Wolf Hunter

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  Had Abby Stark been a wolf playing at being human all this time, with only small hints about being different as a starting point on the road to enlightenment? Hell, where was the certainty about that now? Where were the claws, the fur, the teeth, if moonlight ruled her, as Cameron had insinuated?

  How would any of that amount to being a chip off the old guy’s block?

  Maybe she had been exposed to a wolf bite once upon a time, and Sam hadn’t told her. Truth be told, she’d always been different from Sam. In terms of inherited family traits, that left her mother as a role model in absentia. For a long time, she had imagined herself to be like her mother. Now look. Chances were good she carried the blood of some other species in her veins, and hadn’t a clue as to how it had gotten there.

  A bite she didn’t remember had to be it. Or a scratch she had failed to locate. It all went back further than her tryst with Cameron. It had to.

  “Cursed,” Abby said, figuring she’d have to dig deeper into family matters and mythology in order to find out about herself and how this might have happened.

  Perhaps a person could become wolflike without really being one because of so much time dealing with them. Maybe too much sympathy did the trick. What had that wolf said moments ago? That the fact of having no bite marks explained some things. Did that mean a ring of scar tissue made from a wolf’s teeth would have proved a point she wasn’t aware of?

  “Don’t know shit.”

  Clearly she had to get help with a few important details, such as what would happen to her now, and what to expect. Like how to get around Sam in fairly close quarters, in order to pick up her things, when she despised him more than ever.

  Moving out of her apartment was the first step to separate herself from the hunters, and yet was that an option if she wanted to keep tabs on the game? What better way to find out what went on, and about Sam’s plans, than being an insider?

  Could she face Sam knowing he might have shot Cameron?

  She was livid about the way things had turned out, and wasn’t sure she’d be able to pretend things were okay, even to use Sam for information she might in the future share with the wolves.

  Help was needed, now, tonight, so that she’d gain some bearings. The she-wolf she had met had to lead her to Cameron, or to others like her.

  And how would a wolf pack react to having a hunter in their midst, even if that hunter wasn’t completely human any longer?

  She ran faster, putting more distance between herself and the hunters. The park stank of wolf presence. She stank of sweat and blood and the metallic edge of too much uncertainty. One of these warring factions—man and wolf—would eventually kill her.

  Caught up in this insane dilemma, Abby let her mind wander. Suddenly her steps faltered. She smelled something strange and looked up in time to see a heavy net of knotted rope descending from above to swallow her up.

  Chapter 17

  Fighting like a tiger to get free of the heavy net encapsulating her, Abby struggled and pushed against the rope, kicking and tearing at what held her in a crouched position.

  “No use burning off more energy,” Sam said. “You tripped the wire.”

  She didn’t stop struggling.

  “What are you doing here, anyway, Abby, when I told you to go home? See how that little rebellion panned out?”

  “Is this how you catch them, Sam, before you shoot at close range? You drop a net?”

  Irritation deepened Sam’s voice. “Actually, we prefer to catch some wolves alive.”

  She didn’t know that, and was horrified by the thought.

  “You don’t need to know any more than you already do,” Sam said. “That part isn’t your business. The question I have is about what the hell you’re still doing out here, and who it might benefit?”

  Abby looked up at her father through the holes in the net. Her heart raced. She was tired of being out of breath.

  “Something has happened to you, Abby.” Sam stood over her imperiously. “Mind telling me what that is?”

  “Mind getting this thing off me first?”

  Sam made a motion with his hand to stay the hunter on his right and said, “Consider it penance for being foolish twice in one night.”

  Abby swallowed hard, disliking Sam more than ever.

  “It’s heavy, Sam.”

  “So are your recent transgressions.”

  “My transgressions? I’m only running around in a park where you make a habit of killing things.”

  Sam went quiet. Abby’s heart stuttered.

  Then Sam spoke to the other hunter. “You go on. I’ll deal with my daughter.”

  With those directions, Abby’s mind moved on to one relatively new thread in particular—the werewolves that hunters caught in nets, and how Sam disposed of them after they’d been trapped. She wondered what it felt like for innocent Weres to look up at the instruments of their death without being able to do anything about it because they couldn’t even state their case without a human voice.

  All those beautiful pelts, not all of which came from criminals.

  Her mind skipped to Cameron, whose skin hadn’t been completely covered by the fur these hunters coveted when he had shifted. She wondered why he didn’t have a full pelt, and what hunters might do to a catch like Cameron, with no pelt money coming. Throw him back? Kill him, anyway?

  How did Sam dispose of his kills so neatly, and so close to thousands of people?

  “Let me up,” she said as calmly as she could manage. “Before I start shouting and scare everyone.”

  Sam stepped closer, towering over her, his stance as imposing as the rifle in his left hand. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I told you I’m sick.”

  “That’s not the whole story.”

  “Isn’t it enough?”

  “You’re in the way, Abby. I’ll take you back and lock you in. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”

  “I want to talk now.”

  Sam didn’t free her. He continued to stare down at her with a curious expression etched into the lines of his rugged face.

  “I really am sick,” she said.

  Sam’s response hit like a hot poker to her soul. “Your mother wasn’t stable, but I thought you’d missed that gene. I’ve watched you for signs of imbalance all these years, and don’t like what I see tonight.”

  Abby’s eyes met his. She felt the darkness of dread coming on. “What did you say?”

  “You’ve been teetering lately, been off the norm and not willing to listen. You’ve been wandering in places where you don’t belong, just like she did.”

  Abby blanched, and felt the blood drain from her face. “The first time you mention my mother, and it’s to cough up a thing like that? Off the norm, Sam? What does that mean?”

  His face came closer. The scrutiny was intense. “Let’s hope you’re not too much like her, after all. Because...”

  “Because what?”

  “We’d have to do something about that.”

  It was an ominous reply with no follow-up or further explanation, and it left a hole in Abby’s heart. She stopped breathing long enough for her lungs to burn. Flames of the flash fire she’d experienced both in the moonlight and in Cameron’s arms began to rip their way through her chest. Her limbs felt heavy. Dizziness returned with a brief whirl of vertigo.

  But Sam had nothing more to offer, no insight to guide her toward understanding, other than allowing her a flat-out inner acknowledgment of having been right in the previous assumption that Sam had not loved her mother.

  We’d have to do something about that...

  Angry enough over this to want to shout out what Sam could do with his hunters, and where to stick them, Abby nonetheless felt tears welling in her eyes—hot, salty tears. Her mother had always been a sacred thought, a long-held love and a thing apart. Sam, after all this time of prolonged silence, wanted to defile that image.

  She’d been tough, or had tried to be, living among Sam and his varyin
g band of hunters. But at her core, deep down inside, lay a spot that resisted toughness and needed to be filled with light and love.

  An angry growl rose from within her that Sam might not have heard. Another noise got his attention. Someone shouted in the distance, and Sam’s face solidified into an expression that Abby classified as feral.

  He sent her a pitiful look. “You think those things over, and I’ll be back.” He took off, leaving her entangled in the rope without pausing to witness the pop of a claw, as narrow and as sharp as any knife’s point, ripping through the tip of the finger Abby raised to flip him off with.

  So, it was true. This was proof, at last.

  “No mistake.”

  More growls bubbled up from her throat to combine with Abby’s startled exclamation over the ungodly appearance of the claw. The growl was echoed someplace close by. Choking back a reaction, Abby turned her head toward rustling sounds heading her way, her sight clouded by a haze of unspilled tears.

  “Cameron?” she called out hopefully as two werewolves, the biggest she had ever seen, rushed forward, fully furred up, their pelts thick and spiky, their eyes glowing like hot coals.

  It wasn’t Cameron, though. Of course it couldn’t be, because he’d been shot. He’d been hurt.

  “Who the hell are you?” she demanded as they slashed the rope with their claws and bit through the knots with their teeth, shredding the net in a few quick, crazy minutes.

  She thought seriously about screaming when they reached for her. Loud noise would bring Sam and a hunter or two running. But she’d recently found three wolves to help break the spell she’d been under. Three wolves out of three hadn’t made a move to harm her in any way.

  And these two, completely different for all she knew, had their paws on her arms, and were staring at the claw she still held raised.

  “Not human,” Abby said in a voice reflecting full knowledge of that fact. “And in need of help.”

  In hindsight, as they pulled her to her feet, she might have asked, “Good guys, or bad guys?” first, before declaring herself one of them. Their grip was rough and tight, one wolf per arm. On her feet again, they hustled her away, heading for the shadows, loping east, away from the direction Sam had taken when he’d left her alone and vulnerable in the middle of a virtual minefield of werewolves.

  As she now saw it, good guy or bad, one outcome looked pretty much like another.

  * * *

  As soon as the woman with the kind voice had exited the room, Cameron got to his feet, fighting for a decent breath in a system that had betrayed him by keeping that breath from him.

  He was in a room—a bedroom lit by one tiny lamp and thin ribbons of moonlight streaming through louvered slats in an open window. The room came furnished with an oversize bed, two small tables, a large wooden bureau with a mirror above it and an upholstered chair.

  He was alone in the strange room, and couldn’t stand up straight. He had been shot, they’d said, by a silver bullet. It hurt to think about that.

  As he looked to the closed door, Cameron wondered if whoever owned this place would need to lock a stranger in, or if he’d be free to roam around. They had told him his recovery might take a while, but time was of the essence. Abby was out there somewhere, alone. She might be searching for him, and he couldn’t breathe or move his feet.

  “Where am I?”

  Since the voices he’d heard here had been friendly, possibly they had brought him to the cottage behind Landau walls where earlier tonight he had met Wilson’s friends. In that case, and if the door was locked, he might be able to use the window for his escape.

  He hadn’t been out of it long. The moonlight streaming in meant that it was still dark. Hopefully, it was the same night.

  He made his way toward the window by placing one hand over the other and working his way around the bed. But even then, he had to take breaks.

  “No good to you like this,” he said to the image of Abby that ruled every thought he had, pictured in an ongoing, continual loop. Abby as he’d first seen her, magnificently defiant and brave. Abby, naked and in his arms. Abby at the bar, looking pale and frightened. Abby, with moonlight on her bare skin and a pleading look in her eyes.

  Sick or not, he wanted her so badly he was willing to forgo a little healing in order to reach her. He had to reach her. It had become clear that as Dana Delmonico had said, he and Abby were a couple. They had imprinted man to woman, wolf to wolf, soul to soul. Theirs was a trinity of connections. A triple threat to the heart. And his heart hurt without her.

  “Abby,” he whispered as he pushed off the bed and grabbed hold of the sill. “I will find you. Never doubt that.”

  Inwardly, he added, It might take a little time.

  “Silver be damned.” Needing air, Cameron reached for the shutters. He looked out of the window to find the ground a full three stories below. That ground was populated with more Weres than he could imagine existing in one place, even in anyone’s worst nightmares.

  * * *

  Abby didn’t know if she was being saved, freed or captured. As the wolves led her through the dark, deserted grounds of the eastern border of the park, they hadn’t slowed or glanced behind them. If these wolves were connected to Cameron’s friends, surely they’d use more caution and be attentive to the hunters prowling the moonlight. But no, they marched in the open, not seeming to care.

  Fear began to spread through her, snarling and deep. Where was Cameron? She swore she felt him thinking about her. He wasn’t very far from here. Maybe if she tuned in, she’d find him.

  She could use her knife on at least one of these wolves if they turned out to be from the wrong side of the tracks, and if they’d free up her arms. The silver knife throbbed against her bare leg, its hilt touching newly sensitive skin. She hadn’t been able to reach it while trapped in that damn net.

  Something with a whooshing sound went by. Abby ducked, pulling one of the wolves down with her, listening to a second silenced shot ring out.

  The wolf on her right fell to one knee. Blood and splintered bone fragments spurting from the wound made it roar. The other wolf let go of her and ran, leaving Abby to the mercy of Sam’s sudden approach, and behind him, the hunter that had earlier been by his side.

  Sam’s boot came down hard on the wounded werewolf’s chest, and held firm as the beast writhed. “Dose it quickly,” he barked to the other guy. “And call it in.”

  Abby’s ankle lay beneath the wolf’s heavy leg. It took her a minute to free herself as Sam grinned down at her.

  “I knew you’d be of use,” he said.

  Standing up straight, Abby faced him defiantly. She had werewolf blood all over her, and a downed wolf by her feet.

  “In fact,” Sam said, “you’ve turned out to be exactly the kind of bait we’ve needed to hurry things along.”

  Her voice shook with anger. “Bait? Are you saying you left me in that net on purpose to attract your prey?”

  “Not entirely, but your punishment had an added benefit.”

  “Sam,” she said, her voice low. “Do you think so little of me?”

  “Of course not, daughter. Do you think I’m totally without feeling? We didn’t leave you there. We circled around and kept watch. Those monsters couldn’t have harmed you. We wouldn’t have let them.”

  “How certain you are, Sam. But what if they hadn’t meant to harm me at all? What if they were trying to get me away from you?”

  Sam waved that suggestion away as nonsense with a drift of his hand. “That’s what I meant by being off balance, Abby. Can you hear yourself?”

  The hunter Sam had led to this spot knelt by the werewolf. From his back pocket, he withdrew a syringe.

  “What’s that?” Abby demanded.

  “Something to ease his pain.”

  “Temporarily, or forever?”

  Sam’s hand on her elbow made her shiver. Her father led her aside and said calmly, “Haven’t I given you nearly everything you’ve wanted? D
id I ask for much in return?”

  Actually, Abby immediately thought, he had given her something. Cameron. Due to Sam’s games, she and Cameron had met. What grateful daughter wouldn’t stop to appreciate that particular twist of fate?

  Should she tell Sam right that minute, exacting her own sort of revenge, how like the beast on the ground she was, or soon would be in the future? Although the claw had retracted, she felt it there beneath her fingernail, ready to spring.

  Inside her, wildness existed, and had grown stronger. For all she knew, she had more in common with the beast on the ground than with Sam Stark, who would “take care of that” for her if he knew about the wolf connection.

  “I think you owe me an explanation,” she said, “for so many things.”

  “I told you we’d have discussions later. Right now, I have business to tend to. You can see that.”

  “Where will you take...” She’d almost said it, with regard to the beast, but only because she wasn’t sure of the werewolf’s gender. There hadn’t been time to find out what their intentions had been, or where the two wolves had been taking her.

  What if they had been Cameron’s friends?

  Bad wolves or not, a wave of sadness engulfed Abby. Too many possibilities for blame and for shame brought a rush of anger to the surface. Getting away from Sam seemed like an impossible task.

  “What now?” She eyed Sam fiercely with her hands balled into fists behind her back.

  “You mean since you can’t be trusted to leave the park where you’d be safe, and will continue to get in the way of a damn good outing?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I meant.”

  “You’ll have to tag along.”

  “I don’t feel much like being used as bait.”

  “Then consider it a favor for your dear old dad.”

  She heard the hunter using a phone to call for help in moving the werewolf they had shot. Closing her eyes, inhaling the smell of wolf blood, Abby had to rein herself and her anger in...at least until her father turned his back.

  Chapter 18

  The door behind Cameron opened. Turning to look at who stood in the doorway took far too many seconds of the time ticking away in his head.