Page 21 of Hunted

4

River

THE SUN WAS JUST DAWNING A HAZY YELLOW in the east as I turned off the interstate two hours west of Austin at the exit for the Hill Country hometown I saw far too little of these days.

No matter how rarely I visited, some things about Blood Moon, Texas never changed. We still had exactly six traffic lights. The population could best be described as more cows than people. Our major food groups included barbecue, Mexican food and anything that could be fried, something Texans took as a personal challenge. My brother Dallas, who was the foodie in the family, owned The Rusty Spoke, the best barbecue pit south of the Red River. He and his wife Lacey had a one-year-old daughter named Luna who had Dally wrapped around her little finger.

I pulled up the long gravel drive in front of Brody’s restored farmhouse and cut the engine to my armored black SUV. It carried enough computer and military equipment to allow me to lead missions when I got called across the state with no advance notice.

My oldest brother’s place looked nice with all the renovations he’d done in the months leading up to his wedding to London. There was fresh paint on the exteriors and trim. They’d put in new landscaping, with dark fuchsia rosebushes blooming in front of the porch, which was decorated with a fat orange pumpkin. It was hard to believe Halloween would be here in just a few weeks. I knew several of my brothers had helped Brody gut the kitchen and living room, redo the floors and give several of the bedrooms a facelift, as well as build an outdoor patio area for entertaining on cool Texas nights in the spring and fall. Our family could eat a lot of barbecue.

Brody and his wife London were both Alpha wolves and divided their time between their two packs. Because of London, Blood Moon had an alliance with the North Austin pack for the first time in years, a much larger pack just to our south with over a thousand wolves in its membership and far more resources.

I was just climbing the porch steps when a shout sounded from inside the house.

“Someone get the dog!”

There were frantic barks, several thumps and a muffled yelp from West. Just as I reached the screen door, Brody’s golden retriever Major came flying through it, muzzle defiantly streaked with pink frosting.

“Oh no you don’t.”

Seeing me, Major feinted to the left. Please. As if I hadn’t grown up playing capture the flag with six brothers in human and wolf form. As the youngest one in the family, you learned to read that sort of move early on or get creamed. I caught Major in midair, setting him down and gripping his harness so he couldn’t streak away.

“What have you gotten into now?” I petted those velvety golden ears. Sure enough, there was doughnut frosting all over his muzzle. He wagged his back end, tail thumping against my legs. Rainbow sprinkles littered the front porch like fairy dust. “Somebody’s in trouble,” I warned him in sing-song.

The screen door banged open behind me. Brody appeared, wearing his deputy’s uniform, which meant he probably had to be on duty soon. “Sorry. He hasn’t been sleeping well, what with everything going on.” Behind him, London’s dog, who was some sort of German shepherd mix, stood rigidly at attention, as if begging for instructions. “We were just about to get started. Tried to save you some doughnuts but Major may have gotten into the last of the box.”

“It’s fine.” I was actually starving, but Brody was the last person I would ever complain to. He would just throw it in my face that I was thirty minutes late (Austin traffic was an insufferable hellscape) and that the rest of them had jobs to go to. Forget the fact that I’d barely slept in two nights.

“Let’s get started. Gonna have to make this quick.”

I leaned against the wall, not bothering to take a seat. A migraine pounded between my temples after being forced to filter out so many voices all night. Ordinarily I rationed my mental energy for family get togethers. After last night, I was completely drained. There would be no blocking my brothers out, no matter how much I wanted to.

My family had made every effort not to treat me any differently from the moment my powers manifested at the age of twelve. But when someone could read your every thought, knew when you were annoyed they were still around because you secretly wanted to jerk off, knew when you were so pissed at one of your own kids you wanted to punch a hole through the wall, it was only natural to put distance between you and the source of your private shame in order to protect yourself. Even if the source of that shame was your brother or son. Maybe especially then.

Lonely didn’t even begin to describe it.

It was part of why I’d joined the Tracers, a place where everyone had extraordinary abilities. Where everyone was a freak. Where everyone had been the outcast in their own homes growing up. Where for once, I thought I might be understood. Except it hadn’t quite worked out that way. Even on the Tracer base in Dallas, there was no one who could do exactly what I could do, no one who could read minds to the degree I could. Even among the Tracers, I was a freak. Even among the soldiers who should have been my brothers, there was always that distance.

“We need to talk about how Rossi’s recent attacks impact security here in Blood Moon and in Austin. There’s also the issue of how our pack can help support the ALDD research project at the university.”

“Are the Tracers not going to be handling any security at all going forward?” August interrupted, glancing up from where he’d been typing on his keyboard. “Not that West isn’t extremely scary when he shifts into an eighty-pound German shepherd.”

“Bite me,” West called from over by the kitchen table where he was furiously scribbling out last minute lesson plans. From the sound of things, he and his first period freshman English class were locked in a bitter war over comma usage.

His husband Topher Greer, who was a paramedic, peered over his shoulder, lazily stroking a finger down the back of his neck. “Don’t bite the messenger, but that quiz is so overly pedantic, I’m not even sure you could pass it.”

“Commas are important,” West growled, scraping his sandy-brown hair back off his forehead. “And if this is a misguided attempt to flirt with me—"

“Is it working?”

“Getting back on topic.” August smirked. “Not to knock our people, but the ALDD project seems too important to leave the security detail to civilians.”

“The Tracers are overextended at the moment,” I said, rubbing my temples. “It’s not that protecting the research team isn’t a high priority assignment. It’s that ten other things are, too. Ellie is the primary target. Do we have a list of people we can put on her protection detail?”

“Yeah, and it’s a good list.” Brody crossed his arms in a way that told me I wasn’t going to like what came next. “When I asked for volunteers, they were the first ones through my door. Vlad already has Jori, Rowan and Ursula leading the vampire contingent. He has a few more people in mind. I told him we would come up with at least four shapeshifters to round out the detail.”

“And?” This much stalling was never a good sign.