Hunter appeared to consider what he’d said. Although Riker was only half kidding about why Hunter shouldn’t fire him or drop-kick him into the pit used for nonlethal punishments, there was some truth to what he’d said. Myne and Hunter, the only two pureblood male vampires besides Baddon in the clan, got along like two tomcats in a bag, and neither would admit that he needed the other.

“Where is the bastard, anyway?” Hunter asked, and Riker shrugged. Myne wasn’t one to share his plans.

“Patrolling, probably. Not my day to watch him.”

Taggart, a male who had worked with the CIA before being turned into a vampire fifty years ago, cleared his throat. “Riker’s right about stealth. I’d feel better if we had a whole team going in to rescue Neriya, but until we have more intel on her situation, it might be wise to let Riker go in the way he wants to.”

“Especially with the increase in hunters and poachers lurking in the forest lately.” katina growled, her pearly fangs flashing in stark contrast with her brown skin. “A large group of vampires heading toward Seattle’s billionaire district is a lot more likely to attract their attention than one or two of us.”

Except for the sound of the cuckoo clock ticking on the wall behind katina, there was silence as Hunter looked each of them in the eye. Finally, like a great cat rising from its jungle resting place, he dropped his feet onto the wood floor and unfurled to his full, impressive six-foot-seven height. Those who had been born vampires instead of turned into them were generally taller than most humans and turned vampires. They also got to keep their natural eye color, unlike turned vampires, whose eyes always became some shade of silver as their fangs grew in.

“I’ll give Riker a shot at doing it his way.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Out. Everyone but Riker. Fill in the other senior staff. We’ll let the rest of the warriors know what’s happening when we need to.”

“What about general clan members?” Baddon asked. “Everyone is on edge.”

“I’ll speak at dinner. Assure everyone there’s nothing to worry about for now.” Hunter nodded at the door again. “Go.”

Taggart, Baddon, and katina filed out, each shooting Riker a sympathetic glance as they went. Once the door closed, Riker got to his feet and moved away from the table, waiting for the dressing-down.

It came in the form of a right hook to the face.

Riker hit the wall hard enough to make the picture frames rattle.

“Don’t disrespect me in front of the others again.”

Hunter glanced down at his knuckles. “Also? You have a hard face to match your hard head.” No one went from pissed to playful in a split second the way Hunter did.

Tasting blood, Riker tested his jaw. Nothing broken or loose, but he’d feel it for a while. “You didn’t learn that the first ten times you decked me?”

The truth was that Hunter had held back. Riker had never felt the full brunt of his chief’s anger, but he’d seen it. If Hunter had wanted to, he could have shattered every bone in Riker’s skull with a single blow.

Hunter gave a lazy shrug. “I’m a slow learner.”

That was a load of crap. The ancient vampire came across as a laid-back, couldn’t-give-a-shit slacker who liked video games, Sports Illustrated, and muscle cars, but he was a lot smarter than anyone who didn’t know him gave him credit for. His calculating mind was blade-sharp, his smiles frequent, and his nature affable and calm, outwardly, at least. He’d never ruled with an iron fist—and he didn’t need to. Respect for his leadership kept the clan running smoothly.

“You won’t regret this,” Riker assured him. “I can do it.”

Doubt all but billowed from Hunter’s pores as he lifted the ceremonial pipe from the tray. “If this were any other mission, I wouldn’t be concerned. You know that.”

“I know,” Riker admitted. “But you know I’m right about this. I’m familiar with the Martin house. I’ve memorized the grounds. I’ve studied every detail of their security, both inside and outside the house.”

“Studied?”

“Okay, stalked. But my point is—”

“I know what your point is. And I know how much your hatred for the Martins has eaten at you. Hatred makes you sloppy. Makes you focus so completely on revenge that you’re blind to the dangers around you. Makes you—”

“Makes me determined to succeed.”

Hunter put his back to the wall and propped one foot behind him, his pose casual, his expression as serious as Riker had ever seen it. “Your mate was a slave in the Martin household. How can you be sure you can do what needs to be done without that history coloring your actions? A pissed-off bear will run straight for the hunter with a gun.”

“Because this is my home.” Riker met his leader’s gaze head-on. “This is my family. And if I screw up, I lose everything.” He glanced over at the depiction of

MoonBound’s battle with the now-extinct CloudStrike clan. “We all lose everything.”

Chapter 2

Two days after persuading Hunter to let him have his way, Riker stood on a ridge on the outskirts of Seattle, a cemetery at his back, and fi ttingly, a dead man at his feet.

Dead but not bleeding.

Riker had drained him of every last drop of blood—a fi ne vintage, aged about twenty-five years in the veins of a vampire hunter.

A rush of exhilaration fl ooded Riker’s body, because nothing beat the high of taking down a hunter or poacher. Both were scum, just different subspecies of scum.

Tasty scum.

He touched the tip of his tongue to a fang as he looked down on the lights of the city that had propelled vampire slavery from a local phenomenon into a worldwide passion. Seattle’s nightlife, which had exploded along with the population in the last twenty years, used to draw him; there was so much sport to be had in a thriving metropolis. But he no longer lived for fun. Couldn’t remember the last time he’d had any.

No, life now was about revenge, just as Hunter had said.

As a vampire, he ate food daily, drank blood when he had to—and sometimes, like tonight, when he didn’t.

“Hey, man, you ready to head back to the clan?”

“Not yet.” Riker looked over at the vampire standing next to him. “It’s time.”

Myne’s thick mane of pitch-black hair whipped at his temples as he shook his head. “You know I’m all for cutting through the humans like a tomahawk through snow, but—”

“But you think I’m stupid.”

The slow roll of Myne’s shoulder was a screaming Hell, yeah.

“Humans tortured you for years. Defanged you. Were going to f**king castrate you.” Riker eyed with admiration one of the few vampires who had escaped human slavery. It had been eighty years since humans

became aware of the existence of vampires, sixty since they’d enslaved them, and in that time, only a handful of lucky vampires had found freedom before the great uprising twenty years ago led to even stricter controls.

Myne was one of the few to slip the slavery noose. “You slaughtered more humans in twenty-four hours than I have in my life. You kill people every chance you get. So tell me, how am I stupid?”

“Dude, I don’t have enough fingers to count off all the ways.”

“Ass,” Riker muttered.

Myne regarded the glittering skyline in the distance, the streaking blurs from the headlights and taillights on the freeway. “You’re stupid because you plan to do this on your own. I can’t believe Hunter went along with your crazy plan.” His mocha eyes shifted to

Riker. “And how f**ked up is it that I actually agree with Hunter for once? We both think you’re being an idiot. You need to rethink this.”

“I’m not scrapping the mission. There’s less risk of the clan being discovered if we do it my way.”

If Riker acted alone, authorities would waste time scouring the city’s trashy underbelly for him among the many lone vampires who lived there like cockroaches.

But the more clan members he enlisted, the greater the chance that said authorities would realize they had an organized group on their hands. And soon after, the forest, usually left alone by the government, would be crawling not just with the usual hunters but also with

Vampire Strike Force personnel—specialized law-enforcement agents whose mission it was to kill or capture every nonenslaved vampire on the planet.

Once VAST entered the picture, it wouldn’t be long before someone from MoonBound was caught and tortured into revealing the clan’s location. Although the entrances were concealed by both physical camouflage and magic put in place by the clan’s mystic-keeper, Riker knew there was no such thing as completely secure. There was always a way to breach a wall, penetrate an enemy stronghold, and locate the hidden. Just one careless clue left behind by a clan member could lead VAST to the second-largest population of free vampires in the Pacific Northwest. In the distance, a coyote yip-howled, and Myne listened, almost as if he understood the creature. He probably did. Myne had grown up with his Nez Perce tribe until he was a teen, and after that, he’d lived with animals for longer than he’d lived with people.

“What happens if you fail?” he asked.

“Then the clan goes with Plan B. Hunter’s proposal.” Which involved far more people, coordination, and risk.

“Shiiit.” Myne kicked a stone off the ridge andwatched it tumble down the rocky bank. “Let me h elp your sorry ass. With me, your insane scheme has a shot of success.”

Riker grinned. “I knew you couldn’t resist a challenge.”

“So you were counting on my offer to help?”

“Yup.”

“You could have just, you know, asked.”

“Asked?” Riker snorted. “And turn in my male card?”

Riker ignored Myne’s string of curses as he made his way down the embankment, moving toward the mansion he’d been staking out for the last week. Myne followed, his footsteps as light as a cat’s despite his massive size. At six-foot-five and a born vampire, Myne was one of the tallest males in the clan, save Hunter.

Not that Riker was short, but Myne seemed to enjoy flaunting his extra three inches and twenty pounds.

Riker would just smile and claim extra brains and an extra three inches on another part of his anatomy.

“So what’s my job?” Myne dropped his hand to the dagger at his hip and skimmed his thumb along the hilt. “It better involve fighting.”

“It does.”

“And feeding?”

“If you want.” Riker crouched behind a fir tree to avoid the sweep of a security spotlight sitting atop the mansion’s north wall.

“And f**king?”

Riker shot Myne an are you kidding me? look over his shoulder. “Even if there was time for that, I didn’t think you were into humans.”

“I’ll dive into any lake in a drought, man.”

Myne was full of shit. He might be stuck in a perpetual sex drought, but Riker knew damned well the guy went for vampires. He’d gotten his fill of human sex a long time ago, and Riker only knew that because the guy had gotten so shitfaced once that his tongue had loosened. The next morning, Myne had been practically suicidal—and homicidal—over what he’d revealed, and Riker had probably saved both of their lives by lying to him, telling him that whatever Myne imagined he’d said had been all in his drunken head.

Thank God. Riker wasn’t sure who would win in a contest of hand-to-hand, but he knew who’d win a fang free-for-all.

Myne’s titanium chompers could rip limbs from bodies and heads from necks with the messy ease of a chain saw.

“So.” Myne’s fingers caressed the dagger hilt like a lover. The guy had carved it himself from the thigh bone of a poacher decades ago. The thing was so smooth from his touch that it practically shone in the moonlight. “What do we do first?”

Riker effortlessly leaped to the top of the twelve foot stone fence that circled the mansion and surrounding grounds. “See the northwest fence corner? Where the stone is built up into the tree?” Riker peered into the branches. “That’s a sniper station. Built after my mate died. We need to take the sniper out, or he’ll smoke-check us before we get halfway across the lawn.”

“Cool.” Myne had always preferred a stealthy stalk-and-kill over a full-blown battle. Said it was a measure of skill and patience and a more honorable way to hunt an enemy. Riker figured dead was dead, but whatever. “You really think this Charles guy is just going to hand over a captive vampire because we tell him to?”

“Charles? No. That’s why we’re not bothering with that ass**le.” He scanned the property, taking one last inventory of the cameras, the dogs, and the security detail, all of which he’d been familiar with for two decades. “I’m after much more . . . sensitive . . . prey.”

Myne landed in a crouch beside him, whisper-soft.

“Who?”

Ahead, through one of the mansion’s giant windows, a figure moved. A ginger-haired female. Tall. Curvy. Enemy.

“Dr. Nicole Martin.”

Riker felt Myne’s eyes boring into him. “She’s alive?”

“Apparently.” A shiver of hatred slithered up Riker’s spine. Until last week, when he’d seen a newspaper article glorifying the return of the Martin heir, he’d believed only one member of the godforsaken immediate family, Charles, was alive. “After the rest of the Martins were slaughtered in the rebellion, she was sent to Paris to live with her mother’s relatives until she was old enough to work in Daedalus’s French division as a vampire physiologist.”