Page 108 of Hunted

‘The private investigator the hunter mentioned yesterday. The one presumed to have died naturally. We reopened the report.’

The room goes still.

‘He did not die naturally,’ Malachi says.

Valentin’s voice turns deadly soft. ‘What changed?’

‘The original finding was cardiac event. But we pulled the body and had one of ours examine the tissue. Poison was found.’

My pulse picks up with cold, investigative dread. ‘Poison?’

Malachi nods. ‘Old. It caused catastrophic clotting and arrhythmic failure.’

One PI dead. Tezra dead. Both tied, however loosely, to Lyra. To Valentin’s search.

To me.

‘That’s not coincidence,’ I say.

‘No,’ Valentin agrees softly. ‘It is not.’

He’s already moving, every trace of what happened on the sofa sealed behind iron control.

‘Pull every camera from the block. If a cop touched the file, buy him. If he can’t be bought, ruin him. I want the truth.’

Malachi nods. ‘Yes, sire.’

‘We go to the scene,’ Valentin says.

I push off the sofa, my body protesting in several deeply distracting ways, and I force myself to ignore all of them.

Business now. Rage now.

Grief later when I can have a private breakdown over vampire oral and fate-induced doom.

Aaron appears outside the suite moments later, accompanied by three more of the Black Twelve, all in black, silent, moving with that eerie synchronised efficiency that makes them look less like men and more like one organism with multiple bodies.

Valentin’s gaze lands on Aaron. ‘You will transport us.’

Aaron inclines his head. ‘Sire.’

‘But you will not touch her,’ he adds, voice turning colder.

A muscle jumps in Aaron’s jaw. ‘Understood, sire.’

For one stupid second, the possessiveness punches through grief and lands low in my stomach like a spark.

I squash it immediately.

Valentin reaches for me, and when I step closer, he curls his arm around my waist, bringing my back to his front.

Aaron places a hand on Valentin’s shoulder only.

The world folds.

Teleporting via someone else is nothing like Tezra’s jumps. Tezra’s had a weird popping pressure and always smelled faintly of ozone and mint gum. Aaron’s is cleaner. Harder. A blink-and-cut sensation that strips the air from your lungs and gives it back a heartbeat later.

We arrive in a narrow service alley off a filthy Brooklyn street, boxed in by brick, steel and yellow police tape that has been very pointedly ignored by the men standing within it.