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The trail led them to the entrance of a junkyard at the end of an industrial area. The place was gated, but the padlock and heavy chain that secured it had been loosened. There was just enough room for someone to squeeze inside. And someone had; the wet crimson stains on the latch and edge of the gate left no question about that.

“Come on,” Kade said, wrenching the thing open wide enough for Brock and him to slip through.

He heard the rush of movement the instant before the big black dogs came barreling around a pile of scrap and rubbish. Two rottweilers, big as tanks and mean as hell.

“Holy shit!”

Brock’s shout was all but drowned out by the savage barks and growls of the oncoming dogs. No animal alive could take a vampire, but that didn’t mean the sight of a combined three hundred pounds of seething, furious canine wasn’t cause for a little alarm. Kade stood firm, his legs braced wide as the pair of rotties swiftly closed the distance on him.

He stared them down, eye to eye.

They slowed… then stopped, both of them dropping into a cower at his feet. The hounds whimpered, shifting on their bellies and keeping their big heads low as their dark eyes searched out his favor.

“Get out of here.”

They loped off, as docile as puppies.

Brock gaped. “What the hell was that?”

“This way,” Kade said, ignoring the question and the astonished stare that followed him as he stalked deeper into the junkyard. They had bigger things to deal with right now.

It wasn’t hard to find the bloodied victim. The young man had collapsed against a rusted metal crate, one jeans-clad leg stretched out in front of him, the other bent at the knee. He looked boneless and weary, like a puppet whose strings had been severed. He held his hand up against his throat where the bleeding was the worst. He couldn’t stanch the flow. In just a few more minutes, he would be dead.

“Jesus Christ,” Brock hissed.

The warrior’s voice was thick and strained, but whether from revulsion or the simple fact that the sight and smell of so much fresh blood made even the most controlled vampire thirst like he was starving, there was no way to tell.

Kade’s own fangs tore farther out of his gums as he looked at the bleeding human. He tried his best to mask the sharp tips as he edged closer. “What happened to you?” he asked, despite the obvious injuries that could only have come from one of his kind.

“Jumped… me,” the human wheezed. “My neck… fucker… bit me.”

When the man removed his hand to show him the injury, the copper punch of his blood hit Kade like a fist to the gut. He’d fed only yesterday, but the urge to drink again pulled at him. His vision sharpened, bathing everything in amber.

“Who bit you?” Brock asked the human, smoothly stepping in when Kade had to glance away. “Can you describe who did this to you?”

The man exhaled a slow, shuddering sigh. He didn’t have long now. He looked up, eyes listless and glassy in the dark. He lifted his arm, slowly extending his finger to point somewhere past Brock’s thick shoulder. “Him,” he gasped, the voice thready and airless. “Behind you … that’s him …”

Kade and Brock swung their heads around in unison—just in time to see a huge Breed male running for the back acre of the junkyard. The vampire wore black fatigues and a long-sleeved black knit shirt. His head was shaved bald, the back of his naked skull covered in an unmistakable pattern of dermaglyphs

“Holy hell,” Kade muttered.

He broke into a run with Brock thundering at his heels. They bolted for the rear of the littered yard, but the Gen One male in front of them was ten times faster. He vaulted up onto a mountain of crushed cars in one swift leap, then he was gone.

It wasn’t Chase who’d brutalized the human and left him for dead, but another Breed male who was recently familiar to all of the Order. A Gen One who’d joined them only a few weeks ago.

“Hunter,” Brock growled. “Son of a bitch.”

CHAPTER

Fourteen

Claire felt a bit queasy from the flight as she and Andreas stepped off the Order’s private