Don’t, Jono said, trying not to beg.Don’t show them who you are.
The number of people who knew about his patron was growing, but Jono knew now wasn’t the time for word to get out about Fenrir. Enough of the wrong people already knew—Lucien and Ethan—that Jono couldn’t afford for rumors to start to grow. His pack wasn’t ready yet for the civil war heading their way.
Fenrir howled through his soul but let Jono keep control of his body and mind.
“We should get out of here. I don’t like what I’m smelling,” Leon said in a tight voice.
“Because they’re demons,” Jono said, breathing a little harder. The ache in his ribs was getting worse, the burn of silver and aconite making him sweat in a way he wasn’t used to.
The man with a bruised and broken face smiled at that, flexing the hand with a broken finger. Another silver knife dropped out of his jacket sleeve into his hand. Leon’s grip tightened on Jono.
“The bounty on your head was worth the drive north,” the demon said. The skin on his face seemed to move, black veins briefly showing through what skin wasn’t covered in blood. The smell of sulfur grew stronger, making Jono gag.
Before anyone could respond, one of the hunters on the other side of the fence was slammed to the ground by the force of the person that landed on him. Jono heard bones crack, the gurgle of a scream broken off by virtue of a throat being torn out. He heard blood spatter on cold pavement like rain before the vampire moved, flinging himself over the fence and into the playground with a speed that few others in the preternatural world could match.
“You wasted all that gas for nothing and came driving through my territory without asking,” the newcomer said.
Jono heard Austin swear from behind him as the master vampire for the Brooklyn Night Court landed amidst his followers. Jamere’s physical appearance was that of a teenager, but the vampire was over four hundred years old, and how he looked had no bearing on the viciousness he employed when it came to holding his territory.
“Bounty isn’t on your head, but we’ll kill you for the fun of it,” the demon said.
Jamere’s laugh was low and deep. The smile on his dark face showed off a mouthful of jagged fangs. “You wouldn’t be the first hunter to try.”
Whatever signal Jamere gave, Jono never saw it, never heard it. One second the vampires of the Brooklyn Night Court stood like silent shadows in the dark playground. The next, they were blurs of motion that Jono’s eyesight couldn’t keep up with.
Vampires couldn’t fly, but they moved with a speed that lay the foundation for the myths that had propagated over the centuries. The remaining two hunters beyond the playground scattered rather than fight, which told Jono they probably weren’t sharing their soul with a demon. Not standing their ground was their first mistake. Jono tuned out their screams in favor of making sure he got answers.
“Don’t kill the demon,” Jono said.
“This isn’t your territory,” Jamere reminded him as he darted in close underneath the demon’s quick knife thrust to bury his clawed hand in the body’s gut. “You don’t give the orders here.”
“The New Rebels pack is under my protection, which means you and I are overdue for a chat about borders.”
Jamere ripped out a coil of intestines, tossing the ropy organ away from him. The tactical vest the hunter wore had torn like so much wet paper in the face of the vampire’s strength. The body in his hands jerked, a few more loops of intestines falling out of the hole. Blood and the acidic smell of a punctured stomach gave the cold breeze a sour undertone.
The sound of thunder when no lightning had struck echoed loudly in Jono’s ears. Gray light haloed the hunter for a split second before fading. The sulfur scent diminished as the demon fled.
There went any hope of getting answers.
Wherever the demon had escaped to, it wasn’t to anyone around them. Vampires had no souls, and the black magic powering the werevirus made possession too difficult most of the time for demons to attempt it on a werecreature. Jono only hoped they hadn’t damned anyone in the neighborhood to demonic possession.
Jamere dropped the body and turned to look at Jono. “You must be fucking special to have the Krossed Knights coming after your ass. Maybe I should leave you to the fuckers next time or put you out of your misery myself.”
Jono froze at that bit of information. Hunters of all things that went bump in the night had grown out of the Crusades in the western hemisphere, their numbers fluctuating over the centuries. They’d had more influence in the times where magic wasn’t looked upon as something useful. The last couple of centuries hadn’t been kind to their numbers, and they, in turn, had never been kind to the people and monsters they hunted.
Different branches had broken off and drawn up their own laws over the centuries as they migrated across the world. The Krossed Knights were predominantly found in the United States, and a problem Jono had managed to steer clear of until now, it seemed.
“Lucien wouldn’t like that,” Jono said in a low voice, gambling on the thinnest of associations with one of the most notorious vampires in the world to keep him and everyone else alive tonight.
Jamere smiled nastily as he stalked forward. “Way I hear it, Lucien might consider it a favor.”
Jono pushed through the creeping sense of wrong in his body to keep his focus, digging in his heels when Leon would’ve pulled him backward and away from the threat. “You want to chance that? Then be my guest.”
“Between the two of you, I thought Patrick was the only one with a death wish. You need to stop trying to one-up each other,” Leon muttered.
Jono hadn’t realized he was leaning so much of his weight on Leon until he tried to straighten up. Pain lanced through his ribs, and more blood seeped out of the wound. It still hadn’t healed, and Jono was starting to feel like the time he’d had the flu when he was a kid.
Jamere came to a stop in front of Jono, neither of them giving ground. In the distance, Jono could hear sirens, the sound getting closer with every second that passed. But the bodies lying on the ground were technically in vampire territory, and the Krossed Knights were hunters no one would mourn over.
