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Chase swung toward them, his eyes shooting feral amber beams into the dark woods, his gore-slickened weapon clutched in his hand, ready to do more damage. Without a single word, the pair of law-breaking Agents bolted in opposite directions, disappearing into the night.
The woods fell silent once again, except for Murdock's pained groans. Chase drew in a cleansing breath. Intellect and reason slowly filtered in through the dark fog of his fury and the nagging thirst that still rode him. The situation he now found himself in was hardly ideal. One dead Agent bled out on the ground. Two more on the loose, certain to identify him as having attacked them unprovoked. Given his reputation lately, there would be few who'd believe him if he said he'd stumbled upon an illegal blood hunt and only did what he had to in order to break it up.
And then there was the problem of the escaped humans, the runners. He knew as well as any of his kind how dangerous it was to allow humans back into the general population without first scrubbing their memories of all knowledge of the Breed. Centuries of careful coexistence could be wiped out in an instant if enough hysterical humans were to scream the word "vampire."
Chase snarled, torn between responsibility for his race and the deeper, more personal need to wring Murdock for any information on Dragos.
Chase knew the right thing to do. He took a step away from Murdock, ready to fall in behind the escaped humans and contain the situation.
The wail of distant sirens, growing louder by the second, gave him pause. He could be too late already.
He glared down at Murdock.
With a muttered curse, he hefted the injured vampire up onto his shoulder, then bounded off into the thicket with him.
There was enough gas in the tank of the pimp's purple El Camino to carry them a good distance out of the city. This far from New Orleans's revived central hub, the homes were small and sparse, many still in disrepair or derelict from the ravages of the hurricane that had blown through years prior.
As Hunter drove, he kept a calculating eye on the eastern horizon where day was soon to break. Already the deep blue quiet on the other side of midnight was giving way to the pastel shades of morning. He glanced at Corinne, who sat silent in the passenger seat. Her split lip was swollen and bruised. Her eyes were trained on the empty road ahead. She seemed weary, her delicate shoulders trembling from either shock or chill; he wasn't sure which.
"We will stop soon," he said. "You need to rest, and dawn is coming."
Her nod was vague, little more than a tremor of acknowledgment. She inhaled a shaky breath. Blew it out slowly. "Did you know him?"
Hunter didn't have to ask who she was referring to. "I'd never seen him before tonight."
"But you and he ..." She swallowed, then ventured a sidelong look at him. "You fought the same way. Neither one of you would have stopped until the other was dead. You were both so vicious, so relentless. So unemotional as you went about it."
"We were both trained to kill, yes."
"At Dragos's command." He felt her stare fixed on him as she spoke, saw her stricken expression in his peripheral vision. "How many are there?"
Hunter shrugged, uncertain. "I could only guess at our numbers. We were never told about each other. Dragos kept us isolated, with only a Minion handler to look after our basic needs. When we were called into service, our work was always done alone."
"Have you killed many people?"
"Enough," he replied, then scowled and shook his head. "No, it won't be enough until I see Dragos dead and gone. Even if I have to take down every one of the others like me in order to get to him. Then it will be enough."
She turned her gaze back to the road, quiet and contemplative. "What was the thing you used to kill the assassin back at the airport? He was wearing some kind of collar. You took it when we left, and I saw that you were aiming for it when you shot him. The explosion from it was blinding."
Hunter could still see the piercing blast of light in his mind. There were times when he could still feel the confining bite of his own collar, the one he'd shed the night he joined the Order. "It's an obedience device of Dragos's design. Inside, the collar houses concentrated ultraviolet light. It cannot be tampered with or removed without triggering the detonator. Only Dragos can deactivate the sensor."
"Oh, my God," she whispered. "You mean it's a shackle. A lethal one."
"Effective, certainly."
"What about you?" Corinne asked. "You don't wear a collar like that."
"Not anymore."
She watched him carefully, her eyes rooted on him as he turned off the main road and followed a side street toward what looked to be an abandoned row of houses. "If you used to wear that awful device too, how did you manage to get free?"
"Dragos had little choice but to release me. He'd assembled a meeting of his allies last summer at a private location outside Montreal. The Order discovered what he was up to and moved in to attack. Dragos commanded me to provide the sole cover while he and his men fled out the back."
He felt Corinne's grave understanding in the quiet way she listened. "He was sending you out alone against how many of the Order? He meant for you to die."
Hunter shrugged. "It only showed me the measure of his desperation, and his contempt for me. He and I both knew that if I didn't charge out to confront the warriors in those next few moments, he and his associates stood no chance of escaping. I told him I would go, but only if he released me from my bond."
It had been a long while since he'd thought about that night in the forests outside Montreal. In truth, his journey toward freedom had begun even earlier that summer - the night he'd stolen into the private lodge of a Gen One vampire named Sergei Yakut on orders to kill from Dragos and found himself staring into the mesmerizing, mirrorlike eyes of an innocent little girl.
