Free Hunter's Rise by Shiloh Walker Page A

an e-mail to a contact. She wanted an idea of Pulaski’s history— a background search that she couldn’t run without risking tipping off the police and the like. It could be done, but she wasn’t as interested in learning tech as some, so she let others do it.
     
    All it would cost her was some cash.
     
    Once she had that request sent off, she got on her bike and paused, lingered. That vague, itchy sensation still lingered low on her spine but it wasn’t too bad.
     
    Nobody was trailing her. Yet.
     
    Hunters all over the place, but nobody at her back.
     
    “Let’s just hope that holds,” she muttered.
     
    T
     
ORONTO figured the best way to find a hired killer would be to track the hired killer’s prey. He needed to keep the scum alive long enough for Rafe or one of the other vamps to get the information they needed about the rest of the victims from Pulaski, which meant finding him before Sylvia James did.
    He had a few advantages on her.
     
    He knew Memphis.
     
    It wasn’t his town, exactly. That would imply it was home, and it wasn’t. But he’d been living here for quite a while and he knew the place. Sylvia, though, she wasn’t from around here. If she had been in the area long, he would have known. Rafe would have known. They would have crossed paths.
     
    Which was why the mercenaries tended to keep their distances from Hunter types. As long as mercenaries didn’t go over a certain line, Hunters didn’t worry about them. They had their hands too full dealing with the ferals to worry about other shit, but some of the mercenaries traipsed just a little too close to that line.
     
    He’d almost found himself bending too near that line a few times, but he’d always managed to pull back.
     
    Rafe didn’t think he could control himself around Pulaski. Toronto got that. His temper was nothing if not explosive and he didn’t always bother trying to control himself. The irritating thing for people like Rafe was that they knew he
could
control himself. He just rarely did. He let his temper lead him around.
     
    Just like you have since the day you woke up… you might have learned to control the violence, but are you really that much
better?
     
    Pushing that irritating voice aside, he crouched down on the roof of a building. Down below, Beale Street was alive with action. Pulsing and throbbing with life, lust and laughter, and below, there were licks of anger, aggression, apathy.The smell of liquor was strong in the air, along with the smell of food. He caught the sharp edge of drugs but ignored it. He had another job today and besides, if these idiots wanted to waste their short, fleeting lives rotting their brains out on something that would eat those brain cells and those fleeting days, let them.
     
    He’d only step in there if he saw drugs being peddled to kids.
     
    Then he’d step in and shed blood before he was done.
     
    For now, he was looking for somebody.
     
    A familiar head of wiry red hair caught his eyes. A satisfied smile curled his lips and he rose to a half crouch and then leaped. It was a three-story jump down and he landed with his knees flexed, the impact as minimal to him as if he’d jumped off a curb.
     
    The man was gone by the time he moved into the crowds of Beale Street, but that was fine. Toronto knew where he was going. It was a little dive just around the corner where the strippers looked younger than they were, where the clientele was just a few steps up from the scum-suckers and nobody wanted to talk to anybody.
     
    They would, though.
     
    Especially Bobby Prescott.
     
    Bobby Prescott and Toronto had a special relationship.
     
    Toronto hated the sick little fuck and wanted to kill him.
     
    Bobby knew this, and he wanted to live. He was a werewolf, but his abilities were weak— he’d barely survived the Change and now he spent the night of the full moon locked in a cage because he didn’t trust his control.
     
    But that wasn’t the worst part.
     
    He