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He didn't wait for the vehicle to cease rolling. He jumped out and started jogging toward the place he'd watched the vampire go. Kade was right behind him, cursing low under his breath, but prepared to have his back regardless.
They rounded the edge of the brick warehouse and found themselves staring at a low-rent rail yard just ahead. A line of orphaned boxcars sat on one set of tracks, the side of one rusted, graffiti-tagged car wedged open just wide enough for someone to squeeze past. A group of humans stood nearby, gathered around a metal drum that glowed and sparked from the rubbish burning deep inside it. They warmed their hands over the container, passing a small crack pipe to one another.
The stoners hardly looked up as Dante and Kade strode past them. Their faces were hollow, ghostly. They stank of narcotics, booze, and rotted clothing. Their hair was filthy, bodies ripe with the stench of the unwashed. Glazed eyes stared off unfocused, their minds decayed, lost to the seductive grasp of their addictions.
"Jesus Christ," Kade hissed, disgusted. "If Chase is slumming around down here in this shithole, he must really be fucked up.">She wept softly as he approached. Her breath puffed in pale clouds into the darkness. Her sobs were quiet but seemed to come from a place very deep within her. He didn't know what to say as he drew nearer to her. He didn't have any words of comfort, wouldn't have the first idea what she might want to hear.
He reached out his hand, intending to place it on her quivering shoulder the way he'd seen others do in shared moments of distress. Inexplicably, he felt an urge to acknowledge her pain. She looked so alone in that moment, he wanted to show her that he recognized she'd just lost something important to her back in that house: her trust.
She noticed his presence before he had the chance to touch her.
Sniffling, she lifted her head and looked at him over her shoulder. "Did you ... do anything to him?"
Hunter gave a slow shake of his head. "He lives, although I don't understand why you would find his death so unacceptable."
Her fine brows bunched into a frown. "He loved me once. Until a few minutes ago, he was my father. How could he have done this to me?"
Hunter stared into her fierce eyes, understanding that she wasn't looking for answers from him. She had to know, as he did, that Victor Bishop's cowardice had proven stronger than his bond to the child he'd taken in and raised as his daughter.
Corinne glanced past him, into the darkness beyond his shoulder. "How could he have lived with himself all this time, knowing what he'd done - not only to me, but to the rest of the family through the lies he told? How could he have slept after murdering that girl and using her death as part of his deception?"
"He is not deserving of the mercy you gave him tonight," Hunter replied, no malice in the statement, only a bleak truth. "I doubt he would have given you the same consideration."
"I don't want him dead," she whispered. "I couldn't do that to my mother - to Regina. He'll have to find a way to answer to her, not me. And not you or the Order either."
Hunter grunted low in his throat, less than convinced. The chief reason Victor Bishop was still breathing was the plea from his betrayed daughter. Hunter had been taken aback when she'd asked him to spare the man. He shouldn't have been. Mira's vision had predicted it, after all. Yet not as flawlessly as he would have guessed. The situation had seemed different. Corinne had seemed different, pleading not with the impassioned desperation he'd witnessed in Mira's vision but a defeated weariness.
And not just that, Hunter reflected. The outcome of the vision had been different than the child seer had shown him. He'd stayed his hand. The course had been altered, and that had never happened before.
It felt wrong, all of it.
Part of him was being drawn back toward the Darkhaven residence even as he stood there. He'd been trained never to leave loose ends that could unravel on him later. Hunter had witnessed a broken man, someone who'd been proven pliable and weak. Those things could be manipulated by someone stronger, as they had been by Dragos all those years ago. While tonight Victor Bishop had seemed an adversary of little consequence, despite his wealth and any remaining political connections, the experienced predator in Hunter twitched with the need to finish his job. Knowing what he did of little Mira and her extraordinary gift, he wondered how it was even possible that he'd not defied Corinne's pleas and delivered that final, preordained blow. He saw her tremble in front of him as a chilling gust blew through the iron of the secured gate.
"I need to get out of here," she murmured, pivoting toward the tall bars. "I don't belong here. Not anymore."
She grabbed hold of the gate in both hands and rattled it, harder and harder, a wordless cry erupting from deep within her throat. She threw her head back and railed at the star-pierced, black sky. "Let me out, goddamn it! I need to get away from this place right now!"
Hunter moved in behind her and placed his hands on top of hers. She stilled, every muscle within her going tense and motionless. Even though she had been shivering, her body felt warm against his chest. The heat was a living thing, an almost unbearable presence that made all of his senses fire up like awakened circuitry.
Corinne must have felt it too. She pulled her hands out from under his and folded her arms in front of her. He realized now how close they were, barely an inch to separate her spine from his chest and torso, her petite body caught before him in the cage of his arms. She was so small and delicate, yet there was a defiant energy that radiated around her. It drew him closer, enticed him to breathe her in, to let his touch return to the impossibly soft tops of her small hands, and to test the silken warmth of her long dark hair against his stubbled cheek. He wasn't accustomed to acknowledging temptation, let alone giving in to it. And so he held himself still in that bewildering moment, ignoring the sudden quickening of his pulse and the heat that kindled in his veins.
When she withdrew and ducked away, Hunter felt a swift relief. Cold air filled the space between his arms. Corinne stood to his side as he moved in closer to the locked seam of the iron gate and wrenched it open wide enough for them to slip out.
Alarms immediately went off back at the house. Floodlights blinked on from all over, spilling illumination along the Darkhaven's entrance and perimeter walls. Corinne looked at him under the pale yellow wash of the security lights. "Get me out of here. I don't care where we go, just get me away from this place, Hunter."
He gave her a grim nod, then motioned for her to follow him to the car he'd left parked down the street when he'd returned to confront Bishop. They ran together, Corinne jumping into the passenger seat as Hunter went around to take the wheel.
He drove off, taking note of the fact that she didn't look back even once as they left the Darkhaven behind them in the darkness. She sat rigidly in the seat next to him, her gaze distant, staring out the windshield but focused on nothing at all.
They rode in silence for more than twenty minutes, until he had navigated to a quiet part of the city and found a place to pull over. "I must report in to the compound," he said, retrieving his cell phone from the pocket of his leather trench coat.
Corinne barely acknowledged him, her vacant eyes still fixed on the far horizon. Hunter called in, expecting to hear Gideon's typical rote greeting of "Talk to me." Instead it was Lucan who answered. "Where are you?"
"Delayed in Detroit," Hunter replied, detecting a note of urgency - of tense impatience -
in the Order's leader. "Something is wrong," he guessed aloud. "Have there been developments concerning Dragos?"
Lucan muttered a dark curse. "Yeah, you could say that. We just found out he knows the compound's location. We assume he knows, that is. A few hours ago, Kellan Archer upchucked a tracking device. Gideon's analyzing it as we speak."
