Page 7 of Hunted

2

Ellie

ICY WIND SLAMMED ANOTHER SHEET OF RAIN against me where I knelt on a hard metal grating. Lightning branched across an onyx sky, the crashing roar of thunder that followed so powerful I could feel my teeth vibrating in my skull. A streetlamp fizzled overhead, a car alarm blaring sharply off in the distance. The smell of wet, foul rainwater choked the damp night air, no doubt from rotting trash that had drifted from a dumpster twenty feet away.

A loading dock, then. I was in Austin this time, dumped downtown somewhere in an alley behind a building.

I shivered. An unbearable cold so deep it felt as if I would never get warm had seeped into my bones. Shaking, I curled in on myself, and it was then that I felt the hot stickiness of the blood soaking through my jacket, the deep burning pain in my side. Raindrops pelted the metal grating, soaking my hair where it tangled over my eyes.

Footsteps moved closer. Heart pounding, I struggled to my feet, pushing my hair off my face. A growl sounded from somewhere out in the dark. Wolves this time, then. Wolves were never good. Make a list of all the ways you didn’t want to die, and trust me, I had notebooks of them, and feral wolf attack was definitely in the top ten.

I staggered towards the mouth of the alley, holding a hand against my side to slow the bleeding.

Rounding the corner, I burst out into the street, only to come face to face with a man in a dark hoodie leveling a gun at my head. Matteo Rossi’s amber brown eyes briefly flashed gold in the moonlight, marking him as a shapeshifter. His lovely, aristocratic features seemed out of place on such a monster. With his dark hair grown out, he barely looked old enough to order a beer on Austin’s iconic 6th Street, much less be the Tracer’s most wanted fugitive.

I froze.

The alley was blocked.

There was no escape.

There never was.

“What do you want with me?” I rasped.

“Hasn’t anyone told you?” Rossi clucked his tongue. “Never run from wolves. We love to chase.”

He pulled the trigger before I even had time to scream.

The dream dissolved in an instant. I jerked awake tangled in my favorite sage green sheets. Slivers of sunlight shimmered around the heavy blackout shades I kept pulled every night to try to help with my insomnia. An immunology textbook and the latest smutty fantasy romance novel I’d been reading when I couldn’t sleep at 1 a.m. were poking a hole in my liver. Guess that explained the gunshot wound. Nice, subconscious.

On the nightstand, my phone blared All Along the Watchtower from its charger. Scrambling across the bed, I swiped to silence it.

Great. I’d slept through the first half hour of my alarm and we had a staff meeting in forty-five minutes. That would be Monday, off to its typical dumpster fire start.

After the fastest shower on record, I surveyed my closet. Since the weather was still hot despite it being October (thank you, Central Texas), I went with a swingy paisley patterned dress in charcoal gray that fell to mid-thigh, an oversized cream cardigan with these fun retro wooden buttons and the black ballet flats with roses at the toes my sister Hayden and I had found while thrifting on South Congress. Her style was more Joan Jett to my library geek-chic, but we both loved scouring secondhand shops when she was down in Austin on the weekends, looking for amazing deals. My hair was a dark mane of curls that usually ate at least two hair ties before noon. Twisting my damp tresses into a messy knot they would no doubt escape from before I made it to campus, I flew down the stairs.

My aunt was at the stove frying eggs when I burst into the kitchen. At thirty-four, Piper was barely a decade older than me and Hayden and now ran a successful interior design business.

“Breakfast?” she called over one shoulder.

“Can’t. I’m already late.” I hurried to the fridge to grab fresh lettuce and celery for my two giant French lops while texting Jori that I was ready. My rabbits, Butternut and Waffles, were former rescues who at fifteen pounds, were too big to be in a cage, so they were house rabbits, hopping around my aunts’ house and generally getting spoiled to death with hay and veggies.

“You have to eat something. You’ve lost weight.” Piper appeared at my side after I finished cleaning their litter box, wrapping an English muffin with an egg and a slice of melted cheddar in foil. “I made you herbal tea. Peppermint. Meera left a few minutes ago.”

My aunts had met a decade earlier in the Krav Maga class Meera taught twice a week in the evenings on campus. A few of the women had gone out for dessert at a diner nearby after class got out. Meera and Piper had stayed for an hour after everyone else had left, talking and splitting desserts until neither one of them could eat any more pie, and the rest was history. Their house in the Hyde Park neighborhood in Central Austin was close enough to the university that Meera rode her bike in nice weather. They’d welcomed me with open arms when I’d been accepted to UT as a freshman, inviting me to stay with them to save on the cost of housing.

“Thanks, Piper. I’m sorry I’ve been so scattered the past few weeks with everything going on.”

“You don’t have to apologize.” Piper drew me into a quick hug, pulling back to study my face. “I’ve just been worried. We both have. Did you have another nightmare?” She didn’t need to ask. We both knew the answer from the dark circles under my eyes.

We turned as a female vampire materialized in the kitchen. Jori was part of Vlad’s vampire insurgency and was currently serving as one of my bodyguards. Medium height and slight in build, Jori had warm brown skin and short wispy black hair that framed delicate features. Today she had on a swirly cream skirt paired with a floaty silk top printed with rose petals and a beige jacket. I had no doubt she was carrying more weapons than I could count concealed where I couldn’t see.

“Ready?” she raised an eyebrow, reaching for my arm as I looped my messenger bag over my head.

“Jori, I put a breakfast sandwich in Ellie’s bag for you,” Piper called. “You two stay safe. Text me before you head home.”

“Thanks, Piper.” Jori smiled brightly. “That’s really nice of you.”