The Hunt

by Heather Killough-Walden

  The other reason she went along with it was because it proposed a fruition to the unforgiving plan she’d been living for the last twenty years. It would get her closer to her goal – and an end to the wolf with the gray eyes.

  The stranger possessed powers unheard of for a werewolf, reinforcing her assumption that he was not a demon. Through the use of his strange magic and her own trained skills, the two of them infiltrated their ways past the boundaries of the vast estate of some incredibly rich man that she had never heard of. Once inside, she was faced with further surprises, all of them just as inconceivable as what she had already seen and heard and felt that night.

  The mansion at the center of the estate was on fire. She hadn’t caught the scent of fire before stepping foot onto the mansion’s tailored grounds, but smoke billowed from the giant three-story house and part of the building had clearly already caved in. Katherine and the stranger stopped inside the gates and watched the goings-on for a few seconds, gaining perspective.

  The estate was tended to by what Katherine could only assume were a throng of guards. The men were clearly not werewolves; Kat had learned how to tell a werewolf from those around him long ago and there was no failing her on that subject. But the men were also clearly not human. They were different from the stranger who had brought her this far in that they were young, uniformly handsome, and possessed builds that were tall and strong, just like werewolves. But these men were wrapped in a darkness Kat had never before encountered.

  Every once in a while, Katherine came across a human she just didn’t like. The feeling was instantaneous and came before she’d even exchanged words with said human. It was an instinctive kind of thing. Without fail, she would later learn something nasty about the person, and over time, she’d come to trust her instincts.

  That was how she felt about the men before her now, but the feeling ran deeper than ever and left her with a bad taste in her mouth. There was just something about them that literally hurt her stomach and made her heart race to the point of pain. She tried to figure out what it was: The fangs? The slightly haughty tilt of their sneers? The strange red glow in their eyes? Or just a vibration on the air?

  She would most likely never know. She watched, beyond the capacity for being stunned, as they attempted to throw spells onto the mansion, she assumed in order to put out the fire. Everything they attempted to do failed and the fire roared as if it were a beast all its own.

  On the ground were several dead bodies. Every one of them was decapitated. She was confused by this; decapitation was a sure way to get rid of a werewolf. But then again, it worked on werewolves because it pretty much worked on everything.

  Once they got in, the stranger told Katherine that he was putting a shielding spell over her in order to protect her from the mind-bending abilities of the men on the estate grounds. She went along with it and kept her finger on the trigger of her weapon and her eyes on the prize. The wolf was here somewhere; the stranger had assured her. It was all she had to go on.

  They made it into the mansion and began fighting their way through the few supernatural beings remaining inside. She used her own weapons for this, and luckily they worked as well on the creatures within the estate walls as they’d always worked on werewolves.

  After that, the stranger told her exactly where she would find the wolf – and they parted ways.

  Now Katherine closed her eyes and slowly breathed in through her nose. The grounds were a battlefield of both nature and the unnatural, fire-scarred and smoking. How the stranger had known that the man Katherine sought would be here, in this place, right now, she again had no idea. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was what she was about to do.

  The air was choked with smoke and what she could only assume was magic, but she’d had a lot of practice staying calm in the worst kinds of situations. Somehow she managed a semi-deep breath of halfway decent oxygen and let it out through her mouth. Get a grip, she told herself. You can do this. This is what you’ve been waiting for.

  She opened her eyes again and gazed across the clearing at the man who had been a wolf only a few seconds ago. He was alone where he slowly moved into the clearing; his frame was tall and very obviously strong. Kat took in the broad scope of his chest, his sculpted shoulders, trim waist and long legs. She caught the reflection of the moon on his jet black hair and it shimmered, promising a softness to the touch, like satin.

  The man made it to the center of the clearing, and Kat forced herself into stillness. He was close enough now that if she made a sound, she knew his super-human senses would pick up on it.

  He moved in a slow circle, his head up, his storm gray eyes clearly visible – clearly glowing – in the otherwise monochromatic dim of the smoky night. Each movement was the epitome of grace and strength, each breath was controlled and perfect. He’s beautiful, she thought without realizing it. And then she stiffened under the weight of her observation.

  Her gaze narrowed, indigo turning to ice. He’s beautiful. Your father’s killer is supernaturally beautiful because he’s supernaturally evil and he kills people with supernatural apathy.

  The reminder was harsh and stronger than strictly necessary. But it did the trick. The werewolf’s appearance took a back seat to her mission and Kat straightened, pulled the gun from the holster beneath her leather jacket, and took aim.

  As she did so, she made the slightest of sounds; a mere brushing of skin upon leather. Apparently it was enough. The werewolf across the clearing froze and cocked his head to one side. Just as Kat pulled the trigger, the wolf dropped; there was a quick, blinding flash of light and Kat knew that her aim had been off this time.

  The wolf was fast. He was much faster than any other wolf she had gone up against. This realization coursed through her even while she was backing up and blocking the light from her eyes to take aim once more. Based on experience, she knew that when she unshielded her eyes, it would be to find the wolf loping toward her at full speed. It was always the same. If they attacked from a distance, they attempted to close that distance as quickly as possible. If they attacked close up – well, she had always been fortunate enough to able to pull the trigger before they could rip her to shreds.

  Katherine lowered her arm and tightened her grip around her weapon.

  The wolf was gone.

  Kat spun, an instinctive premonition guiding her movements. And then she froze once more. The wolf had become a man again. He stood calm and easy less than ten feet away, his arms at his sides, his glowing, thunderhead gaze slicing through the darkness to pin her to the spot. The sight of him there, so close now, instantly jarred Katherine’s senses. Her hand felt strange around her gun and her breath hitched. She had never seen a more beautiful creature than the one who stood before her now. Up close, she could make out the strong lines of his chin and nose and the perfect slope of his neck and shoulder where his jet black hair curled against his collar. A five o’ clock shadow darkened his visage, making him appear dangerously swarthy. His face was like a Roman sculpture – but it was his eyes that tore at Katherine’s heart.

  She recalled them now. She remembered what she’d felt when she’d looked into them twenty years ago. She had been scared and numb and confused and in awe. And they’d looked at her then just as they were looking at her now. It brought her up short. Her finger hesitated on the trigger. Her hand began to tremble.

  There was no hatred in his look. There was no malice. There was only what appeared to be shock, genuine and deep – and some other, less instantly recognizable emotion that Kat could not readily identify. She would know those eyes anywhere; this was indeed the man who had stood over her father’s murdered body. But if she had learned anything at all under the tutelage of people who killed for a living, it was that the werewolf before her appeared in that moment to be anything but a cold blooded killer.

  It’s a trick, her mind told her. He’s a demon. No matter what his kind called themselves, no matter how beautiful he ha
ppened to be, he was evil and he deserved to die. His nefarious species purportedly possessed members who were not only supernaturally fast and strong, as all werewolves were, but could manipulate things around them: weather, electricity, even peoples’ minds and willpower. Any hesitation on Kat’s part was most likely the direct fault of the demon, who might very well be in her head in that moment. And it would only get her killed.

  Pull the trigger.

  There is a fleeting moment that exists for every individual just before they do something truly life-altering. It’s that flash of insight and sanity that stalls your heartbeat and blood flow – a quick warning – just before you explode and make a fool of yourself. Or that incredibly brief instant of clarity you have before you floor the gas pedal and run the red light. It’s a split second of self admonishment in which you realize that what you’re about to do is wrong, but just as quickly choose to ignore that realization and do it anyway. It’s too fast to catch, too bright to see, utterly gone even before you’ve blinked and therefore, it does a person absolutely no good at all. And yet, there it is.

  It’s what Katherine experienced just before her finger pressed in on the trigger of her specialized weapon a second time, and she found herself closing her eyes.

  It took only a fraction of the time to pull the trigger as it did for her to realize that nothing happened when she did. A stark silence greeted her and her eyes flew open once more. The man with the glowing gray eyes was still standing ten feet away and still watching her, but her gun arm was trembling. The gun hadn’t gone off.

  Jammed? she thought, knowing even as she thought it that it was impossible. These particular guns didn’t jam. They were electric. She’d never before heard of one failing a Hunter.

  She swallowed; an odd reflex in a body more nervous than it had ever been. The swallow caught half way on a slim throat that had gone painfully dry. She managed to keep from coughing, but her eyes watered where they remained locked on the enigmatic fallen angel of a man several feet away.

  The wolf – the man – considered her carefully and then, with that same grace that seemed to spell some kind of perfection, he took a step toward her. Kat’s eyes widened and she hurriedly retreated a step.

  What the hell? That wasn’t right. She had never shied away from a fight before. She’d never backed down from a demon. Something was horribly wrong with her.

  Kat tried to square her shoulders, but she could hear her breath now and she was stunned to find that it shook. She was trembling. This wasn’t her. This wasn’t how she’d been trained to deal with a werewolf – a demon. She was not herself. This was all going terribly wrong.

  “Why are you afraid of me, little one?” the wolf asked. His voice was unlike any she’d ever heard, deep and rumbling and velvet. Katherine nearly gasped beneath the weight of it; it felt like a blanket draping itself over her, warm and comfortable and laced with will-sapping weakness.

  No! Katherine shook herself. He’s using his power on me, she told herself fiercely. Some werewolves could do that. Others had to kiss their victims, but she’d heard tales of demons who could force a human into submission with no more than a glance. Surely, a voice could do similar damage.

  It had to be that. Because it sure as shit wasn’t that she simply liked the way he sounded.

  The man took another step toward her.

  The gun was all but useless now, she knew. She could feel that it was a dead weight in her grip. Something had gone wrong with the technology of it. It was fitting that it should happen now, of all times.

  With frustrated speed, Kat dropped the useless gun in the dirt beneath her and pressed the button on the inside of her wrist. A poison-laced blade shot forward and nestled beneath her right middle finger. “Stay back,” she warned him, absolutely appalled with herself at the turn the night had taken. That she should warn the monster instead of attacking outright, as she had done every other time she’d fought one of his kind, was atrocious to her. She had no idea why she was behaving the way she was.

  There was an unfamiliar and terrifying hesitation within her. It was almost as if she didn’t want to kill the man who had killed her father. She was holding back, and it was probably going to cost her her life.

  The wolf stopped in his tracks and his gaze flicked to the weapon she now held in her right hand.

  I’m going to die. The thought was not one she had ever before entertained. There had always been something there to keep her going, some goal that she had to reach. It was a score that would not allow her to check out before being settled. But now the words floated across her consciousness on a wave of numbingly cold awareness.

  She was going to die, here and now. She’d never had to use the knife against an opponent before; until now, the gun had always worked. Plus, she’d already hesitated, and that was a Hunter’s fatal mistake. The wolf would have the advantage. The title of Hunter was a bitter sweet irony because none was as much a natural predator as the creatures they tracked down and killed. Face-to-face and on even ground, the Hunter would lose.

  I’ll see papa, she thought next. It was her one consolation as her grip tightened and relaxed on the blade and she quickly mapped out her next several moves in her head. She would see her father again. There was at least that. Her chin raised and her gaze narrowed. And by the looks of him, the demon will probably at least make it fast.

  With that, Kat leapt forward, swiping her right hand high while her body went low. If she missed with the blade, she might be able to knock him slightly off balance enough to come back for a second try.

  But she was woefully inexperienced in actual combat with the poisonous knife, and the wolf proved it in record time. Kat felt the blunt pain that numbed half of her arm as the blade was knocked from her grip and a strong arm wrapped around her neck. Her body was spun around and pulled roughly against his chest, but not before he’d also managed to take her already smarting arm in a tight grip and ram it up behind her back. Sharp pain shot through her shoulder, forcing a hiss of breath to escape between her teeth.

  Kat ignored the pain, lunged backward with her right leg, and leaned forward, putting as much momentum into the movement as possible. She felt something in her shoulder tear, and the sensation was sheer agony, but her effort was rewarded when the wolf’s immensely heavy and large body fell slightly forward over her. She took the opportunity to raise her left elbow, catching the demon in the solar plexus.

  His grip on her arm and throat loosened and Kat straightened, slamming her head back into his face with as much strength and speed as she could muster.

  Again, the act hurt horribly, and she wondered whether she’d inadvertently concussed herself, but also again, her efforts were rewarded. She felt the crunch of bone behind her scalp and knew that she’d broken his nose. He made a horrible sound behind her and backpedaled. Kat couldn’t help the mean, hard grin of victory that spread across her lips. It helped a little with the pain.

  Slowly, because she felt slightly dizzy, Katherine turned to face the demon head on once more.

  Chapter Seven

  “You can run...”

  Byron should have been in pain; his nose was broken and his lungs were having to drag in air past a rib that was audibly cracked; it clicked with each labored breath. But it was a fair kind of pain, earned in hand-to-hand combat, and mild in comparison to what he had suffered at the hands of the late princess. Not that it mattered. His mind and heart were in such turmoil in that moment, his physical senses were playing second string to his emotions. He barely noticed the pain.

  The girl, on the other hand, he was very much aware of.

  He’d recognized her scent first, of course. His wolf had been running, shooting through the underbrush beneath the clouds of smoke and ash when the thinnest strain of the scent of dormant had brought him skidding to a fast stop. He’d stayed in wolf form long enough to follow the scent to a clearing just past the boundaries of the warlock king’s estate. There, he’d turned
back into a man.

  He would have had better luck finding her as a wolf, but the animal scared a lot of people, and the last thing a werewolf could afford to do with a dormant these days was scare her. Dormants were more scarce and more precious than words could relay. Whoever this one was – wherever she was – Byron wasn’t going to mess things up right off the bat by making her turn rabbit.

  Little had he known that would be the very least of his worries.

  He’d been turning in a slow circle, fanning his power out around him in the hopes of catching wind of something electrical that would give away the dormant’s location: a cell phone signal or a digital watch perhaps. He’d never used either, but he’d seen them come and go – and evolve – during his captivity, so he knew of them. He even had a vague sense of how they worked. The electrical knowledge, he assumed most likely came as an inherent part of his ability to manipulate electrical objects. He had to admit that he was looking forward to the power he might wield in the twenty-first century a hell of a lot more than he’d enjoyed using it in the early twentieth.

  He caught the electrical blip, like a hiccup on the wavelengths around him, just before he heard the sound. It was the slightest of sounds, and amidst the rampant chaos that the night had become on the warlock king’s land, it was even quieter than it would otherwise have been. But he heard it all the same.

  The feel of the instrument that had sent the electrical pulse in his direction was ominous and wrong. That, combined with the sound he’d heard, had him dropping and transforming back into wolf form before his next heartbeat. The sound of a bullet slicing the air whizzed over the black fur of his head, and he crouched low. A moment later, he was blurring into motion, following the bullet’s path back to its origin.

  The scent of dormant slammed into him like a Mac truck, stalling him once more in his tracks. He stopped, as a small cloud of smoke billowed past him. When it cleared again, he saw a woman standing in the shadows, her arm covering her face.