Chapter Thirty-Two

Hunter, Bane, Edge, and Reynolds drove their Harleys through the streets of Savannah at speeds that would’ve killed a human. Their vampire reflexes allowed them to take turns ridiculously fast, avoid obstacles, and leave any potential pursuers in the dust. Flying might have been faster, but humans had the unfortunate tendency to look up sometimes, and it might be hard to explain a squad of flying vampires. Not to mention that werewolves needed to stay on the ground.

When they arrived at the run-down apartment building just outside of town, Hunter started to get a very bad feeling about the place even before he stepped off his bike. “Something’s wrong.”

Bane nodded. “The place reeks of death and blood magic. We are too late.”

The members of the VMC and the Savannah Wolf Pack who’d cornered the two warlocks had reported that they were safely in custody, but there was an unfortunate truth that Hunter was learning about warlocks. There was no such thing as safety when you were dealing with them. Reportedly, they could even work their foul form of magic while semi-conscious. The trick, Bane had told him, was to never, ever let your guard down.

The scent of blood and death emanating from the apartment on the ground floor with the door swinging open told them that they were definitely too late—and somebody had almost certainly let their guard down.

“Where’s Luke?” Hunter had half expected the other vampire to show up at some point during the evening or even to meet them here, but there was no sign of him.

“He’s dealing with a problem of his own,” Bane said. “A personal issue. Someone from his past has unexpectedly shown up and is trying to cause problems for him, which would cause problems for the rest of us.”

“Oh, good. More problems,” Hunter said, rolling his eyes. “And just when I was becoming so accustomed to happy days and smooth sailing. Anyway, tell him to let me know if he needs anything.”

Bane nodded but said nothing else, and they walked over to the apartment, having avoided it for as long as they could.

Edge and Reynolds, who’d had to veer off the road to avoid a bus full of drunken tourists, roared up into the parking lot and jumped off their bikes, both of them flinching at the smell of rot.

Inside the apartment, the scene was an ugly one, and one that Hunter had seen far too many times before. Supernatural beings weren’t the only ones killing each other, after all. But there was something different about this. Far different from the usual gang shooting or murder over money, sex, or drugs that firefighters saw almost as often as police did.

This room stank of rot and foulness—the hallmarks of blood magic and its practitioners.

“You don’t see a lot of decapitations in Savannah,” Hunter said mildly, hoping he wasn’t going to vomit from seeing a head on the kitchen table in the trashed apartment.

Even before it had become the scene of two murders, the apartment hadn’t been a homey kind of place to live. The only furniture was the scarred table, now carrying the head, and a couple of lawn chairs. A spill of small plastic bags with some kind of white powder contents lay on the floor on a corner of the nasty, stained carpet.

“This is standard operating procedure, unfortunately,” Reynolds said. “When supernatural predators come to town, they often zero in on local drug dealers and kill them, steal their cash and guns, and even take over shit heaps like this so they can use it as a place to hole up while they’re in town.”

Hunter nodded. “Make sense. Even if the warlocks weren’t successful at taking over the place, it’s not like crystal meth dealers were going to be reporting them to the cops.”

“These weren’t drug dealers, though,” Bane snarled. “These are two of our own. Where are the other two?”

Edge checked out the rest of the apartment, careful to avoid stepping in blood or any other kind of evidence. Not that Hunter thought this crime scene would ever see the light of day. Edge glanced through a couple of open doors, presumably to the bedroom and the bathroom, then turned and shook his head. “Nobody here. My guess is wherever our other guys are, they’re either dead or wishing they were.”

Reynolds’s head snapped up, and he lifted his nose, scenting the air, and then ran out of the apartment. When they followed him, he was already headed toward the bikes.

“I smell them. Or, at least, I’ve caught the scent of that nasty blood magic. It would be too big of a coincidence for there to be other practitioners in this neighborhood tonight. Let’s go get him. Them.”

“What direction?”

“That’s the bad news,” Carter said, looking grim. “They’re headed toward Congress Street.”

“She lied to us! Zela lied to us,” Hunter said.

Edge gave him a sardonic look. “Shocking, I know. Warlocks have never lied to anybody before.”

“She was a warlock, too? But—”

“They come in all genders,” Bane said, swinging a leg over his bike. “I think she was still an apprentice but smart enough to lie. Do your people still have her, Carter?”

“We have her,” Carter said grimly. “Or at least we did have her. Now I’m wondering if this was a concerted effort and these two met up with her. If so, this is an even bigger problem than we thought.” He pulled his phone out and made a call but shook his head.

They didn’t waste any more time talking but headed toward Congress Street. Luckily, on a Sunday night, the bars and clubs weren’t as packed as they would’ve been the night before. But there were still far too many people in the streets and clubs, partying, drinking, and generally making fools of themselves.

The perfect prey for warlocks who might be on the hunt for human sacrifices, in other words. If all three of them were together, their triumvirate would be far more powerful than just two of them would be. And if they’d been injured in the battle that had gone down in the apartment, they’d be desperate for a new source of power.

Hunter might not be back to work as a firefighter right now, but the last thing he wanted to see was any of the people in his town getting hurt or possibly killed by these bastards.

Reynolds gestured, pointing to their left, and the four of them made the tight turn to head down the alley he’d indicated. The werewolf was off his bike almost before it was fully parked, running toward the back entrance of Club Red.

“Of course it would be Club Red,” Hunter groaned. “We were constantly having to cite this place for being over capacity. If the warlocks want to cause the biggest possible disaster, this would be a good place to do it, even on a Sunday.”

“Except that’s not it,” Bane said, pointing at the roof. “They’re not inside the club; they’re on top of it. That can’t be good.”

“Whatever they’re planning to do, we’re ending it. Now.” With that, Edge launched himself into the air, Bane right behind him, heading toward the three—and it was three—warlocks on the roof of the club. The alpha werewolf wasn’t far behind, leaping up to dig his fingers into handholds and pulling himself rapidly up the side of the building. The instant he reached the top, he started to shift into his wolf form.

“Time to fish or cut bait,” Hunter muttered, and then he concentrated with every fiber of his being and leapt into the air—this time, he didn’t fall back down to the ground. This time, he didn’t land on his head.

This time, he flew.

Right into a fiery projectile.

“Because that’s fair,” he shouted, shaking off the burn on his side and heading straight for the warlock who’d thrown it at full speed.

That’s when he discovered that a vampire’s full speed in flight was pretty fucking fast. Just in time, too, because Bane and Edge were fighting the other male warlock and Zela. The firebolt-tossing warlock was trying to kill Carter, who was already down on his side, blood pouring out of his chest, and Hunter didn’t know how bad something had to be before a werewolf lost the ability to heal.

He tackled the warlock before he could throw any more fireballs, flew off the roof with him, and twisted in midair so it was the warlock, not Hunter, who hit the pavement headfirst. His head bounced once, and then he didn’t move again.

From the look of him, he was never going to move again.

Hunter had just killed a man.

He stood there staring at the dead warlock, heaving in breath after breath, and only realized the fighting on the rooftop had ended when Bane flew down with Carter Reynolds, still in wolf form, in his grasp. He put the alpha wolf gently on the ground; Edge tossed Zela’s body off the roof, and Bane used his magic to cushion the body’s fall. Edge jumped lightly down, an unconscious third warlock over his shoulder.

“I say we kill this one, too,” Edge growled. “Although, I admit I didn’t mean to kill the woman. I was hoping she’d talk again even though we know she’s a liar. But she was about to skewer me in the heart with a nasty little stiletto knife she pulled out of a pocket. You never expect warlocks to use anything but magic, and that’s how they get you.”

“That’s why I let that one live,” Bane said, nodding to the man, still breathing, that Edge dumped none too gently on the ground. “We should ask him if there are any other Chamber servants or hired help in town.”

“He’ll only lie,” Edge said.

“Not if I compel him,” Bane said, fangs snapping down.

Both of them—all three of them, because Reynolds was coming back to consciousness—suddenly looked at Hunter, as if they’d only noticed his silence right at that moment.

“Hunter? Are you all right?” Bane glanced down at the dead warlock next to Hunter’s feet.

“I’m a murderer now,” he said dully. “I killed this man.”

“Warlock,” Edge corrected him.

“Does it matter?”

“It matters to Carter. You saved his life,” Bane said.

The warlock that Edge had dropped on the ground started to stir, and then he jumped up into a crouch, staring wildly around himself.

“We should take this party out of here, before some human shows up and sees too much,” Edge said.

“What does this one know?” Hunter pointed to the only warlock left alive. “Or should I just kill him, too? Now that I’ve done it once, it probably gets easier.”

He heard the monotone his voice had dropped into—shock setting in. He’d seen a lot of people in shock after fires; he’d just never expected to be one of them.

“Not yet,” Bane said, and the warlock recaptured his arrogance when he heard.

“You! You’re the vampire hanging around Alice Jones.” The captured warlock sneered at Hunter—pretty unwise, considering what had happened to his friends. “You won’t be able to save her. The Chamber is after her, and that creep who ran the Institute is after her, too. One of us is going to get to her. You can be sure of that.”

Alice’s name broke through Hunter’s fog. “I will kill you before I let you touch a single hair on her head,” Hunter snarled, his fangs descending and snapping into place.

The man’s nasty chuckle grated on Hunter’s nerves. “You can’t kill me. It would start a bigger war with the Chamber than you’ve already got. Do you know who my uncle is? When we get our hands on your little ghost whisperer, I’ll be sure I have some private time with her first before we use her up, if you know what I mean.”

The world exploded into fiery red flames, and every shred of Hunter’s sanity vanished, annihilated. He became a creature of death and devastation; no longer a man, no longer a firefighter.

He was a monster—and he was happy to be one. If he was a killer now, he was going to be the best killer those bastards in the Chamber had ever met.

Hunter hurled himself at the warlock, who tried to duck, but Hunter grabbed his arm with a hand that suddenly ended in razor-sharp claws.

“Wait, Hunter,” Edge shouted, trying to hold him back. “We need to find out everything he knows. You can’t kill him. Not yet.”

Hunter suddenly laughed, and the sound was long and loud and far too savage. He acknowledged at a primal level that his laughter meant death was coming—death was here, now—and they didn’t even realize it. The warlock in his grip began to struggle in earnest, though, possibly recognizing what he was about to face, trying to raise his magic to fight back.

Hunter roared, and the fire-muffling wind he’d conjured before raced to his bidding. The warlock’s magic snuffed out, suffocated beneath rage-conjured power. The world was ruby red, splashed scarlet with Hunter’s fury—fury that they would dare to threaten Alice.

His Alice.

Not now. Not ever.

“Then I won’t kill him. Not yet. But he can answer questions without this arm,” Hunter snarled. And then, before anyone could move to stop him, he ripped the warlock’s arm off at the shoulder.

Blood sprayed everywhere, and people were shouting at him, but he couldn’t see. Couldn’t hear. Could only focus on drinking in the hot, rich, magic-laden blood. More and more, rich and dark and sulfurous blood, sizzling from his mouth straight to his nerve endings, making Hunter so powerful that nobody would ever threaten Alice again.

He threw back his head and shouted, reveling in the blood.

In the power.

And the last thing he knew was the blow that hit him in the back of the head before everything went dark.