Hunter's Need

by Shiloh Walker

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  Teaser chapter

  PRAISE FOR

  HUNTER: HEART AND SOUL

  “Some of the best erotic romantic fantasies on the market. Walker’s world is vibrantly alive with this pair.”

  —The Best Reviews

  PRAISE FOR HUNTING THE HUNTER

  “Action, sex, savvy writing, and characters with larger-than-life personalities that you will not soon forget are where Ms. Walker’s talents lie, and she delivered all that and more . . . This is a flawless five-rose paranormal novel, and one that every lover of things that go bump in the night will be howling about after they read it . . . Do not walk! Run to get your copy today!”

  —A Romance Review

  “An exhilarating romantic fantasy filled with suspense and . . . star-crossed love . . . Action packed.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Fast paced and very readable . . . Titillating.”

  —The Romance Reader

  “Action-packed, with intriguing characters and a very erotic punch, Hunting the Hunter had me from page one. Thoroughly enjoyable with a great hero and a story line you can sink your teeth into, this book is a winner. A very good read!”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Another promising voice is joining the paranormal genre by bringing her own take on the ever-evolving vampire myth. Walker has set up the bones of an interesting world and populated it with some intriguing characters. Hopefully, there will be a sequel that ties together more threads and divulges more details.”

  —Romantic Times

  Books by Shiloh Walker

  HUNTING THE HUNTER HUNTERS: HEART AND SOUL HUNTER’S SALVATION THROUGH THE VEIL HUNTER’S NEED

  THE MISSING FRAGILE

  Anthologies

  HOT SPELL (with Emma Holly, Lora Leigh, and Meljean Brook)

  PRIVATE PLACES (with Robin Schone, Claudia Dain, and Allyson James)

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  HUNTER’S NEED

  A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / December 2009

  Copyright © 2009 by Shiloh Walker, Inc.

  Excerpt from Veil of Shadows by Shiloh Walker copyright © by Shiloh Walker, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-15179-2

  BERKLEY® SENSATION

  Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY® SENSATION and the “B” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is for my editor, Cindy Hwang, and for every person that emailed me, asking when Duke would be getting a book. Hope it’s worth the wait.

  To Natalie, who is always willing to do a rush job.

  And always, for my husband and kids . . . I love you.

  CHAPTER 1

  STRENGTH.

  Some people have it.

  Some people don’t.

  Analise Morell knew which category she fell into. She wasn’t strong. Not at all. While she might wish otherwise, wishing for something didn’t make it happen. And reaching for that indefinable something didn’t always bring it closer. She’d reached for strength before, and she’d always failed.

  Here, she was more acutely aware of just how lacking she was. Here being Excelsior, the hallowed home of the Hunters—at least on this side of the world. For four years, she’d trained here, fighting to control her psychic gift, refining her admittedly shoddy shielding ability and working on control. She’d also managed to get her GED and complete the first few years of college courses.

  To the mortal world, Excelsior was a private school for gifted and troubled children and teens. Other than her age, Ana supposed she fit into that category well enough.

  Psychics weren’t exactly the sort of gifted the normal person would expect to find here, no more than they’d expect to find fledging witches, shapeshifters or newly made vampires. Excelsior was a whole different world from what mortals would have expected to find.

  Not everybody who came to Excelsior would become a Hunter—Ana wouldn’t, and she was fine with that. But she’d leave it stronger, smarter and more capable of controlling the gift that had damn near controlled her.

  She wouldn’t be used again. Not by her gift, and not by somebody else seeking to exploit it.

  She may not be strong enough to be one of them, but at least she could control herself enough so that she couldn’t be used to hurt them, either.

  Hurt him.

  As though even thinking of him was enough to make him appear, Duke Lawson came striding into the huge gymnasium, walking with a lazy, feline grace. He’d been born Duke Monroe, but like many of the Hunters, he’d left his given name behind with his old life.

  There was a faint, almost unconscious smile on his face, one that faded as she stared at him. He came to a halt and she saw his nostrils flare—

  His gaze cut to her and she managed to keep from flinching as his dark gray eyes connected with hers. She lifted a hand, waved hesitantly, but he didn’t acknowledge her. He just turned away and strode across the rubberized floor. She knew where he was going—the training area on the second level. Right now, there was a class in progress for the advanced students; fighting skills, but not exactly the kind of fighting one would encounter at any legit dojo.

  Martial arts were definitely taught
, but the advanced students, the ones most likely to be approached about joining the Hunters,weren’t just taught basic self-defense. Duke was currently one of the Hunters assigned to help train—she knew, because she did her best to quietly learn everything about him that she could.

  As much as she could learn without him realizing it, anyway.

  Considering she’d once been party to his kidnapping and torture, she doubted he’d be too happy knowing that she was obsessed with him. None too happy with knowing that she still dreamed about him, more than four years after the night he’d had the bad luck to meet up with her.

  Too fucking twitchy for this, Duke thought as he squared off with a young vampire. Young in vamp years anyway. Shawn Lenning would have celebrated his fiftieth birthday in just a few months if he hadn’t been attacked one night. He’d been heading to his car after leaving work. Parked on a side street in a less than respectable area of East St. Louis, he’d heard the sounds of struggle, a woman screaming and he’d gone to help.

  But it wasn’t just the average rape he’d interrupted. The woman survived, Shawn Lenning was technically listed as missing and presumed dead and his life would never be the same. Duke could sympathize. He knew what it was like to have your entire life changed in the blink of an eye, although at least Duke had been a little prepared. A natural shifter, he’d known pretty much all his life that there was a whole hell of a lot more to the world than mortals thought.

  Shawn had simply been human. Courageous and decent, willing to risk his neck for a woman he didn’t know, but just a human and he hadn’t known a damn thing about natural shifters, vampires, psychics . . .

  Pretty blonde psychics with eyes the color of violets and a mouth he could still taste, even four years later.

  Life would be easier if he didn’t have to know about that particular psychic, Duke suspected. After what she’d done, it wasn’t a big surprise that every time he saw her, it hit him on a deep, visceral level.

  He still had scars from those days, days that ran together in a pain-filled, delirious blur. Just a few days, but even a few minutes under those circumstances would be too much. She’d used him, figured out what and who he was and toyed with him, making him believe she wanted him and convincing him to leave the club with her.

  He’d done just that, but instead of taking him to a motel or some dark, quiet apartment where she lived, she’d taken him to hell. To Cat, a feral vampire with a few mental issues. Something about Ana’s gift fucked with his instincts and he’d been blinded to the fact that the house he was following her into was the territory of a feral vamp’s.

  Blind to everything but Ana, he’d been so caught up in her, in the taste of her mouth, the feel of her body against his, he hadn’t realized the danger until it was too late. He’d been shot with silver and in the brief period he’d been unconscious, somebody had chained him up, bound him head to toe with chains of silver and titanium. The silver had drained him, burned him and ate into his flesh, while the titanium was too fucking strong for him to break away.

  And that was how he’d spent the next couple of days, until help arrived in the form of Mary Kendall and Duke’s old friend Kane. Somebody from his life before. Life before the Hunters. Life before he’d ever met up with a sad-eyed psychic—a life that had been a helluva a lot easier.

  He didn’t remember much of the days he spent in captivity, beyond Ana. Almost every damn time he swam up out of the black well of pain and weakness brought on by starvation, she’d been there, urging water past his parched throat, giving him just enough to keep him going. A natural shifter, he ate more, drank more than a mortal. A mortal could go a decent amount of time before starvation left them weak. But for a shifter, a couple of days without food was enough to put him in a bad state.

  For the thousandth—no, probably the millionth time, he found himself wondering why she’d made the pretense of helping him, of caring if he lived or died under Cat’s hand. Found himself wondering why she was here—why she’d come, and why they’d allowed her to stay.

  A ham-sized fist caught him on the side of the head and he went flying, coming to a stop only when his body crashed into a reinforced wall. Head spinning, he shoved to his feet and stared across the mat at Shawn. Rubbing his ringing ear, he muttered, “Good one.”

  Shawn shrugged, a wry smile creasing his dark face. “Not really. You’re off.”

  Off—yeah. He was that. “Maybe.” Scanning the students seated at the edge of the mat, he singled out Lindsey Sue Whit-taker. Petite, delicate, her head barely reached the middle of Shawn’s chest but when the black man saw her rising from the floor, he swore. Lindsey fluttered her lashes at him and blew him a kiss before bending over and stretching out her legs.

  Then she straightened and without so much as a blink lunged for him, crossing the distance with a speed no mortal eye could track. Werewolf quick.

  As the vampire set about fighting off the werewolf, Duke retreated off the mat and tried to get his head focused and his thoughts off Analise Morell.

  “WHO is that?”

  Duke glanced up, first at the vampire standing across the pool table, and then toward the door. But even before he saw, he knew. Raking Ana over with a contemptuous gaze, he looked back at the vampire. Dominic—the last name escaped him. Here from Nashville, Tennessee, where he served as a lieutenant for the local master. “Somebody that shouldn’t be here.”

  Dominic snorted. “Well, hell. She’s got a lot in common with me, already.” He braced his pool stick on the ground and watched as Ana made her way through the people, heading for the small library tucked off to the side of the rec room.

  The rec room was crowded, but for a rainy Saturday evening, that was to be expected.

  All too aware of the vampire’s interest, Duke focused on the pool table. The edgy, twitchy sensation in his gut expanded and he shot a dirty look at the window. He didn’t mind water. But he hated getting drenched and if he shifted in that downpour, he’d end up soaked to the bone.

  He needed to shift, though. Had to do something to release the edgy, nagging tension that had been building inside him over the past few weeks.

  “You know her?”

  Duke lined up his shot and took it before straightening and meeting Dominic’s gaze. “There’s close to five hundred students in this school—you think I know them all?”

  Dominic shrugged. “Well, you know her well enough to say she shouldn’t be here.”

  Duke could have bit his tongue off. Yeah. He had said that. “Her name’s Ana. She’s a psychic, here to get that under control, not because she’s Hunter material.”

  Running his tongue over his teeth, Dominic cocked his head, watched as she disappeared through the doors leading to one of the numerous libraries. “She’s cute—blonde. Shit, I love blondes. And I bet she’s blonde all over . . . ”

  She was—a memory he’d tried damn hard to forget came rushing up, the night she’d suckered him in, on the trunk of her car. He’d followed her out there, didn’t bother to tell his partner he was heading out, too focused on the woman and the hunger he scented coming from her. Too focused, too impatient to wait, once they’d reached her car, he pulled her against him and kissed her, deaf, dumb and blind to everything but her.

  The way her breath caught when he slid his hand under her shirt and cupped her breast.

  The way she bit her lip when he slid a hand under her short, snug skirt and pushed it up over her hips before spreading her out on the trunk. In public—where anybody could see—she’d said as much, and he’d whispered, “It’s dark. Nobody can see us . . . ” Plus, he would have heard anybody coming before they got close, and he just couldn’t wait.

  Then he made her come, tugging her simple white panties aside and going down on her in the corner of a dark parking lot. Dark, but not so dark his refined vision couldn’t make out the pale, smooth perfection of her body and the silvery blonde curls that covered her sex.

  His cock stiffened under the tight confines of hi
s jeans at the memory. He swore silently.

  Hated it. Hated how a memory could do this to him, how he could still remember how sweet and soft she’d been—how easily she’d lied to him.

  “Ana, you said?”

  Jerking his attention back to Dominic, he blinked, then scowled. “What?”

  “You said her name was Ana?”

  Duke gave the vampire a terse nod.

  “She with somebody?”

  Duke jerked a shoulder up in a shrug and said, “Beats the hell out of me.” Although he knew the answer. No. She was with nobody. She didn’t date. She rarely left her room unless it was to be with her brother or hit the library. He shouldn’t be surprised to see her here. She wouldn’t want to go out in that cold rain to the main library any more than he wanted to go out in it for a run.

  A strange smile curled Dominic’s lips and he glanced back in the direction of the library, then back at Duke. “You mind if I go talk to her?”

  Something inside him screamed, Yes. He tried to pretend it was because he liked Dominic, and Ana Morell wasn’t a woman to be trusted. He even convinced himself he believed it. He glanced at the table and then back at Dominic. With a nonchalance he didn’t feel, he said, “Feel free. We can play later, but I’d watch your back around her.”

  “The game ain’t the reason I’m asking,” Dominic drawled, his southern accent a bit more pronounced. Circling around the table, he leaned in close and said in a near-soundless voice, “I bet she isn’t with anybody. And I bet it’s because anytime a guy thinks about moving in on her, he gets a good look at your face and decides it ain’t worth getting his head ripped off.”