Thrill of the Chase (Hunters & Heartbreakers 1)

IV - Wells

Vampire Hunting: Ways to Effectively Repel Them.

By H. M. Coleridge.

To Wells— This is not exactly light reading, but I know it will help.

Many happy returns, dear brother.

Love, Naomi.

27 March.

It was maddening how much I didn't despise Wilkes while watching him dance with my sister. She seemed to genuinely like him, and even though he seemed a bit bemused by the attention, returned the feeling. I knew I shouldn't overreact. Naomi was very good at hiding her emotions most times, but I knew when she longed for company that wasn't mine. She'd even told me that she just wanted to feel normal for a few hours, which had culminated in bringing Wilkes round to our house.

Which was why it was also maddening seeing him clearly in his element. He was comfortable among all these well-off, well-dressed people with titles and money and an army of servants at their beck and call. To see him hobnobbing with them, like it was something he did every day, was both intriguing and irritating.

After they finished dancing, they came back to join me. I saw the flush in Naomi's cheeks clearly, and the brightness in her eyes. So whatever she felt for Wilkes wasn't just infatuation, then.

"So what now?" Wilkes asked. I noticed, completely unintentionally, how that same sheaf of hair was escaping again, a few wayward strands already falling into his eyes. Then I shook it away. Why was I like this, taking in that detail in these circumstances?

"We do what we were hired on for," I said, patting the front of my tuxedo jacket. I had made small crucifixes out of hawthorn twigs, one for each window and outside door. I'd also filled small glass flasks with iron powder, to sprinkle on top of every inside door frame.

Once we'd gotten out of the crowd, I gave Naomi and Wilkes each a handful of crucifixes.

"Don't miss any access to the outside, understand?" I said, with pointed looks for both of them. "They all have extra string, so you can hang them. It'll be more effective that way."

They nodded, then dispersed. I took out the first flask and got to work.

—

About an hour later, we met up again in the middle, on the first floor. There was no sign of vampire activity, and midway through, it'd crossed my mind that Lord Grafton might have been overreacting.

"Seen anything?" Wilkes asked, when we regrouped in the dim upstairs corridor, at the top of the stairs.

"No," I said. "Nothing."

"We've just got that last room there," Naomi said, nodding to a bedroom papered in red wallpaper at the end of the hall. "If we don't see anything by the time we're done, I'll start believing Lord Grafton panicked."

The three of us entered the bedroom in single file, and while Wilkes and Naomi tied the crucifixes in the window, I stood on tiptoe and sprinkled a thin line of powder on top of the doorframe. I hoped we hadn't wasted an entire night when there could have been other worse creatures to hunt down.

It was when I stepped outside the room to sprinkle the outside doorframe that I caught a glimpse of a strange dark shape through the crack between the frame and the edge of the door. I inched back inside and swung the door away from the wall, and suddenly a hand with fingers tipped in sharp claws whipped out and seized me around the neck.