Wolf Hunter

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  Abby glanced behind her at the wall of chains. Her heart pounded. She withheld a growl. Things were becoming clearer. Too terribly clear. Maybe the reason there weren’t any pictures or photos of her mother in the apartments was because Sonja Stark had never set foot there. It was possible that Sam had hidden his madness all along, but how possible was it for him to have kept Abby’s mother here, in this dreadful place, on purpose, and by promising that Sonja’s daughter would enjoy the freedom Sonja never had?

  There had been no marriage. That was the answer to the questions of her past. Sam and Sonja’s union had been a sham, no more than a deal with blackmail at its core. Sam had used her mother to catch werewolves, just as Sam had used her.

  Tears sprang to Abby’s eyes and spilled over, trickling down her elongated face. How long had her mother been a prisoner, and watched over by this madman, when her daughter had been the cause? She had been the reason her mother complied with Sam’s demands. Her mother had loved her enough to live like this, and to be treated like one of Sam’s monsters.

  For how long?

  She wanted to know how her mother had lived in chains, and how many darts filled with sedatives had her mother endured.

  The world spun around in slow circles, and Abby’s mind went with it as tears continued to fall.

  She had found the truth, at last.

  “We’ll have to address a new problem,” Sam said as casually as if he were speaking about too many broken glasses in the bar. “Your new friend. What’s his name? Oh yeah. Mitchell. Cameron Mitchell. Did you bite him, I wonder, in a fit of passion, to make him a wolf?” Sam crossed his arms over his chest. “You always were a cheater. After all, you had her.”

  Abby looked up at him, her anger rekindling, heat radiating off her in waves. Sam was mixing things up now, going between her mother and herself.

  “Well, you’re safe here, for now. Tonight, we’ll go out. Just you and me. There might not be any Weres around, but Lycans are another matter, and when they see what I’m going to do to you, they might come running.”

  Again, Abby’s vision turned red. In a swift, unplanned move, she got to her feet. Sam using her against Lycans like Dylan Landau was not in the realm of possibility. She wasn’t Sonja. She didn’t have to protect anyone here, and sure as hell didn’t have to obey the real monster in this room.

  Power soared through her. Her muzzle curled back to expose a mouthful of sharp teeth, some of them bloody from biting down too hard. With clawed hands, she took hold of the bars thinking that Sam had made one mistake too many. He hadn’t locked her into those silver chains before taunting her with information she had spent most of her life searching for.

  She was Sonja’s daughter. Lycan. Strong.

  And Sam was just a big demented bastard.

  With Lycan power swimming in her veins and the musculature to back it up, she bent two of the metal bars back, stuck her head through the gap and let loose a growl that echoed in the room and wiped the grin from Sam’s surprised face.

  But the bars were too strong to get her body through. She couldn’t reach Sam, or get free. She didn’t want to think about how many times her mother might have tried.

  And yet...

  She looked up at the ceiling, where the cracks outlining the trapdoor were barely visible but there. Something had gotten stuck in that trapdoor on her way down.

  She pulled her head back into the cage. Gathering what she could manage of her new strength, she launched herself at the bars. Using them as leverage to heave herself upward, hearing the ring of her claws against the metal, Abby propelled her newer Were bulk toward that ceiling in a flash of startling energy, hoping that trapdoor would help her escape.

  * * *

  “No damn ax,” Cameron muttered. But there was a tire iron. He used it to beat at the wall between the two floors, causing some damage to the building’s siding, though he didn’t have to continue for long.

  The door above him opened and a werewolf, furred-up in pure daylight, jumped toward him. Startled, he stepped back, but the wolf came right to him and put its face close to his.

  “Abby?” he said, blindsided by her appearance.

  She pushed past him, leaped from the stairs and took off. Cameron knew she wanted him to follow, but first he had to find Sam Stark, to see what the imbecile had done to make Abby shift.

  He ran up the stairs and into the hallway, seeing that there was indeed a trapdoor, and that it was open. Abby had crawled up that way. Scrape marks scarred the floorboards.

  He swung himself down into the hole and landed on his feet with his fists raised. No one met him. No one was there.

  It took all of ten seconds to see the place, and figure out what had happened. What he saw made him sick. As Cameron headed for the stairs and wherever they’d take him, he flipped open Dylan’s phone and dialed the emergency number. “Mitchell. PD. You might want to send a car to the following location and find the trapdoor.”

  He had no more time for explanations. There were only two places Abby would go, and he had to get to her before she chose.

  The keys were in the Mercedes. He cranked the ignition, glanced quickly behind and was about to pull away when he saw her. God, he saw her...

  Abby had pressed herself into a space between the building housing the bar and the one next to it, on the opposite side of the vacant lot. She crouched on her haunches with her head on her knees.

  He reached her as she looked up, and yanked her to her feet. He pushed her back, out of sight of the street, and ran his hands over the new angles of her face. “Change back, Abby. Do it now. You’re out of there, and I have you.”

  She looked at him with red-rimmed eyes that were still a deep emerald green. She panted with shock and the effort to restrain herself from doing as he asked.

  “Abby. Listen to me. Do it now. I have a car. We’ll drive away, and you never have to see Sam again.”

  Clearly she understood, and yet Cameron felt the power of the Lycan blood coursing through her dictate another direction.

  “No,” he said. “Not now. Maybe never. You cannot get to him. End it, Abby. Please. The police will find Sam and haul him in for creating a place like the one I saw in there. He will be out of the way. We can figure out what to do once you’ve rested, and after you let me know you weren’t hurt.”

  The tears that ran down her face broke his heart. Cameron put his arms around her shaking body and waited, silently urging her to come back to him, so that he could take her away.

  Her skin began to shrink. The fine hair covering the parts of her that were bare disappeared. This was nothing like his own reversal. The snapping of her bones back into place sounded like stepping on bubble wrap, and happened all at once, instead of in pieces. The extra musculature in her arms and legs streamlined, molding into limbs he had been familiar with on more than one occasion.

  And there Abby was...in his arms, dressed like a street urchin, her tears falling from thin, pale cheeks to splash on his shirt.

  God, he loved her.

  She had been through hell, and had made it back.

  “Come on,” he said, taking her hand in his. “Time to go.”

  With a grip that no one on the planet could have made him loosen, Cameron led Abby to the car, got her inside and climbed behind the wheel. He figured that five or six people might have seen her furred-up when they drove by, but there were plenty of wacky phone calls to the department, everything from alien spaceships to ghosts.

  What difference would a lone werewolf beside a bar make?

  Chapter 30

  Werewolf gangbangers knew where he lived, which meant he’d have to relocate sometime soon. In the middle of the morning on a weekday, Dylan and the other Landau pack members would be at work, maintaining a distance from one another and from things that went bump in the night. They weren’t apt to be up for another rescue today.

  Motels were everywhere in Miami, plenty of them by the ocean offering scenery and fresh air. But he was min
us his wallet, and Abby looked as if she’d been in a train wreck. She shook as if she’d been frozen in ice cubes. Her face was pale enough for the lacing of fine vessels beneath her skin to show as blue streaks.

  He thought about taking her to the department, where she’d be surrounded by cops and safe, and he wondered what kind of questions might arise if he did, in the state they both were in.

  No, as he saw it, there was only one way to go, and he had abused that welcome a few times already. However, Abby needed care, food and a shower, and Dylan had said the words any time, so maybe he’d be allowed to get through the gates. He’d head for the cottage on the property, or the garage, leave Abby in one of those secure places, then gather his stuff from home and find a new location to take her to, where she’d be comfortable and he’d feel relieved.

  The Mercedes took the roads effortlessly. Cameron had automatically memorized the route, for personal reasons and to return the car. Abby rode in silence next to him, with her head against the seat. She lacked the energy to speak, he supposed. Perhaps she just wasn’t ready.

  The road took a turn through wide-open spaces, and then doubled back. Big stone gates appeared, closed. When he pulled up in front of them, the Mercedes emitted a beeping sound that brought a man out from behind one of the gates’ statuesque pillars. After looking through the windshield, the man waved them on, and the gates opened.

  So, the Landaus had guards. Wolf guards dressed in black, no doubt packing heat. Dylan’s family wasn’t taking any chances on intruders getting inside.

  So far, so good.

  Cameron had time to look around as the driveway meandered through a grove of trees. In the sunlight, the estate looked different—slightly smaller and less imposing. Freshly watered lawns sparkled. Flowers bloomed in beds along the driveway, adding pops of vibrant color to a place that had started out as part of a nightmare.

  It all seemed so normal, so refined. Just another mansion among mansions that not too many people got to see up close. Its secrets seemed ludicrous bathed in yellow, but it only took a sideways glance at Abby for Cameron to remember how different and difficult life could be beneath any surface. Sam’s building had a false floor, accessed by a trapdoor. Abby’s beautiful countenance housed a wolf with the ability to shift without a full moon.

  And Cameron Mitchell? He was a cop, a defender of the weak and a wolf. He was a man who wasn’t really a man, in love with a woman who wasn’t a woman.

  Yes, he loved Abby, and dreaded every minute they were apart. He loved her so much that the word love didn’t begin to describe his feelings. And this, Cameron thought as he turned the car toward the garage, read more like science fiction than reality.

  So, what was the world coming to, and where would these things end? Well, a good start in that direction would be to help Abby deal. Help her over the hump that remained as a last temptation for trouble. Finding Sam Stark.

  “I’ve never thanked you,” Abby said, bringing his thoughts back around.

  “For the ride, or the great bedside manner?” His joke, meant to lighten the mood, didn’t result in a smile. “I haven’t helped much,” he added soberly. “I wasn’t there today.”

  “How could you have been there? I left while you were sleeping.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel any better about what just happened,” he confessed without bringing up what he thought about the stupid, dangerous move she’d made by running out on him to face Sam alone.

  “I had to go there,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “He kept my mother in that terrible place. I don’t know how he killed her, or how he got away with it. I don’t understand how anyone, crazy in the head or not, might keep someone in a cage.”

  “What about you, Abby? Tell me about you.”

  She fell silent, seeming to mull over his question.

  “You shifted, and shifted back,” he said, as if she didn’t know that.

  She turned her head toward him as they drove into the coolness of the garage. “Lycan. I get it. It’s not about pelts or money for Sam. That’s a cover-up. He’s not like the rest. For Sam, it’s about revenge.”

  “Revenge for what?”

  “Loving someone he considered inhuman. Loving her so much, her Otherness drove him insane.”

  Cameron sensed Abby’s reasoning powers hard at work. He wanted to hear about what had happened, and feared pushing her too far. Abby might be Lycan, and therefore a kind of werewolf royalty, but she was newer to this wolf business than he was. She looked thin, ragged and hungry. She looked haunted. Not in the way she haunted him, more in the manner of having had a ghost walk over her grave. Her mother’s ghost.

  She’d shared only pieces of what had happened to her. He didn’t fully understand what she’d said, though he had a good idea about Sam’s treatment of wolves after seeing that hidden room. Sam had likely hurt her mother before killing her. He had hurt Abby in ways that were going to be difficult to repair.

  “They won’t catch him,” she said.

  “We will. We’ll do our best.”

  “He’ll be waiting for me.”

  “Why? Hasn’t he done enough?”

  “I don’t remember what my mother looked like, but I must resemble her. I probably smell like her. When Sam sees me, he sees her. He...”

  “He...what?”

  “He thought I was her. Am her.”

  “Your mother is dead. Surely he’d remember that.”

  “I’m not certain. He’s unstable. I believe he won’t rest until I’m in the ground with her.”

  “We will find him,” Cameron repeated. “And then it will be over.”

  “Yes.” Abby’s voice had grown weaker. “Over.”

  Cameron pulled the Mercedes into its slot and shut off the engine. He didn’t open the door. He liked things this way—just Abby and himself. The coolness of the garage offered a respite from the heat outside. Leather seats were the ultimate luxury for weary bones. Sooner or later, though, Abby had to be seen by somebody better able to help.

  Although his thoughts raced, the interior of the garage was serenely quiet. A mint julep would have been a bonus, or a cold beer. Cameron had no idea when he had last eaten a meal, and doubted if Abby had had enough sustenance in the past seventy-two hours to sustain her for much longer. She had been slender before all this had started. Now, she was rail-thin. The bones of her shoulders jutted out beneath her shirt. Her jaw had the quality of carved marble. Looking at her hurt him in ways he obviously had yet to discover. If anything more happened to her, he didn’t know what he’d do.

  Good thing full-on humans didn’t have to contend with this imprinting thing, or insanity might rule the masses.

  And heaven help him, with that last thought, it was clear that he had begun to differentiate between what he had been, and what he had turned into.

  “We need to see if Dylan’s mother is at home,” he said at length.

  “I don’t want to talk about what happened,” Abby said.

  “I’m guessing you won’t have to. If my instinct is correct, everyone here has secrets and is adept at keeping them. They won’t bother to pry into anyone else’s.”

  Abby faced him again. “Are we a pack now? You and me?”

  “Only if I can be the leader.”

  Abby smiled briefly. Because of that smile, Cameron figured she’d be okay. Gauging the magnitude of his relief over that was next to impossible.

  He would keep things light and honor her timetable for providing him with more pieces to the puzzle that consumed her. Impatience was a cop’s daily staple, and had to be overcome. Abby had to have her mental space, for now. Physical space was altogether different. This cop planned on sticking to her like glue, or gluing her somewhere safe, while he picked up his weapon, his wallet and his badge, items he’d need in the search for serial torturer Sam Stark.

  “Time to go in,” he said as he opened the car door, hoping against better judgment that he’d get to carry her again
, and for a few minutes more keep her close to his heart.

  * * *

  Abby had never felt so weightless. If a stiff wind had blown, she might have drifted away. The heaviness of her wolf had been decreased, or dispersed...whatever the hell it did when not showing itself. But the wolf hadn’t gone completely. She felt its nearness. On her fingers, the phantom imprint of claws made her nerve endings tingle.

  In a self-protective gesture, she reached for Cameron’s hand, relieved when his fingers closed over hers. Handholding was a human thing, and she desperately wanted to feel human.

  Cameron led her over the grass, taking a shortcut to the house. The scent of the freshly mowed lawn seemed to her like heaven, and drowned out the stench of Sam’s cage. She wanted to lie down and roll in the grass, cover herself with greenery, immerse her senses in normal, decent, everyday smells. Many kinds of animals did this, and she now understood why.

  Nearing the house brought on anxiousness, a slight movement of the beast within her, as well as a ton of regret. She had been offered help here, and had run away in search of her destiny.

  Finding some of the answers to the questions she’d asked added light to the dark hole of her past, yet a few questions remained. Why had Sam killed her mother? How had he done it? Something had finally pushed him into the abyss.

  Sam had to be taken off the streets.

  Landau’s front door opened before they had reached the steps leading up to it. A gray-haired Were woman that Abby barely remembered advanced. Dressed in pale gray slacks and a matching silk shirt, their hostess extended a hand first to her, then to Cameron. Gray eyes, inquisitive and wide, gave her a quick once-over.

  “We don’t like to intrude. Are we welcome at this hour, Mrs. Landau?” Cameron asked.

  “Of course you’re welcome here. We hoped you’d make it back sometime today,” the woman replied in an aged alto. “Dana has been calling every half hour. I hope you need breakfast, because everyone left this morning without eating, and the food will go to waste.”