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The smell of death--overripe and cruel and undeniable--spilled out froly end here

Or soround

CHAPTER TWO

BAD BITE

The h, tanned skin, brown eyes, and deep lines around his mouth His body hipcord lean beneath jeans and a T-shirt, and thatchy brown hair stood in ered in the air above hi to settle And it carried with it the faint sense of animal

He was deadand a shifter

His face was horribly swollen and bloody, his hands ripped at the knuckles But that wasn’t the worst of it The left neck and shoulder of his T-shirt was saturated with blood that had drained froround around him

He hadn’t just been killed He’d been uilt The North American Central Pack was our ally and many of its members were our friends But they wouldn’t take kindly to the death of their own by one of ours

A second -sleeved shirt burst out of the alley, raround In that fraction of a second while he stu fa I could place The bill of his cap shaded his face, showed only the thick, dark beard above pale skin And the scent of the blood he’d stolen still clung to him

The ht hi to his feet again and taking off

I didn’t stop to think I tore after hiht and fast

The va into shadow He enty feet in front of ed into the street and the glow of overhead lights He darted between buildings with rooftop views of Wrigley, and then onto Sheffield on the stadiu in the bars around us, Ethan and I kept pace with each other, our gazes on the perpetrator, who still trailed the ht

I doubted any Housed vampire would take out a shifter on the street, at least not one froue, a vampire who lived outside the House system Or maybe a vampire from another city on some kind of mission to take out a shifter Either way, there’d be hell to pay with the Pack

We dodged through a group of girls in pink Cubs T-shirts, one of the a veil Probably a bachelorette party, and fro for a while

The valanced back to check his lead, nearly ran into a group of guys and girls heading across the street from bar to stadium

"What the hell?" yelled one of the th cornrows, neatly sidestepping to avoid getting mowed down by our runner

"Sorry!" I offered as we slid through the gap he’d created