Page 8 of The Wayward Sons & The Vampires of Fortune (The Wayward Sons #4)

W e made it to Phoenix in record time with just enough stops for gas and food along the way.

Gray didn’t even buy Twizzlers, which was something.

Why did that little fact bother me so much?

Usually, I was on his case about eating something other than Twizzlers, but right now, I would’ve given anything for him to eat a whole pack in one sitting.

Instead of staying on the outskirts like I wanted, Gray found us a cheap enough hotel in the middle of the city.

Crowds . He wanted to keep us surrounded by crowds.

It was awful. I understood why that was his plan of attack, but the sheer number of people bled through my defenses.

Everything had me painfully on edge as I paced our room while he grabbed food from the corner mart.

I was also so fucking tired. Tired of running. Tired of looking over my shoulder. Tired of making Gray live like this. Not that I said any of that out loud. I knew how that conversation would go—the same way it did any other time I brought it up.

When my phone vibrated on the nightstand, I practically launched myself across the room to grab it. Tessa’s name flashed across my screen, and I frowned. We hadn’t told her anything about running from Ohio.

“ Are you okay? ” she demanded without any other kind of greeting when I answered. “ Where are you? ”

“We’re—”

“ Tell me you’re not in Arizona right now, Ryder. Tell me you’re anywhere but Arizona. ”

“We are.” My frown deepened with her words.

“ Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! ” Tessa exclaimed, and I cringed at her volume and vulgarity. “ Ryder, you need to get the hell out of there right now. Now! ”

“What—”

“ The vampires are right behind you! ”

I felt the blood drain from my face.

Vampires.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

The Vampires of Fortune were a demonic nightmare.

Vampires as a whole were highly intelligent demons, impossible to kill, and difficult to detect—so difficult that they often stayed under the radar in the human world.

But the Vampires of Fortune capitalized on that.

They were violent mercenaries who used their vampiric traits to make money.

And my father was one of their clients.

Very specifically: my father hired them as a last resort to hunt me if shit ever hit the fan.

“Seattle?” I asked quietly.

“ Yeah ,” Tessa said. “ He’s been in a riot ever since he got wind of it. He put out a bounty on your head—it’s a damn good bounty. That sounds wrong, doesn’t it? Shit, I’m sorry— ”

“It’s fine,” I cut her off before she could start a rambling apology. We didn’t have time for that. “What else?”

“ But it wasn’t enough, ” she continued.

“ And he’s mad! He’s so mad about everything.

It’s like the past ten years haven’t calmed his anger, only pissed him off more.

So, he called them in. The vampires. He sent the vampires after you to end it all.

The last I heard, they tracked you to Arizona. They know you’re there, Ryder.. ”

I frantically searched the room as my mind ran rampant with a fractured plan to get the hell out of Phoenix. We weren’t unpacked. Jumping in our car and running would be easy enough. We’d leave no trace.

“How exactly do you know all this?” I demanded. As far as I knew, she and Mal hadn’t had any contact with our father in years.

“ It’s complicated. ”

“Uncomplicate it, Tess.”

“ Okay, so, ” she began, drawing the word out dramatically, “ it turns out the guy that Dad hired to take over the house also thinks that Dad’s a dick.

He’s definitely not a fan of the anti-you things going on.

Grief is grief and all that, but this shit is just crazy—his words not mine.

Anyway, well now, he and Mal are sleeping together, he comes around for regular Sunday dinners, and Sawyer is great at keeping us up-to-date on Dad’s crazy. ”

I didn’t say a word because what the fuck? I needed a long minute to process even a fraction of that.

“There’s so much to unpack in all that,” I muttered.

“ Yeah, I get that, but you don’t have time for that! ” she exclaimed. “ You need to get out of there. You need a plan. ”

“Gray and I can handle it,” I assured her with absolutely no confidence. I needed to get Gray from the store, and we’d go. We’d run. It’d be fine. We’d be fine.

God, even in my head, I didn’t sound convincing.

“ You can’t let Gray get involved in this, Ryder, ” Tessa said.

“ This isn’t you and Gray against the world this time.

These vampires… they have a code. They won’t touch humans, but if Gray gets in the middle of it…

they’ll kill him, Ryder. They won’t kill you—they have to bring you back.

But if they get their hands on Gray, they’ll kill him. They won’t hesitate. ”

Those words sucked the wind right out of my lungs. I sank down on the bed as my brain stalled on them. They’d kill Gray, and it’d be my fault.

“ There are too many of them… seven? I think? I don’t know, ” she rambled on. “ Either way, you can’t be stupid. You can’t fight them. ”

“I know,” I whispered. We couldn’t fight them, and I sure as hell wasn’t about to let them catch Gray.

But what did I do? How did I keep him safe?