Bound to Earth

Bonus Chapter | Brynjar

The crunch of cartilage and bone was only background noise to Brynjar as he swiped through his phone. He'd been sure to get decent photos of the body before his brother tore into it. 

Unless they had proof the bounty couldn't be collected. Malachi always destroyed the evidence past proof.

Though he had to be careful. Their employers weren't always legal, but he tended to stay away from them. It wasn't worth the money. Sometimes the employers were the government themselves. Even then he had to be careful.

Malachi was taking longer than usual. It wasn't often Brynjar would come across a job with vampires. That entire community had a system of their own, dealt with their own strays. He'd taken it, their flesh was a luxury for ghouls. A diet of blood made the skin sweeter than most supernaturals, dessert for Malachi.

He didn't mind. It gave him the extra time he needed to scroll through his phone and delete old photos of bodies. 

Alistar's name lit up on his screen. He almost didn't pick up. If they were calling, something was wrong. They were strong enough on their own to deal with it. He was tired from hunting the vampire.

He sent Alistar's call to voicemail. It rung again less than a second later.

Something was severely wrong if he was persistently calling rather than just meeting him after. 

"What happened?" He sounded more exasperated than he meant.

"We found a girl." Alistar rushed the words out, trying to talk over the background noise. Brynjar could hear Valentino's faint voice, persuading someone.

Brynjar was quiet for a second, not sure he heard Alistar correctly. "What?"

Alistar groaned in frustration. "We found a girl."

Brynjar's eyebrows raised at his word. 

He would've expected Valentino to be the one caught up on someone. Some days he had to drag Valentino away from hooking up with whoever the nearest person was. They had business to attend to.

That wasn't to say Alistar didn't have his fair share of women. Alistar was . . . better at hiding his share of lovers. Brynjar didn't know which was worse to deal with. 

Prying answers out of Alistar was one of the most difficult tasks he had. There were secrets he couldn't get out of Alistar to this day, but he let those secrets go. Brynjar knew Alistar would only tell him what he wanted him to know. Nothing, not even torture, could pry information out of his brother.

 "She's my mate. I can smell the bond and so can Valentino." Alistar continued. It made more sense to Brynjar now.

The background was so loud, music blasting. But not loud enough to cover Valentino. "Shit, we gotta hurry. I lost her and the vampire."

Brynjar pinched the bridge of his nose, a headache forming. It'd been a while since they'd run into a problem on a job. He should've known any longer of smoothly running events was too good to be true.

"Get here quick, meet us in the lobby." Alistar rattled off his location almost too fast for Brynjar to catch, and hung up before he could say anything.

"Malachi, finish up. We need to go." He searched the address Alistar gave him. It was a 10 minute drive from where they were. Right on the strip, traffic was terrible. It'd be faster if they ran, maybe 3 minutes.

Malachi glanced up, pulling a chunk of the vampire's bicep from the bone. He chewed, swallowed, then whipped the blood from his mouth. "What'd they fuck up this time?"