It’d been a shitty night already, and it wasn’t even over yet.
CHAPTERTEN
The foreston either side of the road was a blur to Takoma as he raced back toward where Alyona had parked her SUV on a turnout a mile away, lights off but engine still running. A second SUV was parked behind it, William in that driver’s seat, the warlock smoking a cigarette and flicking ash out the cracked-open window. A lone motorcycle was parked between the vehicles, engine cold.
Alyona looked up from her cell phone, the device held below the window to minimize glow, when Takoma landed beside the front passenger-side door. The pistol in her other hand only twitched minutely before she moved her thumb to click the safety back on, giving him a firm nod. He could hear the steady beat of her heart like a drumline in his ears before he tuned it out.
“Sheriff deputies sped by about five minutes ago,” Alyona said when he yanked open the door, heat pouring out.
“Dispatch say anything different from before?” Takoma asked.
Alyona tilted her phone to show the police scanner app she was in. “Only confirmation they were on the scene and requesting backup. Did I hear correctly we’ve had an incursion into our territory?”
“Spencer said a vampire tried to kill him. I want updated reports on our eastern border delivered to me before sunrise. I want to know if the Spokane Night Court is trying to expand again.”
“Understood.”
It’d been a generation since the last time the master vampire of the Spokane Night Court had tried to encroach on his territory. Takoma hadn’t taken kindly to it back then and even less so now, considering who the vampire in the forest had been after. If Rufus had taken his refusal for passage through Seattle as the right for the Spokane Night Court to go after those who belonged to him, Takoma was more than willing to challenge the bastard over it.
Takoma looked back at the forest. Even with clouds covering the moon, enough light slipped through that the road and woods appeared dimly lit to Takoma’s sight. He couldn’t remember what his vision had been like when he’d been human; he only knew he didn’t miss it.
Three of the vampires who’d come with him into the forest arrived at the vehicles moments later, each of them carrying an unconscious hunter stripped of weapons under their arms. He’d ordered Caleb to stay behind in the woods to keep an eye on Spencer from a distance. As much as Takoma wanted to be the one to remain, he needed to deal with the most pressing problem first.
The hunters were dumped unceremoniously on the ground by the SUVs, bloodied, bruised, and limp, save for one who writhed back to awareness upon impact. The reason for that was the tree branch impaled in his gut, his clothes saturated with blood. The smell was stronger on the hunter than what had clung to Spencer, but the sweet scent of it was something Takoma could almost taste on his tongue when he spoke, letting air push through his lungs.
“Kill it,” Takoma said.
Masha fell to her knees beside the hunter, wrenched his head back, and sank her fangs into his throat. She bit down deep before jerking her head to the side, tearing open his throat. The gurgling scream cut off, the hunter’s airway ripped open and useless as blood poured out of the major vein and artery. Masha clamped her mouth over the carotid andsucked, cheeks hollowing as she drank.
“Still haven’t learned any manners,” Leonard snorted.
Masha wrenched her mouth away from the ragged hole of the hunter’s throat and licked her lips, chin and lips smeared dark with blood. “Not worth it for thistvar’.”
“Get the rest in the trunks. Make sure they’re secured. One of you get the motorcycle undercover,” Takoma ordered.
Alyona was already tapping away on her phone. “I’ll let Caleb know we’re leaving it for him.”
His vampires moved quickly, ignoring the one passing car that didn’t stop, thanks to William’s look-away ward. The metalhead warlock might not carry any bite mark scar on his neck, but his loyalty had never been in doubt since Takoma scraped him off a Seattle public bathroom with a needle in his vein. William carried track mark scars on his arms but hadn’t touched a needle since Takoma got him clean.
The Seattle covens might not have had any use for an addict, but Takoma would always have a place in his Night Court for magic users. William had carved one out over the last nineteen years, and the warlock was second only to Alyona and those belonging to her Zaitsev family in terms of hierarchy. Alyona would always come first, with or without magic.
When the surviving hunters were secured by zip ties and magic, the back seat in William’s SUV was pushed down to make room in the trunk. The hunters were dumped in the space on top of each other, with Masha choosing to ride with William. The other vampires joined Takoma in Alyona’s SUV. She switched on the headlights and pulled onto the road, heading back to Seattle.
Takoma disliked leaving Spencer behind, not least because the tracker he’d put on the mage’s rental was now useless. When Alyona had interrupted his meeting with representatives from the Cascade Coven to inform him Spencer was leaving Seattle, he’d cut the meeting short and moved to intercept the mage. He’d refrained from calling, wanting to see what had drawn Spencer out of the city.
They’d been a mile behind Spencer’s SUV when the tracker had suddenly died, and the mage’s heart rate had spiked in Takoma’s ears. Takoma had heard the crash and gunfire in the distance, and he hadn’t thought twice about ordering Alyona to pull over. He and his vampires had raced down the road and through the thick forest, following the sound of heartbeats and the smell of blood.
And then the haunting had started.
It had initially overridden his senses the same way it had in the hotel hallway. Takoma knew it wasn’t real, but shaking it off to reach Spencer had taken a little more concentration than he was used to needing. Whatever the poltergeist was, it was strong but not strong enough to keep Takoma and his vampires from making hunters their prey. They’d closed in, taking out two of the hunters, when pressure in the air that spoke of magic had them retreating at top speed to get clear of the concussive blast that ripped through the area.
Once the trees finished falling, Takoma had left the hunters to his vampires and went to find Spencer. The mage had been furious about Takoma tracking him, and Takoma had been furious Spencer had been made to bleed by someone else. Then to learn that a vampire had tried to kill him alongside the poltergeist? Takoma had wanted to drag Spencer away, but like in Manhattan, the mage was determined to do his job. An admirable trait, to be sure, but Takoma wasn’t leaving the area without the hunters. He’d deigned to leave Spencer one for his case, but the rest of them?
They wouldn’t see the dawn.
The drive back to Seattle was made mostly in silence, with Alyona making several phone calls in preparation for their arrival at Terminal 91, north of the main waterfront. Closing in on midnight meant the area was locked down, but gaining access wasn’t a problem. They parked in the shadows of the lot near a waterfront warehouse, not bothering to hide from the security cameras.
The fish-processing plant in the warehouse was owned by Takoma through the Zaitsev family and a multitude of shell companies. Most of his business empire in and around Seattle and the Pacific Northwest as a whole was held in such trust. This particular industrial warehouse complex made cleaning up garbage easier, even if the secondary use Takoma used the space for would never be approved by federal inspectors. But what they didn’t know wasa lot, and Takoma had always ignored colonist law as he saw fit.
