Chapter 9

“Ihave Heskel’s home address,” Dane said to Jacqueline, Stacey, and his brothers. “We talked about his blood bonds and vampire friends—where their homes are. But what about his home? Maybe that’s where he is, believing we’ll be searching for him every place else, not believing he would be home.”

“Let’s go there,” Jacqueline said.

Everybody was agreeable. Dane sure hoped they could take the rogue down tonight.

Then they got into the two vehicles and headed to the house that Heskel owned. His home was surrounded by about five acres, half an acre in front, about four acres in the back and some land on the sides, but not that much between homes. His home was maybe about seventy-five-hundred square feet, all brick, lots of windows, but all were covered with beautiful hurricane shutters. Typical of a home that was owned by a vampire who had to keep the sun out when it was shining bright during the day.

Even Dane kept his blinds closed now that he was a vampire, and he had noticed that so did Jacqueline.

“Wow, what a house,” Jacqueline said.

“Yeah, these ancient vampires often have a lot of money. They’ve been able to save money for centuries, not like the rest of us,” Dane said.

“Yeah,” Matt agreed. “He’ll have security cameras since he can’t watch out the windows. Because there are three cars sitting in the driveway, and not in the three-car garage, I suspect those are blood bonds. Though they could be Heskel’s vampire friends.”

“I agree. And if they’re here, there’s a good chance that their master is also. At least I’m hoping so,” Dane said. “Let’s go.”

Trey, Ryan, and Stacey joined them at the car. Then they all discussed what they were going to do.

“We go in twos,” Matt said. “One person to watch each other’s back. Who wants to go with whom?”

Dane immediately said, “Jacqueline is with me.”

Trey said, “I want Stacey with me because she has some cool vampire moves. You’re on your own, Ryan.”

Ryan smiled. “I’m with Matt.”

“Did I just get picked last for teams?” Matt asked.

Everyone smiled.

“We don’t take out blood bonds,” Matt said. “If there are other vampires in the house and they stand back, we leave them alone. If they come after us, they’re dead. We’ll go in the back way together. Even though I like the idea of going in from different directions, and not getting backed into a corner, I want us to stick close to each other so we all have each other’s backs. But your partner is the one that you’ll be concentrating on. Does anyone have any different ideas?”

“We need one of those infrared cameras to know where everyone is in the house,” Stacey said.

“Yeah, we tried it once, but when we go into a fight, we often don’t have time to use one before we’re in attack mode,” Dane said.

“Completely understandable. Let’s go,” Jacqueline said, and Dane knew she wanted to get this over with if they could tonight.

They saw some security cameras, but the hunters skirted them, while the hunters turned vampires all vanished and reappeared in the backyard where they could check out the security cameras in the backyard. Heskel didn’t have any. Score!

But Dane couldn’t deny how much he worried about Jacqueline. He knew she was a good huntress, but she was also the one that Heskel could control—to an extent. They still didn’t know how much if he really put his mind to it, or how much she could fight against it.

Matt was in the lead with Ryan.

They heard loud laughter and talking inside.

How many were inside? And were they a mix of vampires and blood bonds? But mostly, would they fight the hunters and put their own necks at risk?

Matt used the lockpick and carefully opened the door, and they were all glad it didn’t squeak. Dane couldn’t stand squeaking doors and was always putting grease on his when they did that. But in a way, a squeaking door could act as an early warning system.

The laughter and talking was coming from deeper inside the house. The back door led into a den, and it was beautiful, the lights on in there showcasing oil paintings of ranches and cowboys, of cattle drives, and fields of Indian paintbrush. The couches were all brown leather and marble-topped tables with wrought iron legs.

Then they moved toward the room where all the conversations were coming from. They kept Dane and Jacqueline in the middle to begin with and Dane knew they were trying to keep anyone from hurting her.

“That’s him,” Jacqueline whispered to Dane, but Matt turned to look at her too. “In the room up ahead. I recognize his voice. It sounds just like his telepathic voice,” she said.

“That’s who we’ll concentrate on then,” Matt said.

They went slowly though, not wanting to alert everyone they were coming. Though it was killing Dane not to be able to rush in and kill the vampire to free Jacqueline from his control.

They reached the end of the hall where Matt could see what was going on, the rest of them holding back. Matt moved back to speak to them privately. It was so noisy in the living area that no one could hear them speaking.

“Five vampires—two on my list besides Heskel,” Matt said. “The one kind of in the middle of the whole group is Heskel. And it looks like about seven blood bonds are here. Ryan and I will go straight into the mess of them and target Heskel. Romanoff is off to the right near the fireplace holding a bloody cocktail and wearing a black tux. He’s a vampire on my list. Vandenburg is off to the left of the group feeding on a blood bond, both sitting on a forest green couch.”

“We’ll take out Romanoff,” Dane said, Jacqueline agreeing.

“We’ll aim for Vandenburg,” Trey said, and Stacey was ready for it.

“Let’s go,” Matt said, and he rushed into the room before anyone even noticed he shouldn’t have been there.

Stacey and Jacqueline vanished and appeared right next to their targets. Dane had to get with the program when it came to moving like that and quickly joined Jacqueline as she aimed her sword at the tux-clad vampire.

Trey was racing to catch up to Stacey as three of the blood bonds screamed out and ran away. They appeared eager to get out of the hunters’ path and live another day. As soon Romanoff saw Jacqueline with her sword aimed at his heart, he disappeared and came around behind her. But that’s when Dane came behind him and thrust his sword into the vampire’s heart. Dane was beginning to think this was a winning way for him to team up with Jacqueline. Romanoff turned into a baggy skinned skeleton while Matt was fighting Heskel and Ryan was fighting an overzealous and loyal blood bond.

Dane immediately flew to help Matt to take Heskel down, knowing he had to be their prime target.

Ryan killed the blood bond he was fighting, and the rest of the blood bonds rushed off through the front door and left. Trey and Stacey had managed to eliminate Vandenburg, the other three vampires who had been there quickly vanishing. Then Dane cut Heskel’s arm, and he immediately disappeared. “Damn it.” Dane looked around for Jacqueline, but she had vanished too.

Hell. “Jacqueline!” Dane tried to contact her telepathically then. “Jacqueline!”

The house had been vacated except for the dead body of the blood bond and the remains of Vandenburg and Romanoff. Matt was immediately on the phone with the police to verify the two rogue vampire kills.

“I’m at the house,”Jacqueline said to Dane. “Heskel was trying to make me turn on you. I had to get as far away from you as possible.”

“I’m coming. We didn’t kill him.”Dane said to Matt, “Jacqueline’s at my house. I’m going to join her in the vampire way.”

“I’ll drive your vehicle home when we’re done with the police here,” Matt said.

“I’ll go with you, Dane. Trey can drive my car there. What’s your address?” Stacey asked.

He told her the name of the residential area and gave her the address. She looked at her phone and found the directions for it. “Okay, I’m going with you.”

Then they both vanished and when they reached his place, he saw the whole house was dark. He didn’t like the looks of this.

He went inside and called out, “Jacqueline?” Then he tried telepathically communicating with her. “Jacqueline? Where are you?”

“At home.”

“Your home?”

“Yes, that’s what I said.”

“Sorry, I…forget it. Stacey and I are on our way.” He told Stacey, “Jacqueline’s at her house, not mine.” Then he gave Stacey Jacqueline’s address, and they headed over there. He knocked on her door, at the same time saying, “It’s just me, and Stacey is with me.”

Jacqueline hurried to open the door for them and pulled them inside. “I’m sorry I left all of you behind, but Heskel tried to force me to turn on you, Dane. I think that when Matt was cutting at him, Heskel couldn’t concentrate on forcing me to do any harm to you, but I didn’t want to worry that I might injure or kill you if he managed to hurt your brother and attempt to gain control of me again.”

“Did he get control of you?” Dane asked.

“He tried. I was fighting it the whole time. Until he was too distracted and then that’s when he left. So he’s still alive?”

“Yeah,” Dane said with regret. “We tried to take him down, but then he vanished. We did manage to take down the other two rogue vampires on Matt’s list though. Why did you come here and not go to my home? I was afraid he had gotten ahold of you.”

“It was just natural for me to go here. Plus, I was afraid he might follow me to your house. I don’t want him to know where you live.”

Dane hugged her. “You know, you nearly give me a heart attack every time you vanish like you do and suddenly appear where the vampire is that you’re trying to take down.”

Jacqueline smiled. “You need to learn to do that so that it comes naturally in a fight. It gives us a real advantage over rogues when they don’t expect us to have that ability.”

“Yeah,” Stacey said. “I think Trey was surprised too when I left him behind to fight Vandenburg.”

“I’m sure of it,” Dane said. “He wanted to be right there with you helping to take him down, not putting yourself in danger. Do you want to go to my house, Jacqueline?”

“Yeah. Now that you’re going to be there too.”

Then the three of them headed over there using their vampiric ability. It saved on driving a vehicle places!

When they went inside the house, Princess purred and rubbed up against Dane first, then Jacqueline. “You know you can be replaced,” Jacqueline said to her cat.

Dane chuckled.

“I take it that she’s your cat, Jacqueline,” Stacey said while Dane got them all glasses of water to drink.

“Yeah, but she has fallen totally in love with Dane.” Jacqueline sat down on the couch and Princess jumped onto her lap because Dane was putting the glasses of water on the coffee table.

Then Dane got a call. He put it on speakerphone.

“Hey, we’re almost done with talking with the police here. We’re letting Stacey have Vandenburg’s bounty. You and Jacqueline can split Romanoff’s bounty,” Matt said.

“No. We agreed we would split the bounties between us. We never know who we’re going to be taking down and we’re all at risk,” Dane said.

Stacey and Jacqueline agreed.

“All right. We’ll split the money when we get there. You can tell us what happened when we arrive,” Matt said.

“See you soon,” Dane said.

“Do you usually team up with a hunter to fight vampires?” Jacqueline asked Stacey.

“Uhm, I’m more of a lover than a fighter,” Stacey said.

“Of vampires?” Dane couldn’t help frowning. Not that some hunters hadn’t fallen in love with a vampire and even been turned to be with them forever, but they hadn’t been rogues and he could see how it could happen in some cases, like with Rachael falling in love with Adonis. Then again Adonis had been a hunter also.

“Uh, no, I mean with hunters. I don’t usually go on hunts all that often.”

Which explained how Stacey had been turned by a rogue vampire while making love with him, and not when she was engaging with one in combat.

“But you looked like you really had a handle on fighting,” Jacqueline said. “We wouldn’t have put you in the position of having to fight anyone if we had known you don’t like to hunt rogues down.”

“Oh, I’m fully qualified as a fighter. I love practicing fighting with a fellow hunter. My brother usually. And the thing of it is that once I was turned and had these special abilities, I felt changed about that too. Like I wanted to help the hunters’ cause, and I wanted to help the police take down the villains, and I wanted to help protect humans. It made me realize how ruthless rogue vampires are and how manipulative they can be,” Stacey said. “I think before that, I was kind of living in my own little bubble. Playing at being a hunter, until the vampire turned me.”

Then they heard two vehicles drive up and recognized they were Stacey’s car and Dane’s truck. Matt parked Dane’s truck in the garage and Trey parked Stacey’s car in the driveway, then Dane’s brothers all joined them in the house, everyone giving each other a hug for a job well done. Dane gave them glasses of water and then strawberry margaritas after that for all of them to celebrate.

“At least we took two down on my list,” Matt said, “though more than anything, I wished we could have taken down Jacqueline’s vampire.”

Everyone agreed.

Then Dane got a call from Zachary Bremerton, and he wondered if he’d heard Dane had been turned. Zach had and had been so distraught when he had been turned that he had wanted to die. But that had all changed for him when he met the huntress of his dreams. “Hey, I’m putting this on speakerphone. My brothers are all here and so are two of my friends who are huntresses who have likewise been turned, if that’s what you’re calling about.”

“Yeah. Adonis, Rachael, Pasha, Michael, Danai and I are back in Dallas, and we learned what had happened to you. How are you and the huntresses doing?” Zachary asked.

“Well, we kind of have a problem. Jacqueline’s maker is still alive.” That’s all Dane needed to say. Adonis had mated Zachary’s cousin, Rachael, and had been a hunter before he was turned. He couldn’t kill his maker either, who had been trying to force him to hand Rachael over to him, but with Zachary and other members of the family’s help, they had finally eliminated Adonis’s and his sister’s maker and rescued his parents and younger sister. But his older sister, Danai, was dating Zachary’s older brother, Michael. So Adonis and his older sister had known just how hard it was to be hunters who were turned and then forced to do their maker’s bidding.

“We’ll help you with this,” Zach said.

“Thanks,” Jacqueline said. “I’m Jacqueline and met Dane and Stacey at a group therapy meeting to deal with being hunters turned.”

“We heard about that too. We’ll be at the next meeting to share our experiences, though I think for the most part, we’re dealing with it the best way we can. But if we can speak about what happened to us, maybe it will help others to realize what we have become doesn’t have to be a curse,” Zachary said.

“We were talking about going to a hunters’ club and getting drinks and dancing,” Jacqueline said.

“We will be there to back them up,” Matt said.

Zachary laughed. “Well, we haven’t tried that since all this happened. We’ve been in Florida taking down rogue vampires for the family, so, yeah, sign us up. I’m sure Adonis and the rest of us would all be for it. What’s the worst that could happen? A bunch of narrow-minded hunters kick us out? Maybe someday we’ll have a club of our own. But until then, we’re still hunters, right?”

“That’s exactly what we were saying,” Dane said.

“Well, my family will be there backing us too and they have a lot of sway in Dallas,” Zachary said.

“Okay, we’ll make it a date. Though Jacqueline wants to wait until we take down her maker,” Dane said.

“We’ll help you with that too. What’s his name?” Zachary asked.

Dane said, “Heskel.”

“Hell, he was Piaras’s friend. When Rachael killed Piaras, she had ended the rogue vampire’s reign of terror. Piaras was the one who had turned Adonis and his older sister, Danai, and had wanted to turn Rachael to be his own mate. Heskel wasn’t at Piaras’s house when the hunters went there to eliminate him. It appears, Heskel didn’t have designs on Jacqueline, like Piaras had on Rachael, since the time that she was a youngster.”

“Yeah, she had killed Heskel’s twin brother, and he caught her at it. Instead of killing her, he turned her. We’ve tried twice to take him down, but he just vanishes before we can do it,” Dane said.

“We’ll add him to our list.”

“Okay, thanks. We can use all the help we can get on this,” Dane said.

“You’re welcome. We’ll talk soon.” Then Zachary and Dane ended the call.

“That’s great news about the other hunters helping us,” Jacqueline said. “I’ve never met Zachary or his family, but his family are well-known in Dallas.”

“Yeah, when some of them were turned, it really rocked the city. Some hunters still were their friends, and others dropped them,” Dane said.

“Like what had happened to us,” Jacqueline said.

“Oh, yeah, the same with me,” Stacey said, then finished her margarita. “Thanks for helping me take down my rogue.”

“Thanks to you for helping to take down one of our rogues,” Matt said.

“If you need any help with anyone else, Stacey, just give me a call,” Jacqueline said.

“Thanks. I will.” But Stacey glanced at Dane as if she fully intended to call on him, not Jacqueline. “Oh, and if you get an idea where Heskel might be, call me and I’ll go with you. We have to free Jacqueline of the curse.”

“Do you need one of us to follow you home so you get their safely?” Trey asked.

“No, I’m good, thanks so much!” Then Stacey gave everyone a hug, Jacqueline last, of course, and then she left.