“You aren’t as foggy as my employers think, secret knock ’em out darts that work on werewolves or not,” said the enemy soldier. “They don’t affect you the way they are supposed to, I saw that right off, even if Jones chooses not to. So you might have picked up that I had some men waiting at Kyle Brooks’s house with orders to capture your wife, your daughter, and Ben Shaw because our intelligence said that was where they would probably go. Early this morning, the police broke up the party—” He quit speaking for a moment and stared at Adam’s face. “And how do you know that?” He shook his head and spoke to himself. “Freaking supernatural bullshit. I told them we should stay out of it, but the money was too good, and we always like to keep the government happy with us. Keeps us employed.”

He sat there in front of Adam and thought some more. Patience, Adam counseled himself, there was more information here, and it would be easier if the man chose to tell him about it himself.

“So we ended up with one of ours dead and three in custody—and your wife is talking to the police about how someone kidnapped your pack and wants you to go kill the good Senator Campbell. I thought maybe one of my boys talked out of turn—which they wouldn’t. But maybe she knew about it the same way you know what went down this morning, huh?”

He waited a moment, but both he and Adam knew that Adam wasn’t going to respond.

“Now my outfit is pretty big news, and we make good money. With no civilians dead, it didn’t take our lawyers long to get the rest out—and once out, they’re all the way out. Too many eyes on them to make them useful for this operation. No worries, we have the resources to replace them with operatives with clean slates and redeploy the hot ones somewhere less worrisome—out of the country until certain people forget the ones who work for a paycheck and keep after the people who pay the money, you know what I mean?”

Adam didn’t say anything, just waited for the man to get to the point.

“I’ll tell you the truth,” he said slowly, as if he had all the time in the world. Maybe he did. “I asked to be in on this. You are demon spawn, you werewolves and the fae and the witches. All of you need to die, and someday I hope to be one of the people called upon to rid your scourge from the earth.”

And Adam smelled the fear on him for the first time, fear and eagerness for blood. Adam was sympathetic; he was afraid for his people, for Mercy—and hungry for blood, too.