Fan Fiction ❯ The Vampire Hunter II: Bloodlines ❯ Chapter 1

Attention: This Is The Sequel To ''The Vampire Hunter.'' If You Have Not Read ''The Vampire Hunter'' Please Do So Or This Story Will Not Make As Much Sence To You, Thankyou...

Chapter I

"Everything set?" Shiri asked.

"Yes. Our first stop will be Washington, D.C. We'll leave out of JFK at dusk tomorrow," Gabrielle replied.

"Private or commercial?" Michelle asked.

Gabrielle tossed ticket packets to each vampire that was sitting around Michelle's living room.

"Commercial, whenever it's possible; private, only if there will be too much of a delay waiting for a regular flight. And I'm only booking the seats the day before. I don't want there to be any... accidents."

"Good thinking," Shiri commented.

They were all well aware that this expedition would create a particularly good opportunity to assassinate the Queen of the Vampires. Gabrielle would be very vulnerable to attacks while she attempted to establish her place as First Born. One of their duties on this trip would be to protect the Queen from such threats.

"Do we at least get to know where we're going?" Yelena asked.

Though Michelle and Shiri had both learned in their three thousand years of life how to drop their accents in order to blend in with their current cultural surroundings, Yelena was only a few hundred years old and she still carried her Russian-born accent, especially on her "w's," turning them into "v's." Gabrielle found it quite endearing.

"Yes." Gabrielle passed out copies of the proposed itinerary she'd created. "After D.C., we'll be going to Chicago, then L.A. You can see the rest of the destinations listed in order of when we'll be visiting them and approximately how much time I expect us to spend at each place. I've tried to set it up so we won't do too much backtracking. I realize traveling is going to eat up a lot of our time, so I'm going to try to choose flights that will take place during the daytime hours when we'll be sleeping anyway. That means we'll have to rely on the servants to make sure we're placed in cargo properly."

"Sam can handle that. She's the eldest servant, so she'll be in charge," Michelle said.

There was a slight question in her look, as she waited for Gabrielle's approval of her choice.

"That will be fine. Who else has been chosen again?"

Gabrielle had only asked for the number of people that were going in order to book the right number of seats on their first flight, but she hadn't spent enough time around the others to know which servants belonged to which vampires.

"Well, Theresa volunteered as soon as she found out. You remember her from the Arena," Shiri said with a smirk.

Theresa had taken it upon herself to act as Gabrielle's personal slave while the Queen visited the Arena and hadn't allowed any other servants to do the First Born's bidding as long as she was around. Gabrielle had mixed feelings about bringing the human with them, but loyalty was sometimes hard to come by.

"Yes, I remember her. Who else?"

"Chen was recommended by David, so he'll be coming, too, to assist Theresa. I made sure she agreed to that before granting her request to join us. Yelena only has Trevor, so that's it," Shiri concluded.

Gabrielle nodded her head. Though she'd told them that they could each bring two servants, she was glad they'd kept the number down to a minimum. And even though Shiri had made it sound as though Gabrielle would have two servants for her use, it worked out so that there was one servant for each vampire.

"Well, dawn will be here soon. I suggest we all get a good day's rest. I'll see you at the gate," Gabrielle said and left.

~\/^^^\/~

Dana Clark ran her eyes down the recently updated passenger list again. Her search query had notified her of several new passengers with the name "Gabrielle" in their documentation and she was checking to see if the vital statistics matched.

Clark frowned. The first one was only a partial match. The person in question was a man named Gabriel Thompson and he was seventy-three years old. He'd requested not to be put near an emergency exit because he wouldn't be able to assist with getting the door open.

She heard the reminder beep prompting her to look at the next one on the list and sighed. After her initial check of all the passenger lists of every flight out of John F. Kennedy International Airport, the only likely place of departure for Gabrielle from New York City, Clark had realized she wouldn't be able to keep tabs on the lists herself, so she'd set up the search/alert program to let her know of recent additions. She'd rigged it to only let her know of new passengers if they had the name Gabrielle in them, but she'd been unwilling to exclude partial matches in case Gabrielle used a shorter form of her name.

She'd been inundated with Gabriel's, Brie's, Elle's, and Gab's, and the few Gabrielle's that had turned up were soon proven to be unacceptable matches for one reason or another. Either the listed age was out of the question or the ticket had been bought in person during the day or something else seemed too out of place to be a match.

Clark figured Gabrielle would use the surname she had seen listed in the Vampire Hunters Association's database, but she couldn't be sure. That was why she'd settled for only using Gabrielle's first name in her search.

Clark checked the second notice before the computer could beep at her again and was taken to the appropriate passenger manifest. She scanned the page. Her smile lit up her eyes and she laughed, as she saw 'Gabrielle Alucard' among the newest passengers.

"Ha! Gotcha."

Clark checked the rest of the new additions to the flight and noted the purchase times. There were seven other tickets bought along with Gabrielle's at around three that morning and Clark wrote them down, along with the credit card information. She'd be able to use the other names to make her search more specific next time, it being unlikely that Gabrielle would go anywhere without her entourage, and she could track the credit card use, too, for more subtle information about what Gabrielle was doing.

Clark shut down the program and logged out. She went to her kitchen to refresh her glass of soda and then went to the living room to sit down and think.

She could hop on a plane now and be there before Gabrielle and her group showed up. Or she could book a flight for after Gabrielle would arrive. Or, and this was probably her best bet, she could wait until Gabrielle went on to her next destination and give Gabrielle a chance to relax her guard a little.

Clark nodded her head to herself. Though waiting was not her preference, she knew it would be her smartest move. It would also give her a little more time to prepare. She needed to decide what she was going to take with her. At the very least, she would need to be ready to meet hostile vamps. At the most, she would need to be able to get the data she gathered back to the VHA, if she couldn't deliver the information herself.

There were several key pieces of equipment she would need to get from the 46th precinct where she worked for the VHA based in New York City, but that wouldn't be too difficult for her. It was the home of the original Vampire Hunters Association and had been around almost as long as the New York Police Department, having gained independence from the state police less than twenty-five years earlier.

Clark shook her head. To think she'd been working as a Vampire Hunter for nearly half that amount of time. Sometimes, her life seemed unreal. Both of her parents and her younger brother had been killed by a vampire, just weeks before she'd planned to go off to college. That dark night had set her on a path that had led her from one nightmare to the next in her quest to avenge her family's deaths.

Though she'd killed the vampire that had attacked her home and destroyed her safe life, it hadn't been enough. Clark had gone on to build the most notorious reputation in the VHA that anyone had ever known. Her kill list had surpassed triple digits after having spent twelve years as a Hunter. Others called themselves Vampire Hunters, but Clark was The Vampire Hunter. No one else had even come close to deserving that title.

Clark stood up and headed to her gym. Though the strange high she'd been on ever since Gabrielle had repeatedly healed her body had worn off, she'd found that the effects of increased strength and endurance hadn't. She was eating more, something she'd chalked up to the extra energy her body was using up, and sleeping less. Thankfully, those seemed to be the only changes in her behavior once she'd felt Gabrielle's influence diminish.

Clark did a quick warm-up on her treadmill, then stretched for several minutes before beginning her first circuit of the machines she kept in her workout room.

She'd realized, after waking up the morning before, that Gabrielle had been right. When she was around the Queen of the Vampires, she didn't think very clearly. She was also pretty sure that the same applied to Gabrielle.

Gabrielle was a vampire and should have had no problem killing Clark. Clark was a Vampire Hunter and should have had no problem killing Gabrielle. However, neither had done so and Clark actually found the idea of staking Gabrielle to be repulsive at best and soul-shattering at worst. The feeling of having one's heart ripped out seemed to accompany those thoughts.

Clark started on a second circuit and upped the weights by five pounds.

Then, of course, there were the thoughts of letting Gabrielle bring her into the Vampire Order. Gabrielle called it the Gift and she had never Gifted anyone. In fact, Gabrielle wasn't too sure she could anymore. She was so powerful that letting a human drink her blood could very well lead to insanity. Blake, the vampire that had managed to steal Gabrielle's blood and gain some of her powers before she killed him, had already been delusional at that point, so there was no way to really check Gabrielle's theory. But it was certainly something to consider.

Clark wiped her forehead with the white towel she'd draped over her shoulders and headed for the shower. One thing was for sure. When she did finally meet up with Gabrielle again, they were going to have a lot to talk about.