Page 97 of Roguefinder

Caleb watched them as we passed. “Fucking Stefanos did this on purpose.”

I glanced back at the workers. “The storm?”

“The flight,” Caleb said in a testy voice. “Five in the goddamn morning. The next time he calls, I’m telling that Greek fucker to⁠—”

“I think that cafe up there has power,” I said, pointing. “What about a cornetto?”

He cast me a wary look. “What’s in it?”

I smiled. “Whatever you want. Chocolate and custard are popular. Or you can ask for⁠—”

The scent hit so hard that I missed a step.

Rotting fruit. The cloying, gamey smell of a mind gone feral. My wolf surged to its feet and howled, hackles raised.

Rogue.

Ulfrik was close.

Caleb yanked down his hood. “Jesse?”

“I have him,” I said. The trail ran ahead of us, the scent so thick it unrolled like a carpet on the sidewalk.

I broke into a run. Caleb pounded beside me without a word.

My wolf clawed at my ribs, wanting out so it could hunt. With my gift running hot in my veins, I could have managed a swift transformation. But we were in the middle of Rome. Humans were everywhere, cleaning up the storm and trying to start their day despite the spotty electricity.

Ulfrik’s trail led us toward the river. We ran through the slick streets, dodging a delivery van unloading crates outside a bakery and cutting across an intersection against the light while a Fiat’s horn blared behind us.

The scent pulled me left down a narrow side street with empty laundry lines sagging between the buildings, then right along rows of shuttered shops with mannequins and glasswares in their windows. Our shoes slapped against the cobblestones. A man walking his dog jerked the leash backward as we blew past.

Caleb matched my strides, his athlete’s body handling the chase like it was nothing. I turned down another street, and then another, tracking the rot that cut through the city’s wet concrete, mold, and car exhaust.

The scent thickened with every new twist and turn. No vanishing this time. It ran ahead of me like a rope pulled taut.

Then it turned toward the Tiber. We followed, reaching the Lungotevere. A stone staircase descended from street level to the lower embankment, its steps slick and black with rain. The trail poured down it.

“Come on,” I told Caleb, and we took the stairs fast, emerging onto the wide stone walkway that ran along the river below the city. The Tiber slid past on our left, the river swollen and brown with stormwater. Graffiti-covered travertine walls rose on either side. Rome carried on far above us, distant car horns and scooter engines echoing across the chattering water.

The embankment stretched in both directions, empty except for a figure slumped against the wall twenty feet ahead.

I stopped, disbelief rocking me on my feet. Caleb halted beside me.

In front of us, Ulfrik Haraldsson was unmistakable. His big frame filled out a tuxedo, the black bow tie askew. Tangled blond hair streamed over shoulders wide enough to take out a stone doorway. One hand rested palm-up on the ground next to him, the fingers that had once gripped a Viking’s axe curled toward the sky. His long legs sprawled in front of him, and his chin rested on his chest.

But it shouldn’t have rested anywhere. Because I’d ripped his head from his shoulders with my jaws and then burned his body with aluminum, magnesium, and iron oxide. I’d watched his flesh bubble and melt and his bones turn to dust.

I’d killed him in New York, and yet he slumped against a wall next to the Tiber in Rome like a drunk sleeping off a bender.

I jolted forward. Caleb came with me, and we pounded toward Ulfrik.

Ten feet away, he rippled.

I threw out an arm, and Caleb and I stopped cold.

Ulfrik’s body changed, his form going wavy like heat shimmering above asphalt. His blond hair darkened and receded. His giant frame shrank and softened, broad shoulders collapsing inward until the tuxedo hung off him like a deflated tent. By the time the air stilled, Ulfrik was gone.

A different man slumped in his place, his smaller body swallowed by the tuxedo. He was fifty, maybe older, with the round, flushed face of a hard drinker. His scalp showed through a bad combover. A gold Rolex circled one hairy wrist.