Wolf Hunter

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  “Why do you think so?” Wilson asked.

  “Because,” Dana Delmonico said to the group in a low voice all the more noticeable for the quietness in it, “Abby Stark is one of us.”

  That information virtually shut down the conversation until Dylan recovered sufficiently enough to address Delmonico’s remark.

  “Sam Stark’s daughter is Were?”

  “Maybe not fully, or not yet,” Cameron heard himself say. “Nevertheless, she now realizes she’s not like everyone else around her, and more like me. It can’t be long until she comes into her own. Her body wanted to change tonight, but she fought hard against it.”

  Wilson slapped the wooden post beside him and said seriously, “Well, if that isn’t some kind of cosmic justice, I don’t know what is.”

  Dylan required further confirmation. “You know this how?”

  “By way of that kiss Wilson mentioned. Plus a whole host of other things.”

  “You’re not mistaken?”

  Cameron shrugged. “I’m pretty sure there’s no way to be mistaken about that. I might be new to this whole species thing, but I’ve already learned that a wolf recognizes other wolves.”

  Dylan tossed Delmonico a thoughtful expression. Cameron observed how their eyes connected, and he relived the strike of the connection he and Abby had shared. Dylan and Dana Delmonico were indeed a couple. Seeing them, he fought a nearly overwhelming desire to go after Abby right then.

  “This complicates matters,” Dylan said.

  “And places her in jeopardy,” Delmonico added. “Imagine being the daughter of a major player in the wolf-hunting business, while becoming a wolf herself.”

  Cameron suppressed the impulse to shout that he had to be on his way. Instead, in a managed calm-cop tone, and with a straight face, he said, “I need to get her out of there before her father finds out.”

  Chapter 14

  “Shut up,” Sam Stark said. “Shut your damn mouth. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  With a groan of frustration, Abby shoved Sam’s hand away. She was bathed in moonlight, and had to escape. The light sank into her skin and down into her bones, icing muscle and marrow, producing sharp prickles of apprehension that bordered on pain.

  “I guess that answers my question pretty clearly, Sam.”

  Folding her knees, Abby flipped over and used her hands to steady herself, though steadying herself completely wasn’t in the picture. The shaking got rapidly worse, and Sam, who might have guessed the quakes were merely the effects of their heated confrontation, got to his feet without offering to help her up.

  “You don’t know anything of the kind,” he said. “And you suppose that now is the time and place to have any discussion about family?”

  “It’s as good a place as any.”

  Abby’s fingers curled against her palms, her nails drawing thin lines of blood, the scent dispersing in the air, and in the moonlight, like dust motes caught in sunbeams.

  She could not get to her feet. She felt weak and unnaturally winded.

  “Get up,” Sam commanded. “It’s dangerous to stay here.”

  “I’ll move when you tell me one thing I’ve asked you for.”

  “Now you’ll bargain with me, Abby? It isn’t my health that’s at risk by remaining in one place looking the way you look.”

  The shakes had gone internal, rocking Abby’s stomach and chest. She closed her eyes and tried to rally. Whatever had taken hold of her tonight threatened to turn her inside out. Was she sick? Flu? Summer cold? Some sort of virus? Was it nerves revving for battle?

  A series of terrible images sprang to mind.

  Cameron, in the moonlight. The way his pulsating body had exploded into masses of rippling muscle and his skin had danced like water over stone. His beautiful features, drawn with the pain of a transition he had worked so hard to hold off for her sake.

  Real fear crept into her heart for the first time. But heaven help her, the only person who seemed to truly care about what happened to her wasn’t human.

  Awareness of the bond connecting her to Cameron across the distance separating them made her muscles start to mimic his, twitching and contracting as the moonlight began to change inner sensation from ice to fire.

  She looked at her hands and extended her fingers, recalling how Cameron’s skin also had burned up in the moonlight.

  Something was happening to her. She had to get away.

  Sam yanked her up by the back of the leather jacket and shoved her up against a tree. She wanted to fight back, needed to assert herself. The leafy canopy overhead offered a temporary respite from the light, but breathing seemed an impossible task.

  “You’re ill,” Sam said.

  “You think?”

  “And you’re half-naked under that jacket.”

  Abby glared at her father.

  “You know the way home. I’ll let the others know you’re moving toward the street,” Sam said. “Keep out of the way, Abby. Maintain a distance from the team.”

  “Or what? Maybe they’ll screw up and put me out of my misery before I get there?”

  Sam slapped her across the cheek so hard Abby’s head turned. Her father had never struck her, had never actually paid that much attention to her, other than to shout. Talking about her mother had been an obvious touchy spot for him. Abby’s new show of defiance had to be icing on the cake.

  The slap that burned her face served to awaken more of the dark sickness rolling around inside her, inspiring that darkness to gather and rise up against such violence. When Sam turned away, Abby drew her blade. As he reached for his cell phone, she went after skin...her own skin.

  Pushing back the sleeve of the leather coat, she sliced open her left forearm, severing enough small vessels to bring up a small river of blood. Sam might not notice, but they would smell the blood. If werewolves roamed this park tonight, they’d come running. Weres would either try to hack Sam to pieces, or lure Sam to go after them, leaving her alone, allowing her a few precious moments to herself.

  The blood also might do something else, her frantic mind insisted. It would let Cameron Mitchell know of the immediacy of the danger here. If he scented her distress, he’d be forewarned about the seriousness of the hunters and take care to circumvent the trouble.

  That’s what Abby hoped as she stood on trembling legs that wouldn’t hold her up for much longer, and with her blood pattering as softly as summer rain to the ground by her feet.

  * * *

  “Mitchell?”

  The voice calling to him seemed blurred by a great distance. Cameron turned his head, stunned to find that he had dropped into a crouch, and that his heart pounded as if he’d been running.

  He looked up.

  “I guess it’s true, then.” The voice belonged to his new host, Dylan. “Abby Stark has wolf in her.”

  Puzzled about how he’d gotten into this position, Cameron kept very still. “What just happened?”

  “You recognize her scent,” Dylan replied. “I smell it, too. Wilson?”

  Wilson shook his shaggy-haired head. “I sense the change in the air, but can’t pinpoint the source like you do.”

  “Blood? Is that what’s in the wind?” Cameron’s body reacted with a jerk as he finally got the gist of what Dylan had proposed. “It’s Abby’s blood? Good God.”

  He sprang to his feet and started for the steps. Delmonico stopped him from descending by barring his way.

  “It could be a trick,” she warned. “Very likely it is. That woman might be wolf without knowing it, but she’s also been one of those hunters for a long time. She would know how blood would affect you, especially her blood if you’ve bonded.”

  Wilson concurred. “And if she didn’t do this to lure you front and center, someone else might have provided that invitation for her.”

  Cameron stiffened, horrified by that thought. “You think those hunters might cut her up in order to draw wolves out of hiding? They’d be cruel enough to do that?”
>
  Dylan stepped forward until he was shoulder to shoulder with Cameron, and offered just two simple, incredibly strong words. “It worked.”

  Cameron glanced from Delmonico’s practiced, blank-cop face to Dylan’s. They were right, of course. His body strained to move. Independent of his mind, his system wouldn’t be appeased for long by rational thought. Each breath he took in filled with Abby’s scent. Each breath brought back the memory of feeling her bare skin against his skin and her lips crushed beneath his in an endless kiss. And those hunters might injure her in order to get a rise out of wolves in the area, and a rise out of him?

  Well, it worked, all right. He was a breath away from shoving Delmonico aside. His legs were gearing up for a sprint.

  “Talk to us,” Delmonico said.

  “It doesn’t matter who did this to Abby, or the reason. Besides, how do we know what this is, for sure? What if it’s a call for help? What if this is Abby’s personal message to me, an SOS? I can’t risk ignoring that, can I? I’ll have to find her in either case.”

  He sounded breathless, and hardened his tone. “Thank you for the introductions. I’m grateful. I needed to find you, so I hope we’ll meet again.”

  Sidestepping Dylan, Cameron leaped from the porch. Moonlight was waiting for him. Knocked backward by the suddenness of the start of his shift, Cameron clenched his teeth and stretched out his arms. “Bring it on, damn it!”

  As his body ripped apart at the seams and his face began to morph, he let out a roar that shook the ground. But he didn’t wait. He could not let more time go by with Abby in trouble.

  Halfway through his wolfish transformation, he shook off the immensity of the pain. With his head pounding and his chest torn in two, he headed for the wall that had sealed him in with an offer of safety, and maybe even the companionship he had desperately sought. When he reached that wall, Cameron launched himself upward.

  Claws scraped the brick in a sound like fingernails on a blackboard as he found purchase in the grooves in the mortar. Growls erupted from his throat, one after the other, as he hauled himself up—menacing sounds heralding his intent to do harm to anyone or anything that might have harmed his mate, and to anyone stupid enough to get in his way.

  On the top of the wall he stood for a few seconds, strange sensations pinging through him that paralleled some wild, distant past. Wolves running. Wolves howling from mountaintops. Wind ruffling through fur.

  Landing on both feet with a heavy thud on the opposite side of the wall, Cameron knew he had crossed into life-threatening territory. But he faced those kinds of things on a daily basis as a cop, and only one thing mattered tonight. Abby.

  He did not believe she would intentionally cause him harm. She had warned him clearly enough. She had confessed about the part she had played in the deadly game of hunting werewolves.

  If he had been mistaken about her...

  If the other reason for shedding her blood turned out to be the case, and this was a particularly sadistic trap, he’d get his wolf on in the worst way possible, and do some damage of his own.

  Seconds into his sprint, Cameron realized he wasn’t alone. The aggressive growl he’d let loose was answered by each of the werewolves beside him. Three of them, all furred up and terribly intimidating as their muscles stretched and their pelts ruffled with each churning stride.

  Not your problem, he would have shouted if he possessed a human voice. Then again, it had been their problem for a lot longer than it had been his. Hunters had been on their radar for a while. These wolves knew infinitely more about werewolves than he did, and the iron-rich scent of Abby’s blood had disrupted the meeting, keeping him from finding out a few important things.

  He inhaled. A real ocean breeze, rare this far from the beach, diluted the bloody scent somewhat, though he found it easy enough to follow.

  Cameron growled again, and this time the gruff vocalization felt good, because in spite of the situation, he had companions from whom he didn’t have to hide. These wolves knew the score.

  His companions might have gone after a sighting of the hunters tonight, anyway, whether or not he had shown up in their backyard pining for a female they considered an enemy. But right now, he had become one of them. One with them.

  Dana Delmonico as a wolf was dark, streamlined and larger than her human shape, though not by much. Her mate, Dylan, now running by her side, presented as a huge, impressively daunting figure, scary as hell in the moonlight, with fur as light as his hair. But then, Dylan had been nearly as formidable in his human skin, with those angular features and pale eyes.

  Dylan, whoever he really was, possessed unnameable qualities that separated him from the other two Weres somewhat and lent him a regal air. Delmonico’s mate was no blue-collar worker in his day job, Cameron was willing to bet. Maybe he didn’t have to work, if the mansion behind the walls meant family money.

  With so much wolf around, keeping his mind on the matter at hand took concentrated effort. Cameron’s wolf liked being surrounded by others like him. The wolf in him reveled in running with this pack, as if he finally had a place, and belonged.

  He snapped his teeth and sniffed the air, better able to separate scents in wolf form.

  Blood. Getting stronger.

  No mistake. It was hers.

  His heart beat faster. His chest heaved and his veins pulsed. Abby had to be close, yet caution was needed or his new friends would be picked off en masse. And then what? What did hunters get for bagging a werewolf? Bragging rights? Underground bounty?

  Abby, where are you?

  When Delmonico gave a muted yip, Cameron looked to her. She had circled to his left and slowed, pointing at the ground. He raced to the spot, breathing hard through his mouth like the rest of the Weres.

  Delmonico had found a small pool of liquid, very dark, nearly black, on the grass by the base of a tree. Abby’s blood. He didn’t need DNA testing in the lab to know this.

  His insides twisted. A sound tore through him that he couldn’t suppress. Half groan, half growl, it caused the other wolves to drop to their haunches. In predatory positions, all three Weres tensed, waiting for whatever was to come in complete silence.

  That event turned out to be a bullet with Cameron’s name on it.

  Chapter 15

  One hunter passed to Abby’s left, creeping slowly over the grass as soundlessly as the prey he chased. This was a big guy she had served in the bar earlier that night—a bulky, middle-aged man with a recognizable attitude and the buzz cut of an ex-military man. He held a silenced rifle with a large scope, and carried the weapon easily, as if it weighed nothing.

  He glanced at her only once before continuing west, following Sam’s directions. This guy hadn’t fired the other shots, or she wouldn’t have heard them. She had led them astray with her lie to Sam about meeting up with a couple of stray werewolves near the boulevard. This bought her some time.

  She hadn’t been one for offering up prayers, but did so now, asking for Cameron to have been nowhere near those two earlier rounds of gunfire. She had to see him again, a meeting that couldn’t be risked tonight. Although she had cut her arm open, being cut off from Cameron hurt her more deeply, and in a place so far down inside her as to be inconsolable.

  Her self-inflicted wound throbbed mercilessly all the way to her shoulder and made her head feel light. Damn, though, if she’d give in to the urge to sit right down and bleed to death while Sam and his team rummaged through the place where she had met her own werewolf.

  She craved Cameron now, more than ever. Their bond hadn’t weakened one bit.

  “Cameron. Change in plans. Stay away.” Although her voice carried, the hunter she’d seen didn’t return or respond to the noise.

  Abby made a tally. She now knew where two hunters were. More of them had to be out there in the dark, and if they believed Sam, they’d all be heading in the wrong direction. That was another small point in her favor.

  She gritted her teeth to keep from shouting ab
out not knowing where to go from here. If she couldn’t find Cameron and couldn’t go back to Sam’s house, what did that leave?

  The other strange wolf she and Cameron had met up with had lent her his jacket, and it had been saturated with her blood, virtually ruined. For a good cause. Hopefully that Were would appreciate that.

  She kept a hand clamped to her wound, hoping to stanch the bleeding. Through the lacy branches overhead, moonlight called to her like some kind of Siren from a horror movie, raising the hairs at the nape of her neck and causing a pulsing pressure behind her rib cage. Her bones ached. Her head hurt.

  Thinking about closing her eyes, Abby stumbled forward in an unintentional move that planted her dead center in the silvery moonlight.

  What the hell?

  Temporarily blinded by the sudden brightness, other senses took over. The sound of a low drumbeat began at the base of her spine, starting out slow and then rapidly increased in tempo. A surge of fire rolled through her, breaking up the chills.

  The heat quickly became unbearable. Her shakes worsened the pain. The damn moonlight was doing this to her. The same moon she had always mistrusted had the power to manipulate the degree of her suffering, and desired to do so. Payback for all the nasty thoughts she had sent its way.

  Holding back a slew of curses, Abby glanced up to assess her situation.

  “What do you want from me, moon?”

  The moon’s answer was a whip of internal fire that flung Abby’s head back. Fire covered her face, took over her lungs, covered her skin. Her only option was to withstand it.

  Overheating from the inside, she tore open the jacket. Baring her chest felt better, slightly cooler, slightly right, even though so much about this was ultimately absurd.

  Light cascaded over her face and neck, over her breasts and chest, its touch strangely personal. Moonlight slid like liquid over the coat and toward her wrists.

  Another eerie impulse made her lift her fingers from the wound on her forearm and extend that arm away from her body. She watched the light envelop the bloody gap in her flesh, and heard an ungodly sizzling sound.