Page 14 of Hunted

3

River

THE YOUNG MALE VAMPIRE VLAD HAD SENT MATERIALIZED at my coordinates on the Tracer military base outside Dallas five minutes after the emergency text went out from the on-site team. On a good day, dematerializing was like having your internal organs ripped out and shoved back into all the wrong places.

This wasn’t a good day.

My priority was getting to Austin before crucial evidence was destroyed. That meant no time to be gentle with the fragile werewolf passenger along for the ride. I especially loathed fast jumps in quick succession. Vampires scattered and reformed their bodies effortlessly as breathing, much in the same way shifters learned to break our own bones, changing from our human to wolf forms from the time we were little kids. For bloodsuckers, it wasn’t like having your spine crushed in an auto compactor while someone sucked out your intestines with a shop vac (and that was putting it nicely.)

It was almost two hundred miles from Dallas to Austin, and all I could think as we made multiple jumps across the state was that I should never have left Ellie unguarded. My uncle’s orders be damned.

The last jump spit us out into a cold rainy street just south of the microbiology building at the center of campus. A sharp wind lashed rain into my face, the trees bending from the force of the gusts. A rhythmic chopping rent the air. I growled. Of course someone had sent in a goddamn helicopter now after they couldn’t even be bothered to put campus police outside the building. Bastards.

First responders from police, fire and emergency medical services swarmed the scene, along with a handful of feds from the local branch of the Paranormal Investigation Division, nearly fifty people in all, a cacophony of voices that screamed in my mind. Picture being woken up after a raging all-nighter by death metal played by a pissed off guitarist. The situation commander barked orders to a uniform to secure the back of the building. Someone from the Paranormal Investigation Division was on their phone, pissed that they’d been put on hold. A group of students who’d snuck out of the dorms were filming from a distance and posting to social media. Mentally bookmarking the first two, I lowered the volume in my head. It took exhaustive amounts of moon magic and would leave me with one hell of a headache afterwards, but it was the only way I could focus in big crowds.

“Find me Vlad,” I growled to the vampire who’d brought me here, glaring at the sea of strobing red and blue rack lights on the police cars lined up down the block. “Now.”

“I’m not sure he’s here tonight.”

“Find him, please.”

“Yes, sir.”

The helicopter swarmed overhead like a wasp out for blood at a Fourth of July picnic, buzzing the nearby buildings, the searchlight skittering briefly towards the circle of pavement where we stood. The young male vamp scuttled out of the way. The undead were all light sensitive. Daylight was deadly, but manmade light that was too bright would sicken them, too.

“River.” Fallon Gray strode towards me. Her dark hair was pulled into a high ponytail, and she had on a long black coat. “We’ve got a situation.”

A Tracer and powerful neural manipulator, Fallon had spent several years in vampire captivity after being captured on a surveillance mission. The vampires had used her and other female shifters that were captured as part of their forced breeding program to create werewolf-vampire hybrids or varewolves so that their blood could eventually supply the covens. At best, varewolf children were involuntary donors, at worst, outright blood slaves. Due to the fact that varewolf blood allowed vampires to daywalk, but didn’t cause ALDD, it was highly coveted, and no matter what the fang-heads claimed, no one believed for a second they would allow a varewolf child who came of age to leave the covens of their own free will. Fallon was fiercely protective of her three-year-old son Jonah, who now stayed with her on my parents’ ranch in Blood Moon.

“Sit rep.”

Fallon fell into step beside me. “It was a coordinated strike against the lab. A werewolf and two vampires. The werewolf and one of the vampires breached the perimeter and got into the lab. They’ve been taken to a secure location. The feds are pissed as hell and want access.”

“Not happening. The minute we give them up to human law enforcement, we’ll never see them again. We question them first.”

“That’s why I said they must have dematerialized away and that we had a team hunting for them and would contact the Paranormal Investigation Division immediately as soon as we know anything.” She smirked, the expression quickly fading. “We’re still trying to figure out how they made it past Jori’s wards.”

“Only two got through?”

“That’s the weird part. The blood wards were able to prevent the second fang-head from dematerializing through with a bomb. The sharpshooter took them out as they landed on the stairs outside the front entrance.”

I glanced up at the building across the street from the biology complex, where the police helicopter was still circling. At that angle, in the dark, down from the roof in this wind and rain—

“That’s a hard shot to make.”

“She kept a cool head under pressure.” Fallon swiped a wet strand of hair off her forehead. “I would’ve asked her to go to the range with me next week if the vamps hadn’t ghosted the moment the SWAT team showed up.”

“Where’s the bomb?”

“Fifty-yard line of Darrel K Royal Memorial Stadium. One of Vlad’s team grabbed it and got it out of there fast. Bomb squad is out there now.”

“Bet the athletic department is thrilled about that.”

“Yeah. We’re pretty much on everyone’s shit list tonight.” She jerked her chin over to where I could see two humans getting fluids in the back of ambulance bays. “Rowan was inside. She was able to grab both researchers who were working late and flash them to safety, but they had no warning and it was a rough jump. Normally with humans, the vampire teams try to be a bit gentler.”

“And humans experience even worse side effects than shifters when they try to dematerialize,” I finished, scrubbing a hand over my head. “Their physiology is just too fragile. What’s their status?”

“They’re taking them to the hospital now. Rowan wants to head over there with them, see if she can answer any questions the doctors might have.”