Night Hunt

by L. L. Raand

  “She won’t be far behind. That’s why I need the keys. It’s important, Dasha. Just trust me.”

  “If Niki doesn’t flay me alive, Callan will.”

  “I’ll call them both as soon as I’m on the road. I’ll explain.”

  “And the Alpha?”

  “She’ll understand.”

  Dasha heaved a sigh and dug the keys out of her jeans. “It’s fifty yards down the fire road. You ought to hurry. Niki’s not likely to let her mate get far away.”

  Sophia grabbed the keys and ran.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Just after dawn, Sophia drove down a single-lane, unpaved road that climbed through the Adirondacks overlooking Lake George. The farther she traveled from the Compound, from Niki, the more her chest ached. She pushed on—she couldn’t wait any longer to face the truth. The road ended in a small grassy clearing where tall firs shielded a rustic two-story log cabin. Just as she pulled up in front of the wide front porch, the door opened and her mother came out.

  “Sophia! What are you doing here?” Nadia frowned. “The Alpha transmitted an all-Pack general alert last night, and we still haven’t received an all clear. We’ve been waiting to go into the lab until then.”

  Sophia climbed the rough stone steps and hugged her mother. “I have to talk to you.”

  Nadia gripped her shoulders and held Sophia at arm’s length, appraising her critically. Her eyes flared. “You’re mated.”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Sophia said. “The Alpha says yes, but we haven’t…I haven’t bitten her. The bond isn’t complete.”

  Nadia gently lifted the pale blond strands from Sophia’s neck. A smile touched the corners of her mouth. “She has bitten you.” She raised an eyebrow. “She must be persuasive if she’s gotten this far. A dominant, or am I wrong there?”

  Sophia laughed. “You’re not wrong. It’s Niki.”

  Nadia caught her breath. “You’ve chosen the imperator?”

  “I think I’ve always known.”

  Nadia nodded. “Sometimes the bond is there before we even realize. It was that way for me with your father.” Nadia stroked Sophia’s cheek. “She will be a formidable mate. Her duties—and the price—will become yours.”

  “I know. I don’t care. I’m proud of her. And I love her.”

  “Of course you do.” Nadia wrapped her arm around Sophia’s waist and hugged her as the door opened and Sophia’s father came out. He looked from one to the other, his eyes questioning. Both her parents, lithe and blond and blue-eyed, looked young enough to be her siblings, and would for many decades. Her heart swelled when she looked at them. “I’m sorry I didn’t call.”

  Her father waved her words away. “Something has happened?”

  “Sophia is mated to the imperator,” Nadia said.

  Sophia’s father grunted. “She’s almost worthy of you.”

  Sophia laughed despite her fears and uncertainty. Her parents had always made her feel as if she was the most special Were in the world. “She is brave and strong and tender. She’s good to me. Good for me.”

  “She’d better be,” her father grumbled.

  “She is willing to accept me as her mate without a bite, but I want to give her that.” Sophia looked from her mother to her father. “I need to give her that. I need to understand…everything.”

  Nadia glanced at Leo.

  He nodded almost imperceptibly.

  Her mother pulled her closer. “We’ve always told you what we thought you needed to know to deal with whatever arose in your life. We weren’t certain this day would come.”

  A cold hand squeezed Sophia’s heart. “But there’s more you haven’t told me, isn’t there?”

  Her father came to stand beside her mother, sliding his fingers around Nadia’s nape. Her mother leaned into his chest as he said, “We’ve never been certain that anything we could tell you would change your situation. And there’s nothing we can tell you that would make you less our daughter, less a Were, less a valuable member of the Pack.”

  “Whatever it is, I want to…” A wave of heat brushed over her, as if the sun had suddenly fallen to earth. Her mother and father stiffened, their attention jolting to the woods. Sophia spun around just as a red-gray wolf charged from the woods and launched itself toward the porch. Her father growled and started to shift.

  “No,” Sophia cried. “It’s Niki.”

  Niki landed in the center of the porch, shedding pelt almost instantaneously. She crouched, naked, quivering with aggression that clouded the air. A rumble rose from her chest when Leo put himself between her and Sophia.

  “You trespass in my territory,” Leo snarled, “and dare to challenge me when my mate and daughter are vulnerable?”

  “I’ve come for my mate.” Niki bolted to her feet and brushed Sophia’s father aside with a twist of her shoulder, stalking Sophia.

  “How did you find me?” Sophia backed up rapidly to give herself a chance to think. Her skin tingled in response to the pheromones pouring off Niki’s body. Another second and she’d want Niki over her, Niki’s teeth in her neck. The mate bond tugged at her heart, stirred her body. She could think of nothing but Niki, feel nothing but Niki.

  “You think I can’t scent you—feel you?” Niki growled, her eyes glowing lakes of hunter green. Her canines lanced down from beneath her upper lip, sparkling like blades in the dawn sunlight. “You think you can run away from me—leave me behind and face whatever hurts you without me?”

  “Niki,” Sophia whispered, clasping Niki’s shoulders, stroking the rigid muscles in her neck. “I can’t be with you until I know.”

  “You are mine. I’m yours. Nothing else matters.”

  “It does,” Sophia cried. “I have to know. I can’t be with you and not know—”

  Snarling, Niki grasped both Sophia’s wrists and jerked her forward until their bodies clashed. She kissed her, bruising her mouth, claiming her with a slash of canines and a soothing stroke of her tongue. “I don’t care what some tests show. I’m in your blood now. You’re in mine. Nothing else matters.”

  Sophia clenched fistfuls of Niki’s hair, unable to get close enough to her. She twined her leg around the back of Niki’s thigh, cleaving to her, losing breath even as warmth and sunlight filled her. “Oh God, Niki. I love you.”

  Niki finally released her mouth and drew back, keeping one arm possessively around Sophia’s shoulders. “You’re my mate. Don’t ever run away from me again. I will always follow you. Whatever needs to be faced, we will face together. I love you.”

  Sophia rubbed her cheek against Niki’s shoulder, tears dampening Niki’s skin. “I’m sorry. I love you so much. I want to give you everything.”

  “You already do.” Niki looked at Sophia’s mother and father. “Whatever you have to say, I want to hear it with her.”

  “My daughter has chosen well,” Leo said. “Come inside, Imperator.”

  *

  Veronica stepped out of the steaming shower and wrapped a white bath sheet around her body, tucking it absently under one arm as she crossed to her bedroom. She was tired, pleasantly so. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so relaxed. She ran her fingers over the side of her neck and turned her head in front of the mirror on her dressing table to study the faint bruises on her throat. The punctures were gone; just a faint blush of the skin and tenderness remained. She rubbed her fingertip over the spot and imagined she could feel the scorching heat streaking through her again. Her nipples hardened underneath the plush cotton towel and her clitoris quickened deliciously.

  How strange, that a creature like Luce could feed in such a primitive fashion and still induce such incredible pleasure at the same time. The evolutionary advantage for Luce’s kind was astounding. Every other predator provoked fear and dread in their prey, but the Vampire bite incited such a rush of endorphins and erotostimulants the prey actually sought out the predator. She ought to take a sample of her own blood before the chemicals Luce injected were meta
bolized. She might be able to isolate the kinins and neurotransmitters that were producing this remarkable reaction. To know was to control, and control was the ultimate power.

  Veronica dropped the towel and studied her form in the ornately carved antique mirror. She was paler than usual, but her eyes gleamed as if she had a fever. Maybe she did. Her skin rippled with galvanic tension and her heart raced. And she was restless. She was never restless. Luce had left before dawn and wouldn’t return until after sundown. The day stretched before her with an odd sense of emptiness she’d never experienced before. Usually, her work was the siren call that enchanted and satisfied her. Now she felt herself longing for something else. Someone else.

  Veronica shook her head. These reactions had to be a side effect of whatever hormones Luce had transferred into her blood during the bite. Fascinating. She cupped her breasts, imagining the hands on her breasts in the reflection in the mirror were Luce’s. Her nipples were hypersensitive, and when she brushed her thumbs over them, she tightened inside. She was wet. Her clitoris throbbed. She considered her options. Raymond was here along with another guard sent to replace Luce. Jean-Paul. She supposed she could try fucking them to see if that would still the simmering urgency in her loins, but she really couldn’t be bothered. She knew they wouldn’t satisfy. She wanted Luce’s mouth, her bite, her essence streaming through her blood.

  She needed to work. Work would help her forget her needs.

  With a sigh, she walked to her bedside table and picked up her cell phone. She speed-dialed Nicholas and idly watched the sunrise while the phone rang. She rarely noticed the dawn colors, though she was usually awake. Today she wondered when Luce had last seen the morning sky.

  “Yes?” Nicholas said brusquely.

  Veronica glanced at the bedside clock and smiled. Just after five. She’d probably awakened him. She hadn’t slept at all.

  “What is it?” Nicholas injected into the silence. “Veronica?”

  “You didn’t tell me you intended to move forward so quickly, darling. I heard about the…incident.”

  “That sort of undertaking needs to be completed without delay. We’d been compromised—I needed to sterilize the site as soon as possible. Fortunately, we’d already prepared for the possibility of abandoning the facility on short notice.”

  “It would have been nice to know even after the fact,” Veronica said. “The point is, I am publicly associated with your enterprises, and I don’t want to be kept in the dark. Not knowing all the details puts me in an awkward position.”

  “Then I apologize for the oversight.”

  “Well, as long as we understand each other now,” Veronica said, opening her closet door and riffling through the row of silk shirts with one hand. “I assume there’s been some public acknowledgment?”

  “The local news has our story—corporate terrorism perpetrated by persons unknown.”

  “Hmm, I suppose that works, although it might lead to speculation as to what about our work warranted such extreme opposition.”

  “That’s been covered also.” Nicholas murmured something she couldn’t hear—perhaps he was speaking to his wife. He said more clearly, “Within the hour, an animal rights group will take credit for the destruction of our lab.”

  “That’s a good idea. It might be an even better idea if another facility was also targeted—one not associated with you or me.”

  Nicholas laughed. “We think alike. I believe you’ll be pleased with this morning’s scheduled events.”

  “The animal rights group is about to strike again?”

  “Those types do tend to use multiple targets to make a statement.”

  “And we will of course have plausible deniability.” Veronica slipped a blood-red silk shirt off a hanger.

  “My dear,” Nicholas said, an undercurrent of self-satisfaction in his tone, “we can hardly be accused of having anything to do with an installation run by an entirely different species.”

  “Ah,” Veronica said, thinking of the only other major lab doing any kind of research that rivaled theirs in scope, “and you’ll eliminate the competition while reinforcing the domestic terrorism angle.”

  “I take it you approve?”

  “Oh, very much so. You’ll have my new facilities operational by tomorrow?”

  “It may take a little longer—we’ve had some major equipment losses.”

  “Don’t take too long, darling. There are other labs, you know.” She rang off before he could comment, not convinced that Nicholas’s plan was really to her advantage. After a moment, she dialed another number.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Sylvan entered the holding cell where Martin Hoffstetter sat, still shackled to the wooden chair. She walked over and released his hands. “You need something to drink or eat?”

  He brushed a hand over his mouth. “What time is it?”

  “About six in the morning.”

  “If I don’t report in by seven a.m., my contact will alert our cell and people will start looking for me.”

  “Where would they search?”

  Martin looked confused, then chagrined. “Probably in the woods around the installation.”

  “I doubt anyone will be able to get close to that place for weeks. If they try, they’ll run into the police barricades and a whole lot of questions they may not want to answer.” Sylvan rumbled, remembering the explosion and the fierce fire that killed so many animals and almost claimed her mate, all to destroy evidence of experimentation. She needed to find the humans behind the projects—and she didn’t doubt the leaders were human. Humans seemed to be the species most bothered by the discovery that not everyone was exactly like them, and their immediate reaction was fear and hatred. Those experiments might not be exclusively perpetrated by humans, but they were designed to annihilate those who were different. “Your people are likely to think you dead or captured.”

  “I didn’t see what happened after your soldier caught me,” Martin said. “I heard the explosions. Did you find any others?”

  “Why did you think we would?”

  Martin raked his hand through his hair and shook his head. “I wasn’t sure, but I knew the place was bigger than the wing where I guarded your Weres. It didn’t make sense to me that there wouldn’t be others, and when I saw what was happening—that they were preparing to abandon the installation so precipitously, I was afraid they might be trying to hide evidence of more captives.”

  “Do you know how long it’s been going on?”

  He shook his head. “Months, maybe longer. At least one of the installations where I rotated had clearly been in operation for years. But the experimental wings were usually attached to legitimate research labs, so that other work provided a public cover.”

  “Everything you’ve told us makes sense,” Sylvan said, “except why you care.”

  He stared at her, meeting her eyes for the first time before something he saw there made him look away. “I don’t know if I can explain it except to say that what they’re doing is wrong, and trying to destroy the Praeterns for being non-human is evil. Whoever is behind these experiments—human or otherwise—needs to be stopped. I don’t want to live in a world where these things happen. I don’t want my children to inherit that world.”

  “Katya and Gray can’t remember what happened to them. I can’t confirm what you tell me unless I know who you work with.” Sylvan walked back to the door. “I want to meet with your leaders before I release you.”

  Martin straightened in his chair. “I don’t think they’ll agree to that. Some of them—most of them—I don’t even know. Many are high-profile public figures and don’t want to disclose their identities. Our goals are unpopular with some powerful—and dangerous—people.”

  Sylvan shrugged. “Then you should plan on a prolonged stay.”

  *

  Niki pulled on the clothes Sophia’s mother brought her and joined Sophia on the sofa adjacent to a huge stone fireplace in the main room of the cabin. The cei
ling climbed two stories above a stone floor covered by thick area rugs in the colors of the forest. The walls were board and batten, the heavy-paned windows oversized—designed to accommodate wolves leaving and entering. Under other circumstances, she would have found the space comfortable, but not today. Sophia was upset, and so Niki’s wolf was unhappy.

  Leo and Nadia sat on a facing sofa, Nadia’s hand resting on Leo’s thigh. Niki put her arm around Sophia and pulled her close. Sophia trembled and a surge of protectiveness filled Niki’s chest. She rubbed Sophia’s arm. “It’ll be okay.”

  Sophia wrapped her arm around Niki’s waist and leaned her cheek against Niki’s shoulder. “I love you.”

  Niki kissed Sophia’s temple. “I love you too. Don’t worry.”

  “Niki,” Sophia said softly, “some of the things you might learn about me…”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Niki growled.

  Sophia kissed her neck. “Thank you.” She straightened and faced her parents. “We’re ready.”

  Nadia glanced at Leo. He brushed his lips over her hair and murmured, “Go ahead.”

  Nadia took a breath and looked from Sophia to Niki and back to Sophia. “What we need to tell you, even the Alpha doesn’t know.”

  Niki stiffened. “I am the Alpha’s imperator. You must know that my duty is to protect her and the Pack. I can’t keep anything from her.”

  “We know,” Leo said, “and we wouldn’t have either, except to protect Sophia. Our first duty is to our family. Then the Pack.”

  Niki nodded. She would protect her mate first above all, and the Alpha would expect nothing less. “I understand. But anything you tell me—”

  “We know you will have to tell the Alpha. We accept that,” Nadia said quietly. “It’s time.”

  Sophia jumped to her feet. “No. I don’t want to endanger you. I don’t need to know.” She faced Niki. “I love you. But I can’t put my parents in danger, not even to be with you.”

  Niki rose, holding back her wolf, who wanted to grab Sophia and drag her to safety. She wouldn’t let her run away, but she wouldn’t frighten her either. She loved her too much. “I don’t need to know anything more than what I know about you right now. I’ve loved you for a long time. My wolf chose you. Your wolf chose me. Do you choose me too?”