Anna Hackett - Vampire Hunter - Shadow Hunter

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess something a little bit…rougher around the edges.”

He removed the Desert Eagle from the back of his pants and placed it on the counter.

The large silver gun thunked as it hit the countertop. Rough around the edges? Try jagged on every corner.

He watched as Tiffany ran her hand over the banister of the wooden staircase.

“If you’re a member of the Execution Underground, what are you doing in Rochester?”

Damon froze for a moment, but then forced himself to relax. He kept his back to her and managed to speak evenly. If she knew he was responsible for her brother’s death, she’d never trust him. Sure, there were other reasons for hunting Caius, but he knew how sharp Tiffany was. He would need a damn good excuse to make her think he had absolutely no connection to her brother, much less any knowledge of his death. Keeping his mouth shut was the best option.

He walked to the refrigerator and pretended to search for something to drink. “Who said I was a member of anything?” He grabbed a bottle of water and closed the fridge. After chugging down the water in a few quick swigs, he turned to her again.

She rolled her eyes. “Look, my brother was one of you, okay? I understand how you guys are with keeping your secrets, never admitting your true occupation to anyone, blah, blah, blah, but there’s nothing to hide here.” She shrugged as if secret international networks of lethal hunters chasing the supernatural were no big deal. “I already know the Execution Underground exists, so why the tight lip?”

He recapped the now-empty plastic bottle and placed it on his countertop. “Organization or not, I don’t make a habit of sharing my personal life—with anyone.”

She gestured to the large open space around them. “Uh…I’m in your apartment. How’s that for personal?”

He smashed the empty water bottle with his palm. Man, she drove him up a wall with the nonstop questions. But what wouldn’t he give to throw her over his shoulder and carry her up to his bedroom. Maybe in another life.

Another life where he wasn’t a worthless excuse for a hunting partner, where his mistakes didn’t cause innocent people to get killed and where the deaths of more than one person didn’t rest on his shoulders. Mark could have gone after Caius without the need for a transfer, closing in much sooner than Damon could. And any extra time meant bodies piling higher.

“There’s no division of the Execution Underground in Rochester. I know that because otherwise my brother would have worked here. So why are you here?”

He took the samples from his coat pocket and walked toward the tech room. It had been meant as nothing more than a bedroom, but it hadn’t even taken him two days to hardwire everything in place. His own personal contact with headquarters.

“Stay here.”

She shot him a scathing look before she marched to the other side of the room and flopped on to the white leather couch.

Certain she was firmly planted in place, he slipped down the short hall to the tech room. He punched in several series of codes to unlock the door and stepped inside. The wall was lined with monitors of all shapes and sizes. The highest-end technology headquarters could supply him with was all contained within this one room. It was a tech nerd’s wet dream.

Damon dropped into the desk chair and typed several numbers on the keyboard. The monitor rang like a telephone until a small beep confirmed that Chris had answered the other line. Seconds later his face appeared on one of the monitors.

Chris’s expression was one of concern. “Hey, Damon. How you holding up?”

Damon held up the three samples. “I need these processed as fast as possible. If I load them into the DNA analysis machine, can you connect with my database and look them over?”

“Yeah, sure. Though…want to trade jobs? I’d rather be an assassin.”

Damon fought back a small smirk as he rolled his chair to the opposite wall and carefully loaded the specimens into the scanner, which processed the data instantly, locking the genetic code into Damon’s control system. Only the technological abilities of the Pentagon and the CIA rivaled those of the Execution Underground, and even they sometimes fell short.

“The samples are from the latest victim. One blood culture, one saliva analysis and one unknown.” He fixed Chris with a hard look. “Looked like the killer ate the body. Ate it. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the bloodsucker ate it.”

Chris raised an eyebrow. “Like a zombie?”

“Sure, whatever you want to call it. But vampire, zombie or who knows what, I don’t care what it is. I just want to know who and where it is so I can stake it straight through the heart.”

Chris focused on one of his monitors and typed at full speed. “The blood looks normal, nothing unusual about it. But the saliva and the unknown, I’m going to have to get back to you on those. There’s something off about them.”

“Off like how?”

“Like there’s a different genetic marker that’s screwing up the whole code. They don’t look anything like normal.” Chris pounded away at his keys. “Are all these from the victim on the far side of Franklin Street?”

Damon gripped the arms of his chair like a vice. “What do you mean, the far side of Franklin Street?”

Chris stopped typing and looked at Damon through the screen. “The most recent killing ten minutes ago on the far side of Franklin Street. A P.D. informant tipped us off. He said he’d call you. He saw it on patrol, and he’s been holding off on calling the cops. I thought you said this was the most recent one? I—”

“I have to go.” Damon stood and jabbed at the keys, beginning to shut down his system. “Chris, I didn’t know about the newest killing and F.Y.I., I live on Franklin Street.”

Tiffany pressed her ear against the door. She strained to hear even the smallest sound, but the door was apparently soundproofed. She sighed. She missed her brother every second of every day, and, as pathetic as she knew it was, she needed to know if Damon was in the Execution Underground, regardless of whether he’d fought alongside her brother or not. Anything that would help her hold on to Mark’s memory was worth fighting for. And she had lost B, too… .

Part of her hated him for the role he’d played in Mark’s death. The other part missed him like hell. She could have used a friend these past three months.

The steel-reinforced door was yanked out from under her ear, and she toppled into Damon’s chest. “What the hell?”

Holy guacamole!

Looking past him, she spotted what he was hiding: a control room that wouldn’t have been out of place at NASA.

Damon slammed the door shut behind him, helped her regain her balance and then hurried past her in a full-on jog. She heard his steel-toed boots clomp up the staircase. What in the world was going on?

She raced after him.

When she reached the top of the stairs, she watched as he threw open the doors of a walk-in closet lined with weapons.

Whoa. Mr. Tall, Dark and Scary sure packed a whole lot of heat.

He shoved various weapons into the military loops on his belt before he slammed the closet doors shut and thundered down the stairs again as if she weren’t even there.

She followed. “What’s going on?”

He grabbed his jacket and gun from the counter, slipping the jacket on and tucking the gun into place before she could blink.

He wrenched open his front door. “If you’re coming, then haul ass. If not, stay here and keep this door locked no matter what.”

He nearly closed the door on her as she rushed after him.

She stayed at his heels as he ran out to the street. She grabbed his shoulder. “What’s going on?”