Page 10 of The Tracker's Revenge
“At least a bullet to the head takes them down. Itdidhave a wolfsbane core.” Rosalina gestured toward her gun.
I nodded, feeling the same relief I knew she felt. I had killed a hybrid at the temple, but it hadn’t been easy. He had broken my back and nearly eaten me alive. The only reason I was still here to tell the tale was because my tracker skills and mywerewolfnesscreated an interesting mixture of powers. I looked down at my hands, remembering how I’d hit a hybrid and, before that, a vampire with a sensory blast. Would I be able to do it again? Maybe Eric was right, and I needed to get back to training. He’d said we would test my limits, find out, during controlled sessions, what exactly I was capable of.
Eric looked at Rosalina’s gun doubtfully.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
He shrugged one shoulder, his eyes darting between the hybrid and the weapon. “I don’t know. I—”
“What’s going on here?!” an agitated voice asked from behind us.
We whirled in unison to face a slender, petite woman in her mid-twenties. She was standing framed by the front door. She had jaw-length green hair with straight bangs that fell to her eyebrows, piercing green eyes, and pale skin as smooth as a baby’s. She wore a pair of ripped jeans, an oversized T-shirt, and slippers. My nose twitched at the overpowering scent of her perfume. She smelled as if someone had dropped a truckload of roses on her head. Cloyingly sweet!
Eric stepped forward. “Who are you?”
“Who areyou?” she demanded, though her voice broke at the end when her eyes drifted toward the sofa where Liliana laid, then past the living room and into the kitchen. “What happened here? Liliana,” she called, raising her voice, “are you all right?”
Silence was the only response.
The woman’s hand jerked towards her jeans pocket.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Eric warned.
She took a step back. “I’m calling the police.”
I put a hand up and said in a calm voice, “That’s good. We need to call the police. Let me do it.” I reached for my phone, but she shook her head and kept backing away, her eyes full of distrust.
That was when I noticed someone walking up behind her, and my heart froze.
I recognized him immediately, even though I’d only met him twice. It was Bertram, Bernadetta Fiore’s vampire driver. He was holding a UV umbrella and was dressed as if he were going to a board meeting.
The woman ran smack into Bertram and shrieked in surprise. She scrambled away from him, getting back into the house in her mad dash to get away from the tall, intimidating vampire. He gave her a withering glare. She shrank further, her head sinking into her shoulders as if she were a turtle. Bertram stepped in, folded his umbrella, and took stock of the scene. Teeth grinding, I waited for Bernadetta to appear, too, but she wasn’t here.
A growl rumbled in my chest of its own accord. Seeing my reaction, Rosalina raised and aimed her gun at him, while Eric crouched, ready to attack.
“You know him?” he asked in a growl of his own.
“He works for Bernadetta,” I said. “Just like that fucking hybrid.”
Bertram frowned and opened his mouth to say something, but the petite intruder interrupted him, speaking in a shrill voice that betrayed her fear. From the looks of it, she was a Stale who’d just figured out she’d tangled with the wrong group of Skews.
“I’m just Liliana’s neighbor,” she blurted out. “I’ve nothing to do with any of this. Let me get out of here.”
The burly vampire sneered down at the woman, his eyes flashing with annoyance. “I would advise you to be quiet.” He made a zipping motion over his lips, towering like a giant over a pixie. When she was properly intimidated, Bertram returned his attention to us, or more accurately to me. He regarded me for a long moment, then his attention drifted to Liliana’s prone body on the couch. A realization passed over his face, something that seemed to please him.
“We need to talk,” he said with his slight German accent. His tone was reasonable as if one of his boss’s hybrids hadn’t just killed Damien’s daughter.
“I have nothing to talk to you about, you fuckin’ murderer.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, we outnumbered you,” Eric spat.
My nose twitched as if somehow I would be able to smell Bertram’s cronies beyond the front door, which the vampire was blocking with his refrigerator-size body. But all I could sense was the pixie’s overly sweet perfume. How Eric knew that there was only Bertram was beyond me. Paired with the hybrid, he would’ve stood a chance against the three of us, but by himself... not so much.
“I don’t want to fight,” he said. “I just want totalk.”
Eric huffed to indicate there was no chance in hell we would be sitting down to tea and pleasant conversation. He sized up the vampire for a couple of extra beats, then, like the badass that he was, he shifted into his wolf form as fluidly as water flows around a boulder, and attacked. He leaped. Liliana’s friend screamed and threw herself behind a love seat. With the speed of a cheetah on steroids, Bertram pivoted out of the way, smoothly stepping into the house. Eric soared through the air, missing him completely, and landed outside. He skidded to a stop and, changing directions, leaped back.
Quickly, Bertram slammed the door shut. Athudsounded outside as Eric slammed against it.
