Hunted

by Samantha Stone

  Until I was fourteen, when I caught meningitis.

  Birgit nodded. “That may help you. So may those…things.” She lifted her hands to her head, pointing to where Leila’s transmitters were. “Honestly, deaf banshees are so rare that we’re just going to have to use a trial and error method.”

  What helped your sister?

  “She would travel away from our village in Ireland, until she was far from others. Then she would scream and scream until there was no energy left in her.” Birgit’s brown eyes turned hard. “She did that every week until her powers began to turn on her, hurting her because there was no one else. She let it happen, and then one day we found her dead.”

  I thought we were extremely hard to kill.

  “We are,” Birgit said earnestly, folding her hands. “But we’re also so powerful, we can absolutely kill one another. The same goes for suicide.”

  Leila had never come close to hurting herself. Yes, she sometimes felt the need to scream, to release the energy she kept inside her, but there was no indication her expression would turn on her, tearing her apart as Eartha’s voice had.

  She would have the life she’d worked so hard for, the life Mary had sacrificed so much for—she only had to find a way to release the creature within her without hurting others or herself.

  What can I do?

  Birgit lifted her chin. “Speak.”

  Leila almost said no, but changed her mind. She needed this woman’s help; she might be the only banshee she’d ever meet who understood what it was like to have their powers alongside deafness.

  “Alexandre,” she said in a voice that sounded strange, warped from being unused, but also unnatural.

  The table cracked down the middle, but Birgit appeared unharmed.

  Did that hurt you? Leila had to be sure.

  Birgit nodded slowly, but she was also smiling slightly. Gripping the delicate necklace she wore, she said, “But that should have hurt me much worse. Maybe those implants are good for something after all. You have a hard road ahead, but I think you can beat this.”

  Leila beamed.

  I’m not going to hurt anyone. She was positively lightheaded in her excitement. My pack is safe.

  Chapter 14

  CHRISTABEL arrived in New Orleans feeling refreshed, having cleansed and moisturized her face twice during the flight south. Her skin wasn’t completely unharmed by the drying high-altitude air, but she looked good.

  She, Seraphina, and Lilith were freshening up in their suite on the top floor of Le Pavillon, Christabel’s preferred hotel in the city, and one that happened to be only a few blocks from the Ritz she knew Kiril was currently staying in.

  From the text message Lilith just received, their trip wouldn’t last long. One of the faery’s contacts found out where Sophia was staying, but refused to give up the information until he was guaranteed a large sum of money.

  Christabel was almost desperate enough to have him name his price, avoiding haggling altogether so she could end this quirk in her relationship with Kiril in the next couple of hours. But she knew that if she began to work that way, it would alter her business reputation in a direction that would not behoove her—she never allowed others to gain the upper hand, even when they had information she would kill for.

  Her composure in check, she said, “Ask him what he wants, and offer him half that figure.”

  Lilith nodded, already typing into her phone, when Christabel’s phone rang. The contact read KIRIL’S STALKER, letting her know the tail she had on Kiril was calling to update her on her mate’s whereabouts.

  She shivered in excitement. Kiril had only called her once since the last time they spoke, and it had been a short, terse conversation. He would frown upon having a tail, she was sure, but it helped her feel closer to him. She smirked. And if he doesn’t realize he has someone tailing him, he deserves to be followed.

  Words to live by, those.

  “What’s my handsome man up to today?” she asked in way of greeting.

  “He’s the leader of some kind of group,” Mitchell, i.e. the “stalker,” responded dryly. “Did you know he leads a bunch of faeries around like some kind of werewolf pack where he’s Alpha?”

  The Fey don’t get led around. They were more solitary than the majority of other creatures, usually living relatively far apart from one another for their own safety. There was loyalty among the Fey like Christabel had with Lilith and Seraphina, but she would always look after herself first, as they would as well.

  When she’d first realized she was mated to Kiril, she secretly thought it might be nice to truly care about someone else, and for him to put her before himself. It was a notion so foreign to the Fey it seemed almost exotic and rebellious to love someone the way she did her mate.

  What she had with Kiril was unheard of.

  “You’re mistaken,” she told Mitchell. “You know us faeries don’t play that way. Wouldn’t you have noticed if he’d been gathering followers?”

  “That’s what’s strange.” Crackling paper sounded over the phone, as if Mitchell were sorting through his notes on Kiril. He really needs a tablet. “His phone use has increased to three times what it was when you first hired me. Now, from the way he speaks, I haven’t been able to gage what the conversations have been about, which makes me think he’s had this set up for a long time.”

  “Send me pictures and locations.” Christabel began to gather weapons, curses, and ancient relics, throwing them into her vintage Birkin bag. “Has he found Sophia yet?”

  She’d told Mitchell everything. It was a threat, not merely secrets told in confidence—now the man knew just what was on the line, and how important his job was. If he succeeded, he would be paid handsomely. If he failed, he wouldn’t live to see his homeland again.

  “No. The group hasn’t stayed in one place for long, but I’ve gotten the impression that they’re getting closer to their mark. Christabel, Kiril may have put this group together to kill the little were girl.”

  She dabbed on some Chanel No. 5 for luck. “Whatever he’s after, it’s not to kill Sophia.” He could do that himself. Would he torture her? No.

  Sure, Christabel had a list of creatures she’d tortured a mile long, and it technically included Sophia. But she’d had good reason to hurt her. The question was, what had Kiril focusing such an amount of energy and resources on the pint-sized were?

  Why didn’t he want Christabel that badly?

  She briskly relayed to Seraphina and Lilith what Mitchell told her, refusing to let her friends see her distress. Condemnation became more visible in Seraphina’s expression the longer she spoke, but Lilith didn’t seem surprised.

  She decided to watch Lilith closely.

  Apparently she didn’t know her own mate, so how could she be an accurate judge of her friends?

  I really don’t know him at all. She thought through the past six months, and realized with startling clarity that the glasses she viewed Kiril through were worse than rose-colored.

  Was she pinning her target on the wrong creature? Surely not.

  Luckily for her, everything would be revealed soon.

  They left the hotel armed to the teeth, Christabel’s rage increasing with each step she took. It’s all her fault, she repeated to herself, over and over.

  It’s all her fault I feel…lonely.

  * * * *

  Heath woke wrapped in the scent of cedar and honeysuckle. Sophia. Last night they’d consummated the tie between them, and now there was no going back. She belongs to me. She was his mate, and he hers—they’d have to ride the coming storm together.

  And there would be a storm.

  Whether it be from the coming changes in their powers or the faery determined to kill Sophia, Heath knew they weren’t safe. He had to figure out a way to protect them both, and to keep them whole until the faery was dead.

  He needed to confirm his suspicions, but there was a good chance Christabel’s
death would dissolve the mark she’d put on Sophia, making it safe for her to be in the presence of the Fey again.

  In a city like New Orleans, creatures were everywhere. If he wanted her to stay here with him, there couldn’t be an entire race of creatures gunning for his mate—he simply wouldn’t allow it.

  What he couldn’t control were the alterations in their powers. If they had been virtually any different combination of elements, they would have seen heightened abilities in their respective elemental powers, as well as small abilities regarding their mates’ element, abilities that would become more powerful when adrenaline was added to the mix.

  When she was scared, Mary could hone in on Raphael’s air abilities—she’d slammed the door to the firehouse shut one night using air when she’d been afraid to sleep in the studio alone. Since her parents were murdered in their beds in this very city, no one made fun of her for her moments of panic on those rare nights when Raphael was called away by the Elders.

  Well, they didn’t make fun of her too much. Alexandre had sneaked into Raphael’s old room, where she was sleeping, and pretended to be the sack man, an old myth everyone knew terrified her.

  Her scream tore through one of his eardrums.

  Raphael’s yell tore the other when he came back later that day, missing his mate and infuriated that she’d been scared in his absence.

  When he became royally pissed, her banshee powers infiltrated his voice. As Alpha, Raphael never had to worry about commanding their attention.

  Heath and Sophia didn’t have Mary and Raphael’s luck—most likely, they would be left with traces of their water and fire powers after the coming night’s full moon. There was no chance he would ever tap into her powers, and her his, simply because they were opposites. They extinguished each other.

  Heath shifted, Sophia’s small form molded to his. Her size was quickly overshadowed by her playful hiss and quick nip to his arm for daring interrupt her sleep.

  He couldn’t stop his growing smile. Intellectually, he understood the way their powers worked, but a small part of him just didn’t buy it. Last night, still throbbing from the pleasure her sweet body brought him, he’d felt the same connection she had, that immeasurable something that mated them.

  There was nothing weakening about it. It was subtle, barely there at all, but it didn’t feel like it was capable of sucking their powers away. He felt connected to her strength, her will, while she was joined to his protectiveness toward her, his loyalty to this pack. With no prior knowledge of what happened between mated fire and water elementals, he would assume they’d become even stronger.

  When things seem too good to be true, they are.

  Approaching footsteps had him sitting up, with Sophia murmuring disapprovingly beside him.

  “Hey, Aiyanna’s made breakfast!” Alexandre shouted from outside his locked door.

  “Why?” Heath asked suspiciously. The last time she’d cooked for them, it had been an apology for shooting Cael with a tranquilizer gun.

  They kept the guns around in case a human came to cause trouble in the house. On threat of death they weren’t allowed to kill humans as a rule, and the tranq guns had been a real help the time humans had attacked the firehouse with semiautomatic weapons.

  “She drank everyone except Sebastian under the table last night.” Alex groaned, and Heath knew he had to be holding his head. “If Cael doesn’t kill her this time, I will.”

  Heath barked out a laugh. It took a lot to make a werewolf hungover.

  Sophia, having sat up when Alex first began to speak, laughed so hard she bent over at the waist. “That’s perfect,” she gasped.

  Beyond the door, Alexandre growled.

  “Hold on, Alex.” Sophia commanded, crossing the room to open Heath’s drawer. She took out a pair of sweatpants as if she owned them, throwing them on underneath Heath’s oversized shirt. She tossed a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt over her shoulder to Heath, which he quickly pulled on.

  She was still rolling the waist of the much too-large pants when she opened the door.

  Alex was green. The hood of his sweatshirt was pulled over his hair, and he had an arm thrown up to support him against the doorframe.

  “You look terrible.” Sophia was obviously choking back laughter.

  Before Alex could growl at her again, Heath wrapped a proprietary arm around her waist. “Aim it at the woman who caused your pain.”

  Alex grimaced. “Leila’s going to be pissed.”

  “Or she’ll laugh her ass off,” Sophia supplied.

  They walked to the kitchen together, where Aiyanna manned the stove. Raphael and Mary were measuring out something into a mixing bowl, and Briony was pouring a green concoction from the blender into glasses.

  “Here, Alex.” She reached over to hand him a gelatinous smoothie, which smelled nothing of leafy greens or fruits.

  Alex’s eyes went wide; he looked ready to vomit.

  “It helps,” Mary said. Flour striped across her nose. “It took away my migraine pretty quickly.”

  “She drank more than I did,” Alex muttered, throwing back the smoothie in what sounded like three painful gulps. “The consistency is weird, but it tastes like dirt.” He smiled, and the circles under his eyes seemed to vanish. “Not bad.”

  From the table, his laptop in front of him, Sebastian scoffed. “It’s terrible, which is why I won’t sell it.”

  “It would help people,” Briony argued.

  “Can you make it taste better?”

  The witch shook her head solemnly.

  Soon the smells of grease and spiced bread permeated the air, and everyone was seated around the table, talking and laughing with one another. Cael took a smoothie from Briony without a word, situating himself next to a grinning Aiyanna. Mary and Raphael held hands, even though they were both speaking to different people.

  “Next time,” Sophia said, putting her coffee down, “it’s going to be me and you, shapeshifter.”

  Aiyanna dropped her cinnamon roll. “You think you can outdrink me?”

  Sophia exchanged a look with her brother. “Oh, I can. We’ve got some damn good genetics on our side.”

  “It’s on.”

  Cael groaned. “You’re speaking too loud, woman.”

  Laughing, Heath turned to Sophia. “Next time?” he asked hopefully.

  She covered his hand with hers. “We’re mated. It won’t be official until tonight, but I think it entails that we live in the same city.”

  Heath agreed. “I would consider Halifax—”

  She cut him off. “You want to live here, or you would’ve taken your mother’s offer. Besides, I can’t just leave Sebastian if they really are stuck.”

  Big Mama’s words came back to him. She said she’d help him and one other. He wondered who that would be. Would she choose, or would Raphael? Their pack was in uncharted territory—the decisions made would cause a ripple effect over the coming centuries.

  He’d never been so glad he wasn’t their Alpha.

  “Then we live here.” Heath pulled her to his lap and kissed her right at the table, uncaring of the howls and snickers around them.

  He wanted to leave New Orleans—after over two centuries, he needed to venture elsewhere—but it had become home to him. Any travel would be temporary, meant to satisfy the wanderlust he knew everyone in his pack had developed from being stuck in one city for so long.

  He couldn’t abandon them now, not with many of them stuck, even if they were freed—not with the impossible choices Raphael had to make. We aren’t a clan prohibitum anymore. Soon, we’ll be a true pack.

  Of that, Heath was certain, and so incredibly proud.

  Across the table, Sebastian was beaming. Heath assumed it was less due to his sister’s current position, one arm tightly wrapped around his waist, the other stretching out to steal a gooey cinnamon roll from Alexandre’s plate, and more to do with their decision to stay in the c
ity.

  “Can you two work together?” A line of concentration appeared down Raphael’s forehead. He frowned thoughtfully, his fingers at his chin.

  Heath nodded, and Sophia said, “Yes.” She turned, grinning, to raise an eyebrow at Heath, a reminder of where they started—with him refusing to acknowledge that she could be a strong soldier—and where they were now. He would always try to protect her, but he fully respected what she was capable of. She was a force in and of herself, and he would always be the first to acknowledge it.

  “Before you offer us some kind of position”—Heath tightened the arm he had around Sophia’s waist—“wait until we know how our powers will react to our mating.”

  Raphael inclined his head, and a hush fell around the table, each man undoubtedly thinking of powers lost.

  It was Cael who broke the silence.

  “Why do I still feel like my head’s been split in two?”

  A glance around the room made it clear that Briony’s concoction had solved everyone’s hangover…except Cael’s. He looked even worse than Alex had earlier, his normally slicked back hair uncharacteristically ruffled, the chain he always wore around his neck absent.

  “Oh, I didn’t give you my potion,” Briony said airily, her serene expression making her appear oblivious to Cael’s rising anger.

  “Then what did I drink?” Cael’s low snarl had no effect on the witch, but Heath noticed Sebastian edging slightly closer to her, his blue eyes watchful.

  “Dandelion for vitamins and iron, and passionflower for anxiety—I thought they would help during the full moon tonight,” she added with a bright smile. “Along with a few other herbs. It won’t help your hangover a bit, but it was good for you.”

  “Why did everyone else merit your potion?” Cael’s hands were clenched, as if he wanted to strangle Briony.

  “I don’t like you.”

  Cael’s mouth fell open, his eyes narrowed dangerously. Heath grinned, knowing damn well the man was used to women falling all over him.

  Aiyanna howled with laughter, leaning back in her seat.

  Everyone stared at Briony with either humor or shock. She flushed slightly, but her smile didn’t fade. Rising, she leaned over to Cael and whispered something inaudible in his ear that made him curse, and walked out in a mass of curls, flower prints, and Heath was almost certain, glitter.