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  I attacked.

  It wasn't a killing spell I used but one that would hold her in place, keep her contained. It worked to destroy the blood vessels in the brain, but any supernatural creature could heal that before it would kill them, resulting in a “supernatural migraine” that left them kneeling on the ground, unable to move.

  That's what should have happened, but it didn't.

  And I knew it wasn't that my magic wasn't actually doing anything; I could feel it reaching out of me to latch onto her, wrapping around her, but it couldn't sink inside of her.

  There was something stopping it.

  My eyes widened as I realized the only possible reason someone would be able to withstand the effects of my blood magic. The only kind of person that could ever resist it.

  She was a blood mage.

  She regarded me calmly, waiting for me to halt the chant I'd been rambling off, and only when I did so did she offer me a faint smile and take a step toward me.

  "Hello," she said, a light Hispanic accent tilting her words. "I've been waiting to meet you for quite some time."

  I frowned. "Who are you? And how did you know about me?"

  "My name is Tita. You're Nina, right? Nina Rodriguez?"

  I didn't want to confirm that, seeing as she wasn't really giving me any information that would help me, but somehow I found myself nodding slowly in agreement.

  Her smile brightened.

  "Well, I'm Tita Rodriguez. I'm your cousin."

  My heart stopped, stuttered, and for a moment, I couldn't even think. No coherent thoughts formed in my mind. It was all I could do to just stare at her.

  My cousin? She was my cousin?

  Rodriguez was a common last name, but…could it be? I almost didn't want to let myself think that it was even possible. The idea of having family, of this woman being my family, was an overwhelming thought. I'd always wanted to belong somewhere, and shouldn't a person’s family be the one place she could belong?

  Before I could even get my mind working again, she had enveloped me in a hug. I froze, my instincts screaming at me that I was being attacked, so I was a little busy just getting myself to calm down and…and let this happen.

  This was my cousin, and she was hugging me, and that was normal.

  Nothing in my life had ever been normal, but this was.

  She stepped back. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that. You're probably not used to that sort of thing, and I should have been more cognizant of that, but I was just a little overcome at actually having found you. I heard that you'd escaped a few years ago, and I've been searching the streets every night, but I hadn't been able to find you until now."

  She looked confused by that, and I had to laugh, weak though the sound was.

  "Yeah, that's my fault. I'm really good at making sure no one takes note of me, but, well, I haven't eaten or slept well in days, so I got a little sloppy today."

  "Oh dear, that's not good at all. You haven't eaten?" she asked, her eyebrows raised and knit together in obvious distress.

  I shrugged. "I'm on my own now. I used to work for the hunters, but, well…we had a falling out."

  Something flickered in her eyes at that, but it was gone before I could even think to identify it.

  "Well, we'll have to get that sorted out straight away. I was hoping to bring you back to where I'm staying. A family of other blood mages took me in when you and our family were captured, and they've been very kind to me. They know that I've been looking for you, so I'm sure that they'll welcome you with open arms," she said, beaming. "Won't you come?"

  I smiled weakly. "Hey, if there's food involved, I'm not about to turn it down. But I wouldn't get your hopes up for anyone welcoming me with open arms. That just hasn't been a theme in my life."

  She reached out and touched my shoulder gently.

  "It will be now. You're coming home," she said, and I felt a warmth spread in my chest.

  Home.

  Four

  The trip to the safe house where Tita was staying was uneventful, thank goodness. She was clearly untrained in the art of slipping in and out of the shadows, of traversing the city unseen, and I stressed about us getting caught with every step we took, but nothing happened. No one bothered us.

  Maybe because the night was dying, and the vampires that were out would be headed back to the castle, to slip inside their light-tight rooms where the sun couldn't touch them.

  Likely as not, that was all it was, but still, I had to wonder.

  The moment I stepped inside the safe house, though, I almost wished I was back on the streets. The living room was full of other mages, other men and women, and their conversation died as soon as I entered. They were all staring at me.

  "Hunter." The oldest woman in the room hissed the word as if it were somehow dirty, and the looks the rest of them gave me were so distrustful that I wanted to turn and run.

  "Eva," Tita said, a pleading note in her voice. "This is my cousin, Nina. The one that I've been looking for for so long, remember? She has nowhere else to go, and I told her that she could stay with us."

  Nowhere else to go might be right, but I wasn't about to stay somewhere I wasn't welcome. That was a recipe for disaster and, I suspected, dangerous as well.

  My life had been one threat after another, and I didn't doubt for a second that a room full of blood mages that didn't want me around was going to turn lethal if given half the chance.

  "Tita, you know that we do not consort with hunters," Eva said. For her age, her voice was strong, and it brooked no argument.

  But Tita did argue. She drew herself up to her full height, wrapping one arm around my shoulders.

  "I will vouch for her. She isn't going to put us in danger, Eva, you'll see. She just wants to be safe, as much as any of us do. Isn't that what this home is about?"

  There was a challenge in her words, one that I didn't understand, and for a moment Eva and Tita just stared at one another. A battle of the wills was clearly going down, and I fully expected Tita to back down any second. She was risking a lot by sticking up for me, I suspected, and I didn't want her to get kicked out just because she had a bad relative.

  Especially if that bad relative was me.

  "It's all right, Tita. I told you no one was going to welcome me—" I started to say, but Eva cut me off.

  "Fine. She can stay for now. We shall see what happens, but don't say that I didn't warn you," she said, casting a dirty look at me.

  I frowned. This woman really hated me, for no reason other than my occupation, and I didn't know what to do about that.

  Really shouldn't be so much of a surprise. The vampires hated me for existing, the wolves didn't trust me for existing either, so why should this be any different?

  But it should have been, another part of me protested. It should have been different, because the vampires and the wolves had distrusted me for being a blood mage, and these people were all like me. They should understand better than anyone else what it was like to live with everyone hating you, and they shouldn't turn that kind of attitude on me again.

  Regardless, they were, and there wasn't anything I could do about it for the moment.

  I looked over at Tita, who was beaming, clearly ecstatic that she had won and she was going to be able to keep me around. No doubt she was suffering from some delusion that everything would be exactly as it should be now that she had a family member back in her life, and I hated to think how I would disappoint her.

  I was never going to be what anyone wanted me to be.

  But I was determined about one thing—I was going to do whatever it took to get these people to accept me.

  This was where I was meant to belong, and damn it, I wasn't going to let that go.

  Five

  It had been three nights since I had come to the safe house—I'd spent so much time living nocturnally that I still counted time in “nights” now—and so far things had been…tense. There was a sort of peace in place between me and the other
blood mages, who were all healers, but I could feel how much they didn't want me around.

  I was a hunter, and that was anathema to their nature, apparently.

  But wasn't that what my abuelita had always taught me? Her words had haunted me my entire life, telling me that blood mages were created and put on this earth to heal the pain of others, and I had turned around and become one who dealt out that pain to others. I was everything my abuelita would have hated to see, and it was that hatred that I saw in the eyes of the other mages here.

  It made sense, but that didn't stop it from hurting every time I saw it in their eyes.

  They wanted to be rid of me, and honestly, I was considering granting their wish.

  I would have left already if it hadn’t been for Tita. She was beautiful, inside and out, with the same raven hair and tawny skin that I had, but the differences between us lay inside. She was kind and compassionate, she wanted to heal not just the physical scars of the world but the emotional ones as well, and she talked on and on about the hope she had for a future in which peace would reign. She was such an optimistic person, so hopeful, that I couldn't bring myself to bring any more pain into her life.

  And I knew that if I left, I would be doing just that. She had hungered for the love of a family member for a long time, and now that she had me, she was determined not to let me go.

  Before I could think too much more on that, though, a cry went up from the lower floor. I froze. I'd been sitting on my bed beside Tita, wearing the same white gown that she and the other women wore—the uniform of a healer, which apparently I had to wear even if I wasn't one—and now we were both silent as we waited to see what would happen next.

  "Tita!" Eva's voice cracked through the air like a whip, calling my cousin down.

  She cast a worried look at me. "It can't be that bad if she's yelling for me. If we were under attack, she wouldn't alert anyone to the presence of the other mages."

  "It still didn't sound good," I said, standing up at the same time she did.

  We hurried out of the room and down the old wooden stairs to the lower level of the house. In the dining room, we found the source of the commotion. A young man was laid out on the massive table, a sheet underneath him, and with good reason. He was covered in wounds, almost no inch of his skin visible that was not caked with blood, and he had a deathly pallor about him.

  "We need all hands on deck," Eva said, pointedly ignoring me and looking right at Tita. "Boil some water and get to work."

  "Can I help?" I asked, but she didn't answer.

  Cold shoulder. Should have expected that, but I would have thought that in this particular instance, she would have wanted any help she could get. Not that I would be much help, I suspected. I had healed myself before, but I'd never done it to anyone else. I didn't know how to interact with another person's body in that particular way, and I would probably make more of a mess of things than be any actual help.

  Instead, I stayed to the back of the room, watching the scene unfold in front of me. Five mages stood around the young man, some of them cleaning his wounds and some of them chanting spells I couldn't identify. Healing spells, of course, and I knew the language, but the rhythm was lost on me. I couldn't catch it, and I didn't dare try.

  Another woman came to stand beside me, wearing the same white gown that we all wore, and she cast a furtive glance at me.

  "I hope he's going to make it," she said, biting her thumb. "I haven't seen anyone so messed up before."

  I frowned, focusing a little more on the specific wounds that the man bore.

  "Looks like the work of a…well, I'd say a wolf, but the bite marks at his neck say vampire…" I mused aloud.

  "Oh, that'll make for complicated healing if they can't identify what did it."

  "No one saw?"

  She shook her head. "He was found in an alley alone, like this. It's a miracle he's even alive right now."

  "I agree. Something capable of doing that amount of damage should have finished him off, unless…" I tilted my head to the side, still contemplating the wounds on the man. "Unless it was distracted by something else. Or it grew bored."

  "It?"

  I looked over to see the confused look on her face.

  "Why do you say 'it' like we're talking about a creature attacking him?"

  "Because of the wounds," I said, gesturing to the man. "I already said that he doesn't bear the marks of someone attacked by just a vampire or just a werewolf, and they wouldn't work together. They hate each other. In fact, if I didn't know better…"

  My words stopped at once, a chilling sensation flowing down my spine as I realized what we were talking about.

  "What? If you didn't know any better, what?" It was Eva who spoke now, her sharp eyes locked on mine. "Speak quickly, child. We need to know what we're dealing with."

  "A hybrid," I said, grimly. "I'd bet money he was attacked by a hybrid."

  "What?" She scoffed. "There's no such thing."

  "I'd agree if I hadn't fought an army of them already. I know those wounds. I've seen them before. It was definitely a hybrid that did this—but as I said, it's a miracle it didn't finish him off. Those things are mindless, little more than beasts that just follow the instinct to hunt, kill, and feed." I pushed off the wall and headed for the stairs.

  "Where are you going?"

  I looked over my shoulder to see Tita straightening from where she'd been hunched over the man.

  "I'm going to find the monster that did this and put an end to it. It's too dangerous to allow a hybrid to roam the streets unchecked. This will just keep happening. Heal the man, and let me do what I do best."

  Eva was watching me with suspicion in her eyes. "You can't possibly think you can fight a creature with the talents of both of the night walkers."

  I arched an eyebrow. "As I said, I've fought them before. I can do it again. You need to know you can walk the streets safely, and I'm going to make sure that you can."

  This was what I did. I hunted.

  Six

  The moment I stepped out of the entryway of the house and into the shadows in the alley at its side, I felt a sense of relief wash through me. This was where I was most at ease—stalking the streets of the city, sending my senses rushing out ahead of me to catch the scent of the creature I was hunting.

  This was my element, and now that I was back in it, I hated the idea of ever letting it go again. I hated that I had to hold back what I was when I was with the other blood mages; they all looked at me with such suspicion and distaste in their eyes at the very idea of having a hunter in their midst, but I was sure they'd be thanking me for it when all was said and done. They couldn't protect themselves from the monsters that walked alongside them through the night.

  They needed me, even if they weren't ready to admit it.

  After I was a few blocks away from the safe house, I let loose, slipping through the shadows at a full-out run, letting the adrenaline pump through my veins.

  God above, this was what I'd been made to do. There was no way something could feel so good, so right, if it was supposed to be so bad. Screw what they all said about blood mages being made to heal. I'd healed myself before, and it had never come as easily or felt as right as hunting and killing did.

  Maybe they were made to heal, but I was made to kill.

  The night wore on for a bit as I raced through the city, deftly avoiding the streets that held too many humans, keeping out of notice with little effort. I could hide my scent from anyone around me—I'd spent enough time doing it in the vampire court that it was second nature now—and I had trained long and hard to learn how to move about without making a sound.

  Tita had been confused that she hadn't been able to find me in all the years that I had been free of the dungeons. Even with me being a hunter, it didn't make sense to her that she wouldn't have run into me while I was hunting through the city, but she didn't understand or respect exactly what I was.

  If I didn't want anyone to fin
d me, no one would. And now that I was fed and rested, I didn't worry that I would be found again. The vampires could hunt me all they wanted, but I knew how to avoid them. Hadn't I been doing just that for the few years that I had spent working for Conall? Sure, they hadn't been so attuned to my scent then, hadn't been so exposed to me, but the tricks would still prove useful.

  They wouldn't find me. I was going to make it, just as soon as I proved to the blood mages that it was good that they had taken me in. I could prove my worth, and then they wouldn't want to let me go, and I would have a home at last.

  I was beginning to doubt my ability to find the hybrid, though, when I rounded yet another corner and came up with nothing. Finding a hybrid with nothing to go on was much harder than my usual hunts. When I had worked for Conall, I'd always had some information to go off of. The vampire's usual haunts, for example, or their particular habits. Places they might go, things they might do, so that I could more easily find them. But this hybrid—I didn't have anything to go off of in this case.

  All I knew was that it was a mindless creature that had shredded a man to ribbons and left him for dead instead of eating him. It wasn't even intelligent enough to have any hobbies or favorite bars or shops. All it knew was how to hunt and kill.

  I smirked. Not so different from me in the long run.

  Not that I wanted anyone to think of me like that, but those were my few talents.

  I slowed from my normal running speed to more of a jog as I turned down yet another alley, sending my magic out to search in a broader fashion.

  Come on, give me something to go on, I thought to myself as I waited impatiently for my magic to finish seeking.

  And then I had it. The sensation of something wrong in the world, my magic brushing up against something that it knew it was never supposed to touch. I felt my magic recoil from it, as if it were afraid that just touching this creature would taint it somehow.

  Silly. I'd fought these hybrids a few times now, and nothing bad had happened to me for using my magic on them.