Depraved (Tales of a Vampire Hunter #2) (4 page)

“Tomorrow, we’ll buy knives. A gun if we can afford one,” he
told her once they’d settled as comfortably as they could.

“Silver bullets?” Though she joked, her voice held no humor.

“Our best weapons are our brains and our natural defenses,
but silver bullets might not be a bad idea. Mexicans are superstitious, and
that thing wasn’t too far from town. If we saw it, odds are some of the people
here have too. Didn’t you say they used to mine silver around here? If we can
find silver knives, we’ll get them. Otherwise, we’ll figure out how to make
them.”

“I thought you said you didn’t think that thing was a
werewolf?” she said, a bit of tease back in her voice.

“I don’t, but I still think we need to be ready for one
anyway. The first advantage we have is our ability to accept that we don’t know
anything. We need to let go of everything we thought we knew, not just about
vampires and vampire hunters but about everything else too.”

“You don’t believe the stuff my father and Sage told us do
you?” She sat crossed-legged on the bed atop the colorful Mexican blanket that
served as a bedspread.

Oliver reached for her hand and shook his head. “Not all of
it. It was easier to listen to them and take the money and run with their plans
than it was to do anything else. That’s another thing—no more taking the easy
way out. The easy way is a trap.”

She squeezed his hand. “You think they set us up in Paris?”

“They kept us in the city, but had no way of knowing where
we were going, unless they put something with a tracker in our bag. I didn’t
find anything when I looked, but they had plenty of time to take it out when we
were in the catacombs dealing with Jonathan. Ditching everything they gave us
was a smart move.”

“That wolf-thing still found us.” Her tone was weary, tired
and still pissed off.

“As much as I’d like to think wolf dude wasn’t connected to
the others who’re hunting us, we have to assume it was, that our families
somehow got the word out to others and that they’re all on the lookout for us.
I need you to tell me everything you know about vampires, about how they track
their prey, about your family and others. Everything.”

Miranda was quiet for a few moments, her brow wrinkled.

“You were probably taught like I was never to share these
things, to die before giving up your kind’s secrets. But this is the first step
to understanding what we’re up against,” Oliver said.

“It’s not that. I trust you, like I’ve never trusted anyone
else. I just don’t know much. A lot of what my dad—if Marc even is my dad—told
you was true. I was raised by a foster family, only I thought they were my real
parents until I was sixteen and Marc told me the truth about who I was, what I
was. I thought I was human, had no reason to think anything else. When I was
growing up, if someone had told me I was a vampire or half vampire, half
vampire hunter, I’d have thought they were nuts.”

“When did you start to realize you weren’t like other kids?”

“When I was about thirteen. I . . . this is going to sound
crazy, but I started hearing voices in my head. At first, I thought it was just
me, you know like my conscious or something. But the voices weren’t talking
about me or even to me. It was like I could hear what other people thought. For
a while, I thought I
was
crazy.”

“That had to be scary, especially with no idea you weren’t a
normal, human kid.” Oliver knew what that was like—being different from
everyone around you, not knowing why, and too scared to tell anyone.

Miranda let go of his hand and curled up under the crook of
his arm, her head on his shoulder. She didn’t look at him as she continued.

“It was useful though. I knew what my foster parents had
always told me was a lie, that they weren’t my parents at all.”

“That had to hurt.”

“It did, at first, but because I could read their minds I
also knew they genuinely loved me. They’d wanted a child so badly, and they had
no idea that I wasn’t normal. They were good people. My mom used to pray to
herself all the time that I’d be happy and that nothing bad would ever happen
to me. It had to kill them when I disappeared after Sage came for me and took
me away.”

Oliver shifted his position and smoothed his fingers over
her head. “Did you ever contact them after that?”

“I was afraid if I did, they might get hurt. No one was
supposed to know about vampires. Not that they’re real anyway. If I’d found a
way to let them know I wasn’t dead, I was scared the Vladulas wouldn’t
understand and would kill them. I was still trying to figure out a way to
contact them without anyone knowing about it when I met you.”

“I’m sorry, Honey. When this is all over, we’ll find a way
to let them know you’re all right.”

Miranda lifted her head from his lap. Tears clung to her
lashes. “You think we could do that?”

“If there’s any way, we’ll find it.” Oliver’s heart ached
for her. He tenderly caught a tear on his fingertip, wiping it away.

“Okay.” She lay back down, curling against his side, her
head on a pillow.

Oliver asked another question to keep her mind off the
painful aspects to her story. He hated having to do it, but even the smallest
clue could be the one that saved them when the vampires or vampire hunters
caught up with them.

“Other than the mind reading, was there anything else you
noticed about yourself that was different?”

“Not really, except for the mirror thing we’ve already
talked about.” Her voice was tight again.

“You mentioned seeing other things, but didn’t tell me what
else you saw or when this started.”

Oliver too had grown up able to see things in mirrors—his
family of vampire hunters had looked like monsters when he looked at their
reflections, reflections they could not see. But he’d seen other things too,
strange creatures, people, a wondrous place like something out of a fairy tale.
He’d told his mother some of it, when she told him she knew what he could do
and asked him to tell her the things he saw, wanting to belong in the family
he’d never quite fit into. But he hadn’t told her everything.

“It’s going to sound crazy again.” Miranda looked up at him,
her teeth worrying her bottom lip as her gaze searched his face.

“Baby, this
all
sounds
crazy, but if anyone’s going to understand what you’re going to say, it’s me.”

“And you’ll tell me everything about you and vampire hunters
too?”

“Yes. Everything.”

Maybe they’d finally find the answers to the things that had
haunted both of them since they were kids. And maybe they’d find the key that
would save them both.

She sighed, closing her eyes and resting her head on his
chest again. “It started about the time I could read some people’s minds. At
first, it seemed like a trick of light or something. I’d look in the mirror and
see me but, when I turned away, it was like there was something else, kind of
like when you look into water and it’s still on the surface but there are fish
moving way down deep.”

“I saw stuff like that too. It started for me earlier
though. I was about six.” Oliver remembered how scared it had made him, and he
curled his arm tighter around her. “What else did you see?”

“After a while, I could see the ripples in the mirror even
when I looked right at it. Then, one day, I think I was about sixteen, my
reflection blinked when I didn’t. I thought I’d imagined it and I stared into
the mirror without blinking for as long as I could until my eyes burned. And it
happened again. It was like there was a person, one who looked just like me,
looking back at me from some other place, someplace inside the mirror. Did that
ever happen to you?” She looked up at him, her eyes searching his face.

“No. But I saw other things. Other people.” And horrible
things, things he wished he didn’t have to tell her. “Did you see anything
else?”

“Not for a while. It scared the shit out of me. I just
stopped looking in mirrors. I stopped reading minds. I tried to be a normal
girl in high school.”

He filed that away to ask her about later. He needed to know
what she did to stop picking up other's thoughts, and if she’d ever found a way
to block others from looking into her mind.

“But then Marc found you and told you that you were half
vampire and half vampire hunter.” Oliver couldn’t imagine what that must have
been like. At least he’d had the benefit of knowing he was a vampire hunter his
whole life.

“He made it all sound reasonable somehow, why they made us.
Said he knew about how I could read minds and see things in mirrors. He made me
feel like it all had a purpose, like it all finally made sense, like I
belonged. But now I don’t know what to believe.” She sighed heavily, pressing
her face into his neck, her lashes brushing his skin.

“We don’t have to believe in anything but each other. We
just have to figure out exactly what we can and can’t do with the powers we
have. We don’t have to do it all in one sitting either.” Oliver smoothed a
fingertip over the arch of her eyebrow.

“I’m sleepy. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Her
voice had grown petulant, childish and sleepy.

“Sit up. You can sleep later.”

Oliver waited until she did what he told her to do and sat
with her knees bent, looking at him with tired eyes that still managed to flash
with irritation over him bossing her around.

Glad she was too tired to argue, he continued. “Once the
Vladulas took you to Chicago, what did Sage tell you about vampires?”

“Not much. I met the other Vladulas. Heard about how they
were one of the oldest vampire families in the world. Sage said she’d made me
one of them by sharing her blood with me, like in vampire movies. I had bite
marks on my wrist, but I didn’t remember it happening. I felt like I’d been in
a coma or something. After a while, I
did
start
to feel different. I didn’t have to sleep, which is weird because now I’m tired
all the time. I was faster when I ran and lost all the baby fat I’d struggled
with like my metabolism speeded up too.”

“But you never exhibited true vampire abilities until we
were in Paris?”

“Some of them could read minds too, but no. I wasn’t like
the rest of them. I never truly felt like a vampire at all. I started
questioning what I was being told. Sage never told me the same stuff Marc had
so I didn’t know what to think or who to believe. I looked in mirrors again and
saw the same “me” I’d seen before, but she didn’t have any answers either.”

“When we met, you’d been sent out to find the ones who’d
killed Cire Vladula. So, even though you were different, they all treated you
like one of the family?”

“Not really. They stuck to themselves. Slept during the day
and went out at night. I never went with them. Sage had a massive library
filled with books about the family. I spent most of my time in there reading,
trying to make sense of it all. It wasn’t until you killed Cire that they asked
me to do anything. By then, I’d read enough to be romanced about the whole idea
of vampires. I missed my real family so much. I guess I just wanted to fit in
since I knew I could never go home. So, I went where they told me to go and
picked up your thoughts when you were telling Jonathan about killing Cire.”

“You’ll have to tell me what you read in those books, but
let’s stick to this tonight. I know how you found us. What’s interesting is
that they sent you there, to that part of the city. I don’t think that was a
coincidence.”

It had always seemed unlikely that the one person in the
world who was like him had just happened to trip over him in Chicago. Now, he
was certain their meeting had been planned all along.

“When Marc and Sage talked to us in Paris, I found myself
wanting to believe all of it, wanting to believe in them. You know, they can do
that, some of them, just like vampire hunters. Vampires can cast something like
a spell over people, sort of hypnotizing them to make them believe whatever
they want them to or forget stuff too.”

“Yes, but there are ways to counter that. I’m going to teach
you.”

“You can do that?” She grinned.

“I’m going to try. And you’re going to teach me more about
mind reading now that I can do it too.”

“I can’t do that hypnotizing thing or attract vampires like
you can,” Miranda said.

“We don’t know that. We don’t know anything, remember?”

“Can you go for a while? Tell me about hunters? Let’s take
turns.” She rubbed her sleepy eyes.

“Okay.” He pushed his own unpleasant memories aside, shelved
his remaining questions, and gathered his thoughts as she snuggled closer to
him.

“Before we met, I’d have said I knew
a lot about vampire hunters, but so much has changed in the last few days that
now I doubt everything I was ever told,” Oliver said.

“Me too. But, like you said, we should start by just going
over what we’ve been told and what we’ve seen for ourselves.” Miranda’s fingers
traced circles on his chest. “Let’s do history. We skipped with me.”

“We didn’t have books or anything like the Vladulas, so
everything I know I learned from my mom. She always told us that vampire
hunters were as rare as vampires. It’s not at all like in books and movies
where vampires are in every club and every high school.”

Miranda laughed softly. “Do you think humans know on some
level that vampires really do exist, and are scared but also intrigued like
they are with fairies and leprechauns, and that’s why they write about them so
much or do you think vampires are the ones creating some of those stories?”

“A little of both probably. Some writers know a bit too much
about how vampires operate and others are just copying from stories and movies
that came before.”

“But you don’t hear a lot about vampire hunters, unless
you’re a vampire. That’s interesting.”