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Finn shakes his head while looking thoughtful. “The council is in shambles. There’s barely anyone left in it. I’m not sure they’d stage some attack at this point, right?” he asks. “Marcus, you just came from a meeting with them literally minutes ago. Was everyone accounted for?”

“Yes, as well as some new faces. People they’ve pulled in from international councils to help figure out what’s happening and what should happen going forward,” Marcus says.

He acts like someone is slowly ripping his fingers off as he talks, it seems to be paining him so much.

Honestly, I can’t help but enjoy it a little bit.

“If they took her…” I hesitate, feeling like I shouldn’t verbally explain what I would do to them if they did.

Honestly, if they took her from me again, I’m very prepared to dispose of them.

I would shred them into the smallest of pieces and ship their heads to the rest of the council members as a warning to stay away from Rylee.

I think it’s a beautiful plan, and even if others think it’s a bit morbid, it would surely get the point across.

Finn puts a hand on my arm, causing me to warily look down at it. Is it his robot arm, as Rylee likes to call it? Does he plan to crush my bones with it or something? I can’t think of any other reason he’d be reaching out to me.

He gives it a gentle squeeze, confusing me even more. “We’ll find Rylee. We can go now. The faster we work, the better. Where is the last location you scented her?”

I look up from his hand as I comprehend that he’s willing to work with me. So I quickly tell him her last known location before leaving the department with the plan of meeting them there. There’s no way I’m taking a slow car when I can run.

When the others finally pull up, I’ve extensively looked over the area, but I’m at a loss for what to do. If they really believe it wasn’t the council, then who would have done it? The council could have been meeting Marcus as a show while sending someone else out to collect Rylee.

Honestly, they’re not going to be of any use at all?—

“Alexei, could you show Ender what you found?” Finn asks.

“I refuse to speak to him,” Alexei snarls. Rylee told me he was scary, but honestly, I just think he’s pissed. “I fear that if I spoke to him, I would merely tear his head off.”

“You could try to tear it off,” I growl.

“That is not an appropriate response for someone trying to help you, Ender. Imagine if Alexei tried killing Rylee? How would you feel about him?” Finn asks. “Claude nearly died. I could have died because of you. Because of what you did. You cannot even act pissy with him, understood?”

I stare at them, not quite sure what they want me to say. There’s not anything I can say that will fix any of my former actions. “I did not trust any of you,” I say, knowing I had good reasons not to.

“Fixes nothing,” Alexei snarls. “I don’t trust people all the time. Doesn’t mean I go about trying to kill them.”

Nothing I say will appease him, so I simply don’t say anything at all.

“You think staying silent will fix everything?” Alexei asks.

I don’t know what to say that he will even understand. I’m pretty sure nothing I say or do will change anything; it never does.

Finn gives Alexei a soft smile. “Alexei, please forgive me, you have every right to feel the way you do, and please don’t mistake this as me forgiving Ender, but for right now, let’s focus on Rylee. It doesn’t mean I trust him or that he deserves our help, but Rylee is innocent here.”

“Fuck,” Alexei snarls before opening his laptop. “There’s a traffic camera at the end of this road. The car that held Rylee passed through it, right here. White, large van, we have the license plate, which I’ve already sent out to police in the surrounding areas.”

“So we have to assume the kidnapping was planned if they had a car ready, right?” Claude asks.

“Seems like it. Do you recognize any of the people?” Finn asks me as he looks at the laptop Alexei is holding.

I slowly walk over to the man who clearly hates my guts and would choose to kill me right here if he had a choice and look at the screen. There’s a still of the van that he believes Rylee’s in. There’s a man in the front seat, but that’s all I can see of it.

“Does it show them taking Rylee?”

“No, but the van is the only vehicle that doesn’t follow the flow of traffic. There is too long of a hesitation between this light here and this one,” Alexei responds. “The van either pulled over for an extended period of time or they stopped for a reason… such as grabbing the girl.”

“Can you follow it from here?” I ask. “Which direction did it go?”

“Not too well. Traffic cameras are generally used for high-density areas that have issues, so they’re not commonly used,” Alexei explains. “I’ve sent the information out and will see if anyone else picks up on the vehicle in a different area.”

“I can’t just sit here.”

“I found something,” Marcus says as he comes up from under the bridge holding what looks like an access card. “Seems to have been torn off a clip of some kind. Maybe Rylee ripped it off when she tried to get away.”

Finn takes it and flips it this way and that.

“Looks like something for the nearby hospital. I’ll go ask and update you guys as soon as I get an answer.

” Then he hesitates as he seems to realize he’s leaving me alone with the rest. I’m not sure if he thinks they’re going to slaughter me and toss my body in a ditch somewhere or if I might try to slaughter them.

They don’t need to worry; I’m in control of myself tonight.

“We have it handled,” Claude says with a beaming smile. Honestly, of all of the vampires, the one who should be most pissed at me seems to be the only one willing to work with me.

“Okay, please be decent beings, please? Pretty please? Do it for Cheetah Legs,” Finn implores.

“Who the fuck is Cheetah Legs? Just hearing that makes me not want to be decent,” I say, which is apparently the wrong thing to say as Marcus and Alexei glower at me.

“Don’t act like you two haven’t also made fun of my phenomenal nickname,” Finn says as he lightly smacks both of their shoulders. “And, Ender, I’m Cheetah Legs, of course.”

I eye the man, unsure how he could have come to that conclusion, but he’s willing to help me so I will call him anything he’d like. “Fine, I will grudgingly call you Cheetah Legs.”

“I… it…” Finn trails off then gives me a smile and two thumbs up. “Thank you. Cheetah Legs out.”

He gets in the car and drives off, but that just leaves me standing here with absolutely no idea what to do. “I’m going… the way the van went,” I decide.

“Do you have a phone we can contact you with?” Claude asks.

“No, that’s okay.”

Claude pulls his personal phone out of his pocket and hands it to me.

“Here, take my phone. The password is 8316. Okay? We’ll call you if we find anything.

If you get bored, you can look at the tabs I have open of an absolutely gorgeous suit I’ve been dying to buy.

It has exquisite embroidery that rounds out the edges with buttons made from?—”

I take off before I’m stuck listening to any more of that nonsense. Who cares if the buttons were made of fucking dinosaur bones, I have Rylee to find.

I head in the direction the van had last been seen but I’m not quite sure what to do now that I’m here.

While I know it was heading south, that doesn’t mean it never turned off one of the exits.

But standing here is getting me nowhere.

I consider grabbing a human or two to threaten them into telling me if they’ve seen the vehicle, but the moment they notice me lingering, they quickly move on.

Since the main road continues straight through here, I choose to keep going in the hope of seeing their vehicle somewhere, but I feel like I’m mindlessly moving with no real purpose, wandering this goddamn city.

Do they not realize she’s mine? Do they not realize that they can’t take her from me? Or how far I’ll go to get her back?

The phone starts ringing and I see that it’s Finn, so I swipe to answer it. “Do you have something?” I try not to sound desperate as I ask this but I’m pretty sure I fail.

“The key card belongs to a vampire named Annalee McLernon. She owns a house in the inner city and a place down at the pier near where we were searching. Looks like an outbuilding of some kind, so I would check there. My guess is that it’s storage for boats, but it is in the direction the van was heading. ”

“Why would this woman want her?”

“I have absolutely no idea,” Finn says. “They almost have to have found out what she is, but how? Did the council share it before we could stop them?”

“I’m going to kill them all,” I snarl.

“Or you could kindly talk to them? Maybe you shouldn’t arrive first? Maybe you should let us arrive first. Ender? Ender, I know you can hear me! Ender, the call is still connected. Do NOT kill anyone. Do you understand? You are in hot water as it is. DO NOT KILL?—”

I decide that’s enough of that nonsense and hang up on him. I mean… does he really think I’m going to let them go free after they took Rylee from me? Honestly, they deserve worse than whatever I’m going to do to them.

When I reach the pier, I head to the right since there are more outbuildings that way. It doesn’t take long before I can smell Rylee. I don’t see the van anywhere, but I can smell her and that’s all I need to know that she’s here.

With Finn’s annoying words circling around in the back of my head, I move over to the door of the outbuilding and quietly slide it open. I don’t need them aware that I’m here, so I’m silent enough they’d never imagine they weren’t alone.