C. Hunter - Reborn

To my friends and book pimps. To all those wonderful readers and friends out there who constantly hand-sell my books: Betty Hobbs, Susan and Ally Brittain, Shawna Stringer, and Lucero Guerrero. Thanks to Natasha Benway, the best children’s librarian ever. And a special big thank-you to my street team. You guys rock.

To my hubby, you are my world, and my inspiration. Thank you for allowing me to chase a dream and for making me believe I could catch it. To my editor, Rose Hilliard, and agent, Kim Lionetti—we make a pretty darn good team. Thank you to my assistants who keep me on track: Kathleen Adey and Shawnna Perigo. Thanks to my friends and writing buddies who are there for all the woes, whines, wows, and walks: Lori Wilde, Susan C. Muller, Jody Payne, and R. M. Brand. You guys are to me like Kylie and Miranda are to Della—vital to my well-being. Thank you all.

The monster charged down the moonlit ally, right at Della Tsang. Even in the dark, she could see its yellowed fangs, its stained claws, and its horns, sharp and deadly. The thing reminded her of a supersized, chubby gargoyle, but in all honesty, she didn’t have a clue what it was.

Not vampire. Too ugly for that.

Maybe a rabid werewolf. She’d heard of them, but never seen one.

She tried to check its forehead to identify its pattern. Every species had one, and every supernatural could read them. This one, however, moved too fast.

One thing she did know: It hadn’t come in peace. The blood-red eyes, along with the look of pure evil, warned Della of its malicious intent.

Two options. Flight or fight, her instincts screamed. Her heart pounded. Only cowards ran. Taking a deep breath, she tugged at the shirt hem of her Smurf pajamas and prepared herself for the attack.

Smurf pajamas?

What was she doing in an alley wearing…?

The cobwebs in her mind cleared and she vaguely realized the third option. She could wake up.

A dream. Not real.

But even waking herself to escape felt cowardly. Della Tsang was no coward. So she allowed the nightmare to pull her in deeper, and watched and waited as the monster heaved closer. She had mere seconds.

One.

Two.

Three.

The creature smelled of death. The huge beast barely got within a foot of her when it leapt up, twisted in midair, and pounced down behind her. Della hadn’t completed her turn when the creature latched on to her shoulders. She felt a pain in the base of her neck as if a claw or fang had punctured her spine. Grabbing behind her, she buried her fingers into a mass of loose-feeling skin, and with every ounce of strength she had, she hurled the creature over her shoulder. “Take that, you obnoxious lardass!”

A loud thud brought Della fully alert. Jackknifing out of bed, her heart pounding in her throat, she saw her pillow, the object she’d just mistaken as Obnoxious Lardass and thrown across her room, sticking half in and half out of her Sheetrock.

Correction. Not her Sheetrock. Her parents’ Sheetrock!

She was home on a mandatory parent weekend. Home? The word sank into her mind like a splinter.

This wasn’t her home anymore. Shadow Falls was home. The camp/boarding school that the outside world thought was a place troubled kids got sent to, but in reality was a place supernatural kids went to learn to deal with being … supernatural.

Kylie, Miranda, and all her friends were her family now. This place … She glanced around her old room, filled with old memories. This was where she came to be reminded of everything she’d lost.

She glanced back at the pillow and the freaking hole in the wall.

Crap!

Catching her breath, she tried to think how she would explain this to her parents.

On the opposite wall stood her dresser with the attached mirror. When she looked at it, a plan emerged. A little furniture rearranging and the hole would be hidden. She glanced back at the pillow, and when she moved her head, a sharp pain pinched in the very top of her neck. Right where that damn monster had gotten her in her dream.

She reached up to rub the pain away and felt the cool stickiness. Pulling her hand around, she stared at the blood. What the heck?

Reaching back again, she felt a large pimple at the very base of her skull. Perhaps the pimple had simply been hurting and brought on the crazy dream. The smell of her own blood reminded her that she hadn’t fed in two days. But bringing a bag of blood home with her was too risky.

The last time she’d come here, she’d caught her mom rummaging through her things. Her mom had looked up guiltily and said, “I’m sorry, I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t any … I have to worry about your sister.”

“You don’t worry about me anymore?” Della had asked. It hadn’t mattered that her mom thought she was doing drugs, it was that she didn’t worry about her anymore that hurt the most. Then she’d left the room before she had to listen her mom’s heart beat to the lie she was about to tell.

Pushing the past back, she grabbed a tissue from her bedside table to stop the bleeding. In a few minutes, she tossed the tissue in the garbage, pulled the pillow out of the wall, and picked up the dresser and hauled it across the room to hide her dream-induced oops.

Standing back, eyeing the newly placed piece of furniture, she sighed in relief. They would never know—or wouldn’t know now. Someday her dad would find it, and he’d probably call her and tell her again how disappointed he was in her. But hell and pain later was better than hell and pain now.

Glancing up, she saw herself in the mirror and had an epiphany. She might face monsters—in her dreams and even in her real life—but the thought of facing her parents, of seeing the sheer disappointment in their eyes again, turned her into a spineless little girl.

Every change that had happened to her since she’d been turned into a vampire had been seen by her parents as a form of rebellion. They believed her to be an unappreciative, uncaring teen—probably on drugs, possibly pregnant—and out to make their lives miserable. But better to let them believe that, than to believe her a monster.

Sometimes she wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to take the easy way out and just fake her death like most teens in her situation did. Losing her family would hurt like hell, but wasn’t she still losing them? Day by day, bit by bit, she felt them distancing themselves from her. They barely talked to her anymore, hadn’t hugged her in so long, Della couldn’t remember what it felt like. And there was a part of her that missed them so badly she wanted to scream that it wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t asked to be turned.

“What are you doing?” The voice shattered the somber silence.

Della swung around. With her supersensitive hearing, she could normally hear her younger sister turning over in her bed. How had she not heard her slip into the room?

“Uh, nothing,” Della answered. “What are you doing up?”

“I heard you…” Marla’s eyes widened. “You moved your dresser.”

Della glanced back at the piece of furniture. “Yeah, I couldn’t sleep and I just … thought I’d freshen things up in here.”

“That thing’s heavy!”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been eating all my veggies.”

Marla frowned. “You barely ate anything at supper. Mom’s worried about you.”

No, she isn’t , Della thought.

Marla looked around again. “Did you ask Mom if you could rearrange your room?”

“Why would she care?” Della asked.