Chapter 5 · The Hunter's Name

"You knew him."

I can't look away from the photograph. 1892. Victor and Adrian, shoulder to shoulder. Silver blades in their hands. Both smiling like they just came back from hunting something together.

Adrian's standing so close I can feel the cold coming off him. He hasn't said a word since I opened the case. Just staring at that photo like it might disappear if he blinks.

"You stood there and listened to me talk about my family," I say, "and you knew."

He doesn't deny it. Doesn't even try.

I turn back to the wall. My grandmother's picture is right next to Victor's file. She's young in it—maybe twenty. Dark hair pulled back. Hunter's mark on her wrist, same as mine. My father wrote one word under her name: *Betrayed*.

"Lynn—"

"Don't." I cut him off. "Just don't."

I move to the next section. My grandfather. Killed in Chicago, 1979. Throat ripped out in an alley behind a blood bar. The police report's pinned right under the photo. *Animal attack*, it says. My father circled those words in red ink so many times the paper tore through.

Every file ends the same way. Same MO. Same coverup. And at the bottom of each page, my father wrote the same name over and over.

*Victor Ash. Victor Ash. Victor Ash.*

Like he was trying to burn it into the paper.

"He ordered the hits." Adrian's voice is quiet. Too quiet. "All of them."

I spin around. "You knew that too?"

He meets my eyes. For the first time since the bond snapped into place, I can't read him at all. The connection's still there—I can feel it pulling under my ribs—but he's shut down every other part. Locked me out.

"I suspected," he says. "I couldn't prove it."

"Suspected." I laugh, and it comes out ugly. "My father spent fifteen years trying to prove it. Three generations of my family died trying to prove it. And you *suspected*?"

"Victor's a Council elder. You don't accuse an elder without evidence that'll stand up in front of the entire Blood Court. If you're wrong, you're dead. If you're right and your evidence isn't airtight—"

"You're still dead. Yeah. I get it."

He's not wrong. I know how the Council works—my father taught me that much. But it doesn't make the anger go away.

I turn back to the wall. There's one more section. Tucked in the corner, half-hidden behind a stack of old journals. I pull the journals down.

And freeze.

It's my father. Recent photo—maybe two years old. He's standing outside the bar where I work now, coffee cup in hand. Someone took this from across the street. Surveillance shot.

Under the photo, one line in my father's handwriting: *They know. Moving the records. If I don't make it, burn everything except the list.*

The list.

I look up. There's a metal case mounted on the wall above the photo. Small. Reinforced. No visible lock, just a handprint scanner that looks like my father built it himself.

I press my palm against it.

The case clicks open.

Inside, there's one piece of paper. That's it. No files, no photos, no evidence. Just a single page, folded once.

I unfold it.

It's a kill list. Twelve names written in my father's tight, precise script. Each one has a date next to it. The first date is 1847. The last one is three weeks ago.

Eleven names are crossed out.

The twelfth name sits at the bottom of the page, untouched.

*Victor Ash. Real name: Marcus Ashford. Council Founder. Sire: Unknown. Turned: 1847. Kill order: Active.*

And under that, in newer ink—my father's last entry, I think—he wrote: *He's not hunting us because we're hunters. He's hunting us because we know what he did in 1847. Proof is in the bloodline. Check the seal.*

My hand goes to my wrist automatically. The hunter's mark. Every firstborn in my family gets it. We're told it's tradition, passed down through generations. A symbol.

But my father didn't believe in symbols.

"What seal?"

I don't realize I said it out loud until Adrian steps closer. He's looking at my wrist now. His expression shifts—just for a second, I see something that might be recognition.

"Let me see it," he says.

I pull my sleeve up. The mark's always been there, as long as I can remember. Black ink, circular pattern, hunter's blade crossed with a crescent moon. My father told me my grandmother gave it to me when I was born. Some kind of blessing.

Adrian reaches out, then stops. His hand hovers an inch from my skin.

"Can I?"

I nod.

His fingers brush over the mark. The second he makes contact, the bond flares hot in my chest. I feel his surprise spike through the connection before he shuts it down again.

"It's not a tattoo," he says. His thumb traces the edge of the mark, slow. Careful. "It's a seal. Old magic. Pre-Council."

"A seal for what?"

He doesn't answer right away. His hand's still on my wrist. I can feel his pulse through the bond. Faster than it should be.

"Bloodline magic," he says finally. "Your family didn't just hunt vampires. You come from a line that could manipulate vampire blood. Control it. The Council wiped out most of the bloodline families three hundred years ago. I thought they got all of them."

I pull my hand back. "My father never said anything about that."

"Because the seal locks it away. If Victor knows you have an unsealed bloodline, he'll kill you himself. Tonight."

The room goes cold.

"Why?"

Adrian looks at me, and for the first time I see something like fear in his eyes. Not for himself.

For me.

"Because bloodline magic is the only thing that can break a sire bond. And if Victor's hunting your family, it's because one of you figured out who his sire is."

I look down at the list in my hand. At my father's last words. *Proof is in the bloodline.*

And then I see it.

The ink on the page is moving.

Not all of it. Just the empty space at the bottom, below Victor's name. New words crawling across the paper like they're being written by an invisible hand. My father's handwriting. Impossible, but I'd know it anywhere.

Adrian sees it too. He goes completely still.

The words form slowly, one letter at a time:

*Don't trust the vampire beside you.*

I look up at Adrian.

He's staring at the page. His face has gone blank again, but through the bond I feel it—the split-second of panic before he slams every door shut.

"Lynn—"

The lights go out.

All of them. The house, the street outside, everything. Pure dark, the kind you only get when every power line for blocks goes dead at once.

I hear Adrian move. Fast. He's between me and the door before I can blink.

"Stay behind me," he says. "Don't make a sound."

I grip the paper tighter. My father's last message still glowing faintly in the dark.

*Don't trust the vampire beside you.*

And from somewhere upstairs, I hear footsteps.

Slow.

Deliberate.

Coming down.