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On a whim, Rafe started across the wide lawn dotted with partially barren maple trees. The ones closest to the road were smaller and younger. Maybe only a few years old. As if the place got some unexpected funding to try to improve the appearance of the grounds. While larger, older trees were positioned closer to the building.
“Wait! Where are you going?” Philippe demanded, taking a couple of jogging steps to catch up with Rafe. “You don’t think that Piper actually preyed on senior citizens?”
Rafe frowned. Had he thought that? It would be odd. Most vampires didn’t seek to kill their victims. It drew too much notice. And someone old enough to be living in a nursing home would definitely be too frail to feed upon without seriously risking death.
But then, hunting so close to a nursing home seemed like a strange choice as well. Piper’s entire hunting ground selection felt strange. Residential areas were hard places to hunt in. Going into a person’s home was an unnecessary risk, and the selection was slim when it came to waiting on someone to leave their home. Busy cities with their shopping areas and restaurants made it much easier to find prey.
“I don’t think she was hunting at the nursing home, unless she has a taste for older, more mature blood,” Rafe said.
“No. She wasn’t hunting there,” Philippe snapped.
Rafe shrugged. “We’re just looking around.”
He had no plan. When he’d suggested searching the last area where Piper would have been, he’d thought it would be a potential area where other vampires might have crossed through, a place where someone might have seen her at one time. At the very least, he’d hoped to get a sense of what other vampires might be in the area. People he could lean on for information if they ever hoped to get access to Blush again.
But no. Piper had to hang out in an area where no sensible vampire would hunt. A place where he couldn’t find a single damn lead to get him one step closer to having this whole fucking charade completed.
Of course, finding out what happened to Piper would likely mean putting an end to his visits with Philippe, something that left him feeling extremely conflicted. Seeing Philippe again was a very bad thing. But he still couldn’t forget their encounter in the hallway at Blush. He wanted all that to happen again very soon and so much more.
Rafe was pulled out of that thought by…something he couldn’t quite define. It was shadowy and half-hidden. Or it was trying very hard to be hidden. And that usually meant it was a threat.
Grabbing Philippe’s arm, Rafe pulled the vampire behind his body, keeping him at his back as he turned toward the vague ripple of energy. They weren’t alone. There was another…something. Vampire? The feeling shouldn’t be so vague and weak if it was another vampire. Rafe didn’t sense other vampires the same way he sensed his brothers. Their power was incredibly clear and distinct. He could identify them all. Even now, he pinged them all in his mind. They were a distance away.
Other vampires all felt roughly the same. Just a discordant note struck within a melody that played endlessly like a bit of white noise.
But this…this he couldn’t make sense of.
“What’s wrong? What are you doing?” Philippe demanded. He pulled against Rafe’s hold, but not enough to break free. Rafe had no doubt that Philippe could slip away from him if he truly wanted to. For now, he was following Rafe’s lead.
“Someone else is here.”
“Shouldn’t I be the one protecting you?”
Rafe snorted. “If something happens to you while on my watch, Marcus will have my head.”
“Funny. I feel the same way about you right now.”
A strange feeling shimmied through Rafe at his words, but he tamped the warmth down. He couldn’t get a bead on the newcomer. The wrinkle of energy would drift in and out, the location so damn vague. All he knew was, someone was close.
Pain sliced through Rafe’s shoulder followed by the crack of gunfire. The impact of the bullet ripping through him spun his body halfway around. A second bullet slammed into his side, knocking him to the ground.
Rafe blinked up at the black sky, stunned to find himself on his back. The motherfucker was using a gun. A vampire was shooting another vampire. That couldn’t be right. Vampires didn’t use fucking guns because they couldn’t kill each other with them. Well, not with the regular handguns. An attacker would need one of those monstrous hand cannons to do that.
Philippe’s worried expression appeared above him a second later, tearing Rafe from his swirling, useless thoughts.
“Are you—” Philippe started to ask, but Rafe didn’t give him the chance to get the words out. Grabbing Philippe’s shoulder with his uninjured arm, Rafe pulled himself upright. The second he reached his feet, he shoved Philippe behind him again. There was another gunshot, but this time the bullet kicked up dirt not more than a couple of feet from where Philippe had been kneeling.
