The Hunt

by Heather Killough-Walden

  The third vampire wore what looked like wizard’s robes. His head was shaved and a tattoo of intricate red knots decorated his scalp.

  Despite the massive muscles of the bunch who surrounded Byron, the three piece cage on “lawyer” vampire, and the strange mode of dress of the “wizard” vampire, it was the vampire who now stood over Katherine who easily wielded the most charisma. He was tall, as all supernatural creatures seemed to be. But his build was not as large as those of his companions. He looked leaner, harder – faster. He had light brown hair, neatly cut, and a small scar ran from the bottom of his left eye through his eyebrow.

  His eyes were different colors. His left eye was blue, the color of arctic ice. That was the one the scar ran through. The other was gray. Together, they looked like a dichotomy of sunny morning and stormy afternoon.

  There was an air about him that the others didn’t possess. When he turned back around to face her and very gracefully knelt beside her once more, Katherine found that she couldn’t pull away. Instinctively, she wanted to back up and put distance between them. But she couldn’t. Instead she sat there and watched him with a mixture of fascination and trepidation. And something else.

  This was new. His gracefulness appealed to her. A lot.

  “It happens, little one,” the vampire told her as he cracked a handsome smile. The smile touched his eyes, lighting up the blue and sparking the metal in the gray. “You’ve been marked. Such a thing awakens the sexual nature of a dormant,” he said as he reached out and touched the side of her neck where Byron had bitten her. She was thoroughly shocked with herself that she allowed him to do so. The touch was bad enough; she was a Hunter and no supernatural creature had ever come this close to her before without her consent. But the touch was also intimate.

  What shocked her the most was that it hurt.

  Byron was right, she thought as a mild, warning ache moved through her neck, making her wince. She knew that Byron had marked her in the hopes that it would protect her from vampires as it did from werewolves. And from the slight pain now moving through her, she would have to say that he’d been right to assume as much. If it hurt, then it was working. No one in that cave would be able to sink his fangs into her and drain her dry. No one but Byron, that was.

  “Touch her again,” Byron told the man, his tone lower and more threatening than any Katherine had ever heard. “I dare you.”

  It was hard to pull her gaze from the man before her, but somehow Katherine managed. She glanced at Byron, whose platinum glowing eyes spoke heated volumes. Kat let out a shaky breath and returned her attention to the vampire who had touched her. His fingers still lingered beside her throat, but there was no longer any contact.

  The vampire smiled a small, slightly guilty smile at Katherine and then removed his hand completely. Something strange flickered in the depths of his bi-colored eyes. “I apologize,” he said, speaking so softly that it was clear he was addressing only Katherine. “I had to be sure.”

  Again he stood. Kat watched as he spoke a few short archaic words that she didn’t understand. There was a rippling effect over his tall form, as if he was suddenly separated from Katherine by a wall of water. But it moved over him and vanished, and Kat wondered what the hell he’d just done.

  The vampire then pulled something out of the inside pocket of his black sports coat and held it up for her to see. “Glucose and a few added nutrients,” he told her. “You’ve lost blood and this is something I’ve had a lot of experience in dealing with.” He smiled and shrugged. “You’ll live but you’re weak. This will help.”

  He leaned over and held it out for her. Kat sat up a little straighter, looked at the small glass vial, and was torn. She wanted to trust him; her body wanted to trust him. She knew he was right about one thing – Byron’s mark had brought out a submissive nature within her. She felt divided into threes at that moment. A part of her was terrified and worried for Byron. If the vampires were there, then they’d been sent for a reason and that reason probably had a lot to do with Malachi Wraythe. And if that was the case, he probably wanted Byron dead.

  Another part of her felt disturbingly… heated. She felt like stripping down and having a roll in the sack. And the vampire before her was a very handsome man. He professed to want to help her. It was a hard thing for her to turn down at that moment.

  At the same time, she wasn’t stupid. She shook her head.

  The vampire knelt once more and she found herself gazing into his different colored eyes. “Drink it,” he told her softly.

  At once, it was the only thing Katherine wanted to do. She gently took the vial from his fingers, uncorked it, and placed it to her lips. The vial was empty in a few short swallows. It tasted like clear, super-sweet Hawaiian punch.

  She handed the empty container back to him and he took it, re-corked it and placed it back into his sports coat. Then he stood and leaned over to offer her his hand.

  Kat glanced down at his hand and experienced another moment of trepidation. There was no way she was going to touch him again. Pain was a great teacher.

  “It won’t hurt, little Huntress,” the vampire said. “I’ve seen to that.”

  Kat looked up at him. Again she was caught up in the charisma of his gaze and her body flushed warm. It was discomfiting at best.

  It was discomfiting because the third part of her was the Hunter and that Hunter very much disliked the idea of being controlled by anything other than her own will. It was a logical part of her, fortunately, so it also realized that she and Byron had truly had no other choice. But it was also an angry part of her. It had been trained toward hatred and revenge for more than a decade. It couldn’t help it.

  That Hunter wanted to regain her power, and power came with knowledge. So out of curiosity and a pure strength of will, Katherine placed her hand within the vampire’s.

  There was no pain.

  The vampire closed his fingers over her hand and helped her to stand. She was a tad wobbly at first, but quickly regained her footing. Still, her head felt light and buzzed slightly as she again glanced around the room.

  “I must say I’m impressed,” said the vampire, releasing her hand to turn toward Byron. “You went for the jugular.” He smiled and chuckled softly. “I can’t say I blame you, but it’s a new one.” He slowly strode toward Byron and Katherine had the distinct impression that the vampire was composed of unspent energy, carefully disguised in black clothing. “I imagine that if we had not arrived when we had, you wouldn’t have been able to stop.”

  He glanced at Katherine over his shoulder. “And you would be walking on all fours at the moment.”

  Katherine swallowed hard. She knew a taunt when she heard one, no matter how mild or underhanded it might be. She wisely chose not to respond.

  As did Byron, but his bright white gaze glowed menacingly and she could see the tips of his fangs resting upon his lower lip. As Kat watched him watching her, she noticed something shimmer in the air beside him. She frowned and looked more closely. The air moved… a force field?

  “He’s wanted alive for the time being,” said the vampire who had helped her stand. “Therefore, it’s best if he be incapacitated.” He turned back to face her. “For what it’s worth, little one, it’s taking the magic of six of my men to hold him.”

  Kat’s eyes widened. She looked back at Byron, seeing him now in a new light. She’d known that he was strong. She’d known he was powerful. But as he stood now, a tower of breathtaking and deadly beauty trapped in a circle of six vampires, she saw him as the gorgeous monster he really was.

  The black wolf, she thought. With the gray eyes.

  My wolf.

  “Indeed,” said the vampire. “Now then, there’s one last small detail to see to.” He raised his hand toward Katherine, palm-out. She winced and back-pedaled, her survival instinct finally trumping everything else.

  But magic apparently moved at the speed of light, and she hadn’t retreated fiv
e inches before his spell was washing over her. It didn’t hurt. It just felt strange. Like being blanketed in something cold for a moment. She had the sensation that she was drenched in water – and then dried just as quickly. She looked down to find that nothing had changed.

  “What did you do?” she asked.

  “You’ll see,” he told her. “Shall we?” he asked, gesturing toward the exit of the cave. “There is someone who wishes to have a word with you and, seeing as how he has the king’s blessing, I don’t think it would be a good idea to keep him waiting.”

  Kat glanced at the exit to the cave. “I can’t,” she said. “The sun.” It was about to go down, she could tell. But for the moment, it still shone – and still posed a danger.

  “You can now,” the vampire told her. He smiled at her, flashing fangs. “Trust me.”

  So that’s what that was, thought Katherine. The spell he just cast on her had been to protect her from the sun. “What about Byron?” she asked, knowing full well that whatever the sun might do to her, it would do to him fifty-fold.

  “Of course,” said the vampire placatingly. “It wouldn’t do to have our prize prisoner fry to a crisp before we were half way home.” He glanced at Byron, who glared at him steadily. “Consider him safe.” He turned back to her, a small smile still tugging at his lips. “For now.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “The Permit”

  Daniel Kane pushed his chair back from his desk and stood. Then he turned and gazed out the windows of his third story office to the twilight landscape of Baton Rouge beyond. He’d left the West Coast and headed back to Louisiana after their meeting with the overseer and he would be away from Lily and their son for the next week or so – until he could either catch a break in his workload and fly out to see her or council called and he had no choice in the matter.

  In the meantime, the cavalry had been called out. Enforcers across the globe had been instructed to “hunt” down one Byron Caige and get him safely to council headquarters before either the vampires or the Hunters could do the same. If he was found, Daniel would get the call. Every alpha able to fight would need to be there; bringing Byron in might set off an all out war with a race of vampires the werewolves had only recently learned even existed.

  While no werewolf alive could ignore the possibility that Caige’s death might ensure their continued survival, not one of them would sacrifice one of their own for such a promise either. There was a brotherhood amidst their kind that might not have existed in other races. A string of empathy and love ran through them so deeply that despite their surface differences and occasional argumentative mannerisms, when it came down to it, each would die for the other.

  So they weren’t going to hand over Byron in order to allow the survival of future wolves who were not yet even born. Never burn a bridge.

  According to Lily, whose visions had been coming hard and fast since her initial episode, when they did find Byron – if they found him – he wouldn’t be alone. He had a dormant with him, and she was as vulnerable as he was.

  She was also a Hunter.

  It was that thought that plagued Daniel as he gazed out over the town he’d grown up in. It was a changed city; much of it was unrecognizable as the home he’d known for more than thirty years. Time changed a lot of things.

  It changed people too. Malcolm Cole was a prime example. Hell, they all were.

  In the seventeen years that Daniel had been on the force, he’d seen a lot. People were canvases and the paint that drew what they became was colored by a variety of things: genetics, environment, happenstance. A man could be unfortunate in DNA and worse off in the way of financial means – but cross his path with a giving soul, and his life would change forever. It was a splash of yellow on what would otherwise have amounted to the monotone masterpiece of his human soul.

  People were the product of their pasts. It was like that for the young dormant who was a Hunter. Daniel’s wife had told him that as a child, the Hunter had seen a werewolf standing over the dead body of her father. Daniel was no fool. It would have been naïve and short sighted to think that such a thing could happen to a child without it incurring dire consequences. For Katherine Dare, those consequences had been brutal - as they had been for every werewolf who had crossed her path since then.

  Daniel took a slow, deep breath and closed his eyes. The dormant Huntress had killed more than a dozen of his kind. Most of them had been alphas.

  Daniel opened his eyes again and, this time, as he looked out over the city of Baton Rouge, he imagined what it would have looked like a hundred years ago. Two hundred.

  It would have been lush and uncut and ripe with possibility. Like a person. Every brick laid, every road paved was a scar for better or worse that determined the map a being became. With luck, love and imagination, the map would show San Francisco. Without it, a person was Houston. Messy, cruel and mean.

  Katherine Dare’s soul had a bit of Houston in it. But Daniel was willing to bet that there was a Golden Gate Bridge under there somewhere. He just prayed, for her sake – and for Byron’s – that he wasn’t the only werewolf willing to take the time to look for it.

  The phone on his desk vibrated and a dedicated beep went off. It was exactly the sound he’d been waiting to hear. He quickly turned and picked up the phone, placing it to his ear. “Kane.”

  “We found them,” came the quick report. “I’m on my way.” ***** When they left the cave and walked out onto the black and tan sand of one of California’s many secluded beaches, the vampires stopped them and surrounded them. They made a circle around Katherine and Byron and, for a moment, Kat wondered whether that was it. She felt like someone about to be sacrificed.

  But what actually happened next had nothing to do with killing. yet another impossibility that Katherine was having to wrap her head around. Witches, warlocks, vampires – they were enough. But inter-dimensional travel on demand?

  The vampire had called it “transporting,” and apparently the only reason he’d waited until they were out of the cave to do it was so that she would see she was safe in the sun. She had no idea why he would care what she thought. Maybe it was just that a calm prisoner was a hell of a lot easier to deal with than a prisoner who was sure she was going to get fried at any second.

  The transportation spell had left her a little disoriented, but it was passing. They’d disappeared from the beach and reappeared in the middle of the redwood forest. Then the vampires had begun walking them down a trail. It was rather surreal for her. Wasn’t she just here a few hours ago? She felt like her life was moving in maddening circles, doubling back in on itself. Not a lot made sense any longer.

  She was thinking about this and simultaneously beating her brain from the inside out in the hopes of coming up with a way for them to get out of this mess when there was a commotion behind her. She’d been walking ahead of the group, accompanied by two vampires, one on either side of her. Byron and his six-vampire entourage were in the middle, and the lead vampire – the one who had cast the sun protection spells on them – was bringing up the rear.

  But when Kat turned around, it was to find that three of the vampires who had been watching over Byron were on the ground unmoving, and Byron and the lead vampire had their hands around one another’s throats. She gasped in surprise; she couldn’t help it. It was the last thing she’d expected to see.

  The men beside her were moving forward at once, their speed blurring like some kind of Hollywood special effect. Kat could only watch as the lead vampire smiled and held up his free hand, staying the help the others would have otherwise given.

  “I warned you not to touch her again,” Byron growled, all fang and monster.

  The vampire chuckled, the sound somewhat strangled. “So you did.” He raised a brow and added, “So go ahead and kill me.”

  Kat found herself entranced with the image before her. She should have been looking around, finding viable exits, weak spots, ways to esc
ape. But Byron was incredible. How in the world he had gotten through the force field around him, taken out three vampires and attacked the lead vampire in the course of seconds, she had no idea. It blew her mind.

  “It’s your blood,” the vampire told her without looking at her. His gaze was steadfastly locked onto Byron’s. Byron seemed to be contemplating something; he was silent.

  My blood? Kat thought.

  “Indeed,” the vampire replied. “You’re his mate. The stuff you’re made of will always give him more strength than anything else. And apparently the wolf knows what to do with it.”

  Kat was amazed the man was able to speak so well around the grip Byron had on his throat, but then again… did vampires really need to be able to breathe? If they were truly the offspring of warlocks and magical demonic creatures – Akyri, she reminded herself – then they could probably find ways to speak without air.

  The vampires on the ground were coming to. The fact that Byron had knocked them unconscious in the first place was beyond her. The other three that had been guarding him, along with the two who had been guarding her, all waited like sharks around the duo, their eyes glowing like stoplights, their fangs bared.

  “Well, Caige?” the vampire asked again. “Why don’t you just do it?” It was another taunt, Katherine knew. She also knew that it would be illogical for Byron to kill the vampire. It was twilight now and they were probably safe from direct sunlight, but as it always did, the sun was sure to rise again in the morning. If Byron killed the lead vampire, the spells the Offspring could place upon them to protect them from the sun would probably die along with him. And that would be bad.

  Byron hesitated another two seconds, and then he spun, throwing the vampire toward the nearest redwood. The man went sailing through the air, but before he would have hit the tree, he vanished into thin air.