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CHAPTER EIGHT

NERI

Neri glanced around the room when whatever Liv said registered with each of them. From what they were saying, there was no shifter around to bite her, so they had no clue how she had transitioned. As she thought back to her time at Standard, nothing but the memory she shared with Hunter would surface.

Her right arm flinched as a phantom pain pierced the crook of her elbow and she pressed two fingers down until the sensation disappeared.

While the others were talking, Xander motioned her over and she sat on the couch next to him. As soon as she settled, he turned the screen toward her. At first, she wondered why he was showing her a black screen. The image was pixilated but there was a light shining in the lower left-hand corner. Then she realized it wasn’t a picture, but the start of a video clip.

“What did you find?”

“Kai’s camera picked up movement after you and Hunter entered the house. Reaper mentioned someone followed you to your house from here, so I searched the video footage and found this.”

Neri nodded, not taking her eyes off the screen. Xander pressed the space bar the silent black-and-white camera moved from right to left and back again, scanning the area. As it panned left again, Neri caught the sight of someone stepping out from behind a tree. A leg only at first, but Neri squinted and leaned forward when a woman came into view.

“Do you recognize her?”

“No, not yet. Does she get closer?”

“Yeah, wait a minute.”

The first obvious clue she wasn’t an immortal was her walk. She shuffled from behind the tree before she pressed her back against the bark, her head whipping back and forth as her long dark hair shimmered with each movement, before she bent her knees and waddled forward. She must have realized how stupid she looked because in the next second, she stood up and brushed away the imaginary lint on her pants.

The woman balled her fists next to her thighs and stomped forward, heading toward the side of the house leading to the front door. The stride was familiar, but it wasn’t until she flipped her hair away from her face and scowled that Neri recognized her.

“Zahava,” Neri sucked in a breath when she realized who she was. “Hunter, do you remember seeing her?”

Hunter moved closer and glanced down at the paused image of Zahava glancing over her shoulder. He recognized her and jerked back. Then he started pacing the floor.

She flinched at every curse she heard flowing out of his mouth and worried about his anger as his fists clenched and unclenched at his side as the length of his stride increased with every step.

“What? What’s going on?” Axel asked.

Neri swallowed as a bolt of fear ran down her spine. But when she noticed the concern in every face as they flanked Hunter, Xander, and herself on the couch, she had two feelings back-to-back. Fear that these people she’s come to care for in such a short time were in danger and the second, pride because they were dangerous to anyone who crossed them.

“In the flashback I had when I first met Hunter, the one I pulled him into, Zahava was the nurse who gave Dr. Steven’s the syringe filled with vampire venom and the bioweapon.”

Hunter cursed again. “I remember glancing at her and recognizing the clear hatred etched on her face when she stared at Neri on the table before the injection, but I brushed it off, thinking she hated all immortals.”

Xander’s fingers flew over the keyboard and after a few minutes, he sat back on the couch. “Huh.”

Hunter froze and glared at Xander. Neri almost laughed aloud but Hunter’s waves of displeasure about the situation washed over her and she bit her lip and waited to see what Xander had to say.

“She used her real first name to apply for the job at Standard. Zahava Wolfe started as a nurse in the biological ward at Standard in July 2015.”

“Wolfe, Wolfe, why does that sound familiar?” Ghost asked.

“It’s wordplay, wolf shifter, but that makes no sense. She has no shifter traits and if she’s human and four years younger than Neri, she’s aged badly. There are wrinkles around her eyes and mouth and there is a smattering of gray hair around her temples,” Ara observed.

“Why would she be after me? She went to a foster home two months before I did. Orphanages were closing and placing kids with foster parents. Since she was younger, they found her a home first.”

Frost squeezed Neri’s shoulder. “Not every placement works. There have been horror stories about kids being abused and neglected from families who only want government help. She’s targeting you for some unknown reason, but no one looks at someone with utter disdain without a reason, no matter how twisted or fabricated.”

Ghost snapped his fingers capturing everyone’s attention. “When Anzû applied for the position at Dark Company, he listed his last name on the application as Wolfe with a ‘e’”

Neri leaned over and watched Xander open and close screens as he typed in the black screens filled with white or green type, each of them foreign to her. She surfed the internet and setup a website which she had to learn for her to sell her pieces around the world, but Xander’s skills surpassed anything she’d known.

Xander stopped his frantic searching at a site that looked to her as pure code. A growl escaped from his throat as he glanced toward the stairs to where his son slept. Neri knew he held his rage at whatever he found because he didn’t want to wake his son again. Instead, he fisted his hands next to his thighs on the couch as he took deep breaths for a solid five minutes before he calmed enough to open his eyes.