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any combination heading his way.
    That’s what came from accepting a kill contract with the government, limited as it was. Especially given his targets were vampires.
    In exchange, he had plenty of downtime between jobs and some much-needed privacy. Coming up here to develop and test new gear had been a sweet deal. Nick had been given the run of the mountain, which was all government property and still a source of some rare mineral Uncle Sam didn’t want to privatize. The feds had been nice enough to slap some fresh concrete over the crumbling bunker at the summit, an abandoned World War II lookout for enemy planes. The slot windows didn’t let in much light, but no one could use them to get in. He liked it fine. Per his request, some other improvements had been made.
    Home sweet home. Fairly cozy for a fortress. Nick didn’t much care where he lived as long as he had something challenging to occupy his time. Right now, he was developing specialized equipment for the FBI, supervising the training of search dogs by soldier Kevin Day, and most important, dealing with the things those dogs were being trained to find.
    The list of turned vampires he was supposed to kill wouldn’t take him that long to checkmark, especially because someone else was helping him track them.
    Vampires. Not the kind in movies. Real ones. What a learning experience.
    After he’d left the army, Nick’s former commanding officer had set up a meeting between him and the FBI. Little did he know then that his record number of longdistance kills was only one of the reasons. Sworn to secrecy, he’d been briefed about vampires—both the born and the turned variety. Hardly anyone knew about them—anyone human, at least. But that could change, and soon.
    At first, Nick hadn’t wanted to believe it. But the thorough documentation he’d been repeatedly drilled on—and his required attendance at an autopsy of the ghastly remains of vampire victims, drained of every drop of blood—had been enough to convince him. The secret operation was critically important.
    There were other ex-ops on similar missions throughout the United States. He didn’t know any of them. He doubted that the name on his orders was any more real than the signature. If he went down, the FBI would protect itself, which probably meant denying any knowledge of the half-assed vampire-turning operation it had lost control of some time ago.
    But the story hadn’t ended there. Far from it. It had taken Nick months to learn the real story. That the bastards in Washington had worked with what were essentially vampire criminals to turn humans. And not just any humans, but military vets who’d been incapacitated, either physically or mentally, by war, but who still wanted to serve their country. Military vets like his brother, Gary, who in the end had begged Nick to kill him.
    And Nick had done it. Now the FBI’s Turning Program had been shut down, but the FBI still had three vampire enemies to worry about: 1) the born vampires who said they wanted to live in peace and remain hidden but refused to give up their secrets; 2) Rogue vampires, plenty of whom had once worked for the Bureau but were now becoming bolder in their criminal activity against humans; and 3) the turned vampires that the FBI had itself created and were now the victims of some kind of neuron-rage and had to be put down like sick, useless animals. This last classification of vampires had become so violent and mentally imbalanced—in official lingo, a clear and present danger to innocent citizens—that they were named on The List.
    It was a document that didn’t officially exist, one that had been drafted when some freak club called Salvation’s Crossing had been busted up out in California. Reliable intel, which had been shared with him, had it that the vampires would swiftly move east, to be closer to Europe, the part of it where he’d been stationed, anyway. Some of the major players apparently liked to commute from