Mellie Rose's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Mellie locked the red cabinet and stepped out onto the porch. The night smelled wrong. Under the pine and damp leaves, she caught something sharp and human. Sweat. Gun oil. Salt from a hand that had gripped a stake too long. She went still. Someone had followed her scent home from the club last week, when she had fed too close to the lane and left the body warm. She could not die yet. Not with Raven still mortal and the maker still breathing somewhere. She went inside, killed the porch lamps, and called the only person who would know a hunter's pattern. Mia Harper answered on the second ring. Mia was the other guitarist in town who had fangs, a small pink-haired girl who tracked her own maker the way Mellie tracked hers. They were not friends. They traded information the way rival shopkeepers trade weather reports. "There's a hunter on me," Mellie said. "Tonight." "How close." "My porch." A pause. "Don't run north. He'll have the road." "How do you know it's a he." "They're always a he. Go to the old quarry. The black rock with the purple center. He won't cross open stone. No cover." "Then what." "Then you wait him out till dawn is close and you double back. He has to sleep. You don't." Mellie went out the back. She kept low through the trees and moved upwind. Twice she heard boots. Once she heard a safety click. She did not run. Running left a trail a child could read. She reached the quarry an hour before moonset. The monolith rose out of the pit, black stone split by a vein of amethyst that caught what little light there was. She climbed the flat shelf beside it and crouched. Open ground on three sides. He would have to show himself. He did, near two. A thin man in a canvas coat, stake in one hand, small crossbow in the other. He stopped at the edge of the trees and studied the shelf. He did not step onto the stone. Mia had been right. He waited. Mellie waited longer. When the sky at her back went from black to gray, he swore, low, and turned into the trees to find his truck before the sun caught him. She followed him just long enough to see the plate. Then she ran home under the last of the dark. Inside, she called Mia back. "He left." "He'll come back tomorrow. They always do." Mia's voice dropped. "Move. Tonight. Don't tell your girl where." Mellie looked at the red cabinet. At the journal locked inside. At the photograph of Raven on the shelf, laughing at something off-camera. She would have to leave the cottage. She would have to leave Raven in the dark about where, and why, for as long as it took to bury the hunter's trail. She started packing a bag.