Return of the Hunters (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 4)

by Sonya Bateman

  SONYA BATEMAN

  Thank you for picking up Return of the Hunters. Please join my mailing list to find out about the latest new releases, book sales, and special subscriber-only offers.

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  Copyright © 2016 by Sonya Bateman

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

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  More books by Sonya Bateman

  COMING SOON:

  CITY OF SECRETS

  The DeathSpeaker Codex – Book 5

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  WRONG SIDE OF HELL

  The DeathSpeaker Codex – Book 1

  Available now from Amazon and Kindle Unlimited

  FIELDS OF BLOOD

  The DeathSpeaker Codex – Book 2

  Available now from Amazon and Kindle Unlimited

  REALM OF MIRRORS

  The DeathSpeaker Codex – Book 3

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  MASTER OF NONE | MASTER AND APPRENTICE

  The Gavyn Donatti series – Available for Kindle and wherever books are sold

  THE GETAWAY (A Gavyn Donatti novella)

  Available now from Amazon and Kindle Unlimited

  PROLOGUE

  Granite Mountains, Wyoming – Ten Years Ago

  It was getting harder to make a dishonest living these days.

  Four bighorns. Wouldn’t have been a bad haul for a day’s hunting—except it’d taken them damned near a week to bring down just those four, and they couldn’t hang around any longer. Time to move down to Mexico for the winter. Bag a few howlers, maybe a jaguar or two, and bide time until these grounds cooled off. Business in the States had gone to hell over the last few months.

  And he blamed the goddamned kid for that.

  How the little shit managed to get out of those chains, he had no idea. They’d lost a month looking for the bastard, too, before they gave up and headed out here. There was no trace. Part of him hadn’t been that surprised—the boy might’ve been a worthless waste of flesh, but he could track anything, anywhere. Meant he could cover his own tracks just as well.

  Which the kid had somehow managed to do with five or six broken bones and massive blood loss from the latest beating he’d handed down. After the brat opened a couple of industrial padlocks without a key and shucked loose from twenty pounds of chain.

  When—not if—he found the slippery bastard again, that boy was going to pay. With interest.

  For now he had to focus on moving the family. A few of the trucks were going to need repairs before they crossed the border, and they had to replenish some of the heavier supplies. Hopefully this outpost carried something more than standard ammo.

  The place was new. Sturdy and cleaner than most of the clapboard shacks and grungy back rooms he usually dealt with, wedged under an outcropping in the shadow of a red rock mountain. He’d stopped the caravan half a mile out and come alone to get a bead on the place. Just to make sure there wasn’t a repeat of Montana.

  A few years back, some fly-by-night operation up in the flatlands had tried to steal his haul, while him and his two oldest boys were inside cutting a deal. So as a kind of public service, he’d been obliged to kill the bunch of thieves running the place.

  Eventually. After they stopped screaming.

  Inside, the outpost was bigger than it looked—and mostly empty. His footsteps echoed in the spacious front room. There was a plain wooden desk at the back, rough shelving against the walls with boxes of ammo and a few cheap rifles, and something that looked like an oversized dog bed in the corner with a dish of dirty water beside it. Two doors on either side of the desk, one open and one closed. Nothing more, and nothing he wanted.

  He was about to leave when a voice said, “Are you selling, or buying?”

  The voice came from the shadows beyond the open door. He looked steadily at the opening. “Neither, if this is all you’ve got,” he said, one hand straying to his gun. “Because from the looks of things, you don’t have shit—and you can’t afford what I’m selling.”

  “Oh, I’m sure we can,” the voice said. “The question is, are you selling what we want to buy?”

  He sneered at the shadows. “I don’t deal with ghosts. So unless you want to step out here and show me you’ve got something, I’m gone.”

  After a brief pause, a figure stepped out—and his internal alarms went off. A man in a suit like that had no business in a building like this, in the middle of Wyoming nowhere. This smelled like Feds.

  His piece was already in his hand. “If you think I won’t gun you down, and any other—”

  “Please.” The man spoke sharply, with absolute command. The way he raised his hands was almost mocking. “If we wanted to capture you for any reason, we would have by now. We’ve been watching your…crew for several days.”

  He gestured with the gun. “Who’s we?”

  “Do you recognize this?” The man reached for his left sleeve with his right hand.

  “Don’t move.”

  “I’m not armed,” the man said patiently as he unbuttoned the suit jacket and pushed the sleeve down, revealing nothing more than a tattoo—a dark blue, looped cross that ended in the point of a sword. “Do you know this symbol?”

  His finger caressed the trigger. “Doesn’t mean a damned thing to me.”

  “Good. We prefer to hire those who aren’t familiar with our organization,” he said. “People who know about our work typically have some…mistaken beliefs that are hard to break.”

  “Hire?” he said. “So this is about a job.”

  “Yes. A very lucrative, ongoing job, in fact.”

  “How lucrative?”

  “A quarter of a million dollars. Per specimen.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “All right. You’ve got my attention.”

  “Happy to hear it.” The man tugged his sleeve back into place. “Now, if you’ll lower your weapon, I’ll show you what we’re looking for.”

  He still didn’t trust this slick son of a bitch. But if this was a sting, the people behind it were incompetent. The Feds never tried to offer outrageous amounts of money. They knew no one would fall for something that much over black market rates—the bastards played it safe, tried to make things seem legitimate. If this was a serious offer, he wasn’t going to turn down that much money.

  And if it was a setup, he’d just kill everything that moved in this place.

  “Fine.” He lowered the gun, but it was staying in his hand. “Show me.”

  The man in the suit glanced at the gun, shrugged and turned aside. “Come on back,” he said. “My name is Redfield, by the way. And you are?”

  “You’ll get a name if we have a deal.”

  “Fair enough.” Redfield jerked his head and melted into the shadows.

  He crossed the room. When he neared the doorway, a light came on—and something whimpered faintly, like an injured animal. Christ, did this guy have a specimen of whatever he wanted in there with him?

  The next room was smaller. Another man in a suit sat at a desk to the right, working on a computer with two monitors. There was a table next to the desk with a satellite phone, a briefcase, and a stack of folders. Toward the back, a hospital-style curtain enclosed one corner of the room. That was probably where the whimper had come from.

  “My associate, Wurther.” Redfield gestured at the other man, who didn’t bother turning away from the
computer. “Now. You seem like a man who’ll believe what his eyes tell him, no matter how…unusual,” he said. “Am I right?”

  A whisper of unease moved through him, but he pushed it away. “Guess that depends on how much unusual we’re talking.”

  “More than you’ve ever seen. But I assure you, it’s very real. And it can make the right people very rich.” Redfield nodded at his associate. “Bring up the feed.”

  Wurther tapped at the keyboard, and a video window opened on the left-hand screen. It showed some kid who looked around twenty or so, pacing back and forth along the short wall of an otherwise empty room. He’d been roughed up pretty hard. The faint sound of his footsteps came from the monitor’s speaker. He stopped occasionally to glare at the camera, and then went back to pacing.

  “So you’re hunting people,” he said carefully. If this group was into human trafficking, they might actually be offering that much money.

  “Not exactly.” Redfield produced a phone, swiped the screen and hit a number in the address book. After a minute, he spoke into it. “Gretchen. Turn the lights on in cell five.”

  He didn’t hear the response, but a low, humming sound came from the speaker and the video image flashed bright. The kid in the room screamed and fell to his knees, throwing an arm across his eyes as if he was trying to block the light.

  And then he started to change.

  They ran the video for two or three minutes that stretched out forever as screams became growls and snarls, skin became fur, teeth became fangs, and the impossible creature lunged at the walls again and again, slashing with lethal claws. Finally, Redfield spoke into the phone again. “Enough. Thank you, Gretchen.”

  He stared open-mouthed at the screen long after Wurther closed the image.

  “Let’s not mince words here,” Redfield said. “That is a werewolf. And it’s not the only type of creature we’re interested in. They’re called Others. And our mission is to find them, capture them, study them and take them apart. And ultimately, wipe them from the face of this Earth.”

  “Others.” His hand trembled slightly as he gripped the gun tighter, and it pissed him off. Fear was a weak emotion. “You want us to hunt…that.”

  “Yes. Not just weres, but all types of non-humans. Vampires. Bogies. Fae. There are so many species. All of them quite dangerous, but very…rewarding. Satisfying, as well as lucrative.” Redfield opened the top folder on the desk, glanced at the papers inside and closed it again. “We’ll provide you and your crew with full training, and keep you supplied with the equipment you’ll need to capture them alive.”

  He finally tore his gaze from the monitor. “Bullshit,” he said. “That thing was a bunch of special effects. I don’t know what your game is here, but I’m not playing it.”

  Redfield sighed. “More proof, then,” he said. “Elijah? Come out here. Now.”

  The hospital curtain twitched.

  He backed up half a step and raised the gun.

  “Relax. Elijah works for us.” Redfield turned to the curtain. “I said now.”

  The curtain shivered, and something slunk around the corner.

  Something that looked like a four-foot tall, mutated rat.

  “Jesus!” he blurted. “What the hell is that thing?”

  The thing in question shuddered. It was scrawny and filthy, dressed in rags, and all of its limbs seemed to be screwed on wrong. Its dulled eyes stared at the floor, and its misshapen mouth was full of sharp, yellowed teeth.

  Whatever it was, human didn’t apply.

  “Elijah is a very unique example of an Other,” Redfield said. “He’s quite tame, though. He only does what we tell him to, and he’s…between assignments right now. I do hope he’s sufficient proof.”

  He frowned and took a threatening step toward the rat-thing. It flinched once, but it didn’t attack. It didn’t even look up.

  This was unreal. But Redfield was right—he couldn’t discount what was right in front of him. And all that money was damned hard to pass up. “A quarter million each?” he said. “For live captures. And you provide the equipment.”

  Redfield nodded. “Some are worth even more. In fact, we pay up to a million for viable Fae specimens,” he said, and held out a hand. “Do we have a deal, Mr. …?”

  “Valentine.” He grinned coldly and shook with the suit. “We’re in.”

  CHAPTER 1

  Manhattan, New York – Present day

  I sighed and lowered the gun. “I can’t do it.”

  “Yes, you can,” Taeral said. “You must.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  My teeth clenched as I focused on the target again. I really didn’t want to do this. Being a warrior wasn’t supposed to be part of the DeathSpeaker job description—the actual talking to the dead part was bad enough, without having to supply the dead people myself.

  Unfortunately, Taeral was right. We had to take down Milus Dei. And if I didn’t make casualties, I’d become one.

  Didn’t mean I had to like it, though.

  “Okay,” I said, trying to shake out some of the stiffness. I lifted the gun in both hands and mentally ran through the steps. Aim with the dominant eye. Line up both sights with the target. Concentrate. Breathe. Pull the trigger.

  The gun thundered, and my arms bucked up with the force.

  But the glass bottle ten feet away remained whole and un-shot. Again.

  After an awkward silence, Taeral said, “You were much closer that time.”

  “Bullshit I was.” Christ, we’d been down here for three hours now. My brother the drill sergeant had cast some kind of sound-dampening spell on the basement of the Castle, and we’d shoved all the junk against the walls to make room for me to fail at shooting things, over and over again. “Look, I’m just not cut out for guns,” I said. “I’ll have to find some other way to fight. Maybe I could use a sword or something.”

  He stared at me. “A sword.”

  “Yeah. Or something.” I gave the gun a rueful glance. “These things don’t cooperate with me.”

  “I cannot help thinking it’s not the gun that refuses to cooperate.”

  Right again. It was a fact that I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn—but it was also a fact that I had no interest in getting better at shooting firearms. I didn’t want to have anything in common with the savage bastards I’d grown up with.

  The Valentines were not my family anymore.

  “Perhaps we should take a break.” Taeral held a hand out. “Give me the gun, and I will put the target out of its misery.”

  I smirked. “It’s a glass bottle, man. Pretty sure it’s not all that miserable.”

  “Nevertheless. We’ve set out to destroy it,” he said. “We should finish the job.”

  “Look, if you really want it destroyed, I’ll just go over there and smash the damned thing.”

  “Or you could shoot it.”

  “No, I can’t! We’ve established that already,” I said. “Here. Let me demonstrate, in case you missed it the first hundred times I tried.” Without much thought, I raised my right arm, glanced at the stupid bottle and pulled the trigger.

  The sound of shattering glass mixed with the flat crack of the report as the bottle burst into shards.

  Taeral smiled. “I was right.”

  “Jesus.” I looked from the gun to him. “Did you cast a spell on me or something?”

  “No. I simply helped you get out of your own way,” he said. “You were focused on what holds you back, rather than what will move you forward.”

  Yeah, and what held me back was always going to. I had enough physical and emotional scars for a few dozen lifetimes, and they’d never heal. Not because they couldn’t—but because I wouldn’t let them. That would require me to think about those sixteen years I’d spent in hell. Maybe even talk about them. And even though I knew it was wrongheaded and stupid, I refused to do that.

  My past came with sharp teeth, and I didn’t enjoy letting it bite
me.

  “Well, I did it,” I said. “So we’re done now, right?”

  “Not even close. You’ve only just begun to realize success.”

  “We’re done.” I held the gun out to Taeral butt-first. “Unless you want to be the next target, because I will shoot you.”

  He grinned. “You can try.”

  “Don’t tempt me. You’re really annoying when you’re making me do shit.”

  Before he could respond to that, the unseen door to the basement opened, and someone started down the stairs. The steps sounded wrong—faltering, uneven, and too heavy. There was a pause, a scraping sound.

  Then a series of grunts and thuds as whoever it was fell the rest of the way.

  Taeral and I glanced at each other and ran for the front of the room, and the stairwell around the far corner. The crumpled figure at the bottom of the stairs was the last person I expected to see hurt, or apparently looking for help from us.

  Zoba.

  The eldest of the Duchene clan lay sprawled face-up and motionless, one leg still on the stairs and the other bent awkwardly beneath him. His breath came in tortured gasps. His amber-gold eyes were rolled back to white, giving the skull tattooed over his face an eerie, death-mask appearance. Blood and foamy spittle smeared the corners of his mouth.

  I dropped next to him, intending to see how bad it was and try to heal him if I could.

  And he started to convulse.

  CHAPTER 2

  Zoba’s head was bent back, his chest arched high and locked into place. Pink foam frothed at his lips. If I didn’t move him, he’d choke.

  Though I hadn’t worked as a paramedic in years, all my training took over. I grabbed him beneath the arms and dragged him away from the stairs, wincing in sympathy as his bent leg cleared and flopped at an awkward, impossible angle. It was badly broken. At least I could heal that—but I couldn’t heal dead.

  I had no idea if the Duchenes could die as easily as normal people, and I didn’t want to take the chance.

  A guttural sound came from his throat, and I rolled him quickly onto his side. His back was wet and warm, and something writhed just beneath the surface of his skin. Something that didn’t feel at all like muscle spasms.