Almost Human (2 page)

“She was turned by Misha.”

“Misha? Like of the three brothers that
decimated Europe in the middle ages? Murdered great grandmother
Sherra, among others?”

“Yes. If they’d been smart, they would have
murdered her children. Celebrate their stupidity, and make the kill
in the name of our ancestors. Don’t fail me, Daughter.” She hung
up.

“Well, what a wealth of information you
were”. But she’d told me all I needed to know. I could find out
from my sources where the infamous band of brothers lived.

They weren’t incredibly old compared to most
vampires, but they were damned skilled. The rumors about them were
ridiculous, claiming they had a body count that rivaled the Black
Death.

It would be hard to kill her if they
protected her. I needed to kill them all, because I planned to kill
Misha, too. The brothers would definitely come after me if I even
attempted that. It was best to take them all out. It wasn’t going
to be an easy feat either. I would have to get them alone and
surprise them.

I changed clothes quickly before going to my
weapons locker. I unlocked it and started filling my suitcase with
everything from guns to swords to pocketknives. Guns weren’t
terribly effective on vampires unless you got in a head shot, but
they would slow one down…or really piss it off. The best way to
kill a vamp was to behead it. If the thing was old enough, it could
heal a dagger to the heart.

I zipped the suitcase and collapsed across
it. My sister was dead. I hadn’t been able to save her. But then,
had I ever saved anyone? Our father was dead. Casey’s twin had
never been found, but it was assumed that she was dead. Vampires
weren’t likely to keep a sickly eight year old alive. She would be
seventeen by now.

A tear trickled down my cheek and I swiped
at it angrily. The McCormic witches didn’t cry. The McCormic
witches didn’t feel anything. But then, I’d never been like the
rest of the family. My mother must have been proud. One dead
daughter, one vampire daughter, and one weak, emotional, royal fuck
up.

I shook my head and pushed myself off the
luggage. There was time for self pity and debilitating grief later.
Right now I needed to load up the car and head home. Or Hell,
depending on how you saw it.

Five in the morning is an un-Godly hour when
you started driving at nine the morning before. Then again, when
you’d been in the car that long, every minute is unbearable, even
with the small exercises I did while I drove. I pulled into Astra’s
front yard and parked the car.

I’d called her to tell her I would be in the
area and she insisted I stay with her. She knew exactly how well I
got along with my mother.

I’d trained her to hunt vampires in college
after they had slaughtered her parents. She was one of my best
friends, and eternally grateful that I’d taught her to fight.

She was an odd duck. She lived with most of
her hunting party, which was incredibly fun, but unheard of. She’d
inherited a lot of money, and several properties, so she could
afford to devote her entire existence to hunting and she could take
in the extra houseguests. She also had split a few bounties with me
when I needed a partner in crime.

If I needed help, she would have my
back.

There was no one else in the driveway. They
were probably on their way back from hunting.

I pulled my suitcase out of the backseat and
walked up the porch steps. I was looking for the porcelain frog
that contained the key when a battered, red truck came barreling
down the driveway, gravel spinning in its wake. The bed of the
pickup was packed with boisterous vampire hunters.

They were a disheveled group, streaked with
blood and dirt. They were battered from the fighting and passing
around a bottle of liquor. There was a chorus of shouts and
whistles when they spotted me.

The truck came to a screeching halt that
made me question the driver’s sanity. A cloud of dirt drifted over
the porch. Hunters bailed out from all sides. Questions started
firing.

“Kori. How have you been?”

“Making the big bucks?”

“Made any awesome kills lately?”

“We brought food.”

Astra’s lithe, ebony body slid through the
mass of hunters. “Chill boys and girls. Let Kori catch her breath
and get some food. Go on, inside.”

She squealed and threw her arms around me.
“It’s been a long time.”

“I’ve missed you, too.”

She released me and pulled her large white
windbreaker back onto her shoulders before squeezing my hands.
“Sorry about Casey. I know you loved her.”

I raked my hand through my hair. “Yeah.
I…”

Astra shot me a sad smile. “You don’t have
to talk about it. I remember the feeling.”

She slung an arm over my shoulder. “So, when
are we going in?”

“Uh, we aren’t. Tonight I’ll go on a little
reconnaissance mission and then I’ll come up with a plan.”

She shook her head. “Nope. I don’t care if
you’re only going on a little fact-finding tour, you need back up,
and I’m going with you. You can’t talk me out of it, so don’t even
try.”

I sighed. “I guess it would be nice to have
back up for once. I don’t hunt with a party anymore. If I get neck
deep in shit, then I have to dig out of it myself.”

Astra clapped me on the back. “Good girl.
You didn’t argue nearly as much as I thought you would. Now, let’s
go get some sleep. Hopefully the children are done partying.”

* * * *

That afternoon Astra and I sat around
discussing tonight’s party. “Okay, here’s how it’s going to go.
We’re only looking for information, unless we can kill Alaric or
one of his brothers. I’ll give you the signal if I go in for the
kill. You need to get away as quickly as possible if I do.”

She cut me off. “I know the drill. We signal
each other so everyone escapes. The hunter who bags a vampire needs
to worry about getting herself out, not her companions. This isn’t
my first barbecue, Kori.”

Sometimes I still thought of Astra as the
teenager she had been before her parents were killed by vampires.
She’d been bright and happy. She loved her studies and couldn’t
wait to become a surgeon. She had been truly devoted to saving
lives.

When they were killed, she became a
frightened woman who had seen too much. She had been alone and
feeling powerless against the monsters she knew existed.

I wished she’d go back to that happy girl
I’d known before she got herself killed.

“You should go back to school, Astra. Get
out before you die. You got the vampires that killed your parents.
It’s over.” My voice sounded hollow to my own ears. It was a wasted
speech.

Astra frowned at me. “I don’t think I could
ever go back to a normal life. Knowing what’s out there changes
you. You don’t understand. You grew up knowing all this crazy shit.
I like killing vampires. I’m saving people.”

“You’d save people being a surgeon,
too.”

She rolled her eyes and tried to be
nonchalant, but I could see the tension in her body. “Can we drop
this, please?”

“No, we sure as hell can’t.” I bit out
through clenched teeth.

She jumped to her feet and walked away from
me. She rotated her shoulders, as if she was trying to get the
muscles to loosen up. “What’s causing this sudden concern anyway?
You’ve always supported me. The more people killing vamps the
better.”

“I don’t know. I guess my sister is causing
it. Hell, Pagan got turned about two months back.”

Astra swung around to face me. “Good, God.
But she was the best.”

“Damn right. Hell, she was better than me.
It didn’t save her, though. Nothing saves you. We are destined to
die young. Probably slowly and as painfully as possible.”

Astra’s eyes got so wide I thought they
would pop out of her skull. “Geez, Kori, you can’t go into battle
thinking like that, you’ll lose.”

“Mindset doesn’t matter. Eventually I’ll die
anyway. I can feel it. Death is close.” I had no idea where the
words came from, but somehow I knew they were true.

“Bullshit. Mindset is everything. And you
can’t know you’re going to die. Precognition isn’t one of your
gifts.”

I shook myself mentally and plastered a fake
smile on my face. “I’m sorry. You’re right, of course. I’m upset
about Casey. I can’t believe I lost another sister to those
things.”

Casey’s twin Tahira had been kidnapped by
vampires with our father when she was eight. Our father’s body had
been dumped, but we’d never found Tahira. At least I knew where
Casey was, and what had become of her.

“You can take that Barbie smile off your
face. I know it’s fake. And you could never look that air headed
without practice.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I think I’m going
to talk to my mother. Find out what the monsters look like, where
they live, et cetera.”

Astra’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you dare go
hunting vampires without me.”

“I won’t. Priscilla probably doesn’t know
where they live anyway. We’ll probably have to go trolling the
parties or bars to find them.

* * * *

I knocked on the door of my mother’s large
house. She was probably asleep, but too damned bad. I couldn’t
sleep, so I would get the answers to my questions now.

The door swung open so hard it bounced off
the wall and almost closed again. I nudged it back open with my
foot and stepped through the threshold. Dang, she must have been
pissed to open the door with her magic.

“Priscilla?” I called, and then remembered
myself. “Mom?” She always hated it when I called her by her given
name. She also hated it when I called her
Mother
. In spite
of being the coldest bitch I’d ever met, she wanted me to act as if
she’d been a loving parent.

I rounded the corner and saw her coming down
the stairs. She was pale and sweating. She descended slowly as if
she was in pain, and she gripped the banister for dear life.

I rushed to the foot of the stairs to help
her down the last few steps. When I touched her, a shiver went down
my spine. Every hair stood up on my body. Every sense I had
whispered,
evil.
I tried to ignore it. As far as I knew
there was no reason to have such a feeling.

“Mother, are you all right?”

She shook me off and moved away. Her lips
curled back into a snarl. “I’m fine. What the hell are you doing
here this early?”

I wiped my tingling palms on my jeans. It
felt like I’d dirtied them. “I…” My voice died in my throat and I
had to shake myself and begin again. “I came to find out as much
about the vampires that killed Casey as you can tell me. What they
look like, where they live. Anything.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re so incompetent.
Can’t you figure anything out for yourself?”

Whoa, my mother was rude, but not usually
this rude. There had to be something seriously wrong. She continued
before I could get a word in.

“They are three brothers. All blond. They
will all be surrounding your sister, and that’s how you’ll know
them. They all love her. She’s probably involved in all kinds of
debauchery with them. It would certainly be like her to become a
whore for the undead.”

For a second all I could do was gape at her.
“Mother, I seriously doubt that. Casey was a virgin before she met
this vampire, and she’s a bit of a prude.”

She sneered at me. “So she told you, anyway.
Besides, it doesn’t matter what she was as a human. Now she has no
soul. The thing that inhabits her body is nothing like her.”

I quickly changed the subject. I didn’t need
a five thousand-word lecture on things I already knew.

“Mom, is there anything else you can tell me
about them?”

“You might want to keep your eye on the
oldest. He has the long hair, his eyebrow is pierced. He fights
well. I almost didn’t make it out of the battle with him. As for
their location, you’ll have to scope parties or that damned bar all
the freaks frequent and pray you find them.”

She swayed and caught herself on the arm of
the couch.

“Mother, are you sure you’re all right?”

She snarled. “I’m fine, damn it. I’m just
tired. You shouldn’t have barged in here at ten in the morning.
I’ve been out hunting all night.”

I nibbled my bottom lip and turned to leave.
She grabbed my arm and dug her nails into it.

“Ouch, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“You kill your whore of a sister, not just
the men she’s running with. Do you understand me?” She seized my
face between her palms and a wave of agony rolled through my head
at the sheer malice of the power I could feel coming from her. “She
is no longer your sister. Don’t fail me.”

I jerked my face out of her hands and
stumbled away. I tried to shake off the heebie-jeebies and my
massive, new headache. “Fine. Shit, you made your point. You didn’t
have to grab me. I understand what’s going on.”

I turned and rushed out of the house. I shut
the door behind me and leaned against it. Nothing had ever gotten
my powers so riled up, not even a vampire. I clawed at my skin to
try and get it to stop itching.

I knew one thing. My mother had recently
been in contact with some powerfully evil magic. There was no other
explanation. I took a deep breath and pushed myself off the
door.

She had probably killed something evil. That
could leave a person feeling off for days and give them the stench
of malice.

The hair on the back of my neck stood at
attention again. I was being watched. I glanced back at the house
and the curtains of the guest room fell back into place.

Then again, messing with dark magic could
also leave the scent of evil on you.

I decided to deal with one crisis at a time.
Whatever dark arts my mother was screwing with could wait. Today it
was time to deal with my vampire problem. Unfortunately, that was
easier said than done.