To Hell and Back (Hellcat Series Book 4)

by Sharon Hannaford

With a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders, he turned dismissively from Stupid. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Then he lifted his leather-booted foot onto the lip of a sturdy, cement flower box and leaned one elbow against his upraised knee as though preparing to watch the showdown.

  Something must have finally penetrated Stupid’s thick skull because he looked around at the gathering crowd, took a couple of steps back from her, and twitched his head at the girl. She gave a sullen snarl and threw the wallet and phone at Gabi before the two of them took off at a dead run, straight towards the nearby train station.

  Gabi caught both items before they hit the ground. With the situation uneventfully defused, people quickly moved off back to their daily grind. In a few minutes only the grizzled man remained.

  “I owe you my thanks, Mr…” She left it hanging, waiting for him to supply his name as she approached him.

  “Maclary, Joshua Maclary,” he obliged, offering her his hand.

  She shook it; it was a firm confident grip, without making any attempt to overpower or challenge her. He released her hand and lifted his to scratch his stubble contemplatively. She was almost sure she could detect a twinkle of mirth in his eye.

  “What?” she asked warily.

  “Well, it’s not every day you get to shake hands with the great Angeli Morte, and honestly, you’re quite pretty for a monster-slaying badass.” His lips curled into a mischievous half grin, showcasing uneven but surprisingly white teeth. His statement should’ve shocked her, but she’d already known that he was more than just your average-joe norm.

  “Can I buy you a cup of coffee to show my appreciation?” Gabi asked the man. She was in a hurry, but he was an enigma she couldn’t possibly walk away from.

  “Why not? It’s not often you get asked to coffee by one of the most notorious Vampire Hunters in the world.” His accent matched his appearance and attitude, a lazy drawl with a bit of a twang to it.

  Gabi rolled her eyes at the gentle teasing, picked up her box of paperwork, and led the way down the street to a tiny, Cuban-style café. It looked more than a little dodgy from the outside, but she knew from previous experience that they made a decent cup of java.

  They chose the only table set away from the others at a tiny window overlooking the square and took their seats. A burly waiter appeared, though he was probably also the chef, as he wore a stained apron that must’ve once been white, but was now predominantly the colour of heavily creamed coffee. He shoved two well-used menus down in front of them and waited. There wasn’t much choice of coffee here, with cream or without was the only option. Gabi ordered with cream; Joshua ordered black. Blessedly short on chatter, the waiter made a gruff noise in this throat and left without comment.

  “So, tell me, Mr Maclary—” Gabi began.

  “Call me Mac,” he interrupted her. “I don’t do the whole Mr thing.”

  Gabi smiled. “All right, so tell me, Mac, how is it that you know who I am?” Her best guess was that he had to be a Magus who hadn’t taken up his powers, or was from a Shape-shifter family, one of those who the ability to Shape-shift had skipped, but it was unusual for her to not have any kind of inkling of his race.

  Her puzzlement must have been written too clearly on her face, as he grinned slyly and said, “You’re trying to work out what I am, aren’t you?”

  Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t like that he was avoiding her questions.

  He quickly put his hands up in mock surrender. “Now, now,” he chided, “I’m not trying to piss you off.” He sat back in his chair a little, and his eyes made a quick circuit of the room, checking, Gabi assumed, if they had any unwanted attention. She already knew that no one was paying them much heed; she’d just scanned the room herself. “I’m plain old human,” he said, surprising her, but she’d made a point of putting on her best poker face.

  “So back to my actual question, then,” she prodded.

  “Well,” he drew in a breath, “though I never met the man, knew him only by reputation, I’m thinking I’m a lot like your daddy.”

  Gabi’s poker face disintegrated as the implications of his words hit her. Surprise, shock, anger, then understanding. Her father had been fully human, but he’d also been a Hunter of all things supernatural and nasty.

  Mac gave her a few seconds to digest his words before he continued. “Well, I didn’t start out like your daddy. I wasn’t particularly discriminatory; I simply hunted anything that wasn’t human.” It was clear he didn’t mean he hunted animals.

  “You didn’t care if they’d actually done something to warrant a death sentence or not?” Gabi asked.

  “I thought every single one of them had done something to warrant a death sentence,” he corrected.

  “You assumed all,” Gabi did another quick sweep of the people close enough to overhear them, “non-humans were intrinsically evil.” There was no judgement in her voice; she knew how easy it would’ve been for her own father to have had the same idea had Caspian not stepped in to save her mother from a rogue Vampire attack.

  Mac nodded. “I was but a lad when I saw the evil for the first time.” They both fell silent as the waiter returned with their coffees. The fragrant scent of the coffee set Gabi’s mouth watering.

  “So you trained yourself to hunt?” It was more of a question than a statement as Gabi took her first sip.

  “I had some help along the way,” Mac admitted, but didn’t elaborate.

  “So what changed?” Gabi pressed.

  Mac smiled as he turned his coffee cup around, staring into it. The smile was sad. “It’s a long story,” he said at last, “one I think you, of all people, would understand.” He looked into her eyes at last. “The short version is that I met, and fell for, a beautiful woman.”

  For a second Gabi was confused, and then the answer came to her. “This woman wasn’t human.”

  Mac nodded, his eyes going distant as he sipped his coffee. “No, she wasn’t, and she sure did open my eyes,” he confirmed. “So to answer your original question, that’s how I know who you are, and who your father was. When she was trying to make me understand what I should be doing, she used your father as an example. She knew of your Master Vampire, but she had something of a personal relationship with his predecessor. I’ve had an ongoing interest in this place ever since, and followed your…career, through the ‘otherworld’ grapevine.”

  Gabi assumed this grapevine was a lot like the Community, their own local version of a supernatural grapevine.

  “You speak of her in the past tense,” Gabi noted.

  “She’s gone,” Mac said simply, his tone making it clear he wasn’t prepared to discuss her demise further.

  Gabi gave a small nod of understanding. “And you still hunt?” she asked, thoroughly intrigued by this man and astounded that he’d survived as a human hunting supernaturals.

  “No, I gave up that game several years ago. I was getting too old for it, and,” he drained the coffee cup, “I didn’t have the heart for it anymore.”

  Gabi cocked her head, studying the man who called himself Mac, a man who could say so much with so few words. “So what do you do now?”

  He smiled without mirth. “A bit of this, a bit of that,” he replied evasively.

  She raised an eyebrow, making it clear she wasn’t going to let him get away without elaborating this time.

  He sighed. “I keep myself busy,” he said finally. “I sometimes take on some carpentry and maintenance work, but mostly I do private investigation, missing persons cases mainly. I can still call on some of my previous contacts for information if I think there’s a supernatural reason for the disappearance. Oft-times the person is no longer human. I try to come up with plausible explanations to give the families some closure.”

  “What are you doing in the City?” Gabi asked, a light bulb flicking on in the back of her mind.

  Mac frowned, obviously wondering at her sudden intensity. “I’m following a lead on a missing person,” he answered, “one I ha
ve reason to believe is no longer human and has been brought to the City against their will.”

  A sudden chill raced down Gabi’s spine as her intuition made some disturbing connections. “If I helped you solve your case, would you have some spare time on your hands?” She tried to keep her voice calm, but her mind was taking large leaps forward in multiple directions.

  He narrowed his eyes, not fooled by her apparently mild question. “There’s something running through that pretty head of yours,” he said, his expression shrewd. “I may not look like the most able person around, but I don’t need anyone trying to fix up my life.” His voice had gone unexpectedly cold.

  Gabi shook her head with a wry twist to her lips. “You misunderstand. I’m not trying to fix your life, Mac; I’m trying to fix mine.” Gabi watched the emotions play across his face in silence. When he eventually inclined his head to her to put forward her proposal, she let out a breath she didn’t realise she’d been holding. Another check of the norms around them and her eyes fell on the clock behind the host station. Shit, it was getting late, and she was way overdue for her appointment with her accountant. She retrieved a pen from her box of paperwork and tore the edge off a piece of paper. Scribbling down her phone number, she pulled some money out of her wallet and shoved it under her coffee mug. “I’m late. I really have to run. Call me later,” she told Mac, handing him the scrap of paper. “I have something I’m pretty sure you’ll want to see.”

  He gave her a solemn nod and stowed the paper in one of his pockets. “Thanks for the coffee,” he rumbled as she scooped up her box and hurried out of the café.

  CHAPTER 8

  Gabi had used what little remained of the day after her trip to the City centre to do some background checking on Mr Joshua Maclary. It was awesome having a best friend who happened to be a computer hacker and expert at digging up information on people. Trish had been working as a computer programmer when she’d been infected with Lycanthropy. Returning to normal life would’ve been hard for her, and interacting with all her old colleagues would’ve eventually have just highlighted her altered appearance, appetite and personality. At the same time Julius had been looking out for a replacement computer whizz, as he called them, and Trish fit the bill perfectly.

  A few weeks ago Gabi would’ve been reluctant to ask Trish to do work for her personally, but since she was now Julius’s official Consort, she decided it was time to make some practical use of her title. She put a call in to Trish on her way home, and Trish had called her back in less than an hour with her findings.

  Mac seemed to be on the level. If he wasn’t, he was a brilliant covert operative of some kind, with an impenetrably deep cover. As it was, he hadn’t left a terribly large online footprint; he had an email address, a driver’s licence, two bank accounts, one credit card and no criminal record, though some warnings had been issued by his local police with regards to civil unrest and impeding police investigations. There was an interesting government file on him, in which they flagged him as a possible civilian vigilante. His known associates were a professor of anthropology and a martial arts weapons master. He made a modest income from a slightly better than modest investment account in his name, and he was a registered private detective, which brought in an additional modest income. Other deposits and his tax returns proved he also did occasional work outside of the detective stuff. He owned a ten-year-old Ford pickup and had no known living family. He’d done some military training when he left college and had spent a couple of years serving in a special forces unit. He was honourably discharged, but there was no record of exactly why he’d decided to move on. He’d run a security detail for a chain of jewellery stores for many years before leaving that job. After that, he’d drifted between jobs until he qualified as a PI. Since then, he’d mostly kept his nose clean and developed a reputation for solving missing persons cases. Trish’s research backed up Gabi’s gut instinct; he was an enigma and a straight arrow all at the same time.

  If Mac called her back and agreed to meet with her, he’d have one final test to pass. Julius and Kyle. It was an incredibly rare human who could lie without giving themselves away to a Werewolf or a Vampire. There were simply too many telltale signs and automatic, uncontrollable bodily reactions when a person was lying. And a supernatural lie detector was far more foolproof than a mechanical one. A mechanical one could be deceived, especially by a human who’d convinced themselves of the truth of their own lies, but a Vamp or Were could see through even those lies, apparently it was all in the body language, and not even a pathological liar could keep control of all their body language all the time. They would meet somewhere neutral before heading to HQ to see if Mac could identify either of the bodies.

  Joshua Maclary did call her shortly after she’d finished reading Trish’s electronic dossier on him. His first words made her smile.

  “So, did I give you enough time to find out what you wanted to know about me?” His slow drawl came through the phone.

  “Your timing is perfect,” Gabi replied, allowing the smile to colour her tone. A man who could read her next move should’ve annoyed her, but she had a feeling that she and Mac would be on the same wavelength more often than not.

  “Any questions you still want answered?” he drawled. “Not that I’m promising to answer them, mind you.”

  Gabi snorted. “Several hundred, as a matter of fact, but they’ll have to wait until we have time for a beer in a bar.”

  Mac barked a short laugh. “It’ll be a cheap round,” he told her. “Not that I mind sharing a drink with a lady at a bar, but I’m a teetotaller, so I’ll just join you for a soft drink.”

  Now that surprised Gabi, and she filed the snippet away for later consideration. “How about a steak dinner, then?” Gabi suggested. “I know a great restaurant.”

  “I don’t really have anything to wear to a fancy-shmancy restaurant,” he warned.

  Gabi laughed aloud. “Don’t worry. I know the owner; he’s not terribly strict on a dress code. As long as you pay on your way out and don’t break too many things while you’re there, you’ll be fine.”

  “I promise to be on my best behaviour,” he assured her seriously, but she knew there would be a teasing twinkle in his eye.

  “I’ll be bringing some company, just two,” she told him.

  “I wouldn’t have expected anything different,” he said wryly. “Let me guess—the Wolf and the Master.”

  Gabi shook her head. He was one step ahead as usual. “The Wolf and my Consort,” Gabi corrected, with emphasis on the last word. She was rewarded with a moment of silence and felt an idiotic little thrill of triumph.

  “Well, now,” Mac drawled, “there’s a thing for you. You got me on that one.”

  Gabi chuckled, suddenly hoping he was as genuine as her gut was telling her. Mr Joshua Maclary was one of the most interesting humans she’d ever had the pleasure of meeting. She gave him the street address for Olivella’s and set a time of eight p.m. She never passed up an opportunity to eat at her Shape-shifter friend Shawn’s fine establishment.

  Gabi’s BMW hadn’t been delivered yet, so she drove the McLaren to the Estate and left it there, joining Julius in the Aston for the drive to the restaurant. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy driving the new car, it was faultless in her book, but the recent spate of horrid luck where her cars were concerned was making her cautious. Kyle and Alexander already teased her mercilessly about killing her cars; she was determined not to have another expensive vehicle written off for at least the next few weeks.

  Razor managed to tag along and stalked into the restaurant at Gabi’s heels. Jorge, the maître d', was as welcoming as always when he saw Gabi, fussing to take her coat and greeting Julius politely.

  “You are looking very well, Miss Bradford, and it is so nice to see you, Mr Edwards,” he said in perfect but heavily accented English. When out in the public human eye, Julius used his reclusive businessman alter ego Julian Edwards. “Mr Robson is here, and your other g
uest, Mr Mac—oh my goodness.” His voice rose to a squeal when he suddenly noticed Razor.

  Gabi quickly put a hand on his arm to calm him. “It’s all right. This is my cat, Razor,” she reassured the poor man. “I’m training him for a film role, and he needs to get used to being among lots of strange people. Don’t worry. I’ve cleared it with Shawn,” she lied smoothly. Usually she was telling the dear man lies about how she came by some injury or other, so the fabrication slipped easily from her lips. Razor glared at the man with narrowed eyes. “Did you say our other guests are here, Jorge?” she prodded, trying to redirect the man’s attention.

  “Oh yes.” The short man shook himself, trying to regain his composure. “At your usual table, of course.” As extra-special guests, she and Julius generally managed to secure the most isolated table in the restaurant. Set behind a decorative screen and several large potted palms, it was the only private table the restaurant had, and was reserved for special guests only. “Come, I’ll take you through.” Jorge’s professionalism kicked in, and he held his head high, pretending that escorting an extra-large cat through the tables of diners wouldn’t be anything he didn’t do on a nightly basis.

  “We’ll be fine, Jorge,” Gabi assured him. “We know the way. You see to your other guests.” She patted his hand in thanks, and the three of them wound their way through the other patrons, a few of whom stared wide-eyed at the furry member of the trio. Luckily most of the eyes were following Julius or Gabi. They made a striking couple, drawing attention wherever they went together, yet another reason to eat in private. If anyone looked as though they would protest the presence of a cat in a restaurant, Gabi knew Julius would sort the problem out before it became a problem. Amazingly enough, they made it to the private alcove without Gabi feeling the prickle of Julius’s power.

  Kyle and Mac were seated at opposite sides of the table, talking amiably, a beer in Kyle’s hand and a glass of soda perspiring on the tablecloth in front of the older man. At their arrival Mac stood, inclining his head to Julius respectfully, but not moving to shake his hand or looking him in the eye. He did indeed know Vampires, Gabi thought. She felt Julius’s agreement through their mental connection.