The Kill: Book 3 in The Hunt Series

by Alainna MacPherson

  I ignored the question. “Put your sweater on. Get your stuff, just in case.”

  The two of them packed up the few things they’d pulled out of their bags, slipped the straps over their shoulders and stood up. We gathered at the door as I slowly slid it open, feeling Maeleigh’s nails digging into my back through my shirt.

  Finding the narrow hall clear, I hurriedly led them down it. Coming to the end of our car, I peered through the set of windows between it and the next. It was empty, too. Pulling open the main door to open the breezeway connecting the two cars, I waved them through. As Bri cleared the car and we all stood on the rocky platform, I felt the train begin to slow.

  “It’s them!” Maeleigh called anxiously. Turning, I followed her panicked gaze to the other car and saw them myself. There, at the end, probably having just entered, were three hunters, maybe more. I couldn’t tell because they were forced to walk in single file down the coffin-wide passage. Looking out the postage stamp of a window on the train door, I watched the ground start to slow, but it was still too fast.

  “What do we do?” Bri asked calmly.

  I turned back to look at the hunters and the one at the front locked eyes with me. Seeing his target, he started to jog, the heads of those behind him bobbing up and down as they followed. Not wasting any time, I jerked hard on the lever of the door and it slid open. Below my feet, I watched as the grass and dirt on the side of the tracks still passed by. We were probably going about thirty miles per hour. Sticking my head out to look ahead, I saw the station coming into view.

  “Come on!” I looked at Bri first. Without hesitation she leaped out, rolling before hitting the ground. “Tuck and roll as you land,” I told Maeleigh as I grabbed her shoulder and jumped out with her. She screamed, but luckily, she remembered my words and took my advice, tucking herself into a ball and rolling as she landed hard in weeds at the bottom of the small hill below the tracks. Standing up and helping Maeleigh to straighten, I watched the hunters leap out as well. There were just four of them. Whipping my head around to Bri, who was brushing the hair out of her face, I said, “We’ll have to take them out and get back on.”

  “What? But that only gives us minutes before the train departs!” I was already jogging through the low brush towards the parking lot full of cars. The sun was starting to go down, bringing the first shadows.

  “Head for the cars,” I instructed. When I looked to Maeleigh, I saw that she was just following along, having no direction at all. “We’ll have to fight them off.” At her nod I pointed to the thickest group of parked cars. “Make it quick.” For a split second I saw confusion in her face, but it quickly disappeared as understanding dawned. “We’re getting back on that train,” I informed her and she nodded.

  Keeping to the rear, making sure the girls had time to get ahead of me and in a good position to fight, I peered over my shoulder to see the hunters gaining on me. Good. Come and get me, boys, I thought.

  They didn’t wait for me to get to the cars, or for any cover whatsoever. A few feet from the first line of cars, I heard what sounded like a bull approaching. Whirling around, I watched a man with dark hair and eyes, wearing the usual black clothes and jacket, run straight for me. Before he started to jump at me, as I expected, he drew a gun from his side holster and took aim. Quick on my feet, I dodged to the side and leaped across the couple feet to the cover of a truck. A bullet hit the hood but I was already scrambling between vehicles. “Silencers!” I called out for Bri. “They’ve got guns with silencers on them. Be careful.”

  She didn’t need to answer for me to know she’d gotten the message. I felt the brush of her consciousness on mine, reassuring herself of my safety.

  I could hear their boots thud on the asphalt as they carefully but hurriedly looked around the cars. One was close. I bent low, keeping my head below the windows of the SUV I was hiding behind. After a few seconds of unnerving quiet, I chanced a peek through the passenger window, only to get an answering shot that shattered the window. Crouching, I ran towards the tail of the vehicle, scampered under the bumper and waited.

  The hunter’s footsteps were silent but I saw his shadow approaching. When he stopped in front of me, I reached out, grabbed his ankles and dragged him under. He screamed and tried to shoot towards me while at the same time clawing at the ground, the tire, the muffler. To no avail though. He was human, and I was not. I wasted no time and sunk my canines into his throat, pinching off a scream that gurgled as the last gasps of air escaped from him and he died. Leaving him there, I scrambled out from behind the car and looked around for the girls. Spotting Bri in hand-to-hand with another hunter, I made my way to her, keeping an eye out for the other two.

  Chapter Twelve

  Maeleigh

  At the other end of the lane, from under a Nissan Sentra, I watched Bri kick at the balls of the hunter she fought, which, I was sad to see, he blocked expertly. I wanted to help her but I worried I wouldn’t hear them coming. I wouldn’t be able to hear their footsteps or any guns being shot in my direction. I would be a liability. Then, from behind, a second hunter came at Bri’s back, but she was too occupied with the one in front to notice. Uncaring of the scratches and debris that was embedded in my knees and arms, I pushed my way out and up, and I raced over to her.

  I was too late. She’d fallen, the prick behind her having kicked her in the back of the knees. They didn’t see me coming, though, and the one in front of me drew his gun. Before he could point it at his target, Bri’s head, I was on him, my now massive beastlike, paw, yanking back his arm to an impossible extent. I actually felt his muscle and bone snap and his mouth opened to scream. The other hunter reached for his own weapon, but Bri had recovered. Juggling her weight over, she swung a leg out and knocked him on his ass. He still gripped his weapon.

  I tossed the guy I was holding in a torturous grip to the side, throwing him onto the hood of a new Mercedes and swiftly leaped over Bri. I landed on the hunter’s chest, pinning the wrist of his arm that was still holding the gun to the ground. Leaning in close, I snarled at him, sure that spit had sprayed. Gearden ran up just then, standing at the head of the dude I had spread-eagled on the ground. A smile of pride masked the worry but I know it was there – I felt it. Bri squeezed around me, holding a gun. Bending down, she swung at the hunter’s head, pistol whipping him.

  Leaning back, I started to climb up when I spotted the fourth hunter come around, his gun trained on Gearden. Instinct took over and I threw out my hand, launching a ball of fire, striking him in the center of the chest. I watched as he seemed to slowly fall back, the gun falling from his fingers before he landed on the hard ground. Stunned, I stared at his prone body, waiting for him to get back up. After a moment of nothing happening, Gearden stepped over him and heaved me up. “We have to go,” he said urgently, pulling me along. Bri followed close behind, having recovered our bags from where we’d stashed them under a Ford Escape.

  Gearden yelled something back to Bri and me as we ran, but I couldn’t make it out. Ahead, I could see people boarding the train again. We were about thirty feet away. “We aren’t going to make it,” I said.

  “We’ll make it.” He sounded determined, as if there was no other option except for us to be back on that train.

  We almost didn’t. We reached the platform a few seconds before they started to close the doors. A conductor spotted us and thank goddess he waved for the engineer to wait. Leaping on first, Gearden reached out to help Bri and me aboard. We found our cabin – thankfully, still vacant – and I sank down by the window. Bri dumped our bags on the floor as she flopped onto the seat across from me. Gearden remained standing as he looked out the window. I stared out as well, waiting for one of the hunters to pop up and jump onto the train or something.

  “Do you think he’d dead?” I asked absently. It was a while before he answered. I wasn’t sure if maybe he needed that time to find a way to answer that wouldn’t freak me out.

  “I think so,” he said carefully.
It wasn’t what I was hoping but I knew it was probably the truth, which I had to appreciate. Still, it didn’t do anything for the sour feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  The sudden touch of Bri’s hand on my knee had my head jerking up and away from the darkening view outside. “You did what you had to,” she told me. Her expression allowed no room for argument, which I loved her for. Taking the comfort she was offering, I squeezed her hand and held it for a few seconds.

  Then a thought came to mind. I turned to look up at Gearden and he saw the worry on my face, because he frowned at me. “What?”

  “What about the bodies?” I asked him.

  He looked at Bri then and instructed her to call her dad. With a nod, she got to work, pressing buttons on her phone, and soon she had it pressed to her ear. Meanwhile, Gearden looked back at me. “We’ll let the local territory know so they can clean up.”

  I knew all about the lycan way of “cleaning up” a site where hunters had been killed, remembering the pile of bodies after the fight with the Westboros. I didn’t like it, but the idea of the human police finding them and tracking us down unsettled me far more. It was all in self-defense, but it would be extremely hard to explain the why and how of it all without revealing what we were. Secrecy was sacred to the lycan – at least where humans were concerned.

  Holy crap! I had just considered humans as a group that didn’t include me. When the hell did that happen? It was true, yes, I wasn’t a human. I never had been. But I’d only just learned I didn’t fit the criteria. I guess it was somewhere between shooting fireballs at people and spouting fire at will.

  Bri hung up the phone and let Gearden know that Danny would be contacting the beta of the pack that lived nearest to that station. I wanted to ask how many packs there were in the country but I felt the train slow again. We were approaching our stop. More slowly this time around, I slipped on my backpack and started to stand. Gearden took the front again, ever the leader, with Bri at my back. I saw what they were doing and I loved them for it. Though they must have known that I could fend for myself, they still wanted to protect me in any way they could.

  “Did James get back to you yet on an address?” I asked, as we stepped down the steep steps, disembarking along with the rest of the passengers, like normal people, and started to weave through all the people on the platform. Gearden reached behind him, seeking for my hand, and I gave it to him. Lacing our fingers, he guided me through the station where the crowd thickened.

  “He sent a message saying where to find someone who knew Zerena’s last known whereabouts.”

  We made it out of the station a few minutes later and Gearden and Bri stepped onto the curb. I could sense the uncertainty in them, which was accompanied by the deer-in-headlights look that Bri had. It was probably safe to assume they’d never been to a city like this before. I’d never been myself, but I was accustomed to Stockton and Sacramento.

  “We need to hail a cab,” I said.

  With a nod, Gearden leaned forward to peer down the now dark street. It was busy – cars were zooming by, picking up and dropping off, and there were cabs a plenty. The only problem was claiming one before someone else did.

  “Stick your hand out. Wave them down.” Bless him, he did. Something about watching him seeming to flounder in this new world made him particularly cute just then. In a matter of seconds, a cab jerked to a halt directly in front of us and Gearden quickly opened the back door, waving us all inside. We were squeezed in pretty tight but I got the feeling that Gearden and Bri would refuse if I suggested either of them sit up front. Pack had a thing about separation. They stuck closer together when they felt insecure or out of their element. For surviving, it wasn’t a bad idea.

  The driver turned to look over his shoulder through the clear partition separating us and waited. Belatedly, Gearden shouted something and the guy wove back into traffic. Thank goodness we didn’t hit much traffic or else I would have worried for everyone else’s safety, seeing as we were thrown about against one another from all the sharp turns and stops he took along the way before stopping in front of what looked like a club. We stepped out and Gearden handed a few bills to the driver who barely waited for him to shut the door before his light was back on and he was off in search of his next fare.

  The three of us stood outside a building that stuck out like a sore thumb. Not because it looked old and neglected, but because the front of the building looked to have new stucco, painted black, matching the sleek metal door. The name of the building “Elite” seemed to float above us on its barely noticeable wire cables. I glanced over at Gearden, asking out loud to include Bri, “James said the contact was here? Do we have a name?”

  Gearden shook his head and looked down at me. “He just said to tell them that he sent us and they’d know.”

  I pursed my lips. I looked at the pristine door. I glanced at the neighboring businesses with grates pulled over some doors and bars on the windows, complete with tag art on every possible exposed surface. I then looked back at the Elite. When I stepped forward, intent on knocking on the door, Gearden stopped me, pulling me back with a hand on my upper arm. When he did that, it usually meant he was worried. Luna didn’t argue either. She felt his worry and accepted her mate telling her to stand back. “This could be vampire territory. Let me go first.”

  I nodded and stood back as he knocked on the door. The idea of seeing a vampire again kind of made my stomach turn. James was different, being a part of the Cearer, therefore automatically giving him a pass that he wasn’t going to harm me, at least not maliciously. But still, the memory of the pain I felt when the vamp who took me and held me strapped to a chair to torture me still made me break out in a sweat.

  Gearden stepped back just before the door swung open, and I tried to tamp down the panic and focus on why we were there. The guy, if you could call him that, made Dom look docile, he was so massive. I bet he had to turn to the side to go in and out of the very door he stared at us through. He wore a white t-shirt under a black sports coat, that had to have been specially tailored, and matching slacks. His head was shaved, probably that evening, judging from the shine of the sign’s blue light that bounced off it.

  He lifted a questioning brow at Gearden, which was answered but I didn’t see what was said. Having guessed it was just the name drop like James had told us to do, I was surprised that the dude in front of us backed up out of the way and waved us inside. It was dark inside and our eyes had to adjust. Once they did, I saw that it was, indeed, a club of sorts. The door faced the side wall of a massive bar that housed what could have been every type of liquor – spirits, malt, beers – and juice known to man. Someone sat near the register doing the counting while another person was cutting fruit behind the bar. In front of that was a large wide area with tables and chairs, with a couple booths in the far back corner for privacy. The light was the same blue as the sign outside but it was so low, I could barely make out anyone’s hair color.

  Stopping at the front of the bar, Baldy turned and said something to Gearden before leaving us and walking to the back of the building. I looked up at Gearden, “What did he say?”

  “To wait here.” He didn’t look down at me though when he spoke. Instead his gaze was focused on the bar. Turning to see what had caught his attention I saw that the bartender and someone who could be the manager had stopped what they were doing to stare at us. It dawned on me right then that if this were James’ contact, and we were looking for a vampire as well, it was quite possible that we had just willingly walked into a vampire’s den.

  Before I realized what I was doing, I found myself pressed to Gearden’s side. If they touched me, the pain would likely bring me to my knees. As a mated wolf, a vampire’s touch would be like acid, burning through my whole body. I remembered the simple touches of the other vampire which used to make me scream until my throat felt bloody. It still gave me nightmares. But, even for the amount of pain that it gave me, it didn’t leave a mark. The white-hot burning sens
ation would shoot through my whole system but you would never know it with the lack of evidence, except the memory.

  Before my thoughts could get any further away from me, Baldy approached us again. If he noticed the stares from his colleagues, he didn’t let on but he looked at Gearden and said something I couldn’t quite make out again. It was just too damned dark. He turned around and started walking back to where he’d just come from and Gearden stepped in line behind him. I guess we were supposed to follow him. Great, we were following the very large, maybe vampire, deeper into his maybe den.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Gearden

  The biggest dude I’d ever seen opened up a door marked “Manager” at the end of the dark hallway behind the bar. We’d passed the restrooms and possibly a janitor closet on our way and at each door I was ready to shove Maeleigh through if the guy turned to attack. He didn’t smell like a vampire, but that he was an other-worlder, I was certain of, which had my nerves on edge.

  Inside the door was a brightly, or more brightly, lit office with a standard desk, bookcase of business license folders – all appropriately labeled and organized – a chair for visitors and a large locking file cabinet behind the girl who was sitting in the oversized business chair, twisting it from side to side as she peered up at us with interest.

  “Hi there!” she welcomed, waving us in. Big dude hovered outside the door until all three of us were crowded inside and then closed the door, shutting us in. Confused, I glanced at Bri, but I could see that she was just as perplexed as I and Maeleigh were. “Want to sit?” the girl asked, looking at Maeleigh.

  When Maeleigh didn’t respond, either from not reading the invitation clearly or ignoring the woman, she looked to Bri and raised a brow.

  “She’s deaf,” Bri supplied.

  For a couple heartbeats, the girl stared at Bri, the smile plastered on her face until it became uncomfortable. Then, “I know. Did you want to sit?”