Ro nodded robotically. “This happening near there. It can’t be a coinci...” Her voice broke and she forced herself to take several deep breaths to calm down.
He put an arm around her and, despite her reservations, she found herself leaning into it. “Shh, Ro, relax. We’ll find him.”
“Kane, this is my dad. The only reason he wouldn’t have shown up after a hunt...”
“Shh, I know.” He blew out a breath, his tone becoming more businesslike. “You said you found blood?”
“Some splatter on one of the buildings near where I found the casings and then more on the ground several yards away.”
“What does that tell you?”
“I’m thinking he grazed the whelp before ... whatever else happened.”
“Are you sure the blood on the ground wasn’t the wolf’s?”
“If it was, my dad wouldn’t be missing, he’d be here with us ordering a third helping of breakfast sausage.”
Kane pulled away. “Okay, I’ll call the area hospitals, see if they’ve admitted any John Does. Any place nearby he might have gone to ground?”
She shook her head. “His office, maybe, but that’s all the way over in Chinatown.”
“Early morning meeting with a client?”
Ro laughed at the idea, though she didn’t mean to. Her father’s client list had been on a steady decline for years. It had reached the point where they were mostly living on her modest salary as a nurse. If he’d had such an important customer to see, she had little doubt he’d have let her know well in advance. “Sorry, but no. I don’t think so. Besides, I can’t see him risking public transportation after a hunt. It’s...” she lowered her voice, “dirty work, as you well know.”
Kane smiled broadly, showing off his straight white teeth, something that Ro was certain he used as a disarming tactic, whether his quarry was a perp on the run or a woman overburdened by her bra and panties.
She quickly looked away and pretended to fish for something in her bag, surprised that the thought had even entered her mind. The stress of the morning, following a sleepless night spent hunting, must have been getting to her.
“Okay,” Kane said, his tone suggesting that he wasn’t fooled for a second, “but you should probably check his office anyway. I’ll reach out to the Guild, see if they’ve heard from him. It’s a long shot, but we should cover all the bases.”
Ro turned back, hoping her cheeks weren’t flushed. “I should probably head home just in case he shows up there.”
“You do that. But before you go, I want to see the scene.”
They took their coffees and she led him to the area. Pedestrian traffic had increased now that people were starting their work day. With a quick glance around, she ducked into the alley and showed him what she’d described.
Kane stared at the blood stain on the ground, his eyes narrowing when he looked up at Ro sharply. “His gun. Did you find it?”
“No. I’d have told you if I had.”
“So he must’ve taken it wherever he went.”
“Or somebody picked it up and took it.”
Kane shook his head. “I doubt it. Doesn’t fit the neighborhood. If someone had found it here, we’d have heard about it. So that tells me your dad has it with him, wherever he is, and you know as well as I do that if he’s armed, he’s probably fine.”
Ro nodded, but internally she was at war. There were too many variables, too many questions. And she hated to admit that her father had far outlived the typical life expectancy for a hunter.
Oddly enough, it was that thought which calmed her more than any of Kane’s words. She was a hunter of the Guild, too, fully trained and more than capable. She had a job to do, one that could very well serve her own needs this time.
Her eyes locked onto the blood stain on the ground. With a steadying breath, she resolved to hold onto hope, no matter how feeble.
If her father was alive, she’d find him. If he wasn’t, she’d mourn him. But no matter the case, whoever was responsible would pay dearly for what they’d done.
2
The figure in the cage began to stir. His hands reached up to clutch his aching skull. The change back was always like this: pounding headache and a sore body, coupled with no clue of what was going on. He groaned and attempted to pull himself into a sitting position then winced as he felt a twinge on his upper arm. He examined the area to see a line of pink scar tissue already fading. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten the wound, but that wasn’t surprising. The fact that he had it at all couldn’t be good.
His head felt like someone was using it for a bass drum. He had only a couple of vague memories of the night before – faded black and white images that were fuzzy like a poorly shot home video, but nothing that coalesced into anything immediately recognizable.
He blinked, clearing his vision, and realized the door to the cage looked wrong. It was warped, as if something had knocked it off its hinges. Pulling himself to unsteady feet, he inched closer and realized that the bars around it were actually bent outwards.
Holy shit. I escaped last night. Goddamnit! Even after all the precautions they’d taken, he’d broken out of the cage and ... done what?
He racked his brain but couldn’t recall anything more than a few fuzzy memories of an alley. He swallowed, his throat dry, but then caught the distinct taste of blood. Oh no! Did I hurt someone?
Dean Mason swore silently, then banged on the cage door. “Coop! Where the hell are you, man? Let me out of this shithole!” After a few feeble hits, the door swung open freely. The hell?
He stepped out of the cage and saw a pile of neatly folded clothes on a nearby table. “Coop!” he called again, pulling a t-shirt over his head. He desperately needed a shower, but finding out what happened the previous night was a much higher priority.
Dean climbed the short flight of stairs to the main floor, and called his friend’s name again. “In here,” he heard from the direction of the living room.
When he reached the doorway, his intended greeting was cut short by the sight in front of him. “Who the hell is that?”
An older man lay stretched on the couch, seemingly unconscious. Cooper Maddox – Dean’s friend, confidante, and former bodyguard – was fervently attempting to staunch the blood flowing freely from a gaping wound on the old man’s right shoulder. “No fucking clue,” he replied without looking up. “Some guy you bit last night. He’s alive ... for the moment, at least.”
“Fuck. Oh, fuck.” Dean raised his hands to his head and began to pace. “I knew this would happen. You should just kill me like I told you to. My life isn’t worth this shit.”
“Table it for now. I don’t have time for your goddamned martyr complex,” Coop barked. “I need some help here. Get me that saline there and hand me more gauze.” Dean stood where he was a moment longer, then moved to do as he was told. “I’m going to try to suture the wound, but the edges are pretty ragged.”
Dean handed him the supplies. “Did you talk to him? Does he remember what happened?”
“Oh, he remembers, all right. Wasn’t coherent enough to tell me his name, but immediately started raving about goddamned werewolves. Go figure. He seemed far more annoyed than freaked out. Hold that saline while I stick the IV in.”
“Gotcha,” Dean replied. “So, what? He some kind of nutcase?”
“I wish. Look on the table. Found that not too far away from where I picked you both up.”
Dean glanced over and saw a pistol. His mind immediately raced back to the wound on his arm and a hazy memory played out in his mind. “He shot me.”
“Don’t be a big baby. He grazed you. You probably barely felt it. The wound was already healing by the time I tranqed your ass. Just for the record, you’re damned lucky he wasn’t a better shot.”
“Why? You know I heal...”
“It was loaded with silver bullets.”
Dean’s heart stutter
ed. “Holy shit. Are you telling me he’s a hunter?” When he’d first been told about werewolf hunters, he’d thought it a load of bullshit. A ghost story to get him to stick with the pack. Now, he was forced to wonder whether there was some truth to Strike’s warning.
“Either that or a rich crackpot and, judging by the way this guy smells, I’m not betting on that latter. Good thing I found you when I did. Otherwise, he might have done more than give you a flesh wound.”
“Where’d you find us?”
Coop looked him in the eye, but not entirely without sympathy. “Where do you think?”
Dean sighed. He’d gone home again, or tried to anyway. Tears threatened to well up in his eyes at the painful memory, but before it could take hold his head throbbed again, perhaps mercifully so. “Christ. How much did you tranq me with? My head hurts like a son of a bitch.”
“Enough to take down a charging rhino. Serves you right for breaking out. You scared the shit out of me. Thought I was a goner, but you high-tailed it out the front door like your ass was on fire.”
“You know I can’t help myself.”
Coop shrugged as he continued to work on staunching the blood still flowing from the old man’s wound. “Whatever the case, we need to do more. That cage is shot. It wouldn’t hold a puppy right now. I can try to patch it up for next month, but we need to find somewhere we can properly secure – preferably further away from ... well, you know. I think you’re drawn there.”
Dean backed up and leaned against the wall. “Not sure I want to leave.”
“I don’t think we have a choice. You got lucky with this guy, in more ways than one. You could’ve easily killed someone during your little escapade.”
“Don’t remind me. You know Strike has me on a short leash.” Coop chuckled, which caused Dean to frown. “Not funny, asshole. Besides, he’s the one who offered us this safe house.”
“For a hefty fee,” Coop countered acidly. “I’m serious, man. We can’t stay here.”
Dean sighed with resignation. “I know. I ... have something in mind, but it’s gonna take time to get the funds together, especially with that asshole bleeding me dry.” He stepped forward again and glanced down at their patient, wincing at the amount of blood as Coop attempted to stitch it closed. “Can I do anything else?”
“Besides shutting up and letting me work? Not really. But don’t think I’m not pissed at you for this.
“Sorry about last night.”
“Not just last night. This whole fucked up mess,” his friend said softly, the bitterness evident in his voice.
“This isn’t your fight. You know that, right? You can bail at any time.” As Dean said the words, his heart sank at the possibility of losing the only friend he had left, but still he continued. “I won’t hold it against you.”
“Yeah, I could,” Coop replied, standing up to survey the work he’d done. He nodded to himself, then turned to face Dean. “I meant what I said about being pissed, but I’ll get over it. As for leaving your useless butt high and dry, well, I may be an asshole, but I’m not a fucking asshole.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Dean allowed himself the luxury of a hot shower and clean clothes before returning to the living room. Their so-called guest was still unconscious, but his wound had finally stopped bleeding, a fact Coop deemed a near miracle.
“Keep an eye on him while I get cleaned up.”
“And what do I tell him if he wakes up?”
“Hell’s if I know. You’re the one who bit him.”
“Well, why did you have to bring him back here, anyway?”
“It was that or leave him in the alley to either bleed to death or tell the friendly ambulance driver all about werewolves. Neither seemed a good option to me.” When Dean had no response, Coop blew out a breath. “Listen, man, I’m beat. I’m gonna take a shower and get some sleep. Don’t do anything stupid in the meantime.”
After Coop left the room, Dean buried his head in his hands. His friend was right. This whole convoluted mess was his fault. If he hadn’t been such an asshole, if he’d been less of a self-centered douchebag, if he’d learned to be a boring, upstanding citizen like his parents had wanted him to be, none of this would have happened.
He remembered the night this all began. Even though not that much time had passed, it felt like a different life altogether.
♦ ♦ ♦
Dean had been high as a kite when he’d sauntered into the club some six months earlier, a babe with killer cleavage and an ass to match on his arm. He’d met her at a downtown bar earlier that evening where they’d shared a line or two. He tried to remember her name, but couldn’t quite place it. He’d been way too fucked-up for unimportant shit like that.
What mattered was that she was a prime piece of ass who’d given him a blowjob good enough to eat through the haze of even top notch Bolivian coke. His intent had been to sample her wares again before the night was through, but there was plenty of time for a quick pit stop before then.
The dance floor thumped with some shitty electro-pop, but he hadn’t cared about either the music or the dancing. They’d already used up his small stash of blow, but his date had assured him some premium shit could be had there.
That sounded perfect to him, a chance to obliterate any memory of the fight he’d had with his parents earlier in the day. He wanted to venture out on his own, start a company, and stop riding on the coattails of his dad’s success. He was nearly thirty and still living off his parents’ good graces, for God’s sake. It was pathetic. Even though he’d proven himself more than competent in running the research division, his colleagues still treated him like a fucking trust fund baby – barely concealing their whispers of nepotism when he entered the room.
Cocksucking morons, he hazily thought as he settled into his booth and shot back a mouthful of Johnnie Walker. They wouldn’t have known brilliance if it took a shit on their overpriced diplomas. He’d been near the top of his class at MIT, had a PhD in biomedical engineering, but the idiots he worked with still thought he did nothing but suck off his parents’ teat. Even three sheets to the wind, he could’ve run circles around them in either the lab or the boardroom.
After his second shot, he settled back and draped his arm around ... Darla, yeah that was it. “Darling Darla,” he quipped as if to prove to her he’d been paying attention. They finished a few more shots, then he noted the place wasn’t nearly as packed as he’d originally thought. “You sure you have a contact here? Place looks sorta dead to me.”
“You just wait, handsome. Things are just getting started.” She leaned in and slipped her tongue into his mouth, wrestling with his. A moment later, he crunched down on something bitter – a pill of some sort.
He pulled away, a frown forming. “Did you slip me something?”
“Relax, lover. Just a little taste of things to come.”
That brought the smile back to his face. “Oh? Gonna roll me in the alley and take my wallet?”
She grabbed hold of his crotch as she began nibbling on his earlobe. “Mmm, not your wallet I’m after.” Her tongue darted in and out of his ear, warm and wet. “You’re a yummy one. Did you know that?”
Whatever he’d just swallowed was forgotten almost instantly in his need to finish what she’d started. “Why don’t we go somewhere more private?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” She slipped out of the booth and took his hand. He had to pause to adjust his pants before following her through the small crowd of undulating dancers to a door at the back of the room.
A small warning siren had gone off in his head, a vague feeling that something wasn’t quite right, but his brain wasn’t in control at that moment. She pushed open the door and led him into a darkened space beyond.
He could barely see anything, the only illumination coming from a few low-wattage bulbs hanging from the ceiling. A strange odor hung in the air, like incense mixed with something musky, but any questions he m
ight have had were silenced once Darla closed the door. She pushed him against the wall and began grinding her body against his with an intensity that nearly drove him mad.
Whatever she’d slipped him had his head already spinning, but damn if it didn’t make what she was doing to him feel ten times as good.
He reached down to unzip his pants, but a hand grabbed hold of his wrist and stopped him.
In the space of a heartbeat, he realized it wasn’t hers.
Darla backed away from him, grinning, her teeth looking long and white even in the dim light.
“What the fuck?”
More hands reached out from the darkness and he suddenly realized they weren’t alone.
He was grabbed and dragged down the hall, his body too numb to put up much of a fight. Another door was kicked open, and someone shoved him into a chair sitting in the middle of a small dank room that smelled of rotting meat. The stench, combined with the drugs already coursing through his system, made him want to puke his guts out.
“This him, Darling Darla?” an unfamiliar male voice mocked. Dean couldn’t make out much in the dim light, but he could see there were three of them in total. “You definitely picked a pretty one this time.”
“Almost a shame to turn him.”
“Yeah, almost. Good girl. Now get the fuck out of here and go wait in my room.” There came the sound of a hand slapping against flesh, then a thin man stepped forward. He was all wiry muscle, his arms covered in a combination of scars and tattoos that seemed to run together to form intricate patterns of ink and flesh. He leaned down and stared at Dean, his eyes tinged red as a weasel’s. “Thanks for getting her primed for me, buddy. Real good of you.”
“What the hell’s going on?” Dean asked.
“You’ll find out soon enough, Mr. Mason.”
“Huh? How the fuck do you know my name?”
“Who do you think told Darla to bring you here? You should be honored. Not everyone gets this rare opportunity.”
Lycan Moon: An Urban Fairy Tale (Lycan Evolution Book 1) Page 2
