Stalking the Others

by Jess Haines

  He fell to all fours and loped out of the kitchen into the room he’d been watching from, where it was dark and presumably safe. His claws left furrows in the tile. I followed, moving with a kind of single-mindedness I’d only experienced once before, while chasing after Kimberly.

  Hopefully she was here, too, so I could finish what I started with her back in the park.

  Dillon was hauling ass, but I never once thought he’d escape me. When I reached the doorway, I tucked the stake away and drew my gun. In the back of my head, I knew we were moving at hyperspeed, but it felt like everything was moving in slow motion. He sailed over a couch, forepaws landing with a heavy thud that I felt through the soles of my boots. In that short span of time, I’d already locked on my target and popped off a round aimed at the back of his left leg.

  He made a sound I barely heard, his hind leg collapsing under him as he landed. It wouldn’t hold his weight with the silver frying all of the nerve endings in his upper thigh.

  As he twisted around, I calmly put a bullet in his other leg, shattering his right kneecap. He curled up on himself with a shriek, so I walked around the couch and pressed my boot into his thick neck. He made a gasping, choking sound, wildly rolling eyes widening as I lowered the gun until it was aimed at his temple. From this close, I couldn’t possibly miss.

  “Why did you have to make it this easy?” I asked, distantly noting how cold and lifeless my voice sounded to my own ears. “Why couldn’t you have at least put up a good fight?”

  The Were swung one arm, as thick around as both my thighs, his closed fist slamming into my stomach and sending me into the couch. It fell over backwards, sending me with it. The gun fell out of my hand and disappeared somewhere in the dark.

  The belt loved it. My back, not so much.

  Deep inside, the power of the belt uncoiled like a serpent, flooding me with power and adrenaline. Another giant wolf shot out of the darkness toward me, and while I was still on my back, I lifted the other gun and got it right between the eyes. The body, still twitching, tumbled forward and slid into me.

  With a groan, I pushed it aside, coughing on the smoke drifting into the room from the kitchen. The fur was thick, warm, and my gloved hand came away sticky with blood.

  I staggered to my feet and pressed my palm to my forehead. All the energy rushing through my bloodstream combined with the chemical smoke and the tumble was making for a horrible head rush.

  When I focused on where Dillon had fallen, he was gone. A trail of blood and claw marks led me into the next room. Though I was swaying slightly, the vertigo faded as the object of my current obsession came back into view. He was dragging himself to stairs leading up to the next floor.

  He pulled himself one slow, painful step at a time, his talons digging into the stairs one by one. I came up behind him on silent feet, so quiet and swift that he didn’t notice me until my hands were in his scruff and hauling him back to the first floor. His claws hooked into the wood, trying to stay put, but with the help of the combined rage and strength I was channeling from the belt, he took most of the step with him when I threw him against the wall. It buckled and cracked under the impact, and he lay where he fell, luminous green eyes blinking stupidly up at me as I descended upon him like an avenging angel.

  His eyes drifted shut once I was close enough to stand over him, the tips of my boots stopping at the growing pool of blood. The thick crimson liquid kissed the edge of my steel toes, seeped between the treads.

  I knelt down, waiting until Dillon opened his eyes again to look at me. Waited for the dilated irises to focus.

  “Dillon,” I said, soft, gentle, just loud enough to be heard over his labored panting, “I want you to know that I did this for me. For my family. For Jim Pradiz. For everyone else whose lives you ruined or took, whether I knew them or not. You’re never going to hurt anyone again.”

  He blinked and made a faint whining sound in his throat. The sound of a lost puppy.

  It was the last sound he made before I shoved the silver stake into his heart.

  “Shia, no!”

  That anguished, broken voice came moments too late. Not that I would have stopped. Thick, almost black heart’s blood dripped off the tip as I pulled it free, dulling the metallic sheen of the silver. My fingers tightened on the leather grip until it squeaked as I slowly got to my feet and turned around, lifting my eyes to focus on the figure at the head of the stairs.

  He was dressed only in jeans, his bare toes curled over the edge of the top step and his crystalline blue eyes wide with shock. That tousled blond hair was sticking up in all directions, in desperate need of a trim, his tanned chest and arms thick with hair, and his jaw covered with stubble. Maybe he’d just shifted back to human. Or maybe he’d been on the run for so long that he hadn’t been able to see to those simple, mundane necessities of personal grooming. It didn’t matter. Even now, after all he had done, he was beautiful, a golden god among mortal men.

  He stood there, watching me, unmoving as I approached. My world narrowed down to a tunnel. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else existed for me. The patter of the liquid dripping off the stake in my hand. The stink of Were and smell of burning things, stinging my eyes. The embers floating like fireflies, winking in the space between us. None of it.

  I’d found Chaz.

  Chapter 20

  He stayed frozen in place as I stalked up the stairs. I had eyes only for him. I didn’t even realize I’d tried to stab him with the stake until I felt a sudden shooting pain in my wrist, noticed his hand had closed around my arm and his fingers had dug into my tendons until the silver thudded against the floor and rolled down the steps.

  A sound bordering on a sob died in my throat as I rounded my other fist and threw a punch at his jaw. It connected, the silver studs on my knuckles cutting into his cheek, throwing his head to one side.

  With a snarl, he yanked me up into his arms, trapping me against his chest as he pulled me onto the landing. “Jesus Christ, what the fuck’s gotten into you? Are you on vampire blood again?”

  I squirmed and fought, landing a pretty decent blow to his nuts before he slammed me against the wall hard enough for a couple framed pictures to fall and shatter at our feet. The belt was a huge help, but when he pinned my hands at the wrists and used his lower body to pin my legs, pressing against me like he had the right to be as intimate as a lover, his superior weight won out. Still, I struggled, my hands curled into claws as I strained to escape, hoarse sounds that might have been screams of fury passing between my clenched teeth.

  “Stop it,” he hissed, staring down at me with eyes that glowed with an inner light. “For God’s sake, stop! Listen to me! We’ve got to get out of this house or we’re going to die!”

  With an anguished moan, I shoved at him, succeeding in making him take a step back to readjust his position. I had to get him off of me. Had to. If I didn’t, I’d die, and he would live, and all of this would have been for nothing.

  His shock was fading. Calculation was setting in. He looked down at me as though he’d never seen me before, while all I saw was a lying, cheating, murderous scumbag—a walking plague upon this earth.

  “Shia,” he whispered, “what’s happened to you?”

  I headbutted him. He reeled back with a curse, letting me go so he could press a palm to his forehead. With a sweep of my leg, he fell on his ass with a startled yelp.

  At that point, I was too far gone to think to use any weapon but my hands. I fell on him in a straddle, one hand under his jaw to hold him in place, the other settling into a steady rhythm of pounding his stupid, perfect face into the back of his skull.

  He flailed under me, struck me, but I barely felt it, even though I heard a distinct crack that came from somewhere inside my own body. It wasn’t until he loosed a roar and rolled that I stopped, and then only to catch my balance as I arched my body to avoid his grasping hands.

  I fell onto my back and shot a kick at his jaw as he surged to his knees. His head s
napped to the side, blood spraying the wall and a tooth rolling across the floor. His lip lifted in a gap-toothed snarl, and his eyes literally glowed with rage. He hefted himself up on his arms, and then to his feet, the floor shuddering under his weight with each heavy step.

  He was after me now.

  Once again, that deadly calm stole over me. I knew what needed to be done. I knew neither of us was going to live through this.

  His nails were growing—not quite talons, not yet—as he reached down to grab hold of me. With a sinuous twist, I avoided his grasp, moving out of the way and landing a sucker punch just below his ribs. He gasped and rounded on me with a wild swing that managed to clip my shoulder and numb my arm.

  Quietly, in the back of my head, the belt was whispering a litany (‘kill-swing-kill-kill-kill-it-duck-kill-kill’) that was like a mantra, keeping me focused through the pain and the shortness of breath. The fluid movements were mostly the handiwork of the belt. I was long beyond the point of sanity, my only desire in that moment to take Chaz down with me before I died.

  We exchanged blows. He didn’t fight dirty. I did. At one point, I had a good grip on his inner wrist with my teeth, and he made a sound that nearly busted my eardrums.

  When he clipped the side of my face with an uppercut, making my eyes water and everything wobble in my vision for a second, he seemed to come to some kind of realization about what he’d done. He grabbed my shoulders to steady me. I used the grip and his uneven footing to topple us both to the ground again, but miscalculated the distance to the stairs.

  We tumbled down in each other’s arms, the wooden steps snapping under our weight.

  Though my ears were ringing and everything hurt from that fall and my skin was stinging from the heat of the nearby fire—which had spread and was now creeping up the walls near the doorway to the kitchen—I was amazed I was alive. Chaz had put his hand behind my head on the way down so my skull wouldn’t be crushed.

  It was a terrible tactical error on his part. I might have been shaky, but I was still functioning, and the fight wasn’t over yet.

  He blinked down at me through watery eyes, his hand going to my cheek where he’d landed a good one. I stabbed him in the side with a stake while he was distracted.

  A pained howl was torn out of his throat, and he flung himself to the side, grabbing the weapon and tossing it away in the process. His palm was singed from the brief contact, even through the leather grip. I reached for another stake.

  “Chaz! Chaz, the passage is open, we can leave—”

  Kimberly’s voice abruptly cut off as she noted exactly what he was up to. Seeing her readjusted my priorities a tad, considering he was down for the count. She must have escaped from Isabelle when the Moonwalker chased her in Central Park.

  The shock on her features, combined with the new angle of her formerly pert and perfect nose and the scarring on her cheek from the silver I’d pressed against her in the park, made my day. I gave her a bloody smile, spitting some of the copper taint out of my mouth before advancing on her. She squealed and retreated back into the basement she’d been hiding in, slamming the door behind her.

  Just before I could reach the knob, Chaz grabbed me around the waist and flung me back, sending me skidding over the floor until my head and spine connected painfully with the wall. It was hot enough to the touch that the heat of it was burning my back through the armor. Everything went dim for a few seconds, and my body ached abominably, but I was conscious enough to keep going.

  There were stars in my eyes as he limped closer, but I still got to my feet, ready to meet him. He eyed me warily, his fists up in a defensive position, but made no move to strike me again.

  “Listen,” he said, voice thick and raspy from blood and smoke, “just stop for a minute. Stop it! I don’t know what the fuck bug has crawled up your ass, but you’re going to knock it off and come with us. You hear me? You’re not dying in this house. I want to know how you found me, why you’re doing this, and what the hell you have to do with the hunters outside when you’re so obviously tainted with Other blood.”

  Tainted. There was a word for it. I was tainted all right.

  ‘Tainted with the blood of thy enemies, perhaps, but you have the upper hand here. He wouldn’t be calling for a truce if he thought he could win by force. Take him now. Don’t let him get away.’

  My chest heaved, every breath burning both inside and out. I used my arm to wipe some sweat and blood off my brow, flinging sweaty curls out of my eyes. Chaz took another step closer, edging nearer bit by bit, while blood turned black from silver taint slowly leaked down his side, staining his jeans.

  “I don’t care if it’s the vampire, Shia. I really don’t. I don’t want you to die in here. Come with me.”

  I blinked slowly, not quite processing that last. My jaw hurt, the words coming out haltingly and with a wince or two in between. “What do you mean, ‘if it’s the vampire’? What the hell are you talking about?”

  He waved some of the smoke out of his face, then held out his hand. “Whoever made you Other. You smell more like him than like a Were. Come on, let’s go!”

  I ignored the offered hand. Stepped closer, fingers twitching above the handles of the stakes. Had to wait to use them until I was close enough that he couldn’t stop me.

  “Dillon changed me. Dillon infected me,” I spat.

  That seemed to throw him through quite a loop. Hell, I almost believed his nonplussed expression, though it was a little hard to see under the mass of cuts and bruises on his face. “What?”

  “You heard me. Don’t tell me you didn’t see it in the papers. The picture Pradiz snapped of my being scratched back at the cabins. Dillon did it, Chaz. If not for your fucked-up pack, and their fucked-up politics, and your fucked-up sense of responsibility, my life wouldn’t be a complete fucking mess right now. J.P. would be alive. You and your whole goddamned pack have a lot to answer for.”

  He stared at me, thunderstruck.

  It gave me the opportunity to step in close enough to draw a stake and go for his chest, hopefully to land a clean kill as I had with Dillon.

  Chaz twisted his torso back, avoiding the killing blow, though the sharp tip still sliced him open across the chest. He slapped my hand aside, then rushed at me, nearly cracking my ribs as he slammed me into the wall again.

  Embers and flaming bits of plaster rained down on us, stinging my eyes, burning my cheeks. He ignored the pain he must have been feeling from the fire licking at his skin, one large palm holding my head steady so I had no choice but to look into his eyes. He had to blink away blood from the cuts I’d inflicted when I’d whaled on his face. His voice was a low, husky growl, and I could see the tips of upper and lower fangs peeking through his lips as he spoke.

  “Listen to me, Shiarra, and listen good. My pack isn’t perfect. Never claimed it was. But we’re not murderers. I know who killed Jim Pradiz, and I’ve been trying to find him for the last three weeks so I can clear myself. This isn’t the time or the place for me to explain all this to you. Stop fighting, now, and come with me!”

  All the while, the belt was speaking, too.

  ‘See how he lies. What story do you think he’s cooked up to save his ass this time? Do you think it’s as convincing as what he tried to tell you about why he was sleeping around behind your back? I wonder ...’

  Blinded by tears of rage, I lashed out, renewing my earlier attack of punching, kicking, and biting, even though I wasn’t in a good position for it. He’d never stop lying. He’d never stop trying to find a way to make me fit into the mold of stupid, human girlfriend. From the very beginning, all he’d ever done was lie and cheat and manipulate me. And I hated that I was so dizzy I could barely stand up, choking from the smoke in the air, my vision blurred with tears and ashes.

  ‘just a little more. Find that well of strength. The one deep down. Right near your heart. Draw on it.’

  Sobbing, I struck at Chaz with all the force I could muster, though everything w
as going hazy and black at the edges. All he did was hold my upper arms so I couldn’t hit him too hard or grab one of the stakes or guns again. I was on the verge of passing out, and even with the belt’s help, I wasn’t coming back from that precipice. Still, I kicked at him, each strike a little slower and less powerful than the last. Mostly I went for his shins and knees, hoping that would force him to step back and give some ground.

  ‘You’re wearing yourself out. Concentrate. Think. Aim for his weakest spot.’

  I went for another cheap shot between his legs, lifting my knee, but he swiveled his hips to avoid it, then shook me like a rag doll. As much as I wanted to claw his eyes and tear his heart out with my bare hands, then feed it to him with a rusty spoon, the trip down the stairs and the last blow to my head had damaged me somehow, or I’d inhaled too much smoke.

  I’d failed. It was so hard to breathe. My muscles were weakening, going slack, one by one.

  ‘Don’t stop. Don’t! Live, damn it, you fucking rookie, you have to live!’

  The heat was so intense that the tears on my cheeks were drying almost as quickly as they leaked from my eyes. My hair was getting singed; the smell was awful, even beyond the way the burning building already smelled. I couldn’t see a thing anymore, but I kept trying to strike out any which way I could.

  Of course, that’s when my muscles seized on me. A strange lethargy was eating away at my energy, sapping what little was left until I could no longer move. Even the effort to take a breath was becoming impossible.

  This was it. This was really it. I was dying.

  Distantly, I felt Chaz picking me up, but I could no longer see or fight against that hated touch. Wasn’t sure if I cared enough to fight anymore. Even with all the belt had to offer, after all my hard work, after weeks of hunting and worrying and going insane with the need for revenge and closure, I’d failed.

  ‘No. NO. I will not accept defeat. Not this close. Get up. Get up!’