Page 4 of Blood Illusions

I fluttered my eyes open and yawned, stretched my arms. “What time is it?”

He rubbed the bridge between his eyes. “A little after four.”

I dropped my arms and yawned again. “You should have woken me up. I could have driven part of the way.”

He shrugged. “You were out like a light. And let’s face it, you could use the extra Z’s to keep up those stunning good looks.”

Red spider veins lined his deep blue eyes, and dark circles underlined his eyes as if someone had smudged charcoal beneath them. I cocked an eyebrow. “You need to catch some shut-eye, too, Damon.”

“Yeah, as soon as we dump our decapitated hitchhiker in the back with the geezer squad.”

I rolled my eyes. “You mean the Elders?”

He flashed me a mischievous smile. Damon had gotten into trouble more than once with the Elders of the Lumina Brotherhood, a top-secret society of supernatural hunters. They were our so-called bosses, but Damon had never been much of a rule follower. With Dad being an Elder, they had bonked heads again and again like stubborn bighorn sheep.

Our parents had trained us to be hunters since we first learned to walk. Dad had ideas about us becoming Elders and retiring from hunting, but neither one of us wanted to be a pencil-pusher.

I expected Dad to tear out of the house, ready to battle me again, but the house was strangely quiet. He always greeted us after a hunt.

Always.

Damon and I glanced at each other.

Something was wrong. Dread crept into my bones.

CHAPTER TWO

Damon grabbed his sword from the back seat, and I pulled out my dagger.

Not a single glimmer of light shone through the windows. The porch was always lit up, like a beacon from Dad to welcome us home and provide warmth on the chilliest and hardest days of a hunt. But this morning, not even that small source of hope was present.

Damon brushed past me like he always did. I rolled my eyes. Like Dad, he could be stubbornly protective and insisted on going in first in any situation. Even though I had saved his butt more than once.

At least he didn’t push me to go to college.

Damon slowly creaked open the front door, his sword drawn and ready to strike. A line of fine white specks that looked like snow lay in front of it. That was strange but not the most important thing on my mind.

My nose wrinkled. “Do you smell that?”

“Yeah. Let’s hope Dad short-circuited the toaster again.”

I nodded, praying he was right. Dad and technology were mortal enemies. He had problems even working the clock on his old VCR.

That wasn’t the only thing I noticed. I detected a flowery scent, and we didn’t have any flowers in the house. It was the same smell I had experienced with the strange vampires.

Despite the faint orange light of predawn outside, our house was still shrouded in darkness, and it wasn’t merely cold. It was freezing.

Damon cautiously clicked on the light switch, but nothing happened. Not even a flicker.

I glanced over my shoulder, hoping there was an outage on our street, but the neighbor’s street light across the way glowed.

I held my breath, waiting for something to attack. The house was quiet—too quiet. The only sound I heard was the blood pounding between my ears.

Damon glanced over his shoulder. “Turn on your phone.” His voice was barely a whisper.

Every muscle in my body tensed as my hand fumbled into the back pocket of my jeans for my phone. At last, the tips of my fingers brushed over the cold plastic of my phone. I trembled as I switched on the flashlight. The blinding beam lit up the living room like a stage, revealing the same white specks scattered everywhere on the hardwood floor and the furniture.

I frowned. “What is this stuff?”

---