Chapter 8: Messy Work

Robin’s POV

An earth-shattering roar broke through the normal chatter between Robin and his other pack members. They had found Claude’s apartment building, but they didn’t know which unit he was in. Robin heard a beam snap an instant before the building went up in a plume of dust.

Water gushed along the building, the pipes bursting like a bomb went off. The ground beneath Robin’s feet rumbled momentarily.

“Oriana!” Robin heard Claude shout into the alleyway before his voice muffled with the crumbling rubble. Edgar, the pack’s Beta jumped from the ground.

Robin looked up as a small woman sprung from a balcony several stories up, crashing down hard onto the pavement. She was shrouded in darkness, but the impact of the ground didn’t slow her down. Robin caught a strange scent. She smelled like a vampire, but with an underlying smell that Robin could not pinpoint.

“Go!” Edgar commanded, sending Tanner, Liam, and Robin after the evading woman.

No hesitation. They took off after Oriana, but she was fast. Really fast.

Liam was the fastest one among them, but even he couldn’t keep up. Robin could hear Oriana’s blood pumping wildly like an adrenaline rush. Her scent was potent, and he could smell her far after she had lost them.

“Shit,” Liam grunted, coming to a full stop, panting as he gripped his side. They would be faster in their alternative form, but they shouldn’t shift in the city. Wolves in New York City? There would be no explanation for that.

“Do you hear anything? Smell where she went?” Tanner asked. “God, I can’t smell anything.”

“Down there,” Robin said, pointing down a side alleyway. The scent didn’t get any further away. She had stopped. The guys followed Robin as he led them down the backway, walking so they could catch their breath before they found her.

“Have you ever seen anything like that?” Tanner asked quietly.

“Never,” Robin replied.

Even a pack full of wolves couldn’t level a building like that. Edgar stayed behind to drag Claude out of the rubble to get some answers out of him.

“The scent is getting stronger,” Robin continued, but suddenly another scent filled the air.

The thick scent of human blood. Everyone sensed it at the same time, and further down the alleyway, they heard a hushed wail of pain.

Oriana, still shrouded in darkness so they couldn’t get a good look at her, was on top of a man, long fangs tearing right through his throat. The squelching sound of bloodshed was nauseating.

“Hey!” Liam shouted, picking up the pace.

The woman tore away from the man, her eyes black as the night, wild curls cascading everywhere, caked in blood. Robin couldn’t even scent her anymore after being saturated in blood. She looked familiar, almost like Olivia, but Olivia wasn’t a vampire. He’d be able to smell that, and he had seen her in the sun.

That guttural voice deep inside of him tried to worm its way up at the sight of her. Robin assumed that thinking of Olivia woke the beast back up again.

After Oriana saw them, she disappeared, like blinked out of existence. Unbelievably fast. The scent was gone just as fast.

Robin ran to the bleeding man. He gasped, gripping onto Robin’s forearm. Blood poured from the gaping wound on his neck. The man gurgled once, twice, then he was dead. There was no saving him. He looked up to Liam, who examined the other man.

A disembodied heart rested on the pavement next to the other body. Shit. Now, this Oriana had a body count.

Edgar followed the scent of blood to reunite with his packmates. “Claude’s gone. What the hell happened here?”

Tanner answered, “We lost Oriana. She killed both of these guys.”

Edgar walked up to the bodies and tore the sleeve off of one of the bodies, revealing gang insignia branded into the skin. “Swarm members. No loss here. Get rid of the bodies.”

“What do you mean, sir?” Liam asked. He may be the fastest one, but he was also the youngest fully-fledged wolf in the pack. Too young to be familiar with the scumbags that plague the city.

Robin lifted the dead weight, tossing the body over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Tanner opened a nearby dumpster and Robin flung the corpse in the dumpster. Messy work, but in a busy city, it’s important to keep incidents like this from prying eyes.

Edgar gestured to the familiar brand. “There are worse things than dying at the hands of a vampire. I need to report this back to Wyatt. You guys got this?”

“We’ll take care of it,” Tanner agreed. He sniffed once. “Smells like rain. That’ll help.”

Liam helped hide the other body while Tanner called the cleaners to make it completely disappear.

“Who are Swarm members?” Liam asked under his breath to Robin.

Robin glanced at Liam once. “They’re a waste of flesh,” Robin answered simply. That didn’t appear to clear anything up for Liam. He sighed. “Wannabe gangbangers that like who target women.”

“That’s terrible,” Liam replied.

“Unfortunately, it doesn’t really matter who they were, Oriana has a body count now,” Tanner chimed in. “The cleaners will be here soon.” He looked down at the bloodied pavement. “She made a mess, didn’t she?”

Robin chuckled, sitting on the back steps of a closed deli. Tanner joined him. “Seems that way. Good. Those guys deserved it.” The sight of blood didn’t make him queasy like it used to when he was a newly fledged member of the pack. Liam though, looked pale as a ghost.

“Is this a normal thing? Cleaning up dead bodies?” Liam asked like he was about the hurl.

Tanner shrugged. “When it’s necessary. You’ll get used to the sight of blood, kid.”

“It’s not the sight, it’s the smell,” Liam gagged. “How do vampires drink that stuff? It’s disgusting.” He paused, looking back at the bloodstained pavement. “Do all vampires look like that when they feed?”

“No. They don’t,” Robin answered. “I’ve never seen one go into a frenzy like that before.”

Silence sat in the air around them as they waited for the cleaners. Those pitch-black eyes were burned into Robin’s memory. He had never seen anything as animalistic in his life. Pure, unadulterated rage. Like a demon masquerading around in the body of a girl.

Heavy raindrops began to fall from the sky as the cleaners arrived on sight. Tanner stood up and showed them where the bodies were. With that, they could leave. The scent of rain was heavy, clouding the sky and muddling any smell.

Even if they wanted to keep searching for Oriana, they wouldn’t be able to find her under the guise of rain. The pack would resume their search for her later. With Claude long gone by now, who knew where they would be.

A small part of him worried about Olivia. An unhinged vampire hunting in the city. Olivia was easy prey. The thought deeply bothered him. Why couldn’t he stop thinking about her? He didn’t know her. She was just this cute stranger that he kept running into.

“Because she’s ours,” that animalistic voice growled.

No. She wasn’t. His wolf was confused, clearly. Robin fidgeted with his wedding ring, spinning it around his finger. He already had his soulmate. Already lost her too soon. Robin wasn’t done mourning. Just sometimes he tried to find someone to fill the hole.

But no one could.

Especially not a girl like Olivia.