Page 66 of Hunted

9

River

THE FUNERAL FOR THE TWO FALLEN VAMPIRES was held an hour before dawn at a high bluff overlooking the Highland Lakes just west of Austin. Ellie and I stood silently beside Rowan and Vlad, each of us holding a single night blooming lily to lay on the white granite slabs where the ashes of the fallen soldiers stood in small ceramic urns, waiting to be spread just before dawn.

Rowan explained that at traditional vampire funerals, the body was washed and wrapped in a single piece of linen before being laid out on the same ceremonial slab. Vampires didn’t believe in burial. They lived in eternal night, and once their souls had gone on, they allowed a single day of mourning before releasing the person’s physical form to the sun where it would be burned to ash and returned to the earth.

“They were the best of us.” Zara’s voice carried across the gathering of vampires and wolves. “Called to serve in a war none of us ever wanted to fight. They did not back down. They did not hesitate to go where they were needed. They understood the risk was great. They did not flinch.”

The hair rose at the back of my neck as I felt the energy resonate through the vampires standing around me. Vlad remained silent, face a stoic mask. I wondered how hard it had to be for both him and Rowan, being back here today.

“We are only as strong as every individual who makes the choice to put the good of the Vampire Nation over self. And tonight we are safe because of two brave souls we will never forget.”

* * *

THE NEXT THREE WEEKS CRAWLED BY. My traumatic brain injury resolved itself. Despite the massive pissing match Guillermo and I were in, I remained on active duty. After the Blackout attack on base, there were too many soldiers still restricted to light duty, and furious as my uncle was at me, he couldn’t afford to sideline me for the foreseeable future.

Fallon was back in Blood Moon. She’d spent a week in the burn unit on the joint base in San Antonio while her skin and hair regenerated, but was fully recovered now. Cal was up in Dallas in the middle of another of our uncle’s required training sessions. West still wasn’t talking to me, pissed that I’d known about the deal between Guillermo and Cal and had kept it from him. Every secret in this family was somehow always my fault. Worst of all, my standoff with our uncle meant I was getting frozen out of critical case files on the Rossi investigation.

In short, I really wanted to punch a hole in something.

I shifted to my wolf form, taking a much-needed break between going through case notes to run in the hills west of Austin. The cool November air smelled of wild Texas sage, rocky soil and mesquite trees. Storm clouds gathered off to the west, a gorgeous dark purple-gray mountain of thunderheads promising yet another round of rain and more flooding.

Returning to my SUV, I shifted back to human and called Tracer headquarters. My uncle’s second, Alek, picked up.

“Guillermo just left,” he said without preamble. “He wants to pull you off the Rossi case completely.”

That was new. Interesting.

“Just left as in your office, or he left base again?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

I did. I just didn’t like it.

“Where does he keep going? No way do I believe you haven’t tried to put a tail on him.”

“Naturally we have,” Alek said dryly. “But do you really think there’s any tail out there your uncle couldn’t compel to drive their car off into a ditch, then disable it in a way that would make it inoperable?”

I ground my teeth. “So am I being pulled off the case or not?” His choice of words was carefully calculated. If Guillermo and Alek wanted to pull me, I was done. “Make no mistake, I will keep hunting Rossi until he’s dead. Whether I do so using the resources and support of the Tracers is entirely up to you.”

Alek cleared his throat. “I think we can all agree everyone has been under a lot of stress the last few months. You leaving the Tracers benefits no one.”

The tension at the back of my neck eased.

“Are you going to tell me why evidence keeps getting suppressed in the Rossi investigation? First it was the laptop. Now I’m looking at field reports for two suspected safe houses Rossi may be using to stage attacks on covens in the southwest.”

“How did you get those?”

“Answer the damn question.” No way was I throwing August and his mad hacker skills under the bus.

“I would if I had any idea what you were talking about. When did these reports come in?”

“Two days ago. The soldiers who sent them in are still out in the field. They wouldn’t have had time to return to base and submit a report in person.” Were they being purposefully moved around? Did this shit go even deeper than I thought?

“Do you have the case numbers?”

I read them off, waiting impatiently while keys tapped in the background.