complex’s parking lot. Somebody would probably be annoyed as hell in an hour or so, when they got home to find a full lot, but that wasn’t her problem. Her problem was that she had only made the one phone call, rather than two, and had no idea whether she had gotten there too late. She would feel like an absolute idiot if she had driven all this way for nothing. Her only consolation was that her parents would never know.

Well, she was here. Might as well try.

She found the apartment and knocked loudly before she lost her nerve. For several seconds there was no answer. Just as she was about to turn and leave the door swung open and put her face to face with a sleepy Ryan. Wearing nothing but pajama bottoms.

He rubbed his eyes, blinked unfocusedly, and did a double-take when he finally got a good look at the girl at his door.

He stared at her for several seconds.

“…You have got to be kidding me,” he blurted.

Aleda shifted nervously. “Hi.”

Again there was an awkward pause as he tried to process everything. “What are you doing here?” he finally asked.

“Er… is Talia here?”

“No.”

“…Oh.” She must have already left. It figured.

“She’s still at work.”

“Oh! When does she get back?”

Ryan turned to squint at the clock behind him. “About ten minutes.” He sighed and looked her over. “You’ll be wanting to wait for her, yeah?”

She nodded.

“Alright. Come on in.” Ryan moved out of the doorway and ushered her in with a resigned gesture, closing the door behind her. “Make yourself at home, I guess. There’s… magazines, and a television.”

He disappeared into another room. Aleda sat on the couch, feeling more self-conscious than ever. There were, indeed, several magazines scattered on the coffee table, various celebrities splashed across the covers. She picked one up at random and flipped through it, landing on an article about which shades of eye shadow to wear.

The magazine got tossed back onto the table.

Ryan reemerged from his room fully dressed this time and looking considerably more awake. Aleda watched him, bemused, as he went around the kitchen and ignored her presence entirely. He fetched a box out of the freezer—frozen dinner—and stuck it in the microwave, staring at it in silence the entire time it took to heat. He didn’t even move until the microwave beeped at him several minutes later. Aleda watched him eat for a few seconds.

“I’m surprised you eat regular food,” she commented into the silence. Ryan looked up in annoyance. “Considering your sister’s eating habits, I mean.”

His irritated glare faded into the hint of a smile. He nodded slightly at his normal, if hurried, dinner. “This is the only thing she’ll eat that’s remotely healthy, so I bought a ton of them.”

“You mean you don’t cook a gourmet dinner every day?” she teased.

“Breakfast, actually.”

“Breakfast? Er… You do know it’s after six in the evening, right?”

“Well, considering I sleep most of the day…”

“Oh, right. The pajamas.”

“The pajamas,” he agreed.

“Oh, no, I woke you up, didn’t I?” she asked with a worried frown.

Ryan shrugged. “I had to get up anyway. Better you than that damned noisy alarm clock.”

“Alright,” she said, “If you’re sure. I mean, it’s bad enough that I just showed up at your door like this…”

He chuckled. “Trust me, waking me up before my alarm is much better than some of the things you’ve done.” He glanced up at her while he spoke, those jade-green eyes of his shining.

Aleda’s retort died in her throat.

“You, um… Are you hungry?” he asked. “There’s about a thousand bags of popcorn in these cupboards, if you want.”

“No. Thank you,” she replied. “I had dinner.”

Ryan nodded and went back to his own meal. There was another minute or two of silence.

She watched him eat, getting a bit restless. She had rehearsed the explanation over and over in her head and now she was getting antsy to use it. “…Aren’t you going to ask why I’m here?” she finally asked.

His eyes flicked back up at her. “Wasn’t planning on it.”

“You’re not even curious?”

“No,” he said simply.

Aleda frowned and turned away from him on the couch. Silly of her. She kept forgetting he had no interest in anybody but himself.

“You’re here to hunt.”

She whipped around to gawk at him. “How…?”

“I can still smell the blood on you. This past Sunday, right?”

She nodded slowly, cautiously. “That last feeder… the one that got away a month ago. I killed it.”

“Good.” He paused, raising his head to listen to something. “Talia’s here,” he announced.

“How do you know?”

He held up a finger. “Listen.”

Aleda strained to hear. After a few seconds she could make out a faint squealing noise. It came a bit closer and then died with a groan. Aleda grinned. “I didn’t know it was possible for something to sound rusty,” she said.

“If anything can manage to, it’s Talia’s deathtrap. I can hear that damned thing coming a mile away.”

Footsteps came up the stairs and the door opened.

“Hullo, big brother!” Talia called cheerfully. “Up and a– …Oh, you’re up! Hi, Little Leda!” She dropped her purse by the couch. “What are you doing here?”

“She’s coming hunting with us,” Ryan answered.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Smell her,” he prompted.

Aleda backed away a little bit. “Er… I’d rather you not…” she said uncomfortably.

Talia’s nostrils flared. “Ooh, you reek of feeder. What’d you do, take a bath in it?”

“Cute to morbid in ten seconds flat,” Ryan muttered over his dinner.

“Well, I hope you brought something sharp,” Talia continued blithely. She noticed the tattered purple backpack laying on the floor by Aleda’s feet. “Hey, that looks familiar! Aria’s crossbow, yeah? You any good with it?”

“I have no idea,” Aleda admitted. “But it was either that or the wooden claws. You left those at my house, by the way.”

Talia grinned. “Yeah, I know.”

“So… I can come with you?”

“Well, yeah!” she said, half scoffing. “Of course! One thing, though, before we go. We’ve got to test that hand-eye coordination of yours, if you’re going to be using that old crossbow.”

“What, you mean target practice?”

“Yeah! Wait just a minute…” Talia scurried around the apartment, looking for something. She pulled out something from one of the cupboards that looked like it might have once been a dartboard. “West gave this to me last week, when he got a new one. I thought it might come in handy for something.”

“What, you want me to shoot at that thing?”

“Well, sure, that’s what it’s for!”

“…Are you sure the bolt won’t just go straight through?”

Talia turned the old dartboard in her hand, inspecting it. “Maybe,” she admitted, “But it’s better than nothing.” She took the board and jammed it into the wall with a pencil.

“Talia…” Ryan sighed.

“Yep?”

“Don’t do that,” he begged, his eyes shut in chagrin. “We’ll lose our deposit.”

“My deposit,” Talia corrected. “And anyway, I already lost that when I tore up the carpet moving the dresser.”

Ryan gave Aleda a long-suffering look. Poor guy. She offered him a partially sympathetic, predominantly amused grin in return. Did she see what he had to put up with? Yeah, she saw.

But she wasn’t going anywhere if she didn’t prove that she could hold her own. She pulled the old crossbow and a bolt out of the tattered backpack, thankful that at least the former hadn’t fallen into disrepair. It was a bit of a trick to get the bolt loaded, but straightforward enough once she saw how it went together. Getting it into the dartboard was trickier. Her hand-eye coordination had always been pretty good—probably because of Mom making her play violin for so long—but she’d never tried projectile weapons.

The trigger was stiff. It was difficult to get the first shot off, let alone into the dartboard. The bolt landed in the drywall, several inches away from the target. Aleda’s heart sank.

“The trigger was stuck,” she complained.

“Okay,” Talia said. “Here, try again.” She ripped the bolt out of the wall and handed it back, a coating of white dust from the drywall covering the tip for her troubles.

Aleda tried again. The trigger wasn’t quite as stiff this time. She managed to get the bolt into the target this time, albeit at the very edge. The thump of the bolt into the wall was echoed by an answering thump from the next apartment.

“Oy! Keep it down over there!” an irritated voice yelled through the wall.

“Sorry, Mr. Thompson!” Talia called back. “Well,” she said, turning back to Aleda, “That’s good enough for me. Ready to go?”

The girl’s eyes widened. Talia was really going to let her go, even though she’d only hit the target once? She had no time to protest or question the other girl, who was already pulling her coat back on and walking out the door. Ryan had finished his dinner and dropped the remains in the trash, and now he was following close behind. Aleda had no choice but to fall in behind him before they left her in the apartment. She barely remembered in time to grab the purple backpack and shove the crossbow back inside.

 

 

î

 

Talia’s hunting grounds for the night were a little over two miles away: a busy strip mall backed by a matching stripe of trees and underbrush. Fortunately for Aleda, the location meant that Talia could easily drive there and leave her car in the parking lot without worry. Aleda sat silently in the back of the car, nervously fiddling with the trigger on her mother’s crossbow and trying to loosen it up a bit. She shoved it back into the bag when Talia pulled into the parking lot. She should have switched backpacks before leaving—the worn fabric made her nervous and she hoped it wouldn’t give way and spill its contents everywhere. That would be slightly difficult to explain.

Talia started out first, heading immediately for the shops. Ryan slowed a little to let Aleda catch up.

“Stay close,” he said in a low voice.

“Where’s Talia going?”

“She’s going to check the shops. She finds something, she lures it out, I catch it behind the building.”

“Shouldn’t I go with her, then?” Aleda asked.

Ryan shook his head. “You wanted to hunt. You’ll hunt. Since you can’t recognize demons, you’re coming with me.”

“Actually…” Aleda began.

He turned to look at her, an odd expression on his face. She gave him an embarrassed half-smile and shrugged. It was a little hard, sure, but she could always tell if she got a good look at their eyes. She had a feeling that wasn’t quite what he was talking about, but it wasn’t as if she were completely useless.

He was still looking at her funny.

“What?” she asked, feeling self-conscious. She shifted the backpack on her shoulder. “They’ve all got dead eyes. What’s the big deal?”

Ryan turned his head back to see where they were going, a wry smile playing on his lips. “Like mother, like daughter,” he said. “I had a feeling.”

Now it was Aleda’s turn to stare at him in bafflement. “And just what does that mean?” she demanded.

“Aria could do the same thing, back when your father first found her,” he explained. “It’s how he found her.”

“Really?”

He nodded and grinned at her. “That crossbow? That backpack? Turn your hair ginger and you could be her twenty years ago.”

Aleda was taken aback. She’d known that Mom had been a bit of a sniper in the war, but she hadn’t realized that Mom had started before she was called.

Ryan led her to the nearest edge of the strip mall, where she could see the fringe of trees beyond. For as many people as there were wandering around the front of the shopping center, nobody would venture back there. He stopped at the corner of the building, so that he could still keep an eye on the activity out front, and bid Aleda to stand against the wall. He turned to face her, his eyes still trained on the storefronts.

“You know, I should thank you,” he said quietly. “I usually have to act like a delinquent when I’m out here by myself.”

Aleda smirked up at him. “I’m sure that must be terribly hard for you to pull off, Mister Sunshine.”

A woman and her daughter passed nearby, and Ryan moved to stand even closer to Aleda. The woman saw them and shot them a disapproving glare.

Aleda noticed.

“Apparently you’re still a delinquent,” she said dryly.

“I’m not sure that’s why she glared,” he murmured, almost too quietly for her to hear.

Well, why else would she be glaring?

“What do you think Talia’s doing?” she asked, for lack of anything better to say.

“Probably flirting with something.”

“Demon?”

“Or boy.”

“What about Pizza Boy?”

“I’ll be damned if I know,” he grumbled. “That sister of mine goes through boys almost as quick as she goes through popcorn.”

“At least she’s getting plenty of exercise,” Aleda pointed out.

“At least I’m at work while she does,” Ryan countered. Aleda giggled. “Ah, there she is.”

“Demon?”

“Sucker, looks like. Come on.” Ryan took her arm and pulled her around the side of the building. “Here they come. I can smell it. Get that crossbow of yours out.”

Aleda quickly complied, fumbling with the backpack’s old zipper and clicking a bolt into place as swiftly as she could. The backpack, along with the rest of the bolts, got dropped on the ground. He gestured for her to move just a bit farther back, while he stood just around the corner, his back pressed to the building. Talia emerged first, followed closely by a sallow punk who was staring more at her neck than her swinging hips. Aleda had her crossbow up, but at this rate it looked like she wouldn’t get to use it. As soon as the sucker passed Ryan he caught it around the neck in a death-grip and Talia backed off, letting her brother take it.

Unfortunately, this just seemed to piss the thing off. It struggled fiercely against Ryan’s grip, trying to free itself and kill him at the same time. Ryan dragged it around and behind the building, throwing it hard against the wall.

Aleda didn’t even think.

She just saw that demon fly against the brick wall, its chest exposed and over an arm’s length from Ryan.

She didn’t think. She just pulled the trigger. Her crossbow had been trained on the demon since it first appeared behind Talia. It was loose, now, and it pulled much easier than she expected. Before she realized what she was doing the bolt had slammed through the demon and into the brick beyond. Her aim was true—the demon collapsed immediately and fell to dust in the darkness. Ryan whipped around and fixed her with a piercing glare, instinct making him resent the loss of a kill. It took only a second, though, for him to realize what had happened. His glare turned to admiration, though no less piercing, and for the briefest of moments Aleda thought she could see a glint of light shining from his eyes.

The moment ended. Ryan picked up her discarded backpack and handed it to her without a word.

“Come on, Little Leda,” Talia said, rolling her eyes. “Come on, Zeus. This place is clean.” She strolled back to the parking lot without a backwards glance.

Aleda shouldered the backpack and followed her, turning to Ryan in confusion. “Why did she just call you ‘Zeus’?” she asked.

“Damned if I know.”