Page 68 of Crave

Hayden’s phone chimed. Frowning, she swiped the screen. And then jumped up. “Change of plans. Got your weapons?”

“Step away from my hell-cat.”

She snorted, whirling to blow the sectional a kiss. “Cute. That was Ethan. Topher’s escaped and we’ve got vampires headed towards town.”

I shot her a look. “Are you sure the guys aren’t pranking us? Because this all lines up a little too neatly for me. The undeads didn’t grab him… he just happened to run off at the exact moment they appeared?”

“Yeah, that part doesn’t make sense.”

My phone chimed at the same time hers did. Briefly locking eyes, we read the coded text from Brody.

GameNight: Group meetup happening now. Dirty dozen poker tournament. Bring refreshments.

Me: Cupcake and Daisy can’t wait. Text with deets.

Going to the closet, I keyed open the gun safe in back and yanked out my go bag. “I’ve got extras. You drive.”

* * *

Located five miles north of town, Jack Frost’s Christmas Tree Farm was one of Blood Moon’s biggest attractions every December, drawing local families and visitors from across Central Texas. The farm boasted acres of fragrant green pines, hayrides, ornament decorating classes on the weekends, and a huge gift shop. Dallas and I came out every year the weekend after Thanksgiving so that I could pick out a tree (according to him, always the one furthest from the parking lot) and he could saw it down and haul it back to the car (his, not mine) while I sang along to Christmas carols and he acted like a total grinch.

He drew the line at the gift shop. After the tree was safely wrapped in red and white netting and loaded onto the top of his Escalade, he scouted out a rocking chair on the front porch while I circled the ornament bedecked Fraser firs with what he called my crazy Christmas eyes. Could I help it if like a salmon returning to its ancestral birthplace, I was lured back once per year to sigh wistfully over little gingerbread men, whimsical spatulas, sugar plums and candy canes? Or, cough, the Edward and Bella ornament with the bloodred bow on top that might be hanging back on my tree at home? Don’t judge. Even for a bloodsucker, Pattinson was hot.

We left Hayden’s deathtrap car concealed behind a row of snow-dusted trees just off the highway. Dressed in form-fitting black tactical gear, we shimmied our way through the barbed-wire fence. A gust of snowflakes swirled through my hair. I whipped my head to the north, where approaching headlights in the distance illuminated the near-deserted highway.

“Crap,” Hayden breathed, grabbing my arm. “Hurry up.”

Together we crouched behind a giant bushy pine, peeking between its prickly branches as a lone delivery truck lumbered past.

Hayden’s phone chimed, startling an owl in a nearby tree.

I rolled my eyes. “You want to turn that thing off before West starts tweeting out celebrity gossip updates? You’ll lure every leech in four counties down on top of us.”

“Wow, why do I even like you?” Frowning, she tapped at the screen. “And for your information, that was Ethan. He’s back at the ranch, monitoring the perimeter. Things are still quiet. August is trying to get a drone up, but the wind is too high. Stationary cameras tracked Topher heading this way before he moved out of range. One shot on a camera a mile or so from here showed six figures making their way towards him.”

“They’re here for Topher. And I’d bet anything he’s somehow been communicating with them all this time. Otherwise, the odds of him taking off at the exact moment the vamps showed up are astronomical.”

Hayden cursed under her breath. We emerged from the wooded area beside the road onto the Christmas tree farm. Acres of evenly spaced pines stretched as far as the eye could see. It took nearly a decade to grow your average sized commercial Christmas tree. The fields due south held the more recent plantings—squat three-foot bushes that would provide neither us nor the undeads with any cover. Which meant they wouldn’t come that way. The mature pines in the fields beyond formed neat rows, having been systematically planted, mulched, and trimmed by workers year after year so that they cast perfect triangular shadows across the snowy ground.

In other words, the ideal place to hide.

We worked our way between the rows, keeping alert. Vampires had superior speed and strength to werewolves. I’d watched one deadlift a car without breaking a sweat. But they were fragile, sustaining lethal burns in seconds in direct sunlight and lacking any regenerative abilities beyond what most humans had. And in addition to dealing with tonight’s fanged and freaky complication, Hayden and I also had to avoid getting caught by the human owners of the farm while prowling around in the dark armed to the teeth and dressed like a SWAT team. Pretty sure Brody would hand us our asses for that one.

“So if you’re right, how have they been communicating with Topher all along?” Hayden whispered. “West told me he and Cal strip-search his room daily.”

“Obviously they missed something—”

A howl sounded in the distance. Hayden and I froze. Heart pounding, I scanned the hillside leading down into the valley below. Neat rows of six-foot pines were pockmarked by freshly sawed-off stumps, bright yellow dust and scattered needles littering the fallen snow.

Through the pack bond, I caught blurred images of Cal tracking in wolf form, feltmore than heard West shouting something I couldn’t make out, and shuddered as the force of Dallas’s fear for me burned through the cold starless night like a brand.

Shutting out the others,I pulled up the text from August with Topher’s last known position along with the image they’d captured of the vampires. The shot was grainy, even at ultra-high resolution. But there were definitely six of them. And they’d been in a hurry, wherever they were going.

Hayden spoke close to my ear. “If you’re right and this biologic agent came from us, that means the Council has known all along what was going on. And played dumb. Including River.”

“Maybe.” Even I heard the hesitation in my voice. Why was I so unwilling to throw River Caldwell under the bus? Reluctance to betray his brothers aside, we all knew his loyalties were being tested between the Blood Moon pack and the Council. “This isn’t his area. Something like this would be need to know only. Even if he’s overheard rumors by now, or has his suspicions, he may have good reason to keep quiet.”

“You really believe that?”