The Final Hunt Begins
The words hung in the air between them, heavier than the rain that had begun to mist against the windshield. Isabella felt the warmth of Lucas’s hand over hers, and for a fraction of a second, she allowed herself to believe that they could simply drive away—disappear into some pocket of the world where the Covington name meant nothing.
Then Lucas’s phone buzzed against the console. A single text message. No caller ID.
*Abandoned backlot. Sunset. Bring the boy. Or we find the school.*
Isabella’s blood turned to ice water. “They know about Max’s school.”
Lucas had already read the message, his jaw a rigid line. He killed the engine and turned to face her fully. The streetlights outside the diner cast his features in alternating bands of shadow and sodium glow. “They’ve known from the start. This was never about hiding him, Isabella. It was about buying time until I could figure out how they were tracking me.”
“They’re human.” She said it as a statement, watching his eyes. “The Covingtons. They can’t shift. That’s what you realized.”
“Owen Covington built his empire on a lie.” Lucas’s voice was flat, clinical. “He wanted the Lycan families to believe he was one of us—that his bloodline carried the curse. But Dorian never shifted at sixteen. No Covington has ever grown claws. They’re corporation men. They use money, contracts, and human muscle.” He paused. “And they’ve been waiting for me to figure it out somewhere they control the variables.”
Quinn leaned forward from the back seat, her laptop already open. “If they’re using human assets, they’ll have electronic countermeasures. Jammers, drones, maybe thermal imaging to track movement. Standard corporate security playbook.”
“You’re not coming.” Lucas didn’t turn around.
“Actually, I’m the only one who can crack their frequency grid,” Quinn said. “You need eyes in the sky that aren’t theirs. I can spoof their drone feeds, create ghost signals—”
“She has a point,” Isabella said quietly. “And I’m not staying behind either.”
Lucas’s hand tightened on the steering wheel. The clock in the dashboard read 4:17 PM. Forty-three minutes until sunset.
“Fine.” He didn’t argue further. “But when we get there, you both follow my lead. No heroics. No deviations. The moment I give the signal, you run. Understood?”
Neither woman answered.
—
The abandoned backlot sprawled across fifteen acres of cracked asphalt and skeletal soundstages, relics of a Hollywood that had died decades before. Weathered facades of Main Street storefronts stood propped against the skyline, their painted wood peeling, their windows dark. The Covington men had positioned themselves at the center of the lot, where a mock town square opened into a wide concrete basin—once used for car chase sequences, now a dead zone covered in gravel and weeds.
Lucas parked the sedan behind a collapsed billboard, engine off, coasting the last fifty feet in silence. He scanned the perimeter through the driver’s side window, counting shadows, mapping exit routes.
“Twelve visible tangos,” he said. “At least two more on the soundstage roofs. They’ve got jammers mounted on the light poles—see the parabolic dishes? That’s military-grade signal suppression. No phone, no radio, no GPS.”
Quinn peered through binoculars. “I can see the main unit. It’s a Meridian Series jammer. Expensive. Fragile. If I can get within thirty feet, I can override the frequency with a brute-force reset. But I’ll need a distraction.”
Isabella unbuckled her seatbelt. “Then give them the distraction they came for.”
Lucas caught her wrist. His eyes—human now, a steady, dark brown—held hers. “You walk into that square, you’re the bait. Owen will expect me to use you. He’s prepared for that.”
“Then don’t use me.” She pulled her hand free gently. “Let me use myself.”
He watched her for a long, aching moment. Then he nodded once. “Stay on the north edge. If you see Dorian, you drop flat. Don’t look at his hands—look at his feet. His weight will tell you which direction he’s about to move.”
“Military training?”
“Prison yard survival.” He opened his door. “Quinn, you have twelve minutes from my first contact to locate the jammer console. After that, I can’t guarantee their attention stays fixed on me.”
Quinn closed her laptop. “Twelve minutes. Got it.”
—
Isabella walked into the square at 4:49 PM, the sunset bleeding orange and violet across the soundstage rooftops. She wore a simple jacket, hands visible, steps measured. Behind her, Lucas melted into the shadow of a derelict general store facade, invisible among the false fronts and broken windows.
Owen Covington stood at the center of the basin, flanked by four men in tactical vests. He was older than Lucas—late sixties, silver hair swept back, a tailored overcoat that cost more than most people’s rent. His smile was a politician’s tool, warm and utterly empty.
“Ms. Harrington.” He spread his arms. “I was hoping you’d come. Though I admit, I expected the wolf to be on a shorter leash.”
“Lucas isn’t here.” Isabella stopped ten feet away, hands still visible. “I came to negotiate.”
Owen’s laughter was soft, almost paternal. “I’m sure you did. But we both know that’s not how this works.” He gestured to the soundstage behind him. “This lot is the neutral ground. Fifty acres of dead radio and no witnesses. I proposed a Survival Game—old mafia rules. One hour. The last man standing keeps the territory, the heir, and the woman.”
“I don’t see a game. I see an ambush.”
“Clever girl.” Owen’s smile thinned. “The game is rigged. I’ll admit it freely. You’re standing in a killing box with twelve contract shooters and three drones overhead. Your boyfriend can’t call for help, can’t shift, can’t do anything except bleed.” He stepped closer, voice dropping. “The Lycan bloodline dies tonight. And you get to watch.”
A high-pitched whine cut through the air. One of the jammers on the nearest light pole stuttered, flickered—and went dark.
Owen’s head snapped toward the sound. “What was that?”
The jammer on the next pole flickered. Then the next. Three jammers down in rapid succession, a cascade failure rippling across the perimeter.
Quinn’s voice crackled through a hidden earpiece in Isabella’s ear: *”Six minutes. I got the primary console, but there’s a secondary relay near the south gate. Keep them busy.”*
Isabella smiled. “You made a mistake, Owen. You assumed Lucas would fight like a wolf.”
Behind her, the door of the false general store swung open.
Lucas stepped into the failing light, moving with the unhurried precision of a man who had already calculated every exit, every angle. He wasn’t transformed. His hands were bare. His eyes were simply his own.
“I’m fighting like a Davenport.”
He covered the distance in seven strides, and the first contract killer barely had time to raise his rifle before Lucas’s palm drove into his throat, collapsing his windpipe. The second man swung a baton; Lucas sidestepped, caught the weapon’s momentum, and redirected it into the third man’s knee with a sound like cracking ice.
Owen was already retreating, barking orders into his wrist comm. “Shoot him! Shoot them both!”
Gunfire erupted from the rooftops, but Lucas had already moved, dragging Isabella behind a concrete barrier as rounds chewed through the gravel where they’d stood.
“Quinn, status,” Lucas said into she earpiece.
“Secondary relay is shielded. I need manual override.” A pause. “There’s a security station at the south edge. I can see the console through a window, but there’s a guard posted.”
Isabella looked at Lucas. “Go. I can hold here.”
“Absolutely not—”
“Lucas.” She grabbed his vest and pulled him close. “Max is somewhere in this city, waiting for his father to come home. Go clear the relay. I’ll keep my head down.”
His eyes searched hers. Then he pressed his forehead to hers, once, hard. “If you die, I’ll find you in whatever comes next.”
“I’m not planning on dying.”
He was gone before she finished the sentence, a shadow moving through the false-front buildings, silent and lethal.
—
Quinn crouched behind a rusted dumpster, her fingers flying across a tablet that patched into the jammer relay’s diagnostics. The security station was thirty feet away, a reinforced kiosk with one guard visible through the window, his attention fixed on a bank of monitors.
She had no combat skills. She was a civilian with good eyes and a faster brain.
So she used her brain.
“Fire alarm,” she murmured into the earpiece. “Lucas, I need you to pull a fire alarm.”
“There’s no alarm system. This lot is dead.”
“Then make one.”
Three seconds passed. Then a propane tank exploded somewhere in the western soundstage, a gout of flame and metal that sent the guard spinning toward the smoke.
Quinn was already moving, sprinting the thirty feet in a low crouch, sliding through the kiosk door before the guard could turn back. She slammed the manual override, and the secondary jammer console went dark.
Silence.
Then Isabella’s voice, sharp and urgent: *”Dorian. He’s here.”*
—
The floodlights clicked on one by one, encircling the square in harsh white glare. Isabella shielded her eyes, and when her vision cleared, Dorian Covington stood at the eastern edge of the basin, a sniper rifle cradled in his arms.
He was younger than his father, mid-thirties, with the lean, coiled look of a man who had never needed to shift because he’d learned to kill with his hands alone. His smile was nothing like Owen’s. It was empty. Hollow. A skull’s grin.
“Your wolf is useless here, Davenport. This is a human war. And you’re outnumbered.”
The words echoed across the concrete, swallowed by the dark soundstage maws. Lucas emerged from behind a shattered facade, his shirt dark with sweat and blood that wasn’t his. He stopped in the center of the square, facing Dorian directly.
Quinn’s voice came through the earpiece: *”Jammers are down. I’ve got a clean signal. You can call for backup.”*
Lucas didn’t answer. He was watching Dorian’s feet.
“I’m also a Davenport,” he said.
Dorian raised the rifle.
Lucas cracked his knuckles. “And I don’t need fangs to break your neck.”
Dorian stepped into the floodlights, a sniper rifle in hand. “Your wolf is useless here, Davenport. This is a human war. And you’re outnumbered.” Lucas cracked his knuckles. “I’m also a Davenport. And I don’t need fangs to break your neck.”