Page 8 of Hunters and Prey

Chapter 4

Viola knew his face. The picture the PI had attached to his file hadn't done him justice, and he might not have been quite grown up when it had been taken, but she knew the face he had now. She knew his eyes. She knew his smell. Sea and spice, earthy and volatile. The smell of an Eirikrson child before they were turned. A wave of nausea, nostalgia, and anger tightened her core. How? Why? How? How? How?

Where had he been? Where had his entire line been hidden for five hundred years? She was furious and ashamed, knowing what this meant. One Eirikrson child had escaped the massacre, and had survived to father a line, a line of fledglings who were never turned. She should have found them. She should have looked harder, turned every stone…

But she hadn't, and now, because of her incompetence, he was in danger.

Vampire children were so very rare, they were cherished and protected. That man perhaps didn't qualify as a child—he looked older than she—but he was an Eirikrson fledgling: her liege, her charge. He should have been locked up in a golden tower, training and being spoiled to death until he could protect himself. Not in a random trashy club surrounded by a dozen enemies.

Viola wasn't outmatched, but winning a fight was very different from winning while making sure that your very mortal, very breakable master remained in one piece.

"What?" he asked, dumbfounded.

He had no clue, not the faintest idea—she could tell.

Dammit. How was she supposed to deal with this mess?

"Some guys are after you. They…" She didn't have time for questions, or to try to convince him. "They've been fed wrong information. Now, they're under the impression you're the heir of a very powerful, influential family. They sent slutty tits first, to reel you in with honey. As that didn't work…"

To her surprise, Thomas didn't panic.

"Shit. Can we talk to them? Tell them they have the wrong person?"

"No. They have no reason to believe us."

Especially considering the fact that he was the right person.

"So what?"

"So, we get you out of here, and we hack into the database to erase the information."

She should have done that the moment Knox's team had sent it, but she'd been so unwilling to believe it, to believe that random Thomas Miller from Nowhere, Colorado, could be an Eirikrson; it hadn't crossed her mind. Now she was going to have to hunt down every single person who'd accessed his blood results, and whoever they could have told.

"All right. Let's go."

She'd only delayed the inevitable, but now wasn't the time or place to tell him everything.

They made their way out, her eyes and ears scanning the surroundings. The club had a parking lot at the back; they had to walk down a dark alleyway to get there.

Viola calculated their chances. If she left him there and went to get her bike, he would be dead before she returned. If they walked, they'd be a lot slower than they could afford to be right now. Her only real option was to take the alley, the perfect place for an ambush.

Her eyes shone as she pushed them to see past the darkness. Yes. Some enemies were already in place.

"Are you capable of doing what you're told without questions?" she asked, jaw tight.

"No."

At least he was honest.

"Well, make an exception," she told him. "Or die."

She couldn't, wouldn't let him, even if it cost her her own life. The mark on her neck wouldn't let her.

If she let the last Eirikrson die…

Wait. The guy was in his mid-twenties. Maybe he had a son, a daughter. Parents, siblings. She had so many questions she needed answered, right now. But no one could overhear them. For now, he was the one Eirikrson she knew existed, and she was not losing him.

"I'd very much like not to die."

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