“There are a lot of people even now who see the angels as God’s messengers.”
“What about you?”
“Another species,” he said. “Maybe they’re what we’ll become sometime in the next million years.”
It was an interesting hypothesis. Sara didn’t know what she thought. Angels had been around since the earliest cave paintings. There were as many explanations for their existence as there were stars in the sky. And if the angels knew the truth, they weren’t telling. “So, why Timothy Lee?”
“He’s been in the city during every one of the murders; he’s capable of doing the job—”
“We’re all capable.”
“Yes. So that wouldn’t matter as much, but Timothy’s a very dedicated hunter. He sees it not as a job, but as a calling.”
“Is he hunter-born?” Having been best friends with Ellie for so many years, she knew that for those born with the ability to scent-track vampires, entering the Guild was less a choice than a compulsion.
“No. But he worships the hunter-born.”
“Not healthy, but not psychopathic either.”
Deacon nodded. “That’s why he’s one of three. The other two have their own little idiosyncrasies but all hunters are strange to some degree.”
“You’ve met Ashwini, haven’t you?”
She heard him choke. “‘Met’ isn’t quite the right word. She shot me the first time we came into contact.”
“Sounds about right.” She grinned, but it didn’t last long. “If it is one of these three, you’ll execute him?”
“Yes.”
“No police?”
“I’m authorized to do this. The law will never become involved.” A pause. “They’re glad we police ourselves. Hunters who turn bad have a way of upping the body count.”
“Like vampires.”
He didn’t say anything, but she felt his agreement in the tense stillness of his body. Eerily quiet, the night seemed to discourage further conversation, and they rode in silence until Deacon pulled over to the side of a still, dark street. “We’ll go on foot from here.”
Stowing her helmet alongside his, she followed him as he led her down the street and to a chain-link fence. She frowned. “This looks like a junkyard.”
“It is.”
Okay, that was truly odd. Hunters almost never lived in crappy places. They were paid very well for sticking their necks out chasing vampires who might just tear those necks off. “To each his own.”
“He has a hellhound.”
She thought she’d heard wrong. “Did you say hellhound?” Visions of red eyes pulsing in a miasma of sulfur danced through her head. Then the pitchforks started circling.
“Big, black thing, probably bite your hand off if you look at it wrong. Timothy calls it Lucifer’s Girl.” He took something from his pocket. “Tranquilizer dart.” Then he was gone, and if she hadn’t seen it, she’d never have guessed he could move that fast.
She stayed with him, both of them scrambling over the chain link to land with hunter silence on the other side. There was no bark, nothing to alert them they’d become prey—Lucifer’s Girl came out of the darkness like a raging whirlwind. Sara ducked instinctively, and the dog’s body jumped over hers . . . to meet the clearly rapid-acting tranquilizer in Deacon’s hand. Instead of allowing the dog to fall, Deacon caught its muscled weight and lowered it gently to the ground.
“You like her,” Sara said, incredulous.
Deacon stroked the dog’s heaving sides. “What’s not to like? She’s loyal, and she’s strong. If I have to execute Timothy, she’ll miss her master.”
“You’d adopt her, wouldn’t you?” She shook her head. “There go your chances of ever again getting a girl.”
He raised his head, looking at her in that intent way of his. “Not a fan?”
“She’s got nine-inch fangs.” Only a slight exaggeration. “A woman would have to love you an incredible amount to put up with that kind of competition.” She jerked her head toward the building on the other side of the mountain of scrap metal and God knew what else. “Yes?”
“Let’s go. Tranq will keep Lucy out for a while.”
Lucy?
They took their time finding a path through the junk, checking for booby traps in the process. When they finally reached the tumbledown shack that Timothy called home, it was to discover the place empty. A little breaking and entering later, they were inside, but saw nothing even close to a smoking gun. The fact that Tim wasn’t home meant nothing—hunters kept irregular hours as a rule.
She watched as Deacon took something from his pocket and placed it on the bottoms of all the shoes he could locate. “Transmitters,” he told her. “Battery life of about two days. So if there’s a kill in that period, and he wears a pair I’ve tagged, I’ll be able to trace his movements.”
“Who’s next on the list?”
He told her after they scaled the chain link—petting Lucy along the way, and waiting long enough to ensure that she was coming out of the tranq okay. “Next is Shah Mayur. Loner, does the job but doesn’t seem to have any contact with other hunters.”
“Like someone else I know.”
Deacon ignored the comment as they straddled his bike and took off.
Grinning, she pressed herself to the heat of his back. “What put Shah on your radar?”
“He’s had five complaints filed against him by the VPA.”
The Vampire Protection Authority had been set up to stop cruelty and prejudice against vamps. They never won court cases—it was extremely hard to make a vampire look the victim when you had pictures of their blood-soaked kills—but they could kick up a serious stink. “What for?”
“Excessive violence against a vampire during retrieval.”
“Hmm.” She thought about that. “Why don’t you sound more excited?”
“Because all five complaints came from the same vamp.”
Her own burgeoning excitement deflated. “Probably someone with an ax to grind.”
“Yeah, but we have to check him out.”
Shah Mayur lived in a much more ordinary home—in terms of its attractiveness to hunters. His apartment occupied the entire third floor of a freestanding town house.
Sara frowned. “Getting in’s going to be a problem.” Deacon had already told her there was no internal access, so they couldn’t break in downstairs—and the ladder that Shah used to get up and down was currently pulled up. That didn’t mean he was home. According to Deacon’s intel, it could be raised or lowered by remote. Shah wasn’t a trusting sort. But he was also supposed to be on a flight to Washington as of an hour ago. “Any ideas?”
Deacon was staring up at the back wall when she turned to him. “Can you climb that?”
She followed his gaze to what looked like some kind of a water pipe, a reasonably substantial one. “Yeah.” The request surprised her. “I thought you were babysitting me.”
“We’re probably under surveillance,” he told her, voice matter-of-fact. “I can’t defang you completely.”
“That implies you could.” She shot him a sweet smile laced with bite. “We have to consider something else—if we are being watched, then the angels and high-level vamps have to know what we’re up to. I’m not going to deliver a hunter into their hands.” Angelic vengeance could be soul-destroyingly brutal.
Deacon looked into her face, unblinking. “That’s why we have to get to him first. We’ll deliver death with mercy.”
Giving a nod, she accepted the transmitters he held out and ran to the pipe. She was light enough—and, more important, had enough muscle—that it was fairly simple to pull herself up. When she reached the window ledge, she found it an easy, wide perch. So close, it was tempting to push up the window and go in, but she took her time checking everything out.
Just as well, as it turned out.
Shah had rigged a garrote across the opening, at the exact height to cut anyone coming in. From the faint glitter, she guessed it was covered with crushed glass. Gruesome, but home security wasn’t a crime. Double-checking for any electrical wires that might be connected to an alarm, she glanced down at Deacon and signaled her intention to enter.