Page 4 of Hunted

It’s past midnight. The Quarter is loud, with music leaking from doorways, laughter rolling through the humidity, tourists drunk on neon and sugar and the promise that nothing bad ever happens on streets this bright.

My quarry uses that.

The Revenant Agency’s brief said elusive, violent when cornered, fond of crowds.

It didn’t say clever, but that part was implied.

‘Stop,’ I warn him, because sometimes that works. Sometimes instinct overrides arrogance and the right tone makes a creature remember consequences.

It doesn’t tonight.

He shifts on the run, shoulders rolling, bones setting wrong beneath skin, glamour slipping just enough that the people nearest him step back without knowing why.

Fear recognises its own.

‘I just wanna talk.’

‘Yeah, right,’ he snaps.

Sigh. It was worth a try.

My phone vibrates against my thigh.

I ignore it, cut left, vault a wrought-iron fence, and come out ahead of him at the mouth of a narrow alley that stinks of old beer and rain.

He skids to a pause, recalculates, snarls.

The sound carries a warning that has nothing to do with volume and everything to do with what he is. A low-level vampire. I feel the old prickle along my spine that used to mean danger before I learned to master, then overcome it.

He reaches for me with his mind, sloppy and desperate. The compulsion hits like cheap cologne, obvious and badly applied.

I crush it instantly, fire the agency-issued pulse dart into his shoulder, then trigger it and watch his confidence disintegrate.

‘That all you’ve got?’ I ask pleasantly. The glamour collapses with a hiss of static. ‘Nice try,’ I tell him as he staggers. ‘Hotter deviants than you have tried that. None of them walked away either.’

‘Why the fuck are you chasing me? I’ve done nothing wrong.’

‘Bullshit. You know why, Andre. You fled your sire while still bound by oath. You drained two human witnesses to conceal it. And you attempted to trade your sire’s territory maps for immunity. That’s just for starters. I could go on but I’m tired and hungry and you’re getting on my last nerve,’ I say. ‘You’ve been a bad boy. I’m here to bring you in.’

He snarls and lunges.

I meet him with a baton to the ribs that would shatter human bone but merely slows him, then a hook to the jaw that snaps his head back and drops him to a knee.

He comes up swinging.

I catch his wrist, twist until tendons complain, and drive my knee into his thigh. His roar rattles glass and draws eyes.

I don’t want eyes.

I want this done.

My phone vibrates again. Then a third time.

I grind my heel down on his foot, feel something give, then step inside his guard and wrap a silver-threaded cuff around his forearm. He bucks, claws scraping sparks off brick. I clamp the second cuff onto his other wrist and murmur the words that lock the weave.

He slams into the wall and slides down, glamour gone.

The cuffs bite.