Glancing out the window, she could see the castle in the distance, could hear the sounds of revelry from the Christmas market below, where shoppers were enjoying glasses of glühwein as they browsed the stalls. Was this fate? That she had been on her way to Europe when she’d received the call? Although she had chosen not to believe in fate. Well, much.
An argument in German caught her attention, and she leaned toward the open window. It was early in the afternoon for the alcohol to be affecting tourists already. She listened as two brothers argued about a Christmas present for their mother.
That was cute, even though the men sounded as if they were in their fifties.
Christmas music poured through speakers, and in the distance, the odd droning of a German official vehicle hinted that the police were near.
Movement showed on her screen. “Okay, he’s down one more level in the tunnels. Go east,” she ordered the two teams.
Finally. They’d have this criminal. She could feel it. Then the sound of an explosion ripped through her headset, and she dropped to her seat. “Call in, now. Everyone!”
Chapter Three
“He threw something back. Some sort of flash grenade,” Libby said, coughing. “We made it to cover, but visibility is hampered by debris.”
“Our team is fine,” Collin said. “Where is this asshole?”
Hope swallowed and leaned closer to the screen. “He’s to the north, just ahead of you.”
“We’ll get him,” Liam snapped.
“We’re close,” Libby said. The young feline shifter was one of Hope’s best friends and as stealthy as a missile.
Her team had trained long hours, and they worked hard; she knew each of their strengths better than she knew her own. She typed rapidly and twisted the map on the screen, widening it even farther. “The subject has to turn left by that stack of bricks on the second level down, right under the castle,” she said. “We marked it last year while scouting.” Though many folks were aware of the tunnels, most of them had been blocked off. Not to her people.
Derrick cleared his throat. “I hear tourists buying chess sets ahead. There aren’t supposed to be people in these tunnels.”
Hope took a deep breath. “Go dark and evade,” she said. “Call in when you’re clear.”
“Let us know if you need backup,” Liam said, his voice a low growl like his father’s.
The team went dark again. Hope hated that part, even though she could watch their blips on screen and could engage the cameras in their vests. She did so, flinging those images to the far-right screen. The blips gave her more information right now.
Nervous, she spun the silver band on her right ring finger. Paxton had given the ring to her for her birthday years ago, and she always wore the piece. Gulping, she glanced at the gold band circling her left ring finger. Drake was the leader of the Kurjan nation, and he’d gifted her with it a while back, telling her she’d be his queen and together they’d make peace between the Realm and the Kurjans.
The queen of the Kurjan nation? What did that even mean? He might intrigue her, but was he really her fate? If the male she hunted was a Kurjan, as she suspected, she’d have some leverage in dealing with Drake. She needed answers.
Hope typed rapidly, watching the blue blip. Two years was a long time for anybody to elude her. She’d first caught wind of him through an internet search that had led to several skirmishes in the vampire and demon worlds. Then he’d siphoned off funds from both kingdoms, and he’d somehow managed to hack into the King of the Realm’s personal schedule three times in the last month alone.
The breach had been discovered in time, and the schedule had been changed. If this jerk wanted to kill her uncle, she’d hunt him to the end of the globe. “Libs and Derrick? You’re getting closer to him. Be ready for him to launch more explosives at you.”
She’d spent weeks following the money trail of her prey to first Prague and then Nuremberg after she’d found his secret headquarters in Scottsdale and confiscated his entire computer system. Which had, unfortunately, wiped itself before she could find anything except two obscure files referencing a group called the Seven, who she was determined to protect. She was glad Bo?ena had followed orders and coated him with tracking dust. The woman was no doubt already out of the country now. “Go faster, teams.”
Collin sighed. “You need to report this mission, and you need to do it now.”
“I already did,” Hope said. “I’m not stupid.”
She’d take a gamble or two, but she wasn’t going to risk the wrath of the King of the Realm, also known as her uncle Dage. She thought fleetingly about contacting another one of her uncles, Garrett, since he was a member of the Seven, but quickly discarded the notion. After she caught the enemy, she’d call G.
The Seven was an elite group of warriors tasked with ridding the world of a true monster, a Kurjan leader named Ulric. It wasn’t Ulric she was chasing today, but no doubt it was one of his soldiers. The only description she’d gotten from an arms dealer in Iran was that her enemy was male, tall, and pale—just like the Kurjans and the members of their religious order, the Cyst.
“Tell us the rest of it,” Liam ordered, obviously forgetting he was three months younger than Hope. Twice as big, though.
She swallowed. He had every right to ask. “Last week, one of my sources hinted that he might be here taking a meeting with Christopher Larkin about the Seven, but I thought it was unlikely. I just texted Larkin, and he reluctantly admitted he’d been contacted,” she explained. Larkin was thought to be a psychic vampire, and since he was four thousand years old, it was possible. But he only gave readings in exchange for trucks of gold or baskets of diamonds.
Silence came over the line.
She sighed. “I can hear you judging me.”
It was Collin who spoke first, and his voice was rough with anger. As the mellow cousin, he rarely lost his temper. “You have clear orders to stay away from the Seven. Period.”
“I haven’t disobeyed orders. We received concrete intel that an enemy of the Realm was going to be here buying illegal computer components.” She’d also had a hunch they’d find the Interloper. Yeah, her hunches were psychic, so were they really hunches? “If you ask me, fate has intervened again.”
“Damn fate,” Libby muttered.
Hope could agree. She thought through the weapons she had at her disposal, mainly her cousins. Though young, they were deadly and they were strong. She had to take back control of the mission. “Derrick,” she reminded him. “If you throw fire underground, there’s going to be a smoke problem. You need to keep that in mind.”
“Affirmative,” Derrick said.
“Liam and Collin, you come in strong from the other side,” Hope ordered, typing rapidly, trying to find the best place for them to take this guy.
“Not a problem,” Liam said.
“Got it,” Collin said.
She tracked her swiftly moving team by their dots on the map. Liam and Collin worked perfectly together, sweeping each area before they went forward, moving in a synchronized dance. Derrick did the same with Libby, but he stayed slightly ahead of the shifter no matter what, willing to get shot to prevent her from being harmed. Hope admired that in him, but she didn’t want to see any of her cousins hurt.