“Did he mention it was completely abandoned?” asked Aris as he grimly looked out the window.
“No.” Thomas pulled into a parking spot in front of a brick building with the sign: Winslow Bed and Breakfast. Gareth hopped out, opened the sliding door, and helped Angela out of the vehicle. Cyn, Aris, and Kane followed. They all met on the plank sidewalk.
The town had obviously been built in the 1800s, one of many places established when this area experienced a gold rush. It looked like the set of a western movie, but it had the creepy feel of a horror flick. The wind blew, scattering leaves across the pitted road. The air was thick with a coppery scent that Cyn knew well. Blood. But it was old, the remnants of deaths long past.
Cyn shook her head, her skin vibrating with apprehension. “Wolfe sent us to a freaking ghost town.” People she could fight and kill, but spirits were another story.
“What happened here?” asked Angela, pointing to the large dark red stains on the plank sidewalk.
“Maybe there was a shoot-out at high noon,” said Cyn. “And those were the losers.”
“Tristan said Hellion Hill was occupied by humans when he visited.”
“Half a century ago,” reminded Gareth. “This place hasn’t been occupied for a while.”
“Yeah,” said Angela, rubbing her arms. “The only occupants now are the kind that jump out at you and scream boo.”
“Ghosts aren’t real,” said Aris confidently.
Cyn lifted an eyebrow. “Said the werecougar who is hanging out with vampires. And we know the Hunter is real, don’t we?”
“The protector of the Valiant werecat colony isn’t a ghost.” Aris thought for a moment. “It’s a … thingie.”
“Thingie.” Cyn laughed and punched her mate on the arm. “You mean it’s the ghost of a long dead being.”
“The Hunter is not a ghost,” insisted Aris.
Kane gripped his friend’s shoulder. "Ghosts or not, it’ll be dark soon and we need to settle in somewhere.”
“Let’s check in to the Winslow,” said Thomas. “I’m pretty sure they have rooms available.” He opened the glass-paned door. Its ominous creak sent a chill through Cyn. Hellion Hill gave her the serious creeps. In fact, something very close to fear trembled inside her—and she wasn’t afraid of much.
“We should do a perimeter search,” said Kane. Kane was the older of Cyn’s two mates and had once been part of those who guarded the Harper werecat colony. When they met, all three of them were sent on missions to kill Thomas, Angela, and Gareth. But everything changed when she died—thanks to her weak human heart—and she was turned into a bloodsucker. Now, here she was on the run with the people who used to be her targets but had become her family.
Shaking off the alpha of the Harper colony, Craig Harper, and the pissed-off vampire Eliza DuChamp, had not been easy. For the last two months, they’d stayed one step ahead of the deadly duo, hah, but eventually, they would need to face down their enemies. However, they couldn’t keep moving place to place with a new baby. They all needed stability and safety, and that was especially true of the impending child. Cyn remembered too well traveling with her assassin father, learning the tricks of the death trade. She never went to school, never made friends, never did anything for the sheer joy of it. She only cared about the wet work until her heart decided to fail.
It was then she’d realized she’d had nothing. No one. Except for the promise of an evil vampire bitch to give her eternal life, she’d had very little to live for. But now? She had Aris and Kane, her spectacular werecat mates, and she had friends. True friends who understood loyalty and sacrifice.
“Cyn?” Aris’s soft voice interrupted her thoughts. She realized she was standing on the porch between Aris and Kane. The others had gone inside the hotel. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Just got lost on Memory Lane.”
Aris kissed her and then Kane did, too. As usual, lust flared hot and bright in her belly. Oh, the things these men did to her. And the things she could do to them. Yummy. But now wasn’t the time or place for a sweaty, awesome werecougar sandwich.
“Rain check,” said Kane, guessing at her thoughts.
Cyn smiled. The love and passion of these two men, her beautiful mates, awed her every day. She loved them both with her whole undead heart.
“There’s something off about this place,” said Kane. “I think we should make sure we’re the only ones here.”
Aris and Kane kissed Cyn again, more chaste this time. “Let’s go,” said Aris.
* * *
“Where are they?” screamed Eliza DuChamp. She punched the nearest wall, instantly crumbling the plaster and leaving a hole big enough to see the garden outside of the cottage. The smell of wet grass and dying roses filtered into the living room. It had rained earlier, leaving the night air cool and crisp.
Craig Harper rolled his eyes. Eliza was prone to fits of rage. He found her drama queen antics exhausting, but for now, he would tolerate the vampire’s outbursts. He needed her to find his asshole half-brother and the human bitch who carried the mongrel, not to mention the two betrayers Aris and Kane. Eliza wanted the head, quite literally, of Thomas Moore and that of the assassin Cyn Salais, who had been sent to kill Thomas but, instead, had joined him.
What a clusterfuck.
Eliza had been the one to show up at his door and give him the news that not only did his brother and the mother of his brother’s babe live,
