AN: Wow, writing this chapter was like pulling out a tricky splinter. Hard, slow and painful. I didn't do any writing over the Christmas break and I'm only just recently getting back into it.

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THE HUNT

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Caitlyn leaned against a chair; thinking. Whatever her decision, if she wanted to stop more Hellbeasts from emerging then she'd have to act soon.

She didn't know if word of Frost's deal had reached the Nightstalkers yet. She might have to act fast to prevent Blade and Frost from trying to kill each other.

She gently ran her fingertips over her head wound, and found it little more than a graze by now. She wasn't sure if Kevin was still trapped under the jeep in the desert or not. He could be dying for all she knew.

"Here's what I want from you," she said to Arvin. "Transportation to the spot where I was taken and then transportation to wherever I choose. Not the helicopter; I'll want something less obvious. I want directions to the Temple of Eternal Night. I'll also want the use of one of your familiars for however long I need."

"Will the human need to be expendable?" Arvin asked.

"I'm not sure," Caitlyn said, and then something passed over her face, like resolve and need. "Better make that yes. I'm not sure what else is going to happen today. I'll also want a means of communicating with you if I want your help but I also want complete independence. You don't monitor me, you don't make demands on me. You give me information or warnings if and when you get them. That's the only way I'm going to do this for you. Clear?"

"Of course," Arvin replied smoothly. "As I said before, the decisions are yours."

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Frost wasn't human; hadn't been for a long while, and therefore wouldn't make a move to stop other vampires from attacking humans; wouldn't protect the humans like she and Blade did. If he became less dependent on them, got to live among them in sunlight, in time… maybe he might learn to care. But that was only a possibility if both she and Frost were going to be around for a while longer.

Even if Caitlyn hadn't been confused about her loyalties, she knew that if he was made the vessel again that he would fight to the death and possibly win, meaning that La Magra would emerge into the world and bring down Bloody Armageddon. Frost had a strong will to live. He'd made it clear when he'd abandoned the warehouse. She couldn't risk it.

But he was still a Daywalker. At least for as long as her blood held out in his system, he'd be one of them.

Any one of the three Daywalkers could be bled and used to bring forth the Blood God. The bleeding was a survivable process, if there was someone close at hand to help the Daywalker regain his or her strength. A human to feed on. Caitlyn didn't know how much blood would be needed – even her mother, a person able to regenerate it quickly, had died from the draining. From what she'd heard, Blade had nearly killed doctor Jensen when she saved him. He'd been wild with the blood lust until he'd recovered.

In Caitlyn's opinion, it was probably the attack by his vampire mother that had brought him back. The confrontation, the fight, and the closure when he'd killed her had probably given him back his clarity, and the desire to destroy the vampire responsible.

If the drained Daywalker couldn't make it back in time to stop La Magra, a third would be needed to destroy the vessel. Caitlyn never believed in destiny, but it was a strange coincidence that now there was three Daywalkers. Of course, there were still more options, more solutions to the problem, depending on what she decided to do.

If and if and perhaps and maybe. She had the choice, because she was the one who'd been given the knowledge.

Another complication to consider: she didn't know if a Daywalker could be the vessel. Frost was only a vampire when he'd done it. And if it was possible, perhaps a god-infused Daywalker would be harder to kill than a god-infused vampire. What else might it affect? If it came down to her being the vessel, the god would have all of her senses and abilities. Arvin had said that she'd be stronger than the other two, which meant she couldn't risk it, or else the god would be loosed on the world. She wasn't naïve enough to believe she could control a being that was as old as the world itself. No, better to make it another vampire, someone she wouldn't care about losing.

Last time there had been twelve pureblood sacrifices. Would she need those too? Did they have to be pureblood? Frost hated them, which was perhaps why he'd used them. She should have asked Arvin, but she hadn't thought of it. Until now all she'd heard was the stories that circulated among the Nightstalkers. She was no scholar, and never bothered to learn more than she needed to about vampires to do her job.

Caitlyn sighed and rubbed her eyes. She normally slept during daylight hours, and she hadn't slept properly since her initial capture by Frost. It was also likely that she was going to need more energy. It regenerated on it's own, like her blood, but she'd used some of it and hadn't rested since draining the last familiar, and she might need it to heal Kevin. It was one thing she'd thought of when making her demands, which was why a young man was in the driver's seat beside her. He was wearing the company suit and tie. He was clean-shaven and well manicured with glasses and perfectly straight teeth. Everything about him screamed clean. He didn't say anything to her except when she'd asked him his name. Gary. Other than that he'd driven in silence, not even looking at her. If she could smell or sense emotions other than blood lust, she was sure that his would have been indifference.She was going toget him to call Arvin soon and ask about the pureblood part of the ritual.

They arrived back at the crash site and Caitlyn got out to investigate the scene. She smelled the blood, and knew it to be several hours old. No sign of Kevin. At least he wasn't dead in the sand. Caitlyn ran her hand through her hair and tried to work out a few bloody tangles as she glanced around. She went to her knees and looked beneath the jeep and saw nothing but the empty water bottle on its side. She was disappointed; she kicked the door and left a large dent in it. She went back to her knees and half-closed her eyes.

She was so tired; abnormally so. She tilted her head back and took several deep breaths, trying to keep calm as her shoulders started shaking. She was afraid of what she thought she might need now. She leaned forward and grabbed handfuls of sand to squeeze as another tremor shook her upper body.

Hunger.

She felt human warmth beside her and gritted her teeth. Her peripheral vision told her that Gary had knelt down beside her. She'd barely registered the sharp tangy smell of new blood when she saw his arm extended in front of her face, with the sleeve rolled up and a new cut on the wrist. He was offering his arm palm-up toward her. She shot him a confused look.

"What?" she asked in a heavy breath.

"I was instructed to offer you any service that you might require from me. You seem thirsty to me."

With a dazed expression, Caitlyn looked back at his arm and frowned.

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Three vampires were getting out of a limousine outside a club, and three hunters watched them.

Jack, the body-bag survivor with 'military experience', had volunteered to help the Nightstalkers. In any case, he was already marked as a human who knew too much about the vampires, so he had little choice. He was with Abby and King as they started to patrol the pre-dusk streets. He had a silver-loaded gun and Caitlyn's repaired earpiece.

Kevin was using Frost's van to patrol the streets, with Caulder set up in the back to monitor the others. It was safer to be mobile than to stay in the all-too-findable warehouse.

The two immortals, Frost and Blade, were hunting together, but only because Blade didn't want to let the other Daywalker out of his sight. The two were travelling to a downtown alley where one of Frost's people had reported that there'd been a suspicious vampire slaying.

Frost had also been helpful enough to betray a pureblood club to the Nightstalkers, which was why Abby, King and Jack were watching the vampires arrive. The vampires went inside and their car pulled away. From their rooftop vantage point, Abby took aim at the bouncer with her bow for a silent kill. She paused when another car pulled up, a dark convertible, and they recognised the woman to be Caitlyn. The man who had driven them went inside the club first without even a second glance from the bouncer, and Caitlyn followed him.

"Isn't that…" Jack asked softly.

"Yeah," Abby cut him off.

"Why the hell's she getting VIP treatment at a Fang club?" King asked.

"Maybe because she can pass herself off as one of them." Abby suggested, but she didn't sound convinced.

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Caitlyn hadn't noticed or sensed her friends. She was too busy following the scent and interpreting her senses. She was now starting to tell who was pureblood and who was not, even through the din of the music and the mass of bodies.

Twelve to be saved now, else the ritual would have to wait for another night and more of the beasts would be let loose. One of them was coming here; she could feel it. It was drawn by the scent of all of the carelessly spilled blood that these clubs were famous for. Taking twelve purebloods alive with only one civilian human to help her was going to be a tall order, but perhaps she could quietly kidnap a few and store them in a back room before the trouble started and subdue more during the confusion.

If she'd had the other Nightstalkers with her they could block off the entrances for her. She really wasn't sure if she wanted to involve her human friends. Gary might betray them, or worse, she might. It was bad enough that she was working with an enemy and getting a little too cozy with another one, but instead of killing vampires she was going to kidnap them and keep them alive, and on top of everything else, blood was getting harder to pass up.

Some of the blood from a random human victim landed close to her feet as she waded through the room, and she made herself ignore it. Both her human side who wanted to save the half-dead girl, and her other side that wanted to tear the girl's throat out. Having a job to do helped Caitlyn to shut it out.

Gary led her to the door behind a black curtain that led to a much quieter corridor. There were private rooms either side of this corridor. She had a little bit of time left to start taking prisoners. She worked methodically down the left corridor, knocking out vampires as they played with their victims, and using the chains that she'd found in the first torture room to link a couple of them together. She had five by the time the beast was outside the building, and she left Gary to watch her captives with a gun in his hand to make sure they were there when she got back.

The creature burst in the window of one of the private rooms and quickly barrelled through the door. Caitlyn had left the hallway cleared of vampires so the creature immediately roared toward the main clubroom where most of the blood was being spilled. Meanwhile, the Nightstalkers had gotten in contact with each other and had gathered outside the club. It was already frenzied in the clubroom when Blade kicked in the front door and started firing into the mass of vampires.

Caitlyn wrist-locked another pureblood and threw him headfirst into a wall, successfully knocking him unconscious. A second beast skidded onto the slippery surface of the blood-soaked dance floor as Caitlyn ran up to Blade and knocked the gun out of his hand.

"What the fk you playin' at?" he yelled at her.

"I need them alive!" she yelled back.

Frost entered the club behind them whilst Jack, King and Abby stood guard just outside to kill anyone who tired to slip past.

The attention of beast number one was drawn to the group of Daywalkers and it leapt at the closest one with a roar. Frost knocked Caitlyn to the floor and it sailed over them to meet the swift edge of Blade's sword.

"Don't kill the purebloods!" Caitlyn gasped out as she shoved Frost off of her. "We'll need them to stop the beasts."

"You've gotta be kidding me," Blade said, but he used the butt of his sword to strike back a vampire that tried to pass him. It was only a halfblood, but Caitlyn didn't bother to correct him, seeing as they already had a truce with Frost.

Caitlyn scrambled toward the fallen gun so that she could go after the second beast. If she got rid of it quickly she could minimise pureblood casualties. Already a few of the vampires had been mangled to death. Whilst trying to avoid hitting the panicking vampires, Caitlyn aimed and fired at the remaining beast. She dodged as it came after her and kept firing, managing to bring it down. She then spun and kicked a passing vampire in the face. Not a pureblood. She tried to focus again and found a couple of them trying to run out the back way. She ran back toward the curtained back exit and into the corridor. Frost followed her as the rest of the Nightstalkers moved into the club. Blade told them what to do as they went about subduing every vampire in sight until Caitlyn could get back and identify the purebloods for them.

"Hey kitten, aren't I even going to get a thankyou?" Frost asked Caitlyn as he ran beside her. "After all, I'm working with your friends and I brought back that kid Kevin for you."

"Thanks," Caitlyn said shortly, "but I'm kind of busy right now."

Frost lunged forward and tackled one of the vampires around the waist as Caitlyn jumped and kicked the second one over and onto the floor. They hit the two purebloods until they were unconscious or close to it and dragged them back to the main room.

The Nightstalkers had mostly been shooting into the legs of the vampires and fighting hand to hand so that they could be caught alive. Caitlyn and Frost helped to subdue the last of them and then Caitlyn started counting. They had six purebloods in the main room. The rest had been killed or were only half-bloods.

"I've got five in a back room under guard," Caitlyn said, "but we're still short."

"What's going on?" Abby asked.

The moment had come for Caitlyn to decide how much she was going to tell them.

Now that things were quieter, Kevin limped into the club to make sure his friend was really okay. Caitlyn saw his injuries and looked away as the hunger started to rise again. "Stay back, Kevin, please." She glanced back. "Remember that thing we talked about? It's not time yet, but you need to be cautious." Then she looked at the rest of them. "Listen up. The beasts don't come from any lab. They're not something new; they're old. There are more of them, maybe thousands more, and they'll keep coming unless we trap them back where they came from."

"Where are they from?" Abby asked.

"We have to go back to the Temple of Eternal Night," Caitlyn said, ignoring King's derisive look at the strange name. "I'm not sure exactly where they're coming up, but if we re-create the ritual to awaken La Magra, then the death of his vessel should close up the gateway between our world and the underworld."

Blade gave a hard look at Frost and Caitlyn quickly added, "We can't use him. He's a Daywalker. The stronger the vampire that we put in the centre, the more powerful La Magra will be when he comes back. It has to be a normal vampire, preferably a half-breed. We also need one more pureblood, and one of us," she glanced at Blade and Frost, "has to volunteer to be bled."

"Then we'll also need a volunteer to feed that Daywalker," Frost said.

"I've been thinking about that," Caitlyn said, "and maybe not. My ancestors were meant to be a renewable blood source for the vampires. I can recover quicker than anyone, and there will still be the two of you to stop La Magra whilst I get better."

"What about the rest of us?" King asked.

"You can be nearby, but you shouldn't be on the floor with La Magra. All he has to do is touch you and you'll be turned." Caitlyn explained. "However, if it is going to be me, I think I need to pay a visit to Doctor Jensen first. I need some kind of serum to hold back the thirst."

"You're changing?" Abby asked.

"Yeah." Caitlyn said. She glanced at Frost. "I have an idea for the half-blood to use as the vessel. Your second-in-command is a traitor, and a spy for Thomas Arvin. He's the reason I got run off the road with Kevin. Even with the truce in place, I'm sure you wouldn't mind giving him up." Frost nodded.

"So now all we'll need is that last pureblood and some serum for you." Blade said.

"And some of that stuff you used to stop La Magra the first time," King added.

Caitlyn nodded, feeling a little better. The decisions were being taken out of her hands. It wasn't up to her alone to save the world anymore. It was up to the Nightstalkers and the Daywalkers.