Instantly the tree was engulfed in a massive fireball. Flames ballooned heavenward in a mushroom cloud, twisted tongues of fiery debris snaking back to Earth as the ancient oak began to burn. Rain pooled on the asphalt, shimmering silver and translucent, gray ash fluttering down like flakes of snow.
Blinking rain from her eyes, Lacey stared up at me. Sirens sounded far off in the distance—which made no sense. We were miles from anywhere. First responders couldn’t know what had happened this fast—
Unless they’d been tipped off.
Lacey’s phone fell silent. A second later, Kashmir exploded across the wet pavement. Scrabbling for it, she swiped to answer. “August?”
“Get out of there—”
I grabbed her phone. “What’s happening?”
Lacey shot me the finger. Whatever. Like we didn’t both know if vamps were about to start materializing out in the middle of the road, she was the better shot.
“They hit the ranch.” My brother sounded out of breath, like he’d been running. “Pretty sure they were looking for Topher. Maybe Lacey, too, if they weren’t expecting her to have recovered this fast. We don’t know anything right now.”
“Is anyone hurt?"
“Everyone’s fine. But Brody says they’re shutting down all the highways for two hundred miles outside of Blood Moon as a precaution, setting up random checkpoints.”
Which meant we had to hurry.
“How’d you know it detonated?”
“Caught the flash on another camera.”
“You had two cameras that close together all the way out here?”
“Yeah. Weird coincidence. Anyway,” my brother continued, “Brody says they’re talking about blood draws. No refusal.”
“That’s illegal.”
Lacey’s blood probably wouldn’t show anything. Females carried lower viral loads in their blood than male shifters, and didn’t even carry high enough levels of the lycan virus in their saliva to infect a human through biting. To date, there had never been a recorded case of accidental female transmission. But so close to the full moon, my blood would register an increased viral load. Which meant getting pulled over could be a death sentence.
“Well sure. And how much you want to bet this will be the catalyst supporters of the Nationwide Database Act need to push it through Congress?”
I cursed.
Three years ago, after #DashCamVlad outed supernaturals to the human world by dematerializing just before dawn during that fateful traffic stop, it spurred calls to screen the blood of every man, woman and child, searching for supernaturals hidden among us. So far, watchdog groups had kept the bill from passing. But how long would that last in the wake of a terrorist attack?
Yeah. This was not good on so many levels.
“—the news has cameras swarming all over town. No way does this get covered up.” He paused. “Brody just texted. He says head east and find some place to hole up until things die down.”
“Will do.” I reversed out onto the highway, gunning the engine.
There was the sound of a keyboard clacking in the background. “So about all the equipment malfunctions out there tonight. The three cameras you two checked out? Last summer when Brody had me and River upgrade our early detection systems, we got all the bells and whistles. State of the art equipment. Better monitoring software. The works. You know we’re required to keep all security plans filed with the Council—”
“Yeah, I remember there was that one pack that mounted chain guns on the roof of their pack house, was shooting at every pigeon that flew by.”
The typing stopped. “Always the geniuses. Anyway, River never said anything to me directly, but we went out for beers before his leave was up, and he may have hinted there had been raids in other territories they couldn’t explain. Vamp raids. That we should watch our backs.”
My blood ran cold. In the rearview mirror, I saw Lacey had stopped breathing.
“August, what are you saying?”
“That after that conversation I went back in with Ethan a week later and installed another ten cameras that I never reported to the Council. I never told River about them either. I got the feeling he didn’t want me to. You know how that place is a nest of snakes.” August paused. “Whoever was taking out cameras tonight seemed to know right where to find them. Just not the ones we kept off the map.”
The Escalade’s high beams cut a path across the empty road, sirens growing ever louder in the distance. And somehow, I already knew what my brother was going to say next.
“I think we have a mole.”
6
Lacey
“THEY’RE SAYING THIS COULD BE just the beginning.”
As one, everyone in the soup kitchen turned to the TV in the corner of the room. The sixty second clip the networks had been replaying non-stop for the last forty-eight hours was on again.
“Once the virus that causes lycanthropy is in your blood, there is no stopping the transformation. There is no cure. No treatment. Early symptoms include fever, body aches, dehydration and blackouts. Your doctor may dismiss it as the flu. But by the next full moon, you will be one of us, able to infect others.”
The girl, about my age, paused, giving us all time to take in her delicate features and heart-shaped face. There was speculation her image had been digitally altered. Though why the undeads would bother protecting the identity of someone they’d undoubtedly executed seconds after taping concluded was anyone’s guess.
“We are among you. In your schools. In your neighborhoods. In your military and police force. We are in your blood supply. Your human government is trying to hunt us down. And we will not be silenced—"
The room sucked in a collective breath. I kept my eyes on the screen, knowing disinterest would attract attention. Who in the country wasn’t riveted by images of Athena, the shapeshifter terrorist claiming responsibility for the bombing that had consumed the last forty-eight hours of news cycles? Particularly in the moment she shifted into a sleek black wolf right there on camera.
As if this week could get any worse.
I gritted my teeth, barely resisting the urge to throw a pumpkin pie at the screen.
Every Thanksgiving, my mother and I volunteered serving meals at a shelter, then got takeout and gorged ourselves while watching House Hunters. Now Blood Moon was swarming with military types and ghost hunters alike, which, okay, was excellent for my cupcake sales—even werewolf-haters needed to eat, the pundits couldn’t seem to lay off the doomsday predictions, and all I wanted was one cat-friendly show to lure Godiva out from her bunker behind the washing machine. Supernatural hate-fest? So over it.
“Can’t they turn something else on?” I reached across my mother to load up a row of trays with mashed potatoes and gravy.
“This could be important. It’s the first time we’ve seen one of them in almost two years.”
I’d rolled my eyes at the high-powered bear mace. At the voice activated UV lights she wanted to mount strategically around my apartment. I shrugged it off when we went to the shooting range and she chose targets that looked like I did every twenty-eight days at the full moon. Not gonna lie, though. Hearing my mother refer to me as one of them kind of made me wish I’d sprayed myself down with the bear mace and claimed a freak poison ivy attack rather than show up this morning.