Wolf Hunter

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  Jolts of electricity flung her sideways. She searched for the source of the storm but there was none because this lightning was inside her, crashing and diving from one corner of her body to the other, taking out everything in its path, leaving a trail of charred destruction.

  Sickened, Abby leaned over to heave. Off balance, she teetered and nearly went down, but recovered in time to haul herself upright. Her skin glistened with sweat. Strands of her long hair stuck to the damp sides of her face. And she could do nothing about it. Further actions, such as ducking for cover, were impossible.

  The point of this wasn’t lost on her. She had been standing like this in the light when she met Cameron. She had hated the light even then, and the moon had taken this opportunity to return that hatred. The time for ignorance had ended. Her body was betraying her in a way she had to come to terms with. The damn moon had become a seducer, whispering its intent.

  “What are you offering?” Abby challenged. “It had better be good.”

  And then she got it. Grunting with the effort of staying calm when she wanted to scream, Abby looked down at her arm—the wounded one—and found its ragged edges starting to pull together. Her injury was sealing itself up, in the manner of invisible fingers simply tugging on a zipper. She was witnessing a miracle. A damn bloody miracle.

  Panic struck. Her heart skipped a beat. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, blinking fast, breath coming in gasps. There could only be one way this kind of spontaneous healing might happen, surely, if, in fact, it could.

  The moon’s ultimate revenge was to make her a werewolf.

  * * *

  Cameron couldn’t open his eyes. The world had gone temporarily black, and had taken him with it. He fought to get his wits back.

  “All cops know better than to walk right into a fight standing up,” a voice scolded, but Cameron detected an ounce of concern tying those words together.

  “Breathe, Mitchell,” a female voice directed. “Dylan’s going to remove the bullet, and you can’t curse out loud.”

  Remove the bullet?

  “Do you hear me?” she asked.

  He nodded, or thought he did, because the next thing Cameron knew, a heavy weight came down on his chest so hard that the world started to spin. Pain followed in an excruciating wave.

  “Damn,” a male voice said. “It’s silver.”

  The female spoke again. “Is he too new to withstand it?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “They will be coming for him if they think he’s been hit. We can’t leave him.”

  “Dana, you’ve got a big heart that’s aching for trouble.”

  “Yeah? Well, let’s get him out of here and talk about that later.”

  A third voice, deeper than the other two, chimed in. “I’ll lead them on a chase.”

  “Where?”

  “Right to the street.”

  “Too bad we can’t have others waiting there. I know a lot of folks who’d love to get their claws on these guys,” the female said.

  “There were other shots.”

  “The pack knows better than to be here.”

  “Then some other poor suckers might have eaten a bullet or two.”

  “We can’t save them all, Dana. Nor do we want to. Right?”

  “I’ll provide the chase,” the female said. “He will need both of you to carry him.”

  “And if I object to your running around on your own with bullets flying in all directions?”

  “How well do you know me, Dylan?”

  “Well enough, I suppose, my lovely wolf. Well enough. But honestly, I’ll never get used to it.”

  “So get going,” she directed, “or Abby Stark won’t be the only one bleeding to death out here.”

  “I’m guessing you won’t let that happen, either?”

  “Protect and serve, Dylan. That’s the gig.”

  “All right. Wilson, fur up, and let’s get this guy out of here before I really get mad at these hunters and do something I might regret.”

  “So that you know,” the deeper voice of Matt Wilson said, “if you do that regretful thing, I’ll be right beside you.”

  * * *

  Something hard slammed into Abby before she could react, and her only thought was of being sick to death of getting caught unaware...by anybody. But this new hit turned out to be a combination of scent and feeling, not an actual physical blow.

  With a newfound agility fueled by a massive adrenaline dump, she whirled to face the next challenge, which turned out to be a naked woman who smelled like a Were.

  Half-hidden by shadows, the woman visitor sniffed the air and said, “Hello, Abby,” as if only Abby’s scent might confirm recognition.

  “Where is he?” Abby asked, her senses sharp enough to smell not only wolf but Cameron’s heady scent.

  “He’s been hurt,” the female replied.

  “Take me to him.”

  “Can’t. Sorry.”

  “Is it serious? Will he be okay?” Abby’s heart beat furiously in her chest. The rise of that dark thing inside her that the moon had drawn closer to the surface made her vision sharpen.

  “I don’t know if he’ll be all right,” the she-wolf replied. “I think so. Hope so. Your father has done his homework with the silver ammunition. Did he do that to you?”

  Abby waved her arm, still red and raw, but no longer bleeding. “No. But he might have if I’d handed him the blade.”

  “Then what was the point of all that blood?”

  “The point was keeping Cameron away from here.”

  “You didn’t stop to consider that it might have the opposite effect?”

  “I told him what to expect out here tonight. I’ve been afraid he’d return for me.” Abby put a hand to her chest to try to slow her racing heart. “I meant to warn him, and to draw other wolves out of hiding to take the heat from the hunters.”

  She had to take a breath in order to speak again. “I’m to blame for his injury. Please, whoever you are, take me to Cameron.”

  “I can’t, you being who you are, and all.”

  “Do you know what I am?”

  “I do. Mitchell was right on the mark about that. I can smell the wolf in you, though it isn’t fully visible. I can see it in that wound on your arm. What will you do when your father finds out that he’s been harboring a Were?”

  “You said Cameron was right. Does that mean he knows about me?”

  “Oh yes. He knows.”

  Abby glanced up at the moon. “How could he, when I didn’t?”

  The Were chick didn’t answer that one. Maybe no one could have.

  “I haven’t shifted,” Abby said. “Maybe I won’t. Maybe I can’t.”

  “And maybe it’s just a matter of time, though it is curious that you’re not shifting right now. Can I see your arms? Both arms?”

  “Why?”

  “I want to see if there’s a mark.”

  “I haven’t been bitten. At least, I don’t remember being bitten.”

  “Then that alone helps to explain a few things.”

  “What things? I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “But you’ve perhaps known for a while that you’re not like the rest of the people you live with?”

  Abby waved that away. “Don’t all young people feel the same?”

  “Possibly. Yet you’ve hunted us, alongside your father. I don’t think many young people do that sort of thing.”

  “I did so for a reason.”

  “Do you know what that reason is?”

  “I’m fairly sure I found out tonight,” Abby said. “I think I might have been looking for help. In the past, I wanted to aid others who were being targeted by Weres, but now I have to believe I also might have been looking for someone to fill in the blanks in my own strange existence.”

  “Then you’re in for a wild ride from here on out, because no one I know will believe that you can be trusted.”

  “I can live with that. I’ll hav
e to. Is it doable, though? Being a...”

  “Not for everyone,” the Were replied, following her train of thought. “And not by yourself. Certainly not in the middle of a mind-set that brings people in to hunt the very thing you’ll soon turn into.”

  The conversation made Abby dizzy. Worry added to her restlessness. “Will Cameron be okay? Will you just tell me that much?”

  “I honestly don’t know. The bullet has been removed, but it will leave an insidious trail of poison in the body, as you probably know.”

  “It was a silver bullet? No. Oh no.” Abby’s ears stung with the news that it had been Cameron the hunters had shot.

  Her pulse thundered. Her thoughts began to spin out of control. Cameron’s scent, clinging to this Were woman, invaded every cell in her body with specific directives to find him at all cost.

  “Why? Why does silver affect you like that?” she asked.

  “You mean us?” the woman corrected.

  Abby slid her knife from its sheath. “I used this on my arm and I’m still standing.”

  “Could be your wound wasn’t deep enough to leave real damage.”

  “Yet it was deep enough to draw Cameron from wherever he’d gone.”

  Alerted by a noise other than her revved heartbeat, Abby glanced over her shoulder. She hadn’t finished with this Were, and there was going to be an interruption.

  “You have to go. They’re coming,” she said to the Were female anxiously.

  When she looked to the shadows, that Were had already gone.

  Abby closed her eyes and opened her senses further. Scent came on strong, and with it the amended vision. What appeared to be the noticeable heat signature of two humans, seen as a series of wavy red lines, came into view. The hunters had gotten close to Weres in spite of that lie to Sam about the direction he needed to take to find his wolves.

  Make that three hunters.

  No, four of them.

  Why had they returned?

  She had to take her own advice and get out of there. She wasn’t like those hunters. She had no love of blood or pelts. She had never been like them because she wasn’t human, and maybe hadn’t ever been. That fact explained why she had perceived wolves so easily all this time, and also why she had been instantaneously attracted to Cameron Mitchell.

  I’m not human.

  Some part of her might have always feared that.

  Spinning on her toes, Abby made a dash for the long length of grassy area beside her. She had made so many mistakes, it might be tough to fix them. Plus, she had a lot of catching up to do. At the moment, she would lead her father’s team away from the Were woman who had helped Cameron and knew where he was.

  At the very least, she could do that one small thing before circling back to pick up that she-wolf’s trail...and following it to her lover.

  Chapter 16

  “Bite on this.”

  Cameron obeyed the direction and clamped his teeth down on something warm. Thick gel, the consistency of honey, squirted into his mouth. He choked, coughed, and someone’s hand on his chin made sure he didn’t spit the foul-tasting stuff out.

  Were people trying to poison him? The nasty stuff slid down his throat, coating his tongue and tonsils along the way.

  “That’s it, Mitchell. Take your time. Ride this out. We can heal quickly, almost miraculously, if we do the right things.”

  Was this Abby? Had she found him? No. It wasn’t her scent. Not her voice.

  “Take shallow breaths until the pain subsides,” the voice advised. “Your body will absorb the silver, and there’s nothing we can do about that, but it didn’t stay long inside you. We got that sucker out almost immediately—one perk of having sharp claws.”

  This was a male voice, and recognizable as someone he had recently met. Who, though?

  As a breath-robbing stab of pain shot through Cameron, he squeezed his eyes shut.

  “We’ll have to do something about those guys eventually, but they’ve actually done us a few favors in the past by ridding the area of some tough characters.”

  “They’ve saved us time and effort,” another voice chimed in. “What they lack in style, those hunters make up for in attitude.”

  “And...silver...bullets,” Cameron muttered as the touch of the foreign hand left his face.

  “Well, I think he’ll live,” someone observed.

  “He will be one sick puppy, though. Thankfully, we have Mrs. Landau to take charge of the medical stuff.”

  Landau. The name rang a distant bell, but threads of Cameron’s wits were separating, and chasing them down appeared to be out of the question since he couldn’t move his arms or legs.

  Bullet...

  Numbness...

  Jesus. Had he been paralyzed?

  “You’re safe,” the first voice soothed. “It looks like you will heal, though not today or tomorrow. When we’re injured in wolf form, the body automatically tries to deal with the problem. Since we’re so much stronger when the moon is full, you can probably thank your stars this didn’t occur on any other night.”

  Cameron’s thoughts raced. Five years as a cop, and he’d never been shot. Others on the force hadn’t been as fortunate. But he had to get up, couldn’t wait for a few days to pass in a state of injured inertia. Too many questions remained unanswered. What had happened to Abby? Where had she gone? She couldn’t be left out there to manage a first shift on her own.

  Warm hands pressed on his chest, easing him back before it had even registered that he’d tried to rise.

  “Not so fast, wolf. Ease up. You do want to get better, right?”

  Yes, he did want that. He wanted it desperately. But...

  “Dana went after Abby. She will bring back news.”

  Cameron only had the energy to sputter one word. “Wolf.”

  “Not tonight,” one of the people present said. “Abby Stark didn’t shift tonight. Not yet, anyway.”

  Then she might be safe, Cameron thought. The hunters wouldn’t target a human. Abby would know better than to remain in the area, and understand how to take care of herself. She had lived among those bastards for a long time.

  He had to either believe that, or go mad.

  No, he had to get up and find her. The impulse to do so was too strong to ignore.

  “Whoa, big boy.” A female scent floated to him over the sour smell of whatever this bunch had used to stanch his wound. “I’d stay put if I were you.”

  “Dana?” a male immediately responded, and by the tone, Cameron put a name to this male voice. Dylan. Dylan and Dana Delmonico were a pair. He remembered the way they had looked at each other, and the flare of his longing for Abby worsened.

  “I spoke with her,” Delmonico said.

  “That was extremely risky, Dana.”

  “It seemed necessary. She was looking for our new friend here. I think I put her mind at ease.”

  “Don’t think so.” Wilson’s voice, lower than the rest, was quieter, and calm. “I’ll bet Miss Stark is frantic by now. She has to realize what she is, without shifting. And she’s dead center in the middle of Sam Stark’s personal battle with the rest of us.”

  Delmonico took issue with that suggestion. “She’s strong and capable. Though her father might be a monster, it’s obvious that Abby wants something else.”

  Cameron felt all eyes turn to him without having to open his eyes and look.

  “So,” Wilson said. “It’s like that, is it?”

  “Yep,” Delmonico replied. “A pair.”

  “Will we have to sit on Mitchell to keep him down, or will he see the reasoning behind the need to heal first?”

  “I’m thinking chains might help,” Delmonico said.

  Cameron cracked his eyes open to find Delmonico smiling down at him. Yes, damn it, he felt sick. He hurt worse than almost anything he recalled, except for one event—the terrible, life-altering few days of his body’s rewiring from a human system to a far more complex one. He had barely made it past that. At one
time he had prayed to die, to get the ordeal over with.

  Nothing on the planet was worse than having a pair of razor-sharp canines sinking so deeply into muscle the force shattered bone. A bite with the ability to change cells and DNA, and turn the soul of one creature into another type of being that it wasn’t meant to be. What kind of world would allow for that? He had to ask that question and demand an answer.

  “In the meantime, he’ll be anxious,” Wilson said. “And he’ll miss a few days at work. I’m guessing he’ll get some slack because of last night’s incident and being considered a hero within the department for a few more hours. We can come up with an excuse for his absence, and call it in.”

  “And he’ll need some rest, without company and noise,” another female said. “You all have things to do.”

  “Indeed we do,” Dylan replied soberly.

  “Right,” Wilson and Dana said, one after the other.

  Cameron felt them leave. The temperature of wherever they had put him dropped noticeably. But one body remained, the feel of its presence similar to standing near a light that had been burning for quite a while.

  “I don’t suppose you’ll listen to any advice,” the unknown female said softly.

  Cameron opened his eyes again to return the narrowed gaze of a gray-haired woman with a kind, concerned face. How right she was, he thought. Despite the savageness of the pain racking him, and feeling like death warmed over, rest was the farthest thing from his mind.

  * * *

  Abby now supposed that being good at stealth had to be a characteristic indicative of her animal side. She kept running, making sure the hunters were on her tail, close enough to see her movement, yet far enough away for them to be uncertain about what they had their sights on. She wondered if they’d shoot anyway.

  She ached with the effort of ignoring the pull of the moonlight. Hunting had taken on a whole new meaning beneath it. But someone close to her had been shot, and either Sam had pulled the trigger, or one of the other men was vying for the privilege.

  Cameron had been hurt, the female wolf had told her. She had no idea why that she-wolf had bothered to pass along the information. Possibly out of sympathy for another creature who wasn’t completely one thing or another, and who hadn’t yet reached her potential either way.