Caretaker

by Laken Cane

  Something, something…

  I turned and jogged away, my heart racing. I felt her.

  And she was close.

  Now that I’d caught it, I couldn’t imagine how I hadn’t found it in the first place. It was there, it was obvious, and it was strong.

  There were a few people out—as the vampires had begun dying, some of the humans had decided to start braving the night once again—and they hurried to move out of my way when I neared them.

  I passed a bar, and the few people who stood in front of it, cigarettes in hand, watched me go. A couple of them called out, but I barely heard them.

  My mind was on the clean blood of the judge’s wife.

  We didn’t see one single vampire.

  I ran until I reached the railroad tracks, hesitated briefly, then jogged over the tracks and into Galangal, one of the more questionable neighborhoods of the city. It was not a place Mrs. Madalyn Bennett would ever have gone. Not on her own.

  I stopped, finally, and paced in circles while waiting for my breathing to slow. Honestly, I was surprised I wasn’t more winded than I was. I guess a good healthy dose of vampire spit would do that for a person.

  Shane dropped the strap of his shotgun over his head, then stood with his arms crossed, staring toward the brightness of the minimart across the street. He wasn’t winded either, but I wasn’t about to ask him if vampire spit had done that for him.

  When I took off once again, Shane was right behind me. I felt his heat as intensely as I felt the pull of Madalyn’s scent.

  We jogged down the street after street, cut through the parking lot of the closed Galangal Shoe Mart, then trudged up the bank of the woods at the back of the store.

  I sighed. “Of course she’s in the woods.” I hadn’t had a lot of good things happen in woods. It was the place for vampires, blood, violence, secrets.

  It was a place of death.

  I had no reason to think it would be any different that night. I pulled Silverlight from her sheath as Shane and I slowed to a walk.

  A few minutes later I stopped walking and lifted my nose, scenting the air, my stomach tight with expectation.

  Madalyn’s scent couldn’t have been stronger if I’d been standing next to her.

  “She’s here.” I turned in a circle, nervous, irritated. “Somewhere.”

  Shane grunted, back to his usual noncommittal self. But he walked, shotgun in his hands, his stare on the ground, searching for tracks.

  Her scent swirled around me like I was standing right on top of her, and the frustration of not being able to see her was overwhelming. “Shit! Where is she? Where the hell is she?”

  I clenched Silverlight so tightly she gave a tiny flash of light, as though irritated at my tight hold. I eased up and grabbed my flashlight, joining Shane in the search.

  It was like a fierce itch I couldn’t scratch because I couldn’t find it, and the longer I couldn’t grasp it, the more anxious I became. The itchier.

  I whirled, undecided, unable to figure out which way to go. I dropped the flashlight and it bounced, flickered, and went out, and I couldn’t see it in the light from a stingy moon. Something sliced into my finger as I moved my hand frantically over the ground, searching for the flashlight, only not really. I was searching for Madalyn. I had to scratch that itch, or I might die.

  I jumped to my feet, shaking the blood from my finger, panting. “Son of a bitch,” I yelled. My insides quivered, my thoughts were a chaotic scramble, and my emotions flew from rage to tears to fear. I spiraled out of control. I spiraled fast.

  Shane grabbed my shoulders, his fingers biting into my flesh. “Quiet.”

  His voice was sharp in the dark stillness—the only sounds were distant swishes of car tires on pavement and the occasional blast from an angry horn—and it made my brain stutter to a halt immediately.

  It reset me, that voice.

  “Your nose is outpacing your brain,” he murmured. “You just need to be quiet and get your mind straight.”

  I pushed Silverlight back into her sheath, then grasped his wrists and took a deep breath, then another, then another, and the furious storm inside me began to calm.

  “What’s wrong with me?” My voice was steady, and I was no longer jumping out of my skin. I stared at him, at his dark face, concentrating on only him. His warmth, the feel of his skin beneath my fingers, his soft breathing.

  He grinned, then shrugged. “Just growing pains, baby hunter.”

  “Growing pains,” I echoed. “Yes.”

  “All right, then. Now. Madalyn was here. Find her.”

  I let go of his arms, stepped back, then turned around and walked a few yards away. There was a tree, a hickory tree, and caught in its bark, a little below my eye level, were a few strands of long, blonde hair, and the dark stain of blood.

  Madalyn’s blood.

  I’d found her.

  Chapter Eleven

  I clenched my fists, fighting off tears of frustration. “She can’t be dead.”

  “This doesn’t mean she’s dead.” Shane turned his flashlight on the blood and hair, then played the light over the ground around the tree. “We’ll find her, Trinity.”

  I moved away from the tree and tried to latch onto her scent trail, but the blood on the tree was too strong. “I’ll have to get away from this tree,” I said. “It’s all I can smell.” I’d get better over time. I was new at tracking humans, and with practice, I had no doubt I’d improve. But that didn’t help me right then.

  I turned my flash on and took a picture of the clump of hair and blood. “I’ll send this and the location to the captain.”

  But just before I hit send, I hesitated.

  In the end, I slid my phone back into my pocket, text unsent. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do, but Angus was my priority. I didn’t want to hand law enforcement any information that might lead them to Madalyn. Not yet.

  “Let’s go,” I said wearily. “I need to pick up her trail and find out where she went from here.”

  But he shook his head. “We need water. We passed a market on our way in.”

  “You go. It isn’t far. I’ll follow her trail.” I drew Silverlight. “You can catch up.”

  “Trinity—”

  “No.” My voice, sharp and angry, seemed out of place in the quiet woods. I lowered it, but I was no less adamant. “No, Shane.”

  Still, he stood, undecided.

  “Go,” I said, quietly. “I’m a bloodhunter. I’m going to own that shit.” I tried for a smile, but I was too damn serious to smile.

  It might have seemed like a small thing, but it was not.

  “If you need me,” I added, “call me.”

  While he stood watching me, emotions warring in his eyes, I turned and jogged away. And at that moment, I grew up a little.

  I had to have confidence in myself. If I didn’t, no one else ever would.

  And I wasn’t afraid.

  I caught the trailing ends of Mrs. Bennett’s scent and grabbed hold, and then there was nothing but the job.

  I flew over the ground, riding the ribbon of her scent like a magic carpet, almost certain I’d find her at the end of it. Something had changed when Shane helped me get a grip on the overwhelming power. I had control of it, and I was calm.

  Silverlight flared to life as I ran. Vampires were close. Likely not many, and likely too ill to be a threat, but the sword sensed them, and she was ready.

  Fifteen minutes later, the scent began to weaken—five minutes after that, I lost it completely. I backtracked, picked up the thread once more, then followed it down the hill, a few miles from where we’d started, and lost it at the highway.

  After she’d been taken from her home, she’d been taken to those woods, and she’d been injured there. Why had her abductors brought her there, to those woods?

  I lifted my nose to the wind and finally caught a delicate hint of her scent, wafting down the highway. I couldn’t follow on foot—that would have taken forever.
/>
  I turned to jog down the side of the highway, pulling my cell from my pocket as I ran. “Meet me at the gas station,” I told Shane when he answered. “We’ll have to go back for the truck.”

  He was waiting for me when I reached the station, his legs crossed at the ankle, leaning against the front of the store, his shotgun slung over his shoulder. He held two bottles of water and as I neared him, he tossed me one of them.

  “I lost her on the highway,” I told him, after chugging down half the cool water. “I think she was injured and then was carried down out of the woods and put into a car. Her scent is here…” I gestured broadly. “In the city. I can still smell traces of her. I just have to find her.”

  The little minimart had a few customers, and there were four cars in the lot. Two were at the pumps filling up, and as we stood there, another one pulled in. People glanced at us and then away, leaving us to our business.

  “Why would they have taken her to the woods?” Shane pulled a protein bar from his pocket and when I shook my head, he ripped open the wrapper and began to eat the protein himself.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “There’s nothing in those woods but sick vampires. No place to stash a human woman.” And with her blood all over the trunk of a tree, the vampires would have gone nuts. They’d have gobbled her right up.

  “They couldn’t have known she was a clean human before they took her,” he said.

  “No,” I agreed. “I mean, they could have, but I doubt they did. I don’t think that’s why she was taken.”

  Two young women, a blonde and a redhead, walked out of the store, laughing, then glanced over and did a double take when they saw us standing there.

  I sighed when they started toward us. They’d probably recognized me.

  “You’re still here,” the blonde squealed, then grabbed Shane’s arm. “And you still have that very, very large…shotgun.”

  He smiled down at her like she’d said the cleverest thing he’d ever heard, and that was just wrong. Shane was rude, angry, and a complete hardass. He didn’t smile at bubbly, flirty girls who made stupid innuendos about his shotgun.

  “We have to go,” I said, but it was like I wasn’t even there.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to go for that drink?” the redhead asked him, walking her fingers up his chest.

  “Come on,” the blonde said. “Please? Pretty please? One little bitty drink.”

  They were being rude. For all they knew, Shane was mine. I didn’t want to put my hands on them, because that would have caused a whole thing, but they were getting perilously close to making me lose my temper.

  As was Shane.

  He winked at the redhead, then patted the blonde’s hand. “I’m working.” Finally, he glanced at me. “Right, boss?”

  Boss. I clenched my fists. “I am.” I turned on my heel and jogged away. “Asshole.”

  And two minutes later, he was at my side. He took my arm. “Slow down, baby hunter. You’re wearing me out.”

  I jerked away from him and jogged a little faster.

  “Why are you mad?” he asked.

  “I’m not mad.”

  “Really? Because you seem a little pissed off to me.”

  “You’re mistaken.”

  But I was pissed off. I didn’t like what I’d seen back there. I didn’t like those girls touching him. I didn’t like it at all.

  But I had absolutely no right to my possessiveness or my jealousy.

  “So did you get their phone numbers?” I asked, nastily. “Did you line up a date?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I did.”

  I stopped and when he stopped with me, I poked him in the chest with a stiff finger. “You were just now trying to get me into bed.”

  He frowned. “I was?”

  I gaped. “The dinner you cooked for me. You offered yourself for dessert!”

  He put his fist to his lips, and I realized he was trying not to laugh at me.

  “You’re an asshole,” I said, flatly, then walked away. “Do what you want.”

  “There isn’t a man alive who believes he should do what he wants when a woman tells him to.” His arm brushed mine as we walked, and I shivered.

  Five minutes later I once again came to a halt. “Give me the phone number.”

  “She wrote it on my hand.”

  “Of course she did,” I said scornfully. I twisted the lid off my water, took his fingers in mine, then upended the bottle over his hand.

  He didn’t say a word as I rubbed the phone number—and the little smiley face—off his skin.

  We didn’t speak all the way back to his truck.

  When we sat in the dark warmth of the truck cab, I finally looked at him. “You can’t do that. No phone numbers, dates, one night stands. You can’t do any of that. Not if you want to stay here with me.”

  He nodded. “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “I knew the moment we had sex in the woods.”

  I squinted. “You knew what, exactly?”

  His smile was slow and filled with heat. “That you’re not the type to share.”

  “Oh.” My mouth went dry, and I regretted using all my water on the offending ink stains.

  “Baby hunter.” He ran the soft pad of his thumb over my lips. “You want to get naked with me?”

  “Yes,” I whispered. “I really do.”

  He dragged me across the seat and into his arms, and I forgot the girls, my jealousy, and my anger. I was in Shane Copas’ arms, and there was simply no room for anything else.

  Chapter Twelve

  He wasn’t angry at my possessiveness. On the contrary, he seemed pleased. Quite pleased. Maybe he’d played me to get me to claim him, and maybe that pleased me.

  The last time we’d had sex, we’d been high on the aftereffects of a bloody, vicious battle and filled with a little madness and bloodlust. Now, there was only lust.

  He buried his fingers in my hair, tilted my head, then lowered his lips to mine. He kissed me like he wanted to crawl inside me, like there was nothing else in the world as vital as that kiss.

  He kissed me like he’d wanted to kiss me for years and had just gotten the green light. He devoured me with that kiss.

  Desire, sharp and hot, shot through me, tightening my belly, speeding my heart, and making me wonder why I’d forced myself to wait.

  We were parked on the street in front of the judge’s house, and though that realization gave me pause, the wrongness of it made me even more excited. I never said I wasn’t a freak.

  But finally, he pulled away.

  “I’m taking you home with me.” His breath caught and his voice was ragged and strained, but he gave me a little push. “Buckle up.”

  Sliding away from him might have been the hardest thing I’d ever done. I jerked the belt across my chest, and finally, he took it from me to shove it home when I took too long to fasten it.

  I didn’t want anything taking my attention from him and what was about to happen, so I called Frank Crawford’s cell phone. I wanted to keep Madalyn’s encounter with the tree trunk to myself, because the crime scene could easily lead the cops to her before I had a chance to find her.

  But she could be out there somewhere, injured. Dying. And I couldn’t keep information away from the very people who might be able to save her. I’d thought I could, but I couldn’t.

  When Frank didn’t answer I left a message, explaining exactly what I’d found and where I’d found it. I also texted him the photo I’d taken, then slid the phone back into my pocket, my conscience clear. Sort of.

  The ride there was a blur. I couldn’t look away from Shane. He was mine, and I felt it with every part of my body, my heart, my mind.

  He was my hunter.

  I’d never been inside his place. I’d assumed he stayed in Bay Town, but he sped to an apartment complex a few miles from the building I’d lived in before I’d moved in with Angus.

  He led me into his apartment and to his b
edroom, placed his shotgun on the dresser, then turned to me.

  He watched me, his stare dark and fierce, his hands at his sides.

  It was like I had to slog through quicksand to reach him. My legs were heavy, sweat trickled between my breasts, my heart pounded. I was nervous, excited, impatient. I was full of need.

  My hands shook as I unbuckled his weapons belt. I let it drop to the floor, then began searching for and removing his weapons, one by one. I knelt and pulled a knife from one boot, a small holstered gun from the other, then unlaced his boots and waited for him to kick them off.

  I ran my hands up his legs, then cupped the bulge at the front of his pants.

  “Is that a weapon?” I asked.

  He stared down at me. “If you want it to be.”

  I wet my dry lips with the tip of my tongue. “Not this time.”

  He hauled me to my feet, his fingers hard on my upper arms. “Whatever you need.”

  I slipped my hand under his shirt, concentrating on the feel of his warm, smooth skin beneath my fingertips. I rubbed my thumb over a raised scar, then pushed his shirt over his chest. He was wearing too many clothes, and I wanted to look at him.

  He lifted his arms, helping me, and when his shirt was gone, I ran my hands over his ribs and then dipped my fingers into the waistband of his pants.

  He sucked in a breath but said nothing as I unfastened them and slid them over his hips. He stepped out of them, kicked them away, then stood in his boxers while I swept his body with a hungry stare.

  I reached out to touch the flatness of his stomach, then bent forward to kiss the small, long-healed scar to the right of his navel. “How did you get this?”

  He cleared his throat. “Knife fight.”

  I licked my way up his abdomen, stopping at two old scars that slashed over his ribs.

  “Wolf,” he murmured.

  I straightened and spread my fingers over his chest, where scars, faded and thin, lay like silver tattoos on his flesh.

  “Vampires, mostly.”

  “So many scars,” I said. Maybe I was hoping to prepare him for the scars that decorated my own body.