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“Sorry, I…forget it. Stacey and I are on our way.” He told Stacey, “Jacqueline’s at her house, not mine.” Then he gave Stacey Jacqueline’s address, and they headed over there. He knocked on her door, at the same time saying, “It’s just me, and Stacey is with me.”
Jacqueline hurried to open the door for them and pulled them inside. “I’m sorry I left all of you behind, but Heskel tried to force me to turn on you, Dane. I think that when Matt was cutting at him, Heskel couldn’t concentrate on forcing me to do any harm to you, but I didn’t want to worry that I might injure or kill you if he managed to hurt your brother and attempt to gain control of me again.”
“Did he get control of you?” Dane asked.
“He tried. I was fighting it the whole time. Until he was too distracted and then that’s when he left. So he’s still alive?”
“Yeah,” Dane said with regret. “We tried to take him down, but then he vanished. We did manage to take down the other two rogue vampires on Matt’s list though. Why did you come here and not go to my home? I was afraid he had gotten ahold of you.”
“It was just natural for me to go here. Plus, I was afraid he might follow me to your house. I don’t want him to know where you live.”
Dane hugged her. “You know, you nearly give me a heart attack every time you vanish like you do and suddenly appear where the vampire is that you’re trying to take down.”
Jacqueline smiled. “You need to learn to do that so that it comes naturally in a fight. It gives us a real advantage over rogues when they don’t expect us to have that ability.”
“Yeah,” Stacey said. “I think Trey was surprised too when I left him behind to fight Vandenburg.”
“I’m sure of it,” Dane said. “He wanted to be right there with you helping to take him down, not putting yourself in danger. Do you want to go to my house, Jacqueline?”
“Yeah. Now that you’re going to be there too.”
Then the three of them headed over there using their vampiric ability. It saved on driving a vehicle places!
When they went inside the house, Princess purred and rubbed up against Dane first, then Jacqueline. “You know you can be replaced,” Jacqueline said to her cat.
Dane chuckled.
“I take it that she’s your cat, Jacqueline,” Stacey said while Dane got them all glasses of water to drink.
“Yeah, but she has fallen totally in love with Dane.” Jacqueline sat down on the couch and Princess jumped onto her lap because Dane was putting the glasses of water on the coffee table.
Then Dane got a call. He put it on speakerphone.
“Hey, we’re almost done with talking with the police here. We’re letting Stacey have Vandenburg’s bounty. You and Jacqueline can split Romanoff’s bounty,” Matt said.
“No. We agreed we would split the bounties between us. We never know who we’re going to be taking down and we’re all at risk,” Dane said.
Stacey and Jacqueline agreed.
“All right. We’ll split the money when we get there. You can tell us what happened when we arrive,” Matt said.
“See you soon,” Dane said.
“Do you usually team up with a hunter to fight vampires?” Jacqueline asked Stacey.
“Uhm, I’m more of a lover than a fighter,” Stacey said.
“Of vampires?” Dane couldn’t help frowning. Not that some hunters hadn’t fallen in love with a vampire and even been turned to be with them forever, but they hadn’t been rogues and he could see how it could happen in some cases, like with Rachael falling in love with Adonis. Then again Adonis had been a hunter also.
“Uh, no, I mean with hunters. I don’t usually go on hunts all that often.”
Which explained how Stacey had been turned by a rogue vampire while making love with him, and not when she was engaging with one in combat.
“But you looked like you really had a handle on fighting,” Jacqueline said. “We wouldn’t have put you in the position of having to fight anyone if we had known you don’t like to hunt rogues down.”
“Oh, I’m fully qualified as a fighter. I love practicing fighting with a fellow hunter. My brother usually. And the thing of it is that once I was turned and had these special abilities, I felt changed about that too. Like I wanted to help the hunters’ cause, and I wanted to help the police take down the villains, and I wanted to help protect humans. It made me realize how ruthless rogue vampires are and how manipulative they can be,” Stacey said. “I think before that, I was kind of living in my own little bubble. Playing at being a hunter, until the vampire turned me.”
Then they heard two vehicles drive up and recognized they were Stacey’s car and Dane’s truck. Matt parked Dane’s truck in the garage and Trey parked Stacey’s car in the driveway, then Dane’s brothers all joined them in the house, everyone giving each other a hug for a job well done. Dane gave them glasses of water and then strawberry margaritas after that for all of them to celebrate.
