The Hunt

by Chloe Neill

  I screamed as I was hauled to my feet and looked up into golden eyes.

  But this time, it wasn’t an enemy.

  Liam crushed his mouth to mine. “Together,” he said.

  My head was spinning, but I nodded. “We’ll try it again.” I had only a moment before the next round. “Behind you!” I yelled, and pulled him to the side, inches from where a golden lance slid into the ground.

  I’d seen one of those before, knew they were heavy. But with the two of us together . . .

  “I have an idea. But it’s a little dirty.”

  “They’ll kill us if they can,” he said. “Dirty’s fine.”

  I glanced back. The soldier who’d thrown the lance—a man this time, a Seelie with dark skin and beard with the same crimson stripe—galloped toward us.

  “A Seelie walked into a bar,” I said, and Liam nodded.

  “Right there with you,” he said, and took my hand.

  There was plenty of magic in the air, especially now that it was funneling through the open Veil, but it was weird and wild, and that much harder to wield. It took precious seconds to pry the enormous lance from the ground, to get it horizontal. And we had only seconds to move.

  “On three,” Liam said. “One, two, three!”

  We raised the lance to the Para’s chest height.

  The horse galloped toward us, passed cleanly beneath the bar. But the rider hit the bar, then hit the ground, and didn’t get up. We let the lance fall; it was heavy enough, dense enough, that it didn’t even bounce.

  The earth shook, and we looked to see smoke rising from a mortar round fired on the other side of the battlefield where soldiers, horses, and Paranormals had fallen.

  Fuck war, I thought, and let myself look away. I had to if I was going to get through this.

  Behind us came a banshee scream. A female Seelie, golden sword lifted over her head, ran toward us, her gaze aimed at me, maybe because I was smaller and she believed I was weaker, the easier target.

  But Liam had decided no one would get to me. No one would get past him.

  His eyes glowing gold, he put a hand on the ground like a sprinter on the block, then pushed off. They ran toward each other. Liam leaped, propelling his body an inhuman ten feet into the air—maybe borrowing her magic for the trip—arms back and ready to strike.

  They met with a blaze of fire and power that sent a shock wave of magic through the air; then they hit the ground with enough force to put a dent in the earth and send dirt flying.

  The Seelie swung the sword. Liam blocked it.

  I watched for a moment to intervene, for a chance to lend him a hand, to grab the sword or the woman, but they were a blur of action as he fed off her magic and matched her strike for strike.

  I was so focused I heard it before I realized what it was—the buzz in the air, the sound of speed and danger. And even when I looked up, all I could see was the gleaming edge of the golden arrow headed straight toward me.

  “No!”

  Erida leapt toward me, pushed me toward the ground.

  I heard the arrow land with a horrible punch of flesh, and Erida jerked above my body.

  “Oh, no,” I murmured, maneuvered out from under her and tried to roll her over—or as much as I could, given the arrow piercing the middle of her chest. “Oh, Jesus, Erida. Why did you do that?”

  She smiled a little. “That’s not very gracious of you.”

  “I’m grateful and pissed off . . .” I trailed off, looked her over, tried to figure out some way to help her, to move the arrow.

  But there was only acceptance in her eyes. She reached out, squeezed my hand. “I did it for your father. Because I loved him best of all. And you were his child. He was gone before I wanted him to go. But this is a gift I can give him, even now.”

  Bon dieu, I thought, borrowing one of Liam’s favorite phrases as tears streamed down my face.

  She shivered, blood at the corner of her mouth.

  And I knew what I could give her. “The gas station,” I said. “Remember what you told me about it?”

  Jaw clenched, she nodded.

  “He finished, Erida. But it’s not just a gas station. It’s a museum. All those magical artifacts Containment tried to burn, tried to get rid of, he saved. Books, weapons, objects. Hundreds of them.”

  She squeezed my hand, tried to smile against the pain. “He saved them.”

  “He did.” I wasn’t exactly sure why, but I could make a good guess. “And there’s a bunker in it, too. Food, beds, a kitchen.” I swallowed back tears, tried to dig out the strength to do this. “It wasn’t just going to be a store. I think he saved the objects for you, and I think he meant for the three of us to live together. To be a family. Me and you and him.”

  Tears slipped from her eyes, gratitude clear in them. “Thank you, Claire. Thank you for that.”

  “Thank you for making him happy, Erida. Even if it wasn’t for nearly long enough.”

  She squeezed my hand again, then closed her eyes tightly against an obvious burst of pain. There was a sudden intake of breath, and then her eyes opened and she went still, even as the battle waged behind us.

  Liam shielded me, watched me, and waited. I brushed the hair from her face, then linked her hands atop her chest and climbed to my feet. I would grieve for Erida, for what she’d meant to my father. But I couldn’t do it now.

  There was fighting to be done.

  • • •

  There was more blood. More death. The Paras, for their part, were fierce warriors. But though Containment’s new mortar rounds were still being tested, they were ferocious. They cut through armor just as they’d cut through the Veil. Unfortunately, only half a dozen rounds had been manufactured thus far. And they’d all been depleted today.

  When smoke spread like fog across the field, the scents of gunpowder and blood in the air, the world fell quiet.

  Malachi emerged through the smoke that swirled around his boots. His wings were folded but still visible. The top arc on his left wing was ripped, his blood brilliantly crimson against the ivory feathers.

  “Is this it?” Liam asked.

  “This was probably a sentinel unit assigned to watch the Veil for breaches,” Malachi said.

  Liam surveyed the devastation. “They’re only the first wave.”

  “The first part of the first wave,” Malachi corrected. “A guard unit. They’d have passed along a signal, a warning, the moment the Veil began to open.” He wiped sweat and smoke from his face. “A battalion will be next, whichever is closest. And when they come, they’ll come with weapons and death. We need to prepare.”

  He walked toward Gunnar, who was talking to a few of the troops.

  Liam reached out, squeezed my hand. “I’m going to go speak to them.”

  “Go ahead.” I watched him walk away—temporarily, this time—and then turned back to Laura and Caval. They were on their knees twenty feet away.

  There was a bruise across Laura’s cheekbone, a smear of blood from a cut on her collarbone. But unlike many of the others, they were alive. They were the reason for it all.

  I strode toward them, stared down at them. “How could you be so selfish?”

  She pushed her hair from her eyes. “I did what I was asked to do.”

  “You were fired. Icarus was killed. But you decided to keep going. To keep developing a weapon.”

  Her eyes were clear, and utterly free of guilt. Free of conscience, if that was possible. “I had a job to do, a mission. I wasn’t going to just stop because someone got scared. Because someone wanted to ignore reality. You think Paranormals are our friends? Look around you.”

  She would never change her mind. She was at least forty, and wasn’t able to see the world outside her myopic vision. And it didn’t matter. I didn’t matter to her, and she didn’t have to matter to
me. I wasn’t her responsibility, and she wasn’t mine.

  I looked at Caval. “You destroyed the Veil.”

  His smile was wide and totally without doubt. “We beat them before. We’ll beat them again.”

  “You won’t be beating anyone,” I said. “You’ll both be in prison. Locked away for the rest of your lives. Away from your money, away from your lab. You’ll have plenty of time to think about all your achievements.”

  “We have friends.”

  “Not anymore,” I said. “The jig is up, and your friends are as much underwater as you are.”

  Liam and Gunnar walked back with half a dozen Containment agents.

  One of the agents, an MP badge on her fatigues, stepped forward. “Laura Blackwell and Lorenzo Caval. You’re under arrest for murder, several counts, terroristic acts, and other charges that will be made known to you.”

  They were pulled to their feet, and two of the agents took the prisoners toward one of the vehicles for transportation.

  But the other agents stayed behind. And they looked at me and Liam with grim expressions. They’d seen us do magic. Big magic. Powerful magic. Liam had been cleared of murder, but we’d still violated the law.

  We were still criminals.

  One of the agents stepped forward. Gunnar tried to move in front of us, to protect us, but I held out a hand, shook my head.

  “Claire Connolly and Liam Quinn, I’m sorry, but you’re under arrest for multiple violations of the Magic Act. We’re going to need to take you in.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t believe you will.” Because I was absolutely done.

  The agent’s eyebrows lifted.

  “We won’t be putting our hands in the air. We won’t be going with you and we won’t be going into Devil’s Isle.” I took Liam’s hand, smiled at him. “Little help?”

  “Always.”

  I reached for the magic, gasped at the sheer volume of it. It was flowing from the Beyond now, filaments filling the air like millions of fireflies. So much magic I could feel it floating between my fingers.

  “Damn,” Liam said, swallowing hard. “There’s a lot of it.”

  And there’d be more than this eventually. More magic in our world, more humanity—if that was a thing—in theirs. Because the Veil had been ripped open, and there was no turning back.

  The agent put a hand on his weapon.

  “Nor will you be pointing those at us,” I said, and lifted my hand.

  Liam’s magic joined mine, braided around it, and together we lifted every weapon in the group into the air, let them float twenty feet above their heads.

  Some of the agents jumped, scrambling to keep their guns. Others just stared at us, openmouthed and afraid—or openmouthed and completely awed.

  “In a few hours,” I said, “maybe sooner, battalions of Paranormal troops are going to storm through that gap and into our world. They’ve been waiting for an opportunity to go to war, and Lorenzo Caval just gave them one.”

  “Call the Commandant,” Liam told them. “Tell him to get ready for war.”

  I squeezed his hand, my partner and my friend. “And tell him we’re ready to fight.”

  Love Liam and Claire? Then meet Ethan and Merit!

  Read on for a look at the first book in

  Chloe Neill’s New York Times bestselling

  Chicagoland Vampires series,

  SOME GIRLS BITE

  Available now wherever books and e-books are sold.

  Early April

  Chicago, Illinois

  At first, I wondered if it was karmic punishment. I’d sneered at the fancy vampires, and as some kind of cosmic retribution, I’d been made one. Vampire. Predator. Initiate into one of the oldest of the twelve vampire Houses in the United States.

  And I wasn’t just one of them.

  I was one of the best.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me begin by telling you how I became a vampire, a story that starts weeks before my twenty-eighth birthday, the night I completed the transition. The night I awoke in the back of a limousine, three days after I’d been attacked walking across the University of Chicago campus.

  I didn’t remember all the details of the attack. But I remembered enough to be thrilled to be alive. To be shocked to be alive.

  In the back of the limousine, I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to unpack the memory of the attack. I’d heard footsteps, the sound muffled by dewy grass, before he grabbed me. I’d screamed and kicked, tried to fight my way out, but he pushed me down. He was preternaturally strong—supernaturally strong—and he bit my neck with a predatory ferocity that left little doubt about who he was. What he was.

  Vampire.

  But while he tore into skin and muscle, he didn’t drink; he didn’t have time. Without warning, he’d stopped and jumped away, running between buildings at the edge of the main quad.

  My attacker temporarily vanquished, I’d raised a hand to the crux of my neck and shoulder, felt the sticky warmth. My vision was dimming, but I could see the wine-colored stain across my fingers clearly enough.

  Then there was movement around me. Two men.

  The men my attacker had been afraid of.

  The first of them had sounded anxious. “He was fast. You’ll need to hurry, Liege.”

  The second had been unerringly confident. “I’ll get it done.”

  He pulled me up to my knees, and knelt behind me, a supportive arm around my waist. He wore cologne—soapy and clean.

  I tried to move, to give some struggle, but I was fading.

  “Be still.”

  “She’s lovely.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. He suckled the wound at my neck. I twitched again, and he stroked my hair. “Be still.”

  • • •

  I recalled very little of the next three days, of the genetic restructuring that transformed me into a vampire. Even now, I only carry a handful of memories. Deep-seated, dull pain—shocks of it that bowed my body. Numbing cold. Darkness. A pair of intensely green eyes.

  In the limo, I felt for the scars that should have marred my neck and shoulders. The vampire that attacked me hadn’t taken a clean bite—he’d torn at the skin at my neck like a starved animal. But the skin was smooth. No scars. No bumps. No bandages. I pulled my hand away and stared at the clean pale skin—and the short nails, perfectly painted cherry red.

  The blood was gone—and I’d been manicured.

  Staving off a wash of dizziness, I sat up. I was wearing different clothes. I’d been in jeans and a T-shirt. Now I wore a black cocktail dress, a sheath that fell to just below my knees, and three-inch-high black heels.

  That made me a twenty-seven-year-old attack victim, clean and absurdly scar-free, wearing a cocktail dress that wasn’t mine. I knew, then and there, that they’d made me one of them.

  The Chicagoland Vampires.

  It had started eight months ago with a letter, a kind of vampire manifesto first published in the Sun-Times and Trib, then picked up by papers across the country. It was a coming-out, an announcement to the world of their existence. Some humans believed it a hoax, at least until the press conference that followed, in which three of them displayed their fangs. Human panic led to four days of riots in the Windy City and a run on water and canned goods sparked by public fear of a vampire apocalypse. The feds finally stepped in, ordering Congressional investigations, the hearings obsessively filmed and televised in order to pluck out every detail of the vampires’ existence. And even though they’d been the ones to step forward, the vamps were tight-lipped about those details—the fang bearing, blood drinking, and night walking the only facts the public could be sure about.

  Eight months later, some humans were still afraid. Others were obsessed. With the lifestyle, with the lure of immortality, with the vampires themselves. In particular, with Celi
na Desaulniers, the glamorous Windy City she-vamp who’d apparently orchestrated the comingout, and who’d made her debut during the first day of the Congressional hearings.

  Celina was tall and slim and sable-haired, and that day she wore a black suit snug enough to give the illusion that it had been poured onto her body. Looks aside, she was obviously smart and savvy, and she knew how to twist humans around her fingers. To wit: The senior senator from Idaho had asked her what she planned to do now that vampires had come out of the closet.

  She’d famously replied in dulcet tones, “I’ll be making the most of the dark.”

  The twenty-year Congressional veteran had smiled with such dopey-eyed lust that a picture of him made the front page of the New York Times.

  No such reaction from me. I’d rolled my eyes and flipped off the television.

  I’d made fun of them, of her, of their pretensions.

  And in return, they’d made me like them.

  Wasn’t karma a bitch?

  Now they were sending me back home, but returning me different. Notwithstanding the changes my body had endured, they’d glammed me up, cleaned me of blood, stripped me of clothing, and repackaged me in their image.

  They killed me. They healed me. They changed me.

  The tiny seed, that kernel of distrust of the ones who’d made me, rooted.

  • • •

  I was still dizzy when the limousine stopped in front of the Wicker Park brownstone I shared with my roommate, Mallory. I wasn’t sleepy, but groggy, mired in a haze across my consciousness that felt thick enough to wade through. Drugs, maybe, or a residual effect of the transition from human to vampire.

  Mallory stood on the stoop, her shoulder-length ice blue hair shining beneath the bare bulb of the overhead light. She looked anxious, but seemed to be expecting me. She wore flannel pajamas patterned with sock monkeys. I realized it was late.

  The limousine door opened, and I looked toward the house and then into the face of a man in a black uniform and cap who’d peeked into the backseat.

  “Ma’am?” He held out a hand expectantly.