“We told you to do one thing! We told you to not interfere and you disobeyed a direct order! And, look what your decisions led you! Two of your teammates are dead because of you!” Victor barked. My head was looking down, my eyes were swollen because of how much I cried. Aphrodite and Andrew were standing tall, not showing any emotions. “Why did you interfere?” Victor demanded.
“If we didn’t interfere then we could’ve ended up like the other hunters,” Aphrodite interjected. “We did the right thing.”
“How the hell do you think it’s okay to tell me what is right and wrong?!” Victor spat in her face. “You have no authority to tell me what is right and wrong. You get one thing straight, that vampire knew you were new hunters. If it really wanted to, it could’ve killed all of you.”
“It could’ve killed us if we stayed in the closet!”
“That closet was secured. No vampires could get into that room because there is pure silver built into those walls, just like your bedrooms are.”
“All the hunters were dying,” Andrew answered. “I wasn’t going to let that happen.”
“I don’t care if all the hunters were begging you to save them! When we give you an order, you do it! You should know that since your family came from nothing but military, Andrew.”
Andrew’s jaws clenched. “I did what I thought was right.”
“You and Aphrodite decided to take matters into your own hands and look where it placed you. You lost two teammates and placed your worthless asses on my shit list. I knew that you two would disobey my orders. You’re both off the field. You will be doing nothing but running laps and doing obstacle courses, even after your feet are bleeding. You'll keep doing that and paperwork until I feel like you learned that my orders will always be final. Now, get out of my face!”
I was about to walk out with them, until Victor stopped me. “You stay. I’m not done with you yet.” I nodded and stood in front of his desk. He gestured me to sit down and I did. Victor relaxed and sat down in his chair. “What went wrong, Jazlyn?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“No need the formality when there are closed doors.”
I sighed, “I seriously don’t know. One minute, there was forty hunters. Next thing I knew, there was only the five of us that ended up being three at the end.”
“Did you see the coven?”
I shook my head. “There wasn't a coven.”
“What do you mean?”
“It seemed like there was only one vampire.”
Victor straightened and leaned against his desk. His face was stern, every muscle on his face was stiff. “Are you telling me that there was only one vampire that killed all of our hunters in the states?”
I nodded, “That’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you.”
He shook his head. “That’s not possible.”
“Before Todd died, he confirmed that there wasn’t a coven and it sounded like he was about to say that there was only one.”
“Did he say it?”
“No, he died before he can finish, but if I sum it up, ‘there’s only one vampire’.” I noticed how Victor’s hands clenched together at the sound of there being only one vampire that killed so many hunters. “Is that possible? One vampire slaughtering so many well trained hunters?” I asked.
“I didn’t think it was. This vampire might be the strongest we ever heard of. I will inform Julianna when she is done with her class. Do not speak of this to Andrew or Aphrodite. They're off the team for now.”
“Are they going to get replaced?”
Victor shook his head. “We don’t need a group of hunters yet. There is something though. I have a mission for you specifically. Do you think you can manage?”
“What’s the mission?”
“In London, there is a club called Mystique. There have been reports of girls entering the club and some of them missing. When we call you in, we are going to make you investigate inside the club to figure out what’s going on. We are thinking vampires, but since no bodies have turned up, we can’t be definite.”
“I’ll do it,” I said immediately. “Whatever it takes, I’ll do it.”
“Good,” Victor nodded, approvingly.
Julianna walked inside Victor’s office. Her eyes were fixed on me. I stood up and hugged her tightly, she returned the hug. The superior stance that she displayed was gone.
“Are you alright?” Julianna questioned.
I nodded, “I’m fine, Aunt Julie.”
“I’m sorry about your friends,” she muttered. “I noticed how close you were.”
I sighed, “I knew that I would lose friends once I came into this school.”
“You already lost so much this year though,” she muttered.
I tried my best not to show the pain in my eyes. She was very good at reading emotions and I know that she would be able to read mine if I didn’t focus enough. “I’ll be alright.”
She glanced over at Victor. “What’s going on?”
“Jazlyn and I were wondering if it was possible for one vampire to destroy all the hunters that were in the states.”
Julianna frowned, “Rarely, but possible. Wait, are you saying that there was only one vampire that attacked all the headquarters?”
“That’s what it appears to be at the moment.” Victor sighed, “Apparently, Todd was about to say there was only one until the damn bloodsucker killed him.”
“One vampire managing to kill hunters that had years of training…” Julianna’s eyes furrowed. “There is a lore about powerful vampires. There is a belief that the vampires closest to the ancient vampires are immune to almost anything, but finding someone who is close to an ancient vampire is rare to find. Most of the vampires that were close to the ancient ones are supposedly extinct.”
“Ancient vampires?”
“They are the vampires that are about a thousand or more years old. No one knows how to kill an ancient vampire, except the ones who succeeded but those records went missing long before we were born. I don’t even know how they could be killed.”
“So, you’re saying that if an ancient vampire turned a human to a vampire, it won’t be able to get killed by anything?”
“It’s possible that the only way it can be killed is when it’s at it’s weakest point.”
“Which is when?”
Julianna shrugged, “I don’t know. Did you get close to the vampire?”
“Melissa stabbed it with a silver knife before she died,” I answered.
“That wouldn’t do much.”
I thought back at what we did with our weapons. “Well, Andrew made us put a blood of a dead man and hawthorn on our weapons. Melissa’s blade had that stuff on it and she stabbed it in the heart.”
“Did it affect it?” Victor questioned.
“The vampire was stumbling around like it was badly hurt.”
“So that might be it’s weakness,” Julianna thought out loud. “I know that blood from a dead corpse is a poison to some vampires. It all depends on the age of the vampire though. If it’s an ancient than it will tickle it, but if it’s a modern vampire that was created during the nineties, then it should affect it like it did with that one.”
“So, this vampire isn’t an ancient?”
She shook her head. “If it was hurt by that stuff, then it isn’t.”
“But how is it so strong?” I asked them. “That’s what doesn’t make any sense.”
Victor cleared his throat. “It probably drank out multiple humans before it attacked the headquarters. Fresh human blood is like steroids for them.”
I nodded, trying my best to make sense out of it. “Okay,” I muttered.
“I told her about Mystique,” Victor informed Julianna.
“Don’t you think it’s a little too early for her to be assigned to missions on her own?”
“I’ve seen her training. Besides, we aren’t telling her to kill a coven. All she’s doing is figuring out if Mystique is a vampire territory.”
Julianna sighed and glanced over at me. “Are you ready for this?”
I nodded, “I’ve been ready. You knew that from the beginning.”
“Fine, but, please, don’t make the same mistake your ex teammates made. Learn from their mistakes, Jazlyn. One disobeyed order can change everything, in this case, it was your friends’ lives.”
“I know,” I muttered. “But I think I should train some more before I officially go into the mission. When I fought that vampire, it took one swing to knock me out. I don’t want that to happen ever again.”
“We’ll prep you up for it then,” Victor stood up. “We will call you in when we want you to do this assignment.”
“I won’t let you down.”
“I know you won’t. Jazlyn, I’m sorry about your friends.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, “Uncle.”