Mother Hunter E-Book

Johnson ID

• Herausgeber: ID Johnson
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Jo McReynolds is one crazy Mother Hunter....
After finally defeating the Vampire queen, Jo has one more important task to complete--finding her mother. 
There's just one problem. Cadence is somewhere inside of the Blood Moon Portal, a place Jo has never been before, and she has to rely on Christian Henry--no one's favorite Guardian--to help her find her mom. 
Will Jo and her team be able to find Cadence? And if they do, will she tell her mom the truth about the Guardian Leader?
This new series, Blood of the Vampire Hunter, continues the story from The Clandestine Saga with some brand new characters you’re sure to love and some familiar faces from the previous series. You do not need to have read The Clandestine Saga to love Blood of the Vampire Hunter. 
Blood of the Vampire Hunter is darker than the previous series with more intense language, gore, and some steamy scenes.

Leseprobe

Mother Hunter

Blood of the Vampire Hunter Book Four

ID Johnson

Copyright © 2022 by ID Johnson

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Created with Vellum

For Pat

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

A Note From the Author

Also by ID Johnson

Chapter 1

The portal wasn’t quite what Jo McReynolds expected it to be. The tunnel was dark, and the material beneath her feet was some sort of a cross between hardened volcanic ash and marble. It had the color and consistency of the first on top, but down below, it was so hard, it felt like they were standing on the core of the Earth.

Even though they weren’t even on the planet anymore.

Jo had traveled to quite a few places in her twenty-five years, some of them stranger than others, but this was her first time leaving the planet.

Christian Henry was leading the way, carrying a bright flashlight. It wasn’t necessary for the Hunters and Guardians in the group who could see through the dark just fine. Her concern wasn’t for Christian, her Aunt Cassidy Keen, her sort-of boyfriend Zane O'Braonain, or the healer, Scott Joplin. It was for the human that had managed to sneak in when none of them were looking--Ryker, who apparently only had one name--who was probably about to be dead.

She still hadn’t had a chance to talk to the man. Part of her wanted to grab him and shake him the second that she saw that he was there, but the rest of her knew she shouldn’t be the one to kill the fragile creature, so she was waiting until she calmed down. Chances were, she would calm down the day after never.

“Do you know where we are going, Christian?” Cassidy asked. “Or are we just taking a stroll?”

“I know where we’re going, bitch,” he said without even turning his head. “Don’t pretend to tell me what you think we ought to do because I don’t give a damn.”

“Well, I see you’re just as delightful as ever,” Cassidy said, clearly annoyed. Jo was aware that Christian and Cassidy had never gotten along. She was just hoping they could manage to make nice for however long it took them to find Jo’s mom, Cadence, who she knew was in this portal somewhere. If they didn’t find her soon, these two were liable to kill one another.

The group was quiet for a few more minutes as they walked along before Cassidy said, “It just seems like we are walking incredibly slow for no particular reason.”

Christian’s head went up to the ceiling as he huffed, stopping in his tracks. He turned around and glared at Cassidy. “Shut your trap, bitch. I’m in charge here.”

“Hey, no, you’re not,” Jo said, remembering that even though Christian had been through the Blue Moon Portal, he could die in the Blood Moon Portal. That theory had been proven when a friend of Cassidy’s had been killed in here before Jo was born. Which meant she could kill him, theoretically, if she wanted to. “I’m still in charge, Christian.”

“The hell you are,” he replied. “You wanna lead the way?”

“No, I want you to stop being an asshole and just take us where we need to go, and Aunt Cass, please just let him do what he needs to do.”

“Fine,” Cassidy said. “But we’re going to be in here for a couple of decades if he doesn't get his ass in gear.”

Christian began to walk again but didn’t make it more than a few steps before a glowing white brightness materialized right in front of him, and Jo realized at the last second that she was looking at a set of teeth--razor-sharp teeth, flying right at his face.

With a quick snap of his trigger, Christian dispatched whatever the hell that thing was, and it fell to the ground with a heavy thunk right in front of them. Whatever it was, it had to have been huge for it to shake the tunnel and knock small rocks free from the ceiling and walls the way that it did.

“What the hell was that?” Scott asked, his voice wavering. He was standing behind Jo, so she couldn’t see his face.

“Tunnel snake,” Christian said. “Reason I was walking so slowly. I knew it was here somewhere, but until I saw it and killed it, I didn’t want to walk right into its maul.”

Jo turned and looked at her aunt. It seemed like Cassidy was trying not to show that she was shook up, but it was clear that the snake appearing so quickly that it had rattled her, too.

“What’s to keep one of them from sneaking up on us?” Zane asked. He was also behind her, but Jo got the impression he was turning around backward as he asked, looking behind them.

“Nothing,” Christian confirmed. “I can usually hear them coming, but not always.”

She heard Ryker mumble, “Shit,” and then he was in front of her, right behind Christian.

Jo didn’t know if she should laugh or roll her eyes. It was pretty clear that he didn’t want to be eaten by the snake, but then, Jo had to wonder what he thought was going to happen now that he was in the portal with them. What had made him want to come with them to begin with?

“What other kinds of monsters should we be looking out for?” Scott asked.

“All kinds,” Christian replied. “Anything you can imagine, we’ve seen it in here. Some things you would’ve never imagined could possibly exist.”

Thinking of her dad walking around in here, often by himself, for all of those years, made Jo’s heart feel heavy.

“I thought Heather said there was usually some sort of a warning, like howling or something, before they attacked.” Cassidy sounded curious, not argumentative, for once.

“They used to give us the courtesy squeaks,” Christian said with a nod. “But then they stopped. So now… it’s just a feeling we’ve developed in our guts to let us know they’re nearby. Or we hear them or see them, but usually, they’re just here. I say we. Me, I guess. I’m the only one left.”

They all ignored Christian’s reference to Aaron’s death since their potential impending doom was more important to focus on at the moment. “Have you ever been bitten by one of these monsters?” Scott asked.

“Hundreds of times,” Christian said. Up ahead of him, Jo could see the tunnel emptying into what looked like a large center area with more tunnels going off in every direction.

“But you didn’t die,” Scott pointed out.

“No, but sometimes it hurt so bad, I thought maybe it would be better if I did.”

That had to be pretty painful for Christian to admit that. Again, she had to wonder how many times her father was injured in here. Probably not as many times as Christian, but probably more than none. Aaron was faster than Christian and more skilled. He wasn’t as likely to get hurt. But clearly, he wasn’t unbreakable.

They walked out into the open area. “This is the hub,” Christian said, checking the bullets in his weapons, apparently to make sure they were loaded. Jo was tempted to do the same thing, but she didn’t want to look paranoid, and she’d checked them several times before she walked into the portal. It wasn’t as if the portal could suddenly make her weapons not be loaded--could it?

“All of these tunnels go to a different portal opening?” Cassidy asked, looking around them at all of the tunnels leading off into the darkness.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Christian said. “There are thirty-seven of them. That one over there actually goes to hell, not a portal, but if you don’t believe me and wanna try it out for yourself, go ahead.”

“Hell?” Scott asked for all of them. “Like… an actual pit of fire or--”

“No, dumbass,” Christian said, finally finished with his last weapon, which he kept in his hand. “Hell is not a fiery pit any more than heaven is floaty clouds and little naked babies hopping around on rainbows. It’s just another dimension where everything sucks.”

Jo had lots of questions about that, not the least of which was how in the world did he know that, but she didn’t want to ask him. She hoped no one else did either.

They didn’t. Apparently, the rest of the group also didn’t want to hear what Christian had to say about the devil’s lair. Or the devil himself. If he existed. Maybe Christian Henry knew about hell because he was the devil.

“Which of these tunnels leads to the one that goes beneath this place, to the tunnel where my mother is?” Jo asked.

“None of them,” Christian said, tugging on his beard.

“Wh-what do you mean?” Jo was confused. Her dad had said there was another layer of tunnels beneath where they were standing now, and that’s where he thought her mom was.

“It doesn’t work that way,” Christian said.

“Then--”

“Listen, McReynolds,” Christian said, turning around to look at her. “Nothing is what you think it is here. A little fluffy bunny rabbit will bite your goddamn head off. You think things are solid that are actually portal openings, and there’s a layer of light around the outside of this place that reaches up and around the ceiling.” He raised his eyes, and Jo did, too, even though she didn’t know what he was talking about. Nor did she see any light above them. Like everywhere else she looked, everything was black.

“How do I find her?” Jo asked, growing tired of his riddles.

“Well, I was down there when you sent your fucking text and drew me back out again, so I’m not sure. But we’ll find it.”

“You don’t know how you got down there?” Cassidy asked.

“I think I just told you nothing is what it seems. Aaron and I stumbled upon the opening. Finding it again could take some time. All of these tunnels look the same, but beyond that, they’re constantly moving and reordering themselves. We thought it was tunnel number eight, and you can see that it’s numbered right over there, but I’m guessing it’s not there anymore now that the portals have spun around while I was gone.”

“Do you remember where eight was when you were here last?” Jo tried not to sound as irritated as she was, but it wasn’t easy.

Christian nodded. “Yeah, it was right over there, where fifteen is now.”

“So doesn’t it have to be where eight is or where fifteen is?” Scott asked.

Christian shook his head. “No. It could be anywhere. Hell, it could be in your ass. There’s no way to know.”

“Do you have to be such an asshole?” Jo asked, wanting to test Christian’s theory that he could die now more than ever.

“I do. I am. If you don’t like it, I’ll be happy to open a portal back to Kansas City and throw your ass out.” He wasn’t even looking at her as he spoke.

In fact, he was digging in the pocket of his leather jacket. When he pulled out a cigarette and lit it, Jo didn’t know if she should be disgusted or pull it out of his mouth and put it out on his face.

“If he doesn’t know where the hell the portal opening that leads to Cadence is, why do we need him, Jo?” Cassidy asked.

She opened her mouth to answer, but she didn’t get the chance to. Christian replied, “You won’t last half an hour in here without me, sweetheart.”

“Bullshit. Heather lived in here for over a hundred years,” Cassidy reminded him.

“That was before.” He pulled the cigarette out from between his chapped lips and blew smoke right in Jo’s face. She stepped back, trying not to cough.

“Before what?” Zane asked, trying to stay calm despite his obvious irritation that Christian had been so rude to Jo.

“Before Holland came in and fucked everything up. She was running around in here for fifteen years, at least, screwing everything up. Everything is messed up now.”

Looking around, Jo couldn’t possibly understand what might’ve been better before the Vampire Queen was in there. Had it been a fucking rose garden before?

“She opened a bunch of fucking wormholes,” Christian continued. “They go through to other dimensions, including the one where your mom is hidden. She was trying to tunnel her way back to earth, but the rule of one left behind hadn’t changed. She couldn’t leave until someone else came in.”

Jo had completely forgotten about that rule. How were they going to get out of there once they found her mom? “But… wasn’t Mom still in here?” Jo asked.

Christian shook his head. “No. She’s in a different dimension.”

“So how do you ever leave the portal to go look for her? Wouldn’t that mean no one is in here?’ Jo felt like they were talking in circles.

“I solved that problem.”

“How?” Cassidy asked, folding her arms.

Christian opened his mouth to answer but he didn’t get the response out before a giant black monster jumped out from the tunnel they’d just been walking through, lunging for Scott’s back since he was the closest one to it at the moment.

Opening fire, Christian shot the monster in the head and it fell to the ground.

But it wasn’t alone.

Chapter 2

Leading a team meeting was a lot harder than it looked.

Cadon McReynolds stood at the front of the conference room, staring out at almost three dozen faces. He’d seen his father do this more times than he could count. Aaron always made it seem like it was the simplest task imaginable. Just stand up here and talk, tell everyone what the plan was, and they would listen and then do it.

Now that he was the one standing here, he could see why his sister had had so many problems with it when she’d first started leading the LIGHTS team. Still, Jo had made it look easier than this.

“Well, Cadon, where do you want to start?” Elliott Sanderson asked from a chair to his right. The Guardian was slouched so low, he looked like a high school student in the back row of math class. Except for much, much bigger. “We’re going to the Rock, right?”

Cadon nodded. That much had been decided. After the Capitol, the next largest number of LIGHTS team members was being held in Alcatraz. It just made sense that they would go try to get those people out before the Vampires decided it was time to execute them, too.

But just waltzing over to California and opening the prison cells wasn’t going to cut it. In order to throw the Vampires off of their trail so that they could sneak in without being caught, they’d need a diversion.

Cadon was hoping that Margie Joplin and the Australians would be willing to launch some sort of an attack on the other side of the country to draw President Crimson and his armies away from the west coast. Exactly what her objective should be, he wasn’t sure. He was planning to get that nailed down during this meeting.

The leader of the Australian army, as well as that region of LIGHTS, was sitting dead in the center of the room across from him, her arms folded, her face puckered, her blue hair making her look even more intimidating. Cadon tried not to focus on her.

“Cadon?” Jamie Joplin, Margie’s brother, said from a seat just a couple down from Elliott. “You want to tell us where we are going?”

“Uh… yeah… yes,” Cadon said with a firm nod, running his hand through his hair. “Yes. I would like to tell you what our next mission will be. I have been talking to some of the senior leaders of the team, and we agree that our next objective should be Alcatraz. As you may know, many of our LIGHTS team members are locked up there. So… we need to go get them out.”

“And how are we going to do that?” Margie asked, not unfolding her arms, and not changing her scowl.

“Actually, I’m glad you asked, Margie. Ms. Joplin… uh… ma’am.”

In his IAC, the tiny computer inside of his eye that let him talk to his other team members, Elliott said, “Calm down, bro. You don’t have to call her anything but Margie. Or Marge. Or Large Marge.”

He knew his “funcle” was just trying to be funny. Margie wasn’t large at all.

But she was intimidating.

Cadon cleared his throat. He wished his dad was there. If Aaron was in the room, even if he wasn’t leading the meeting instead of Cadon, just seeing his reassuring smile would’ve made everything better.

“My plan is that the Australians will actually create a diversion on the east coast so that the Vampires don’t know that we are taking a smaller force to the west coast to attack Alcatraz.” There. He’d gotten that much out.

“All right,” Margie said. “That sounds like a decent plan. Where, exactly, would you have us concentrating our forces? Keep in mind, I will have to send a large chunk of my forces back to Australia because they were only here to take down The Capitol. Now that they’ve done that, the prime minister wants them back. They are having their own Vampire problems. Now that Holland is no longer controlling the Vampires running around the continent, it’s a lot easier to blow their ashy brains out. She needs troops to do that.”

Cadon nodded. “All right. That’s understandable.” A lot had changed in the few days since Holland had been taken out. The vice-like grip she had over the rest of the Vampires was gone, so their powers had lessened significantly. They were back to being able to kill Vampires with one well-placed bullet, instead of needing titanium bullets or silver knives plunged over and over again. “Will you be able to stay to lead the diversion attack?”

“Yes, I will be able to,” Margie said. “But I’d like to know where I’m attacking.”

“There’s Grand Central Station,” Elliott offered. “The Vamps have really taken over that place. I hear it’s a great place to get killed--if you’re a human.”

Cadon had no idea what Elliott was talking about, but he didn’t want everyone else to know that. “Hmmm, that’s a potential target,” Cadon said, stroking his chin. Everyone told him he looked so much like his dad, except he had his mother’s chin. Not that a chin made a face…. “What other intel do we have about Grand Central Station?”

“Tunnels,” Brandon Keen, Elliott’s son, summed up. After everyone turned to look at him, he elaborated. “There’s a hell of a lot of tunnels from GCS that veer off to the buildings all around it, so it’s a great place for Vampires to hang out. They can go up through the buildings, find someone to eat, and then bring them back beneath the terminal.”

“Great, just what we need. More goddamn tunnels.” Cale Ryan, one of the Healers, who had incidentally gotten shot by friendly fire in their last attack concerning a tunnel, did not look amused.

“You’ll be with us, in Alcatraz, Cale,” Cadon told him, hoping he’d feel better.

“Great--an island covered with Vampires surrounded by rocks, frigid water, and sharks. Just what we need.”

Cadon cleared his throat. Apparently, the Healer wouldn’t be happy no matter what he said. “I think Grand Central Station is a great alternative objective. Margie, can you and your team look into what you will need in order to attack that location and destroy as many Vampires as possible?”

“Sure we can,” Margie said with a shrug. “What’s our ETD?”

“Uhm… I don’t know.”

“It means estimated time of departure, Cadon.” Amanda Sanderson, Elliott’s daughter, who was sitting by her dad piped up with a wide smile on her face. Whether or not the smile was intended to be encouraging or if she was laughing at him, Cadon wasn’t sure.

He had always found her annoying.

“Yes, I know. I just don’t know when we’re going to launch. Thank you, Amanda.”

“You’ll need to get into position before we even leave here for it to be a true diversion,” Jamie told his sister. She only nodded, like she already knew that.

Everyone thought they were smarter than everyone else today.

“I would like to launch our attack on Alcatraz by Thursday at the latest,” Cadon said. That would give them a day to plan and two to get there.

“That seems quick,” Ashley, Jamie’s wife, said. Cadon was surprised she’d said anything at all. He figured she was still lost in her thoughts. Her son was gone--into the portal with Jo and her team--so she was obviously worried about him. Having just gotten her husband back from the president’s prison in the Capitol Building, she was obviously stressed about her son being gone now. Hopefully, Jo would be back soon with all of the team members who had gone with her.

And one more--their mom.

“Yes, it is rather quick. I’ll give you that,” Cadon said with a nod. “But I think we need to strike while Crimson is still discombobulated.”

“Yeah, Ash,” Elliott said. “We don’t want to give him time to get bobulated.”

Chuckles filled the room. Cadon knew that Elliott was just trying to lessen the tension, but he didn’t feel like it was the time for jokes.

“How are we getting to Alcatraz?” Cale asked. “I’m pretty sure we’re not going to be able to take a plane in there.”

“No, but helicopters would work,” Cadon said with a nod. “Do we have any in the hangar?”

“Not that aren’t obliterated,” Brandon said. “Most of the vehicles we left here are junked now.”

“Shit,” Cadon muttered.

“There’s an air force base in Knob Noster,” Martin Green, another Healer who had been with Jamie at the Capitol all this time,” offered. “I don’t know specifically about that base, but I heard enough of Crimson’s assholes talking about air force bases around DC to have a pretty good idea that they were keeping as many birds at the ready as they could.”

“Why? Were they going to fly overhead and spew venom on all of the humans on the ground?” Elliott asked.

Martin didn’t seem to realize he was joking. “I don’t know why they were keeping them, but I don’t think it would be too hard for us to drive over there and take them.”

Cadon considered that possibility. Knob Noster wasn’t that far away. “All right. But there’s another problem. If we steal a helicopter… we’re going to need a pilot. A helicopter pilot. It was hard enough to find an airplane pilot before. What are our chances of finding a helicopter pilot?”

“I’ll get you a pilot,” Margie said, finally unfolding her arms long enough to wave at him like he was a nuisance, a pesky fly. “You make your plans to go steal the damn helicopter, and I’ll get you someone to fly you out of there.”

“Won’t we need more than one?” Elliott asked. “Once we land on the Rock, how are we going to get off--with all of those prisoners?”

Cadon tried not to look exasperated. He didn’t know the answer to that question either.

It was Heather McGraw, the other Hybrid, besides Cassidy, who chimed in. “Getcherself a big ol’ boat,” she said. “Any damn person can drive one of them barges. Have it at the ready, and y’all can get off the damn island and onto the boat.”

“That’s a good idea,” Cadon said. “I like that idea.”

“But why did you say ‘you’?” Brandon asked her. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

“Hell if I know. The kid ain’t told me diddly squat yet. Well, kid? Who’s going where?”