Page 21 of Hitched to the Vampire King
“He found you first,” I said, digesting this new piece of the puzzle. So, Adrian didn’t own that warehouse. And he wasn’t the one stocking it up with cages. ThisNashwas. “Adrian and Nash must know each other then. Or Adrian’s heard of him. Heard enough to reach out to him in a moment of need.”
Avery’s eyes suddenly widened, and she reached out and snatched my hand. I wasn’t a fan of being touched by people I didn’t know, but I refrained from pulling back.
“You’re a vampire slayer,” she said, a light sparking in her eyes.
“Uh huh.”
“You can kill him. Nash, I mean,” she announced, as though there wasn’t a doubt in her mind. “I can help you track him down. I’ve done it before, I can do it again. And then you can slay him. I’m a great tracker, but I’m not trained for fighting vamps.”
Oh boy. I should have seen this coming a mile away. And if she was such a great tracker, then how did he find her first? I didn’t voice that question though.
“Please, Maddie,” Avery pushed, likely when she caught sight of my frown. She scooted closer on the couch, her presence a bit overwhelming now that she wanted something from me. “My pack is strong, but we’ve had some rough times. You’re Sam’s sister-in-law, meaning you’re Lucy’s sister, yes?”
I nodded.
“Then you know about Corbin?”
Oh yeah, I knewallabout him. He was dead, thankfully.
“Corbin murdered one of Sam’s sisters.”
I flinched. Lucy had mentioned that to me once, but we’d never spoken of it again.
“After that, things changed. It was about a year after Izzy’s death when Sam’s dad decided to step down as alpha. He never really recuperated, you know?”
I’d never had a child stolen from me, so I didn’t know. But I could imagine. If anyone ever touched one of Lucy’s children, my niece and nephew, there wouldn’t be anything left of them for the police to find.
“And since Sam’s in Mississippi with Lucy, his eldest sister, Aimee, took over the pack. She’s been a wonderful alpha. She implemented a new training regime so that our people would never be caught unaware again. She prepared us for any worst case scenario she could imagine—that’s how I knew how to navigate the bayou and knew about the boat. She trained us well.”
“Okay,” I hedged, hearing the quietbut….
“But”—there it was—“she’s inexperienced in matters like these. Hell, I don’t know many werewolves whowouldbe experienced in this kind of thing.”
More than she knew, unfortunately. Myself, Lucy, Sam—we had far too much experience in matters such as these.
“Start from the beginning,” I said, needing the full story before I promised anything.
Avery blew out a breath. “Okay. It started about a year ago. One of our more introverted werewolves disappeared. He never came to pack meetings, had very few friends. He was like you, I guess, a lone wolf. Unfortunately, we didn’t give much thought to his absences until he’d already been missing for about a month.”
“No one ever reported him as missing to the police?”
She shook her head. “He truly didn’t have many people in his life. And those we found were like his mailman and a barista at a coffee shop he frequented. Both just thought he’d gone on a vacation or something. Aimee initiated a new procedure that requiredallwerewolves to check in monthly, even if they don’t come to the pack meetings. That’s how we noticed when our second werewolf went missing. A woman named Dana. Also fairly low in pack ranking.”
“So he started with the weaker members,” I concluded.
Avery nodded. “We immediately started investigating. This time, it was a bit different. We found her car in an impound lot. It’d been towed after someone reported it abandoned. We didn’t find any evidence of a fight in her house?—”
“You wouldn’t. Unless she invited him in. A vampire can’t enter someone’s home without permission.”
Avery chewed on that for a moment. “Meaning he would have had to wait until she was somewhere accessible.”
“Correct,” I said.
“When our third wolf went missing, a man by the name of Joseph Donnelly, I got involved.” Her expression shuttered, and she closed her eyes.
Uh huh. And I suspected why. “Joseph was important to you?”
Her bottom lip trembled. “My best friend. We’d been friends since we were pups. Not a day went by when we didn’t talk.”
