Ferko looked like shit. He had been beaten, stabbed, and dragged through the forest by Valerio and Stefan. When I arrived at the clearing again, the two vampires were flanking the lycanthrope as he kneeled in the center with his hands hanging limp at his sides. A deep cut slashed across his brow, dripping blood into his right eye. Meanwhile, his left eye was swollen shut, keeping him blind to his surroundings. Not that it mattered. His other senses were still keen and he knew the second that I arrived when he deeply inhaled my scent.

“Any trouble?” Valerio asked.

“Nothing important.” I shrugged, pushing thoughts of Rowe and Nick to the back of my mind. This was supposed to be a hunt for werewolves, and those two had decided to join in the fun uninvited. Standing with my legs spread before the lycanthrope, I placed my hands on my hips and fought the urge to kick him under the chin. I restrained myself, barely.

“How many are left?” I asked, looking up at Stefan.

“Three, maybe four. Do you want us to hunt them down?” He smiled at me with frightening eagerness. Stefan loved his bloodshed, but then so did most nightwalkers.

I waved my hand, brushing off the question. “Don’t bother,” I muttered, turning my attention back to Ferko. “Hear that? You started with sixteen shifters and now there are only a handful of you left in all of Budapest. This could have been settled quietly. Lives could have been spared, but you chose to go this route.”

“You have no business in Budapest,” Ferko said in a rough, gravel-filled voice.

“The naturi are here. That makes it my business. But we have a more pressing matter.” I glanced over at Stefan, who tightened his grip on Ferko’s neck. The werewolf flinched, twisting in the nightwalker’s grasp. “It seems that Stefan’s assistant has gone missing in Budapest.”

“What the hell do I care if someone has gone missing?” the werewolf snarled. “What the hell does that have to do with me?”

“A lot. Veyron pointed us in your direction.”

“Bastard,” Ferko muttered under his breath.

Stefan gave his prisoner a hard shake, making sure he had his full attention. “Her name is Michelle. She is a nightwalker with brown hair and brown eyes. Her hair hangs down past her waist. She is delicate. You would remember if you saw her.”

Ferko laughed. “You think I’m going to remember some random girl?”

Stefan slammed his fist into the back of Ferko’s skull, knocking him flat on his face. The werewolf shook his head slowly as he struggled to push back into a seated position with a low groan.

“You would remember her!” Stefan shouted, losing the last of his grip on his temper. “She is exquisite, like a dream. Dark hair, dark eyes, and pure white skin. She’s a nightwalker. You would remember her!”

“When did she come into town?” he asked, finally taking the inquiry seriously.

“Weeks ago!”

As I started to walk by Ferko, I slammed my knee into his jaw, knocking him back to the ground while walking around to stand next to Stefan. Valerio stepped away, wandering over toward Danaus, lingering close in case Ferko did something truly stupid like attack me. I laid my hand on Stefan’s shoulder, but he jerked out from my touch while a low growl rumbled in the back of his throat. He wasn’t in the mood for any comfort from me, which meant he wasn’t going to like the other part of my so-called brilliant plan.

We’ll find her, I tried to silently reassure him.

You mean, we’ll find her dead body, he snapped back at me.

I bit back a sigh and didn’t deny it. At this point we’d be lucky if we found her body at all. She had been missing for a while now, and Budapest wasn’t the friendliest city I’d ever visited. My growing concern was that we wouldn’t be able to find the actual culprit in this rotating fun house of horrors. First we met the sensual Odelia, and then the power-hungry Veyron. It didn’t ease my mind that we had Macaire lurking about, eager to offer a helping hand. And now the unlucky Ferko, who was not only doing the grunt work for Veyron, but also taking on all of the blame. This couldn’t be the arrangement that the lycanthrope originally signed on for, and we had to find a way to use that to our advantage.

We need to leave him alive, I said reluctantly to Stefan.

The nightwalker jerked a step away from me, pinning his dark gaze on my face. Are you insane? He may have killed her. If not him, then one of his people.

Probably so, but we need him in order to get closer to Veyron. It’s the only way to catch everyone in this twisted power dynamic. There’s a warlock out there that’s working with the lycans as well. I want them all.

So be it, he snarled at me as he stalked off a few yards. Just so long as I kill him before we leave Budapest.

Agreed.

I walked back around so I was standing in front of Ferko, who growled at me like a wounded dog. “Is this the agreement that you had in mind when you went in with Veyron? Sacrifice your people? Get yourself killed just so he could be the big bad vampire in Budapest? He wanted you for his enforcer so you could do all his dirty work?”

“You don’t know anything,” Ferko said stubbornly.

“Really? Then enlighten me.” I slipped my hands into the back pockets of my pants as I came to stand before the shifter. “Seems like you’re getting the raw end of this deal. You’re going to die while he gets away without a care.”

“What do you want from me? Names? Dates? The total betrayal of everything? I’m no snitch.”

I sighed, my shoulders slumping under the weight of too many long nights with no real answers. Glancing up at Stefan, I found the nightwalker growing more impatient by the second. I thought he was getting closer to the realization that he wasn’t going to get his Michelle back, but he at least needed the culprit behind her disappearance and death.

“Hasn’t he already betrayed you? He singled out the lycanthropes for the disappearance of Michelle. Lycanthropes attacked Danaus today, trying to kill me. Did you actually think you would escape unscathed from such acts?”

“One can hope,” he said, looking up at me with a lopsided smile.

“You’re no help to me. Kill him,” I said, weary. I turned on my heel to look at Danaus, who was watching me with dark eyes. The hunter made no move to stop either me or Stefan. Valerio leaned against a nearby tree, picking dirt and dried blood out from under his fingernails.

“No! Wait!” Ferko shouted suddenly. “Odelia sent me after the woman.”

I turned back to face him, raising one hand to halt Stefan, who was holding the man with both hands around his neck. If Ferko had hesitated any longer, the nightwalker would have snapped his neck before we could procure this interesting and surprising bit of information. Odelia had struck me as another of Veyron’s flunkies. She didn’t have any particularly special standing within the nightwalker community other than being somewhat old. The true power, in my mind, had always been linked to Veyron. He was the oldest, strongest, and most powerful in the region.

“Odelia? Not Veyron?” I asked.

“Odelia likes the fact that she’s the most beautiful of all those in the city. She doesn’t like having competition,” Ferko said quickly. “The bitch had two of my own females killed because of their looks. When this brunette showed up unexpectedly in town, Odelia didn’t care that she was only passing through. She wanted her dead.”

“So she requested that your people take care of her,” Stefan said.

“Requested?” Ferko snorted. “You make it sound like we had a choice. Between Veyron and Odelia, we didn’t have much choice in the matter if we wanted to continue to run in the city.”

“You tracked Michelle down and killed her,” I finished, my throat tightening around the words. The nightwalker had done nothing more than come into town so she could pick up a package for Stefan. She had been eliminated because she was simply too beautiful to live where Odelia was concerned.