Wolf Slayer

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  That was a shame because he knew instinctively that Tess Owens was something special and so much more than the reputation that preceded her.

  He just couldn’t put a finger on how he knew this.

  As his body shuddered with a mixture of appreciation and wariness for this new opponent, Jonas spoke softly so that Tess wouldn’t be able to hear what he had to say.

  “Possibly that’s your greatest asset in dealing with my kind? We tend to underestimate you after a first glance? Pretty girl all alone in the woods?”

  Inwardly, he also added, I vow not to become one of the suckers overly intrigued by those things. All I have to do is stay out of your way and hope you can determine friend from foe.

  He prayed that Tess Owens might turn out to be an ask-questions-first kind of predator, just like he was. But this wasn’t the time for introductions and more wayward thoughts having to do with Tess’s tight jeans. Any hunter with a rep like hers wouldn’t let a full moon go to waste. Tess Owens would make the most of tonight and come knocking at his door fully armed and ready to rumble.

  He had to keep her from doing so.

  “I’m not what you think I am, Tess. I’m here, not to mess with you, but to protect a secret of my own. I’m needed. Someone else’s life depends on what happens here and what I do, and you just need to stay out of my way for a while.”

  Did she get those confidences sent across the distance separating them? Jonas watched her turn her head as if she might have. He also felt a pull from somewhere behind him, an indication that he had to get back to his temporary home.

  Having an Owens next door was one strike against him. The other creature that was looking for him was far worse.

  Death was coming and would find him eventually. The black-cloaked, soul-catching bastard was the greater opponent, the mightier threat, and the monster he needed to keep at bay. Besides himself, there was only one member of the Dale family left, and his sister’s life depended on his ability to protect her. That had become his goal in life.

  The bad news was the wave of aggression coming from Tess Owens and the silent words he swore he heard slip from her lips.

  “It’s a date, wolf. Tonight. Don’t be late.”

  At this point, so early in their association, probably nothing he could have said in return would have changed her mind.

  Chapter 2

  Tess paced the room as night began to descend. Wearing leather pants, a black shirt and black boots, she took a quick look in the mirror to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything that might make the difference between life and death when dealing with a werewolf.

  She looked good enough, Tess thought, though people in town stared at her for other reasons when they met her. More than one of them had probably wondered where she might have gotten so many of the scars that crisscrossed the side of her face.

  “Will he keep our date? What do you think, Tess?” she asked herself as she strode down the hallway of the cozy, eight-room, wood-paneled cabin.

  Determined to find out the answer to that question, Tess entered the weapons room and chose a knife with a gleaming silver blade. She slung the bow and quiver of arrows over her shoulder, adjusting easily to the added weight, then rolled her neck to ease the tension building there.

  Gloves on, weaponed up, she walked out of the front door. After giving the cabin a last glance, she set her sights on the trees and slipped into the dark.

  * * *

  “It’s okay.”

  Jonas spoke softly to his sister, though he wasn’t sure how much of what he said ever sank in. There hadn’t been a verbal response from her since she had been attacked in a Miami park not too far from where they had lived.

  Gwendolyn Dale had grown frail and lethargic on the outside—the parts others saw if they looked. He hoped the darkness he now sensed inside his sister would eventually fade away and be replaced by the happy-go-lucky sister he had always loved.

  Sometimes, though, he wasn’t so sure about the darkness’s staying power.

  Jonas tended to believe the attack in Miami had left Gwen with a black spot on her soul, and that she had been marked by Death in some way. This had to be the reason there seemed to be a specter on her trail. He thought it likely that his sister wasn’t supposed to have survived that attack, and that she had been slated, fated, or whatever the hell happened in the big cosmic scheme of things, to have died that night in Miami.

  In the end though, what did he really know about such things? His entire repertoire of ideas was based on nothing more than conjecture and supposition.

  “I have to go out, Gwen. Just for a while.”

  Jonas laid a hand on his sister’s shoulder and winced at its thinness.

  “I’ll be back soon, so take care while I’m gone and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  Gwen would have laughed at the last part of that statement if she had been with him mentally as well as physically. Out of everyone else around them, his younger sister had been the most like him. She had been developing a similar kind of power and strength, even though neither of those things had helped the night she slipped out of the house with her friends without telling anyone and had encountered true darkness.

  Gwen had been the only victim left alive out of the four young girls...if the term being alive could describe the state they had found her in. It had taken weeks of seclusion for her to recover enough to move her to this remote location. She hadn’t said a word to anyone since that terrible night.

  Gwen was haunted. He knew that. She grew paler day by day and seldom ventured outside. Jonas wanted to believe she understood every word he said now, even as he could see her slipping further and further away.

  “Your new companion will be here tomorrow,” he said lightly. “You probably need a female around. I think you’ll like her. She’ll stay for most of the day and go home before sundown. You know why she can’t stay here after dark settles in. That’s my shift. If you like her, we can see about having her spend more time here.”

  Gwen’s pale blue eyes stared up at him as if she had heard him this time. She offered nothing in the way of facial expression.

  “Right, then,” Jonas said. “I’m off to meet our neighbor. She sent me an invitation.”

  In the old days, Gwen would have pleaded to go along. But even before her accident, she hadn’t yet been in full possession of the kind of skills that could have helped against things like experienced wolf hunters. It wouldn’t have been long, though, before his sister would have outshone every other Were in the area.

  Gwen was an anomaly within an anomaly. A special being within the Were species. He wasn’t sure if she knew this.

  “Wish me luck.” Jonas leaned over to place a kiss on his sister’s forehead and then headed out, knowing his meeting with Tess Owens couldn’t be postponed.

  Keeping beneath the shadows of tree cover didn’t isolate him completely from the moon’s effects. Dappled light on his shoulders instigated sparks from nerves that buzzed, snapped and roused the wolf nestled inside him. His claws had appeared. Both shoulders ached. This was all part of the deal when the moon issued a come-hither.

  After covering another acre of rocky, forested hillside, he got his first good impression of what was coming his way. Tess’s scent was in the air—that same mixture of smoke and flowers that had led him to her earlier.

  The scent grew stronger as he walked. So did the moonlight. Jonas resisted the urge to shape-shift. Tess was here, just ahead, waiting for him. She had met him midway between the two cabins, which probably meant she knew where he was staying.

  Tess Owens stood near a large rock pile at the crest of the hill overlooking property lines, surrounded by trees. She was partially camouflaged by shadows. The fact that she wore black would have helped to hide her from human eyes, but not from a werewolf’s. Jonas located her with a complex system of sight, s
cent and the image presented to him by way of her body heat.

  It was showtime.

  “Don’t bother to hide,” she called out in a tone that was both combative and dangerously sexy in equal measures. It was a deep voice for someone her size.

  Jonas hadn’t counted on her ability to tune in to him so quickly, though. This was yet another detail that added respect and wariness to his initial assessment of her.

  She seemed to be looking straight at him when she couldn’t possibly see that far. Night-vision goggles might have helped her to pinpoint him, but she wasn’t wearing them. Maybe she had heard his approach? The snap of a twig? A rustle of branches? He used to be better than this.

  She spoke again. “These days I’m fairly good at what I do, and I get better with age and practice.”

  Careful not to make a sound, Jonas inched forward with his wolfishness twisting his insides. A human growl stuck in his throat. The claws that had appeared made his human hands ache. His wolf side was willing to take on this threat, but it wasn’t time to let that happen. He doubted if Tess would take aim at a human form with the silver-tipped arrows he could now smell. Hunters rarely did.

  “Are you coming out, or should I welcome you with a silver-coated handshake?” she challenged.

  All hunters knew about the Were aversion to silver and a few other metals. Tess Owens seemed pretty confident about that aversion.

  Blaming his comeback on his reaction to her voice, Jonas decided to oblige her request, at least in part.

  He said, “Handshake? I wasn’t aware that you had social skills, Owens. People in town told me you rarely show your face there. To some of them, you’re more of a ghost than a neighbor.”

  He wondered what that remark might do to her self-confidence and if it would shake her up in a way that might lead him to find a crack in her admirable armor.

  “People in town don’t actually know me,” she returned, showing no sign of being affronted either by his remark or the fact that he had not shape-shifted like he was supposed to.

  Jonas took another step forward, keeping to the darker spaces. His wolf urges were rising by steady degrees, drawn to the moon, drawn to Tess Owens, ready to take its turn in this face-off.

  “Don’t stall the inevitable on my behalf,” she continued. “There’s no need to fight your true nature. You know you want a piece of me.”

  “What nature would that be?” Jonas asked.

  “The kind that howls.”

  “I think I’d prefer to meet you on a more human basis, at least on this occasion,” he said.

  “Should I be honored?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “Show yourself and get this over with.”

  “Put down the bow and I’ll think about your request.”

  “How about if you reel in your claws?”

  Her comeback was testy and insightful since she couldn’t actually see his claws. Wild guess?

  Jonas asked, “What if I’m not what you’re thinking I am? Don’t you ever make a mistake when pointing a weapon at someone?”

  “Only one mistake, and I won’t make it again.”

  She might have been alluding to the death of her parents a year ago. But now that he was closer, Jonas finally got a good look at her face.

  He suppressed a growl of appreciation. Tess was incredibly beautiful. All the right stuff was there, in all the right places. She had an oval face with perfectly symmetrical features and large, light eyes. Her brow was wide beneath a fringe of fair hair. Angular cheekbones gave her a regal look, though the deep hollows beneath them accentuated her thinness.

  All in all, she didn’t look anything like any wolf hunter Jonas had ever seen.

  However, she wasn’t perfect. Overlaying all that beauty was a trail of scars. Lavender lines, like crawling vines, crossed one side of her face, running from her forehead to her chin.

  Jonas recognized those scars and knew what had made them. Tess had been mauled by a wolf, and that wolf had done some damage. Because she was here now, it was easy for him to see who the winner of that previous skirmish had been.

  “Are scars the reason you stay away from town, or are hunters loners by necessity?” he asked, earnestly wondering about that.

  A shudder of disgust ran through her, but Tess didn’t drop the aim of the arrow pointed in his direction. Still, Jonas thought he might have found that crack he’d been searching for, however small it might have been. Those scars bothered her.

  “Old wounds come with the territory,” she said calmly enough.

  Jonas nodded as he took another step toward her. She still wouldn’t be able to see him clearly, and he wasn’t going to allow verbal taunts or silver-tipped arrows to mess up this crucial meeting. Two more steps to his right and into the moonlight, and he would become the target she was looking for. He had to stave off that shape-shift. He had to hold on, sensing how badly she wanted to let that arrow fly.

  Tess wasn’t just a hunter out to score. Her level of palpable aggression told him that she had a personal vendetta against the creatures she hunted. Six years on the force with the Miami PD had taught him a lot about dealing with emotion and the concept of revenge. Tess’s hatred for his kind left a sour taste in his mouth.

  “Claws also come with the territory,” he said.

  “Then use them. Do your worst. Or try to,” she taunted.

  “Having animal in my DNA makeup doesn’t make me stupid, Tess.”

  His use of her name surprised her. Her right cheek quivered.

  “If true, that kind of insight would be a first,” she noted.

  “You have no reason to fear or hate me. I’d like to offer a truce,” Jonas said.

  “Like that will happen.”

  “What can I do to force the issue? I have an agenda here that doesn’t include you. My reason for being in the area is important to people other than myself.”

  “People?” She picked up on that word, emphasizing its misuse when pertaining to him.

  Jonas wasn’t used to this kind of treatment. In Miami he was a respected detective on the job, fighting crime both in and out of the shadows. To Tess Owens, he was nothing more than an animal.

  Turns out that she was formidable enough, he supposed. But she was also quite a sight standing there—a delicious, leather-clad, angry sight.

  He wondered what she’d think if he mentioned how exotic he found her voice or how good she looked in that black suit. He could have bet she’d have been insulted then.

  “I applaud your goals,” he told her. “But I’m not one of the bad guys.”

  “Wouldn’t bad guys use that line?”

  “Not around me,” he said.

  Would Tess believe that Weres didn’t like bad guys of any species, including their own? Would she change her mind about werewolves if she knew how many decent wolves there were in the world, and how they fought behind the scenes to further the concept of peace and justice for all?

  What if he showed her his badge?

  “Most of the time, human is what I appear to be,” he said. “That’s what the world believes I am.”

  “Except for those of us who know better.”

  “Yes. But I’m not part of the reason you do what you do, and I’ve already stated that my intention for being here isn’t to cause you or anyone else around here harm.”

  “Why here?” she asked, unshakable on her aim with that arrow.

  “It’s as far away from others as I could find on the spur of the moment,” Jonas replied truthfully.

  “What others?”

  “People.”

  “That’s rich,” she said. “And it would also be a point in your favor, if anyone was counting.”

  All right, Jonas thought. That’s it. He had said more than he had intended, and Tess Owens had no right to question him further
. Meeting her here had been a courtesy. He had hoped she’d see reason and leave him and Gwen alone, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen.

  It was likely that Tess was driven to exterminate every werewolf she came across and had made up her mind about him being included in that goal.

  “I suppose there’s no reasoning with you then,” he said.

  “Reason? I’m pretty sure werewolves don’t know the meaning of the word.”

  He nodded. “Well then, it’s been a pleasure, Tess.”

  The calmness of his closing remark also seemed to surprise her. Another shudder ran through Tess that was sizeable enough to make her leather suit creak.

  “Show yourself,” she demanded, though her voice was softer, lower, and almost a purr.

  Her tone stirred Jonas’s insides in a strange way, as if he could feel its vibration from where he stood. That purr melted into his skin, sparked his nerve endings in a way that created its own electricity.

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea, do you?” he asked.

  “What it would do is make things a whole lot easier.”

  “For whom? You?”

  “Yes. For me,” she said.

  “You believe that killing every Were you meet will bring your parents back? And that every Were is bent on carnage and destruction?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

  “Then you don’t know much, wolf hunter, and your education has been sorely lacking.”

  She spoke quickly. “You’re suggesting that you are not like the others? That you’re different?”

  “I can’t speak to the actions of those others. I can only repeat that I mean no harm to you or anyone else around here and leave it at that.”

  “Can you prove what you say?”

  “I can prove it by turning my back and leaving you alone and in one piece.”

  “Or by showing yourself,” she suggested with more tension on the string of her bow.

  Okay. If you say so...

  Jonas stepped into the moonlight, allowing the rain of silver light to wash over him. The wolf inside him barreled upward so fast, his shape-shift was completed in the few seconds it took him to reach Tess Owens. So fast, she didn’t have time to use her lightning-fast reflexes and let loose of that arrow.