Vampire Apocalypse (The Arcadia Falls Chronicles #3) (3 page)

“
Victory!” he hollered back
at me.

I stepped into the water and felt my
body start to cool down immediately. Oh, it felt so good. The heat
was awful this time of year. “You won’t be feeling that victory for
long, hunter boy,” I called out as I waded deeper into the
lake.

His grin spread even wider when he
reached out and swept his hand across the water, causing a
wave-like splash to spray up around him. “Challenge
accepted.”

I dived down underneath the brisk
water, feeling totally rejuvenated as the lake enveloped my entire
body.

Okay, so maybe swimming wasn’t such a
bad idea after all.

I emerged at the surface and looked
around. Drew seemed to have disappeared. “Drew?” I treaded water
while turning myself at the same time. “Where are you?”

My heart began to beat faster. What if
there were vampires out here? The idea that they were was highly
likely because they came out to our place all the time … so why
wouldn’t they be roaming around the woods?

“
Drew!” I called again more
urgently. “Answer me.”

Suddenly, something grabbed my foot
and yanked me under. I opened my mouth to scream, but only had time
to release a yelp before I was dragged—gurgling water—below the
surface of the lake.

I kicked my feet viciously, trying to
break loose from the attacker’s grip. He had a firm hold on my
ankles, and no matter how hard I kicked I couldn’t get free. Water
forced its way down my throat and up my nose. Oh my God, I was
going to die from drowning. I’m a freaking vampire hunter and I’m
going to drown to death. Never saw that one coming.

Then, as suddenly as the attacker had
grabbed me, they let go. I waved my arms and kicked my feet,
pushing my way to the surface while calling on my fire at the same
time. I broke the surface with my hands first, and let loose the
streams of fire … not caring where they went, but hoping it hit the
target somehow.

My head came up out of the water next
and I simultaneously gasped for air and fired another stream of
flames all around me.

“
Chloe! Stop!”

It was Drew. He was all
right!

I sputtered, choking nasty lake water
out of my mouth. “Are you all right? Drew … someone … they had me.”
I couldn’t make anything very coherent and shot away, swimming for
shore as fast as I could.

Not a minute later I hit the shallow
water. My feet connected with the pebbles on the bottom of the lake
and I lunged for my weapons, grabbed a forty five, and aimed it out
at the water.

Drew was right behind me. “Relax,
Chloe. It was me. All right, it was just me.”

I lowered my gun. “Are you insane?
Seriously, why would you do something like that?”

“
I was just fooling
around.” He moved to put his arm around me and I jerked out of the
way.

“
That was wrong,
Drew.”

“
Chloe, you need to calm
down.”

“
You tried to drown
me!”

Frustrated, he marched off in the
direction of where he’d left his clothes. “Look at how you’re
acting. You have to loosen up and stop being so serious about
everything all of the time. You have become so high strung that you
can’t even joke around anymore.”

I blew a raspberry at him and picked
up the rest of my weapons. “Sure, like you have any room to talk,
Mr. Serious. You never joke around. Oh, wait, until the vampire
apocalypse started … now you’re chock full of fun.”

He glared at me with his cool green
eyes and released a noise that sounded similar to a growl. “Settle
down,” he ordered.

I had no intention of settling
down.

“
People die, Drew!
People
are
dying!
How can I possibly set that aside to make jokes and have fun? This
is all my fault and I have to do everything I can to fix it. I
don’t know why you can’t understand that.”

He dropped his clothes on the ground
again and marched toward me. “Chloe. You are being too hard on
yourself. This ... all of the responsibility that you are putting
on yourself is hardening you, and you’re only a fraction of the
person you used to be.”

I slid my clothes on over my bathing
suit while he spoke. “I am a Hunter and that is what I need to do.
I can’t relax until we fix this problem.”

“
What if we can’t fix it,
Chloe?”

“
Then I guess I’ll never be
the same person I was.” I strapped on my holster, as well as my bow
and quiver, and headed for the trail, leaving Drew behind me. The
branches grabbed at my clothes as I hurried back to the truck. I
just wanted to kill some vampires and try to remedy the problems
I’d caused.

Back at the truck, I waited for Drew.
After a few minutes, he emerged from within the trees, fully
dressed and looking solemn. Suddenly I felt bad; I didn’t mean to
bring him down when he was only trying to help me.

He opened the driver’s side door and
slid behind the wheel without even sparing a glance at me. With a
turn of the key, the truck roared to life and he shot off down the
minuscule dirt road, much faster than he had gone when we came
in.

“
Drew, I know you want the
best for me, but I just can’t force myself to feel a different way.
Please … please, bear with me through this.”

He kept his eyes on the road, still
not looking at me. “Chloe, I’m always going to be there for you.
You are a fighter at heart. You are moody, snarky, and throw
childish fits when you don’t get your way … and I love all of those
things about you.”

Heart melting.

He continued, “I just want to help you
because I’m afraid of what you are becoming. But, know this … I
will never, ever abandon you simply because you are going through a
hard time emotionally. I, of all people, know what it’s like to
shut myself off from the world and focus on one thing. You are the
one who breathed life into me. Before you, there was only the other
Hunters, training, and killing vampires. I found light in you and
now I see that light slowly dimming.”

Talk about making a girl feel
bad.

“
Drew—”

He shook his head. “Let me finish. I
just want you to try not to be so hard on yourself. All
right?”

Tears stung the corners of my eyes as
they tried to break free. Why was it that he always did this to me?
I knew I was becoming hard, but I had to keep going with the
mission. I thought he, of all people, would understand
that.

In the end, all I said in response to
his beautiful words was a choked, “I promise to try.”

“
Good.” He nodded his head
in confirmation.

~~***~~

We drove into the city a couple of
hours before sundown and people were already bustling through the
streets, trying to get their supplies before the sun went down and
the vampires took over the city. It was a sad, sad sight to see.
These innocent people had no idea if they would survive the
night.

When the vampires first went public,
it was a blood bath. A lot of people died in a horrible massacre on
the city, and another city after that, and another after that …
until the entire United States was dealing with a vampire
epidemic.

We’d heard from Hunters in other
countries that the problem was not limited to the United States;
they were also infested with insane amounts of new
vampires.

After the initial murders, thousands
were left dead in the streets and even more were turned. Each
morning when the sun rose, people would leave their homes to go in
search of a loved one who hadn’t come home the night before. With
any luck, they would find who they were looking for amongst the
bodies the vampires left scattered throughout the city.

One morning, the whole group and I had
finished a particularly gruesome fight. We stayed in the city until
the sun came up and witnessed the morning ritual. Watching people
wander through the sea of bodies, looking for someone, but hoping
they didn’t find them dead, was probably the most emotional thing
I’d seen since the first killings of the vampire apocalypse. Also,
they knew that if they didn’t find them, there was a huge chance
they had been turned.

Too freaking sad.

The one problem that Dahlia seemed to
be having with her plan for vampires to take over was the sheer
blood lust of the newborns. They killed almost every single person
they fed from. If they kept killing people, as well as turning them
into vampires, there wouldn’t be any food source left for them,
which would put kind of a dent in her plan for world
domination.

Pulling myself back into the present,
I shoved the memories of the morning ritual and Dahlia out of my
mind and concentrated on the streets.

“
Let’s park here.” Drew
pulled into a grocery store parking lot where there were a lot of
cars, which were probably abandoned or left because the owners were
killed.

When he came to a stop between a
minivan and a VW Bug, he killed the engine and leaned toward me.
“Wait,” he demanded.

About to pull the door handle, I
paused. He reached out, taking my face in both of his hands, but he
didn’t say anything more, like I’d expected him to. He simply
pulled me in and placed a soft kiss on my lips.

I felt my heart skip and my stomach
flutter as it always did when we kissed. The heat began in my toes
and fingertips as my body responded to the stimulation of contact.
When he pulled away, I reached up and wound both of my arms around
his neck, pulling our bodies even closer together for another, much
longer, kiss. I felt his hand work its way into my hair and his
other rested on my thigh.

He broke contact first, moving away
until his face was only an inch from mine and he was staring into
my eyes. The green in his eyes was always so intense. When he was
mad, they were icy, and when he was happy, they were twinkling. At
that moment they were twinkling. “You ready to go kick some ass?”
he asked.

That was my Drew! How could I resist a
man who had such a way with words?

I leaned away and reached for the door
handle. “You know I am. Let’s hit it.” I jumped down out of the
truck and adjusted my holster because it had ridden up while I was
sitting in the truck.

After I was situated, I hurried around
to the front of the line of vehicles and found Drew scanning the
buildings. “Do you want to go high or low today?” he
inquired.

Decisions, decisions. Up high was good
because we could pick them off from a distance, but on the other
hand they could attack and trap us, leaving us nowhere to go. Low
had its advantages and disadvantages as well. On the streets there
was a lot more contact with the vampires, but we also saved a lot
more people being on the ground. That thought alone pretty much
made up my mind; keeping people safe is why we did what we did in
the first place. “I’m not sure yet, let’s see what we find,” I told
him as my gaze moved over the commotion surrounding us.

Most of the shops in the city had long
since been abandoned, so what was considered gathering supplies was
actually looting. During the day, the city was pretty much a free
for all … except for the human law enforcement. They weren’t on our
side anymore, though; the vampires had control of them and anyone
was at their mercy if they were not pledged.

At night, people ran and hid, hoping
that they wouldn’t be found.

A new order was being established. Not
just in our city, but the entire country … maybe even the
world.

It probably wouldn’t be long before
the vampires cut the electricity to drive the humans out of hiding.
Already, a vampire mayor had been appointed and a televised
announcement had been broadcasted into every home and every radio
station.

For a few moments I became lost in
thought again as I remembered seeing my nightmares come to life.
The male vampire with glowing blue eyes and dark brown hair had
appeared behind a podium set up in front of city hall. He had
several vampires in suits standing behind him like they were
freakin’ secret service agents or something. They even had their
dark sunglasses on to perfect the look.

The vampire at the podium had cleared
his throat and spoke into the microphone. “Members of this
community, as you surely know by now, the debate concerning the
historical legends and whether vampires exist or not has finally
been settled. The truth is right in front of you … I am a vampire,
and we do, indeed, exist.

“
Now, onto the subject at
hand. I have been chosen to represent this fine city. With that
responsibility, changes must be made. These changes are being made
in every state, every city, and every county all over the United
States. Therefore, leaving town will do you no good, you will face
the new laws wherever you go.

“
At this moment, a bit of
chaos is taking place, but we are working hard to establish order
once again. To achieve order, the changes I spoke of before must be
put into place and obeyed. The changes will be made within the next
few months and years. But, to begin with, we have a few laws which
are going into effect immediately.