Page 67 of Huntress Unleashed
She didn’t blame him. She hadn’t been either.
“Yeah, I know them. They’re friends of Gregory Devine,” Dane said.
“Hell, the hunter who stabbed Adonis? If the Bremerton family had wanted to charge Gregory, he could have been in prison for life for attempted murder,” Robert said. “I thought he was banished from here, and his friends followed him to wherever they ended up.”
“In Florida, but it appears some of his friends remained behind,” Dane said. “Two are cousins, Flynn and Felix. Ralph, Manning, and Samuel are the others. Felix would most likely be X. He’s really a leader. But we’ll need proof that they hired you to eliminate Jacqueline.”
The IT guy, Calloway, rose from his seat and pulled a recorder out of his pocket and handed it to Dane. “We always record the conversations when we take on a job. That way we have proof that someone actually hired us to do it. Of course the hunters didn’t know it.”
Dane smiled and said to Jacqueline. “I like these guys. They’re on the ball.”
The guys gave him tentative smiles and she thought he had kind of won them over. Otherwise, he looked like a hunter/vampire that could do some serious harm to them. The same with her brother. She could too, but some thought she didn’t look that capable to win in a fight—which gave her an advantage sometimes.
Then Dane looked at the other two guys in the Van Helsing group of human hunters. Both men were dark haired, and they held their hands up to say they didn’t know anything. Both were well-muscled and probably worked out to fight vampires. The other three might too, though they didn’t look like they were that strong, but sometimes looks could be deceiving.
“So if you don’t do the job, then what? Would the hunters want to terminate you because you know too much?” Dane asked.
“Yeah, we figure that would be the case. That’s why we’re hoping that you can take them down before that happens. No matter what, we want no part in eliminating good vampires,” Zeke said, all his friends agreeing.
“How was this supposed to go down? You kill Jacqueline, then report back to X?” Dane asked.
“Yeah, they said she would look like, uh, a regular dead body when we killed her. Not turn to a wizened-up form since she was so newly turned. So we were supposed to take a photo of her after we killed her and send it to X. Then he would tell us what our next job is and would wire us the money. He only wanted the one meeting face-to-face. After that, he wants to do this without physically seeing us to limit his connection to the crime. He let on that this was just a job. If it was just a legal job, there was no reason to keep his connection to the hit a secret. Though of course he told us she was a rogue. But we knew better,” Zeke said. “And the other thing is—if she was a rogue—the hunters would be paid a bounty. They wouldn’t be paying anyone to take down a rogue vampire.”
“Exactly. What was the timeline on the hit?” Jacqueline asked.
“We told him we would get it done by midnight tonight. X said that worked for him, but that if it wasn’t done by then, he would contract someone else to do the job,” Zeke said.
“Yet they don’t have the balls to do it themselves,” the IT guy said.
Everyone agreed with him.
“I’ll contact Adonis and tell him what’s going on. Adonis, Rachael, Zachary, Pasha, Michael, and Danai, all are hunters turned and they could be next on these hunters’ list,” Dane said. “Adonis will relay this information to the rest of the family, especially to Tobias and his brothers. These hunters won’t stand a chance.”
The human hunters visibly sighed in unison, looking vastly relieved.
Dane got quiet after that and she realized he was talking to Adonis telepathically since he wasn’t getting on his phone.
“In the meantime, I’m sure we can make some kind of arrangement to keep you safe. Kind of like a Witness Protection Program only it will be handled by the League of Hunters. Probably Tobias and his kin will be in charge of it, so that no one else in the league will hear of it in case some of the members are friends of these hunters,” Jacqueline said.
“Thanks. We appreciate it,” Zeke said. “We figured we would be in trouble no matter which way we went. I mean, with the hunters or your people.”
“Well, thanks for coming to our aid. We had no idea this was going on,” Jacqueline said.
“You’re welcome. We count ourselves as good guys and don’t want to change that,” Zeke said.
“The same with us.” Jacqueline relayed the information to Stacey because she’d been at the hunter club dancing with them too last night and she wanted to make her aware of the danger to them.
“Thanks. I’ll tell Anne also,” Stacey said.
Dane joined the conversation with Zeke and his team. “Danai and Michael are coming to escort you to a safe place. Tobias and his kin own the land and homes, and they’ll take you to one of them they use for guest quarters. No one will dare come there who isn’t good friends of the Bremertons.”
“Great,” Zeke said. “We want to get back to work as soon as we can.”
“We’ll have to take care of the hunters first, but you’ll have free food and lodging, and you won’t want for anything. If you have family or friends who might be looking for you, let them know you’re going out of state on a job, and you’ll communicate with them when you’re done. We don’t want the hunters to learn where you are,” Dane said.
“Yeah, thanks. We’ll do that,” Zeke said.
“So, uh, I guess I need to thank you,” Robert said to Dane, “for getting rid of the vampire who turned Jacqueline.”