Page 20 of A Hunter Born
Vampires. Five of them, and though they may have arrived together, they didn’t choose a table with the idea of having a friendly drink and conversation. Instead, they spread out, taking up different points around the perimeter of the rooftop, their eyes never leaving Morgan and Travis who were now effectively boxed in.
“You’d think they’d be a bit subtler,” Morgan remarked dryly as she pressed herself against Travis and nudged him into resuming their dance. “Relax,” she whispered, her hands discreetly massaging the tense lines of his back. “Between the two of us, taking five of those meatheads down is child’s play if they attack.”
Honestly, she highly doubted they would, not in such a public place. If she had to guess, they were here to keep an eye on her per Rodolfo’s orders, though why they had suddenly upped their vigilance was a mystery that left her slightly wary.
Under her ministrations, Travis’s posture lost some of its stiffness and he even managed a smile though his eyes remained shrewd and watchful. When the song ended, they returned to their table, but it was no use trying to recapture the magic that had been lost thanks to the intrusion of Rodolfo’s men. They both ordered one more drink, consuming it mostly for show before they made their escape. If the vampires had been ordered to do more than keep an eye on them, now would be when they made their attempt.
Standing from the table, her casual posture belying her readiness for battle, Morgan extended a hand with a smile. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
∞∞∞
Jamie had finally cracked into Rodolfo’s system about an hour ago, and while she’d done a private victory dance around her room, patting herself on the back, she hadn’t yet told the rest of her team. Morgan was out with her super-sexy angel cop and Kane had been gaming last she checked, headphones on as he chatted with some of his cronies. Updating them on her success would only have led to them dropping what they were doing and hovering over her shoulder while she searched innumerable files that had absolutely nothing to do with what they were looking for. The end result being, all of them would be on edge for no reason. It was better if she waited until they had something usable, something they could sink their teeth into.
Shit. The things Rodolfo was involved in was horrifying, but weapons sales, drug shipments, human trafficking, those were things that Morgan might decide to give to her new lover to use as he saw fit, but didn’t do diddly to explain why vampires were killing witches.
She was just about to take a break, grab something to eat, and give her eyes a much-needed break, the lines of code beginning to blur together when a particular file extension caught her attention and made her instincts tingle with excitement. Jamie immediately perked up, hunger and exhaustion forgotten, she dove in.
“Oh… My… God,” she breathed. Her eyes widened to their full diameter and her mouth fell open with shock as she reread the information just to be sure she hadn’t misinterpreted what she’d found. “Shit. Not good.So, not good.”
Snapping her laptop closed, Jamie jumped up from the bed and hugged the Alienware to her chest as she made for the door, her destination, Kane’s room just down the hall. She’d barely cleared her doorway before she plowed into a large, muscular body and a hand was clamped over her mouth, effectively cutting off her scream.
“Someone’s been a very naughty girl,” was whispered in her ear as her favorite laptop was ripped away from her by yet another hulking vampire.
Her struggles were futile, only serving to amuse the two males, and that large hand that covered her mouth was also blocking her nostrils, making it nearly impossible to breathe. Her heart felt like it was going to beat straight through her ribcage it was hammering so fast, while her lungs burned with the need for air. Her vision began to darken around the edges and Jamie’s last conscious thought was,I don’t want to die…before the blackness took her.
Chapter Fifteen
“You were right,” Travis remarked with a wry twist of his lips as he gunned the truck’s engine while eyeing the rearview mirror. “They’re not even trying to be subtle.”
Cranking her head around, Morgan saw the vampires, now seated on motorcycles falling in behind them in obvious pursuit. “Those bikes could easily overtake your truck,” she commented needlessly, wishing she’d armed herself with more than the two long-bladed daggers currently hidden in her boots.
Pulling out her cellphone, she quickly fired off a message to her team to watch their backs before turning her attention to their unwanted company. “I’m guessing Rodolfo’s orders weren’t to attack but to follow and not to lose sight of me at any cost.”
“They’re going to be disappointed,” Travis murmured.
Morgan glanced around at the number of pedestrians wandering the area and her stomach flipped with dread as she imagined a high-speed chase in the heart of New Orleans as he attempted to lose their tail. But instead of cranking the wheel, tires screaming to roar down an alleyway, Travis remained on the same street, barely even speeding.
“Do you think you can lose them once we’re outside of the city?” she asked, guessing his intent was to lead the vampires away from the milling masses before attempting to shake them.
“We’re headed to the bayou.”
His response surprised her yet again. “You hope to lose them on foot?”
“The bayou is wolf territory. Vampires aren’t welcome and any that try to ignore that order will quickly be either run off or fed to the swamp.”
“Um… Hello,” Morgan returned wryly, raising her hand.
Travis grinned, displaying that adorable dimple to full effect. “You’re with me. You’ll be fine.”
That he was friends with the local shifter population shouldn’t have come as a surprise. After all, like angels who had been created to battle demons, the shifter species had been created specifically to protect humans from vampires. That may not be the case anymore – humans having lost that privilege when they betrayed the shifters for profit – but the instinctual dislike was still very much a part of who and what they were. And thanks to the demonic blood in every vampire’s veins, it was a dislike both angels and shifters shared.
Her phone chimed with an incoming message and Morgan quickly checked the screen and released a “Hm.”
“Everything okay?”
“According to Jamie, everything is.”
