"By the way, Michelle called and told me to thank you for introducing her to Tom last night. He wants her to meet him back at the Inferno tonight and she wanted to know if we could go with her."
Cassandra flinched as Kat's words jogged something loose in her memory. All of a sudden, she saw the Inferno the night before. Saw the Daimons. She remembered the terror she'd felt. But most of all, she remembered Wulf.
Not the tender lover of her dreams, but the dark, terrifying man who had killed the Daimons in front of her. "Oh, my God," she breathed as every detail became crystal clear.
"In five minutes no one in that bar will ever remember they saw me." His words tore through her mind. But she did remember him. Well. Had he come home with her? No. Cassandra calmed a degree as she clearly remembered him leaving her. Of her going back inside and rejoining her friends in the club.
She had gone to bed alone. But she had awakened naked. Her body damp and sated…
"Cass, I'm starting to get worried."
Cassandra took a deep breath and shook everything off. It was a dream. It had to have been. Nothing else made sense. But then when dealing with such supernatural things as Daimons and Dark-Hunters things seldom made sense.
"I'm fine, but I'm not going to my morning class. I think we need to do some research and run an errand."
Kat looked even more worried than before."You sure? It's not like you to miss class for anything."
"Yeah," she said, offering her a smile. "Just go grab the laptop and let's see what we can find out about Dark-Hunters."
Kat arched a brow at that. "Why?"
In all the years Cassandra had been chased by her mother's people, she had only confided the truth of her world to two bodyguards. One who had died when Cassandra was only thirteen, in a fight that had almost killed her. The other had been Kat, who had taken the truth a lot easier than the first bodyguard. Kat had merely looked at her, blinked, and said, "Cool. Can I kill them and not go to prison?"
Since then, Cassandra had never kept anything secret from Kat. Her friend and bodyguard knew as much about the Apollites and their customs as Cassandra did. Which wasn't much. Apollites had a nasty habit of not letting anyone know they existed.
Still, it had been such a relief to find someone who didn't think she was insane or delusional. But then in the course of the last five years, Kat had seen enough Daimons and Apollites come after them to know the truth of it.
Over the last few months as Cassandra neared the end of her life, the Daimon attacks had backed off enough so that she had a small semblance of normality. But Cassandra wasn't foolish enough to think that she was safe. She would never be safe.
Not until the day she died.
"I think we met a Dark-Hunter last night."
Kat frowned."When?"
"At the club."
"When?" she repeated.
Cassandra hesitated to tell her. Several details were still sketchy even to her, and until she remembered more of them, she didn't want to worry Kat.
"I saw him in the crowd."
"Then how do you know he was a Dark-Hunter? I thought you told me they were fables."
"I don't really know. He could have just been some weird guy with dark hair and fangs, but if I'm right and he's here in town, I want to know because he might be able to tell me whether or not I'm about to drop dead in eight months."
"Okay, points well taken. But you know, he could have also been one of the fake Goth vamps who hang at the Inferno." Kat went to her bedroom to retrieve the laptop and set it up on the kitchen table while Cassandra finished eating.
As soon as it was ready, Cassandra signed online and headed to Katoteros.Com. It was an online community that she had found a little over a year ago where Apollites could talk to each other. On the public side, it looked like a Greek-history site, but there were password-protected areas.
There was nothing on the site about Dark-Hunters. So she and Kat spent some time trying to hack into the private areas, which proved to be even more impossible than breaking into the government's servers.
What was it about preternatural beings that they didn't want others to discover their whereabouts? Okay, so she understood the need for secrecy. Still, it was a major pain in the ass for a woman who needed some answers.
The closest thing she could find for help was an "Ask the Oracle" link. Clicking it, Cassandra typed in a simple e-mail. "Are Dark-Hunters real?"
After that, she did a search for Dark-Hunters and came up with bubkes. It was as if they didn't exist anywhere. Before she signed off, her e-mail came back from the Oracle with only two words for a response. Are you?
"Maybe they are just legends," Kat said again.
"Maybe." But legends didn't kiss women the way Wulf had kissed her, nor did they find their way into her dreams. Two hours later, Cassandra decided to utilize her last resort… her father.