Chapter 3
Chapter three
Tate
I felt him before I saw him. Kyren, on the sidewalk, talking to some woman. Jack luckily hadn’t noticed him yet, her arms full of a large white and pink cartoon kitten I had convinced her to let me buy for her.
“So what now?” Jack asked, laughing at something I’d said before.
I glanced at Kyren and then back down to Jack, trying to keep my face neutral to what was happening. “Why don’t we put your child away and find something to eat?”
Jack scoffed. “Child? Me? Never.”
I twisted a lock of her curly ebony hair around my finger and leaned down as if to kiss her. “Never say never.” Then I snatched the stuffed animal and ran toward the car.
Jack cried out in surprise and came running after me just as I wanted.
Kyren and the woman had disappeared off the sidewalk and hopefully weren’t drawing attention to themselves.
I’d have to talk to him about what he was doing here later.
Right now, I had to protect Jack, even if she didn’t know it yet.
About halfway to the car, the scent of blood hit me. My footsteps faltered, and I glanced back to see that Jack was no longer chasing after me. She had her head turned toward the same scent. Then, without saying anything to me, she started running back toward the smell.
“Jack!” I called out, but she didn’t listen. I tossed the stuffed animal aside and chased after her.
A part of me knew that Kyren and the woman hadn’t been flirting or just chit-chatting about the weather. While the former had been concerning to let Jack witness, I almost preferred it to what she was about to discover, because the blood stinking the air wasn’t Kyren’s.
I caught up to Jack as she came upon an alley between two buildings near where we had just been. Placing a hand on her shoulder, I tried to dissuade her from going in.
“Jack, princess. Come on, let’s go find something to eat. This isn’t our business.”
Thankfully, the scent of the stranger’s blood was so potent that it covered up Kyren’s presence. If she knew it was him, she wouldn’t hesitate to go barging down the alley just to get in his face, and this was a side of him I wasn’t sure she was ready to see yet.
Jack shrugged me off with a scowl. “I might not be an active hunter, but I still have a duty to protect those against the supernatural.”
Shaking my head, I stepped in front of her. “But we were having such a good time. Do we really want to ruin it with work?”
Her brows furrowed for a moment, crossing her arms over her chest. My massive jacket, which I had given her earlier, engulfed her, making her look more innocent than she was.
“Why are you trying so hard to stop me from going in there?”
I offered her a small smile. “I’m just trying not to ruin the mood of our date. I’m supposed to be showing you there’s more to life than hunting. And I can’t do that if you try to hunt on our date. Now, can I?”
Jack stared at me for so long that I thought I’d lost her before she dropped her arms and sighed. “Alright. Fine. You’re right. I’m sorry.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and hit a few buttons on the screen. “But I have to call this in.”
“No, Jack, don’t.” I went to grab for her phone.
To my surprise, she ducked under my arm and stalked into the alley before I could stop her. God fucking damn it. I’d been tricked by my own hopefulness.
Chasing after her, I tried to prepare for what we’d find in the alley when I almost walked into her back, where she had stopped dead in her tracks. My eyes took a second to adjust, and then I saw what had made her pause.
Shadows almost obscured the view of Kyren standing over what no longer looked like anything but a pile of meat. The blonde and black hair of the woman he’d been talking to before was the only distinguishing feature that told me what I was looking at.
Kyren lifted a hand to the wall, tracing his blood-soaked fingers over the brick of the building.
A small, startled sound escaped Jack, jerking Kyren’s attention to us. His gaze landed on me before shifting over to Jack. Regret mixed with rage filled his face.
“Kyren, what are you…?” Jack trailed off, stepping toward him. “How could you…?”
Not answering her, Kyren stepped back from the wall and into his shadows, letting them surround him until he was gone.
Coward.
I didn’t understand him sometimes. He’d kill for her but wouldn’t talk to her. Made no sense whatsoever.
With Kyren gone, we were left alone with the pile of meat that had once been alive and a bloody message on the wall.
“What does that say?”
“Hey, didn’t you want to call this in?” I reminded her, my fingertips brushing against her arm.
Jack waved me off when I tried to distract her from the result of Kyren’s temper. “Later.”
We both approached the wall, careful not to step in the blood splattered across the ground. My eyes lifted from Jack to the message written out in the woman’s blood, clear as day.
Leave her alone.
I sighed, knowing exactly who this message was for.
Kyren had mentioned being approached by some younglings about getting revenge on the Durands, but I had brushed it off as college kids just looking for trouble.
Apparently, they hadn’t taken Kyren’s no seriously and, by how violent the woman’s death was, she must have run her mouth more than she should have.
Jack turned back to me with an expression mixed with concern and confusion. “He’s not talking about me, do you think?”
I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her forehead. “We shouldn’t linger here. Someone is bound to notice this sooner or —”
“Freeze!”
“Later.”
Crap.
Jack and I slowly turned around to face the two officers standing in the entrance to the alley. Several people stood behind them, trying to peek over their shoulders. Humans. Always so nosy. We were lucky they didn’t have their phones out and pointed toward us.
“Look, officers,” I began, holding my hands up to show them I meant no harm. “This is all a big misunderstanding.”
One of the officers turned to a woman near him. “Is this the man you saw?”
The woman in question leaned around the officer and looked me up and down, lingering on my body for a lot longer than necessary before shaking her head.
“No, the guy was shorter and was super pale. There was something demonic about him, like he was sucking all the light from the world.” She shuddered and stepped back into the embrace of her friends.
Great. Not only did humans discover Kyren’s temper tantrum, but they’d seen him using his powers. Just as I was pondering how the hell we were going to explain this one away, Jack stepped around me and walked slowly toward them, holding something up in a rectangular leather badge holder.
“Princess, what are you doing?” I hissed, trying to grab for her. If Jack ended up arrested while out on a date with me, not only were Kyren and Julian going to kick my ass, but I couldn’t even imagine what her parents would do to me.
“Officers, Jaquelynn Durand, badge number six-two-five-one, part of the shadow division.” She stopped before the two officers and let the one who had spoken before take what I could only assume was a badge.
The officer looked it over and handed it back to her. “Sorry, ma’am, we didn’t know this was part of your jurisdiction. We were just responding to a call.”
Jack nodded, far more calm and collected than I would have been in this situation. “Not a problem. I need to call this in.” She pulled a business card out of her badge and handed it to them. “If your superiors need to follow up, they can contact mine.”
“Thank you, we will.” The officer nodded, and then both turned to the growing crowd. “Nothing to see here, folks. This is police business, go about your evening.”
When they were gone, I stepped over to Jack as she put her phone to her ear. “Princess, what’s going on?”
She held up a finger before speaking into her phone. “Hey, Reynolds, this is Jack. I have a code twenty in Addison, downtown in the alley between…” She stepped out of the alley and glanced back and forth. “Loca Moca and… Vegan Pet Supplies…”
The male voice on the other line chuckled. “Vegan pets? What will they come up with next?”
“Yeah, I know, right?” She shook her head and stepped back into the alley. “Anyway, we need a clean-up crew and probably a dissuasion charm. One too many eyes, if you know what I mean.”
“Got it. Human or supe?”
I stood there, arms crossed over my chest as I listened to her talk about the scene. I knew that Jack was a hunter, but I didn’t realize they had protocols the same way the police did. She even had a badge number. What else about the hunters did we not know?
After Jack ended the call, she faced me again. “Sorry about that. If I didn’t get ahead of this, then they were going to drag us down to the station, and we’d be there for hours before I could get a call in to the guild.”
“So…” I shifted from one foot to the other. “You do this often? Interact with the cops and what not?”
Jack shrugged. “Not really. Most of our missions are done in secret, but occasionally, like tonight, we have a public incident that requires legal channels to keep the humans out of it.”
“But you have a badge. Do they think you’re a cop?”
She fiddled with the sleeves of my jacket and pursed her lips. “Some of them probably do, yeah. But, from what I understand, they don’t get told much about our division. Just enough to know that we have jurisdiction wherever we say we do.”
I snorted, walking back toward the bloody pile of meat. The scent of called to the predator in me, making my stomach grumble. “I can’t imagine the cops are just happy to hand over control like that.”
“I don’t know. Probably not. Tristen — one of the presidents of the guild — told me that a lot of the time, they explain it away with it being part of a sensitive investigation, like with the mob or something. Usually, that keeps them from looking too much further into it.”
She stopped at my side. “We’ve only had this division thing in play for a few years. Before they had to get sneaky and use witch charms and hackers to remove memories and physical evidence of supernatural crimes.”
I was quiet for a moment, contemplating my next words. I knew the work she did was important, and some hated the hunters for policing us, but unfortunately, there were some of us who needed policed.
However, Kyren wasn’t one of them. If he killed someone, it was for a reason, not just mindlessly killing for the fun of it. I know because I’d helped him do some of it. Coincidently enough, a lot more of it ever since we met Jack.
Looking down at what used to be a vampire, I couldn’t help but wonder if she had done or said something to threaten Jack.
Not that I thought he should just kill everyone who tried to hit on our girl or made a rude comment.
That wouldn’t be logical. We’d be constantly taking people out and then it would get back to Jack, putting her in the line of fire.
But this one…
“Are you going to tell them it was Kyren?” I tried to keep my tone even and as not anxious as I felt.
Jack glanced at the mess and then at the wall before looking back at me. “I don’t think that’s necessary, but I wish we could wash this off before they get here. I have little doubt that Tristen won’t think this has something to do with me and connect the dots on his own.”
She paused and stared up at the bloody words on the wall, her voice low, “Why would he do this?”
I huffed a laugh, wrapping my arms around her waist to pull her back to my front. “Isn’t it obvious, princess?”
Jack leaned her head back to stare up at me.
“He’s still completely in love with you, just like I am.”
“So you think…whoever this was…” She blinked, then tilted her head to the side slightly. “That this had something to do with me?”
“Ding, ding, ding.” I leaned down and kissed her nose. “Kyren might not be the most vocal about his feelings, but his actions never leave any doubt, princess. And this has you written all over it.”
Jack winced. “It’d be kind of sweet if it wasn’t going to make explaining this all a pain in the ass.”
The sound of several vehicles pulling up drew our attention to the entrance of the alley. Men and women dressed in black led by a large muscular man with a buzz cut started toward us.
“Well, think of it this way,” I told her, lowering my voice. “There was a reason he did this when you were around.”
“You think?”
“Yep. And I think this means he’s that much closer to admitting what happened before doesn’t matter as much as how he feels about you.”
Jack opened her mouth to retort, but closed it shut when someone neither of us expected walked into the alley with the team.