(Steel’s POV)
The ancients had slipped the leash.
Two of the scouting teams tracked them through Oldtown, but the trail died in the industrial strip, blood in the gutters, no bodies, just a stink that said vampire.
I stood on the edge of the highway, the morning sun bleeding through low cloud. The wind carried the taste of metal and fuel.
“They’re still out there,” Asher said beside me.
“I know.” I looked out over the skyline. “But so are we.”
I’d already sent word across the packs: any sighting, any whisper, I wanted them brought in alive. The ancients might be feral, but they were still useful. Information lived in old blood.
By midday, I met Ojore and Gambol outside Oldtown. The land there stretched flat and wide, broken by half-dead trees and the carcass of an old freeway.
Ojor
