Hunter's Salvation

by Shiloh Walker

  The sound of footsteps drawing nearer had him stilling. With no time to hide William, Thomas shifted into mist. He passed through the walls, knowing that the Hunter would sense him and, Thomas hoped, follow. It was too much to hope for, though. The Hunter had little interest in him.

  It was the lab that the Hunter was searching for. Even if William’s fuckup last night hadn’t happened, the Hunter would have shown up on Thomas’s proverbial doorstep. It was the lab, and the subjects locked within, that had led the Hunter here.

  At least, Thomas had been operating under that assumption.

  The familiar blonde head gave him an unwanted surprise. Jessica Warren—Thomas snarled silently. His rage at William kicked up, and he wished he had simply ripped out the fool’s heart instead of administering the enhanced sedative. William should have killed the nosy, intrusive bitch months ago. When she first appeared on the scene, Thomas had known she would be trouble. He was so wrapped up in his research, he had left William to manage the day-to-day business of the club. For the most part William had done an adequate job. Nate reported to Thomas, keeping him abreast of William’s management of the club—and some of the more troublesome issues. Like Jessica Warren.

  William had been told to watch her, and if it looked as though she would cause trouble, she was to be eliminated. Before the trouble started. Instead William had killed her sister. When she proved to be like a dog with a bone, William still hadn’t been successful. Gave some serious credence to the theory, If you want it done right, do it yourself. Thomas should have killed Warren the very first time she showed that blonde head at Debach.

  There was a curious little puzzle to her presence here. The tall man at her side was a stranger to Thomas, but Thomas could feel the power coming off the witch. After a century or so, the more powerful vampires developed a magickal sense. They learned to gauge a witch’s power the same way they sensed the presence of another vampire or a powerful shifter.

  What he sensed off the witch was exactly what he hadn’t wanted to encounter. A powerful Hunter.

  An inquisitive reporter could be made to disappear. Oh, there’d be questions asked; Thomas had no doubt of that. But there were ways to get rid of humans that wouldn’t lead back to his door. Different story with Hunters. More so with witches. If this one disappeared, another witch could track him. They could connect this Hunter to the labs and therefore to Thomas.

  All because some ignorant bitch wouldn’t mind her own damn business.

  Since they weren’t going to be moved off their course, Thomas stopped trying. The door to the lab was hidden in the panels of the wall, but it wouldn’t throw off either of them. Particularly not the Hunter. He’d found the passageway down here, after all. The woman jumped in surprise when Thomas solidified in front of them, but the Hunter had already drawn a blade from the sheath at his waist.

  The familiar gleam of silver caught Thomas’s eye, and he smiled at the witch. “Do you really think I’ll let you close enough to use that?”

  The man stepped forward, using his body to shield the woman. He waggled the knife and gave Thomas a taunting little smirk. “Do you really think you can keep me from it? You’re no fool, Thomas. You know what I am, why I’m here. You also know that we don’t let the prey get away.”

  With a soft laugh, Thomas shook his head. “Why are you so convinced that I am the prey? It could well be you who doesn’t live through this.” Then he glanced at Jessica and smiled. “Or her.”

  He reached inside his jacket and withdrew a slender gold case. It was similar to a cigarette case, just a bit larger to accommodate the syringes. The murky yellow fluid wasn’t as concentrated as the dose he had laid aside for William. For the trouble he had caused, William got something extra. But this dose would do the trick for the witch, possibly send his skills into meltdown. Or it would be enough to bring his nosy friend through the transition at an accelerated speed. That might be worth seeing.

  There was something to her. Thomas hadn’t been this close to her before. No way he could have known. Anticipation had him smiling. “You aren’t normal, are you?” he murmured. “How intriguing.”

  “Jess. Leave.”

  “No, Jess.” Thomas smiled at her and murmured, “Please stay. You know, if we both live through this, you had better run long and hard to hide her from me, Hunter. I’ve yet to have this experiment succeed on a mortal. But perhaps I was aiming too low. I wanted the average mortal, but I needed one like you, Jessica.”

  She stood behind the Hunter, her eyes wide and dark, her face pale. The Hunter said again, without looking away from Thomas, “Leave, Jessica.”

  “No, Jess. Stay, please. This is going to be so much fun.” He flashed a syringe at Vax and murmured, “I’m going to have a hard time deciding whom to use this on. I have this theory—do you know that magick originates in the brain?”

  Vax curled his lip. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you’ve found a way to duplicate whatever the hell it is that brings magick to a witch. Big. Fucking. Deal.”

  Thomas looked somewhat disappointed. “So you have it all figured out.” He lifted the syringe and studied it. A faint smile appeared on his lips. “Yes, that is what I’ve done, but that’s not what this dose is for. Although I think it would be fun to slide it into her neck and watch—will it kill her? Will she come through it with the strength of a demigoddess?” He looked at Jess like he would a smear under a microscope. Then he gave a dismissive shrug. “We shall have to see. But I’m more interested in what it will do to you, Hunter. Too much of what makes you witch may well make you little more than a weak, pathetic mortal. Some rewiring, so to speak.”

  That smile lingered on his lips as he looked back and forth between Vax and Jess. He tapped the syringe against his palm and murmured, “Which one, which one.”

  His eyes landed on Jess, giving her an idea of how a deer caught in the headlights felt. She suddenly understood why the damn things didn’t run, even though they could feel death whispering its slippery, cold breath all over them. They didn’t run because they couldn’t. Terror clenched its fist around her chest and turned her legs to putty. The only way she stayed upright was by locking her knees.

  She’d thought William was the big threat. But looking into Thomas’s pale brown eyes, she had a bad feeling she was wrong. William was like a forest fire—destructive. But Thomas, a stiletto in the dark, just as deadly but so silent you’d never feel your death coming, and you’d have no chance to escape.

  Under that intense, icy gaze, she backed up one step, then another. But she wouldn’t let herself take that third step away. She was here for a reason.

  He held her gaze as he rolled a syringe between his palms. Jess had seen three more tucked inside with it before he’d snapped the case closed. He lifted the syringe and smiled at her. “Perhaps, instead of letting William have her, I should have used this on your precious baby sister. What was she?…Oh, yes. An Empath. The transition is quite painful.”

  Jess started towards him, a snarl on her pretty, unpainted mouth. “You gutless son of a bitch. She was just a kid.” The Hunter wrapped his fingers around her arm, keeping her from coming any closer, and she turned on him, baring her teeth. “Let go of me, Vax.”

  “Vax…Vax…” Thomas narrowed his eyes, and then he smiled a wide, beaming smile that made shivers run down Jess’s spine. “I’ve heard of you. My kind say that you lost your spine. Talk about gutless, Jessica. You should get to know your lover a little better. He killed his own wife.”

  Wife…Jess looked at Vax, but the stony set of his face told her everything. As though he could read her mind, his hand fell away. “Ahhh…I didn’t think he would have told you,” Thomas said, looking a little too pleased with himself. “I don’t think I ever heard her name, Vax. Tell me, did it give you a rush, sticking that knife in her heart? She had just Changed. She would have been weak, not much of a fight there. Still, one dead vamp is one more dead vamp.”

  Thomas continued to talk, but nothing he was say
ing made much sense anymore. Wife. Okay, so Jess had known from the beginning that all they had was sex, but still—might have been nice to know about the wife part. Even more about the part where he had killed her.

  Hard hands came up, wrapping around her upper arms. By the time she realized what Vax was going to do, he was already doing it. Jess went flying through the air and struck the wall. There was a blur in front of her. The blur was Thomas. He moved too quickly for her eyes to track. He had been coming for her, but Vax moved pretty quickly, too. Jess was out of harm’s way, and Vax squared off with Thomas, catching the vampire around the waist and using a wrestling move that would done Kurt Angle proud. He flipped Thomas onto his back, jerked the syringe out of Thomas’s hand, and hurled it to the ground. It hit the ground and erupted in flames. The flames didn’t die down until the syringe was nothing more than a melting pile of plastic. Vax pinned the vampire and lifted his knife, but before he could use it, Thomas jammed a hand between them. He struck in the nose with the heel of his palm, and Jess heard bone crunch.

  Blood exploded in a geyser, but it didn’t slow Vax down. He didn’t slow down when Thomas reared his head and struck Vax in the arm, catching the meaty part of the forearm and biting through skin and muscle. Thomas shook his head like a dog working a bone. Vax didn’t make a sound. He shifted his grip on the hilt of the knife and then drove his fist into the vampire’s throat. The vampire didn’t have to breathe, but apparently vampires hated the sensation of choking as much as anybody. Thomas left go of Vax’s arm, gagging. Blood and saliva flew out of his mouth.

  Vax lifted the knife once more, but a blast from behind sent him flying. He landed on the floor beside Jess. He rolled to his feet in seconds, and he took Jess with him.

  It was a good thing he was holding onto her, because what she saw in front of her was enough to make her want to run home, crawl under her bed, and hide. Her legs felt rubbery, and her guts seemed to go watery.

  Smoke hung in the air, and there were little charred pieces of drywall and wood drifting down. And unless she was really seeing things, there was also metal melting.

  Jess wondered if hell was anything like this. The heat was intense. She could feel it licking her flesh from thirty feet away. The thing standing in the doorway only added to the hellish imagery. It was big, and even uglier than Dena. Long, wicked fangs protruded out past his lips. He had a stunted muzzle, and his face looked grotesquely malformed. He threw back his head and howled. When he looked back at Jess, his mouth gaped in a bloodcurdling smile, thick strings of saliva dripping down.

  And he wasn’t alone. Her breath caught in her throat as another wolf creature appeared behind him. Another. Another…until they totaled seven. With murderous intent in their eyes, they started as a unit for Vax and Jess. Fire flew through the air, and Jess hissed, startled. Her gaze flew to Vax, and she watched as he lobbed another fireball towards the wolf-things.

  An odd whooshing sound filled the room. It was so loud, it hurt Jess’s ears. She clapped her hands over them and looked around, searching for the source. It was the fire. Vax hurled more fire at them, but each attempt had the same effect as the first. The whooshing sound was the noise the fire made as it hit the wolf-things and their bodies absorbed it.

  Absorbed. Like a sponge absorbed water. “Son of a bitch,” Vax muttered. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Vax’s reaction. It wasn’t much, but considering that she had seen maybe three emotions—namely, lust, anger, and amusement—from him, the worried look in his eyes didn’t bode well.

  His gaze shifted from the menacing creatures in front of them to the ceiling above their heads, then down to the white tiled floor under their feet. “How much can you hold?” he asked quietly.

  She knew he wasn’t asking about her bench-pressing skills. “I don’t know. Never put it to that much of a test. But I’ll hold whatever I have to.”

  “When I say—catch it and aim it towards them.” She never had a chance to ask what. His hand lifted, and although she couldn’t see anything, she felt it. The earth rumbled beneath them; then it shifted and rolled. A gaping maw appeared in the tile, a tiny split that grew and grew until it had rent the entire floor straight down the middle.

  Dust drifted from the ceiling, and then the crack in the earth spread upward, higher and higher until the crack climbed the wall and started to spread across the ceiling. Huge, jagged chunks of concrete and rock speared into open air. As bits and pieces of the building started to crumble, Vax shouted, “Now!”

  Jess braced herself. It was a waste of time.

  There was no way she could have prepared for the massive weight as broken pieces of rubble came crashing down. It was as if the weight of it came down on her skull, threatening to crush her. She shoved with all her might, sweat beading on her upper lip. The chunks of concrete hurtled through the air towards the lumbering atrocities. She saw the first three collapse, but then Vax grabbed her around the waist and hauled her towards the elevator.

  She didn’t fight him.

  Maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t as ready to die as she thought. Especially not at the hands of one of those things. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the things pushing through the smoke, rubble, and fire. Her head screamed at her as she focused, but she didn’t quit. There was an exposed pipe peeking through the ceiling. It was easier to move than the rocks had been, but she was exhausted and her control was shaky, so by the time she had used her mind to rip the pipe out of its moorings, she was sweating. She was in so much pain, she could hardly focus.

  “Hurry,” she gasped.

  They made it to the elevator, and as the doors slid closed, Jess finished with the pipe. Fire exploded, and Jess lost consciousness to the sound of wolves howling.

  VAX had been right. She handled herself well even when they were facing down something unimaginable. Something a little more than he had been prepared for. That was where he had fucked up. Going in there with nobody at his side but a telekinetic who had never seen battle—it had been so pathetically stupid. Criminally so.

  Bad enough that he had almost gotten Jess killed. It was worse than that, though, because Jess would have been just the first if those hybrid shifters had gotten loose. He had put untold others at risk.

  They were back in the hotel. Vax almost hadn’t come here. But he couldn’t drive around endlessly. He had to see how Jess was doing, and he had to think. He’d been thinking for the past three hours, and worried out of his mind over Jess.

  She hadn’t woken up.

  He knew why. She’d overextended herself saving their necks. It wouldn’t have been necessary if Vax hadn’t been so damned stupid. He reached up and rubbed his eyes, feeling unbelievably weary.

  THE phone rang on the table next to the bed, and he reached to pick it up without looking away from Jess’s face. The low, quiet voice on the other end of the line sounded worried. “Look, Kelsey, I don’t need you rushing out here to cluck over me. Just get Malachi and get over here. Talk to Jess. She’ll fill you in.”

  Kelsey’s voice was irritated. “Why don’t you fill me in, big shot?”

  Because I won’t be here. He didn’t say that aloud. “I don’t have time right now.” He was saved from having to make something up when Jess’s lids started to flutter. “I have to go. Jess is waking up.”

  He hung up the phone and crouched down beside her. She groaned, and one hand came up, rubbing her temple. “Headache, huh?”

  She rolled her head on the pillow and stared at him. “Oh, hell. A headache doesn’t even describe it. I feel like my head is going to come off.”

  Vax skimmed his fingers over her forehead. “You overextended yourself. Pushed too hard. This is sort of a delayed reaction—almost as if you worked out way too much at the gym. It will take a few days to subside all the way. Rest helps.”

  “Yeah, like that’s an option.” She reached and wrapped her hand around his upper arm, using that to steady herself as she sat up. She weaved a little and groaned. “Holy shit.”
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  “Lie back down, Jess.”

  She shook her head. “There’s no time. Damn it, what are we going to do about those things?” She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, but every movement made her more and more pale. “Did you see them? It was almost like they ate the fire. And the concrete—some of those chunks probably weighed half a ton, and they didn’t even slow down.”

  As determined as she was to rise, when it came time to actually stand, she made two tries before she finally gave up. When she looked up at him, Vax cocked a brow. “You done?”

  She snarled at him. Vax leaned down and kissed the sexy little sneer before straightening. “I told you—it’s going to be a few days before you feel like yourself, and at least a few more hours of rest before you can go anywhere.” He tucked a strand of hair away from her face.

  She acted as if she were going to smack his hand away, but instead she just wrapped her fingers around his wrist. She was pale; the dark circles under her eyes looked like bruises. Her voice shook a little when she said, “We don’t have hours.”

  “No. We don’t.” He crouched down in front of her and sighed. He cupped her hands in his, rubbing his thumbs across the backs. Under the thin, delicate shield of her skin, he could see the fine network of veins. He could feel the fragile play of the small bones as she turned her hands over in his and linked their fingers. “I’ve called for help. They’ll be here soon, but…”

  Jess jerked away her hands and stared at him with disbelief all over her face. “No.” She shook her head. “No. You said we’d do this together. I haven’t gone and done something stupid. I didn’t take off by myself to look for Masters, even though I wanted to. We’re doing this together, damn it. I’m coming with you.”