The II AM Trilogy (Book 2): Blood Hunt Read online

  Tori looked back, unflinching, saddened by the knowledge that the changes within her must be hurting and confusing her mother, but unwilling to divulge what had happened, how she had become what she now was. At last, Mona dropped her gaze and nodded.

  “Good night, dear,” she said to the girl who had once been her daughter. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Mom,” Tori said. She moved backward, and let the door close with a small thump. She turned the lock mechanism, moved to her window, opened it and lit a cigarette. From the hallway she heard her mother sigh and shuffle off, making her way back to bed.

  * * *

  Tori worked in a nondescript industrial park in Lima, Ohio as an administrative assistant for a dentist, and her job seemed to her the epitome of everything that was wrong with her life in this place. It was boring, slow-paced, unchallenging, and meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Patients came in. Tori retrieved their files. The doctor checked their teeth. Tori marked down their next appointment date, filed the papers, moved on to the next patient. This kept her busy for perhaps twenty minutes out of every hour.

  Most of her time was spent sitting at her desk, answering phone calls and playing solitaire on the single computer in the office, waiting for her next cigarette break. The doctor frowned on the smoking, of course. Tori supposed this was hardly surprising, coming from someone who cleaned teeth for a living, but she also knew that she was better at the job than any of the previous girls he had employed, and probably nicer to look at. She felt safe for the time being, if not content. The job paid her few expenses, bought her booze and cigarettes, and provided a reason to get out of the house and away from her parents. What else was there?

  Her father had asked her, once, when Mona was out of earshot, if Tori had ever thought about returning to college. She had been a student in good standing at Syracuse University before her disappearance. They would likely take her back. Did that still interest her?

  Tori had sighed, frowned, shrugged. Did it interest her? No. She had spent her two years there cheerleading, taking liberal arts courses, and dating a nice young finance major. She had no further interest in cheerleading, could not think of a single course of study that would hold her attention, and the finance major was now thirty-five years old, divorced, and living with a mistress just over half his age in Manhattan. Besides, Mona would have a heart attack if Tori announced any intention to return to the school from which she had been abducted. Why spend the money? Why deal with the stress? Why bother? There was no point.

  Tori wished sometimes that she could explain her ennui. She wished she could articulate the feeling of desperate, hopeless, helpless apathy that seemed to have consumed her since Two’s return to New York. She was here, going through her days mostly by rote, her only real escape the assortment of bars downtown, located not far from I-75 and a reliable source of new, anonymous partners with whom to spend the night.

  She didn’t know how to put it into words, this feeling, heavy like a weight around her neck. Nor could she think of any means of escape. She suspected that moving to New York, though the most obvious course of action, would only leave her equally empty and many times as broke. Two was there, and perhaps that was something, but when Tori thought of seeing her friend again some indescribable feeling, half-hidden, impossible to identify or understand, welled up inside her in protest. At these times, faced with this sudden pain that she wished neither to contemplate nor comprehend, Tori would simply turn her thoughts to other matters.

  She was on break now, sitting outside in the early September warmth, smoking a cigarette and purposefully not-thinking about these things. Sometimes there were other people out there, in the space between her building and the one next door, smoking and chatting. Sometimes Tori would have to make small talk, a process that did little more than frustrate her. Today there was no one, and that was good. She sat on a stone bench, staring up at the sky, smoking and trying not to think at all.

  Nan pareson sa, the voice said at the back of her mind, and Tori barely noticed it. This was more common than the blast that had knocked away her senses at the motel earlier that morning, and Tori had become used to it. She supposed she should be more concerned about hearing phantom voices, even when they were quiet. Tori supposed she should be more concerned about a lot of things.

  Nan Kefaleson sa. Nan effriteson sa. Nan afalmeson sa iae vilestro cheo tuvi kashituvre ma vishtati a nav.

  Nonsense words in her head, and that crawling feeling of being watched. She had investigated this sensation in the past. It was this, more than the voices, that made her uncomfortable … this feeling of eyes crawling over her, appraising her. It was not like being at the bar. Tori was used to having her breasts stared at, or her legs, or her rear. This feeling was similar but not the same. Greedy and covetous, but not sexual. Whoever was coveting her wanted her for some other purpose.

  She had spent time searching, but if someone was out there watching her she had been unable to find them, and eventually Tori had given up looking. If schizophrenia was a side effect of all the changes vampirism had wrought on her body, there was little to be done about it.

  She smoked the cigarette down to the filter in just a few short minutes, wanting to be away from the sensation. The voices were usually weaker indoors, and the feeling of being watched usually left her entirely. She felt a wave of relief and grim humor as she escaped back into the confines of the office building that she had so recently been desperate to leave. Upstairs, a half-finished game of solitaire was waiting for her.

  * * *

  Her father was out in their back yard grilling steaks when Tori arrived home. She could smell potatoes baking in the oven, and a large pot of corn ears was steaming on the stovetop. Tori glanced out through the screen door, watching her father tend the grill for a moment, then grabbed two bottles of beer from the fridge. She opened both and brought them with her out to the yard. The mid-September air was warm, but there was a scent of autumn on the breeze.

  “Hi, Daddy,” she said, holding a beer out for him. He turned and smiled. Tori took her height from Jim, and her blue eyes. His hair, once brown, was now mostly grey. Two years away from sixty, her father was still in reasonable shape, with a broad chest and only the slightest hint of a belly. He was wearing a battered pair of jeans and a grey mechanic’s shirt.

  “Thanks, sweetheart. How was work?”

  Tori shrugged. “Same old, same old. You?”

  He smiled. “Still got a job. Can’t complain.”

  The economy in Lima and the surrounding area had been on a downward slide for several months. Many people had been fired, laid off, or transferred. Still more had simply moved on, looking for other opportunities. Tori’s father worked for a plant on the outskirts of the city that manufactured tanks for the military. He spent most of his time maintaining Cold War–era electronics that there was no money to upgrade. It was a relatively safe, stable job, and Tori hoped it would last until he could retire.

  “I suppose that’s the truth,” she said, and she sipped at her beer. It still felt strange drinking around her father, like she was getting away with something she wasn’t supposed to do.

  “Your mother said you came in late last night.”

  Jim’s back was to her, so Tori couldn’t read his expression. She grimaced, then took another drink, opting not to respond to the statement.

  “Don’t want to talk about it?” Jim asked, after her silence made it obvious that no reply was forthcoming.

  “Not really.”

  “We worry about you, hon.”

  Tori sighed. Why did people always ask if you wanted to talk about something, when they were going to push on regardless of your answer?

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” she told him. “I’m a big girl. Believe me, I can take care of myself.”

  “That may be true, but you’re still young—”

  “I’m thirty-three.”

  “No, you are not.” Jim’s voice betrayed unexp
ected tension. There was silence again for a moment, and then her father continued.

  “You’re not thirty-three. You’re twenty-one, the same as you were when … when you disappeared. I don’t know why, and I don’t know how, but don’t stand here and deny what I can see perfectly well. I know what thirty-three looks like, what it sounds like, what it acts like. You’re the same girl who went away to her junior year at SU and disappeared.”

  “Not the same girl …” Tori managed to keep her voice subdued.

  Jim sighed, the sound curiously broken. Defeated. “No, I suppose not.”

  “Do you believe I’m your daughter?”

  “Yes. I … yes.”

  Tori shrugged. “I don’t know what else I can do for you, Daddy. I am your daughter … but not the same one that I was. You say I’m the same girl, that I haven’t changed or grown, but that’s not really true. Just because I look the same doesn’t mean I’m the same inside.”

  Jim sighed again, drank his beer, refused to meet her eyes.

  “Did you like the other girl better? Is that what this is about?”

  She wouldn’t have been shocked if the answer was yes. Sad, perhaps, but not shocked. She knew that Mona liked the other girl, the Tori who had earned a letter on the cheerleading team in high school, much more than this one that had returned to her.

  Jim shook his head. “No, Tori, that’s not what this is about. I loved you then, and I love you now, different or not. It’s just … we’re so confused, Tori. We’re worried about you, about how you’re living, about what could’ve changed you like this and still somehow kept you the same.”

  “I told you, I don’t know. Two found me wandering around in New York. I don’t remember anything.”

  Jim looked up now, meeting her gaze. “If you could say that to me without looking away, I might have an easier time believing it, but you never have.”

  Tori considered trying, right there, but knew she would fail. She was not the same girl she had once been, but some things hadn’t changed. She had never been able to look her father in the eyes and lie to him.

  “Daddy …”

  “Why can’t you tell us the truth, Tori? That’s all we want. I don’t care what it is – I’ll support you through anything, and I hope you know that.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why lie? Or if you’re not lying, why hide so much? Why avoid so many questions?”

  Tori looked away. “You would never in a million years believe the truth.”

  “Try me.”

  “No.”

  Jim put his beer down and sat on the edge of the picnic table, pressing his palms against his head in frustration. His breathing was haggard; dry and weary. Tori felt like crying. She turned her back to him.

  “I think maybe I should move out,” she said, hating the shakiness in her voice. She hoped that Jim couldn’t hear it, that he wouldn’t try to use it against her to get the truth. It would only hurt them both. She would never tell him about Abraham, about Theroen and Melissa. She would never tell him about the things she had done, the things that she still sometimes did in dreams and memories and fantasies she refused to even acknowledge.

  “Tori … “

  “No, listen. I think it’s too much stress, having me right here on top of you like this after so many years away. Too much stress for you, too much stress for me. I can’t tell you! I can’t. If you won’t accept that, and won’t believe what Two and I told you from the start, then maybe it would be better not to have me here reminding you every day.”

  “I already lost my daughter once … you’re going to go away again so soon? Where will you go?”

  “I don’t know. Columbus, maybe. Or Chicago. Or … or New York.”

  “What is there for you in New York?”

  “Two is in New York. She has a life there. She’d help me get started. Your steaks are burning.”

  Jim stood up, flipped them over, drank again from his bottle of beer. “Two. So she’s stealing you away from us again?”

  The feeling of tears was gone in an instant. Tori turned on her father, furious. “Don’t you ever accuse her of that. She had nothing to do with that.”

  “How would I know? All I’ve heard from either of you, about who she is or where she came from, is lies.”

  “She saved my life. She believed in me when anyone else would’ve given up; when everyone else had given up. Do you think I’m different now? You have no idea who I was, what I did, how I lived. You have no idea. Don’t you dare blame that on Two.”

  “I don’t know who else to blame.”

  “Why do you need someone to blame?”

  Jim raised his voice for the first time in the conversation, shouting in frustration. “Someone took my daughter away from me!”

  They stood in silence for a moment, and then Jim shook his head. When he spoke, he was under control again.

  “Twelve years, Tori. It may not matter to you … those years seem to have passed you by, but that’s almost twenty percent of my life. I’m going to die sooner or later, and I’ll have missed twelve years of watching my daughter grow, and change, and live. I can’t ever have those back. They’re gone. That’s why I need someone to blame. I can’t blame you, and you won’t let me blame Two. You won’t tell me anything else. All I have left is blaming myself for letting you go away in the first place.”

  Tori felt her emotions turn again, this time as a physical force, something that pulled and tore at her. She shuddered, sat down next to her father, took his hand. “Daddy, no. It’s not your fault. What happened to me … it’s like getting hit by lightning.”

  Jim looked at her again. Tori could read concern, and care, and anger, naked there on his face. “At least with the lightning, I’d know what happened.”

  “And I’d be dead. Which is better? Me alive and you not knowing what happened … or the alternative?”

  “You know the answer,” Jim said.

  “Yes. But my staying here is driving you and mom crazy. It’s … not doing great things for me either. It’s probably best that I go.”

  “Have you talked to your mother about this?”

  Tori laughed, though the sound carried little real humor. “You think our discussions are tense? She and I don’t know how to talk to each other anymore. Not like we used to.”

  Jim nodded, standing in silence, considering.

  “Take some time to think it over,” he said at last.

  “I will. I only really started considering it a day or two ago. I might call Two, ask her what she thinks.”

  She saw her father stiffen a bit at this, but he said nothing. Tori stood up.

  “It’s really not her fault. I don’t know if you’ll ever believe that, but it’s the truth. The only thing Two’s ever done that’s hurt me was when she left me here, and I know why she did that.”

  “She knew you belonged here.”

  Tori grimaced, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. “Temporarily, yes. Not forever. Whether I’m thirty-three or twenty-one, I can’t live here forever.”

  Jim pulled the steaks off the grill and put them on a plate. “Let’s eat,” he said, without much enthusiasm.

  “Will you tell Mom? About me maybe moving out? I don’t think I can … not without fighting with her anyway.”

  “If you want me to, I will.”

  “OK. Daddy?”

  “Yes, sweetheart?”

  Tori gave him the best smile she could muster, but she knew it had come out sad and weak. She could see in her father’s eyes that it hurt him to look at it, and thought she knew why; it was exactly the sort of expression that the old Tori could never have made.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Jim returned her sad smile, shook his head, and glanced toward the screen door that led into the house. “There’s nothing to apologize for, baby. Let’s eat.”

  * * *

  Dinner had been a silent affair for the most part, and Tori was glad to be done with it. Mona had returne
d from a trip to the grocery store, and had busied herself preparing vegetables. As Tori and Jim entered, she had looked at her husband, and Tori had read the glance like a highway road sign. The talk had been expected, and Mona had left them alone for that reason.

  Tori had braced herself for a flood of questions, but none came. Instead, there had been a few attempts at light conversation, but nothing sustained. Tori had excused herself after a helping of steak and a small potato. As she walked up the hall, she could hear the soft clink of silverware as her parents resumed eating, still not saying anything. She assumed they were waiting until she was out of earshot, or out of the house entirely.

  Chalk one up for Mona, she thought now, changing out of her work clothes and into a comfortable pair of jeans. Her mother was a sweet woman, but rarely knew when to keep her mouth shut.

  She could hear her parents murmuring and might have been able to piece together individual words if she tried. It didn’t matter. In the long run, she knew she was right, and her father knew it, too. Mona might never understand it, but there was little that could be done to prevent it.

  Tori sat at her computer, idly browsing websites, trying to ignore the noises of her parents’ conversation. She had, for a time, looked carefully for websites relating to vampires, but it had rapidly become apparent that if there were any to be found, they were careful not to reveal it. Most of the people she found claiming to be creatures of the night were little more than angst-riddled teenagers. Of the very few who had sounded halfway serious, all had proven ignorant of a simple test, a single sentence, sent by email.

  “I know the Eresh-Chen,” she had told them, and not one of them had responded with anything other than puzzled curiosity. Tori knew little of vampire society, but even in her previous, animalistic state, she had picked up enough to know that this was important. Theroen’s blood, passed on to Two, had meant something. A real vampire would have known that the term existed, if nothing else. A real vampire would have responded with more than confusion.