Chapter 29 Julian

"Ten days," Piper said through chattering teeth. She wore a hooded purple parka that made her look twice her size, and still the girl couldn't keep warm. "It's been ten days since Hadrian dumped me off here, and there hasn't been any sign of Arya or her friends."

I held back a smile. Piper, the overzealous Initiate—the one who got excited about everything —was miserable. What made matters even better was that she was miserable about a vampire task that had been assigned by the vampire leader himself.

"I've warned you," I said with a shrug. "Being a vampire isn't all it's cut out to be."

"I'd do just about anything to have you turn me right here and now," she snapped. "At least then I'd stop freezing to death."

The smile slipped away from my face like rubber on ice. "There are far worse things than feeling cold."

She held up a gloved finger. "Not right now." Puffs of breath steamed from her mouth. "I just don't get it. It's the Saturday before their Christmas Break, and none of Arya's friends have come out. I mean, shouldn't students be going home to be with their families? And that's not even the craziest thing. None of them have come out since I've been here, and at least one of us has been here every day and night keeping a lookout. "

Piper narrowed her eyes at me. "Unless you've been sneaking away from here when I go back to your apartment to sleep."

I had bought a mattress out of pity for my Initiate, who, during the first two nights, hadn't slept well at all on my hardwood floor next to the fireplace. Since then, she'd slept better, but being out in the cold always seemed to put her in a sour mood.

"Hadrian's monitoring this location," I said. "I wouldn't dare leave the station unmarked at this point. He'd have my head mounted to his wall of trophies."

Disgust unraveled on Piper's face. "You think he'd really do that?"

I shrugged. "Probably. But not until after drowning me for three years."

The sun momentarily snuck from the clouds and illuminated Piper's face. Her jaw dropped, as if a weight had been tied to her chin and suddenly released.

Raising my eyebrows and smirking ever so slightly, I said, "Are you sure you want to become a vampire?"

She swallowed with difficulty, and her glasses fogged up as she let out a deep breath. After rubbing at them, her magnified-brown eyes looked at me. "Hadrian doesn't trust you."

I nodded. "That's very apparent. Your very presence proves that. I'm sure he's asked you to watch my every move."

Her head bobbed softly. "Yes. He wants me to report anything I might perceive to be out of the ordinary."

I swung my arms out and twisted my hips, putting myself on display. "You've been here ten days. Have you discovered anything out of the ordinary?"

"Well, there is one thing," she replied, looking down .

A chill ran down my spine. I'd met with Shea yesterday to warn her about Hadrian's recent interest in her, as well as to inform her about his new vampire-kitty, Rainbow. Had Piper tailed me? Had she planted some device in my clothing that tapped into my conversation? What had she reported to Hadrian?

I hoped my anxiety didn't reveal any sign of guilt.

Piper looked me up and down with interest, and I straightened my back as she analyzed me. "How is it that you can survive in daylight?"

My worry melted away like snow in the spring.

"During my Vampire History classes at Heritage Prep, I learned that protective rings and bracelets exist that have been enchanted to shield vampires from the harmful rays of the sun, but they have mostly fallen into myth. The whereabouts of such trinkets are unknown, and you don't wear any form of jewelry."

I felt the weight of Alice's brooch in the pocket of my dark slacks, and a sly grin crawled across my face.

"That, Piper Adams, is a story for another day. For now, all you have to know is that Hadrian selected me for this shifter-snatching job because of my ability to daywalk."

I let my eyes wander as I turned away from her, allowing my relief to settle my nerves. I had enough going on with the topic of Shea to worry about Hadrian knowing about her. I hadn't responded to Caesar. I couldn't even imagine what that interaction was going to look like, especially since I was utterly incapable of making any decisions regarding Shea myself.

I knew how I felt about her. The feelings themselves were clear as day and sharp as a blade. Could she be right? Could there be a higher reason why she reminded me so much of Alice, and why I craved her so powerfully? Would Alice approve? And yet, the idea of turning away from my hopes of Alice slammed a giant wall down on my feelings every time the thought crossed my mind.

Movement at the stairs of the subway station pulled my attention away from my ruminations. People had been going up and down all day, but I couldn't help but recognize the boy emerging from the stairway.

He looked the same as he had during the fight in the nearby alley. I was impressed the dragon shifter had survived the attack—I remembered the amount of lead the young man had been hit with. This time, he was alone .

He was tall, bundled up in winter gear, but his dark hair was visible, and even from this distance, I could see his amber eyes.

"I've got eyes on one of Arya's friends," I said with a nod toward the station.

She followed my hard stare. "Is that the Dracul boy?"

"That's him," I replied, setting my jaw.

The young man was a descendant of the woman I loathed more than anything. In my opinion, the boy shouldn't be alive—Claudette Dracul should never have been able to have offspring. Not after the unforgivable crime she'd committed against Alice.

I quickly corrected my thinking. This boy was not Claudette, and he had done me no ill-will. For all I knew, Claudette never even had children, and this was some distant cousin. But despite the boy's heritage, I had no intention of snatching him.

"Tobias Dracul."

"Let's get him!" Piper said, eager to finally start moving.

I grabbed her arm firmly as she stepped forward .

"You haven't ever tailed somebody before, have you?" I whispered. "You don't dive right in the first chance you get."

"But we may never get another chance," she argued.

To be honest, I would be entirely fine with that. But I had to at least pretend I was trying to ensnare the Dracul boy.

"Look how many other people are down there," I pointed out. "It's far too open, and too many witnesses. If we swoop in and take him now, we'll have more than a dragon shifter to worry about."

"So what do we do?" she asked.

"Like I said, we tail him, but from a distance," I replied. "If we get too close, we risk getting discovered. And you don't want to be around the Dracul boy if he shifts into his dragon form to protect himself."

Tobias moved northward through crowds with long strides, pausing for a moment as he looked at a nearby alley—the same alley where Hadrian had ensnared Arya and her friends. The same place we'd learned that Arya was a siren.

"What's he doing?" Piper asked.

I ran a hand through my hair. "He's recalling the attack we made on him and his friends just weeks ago. Come on. We can close in a bit now that he's distracted."

Side-by-side, we headed in the dragon shifter's direction. I was surprised to feel Piper's gloved fingers slide between mine.

"Hey," I said, starting to pull my hand away.

"Hold on," she said quickly, resisting my withdrawal. "We'll look less conspicuous walking together like a couple."

I hesitated but let her keep her hold. Not just because I was considering her assessment, but because, for the first time I could remember, Alice's face was not the face I saw at another woman's touch. It was Shea's.

I pushed away the pang of guilt and ambivalence.

"Good point," I conceded. "But if you start looking at me with lover's eyes..."

She laughed. "Don't worry, I won't."

Together, we followed the Dracul boy, who had seemed to gather his wits and move on from the alleyway.

"What's the plan?" she asked.

I couldn't answer directly, as we were surrounded by a large group of pedestrians. Talking about a kidnapping wouldn't go over too well in front of a crowd.

"You know, dear," she said nonchalantly, catching onto the reason behind my unease. "I'm not entirely sure where we'll put my sisters up once they arrive. The apartment is considerably small, and poor Megan is allergic to cats."

"We'll just have to find other lodgings for them," I said, understanding the meaning beneath her lines. "The cats are staying."

I looked at her out of the corner of my eye and found her struggling to conceal her irritation.

"But the cats are weird," she muttered. "Not normal."

I couldn't argue with that. "I can't just throw them out on the streets. Can you imagine what would happen?"

The crowd splintered, and soon, we found ourselves alone again, still following Tobias Dracul.

"Those vampire cats will be the death of me, Julian," she whispered. "Every time I go back to your apartment, they claw at the closet door. One of these days, they'll claw their way through and eat me in my sleep."

"I'll figure it out," I whispered back, looking around to make sure nobody was within earshot. "Let's stay focused on our mission. We need to follow him to a more-secluded area before we can risk grabbing him."

"And once we find that secluded area, how do we go about the actual kidnapping?"

"You distract him with your expert extroverted-ness," I said. "I'll take him from behind."

She blew out a long breath. "That's a lot of pressure."

I arched an eyebrow. "Why? All you have to do is distract him for two seconds. That will give me plenty of time to—" I pounded my left hand with my right fist.

"That works," she replied, flaring her brows like she was impressed.

Tobias turned a corner, instantly concealed by one of the larger apartment buildings. Julian was half-tempted to say that we'd lost him, that we should turn back around and wait for him to go back to the subway station. But Piper pulled me forward, hurrying her pace.

"We're going to lose him!" she hissed.

A gunshot sounded, and I instantly felt a tear burning at my free arm, making it go numb. That numbness did nothing for the pain that rapidly escalated. It was enough to make me cry out and wrench my hand away from Piper as I pressed against a wall and felt at my wound.

As quickly as it had hurt, it healed, and I was relieved to discover that the bullet that hit me had merely grazed me. I'd been lucky. Judging by the pain I'd experienced, I hadn't been hit by an ordinary bullet—the shooter was firing copper bullets. If one landed in just the right place, I'd be dead.

The numbness remained, though, and would for the next several minutes—perhaps the rest of the day. Copper was a vampire's greatest weakness, and my past was riddled with terrible experiences with the red metal.

A stream of panic flooded my gut. Whoever was shooting at me knew I was a vampire, but the gunman also knew I was a daywalker. And anybody with that kind of knowledge was a serious threat.

Screams erupted all around and pedestrians ran into the nearby buildings to get out of potential danger.

"Julian!" Piper cried. "You've been shot!

Instinctually I pulled on nearby shadows to hide myself, but my abilities would only protect me. Piper was merely human. Moving quickly, I hastily pushed Piper behind a nearby bench.

"What's going on?" she squeaked, trembling with fear.

"Stay there," I commanded. "And keep out of sight."

Had we been baited? Was the Dracul boy part of a shifter trap that we'd just set off? Had Caesar betrayed me?

Another shot fired, and I felt a slight displacement in the air next to my cheek. My shadow concealment likely saved me, but it also marked me in broad daylight. I needed to get to the gunman before a successful shot was fired.

My rapid senses caught sight of the next bullet's origination as it zinged through the air, striking the bench Piper was behind.

So she's been marked, too .

But now I saw the gunman, peeking his head around the corner of a nearby store decked out with Christmas decor across the street. He was just one hundred feet away, aiming a rifle our way.

The shooter was a young man, wearing a brown coat and a brown beanie with small locks of brown hair crossing his forehead. What was most noticeable was a marking on the back of his right hand—a tattoo I was all-too familiar with from my earlier days working for Hadrian. The dark mark consisted of a blade pointed downward, encircled by five dots. I'd learned years ago that each dot represented the four main shifter genuses, as well as the vampire race.

"A hunter," I hissed. So, the attack was separate from the Dracul boy's emergence.

I began moving to intercept the attacker, and I could tell the hunter had realized he'd been spotted. Fear flitted over the hunter's youthful face, and he flung his rifle over his shoulder, its strap catching around his back so the muzzle pointed up in the air, then ran out of sight. The store exterior provided him excellent cover.

However, I was faster than any human.

Using all my speed, I sprinted across the street, dodging cars in the process, receiving a chorus of honks—no doubt wondering what this misty form moving through the street was—then stopped at the corner of the store.

Not wanting to step out into the open and risk getting shot again, I peeked around the side and saw the young man throw his rifle through an open window in the back of a small, gray sedan. Through the back windshield, the barrels of several guns could be seen sticking up, likely mounted to a gun rack installed inside the vehicle.

The panicked brown eyes of the hunter spotted me, and he rushed into the front passenger seat and slammed the door. A half-second later, the car peeled away, kicking up rocks and leaving behind the smell of burnt rubber. The last thing I saw on the car was a black decal on the bumper that matched the hunter's tattoo.

My rush of adrenaline urged me to chase after the car—it would be easy to keep up—but I was in daylight, and passersby would see me. Most of all, I needed to protect Piper. She couldn't protect herself in her weak, human form.

Releasing the shadows that concealed me, I waited for traffic to stop at the nearby intersection and crossed legally.

Upon reaching the bench Piper was cowering behind, I held my hand out. "Hey, you okay?"

She turned and looked at me with terror seeping from her eyes, only magnified by her glasses. She took my hand unsteadily, and I helped her to her feet.

"They tried to shoot me," she mumbled distantly, staring at me while the event replayed through her mind.

I nodded. "They wanted to kill both of us."

"Who were they, and why were they after us?" Tears streamed from her eyes, and I pulled her into my chest with one arm.

"Hey, it's okay now," I said, hardly believing I was providing comfort to her. It felt foreign to me but also instinctual. "But we need to get off the street and to safety. We'll take the L and get away from the city for a while."

She sniffed and looked across the street, not toward where the shooter had been, but where the Dracul boy had been last seen.

"W—what about our mission?" she asked. "What will Hadrian say when he finds out we failed?"

I shook my head, shocked that she could even be thinking about that after such a traumatic event.

"Unfortunately, we can't camp out by the station anymore," I said as I walked with Piper back toward the subway station, still holding her closely. "Hunters have been watching us. Coming back will be a deathtrap. We'll have to inform Hadrian that we need a different plan."

Piper nodded against my chest.

But the hunter attack had been the perfect distraction, giving us a good reason as to why we couldn't catch Tobias Dracul. And while it had been dangerous, I was grateful it happened.