Hunter's Salvation

by Shiloh Walker

  “I knew you’d find me,” she had whispered as she kissed him on his chin, his neck, all over his face. “I knew you’d find me….”

  “I’m sorry, Cora.” He reached up, brushing her hair back from her face. He loved playing with her hair, combing through the thick curls, fisting his hands in it as he kissed her.

  “Sorry?” She started to ask him why, but then she looked over his shoulder. He knew she understood the minute she saw Diego.

  Eyes wide with terror, Cora jerked away. She held her hands in front of her naked body, trying to ward him off. “Vax, please. You can’t do this.”

  He reached out, threading his hand through her red-gold curls one more time.

  “Vax, please! You love me, remember?” As she pleaded with him, tears sparkled in her sky blue eyes. Her heart was racing—he could hear it.

  “Yes. I do love you,” he murmured. “Shhhh…” He lowered his lips and kissed away the tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “We can make it right, Vax. I know we can—you just have to help me.”

  “I will.” He tipped up her chin and kissed her gently before guiding her head to his chest. He held her with one arm.

  With the other, he drew the silver knife from his waist. Am I really going to do this?

  As though he were watching it happen to somebody else, he saw himself raise the knife. Watched as he drove it into Cora’s smooth, silky back. She arched against him, screaming. A little puff of smoke escaped her lips, and the scream ended in abrupt silence.

  “You did what you had to, my friend,” Diego whispered. “This is not your fault.”

  Vax sat on the floor of the cave, holding his dead wife in his arms. “Yes, it is. I should have saved her.”

  THE ugly, misshapen tattoo on his back seemed to be throbbing. Fiery pain licked along his flesh, as though somebody had just branded him. He had a sour taste in his mouth, and acid burned its way up his throat.

  His words from earlier echoed in his mind.

  Failure.

  He turned and looked at his reflection in the mirror. Over the past ninety-plus years, he had been approached by more Council emissaries than he could count. Rejoin the Hunters. Come to Excelsior and teach. Join the Council itself.

  Each time, he had refused. They couldn’t get a reason out of him. Nothing more than a flat refusal.

  But they should know the answer.

  Those who had mattered most to him in life had suffered and died, and he hadn’t been able to do a fucking thing to save them.

  Vax Matthews was a damned failure.

  LESS than an hour after he’d left so abruptly, he came back in her room. Jess had an apology on her lips, but after seeing the look on his face, it died. He didn’t want to hear it, she could tell just by looking at him.

  “Time to go,” he said. He grabbed her bag from the foot of the bed in one hand and with the other he closed his fingers around her upper arm and pulled her to the door. She gave the coffeepot a forlorn look and let him drag her out of the room.

  Even though she’d actually gotten sleep, she was still so tired she felt stupid with it. She needed a little more caffeine, and now. But she didn’t bother asking him to wait so she could pour a cup to go. He’d take off without her in a heartbeat, she knew it.

  Why he was suddenly in such a hurry, she didn’t know. It was close to ten in the morning and he was moving along like they had a plane to catch or something.

  The hungry lover from last night was gone. She couldn’t call him a gentle lover—her body ached too much to call him gentle. But it was the sweetest ache imaginable. She couldn’t walk without remembering last night. In vivid detail.

  She plodded along beside him down the dimly lit hall, trying not to think too much about her need for a caffeine fix. She almost lost that fight when she passed by the room right next to the elevator. Somebody was brewing coffee in there.

  Vax slid her a look out of the corner of his eye. “I haven’t checked out yet. You can get coffee downstairs while I do that. Stop scowling. You’ll scare people.”

  “I’m really going to scare people if I don’t get caffeine soon.” She grumbled under her breath but followed him into the elevator.

  She waited right by the doors and slid through them the second they started to open. Oh, yes. There was coffee. Hot, fresh, and strong enough to help clear up her fogged mind.

  By the time she followed Vax out to the car, Jess felt human. She even relinquished the keys to her car and slid into the passenger seat without a complaint. As he took the driver’s seat, she asked, “What do we do now?”

  “Go back to Indianapolis. Find Dr. Frankenstein’s lab. Destroy it.”

  He said it as though he were ticking each item off some invisible list. He started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. He hit the road and headed north. A few minutes later they were heading east, back the way they’d come late last night.

  Vax hadn’t so much as looked at her.

  Jess didn’t feel the need to always fill silence with useless chatter, but this quiet was making her uneasy. Vax wasn’t just being quiet. He wasn’t just not looking at her. He’d shut himself off completely.

  Shouldn’t have said anything, she thought dismally. Vax had started pulling back when she asked about the tatts on his back. She’d sensed it, seen the pain in his eyes, but instead of letting it go, she kept on pushing.

  Then she had asked about that one, the big, ugly tatt that looked like it had been carved into his skin with a dull, rusty knife. There was a story behind that one that Jess wasn’t sure she wanted to hear.

  She felt like she was looking at a stranger and it hurt, because it was her own damn fault. If she had kept her mouth shut, maybe he wouldn’t have pulled away so hard and fast.

  There were a thousand other things she wanted to ask him, and a thousand things she wanted to say—almost all of them started with an apology that she knew he didn’t want to hear. Instead, Jess just stared at the paper coffee cup. She finished off the rest of the coffee and put the cup in the console’s holder.

  “Any idea how we’re going to find Frankenstein’s lab?” she asked softly. She slouched down low in the leather seat and tucked her chin against her chest, exhausted and miserable.

  “Yes.” He drove with just one hand. The other arm rested along the car door, his fingers strumming out a beat.

  Apparently he wasn’t going to elaborate. “You feel like telling me how you’re going to find it?”

  This time he looked her way. It was just long enough for their eyes to meet; then he looked back at the road. “You’re going to do it.”

  “Me?” Jess sat up and glared at him. “You know something I don’t? Exactly how am I supposed to find it?”

  “I’ll help you with that.” His voice was hard and flat, and for some reason it made her even more uncomfortable than she already was.

  Nervous, she mumbled, “I don’t think I much want your help.”

  “What was that?”

  Jess closed her eyes. “I said I want some more sleep.”

  “IT’S been four days. Dena is not coming back.”

  William stood with his back to the room, staring down through the security glass at the dance floor below. It was a one-way mirror. He could see out. Nobody could see in. William liked standing there and watching the figures gyrating below. When it got crowded like this and all the private rooms were reserved for more intimate parties, many of their patrons didn’t bother waiting.

  At last count, there had been eleven pairs of dancers getting it on. Well, one of them was two-on-one action instead of one-on-one. A cute young woman who had dyed her hair pink was sandwiched between two guys. William would have enjoyed it more if the bony-assed kid wasn’t involved. He was blocking William’s view of the girl.

  The girl had a touch of magick ability. William really would have liked to bring her upstairs, have Thomas speak with her. She would have been a wonderful addition to the research. She was young, and the
power was just barely beginning to spark inside her—the best kind, as far as he was concerned. She might fight it—it was better when they fought it.

  William liked being involved in that part. When the chemicals were injected and the transition started, it made them burn. Drove them just a little crazy with fear. William liked playing with that fear. Liked seeing how far he could push them…

  “Stop drooling over that one, Will. We aren’t taking another woman even distantly connected to the club. We can’t risk it.”

  William turned back to Thomas with a smile. “You worry too much. But relax. I know. We’ve already discussed this.” He glanced towards the cute would-be witch and murmured, “Pity, though. She would have been fun.”

  Thomas shrugged. “I imagine. Bugger, Will, if you want her that badly, bring her up to one of the rooms. As long as she leaves alive and relatively unharmed, do what you want with her.”

  “Hmmm. She might object to what I want.” Reaching inside his suit jacket, he withdrew a slim cigar case. He selected one, lit it, and took a deep drag.

  “If she does, I’ll handle her.” Now Thomas smiled a little. “You’re right. She does look like fun. I think I’ll have Xeke speak with her. Invite her back to the upstairs rooms. Tomorrow, maybe. She’ll need a bath.”

  The woman in question arched between to the two men. The soundproofed room kept them from picking up anything outside the room, but William imagined he could hear her screaming as she came. Very pretty—not all women looked so damned sexy when they peaked. “Have Xeke send flowers as well. Some champagne. Maybe a new dress.”

  He turned and saw that Thomas was looking at him weirdly. William just shrugged. “New dress. Flowers. Wine. If she’s like most women, she’ll primp a little. Soak in a nice hot bath for a while.”

  “Good thinking.” Thomas’s smile faded. “We still need to discuss Dena. I knew she wasn’t ready to go out alone.”

  “You’ve sent someone to the reporter’s house?”

  Thomas nodded. He held a tumbler of whiskey in his hand, and he took a slow sip before looking back at William. “Dena was there. I sent Silas, and he could smell her. There was some blood. Some was human, but most of it was Dena’s. There was somebody else there besides the woman.” Thomas paused and took another sip. When he looked up, his eyes were dark and unreadable. The vampire was a bit worried about something.

  “Do we have any idea who it was?” William asked.

  A faint smiled appeared on Thomas’s face. He lifted his glass in a salute. “Silas said it smelled like a witch. A man.”

  William snarled. Turning from the one-way mirror, he shook his head. “A witch suddenly shows up just when Dena would have eliminated our pest. I don’t like it, Thomas.” He started to pace as tension mounted in his body. He was acutely aware of the muscles coiling, shifting, stretching as he moved around the room. His skin itched. Fear had a way of tempting the wolf into trying to come out. William had his wolf under control, though. He wouldn’t shift just because there might be a Hunter nosing around.

  “Calm yourself, William.” Thomas moved to the bar and splashed more whiskey into his glass. “Not all witches are Hunters. We already know the little sister was gifted. The reporter might well be. And birds of a feather…” He drank some whiskey and shrugged.

  “Will flock together,” William finished. He rolled his head back and forth, moved his shoulders restlessly. None of it eased the tension coiled in his muscles. Nothing except shifting would. “Perhaps you were right. We shouldn’t have sent Dena out. At least not alone.”

  “I have been thinking about shutting down the lab. At least for a while. We could sell the club. Go elsewhere.”

  William turned and stared at Thomas. “No. There’s no reason for that.”

  Thomas was still nursing his whiskey and paused with the glass almost to his lips. “I do think I’m probably just being cautious. However, I would rather be cautious and alive than careless and dead.”

  William shook his head. “It isn’t being careless. If a Hunter moves in, we’ll know. We’ll have time to leave. It’s not like we haven’t prepared for a time when we might have to leave abruptly.”

  Thomas sighed. He dropped into his chair and leaned back. “And if we do not have time? Yes, I’ll sense a vampire. As you would likely sense a shape-shifter. But what if they send a witch?” He cocked a brow and said, “You’re still new to magick, Will. And it’s a subtle ability. A good witch could hide herself from you until she was all but breathing down your neck.”

  William smiled confidently. “They wouldn’t send anybody here alone, Thomas. We’ll know.” He closed his eyes, imagined he was shifting, clothes ripping as his body re-formed itself. Running. “We’ve put too much into this to run just because of one lone witch.”

  HER temper was shot.

  Jess had tried to understand why Vax had retreated so fast—whatever his failure had been, it had hurt him. A lot. She could see that. If he had just withdrawn emotionally, she could have tolerated that. It would have sucked, but she could have done it.

  Yet after three hours on the road with nothing but that one cup of coffee from the hotel, she was at the end of her rope. He hadn’t stopped once, not for food, not for a bathroom, and not for coffee. Every single question she’d asked had been met with either total silence or a bark.

  So she’d overstepped her bounds, she got the point, but he didn’t have to keep on snarling at her half the damn day. And now…She curled her lip as she climbed out of the car and stared up at the roadside motel where they had stopped.

  It was inching close to two in the afternoon but there was plenty of daylight left. She almost asked him why they’d stopped, but before she could, he disappeared into the office. When he came back out, she didn’t quite trust herself to say anything. Not until she had used the bathroom and gotten something to drink, something to eat.

  She didn’t get hungry too often—most often she had to make herself eat, but she usually didn’t go so long without food. Jess couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten anything—she was pretty sure she hadn’t eaten yesterday, so maybe dinner the night before? Had she eaten breakfast? She could have gone for a decent meal for once, but there wasn’t any chance of that, not here.

  “We’re upstairs,” he said as he grabbed her back. He still hadn’t looked at her.

  Fine. Be that way, she decided as she slammed the car door and spun on her heel. She stalked towards the stairs and took them two at a time, and he stayed at her back the entire way.

  “So what crawled up your ass and died?”

  Jess stopped in her tracks and turned to glare at Vax. “Excuse me?” She stomped down the hall and shoved him, planting her hand in the middle of his chest. “I know I pissed you off this morning, but give me a break. I didn’t even have a chance to brush my teeth this morning, and I haven’t had anything to eat in more than a day. You haven’t answered a single question I’ve asked, and now you bring me to this fleabag? I don’t even understand why in the hell we are here. Didn’t we come to get a job done?”

  She shoved against the metal railing and watched the posts move under her hand. The concrete was crumbling. No way the railing would hold up if anything heavier than a toddler fell against it. She didn’t even want to think about how the room was going to look.

  Vax looked at the railing and then back at her. His lashes drooped over his eyes, and he just shrugged. “We need some place to crash while we’re looking for him. Might as well be here since you can’t go home.”

  Jess propped her hands on her hips and drawled, “Gee, ya think? There’s probably yellow tape and fingerprint dust all over my house. I’ve probably got cops wanting to talk with me. And there’s no telling what my neighbors saw. But shit, here? You’ve been barking and growling at me all day. When you haven’t been barking and growling, you’ve been ignoring me. And now I’m supposed to sleep in a hotel so damned dirty, I’ll be afraid to pee here. Do you still want to know what—
how did you put it? oh, yeah—what crawled up my ass and died?”

  Vax just shrugged and said, “You want to bail, you can do it at any time.” He didn’t look like he gave a damn one way or the other.

  Jess jabbed her index finger into his pectoral muscle so hard, it hurt her finger. “I’m not bailing. But if I do decide that I can’t handle your shitty attitude, or your arrogance, or your moodiness, I’ll just do what I planned to do all along. I’ll go after William Masters myself.”

  Oh, finally. Something showed on his face.

  His eyes narrowed down to slits as he reached up and closed his hand around her wrist. Vax squeezed lightly, careful not to hurt her. Her wrist looked fragile and pale caught in his hand.

  He moved forward, using his body to crowd her up against the brick wall. In a soft, menacing voice, Vax said, “You’ll damn well keep your skinny ass away from him unless I’m with you. You go nowhere without me, remember, blondie?”

  “My skinny ass?” Jess repeated. Her brows arched upward and her mouth turned down in an angry sneer. “You know, you didn’t seem to mind my skinny ass last night.” She narrowed her eyes at him and added, “By the way, about last night—”

  Vax shut down. He let go of her hand and stepped back. “Last night was a mistake. Shouldn’t have happened.”

  Okay, she was not going to think about how much that hurt. She hadn’t been able to think about much of anything else ever since it had happened. Stuck in the car with him, smelling that warm, sexy scent, reliving every last moment of the past night. She’d even let her thoughts get a little bit sappy. It had been a long time since she had felt a man’s body pressed against hers while she slept. A long time since she had felt much more than a passing attraction—last night had definitely not been a passing attraction to her.

  Jess didn’t know what to think about last night. She didn’t know how she should feel about it. She hadn’t ever felt anything like the heat that had flared between them, but it had felt like so much more than that. Heat, as sweet as it could be, was superficial. It was there, and then it was gone.