Outcast (Hunter: A Thieves Series Book 4)

by Lexi Blake

  “Mistress, he’s right,” Eddie said. “It is possible the primal will recognize the king’s blood. Lee, give me your arm. This will hurt, but he needs to be able to smell the blood.”

  Lee’s arm shot out. He was enthusiastically offering himself up. He was going to kill me one day. “And I’ll heal real fast. Do it.”

  Before I could even countermand the order, Eddie pulled his claw over Lee’s forearm and blood welled fast and hard.

  And he healed before my eyes because the king’s blood is the shit.

  “Damn it.” I heard a low wail of pain in the distance. “Spread it on me and then you and Eddie get back to the tent. Wait for me there. Or better yet, try to find a way to get your dad on the phone.”

  “I can do this,” Lee insisted.

  “I don’t think we have time, mistress.” Eddie had turned toward the cave and his eyes were bright and red, the claws on both his hands out now.

  I turned to see what had him scared, and then I wished I had claws. I missed my crazy weird demon arm. It might have come in handy.

  Bats flew out of the cavern, the speed and sheer volume making my hair blow back. All three of us ducked as the swarm of bats rushed overhead. My knee banged against the forest floor. The trees were thick in this part of the woods, but the bats flew in perfect precision.

  I watched in pure terror as a shadow crossed the front of the cave.

  “Mistress, perhaps you both should run. I am skilled in combat. I can give you time,” Eddie offered.

  Eddie, who knew how weak he was. He looked at the massive predator staring down at us and offered his own life.

  I didn’t care what Gray thought. Eddie was our guy. Our household was getting bigger by the minute.

  “Mr. Miller, my name is Lee and I know your son.” Lee, covered in blood and his damn left shoe untied, stepped up in front of us. “He’s in trouble. Fen is in trouble.”

  “He can’t understand you, Master Lee.” Eddie put a hand on him and was backing away.

  A cloud shifted and moonlight shone down on the primal. His skin was the purest alabaster white, so white dark veins showed under it. His hair was gone, lost to the change. His skin had wrinkled, leaving craggy caverns across his face. His lips had peeled back and his long, razor-sharp fangs were on full display.

  His clothes were in tatters. I would bet they were what he’d been wearing when he’d died and risen and murdered his wife because he couldn’t help himself.

  His shoulders were hunched over, but muscles rippled across his lean body. His ears had elongated, like bat ears, and his eyes were huge in his face. He was utterly alien and terrifying. This was where Hollywood had gotten the idea for Nosferatu. Someone had seen a primal and managed not to die.

  And naturally, he was coming our way.

  He leapt from the cave entrance, though leaping isn’t the best way to describe how he moved. He kind of floated down, but with deep purpose. His bare feet hit the forest floor and I could see his claws weren’t relegated to his hands. Sharp talons had replaced toenails and his feet seemed longer than any human’s. He sniffed the air though his nose was long gone, only two dark slits in its place.

  He hissed our way and Eddie tried getting in front of us.

  I started to pull Lee back, but he lifted his arm, the one that was covered in his own blood.

  “I am your king, vampire,” Lee shouted. “You will follow me.”

  The primal’s head twisted to the side and he breathed deeply. His mouth opened and he spoke around his fangs, the words ground from him as though even his vocal cords hadn’t survived his turn the way they should have. “Fe…Fen…rir.”

  “We’ll take you to him.” I stepped in front of Lee. “He’s in danger.”

  The primal’s jaw clenched. “Where…Fen? Can’t smell his wolves. They seem to be everywhere.”

  The wolves. It had been how he’d tracked his son even through the spell. “They broke up when Fen went to sleep.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to mention that Fen’s sleep hadn’t been his choice. He seemed on edge and trying hard to hold on to his momentary sanity.

  A low growl caught in his throat and his hands started for me. “Run…run…run…”

  When a guy with like three-foot fangs and a taste for blood tells you to run, you should. Even if you’ve got problems with authority figures, it’s best to push those to the side and place distance between you.

  It’s also far easier to run like the wind when you’ve got the spirit of a wolf inside you.

  I held Lee’s hand in mine as we turned and started to run toward the east. Someone had lit a fire back at the witches’ cabin and I could see the vague shadows from the distance. I heard Eddie in the background and he yelled out for us to keep going.

  I glanced behind me and he had leapt onto the primal’s back, his claws going into the vampire’s chest. The primal reached around and pulled the little demon off him, tossing him away. He had a target and it wasn’t Eddie.

  “We need to go,” Lee said, tugging on my hand.

  I ran with him, but my lungs were already burning. We didn’t have far to go, but I couldn’t run the way I used to, and the ground wasn’t exactly level. I stumbled and felt pain explode through my legs.

  “Keep running,” I yelled at Lee because in that moment I would rather he got caught by a Hell lord than watch him be torn apart by the primal.

  He was a stubborn boy. He reached down and tried to drag me up. He was surprisingly strong. “I’m not leaving you.”

  I forced myself to my feet and I could hear the primal rushing toward us.

  Despite the pain, I managed to keep up with Lee. He led me through the woods, darting this way and shifting that, keeping us from knocking into a tree trunk. It had to be his father’s blood that was giving him strength and speed he wouldn’t normally have.

  I swear I could almost feel hot breath on my back as we fled. The primal seemed to get closer and closer to us, but I could see the light getting closer, too.

  Then the primal caught us. He was right beside us, his body moving with the grace of a predator. I stopped, my sneakers digging into the dirt. I yanked Lee back.

  I was ready to cover him with my body, to take whatever the primal had to give.

  The primal kept running.

  “He’s going for Fen,” Lee said, hope in his eyes. “He’s figured out where Fen is. It’s working, Kelsey.”

  It had to be because I heard someone scream and this time I knew it wasn’t Trent.

  “If I ask you to hide, you won’t, will you?” I couldn’t leave him in the forest alone and I couldn’t not get to that cabin.

  “I’ll be careful,” he promised. “But you can take me with you or I’ll go alone.”

  We ran toward the screams.

  I stopped, pulling at Lee’s hand when we made it to the cabin. I hadn’t seen it before since I’d been drugged out of my mind when they’d dragged me here and pulled a piece of my soul from my body. The cabin was tiny and the door stood open.

  Screams were coming from the other side of the cabin and Lee and I made our way around. We didn’t have to worry about wolf senses now. It was obvious every creature involved in the witches’ ceremony was now fully focused on fighting for their lives.

  “Kelsey!”

  I heard the shout coming from inside. Casey was still in there. I could leave Lee with Casey while I…I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but Eddie was alive out there and he would join us when he could. He wouldn’t hide. He would be here when he could and he would start to transport us away. I had to hold things together until then.

  Lee needed a job and I was going to give him one.

  “Get that fucking vampire!” a deep male voice shouted.

  It sounded like things weren’t going so great for Lord Sloane, and that meant one thing was going right for me.

  I hustled Lee into the cabin. My young friend’s education was pretty varied and included some subjects most kids his age
would never study.

  Casey still sat in his corner, still wrapped in chains, though it looked like his tormentors had punished him a bit. Someone had ripped at his shirt, allowing the silver chains to burn his flesh further. Angry welts had risen up, but the flesh at his neck where we’d opened his jugular vein was smooth again. Even the bit of companion blood he had in his system was working, making him stronger than he would normally be.

  I was certain Meredith would have used that to her advantage had the night played out the way she’d planned it to. She would have proof that Casey had her blood in his system and she would have cried and told the king he’d stolen it. Gray—or rather Nemcox in his new body—would have been her helpful witness. They would have explained that Casey had killed us all in his desperate need to get to the companion.

  Yeah, that wasn’t going to fly now.

  “They came and got Gray a couple of minutes ago,” Casey explained, speaking rapidly and lit with hope. “It was your stepfather. I think he means to go looking for you. They don’t know about Lee and Eddie, but he swore he was going to kill you no matter what Lord Sloane wants.”

  Lord Sloane wanted my womb. That was all. He’d taken the she-wolf from my soul, but my eggs still had her DNA floating around in them. He was planning on shoving Gray’s soul down, but his sperm would still work fine, and it had been changed by his turn to a dark prophet. Lord Sloane wanted a child between a Hunter and a prophet, one he could control. Hell, when he was done with me, he might ship my baby factory on to Lupus Solum. Trent’s mom had seemed interested in a child between me and a strong alpha. If it was up to them, I would spend the rest of my life being raped and producing children they would take from me and twist to their will.

  All in all, stepdaddy’s bullet seemed kinder, but I wasn’t going to allow that to happen. Not if I could help it.

  Bullets started going off and I prayed my people were safe. I reached for the lock that held the chains around Casey’s body. It was heavy, thick with silver, but the lock itself was normal and I happened to have a thief with me. “Lee, can you pick this lock?”

  He looked down at it, studying it with way too old eyes. “Yes. I need something to use as a pick. I’ll check the drawers.” He looked back up at me. “Go and save Fen. You can do it. Me and Casey will come and help…or I can hide and wait for Eddie.” He must have seen the look in my eyes. “I just had to get back here. I had to help.”

  “You can help by calling your dad,” Casey said. He winced as his skin smoked but he sat up straighter. “Fuckers left my cell in my back pocket. I mean the horrible people who took us forgot to relieve me of my cellular device. They blocked communications around our house, but not here. I heard one of the witches talking to her boyfriend on a cell about an hour ago. It should work.”

  Two things had gone right.

  “Oh, he’s allowed to cuss tonight.” I was going to give his mom the total lowdown on every single way he’d put himself in danger tonight, but if the kid wanted to drop an F bomb, I was going to roll with it. He was covered in blood, some of it his own. When you’re soaked in the red stuff, cursing is an inevitability.

  A long howl split the night. I knew that howl. That howl shook the cabin walls and called to me.

  God, even without my wolf, I knew that howl was for me. The sound seemed to wrap me up and offer me hope. If he was howling, Trent was still alive, and he was going to fight. I had to fight beside him, to give him my human strength.

  If I had to, I would give him my human life.

  I kissed Lee’s forehead. “Stay safe, little man. I love you.”

  I got to my feet.

  “Kelsey, you’re going to be okay,” Lee said solemnly. “That’s what my papa always says. He told me anytime he went into a fight he told himself that he would be okay and that nothing could ever hurt him because he had all of us behind him. He meant Dad and Mama at the time, but now he would mean us kids, too. I’m with you. I’m beside you even if you make me hide in a closet.”

  It struck me that this soul in front of me was a part of me, too. That small, stubborn, amazing boy housed my father’s soul. I came from him and there was nothing wrong with me. I’d thought she was the best part of me, that she was the part that had come from him, but I’d come from him, too. This was my father as a human, and he was every bit as kickass and awesome, as strong and loyal as he’d been as a lone wolf.

  All of my life I’d thought of myself as a freak, but it is okay to be a freak. It’s okay to be weird and to not fit in. It’s all right to be the oddball. What’s not okay is to take a child and tell her she’s unlovable, that she’s a mistake.

  I thought my wolf made me strong, but I could be strong all on my own. I could be enough.

  I nodded Lee’s way. “I’m going to be okay.”

  “Kelsey, there’s a woodpile outside. I noticed it when they dragged me in,” Casey said as Lee was going through the drawers next to the sink. “They left an ax. Have fun.”

  And I was batting three for three. I stepped out and even my human nose could tell that the blood had begun to flow. I gripped the handle of the ax someone had left near their chopping block. Being off the grid was definitely going to help me today.

  Someone had a bonfire going, and the shadows it threw off were a horror show. A woman rounded the corner, her eyes wide with terror. She wore a billowing cape and she stopped in front of me.

  “Don’t go out there. The wolves have gone insane. I…I…it’s terrible,” she said before shoving her way around me and running into the woods.

  She was undoubtedly one of the witches who’d tried her hardest to pull my she-wolf from me before forcing my bestie to do it, but she’d also signed her soul away to a demon lord. She’d get hers soon enough, and nothing I could do with my ax would even touch what her existence would be like in a few years, if she survived that long.

  I ran around the corner of the cabin and into the clearing where the witches of Wyoming apparently performed their spells. It was obvious they’d prepped the scene carefully because there were three stone altars in the middle of the big old circle they’d burned into the grass. They’d also burned a pentagram in the circle. Someone was an artist with the gasoline. Three figures lay on the altars. Gray was in the middle and his body was still. Fen was to his left and Trent to his right, but of the three only my wolf was struggling against his bonds.

  The primal was struggling with Lupus Solum. It looked like the pack had taken the opportunity to shift and fight in their strongest forms. I estimated about twenty wolves circling the primal. I didn’t see my stepfather, but I knew he’d be in the mix somewhere.

  Jacob stood to the side, well away from the fray. His head turned and his lips curled up slightly as he caught sight of me.

  He wasn’t the only one who’d caught sight of me. The witches seemed to have run, but Nesta hadn’t. Lupus Solum’s high priestess had a gun in her hand and she fired my way.

  I managed to duck and slide behind a massive pine.

  “You did this, you bitch,” she said. “You brought that thing here.”

  I could see her shadow moving toward me, coming to my right side.

  “The Eye is dead,” she shouted over the sounds of gunfire and screams. “You brought that abomination here and he has destroyed my pack. The father is as bad as the son. He took our daughter. Hester was to be my successor. Now she is the mother of monsters.”

  Hester was dead and she’d loved her son. She’d called the pack, but that had been momentary panic. Hester had been young and sheltered, first by the pack and then lovingly by her husband. When the worst seemed to have happened, she hadn’t known what to do. She’d called people who should have sheltered and loved her and her son. They hadn’t.

  Her tragedy didn’t have to be Fen’s. His mother was gone, but he could have a family who would teach him, love him, fight for him.

  I shifted to the left. She had a gun and gun beat ax, but she was freaked out and pissed off, and I was co
ol under pressure.

  That was the human part of me. Human Kelsey had learned this lesson and tempered the wolf. My she-wolf would have balls-out attacked Nesta and likely gotten herself shot to hell. I breathed deeply, the panic easier to shove down because they were alive out there and I could get to them. I had a chance and I wasn’t about to blow it by letting Trent’s insane mother shoot me.

  The primal let loose a throaty scream that kind of curdled my blood, and the shadow I’d been watching made her move. Nesta stepped around the trunk and fired.

  I was one step ahead because I’d managed to swivel around the trunk so I could get behind her. I raised the ax. Turned out I was strong enough to plant that sucker in her back. She fell forward and I left the ax there because her gun had hit the forest floor. I picked it up as my would-have-been mother-in-law started bleeding out. Her body was still and silent.

  I turned and took off for the altars, passing Jacob, who was the only creature who didn’t seem to be fighting the primal. Even Lord Sloane stood in the circle. His horns were out, long and curved. The wolves seemed to be in a frenzy, and it wasn’t merely the primal they were attacking. Lord Sloane had one by the throat and I heard the snap of bones cracking. He tossed the wolf away but another leapt onto his back and started gnawing on his wretchedly expensive suit coat.

  I ran across the clearing to Trent. Gray wasn’t moving, but Trent was fighting, his body bucking up and down against the ropes that held him down. It had to be bad because normally he would have busted out of those ropes easy-peasy. The ground suddenly became softer and I realized my feet were sinking into the grass.

  Blood. It was all over my shoes. It soaked the hem of my pants. Trent’s blood. It had saturated the ground. How long had he bled? How much time had we bought with Trent’s torture?

  His eyes were glazed with pain. His head thrashed back and forth, but he stopped and breathed deeply. His head turned and his gaze met mine as I looked at the ropes tying him down. He wore only a pair of boxer shorts, and it looked like they’d beaten every inch of his body. Blood soaked the wooden altar. It still dripped onto the ground around us.