Hunter's Need

by Shiloh Walker

  She let herself into the room and automatically lowered her shields, checking to make sure nothing and nobody was around. It was something that had become habit. She did a quick walk-through and then dumped her stuff on the counter. Without putting anything away, without getting herself a sandwich, she sat down and booted up the secondhand laptop she’d bought from Carter a few months earlier.

  The model was a little too bulky, but it ran like a dream. As Google’s homepage popped up, she plugged Paul Beasley’s name in the search box. If his girlfriend had disappeared and he was suspected of killing her, something would pop up on a search, she figured.

  Something popped up all right.

  That icy cold shiver raced down her spine as a familiar image came up under the images Google displayed just above the search results.

  It was a book cover.

  Unsolved—Mysteries of the Far North.

  “Shit,” Ana breathed out, pressing the heels of her hands against her eye sockets. That damn book had been sitting on her bedside table calling to her ever since she’d bought it, but every time she went to pick the book up, she’d shied away from it. Lowering her hands, she stared in the direction of her bedroom.

  Slowly, her gaze drifted back to the computer screen, but in the end, she got up and went for the book.

  As much as she’d like to, she couldn’t ignore it anymore.

  SLEEP wasn’t coming easily. Duke was edgy, irritable and if he didn’t know better, he’d swear it was the moon. He wasn’t a were, but the full moon still had a way of calling to him, to pretty much all shifters. A siren’s call that wasn’t easily explained.

  But the full moon had been last week and there was no way it would still be having an effect on him. So it was something else tugging at him, slipping under his skin and turning his muscles into knots.

  Kicking free of the sheet he had pulled up to his waist, he rolled out of bed. Knowing he couldn’t stay in the room, he grabbed his jeans and headed for the door. It was spacious enough, the quarters he used when he was in residence here at Excelsior, but he felt like the walls were closing in on him.

  He’d felt like this for weeks, an edgy restlessness that was only getting worse and worse with each passing day.

  A run. That was what he needed.

  For a shapeshifter, a good, hard run was just about a cure-all. Especially one who had to live confined inside stone walls, stuck in a place he really didn’t want to be, but unable to leave for reasons he couldn’t quite explain. He’d left Excelsior nearly a year ago—ironically, only a week after Ana had pulled up stakes and left. He hadn’t planned on coming back anytime soon, but then he had ended up here a little over a month ago and something just wouldn’t let him leave.

  Without messing with shoes, he left his rooms and headed for the stairwell. His rooms were on the third floor, and whenever he wandered back to Excelsior, the rooms were ready and waiting. It was the closest thing to home he had.

  But Excelsior wasn’t home, and it never would be. Not for him.

  Teaching wasn’t his thing, but every once in a while it was a nice break from the random patrols an unassigned Hunter did. He had no Master he’d sworn allegiance to, and that wasn’t anything he saw changing. He had no lands of his own and no responsibilities.

  It should be a good thing, but lately, he had to wonder if part of that wasn’t the reason he was so damned restless. So edgy.

  So lonely—

  “Can’t sleep?”

  Brad Morell emerged from the shadows as Duke slipped outside. Scowling, Duke flicked a glance at the night sky and then at the youth. “School night, kid. What are you doing up?”

  Brad shrugged. Although it was dark, Duke had no trouble making out the look on Brad’s face. “Same reason as you, I guess. I can’t sleep.”

  He kicked at the dirt and then glanced up at Duke, a strange look on his face. Over the past couple of years, Brad had shot up. In the past year, he’d started to fill out as well, finally growing into his arms and legs. He no longer had that long, awkward look. He was just barely fifteen, but it was all too easy to forget his age.

  More often than not, he acted too damn old for his years, but in that moment, he looked like the kid he was.

  Nervous. Worried.

  “What’s up, Brad?” Duke said, suppressing a sigh and leaning his hips against the stone wall at his back.

  Brad shrugged and kicked at the dirt again.

  “Brad.” Duke folded his arms over his chest.

  The boy glanced up at him and Duke said, “Get up here and spill it.”

  Brad trudged up the stairs, his hands shoved into the back pockets of a pair of baggy jeans. “You don’t want to hear it,” Brad warned.

  Duke didn’t roll his eyes, but he wanted to. He had absolutely no problem believing that he wouldn’t want to hear it, considering who it was coming from. Brad only got down about a few things, and it was just Duke’s luck that he’d be around for this one. “Spill,” he repeated.

  Brad heaved out a breath and tucked his chin against his chest. “I’m worried about Ana.”

  “This a specific worry or more along the lines of I want her back here kind of worry?” Duke asked levelly.

  “Both.” He folded his arms defensively across his chest and stared at the stone underneath their feet. “I do miss her. I still don’t get why she couldn’t try to find some place around here.”

  “Chances are that’s not something she could explain all that easy, or she would have,” Duke said, jerking a shoulder. “But it’s because she needed something else . . . it doesn’t have anything to do with you. Your sister loves you. I bet leaving you was pure hell on her. But I reckon she did it because she thought it was the best thing for both of you.”

  That, at least, he could say honestly. And he had to agree, and not just because he breathed easier when she wasn’t here. Brad had never bothered trying to fit in, but before Ana had left, most people had treated him as an outsider, just because of her.

  It wasn’t fair to the kid and it sucked, but Duke knew Brad had to make his own choices, do his thing, without some well-meaning adult stumbling in and trying to make things better.

  But since Ana had left, people stopped treating Brad so different, and he’d started making real friends—friends his age, too. Not just with the adults who were twice his age. Kids need friends, even special kids like Brad—especially special kids like Brad.

  Yeah, Ana leaving had done the kid good, even though Brad wouldn’t admit it. If nothing else, Ana adored her younger brother. He was the most important person in her life and there was nothing she wouldn’t do for him. Absently, Duke rubbed his thumb along the scar that bisected his left pec, slashing through his nipple and ending just above his rib cage.

  The wound had been caused by a silver blade. Shifters never fully healed a silver-wrought injury. This particular injury had happened while Ana stood by watching in horror, keeping Brad pressed against her so he wouldn’t see.

  “I know she loves me,” Brad said with a scowl. Shaking his head, he said, “It’s not her leaving that’s bugging me, Duke. She’s been gone a year. She’s happier up in Alaska, I get that. I’m glad for her, even though I miss her. It’s not that she left . . . it’s . . . it’s something else.”

  “Can you elaborate on the something else?” Duke asked.

  “I . . . no. No, I can’t.” Brad’s head slumped and he stared once more at his feet. “I can’t. I dunno what it is, but something’s going on.”

  Duke’s skin went tight. He kept his voice calm, though, as he asked, “She in trouble?”

  “No. I don’t think she is in trouble, but somebody is. Or somebody will be.”

  His gut sank down toward his feet. Averting his eyes, he hoped Ana hadn’t fallen back into her old mind-set, letting somebody take control and just tell her what to do, how to do it. Ana didn’t much like having to make decisions and having somebody make them for her was just plain easier.

  “St
op it.”

  Turning his head, he looked at Brad across the porch. Brad’s eyes, a strange purple color, just a little more blue than Ana’s gaze, met his. The worry and doubt had faded from his face and he glared at Duke like he wanted to punch him.

  “Ana won’t do that again,” Brad said, his voice low, all but throbbing with intensity.

  “I didn’t say she would.”

  Brad sneered at him. “Damn it, you don’t have to.” He tapped his forehead with a finger and sarcastically said, “Psychic, hello?”

  “Hunter trainee—hello,” Duke said flatly. “You got better shields than that, so use them. I’m entitled to think what I think and I don’t need you probing inside my head while I’m doing it.”

  Mutinous, Brad glared at Duke. “She’s my sister. I’m sick and tired of everybody treating her like she was some kind of monster—she fucked up, but she did it to protect me, because she loves me.”

  “And if she heard you swearing, she’d wash your mouth out with soap—and have my hide,” Duke said. Shoving off the wall, he dragged his fingers through his hair and then stopped, looked at Brad. “I know she’s your sister. I know you love her. I know you’re tired of people thinking bad shit about her, but she made bad choices. She has to live with them.”

  “Nobody being able to let it go is why she can’t live with those choices here.” Brad turned away, staring out into the night. “I dunno why I’m even talking to you about this. You seem to get the why of it better than most people, but you can’t forgive her or forget it. If you can’t, they won’t. You’re the one who got hurt so until you let it go, nobody else will try.”

  He started down the stairs but on the second to the last one, he looked back at Duke. With those young but ancient eyes, he studied Duke for a long moment. “We all make mistakes and bad choices. We all have to live with consequences. But if you made the best choice you could make, knowing it was wrong, knowing it would have consequences and dealing with those consequences, wouldn’t you want a second chance?”

  “Nobody said she wasn’t entitled to a second chance, Brad.” Feeling guilty, hating it, Duke closed the distance between them and caught Brad’s shoulder when the youth would have left. “I don’t have some grudge against your sister. I’m not secretly hiding some hate-on for her. What’s done is done and I can understand why even if I think she did it wrong. If you got some idea in your head that I’m responsible for her leaving, then out with it. If that’s the case, I want to know so I can set things straight. I don’t hate your sister and I’m not harboring some grudge.”

  Brad smirked. “Yes, that’s the case. You’re responsible for her leaving, but it’s not because you hate her. We both know you don’t. You are holding a grudge and we both know it. If you weren’t, you would have already gone after her.”

  Then Brad shrugged Duke’s hand off and headed back to his dorm, his shoulders slumped.

  Gone after her—

  Duke scowled. Getting the little psychic away from here had been nothing but one huge relief.

  Liar.

  There was no damned reason to go after her.

  Self-delusion was a lovely thing. Let a guy keep his pride. Let a guy happily convince himself of his own version of the truth.

  Setting his jaw, Duke headed off into the night, taking the opposite direction that Brad had taken. He needed that run, damn it. Now more than ever.

  CHAPTER 3

  ANA dreamed.

  She dreamed of a pretty young girl, her hair parted down the middle, falling down the back of a soft, gauzy white blouse cut peasant-style and embroidered along the yoke with bright flowers.

  The girl had a sweet smile and when she directed it at one young man, she managed to make him blush every single time.

  Her name was Marie.

  She was nineteen and she was in love with an airman from Elmendorf Air Force Base. Her mother didn’t know, her father didn’t know, but she’d told her older sister, Beverly. Her sister was the one to help cover for her while she slipped out to meet with her boyfriend.

  Caught up with the raw, tender emotion of young love, Ana felt herself getting more and more lost in the dream, unable to pull away, and unwilling to do so. It was sweet, watching them together, sweet to vicariously experience pleasure through Marie as Paul kissed her, stripped her clothes away and made love to her for the first time. Sweeter still to see the tears that burned in Paul’s eyes as Marie agreed to marry him. It left a warmth in her heart, but only seconds after Paul pushed a ring onto Marie’s finger, that warmth in Ana’s chest turned to ice, heavy, arctic ice that threatened to push her down, down, down . . .

  Marie was screaming.

  Begging.

  Pleading.

  Dying . . .

  Dying while a voice whispered, Let me take care of you. You’re mine. I have to take care of you . . . protect you . . . love you . . .

  ANA came awake, choking on her own scream, nausea roiling in her gut, vomit boiling up in her throat. She barely made it to the bathroom in time. Huddled over the cool porcelain, she emptied her gut, tears and sweat mingling on her face while images flashed through her mind.

  “God.”

  She’d seen . . . something. It hovered just behind a veil, its malevolence just barely contained, the stink of blood and death curling out in smoky, nasty green tendrils. Reaching for her.

  Once the sickness passed, she eased away from the toilet and pressed her back against the wall, staring off into nothingness. Her mind turned inward, back to the dream.

  Back to Marie. Paul. The story of a missing girl and the lurid scene the book’s author had depicted, Paul hunting and stalking Marie, killing her in a fit of rage and hiding her body. Like a child trying to piece together a jigsaw puzzle, Ana worked with the memories of the dream, tried to get them to align with the story she’d read in the book.

  They wouldn’t line up.

  It didn’t fit.

  Useless . . .

  Ana blocked the voice out and made herself focus. Yeah, her psychic gift, the only gift that could be useful in any kind of positive aspect, wasn’t all that great. Without her shielding, random thoughts and images bombarded her, but she couldn’t make much sense of them. It was like having five or ten radio stations blaring at top volume.

  Within her shields, it was better. She could focus, pick up on individual thoughts from time to time, use the gift to pick up on whether or not somebody was lying, whether somebody was hiding something, whether there were other gifted people around.

  But she’d never had any sort of cognitive psychic ability—she’d never had visions, not of past events, and not of future ones.

  Her strongest ability was just to muffle psychic activity, casting the area where she was into a huge null where it seemed nothing extraordinary existed. To some extent, it even worked to blunt the instincts of some gifted people—people like Duke.

  As far as Ana was concerned, it was more a burden than a gift, one that had been used to hurt people in the past. None of her decidedly limited abilities were much use in trying to figure out that dream, or why she’d had it.

  “Overactive imagination,” she whispered, closing her eyes and willing herself to believe it.

  But it wasn’t her imagination. Deep down, she knew it. Body aching, she shoved to her feet, flushed the toilet and then shuffled over to the sink. She washed her face, brushed her teeth and combed her hair and still, she felt dirty. Tainted.

  And on edge.

  The memory of her dream, the memory of Marie’s face, danced in her mind, right at the edge of her consciousness, demanding Ana’s attention. Unable to ignore it, she left the bathroom and headed to the computer.

  “Just a dream.” She rubbed her fingertips over her eyes, wishing she could just erase those memories from her mind that easily.

  She plugged Marie Onalik’s name into Google. One or two MySpace pages popped up at the top of the search results. Off the side, there were paid advertisements for people sear
ches, criminal background checks and the ubiquitous ad, Did you go to school with . . .

  Scrolling past those, she read the brief bits of text available under each individual result. The second to last entry to the page made her heart skip a beat and her hands go cold.

  Palmer teen goes missing.

  Ana clicked on it and then heaved out a relieved sigh as a girl’s face flashed on the screen. Color photograph. Judging just by the hairstyle, it was way too recent to be a girl who had disappeared back in the seventies. Her focus sharpened. Not Marie—but she couldn’t click away from the page. Couldn’t. Something made her read the article in its entirety, pity welling inside her as she read the family’s impassioned pleas, begging for information about their daughter.

  “Were you ever found?” Ana asked sadly. She glanced back at the top of the page. Ten years. The article was from ten years ago.

  She grabbed a pen and jotted the name down on a pad of paper. She read on, uncertain exactly why—morbid curiosity wasn’t her thing. Ana was like an ostrich. She’d much rather bury her head in the sand, even when it was something important. Or rather, especially when it was something important.

  Yet she couldn’t tear her attention from the computer screen and on the second page, in the final section of the article, she saw why.

  There was Marie’s name. Highlighted and linked.

  Along with four other names.

  Clara Pascal’s disappearance is a grim, but needed, reminder of other missing Alaskans, mostly teens or children. Many of these crimes are still unsolved. If you have any information on Clara’s whereabouts, or information that may help solve her case or similar cases, please contact the Palmer Police Department or your local authorities.

  Dread filled her, dragged her down as she moved the mouse to hover over Marie’s name. Then, squeezing her eyes closed, she clicked. She didn’t want to see.

  If the article had any pictures of the long-missing Marie, Ana didn’t want to see them. She didn’t want to know if the woman she’d dreamed about was Marie. Because if the woman’s face looked anything like what she’d seen in her hazed, unclear dreams, Ana didn’t know what she’d do.