I placed a hand on my brother's shoulder to calm him. "We all agreed. If Antoine goes in there and dies, it's not only him, it's Piper and Darren. We don't need three dead bodies today." I smirked at him as I saw the other hunters loitering around the front door. "At least, not any that aren't hunters."
Before anyone could stop me, I jumped over the fence, darting in the direction Piper went in.
"Drake!" I heard my brother's voice quietly yelling for me from the other side of the gate. "Get back here."
I grinned and turned back, urging them to follow with two fingers.
My brother cursed, but he jumped the fence next. Then Marcus. Then Wynn. Only Rayne waited on the other side, arguing.
"Antoine is not going to like this. We're supposed to keep our distance until we're sure there's a problem."
I rolled my eyes and whispered back, "Don't be such a suck-up. We can't keep an eye on Piper if we can't see her. Now, are you going to get your ass over here or let us do all the saving?"
Rayne muttered, "Fuck," before he, too, jumped the fence.
I edged closer to the front of the house where two lone hunters stood smoking. My plan was to grab them and force them to tell us where Piper went. However, before I could initiate my plan, Marcus grabbed me, pulling me back into the shadows.
"What the hell?" I growled at him, jerking my arm from his grasp.
"Wait," Marcus ordered, and then a second later six more hunters exited the house and joined the others for a smoke.
My shoulders sagged. Marcus had just saved me from getting my ass kicked and us found out in the process.
"Do not make contact if unnecessary," Marcus reminded me, as he turned toward the back of the house. It wasn't the quickest way to where Piper had gone, but it would keep us from running into any other vampire hunters.
Quickly and quietly, we made our way around the house, keeping low so as not to be seen through the windows or by the surveillance cameras on the corners. When we got to the back of the house, there was a single hunter standing there talking on his phone.
"Yeah, Mom. I'm fine. Just getting settled in." There was a pause as he listened to his mom berate him about being nice to the other kids.
I mouthed the word, “Kid” to my brother, who shrugged his shoulders.
"Mom," the hunter drawled in an annoyed tone. "This isn't high school. I'm training to be a vampire hunter. Not make friends."
Marcus patted me on the shoulder and pointed toward the guy before doing some kind of weird hand gesture. Before I could figure out what exactly he planned to do, Marcus jumped the patio railing and hit the hunter—who, now that I really looked at him, couldn't have been more than sixteen—on the side of the neck, knocking him out cold. Catching the phone before it dropped to the patio, Marcus tossed it to Allister.
Without being told, Allister spoke into the receiver, his power causing the hair on my arms to rise. "Everything is fine. Your son had to go. He'll call you tomorrow." Without waiting to see if she was truly enthralled, Allister hung up and sat the phone next to the knocked-out kid.
With a scowl, Allister bumped Marcus on the shoulder with his own. "A little warning next time would be nice."
Marcus didn't seem fazed. "I did."
I shook my head and follow them with the others. "Whatever this is," I repeated the hand gesture, "did not include what you just did. I don't even know what that was."
Lifting a shoulder, Marcus continued without apologizing. Though, lifting his shoulder was about as much of an apology as you were going to get from him.
Moving around the other side of the house, we made our way toward a large area in the back. It was the only place that Piper could have gone unless she left the property.
Approaching the building, I noticed it was some auditorium of sorts. Sitting outside beneath the stars, its open top did nothing to shelter those inside against the elements. If we had been there for any other reason, I would have enjoyed exploring it. Perhaps seeing a show of some kind there, but I had a feeling the shows they had weren't the kind vampires would enjoy.
"Come on." Rayne smacked my arm with a knowing look. "I can hear Piper's thoughts coming from inside."
We moved in slowly, keeping to the shadows so as not to be seen. Inside the auditorium, it was empty. Mostly. Piper stood below the stage with two other hunters, and a fourth figure stood in the middle of the stage. The authority coming from the man and the way he was dressed suggested that he was someone of importance.
"The head of the vampire hunters," Rayne provided for us. We were too far away to hear what they were saying, but apparently not too far for Rayne to listen in to their minds.
"What could he want with Piper?" Wynn mused from his hiding place.
Rayne sucked in a tight breath. "He knows who she is."