Page 40 of Hunted

“Ah, that’s where things get interesting.” August was typing again. “I had to do a bit of digging and this is all unconfirmed, but it seems that starting right around the time Rossi would have manifested into his full powers at twelve or thirteen, there were a rash of incidents, if you will, over in the province where his pack ruled. The number of psychiatric hospital admissions increased by seventy-five percent over five years. Deaths rose. Violent police calls spiked. The family did their best to cover it up, but the records are there if you know what to look for.”

“Their Alpha must have realized they had a monster on their hands. Why not stop him?”

“My guess is that the pack Alpha gave his mother an ultimatum. Send young Matteo Rossi away and make him someone else’s problem to deal with before the police come in the night with torches and pitchforks, or the Alpha and his enforcers take care of Matteo late one night and he’s never heard from again. If I had to guess, I’d say maybe Guillermo owed one of them a favor and they thought he would be willing to take him off their hands.”

Which seemed plausible. Like most old wolves, our uncle had survived this long by being well connected. “Guillermo would have gotten a read on Rossi and figured out pretty fast he was bad news. The Tracers denied the application. Favor or not, a guy like that would poison the Tracers from the inside out. Any leads on where Nicoletta Rossi is now?”

“She’s believed to still be in Italy.”

“You said there was a brother.” I scrolled through the information August had sent. “What was his name?”

“Lorenzo Rossi. I’m having trouble locating him. He enrolled this semester as a freshman studying engineering at Cal Tech. But when the attacks broke out a few weeks ago, he disappeared.”

I grunted. “Disappeared, or someone disappeared him?”

“That’s the question, now, isn’t it? Any chance Rossi shows up tonight?”

“Doubtful. He has the backing of the U.S. military forces. They aren’t going to risk us catching up to him in some seedy safe house. He can control his drones remotely. They’ll keep him on a military base behind armed guards and ten feet of razor wire.”

I looked up as Cris approached. “August, I’ll call you back,” I said, stabbing the end call button.

“Great night for this.”

“Must be hard, actually having to get your hands dirty for once, rather than just giving the orders.”

He stared off into the night. There was something about vampire eyes that had always creeped me out. I was sure a biologist like Ellie could break down all the ways they were exactly the same as us. Tissue. Molecules. She was the kind of person who was always looking for ways to bring people together, not divide them. Whereas I was trained to be a hunter. I saw minute differences that made one person stand out in a crowd when they wanted to hide. That almost indiscernible shift in posture, the scent of their sweat in a warm room. Sometimes it was the little things that separated hunter from prey.

“I’m sorry for what we did to your father.”

I tensed, wondering if it would blow the entire op if I punched Cristof in the head. My vision blurred, my wolf clawing up my bones from the inside out. It was ten full seconds before I trusted myself to speak. “Sorry you did it, or sorry you got caught?”

Cris considered the question. “August is sick. If his survival depended on vampire or human blood, are you really telling me you wouldn’t be willing to do whatever was necessary in order to obtain it?”

“My brother has lived with an autoimmune condition his entire life. There’s no cure. And no, we wouldn’t keep blood slaves locked in our basement, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Ah yes. Because you’ve never been forced into the position where your loved ones’ very survival depended on human or werewolf blood products,” Cris countered. “Our scientists have worked for years trying to develop viable synthetic blood. All have failed. Drinking werewolf blood sickens us, but it’s the only way we can go out during the daylight, something else shifters have never had to worry about. You can work normal jobs, pass as human. Your privilege in judging us is disgusting. Vampires are forced into professions that only operate after the sun goes down, lines of work where no one asks any questions.”

“Drug trafficking. Sex work.”

“Yes. Among others.” Cris pushed a hand through his hair. “I am not proud of some of the things we’ve done. You think I don’t look in the mirror every day and worry my son will be ashamed of me? That he’ll be forced to one day do the same things I have in order to survive? I want a better life for him, for all the children in the Vampire Nation. But it is the height of privilege and arrogance for werewolves to look down their noses at us for genetically engineering varewolves, for paying surrogates to carry the young and then raising them in our covens so that they can one day contribute to our blood supply, so that we can one day be raised out of the dark and live without the constant dread of developing ALDD.”

“Where is the line? If the varewolf children refuse to give their blood to the coven leaders, do they even have that right? Rowan didn’t. When she tried to question what was being done to her, your mother locked her in a cage.”

“What would you have us do? Imagine your entire family is dying. The people around you don’t care. They call you a leech. Bloodsucker. Maggot. Parasite. They exterminate you and your parents and siblings like you were insects.” Cris’s voice rose. “You’re telling me that if it was August, West, Dallas, Ethan, Ellie… all of them dying around you one by one, you would stand around and do nothing? Because I don’t believe that for one second.”

“You’re never going to get me to agree blood slavery is the answer. Or that you holding my dad prisoner for two years was ever justifiable.”

Cris laughed, a cold, bitter thing. “Like I don’t know you have just as many vampires down in the prisons below the Tracer base as we speak. Your hands aren’t clean, wolf. You charge our political prisoners with crimes just as we did your father. And then you hold them for years.” He bared his fangs. “My father died in a Tracer prison, held for years just like Ben Caldwell was. I was four years old the last time I saw him. Do not talk to me about the tactics we employ. Your hands are no cleaner.”

Kneeling in the rain a few yards away, Topher Greer, my brother’s mate, shook his head. Topher had been held as a blood slave by the Vampire Nation for over a year and after hundreds of forced feedings, had the rare spidey-sense to detect vampires at a distance. It was game time.

“More body counts,” Cris said almost to himself. “Another week I’m not there to tuck my son in and read to him at night. And all for what?”

“Incoming.” Topher stared across the street at the safehouse, brow furrowed in concentration. “Single male vamp. Don’t recognize his signature.”

“Delta team, you’re on. Fallon, you ready?”

“In position,” she confirmed.