Once Bitten, No Longer Shy by Julie Steimle (chrome ebook reader txt) 📕

Troy shook his head.

“No,” Randon replied. “We threatened him back.”

“With what?” Art asked. He stood like he was subconsciously maintaining the table between him and Troy for safety.

“With the threat of the Holy Seven being sent after them,” Troy said. He then looked to Hanz again. “I’ve only seen a vampire shudder like that at the mention of the vimp—which is your girlfriend. So… she has got to have said something about the Order of Blood to you. I only know what I have read, and it’s not that much. And I avoided vampires.”

Hanz nodded, thinking. “Ok. I see….”

Art shifted in his seat, watching his friend intently. Silvia flipped the quesadilla, pushing around stray shreds of cheese back into the cooking tortillas on the griddle. Randon went and stood beside her.

Hanz thought a moment longer before saying, “Eve does not like to talk about the vampires with me. Her brother and her best friend Jane know more than I do, but that is from experience. I’ve never encountered a vampire myself until last night. But, I have heard of the Order of Blood.”

Randon drew up a stool. Art’s mouth seemed to slowly fall open.

“The only reason she mentioned it was that she was confessing some past incidents she had with them—two in particular—in which they had harmed or nearly harmed people she cared about, and she wanted to make certain I knew what I was getting into by marrying her,” Hanz said.

Troy drew in a breath.

“Her birthfather, you see, is a member of the Order of Blood,” Hanz said. “Or was. Eve found out while she was still in high school that they had executed him because he had defied them when sparing her as a baby. He was the one who left Eve with the McAllisters.”

Randon drew in a breath. Silvia’s eyes grew wet, not quite tearing yet getting close. Art’s mouth opened even wider.

Troy thought on those words with realization that of course her father had to have been the one to have saved her. The question was why? Vampires feared that demon.

“Eve never met a vampire until she was fourteen,” Hanz said. But then he painfully chuckled, adding, “Though there was a colony of vampires in the mountains near their town.”

“No way,” escaped from Art who had not meant to say that out loud.

Hanz nodded to him. “Yeah. Though nobody literally believed it, as vampires, according to Eve, do everything they can to not draw attention to themselves. They do that because hunters would seek them out. It was just a rumor she had heard growing up. She didn’t even believe it until she saw it for herself a few years later. But hikers who stayed overnight in the woods went missing all the time. It was blamed on cougars and accidents. All the campgrounds were removed. They even had a sign at the trailhead warning people not to stay overnight in the mountain areas. I saw it. She showed it to me.”

They all stared.

“Eve told me her history teacher, Mr. McDillan, was a retired vampire hunter, originally summoned to the town to deal with her,” Hanz said. “But he ended up protecting the town from the local vampires instead. He’s quite a good shot with a wooden stake and crossbow, she told me.”

Silvia and Randon exchanged looks.

“But as I said, she never met a vampire—or an imp for that matter—until she was fourteen on that Halloween when she discovered that she was not human.” Hanz sighed. “The story is that they came into the town from out of the mountains, attempting to recruit her.”

“Recruit her?” Randon echoed, not sure he heard right.

“That’s not likely,” Troy muttered.

But Hanz shrugged. “That’s what they were telling her. And I heard similar things from Will, Jane, her sister Dawn and her brother Travis. And her parents. Only Mr. McDillan, whom I’ve met, said that they were probably attempting to get her to lower her defenses to convince her to go back with them—and then they were going to kill her.”

“Why didn’t they try to kill her then,” Randon asked, “When they came into town?”

“Because she is more powerful,” Silvia replied, leaning back with a nod.

They looked to her.

Raising her hands, Silvia explained, “I was raised a witch. I know a bit about the vimp curse.”

Hanz perked up, immediately interested.

“Not everything,” she assure him, lowering her hands. “But I do know that the vimp is basically like a whole vampire combined with a whole imp.” She looked to Randon and Troy. “She’s not like your friend Tom Brown who is half human, half imp. Unlike Eve, Tom is a genetic mix and does not have complete traits of an imp. For example, he’s not as fast as imps are. But Eve is. He doesn’t go completely invisible and she does. Tom is very human, despite everything else. Imps lack compassion or a sense of right and wrong. Tom’s humanity grounds him to this world. But Eve is something else.”

“And the Order of Blood is terrified of her because…” Troy rolled his hand, trying to work it out in his head as he also knew vampires liked to manipulate people. They might have tried to manipulate Eve back then rather than kill her. She would have been a powerful ally if they succeeded.

“Because she is the ultimate killing machine,” Silvia said, nodding. “And they are no match.”

Art looked like he wanted to throw up.

Hanz merely closed his eyes. It pained him, yet he knew it.

“But she’s also extremely good—such a goody-goody,” Silvia added. “And can’t be manipulated. Believe me, my coven tried. It was a disaster.”

That answered that question, and a few others he didn’t even know he had. Troy, however, said, “I overheard the vampires talking about the vimp ending an important colony of the Order of Blood.”

Hanz nodded, his eyes still closed. “Yeah. Eve freaked out when she found out a couple years later that they had killed her birthfather. And… she obliterated the vampire colony in those mountains.”

Troy drew in a breath. So it was true. It was her who had done it. 

“Just obliterated them?” Silvia murmured, her voice catching in her throat.

Hanz opened his eyes with pain. “She didn’t elaborate. But Jane was there, and told me Eve was shell-shocked afterward. She was covered in their bites. They took her to the hospital and bandaged them all up, and she was out of school for the week after, recovering. But I can hardly see the scars. Eve has to point them out.”

The scars….

As Troy recalled, Eve was bloody when she showed up the night before with what looked like gunshot wounds. He wondered how it had happened. It seemed to him, that blood was her legacy.

“But she just obliterated them?” Silvia said once again, sounding surprised.

Hanz looked to her, confused. He nodded. “Yeah.”

Silvia tossed up her hands. “How in the world did that happen? It took everything for our coven to get her to just attack the Seven—which was the purpose of her existence!”

All of them leaned back from her, Art especially, though Hanz looked like he had just bitten into something unexpectedly sour.

“You’re not actually upset about that, are you?” Randon asked with shocked expression.

Rolling her eyes and hanging her shoulders, Silvia moaned. “No. But at the time it was so exasperating. And I wasn’t thinking the same as I do now. I just want to know, what pushed her over the edge to actually kill because she cringed at the smell of blood.”

Cringed? Troy wondered on that.

Hanz bitterly swallowed that distasteful thought, being the only one who could answer the question. But he knew. They could all tell he knew. And he said, “I told you. The vampires killed her birthfather. And when she found out she totally lost it. Family means everything to her.”

“So if someone attacked her family…?” Silvia said out loud.

“You would be dead,” Hanz said sharply, nodding.

For some reason, that made Troy feel good. Eve had saved him. And the more he thought about it, he began to remember stories told about how she had saved Rick from hunters and Matthew from a demon. Their dark angel.

“Have you ever seen Eve lose it?” Art breathed out, sounding terrified of his own voice.

Hanz looked to him, thought for a moment, and then nodded his head. “Only once.”

They all listened, barely holding their breaths.

He sighed. “It was… It was right when she started college. We just met again days before. There was a serial killer on the loose at the time, and Eve caught him red-handed totally by accident. We were on a date at the time, just meeting at the restaurant when she smelled the blood. She shoved her purse in my hands and told me to call the police, saying somebody in the park across the street was hurt. She ran into the street, and the next second her wings spouted out of her back—the second time I had ever seen them—and she flew off. And I was freaking out. But I called the police. And when they came, I showed them where she had gone—and we found her and that killer fighting. Eve looked a fright—glowing red eyes, giant wings, claws, and she was bleeding. She had him pinned down  on the ground like she was about to crush his throat with her knees. Somehow one of her roommates was there, and there as murdered woman there also.”

They all drew in breaths.

“He played the victim when he saw us, and the cops tried to shoot her—which if you know Eve… you can’t. I saw her catch a bullet. They would have continued to try to shoot her, except your friend Matthew was there and he stopped them. The thing is, she didn’t lose it until the killer tried to attack Matthew. That’s when some kind of change went over her. Her face…. She got ahead of the guy before he could get to Matt, but… well… she ripped the guy’s heart out. With her hand.”

Art’s face went white.

Randon and Troy exchanged looks. That was the story they had heard from Matthew. They hadn’t known Hanz had been there, though.

Silvia just stared, clearly blown.

“I…” Hanz shook his head staring at the countertop.

But Randon patted him reassuringly on the back. “It’s ok. It’s hard to reconcile, but you love her. I get it.”

Hanz still shook his head. “It’s not just that. I think that is the reason why those death angels claimed her. She was already a death angel. And when I am with her, it does feel like I am stepping into a world I don’t belong. But I don’t want to let her go.”

“Even if it is good for you?” Art said.

Silvia glared at him.

But Art had a point. Hanz and Art did not belong in their world. Troy could feel it. Randon hid a cringe, feeling it also. Those two guys were the kind of people who would normally be protected from their world.

“Is it?” Hanz asked, his eyes saying he was not so sure it was good to be separated from Eve.

Art hesitated to answer. He didn’t know Eve after all. He looked to the others, seeking some kind of help.

Silvia said, “I take back what I said at the hospital. You should not give up on her.”

Art frowned at her.

With a dirty look at Art, she added, “I didn’t really know you before this, and I didn’t understand. But knowing Eve, she deserves a happy ending.”

Art looked down, his cheeks coloring a little. It occurred to Troy that a conversation had taken place about this. He had a feeling Art felt judged.

However, Troy cleared his throat and said, “Ok. I have one more question, and it is for all of you.”

They all looked to him, waiting.

“Who and what exactly is the Holy Seven?”

Randon leaned back and nodded. Silvia smirked, standing more comfortably, then quickly rescued the melting quesadilla from the griddle before it scorched. She put on a fresh tortilla and added cheese. Hanz raised his eyebrows,