Harlequin Nocturne January 2014 Bundle: The Vampire HunterMoon Rising

by Michele Hauf

  A silver stake through the heart would most certainly kill any werewolf, and if the stake was werewolf-created and owned, Marc could hardly be blamed for Russell’s death.

  “Where is it now?” he asked.

  “When the war ended, it was stored away with other relics the vampires and werewolves thought might be...misused.”

  “Like these?” Marc held up the cuffs.

  Van Bom’s eyes flashed. “Yes, cuffs, silver bullets, stakes. Things both sides used to kill the other. Hiding it all away was part of the treaty.” The ball reappeared in Van Bom’s hand. He squeezed it.

  “Where?”

  Van Bom’s lips twisted. “I don’t know. No one does.”

  “Someone must. Who hid it?”

  “A vampire.”

  “Then he—”

  Van Bom cut him off. “He never came back. He took the weapons and never returned. We all assumed he’d hide them and come back, that the weapons would be ours.”

  So, the vampires had wanted the weapons for themselves, had felt they had some importance. “But the stake wasn’t special?” Marc prompted.

  Van Bom lifted one shoulder in a dismissive manner. “I told you, the wolves believed it was. It was made by one of their own, of silver. And they are a superstitious lot. We acted as if we were as afraid of it as they were.”

  “To get them to throw it in with the other relics. Then if things went wrong, the vampires would have control of the one weapon the werewolves truly feared.”

  Van Bom smiled. “Now you understand.” He placed one long finger against his chin. “But why the interest in the stake?”

  “I told you, the werewolf here was killed with a stake.”

  “But a stake through the heart...surely that would kill a werewolf, silver or not.”

  It was a good point and one Marc had considered.

  Could a mundane stake through the heart have killed the wolf? If so, Marc could easily be blamed. As a member of the Fringe, he was always armed, and stakes were part of that weaponry. But if the answer was no, then someone had either found the legendary stake that Van Bom described or made one of his own.

  “Perhaps you should go home.”

  Marc’s head jerked toward the screen. “Leave? Why?”

  “You said this female werewolf blamed you for her pack mate’s death. If her pack arrives, there will be trouble. There’s no reason for you to be involved in that. If you leave, what will they do? We aren’t that easy to find.”

  It was true. The vampires weren’t like the wolves. They had no central location. Even the Fringe had no set meeting place. They operated independently with very few ties to any one place. When you lived for eternity it became a necessity—if you didn’t want the locals hunting you with pitchforks and torches.

  But Marc had called for ideas and information, not the suggestion that he run.

  He wasn’t going anywhere, not until he found the treasure and proved his innocence. He told Van Bom as much.

  “If the werewolves take you, we can’t be responsible for saving you.”

  Marc had never depended on someone else to save him, but he had thought his century with the Fringe would be worth something.

  Van Bom stared back at him, cold and dispassionate.

  Apparently, Marc had been wrong.

  Without even a nod, Marc broke the connection.

  He didn’t need the Fringe’s protection. He didn’t need anyone. He’d been alone too long for that.

  Chapter 10

  CeCe had gone to the woods first. Not to Russell’s body―she had accepted that the werewolf’s remains were beyond her, at least for now. She went to find her cell phone and retrieve the stake.

  She had returned to the woods with a battery-powered lantern. Even with it strapped across her chest, bandolier-style, it took close to an hour for her to find her cell. She punched a button to see if the phone powered on, then shoved it into her pocket.

  She was running short of time with less than an hour left before she had to meet Marc. She didn’t want to be late; she didn’t want him to change his mind and run. She needed him to be here when Karl arrived.

  Her phone secure, she went to retrieve the stake. It was where she had left it, undisturbed. Again using her shirt as a glove, she dropped the stake into an oversize plastic bag and carefully rolled the weapon inside. Then she placed the newly protected stake into her backpack and covered it with three pounds of fresh mushrooms she’d purchased at a roadside stand. If the sheriff returned, she’d claim she was hunting the fungus, and had a particularly profitable day.

  With the pack hitched onto one shoulder, she began the trek back to Cave Vista.

  * * *

  In her hotel room, CeCe dumped the mushrooms on her bed and unwrapped the stake. Not wanting to touch the metal or disturb whatever evidence might possibly have survived, she studied the weapon through the plastic.

  It was, she estimated, fourteen or so inches long and tapered at one end. The handle was wrapped in leather and the butt was flat, to make it easier to pound the stake into a body with a mallet. CeCe had seen stakes before, but they had all been wood, usually aspen. A few had been iron. This, however, she could now see was silver-toned.

  A sick feeling crept over her. She hadn’t touched any part of the stake except the leather-wrapped handle, and that with her hand covered. Slowly, she slid the stake out of the bag. At the very top, right where the leather ended, there was a spot of bare metal.

  She touched her finger against it. A charge like walking into an electric fence zapped through her. With a curse, she jerked back.

  Her knees weak, she collapsed onto the bed. The stake lay beside her...the bare spot of metal shining like a warning.

  Silver. The thing was laced with silver, and something else. Silver weakened a werewolf, shut off his strength, ability to shift and heal quickly, but it didn’t deliver a punch like this stake.

  Her hand moved toward it; strangely, she wanted to pick it up again.

  She curled her fingers into her palm and pulled her hand back.

  What the hell was the thing? She stared at the weapon for another moment as if it might shift itself or fling itself at her. Finally feeling somewhat recovered from the shock of touching the thing, she considered what this discovery might mean.

  A stake made of silver.

  Was it meant for a vampire or a werewolf? Her father had never told her that silver affected vampires as it did wolves, but there were obviously holes in his knowledge.

  Maybe there were more clues on the weapon itself.

  Wary, but determined, she wrapped the plastic back over the metal and carried the weapon to the bedside table. Under the lamp that sat there, she studied the stake further.

  There were faint designs on three of the four sides. She smoothed the plastic tight against the metal and studied the first set of thin lines—the lightning bolt symbol of the wolves.

  The symbol had been used by the packs for centuries. However, after the Nazis stole the image to symbolize their own movement, the bolt had fallen out of favor. Seeing it on the mysterious stake somehow wasn’t surprising. And knowing she had pulled it from a werewolf’s chest, she had no doubt that in this instance the meaning involved the werewolves.

  She bit her lip. There was something strange about the mark here, however. The Z was broken and not just by the line that traditionally ran through it. No, the Z, which should have been drawn in one smooth stroke, was actually in two pieces, as if someone had chopped the bolt in half.

  The pack broken? A wolf separated? As her mind sorted through various possibilities for this new version, she flipped the stake past the blank side to the next symbol. This one she didn’t know.

  It was similar to something she had seen before. What appeared
to be a snake was biting its own tail. However instead of the usual circle, symbolizing something that came in cycles, it was twisted into the figure eight. She turned the stake so it ran perpendicular to her body...infinity. An eight on its side was infinity.

  Vampires didn’t age, didn’t die unless some outside force took their life. The infinity sign seemed a likely symbol for them.

  She paused, recalling Marc’s tattoo. She hadn’t seen much of it, but what she had seen was curved like the bottom half of a circle and covered with scales. The coincidence was too great. Marc’s tattoo and the symbol on the stake had to be the same and they had to mean vampire or something involving vampires.

  It also, quite possibly, tied Marc to the stake. The realization should have thrilled her. She had suspected the vampire from the beginning, but for some reason she was unnerved, disturbed.

  Not ready to admit success or failure, she rotated the stake under the light a bit more. Like the werewolf lightning bolt, the vampire infinity symbol was broken. A hairline of space ran through the center of the design.

  So, not infinity after all. Not any longer.

  What did that mean?

  She turned the stake again. The third symbol seemed to be a combination of the first two—a bolt running through the eight, and with no break in the original designs.

  This was perhaps the most puzzling design of all. Frowning, she flipped the stake around again, taking a moment to study each side once more.

  She glanced at the clock. There were twenty minutes remaining until she was to meet Marc. Luckily, Cave Vista was small. It was less than a five-minute walk to the diner. Leaving her a decent amount of time to make the call to Karl, and after studying the stake, she felt even more beholden to do so.

  She pulled her cell from her pocket.

  Her thumb grazed over the numbers, but she didn’t immediately start dialing.

  She was about to admit that she had failed completely and in the process had allowed one of the pack to be lost. She had not been directly responsible for Russell, but she still felt as if he had been in her care.

  Karl answered the phone himself. If that hadn’t warned her that he was tense and waiting for her call, his tone would have.

  “What happened? Last night the pack sensed something. Then no word for almost twenty-four hours.” The anger in his voice caused her wolf to whimper. She had to force the noise not to escape from her lips. She lowered her body onto the bed to keep her knees from collapsing.

  Karl was the alpha. She couldn’t stop the urge to crumple in the face of his annoyance, but rolling onto her back on the hard floor with him two hundred miles away would help nothing.

  “I was...busy,” she murmured. She hadn’t considered how she would explain why a day had gone by without her calling, a day where she had lost the treasure, lost Russell and been trapped by a vampire.

  “Busy how? Did you find something?”

  CeCe stared at the stake. The broken infinity sign faced her.

  “I did. Find something that is.”

  “The treasure?”

  “No, the treasure is still missing, and the human who found it is dead.” This she guessed the alpha would already know; he would have been monitoring all news coming out of Cave Vista. Surely, by now a death notice had been posted somewhere online.

  “Dead?”

  So, it hadn’t, or the alpha wasn’t being as vigilant as he normally was.

  “How?”

  “The sheriff here says natural causes.”

  “He says?”

  She glanced back at the stake. “It just seems...coincidental, him finding the treasure and all.”

  “When did he die?”

  She told Karl about being at the bar, about Marc and Porter going into the bathroom and Porter not coming back out.

  “So the vampire killed him.”

  “I told you, the authorities said natural causes.”

  Karl grunted, letting her know he had little faith in human detective skills.

  “There’s more,” she said. “Russell is dead.”

  There was a pause.

  “Dead?” he repeated. “The vampire.”

  “No. At least, I don’t know that.” She hurried through the tale of going to the woods and finding Russell.

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  “He had a stake in his heart,” she finished.

  “The vampire. It had to be.”

  CeCe’d had the same thought, but hearing the alpha’s words from Karl, she felt the need to defend Marc, to give him the benefit of some doubt. “He was killed while he was human. He didn’t even try to shift.”

  “And that means what?” There was warning in the words, but CeCe pushed on.

  “Russell was young, but he wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t have stood still and let a vampire shove a stake through his heart.”

  “Meaning what?”

  What did she mean? How did she think that stake got into Russell’s chest?

  “I don’t know. I just don’t think we should blame the vampire without investigating some more. We’d be accusing him of breaking one of the laws. It could restart the war.”

  “Worse things could happen.”

  Karl’s response shocked her. Worse than war? What could be worse than war?

  “Why is the vampire there? He must be looking for the treasure.”

  “He is...at least I assume he is.” She couldn’t admit she had spent as much time with Marc as she had. It wouldn’t help his case with the alpha, and it would damage hers.

  “Then he has every reason to kill the human and Russell.”

  Karl was too calm, too...almost relieved that the human and Russell were dead and that Marc was around to tie to their deaths.

  “I don’t think he did it.” It was as close to standing up to the alpha as she dared.

  “You don’t think he did it?” Silence.

  She could feel Karl’s anger vibrating through their connection. She understood the emotion; she should want the vampire to be guilty. She closed her eyes, but didn’t take her declaration back.

  “Then who do you think did? Or are you admitting to the crimes yourself?”

  Before she could answer, he continued, “Vampires are not our friends. They never have been. During the war, they carried guns loaded with silver bullets and wore silver caps on their fangs. They filled us with holes and drank our blood. But you think this vampire didn’t do it. Why, CeCe? Why?”

  She had no reason, not one that Karl would understand. Not one she understood herself.

  “So, we’re clear. The vampire killed Russell.”

  Like that, Karl had decided Marc’s fate. A sick feeling filled CeCe’s stomach.

  “But if we assume—” she began.

  “Assume?” His voice was sharp and filled with warning. It wasn’t her place to question him. She knew that. Marc had said she was important, but he was wrong. She was nothing to the pack, not until Karl accepted her, made her position as destined mate official.

  “What about the stake?” he asked, making it clear the decision of guilt was over.

  “I have it.” She wanted to feel good then, proud that she had done one thing right, but she couldn’t.

  “That’s good. Everyone knows stakes are for vampires.”

  “Except...” She hesitated.

  “Except what?” The edge had returned to his voice, warning, reminding her of her role.

  “Slayers. Slayers use stakes.”

  “Have you seen any slayers?”

  “No.”

  “But you have seen a vampire, near both the human and Russell.”

  “Yes.” She was an automaton now, answering his questions as she was supposed to, cutting off
any real emotion she might have felt.

  “Good, then we have a plan.”

  A plan? She hadn’t realized they had been looking for one.

  “Is there anything else?”

  Wanting to feel better about what was happening, CeCe picked up the stake. “It has a symbol on it, three actually.”

  “The stake?”

  “Yes...one is the werewolf lightning bolt, the second...I think it means vampire, and the third is a combination of the first two.”

  She could hear Karl adjusting in his seat, hear the wheels on his chair moving over the floor. Except Karl didn’t own a wheeled chair. She frowned, her focus briefly diverted.

  “None of that matters. The stake itself doesn’t matter,” Karl declared.

  “But the single symbols are broken, and what does the combined one mean?”

  “I said, it doesn’t matter.”

  Any feelings of pride she’d had at recovering the weapon disappeared. She dropped it on the bed.

  “Where’s the body?”

  Drained, she collapsed onto the mattress next to the stake. She assumed he meant Russell, but she was too tired to clarify.

  “Safe. Out of reach of humans.”

  “Humans? Were humans there too?”

  “Yes, a sheriff, but he didn’t suspect anything and he didn’t see Russell.”

  “What do you mean? How didn’t he see him?”

  She told him how Marc had used his powers to hide the body from the sheriff, realized as she was telling the story that it added to Karl’s version of things...that of course Marc would have hidden the body. The killer would always hide the body.

  “The entrance to the cave is actually a hole, a straight drop down. Someone might find it, but they wouldn’t be coming back up to tell anyone about it. Russell’s body is safe for now,” she murmured.

  “Not if the vampire knows where he is. We will have to move him and capture the vampire. Until we get there, you’ll have to watch him.”

  All life seemed to have left CeCe, all fight. She murmured some kind of agreement.

  “Find the vampire. Make sure he doesn’t take Russell or find the treasure. And keep your cell on.”