Thirty-Four

                                    

                                          
Blake
                          
Malachi had planned a special party to celebrate Blake's homecoming.
                          
            Someone set up a bonfire by the lakeside and chairs and tables were arranged haphazardly around it.  A few people were grilling – handing out burgers and hotdogs and veggie kabobs – and others were drinking and laughing.
                          
            A gathering of hunters is funny, Blake thought as she walked up with Hix and Josh at her sides, because everyone here is armed to the teeth just in case.  
                          
            Guns and blades were strapped to ankles and thighs and waists.  A few people had brought crossbows and silver-tipped whips that had been deposited carelessly on chairs and tables. 
                          
            Blake herself was armed with a few blades and a gun was secured at her hip.  So strange to feel the weight of that weapon on her body again after a few weeks of not wearing it.  
                          
            Four days had passed since her return to Beare Lake but her arrival had been less impactful than she'd hoped.  Her plan had been to come home, talk with Malachi, grab her brother, and then leave this place behind for good if she was still able.  
                          
Yet when she, Hix, and Mick arrived sixteen hours after Blake had left Sanguis Ridge, it was to an emptier community than she'd anticipated.  Much had changed while she'd been gone and not all of it was good.
                          
Malachi was gone – away on a hunt – and Josh had gone with him.  Her anti-hunting brother was suddenly very committed to a hunter's lifestyle.  It was only after asking around did Blake find out the reasoning.  
                          
Josh had fallen in love in her absence and then that love had been ripped away from him.  He'd been home in Beare Lake while his boyfriend – Javier, the son of the town doctor – was away on a hunt to take down a vampire nest causing problems in New Orleans.  
                          
Javier hadn't come home.
                          
It had been too much for Josh who'd been so worried about her that he hadn't even paused to consider that Javier was heading into a dangerous situation.  And so when he'd come home in a body bag, Josh had been blindsided and for the first time in his life, Blake thought that he truly appreciated what it meant to be a hunter.  The risk and the sacrifice that was involved.
                          
But with Blake gone in Sanguis Ridge, Josh had turned to Malachi for guidance.  Malachi, their ever fearless leader, had encouraged him to train harder so that he could better protect those he loved.  
                          
Josh had agreed and thrown himself into the training training.  He'd been going out on every hunt possible as if he had a suicide wish.  
                          
            When she'd called him upon her return to Beare Lake, it was to hear a voice that was darker, colder, than the voice of the boy she'd left behind.  There was no joy in his tone now.  Only bleakness.  Even her announcement of her return had only yielded a slight warming.   
                          
            The phone call though had affirmed that he and Malachi had gone to Las Vegas to hunt a djinn and would be back in a few days.  So with the house empty and nothing else to occupy her time, Blake used the time to pick up the fractured, broken pieces inside of her.  Shoving the shards of her shattered heart into a place deep inside of her where the sting wasn't as bad.  
                          
She didn't let herself think of Red's face; how he would have looked if she'd let herself wake up next to him, the way the green of his eyes would have been intent upon her face in the early morning sun, aglow with what they'd done together.
                          
            Blake tried not to think of Red at all, if only because it was fruitless.  She would never see him again.  They would never have a chance to build that home together in the shadow of a mountain peak even if she pondered if that was what she truly wanted more than anything else.