Shadow Hunt

by Melissa F. Olson

She didn’t bother to sniff, just licked the air in front of her face.

  Hmm. They must have left in a hurry after Shadow and Owen had escaped. “What would Jesse do?” I asked myself.

  The answer was obvious: he’d be thorough. So I painstakingly went through every single duffel bag, hoping they’d left behind something about where they planned to start the Wild Hunt, or how to stop the spell itself. But I found nothing other than clothes and toiletries: no personal items, no maps or diaries, no discarded burner phones. There was nothing else of interest, so I checked the neighboring house. It contained more or less the same situation.

  One by one, Shadow and I searched all seven houses on that stretch of Shepherd Street, counting sleeping bags. Every time I opened a new door, I was afraid that this one would reveal a pile of bodies, but it never happened. There were twenty-one sleeping bags, but no signs of the houses’ actual owners. “What did they do with them?” I asked Shadow. She just wagged her tail slowly, the bargest equivalent of a shrug.

  “Okay, how do we get past the fence?”

  Shadow led me between the houses to a place where two welded chunks of fence were supposed to meet. A whole twelve-foot section of fence had been detached and tipped forward onto the ground, and there were dusty lines on the metal where truck tires had passed over it. This was how the Luparii had gotten supplies in and out of Sunken City.

  Shadow led me over the downed fence, past some tall grass, and I could see scratches in the dirt that had probably been pallets and tents holding supplies. They’d taken the time to pack this stuff up, leaving clothes and other replaceable items behind. We wove along a little path in the grass that had obviously been made by feet rather than a machine. It looked old, and I realized this wasn’t a Luparii addition: this was the path that hikers used to get to Sunken City.

  Then we went past the tall grass, and suddenly there it was.

  It looked as though a giant had picked up several concrete buildings, crumpled them in his hands, and flung them onto the jagged side of a cliff. And then some pretty spectacular artists had done the decorating. It was kind of breathtaking. I understood why hikers and sightseers continued to sneak in here, despite the potential for injury or trespassing tickets. I had never been to Stonehenge, but something about the formation of the concrete chunks reminded me of it: a humungous visual marvel that had been simultaneously created by humans and by nature. I wanted to take photos, to climb up and down the structures and admire the graffiti.

  But that wasn’t why we were there. Shadow was already moving, leading me down the inclined path toward a formation that looked like a giant letter T—just like Owen had described. There was nothing on the top, but I could see scratch marks where the metal bars of the cage had dragged. “This is where they kept you?” I asked. She wagged her tail. “Do you see anything they might have left behind?”

  She lowered her nose to the ground and wandered away, looking for clues.

  I wandered a little myself, but the only thing I noticed was straw scattered around, likely by the breeze coming in off the ocean. It didn’t look like the tall grass, or anything native to the coast. It seemed like the kind of thing you’d feed to horses. “Shadow?” I called. The bargest trotted back to me. “Were there horses here?” I asked.

  She took off, which surprised me, but she just led me to a different spot on the cliff’s edge. I peeked over—and the reek of horse poop hit my nostrils. “Ugh!”

  But I made myself look back over. “That is one big pile of shit,” I said aloud. Shadow didn’t laugh. Every bargest’s a critic.

  It looked like a lot of poop to me, but I didn’t know enough about horses to determine how many would have been required to create such a mess. Probably however many they were planning to use tonight for the Wild Hunt. This was not good.

  Shadow’s nostrils flared, and she wandered off again, leaping to the top of some of the stone structures. The whole area was wildly uneven: peaks and valleys created by concrete, mounds of dirt, fallen trees, and decades of wind. I picked my way down to the bottom of the U-shaped valley, checking the crevices for scraps of paper. There was some trash, but it looked like the kind of things teenagers might leave: cigarette butts, the occasional soda cup or beer bottle. I sighed. There was nothing here. It was pretty and interesting, but this had been a huge waste of time.

  I turned to climb back up, but my thoughts shifted to Jesse. It was kind of surprising that he hadn’t called back by now. We’d already been there for over an hour looking through the houses, and it had taken us an hour to get here in the first place. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and checked the screen. I only had one bar, and even as I looked at the screen, it faded away, returned, faded out again. Shit.

  Suddenly, my screen lit up with a bright red circle. I squinted, adjusting the angle of the phone, and realized the glow extended from a small dot. And it was moving. What the hell? Could phones get viruses? But then the little red dot slid to the bottom of the screen, went down my wrist, skimmed over my arm, and stopped on my chest.

  Chapter 37

  My insides froze. “Shadow,” I called, wondering if I could duck behind the nearest concrete chunk before whoever it was got the shot off.

  The bargest had been standing on a massive horizontal chunk of concrete about twenty yards away, but she turned to hop down—and a voice boomed through the air, courtesy of some kind of megaphone.

  “Stay on that ledge, bargest,” said a male voice with a French accent. “Or we will shoot her.”

  I heard Shadow snarl, her nails scratching on rock as she shuffled anxiously, but she didn’t come closer.

  I was still thinking about moving away—I had the bulletproof vest, after all—when two more dots joined the first. One of the three slid up my chest. I couldn’t follow its progress past my collarbone, but I figured it would end up somewhere around my forehead.

  The tall grass at the top of the incline seemed to ruffle, and a man appeared on the dirt path, making his way down toward us. He looked to be about sixty, but I’d lived in LA long enough to know well preserved when I saw it. He was probably upward of seventy. There was a sound amplifier in his hand, but no weapon. He didn’t need one.

  “Miss Bernard,” he called as he approached me. “I thought it was time we spoke in person.”

  I expanded my radius to get him inside it sooner, and felt the immense tug of a powerful witch. A Luparii witch.

  He stopped about a dozen feet away and stood to the side, staying well out of the line of fire. “So good to finally meet you,” he said, as though we were at a fucking college mixer. “My name is Aldric.”

  The name rang a bell. “You’re the head of the Luparii,” I said, a little awestruck. He had come himself, in person? “Don’t you have minions for this kind of thing?”

  He gave me a pained smile. “Come now, Miss Bernard,” he said cheerfully. “You don’t think I’d miss the opportunity to lead the Wild Hunt?”

  “Plus, squashing your insolent enemies doesn’t carry the same weight if you have a lackey do it.”

  The smile faded from his face. “Really, you should be honored,” he said. “It shows great respect to the soon-to-be former leaders of Los Angeles that I came for them in person.”

  I snorted. “Yes, that’s just what we’ve been feeling these last few days. Respected. How did you know I was here?”

  “You tripped the spell I had placed around the houses. When I stopped feeling my magic, I knew you must have arrived.”

  Stupid, stupid. Served me right for not learning enough about witch magic. Karl Schmidt’s house, Noah’s kidnapping, and now this? I was getting really fucking sick of these guys setting traps in my own damn city. And even sicker of falling into them. I had underestimated these people, which was stupid. They’d spent three years preparing for this, and at least part of that time watching me. Of course they’d had contingency plans in place.

  “So why am I not dead?” I said bluntly.

  “Becaus
e in this moment, I do not desire your death.”

  Oh, goody. We were going to play word games. “So what do you want?”

  He smiled mirthlessly. “They did tell me you were direct. I want to go for a car ride, young lady. But first I’ll have you remove your knife belt and vest and toss them aside.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He must have been wearing some kind of communication device, because he just said, “Roland,” and a chunk of dirt kicked up six inches in front of me.

  “The next shot will go through your left upper arm,” Aldric said in the same maddeningly calm tone. “After that, your right upper arm. Then each hand. At that point I may lose my temper and simply let you bleed out, but who knows? You’ll certainly be incapacitated enough for us to do anything we want.”

  Gritting my teeth, I pulled my tee shirt over my head and unbuckled the strap of my knife belt. I could hear Shadow whining and scratching behind me, so I called, “Stay, Shadow.”

  I tugged at the Velcro straps of the vest, ripping them apart harder than I really needed to. Aldric watched me pull the vest over my head, but he didn’t smirk at my skintight tank top. “You may put your blouse back on,” he said, as though he were being hugely generous.

  I scowled, but picked up the shirt and slid it back over my head. “Toss me your cell phone,” he instructed. Crap. He could use that to text someone as me. I thought about dashing it against a rock . . . but Jesse could track the phone. As long as I had it turned on, I had a lifeline.

  Aldric turned his body sideways and held out a hand for me to walk up the path. “After you. Stay six feet away from me, please, or Roland might grow . . . uneasy.”

  As I started up the path, Aldric glanced at Shadow and yelled, “Bargest! I’m leaving behind a watcher. If he does not call every twenty minutes and tell me you are still on that platform, she dies. If you get off the platform, she dies. Sit if you understand.”

  I couldn’t resist looking at Shadow. She looked terrifying, literally drooling with rage, but she sat. Only she did that insolent dog thing where her back haunches barely skimmed the ground.

  “I’ll come back for you, Shadow,” I called. “Me or Jesse, okay?”

  That made her relax into an actual seated position. She licked the air in front of her.

  “She seems to respond to you,” Aldric observed, like he was doing a clinical study. “Interesting.” He turned his back on Shadow and motioned for me to continue up the hill.

  Aldric directed me past the downed fence and through the path between houses. There was a strange-looking black Mercedes waiting at the curb: shorter than a limousine, but longer than a sedan. As we approached, a uniformed male driver climbed out and rushed to open the door. “After you,” Aldric said, gesturing me into the car.

  I balked. The one thing everyone always says about kidnapping is don’t let them take you to a second location. Don’t get into the windowless van—or in this case, tinted luxury vehicle. But the driver pulled a Glock out of a side holster and stood with it pointed at the ground in front of us. The implication was clear.

  I climbed into the car.

  It was definitely the most luxurious vehicle I’d been in, all plush leather seats and glossy fixtures. There were two sets of seats in the back, and they faced each other for conversation. Aldric slid into the seat across from me, his knees cracking a bit. Before I could come up with a decent plan other than punching his stupid face, a hard-looking man with pale eyes and hair opened the opposite door and slid onto the seat next to me. Neither of them buckled their seat belts, so I didn’t either.

  “Miss Bernard, this is Roland, my bodyguard,” Aldric said politely.

  Roland didn’t speak. Or deign to look at me. He simply adjusted his suit coat in a way that fully displayed the handguns he wore on shoulder holsters.

  “You know,” I said conversationally, “only a few years ago, you’d never see guns in the Old World. They were considered . . . uncivilized.”

  “You don’t strike me as a particularly civilized person,” Aldric responded. “Personally, I happen to agree that they are gauche, but unfortunately, that seems to be what you bring out in people. Why did you tell the bargest you’d return for her?”

  I blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “You told the bargest you’d come get her, you or Mr. Cruz. To what purpose?”

  “I . . . so she wouldn’t be as upset,” I said. Did he really not understand the concept of lying to make someone else feel better?

  “Why does it matter if she’s upset? She’s a monster.”

  I gave him a look. “Well, isn’t that Dr. Frankenstein calling the Creature black?”

  It was his turn to say, “Excuse me?”

  Obviously, I had always expected to hate this guy, but even so . . . I was really starting to hate this guy. “Forget it. Could you just tell me what I’m doing here?”

  I was back on script, which seemed to put Aldric at ease. “I want to make you an offer.”

  I probably should have seen something like that coming, since I wasn’t dead and all, but that genuinely surprised me. “You want me to work for you?”

  “Don’t laugh.” He said it politely, but with an undercurrent of Seriously, I’ll fuck you up if you laugh. “This is a very real offer.”

  “Okay . . .” I forced myself to take a deep breath. “What would be in it for me?” I said carefully.

  He smiled. “Better. As you said, I’m deeply interested in ‘squashing my insolent enemies.’ One way to do that would be to terrorize your city with the Wild Hunt, an option that’s certainly very appealing.”

  He waved one hand. “Then again, I have already gotten so much of what I want. Petra is free and has learned the cost of her mistakes. The city leaders have been embarrassed. Perhaps it would be enough if their prize null defected to the other side.”

  I stared at him. He wanted me to trade myself for everyone he was planning to kill? The idea was horrifying, but at the same time . . . what was my happiness compared to the lives of hundreds of people, many of whom I considered friends?

  It might have been a very tempting offer—if I believed for one second he’d stick to it. I glanced at Roland to see what he made of all this, but he didn’t seem to have moved.

  As if reading my mind, Aldric said, “You’re thinking I would go back on my word because I would need to prevent them from coming to save you. But I’m not talking about a kidnapping, Miss Bernard. There would be no manacles, no chains. I’m talking about you leaving them of your own free will. You can even say goodbye if you like.” He shrugged. “We could be on a plane or a ship this evening, and you can start a new life working for me in France.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Why, the same thing you do now, but on a much larger scale.” He smiled in an indulgent, grandfatherly way. “The world is changing, Miss Bernard. Four hundred years ago the Vampire Council fell, and the Old World has had to make do without leadership. But as technology advances, we need better strategies to remain hidden. We need new leadership. A new council.”

  “The Luparii,” I said. That was why they wanted so much power. They were literally going after world domination. Well, Old World domination, at least. I would have laughed if it weren’t so fucking terrifying. “You want to be . . . what? The new government?”

  “Someone has to lead,” he said patiently. “Now is not the time for supernatural factions to be divided. Now is the time for working together.”

  Now I did laugh. “Says the guy who came here to kill a bunch of us.”

  “But you can stop all that,” he said, so serious that it scared me. Well, scared me more. “All you have to do is say yes.”

  I stopped laughing. “What’s to stop me from running away once we get there?” I asked. I wasn’t even sure if I was just playing along now, or if I meant it.

  He looked as if he’d expected the question but was still disappointed by it. “Do you have any idea how easy it would be for me to have
Mr. Cruz killed? Or Mrs. Hayne? Hell, I’ve wanted to kill Will Carling for quite some time. And I’ve had people in this city for years. If you tried to run, how long do you think it would be before your friends no longer drew breath?”

  I tried to keep my breathing even, to keep the stricken look off my face. “Why me?” I said. “There are other nulls.”

  “None as powerful,” he replied. “And you’ve proven quite resourceful.”

  “I killed Killian and Sabine,” I pointed out.

  “And if you hadn’t, I likely would have,” he said casually. “Once we understood your inherent worth, Killian was instructed to take you alive. Instead, he planted a bomb in your vehicle.” Aldric shook his head. “Sloppy.”

  I had a sinking feeling in my belly. “What do you mean, my inherent worth?”

  He shifted in his seat. “Oh, pardon me. The deal I’m offering isn’t only for you. It also includes the child you carry.”

  Chapter 38

  I was too shocked to respond. How did they know about the baby?

  How did they know about the baby?

  Jesse. The twisted slumber. They’d taken it out of his brain, and then pretended not to know.

  “Of course, I can see why you might be hesitant to accept an arrangement of this nature,” Aldric said, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles from his pants leg. “But please understand, you will not be a prisoner in a castle tower. You will have minders, but you can come and go as you please. Most importantly, your child will want for nothing. She shall have money and doctors and nannies. Anything you need. Anything the child needs. All you have to do is work for the Luparii cause.”

  For a moment, I tried to picture it: Having the baby in a foreign country, surrounded by strangers paid to be there. Endless resources, endless security—and none of the people I loved. They would probably never know what had happened to me.

  “And if I say no?”

  Beside me, Roland made his first noise of the car trip: a quiet scoff. Aldric leaned forward, looking incredulous. “If you should make that mistake, the Wild Hunt will ride tonight, as planned, and many, many people will die. No humans will be harmed, so Mr. Cruz may survive, but consider the many who will be lost. Our world will see Los Angeles fall, its leadership crumble.”