Page 74 of Hunted

Vampires were all light sensitive and preferred to keep their lighting levels lower than typical human lumen levels even when using artificial light because it was more comfortable and triggered fewer headaches. I sat up, and was immediately dizzy, my body feeling like it was encased in lead.

“Ellie.” A shadow moved from over by the bookcase, and I instantly recognized Rowan. “You’re awake. I’ve been so worried. You’ve been unconscious for almost an hour.”

“Where am I?” I pressed a hand to my heart, sick and shaky with relief. “It was then that I noticed the heavy bandages swathing my right arm from wrist to elbow. Plastic tubing had been inserted into my other wrist to start an IV. Several bags of fluid hung from a pole by the bed. One looked like standard saline. The other was dark red.

“You keep human blood on hand here?”

“Of course.” Rowan looked at me like it was a stupid question. “Vampires have medical emergencies, too.”

When I swiped at my eyes, Rowan pulled me into a tight hug. “I told them they shouldn’t have tried to make three jumps with you so quickly, that humans were more fragile than shifters and couldn’t self-heal from the damage in transit as easily, but nobody listened. London will have the pack doctors meet us at her house. It’s probably just dematerialization sickness, but you should be checked out.”

“This was all my fault,” I sniffed. Rowan handed me a tissue and I blew my nose. “If I’d left when Jori wanted me to, none of this would have happened.”

“We don’t know what would have happened. One thing my brother has taught me in trying to organize a rebellion is that it doesn’t do any good to go back and beat yourself up over all the what ifs. Your detail will break down what happened as a team because figuring out what went wrong and how to protect you better the next time is our job. But don’t get up in your head playing that game where if you’d done X, Y would have happened because none of us have those answers. Matteo Rossi is a mind reader and projectionist. You don’t know what he would have done if you’d dematerialized away. Maybe he would have left. Maybe he would have taken hostages from your lab. We just don’t know.”

I swiped under my eyes. “Are my lab mates okay?”

“They’re fine.”

“Jori and Quinn?”

“The Tracers are currently losing their shit, to put it mildly, because until an hour ago, it was considered theoretically impossible for neural manipulators to break into vampire minds without considerable effort.” Rowan swept her bangs out of her eyes. “You saw what happened to River. Fallon couldn’t even get through the vampire drones that Rossi was sending to bomb the covens. According to Jori, she didn’t lower her mental shielding. The Tracer analysts have apparently asked her at least seventeen different ways now how Rossi got in, going so far as to mansplain how vampire mental shielding works.”

“Lovely.”

“Right?” Rowan sighed. “So now they want to truss her up like a Thanksgiving turkey and shove her through the CT machine for every type of scan known to medical science. Would you like to guess Jori’s response to that one?”

“Please, that’s easy. Ten bucks says she dematerialized straight back to the North Austin pack house and is currently binge-watching Property Brothers with London over Margherita pizza and Cherry Limeades while the Tracer dudes up in Dallas debate how best to turn her into a lab rat.”

“Oh damn.” Rowan made a face. “Pizza sounds great. I should have thought to have something sent up from the kitchens. You’re probably starving.”

“Actually, I feel kind of sick.” I traced the scar at my throat. “Has anyone called River?”

“Speaking of climbing the walls.” Rowan made a face. “River has been blowing up my phone, demanding to be allowed into the coven compound to retrieve you, which would violate the standing cease fire agreement we have. I had to tell him to take a step back and let me handle it, that I would get you out, and to have a vehicle waiting for us at the gates, but not to come in unless he wanted things to get ugly. But this place is heavily warded and shielded against outside attacks. It’s one of my mother’s most secure facilities.” Her expression darkened. “This room as well.”

“This room,” I began, before trailing off. I glanced around, trying to put my finger on what exactly about this palatial space felt… off. “There are no windows. Is that normal for vampire houses? I mean, I get the danger with the sun obviously, but I would think at night you might want to be able to see the moon and look up at the stars.”

“This room used to be mine.” Rowan smiled sadly. “It’s where Zara held me prisoner for those two years before Vlad found me and broke me out.”

“Rowan,” I whispered. “Oh my god. I had no idea.” My stomach turned over. “She knew. Of course Zara knew. She put me in here knowing you would come, that you’d have no choice but to come for me and see your former prison cell again.”

“And that’s my mother for you.” Rowan smiled thinly. “Always the master manipulator. We should go. She doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

She expertly unhooked my IV and bandaged my wrist. After I changed into clean sweatpants, a white tank top that wasn’t soaked in blood and a soft pale gray hoodie, we made our way down a long, tiled hallway lined with doors. Felix stood at the last door. As we approached, he said something into his wrist communicator.

“She’ll see you now.”

“Thank you,” Rowan said coolly. I couldn’t help but notice how different she seemed here. Cold. Guarded. It struck me then how before I’d always thought of Rowan as one of the wolves, fully a member of Blood Moon’s pack, just with the convenient ability to dematerialize. Here, among her mother’s people, it was impossible to deny she was also very much vampire royalty.

Felix opened a heavy dark wood door and I wondered how many humans had ever seen the inside of a vampire compound of their own free will.

Zara rose from a sleek sofa before a flatscreen mounted up on the wall as we entered, snapping the picture off just as I caught a news broadcast of one of the dams north of Austin, five of its six floodgates now open due to flooding.

“The media is sensationalizing the dreadful attack already.” Zara waved a hand. “They’re calling on research into the lycan virus vaccine and all ALDD therapies to be suspended for safety reasons.”

Her short dark hair was artfully mussed and styled with gel. She had on fitted black slacks and a trendy leather jacket my sister would have killed for. Crossing the room to us, she kissed Rowan on both cheeks and handed me a cell phone. “Your wolf boyfriend asked to speak with you as soon as you woke up, if you’d care to call and let him know we don’t pass around every human who comes to call like it’s cocktail hour and we’re making blood smoothies.”

“Honestly, mother.” Rowan sighed, dropping into a chair and taking a sugar cookie from the plate on the table. “Can you blame him?”