“Hey, fuckers.” Scar’s voice cuts through their argument like a blade. “Focus. We’re hunting hunters tonight. Save the theology debate for after we’ve painted the forest in human blood.”
I pull the throttle, feeling the bike surge beneath me. Cold air bites at exposed skin, but I welcome it, letting it sharpen me. Hone me into the weapon I need to be. “Move out,” I growl.
We ride into the winter darkness, a pack of monsters hunting the men who dared to hunt us. The mountains watch our passage with ancient indifference. The forest opens before us, paths only we know leading deeper into territory that belongs to us by right of power and blood.
Behind us, in the clubhouse, my flame continues dying in its crystal prison.
Ahead, somewhere in the frozen wilderness, a hunter runs.
He just doesn’t knowhe’s already dead.
Chapter Two
RAZE
We ride in formation through the darkness, our engines growling like beasts given voice, headlights carving narrow channels through the thickness of trees. The temperature drops with each mile we push deeper into our territory, frost climbing the trunks of ancient pines, ice crystallizing on branches overhead until they bow under the weight.
The Appalachians don’t forgive trespassers…
… and neither do we.
I lead the club, bike thrumming beneath me with a power that matches the rage coiled in my chest. Scar rides to my left, his vampire senses already tracking scents invisible to lesser predators. Wreck flanks my right, his gaunt frame hunched over the handlebars, hollow eyes fixed on the path ahead with the kind of hunger that makes even the darkness recoil.
Behind us, the brothers spread out in perfect formation. Coil’s serpentine grace translates to his riding, movements fluid and precise. Maul’s werewolf strength keeps his heavy bike steady over terrain that would throw a human rider. Flux shifts his weight with supernatural ease, reading the forest like a map written in blood and bone. Thorn seems to merge with the wilderness itself, thorns sprouting from his shoulders, catching moonlight as trees bend toward him in recognition. Ruckus rides with casual confidence, gold charms clinking against leather, luck already bending probability in our favor.
The prospects bring up the rear, Rhett’s hellhound nature making his bike’s exhaust burn hotter than it should, Bennett’s divine presence creating an unsettling halo of light that refuses to dissipate despite the darkness pressing in from all sides.
We ride for twenty minutes before Scar raises his fist, signaling a stop.
The engines die in sequence, silence rushing in to fill the void. I dismount, boots hitting frozen ground with enough force to send hairline fractures through the ice coating the dead leaves. Steam pours from my mouth in thick plumes as I scan the forest, my dragon senses straining against the cage of flesh and bone.
“Two hundred yards northeast,” Scar murmurs, his voice barely audible even to my enhanced hearing. His eyes glow red in the darkness, pupils dilated wide enough to swallow what little light exists. “Three heartbeats, all human. One wounded, bleeding freely. The others are preparing to move.”
“They know we’re coming,” Wreck observes, his tone flat and hungry. The wendigo’s form seems to blur at the edges, as though reality struggles to contain what he truly is. “Excellent. Fear tastes better when it’s fresh.”
I don’t respond with words. Instead, I let the cold pour out of me in a visible wave, frost exploding from my skin in translucent patterns that race across the ground, climbing tree trunks, coating bark in layers of ice thick enough to crack wood. The temperature plummets fifteen degrees in as many seconds.
My brothers shift into position without needing orders. Centuries of working together have made us more pack than club, more force of nature than organization. Scar vanishes first, supernatural speed rendering him invisible to human eyes. One moment he’s beside me, the next he’s simply gone, displaced air the only evidence he ever existed.
Wreck follows, but his departure carries a different quality. The wendigo doesn’t move so much as cease being here and begin being there, occupying space between heartbeats in a way that defies physics and sanity in equal measure.
Coil drops to the ground, his transformation immediate and disturbing. Bones crack and reshape with wet sounds that echotoo loudly in the frozen stillness. Skin ripples and scales emerge, bronze and black, catching what little moonlight penetrates the canopy. Within seconds, a massive basilisk slithers into the underbrush, easily twenty feet long, thick as a man’s torso, eyes glowing with hypnotic gold.
Maul’s shift is more violent. His human form tears itself apart with savage efficiency, muscle and bone reshaping into something larger, more primal. Dark fur erupts across his body as his jaw extends, teeth lengthening into fangs designed for rending flesh from bone. The werewolf that emerges stands eight feet tall, hunched and powerful, claws gouging furrows in frozen earth as he tests his weight.
Flux blurs, his form cycling through possibilities too quickly to track. Wolf, hawk, shadow, something vaguely humanoid but fundamentally other. He settles on a hunting cat the size of a mastiff, muscles coiled beneath spotted fur, amber eyes reflecting our headlights like mirrors.
Thorn spreads his arms, and the forest responds. Branches reach down toward him like children seeking comfort. Roots writhe beneath the surface, disturbing frost patterns as they reposition themselves according to his will. Thorns sprout from every surface within fifty yards, sharp enough to pierce Kevlar, poisonous enough to kill in minutes.
Ruckus doesn’t transform. He doesn’t need to. He simply grins, gold glinting across his skin, and I watch probability bend itself into new shapes around him. A fallen branch shifts position, creating a perfect stepping stone. A patch of ice smooths itself into a pathway. Somewhere ahead, a hunter’s gun will jam at precisely the wrong moment.
Or the right one, depending on perspective.
“Rhett, Bennett…” I don’t look at the prospects when I speak, but my voice carries absolute authority. “With me. Time to see if you can follow orders when it matters.”
The hellhound’s grin is all teeth and shadows, darkness already gathering around him like a living cloak. “About fucking time.”
Bennett’s angel wings manifest without sound, pure white feathers edged in light that shouldn’t exist in this cursed place. His expression remains serene, but something ancient and merciless stares out through his eyes. “Divine judgment demands precision.”