"Do we know where they might be located? If they abducted Cristina Latham, then they likely took her back to their local base."
Marc sighed and shook his head. "Nothing yet, but we're looking. There is a lot of woodland to cover, and the search teams were starting at the Latham's cabin. The trackers are all familiar now with all three Latham ladies' scents, from the bedding in the cabin. They also picked up several vampire scents, but as far as wolves go, they just found traces of the scents you and Tamika caught. They must have gotten into a car since those disappear almost immediately, along with Crissy Latham’s scent. And I am very concerned about the scent of blighthound you picked up on that dead rogue.”
Aldric nodded. None of this was particularly surprising news, though troubling.
"I am going to hunt. You used the last of the venison this evening, and it might be best if I stay as healthy as possible. Tomorrow morning I will call my cousin to see if he can find any traces digitally."
"Not a bad idea," Marc said. He stretched back in his desk chair before reaching out to turn off his screen. "If these guys rented a space somewhere, there's bound to be a record of it."
Marc stood and walked over to meet Aldric in the doorway. "Be careful on your hunt. We can always use the meat, but with who knows how many rogues in our territory and now this blighthound situation… I would rather go without the venison than go without you."
Aldric smiled and nodded, and they both left the office. Marc headed to the staircase and Aldric slipped out the kitchen door into the backyard.
It was a cool night, for being the middle of summer. The stickiness and the heat of the day had settled down to a slight scent of moisture, and the earth and plants around the area were exulting in it. Thin clouds lazily drifted across the half moon, leaving Aldric more than enough light to see by.
He rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck to the left, then to the right, then took a deep, slow breath in... out. With a glance at the dim bedroom light filtering out through ivory and green curtains, he stepped down off the deck and in a ripple of change, was fully vampire before his foot landed in the grass.
He passed one of his enforcers, Mia, as he entered the forest and nodded to her. She nodded back and tipped her head slightly in salute. She had recovered from her mad run after the rogues’ car that afternoon, and he was glad to see it.
"I am going to hunt. I should return well before dawn."
Mia whuffed her reply, then turned back to her station, and Aldric walked on.
It was a good night for his hunt. The forest sang in his ears and the owl he had heard earlier hooted again, somewhere deep in the night. Hunting was a wise choice. He didn't need to feed, strictly speaking. He had emptied a pint of donated blood a few days ago, but with the new threats to his clan's safety he felt the need to be in the best possible condition. If he was to protect Faith and Kaylee, he needed every advantage.
Also, it would prevent him from doing anything foolish, like standing outside Faith Latham's bedroom door to listen to her breathe like the sort of midnight monster the movies made his kind out to be. Granted, it had been her breathing that had alerted him earlier that she perhaps needed company. He had heard it picking up and start to get irregular in the way that suggested panic or sharp anxiety. Marc had told him about her panic attack earlier in the afternoon.
So he had run into his room and grabbed the first books from his shelf that he laid his hands on, to hopefully give her something else to focus on. Much, as it turned out, to his eternal embarrassment. He really should find other reading material.
Aldric stepped silently over a large branch fallen across his path. He was following a game trail that he often used, stepping lightly down the narrow almost-pathway more by habit than by intent. His mind was still half in the room behind him with the green and ivory curtains, sitting beside a brave, strong, beautiful woman who, for some impossible reason felt she could lean on him when she needed someone else to carry her burdens for a moment.
That she had chosen to lean on him at all made his thoughts race.
Certainly, he was no innocent. He had ample experience with women. He was, after all, a little over a century old. Still, however, they had been mainly vampires who understood his nature and were not overly afraid of him. Alternately, they were humans who were ignorant entirely of the paranormal world entirely, let alone that they took a vampire to their bed, so they had no reason to be more than usually cautious. They only saw him as perhaps dangerous in the way of soldiers or another sort of trained fighter.
He had not lied to Faith. She knew full well what he was and had seen him fighting, killing. Most people were not comfortable to have him in their space for overlong, not even many of his own clanmates that looked to him for safety and protection.
The scent of deer on the faint breeze brought him out of his thoughts and reminded him of his task. He stepped off the trail and followed the scent instead.
Perhaps Faith and Miss Kaylee would enjoy venison sausages for breakfast, assuming they stayed a few days. He and Marc had gone through a period where they experimented with various recipes, and in the end Marc had preferred the fancy cured meats that took
