They picked up right where fate had driven them apart. Ian and Beth were only too happy to accommodate Leila, and Beth's brother couldn't stay away. By the end of the first week, Leila was helping Beth run the inn bar or watch Charles, so that she didn't need to feel bad about not being able to pay for her room (which true to Beth's words was given freely), and Jeremy came in every day after work to sit at the bar and talk with Leila.
She soon found out tales of the Hunter life fascinated the man and asked for them daily. At first, Leila was unsure what to do about this. She had never told stories of the hunt to anyone before, and for her, they were a part of life that one did not tell, even if people in the towns the Marcus clan happened upon had wanted to hear them. Most people did not. The only times anyone had to think about Vampire Hunters was if someone in their village got attacked. Then, they were grateful to see the Hunters come, but they were even happier to see them go. When they weren't there, there wasn't a constant reminder of why they were needed. People were wary, for the most part. Nobody asked about the life, as if hoping that by their ignorance they could be rid of the vampire and the vampire hunter sooner.
Furthermore, for Leila the stories of her life were a brutality she kept closed off from her mind. They were too shocking even for her, and not because of the vampires. She'd watched as a brother – usually Nolt – dealt with any competition. Many were dhampirs, and her brothers loved the job as much as she had. Sometimes, however, as with the dhampir vampire hunters, her brothers loved the job even more than she felt comfortable watching. The word dhampir brought back her memories of D, and she was glad he had not suffered the same fate. The thought of her brothers being able to harm him would have made her laugh, if it hadn't filled her with nausea after having seen them play with some many other dhampirs. The human competition they didn't play with, but granted a swift death. Leila still locked these memories up within her mind.
Jeremy insisted though, even after Leila explained to him that she couldn't tell him anything. Finally, one afternoon after Jeremy had finished work and had sat down at the bar and asked her again to tell him the stories, she surprised both of them by complying.
What came out first were the stories of the non-Nobility horrors they had encountered on the trail. This category was wide. Fire ants that melted the flesh off of the bone were one reason to keep wary, and the storm traps set by vampires who had since died and left their lightning traps on automatic were another. Then there were plants with poisonous darts, trees with perfume somnambulates, and grass that swallowed unsuspecting passersby.
Her stories of this kind lasted a month and could have lasted far longer. However, then he asked about that forbidden topic of the vampires she and her brothers had hunted. By this point, she was able to start talking about them. The first stories were about the "normal" hunts. A family had found a daughter lying under the hypnotic death-sleep with those two tell-tale marks on her neck, and had hired the Marcus clan to hunt down the vampire. That kind of normal, low-risk hunt usually involved hunting down one of the lower vampires, barely powerful enough to be called Nobility, and involved the Marcus clan walking away the heroes of the day.
Jeremy wasn't the only one who listened. At first, Beth was the only other one. However, soon kids came into the bar to hear the stories, gasping in wonder at the tales Leila told with perfect sincerity. Jeremy smiled at her with new appreciation, too. She didn't embellish the telling at all, nor hide anything from young ears that had occurred during the "normal" hunts, and that made her crowd grow that much faster, until it included adults, too, who bought drinks after work and gave Beth and Ian more business.
Soon, she got to talking about more daring hunts, where villager, especially children, would go missing, and the mayor would hire the Marcus clan and possibly a few others – depending on how big the town or how important the children – and they would have to chase down the Nobility. In these tellings, she got to talking about her beloved battle-car and her family's bus, both of which she'd had to fix so many times she could do it in her sleep. Through this, she got to talking about the things that could wreck a battle car and bus that were out there. The little ones loved these stories and listened with baited breath as she told of sand mantas and quicksand, of the freaks of the Nobility's experimentation and of the occurrences of energy sucking air masses.
But at night, after the little ones left, she found herself telling Jeremy darker stories once they were alone. The memories of her brothers came out unbidden one night, and she could stop herself from telling all about them. She started with the way they treated dhampirs, the part-breed children of Nobility and – usually – humanity. Kyle was the worst, she had confided: he took actual joy from tying a dhampir up out in the middle of a desert, using his for target practice then leaving him there to fall into heat exhaustion. Borgoff just liked giving the competition back one of his ears. Nolt usually just lured them into water then gave them the stake. Grove had never participated, though he, as all of them, even her, maintained that it had to be done.
Grove had always been her favorite brother. She recalled the weak and quiet yet funny boy for Jeremy, and her family and days working beside her father as a brilliant child-mechanic, before a vampire took her mother then her father when he went after the vampire.
One thing was certain in these stories, however: she never mention the last hunt and she never mentioned D.