Stalked By The Game

Chapter 17 - Help

::ARI::

              For the first time in days, I slept through the night.

               That in itself was reason for a holiday as far as I was concerned. The fact that I had done it with two vampires nearby was a miracle. Maybe in the end, it was because Jaynie was hanging around. I had managed to get enough of a look see into her life to realise that there was no way either one was going to attack me in front of her. That didn’t mean that I hadn’t shut my eyes, feeling the bulk of one of my guns underneath my pillow as usual.

               Mid morning saw me seated in the kitchen, alone and pouring over my own book of contacts. It wasn’t very extensive, just a dozen names of hunters I’d come into contact with over the years. The sad thing was, getting in touch with Antonio about the leak was beginning to look like my only option. As I flicked over names, I realised that although I could ring every one for back up, I didn’t have much trust in them for anything else. This was a delicate subject and would push anyone’s buttons. I had to make sure that I only spoke to the right people or it would spell trouble for me. If word got around that I thought someone was in league with the vampires, it would not make me popular.

               The hardest part was that I’d have to come up with a good story how I’d heard about all this. Telling another hunter that I was handed the information by Mick McConnell wasn’t going to do me any favours. In fact, I was positive it would get me killed. Our world held a delicate balance of what was acceptable and what wasn’t. Beating the crap out of a vamp for information or paying off some stupid twit like Benny for it was acceptable. Working together and getting information from a vampire working undercover? Hell no. Anything beyond that, you got yourself killed before you even opened your mouth.

               For people who broke the law every day, hunters were pretty rigid in their own rules. Although I’d been living by myself, hunting and watching my own back for years, I was still a child. Almost anything we did, except if we betrayed another of our kind could be forgiven, regardless of our upbringing. Just like in the human world they had an age in mind as to when we were finally adults and the magical number for us was twenty one. From the moment the clock struck one past twelve on our birthday, we were dumped into the adult world in all its glory.

               I had never seen it happen, but I had heard stories of what happened if you broke the rules. If they allowed you to live, you were an outcast but more often than not, the only punishment was death. Don’t betray another hunter, don’t endanger a human and you never, ever got involved with vampires beyond the killing thing. It didn’t matter the reasons, those rules were not negotiable.

               Eventually, I gave up with a sigh. There was no one else I could contact. If I was going to accuse one of our own of betrayal, I wanted to make sure I could trust the hunter I spoke to. Antonio and I had our ups and downs but I was confident that no matter what happened, he would keep this quiet and allow me the time I needed to get some sort of proof. Heating the kettle again for my third cup of coffee, I dialed his number.

               ‘Yeah, what?’

               ‘Sorry I punched your face in.’

               Best to get the apology over and done with first I thought. I didn’t have time to mess around and the sooner things got back to normal, the better. They did pretty quickly as they always did. He was no stranger to my attitude or temper. Our arguments just didn’t usually end up in violence. The fact that I had actually rung and uttered that five letter word I almost never spoke, I knew would tell him I knew I’d done wrong. Getting a sorry out of me was like waiting for a visit from your fairy godmother – it just didn’t happen in this lifetime.