Free Vampire Affliction by Eva Pohler Page B

and went for her salvation—her e-reader. It wasn’t charged, so she plugged it in near the bed and climbed beneath the covers. Not in the mood to read the next book in The Vampire Chronicles , she searched for something else. She needed a fairy tale with a happy ending.
     
    Gertie must have fallen asleep at some point while she’d been reading, for the scorching light of dawn bearing in on her through the window awakened her. She moaned and rolled off the bed into its shadow. She caught her breath and listened for Hector’s thoughts. She couldn’t sense him or his mother. Maybe they were at the council meeting.
    She felt along the top of the mattress for her e-reader, tolerating the pain of the sun on her hand. Finding the device, she brought it into the shadows with her and searched for the place where she had left off in her book. It felt good to get lost in a story and forget all that was going on. She read all morning, until the shadow of the bed became too narrow, and then she rolled beneath the bed and kept reading.
    Sometime later, she heard the front door and sensed Hector’s mother running up the stairs.
    “Gertie?” She opened the guest room door. “Are you here?”
    “Under the bed.” Gertie held her e-reader out in the light.
    Hector’s mother knelt down and pressed her cheek to the floor. “Hi, I’m Dori, Hector’s mother,” she said without smiling. “Hector’s missing. Do you know where he is?”
    “Missing?” Gertie bumped her head on the bottom of the bed. “He wasn’t at the council meeting?”
    “No. And he hasn’t answered my text or calls.”
    “I haven’t seen him since last night,” Gertie said. “He’d gone to his father’s temple.”
    “You haven’t seen him since?”
    “Yes. He came back. But…”
    “But what?”
    “I got upset with him. Oh, God. This is my fault.”
    “Where do you think he went?”
    “Maybe he went back to his father’s temple.”
    “Okay. I’ll search there. Thanks.” Dori climbed to her feet. “Would you mind telling me why you were upset with him?”
    Gertie sighed. “He’d gone to ask his father for help in battle, but I thought he should have asked him to help liberate the vampires.”
    “I see.”
    “If the gods would only help them, maybe we could avoid a war.”
    “Thank you for telling me. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
    Dori hastened from the room. Gertie couldn’t resist reading the woman’s thoughts. If Dori couldn’t find Hector at the acropolis, she was going to go consult her father’s oracle at Mount Parnassus.
    Gertie balled her fists. Everything was falling down around her, and all she could do was lie there in the dark. Never had she felt so helpless.
     
    When dusk finally fell, Gertie climbed from beneath the bed and changed into fresh jeans and a knit top, wondering the whole time why neither Hector nor his mother had returned. The vampires would be attacking the cities soon, and, with or without Hector, Gertie planned to station herself near the Angelis apartment building. She was only one person, but she had to try her best to protect the people she loved.
    Alone and frightened, she climbed from Hector’s window, reaching out with her senses as far as she could stretch. She wished she had some clue as to where the vampires would strike. If the other demigods lived like Hector, then it was likely the vampires would strike in the suburbs. But an ambush might be easier in the city, where there were more places to hide.
    Not wanting to draw attention to herself from other vampires, she took to the streets and ran, rather than flew, toward the inner city. By the time she reached the Angelis’s apartment building, night had fallen, and so had a thick fog. Gertie flew up to the roof of the building, and, like a sentinel, prepared to wait.
    As she looked in all directions for signs of the vampires, she sought Nikita’s mind. Gertie was shocked to learn that Phoebe was missing. Gertie went from mind to