A Chase of Prey (A Shade of Vampire #11)(9)

I hated to think how much he had risked for me. And I still wasn’t sure why. He’d skirted around the subject and refused to explain.

I also didn’t understand what he’d been doing on that island with Annora, and why she’d been unconscious on the ground… why Caleb had just left her there.

I reached for his left hand, which rested on his knee, and squeezed it.

Finally, he looked down at me, his eyes intense. My heart fluttered.

“What are you thinking about?” I whispered.

He inhaled deeply and breathed out, running a hand over his face.

“The journey.” He looked out of the window again.

“Which part of the journey?”

“All of it.”

“There’s one part of the journey I’m thinking about.” He didn’t respond, so I continued. “The part when you…” I paused, casting my eyes about the vehicle. We were too close to the men to speak freely. “When we reach home.”

His jaw tensed.

I wanted to talk details about The Shade, reassure him that everything would be okay. But there wasn’t enough privacy for that now. Instead I just leaned up and pressed my lips against his rough cheek. He swallowed hard, and if vampires could blush, Caleb did then.

Chapter 5: Rhys

I waited three hours before healing the wolf’s wound. Although the agony slowed him down, I needed him to learn his lesson once and for all. Werewolves were stubborn creatures and it was often only after intense and prolonged punishment that they would remember not to disobey again.

But even with the wound, he still moved faster than when we’d started out. Which confirmed my suspicion that for some reason, he didn’t want us finding Rose and the vampire.

Once I’d decided he’d had enough, I healed his wound within seconds. Gripping the fur at the back of his neck, I forced him to look up at me.

“Let’s see how fast you can really move.”

There wasn’t a flicker of hesitation in his eyes now. I climbed onto his back and he lurched forward.

“That’s better,” I said, patting his head. “Much better. Everything will be much easier if you just obey your master. And when we reach them, I’ll set you free. You can even return to The Shade if you like…”

I’d feed him another large hunk of human meat once we returned, but of course I didn’t really intend to set him free. Werewolves were useful to us, and I’d developed a taste for their blood.

We didn’t stop again until we’d reached a concrete road at the edge of the rainforest. It was morning by the time we arrived. I leapt off the wolf just before he turned back into his humanoid form.

I looked up and down the road. “Where to now?” I asked.

He indicated left. I put an invisibility charm over the two of us and began walking in the direction Micah was pointing. He continued sniffing the air as we walked.

It had occurred to me, of course, that Micah could have been deliberately misleading me. Pretending he’d caught the couple’s scent when, in fact, he was leading me in the opposite direction. But he knew what I could do to him. How ruthless I was in my punishments. I doubted he harbored that much attachment to either the girl or the vampire to want to risk his life and sanity.

He stopped outside a four-story building with wide glass doors. Holding Micah’s chain closer against me, I pulled him up the steps. As I vanished us inside the building, there was only one person in the foyer—an old woman sitting behind a desk. I was glad that we had the room mostly to ourselves. Micah began walking toward a staircase leading upward. He approached the first step, sniffing the air with intense concentration. I thought he was about to start ascending, but then he stepped away and headed toward a set of doors at the far end of the entrance hall.

“Through there,” he whispered.

I vanished us through to the other side of the doors, where we found a dining area. The werewolf continued forward, pointing toward yet another set of doors behind a counter piled with food. We vanished through it and arrived in a kitchen. I was pleased by how certain Micah now seemed to be in detecting their scent. I hoped that this meant that we weren’t far behind them. He headed straight toward an open door at the back of the kitchen. We emerged on a balcony. A wide river ran a few meters away.

Ah, water. This was the one element of nature that completely impaired werewolves’ sense of smell. We climbed over the balcony and dropped down onto the shore.

“Well,” I said, “if they entered the water, unless they drowned in there, they must have crawled out again.” I looked up and down along the bank. “We may as well go right first.”

We started moving and it wasn’t long before Micah confirmed my guess. He picked up their scent again about two miles down. It led us up to a busy highway. From there we took a right, and then Micah indicated that we cross the road. He walked along the gravelly pavement for a little longer and then stopped suddenly.

“What?”

Micah scratched his jaw, frowning. “The scent is strong here,” he said. “Stronger than any other location we’ve passed through so far.”

“What do you think this means?” I asked.

“I think they stopped here for a while, possibly even a few hours. Perhaps for a rest.”

“Or more likely to get picked up by a vehicle,” I said, eyeing the cars whizzing by. “The vampire would have had trouble traveling with the girl during the day due to the sun… Where does the scent go from here?”