Chapter Seven

I knew I needed a plan, but my brain wasn't really cooperating. I decided to sleep on it and worry tomorrow. At least it would be Saturday, that was always guaranteed to brighten any teenager's outlook on life.

I woke up the next morning and headed downstairs. My mom was home and she was staring at me curiously as I searched through the kitchen trying to find breakfast.

"You didn't go hunting last night?" she asked. I couldn't really blame her for being surprised, I always hunted on Fridays. I honestly couldn't remember the last time I had been home on a Friday night.

"I didn't feel like it," I answered.

She frowned, "Evelyn, when I restricted your hunting privileges, it wasn't to stop you from hunting. And, I can't lift the restriction if you decide to boycott it."

"I'm not boycotting anything, I just felt like staying home last night. I'm going hunting tonight. I'll call Ethan to see if he can go with me okay?" I reassured her.

She pursed her lips and surveyed my face. I think she might have been regretting my new restrictions on hunting, but I'm not entirely sure.

"I'm going to be with the Administratio all day if you need me, alright?" she told me.

Administratio is the Latin equivalent for government. The members of the Administratio were the ten hunters that made and enforced all the rules. Back when it was first formed they had unlimited power and did basically anything they wanted, but over the years they became a lot fairer.

Technically, they still have a lot of power over the rest of the hunters. Way more than the American government has over its citizens. The Administratio is the group that decides the rules and punishments. They also decided who gets into their elite group and who gets out. They even used to be able to decide how many people were in the Administratio. Sometimes there were five members, other times there were fifteen. It was only about eighty years ago that everyone decided it should have ten members, five male, five female. Also, most of the time they're the only ones who vote, the only time the rest of the hunting population gets a say is when there's a tie.

The system seems a little harsh, but no governing system is perfect and ours works as well as anyone else's. The Administratio isn't a group of strict, stuck up, know it alls either, they can actually be really flexible, even though they do have a lot of power.

After my mom left, Cheryl and Nicole both had things to do, so they would be gone all day. Olivia, the only late sleeper in the house, woke up at eleven and then she went to the mall with her friends leaving me with the house to myself.

I spent most of my day trying to figure out ways to get Anthony. I couldn't attack him in school, and while I didn't think he would do anything there either, I wasn't taking any chances. I would follow my mom's advice about taking a knife to school, and I would coat it in the strongest poison we had. My school wasn't a bad one, so the security there was pretty lax, we didn't have metal detectors, we didn't have to wear ID badges, and the number of security guards was fairly limited, if I brought a knife and left in it in my backpack no one would ever know.

I called Ethan and asked if he wanted to go hunting with me later that night. He agreed, which wasn't surprising. Later that night, we were in South Beach near a new club that seemed to be popular amongst the vampires. It might seem strange to humans that there were vampires living in Florida, "the sunshine state," but that's because only the stereotypes get burned by sunlight. Sunshine has no effect on vamps whatsoever, although, if they did get burned by the sun, it would make my job so much easier.

Since we have teleportation powers, we can hunt just about anywhere in the world that we want. One of the biggest perks to being a hunter is being able to go to wherever your heart pleases. I've been to New York, Hollywood, Las Vegas, Paris, and a ton of other places that people would kill to go to, for free. I would consider myself extremely lucky, if I hadn't been to all those places to catch evil, bloodsucking vampires.

"Did you hear that?" Ethan asked me.

"Yeah," I answered. "It sounded like bones breaking."

We ran to an empty back road to find a vamp standing over a girl. She was blond, a little chubby, and appeared to be drunk. A closer look told me her leg was broken.

"No wait don't do it." her words were slurred. "No I can't get pregnant, my parents will kill me."

She thought he was going to rape her. Some vamps just feed and then kill; they do it without caring about how painful it is, or how much their victims scream. Others, like this one, played with their food. They had sick, twisted minds, and tortured people before they drank. It actually wasn't uncommon for them to rape people either. Some are even worse, my dad once dealt with a vamp that used to skin his victims alive. Those are the truly evil vamps, not that all vamps aren't evil, some are just more so than others. The ones that aren't quite so twisted, pick a random victim, snap their neck, have a meal, and move on with their lives. Cold hearted, yes, but still better than torture.

Ethan ran and grabbed the girl up from the floor. His power was super speed, vamps have this one too, but I've never met one faster than Ethan. The vamp turned and spotted Ethan, he couldn't see me of course. I was invisible. The vamp's nostrils flared in fury, I walked up to him, glad that he was so focused on Ethan that he didn't hear me, and I kicked him. While I fought the vamp, Ethan ran with the girl back to a club, and he called an ambulance. The vamp kicked me in the stomach, hard. He was clutching my wrist so tightly it was going to leave a bruise.

Ethan was back. I shoved the vamp away from me, and Ethan grabbed him and held the knife ready to stab him in the heart, when I felt another vamp grab me from behind.

"Don't do it," the vamp holding me said to Ethan. His voice was gruff and sounded vaguely familiar. He looked at me and asked, "Evelyn don't you remember me?"

Ethan stared at the vamp with his fangs at my neck and I could tell he was trying to guess his chances of killing the one he was holding, and then saving me from the one holding me before he bit me. His chances weren't good.

When vampires bite humans, their fangs numb them so that it doesn't hurt. Hunters aren't spared the pain, if a vampire bit a hunter the pain would equal that of a paper cut, times a thousand.

I struggled against the vampire, but he was strong. As I struggled, I tried to figure out how he knew my name.

I saw the vamp that Ethan was holding trying to struggle too, but Ethan had him in an iron grip. "Let go of me," he hissed at Ethan. Ethan glared at him.

The one holding me chuckled. "Bet you're wondering I know your name, huh?" he asked. I didn't say anything. "Your father killed my cousin in Washington. Do you remember now?"

I did remember. It happened a few months before my father died. My dad had been doing some field training with me. This vamp's name was Edmund, when my dad killed his cousin he was pretty pissed.

"I was as happy as the next vampire when Lucas killed your old man. Hell, the whole vampiric community was happy when David Sinclair died. It was like an early Christmas. The only regret I had was that I couldn't get my revenge. Of course, I can get it now. I seem to remember you knocking me out of the way using that nice little invisibility trick so that I couldn't stop your dad, so that means you're just as much to blame as he is," Edmund decided.

"Look, just let her go and I'll let your friend go," Ethan offered. He was starting to struggle with the vamp he was holding down.

"I don't think so, I think I'll kill her and then move on to you," Edmund said.

Now I'm sure at this point you would wonder why I didn't just teleport away from him, but it doesn't work that way. When I teleport, I take everything that's touching me with me, so whether I stayed in the exact spot I was standing or I teleported 1500 miles away from here, neither option was going to get this guy off of me.

"Ethan, just kill him already," I said. "Don't worry about me."

I could see that he wasn't going to listen to me. He never listened to me. That vamp he was holding was putting up a more serious fight than before. At the risk of him getting hurt, I knew I was going to have to force him to kill the vamp. Doing so would require something that was sure to get me in trouble later, supposing I survived.

I tried one more time, "Ethan, kill him."

"Yeah, go ahead, and as soon as you do it I'll snap your girlfriend's pretty little neck," Edmund said cheerfully.

Ethan would tire out faster than that vamp he was holding. Vamps were immortal, they didn't need to sleep or to rest, the only thing they ever needed was blood. I needed to stop Ethan from bringing about his own death.

So what did I do? I teleported.