Shadow Hunter (The Execution Underground)

by Kait Ballenger

  He stroked the soft tresses of her hair and watched the rise and fall of her chest.

  Stunning.

  He shook his head. What was she doing with someone like him?

  A lump lodged in his throat as he thought of the last words in the final letter she’d sent him. They were burned permanently into his mind and his heart.

  I don’t know how you can miss a person you’ve never met, but somehow, I miss you every day.

  With love,

  Tiffany xoxox

  He knew that after Mark’s death the Execution Underground had given her as many details as they could, to help her achieve closure, which meant she knew he could’ve saved Mark, but he failed. There was no way she didn’t know. She’d never answered a single one of his letters after that.

  Careful not to wake her, he slipped out from beneath her and rested her head on one of his pillows. He made quick work of throwing on some clothes before he headed downstairs. They’d slept most of the day away, and now, with sundown not far away, his workday was about to start.

  He thought of the time he’d spent with Tiffany last night. Already he’d been neglecting his job, making love to her instead of closing in on Caius or searching for the vampire who was killing innocent women. There were so many things wrong with this situation. Images of partially devoured corpses, the awakening bloodsucker’s kidney exploding with green acid and the way the vamp in the alley had guarded the body, flooded his mind.

  He punched in the security code for his tech room, and the heavily reinforced door unlocked. He shoved it open, stepped into the room, flopped into his chair and dialed Chris’s number. The monitor beeped on, and Chris stepped in front of the camera.

  “Hey, man—”

  Damon interrupted him. “Green acid came out of his kidney.”

  Chris’s eyes widened. “What? Whose—”

  “After you told me about the killing I went and located the body. The guy was in his thirties, fit, already drunk from, and chewed up like the girl was, only his arm this time. Then a vamp jumped from the shadows and started guarding the body like it was a three-course meal.”

  Chris shook his head. “This is fucked up, Damon.”

  Damon nodded. “It gets worse—and stranger, too. There was an abnormal amount of blood left at the scene, wasted, which a newly turned vampire wouldn’t even be capable of leaving. They’d be way too hungry. The vamp that attacked us was newly turned, which means it wasn’t the one who took the guy out. Baby bloodsuckers don’t have that much strength.”

  Chris ran a hand through his short blond hair. “What do we do next?”

  Damon held up a hand. “There’s more. After the vamp was dead, I brought the victim’s corpse back here to examine. His kidney had green acid in it, too. It nearly burned my damn hand off.”

  Chris started pounding at his keyboard. “That’s not normal, Damon. That’s bad, really bad.”

  “That’s not all.”

  Immediately Chris stopped typing and looked at Damon.

  “The dead guy turned into a vamp an hour later. Had to stab him in the heart. He exploded like a blood bag.”

  Chris’s mouth fell open. “Only an hour later? That’s barely a fraction of the normal transformation period. You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Damon leaned forward. “Wish I was.”

  Chris buried his face in his hands. “And to add fuel to the fire, I got in five new reports for your area last night.”

  Five? Rage filled Damon’s chest, and his hands clenched into fists. “What?”

  Chris raised his head. “It’s not what you think. Not vamp news.”

  Damon sat in silence, waiting for Chris to elaborate.

  Chris let out a long sigh and swore. “I hate to tell you this, but Rochester is swamped with supernatural predators. There are reported werewolf sightings, possibly a full-on pack, there are demons lodged so deep the people they’ve possessed are pretty much done for, there are several small witch covens, loads of non-werewolf shifters—oh, and that’s not even including all the poltergeists and ghosts reported in the old abandoned asylum.”

  They both sat in silence, uncertain what to say. Words couldn’t express what deep shit Damon was in. Welcome to Rochester.

  Chris cleared his throat and broke the silence. “You know you can’t handle all that on your own.”

  Damon clenched his teeth and slammed his fist onto the desk. He wasn’t ready to lead another division, not given the way he’d failed Mark. But the laundry list of supernatural waste Chris had just dished out was far more than any hunter could handle on his own. The Execution Underground trained all their members to deal with a variety of supernatural creatures, but then headquarters assigned each hunter a species and conditioned them into elite specialists. Damon excelled across the board and was one of the few who’d been granted their choice of specialization. But none of that would do him any good in hunting other beasts full-time. There were too many. Per his choice, hunting vampires was his only true purpose.

  He clenched his fists, and fought down his frustration and anger. “Send me a list of prospective hunters for every type of monster we have in the city. I’ll look through them, pick a team and put in a request to headquarters.”

  He wanted to bash his fist into a wall. He’d thought coming to Rochester would let him work alone, since there were no other hunters in the area and until now there hadn’t been all that much paranormal activity. But not even New York City was drowning in as many supernatural predators as Rochester suddenly was. He’d landed in the exact situation he’d been trying to avoid: being the lead hunter of an entire division.

  “You got it,” Chris said. “But let’s focus on one thing at a time. I ran those samples, but I was only able to determine one thing. Something caused a mutation in the vampire’s saliva, which probably means the vampires themselves have morphed into something new. The weird thing is that the mutation has a lot of similarities to a human virus.”

  If Damon had been a more lighthearted man, he might have laughed. “The vampires are sick?”

  “Yes. I think somehow they’re passing around some sort of virus, and that’s causing the strange behaviors you described. But based on the change in their DNA, I think it’s only being passed on to newly turned vamps. Maybe it has to happen at the moment when a new vamp is made, and that’s why the old ones can’t get it. I have no idea what the original source could be, though. Does any of this fit what you’re thinking?”

  Damon ran his hand over his hair. “Not sure. If the vampires have a virus, the weird behaviors make sense. But what about the dead guy turning so quickly? It only took an hour for him to turn and regular vampire gestation is at least a month, sometimes longer, when buried in the ground. He shouldn’t have changed that quickly.”

  Chris started typing again. “The virus could be causing a genetic mutation in their makeup and speeding up the transformation process.”

  Damon rested his head in his hands. “So we have sick vampires running around who are mutating into zombielike monsters. But that doesn’t explain why a newborn vampire would leave blood. Once a baby vamp bites, it doesn’t detach until the person’s drained, and this guy wasn’t.”

  Chris gave a single nod.

  Damon finished his thought. “But a stronger vamp could do that.”

  Chris stared at him. “You’re thinking an older vamp is killing these people and then feeding the leftovers to the baby zombie vamps?”

  If an older vampire was controlling younger ones within the Rochester city limits, there was a clear culprit. Damon and Chris exchanged knowing looks. They didn’t need to say it aloud to know they were on the same page.

  Caius Argyros Dermokaites.

  * * *

  TIFFANY YAWNED AND stretched as her eyes flickered open. She blinked away t
he sleep from her vision and rolled over. Sitting up in bed, she glanced around the bedroom. No Damon. She flopped back into the pillows and let out a long sigh.

  Holy smokes, the things they’d done...

  A sweet ache pulsed through her core. The slight soreness was just enough to remind her of every move they’d made between the sheets. She’d never thought she would have been capable of anything even close. A small smile crept over her face.

  She’d never thought her first time would be with a strong handsome hunter, though if she’d been the kind of girl to daydream of the perfect man, Damon or someone like him—someone like B—would have been the star of her fantasies. The members of the Execution Underground were brave warriors, the soldiers of the supernatural world, and Damon embodied everything the E.U. stood for. He was strong, intelligent, skilled, ruthless and passionate. Wow. She’d never been one for the sappy stuff, but the thought of the night they’d spent together gave her butterflies.

  She stood and stripped one of the sheets from the bed. Wrapping it around herself, she padded down the stairs. She went into the laundry room and pulled her clothes from the dryer, checking them over. Still mildly stained with blood. No surprise there, but it would have to do. She dropped the sheet and threw on her clothes before heading into the living room in search of Damon. Who wasn’t there, or in the kitchen.

  Where the heck was he?

  She heard a heavy door closing, and moments later he emerged from the downstairs hallway with a scowl twisting his face.

  “Did someone spit in your coffee?” she said.

  Without a word, he flopped down onto the sofa and buried his head in his hands.

  Tiffany raised a brow. “Okay, then. No ‘hope you slept well after that crazy time we had.’” She dropped her hands to her sides with a slight humph. Was she an idiot to expect a little sweetness? Given how tender he’d been earlier...

  “Is this city really overrun with supernaturals?” he asked, lifting his head from his hands.

  She blinked several times. “What?”

  He let out a long breath. “According to H.Q., this city is overrun with supernatural predators. Way more than just vampires. Is that right?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, pretty much. Mark never taught me anything about hunting supernaturals other than vamps, though, so I stay clear of the others.” She walked to the couch and sat down beside him.

  He glanced toward her. “How do you know they’re here, then?”

  She grinned. “Once you know of the existence of supernaturals, it doesn’t take a trained hunter to spot one. You know how it is. It might be a flash of a wolf eye here or there, or just a strange feeling when you encounter someone. I’ve learned never to ignore my instincts.”

  A moment of silence passed between them. She waited for him to speak. When he didn’t, she finally cleared her throat and asked, “Why does it matter?”

  “I need to assemble a division of hunters.”

  Her eyes widened. “So you mean there’s going to be a whole load of you guys here in Rochester now?”

  He nodded. “Five others.” He got up off the couch and walked across the room. His demeanor matched his distant tone.

  She knew he had a lot on his mind, but after last night she...well...she wasn’t really sure what she’d expected, but more than this, anyway. Damon’s skills between the sheets made the guys in the romance novels she read look like bumbling idiots. But out of bed, cold and distant was his default setting.

  “What’s so bad about that? About bringing in other hunters?”

  Damon ignored her question. “We’ve got worse things to worry about. The results of the samples I sent to headquarters arrived. The bloodsuckers have some sort of virus they’re passing between them. That’s what’s making them act like zombies and causing their victims to turn so quickly.”

  Tiffany whistled low and long. “That is not good. How are they passing it around?”

  He shook his head. “No idea. But it seems the vamps contract the disease at transition. Chances are it started from one vamp who turned someone and continued from there. I don’t know how or why, much less how to stop it, but I have to find out.”

  “If it keeps spreading, won’t the entire vampire population be overrun with these freak zombie leeches?”

  Again Damon didn’t respond. His stare was fixed and distant, and she could tell he was lost in thought. Suddenly he snapped back to attention. “If we find the source of the virus and destroy it, then we can go after all the spawn. We think the current existing vamps can’t contract it, since they’re already turned. I think one of the old ones is behind this, though—creating an army of monsters to destroy, maybe to gain more power in the vamp world, and make hunting humans easier, as well—and I think I know who it is.”

  She knew exactly what he was thinking. “If you expect to go into Caius’s nest with guns blazing, you’re out of your mind.” She stood up and walked toward him. “I have a better suggestion.” Lingering directly in front of him, she wrapped her arms around his neck, stood on her tiptoes and pulled his head toward her for a kiss. Their tongues swirled together, and immediately heat rushed between her legs. She pulled back. “I’ll kill Caius.”

  “Over my rotting corpse.” Damon wrapped his arms around her waist and raised a single brow at her. “Did you really think kissing me would get me to agree to that?”

  She shrugged. “It was worth a shot.”

  Damon let out a long sigh. “Tiffany, look—”

  “Let me finish,” she said, cutting him off. “Whether you like it or not, I know a lot more about the dynamics of this city’s vampire scene than you do. All the local vamps have their heads so far up Caius’s ass they might as well take up permanent residence. They’ll do anything he asks of them, and they’ll kill to protect him.”

  “Vampires have no loyalty. Why do you think they’re so devoted to him?”

  She crossed the room again to sit on the sofa. “Caius is a good leader, I’ll give him that. He’s good at controlling, even other vamps. He’s been here only three months when he fled here from New York City, after he killed my brother. Since Club Fantasy was already his, this was a natural place to relocate, I guess. He’d been an absent club owner before that. In only three months, he’s taken a disbanded group of rogue-like vamps and changed them into an organized nest. He must have been some sort of Roman version of Charles Manson in his day. He’s a manipulative psychopath. He was only second in command when my brother raided his nest in New York City. With the head honcho dead, Caius is the big fish now, and he takes his position very seriously.” She shot Damon a pointed look. “With so many vampires in this city, in order to kill Caius you’d have to get him alone, and in order to do that you’d need to gain his trust.” She pointed to herself. “I’ve already done that.”

  He met her stare. “What are you proposing?”

  “I’ll get back inside Caius’s inner circle. I’ll make up some excuse for having run last night, and then I’ll let you in to help me fight once I have him alone.”

  Damon shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

  She placed her hands on her hips. “Do you have a better idea?”

  He grunted in exasperation and fixed her with a hard stare. “Why do you keep trying to tempt death?”

  She scoffed. “Would you quit with that? Maybe I just want to avenge my brother, all right? How do you know I can’t—”

  He interrupted her as he walked to her side. “Even if you were completely capable of handling an ancient vampire on your own—” he narrowed his eyes “—which you’re not, I still wouldn’t want you anywhere near Caius. I don’t know what I’d do if you were hurt or if I was unable to protect you.” He placed a hand on her cheek. “Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes. You trying to fight a vampire as ancient as Caius is foolish. We both know why y
ou’re willing to risk your life. I can see your pain over your brother, and I can’t imagine how painful losing your parents to vampires at such a young age was, but there are few things worth throwing your life away over, and your family wouldn’t have wanted you to throw it away over them.”

  Her heart stopped, and her eyes widened. How did he know about...?

  She swatted his hand from her face. He froze as she stepped away. “How did you know that?” she rasped. “How did you know my parents were killed by vampires, too?”

  He didn’t respond.

  No. No. It couldn’t be.

  Damon Brock. Damon Brock. The words fell out of her mouth before she could stop herself. “Has anyone ever called you B?” No. She didn’t want to know. She couldn’t know. It would ruin everything.

  Damon flinched as if she’d struck him.

  Before she knew what she was doing, she rushed forward and shoved his chest as hard as she could. He didn’t even stagger. “Do they call you B?” she yelled.

  Tears poured down her face. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t. No. She pummeled his chest, but he didn’t move, didn’t defend himself. “Did he call you B?” she screamed.

  The muscles in Damon’s throat strained as if he could barely choke out the words. “He called me B because my last name is Brock. That’s why I signed the letters that way.”

  All sound, all movement, all feeling...stopped. Her hands shook at her sides, and her heart thumped against her chest, the sound of her own blood throbbing in her ears. Every inch of her body went numb.

  Mark had always referred to his partner as B. She never knew it was the letter for a last name. She always assumed it was his first initial.