Hunted

by Samantha Stone

  Éloy watched Sophia as he murmured, “Christabel.”

  “Who?” Heath asked sharply.

  “Her name is Christabel,” Éloy answered, his eyes still focused on Sophia. “I didn’t know she’d mated with a wolf—that’s damn strange, especially for someone like her.”

  Warning bells went off in Heath’s head. “Then how did you know who we were referring to?”

  Éloy nodded to Sophia. “Her wrist may be cleverly tattooed, and you may have taken some of her blood to distract me, but most of us will still know the mark is there and who it’s meant for.” It was then that Heath noticed the sweat beading the other man’s forehead. “She hates you, Sophia. Yes, I know your name, I know your power and I almost every instinct I have is telling me to pull your heart out of your chest and eat it.”

  By the end of his tirade he was shouting, spit flying from his mouth.

  Sophia didn’t cower. She bared her teeth at Éloy, her expression reading, “Let’s see you try, bitch.”

  Éloy seemed to calm himself a fraction; although, he was still straining, his muscles twitching, fists curling and stretching, when he next spoke. “I won’t kill you yet,” he promised, beating his fist to his chest. “I want to so damn badly, but I won’t because of who condemned you.”

  A shelf stocked with weapons rose from the dirt. It held guns, but with wider, longer barrels than most rifles. Éloy rose and picked one up along with a leather satchel before the shelf disappeared back into the ground.

  “You have twenty bullets for this gun.” He placed the pouch and the gun behind him, out of Heath and Sophia’s reach. His eyes glowed silver as he spoke. “If you touch any of the New Orleans Fey, any one of us who is associated with le marché noir, we will end your pack. I’ll tell our Fey not to touch Sophia, so only intruders will attack you.

  “They will find you. Christabel is infamous among us, known for her brutality, her friends, and her nomadic lifestyle. We don’t understand her, but many of us want her dead. She won’t be missed, and I can promise you her death will not cause problems for your people. This gun will either kill her or incapacitate her to the extent where you can easily kill her.” He held up the rifle and threw it and the pouch to Heath.

  Heath pocketed the bullets and pulled the gun’s strap over his shoulder so the weapon rested at his back.

  “You have enough bullets to take on whoever comes after you as well as Christabel,” Éloy said, his voice rising in panicked urgency. “Now leave!”

  “Wait,” Heath exclaimed, a glance at his eye revealing stark horror above them. “Why didn’t the mark affect Zarenyen?”

  Éloy spoke through gritted teeth. “I’m a lot younger than him, much more susceptible to the mark of someone older and stronger, like Christabel.”

  “Maintenant,” he roared, lunging for Sophia. Now.

  Heath quickly stepped in front of her, but Éloy didn’t make it to them before strong hands reached down and dragged them up and into the chilled water above. A naked man was pulling them, kicking with hooved feet. His hair was at least a yard long, drifting toward both him and Sophia on its own accord, tickling their throats threateningly as if it wanted to wrap around their necks.

  Sophia was fighting him, but the kelpie ignored her, dragging them through the water until they were close to the surface. Then he stopped, smiling evilly before sinking back into the depths of the river.

  Heath kept swimming, Sophia keeping pace beside him. Finally they reached the surface, dragging in much-needed air. “This way,” Heath sputtered, spitting water from his mouth. He swam toward the city until they reached land. She didn’t need help clawing her way over the levy and onto the grass in front of them, but Heath reached back and gave her a final pull because he could sense her exhaustion.

  His own muscles were screaming as they sprawled out in the grass, but he kept his hold on the gun. They were somewhere uptown, near State Street.

  Sophia was shivering next to him, her hair and clothes plastered to her, dripping river water. “Do you mind if I—”

  “No.” Heath cut her off, anticipating her question. She’d been about to ask if he minded if she used her fire powers, her attempt to be sensitive to Heath’s loss of his own gift. Raphael did the same thing, and although Heath knew the others appreciated the consideration, he thought they were being pansies about their powers.

  “Never apologize for wanting to use something that’s a part of you,” Heath growled, thinking of his mother, the shattered look on her face when she’d told him how Ranulf felt about her powers. “It doesn’t matter that I’ve been weakened—never weaken yourself because of me. It’s an insult.”

  Sophia looked like she was going to bite his head off but she stopped herself, tilting her head to the side and taking the Zippo from her drenched jacket pocket. “Sebastian never asked me not to play with fire around him,” she murmured, cursing darkly when the waterlogged Zippo failed to light. Her eyes met his, almost turning exact color of the water they’d dragged themselves from. “But I saw how broken he looked, to see me doing things he’d relied on just weeks before. I don’t want to remind him of the part of him he’s lost.”

  She kept fiddling with the lighter, pulling her bottom lip in between her teeth while she worked.

  Heath couldn’t stop watching her. He could feel her power, as if it were something surrounding her that he could reach out and touch. “We never get used to the loss,” he said honestly. He wanted Sophia, but he wouldn’t lie to her; there was no purpose to. “We never forget what we could do, had we not made that one mistake.”

  Sophia looked up sharply. At the same time the Zippo decided to roar to life, forming a much larger flame than it should have. It grew to be almost the size of a football. She set the lighter down in the grass between them, using the fire to balance the device, the flame steady before them.

  “My phone’s toast.” She warmed her hands. “We’re going to have to walk back, aren’t we?” She hadn’t bothered to take her phone out of her purse.

  Heath didn’t look at his, either—he knew with equal certainty it hadn’t survived its trip through the river. The irony was, Sebastian had bought them all waterproof cases a few months back, but Heath had simply set it down somewhere and forgotten about it.

  He liked the case he used, which was covered in scowling South Park characters.

  “No, we’re not,” he said, raising his hands too. Temperatures didn’t affect werewolves quite as much as humans, but he was definitely cold. The steep humidity didn’t help, injecting the chill straight to the marrow of his bones. The fact that Sophia hadn’t so much as complained spoke volumes about how tough she was. The fire seemed to help, but it wasn’t what they needed: warm, dry clothes.

  “Éloy has already called Sebastian by now. I’m sure he or someone else is coming to get us.” He hoped they would have clothes with them, at least for Sophia. Her lips were beginning to turn blue.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Fey don’t hand out gifts. There was a price to pay for the gun and ammunition, as well as the information and safe travel.”

  Sophia slapped the ground with her hand. “Bloody extortionists!” she exclaimed angrily. She pointed a shaking finger at him. “You didn’t tell me there would be such a cost.”

  Heath looked at her dryly. She wasn’t thinking clearly. “You don’t think Sebastian would give them the keys to Full Moon if it meant they would help protect you?”

  “I’d never ask him to!” She kicked at a few clumps of grass, sending dirt flying. “He’s burdened enough because of me,” she whispered. “He’s done more than enough.”

  Her distress was sandpaper over Heath’s skin. He wanted to soothe her, but he didn’t know how to begin. So he spoke, telling her about how the Fey helped to start Full Moon, and how Sebastian impressed them with his business skills—an extremely rare feat.

  His words made her smile, obviously glad her brother was a
ble to do something that made him happy. Heath had to admit that Sebastian had turned his prison sentence into an opportunity. He wondered if the encouragement of a sibling helped, the strong ties between him and his twin lessening the pain of being separated from his home, from the loss of his gift, so akin to losing a limb.

  “I’m sure the price the Fey’ll name will involve beer.” They liked Full Moon, probably because they’d had such a hand in its creation.

  Sophia snorted. “Those faeries are magic liquor drinkers only,” she said assuredly, referencing drinks some creatures preferred, which had much more potent, stranger effects than human alcohol. The wine Heath liked was spelled to prevent hangovers, likely because it was so strong the resulting hangover would be deadly.

  Heath smiled, satisfied he’d distracted Sophia from both her aguish and the cold. “Let’s make a bet,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “If the Fey ask for beer, you have to do something for me, anything that I ask. Likewise, you get to ask me for anything if they demand something else from Sebastian.”

  Sophia thought for a second, the flame between them expanding at a faster rate than normal. “You aren’t playing me, are you?” she asked, a tail from the now-basketball sized fire whipping out toward him.

  He was.

  “Are you going to take the bet or not?” He spoke nonchalantly, as if he didn’t care either way. A calculated move—Heath wanted to be able to ask something of her. Even if it was as small as demanding her to go for a jog with him, he liked having some power where she was concerned.

  He suspected that if she wanted to, she could have him wrapped around her smallest finger. It absolutely terrified him—the thought drove Heath’s eye to watch Sophia in sheer panic.

  “You have a bet.” She held out her hand out. He shook it; her hand felt like ice.

  “Why isn’t the fire warming you?” he demanded, jerking her other hand from her lap and taking both into his own. He briskly scrubbed his hands over hers, trying to use friction for a bit of warmth.

  “The heat doesn’t affect me like the cold.” She shrugged. “It’s inside me. That’s why I steam when I’m angry.”

  So she’d struggled to make the fire for his benefit. Heath couldn’t think of a time someone had done something like that for him, not since he’d left his pack, his mother and brother. He didn’t thank her because her action had been unnecessary. He wished she would’ve focused on her own warmth instead.

  He blew onto her hands and rubbed them some more, during which she scooted around the fire, closer to him, pressing her thigh against his. The woman was so small, but she affected him more than the largest monsters he’d ever come across. He felt an ache in his chest, and he had no way to explain how it had gotten there, but he knew Sophia was at its center.

  He let go of her hands when he heard a car stopping on the nearby road.

  Chapter 7

  “WHAT’S cooler than being cool? Ice-cold.”

  Leila Newman had her hip propped up against the black SUV Raphael and Mary had given her for her birthday last month, her phone raised to play the Outkast song. She was dancing, a welcoming smile on her face.

  She had no clue her new vehicle was a tank, complete with bulletproof windows and protective magic. The latter had been Heath’s idea—the entire pack was especially protective of Mary’s younger sister.

  I’ve got clothes for you, she signed with a sympathetic grimace. You must be freezing. Leila was deaf, the result of a bad bout of meningitis from when she was an early teenager. She could hear because of her two cochlear implants, but she didn’t speak. Mary said the silence began right after their parents were murdered, a night Leila witnessed, but never spoke nor signed about to anyone.

  At sight of the taller banshee, Sophia practically sprinted in her direction. “Leila, first you let me steal your room and your clothes, and now you rescue us. My debts are adding up,” Sophia exclaimed, squeezing the younger woman’s shoulder and diving into the backseat before shutting the doors behind her. At that moment, Heath bitterly regretted allowing the decision to tint the windows to pass. Sophia was only a few feet away, peeling off wet clothes, and he couldn’t see a damn thing.

  “Thanks, Gumby,” he said, using the nickname Alexandre started after he’d seen her dance for the first time. According to him, she could bend as if she was made of clay.

  “And if you imagine her in anything less than a bodysuit, I’ll pluck your eyes out and feed them to the gators,” Alex had said, only half-kidding.

  Sophia opened the car doors and climbed out wearing a giant LSU hoodie and a similar pair of leggings to the ones she’d just taken off. “She likes me more than you,” Sophia said tauntingly. She had the smile of someone who felt utterly refreshed. “She lent me leggings with fleece built-in. These are like pajamas!” She pulled a surprised Leila into a grateful hug.

  Heath rolled his eyes, but inwardly he was grinning. There was something…nice about seeing Sophia comfortable. He felt more thankful toward Leila for helping her than for coming to his aid. “Let’s go.” He took the backseat. His clothes were folded on the seat, a pair of shoes in the floorboard. “Fair warning—I’m going to change back here.”

  Noted, Leila signed.

  “I might take a peek,” Sophia said with a smirk.

  Heath only looked at her, letting her see the heat her remark caused. She gestured at him like a tiger clawing at its prey, her smile only growing. Leila shook her head, her long ponytail swinging, before she hopped behind the wheel.

  In the back of the car, he stripped off his clothes, angling himself so Leila couldn’t accidentally see something she didn’t want to. He didn’t want to embarrass her, and would prefer pissing off Alexandre for a better reason. He didn’t bother hiding from Sophia.

  He could feel her gaze when she glanced back at him, but he didn’t look up at her, only pulled on a shirt he’d never seen before as his lips curled. It had Manbearpig on the front, a South Park monster.

  “Did you buy me this shirt?” he asked Leila quizzically. She and her sister were constantly doting on all of his packmates, much to Raphael’s amusement.

  He tucked the gun into the waistband of his jeans as he spoke. It shrunk to the size of a small handgun, allowing him to lean back against the seat without much discomfort.

  Actually, Mary picked it up for you earlier this week. She just hadn’t given it to you yet.

  Heath grunted. He loved the shirt; he made a mental note to thank Mary later.

  Sophia was openly smiling at him now. With a quiet laugh she turned and spoke to Leila for the rest of the drive, the other woman only responding at red lights in the heavy afternoon traffic.

  Heath had asked Leila to drop him off where he’d left his bike when Sophia said she’d ride back to the firehouse with him. “What are you going to do with your extra helmet, anyway?” she asked.

  Leila only nodded. When they got out, leaving their sodden clothes behind with the promise to get them later, she signed, See you at dinner—and I’ll have that thing done, Sophia. With that cryptic comment she pulled away, waving cheerfully, her car headed toward Tulane’s campus.

  Heath picked up his Ducati from where he’d leaned it against the crumbling building. It smelled wrong, especially given it should have been untouched for the last few hours. Someone had messed with it, likely within the past hour.

  “Weres,” Sophia said, confused. Heath agreed. “Do you think it was someone from the pack?” she asked.

  Heath shook his head. He’d know if it had been one of his friends—the individual who’d manhandled his bike was unfamiliar to him. Whoever it was had inspected it carefully, getting his scent all over it.

  If he saw the man, he’d be able to recognize him in a heartbeat. It was a male werewolf—on those points, he had no doubt.

  He shrugged off the questions forming in his mind. Maybe Theo had brought some of his packmates to the city and they’d been looking for him a
nd Sophia. He had no reason to assume there was any ill will involved, but until he knew for sure he’d keep up his vigilance.

  Especially when Sophia was with him.

  They motored back to the firehouse, Heath keeping his eyes peeled for anything strange until he noticed a car taking the same turns he chose. He purposely circled around a block, a pointless maneuver, to see if they would follow. They did. Heath kept driving normally, as if he’d had a simple lapse.

  “They’re following us,” Sophia murmured, her eyes on his rearview mirrors. There was no fear in her voice, but there was fury. He could sense her exhaustion now even more than he had by the river, and he knew it angered her that she couldn’t find a moment’s peace.

  Heath nodded, his rage matching hers. She needed a break, and he was perfectly willing to kill any morons who got in her way. What he didn’t understand was why weres were after her—he’d expected faeries, not their own kind.

  Heath swerved into an alley at the last moment, the car behind them screeching to a stop.

  He had a clear path through to the next road, where he quickly turned, catching the wheel on a break in the asphalt. By some miracle the bike remained upright, but their followers were only a few blocks behind, and gaining speed.

  Soon he found another turn that would lead straight into fenced-in graveyard, its entrance more than wide enough for a motorcycle, but not a car. He tried to turn his bike in the correct direction but it wouldn’t move, propelling itself forward on its own volition. They accelerated despite Heath’s efforts to break, straight into traffic.

  Heath had no control over his own Ducati.

  “Damn witch!” he exclaimed, recalling the flower she’d put on the side of his bike. She’d spelled it, and now he couldn’t get it to do a single thing he wanted. He slammed his hands against the handlebars, which held themselves steady.

  “Briony?” Sophia asked.