Marcus wasn’t nabbing anything from Tessa. From what he’d seen, she was barely surviving with what she had. If anything, he wanted to give her things. Weapons, support. Food. He’d known she was joking with her crack about buying her dinner, but when her stomach growled…
“She needs care,” his dweller grumbled.
Marcus wasn’t sure if it was trying to manipulate him—or if he even cared at this point. The urge to protect her was growing.
He’d walked with Tessa to an old weather-beaten camper van that was more rust than metal. Dents and scratches covered every surface, some disturbingly familiar. She must have seen a lot of action in the field already. He couldn’t imagine how terrified she must have been with the things that made those marks trying to get to her while she was alone inside.
His skin prickled. If he kept imagining that, he was going to have a problem. Claws got in the way of steering his motorcycle, and his helmet was designed for a human-shaped head. Thinking about what was happening back at the ranch would help distract him.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” Marcus said.
“Porter came in to check on things, as usual. He saw Tessa’s face and wanted a clearer picture. I’m running facial recognition software to learn more about her.”
“Nothing weird there.”
“Wait for it. Then Dexter came running into the ops room.”
“Running?” Marcus said.
“Yeah. I’ve never seen him move that fast. Outside of the gym or in the field, anyway. He told me to transfer the feed to his office along with a backlog of everything you’d seen and heard. He even dropped their royal ‘we’ for a minute.”
Vaughn had noticed that the twins nearly always used “we” pronouns and pointed it out to Marcus shortly after joining the Blades. Marcus hadn’t noticed it before. He was too busy deferring to Dexter to call him out on grammar.
“Of course, there’s no sound in the files,” Vaughn said.
“Thanks.” Marcus didn’t think Dexter and Porter would care about their conversations being left out. Their interest in Tessa was disturbing, though. “If they’ll let you get away with it, keep the feed video only.”
“Will do. You should know Dexter told me that figuring out who she is and sending them the file takes priority over everything right now. Even helping you with patrol. I tried to explain how much you need me, but he wouldn’t listen.”
Marcus laughed. Not because it wasn’t true, but because he knew Vaughn was trying to lighten things up. It was how Vaughn handled stress. Hell, it was part of how Marcus could stay so calm out in the field.
“They’re our leaders and we need to trust them,” Marcus said. “Do as he says.”
“You’re with an unknown hunter heading for a Redcap nest and we don’t even know what that is. I can’t leave you alone.”
“I’ll be with a hunter who just took out four Redcaps by herself and landed the first successful tracker that we’ve ever seen on another. If Dexter and Porter are that interested in her, there must be a reason.” Marcus wasn’t sure what it might be.
“Maybe one of them just wants to call dibs.”
“She’s yours.” His dweller yelled the words in his head, and offered some truly gruesome images of what it wanted Marcus to do to Dexter. Marcus shoved the thoughts from his mind.
Adrenaline spiked through his system like a knife stabbing his guts. It spread through his chest, a current of energy that usually preceded becoming hairy and much more difficult to deal with. Taking deep breaths, he pushed back the bizarre surge of possessiveness that threatened to overpower his control.
“Umm…are you okay?” Vaughn asked.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Because you just growled. Like full-on growled.”
Shit. That wasn’t good. Marcus hadn’t even realized he was doing it.
“I was clearing my throat.”
“Right,” Vaughn said. “I get it. Dibs are yours.”
The pressure in Marcus’s chest dispersed. Vaughn always knew just what to say, even in a moment as awkward as this.
“Thanks.”
“Forget it.” The tightness had returned to Vaughn’s voice. “If you need me, you can ping me with the glasses the same way as through your helmet’s visor. I’ll keep the bosses off your audio feed, but I can’t do anything about the video.”
“I appreciate it.”
“I know. One more thing. I think Porter knows her. He gave me a last name. Rhodes. I’ll keep running it down. Be careful out there, okay?”
“I always am.”
Vaughn chuckled, then the feed went silent.
The dweller in his head was quiet as well. Marcus could still sense it—an eerie presence—like his thoughts were being watched, along with everything else he was seeing and experiencing. He pushed aside the familiar sensation and focused on the hunter in front of him.
Tessa Rhodes.
Red lights shined in his face as she tapped the brakes before turning onto a side street. She parked her van in front of an empty lot. Scraggly grass struggled to grow in the packed earth where a building had probably once stood. Their quest had led them to what Vaughn referred to as the Barrows.
Not many humans came to this part of Providence, especially at night. It was mostly filled with abandoned buildings—warehouses, apartments, and even a derelict factory. Dwellers had crept into this part of town, taking over the waste that humans had left behind.
Marcus slowed to a stop next to the curb and killed his engine. Tessa’s door slammed, and he quickly took off his helmet and clipped it to the back of his bike.
He barely managed to get his glasses in place before she joined him. There weren’t as many streetlamps to reflect off the lenses, but hopefully the darkness would make it harder for her to make out the color of his eyes anyway.
“It stopped moving about a hundred yards away.” She held up her monitor for him to see. “I had us circle the block to be sure, but sort of figured it out when I saw we were close to a junkyard. It’s a perfect place for a Redcap nest.”
“Great.”
She tilted her head and smiled. “You getting cold feet?”
“No, I just wish I knew more about what we’re walking into.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll give you a crash course. But before that…” She looked over at his bike, then back to him. “May I?”
None of the security features of the bike had been activated yet, so he nodded and stepped aside. “Be my guest.”
Her expression as she walked around the bike was…hungry. He wondered what it would be like to have her look at him that way.
She trailed her fingers over the seat, then along one of the handlebars. His skin prickled, imagining how that touch would feel. If this wasn’t her trying to be seductive, he’d be in real trouble if she ever tried to charm him.
“Who do I have to sleep with to get one of these?”
He made a little choking sound, both from the thought of what she was suggesting and how he knew Vaughn would react to the offer.
“That’s not exactly how it works,” Marcus said.
“Too bad.”
She faced him, the hungry smile still in place, and let her gaze travel down his body. He’d already taken a step toward her when he realized what his body was doing, registered the deep purring growl rising up through him from his dweller. Surely from his dweller.
He forced himself to an awkward stop inches away from her. She arched an eyebrow, then shrugged and turned back to her van.
“I guess we have work to do anyway,” she said. “It’ll be dawn soon, and that Redcap nest won’t clear itself.”
He fell in step beside her, hoping the movement would calm his body down.
“I’m guessing you’ve only ever dealt with Redcaps on the street when they’re actively hunting,” she said.
“I didn’t know they did anything else.”
“It’s time for Redcaps 101, then.”
She opened the side door of her van an
d hopped in. After dropping the tracker monitor on the front bench seat, she squatted down and pulled her hair into a tight bun.
Marcus stood on the sidewalk, staring at her as she bent over the built-in seats opposite the door. She lifted a tattered cushion to reveal a storage compartment. The mellow tone of her voice was like white noise in the background, joining with the rumbling approval of the beast in his belly. It would be so easy to tear off her jeans and—
“Hello?” she said.
“What?” He’d been too caught up in his fantasy to listen. What the hell was wrong with him? He’d been at least half-hard since he’d first followed her into the alley.
“I asked if you had a bludgeoning weapon.” She kept digging around in the chests, hips shifting in a mesmerizing pattern.
“No.” He’d never needed one.
“I’ll hook you up, then. Just give me a second.”
Any dwellers Marcus met assumed he wasn’t a threat. They didn’t attack their own, even if they were of different species. The ones who could reason usually talked to him. It never took much conversation to figure out if the dweller in question needed to be put down for public safety.
Marcus seldom needed a weapon to help him with that.
Every once in a while, they would encounter a new species or a dweller that they thought they could talk down from killing humans. Vaughn had developed a special shock weapon for that. He called it the stingray. If it failed to stun the target—and didn’t accidentally kill it—Marcus usually had to take over and finish the job.
Dwellers didn’t like getting stunned.
What he did wasn’t pretty, but it was necessary. He kept humans safe, and even protected dwellers sometimes.
And then there were the hunters.
Marcus had encountered a few in his years with the Blades. As far as he was concerned, they all fell into the “can’t be reasoned with” camp.
They thought every human with a dweller—or even dwellers who could survive with non-human hosts—were threats to their kind. They killed indiscriminately.
He’d yet to meet a hunter that would sit down and talk with a dweller first. He hoped Tessa would prove an exception.
Then again, hunters didn’t know the true origin of dwellers. They thought they were dealing with fairy tale monsters.
If only.
“You don’t have to wait on the sidewalk. Come on in.” She turned and smiled at him. “I promise I won’t bite.”
Marcus felt his body moving forward, like Tessa had become his new center of gravity. He clamped down on his muscles, holding himself in place. If he let go of his control for even an instant, he didn’t know what would happen.
“I get it.” The sultry twist of her lips faded into a gentler smile. “You need your space. That’s fine. What we do doesn’t exactly build trusting natures. That’s one of the reasons hunters usually work solo.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
She let out a little snort. “It’s the only way I know how to be.”
For a moment, he thought he saw a longing for something else cross her features, but then she smiled and shook her head.
“Damn, that was a maudlin exchange. Do what you need to be comfortable. But if you decide you want to do a little more than throw sexy looks my way, let me know.” She waggled her eyebrows briefly and grinned.
Vaughn was going to love her.
Marcus felt himself smile. He noticed because it didn’t happen very often, and never in the field when he was on his own—unless Vaughn was working really hard to make Marcus laugh. He poked his head through the open side door of the van.
The place reeked of cut grass, gasoline, and gunpowder. The grass smell was centered around a plastic garbage bag on the floor behind the passenger’s seat. He was disconcerted by the fact that he couldn’t narrow down the source of the other smells. They emanated from spots all over the van.
“What are we looking for?” he asked.
Tessa knelt on the floor next to a pair of cylinders that looked like two old scuba canisters stuck together, complete with straps for wearing it like a backpack. Instead of breathing gear coming out of the top, a hose came out of the bottom. It was attached to a short metal wand.
“Is that a flamethrower?” Marcus said.
“You know it.” She fiddled with the wand and straps, checking it over. “Best thing for Redcaps when you’re clearing a nest.”
“Wouldn’t swords be better?”
She cast a pitying look at him. He didn’t know how he’d earned it.
“Most things die when you cut off their head,” he said. “It’s a lot less conspicuous than a flamethrower.”
She picked up the ancient device and slid it over the front seat. Was she planning to drive around setting fire to things through the window? With the explosives he could smell all over her van, that seemed ridiculously unsafe.
He looked around the small space more and noticed that the rear window had been reinforced with heavy-duty wire mesh. The metal edges of the back door were fused. It had been welded shut. She put the cover and cushion back in place on the now empty compartment, then gestured for him to sit.
“No thanks,” he said.
“What’s the matter, Marcus? Can’t take the heat?” Some of the playfulness was returning to her smirk.
She stood, hunched over in the small space, and opened the seat closest to the back of the van, gesturing toward its contents. It was filled with canned food, bottled water, and granola bars.
She put the seat cover back in place and said, “You can sit on my pantry if you’d rather.”
“Wait. You live in here?” Marcus couldn’t mask the incredulity of his tone.
“Yeah, I do. So what?”
He struggled to recover from his gaffe. “It’s… nice.”
“It’s a shithole.” She smiled at him again. “But it gets me where I need to go and carts around what I can scrape together to kill things.”
The Blades of Janus had set up the Providence outpost in Vaughn’s family home. It had started off as a good sized cattle ranch, but the livestock were long gone. The main house was set back from the road, giving them plenty of privacy. They were close enough to the city to patrol effectively and had enough space to take care of business.
Marcus and Vaughn had their own master suites, plus an entertainment room with a big screen TV and gaming consoles. They had a library, where Marcus spent most of his solo down time, and a gorgeous kitchen that was always fully stocked.
The sub-basement had a gym, an armory, Porter’s labs and exam room, plus Vaughn’s workspace and ops center. They even had holding cells that Vaughn had developed for various levels of dweller threats that were under assessment. He’d built them using what he’d learned from the ship that was buried deep below the house.
The cells were accessed by an elevator—which also led down to the ship—and every inch of the place and the surrounding land was protected by a security system that Vaughn had designed. It was all under constant surveillance from the ops center by Vaughn or his algorithms twenty-four hours a day.
Which meant that when Marcus went to his warm, comfortable bed at night, he slept. Peacefully—without fear.
What did Tessa live with?
Chapter Five
The looks Marcus cast her way seemed to be turning from interest to pity. That did not sit well with Tessa.
Sure, she lived on little. Most hunters did. But she could take care of herself. She didn’t need anyone’s pity or help. People always let her down. One way or another. They always left.
It would be easy for Marcus to bail, with that sparkly, sleek black motorcycle of his. He must be one of the rare hunters that had money.
There were lines of softly glowing blue lights worked into the body of the bike. The whole thing had to be custom built. It looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. It didn’t rumble or even purr when he turned it on. Instead, it just gave a contented sigh.
He was starting to remind her of Kyle. Maybe Marcus was another trust fund poser who had stumbled across dwellers and thought he could play hero with fancy gadgets and limited knowledge. Her teeth clenched at the thought.
She’d been so young when she hooked up with Kyle. He’d promised her a cure. With his degree and resources, she’d thought he could deliver. Instead, he’d ended up infecting himself. If Marcus wasn’t careful, the same thing would happen to him.
It wouldn’t be her that infected him, of course. She would never let that happen. Not again. But sooner or later, Marcus would come up against the wrong thing and he wouldn’t walk away. Not human, anyway.
He was meddling in a dangerous world. She wasn’t sure he realized just how dangerous it was.
“How long have you been hunting monsters?” she asked.
“About ten years.”
She wasn’t buying it. “You’ve been on your own that whole time?”
He didn’t answer. She doubted he would have survived that long as a hunter relying on cool motorcycles and swords to kill things. Someone had to have trained him.
Hunters only stayed together for extended periods of time when they were teaching each other new tricks or training recruits. Somehow, dwellers always seemed to know when hunters were banding together and they put a stop to it—permanently. Partners could sometimes fly under the radar, but larger groups never lasted long.
The exception was the Blades of Janus. Goody-two-shoes know-it-alls who had set themselves up as the dweller police force a few years back. For some reason, they hadn’t been taken out yet. Maybe it was because they didn’t just go after dwellers who preyed on humans. Sometimes they took out other hunters, if they thought they had “crossed a line”. As if any dwellers could be trusted to exist.
Who were the Blades to pass judgment? That was probably what kept them from being wiped out by dwellers, though. Plus they had resources and…
Wait a minute.
Marcus had resources. He’d said she didn’t have to live alone, as if he didn’t know the consequences of banding together. And when she’d asked if he had someone he could call back in the alley where this all started, he’d said yes.
Pack Page 5
