Huntress Clan Saga Complete Series Boxed Set: Books 1-6

by Jamie Davis

  When the elevator arrived and the doors had opened, he said, “Watch the message board. I’ll leave word on what I find there. I fear meeting in person will be too fraught with danger from now on. Goodbye, Master Clark, Mistress Quinn.”

  He nodded to each of them and stepped inside, disappearing as the doors closed.

  Quinn turned to Clark and stared, unable to say anything. They hadn’t gotten anything they came for, and the source of their information was likely a dead man walking.

  “Don’t say anything, Quinn. Grab your stuff and meet me upstairs by the front of the building. I’ll go get the car. We can talk once we’re back at Spring Grove.”

  He walked toward the nearest stairwell, leaving Quinn alone again with the old, musty books. She shook her head and went to get her backpack and the books. She had too many questions swirling in her head right now to make sense of what just happened. She wasn’t sure Clark had the answers either.

  She gathered her things and left the room, heading up the same stairs Naomi had taken when she left. As she climbed to the ground floor, Quinn thought about the strange woman and the things she’d said. Her thoughts ended in more questions and no answers.

  Chapter Eleven

  Taylor and Miranda ran the VR rig through another test so the tech witch could work on improving her spell-casting skills.

  “Good work,” Miranda said, staring at the status bar on the computer monitor. “The magic has engaged with the programming this time. Keep pulling in the pieces of the weave, based on what looks right to you. Trust your instincts.”

  Taylor half-listened to what the ghost said. Beads of sweat came out on her forehead and began to drip into her eyes. She couldn’t spare even a second to wipe her brow. She needed both hands to continue gathering the floating threads and ribbons of random magical energy so they’d fit the puzzle she’d begun to fill in.

  A single gold thread seemed to be perfect for the next in the weave she’d created. Taylor reached out for it with her right hand, forefinger extended to coax it closer, but the sound of a distant car door slamming and arguing voices broke her concentration, and she lost hold of the power. The rest of the weave began to unravel, and the pieces floated away to resume the random pattern nature initially intended.

  Quinn’s voice reached her as clearly as if Taylor had been standing beside her friend. “Fine, be that way, but you’re going to have to answer the question eventually.”

  Clark muttered something Taylor’s enhanced shifter hearing couldn’t pick up.

  “Damn,” Taylor said, shaking her head as she turned to face Miranda. “I almost had it. I’m sorry I got distracted.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Miranda said. “You’ve got to be exhausted. You only have so much energy you can expend before it takes a toll on you. Remember that.”

  “I had more energy. I was almost finished. I let something break my concentration. Quinn and Clark just got back. They’re arguing about something. It sounds like they didn’t have the successful meetup they expected.”

  Miranda spun in the air where she hovered beside the desk. She looked out the doorway at the empty hall beyond. “How do you know?”

  “Wolf ears, remember?” Taylor said, pointing at her head. “They’re on the way in. Quinn didn’t sound happy.”

  “Stop eavesdropping on things that aren’t your concern, T,” Quinn said from the doorway. “It’s not polite.”

  Taylor noticed the dried blood all over her. The faint coppery scent of it filled the room.

  “Sorry, I can’t help hearing things. You have to be more careful with what you say and where,” Taylor said, pointing at Quinn’s outfit. “That’s a lot of blood. Are you all right?”

  Quinn looked down, wiped one of the stains on the white blouse, and groaned. “Ugh, I’m fine. This isn’t my blood, but I’ve got it all over me. No wonder the people in the library’s entrance and on the street were staring at me as I left.”

  Miranda asked, “Where’s Clark?”

  “He walked off into the woods in a huff,” Quinn said. “I asked him some questions he didn’t like about what happened at the library. He told me it was ancient history, and I didn’t need to know about it.”

  Taylor grinned. “This sounds juicy. What happened out there?”

  “The long and short of it is that his keeper friend Joshua is the chief librarian for none other than John Handon.”

  “What? How is that possible?” Miranda asked. The already-pale ghost grew a shade paler, becoming more transparent at the mention of the vampire who’d taken her life.

  Quinn shrugged. “Apparently, he’s been working for the other side since just after the clan purges.”

  Taylor gawked at Quinn. “Wait, the whole time?”

  “Yep,” Quinn said. “Hold on, it gets better. Joshua has a vampire assigned to keep an eye on him.” Quinn shared the details of the fight and the aftermath.

  “So, Joshua isn’t an option for us anymore?” Taylor asked. She knew Quinn was counting on the information he might have to restore her amulet.

  “That’s even stranger. He sees no problem with working for the enemy while sending us information on the side. He’s going to get back to us with what we need.”

  “How can he go back, now that they know he’s working with you? That’s suicide!” Miranda exclaimed.

  “He claims he is too valuable as the keeper to be killed. It seems too crazy to be true, even though this Naomi character said there’d be no hard feelings if he came back to do his work.”

  “So, what were you and Clark arguing about?” Miranda asked.

  “It started because of something Naomi said. She acted like she knew things about Clark. She said he still couldn’t be trusted. When I asked Clark about it, he got upset and told me he didn’t know any vampire named Naomi, and I shouldn’t listen to anything she said. I could tell he was lying about something and pushed him, but he wouldn’t back down. My questions got to him, even if he wouldn’t answer me. That’s why he stalked off into the woods just now.”

  “I hope he comes back soon,” Miranda said. “We have news.”

  “What?” Quinn asked. She pointed to the computers and the VR headset hanging on the back of a chair nearby. “Is the system working again? That’d be a huge win for us. We could sneak into Handon’s secret library and get the records we need for ourselves.”

  “Taylor is really close. She’s able to draw in and hold the power necessary to cast the spells. It’s a question now of putting that together with the right combination of magical energy and the programming at the same time. There might be one last piece of the puzzle we need, but we’ll know for sure about it soon.”

  Quinn turned to her friend. “That’s great. It’s just in time since I think we’re going to need the rig soon.”

  “Why do you say that?” Taylor asked.

  “It’s a gut feeling. I don’t know why.” Quinn shrugged and held out her hands.

  “Don’t worry, Miranda and I have got this. I need a little more practice. I think tomorrow night or the next, we can try it for real.”

  “Perfect.” Quinn swiped a blood-stained hand at her skirt. “I’m a mess and need a shower to get all this shifter blood off me. Then I’d better go find Clark and apologize for yelling at him in the car.”

  “He’s a big boy, Quinn,” Taylor said. “He should come to you and apologize for hiding things from you.”

  Miranda held up a hand and said, “Don’t forget, ladies, he’s been through a lot. He watched his clan—his whole family—be slaughtered in the purges. He hid during them and afterward and survived against all the odds, losing everything. He’s been hiding so long, covering up his past, I suspect he doesn’t even know when he’s doing it anymore. Give him some time. He’ll realize the need to let us in on his secrets. Just don’t expect him to tell you everything. We all have things we keep to ourselves.”

  Taylor nodded. Miranda was right. “Quinn, go get that shower. Everything will
look better once you do that. Miranda and I have a few more things to try here. Then I’ll start pulling dinner together.”

  Quinn stopped in the doorway and smiled at Taylor. “Thanks, T. You’re right. I’ll be upstairs for a while. Gah! I think there’s blood in my hair, too.”

  “There is,” Taylor said, trying not to laugh at the look on Quinn’s face. “Throw the clothes in the cardboard box you use for your dirty stuff. I’m making a laundromat run tomorrow. I’ll see about getting the stains out in case you want to wear the outfit again.”

  Quinn laughed. “Not on your life. There’s no way. Besides, I had to rip the skirt so I could fight and run. Just toss it. I’ll find a way to pay you back and get some new clothes for you.”

  “Ooh, sounds like we have a shopping trip in our future,” Taylor said, clapping. “I could use a few new things. I hope Clark has extra cash for us so we can each get something.”

  “He’ll come up with it if he knows what’s good for him,” Quinn growled. “He can ask his buddy Joshua to wire him some more.”

  Taylor snapped her fingers. “Really? I knew it! I’ll bet he only lives like a homeless guy because he’s all moody and stuff. He’s probably secretly a millionaire or even a billionaire. He’s definitely paying for a shopping trip now.”

  Quinn laughed and left Miranda and Taylor chuckling as she headed up to shower.

  Taylor looked out the window at the nearby stand of trees that led into the woods behind the building. There was no sign of Clark. An idea came into her head.

  “I’m going to go find Clark. I get the feeling he needs to talk to someone who isn’t Quinn.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Just a hunch. Something is going on here that he can’t tell Quinn, but maybe he can tell me.”

  “What about the rig?” Miranda asked.

  “We’ve almost got it. Besides, you’re getting transparent. You go sleep or whatever it is you do to recharge so you can appear in the real world. We’ll hit it again tomorrow.”

  Miranda smiled. “It’s about gathering more spiritual energy so I can manifest again. Come to think of it, I guess ‘recharging’ is the right word for it. I’ll check in tomorrow morning. There aren’t clocks where I am, so I can’t say when.”

  “That’s fine. Thanks for all your help.”

  Miranda nodded and floated away, fading into nothingness.

  Taylor grabbed her jacket against the chill outside and headed for the building’s rear exit. She wasn’t sure where Clark had gone in the woods, but it was time to put her wolf senses to the test and see if she could track him down.

  Chapter Twelve

  Taylor was surprised by how easy it was to pick up Clark’s scent. She knew he could mask himself if he wanted to, but this time he hadn’t bothered.

  She started through the stand of trees behind the clinic and worked her way to where it merged into a natural forest that backed up on the old psych hospital’s grounds. As she walked along, Taylor wondered how many of the people confined here years ago had run into these woods to escape whatever the doctors thought was the right treatment for their mental illness.

  She shivered, not from the cold, but from the stories she’d heard once about how they used to lock up and essentially torture people here. It had made the first few nights she’d spent here creepy as hell, wondering whether the place was haunted. Now that one of her best friends was a ghost, she wasn’t as freaked out about it. She still wondered if she was being secretly watched by un-manifested spirits in her room.

  As Taylor made her way deeper into the woods, she realized the initial trail had dissipated. She walked a little farther and realized she’d lost it. It had disappeared. She backed up to the point where she’d lost the scent and started examining the surrounding forest floor.

  Taylor tried different things to see if she could determine which way Clark had gone. She crouched to examine the dried leaves covering the forest floor. Try as she might, though, she had no idea what to look for, and no visible footprints or anything stood out to her. Had he detected her coming to look for him and turned on his hunter mojo to hide from her?

  The voice directly behind her startled her and answered her question at the same time.

  “Why are you following me?” Clark asked.

  Taylor stood. “I thought maybe you needed to talk to someone who wasn’t Quinn.”

  He snorted a chuckle. “And you think it should be you?”

  “We’ve never really talked, Clark. There are things about Quinn that nobody but me knows. Honestly, I should’ve come to you sooner. Maybe you’d have had an easier time with the earlier training sessions.”

  “I managed just fine, thank you. I didn’t need any help to break through the outer layer of BS she puts on. She’s a tough girl. Instead of settling for letting her actions prove it, though, she wears it like armor.”

  “That’s because of all the things she’s had to deal with, including growing up in so many different homes and families.”

  “She’s not the only person to have a hard life, Taylor. That doesn’t excuse the way she acts sometimes. She won’t let me be in charge, and I’m afraid it’s going to get her killed before she can grow into the person she was meant to be.”

  Taylor paused and wondered how far she should go with this. She nodded and decided she’d come this far, so she might as well go all-in. “She can’t let anyone be in charge of her. Giving up control isn’t the way she’s wired. She grew up in foster families, moving from place to place in the system. Some people were decent enough although not really homes, but a few of them were outright monsters, and the only way she could survive was to be tougher and stronger than those who tried to take advantage of her.”

  “Why didn’t she report them when she got the chance? Surely some caseworkers monitored her.”

  “You have a lot to learn about how people cope with trauma. Some become victims. They retreat inside and hide their real selves from the world. Quinn’s another sort altogether. The lesson she learned early on was that she could roll over and let things happen to her, or she could stand up and make things happen for her.”

  Clark nodded. “That makes sense. She’s a hunter through and through. There’s no way I can see her rolling over and taking abuse, even as a kid.”

  “She’s a huntress,” Taylor corrected with a smile. “And you’re right—she never let anyone lay a hand on her without permission. The earliest story she’s ever shared with me was when she was seven. A foster mom’s boyfriend tried to force his way into her room. She pulled a bookshelf on top of him and broke a snow globe over his head. Then she ran away. I have no way of knowing for sure, but my guess is she spent half her life living on the street on her own. She always said she felt safest there. The street people told her the shadows protected her from harm.”

  Clark chuckled. “I wish I’d been there to see that. Her amulet let her access her hidden strength even then, although she didn’t know it. If only she’d been able to train in her skills from the beginning!”

  “There are skills, and then there are skills, Clark,” Taylor said. “She brings something different to the job, but that doesn’t make it wrong. You’ve said yourself that she can do things no one else can. I don’t think she’d be able to if it weren’t for what she went through.”

  “I know that, and I figured out some of it from my research into her background. I even tried to find out who her parents were. I thought maybe she was related to me somehow. I don’t think she is, though. None of the hunters I know had babies at the time of the purges.” Clark paused for a second, then said, “Why follow me to tell me all this now?”

  “Because you need to know why it’s not a good idea to keep secrets from her. She has a hard time trusting others as it is. If she thinks you aren’t telling her something she needs to know or that you’re lying to her, she’ll never listen to you when you need her to.”

  Clark’s brows lowered, and his eyes narrowed. “What m
akes you think I’m hiding things?”

  “Quinn said something came up while you two were out. Also, your reaction just now kind of confirmed it.”

  Clark started to say something, but Taylor stopped him.

  “You don’t have to tell me anything. I don’t care what you’re hiding as long as you treat Quinn right, but you need to be willing to come clean with her at some point.”

  The two of them stared at each other in silence for a few long seconds. The chirp of Clark’s phone interrupted them.

  He pulled it out and scrolled through a message before glancing toward the hospital grounds.

  “What is it?” Taylor asked.

  “How close are you and Miranda to getting the rig up and working again?”

  “We think we can do a test run tomorrow night. Why?”

  “Make it happen. Joshua just sent me a message, but it wasn’t from him.”

  “How do you know?”

  Clark turned his phone around so she could see the screen.

  Hunter, the keeper is no longer your lackey. He works for me. The life tome of the clans which you seek belongs to me now, too. That magic is lost to you forever.

  Come seek me out, though. I captured you once, and I relish the rematch.

  JH

  Taylor let out a long slow breath as she finished reading the message. “Wow, he’s a cocky bastard, isn’t he?”

  “He has a right to be. He nearly ended us all the last time we went up against him. Vampires get stronger the older they are. He’s positively ancient and that gives him the power to be almost god-like in his abilities.”

  “Yeah, I was there,” Taylor said, fighting back the sadness she’d felt after Miranda was killed. She cleared her throat and got her voice back. “I also remember how Quinn kicked his ass and sent him running away like a scared little baby.”

  Clark’s grim smile showed he remembered that, too. “There’s no guarantee she can do the same trick again. She lost her amulet doing it. Now she has to fight to access the least of her powers. We can’t count on that.”