Taking another deep breath, she used the counter to support her as she moved slowly back to the island she had left the paper on. She did not want to look at it again, did not want to touch it, but she knew that she had to. She needed to see it, to know for certain if what she had seen was right. To see if what she feared was true.

Releasing the counter, she stumbled to the island, nearly hyperventilating as she grasped hold of the paper and pulled it close. She was shaking so badly that she could barely get the pages open. Her gaze scanned over the article, coming to rest on the date of the first disappearance. September fifteenth, Megan Keller, twenty-two, had vanished from a park in Sandwich.

Cassie grasped the paper; sliding limply to the floor she pressed it tight to her chest. The wrinkled pages crinkled loudly as her fingers curled into it. Devon had arrived on the thirteenth. He had strolled into her life two days before the disappearances started.

Her mind began tripping over everything that she had been trying to deny. Little pieces of the puzzle she’d always had, but hadn’t wanted to assemble, suddenly began to fall swiftly into place. Devon’s speed and agility, the strength he exhibited when he lifted Mark easily, effortlessly, off the ground. He hadn’t even broken a sweat! She thought over the way he spoke, it was so old and elegant, so outdated. He knew the card game faro, a game no one knew anymore. She had definitely never heard of anyone her age ever having played the game.

Though the puzzle horrified her, once the pieces began slipping together, she could not stop them from assembling the picture. Melissa had seen nothing about Devon, other than his arrival, and Chris could not read him. Both of which could be explained by the power that radiated from him, far more power than a human would possess, and she was beginning to believe it was even more power than she possessed.

A chill ran down her spine, her body shook with the fierce tremors wracking it. Closing her eyes she tried to stop the images tumbling swiftly together, but no matter how hard she tried, they would not stop. He was always slightly colder than normal, a fact that could be explained by the weather, or bad circulation, but neither of those explanations seemed right to her now.

She had been irresistibly attracted to him, pulled to him like a magnet to metal from the very beginning. All of the girls were drawn to him, so much so that they had turned against her in the hopes that they would get him. It was something that she had known all along, that her attraction to him was fierce, and something that most people did not experience. But she had chosen to ignore that fact in her desire to be closer to him, to be with him.

As the last pieces of the puzzle slid into place, Cassie’s breath locked in her chest as panic clenched at her. Every single one of those pieces, every single one of those oddities, was abilities or traits, of vampires. Abilities that her worst enemies and most hated foe’s possessed. Now that the puzzle was in place, she fully realized that it was a jigsaw straight from hell.

He had sensed the evil in the woods, but what if he was that evil? What if he had let his guard down briefly, allowing the evil to slip free, allowing it to permeate into them? ‘It’s playing with us,’ Chris had said softly. ‘Playing games with us, before killing us.’ What better way to play games with her than to make her fall in love with him, before he tried to kill her?

Tears streamed down Cassie’s face, pain twisted in her chest as she tried to inhale heaping gulps of air through the agony consuming her. Her gaze darted to the window, and the bright sunlight beyond. Her forehead furrowed tightly in confusion as a piece of the puzzle did not slide into place. Devon walked about in the day, unaffected by the light of the sun. She had never known a vampire to do that before, it was impossible. Sunlight killed them.

The day was for humans, their time to be safe, and not to have to worry about the monsters lurking in the shadows.

Hope ballooned briefly inside her, and then swiftly deflated as she recalled Luther’s words. ‘We do not know what an Elder could be capable of. The powers that they might possess.’

One of those powers may very well be the ability to stroll about in broad daylight, a monster among humans. It would be a perfect disguise to fool any Hunter. If Devon was an Elder, than he was more than just a normal vampire, he was one of the most powerful and one of the most hated. He would have been one of the ones to help mastermind the destruction of her parents, one of the ones that had helped to eradicate her race.

Her body lost all strength; the paper fell limply from her hands as she slid to the floor. Her heart was shattering into a million pieces, her world crumbling around her. She gasped, shaking and crying; her head fell forward into her hands. He breathed, she thought desperately, she had felt him breathe, but what if he only pretended to breathe in her presence? She tried to recall if she had felt the beat of his heart, but try as she might she could not remember ever feeling the reassuring pulse of life within his chest.

She tried to convince herself that she was wrong, but though she tried to hide behind a wall of denial, she could not. Not anymore. Her mind, her soul, knew that she was right.

He was not human. He was not a Hunter. He was not even a human with special abilities.

He was the monster. He was the one hunting them, stalking them, playing and toying with them. And he had been very good at it. She had fallen helplessly in love with him. She had allowed him into her soul, taken him into the very essence of her. And the entire time he had been playing with her, plotting her death, her murder, and the murder of the ones she loved.

The past two nights, when he had held her gently, making her feel safe and protected, had all been part of his game. He was good, excellent even, she had to give him that much. His game had succeeded in crushing her, from the inside out. There was nothing left to her. No hope, no wonder, no life. She was an empty shell of the person she had been, wounded and beaten.

And yet, somehow stronger. She would not let him win. She was stronger than that. He may have destroyed her, but he would not hurt anyone else. He would not take her loved ones from her.

Wiping the tears from her eyes, Cassie placed her hands on the floor and shoved herself up. She could not sit here and cry. She didn’t have time for that. There was a monster out there, and she was one of the few people that could stop him. She stood shakily for a moment, numb and deadened. Then, like a phoenix rising from the ashes fury blazed hotly forth and burned away the devastating hurt that had encased her. He may have destroyed her, but she was also going to destroy him.

She strode forcefully from the kitchen, pounding up the stairs to gather her weapons. She was tired of running, tired of hiding, and very tired of being frightened. It was time to take a stand. It was time to do some hunting, instead of being the hunted for a change.

***

Devon sat completely still on the tree branch, all of his senses tuned to the night beyond. It was the exact same thing he had been doing every night for the past week while Cassie had been occupied with studying, or at Melissa’s. Probing with his mind, he sorted through the few brains close enough for him to pick up on in the area. It was one of his talents, the ability to sift through people’s minds in order to pinpoint the one that he wanted. The mind he would then latch onto, track down, and destroy; the one that stalked this town, and its inhabitants, especially Cassie.

Thoughts of Cassie caused him to tense. Whenever he came out here, he had to shut his mind off of her; otherwise he would be disrupted from his pursuit. He could pick up her mind from miles away; it was as bright and as welcoming as a lighthouse beacon to him. But now, here, her mind was a distraction to him, and one that he could not have if he was going to succeed in destroying his prey.

Tuning his senses to the night, he strained to feel anything out there, to find anything out there. Then, he felt it. For the first time, he picked up on a small flicker of power in the night. A power that he recognized instantly as belonging to the one he sought.

Slipping easily from the tree, he moved swiftly through the woods, faster and more graceful than any cheetah. Leaping over fallen logs, and effortlessly dodging branches, he darted swiftly through the trees, hunting the power that he had sensed. He could feel it moving deeper into the woods, running from the pursuit that it had sparked.

Devon broke out of the woods, racing across the cemetery, jumping stones and tombs with smooth, easy leaps. Whatever he was pursuing was slower than he was, not as fleet in its retreat. He was gaining ground on it.

Leaving the cemetery, the woods encircled him once more. He poured on the speed, becoming nearly a blur as he chased his prey. Excitement and bloodlust pounded through him. It had been so long since he had pursued any real game, any real kill. Animals didn’t amount to the same thrill as a human, or another vampire. Both of which he had not touched in a very long time.

A scream echoed loudly through the air, a young girl’s voice penetrated the dark night. Devon realized that the creature had not been fleeing from him, but had been hunting its own prey instead.

***

Cassie had just stepped out of Luther’s car when the terrified scream echoed throughout the night. It rang off the headstones and echoed throughout the eerily still night. Chris and Melissa stiffened, freezing in mid-step as their mouths parted in surprise. The thick silence that followed the scream was even more nerve wracking.

“It’s out there,” Chris said softly.

“Let’s go.”

Cassie took a step forward, but Luther grabbed hold of her arm, halting her. “Wait.”

She spun on him, anger fisting her hands as it tore through her. “We have to stop him!” she snapped.

Luther’s eyes narrowed sharply upon her, the light gray of them inquisitive and keen. “Him?”

She realized her mistake instantly, they had always referred to the monster as it, and Luther had not missed the fact that she had called it him this time. Cassie glared fiercely at him, she didn’t have time to explain her newfound knowledge, nor did she want to. She didn’t want to hear their gasps of shock and surprise; she did not want them to dissuade her from what she knew. She was right, she had no doubt that Devon was in those woods. Just as she had no doubt that she would be the one to take him out.

Though he had fooled all of them, it was her that he had focused upon. It was her that he had teased with promises of love and hope, only to rip it all cruelly away. She hated him the most for making her hope and dream. She had been surviving well enough, hiding behind her wall, safely protected from the hurts of the world until he had walked into her life, tossing it upside down, and shredding it to pieces.

Cassie ripped her arm away from Luther, spinning back toward the woods. Her blood was boiling with the fury pulsing through her, she knew that she was reckless right now, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She didn’t care about anything anymore, except for keeping the people surrounding her safe. Her gaze rapidly scanned the forest, trying to pinpoint where the scream had come from. Another scream shot through the air, bloodcurdling, pain filled, and terrified. Horror filled Cassie, her heart leapt wildly in her chest; she had never heard anyone make that sound before.

And it was entirely her fault.

Her love for Devon had completely blinded her to the fact that he was a monster. Her stupidity and ignorance had allowed him to continue to kill. He had destroyed the lives of many innocent people, and she was not going to allow that to happen again.

“Come on,” she said briskly.

“Wait!” Luther said sharply, seizing her once more. “Melissa.”

Melissa had gone completely still, her eyes were distant, her face blank and pale. Cassie sighed impatiently; it was a hell of a time to receive a premonition, especially one of the ones that took complete control of her. Melissa gasped suddenly, bending forward she grasped her stomach as she struggled to breathe. Chris grabbed hold of Melissa’s heaving shoulders as she choked and panted for air.

Another scream echoed throughout, but this one was far weaker than before. Whoever was out there was losing the battle, and Cassie was not about to let that happen. Tearing her arm away from Luther again, she spun on her heel and sprinted forward. It did not matter that Chris and Melissa were not with her, she would put a stop to this on her own. It was better if they stayed out of it anyway, she did not want them to be hurt.

Cassie ran as fast as she could, her long legs carrying her swiftly across the ground. She didn’t bother dodging the headstones but vaulted herself easily over them. Reaching the woods, she darted into the thick foliage, using her hands to deflect the branches and twigs that slapped at her.

“Cassie noooo!” Melissa’s shrill, terror filled scream followed her into the forest, but did not slow her down.

CHAPTER 21

Devon burst into the clearing. His heightened senses, and the adrenaline pulsing through him, allowed him to take in all of the details at once. The first thing he recognized was the young woman in the arms of the monster.