Bloodbound Hunt

The stake felt good in her hand. Solid. Balanced. The ash tip had been sharpened to a needle point, and Kara ran her thumb along it, testing. A bead of blood welled up, dark red against her pale skin. She sucked it clean without thinking. The taste was copper and salt and something else. Something that made her stomach clench.

She was in a warehouse on the edge of the city. The air smelled like rust and old rain and the particular chemical sweetness of vampire nests. Her boots made soft sounds on the concrete floor. She’d been tracking this one for three weeks. It had taken a teenager from a bus stop in the Heights. Left the body in an alley with two perfect punctures in the throat and a look on the girl’s face that Kara couldn’t forget.

She didn’t forget much these days. That was the problem.

The nest was in the basement. She found the stairwell by following the cold draft. Vampires always ran cold. They couldn’t help it. Dead things don’t generate heat. She’d learned that the hard way, along with a hundred other lessons that had carved themselves into her bones over the last four years.

Four years since Lena Luthor had looked at her across a rooftop and said, “You lied to me. Every single day. You looked me in the eye and lied.”

Four years since Kara had stood there, her cape billowing in the wind, her heart cracking open, and said nothing. Because what could she say? She’d had a thousand reasons. None of them mattered.

The basement door was unlocked. That was wrong. Vampires were paranoid creatures. They locked everything. They set traps. They posted guards. This was too easy, and easy meant something else was happening.

Kara pushed the door open anyway.

The room was empty. No coffins. No nests. No vampires. Just a single chair in the middle of the concrete floor, and on the chair, a piece of paper with her name on it.

She picked it up. The handwriting was familiar. She’d know it anywhere. The sharp, elegant loops of the L’s. The way the A tilted just slightly to the right.

*Kara.*

*I know you’ve been looking for me. Stop. I’ll come to you when I’m ready.*

*I’m not the girl you remember.*

*Neither are you.*

*L.*

Kara crushed the paper in her fist. Her hands were shaking. She hated that. Hated that after everything, after all the blood and the hunting and the nights she’d spent alone in cheap motels with nothing but a stake and a bottle of whiskey, Lena Luthor could still make her hands shake.

She heard the footsteps behind her a second too late.

“You shouldn’t have come here.”

The voice was different. Lower. Colder. It had an edge to it that hadn’t been there before, a kind of predatory patience that made the hair on Kara’s arms stand up.

Kara turned around.

Lena stood in the doorway. She was wearing black. She always wore black now, according to the reports Kara had collected. Black coat. Black boots. Black gloves that covered her hands because vampire nails grew long and sharp and hard as steel. Her hair was longer than Kara remembered. It fell past her shoulders in dark waves, and her skin was the color of marble. Perfect. Unblemished. Dead.

Her eyes were green. Still green. That was the cruelest part. They were the same eyes that had looked at Kara over wine glasses in Lena’s penthouse, that had crinkled at the corners when Lena laughed, that had gone wide and hurt and betrayed on that rooftop four years ago.

“Lena.” Kara’s voice came out rough. She cleared her throat. “You look good.”

Lena’s mouth curved. It wasn’t a smile. It was something sharper. “You look tired. Hunting doesn’t suit you.”

“It suits me fine.”

“No.” Lena stepped into the room. Her movements were fluid in a way that human movement never was. She didn’t walk. She flowed. Like water. Like smoke. Like something that had stopped obeying the laws of physics. “You were meant for sunlight, Kara. For rooftops and saving people and that ridiculous smile you used to give me when you thought I wasn’t looking. You were never meant for this.”

Kara’s grip on the stake tightened. “You don’t know what I was meant for.”

“I know you better than anyone ever has.” Lena stopped three feet away. Close enough that Kara could smell her. She smelled different now. Not perfume and coffee and the particular warmth that had been Lena’s alone. Now she smelled like cold earth and iron and something floral underneath. Rotting flowers. “I know you still dream about me. I know you wake up reaching for someone who isn’t there. I know you’ve killed seventeen vampires in the last year and every single time, you were thinking about me.”

Kara’s heart was pounding so hard she could hear it in her ears. “That’s not true.”

“Liar.” Lena said it softly. Almost fondly. “You’ve always been a terrible liar. It’s one of the things I loved about you.”

Loved. Past tense. Kara held onto that like a lifeline.

“What do you want, Lena?”

“I want you to stop hunting me.”

“Then stop killing people.”

Lena tilted her head. The gesture was so familiar it hurt. “I haven’t killed anyone in six months.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

“You heard what I wanted you to hear.” Lena stepped closer. Kara stepped back. Her shoulders hit the wall. She hadn’t realized she’d been backing up. “I’ve been careful, Kara. I’ve been precise. I take only what I need, and I take it from people who won’t be missed. The teenager in the Heights? That wasn’t me. I don’t hunt children.”

“Then who did?”

“A rival. Someone who wants to draw you out. Someone who knows exactly what you mean to me.”

Kara’s breath caught. “What I mean to you?”

Lena’s hand came up. Slowly. Giving Kara time to move, to dodge, to drive the stake through her heart. Kara didn’t move. Lena’s fingers touched her cheek. They were cold. So cold. Like touching glass in winter.

“You’re my mate, Kara.” The words were quiet. Final. “I didn’t choose it. I didn’t want it. But the turning changes things. It changes everything. And when I woke up, when I crawled out of that grave, the only thing I could think about was you. The only thing I could feel was you. Every heartbeat. Every breath. Every time you cried, I felt it.”

Kara’s eyes were burning. She blinked hard. “That’s not fair.”

“No.” Lena’s thumb traced her cheekbone. “It’s not. But I didn’t ask to be this. I didn’t ask to be turned. I didn’t ask to spend four years starving for the taste of your blood while you hunted me through every city on the Eastern seaboard. But here we are.”

“I won’t be your mate.” Kara’s voice cracked. She hated it. Hated how weak she sounded. “I won’t be your possession. I won’t be turned. I won’t—”

“I’m not asking you to be turned.” Lena’s hand dropped. She stepped back. The distance felt like a wound. “I’m not asking you to submit to me. I’m not asking for your mind or your will or your autonomy. I’m asking you to stop running. I’m asking you to stop hunting. I’m asking you to look at me and see me, not the monster you’ve built in your head.”

“You are a monster.”

“Yes.” Lena’s smile was sad. “I am. But I’m your monster. And I will spend the rest of my existence proving to you that I can be something else. Something worthy of the woman who taught me what love was supposed to look like.”

Kara’s hand was shaking. The stake was still in her grip. She could end this. One thrust. Right through the heart. Lena wouldn’t stop her. She could see it in Lena’s eyes. The invitation. The acceptance. The exhaustion of four years of hunger and loneliness and rage.

She couldn’t do it.

She lowered the stake.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Kara said. “I don’t know how to be near you without wanting to kill you or kiss you. I don’t know which one is worse.”

Lena laughed. It was a real laugh. Surprised and warm and so painfully human that Kara’s chest ached.

“That’s the most honest thing you’ve said to me in years.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t make this okay.” Kara’s voice broke. “Don’t make me feel like this is something we can fix. You’re a vampire. I hunt vampires. That’s what we are now.”

“That’s what we’ve been.” Lena stepped close again. This time, Kara didn’t back away. “But it doesn’t have to be what we stay.”

She was so close. Her breath was cold on Kara’s lips. Her eyes were green and endless and full of something that looked like hope.

“What do you want from me?” Kara whispered.

“Everything.” Lena’s hand found hers. Their fingers interlaced. The stake pressed between their palms. “But I’ll settle for a conversation. One conversation. No stakes. No lies. Just us.”

Kara looked down at their joined hands. At the stake that could end this. At the woman she’d loved and lost and hunted and mourned.

She didn’t let go.

She didn’t pull away.

She didn’t know what that meant.