The Hunter

by Theresa Meyers

  HUNTER, HUNTED

  The skinwalker jolted forward and slashed Colt across the chest with its razor-like claws, shredding both his shirt and his skin. Colt gasped and shouted. He dropped to his knees as unseen fire exploded across his chest, burning and aching. He grunted, aiming his revolver at the fiend. The skinwalker sneered and cackled in delight.

  The revolver kicked back as Colt fired. The skinwalker darted like a shadow and the bullet exploded in the sandstone just behind the creature, spraying it with rock shrapnel. It shrieked, the sound reverberating off the rocks and multiplying until it echoed in Colt’s skull. In a blur the skinwalker moved from one rock to another, changing position so fast Colt could hardly track it, let alone take aim and shoot the damn thing.

  “Watch out!” Lilly shouted.

  Colt heard her an instant before he was knocked sideways by the creature. The shifter extended its wicked claws at Colt’s throat with the aim of ripping it out. He held back the claws, his left arm bulging and burning with the effort, while he pulled the revolver up as close as he could between himself and the creature.

  “You missed,” it hissed, spittle spraying Colt’s face.

  The Hunter

  BOOK ONE OF THE LEGEND CHRONICLES

  THERESA MEYERS

  ZEBRA BOOKS

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  HUNTER, HUNTED

  Title Page

  Dedication

  In the Beginning

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Teaser chapter

  Copyright Page

  This book is dedicated to my Arizona family.

  To my favorite cowboy, Quinn,

  and my favorite horseback rider, Chloe.

  You two make my world.

  To Marlon for always being there. Always.

  To Marc for being a huge part of our lives.

  To the writers of the Valley of the Sun Chapter of RWA

  and the Desert Rose Chapter of RWA,

  who were my first writing home, and in particular

  to Christine Eaton Jones. Thank you.

  And for Jerry, because you

  look seriously hot in cowboy boots.

  In the Beginning

  Near Springfield, Missouri

  1873

  “Aren’t you Cy Jackson’s boy?”

  Colt looked up at the stranger through the ragged edge of his thick, dark hair. The afternoon sun that had all but baked him alive now slung low in the sky, making it difficult for him to see more than a backlit outline of the man through the dusty haze.

  “Yeah.” Left behind by his pa and two older brothers to chop wood while they went hunting, Colt had spent his energy for the day. His faded red shirt, gritty and damp with sweat, stuck to his lean body. He straightened, keeping a firm hold on the smooth hardwood handle of his axe just in case he needed it. He might be only fourteen, but he knew how to protect himself and what was theirs. The hair on the back of his neck rose in warning. Strangers didn’t just “drop in.” The homestead was thirty miles out of town and not on the road to anywhere.

  It took only a second, just a mere blink, for the stranger to launch off his horse and clamp his cold, pale hands around Colt’s throat. He’d never seen anything move so fast in all his life. Hard fingers lifted Colt off the ground so that his feet swung awkwardly from his long limbs. The pressure caused sparks to pop in Colt’s vision. Choking and gagging, he dropped the axe from his nerveless fingers as he clawed at the icy hands squeezing off his air.

  “I’d like to kill you, just to prove a point to Cyrus, but Rathe said to bring you back alive.” The stranger’s breath stank so bad of sulfur it made Colt’s nose burn and his eyes well. “’Course, he didn’t say I couldn’t have a little fun first.” The unnaturally icy pale blue eyes glaring at him turned violent crimson, the vertical pupils widening with anticipation. Colt’s heart stopped beating for a second.

  Everything seemed to blur as his eyes bulged with pressure. The next instant, the stranger shoved Colt beneath the water of the horse trough that had been ten feet away. Glimmers of sunlight streamed in from above as the water seeped into his nose and he fought to hold his breath.

  Colt dug his fingernails into the hands holding him down, kicking and squirming, anything to get a sip of air into his burning lungs. The stranger pulled Colt from the water at the last moment, before blackness clouded his vision completely.

  “Where’s the Book?” His voice was hot against Colt’s ear.

  Colt coughed and choked, the water rasping his throat.

  “Tell me.”

  All Colt could do was shake his head and gasp. He didn’t know what the stranger meant.

  The water closed over him again. Colt wanted to scream, but he didn’t dare. There hadn’t been time to take a deep breath. He fought hard against the iron hold keeping him beneath the water. Panic turned to outright terror as he realized he was going to drown.

  Suddenly, above the shifting surface of the water, the stranger bucked forward, his head arching back, his mouth a rictus of pain. He lifted Colt from the water and flung him to the ground with a crunching thud, then whipped around, the axe stuck firmly in his back.

  Pain ripped fire through Colt as he gasped for air and scrabbled backward, his gaze darting to Winchester, now behind the stranger. His older brother leveled the barrel of his shotgun at the stranger’s head. Winn was smaller than the stranger, a young man on the cusp of twenty. But the look in Winn’s cool blue eyes said he’d seen plenty.

  “Go to Hell,” Winn said, his voice tight and gravelly.

  The stranger’s mouth widened into a reddish slash in his pale face as he twisted his arm back and around, ripping the axe from his back with a wet sucking sound. His gaze flicked briefly to the glistening blackness oozing off the blade. “Already been there.” The axe flew in a wide arc directly at Winn the same instant the gun exploded.

  Colt screamed as Winn fell to the ground.

  The stranger evaporated into nothing but a dark swirl of smoke.

  Colt scrambled to his brother, ignoring the burning ache in his ribs and the rivulets of water still streaming down his face. Sod and dust burned his eyes and stung his nose as he slipped and stumbled across the ground to reach Winn. “Winn! Dammit, Winn, you still alive?”

  The axe blade quivered in Winn’s upper thigh, bright red blood gushing everywhere. Lord, that must hurt like hell. It had clearly struck bone. Winn’s breathing was shallow, his face greasy with sweat and pain. “Don’t just sit there. Tie it off.”

  Colt ripped off his wet shirt and tied off the limb as tight as he could to stem the flow of blood. He didn’t dare try to remove the axe. He wasn’t big enough to haul Winn to the cabin by himself. He swore under his breath and shivered, his skin tight with cold and fear. Winn’s left eye cracked open.

  “Don’t swear.” The words came out a bare puff of breath. Any other time the rebuke would’ve stung. Now Colt was grateful because it meant his brother was still alive. He glanced up, scanning t
he horizon for a sign of his pa and other brother Remington.

  He looked down at Winn, who was now almost as pale as the stranger had been, beads of sweat making his face shine, his lips tinting blue. “They’re coming. Just stay with me.”

  He glanced nervously at the axe head and gulped against the bile rising in his throat. There was so much blood he was sure Winn was bleeding to death. “This is bad, real bad.”

  “Pa will know what to do. Just keep talkin’ to me. I don’t want to pass out.”

  “What the hell was that, Winn?” Colt hated the tremor of fear still in his voice.

  “Vampire. Demon. Something unnatural.”

  Curiosity bit him hard and wouldn’t let go. For years he’d wondered what was so all-confounded important that he’d be left alone days at a time. But when his father and brothers returned, they’d never tell him where they disappeared to or exactly what they’d done. “Is that what you and Pa have been hunting?”

  “And others like it.”

  The thumping of running feet caused Colt to look at the tree line. Pa and Remington raced on foot toward their homestead. Pa got there first, easily outrunning Remy. He eyed Colt for a second, not bothering to ask for an explanation. He grabbed Winn’s hand and gave it a hard squeeze. “This is gonna hurt, boy.”

  Winn’s jaw jumped as he gritted his teeth. “Do it. Fast.”

  “Get your brother a leather strap to bite on.” Colt knew he was talking to Remy, as his middle brother sprinted into the cabin to fetch the strap.

  Inside Colt’s stomach was an oily mess of anger and guilt. Somehow he shoulda known what that thing was. He shoulda been able to fight it off. But he hadn’t. And now Winn was hurt bad. Likely as not, he’d lose his leg. Possibly even die.

  “What can I do?”

  Pa leveled a steely blue gaze at him. “Stay out of the way.” The words were gruff, but laced with concern.

  And that was the way it always was. Ever since Ma had died when Colt was seven, Pa and the two older boys had banded together and Colt had been left behind. He’d done everything he could to prove he was as worthy as his two older brothers to be included, but Pa had always turned away when he’d asked what they were hunting.

  Remy came back, then crouched beside Winn to shove the strap between his tightly clenched teeth as Pa pulled the axe from Winn’s thigh. Winn’s scream pushed past the strap as he reflexively forgot to bite down in anguish. Holy crap. His piercing scream went through Colt like an electric charge he’d once gotten from one of his pa’s weapons hidden under the bed, stinging and sharp. It sliced through his skull and echoed in his head, making his insides curl in around themselves away from the gut-wrenching guttural sound.

  Blood gushed out of the wound, saturating Winn’s pant leg in scarlet. Winn started panting through what was surely agony as Pa carried him into their cabin. Colt didn’t bother to follow. He knew he’d only be in the way. The single room wasn’t hardly big enough for four of them.

  Hours later he heard the stiff scrape of Pa’s boots in the soil behind him. Pa’s hand, broad and thick, settled on his shoulder, giving him an awkward pat. The metallic scent of blood, Winn’s blood, tainted the air. “He’ll live. It’s not your fault, Colt. Winn knew what he was dealing with. You didn’t. And that’s my fault, boy.”

  Colt turned, gazing up at his father, whose dark blue eyes were now bloodshot and shining with unshed tears. His ma used to say they were so like Winn’s it was kinda eerie. “I was trying to spare one of you boys from the life. I figured it should be you, being as you were your mama’s favorite and the youngest. But I guess those bastards won’t let me.”

  Colt fisted his hands against the damp cotton of his pants, his face heated. So many times he’d asked and been put off. He didn’t dare believe the little leap of excitement in his gut or the light-headed feeling in his head. “Pa, you’re not makin’ a lick of sense.”

  His father shook his shaggy head, the dark hair thick and unkempt as all his boys’. His hand grazed over the three days of stubble along his square jaw. “Colt, it’s time for you to learn exactly what you are.”

  Chapter 1

  Arizona Territory

  1883

  He’d finally managed to wash the dark, sticky, tar-like blood off his hands. There’d been no hope for his clothes.

  He’d had to burn them.

  A man couldn’t be too careful. For the likes of Colt Jackson, a Hunter born and bred, danger lurked everywhere, even in a place as innocuous as a worn-out bar that reeked of old tobacco smoke laced with the eye-watering fumes of rotgut whiskey. But neither of those blotted out the telltale stink of sulfur. Something supernatural lurked close by. He’d bet his gun hand on it.

  Everything in the little mining town turned ice hub in Arizona Territory seemed coated with a ghostly layer of grit, even the chipped crystal chandeliers overhead. He felt the grit in his lungs and in his nostrils. It stank of putrid eggs and worse, probably from the smokestacks billowing white outside against an endless cerulean sky. He picked up his smeared, nearly empty glass of ice water, leaving behind a dark ring in the pale dust on the scarred, liquor-sticky table.

  Hell, the only reason he’d stopped in Wickenburg in the first place was for the ice. Ever since the mines deep in the desert had flooded out and ingenious businessmen replaced the old rock crushers with steam-powered freeze machines, ice had become one of the most profitable commodities next to copper, gold, and silver in this special little sizzling corner of Hell on earth. He glared at his glass. The ice water had cost him almost as much as a good whiskey.

  The lithe blond saloon girl he’d been eyeing since he walked in strolled toward him across the warped wooden floorboards worn smooth from the sand of so many boots. Her hips swayed to the sound of the out-of-tune piano plunking away near the stairs that led up to the rented rooms on the second floor. The cheap glass beading on her dark blue off-the-shoulder dance-hall dress flashed in the illumination of the gaslights overhead, creating sparkles to dance along the curves of her pale cleavage.

  “Would you like some company, sugar?” Her smile didn’t reach her heavily kohled eyes. She was anywhere between sixteen and thirty. How many men had she had? Worse, did he really care? He wanted the comfort of someone who smelled sweet and womanly. Someone in whose arms he could forget, if only for a few hours, who and what he was.

  Colt smiled wide. Enough women had told him his smile was dead gorgeous that he’d learned when to use it to his advantage. He’d dressed with more care than usual tonight, in clean black trousers, a starched white shirt, and a black brocade vest threaded with a pattern of silver and blue he’d been told matched the blue in his eyes. Seemed the effort had been worth it. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She cuddled up beside him, throwing a long, smooth leg, bare to the thigh, over his. “So what brings you to Wickenburg, cowboy?”

  He slid a hand over her smooth thigh. “Hunting.”

  She let out a husky laugh, full red lips tilting up in a come-hither pout. “Most men here are lookin’ to strike it rich in ice. But I knew you was different the moment I saw you. In fact, I’ve seen your face before. What’s your name?”

  Colt tensed. He worked fairly hard at keeping a low profile, but every now and then a completely unwarranted wanted poster tended to circulate with his likeness. “Colt Jackson.”

  “Relax, handsome,” she said, rubbing her hand over his chest, delving beneath the edge of his vest. He felt the heat of her hand through his shirt as her soft fingers stroked right over his heart. “We get outlaws in here all the time.”

  Yeah, but Colt seriously doubted they were anything like him. Her constant kneading touch began to drain the tension out of his shoulders, but only a little. His gun hand had started itching the moment he’d stepped into the bar, and his instincts had never steered him wrong before. Something in this little town wasn’t right.

  “So, are you famous? Are you dangerous?” she asked, her fingers threading through his shock of nea
rly black hair as she wriggled on his lap. Her perfume was way too strong, and verging on unpleasant. Her skin under all that makeup looked dirty. Her blond hair felt stiff and brittle beneath his fingers and he dropped his hand to her waist, feeling whalebone and crisp satin, not silky skin.

  “Not exactly,” Colt muttered, finding her less appealing by the moment. “Really more like a modern Robin Hood.”

  Glossy ruby lips pouted. “It’s so much more fun when you’re dangerous.” He realized that it didn’t matter how much he wanted or needed a woman right now, a tumble wasn’t going to give him what he truly wanted and could never have—a home, a place where he belonged. No matter how delectable she looked, she wouldn’t satisfy the deeper craving.

  These days nothing could. There wasn’t a way to feed the hunger that gnawed deep down, belly-deep. It bit into his bones and wouldn’t let go. Hunting was a like a drug. Once a man knew supernaturals existed, he saw the Darkin everywhere. Once a Hunter knew that those creatures were the cause behind deaths no one else could explain, duty lay heavy on his shoulders.

  Once a Hunter started hunting, he couldn’t just stop.

  Evil didn’t take a holiday. Hunting wasn’t a profession, it was a way of life.

  For an instant he wished he could be like his older brothers, Winchester and Remington, upstanding citizens who didn’t run from place to place even if they too were named after his pa’s favorite guns. While the Jackson brothers looked a lot alike on the outside, with their pa’s jet hair and wide shoulders and their ma’s blue eyes and winning smile, they were different as could be on the inside.

  Winn was a solid, steady, ordinary man. Remy straddled the line, looking respectable but hunting on the side. But being like Winn and Remy wasn’t Colt’s destiny. No, Colt had every intention of living up to the family legend his pa Cyrus “Black Jack” Jackson had started as one of the most notorious outlaws of the western territories, rather than living it down like his brothers. That was the life of a Hunter. Tracking down supernatural monsters one at a time and killing them to make the world a safer place.