Stormfront (Undertow Book 2)

by K. R. Conway

  Christian, I had to begrudgingly admit, was an asset.

  I, however, was becoming a liability. I hadn’t hunted since the Breakers and I needed to hunt. Now.

  Kian was about to unlock the deadbolt, but I stopped him, placing a hand on the mahogany door, now lightly painted with snow. “I’m in the mood for dinner on the run. Care to come?”

  Kian looked at me, surprised for an instant, but then a cocky smile spread on his face. “Hell yeah. Sandy Neck?”

  I snatched the keys out of his hand. “I’ll drive.”

  5 Raef

  The area known as Sandy Neck stretched miles along the northern coast of the Cape. While some portions were accessible by four-wheel-drive vehicles, most of the land was an untouched, sandy forest. It also contained herds of deer and packs of coywolves. For soul thieves trying to stick to an animal diet, it was an excellent place to hunt Bambies, since the carcasses would be finished off by the hungry, coyote-wolf hybrids.

  On the downside, animals were harder to sneak up on than people. Animals could sense our approach – could sense that though we smelled and looked like humans, we were anything but human. They sensed the void of a soul, unlike a human whose higher brain function was too busy processing the world around them to comprehend our true, dangerous intent.

  But unlike an animal, a human soul was the purest hit of power. A rush, like injecting adrenaline and cocaine into your heart at once.

  Those Mortis who killed people on a regular basis were able to seamlessly control the voids of light that the human world saw as shadows. To a Mortis, a shadow looked like a transformable liquid midnight – a living smoke that whispered temptations to us and obeyed our demands. It could coat our skin in blackness, enabling us to hide where the light did not breech.

  True Mortis, who killed humans, were perfect stalkers and untouchable in strength. They were living nightmares, both intoxicating and deadly. They were whom I feared the most when it came to Eila and Ana, because as I was right now, I doubted my ability to kill one in a fight.

  Hunting deer would give me short-lived strength and energy, but if I wanted to be an equal match to the most dangerous Mortis, I needed to return to my roots and seek out a human hit. It was something that I knew Eila would strongly object to.

  Kian and I had been walking through the scrub pines silently, checking for signs of deer in the landscape. Hunting was something we both had done when we were human, though back then we both favored a bow as our weapon of choice.

  Nowadays we favored our bare hands.

  I heard the soft snuffling of something farther in the woods – a noise far too quiet for human ears, but easily heard by both of us. I slowly crouched to the ground looking in the direction of where the deer was foraging. Kian backed up slowly into the shade of a pine and seamlessly called the shadows over his body, disappearing into the darkness.

  I knew he shouldn’t be able to control the shadows when he supposedly hadn’t been hunting humans. I glared at the darkness of the tree where I knew he stood, now almost completely invisible, and understanding took hold, fueling both my anger and envy.

  Kian had apparently been sneaking around killing people – a tidbit of critical information he had not shared with me. I was going to force a confession from his lying lips, but right now I needed the life-force of this one doe who was pawing at the underbrush below the snowy blanket.

  The animal turned slightly from me and I saw my chance. I bolted across the small clearing, moving at a speed that was nearly impossible for an animal or human to track. The doe caught scent of me just as I was upon her, but I swung up and over her back before she could flee, grabbing her soft neck and hauling her to the snowy ground with a crash.

  She had no chance the moment I touched her.

  Holding one hand to her chest and the other to her muzzle as she wailed, I immediately began drawing her life-force from her, weakening her quickly and calming her pleading calls. While velvet fur covered much of her graceful body, the area around her eyes showed the soft ripple effect of gentle light that pulsed beneath her skin as I pulled the energy from her body. Her free-running soul, her essence, felt like fire in my veins.

  My own skin, now covered with Fallen markings, flared like a heartbeat as I drank in her soul through my touch alone. Her huge, brown eyes, so terrified when I first touched her, now softened. Her breathing slowed and her body relaxed as she weakened towards death. I pulled from her gently, doing my best to control my need, which urged me to brutally rip her life from her. To sate my hunger instantly, rather than in slow, controlled drags.

  I could cause bone-breaking pain if I wanted to. I could make the last seconds of life be the most terrifying, excruciating final moments for my victims, but I tried to take out my targets with compassion. I had to survive at their expense, but I didn’t want them to suffer needlessly. But every once in a while, I failed to control my need and my victims . . . paid dearly.

  I could feel the current of the doe’s life-force trickle down to a thin stream as she exhaled one final time and stilled, her eyes seeing no more. The pulse of my own marks slowed and faded from my skin as I finished off what she had to offer.

  I felt strong. Alive. As if a weight had been lifted from me. I felt like I could fly, high off the power the deer had given me.

  “Feeling better?” asked Kian, walking up to me and the dead deer. It took me a moment to regain my balance. I had been starving for so long, I hadn’t realized how severe it had been. I was actually light-headed, and my vision was near blinding. My body, finally resetting after such a long run of deprivation, felt incredible. Strong, healthy, and dangerously powerful.

  Finally I turned to him, my look hard. “Since when did you start offing people?” I asked, angry that he had left me out. I had thought we were on the same page with regards to hunting, and now I was just pissed that I hadn’t gone with him, so I could have taken a few lives as well. How quickly my moral center shifted when it came to protecting Eila.

  Kian gave a knowing grin. “I never really stopped, just more-or-less went on a diet,” he said, stepping closer to me, a glint of the devil in his eyes. “But the animal-only diet sucked, and once the Breakers happened, I jumped off the wagon. Care to come on one of MY hunts next time?”

  I didn’t even need to debate my answer. Eila was everything to me and if it meant that I needed to claim the life of a man or woman to protect her, so be it. Not to mention, I wanted the hit. I craved it.

  “Absolutely,” I replied.

  Kian grabbed the keys back from me. “I’ll drive, Miss Daisy. You do know the speedometer makes it over 50, right?”

  I didn’t reply, the adrenaline in my veins running wild. With the deer’s life-force flowing through me, I felt reborn. Only one thought blazed in my mind: getting back to Eila and wrapping myself in her breathy laugh and luminous smile.

  I needed to calm down before I saw her, however. After so long without a kill, the new power flowing through me was fraying my self-control. I would get used to the soul-high once I started hunting regularly again, but at the moment every dangerous cell in my body was demanding that I ravage Eila the instant I got to her house. And this kind of ravaging would definitely lead from breathy laughter to breathy gasps, and a decided lack of clothing.

  In my current state I was very, very unsafe for Eila.

  Kian stepped in front of me, one knowing eyebrow raised. “Yeah - there ain’t no way I’m bringing you back to Eila when you are this cranked-up. You need to run-off the excess, lover-boy.”

  “Race you to the car?” I offered

  “Try to keep up Granny,” replied Kian, and he shot off in the direction of the Rover at a break-neck speed. I, however, beat him to the vehicle, and thus was the first to notice that our run was about to get a whole lot longer.

  Someone had slashed the tires of Kian’s SUV.

  6 Eila

  “Jesse says the game has been postponed to Sunday night,” announced Ana, closing her textin
g app and sliding her phone behind her. She sat on the kitchen counter in her Grinch pants, licking the last remnants of cookie dough from an oversized spoon. Her bare feet bounced to the radio station’s hour-long set of Christmas songs.

  I sat cross-legged on the kitchen floor near one of the ornate heat registers, keeping myself toasty warm. The hot cocoa in my JAWS mug gave off the most delicious double-chocolate aroma, which was probably the reason why it was disappearing so fast. “I’ve only been to a couple of football games at my old school, but they were usually the ones earlier in the season.”

  “Cold-phobic?” asked Ana, dropping the clean spoon in the sink.

  “I’m happily frying griddle marks on my rear end thanks to the radiator, so yeah – I am definitely allergic to anything below 40.”

  Ana snorted as she hopped down from the counter. “Well, you’ve got to go, especially since Jesse keeps reminding me constantly that you need to come. I am just about ready to give him your cell number, because this secretary gig is getting old.”

  “Oh – please don’t,” I moaned. “He’s really a nice guy, but I don’t want him to think I’m interested in him when I’m not.”

  Though he was busy as captain of the football team, Jesse Vale had managed to coordinate all my missed schoolwork from the two classes we had together. He would hand off his copied notes and papers to MJ, who would dutifully bring them to my home. While I was hoping he did it purely out of friendship, I was starting to worry that he was developing feelings for me, and I didn’t want to accidentally lead him on.

  But he had been my schoolwork gofer and I owed him, so when he asked that I come to the football game, I agreed. I was actually looking forward to the high school’s annual rivalry game with another town, but then I realized that there would be two other people in attendance who I did NOT want to bump into: Nikki Shea and Teddy Bencourt.

  Nikki wanted to slowly kill me, and Teddy almost drunkenly assaulted me. Talk about a bad combination.

  Unfortunately, I had already promised Jesse. Plus, Ana had assured me that she would bring along her pepper spray, which had been a gift from Kian last summer. She said she would happily spray first, ask questions later, which was not a good idea with Ana.

  She’d spray just about everyone.

  So, I did the only thing I could: I sucked it up. No fear, live hard, and all that jazz. Plus, I would be in the bleachers with a zillion other screaming fans, who would be witnesses if needed.

  Of course, I was praying there would be no incidents, period, and therefore no need for witnesses. I was also going to demand a guard-free football game, because Ana and I needed to show the boys that we could be fine on our own.

  Kian and Raef had returned from Torrent Road a while ago, but on foot. Apparently some jerkface thought it would be fun to vandalize the Rover’s tires, and Kian was not pleased – and no doubt would kill the fool who mucked with his ride, if he could find him.

  After a few phone calls, Kian managed to locate a tow company that was able to go get the Rover and replace the tires. Initially they had said the vehicle wouldn’t be ready until after Thanksgiving, but then Kian mentioned a sizable bonus to any mechanic who had the Rover repaired and delivered to 408 by the day’s end. Sure enough, Kian’s vehicle was back at my house within 90 minutes and one underpaid mechanic was a grand richer.

  While they had been waiting for the car to arrive, Kian and Raef had started moving the firewood from the barn out back, to the side of the house for easy access. The wind and snow had picked up as the storm bore down on the Cape, and the lights had flickered inside 408 a few times.

  While the boys did their thing, Ana and I had helped Mae make cookies and prep the pies for tomorrow’s feast. Mae was on cloud nine that she actually got to entertain a real group of friends for Thanksgiving. Ana and I had hung out in the cookie-scented kitchen, chatting and waiting for Kian and Raef to be done. Mae eventually headed upstairs to sew little lace leaves on cloth napkins.

  Yeah . . . she was just a wee bit excited.

  “I’m in the mood to zone with a movie. Wadda ya say?” asked Ana, pulling a bottled water out of the fridge.

  “Movie sounds good. Can I take my butt-warmer with me?”

  “Uh . . . no. But when Raef comes in I’m going to tell him that you have a new radiator marking on your rear. Think he will want to examine that one as well?”

  I blushed hot. Raef had seen the kill mark on my lower back the night he pulled me from the Town Neck River. I was raised believing that the mark was a radiator burn from childhood, but I was wrong. My mark was a sign of my dangerous lineage and it had changed since the Breakers. Christian said it would evolve every time I killed, just as Elizabeth’s had.

  The side door swung open and a blast of snow raced into the room, smacking me in the face. I squealed and scrambled to my feet as Raef came through the door, his arms loaded with wood. Kian followed, his arms equally full, and kicked the door shut behind him. A dusting of white littered the tile, but was quickly melting.

  “Sorry E!” called Raef, as he headed into the parlor with the wood.

  “It’s okay!” I called back as I grabbed a rag from the counter and started wiping up the floor. Once done, I tossed the rag to Ana, who pitched it in with the dirty pile in the laundry room that was attached to the kitchen. We headed into the parlor and watched as Raef and Kian stacked the wood beside the ornate fireplace. Soon the boys had a luminous, orange fire crackling.

  I sat on the floor near the couch as Ana riffled through the movies under the TV. Raef slid back to sit next to me, his long legs kicked out in front of him.

  “So how is Christian?” I asked, admiring how the wood popped and crackled under the flames. I had yet to actually go inside Christian’s new Torrent Road home. It just felt weird that he was my grandfather, especially since he looked like he was only in his late 20s. Even more insane was that he was technically my FOURTH great grandfather. It was taking a while to adjust to those time-warping details.

  “We didn’t actually see Christian. We ended up heading to Sandy Neck to go hunting. That’s where Kian got the flat tires.” Raef leaned his head back slightly, resting it against the couch cushions.

  “I can’t believe someone would flatten his tires. Some people are such . . . such . . . poop-heads!”

  Raef looked at me, “Really? Poop-heads?”

  “I’m trying not to swear too much. I need to work on my creativity, obviously.”

  Raef smiled, “Maybe just a little.”

  “I’m glad you went hunting. I mean, you did seem kind of beat. I take it you’re feeling better?” I leaned my head back as well, and our eyes were even with one another.

  “Yeah. It’s good . . . I didn’t realize how rundown I was. I haven’t hunted in so long.”

  Had he starved himself? Good grief, why? I furrowed my brow and sat up quickly. He followed suit. “You haven’t been hunting? Why on earth not?

  He shrugged, “I just didn’t want to leave you alone. And I have hunted, just not that often. It’s not a big deal, really.”

  “It is a big deal, Raef! Don’t starve for me! And I am safe. For the thousandth time, no one is hunting me down.”

  “Except the FBI.”

  I smacked him in the arm, pissed that he would deny himself the one thing that kept him alive in order to ensure my survival.

  His mouth tipped up, amused at my pitiful punch, so I went to whack him again, but he snatched my wrist, holding it snuggly in his wide palm. My skin tingled softly where he touched and he tugged me towards him, bringing my face closer to his.

  “I just want you safe, E. And I realize now that not hunting enough actually makes me more of a liability. But don’t worry. I’ll hunt more.”

  I looked at his storm-blue eyes for a moment, allowing myself to enjoy our close proximity. I could hear the voices of Kian and Ana discussing which movie to watch, but their conversation barely registered in my head. I was as close to Raef as I was the night
he first kissed me, and thus my brain wasn’t functioning too well anymore. I swallowed and finally pulled myself out of my momentary stupor.

  “We had an agreement that you have not honored. If you really want me safe, you will help me train,” I whispered.

  His face tensed and his grip on my wrist tightened. “I know. And I’m sorry I haven’t supported you on that. But I will – I promise. Just let me figure out where we can train and how. We can’t risk attracting any more government goons. And we do it in stages. Basic self-defense first, okay?”

  “Ana comes along as well,” I demanded. It wasn’t a question, but a statement of fact.

  He gave a quick nod, “The Elmo groupie learns to kick ass too.”

  I snorted a laugh, “It’s not Elmo!”

  “All furry monsters are the same in my book,” replied Raef, finally releasing my hand.

  “I’m telling MJ you said that!” I chided, knowing that MJ, whose ability to shift into a massive, black dog was ridiculously cool, would be highly insulted. MJ, once in his dog-form, was one formidable fighter and pretty darn lethal when matched against a Mortis. In his human form, however, he was just a big, lean goofball.

  Raef smiled, but then his face grew more serious. “There was another part to that deal we had.”

  Holy chicken nuggets, I didn’t think he would bring that up. Uh, yeah there was another part to the deal, regarding his lips and mine. My voice came out a little hoarse, “Yeah. I remember the other part. Are you thinking we should entertain a few revisions?”

  “Maybe just a few,” he grinned. “But only if you’re okay with it.”

  “YES!” I shouted in his face. It was so uncool, but the shine in Raef’s eyes spoke volumes.

  Ana’s head popped up, a DVD in her hand with two elderly actors on the front, “Really? You want to watch The King’s Speech?”