out of the distant bracken a moment later. Followed by another woman, limping and sobbing. She too was spattered with blood, bleeding from a bite mark on her forearm. They careened off in separate directions, fleeing like a spooked herd of deer.
Like the sporting game they were, Chase realized, the truth of what he'd stumbled into dawning on him with cold understanding.
Blood club.
Chapter Sixteen
That was the niggling familiarity of this place. He had been here once before, more than a decade ago, he and Quentin and a squad of raiding Enforcement Agents, responding to rumors of an illegal hunting party organizing a night of sport at Boston's suburban Blue Hills Park. He didn't have to hear the animal howl of one of the vampires in pursuit of these doomed humans to know he was standing in the midst of a game for the most depraved of his kind. Banned by Breed law for centuries, clubs that arranged the pursuit of humans as sport - and anything else a vampire could desire - had been condemned but not completely abolished. There were still those who defied the laws. There were still those closed social circles with their very exclusive memberships, catering to the Breed's perverted elite.
Chase searched for the contempt that he should have felt for something so reprehensible. He felt the flicker of outrage, his old Agency ethics tingling with the impulse to intervene, but it wasn't enough to keep his fangs from ripping farther from his gums as the coppery fragrance of spilling blood permeated the thicket. Hunger coiled inside him, making his pulse run hot and wild through his veins.
As the humans neared the unplanned blind where he crouched, he got to his feet. His amber gaze burning his vision, he stepped out of his hiding place and directly into their path.
They arrived at the airport in a low-riding purple El Camino that Hunter had commandeered off the street in New Orleans.
The man who'd left the vehicle idling at the curb had been involved in a heated argument with a couple of scantily clad young women on the corner - women he seemed to think owed him money. While he'd jumped out of the car to shout and curse at them, Hunter had put Corinne in the passenger side, then smoothly slid behind the wheel and sped off before the man had the chance to notice they were gone.
The Order's jet awaited them in the private hangar as they drove the stolen vehicle into the cavernous space. Corinne glanced at Hunter, still trying to reconcile the tender touch that had held her in the jazz club with the lethally efficient violence that had taken two lives in the alley outside it. "Those guards back in the city," she murmured as he put the car into park and cut the engine. "You snapped their necks like they were nothing more than twigs."
His expression was unreadable, completely neutral. "We have to go now, Corinne. Gideon has already called ahead to alert the pilots. They'll be waiting for us inside."
She swallowed past the lump of ice that had been lodged in her throat since they fled the club. "You murdered those men, Hunter. In cold blood."
"Yes," he said levelly. "Before they had the opportunity to do likewise to us."
I deal in death.
That's what he'd told her, just last night. Born into the role of assassin and trained very well to do unthinkable things. Before now, it was only words. Only the threat of danger. Now she was seated beside him, about to follow him out of their stolen car and onto the plane that would take her with him God-only-knew-where next.
And yet, when he got out from behind the wheel then walked around to open her door and hold out his hand to her, she took it.
She walked with him, across the concrete floor of the hangar toward the lowered staircase that led up to the cabin of the private jet. Hunter climbed the steps ahead of her, then gestured her toward the spacious cabin.
"The pilots must be in the cockpit," he said as she walked past him to head toward one of the dozen large, leather reclining seats inside. "I will tell them we're here."
Corinne swiveled her head to nod in acknowledgment.
But as her attention swept back toward Hunter, everything seemed to go terribly silent around them. His eyes sparked with warning. He reached for her.