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CHAPTER ONE
ENDER
I hate this fucking city, but I can’t leave yet. Not when I still need answers. As soon as I get them, I’m going to scoop up Rylee and get out of here. I’m going to go somewhere no one knows me and start again…
Then I’ll give Rylee a chance at a normal life, although I suppose her only hope for that is with someone who isn’t me. Not that the child would allow me to step away… or that I willingly would.
Since we were run out of the house a family had kindly offered up to us during their vacation—not that they knew—we’re back to moving from place to place. It’s not that I don’t have any money to set up a home of our own, it’s that there really isn’t anywhere safe to settle down just yet… at least not with him still alive. So until then, I just wait and watch, and when a new place opens up and is vacant for a bit, I simply move us in. There’s generally enough food for Rylee, and we can sit and wait for the next time we have to move on.
This time, we’re staying in an apartment on the second floor of a smaller building right off one of the busiest streets. It’s no problem for me to get up to the second floor, which I do with ease when I’m positive no neighbors are looking. Apartments generally aren’t my go-to, but with the vampire council on the lookout for me, I just picked a location that would allow me to hide among the humans. I really don’t want to leave the city until I know what’s happening with the council.
“Rylee, I found some of that candy you like so much. The one that is surely eating through your teeth even though you claim it’s healthy⁠—”
I still when I realize that I don’t hear the seven-year-old child anywhere in the small apartment. I understand that she’s a true vampire, and if she wanted to make herself disappear, she could do so, but she’s not quiet enough to evade someone of my age.
“Rylee?” I call as I step farther into the room.
I don’t smell anyone else… it doesn’t seem like someone else was in the room, so why would she have left? It doesn’t make sense for her to go anywhere. She knows to keep her head down, to stay quiet, to never leave. While she can certainly be stubborn at times, she’s never refused to listen, telling me that something must have happened for her to choose to leave. Did they find her? Was there someone left from the council who figured out where we were? Is she hiding somewhere in the hope of avoiding them?
Fuck.
I head into her room where I see that the window is open. Rylee could have easily jumped out of the window from this height, and the lack of a screen makes me believe she did. I check her room one last time before slipping through the window myself and dropping down into the alley below.
I breathe in the air around me, finally snagging her scent, but still… I don’t smell any other scent as if someone was tracking her. Moving quickly, I rush down the alley before coming to a busy road. At this time of evening, people are still moving around, enjoying whatever this touristy location has to offer as they find different places to dine. The smells mix and make me hesitate, but I can still catch her scent moving into the main street.
I walk swiftly, not wanting to draw attention to myself as I move. I’m well aware most of the council died mere weeks ago, but that doesn’t mean they’re all gone and that they’re not looking for me. The last thing I need is for any of them to sniff me out.
The moment I find Rylee, I’m going to make her well aware how angry I am. If she doesn’t have a valid reason for making me feel like this, she’s going to regret ever hopping out of that window.
Her scent veers off down another alley that I quickly take, but now that I’m away from the other smells, I realize that she was no longer alone. No… there was someone else here… was someone tracking her? At what point did they start?
I pick up my pace, rushing down the alley and across another street. What would they want with her? Do they know who she is? Do they know what she is? Is it someone planning to hand her over to the council? Or possibly the council itself?
Not paying attention to where I’m going, a car nearly hits me as I dash across the highway and reach the edge of a bridge. I look left and right but her scent seems to go over. Dropping from above, I land in the soft earth on the edge of the river. What the hell was she doing going farther away from people who could help her? Why wouldn’t she have sought some help? There’s no way a group of people, even if they were human, wouldn’t have protected a child if she’d told them someone was chasing her. Did I cause this because I’ve always drawn her away from others instead of encouraging her to seek help from them? I suppose before I had her, she never had the luxury of others helping her then either. Who knows if she even trusts others after all she’s gone through.
I can smell Rylee under the bridge, but I can see that she’s no longer there. Was she trying to hide from them?
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I hiss. They had to have grabbed her. They grabbed her, but then what?
I see blood splattered across some rocks but when I pick one up and sniff it, I realize it’s not hers. Did she scratch them or bite them? Clearly, it wasn’t enough to do much damage, but a fight did take place here.
Their tracks lead me to another road where her scent disappears, telling me she got into a vehicle and was taken away from me.
Enraged, I stand in the middle of the road and stare down it. Who the hell has her? I will tear this fucking world apart to get her back. I will rip it apart… I will find the monsters who dared lay a hand on her. I hadn’t even left her alone for long. An hour, possibly. Rylee was in her room playing on some handheld gaming thing the child who lived here owned. She was obsessed with that thing, so why would she have gotten up? Why would she have left the safety of the apartment when it seems like they didn’t even start following her until they saw her on the main road?
And now what the hell do I do to find her?
Anger and frustration are eating through me as a car comes toward me and begins blaring its horn at me.
“Get off the damn road!” the man yells.
I turn and look at him, and the moment I start toward him, he throws the car in reverse as if he could possibly get away. As if his car is possibly fast enough to evade me⁠—
Another horn honks and I look over at a police car pulling to a stop near me. The window goes down and a petite woman with a big smile looks out at me.
“Hey there, you alright, fella?” she asks.
I should ignore her or even tell her I’m just fine because it’s likely my fault Rylee is in this situation. Why should I be the one taking care of her? She unexpectedly ended up in my life, but now I’m not doing a damn thing I’m supposed to do, and instead, I’m putting her life at risk.
“You alright?” she asks again.
“No,” I say as I turn from her and disappear into the night.

When I step into the VRC, the entire room goes silent. It’s not surprising when I’m currently one of the most wanted men after the whole council bullshit. Like the council hadn’t unjustly arrested me and held me for information while they were over there slaughtering their own. They shouldn’t be so killable if they didn’t want me to kill those who went after me.
“E-Ender!” the irritating human says in surprise when he sees me. “Hey, buddy! It’s okay, everyone. Ender and I are pals.”
There’s so much emphasis on that word, it’s like he thinks the harder he emphasizes it, the better chance everyone has of making it out of this alive.
Before Finn can even get close to me, his vampire partner slides in front of him. The man is taller than me and does a decent job of looking menacing, but I’ve bested him in every one-on-one fight we’ve ever been in. He doesn’t worry me, and he’s not the person I need or want.
I push him out of the way and go for Finn, but when I do, Marcus snatches my wrist and half of the damn vampires wrap around Finn like some protective bubble. It’s quite irritating when I just want to talk to him.
“What are you doing here?” Marcus asks. “Are you asking to get arrested?”
I turn to face him, eyes narrowed as I fixate on the man I’d love to smack down. But I’m also positive that if I begin smacking people down, no one will help me.
“Just calm down, everyone please calm down,” Marcus’s brother, Claude, says.
“Calm down? I’m not fucking calming down. This asshole tried to kill you,” the man with a Russian accent snarls as he joins Marcus. Rylee has informed me that this “second scary vampire” is called Alexei. He has no intention of allowing me to get any closer to Finn than Marcus does, and is also trying to keep me far away from Claude.
Obviously, it was an absolutely foolish idea to even waste my time coming here.
“Fuck this,” I snap as I head toward the door. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Guys, please. Just one second,” Finn says to the others before he slides in front of me so I can’t leave. “Something had to have happened to Rylee since there’s absolutely no other reason you’d have come here. What happened to her?”
I stare at the human for a moment before deciding he really is the only help I’ll get. And when it comes to Rylee, I’m willing to do anything it takes to get her back to me safely.
“Rylee’s missing. She left the apartment while I was out. When I came back, she was gone. Some vampires seem to have chased her under a bridge before grabbing her and putting her in a vehicle, based on what I scented. It was likely that fucking council and if it was, I’m going to destroy them.”
Finn shakes his head while looking thoughtful. “The council is in shambles. There’s barely anyone left in it. I’m not sure they’d stage some attack at this point, right?” he asks. “Marcus, you just came from a meeting with them literally minutes ago. Was everyone accounted for?”
“Yes, as well as some new faces. People they’ve pulled in from international councils to help figure out what’s happening and what should happen going forward,” Marcus says. He acts like someone is slowly ripping his fingers off as he talks, it seems to be paining him so much. Honestly, I can’t help but enjoy it a little bit.
“If they took her…” I hesitate, feeling like I shouldn’t verbally explain what I would do to them if they did. Honestly, if they took her from me again, I’m very prepared to dispose of them. I would shred them into the smallest of pieces and ship their heads to the rest of the council members as a warning to stay away from Rylee.
I think it’s a beautiful plan, and even if others think it’s a bit morbid, it would surely get the point across.
Finn puts a hand on my arm, causing me to warily look down at it. Is it his robot arm, as Rylee likes to call it? Does he plan to crush my bones with it or something? I can’t think of any other reason he’d be reaching out to me.
He gives it a gentle squeeze, confusing me even more. “We’ll find Rylee. We can go now. The faster we work, the better. Where is the last location you scented her?”
I look up from his hand as I comprehend that he’s willing to work with me. So I quickly tell him her last known location before leaving the department with the plan of meeting them there. There’s no way I’m taking a slow car when I can run.
When the others finally pull up, I’ve extensively looked over the area, but I’m at a loss for what to do. If they really believe it wasn’t the council, then who would have done it? The council could have been meeting Marcus as a show while sending someone else out to collect Rylee.
Honestly, they’re not going to be of any use at all⁠—
“Alexei, could you show Ender what you found?” Finn asks.
“I refuse to speak to him,” Alexei snarls. Rylee told me he was scary, but honestly, I just think he’s pissed. “I fear that if I spoke to him, I would merely tear his head off.”
“You could try to tear it off,” I growl.
“That is not an appropriate response for someone trying to help you, Ender. Imagine if Alexei tried killing Rylee? How would you feel about him?” Finn asks. “Claude nearly died. I could have died because of you. Because of what you did. You cannot even act pissy with him, understood?”
I stare at them, not quite sure what they want me to say. There’s not anything I can say that will fix any of my former actions. “I did not trust any of you,” I say, knowing I had good reasons not to.
“Fixes nothing,” Alexei snarls. “I don’t trust people all the time. Doesn’t mean I go about trying to kill them.”
Nothing I say will appease him, so I simply don’t say anything at all.
“You think staying silent will fix everything?” Alexei asks.
I don’t know what to say that he will even understand. I’m pretty sure nothing I say or do will change anything; it never does.
Finn gives Alexei a soft smile. “Alexei, please forgive me, you have every right to feel the way you do, and please don’t mistake this as me forgiving Ender, but for right now, let’s focus on Rylee. It doesn’t mean I trust him or that he deserves our help, but Rylee is innocent here.”
“Fuck,” Alexei snarls before opening his laptop. “There’s a traffic camera at the end of this road. The car that held Rylee passed through it, right here. White, large van, we have the license plate, which I’ve already sent out to police in the surrounding areas.”
“So we have to assume the kidnapping was planned if they had a car ready, right?” Claude asks.
“Seems like it. Do you recognize any of the people?” Finn asks me as he looks at the laptop Alexei is holding.
I slowly walk over to the man who clearly hates my guts and would choose to kill me right here if he had a choice and look at the screen. There’s a still of the van that he believes Rylee’s in. There’s a man in the front seat, but that’s all I can see of it.
“Does it show them taking Rylee?”
“No, but the van is the only vehicle that doesn’t follow the flow of traffic. There is too long of a hesitation between this light here and this one,” Alexei responds. “The van either pulled over for an extended period of time or they stopped for a reason… such as grabbing the girl.”
“Can you follow it from here?” I ask. “Which direction did it go?”
“Not too well. Traffic cameras are generally used for high-density areas that have issues, so they’re not commonly used,” Alexei explains. “I’ve sent the information out and will see if anyone else picks up on the vehicle in a different area.”
“I can’t just sit here.”
“I found something,” Marcus says as he comes up from under the bridge holding what looks like an access card. “Seems to have been torn off a clip of some kind. Maybe Rylee ripped it off when she tried to get away.”
Finn takes it and flips it this way and that. “Looks like something for the nearby hospital. I’ll go ask and update you guys as soon as I get an answer.” Then he hesitates as he seems to realize he’s leaving me alone with the rest. I’m not sure if he thinks they’re going to slaughter me and toss my body in a ditch somewhere or if I might try to slaughter them.
They don’t need to worry; I’m in control of myself tonight.
“We have it handled,” Claude says with a beaming smile. Honestly, of all of the vampires, the one who should be most pissed at me seems to be the only one willing to work with me.
“Okay, please be decent beings, please? Pretty please? Do it for Cheetah Legs,” Finn implores.
“Who the fuck is Cheetah Legs? Just hearing that makes me not want to be decent,” I say, which is apparently the wrong thing to say as Marcus and Alexei glower at me.
“Don’t act like you two haven’t also made fun of my phenomenal nickname,” Finn says as he lightly smacks both of their shoulders. “And, Ender, I’m Cheetah Legs, of course.”
I eye the man, unsure how he could have come to that conclusion, but he’s willing to help me so I will call him anything he’d like. “Fine, I will grudgingly call you Cheetah Legs.”
“I… it…” Finn trails off then gives me a smile and two thumbs up. “Thank you. Cheetah Legs out.”
He gets in the car and drives off, but that just leaves me standing here with absolutely no idea what to do. “I’m going… the way the van went,” I decide.
“Do you have a phone we can contact you with?” Claude asks.
“No, that’s okay.”
Claude pulls his personal phone out of his pocket and hands it to me. “Here, take my phone. The password is 8316. Okay? We’ll call you if we find anything. If you get bored, you can look at the tabs I have open of an absolutely gorgeous suit I’ve been dying to buy. It has exquisite embroidery that rounds out the edges with buttons made from⁠—”
I take off before I’m stuck listening to any more of that nonsense. Who cares if the buttons were made of fucking dinosaur bones, I have Rylee to find.
I head in the direction the van had last been seen but I’m not quite sure what to do now that I’m here. While I know it was heading south, that doesn’t mean it never turned off one of the exits. But standing here is getting me nowhere. I consider grabbing a human or two to threaten them into telling me if they’ve seen the vehicle, but the moment they notice me lingering, they quickly move on.
Since the main road continues straight through here, I choose to keep going in the hope of seeing their vehicle somewhere, but I feel like I’m mindlessly moving with no real purpose, wandering this goddamn city. Do they not realize she’s mine? Do they not realize that they can’t take her from me? Or how far I’ll go to get her back?
The phone starts ringing and I see that it’s Finn, so I swipe to answer it. “Do you have something?” I try not to sound desperate as I ask this but I’m pretty sure I fail.
“The key card belongs to a vampire named Annalee McLernon. She owns a house in the inner city and a place down at the pier near where we were searching. Looks like an outbuilding of some kind, so I would check there. My guess is that it’s storage for boats, but it is in the direction the van was heading.”
“Why would this woman want her?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Finn says. “They almost have to have found out what she is, but how? Did the council share it before we could stop them?”
“I’m going to kill them all,” I snarl.
“Or you could kindly talk to them? Maybe you shouldn’t arrive first? Maybe you should let us arrive first. Ender? Ender, I know you can hear me! Ender, the call is still connected. Do NOT kill anyone. Do you understand? You are in hot water as it is. DO NOT KILL⁠—”
I decide that’s enough of that nonsense and hang up on him. I mean… does he really think I’m going to let them go free after they took Rylee from me? Honestly, they deserve worse than whatever I’m going to do to them.
When I reach the pier, I head to the right since there are more outbuildings that way. It doesn’t take long before I can smell Rylee. I don’t see the van anywhere, but I can smell her and that’s all I need to know that she’s here.
With Finn’s annoying words circling around in the back of my head, I move over to the door of the outbuilding and quietly slide it open. I don’t need them aware that I’m here, so I’m silent enough they’d never imagine they weren’t alone.
I step inside and nearly trip over a body since I’d been so fixated on looking up that I hadn’t even noticed it. Slowly, I kneel down, careful not to make a sound as I realize that the body lying at my feet is a vampire, but nothing seems to be wrong with him. There’s no scent of blood and his head is attached. Did he get hit by whatever killed the people in the council?
I carefully make my way in as I see more bodies littered along the floor. If someone attacked them… what about Rylee? I hesitate when I hear a noise.
There’s someone in here who isn’t quite dead yet… a vampire whose steps are too heavy to be Rylee. Are they the one who killed them all? Or are they the last one standing?
I move around the corner to face them and find a man standing in the middle of the room holding up the body of a rather dead vampire. Noticing me, he drops them. The way he drops them on the ground tells me he’s not someone who was attached to the vampire who’d just died.
“Where is Rylee?” I ask, voice cold.
He appears like he’s in his early thirties, but I can’t quite tell how old he is as a vampire, although his age doesn’t worry me. Even Marcus, a true vampire, has trouble when it comes to me. He has light hair, almost blond, with vibrant blue eyes that are watching me quite closely. “Rylee? I think you’re confusing me with someone else. How can I help you?” he asks with a British accent and a beaming smile that I want to wipe off his face.
“You can help me by telling me where the girl is.”
“The girl? I haven’t seen a girl anywhere. Then again, I just arrived here and haven’t thoroughly looked around. It appears like you’ve just arrived as well, so you wouldn’t happen to know what happened here, would you?”
I step toward him, and he puts both hands up.
He gives me a nervous chuckle. “I have an odd feeling that maybe you mistakenly think that I have anything to do with any of this. I was simply walking by and heard something… peculiar and happened to walk on in.”
“I don’t give a fuck what you did to these people. I only care where Rylee is and if she is well.”
“I would love to help you find her. Can you tell me what she looks like?”
I rush over and grab the man by the neck, slamming him against the wall as he stares at me with wide blue eyes. The innocent act is irritating me.
“Ha. I feel like maybe I pissed you off for some reason that I don’t yet know. Did I do something wrong? I really feel like maybe you think I did something wrong. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to if I did,” he says as he reaches toward me. At first, I assume he’s going to try to crush my throat, but instead he pushes my hair back and tucks it behind my ear before smiling even bigger at me. “You should definitely wear your hair up when fighting with others so it doesn’t shield your view. Imagine if your downfall was because your hair got in the way!”
I toss him, positive that this guy is confused, and leave him to murder whoever else he wants to.
Of course I don’t let my guard down. It’s apparent this man is a psychopath, but my worry is about Rylee, and I don’t feel like fighting with him if I can just take Rylee and leave.
Seeing a door past the boat stored in the building, I rush over to it.
“I will check over here. What does she look like?” the man asks, evidently not getting the hint that he should be on his murdering way.
“If you see a child, then tell me.”
“Ahhhh, makes sense. I will, I will.”
“If you even look at her wrong, I will rip your head off your body and drain you dry.”
“Oh! Sounds a bit like I definitely don’t want to look at her wrong. I will probably refrain from looking at her at all then because I’d rather keep my head attached. I feel like you’re a wee bit feisty, you know?”
“Or you could just leave?”
“I would rather help in your time of need,” he says.
I ignore the man and tear open a door, but it merely leads to a bathroom. I’m so wound up that I can’t even focus. What if she’s not here? What if she’s already dead? What if…
“You’re just absolutely adorable! Hey there, sweetie!” the man coos.
I nearly trip over myself rushing into the room. I push him out of the way and snatch Rylee up before he can hurt her. Quickly, I pull her into my arms as I glower at the man who is hugging the wall after I’d pushed him into it.
“EN!” Rylee cries as she grabs me.
“You’re fine,” I assure her as I notice the vampire staring at me.
“If I pretend to be a part of the wall, will you not murder me? Because I definitely did look at her when I had clear instructions not to. But she looked so sad and scared I couldn’t help it. I would rather you didn’t remove my head—Marcus! Twice in one day, such a pleasure!” the man says as he sees Marcus enter the building. He stops hugging the wall and straightens up, even fixes his shirt, like he’s wanting to make a good impression.
“Yeah…” Marcus says, sounding as full of “pleasure” as I was dealing with the man. “Ender, did you kill these people?”
“Does it look like I killed them?” I ask. Because if I had, there’d have been a whole lot more blood.
Rylee desperately clutches me with one hand. “En, I was so scared. There were people following me, and they started running after me. I tried running away but they were so fast. And they kept coming for me, and I was so scared, and I tried to hide but they still found me and then they kidnapped me and I remember you telling me not to leave home or someone would kidnap me and eat me and I didn’t listen and I didn’t mean to not listen. I’m so SORRRY,” she wails before she begins bawling.
Tears are my least favorite thing to deal with. They’re so… wet… and annoying. Like what’s she crying about? She should face what she did and learn from it so she won’t ever do it again. If my words of warning weren’t enough, maybe this will be because I can’t lose her.
I really can’t lose her.
I squeeze her tight to me, well aware I’d tear this world apart for her.