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Heat of the Night
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Hot Louisiana wind whipped me in the face as I flew down the highway. A glance up told me the moon was full and we’d probably be very busy tonight.
Damn werewolves.
I steered my Harley toward the water, needing to be alone and think before the night started. I had big news for my men, and I had to contemplate how to tell them. Shadow could hold down the clubhouse while I mulled over my decision.
I reached Cross Lake fairly quickly and parked my bike in the lot. Patting my pants to ensure my knife was in my pocket and my revolver tucked in tight, I strolled toward the dock and stopped at the edge, where it stretched out onto the lake. The water was very still, like a sheet of glass, the moon a perfectly round white ball reflected on its surface. I briefly wondered what Cross Lake looked like first thing in the morning with the orange sun rising behind it. I hadn’t lived here the last time I’d seen a sunrise. No, I’d been in California, where I was born and raised. I don’t remember my last sunrise, but I do remember my last sunset. It was in 1987.
“Sweet swells today, dude!”
I grinned and high-fived my best friend Randy. We’d graduated high school together twelve years prior and pretty much had been living as beach bums since. We surfed, worked menial jobs, and practically never left Huntington Beach. As we sat in nothing but swim trunks with our surfboards by our sides, we reminisced about how awesome the waves had been that day, watching the large, orange ball sink below the Pacific Ocean’s horizon.
I flicked my sand-splattered blond hair to the side. It had been permanently bleached by the sun—even though, by then, a few gray hairs had begun popping through. We sat in silence until the dark descended and a blanket of stars began to break through the dark-navy sky.
Randy got up and brushed sand from his shorts. “Okay, man. Gotta get ready for work. Spring break bitches gonna keep us busy tonight!”
I chuckled. Randy tended bar at a local nightclub. “Have fun.”
“Stop by if you’re not busy,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder before shuffling off in the sand to head to his car, his surfboard under his arm.
The sound of an approaching motorcycle bolted me out of my memory, and I turned my head to see one of my club members come rumbling up on his Harley. He killed the engine and dismounted his bike before heading toward me.
I furrowed my brow, my hands on my hips. “This better be a fucking emergency.”
He shrugged and grinned at me. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the sunglasses he never took off. “Eh sort of.”
I sighed and looked out at the water, wondering how he’d found me. This was my so-called happy place and now I would have to find a new one. “What is it, Kovah?”
“This lake is a good place to unwind. A buddy of mine likes to come fishing out here when he wants to be alone.”
“I know the feeling,” I replied dryly. “How did you find me, anyway?”
Kovah lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “Eh, I have my ways.”
“You’re an annoying ass, you know that?” I replied.
“Well, we’ve got a wolf on the loose near the clubhouse.” He looked up at the full moon. “I told the guys to inform you, but they said you weren’t there. You didn’t answer your cell, so I tracked you down.”
I pulled my phone from my pocket and swore. “It’s off.” I powered it back on and re-pocketed it.
“I figured. Anyway, Venom won’t let me kill him. He was mid-shift when we got the call. It was cute, him trying to bark orders at me from inside his cage.”
I sighed and ran a hand down my face. “Fucking wolf. Should have never let one in the Nighthawks. Should have kept it vampires-only.”
“And one human-vampire hybrid,” Kovah added, throwing me a cheesy smile that looked so out of place against his dark hair and sleeves of tattoos.
I chuckled and turned my head to look out over the water. “You’re lucky I didn’t kill you the night I found you sleazing around my clubhouse.”
“You almost wrecked my baby though. Good thing my buddy’s a bike mechanic or I would have sent you the bill.”
I raked a hand through my hair. “Apprehend the wolf, lock him up, and I’ll be back shortly. If Venom has an issue, he can take it up with me.”
“Ten-four.” Kovah saluted me like an idiot and then got back on his bike and left.
I pulled my phone from my pocket to see I’d missed three calls and five texts while it had been off. I had a love-hate relationship with this damn device. I looked up over the calmness of the lake and wanted to throw the phone into it and never have to deal with one again. I remembered what it was like to not be burdened with having to be on call all the time, but as the leader of the Nighthawks, I had a responsibility to my men. To my team. And that meant always being available for emergencies. Which seemed like we had one every fucking day.
I stared at the lake and blew out a breath. Emergencies I brought on myself and my men. I’d chosen the life of a hunter and now had a couple dozen other hunters by my side. Mostly a band of misfits who’d found a place to belong by joining the Nighthawks. Supernatural creatures with nowhere to go after becoming what they now were.
A low growl from behind me bolted me from my thoughts. My silver knife was in my hand faster than I could blink as I spun around. A large gray wolf paced back and forth twenty feet from me, blocking my exit to the parking lot.
I narrowed my eyes at the beast. “What do you want?”
Of course, it didn’t answer me since they couldn’t speak aloud in their wolf form. It could understand me, though. That much I knew. It just stared at me as it prowled.
I waved my knife as I walked closer to it. “Are you lost? Or do you have a death wish?”
As I saw now it was a male, he stopped at my warning and seemed to narrow his eyes at me.
“Shoo,” I said, getting more annoyed with each passing minute. “You’re going to get out of my way, and I’m gonna get on my bike and go. We’ll both leave here unscathed and alive. Deal?”
I didn’t want to kill the creature, since we only did that when we caught them threatening or harming humans or us, but I wasn’t going to let this fucker hurt me, either.
The wolf didn’t move so I shrugged. “All right, man. If this is the hill you wanna die on...”
I threw the dagger toward his torso to scare him, and it missed by centimeters as he bounded out of the way at the last second, bolting away into the night. At least he wasn’t going to be a problem to me now. I used vampire speed to bolt to my bike, picking up my beloved knife on the way. The thing was not only made of pure silver, it had sentimental value as well.
I tucked the knife into the leg pocket of my trousers and got on my bike. Before taking off, I looked around and saw that everything was quiet. Normally those bastards traveled in packs, so I wondered if this one was just lost.
Stupid fucking wolves.