Dark Hunt

by Naomi Clark

  Luckily no teenaged wolves had joined the fray. They were youngsters, lacking the confidence to interfere in older wolves’ battles. They watched, the battle lust shining in their eyes, but they didn’t dare get involved. That helped. Patric had one of the older wolves pinned beneath him, pummeling his face. The sound of his fist hitting flesh was sickening, the smell of the blood gushing from the wolf’s nose and split lips intoxicating. The second wolf clawed at Patric’s bloodied back, but the big man didn’t seem to notice.

  I grabbed the second wolf by the shoulders. His claws raked down Patric’s back as he tried to hold on, tearing through the shirt and into the soft flesh. I flung the wolf away from Patric. He hit the sofa, scrambled to his feet and snarled at me, poised to attack again. Thérèse jumped in with a hard slap, shouting something that made him cringe.

  I went for Patric. Getting him in a throat lock I tried to wrench him off the wolf he was pounding into the floor. He was heavy, pure muscle and about a foot taller than me. It took a lot more effort to move him than I’d thought. With a grunt of effort, I managed to pull him back, locking my legs round his waist to get more leverage.

  He fell back, crushing me. The air shot from me in a pained squeak. Patric swore and clambered to his feet. For a second I thought he’d go straight back to beating the crap out of the bloodied, dazed wolf on the floor. His whole body still vibrated with the need to act, to hurt. I got to my knees, ready to tackle him again.

  Thérèse came to the rescue again; she grabbed Patric’s hands, spilling out a flood of garbled, teary French. She gazed up at him, dark eyes glowing, lush lips pleading and whatever she said, it softened him. His shoulders slumped and the fight in him died. The atmosphere in the room shifted, all the rage melting away. I dropped back to the floor, relief filling me. Shannon knelt behind me, wrapping her arms round my shoulders to hug me.

  “You scare the hell out of me sometimes,” she whispered.

  “I scare the hell out of myself,” I confessed, swallowing hard.

  Thérèse and Patric headed for the door, tension still strung between them. Thérèse was careful not to touch him as they walked and Patric stared straight ahead. I wondered if he thought that by ignoring the carnage he’d created, he could ignore his part in it. When the door slammed shut behind them, it was as if someone let the oxygen back into the room. Around me wolves relaxed with huffs and sighs, exclaiming to each other with that kind of hysterical laughter you use to hide how freaked out you really are.

  Clémence sat up, shaking her head and whining. Her wolf form vanished, leaving her human body in shredded clothes. She rubbed her head and swore softly. “Thérèse?”

  “She left—she took Patric out,” I said, leaning back in Shannon’s embrace. “Don’t,” I added when Clémence staggered to her feet to go after them. “Don’t, Clémence, let them sort it out, okay?”

  She looked like she might argue, then one of the younger wolves said something to her and she noticed the wolf Patric had beaten. With a cry, she dashed to him, crouching down to gingerly touch his battered face.

  “Oh, Adrien... Merde.” She helped him get upright, then snapped at one of the watching wolves. He hurried to grab the first aid kit still sitting on the table. With Clémence barking orders, he started cleaning the blood from Adrien’s face.

  I stood, pulling Shannon up with me, unsure what we should do now. My face ached and my head pounded, adrenaline making me twitchy. I wanted out, away from the smell of fresh blood and the fading aura of violence.

  “Can we help?” Shannon asked Clémence. The other woman shook her head, eyes glistening with tears.

  “No, please. It’s fine. I should... Thérèse... She...” She broke down and stood quickly, heading for the bar. Everyone watched, but nobody moved to comfort her. It’s hard seeing your alpha, your leader, weak and vulnerable; impossible to know what to do.

  Shannon and I didn’t have that problem; Clémence wasn’t my alpha and Shannon didn’t care about Pack protocol. We joined Clémence at the bar. She stood behind it, twisting open a bottle of coke, muttering about wanting vodka as she did..

  “If she goes back to him, I’ll die,” Clémence declared, rubbing her eyes. “I’ll just die.”

  “Don’t say things like that,” Shannon said, resting her hand on Clémence’s knee. “She’ll be back, I’m sure.”

  “But she went off with him!” Clémence protested. “He will talk to her and make her go back to him. He always does!”

  “After what he just did?” I shook my head . “I’m sure as soon as she knows he’s not going to beat anyone else to a pulp, she’ll be right back.”

  Clémence wiped her nose and plucked at the hem of her ruined shirt. “You should go find Sun,” she said . “She might be home.”

  I’d forgotten Sun. Hardly surprising, but once I realized it, guilt gnawed at me. “Yeah, I suppose so.”

  “If she is back home, I’ll have some serious words for her,” Shannon muttered. She leaned in and kissed Clémence on the cheek, surprising me and Clémence too, I think. “It’ll be fine. Just relax, okay?”

  We gathered our things, pausing to check on Adrien. He was perched on the edge of the sofa, face bandaged up like a mummy whilst the other wolves crowded around him, chattering excitedly. Now that the danger was over, Adrien was apparently a hero. Just for getting his face flattened. Kids.

  I took Shannon’s hand, eager now to get home and see if Sun had indeed shown up. My gut said no, but I desperately wanted to find her back at the flat, sweeping around in one of her rainbow dresses, singing to her baby bump or something.

  “Oh, wait.” Shannon released me and rummaged in her bag, pulling out a business card. She handed it to the nearest wolf. “My number, in case Sun comes here first.”

  He nodded solemnly—although I’m sure he had no idea what she was talking about—and tucked the card in his shirt pocket. With one last glance at Clémence who was still slumped over the bar and sobbing softly, we left.

  ***

  Sun wasn’t back at her flat. The place was as empty as we’d left it, the sunlight glowing off the scattered dresses and jewelry in the bedroom. It felt like a crime scene, frozen at the moment of the foul deed. I felt like we were intruders; like every second we spent there destroyed evidence.

  “Come on,” I said to Shannon, who was staring at the mess of clothes on the sofa.

  “Do you think Sun could do it?” she asked me suddenly. “Kill Mike, I mean? Do you think she’s capable?”

  The question surprised me. I’d thought we were done with that line of thought. “I don’t know... I mean, of course she’s capable, same as anyone’s capable of hurting someone else. But that doesn’t mean anything. Shannon, come on.” I tugged at her sleeve. I didn’t want to hang around in Sun’s flat without her there, not when we had no clue when or if she’d be back. It felt dirty, voyeuristic.

  “I just keep thinking that they were fighting when we ran into them. And she did find him,” Shannon said, face troubled. She didn’t want to believe it, but that sharp PI brain couldn’t dismiss the facts either.

  “That’s what the police call circumstantial evidence, I believe.” I dragged her out of the flat. “Come on, Shannon, she’s a bimbo. She’s a heavily pregnant bimbo—you really think she could get the jump on a big man like Mike? And she definitely couldn’t have killed the five or six other victims. She can’t shift for one thing, can she? A wolf in human shape couldn’t kill a man like that.”

  She unlocked our front door and stepped aside to let me in. “True, but she could have set it up to look like the other murders, couldn’t she?”

  “She’s a bimbo,” I repeated, although a little sliver of doubt troubled me now. Maybe Shannon was right. Maybe that was why Sun was so insistent she couldn’t contact her family—she was on the run. Maybe she hadn’t just left Dae. Maybe she and Mike murdered him to escape her cruel, restrictive Pack. And then they’d argued, maybe Mike had wanted to turn himself in, so...
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  I shook my head, knowing I was being ridiculous. “I just can’t picture Sun as a murderer,” I said. “She’s all sunshine and rainbows. Where did this come from anyway?”

  “I don’t know.” She raked her hands through her hair and slumped on the sofa. “Why else would she run off? Maybe the guilt’s got to her.”

  “But she ran off without even taking any money,” I pointed out. I sat down next to her, rubbing her knee absently as I thought it over. “No, she’s not a killer, Shannon.”

  Shannon pulled her laptop onto her lap and switched it on. “I suppose Sun isn’t exactly a femme fatal,” she admitted. “But what does a murderer look like? If you could tell a person’s mind just by looking at them, you’d save a lot of lives.” Her fingers danced over the keyboard. “You’ve got an email from Vince.”

  I dragged the laptop across to read it.

  Hey girlfriend, missing u! Joel says hi too and Glory says bring her back a nice Parisian boy. Why u asking about Hesketh? I don’t really remember, but Glory says it was like bad meat or something. What’s all this about a pregnant werewolf too?! What are you up to out there? X

  I sat back, huffing. My nightmare and the memory of Hesketh returned. His whole house stank like a butcher’s bin, sour and rotten. Nothing like the too-sweet, rotting fruit smell of Le Monstre. And whilst my wolf had known Hesketh was unnatural, I’d never been frozen in fear by him; if anything, his presence, his existence, had infuriated the wolf, driven her to attack. Le Monstre was something different, something beyond my experience.

  Shannon read the email too. “Well, scratch that theory then,” she said, once I’d explained my dream. “That leaves us with wolf or human.”

  “We shouldn’t even be thinking about it,” I said, draping my arm around her shoulder. “We should be enjoying ourselves.”

  She laughed, resting her head on my shoulder. “I think we can probably give up on that for today, don’t you?”

  I touched my face wound. “Yeah, okay. What shall we do instead?”

  ***

  We did nothing in the end, which wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind. It was nice anyway. I curled up on the sofa with a battered copy of Desire by Moonlight, one of the early Katrina Pagan novels, and Shannon sat at the other end with her laptop, checking her business emails and searching for restaurants near the Eiffel Tower. It was peaceful, relaxing and exactly what we both needed. Whilst Sun and the drama at Loup Garou didn’t entirely leave my mind, the adventures of a leather-clad werewolf government agent and her sexy demon lover did a lot to push it back.

  “What’s she fighting in that one?” Shannon asked me as she rose to make a cup of tea. She stopped to flip the book up in my hands and see the pulpy cover, with its B-movie like colors and graphics.

  “Vampires,” I said. “It’s always vampires.”

  Shannon clicked her tongue at me. “I’m sure those books lower your IQ, you know.”

  “Don’t be a snob,” I scolded, not really paying attention to her. “They’re fun.”

  So fun in fact that the next time I looked up the sun was setting outside, dusk sliding slowly over the city. I stretched, set my book aside and decided I’d go and check Sun’s flat again, even though neither of us had heard a sound all afternoon. I just couldn’t help but hope she’d sneaked in while we were distracted, and was just taking a nap.

  But no, of course the flat was still empty. I stood in the doorway, despair filling me. If she didn’t show up soon, I’d call the police. I should have already, but I wasn’t sure how long somebody had to be missing before you could report it. And what could we tell the police? A girl we just met and didn’t know had gone off without telling us? So what?

  But my gut instinct was that she was in trouble—in danger even, given the killer stalking the streets—and I hated doing nothing.

  “Ayla!” Shannon’s frantic cry sent me racing back to our flat, my heart jolting at the panic in her voice. She stood in the middle of the living room, TV remote in hand, staring at the screen with a look of horror on her face.

  “What? What is it?” I rushed to her side, fully expecting to see some reporter standing by while Sun’s body was dragged from the Seine or something.

  I had the reporter bit right.

  The crowd of angry people wielding bricks and hammers, spades and tire irons swarmed around a warehouse building, all screaming and shouting at the top of their lungs, I hadn’t expected. It took me a split second to recognize the building and remember Clémence’s prophetic words from that morning. People will panic if they know a werewolf is their neighbor. I clutched at Shannon, digging my nails into her arm.

  “No,” she said, looking at me and guessing my thoughts perfectly. “No, Ayla, we can’t. You can’t go down there. There’s nothing you could do.”

  “But Clémence—”

  “No!” She turned to grab me, eyes pleading. “Look at that mob—you could be killed! Crushed, trampled, beaten to death...”

  “And what about the wolves in Loup Garou who could be beaten to death?” I demanded, pulling away from her.

  “The police will take care of it.” She sounded doubtful though and I didn’t see any police on the TV. It was a big mob, clearly out for violence; I wouldn’t fancy a policeman’s chances against them.

  I looked at Shannon, desperate to make her understand. My wolf was buzzing, furious at the thought of other wolves in danger and the urge to get there, to do something, was overwhelming. “Please Shannon...”

  “What would you do?” she challenged me, face flushed with anger and worry. “What would you do, Ayla, if you went down there? Disperse the mob single-handed?”

  “I don’t know! But I can’t do nothing. Please, Shannon, I can’t just watch.”

  “You promised,” she said simply.

  For a heartbeat, I hated her. Hated her for holding that over me when wolves were in danger and every instinct I possessed screamed at me to go and help the Pack. Hated her for asking me to watch, even though she was right—what could I do if I went?

  I think she saw it too; pain flashed over her face, fast and anguished. I think in that moment she hated me too for wanting to go. Then she threw her hands up in a gesture of pure defeat. “I’m coming with you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, biting my lip.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “But I am sorry.”

  She smiled weakly at me as she slipped her shoes on. “It’ll probably all be over by the time we get there.”

  ***

  We caught a cab to Loup Garou at Shannon’s insistence; I think so I couldn’t just shapeshift and run off without her. I fidgeted endlessly in my seat, worrying at the seat belt, fretting and focusing all my willpower on keeping the wolf at bay. Shannon gripped my hand so hard I was sure she’d leave bruises. Deep down I knew she was as worried about Clémence and her little Pack as I was.

  The police arrived the same time we did. We watched them pour out of their cars and dive into the mob circling Loup Garou. Fists flew, batons crunched against bone and people screamed, but they made little impact. The mob outnumbered them and had righteous anger on its side. They were firm in their belief that they were protecting their families, their own lives, by striking out at the werewolves in their midst. The smell of blood, sweat and fury hung in the air like storm clouds about to break.

  Shannon and I hovered at a safe distance, neither of us sure what to do now we were here. A small group of onlookers, growing by the second, gathered around us, shouting support or insults, I thought, judging by their tone. I suddenly felt terribly exposed and vulnerable. When someone behind me grabbed my arm, I yelped and spun round ready to defend myself, only to find Thérèse looking down at me with panic in her eyes.

  “Clémence is inside!” she cried. Her whole body trembled. Her face was tear-stained and the earthy scent of wolf rolled off her. She was on the edge of a shift and in this volatile crowd, that could be very dangerous.

  I held onto
her as if I could keep her in human shape that way. “What happened?” I shouted to make myself heard over the cries of the mob.

  “Patric! We argued... I told him I was leaving him and he said...” She sucked in a deep breath. “He said he would kill Clémence, that we were both bitches to be put down. His friends, they came with him, telling people they had found Le Monstre. They said Clémence is Le Monstre and she is inside!”

  And just like that, a mob was created. I was surprised we didn’t have pitchforks and burning torches too. Anger flamed inside me, both at the stupid, mindless mob and at Patric for being a wolf-hating, violent son of a bitch. A small part of me was furious at Clémence and Thérèse, who like Sun, were so blind and ignorant to the consequences of their actions. I hadn’t been that stupid at their age, surely?