Hunting Ground [Claiming Series, #3]

- 5 -

Asher picked up Julie from the morgue around three in the morning. She'd gotten her time off, and she announced as she came into the office, "It wasn't a busy night. Only two bodies."

Asher and Kane exchanged looks. "It could be," Kane said after a moment, "that the snow is keeping people indoors, making it more difficult to get at them. Or more difficult to find the bodies."

Asher nodded. "Or they've decided to change some of their victims."

"That we can't know until tomorrow night at the earliest."

"Let's pack and go," Asher said abruptly. "We still have enough time to reach Soren's cabin. We can await word on the gathering there and make plans just as well."

"What gathering?" Tessa asked.

"I've been contacting old acquaintances. Some may come help."

Another gathering of vampires. Tessa almost shuddered.

They drove through deepening snow, meeting almost no traffic except plows that were trying to keep the main roads clear for the morning. Their headlights bounced off swirling snow, but Asher, at the wheel, seemed to be able to see beyond it.

Maybe he could, Tessa thought. She closed her own eyes so that she couldn't tell how fast they were moving when she could barely see ten feet in front of the car.

Kane sat up front beside Asher, his tense posture and the way he kept looking around telling her that while Asher drove, Kane was on sentry duty.

Beside her sat Julie, who drifted to sleep. In the rear sat Mackenzie, who was unusually silent.

But of course. Asher felt the danger was great enough to get the women out of town. Except for the three humans, he and Kane probably would have stayed.

Once again she was a burden to be protected. Tessa's mouth soured at the thought, but realistically she had to admit there wasn't much she could do to help. She had spoken brave words, but it remained utterly beyond her to imagine how she could be anything but a hindrance.

About an hour north of the city, they turned off-road. Or maybe they were still on some road. Or maybe there were still on some road, but to Tessa, it looked as if they were wending their way among trees.

"How can you see where to go?" she asked finally.

"The road is there," Kane answered. "It retains a bit of heat from the sun yesterday, more than the woods beneath the trees."

"And you can see that through the snow?"

"Easily."

"My God," she muttered, once again facing the huge difference between vampires and mere humans like herself. She was surprised to feel Julie reach out and pat her forearm.

"Vampires," Julie said, "are actually quite gifted. But what's working for us now can work against us with those rogues."

"Yes," said Kane. "The passage of our car has left a heat trail for miles. I hope our departure went unobserved."

Tessa couldn't even think of a reply for that. About the only equivalence, she could make was her pack's ability to follow a scent even after it was weeks old, or even to follow one hundred of feet above them in the air. She wasn't that capable herself, but she had some small experience.

These vampires magnified everything, she thought: strength, speed, vision, smell. She most certainly didn't want her pack in the middle of this, although she felt more homesick at that moment than she had since the first days after her arrival in the city.