Lucas woke to sunlight streaming through the motel room window onto his bed and almost directly into his face. He winced and turned away from it, rolling to face the other bed. Shaun was sprawled beneath the covers in a partially dressed heap. Lucas had heard him come in late the night before, but hadn’t stirred to greet his partner. Shaun had apparently collapsed on the bed, having half undressed himself before slipping into a drink-induced slumber.

Sighing, Lucas pushed out from under the comfort of the sheets into the cooler air of the motel room. From the faint smell coming from the bed, Shaun hadn’t bothered to shower before passing out. He still smelled of cologne and beer. It wasn’t a cologne Lucas recognized, and he was surprised to see that Shaun had come back at all last night. Shaun hardly ever brought his trysts back to the motel room, even if Lucas was going to be out for the night. It usually meant Shaun slept wherever his sexual partner for the night was staying, returning at some point in the morning. Either Shaun had made quick work of whatever bit of fun he was having, or the guy he’d found had booted him out.

“None of my business,” he muttered to himself as he flipped on the coffee pot on the table. It wasn’t as if he expected Shaun to only sleep with him, as long as he followed through on being safe when he slept with someone else. What he did find strange, and a little irritating, was that Shaun liked to get laid again shortly after he had fucked Lucas. It wasn’t every time, but it was often enough for Lucas to have noticed the pattern. It almost felt like his partner was trying to rid himself of some sort of residue that sleeping with Lucas left behind.

It was a paranoid thought, and one he knew came from the fact that he had spent so much of his life with few people to trust. Sure, there had been plenty of hunters after he had lost his parents, but it wasn’t the same. Most hunters didn’t trust Lucas because of his abilities, treating him like he was only one step away from being one of the things he hunted. Trust came slowly from the mistrusted, but Lucas knew that Shaun deserved it from him.

The buzz of his phone drew him from his thoughts and he answered it before it could vibrate off the nearby table. “Yes?”

“You really could try a ‘hello’ for a change, maybe even sound happy about it.”

He closed his eyes with the barest of sighs. “Ana.”

“Mmm, don’t sound so happy to hear from me, my lovely Lucas,” her tone was as dry as his, mimicking him on purpose.

“Forgive me, I’ve only just woken up, and you know I’m not much of a morning person.”

“Or a people person, for that matter.”

He grunted, pouring himself a cup of coffee before the pot finished burbling. “I assume you called me before I’ve even had a cup of coffee for a reason.”

“As astute as you are grumpy. I heard you were putting your feelers out about Toby and David. It true that they’re dead?”

Faintly wincing, he replied. “Yes.”

“Any idea what it was?”

“Not yet, which is why I was putting the feelers out, as you put it. They were ambushed in their motel room by whatever killed them. Something messed with the lock, then came in and shot David. Got Toby a couple of times, but a knife is what finally did him in.”

“Really? Something managed to knife Toby?”

Lucas let his first sip of coffee slip down his throat, hoping the caffeine would hit quickly. “So it appears. Is that significant?”

“The man was a whiz at close quarters combat, and was apparently damn good with that knife of his. If something managed to get the best of him, with a knife of all things, I’d say that’s pretty significant.”

“He had been shot before that, so it’s possible that his wounds slowed down his reaction time.”

“Could be,” Ana replied, sounding doubtful.

Lucas jotted down that bit of information, thinking it could be relevant. “Were you calling to confirm the rumors, then?”

“And if I was?”

Her question sounded irritated, but Lucas didn’t blame her. She was the closest thing the hunters had to an intelligence expert. She ran her own private website for hunters to use if they knew where to find it and how to get in. That usually meant contacting Ana or someone she worked through to prove you were a hunter, and one worth trusting. In Lucas’ case, it had involved him coming across her website by accident and using a backdoor into the site. It had impressed her enough that, in his case, she suspended her natural suspicion of anyone she didn’t know. Theirs had been an interesting friendship, carried out either online, by messaging, or phone call, but it worked. She had all the information collected from every source she could find in a shared database, and he kept her up to date with things he learned so they reached her as quickly as possible.

“You were, but that’s not all,” Lucas said, finally recognizing her smug tone.

“True, I got a little curious when I saw you’d put a request out for information on them. Which is how I found out they were dead in the first place. Probably should mention that in any request you post on the forum in the future, FYI. Also, I was curious enough to do some cross-referencing for you.”

“Cross-referencing of what?”

“Well, see, David and Toby worked a lot like you and Shaun do. David was the big tough guy who hit things a lot. Toby was the nerd, who just so happened to be good with a knife. Actually, considering what you’re like, that is a really creepily accurate comparison.”

It was but, “The point?”

“Toby was a user on my site, Lucas, and used it frequently.”

That caught his attention enough that he leaned forward. “You wouldn’t by any chance keep records of people’s posts, would you?”

“It’s a forum, so of course there are records. Sure, the posts self-delete after a week or so if there’s no activity in the thread, but I keep a record of everything on a separate physical server. Don’t you dare tell anyone that. I’ve got a hell of a bunch of security systems on that server, including an actual bomb. The fun ones are actually the programs I have on it in case-”

“Ana, focus, please. I simply cannot keep up with what you are saying when it’s this early.”

“Right,” she said, sounding flustered. “The point is, I do have records. I collected a bunch that he had been uploading recently. I’ll send them to your second email account for you to look over yourself.”

“That would be lovely,” he told her, and he meant it. “Notice anything of interest in them?”

“You’ll see when you comb through it all, but there’s a few posts from the past couple of weeks that caught my attention. Looks like he felt like they were being followed by something, though I don’t know what. He was asking about tracker types, trying to find out if there were any that were prone to hunting across country.”

“Tracker types?” he asked, frowning as he opened his laptop to check his email. Tracker types was a category that had been used by generations of hunters, though the title changed now and then. It included any sort of creature that was known to have senses or abilities that allowed them to find their chosen prey wherever they tried to hide. A lot of creatures were good at it, but the ones in this category were considered the best of the best: vampires that could track the scent of a person’s blood, werewolves who seemed to be descended from hounds because of how well they could track scents, ghosts that weren’t tied to one place and could follow auras. Trackers were categorized in different ways, and sadly, the only way for a hunter to know if they had a tracker was to find one. There was no other warning, especially if said tracker was pursuing you.

“Yessum, he was really curious to see if anyone had identified any trackers recently. Especially if anyone had found any in the New England area. Weren’t you just up that way recently?”

Lucas shook his head, beginning to download the attachment to her email. “No, West Coast. Hunting a werewolf.”

“Just the one? Found yourself a Lone Wolf, did you?”

“My guess was an estranged one, he acted a little too lost and confused to be willingly alone. Didn’t take us long to find him and put him down after the third murder.”

She hummed thoughtfully. “Ah, self-destructing?”

He shrugged. “That or just one more mindless monster who really enjoyed killing people. Hard to tell anymore, it’s not like I had a chance to sit down and talk with him.”

“Unlike the one that got away?”

Lucas’ gaze flicked to the bed where Shaun lay, checking to make sure he heard the familiar regular breathing that indicated his partner was asleep. “Heard about that, did you?”

“You had Josie there with you so naturally, she didn’t shut up about how that one got away from the three of you. From the sounds of it, you had that one pinned down well and good, and then somehow it managed to get away from you. Hell, it straight up fled the St. Louis area, despite supposedly being broke and without friends.”

It wasn’t the first time Ana knew more about something than he would have liked, and he was willing to bet it wouldn’t be the last. Over the years, more and more hunters had started using her database to help their hunts, and that meant even more opportunities for her to learn about the goings-on of each hunter. She rarely brought something up unless there was a good reason, or someone brought it up to her first.

There was nothing to be gained from finding out what happened on that hunt, at least nothing he could see that would help her. She had never sold him out before, and he would swear there was genuine concern beneath her curious tone. Other than Shaun, she was one of only a few people he had even a sliver of trust in. They’d had a working relationship for a few years now, and he was still hovering indecisively over how much to tell her.

“Weigh the numbers all you want Lucas, but you can trust me. I don’t have any good reason to tell anyone what really happened that night. You might not think it, but I like to think of you as a friend. And…if you really did let that werewolf go that night, just know that you aren’t the only one who sometimes questions whether killing every one of these creatures is the best idea.”

The actual admission didn’t surprise him so much as the fact that she admitted it in the first place. He’d met a few people in the hunter’s community over the years that he suspected weren’t as dedicated to killing as the majority were. He knew damn well that Shaun suspected Lucas of questioning the necessity of killing everything, but neither of them had spoken about it. It was hard to call for the deaths of some of these creatures, especially the ones who had caused no harm and were just trying to live their lives. At the heart of it all, they were merely creatures, people born different from the majority, which made them a target for people like Shaun and himself.

He took a deep breath before finally answering. “She, the werewolf was a she. She had been part of pack but left it when she learned she was pregnant. It was the pack Josie had been targeting on the outskirts of St. Louis: Really territorial and more than a little aggressive. From the sounds of it, taking them out was the best thing we could have done. She had been so scared of leaving, since they weren’t big on deserters. Scared until she found out she was having kids, twins.”

“I’m going to take a shot in the dark here and say you were the first one to find her before her great escape huh?”

Glancing at Shaun to make sure he was still asleep, he nodded. “The benefits of having extrasensory abilities. She’d been hiding for almost two years after she gave birth to those kids, you know that? Then she gets found by us, she’s not hurting anyone, just trying to raise her kids the best she could while trapped in St. Louis. She couldn’t get out because of that pack, every time she tried, they would come after her.”

“Hmm, here’s my question. How did you manage to get her out, then?”

“She didn’t know Josie had already been working on killing the pack. All I had to do was tell her that, and slip her some money.”

“And just like that?”

“Well, it helped that everyone likes to leave me in charge of the planning. I might have…sorta told her my plan for coming after her that night.”

“Your whole plan?”

Lucas snorted indelicately. “No, not everything. I felt bad for her, but I’ve been doing this work for long enough not to trust her totally. I told her enough to let her get away at the last second, but not enough to put Josie or Shaun in any danger. Even if I fully trusted her not to hurt them, she had her kids with her. If she got cornered by Shaun or Josie, I had no illusions that she would put up one hell of a fight if her and her kids were in danger like that.”

“And no one was suspicious? That’s impressive.”

He poured himself another cup of coffee, sighing. “Josie was just pissed. Shaun wasn’t though. He just kept…staring at me. I think he knew, he just couldn’t say it out loud. You know how he feels about that sort of thing. Doesn’t matter what their story is. To him they’re not human, and they have to go.”

“I’m sure he’s a hoot at pet stores.”

“Ana, please.”

She laughed, the sound thick with what he suspected was smoke. “Oh come on, that was too easy.”

The thought of smoking a cigarette had him reaching for his own pack to pull one free and light it. “If you add that little story to your database, do me a favor and keep it private. And leave out any names.”

“No,” he could almost hear her shaking her head. “That one’s not going on there. That little story was just between the two of us. For what it’s worth, I’m glad you gave her the chance.”

He inhaled deeply, letting the smoke fill his lungs before exhaling slowly. “Was it a good idea though? Was it smart?”

“Smart? Probably not, since it would have been a lot easier to just let them kill her. Hell, maybe even the kids too, as dark as that is. Or maybe just let the kids go into the system. That would have been good: two werewolf brats, not knowing what they are, drifting along in the human world until they change and snap. But you know what? Sometimes doing the right thing isn’t the same thing as doing the smart thing.”

“And how do I know if it was the right thing?”

“How do you know that killing her would have been the right thing? Because that’s what most hunters think? Because it’s what Shaun thinks is right? Maybe the only thing that keeps us separate from the monsters is that we remember compassion now and again. Maybe saving her could turn out to be one of the best decisions you ever made, or maybe one of the worst. But I can’t comprehend a world that’s morally gray in every other way, yet somehow there’s just the one aspect that’s black and white.”

“Careful Ana, that’s considered traitor talk,” he chided her, hoping she picked up on his playful tone.

She snorted, the sound soft and more ladylike than her normal, catty tone. “Let them find out and come after me. I know so much about you soldier boys, it would probably make your heads spin. Information can be just as deadly as a gun or silver sword.”

Lucas raised a brow. “And besides what I just told you, what other little tidbits might you have on me?”

Her laugh was soft, devious. “I know you and your boy are more than hunting partners, but less than devoted lovers.”

That made him stiffen, but he was hoping it didn’t show in his voice. “While I won’t say that it’s disturbing that you know that, I’m sure it isn’t uncommon. This life throws people together intimately in all other ways, the odds are that eventually it will put two people who share the same sexuality together.”

“Look Mr. Fancypants, I’m just saying I know that there’s more than just hugging going on over there. Hunters are worse than old women when it comes to gossip, and that’s one of the rumors going around. You’ll be happy to know that no one knows for sure, except for me. But I’m pretty sure the little story you just told me, about letting the werewolf escape, will make sure you behave more than me knowing you two are doing the horizontal tango.”

Sighing at her “eloquence,” he flicked the ash off his cigarette in an annoyed gesture. “Well, if that’s all…”

“Uh huh, you open up to me, find out I have all sorts of dirty little secrets on other hunters, and now you conveniently have to run?”

“I have reading to do and,” he glanced at the softly snoring lump in the bed. “A possibly hungover partner to wake up.”

“Ooh, busy morning. Keep me updated on what you find out about our fallen hunters would you?”

He smiled at that, fond of the energetic and sassy woman. “You know I will.”

“Good, and Lucas?”

About to end the call, he paused momentarily. “Yes?”

“Please be careful. If Toby was right and they really were being hunted by a tracker, it means that whatever got them is very good at what it does. They would have had plenty of warning that something was after them, but it got them anyway. I don’t want to get a call in a week or two telling me you two were its next targets.”

“Tell you what,” he began to assure her, the corners of his mouth turning up in a little grin. “If that happens, I’ll etch whatever it is on the walls. Better still I’ll carve a description on the headboard as I bleed out.”

“Not funny. Plus, a picture would be quicker. It’d make it easier to avenge your death.”

“One dying picture, understood.”

He heard a disgusted noise from her on the other end of the line. There was a muttered “Hunters” as she shut the phone off, making him grin a little wider. Soft snoring filled the subsequent silence as he turned to Shaun. He supposed he could do the reading after he had managed to wake the beast.