Pack

by Cassandra Chandler

  Point in case, the hot psycho waiting for her outside the alley. The psycho who was almost assuredly not a werewolf.

  She slipped another tracker into her hand and activated it. It wasn’t nearly as fun planting this one as it had been tagging Marcus. She pressed it onto the back of the fifth Redcap’s head, suppressing a shudder.

  Now that she had it tagged, it was time to release it back into the wild—and follow it to the nest. She pulled out the monitor that displayed where all of her active trackers were. Two dots blinked on the screen. Two dots right on top of each other.

  There should have been some space between them. That is, if Marcus had actually gone around the corner and a few feet away like she’d asked. She fought the urge to look up at the rooftop over her shoulder.

  She looked at the ground instead, wondering if Marcus’s tracker had fallen off. She’d never lost one before. The things were designed to hold on to whatever she attached them to, after all.

  The hair on the back of her neck rose. If he was a werewolf, he might be waiting for his pack to arrive to attack. He could be lingering nearby, watching her. Positioning himself to strike.

  But she had challenged him. No werewolf could have handled that insult.

  Unless he was the pack’s omega. They were often used as scouts.

  Her stomach twisted with fear. She had to get to her van. It wasn’t far.

  She stuffed her hands in her pockets and headed for the mouth of the alley. She was walking so fast, she almost bumped into Marcus when he stepped into her path. Yeah, he hadn’t gone as far away as she’d thought.

  “You in a hurry?” he said.

  “I…um. I’m all done here.”

  Marcus glanced down the alley. “You missed one. Unless you’re leaving it on purpose.”

  She stammered, not knowing what to say.

  “You can’t track Redcaps with these.” He held up her tracker and smirked. That is, his grimace became a little less pronounced.

  “You know about Redcaps?”

  “I never said I didn’t.”

  Her brain sifted through everything she’d noticed about him. His muscle and build, his attitude, and the duster that was as out of place in the unseasonably hot weather as her jacket. The jacket she wore to hold and hide her weapons.

  “You’re a hunter,” she said.

  He stared at her in response.

  Typical. Hunters tended to be paranoid, not sharing their trade secrets until their trust was earned. She was just happy he wasn’t a werewolf.

  She held out her hand for him to drop the tracker into. Once he had, she deactivated it and tucked it back into the pocket in her sleeve. While she was at it, she turned off her bug repeller.

  With them both standing on the street, clearly visible by the few pedestrians still walking about, the Redcap wouldn’t attack. She was betting it would hop off the body it had commandeered and skitter through the nearest storm drain to head back to its queen. Blue light in her periphery told her she was right.

  Marcus snapped his gaze to the alley. “What did you do to it?”

  “Tagged it.”

  He turned back to her. Now that she knew he was a hunter, his piercing stares didn’t bother her. She’d hung out with way too many of their kind.

  She held up her monitor and let him see the blip that was steadily moving away from them. His raven-wing eyebrows actually hitched up his forehead.

  “How did you do that?” he said.

  “We all pick up tricks along the way.”

  He shook his head. “Whatever you’re working on, I want in.”

  “That fast? Buy a girl dinner first.”

  Her stupid stomach growled. She hoped he didn’t hear it.

  “There’s a burger joint down the street,” he said.

  “I was kidding. Besides, I’m vegan.”

  “They have salads.”

  Her pride was starting to sting. She needed to change the subject, even though her wallet was almost as empty as her stomach. Granola bars didn’t last long with her metabolism and it had been a while since she’d managed a paying gig.

  She never stayed anywhere for more than a few days anymore. It was hard to get work on that schedule. Summer was right around the corner, though, and as soon as there was grass to cut, she’d be fine.

  “The range on my tracker isn’t that far,” she said. “Once these things have gone mobile, they can cover ground quickly, going places my van can’t reach. I need to leave now to follow this one back to the nest.”

  It had been a long time since she’d run into another hunter. She was glad to know he wasn’t a run-of-the-mill psycho. But being a hunter didn’t necessarily make him more stable. It just made him more dangerous.

  She was damaged goods. If Marcus found out about the “guests” inhabiting her arm, he would kill her. Worse, he might not give her a chance to tell him how to do it right.

  The thought of having company for a little while was appealing, though. Maybe he could back her up in taking out the Redcap nest. It would be nice to have someone to talk to openly about dwellers—or rather, “monsters”.

  She’d have to watch what she said to make sure he didn’t get suspicious about how much she knew. She was fairly confident the word “dweller” was only used among their own kind.

  Marcus was probably intrigued by her trick with the bug repeller and wanted to know how she’d immobilized the Redcaps. The fact that he’d followed them into the alley before he even knew about the ace up her sleeve spoke well of his character. Or told her he was crazy. Even two hunters would have trouble against five Redcaps.

  He’d remained remarkably calm. He’d be a great asset killing the Redcap queen, if he could stay as cool under fire—literally.

  Tessa started down the street, heading for her van. Marcus didn’t join her.

  Looking back over her shoulder, she said, “Are you in or what?”

  She swore he smiled a little before following her.

  Chapter Three

  The moment Marcus said that the damsel in distress he was set on rescuing was actually a hunter, Vaughn had hit the keyboard. An entire screen of the ops center focused on her. He’d frozen a frame with a good shot of her face and was running it through all the facial recognition databases he had access to—which was all of them.

  Thank the Internet Marcus was wearing those glasses. Vaughn was used to running blind with his partner, only going off of what the early-model earpiece could communicate. Marcus wasn’t the chattiest of people. Few Guards in the Blades of Janus were.

  The previous cameras Vaughn had worked into Marcus’s duster weren’t cutting it. The cameras in their motorcycle helmets were pretty good, but it was too conspicuous to walk around town wearing them.

  The new glasses had real potential, though. Vaughn could see the hunter’s features with crystal clarity.

  It had helped that Marcus couldn’t seem to stop staring at her.

  Vaughn’s fingers hit the controls worked into his desktop even harder.

  Marcus had always been clear in how he felt about Vaughn. There was no leading on or jibes. But Marcus had never expressed an interest in anyone. Or anything for that matter—man, woman, or dweller. Vaughn had been holding on to a tiny shred of hope that their friendship might change into something more.

  He had a feeling that shred was about to be stomped on.

  Maybe it was a good thing. On some level, he knew he’d been kidding himself about it. Using his crush to avoid actually trying to find someone—not that the life of a Blade was conducive to building relationships.

  He refused to give up hope, though. He would find someone someday. Preferably who enjoyed quiet nights at home, basking in the light of a dozen monitors, like the one focused on finding more information about this new hunter.

  The search would take a while, even with Vaughn’s algorithms on the case. All he could do was listen as the hunter chatted up Marcus.

  At least she was still in the dark. Hu
nters didn’t like the Blades. And if she figured out Marcus’s darker secret…

  Vaughn wished for the thousandth time that he could work in the field. Even if the bosses didn’t think Vaughn was too precious to risk, his agoraphobia was usually bad enough to keep him locked up inside. Besides, the field was fucking terrifying.

  The thought of Marcus out there alone was almost enough to make Vaughn want to tell the bosses to get bent and figure out a way to join his partner among all the ghasts and ghoulies and things that went bump in the night. His only comfort was that Marcus was one of them.

  Instead, Vaughn sat in front of his wall of monitors, watching camera feeds from all over the city, refining his algorithms for predicting dweller activity. Coming up with new jokes to take the edge off when Marcus came home—and new technology to make sure he made it.

  The light above the main door to the ops center flickered to amber, then turned green again. Company, but someone with clearance.

  There were only two other people at the ranch, so it was probably Porter coming to check on the night’s patrol. Sure enough, the door slid into the wall with a soft whoosh, and one of the bosses walked in.

  Vaughn still wasn’t sure which one it was.

  Dexter and Porter took “identical twins” to a rarified level. They kept their dark hair the exact same length and style—short on the sides and spiky on the top. Kind of like Vaughn’s own hairstyle, actually. And they always wore the standard Blades uniform. Black cargo pants, black T-shirts, and black combat boots.

  Their outfits matched their black eyes perfectly. Vaughn had never seen anyone with such dark eyes. He would consider them hot, if they weren’t so freaking creepy.

  It usually took about five minutes of conversation for Vaughn to figure out who he was talking to. Dexter tended to want discussions to be quick and efficient. Porter was friendlier. Vaughn wished they would put a big “P” and “D” on their chests.

  “Good evening, Vaughn. How is tonight’s patrol going?”

  Probably Porter.

  “It’s an interesting one.”

  “Interesting good or interesting bad?”

  Vaughn cocked his head to the side and shrugged. “I’m still figuring that out. The straight-up bad news is that Providence has Redcaps now.”

  “Redcaps.” Porter let out a huff of breath through his nose. “That’s a class-C dweller.”

  “Yup. Humanoid, human-sized, able to mingle with the populace, and once they’re in town, you have them forever.”

  “What’s the other news?”

  “Marcus ran into a hunter with some interesting tech and some serious issues.”

  Porter arched an eyebrow. “Interesting tech?”

  “Not like my tech-interesting, but I’ve asked Marcus to secure me some samples.”

  “Exercise caution while investigating it.”

  “I always do.”

  Porter smiled his cold, creepy smile. “And what about those issues you mentioned?”

  “Every hunter I’ve observed is pretty messed up, but she’s taking it to a new level. She hummed a cheery song as she bludgeoned four Redcaps to death with a baseball bat.”

  “That sounds like fairly typical behavior for a hunter. She must be good if she could sing while fighting, though.”

  “There was no fight. It was an execution. She somehow managed to paralyze them. She even tagged one with a tracker.”

  That caught Porter’s interest. He walked up behind Vaughn to get a better look at the screen that displayed Providence’s streets illuminated as gridlines. Two gold blips travelled along the roads, following a red blip closely. Vaughn had figured out the frequency of Tessa’s trackers and was also tracking Marcus’s bike, as usual.

  Marcus was sticking close to the hunter’s van. Another monitor had a view of Tessa’s epically crappy vehicle as seen from the camera in Marcus’s visor.

  “She tagged a Redcap and it worked?” Porter said.

  “As near as I can tell. I’ve piggybacked her signal and am tracking it, too. She only has a proximity tracker with limited range. I’m borrowing bandwidth from one of my favorite satellites to make sure we don’t lose it.”

  Porter nodded, his brow furrowing as he stared at the monitor. “The Redcap is moving under the buildings.”

  “The hunter said it somehow went into the sewers through a storm drain. If I hadn’t already seen her do amazing things, I would think she was nuts.”

  “How does a Redcap fit through a storm drain?”

  “I can have Marcus ask her.”

  “Please do. And ask how she paralyzed them as well. That would be extremely useful knowledge, now that we have Redcaps in Providence.” Porter—and Vaughn was certain it was Porter at this point—smirked again as he started to turn away. “Good work. Keep me posted on—”

  Porter’s gaze flicked to the screen that was running facial recognition on the hunter and seemed to get stuck there. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open.

  That had never happened. Never once had either of the bosses ever looked surprised. And they had seen some shit.

  Porter snapped his mouth shut, put his hand on Vaughn’s chair, and leaned in closer. Also new.

  “Who is that?”

  “That’s the hunter,” Vaughn said.

  “Bring up a clean image on screen two.” Porter shifted to stand in front of the monitor he’d indicated, even though each screen was big enough to give a good view from pretty much anywhere in the room.

  Vaughn sat up straighter and typed in the command, killing the camera feed of a known hotspot for dweller activity and bringing up a picture of the hunter. He removed the gridlines from her face to give Porter a clear view.

  “I’m searching databases to try to find out who she is,” Vaughn said. “It’ll take a while, though. Her plates are bogus, of course. All we have is her face and a first name, which might be fake as well.”

  “What is it?”

  “Tessa.”

  The door to the ops center whooshed open again and Dexter ran in. Ran.

  Holy hell…

  Vaughn wasn’t used to seeing the pair together. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, staring silently at the picture of the hunter. Even with this golden opportunity to compare them, he couldn’t find any differences. Not a single hair. It was creepy.

  It was even creepier when they both looked at him, turning their heads at the exact same time and angle. Vaughn wanted to run his hand over his face and look again, as if that would rid him of what had to be a trippy case of double vision.

  “Transfer the feed to our office,” Dexter said. “And compile everything about her we missed up to this point. This takes top priority.”

  Vaughn shook his head. “Marcus is on active patrol with an unknown hunter heading into a Redcap nest—whatever that is. I can’t be distracted. I need to back him up.”

  “Marcus can take care of himself,” Dexter said. “You have your orders. We need a positive ID on this hunter as soon as possible.”

  Of course Dexter wouldn’t put Marcus’s safety first. Porter remaining silent was a surprise, though.

  “It’s going to take time,” Vaughn said. “I don’t have much to go on.”

  Porter turned back to the screen and said, “Rhodes. Search for Tessa Rhodes.”

  Dexter grabbed Porter by the arm, the same wide-eyed look of shock on his face that Porter had when he first saw Tessa. Vaughn had always thought Dexter was the alpha twin, but when Porter turned to glare at Dexter, he dropped his gaze to the ground almost immediately.

  It was the first time Vaughn had ever seen them look at each other. The few times they’d been in a room together, they paid each other about as much attention as a pair of iguanas. What the hell was going on?

  “Rhodes,” Vaughn said. “Do you think you know her or something?”

  A look of such pain flashed across Porter’s face, Vaughn knew he’d never forget it. Before Porter could say anything else, Dexter started pulling h
im toward the door.

  “Send the feed to my office,” Dexter said. “Now.”

  Vaughn waited till the room was empty to speak again. “‘My’?”

  That was another weird thing that Vaughn had noticed about the bosses. They always spoke about themselves in plural. “We need you to check this out.” “What are you making us for dinner?”

  At first, he thought they were speaking on behalf of all the Blades or something. But a pattern had emerged that couldn’t be explained away with that. When Vaughn had pointed it out to Porter, he’d just smiled and walked away.

  Everybody had quirks. Vaughn didn’t have much room to talk there. He shook his head as he turned back to his keyboard, connecting to the one world that had always made sense to him—his machines.

  Chapter Four

  After ten minutes of silence, Marcus started to worry. Vaughn had never been quiet that long when they were patrolling. Or…ever, really.

  Marcus glanced at the section of the display screen of his helmet that would ping Vaughn to get his attention, then said, “You still with me?”

  The silence lasted a few more seconds before Vaughn replied. “Yeah.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Just freaking out a little here.” Vaughn’s voice was tight. “You should know our fearless leaders are seeing everything you’re seeing. They ordered me to connect the feed to their office. The video feed. I’m keeping our chats on a private line.”

  “Thanks,” Marcus said. “They’ve watched the feed from your other cameras before. Why is it freaking you out this time?”

  “Mostly because they’re freaking out. Something about this hunter you’ve hooked up with has caught their attention.”

  “She isn’t like the other hunters we’ve encountered. Even you said you’re curious.”

  “I’m only here for the tech. I still want you to nab some for me to study.”