Page 3 of Hunted

There were more shouts from the audience. I flicked a glance at Guillermo, whose expression was grim. Even golden boy Cristof was frowning. Zara looked cold as ever.

“I have instructed all Governors to mobilize National Guard units and move them into the major cities in order to protect infrastructure. We will suppress this vampire insurrection and secure our nation for humankind. Thank you.”

The recording cut off.

Guillermo pocketed his phone. He turned to Zara, voice cold. “We agreed these attacks would stop, that there would be no more violence. I thought we both understood what was at stake.”

“This isn’t us,” Zara snapped.

He silenced her with a dark look. “If you and your people have decided to go rogue—”

A flapping sound from across the field caused all of us to whip our heads to the north. As I watched, a small owl burst from the corn and flew off towards a line of cottonwood trees marking the far edge of the field.

“Okay,” I said. “We’re all on edge. But let’s keep our damn voices down.”

“It wasn’t us,” Zara repeated. “The same black ops teams that have been targeting our covens are hitting human civilian targets at night and framing the attacks to make it look like it was vampires. Hate us all you want, but we don’t have a death wish. I have my people to protect the same as you do. We don’t have the firepower to take on the U.S. military. Of course we know we’d be annihilated.”

“Oh please. Let’s not pretend vampires aren’t master strategists when it comes to analyzing vulnerable situations and manipulating them to try to take more territory,” I countered. “So this time it didn’t work and now you’re going to claim it was a set up?”

Zara glared daggers at me. “That’s not how it went down. Our covens are being bombed and we have no idea how they’re getting past our defenses. We’re being targeted for extinction. We need your help. I’m not lying. You think I like having to come here begging you for aid?”

I caught the silent slip in her mind. Not you. But a filthy pack of strays. Because that’s what we were to them, what we would always be. Mutts. Animals. Ferals. A filthy blood source they detested and craved in equal parts.

Never equals.

Never allies.

Never friends.

They needed us now. There was no way around it. Even if we formed some sort of alliance, I would never trust any of them.

Every species on the planet was hard-wired to survive. For vampires, that meant finding a blood source. Human blood was clean. Drinking werewolf blood was complicated. Pureblooded vampires couldn’t go out during daylight because even a few seconds of exposure to sunlight would burn them to ash. Drinking shifter blood temporarily transferred our regenerative abilities to vampires, allowing them to go out into the sun for days, sometimes weeks at a time. But consuming werewolf blood came at a cost. Repeated exposure to a protein in shapeshifter blood triggered an immune response that ate away at the myelin sheath protecting nervous tissue, causing acute lycanthropic degenerative disease in vampires, or ALDD. Over time, vampires experienced increased neurological impairment, lost muscle coordination, began to experience dissociative episodes and eventually died.

Their desperation to stop the disease ravaging their community was understandable. At least up until the point they’d resorted to blood slavery, medical experimentation on werewolves, and a forced breeding program to produce vampire-werewolf hybrids, or varewolves. I couldn’t allow myself to forget for one second that my duty was to protect the vulnerable pack members who couldn’t defend themselves.

“The Vampire Nation has spent the past year terrorizing the urban city centers,” I said. “You’ve been outing werewolves and their family members on social media, forcing them to go into hiding. You were hoping the first wave of anti-paranormal policies like the Nationwide Database Act would wipe out the werewolf population, maybe reduce us to a more manageable number.”

“The feds want to exterminate all non-humans,” Cristof said quietly. “Cleanse the population so that there are none of us left except for a few they keep in a lab for medical testing.”

“You would know something about medical testing, wouldn’t you?” I said dryly. “Talk to your sister Rowan lately?”

He ignored me. “What do you want, an admission that we made the wrong call? I should think that much is obvious. Let’s stop playing games. You need our help as much as we need yours.”

Zara leveled a sharp look at me. “Two more covens were targeted within the last twelve hours. Most of our people were able to dematerialize away in time thanks to the emergency drills we’ve put in place in every complex, but we’ve had thirteen fatalities since this started a week ago. It's Matteo Rossi and his strike team. It has to be.”

Guillermo hesitated, his mental shields slipping for a fraction of a second, long enough for me to catch a glimpse of a crowded room. A restaurant? And then the impenetrable wall guarding his mind slammed back into place. “We’re dealing with Rossi.”

Matteo Rossi was a werewolf who hailed from a line of powerful Italian shifters. He’d applied to join the Tracers five years earlier, but for political reasons it had been determined it would be better if he completed training within his own pack. Rossi was dually gifted, a neural manipulator and powerful projectionist. We believed he had been secretly recruited by the United States government to lead a black ops team that was purposefully infecting military recruits with lycanthropy on an abandoned army base in the hopes of creating super soldiers.

“Are you now?” Cristof’s lip curled. “Because last I heard, super-wolf’s attacks on our communities are gaining support amongst shapeshifters.”

My uncle bared his teeth. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten, but he tried to kill my sister and two of my nephews as well. Don’t forget we’ve had losses on our side, too.”

“We’re aware of your losses.” Zara waved a dismissive hand. “This isn’t a competition.”

“The Tracers informed the local authorities six months ago that Rossi is a dangerous werewolf fugitive responsible for multiple deaths, and that he was the one who threatened the lives of the leaders at the summit,” I cut in. “We let them know we were hunting for him and advised that Rossi’s name be released to national media outlets and law enforcement immediately as part of a nationwide manhunt in an effort to bring him in before any more lives were lost.”

Zara raised an eyebrow. “And?”