Hunter's Need

by Shiloh Walker

  You don’t have to do anything.

  She swallowed. Tried to believe that. She didn’t have to. Not really. She wasn’t a Hunter. Marie, no matter what had happened, was dead and nothing Ana did would change that fact.

  She didn’t have to do anything, did she? After all, the girl had most likely been dead for thirty years.

  Setting her shoulders, she took a deep breath and made herself open her eyes.

  But a weight dropped down on her, crushing the air from her lungs, as she stared into the face of Marie Onalik.

  In the back of her mind, she heard a voice. Crying, pleading, begging.

  Help me, please . . . oh, God . . . somebody please help.

  “ANA Morell, amateur sleuth, on the case,” she muttered, hiking her bag up on her shoulder as she plodded along the side of the road, checking the addresses. Her skin buzzed and she glanced out of the corner of her eye to the houses across the street. Nice houses. Her rented apartment in Hillside was nice, way nice, but these houses made Hillside look like the slums.

  Gleaming oak doors, heavy windowpanes of etched glasses. Manicured lawns, riotous bursts of flowers. Two-or three-car garages and the cars parked in some of the driveways were of the Hummer, Mercedes or BMW variety. Nice with a capital N.

  She was about as out of place here as she had been back at Excelsior, completely out of her depth, but she wasn’t turning back. She couldn’t because for the past three days when she tried to sleep, her dreams were haunted with the plaintive cry of Help me, please . . . oh, God . . . somebody please help. Not exactly a soft, pretty little tune to fall asleep to.

  If she wanted to sleep decently anytime in the near future, then she needed to at least try to figure out what had happened to Marie. Try to understand why the face of a dead woman was haunting her every waking and sleeping thought.

  Finally, she reached her destination and she shifted her backpack, holding it on her shoulder as she stared at the house before her. It wasn’t as big as some of the others, constructed of mellow gold logs and lots of windows. Situated on the mountainside just outside of Chugach State Park, the house faced out over Cook Inlet.

  There was a tricycle just beside the walk, painted a bright, vivid pink with a purple seat. It had a nameplate on it—Marie. Her skin crawled, her throat knotted up and she froze in her tracks, staring at the name tag and struggling to breathe.

  Lock it down, girl. She took a minute to level out her breathing and focus. More to calm herself than anything, she bolstered her shields and went through one of the mental exercises that had been drilled into her head. Nothing in. Nothing out.

  Her normal shields were pretty solid, but they were designed to let some things filter through, the kind of things a psychic started to rely on, without even realizing it. With her normal shields, she was just a little more attuned to things, like hypersensitive instincts.

  But right now, she didn’t want that. She didn’t want anything filtering in or out. Not until she got the lay of the land, so to speak. She wouldn’t broadcast anything, and she wouldn’t pick anything up. Not unless she chose to, and right now, she definitely didn’t choose. Not when she was getting ready to approach the family of a murdered young woman.

  Tearing her gaze away from the tricycle, Ana forced herself to take a step. One. Two. Three. Once she reached the porch, she didn’t slow and try to prepare herself, didn’t take two seconds to brush her hair back from her face or straighten her clothes. If she paused for even a second, she was going to take off running.

  She pressed the doorbell, hearing it echo through the house behind a door inlaid with lovely panels of stained glass. Through the glass, she caught a distorted shadow and she pasted a smile on her face.

  The door opened and Ana’s smile fell away as she found herself gazing into a disturbingly familiar pair of brown eyes. The woman gave Ana a polite smile and asked, “May I help you?”

  Her smile faded as Ana stood there, unable to speak. Lines appeared next to the woman’s eyes, bracketed her mouth and she went to shut the door.

  Desperate, Ana moved, lifting a hand and reaching out, touching the woman’s hand. “I’m here about Marie Onalik. Your sister.”

  The woman’s eyes widened. Tears appeared.

  Pain arced, slamming against Ana’s shields. She jerked her hand away, but not quick enough. Grief and anger slammed into Ana’s shields with gale force, threatening to blast her shielding to smithereens. So much for nothing in—stupid. You shouldn’t have touched her!

  Physical contact made it worse.

  Locking her knees, she battled through the outside forces of pain and grief, blocking them out. She slapped up an extra shield, this one so thick and heavy, it was like she’d locked herself in a crypt buried deep below the earth’s surface. Blinded, deafened. Psychically speaking, at least. A werewolf the size of Bigfoot could come up behind her now and unless heard with her ears, she’d never know—not buried under this many shields.

  She couldn’t have that pain filter through again. Not if she wanted to get through this without looking like a nutcase.

  “Who are you?” Beverly Onalik Hartwick demanded. “Another wannabe writer wanting to sell some macabre story about my sister’s disappearance, how the boy she loved went crazy with jealousy and killed her?”

  “No. That’s not what happened.” Ana shook her head.

  Beverly snorted. “How would you know? How old are you? Twenty? Twenty-one? My sister’s been missing since 1974—there’s no way you can know what happened to a woman that disappeared before you were born.”

  Forcing a smile, Ana said, “I know. It’s just . . . ” She licked her lips and took a breath. She was doing this all wrong. Completely, totally, all wrong. “Look, I’ve met Paul Beasley. I know he used to date your sister, but I don’t think . . . ”

  Beverly’s angry glare faded. She studied Ana’s face and then slowly, a sad smile came. “You don’t think Paul had anything to do with it, do you? That what you want to say?”

  “Yes.” Ana swallowed the knot in her throat.

  Sighing, Beverly stepped back and gestured for Ana to come inside. “I can talk for a few minutes. I watch my granddaughter during the day and she’s down for a nap. Once she wakes up, you’ll have to leave.” She met Ana’s eyes squarely. “My daughter was four when Marie disappeared but she still remembers her aunt. She hurt for a very long time over losing her—gave Marie’s name to her daughter. I won’t have them upset over this.”

  “I don’t want to upset anybody.” Following Beverly into a large, open living room, Ana tucked her hands into her pockets and said, “I just wanted to ask a few questions, that’s all.”

  “To what purpose?” Beverly asked sadly. “It’s been more than thirty years. She’s not still alive . . . I know that. She won’t ever come back and I doubt I’ll ever know what happened, at least not in this life. What good will it do to ask questions?”

  “I don’t really know. I just feel like I need to ask them,” Ana replied honestly.

  Beverly settled down at a breakfast bar and gestured to the seat next to her. “I don’t really know how much I can tell you, but if it’s something I can answer, I will.” She waited a beat and then said, “I won’t be offering you a drink. I’m sorry, but I’d rather you just ask your questions and leave.”

  Ana opened her mouth, but she still wasn’t sure what exactly she should ask. What she should say. What she needed to know. Before she had any luck figuring that little puzzle out, she heard footsteps. Automatically, she looked up as a tall man, balding and whip-thin, entered the room.

  He came to an abrupt stop when he saw her, a puzzled smile on his face. “Hello.” He glanced at Beverly and said, “I’m sorry . . . I didn’t know we were expecting company.”

  Beverly smiled at him, but it was strained. “Kyle, I’m sorry . . . we didn’t interrupt you, did we?”

  “No.” He smiled at Beverly and then looked back at Ana, curiosity in his gaze.

  Ana didn
’t know what to say. Fortunately, Beverly did. She gave Ana another smile, this one a little more relaxed. “This is . . . oh, dear, I’m sorry, I forgot your name.”

  “It’s Ana.”

  Beverly looked back at her husband. “This is Ana. She’s a tourist and she’d taken a break outside, admiring the view. I saw her while I was checking the mail and we got to chatting. She mentioned some of the beadwork she’d seen down at the museum and I ended up inviting her inside to see some of Mom’s beadwork.” She gestured toward the living room as she did so.

  Ana glanced that way and saw a beaded belt in a display case on the wall. A baby belt—she knew what it was called because she’d been to the Alaska Native Heritage Center and she’d seen some of the work down there. She’d enjoyed looking at the different types of art enough to do a little bit of research.

  Thank God.

  Without missing a beat, she smiled and said, “It’s lovely work. I can’t imagine how much time goes into crafting the belts. I think I read somewhere that women here used to work on them for months—it was almost like a trousseau.”

  “Oh, yes,” Beverly said, beaming. “My mother spent weeks and weeks working on that one. And they still do make them. In some of the smaller villages, especially. Women use the belts kind of like a papoose.”

  “Be careful, Ana. My Beverly could talk for hours about this subject. I’m Kyle, by the way, Beverly’s husband.”

  “It’s nice to meet you.”

  He nodded, an absent look on his face. “I just came to get some more coffee. I’ve got to get back to work.”

  While he poured himself a cup, Beverly chattered on, about the belt her mother had made, about her own attempts. She kept it up until his footsteps faded down the hall and they heard a door shut somewhere in the house. Beverly heaved out a breath and gave Ana a grateful look.

  “Thank you. I’m sorry, but I just felt lying seemed best. I was so upset after that book came out. I was depressed for weeks and I didn’t want Kyle . . . well . . . ” She sighed and shook her head, brushing her hair back from her face. “Kyle shouldn’t have to keep picking up the pieces each time I fall apart.”

  “But isn’t that what he’s there for?” A sympathetic smile curled Ana’s lips even as a ribbon of envy curled through her. She knew what it was like to fall apart, but she didn’t know what it was like to have somebody there to help hold her together, to help her pick up the pieces. “You’d do the same thing for him, I imagine.”

  “Of course I would.” Beverly smiled. “And yes, I imagine that’s one of the benefits of being married, having somebody you love living your life with you—so you can share the burdens. Still, this burden just keeps getting heavier and heavier, not easier. I don’t want him to keep worrying about me so.”

  “You didn’t want him to know that I’m here asking about your sister. You don’t want him upset.” She shoved the envy aside.

  “No. No, I don’t.” Beverly braced her elbows against the table. Her dark eyes, cool and direct, bored into Ana’s. “Please don’t make me regret talking to you. Please don’t make me regret lying to my husband.”

  SHE liked to go hiking up in the Mat-Su Valley. Loved the glacier.

  Everything else that had been said had fallen on mostly deaf ears, and Ana doubted if she could have recalled the conversation with any credibility, because as soon as she’d heard the words Mat-Su Valley, that nagging, impatient demand had flared to vibrant, hot life.

  The valley. Something had happened in the valley, and Ana was going to have to go there. Which was why she took two personal days, why she shelled out a ridiculous amount of money to rent a car for the weekend and why she was driving north on Thursday morning instead of catching a bus to her job.

  Four days. She’d give it four days and see if she figured anything out.

  Off in the distance, mountains rose into the sky, tall and green, vibrant against a sky so blue, it hurt to look at it. Along the roadside, the skeletal remains of trees jutted upward, the remnants of an earthquake that had hit Alaska decades earlier.

  Somebody had told Ana the stands of dead trees were called ghost forests. When the 1964 earthquake hit, huge areas of land dropped below the sea level, leaving the trees’ roots submersed in saltwater from the ocean, killing them.

  They were eerily beautiful but today, for some reason, they took on a more macabre slant and Ana found herself working to not look at the trees. She didn’t want to see them. Or the mountains, either.

  Just focus on the road. Focus on whatever lies ahead and whatever you’re getting into.

  DUKE was going out of his damned mind. Edgy.

  Itchy. Edgy.

  Restless.

  It had gotten worse after the run-in with Brad a few days earlier and all he wanted to do was head out again. Go back on patrol for a few more months. Just climb on his bike and ride out, maybe head north up the coastline this time. Bounce around New England for a while.

  A lot of the Hunters without formal territories had a tendency to just roam, looking for trouble in areas where no Master controlled things.

  Sometimes, it was damned monotonous, but it kept him busy. Plus, if he was out on patrol, sooner or later, he would come across trouble. Lately, he was strung so tight, trouble was just what he needed.

  A good fight just might clear his head a little.

  He couldn’t leave, though.

  It wasn’t that anybody would stop him. He just couldn’t leave. Whatever it was that kept him from leaving was some mess of his own, but he couldn’t figure out what in the hell the problem was.

  How he was supposed to handle it.

  One thing was sure, he had to figure that answer out. Excelsior was supposed to be where he came when he needed downtime. Not home, really. But the closest thing to home he had.

  A safe haven. Quiet. Controlled. A place where none of them had to live behind the normal personas that they projected to the mortal world. Where they could just be who they were and not worry about anything else.

  He loved coming back here and didn’t even mind all that much when they started drafting him into helping the regular instructors. For the most part, he felt at peace here, even if he did still find himself looking for Ana Morell, a fucking year after she’d left.

  But the peace he’d needed to find, hoped to find, expected to find, had eluded him this trip, and he was about to climb out of his skin just from how fucking edgy he was. It was like the night of the full moon, only worse, and it only affected him.

  He stormed out of his rooms with a scowl, his mood downright toxic. A couple of the people he passed by took one look at his face and cut a wide berth around him. He knew it and he didn’t care. He wasn’t on rotation to teach today, and he’d steer clear of the school itself and anyplace where he’d come in contact with the students, but he’d be damned if he stayed inside his room another minute.

  He had some vague idea in mind about the gym. Maybe he could find a sparring partner and work some of this tension off . . .

  But his feet led him elsewhere. To the lower levels under the main school, to an area nobody but the teachers and Hunters ever saw. He found himself in Kelsey Hughes’s office, her real office, not the one she used on the rare occasion she had to be headmistress for the mortal world.

  This room, while definitely an office, had things that just wouldn’t fit into the normal persona Kelsey projected to the mortal world. A sword hung over her chair, clearly old, painstakingly cared for. Other weapons and artifacts adorned the walls. Bookshelves lined the walls, holding ancient, hand-bound books, protected from dust and carelessness by gleaming glass fronts. Those books held a written account of the history of the Hunters, going back for centuries. A great deal of them were written in languages that hadn’t been spoken in centuries.

  It was a soothing room, though, or at least it normally seemed that way.

  Not so much today.

  In the quiet, empty office, he paced back and forth until he wouldn’t hav
e been surprised to see a path worn through the carpet.

  “Kelsey’s not in right now. She’s got a class.”

  Glancing up, he met Cori Marcum’s gaze. She lingered in the doorway, eying him warily. “I can see she isn’t here, thanks.”

  “She . . . ah . . . she may not be back tonight.”

  He bit back a pithy remark and just nodded. She frowned at him and then left in silence. Too much silence, that deafening silence that weighed down on a man and threatened to drive him nuts. The skin along his spine itched and he could feel his muscles twitching with the urge to shift. Shift and run.

  Stopping in his tracks, he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and swore. “What in the hell is going on?”

  Fuck. He could hear the damn growl in his throat. Storming across the room, he jerked open the door to the restroom and crossed to the sink. He paused, staring at his reflection in the mirror.

  His eyes glowed, swirled, but he didn’t need to see that little sign to know how precarious his control was just then. He could feel it, feel the beast lurking just under the surface of his skin, lurking too close, desperate to be let loose.

  Turning the cold water, he bent over the sink and splashed it on his face.

  He turned off the water and stood there, head lowered. He reached for focus. He reached for calm. Focus, calm; they weren’t coming too easily for him.

  “Get it under control.”

  Of course, it would help if he could figure out what it was. If he knew what the hell was wrong and why he was so keyed up—

  In that second, the phone in Kelsey’s office rang. Slowly, Duke straightened from over the sink. Slowly, he turned his head and stared back into the office.

  Ring.

  Ring.

  Ring.

  It was an old-fashioned sort of phone, the kind with a rotary dial, no extra lines. About as simple as a phone could get, and nothing computerized to it. Witches and technology didn’t mix all that well for the most part, and Kelsey was worse than most.