stand watch to ensure no more harm comes to her.”
“I still need to touch base with command. The vampire who attacked us might be the killer.”
“I’ve already dispatched two of my people to track them down. That ought to suffice, for now.”
Demaryius must be afraid of spooking the killer worse. With his help, Boaz would let it ride.
As the clan master himself said—for now.
“Thanks.” Boaz reached for his phone. “You understand I’ll have to check your credentials.”
Scanning the area, Demaryius lifted his head to breathe in. “Of course.”
Boaz dialed Addie, who handed the phone to Cass, who asked to speak with Demaryius. With his hearing, Demaryius had been expecting the handoff and accepted. They spoke briefly, he handed the phone back, and Boaz got his confirmation.
“Honey will be safe with them,” Addie promised him. “Demaryius will do anything to get Ari back.”
He didn’t know Cass well enough to trust her word, but he believed Addie.
“All right.” He checked with Honey, who gave her blessing for him to go. “Send me your coordinates, and I’ll meet up with you and Cass.”
“Or perhaps,” Demaryius offered, “you would prefer to partner with me.”
“Sure,” Boaz drawled, aware this was politics. “Scratch that, Addie. I’ll partner with Demaryius.”
“Be careful out there,” she said softly. “You promised me funnel cakes at our wedding, and I expect you to pay up.”
“You too.” The flash of grief he expected came, but it was dulled by the woman on the other end of the phone. “It’s down to you to educate me on how they’re any different from elephant ears. They’re both doughy, both fried, both served coated in powdered sugar. I expect answers.”
Her snort of laughter rang in his ears as he ended the call and met Demaryius’s stare.
“You understand what I’ve lost,” he observed. “I will do anything to get her back.”
Boaz was no stranger to grief, to loss, but he hadn’t experienced what Demaryius had with Ari. The vampire read him well, but not well enough. He misunderstood the affection Boaz had for Addie. It was a separate entity from the grief over his betrayal of Grier. They coexisted, overlapped, but they weren’t the same.
Though it was the height of rudeness to treat vampires like tracking hounds, they had excellent noses, and Boaz was going to use every resource available to him. “Can you scent the vampire who attacked us?”
“I can,” he said at length, shoving aside his dislike of the question. “It’s no one I’ve met before.”
The killer wasn’t local, so Boaz hadn’t expected Demaryius to be able to ID them. His hopes lay elsewhere. “Can you track them?”
The request pushed the limits of Demaryius’s patience, evidenced by the muscle tic in his cheek, but he cared more for his mate than any perceived rudeness. “Yes.”
The two stared at one another before Demaryius heaved a sigh and set out on a path running perpendicular to the main trail. Two other vampires followed at a discreet distance, and their nostrils twitched as they pulled in scents too.
A text prompted Boaz to reach for his phone, and he spat a curse. “Whoever we’re tracking, it’s not Delacorte.”
“What do you mean?” Demaryius continued to lead, his pace quickening. “I thought he had been positively identified.”
“We made the assumption it was him, based on the belief Cass was the one being targeted.” Boaz shot Chambers a message to dig into any known associates. “Cleaners out in California verified he died in a fire a little over a century ago.”
“Are you wasting my time?” He whipped around, hands balling at his sides. “My mate has only hours.”
“We acted in good faith on the information we discovered.” Boaz texted a warning to the others, which was hard as hell to do while also keeping an eye on Demaryius. “The fact remains a strange vampire attacked my partner and me in the park, where Cass expected to find your mate.”
“Vampires pass through small towns all the time on their way to bigger ones. The poor or exiled have been known to live in forests like animals and prey on hikers or campers. Who’s to say that’s not who we’re tracking?”
“This is the best lead we’ve got,” Boaz said softly. “I know that’s not what you want to hear, but it’s the truth. I’m sorry. I wish I had more, but I don’t.”
Demaryius hissed under his breath, the words foreign and sharp as his teeth. He marched off in the direction of the road, his guards on his heels. Boaz let his head