Page 33 of Crave

The car door slammed behind me. And then Lacey appeared at my side, phone tucked in the crook of her shoulder, gun drawn. Ears cocked, I backtracked the way we’d come. Rain drummed on the icy pavement, the howl of the wind whistling in my ears. I let my wolf senses guide me, honing in on the faint traces of scent that didn’t belong. Twenty yards. Thirty. The air cleared. I stopped. Behind me, Lacey froze, scanning the empty fields around us.

I turned back towards town. Over the sound of Lacey’s footfalls, I heard her dialing. The call dropped. She cursed. The scent of accelerant grew stronger. I growled. We both stopped, scanning the dark, empty highway. Lightning split the sky, reflecting off the rain-soaked road. The next fifty feet, at least, were clear of trip wires.

Why sound the alarm and tell us they’re coming?

“Something’s wrong. The call’s going through, but August isn’t picking up.”

I was just pushing the image of Brody into her mind when another wicked branch of lightning tore across the sky, silhouetting the massive tree standing one hundred yards off the road. The sharp scent of ozone permeated the air. My hackles rose.

Why sound the alarm and tell us they’re coming?

Why… unless they’d wanted to draw us here in the first place.

The phone exploded in Lacey’s hand. Kashmir by Led Zeppelin. Thunder slammed into us, a massive concussive wave that made my fangs rattle in my skull like a bomb had gone off. And beneath it, a high-pitched whine—

I slammed into Lacey, her phone skittering across the asphalt. We crashed into the pavement together, limbs tangled, her head cradled in my hands. She tried to rise. I held her down, human body curled protectively over hers. A second later, the night sky went supernova.

Instantly the tree was engulfed in a massive fireball. Flames ballooned heavenward in a mushroom cloud, twisted tongues of fiery debris snaking back to Earth as the ancient oak began to burn. Rain pooled on the asphalt, shimmering silver and translucent, gray ash fluttering down like flakes of snow.

Blinking rain from her eyes, Lacey stared up at me. Sirens sounded far off in the distance—which made no sense. We were miles from anywhere. First responders couldn’t know what had happened this fast—

Unless they’d been tipped off.

Lacey’s phone fell silent. A second later, Kashmir exploded across the wet pavement. Scrabbling for it, she swiped to answer. “August?”

“Get out of there—”

I grabbed her phone. “What’s happening?”

Lacey shot me the finger. Whatever. Like we didn’t both know if vamps were about to start materializing out in the middle of the road, she was the better shot.

“They hit the ranch.” My brother sounded out of breath, like he’d been running. “Pretty sure they were looking for Topher. Maybe Lacey, too, if they weren’t expecting her to have recovered this fast. We don’t know anything right now.”

“Is anyone hurt?"

“Everyone’s fine. But Brody says they’re shutting down all the highways for two hundred miles outside of Blood Moon as a precaution, setting up random checkpoints.”

Which meant we had to hurry.

“How’d you know it detonated?”

“Caught the flash on another camera.”

“You had two cameras that close together all the way out here?”

“Yeah. Weird coincidence. Anyway,” my brother continued, “Brody says they’re talking about blood draws. No refusal.”

“That’s illegal.”

Lacey’s blood probably wouldn’t show anything. Females carried lower viral loads in their blood than male shifters, and didn’t even carry high enough levels of the lycan virus in their saliva to infect a human through biting. To date, there had never been a recorded case of accidental female transmission. But so close to the full moon, my blood would register an increased viral load. Which meant getting pulled over could be a death sentence.

“Well sure. And how much you want to bet this will be the catalyst supporters of the Nationwide Database Act need to push it through Congress?”

I cursed.

Three years ago, after #DashCamVlad outed supernaturals to the human world by dematerializing just before dawn during that fateful traffic stop, it spurred calls to screen the blood of every man, woman and child, searching for supernaturals hidden among us. So far, watchdog groups had kept the bill from passing. But how long would that last in the wake of a terrorist attack?

Yeah. This was not good on so many levels.