Mallory's Hunt

by Jory Strong

  The Reaper Lord mounted the horse. "The other is for you, daughter."

  Mallory swung into the saddle, the beast prancing, snorting beneath her.

  They entered one of the nightmare forests.

  Her sire's pack was immediately there, weaving and circling. And the only comfort Mallory found in their presence was at seeing no half-brothers among them.

  The alpha bitch snarled and snapped, vibrating with the desire to kill.

  If not for the Reaper Lord's control, she would have leapt and pulled Mallory from the horse.

  Hate burned in the bitch's eyes, raw and savage and merciless.

  Because I'll always be part human?

  Because I can hunt in places she can't?

  Mallory didn't know. She wondered if she'd gain that knowledge.

  They moved deeper into the forest, coming to a clearing scattered with clubs and stakes and lances.

  Iosif's killer was in its center, tugging at multiple rope-like vines attached to his ankles and wrists. The ends were held by clown-like figures dancing back and forth as if they were demented puppeteers, their laughter the skin-crawling sound of hyenas.

  He fought like a crazed bull, battling to reach a weapon, being given enough slack to have hope, only to have it ripped from him inches away from grasping a lance or stake or club.

  He bellowed and raged, attempted a charge at one of the ghoulish clowns only to be dropped to his back as some of the lines gave while others tightened.

  He flailed. Cursed and was allowed to his feet.

  His attention was seized by a long spear with blood-blackened tip that was a lunge away. His awareness didn't extend beyond his tormentors.

  A healed, pink line marked the place where Sabin's blade had ended his life. She had no way of knowing how he experienced time or how his mind processed this reality any more than she could predict whether it would be nightfall or only moments after his death when she returned to the ring room.

  "Your presence pleases me so much that I'll offer you a boon. Answers from him? Or the barrier keeping Dane a Hound removed?"

  "Answers." It was far too late for any other choice.

  Her sire's smile was the flash of a knife created for paring souls. "Ask your questions then."

  The horses flowed forward, harbingers of nightmare.

  The clowns' entertainment changed. Garish beings hurried to predetermined positions and stilled like pillars. The lines they held tightened and stretched the Russian's limbs until movement was impossible, the effect like some macabre string game where he became a dragonfly.

  He became aware of her then. Hatred blazed in his eyes. He spat and struggled, the desire to rape and defile and kill easily read in this place where souls were bared.

  She saw his Earthly name—Oleg Kozlov—and it was further evidence that because of the Reaper Lord's touch in the ring room, or his will, or her own evolution, she was changing.

  "Where are Iosif's girls and their mother being kept?" she asked, because their fate preyed on her mind, because Rahmiel's involvement made her believe that finding them would lead to the man the Reaper Lord wanted to hunt.

  "Stupid cunt."

  "Release him," her sire said, and the ropes dropped, falling to the ground like weak vines.

  Oleg snatched up the blood-stained spear, charging toward her rather than running.

  The Hounds were on him in an instant. Biting. Tearing. Shredding flesh and cracking bones as he grunted and struck out at them, offering additional challenge with his refusal to scream and shriek.

  Massive jaws clamped on his neck. The alpha bitch's gaze was fully on Mallory as she vented her hatred, ripping Oleg's throat open while her mate growled and dug into Oleg's chest, tearing out his heart.

  A gulp and it was devoured.

  Oleg's body healed even as the clowns gathered the ends of their ropes and pulled, standing him upright.

  "Again," her sire said, magical command that returned translucent soul to physical shell.

  Oleg's eyes opened, the hate deeper, the determination to rape and defile and kill stronger.

  "Who do you work for?"

  Oleg spat, saying nothing.

  Her sire signaled and the ropes dropped.

  Iosif's killer grabbed a club. He feinted forward, only to whirl and swing, knocking one of the clowns to the ground. A second strike and its head crushed, exploding like a Halloween pumpkin.

  Oleg ripped a dagger from the clown's belt and charged toward her rather than running.

  The horse beneath Mallory rose on hind feet, the move perfectly synchronized with the one her sire rode. Front hooves struck with deadly accuracy.

  Oleg dropped. And if not for the words that left her sire's mouth, he would have been nothing but warm meat on the ground.

  Instead he screamed and screamed and screamed as the horses trampled him beneath their feet, breaking bone and reducing him to a pulpy bag of human skin while the Hounds swarmed on the fallen clown, rending it into patches of blood-soaked ground and rags.

  "Again," her sire said, and time was reset.

  Oleg ran.

  Her sire's raised hand kept the Hounds from taking Iosif's killer down before he reached the line of trees.

  "What do you think of Sabin?" the Reaper Lord asked, his tone conversational.

  There was no safe answer and so she gave none.

  He laughed, and it held the same soul-paring sharpness of his smile.

  Oleg disappeared into black, treacherous woods.

  The Hounds orbited, sleek and sensuous, transmitting their restlessness in ripples of muscles and dark-fire glances.

  The Reaper Lord passed her a silver horn.

  She was loath to touch her lips to it but she'd never escape this world if she didn't.

  Mallory carried it to her mouth, surrendering breath, surrendering another piece of her soul.

  The Hounds bayed and part of her thrilled to the sounds of a hunt. The pack she'd once run with set off in a smooth, loping wave of black menace, the horses behind them.

  There was no correlation between time and distance here. There was only quarry and hunt, scent and the silent padding of paws, screams and savaging and death.

  They rode through the forest, ducking branches, scrambling over rocks made bloody by Oleg's passage.

  In the near distance there was a splash and she knew he'd stumbled into one of the pits.

  Moments later the Hounds encircled it, their snapping keeping him in bracken water to become a feast for flesh-eating creatures.

  Her skin slicked as she remembered the pinprick bites of pain, the sensation of maggots entering torn flesh, burrowing so quickly that the seconds she'd been in a similar pit had led to hours of torment as she and Dane used knives to dig the parasites from her body.

  "If not for you at my side, this would have been a waste of time," her sire said, his voice not carrying to the pit. "I'll leave him to you, daughter. When you are done, use the word I have used."

  He turned and rode off, the Hounds going with him.

  The horse beneath her snorted, muscles bunching. Mallory dismounted rather than waste her energy and concentration in an attempt to master it.

  Oleg surged toward the bank.

  Its slippery steepness gave her time to sweep up a branch and strike his hands, the contact allowing glimpses into his dark soul, of the things he'd done to women, the things he'd intended to do to her.

  "Tell me what I want to know and I'll let you out. Where are Viktoriya and her girls?"

  He attempted to leave the pit again.

  She struck.

  "Tell me what I want to know and I'll let you out. Who do you work for?"

  "Cunt. Stupid bitch."

  She lost track of how many times she asked the two questions. How many times she blocked his attempts to escape. How many glimpses into his dark soul she gained.

  He lost an eye to the maggots. An ear.

  "Where are Viktoriya and her girls?"

  "
In a warehouse."

  Not the entire truth, not given the faint carrion stench.

  She allowed a hand eaten down to bone to remain on the bank, skeletal fingers digging into the muck.

  "They're all alive?"

  "Not the mother."

  He levered himself upward, grabbed, but she was already thrusting the branch.

  It struck and sent him back to plunge beneath the surface of the water.

  He returned without a nose.

  "Give me an address."

  He gave it to her and she allowed his fingers to spear into the mud.

  "Is there security?"

  "Yes."

  He attempted an attack.

  She parried.

  This time he emerged from the bracken water without lips or tongue.

  "Again," she said, releasing her claim to him, feeling that release as she'd felt the frantic struggle of an unknown soul against her palm in the morgue.

  Oleg's body submerged, disappeared.

  A moment later wild laughter wove its way through the forest, the hyena sound of garish clowns who'd had their plaything returned.

  They still had the power to make her skin crawl. But it was the ease with which she'd done what needed to be done, the lack of regret over it that made her sprint to the door between realms.

  The words to escape her sire's realm rushed from her.

  The scent of Hell still clung to her when she was again in the center of the ring room circle.

  "What time is it?" she asked.

  Hayden glanced up from the laptop. "A little after midnight. Did you learn anything?"

  "Viktoriya is dead but I know where the girls are being kept. There's security."

  Sabin pushed away from the desk. "So your pet will be coming with us."

  "Don't call him that."

  He laughed, circled, brushed against her when she didn't step away to avoid it.

  "Make me stop," he murmured playfully and she knew this would escalate, that this challenge would soon give way to increasingly emboldened ones, that it was a mistake to think of him as human, to think like a human when they were Hounds.

  She pulled her knife. He danced away, sensuous smile on his lips and eyes shining with amusement, not understanding the feint until she jerked the gun from the holster, aimed and fired.

  Red blossomed at his shoulder where the bullet had grazed him before burrowing into the wall.

  His shout and the echo of gunfire rang in her ears. Dimmed and was replaced by Hayden yelling, "Have you gone fucking nuts!"

  "I assume you're talking to Sabin."

  She met Hayden's gaze, Matthew's image in her thoughts, the need to be strong, to be alpha in fact, not just in name, essential if she was going to keep him in her life, if she was going to keep him safe from other Hounds.

  For the first time ever, Hayden was the one to look away.

  He masked it by opening a desk drawer and pulling out a first-aid kit, but that didn't change the reality of his acknowledgment.

  She shoved the gun into the holster. He tossed the kit toward Sabin.

  It landed short and skidded the remaining distance.

  None of them volunteered help beyond that.

  "We'll need Matthew to deal with the security," she said, giving Hayden the address so he could get a visual of it.

  "The guy we're looking for won't be there," he said. "He'll be a buyer."

  She agreed, realized the others didn't know about the lead she'd pursued with Matthew. "We're looking for a black man."

  "He's also a witch," Hayden said. "We summoned Raven Stone. She repeatedly drew the sigil designating one inside a box."

  "The Satanists would have found him if he belonged to a coven or was trained by someone locally."

  The medusa would have too.

  "Yeah. The news broke a couple of hours ago that the police found Amanda Edson's body. We used the doll. She paced the same dimensions repeatedly, as if she'd been kept in a small bedroom with a private bathroom."

  Mallory rubbed the place above her heart.

  Too late. Too late. Too late.

  "I'll get Matthew."

  Sabin sauntered over, bare chested and bandaged.

  She bared her teeth when he got close, warning him against brushing against her.

  He laughed, heat in his eyes and his smile. "It's not over 'til it's over, Mal."

  She left the ring room.

  Fierce, complicated need surged into her with the sight of Matthew playing pool.

  He glanced up immediately, dropped the cue rather than finish the shot he'd been about to make. He came to her, enfolding her in strong arms.

  His heat and passion and scent were enough to eradicate the smell of her sire's realm, the immediacy of it. His concern wrapped her in comfort and she allowed herself to draw from it for long, treasured minutes before saying, "The girls are being kept in a warehouse. There's security."

  "The mother?"

  "Dead. Hayden's pulled up a picture of the location."

  She drew him into the ring room.

  "Where's the Russian?"

  "You're better off not knowing."

  She sensed him scanning, looking for a hidden exit. She felt his desire to push for an answer. He said, "We hit the warehouse tonight?"

  "Yes. As soon as you disable the security."

  "I'll do it only if I go in with you."

  Denial rippled through her brothers. Sabin smirked.

  "Take it or leave it," Matthew said.

  With misgivings she said, "You go in."

  * * * * *

  Chapter 29

  Vadim leaned back in the chair, smoke curling toward the ceiling from the Cuban cigar.

  Life was good in America. He had made it so.

  His dreams were close to being made real. He could hear the clapping and the pop of expensive champagne bottles being uncorked, the murmurs as the movies he'd bet on garnered awards. He could smell the expensive perfume and taste Almas caviar imported from Iran. He could feel the hungry gazes of A-list actors and actresses and their agents, of sought-after directors, their thoughts filled with getting him to invest in a favored project.

  He sent another puff of smoke upward, thick fingers tapping the script on the desk. This one was better than any of those he had already sent.

  He allowed himself a smile. There had been urgency in Linden's voice. Not obvious to another, perhaps, but to a man who had spent most of his life living among and preying upon the desperate, it was the sound of money and power.

  He would let Borya finish filming the girl, in case she was not returned. Then he would have her drugged and he would return Linden's call, naming a location for the delivery.

  Satisfaction swelled at imagining the man who'd once refused to take his calls now waiting, pacing, anxious to be contacted. Vadim's smile widened and his gaze strayed to the bed.

  For a moment he contemplated having one of the women brought to him. But then dismissed the idea.

  He did not wish to share his pleasure, his victory—not that he would speak of his dreams—with a whore.

  His thumb brushed upward against the script edge, lifting the sheets of paper, letting them fall with a shuffling sound.

  Worry slithered in. It bothered him that Oleg had not responded to his calls, enough so that he had left his cell phone at home and brought only a throw-away with him to the warehouse.

  It was time to use another place for receiving shipments. It was time to get rid of the women kept in this one. He would attend to the matter after his new friend was in possession of the girl.

  Vadim opened a desk drawer, lifted a pistol, the very one he'd used to kill his first man in America.

  Some would say it was foolish to keep such a souvenir, but the body had been dealt with, disappearing in a bath of acid.

  There was a round already chambered. He held the gun, remembering the hardship he'd experienced, the struggle. Pride burned through him at what he had accomplished. If trouble came
, it would be met by bullets.

  He placed the gun back in the drawer. It would not be a practical weapon. For that, he would open the safe and remove the MAC-11.

  It was a vintage machine pistol, a trophy taken from a dead rival. With it, he could fire twelve hundred rounds per minute. With it, he could be like the hero in an action movie.

  Vadim laughed. In the future he would look for such a script.

  He leaned back in his chair, lifting the cigar from the ash tray and sending another puff toward the ceiling. Life was good here in America.

  * * * * *

  The ski mask trapped heat against Caleb's face. The gloves slowed him, but not much.

  Mainlining adrenaline, he spoke into his phone, "Come on."

  And they did, Mallory and the others moving through the darkness as if they'd been created from it.

  Mallory carried a silenced 9 mm like the one in his hand. They reached him and he opened the door to reveal a hallway between rooms created out of thick, unfinished plywood with peepholes drilled into doors that bolted on the outside.

  Prison cells. There were easily twenty rooms on each side of the narrow hallway.

  Dane entered, Mikhail at his side. Mallory's call, not his.

  Caleb went in behind them, with her. He paused to look through a peephole.

  A dark-haired woman lay naked, stark and pale on a bare mattress beneath a bare light bulb.

  He held up a finger to indicate one.

  Mallory was doing the same on the other side of the narrow hallway. She nodded, held up a finger to match his.

  Male laughter erupted along with a rapid spate of Russian. It was followed by the sound of cards shuffling

  Caleb smiled, putting five different voices to the right of the hallway with a fifty-fifty chance guns were tucked away in holsters.

  That'd be seconds gained. Less if the guns were on the table.

  They crept forward, not pausing to look through the other peepholes.

  Hayden was behind Mallory and Sabin at the rear.

  He'd have preferred to have both men in front.

  He couldn't discount the risk that he'd be a casualty of friendly fire.

  Dane reached the end of the hallway, holding back.