Hunter Trials (The Vampire Legacy Book 2) Read online

  The Vampire Legacy

  HUNTER TRIALS

  RITA STRADLING

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents and places are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Rita Stradling

  Copy edited by Serious Moonlight Editing

  Proofread by Stories Matter Editing

  Cover Art by German Creative

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit this book in any form or by any means. For subsidiary rights please contact the author.

  Email: [email protected]

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  Hunter Trials

  PROLOGUE

  Justin Roberts

  Blood pumped in my ears as I held a crossbow up and aimed it around the old condemned house. The night was so quiet that every single move I made seemed to echo through the space. If there was a vampire in here with me, they knew exactly where I was. I felt exposed, like I had a big red target painted on my neck, and I backed toward the graffiti decorated wall, my boots crunching over the glass shards that littered the cracked linoleum.

  Moonlight spilled in from a shattered window, but it did little to illuminate the dilapidated space. It hadn’t even been a month since my girlfriend January moved out of this hovel and into my family’s garage apartment, but the condemned house looked like it had been abandoned for years. A sickly-sweet odor permeated the space, smelling like a decaying animal. Hopefully it was an animal. There were clear signs that the homeless were taking shelter in here, a filthy blanket in a corner, bottles lining one wall, and several open cans lying on their sides.

  A chill ran up my spine as the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I felt someone watching me from the deeper shadows of the living room, but I couldn’t see or hear them.

  “I will shoot you, vampire,” I called out as I lined up the shot on my crossbow, aiming it into the darkness.

  “You took a big risk coming here. I hope you don’t take the same risks with my daughter’s life.”

  I spun on my heel, only to look up into the face of a hulking vampire. The massive man stood in the doorway to the kitchen, glaring at me with his blue eyes.

  My heart thundered as I readjusted my aim at the giant vampire’s chest. The vampire wore a motorcycle jacket and boots. A t-shirt stretched over his muscular build. He looked mid-twenties, but he was probably much older. He was pale with long blond hair and vivid blue eyes.

  “Don’t come any closer, Dante. I will shoot you.” As I held up the crossbow, suddenly, the words Dante said to me a minute earlier sunk in, and I narrowed my eyes at the leader of the Brightside vampire coven. “Who is your daughter?” Even before he answered, my stomach sank. I was pretty sure that I knew who he was referring to. I only knew one dhampir, the child of a vampire and human. January.

  The vampire squinted back as his pale brow furrowed. “I saw January last night… that’s what I thought this was about.” Dante moved very slowly, lifting up a slip of paper that I had left for him in our arranged place last evening. On it was this address. He set it on the dusty counter and slid it toward me. “She didn’t tell you? Does January not trust you?”

  Dante didn’t say the words like he was trying to insult me, but I still felt like an invisible fist punched me in the gut. January had come face to face with her vampire father, and she hadn’t said a word to me. We hung out by my pool and made out in the pool house for hours, and she hadn’t said a word about it. Did January not trust me? I had done everything in my power to be someone she could rely on, but obviously, that wasn’t enough. I wasn’t going to admit shit to this man though, so I lifted my chin. “She trusts me.” I grabbed the paper off the counter and shoved it into my back pocket. “We’re both learning to trust people together. Neither of us had people we could rely on growing up.”

  I hadn’t meant the statement as a dig either, but Dante took a step back like I’d actually struck him. It was interesting because I’d been raised to believe that vampires didn’t feel emotions in the same way as humans did—certainly not guilt. But then—I had been questioning everything I’d been raised to believe for a while now.

  “Point taken. So, are you going to continue to aim that crossbow at my chest, Justin Roberts, or are we going to have a friendly conversation?”

  Even though it was the last thing I wanted to do in the world, I lowered my weapon to my side. My heart was still racing faster than I liked as I stood before the master vampire who was also my girlfriend’s father. I couldn’t help but wonder if the fact that I was in a relationship with his daughter increased or decreased the chances that this man would kill me. “If you’re January’s father, then why is your coven hunting her?”

  I tried to ask the question in a level tone, but it came out harsher than intended. Dante Mortus and I had only met in person once before, two years ago. In my sophomore year at Blackburn Academy, I had a harsh awakening to the corruption embedded in the Hawthorn Group. My family was so twisted up in the paramilitary organization that killed volatile supernatural creatures that I didn’t know who I could trust. My father was the CEO, my uncle the owner, and the school I attended was not-so-secretly owned and run by the organization. I ended up doing something very stupid. I tracked down a vampire to see if I could get some answers, and I was hunted in turn by the coven king. Dante told me that he didn’t drink children’s blood but there were plenty of vampires that would so I should run along.

  I left a letter for the vampire coven leader the next day, asking a question about the Hawthorn Group, and the next morning, I found a response. After that, when I needed to ask a dangerous question, I left letters for Dante. Sometimes it took him weeks to respond, that was why I was so surprised that he came to meet me tonight only twenty-four hours after I left the note.

  Dante shook his head slowly, and his loose blond hair fell around his face. “I can’t stop them from hunting January, not now. It’s out of my hands. I didn’t even know that she’d moved out of this house—it doesn’t seem possible that she’s grown so old.” His words trailed off as his gaze roamed around the filthy remains of what once was a kitchen. “I didn’t even recognize January until I saw her fully illuminated by headlights.”

  We both fell into silence, and though I was standing across from a bloodthirsty monster who likely now considered me old enough to murder without compunction, I felt sorry for him. For just one moment, I saw a father who’d missed watching his daughter grow up.

  The vampire’s cold eyes snapped to mine, and my moment
of sympathy shattered. “If you’re not here to talk about January, then I have nothing to say to you,” he growled. “Don’t summon me again—there’s too much risk involved in it for both of us.”

  He began to turn away, when I called out, “What is an Alphastrain?”

  Dante froze and glared over his shoulder. “You keep asking me that same question, and I keep giving you the same answer. I don’t know.”

  “Yeah, you keep saying that, but you’re lying. You know what an Alphastrain is.” For one irrational moment, I considered lifting my hand and aiming at the vampire leader’s back. My fingers twitched around the foregrip of my crossbow, but I forced my arm to stay at my side.

  “What makes you so sure that I know what an Alphastrain is?”

  “Because out of the four Hawthorn Group soldiers that were killed by vampires a year ago, three of them had the word Alphastrain on their medical record. You’re targeting them, and I want to know why.”

  The vampires weren’t the only ones targeting the people who were marked Alphastrain in their records. Up until a year ago, I interned in the medical office at headquarters, and almost every agent that went missing had one thing in common: they were Alphastrains.

  Dante didn’t answer, but he didn’t leave either. He just stood there in the shadows, staring out the broken window at the moon. “If I were you, I’d stop looking,” he said, finally. “You’re not going to be able to fix what’s broken in the Hawthorn Group. They don’t want to be fixed. It’s not in their best interest to change. The Hawthorn Group is more likely going to shut you up permanently and brand you a traitor.”

  “Please.” I cleared my throat. “Someone close to me died—years ago. She was an Alphastrain. I’m about to leave the Hawthorn Group forever, and I can’t leave without knowing why she died.”

  The vampire turned back fully, and his eyes flashed with anger as he bared his fangs. “You’re going to abandon my daughter at Blackburn Academy?”

  “Never.” The very idea had a wave of terror crashing over me that had nothing to do with the massive vampire bearing down on me. “Blackburn Academy isn’t going to be safe for her, not for long. The Hawthorn Group knows what she is, and my cousin Sebastian Holter gave her his personal scholarship. I’m working on a way to get us away from the Hawthorn Group long term, but I can’t leave Brightside without understanding why Marisa died.” A pulse of pain struck my chest, and I realized that I had said Marisa’s name aloud for the first time in a very long time.

  Dante shoved his hands in his leather jacket and studied me. “Did this Marisa die in the last couple of years?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I suggest you look back further—look back to when the first records were marked with Alphastrain and ask yourself what predicament the Hawthorn Group was facing at the time. What crisis was suddenly not a problem anymore for them when the Alphastrains started disappearing?”

  “You’re not going to give me any more than that?”

  “No.” Dante started to turn away again, when the vampire leader stopped and closed his eyes. “I’m going to help you, but you can’t seek me out again. I’ll find you when I need you. I’ll call you when I need to get ahold of you.”

  I wanted the tell the vampire leader fuck no, I wasn’t going to take his orders, but instead, I pointed out the obvious, “You don’t have my phone number.”

  “That’s not going to be a problem.” He turned and strode out of the house. By the time I followed him out, I found the road empty. A streetlamp blinked above me, illuminating the rundown neighborhood in flashes.

  My heart finally began to slow as I climbed into my truck and headed down the nighttime streets of Brightside. I wasn’t even sure what sort of partnership I’d formed with the vampire leader. He was the Hawthorn Group’s number one enemy, the most brutal and deadly vampire in Brightside, and tonight, he’d said he was going to help me.

  As I climbed out of my truck in front of the pool house at the far side of my property, a town car came roaring down my hill, heading straight for me, before skidding to a stop and spraying up gravel. A hulking figure toppled out of the backseat and landed in the road.

  “Mitch?” I called over as my cousin dragged his large bottle of clear liquid out of the backseat and kicked the car door closed.

  I headed up the driveway. “What the fuck, Mitch?”

  Three figures separated from the house in full tactical gear only to vanish again behind hedges and the corners of the house. My heart skipped a beat as I realized that Hawthorn Group agents surrounded us on all sides, but I managed an impassive expression as I glared down at my cousin.

  People always said Mitch and I looked like brothers. We had the same dark hair, sharp features, and cleft chin. We were both tall and muscular too, but my cousin and I had one major difference. He was born an Elite, gifted with super strength, speed, agility, and several other abilities, and I was born a regular human.

  Mitch leveraged himself up and scooped up his booze. “How many fucking HG grunts do you have at your place anyway?” He lifted the lip of his vodka bottle to his mouth. The acrid scent of liquor filled the air as liquid streamed down his front. He dropped the bottle and gasped in a breath. “Your dad is such a tool.”

  “Mitch, I’m done with this shit for the rest of summer. You don’t live here. Go home …” I trailed off as my cousin stumbled into the light and I got a first glimpse of his face. It looked like someone took a meat tenderizer to Mitch’s skin. He had two black eyes, a busted lip, and a visible break in his nose.

  “It’ll just be one night,” he said. “I’ll be gone in the morning.”

  “Yeah, fine. You can crash here.” I nodded toward the pool house. “I was planning on staying on January’s couch anyway. You’ll find towels and a change of clothes in —?”

  “January… Moore?” Mitch interrupted.

  I froze from where I was turning away and looked back. “What did you say?”

  “This.” Mitch gestured to his bruised face. “This is all courtesy of my brother. Sebastian has some big plans for a high school senior named January Moore, and he wants me to help him. I told him to go fuck himself. He took exception at my tone.”

  My heart raced, beating against my ribcage. I wanted to grab Mitch and shake him, but I managed to sound calm as I asked, “What do you mean plans? I know he’s giving her the scholarship, what else is he planning?”

  “Like I fucking know. He’ll probably just tell me at the time I’m supposed to act them out and expect me to drop everything.”

  The world spun, and my vision blurred at the edges. This was not fucking happening. I needed to take down the Hawthorn Group, and I needed to do it yesterday.

  “Mitch …” I crossed the distance and leaned in toward my cousin. “I’m going to need your help.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  January

  Seven Days Later

  I once read in an article that you could tell a lot about your mood based on if the world appeared friendly or unfriendly to you. I wondered what that meant about my state of mind as Gregory Hall, my new residence building, looked to me like a monstrous, screaming face.

  The front stoop and open door could have been a gaping mouth. The series of double, pointed-arch windows on the three uppermost floors looked like dozens of beady eyes. From the roof, gargoyles opened their mouths in a silent scream as they glared at the street below, just like Medusa’s serpent hair. I really wanted to find my new residence building enticing. Instead, Gregory Hall felt about as hospitable as a haunted house.

  The rest of the street looked innocuous — cars parked along the curb where chic families busily disembarked and streamed toward the intimidating building.

  “It’s time to get out of the vehicle,” Henry, the Roberts’ butler said as he glowered from the front seat. “You’re safe here within Blackburn Academy walls. Your belongings will be delivered to your room by nightfall.”

  What the Roberts’ stone-faced butler didn’t
say was that I would, of course, be safe from vampires during the daylight hours. Vampires were nocturnal. It was a new factoid to me, as up until a little over a week ago, I thought I was a vampire. It turns out that I’m a dhampir, which is a whole different species I get to be classified under.

  My hand went to the handle of the town car, but I paused and looked to the front. “Henry.”

  He grunted. Obviously, the granddaughter of the Roberts’ housekeeper didn’t deserve actual words.

  “When are you going to replace my phone?”

  He glowered into the rearview mirror, saying nothing, but his gaze said enough. That would be a big fat never.

  “Haven’t you ever heard the phrase, you break it, you buy it?”

  Obviously, he hadn’t, because he just continued to glower. I hesitated one more second. I didn’t want to be in the town car, but I also didn’t want to be taking the first steps into my new life. It had all seemed so exciting while I was naively preparing to compete in the trials for Blackburn Academy. Not anymore.

  Blackburn was an academy that secretly trained high schoolers to kill vampires. I was half-vampire, a dhampir, something that I had sworn to keep a secret from everyone except my boyfriend and the teachers of Blackburn.

  It had been a week since my father, Dante Mortus — the notoriously malicious vampire king of Brightside — slipped me a note stating that I joined the wrong side and some unstoppable threat was coming for me now. It was, most likely, bullshit. And yet, the vampire king had a chance to kill me and instead handed me a warning.

  Somehow, climbing out of this town car felt like crossing a threshold I could never retreat from. As if joining the crowd disembarking on the curb was ending one life and starting a new, much more dangerous existence.

  Henry had enough, though. He charged out of his side of the vehicle, rounded to my door, and yanked it open. The heat of the morning rushed in, and sweat immediately dampened under my loose blond hair. Henry leaned in, and his voice was just short of a growl as he said, “Get out. I have more errands to run today.”