The Hunters Series

by Shiloh Walker

That’s me…Shadoe thought, dazed.

  As she stared, mesmerized, the child grew to a chubby little toddler who latched her hands onto Mama’s curls and laughed as her father tickled her. “I know them,” Shadoe whispered thickly, fighting the tears that threatened to fall.

  “I know them,” she repeated as memory flooded her and tears stung her eyes. She remembered a slide, and a park, and a puppy…and them, the man and the woman, always the man and the woman, their voices, and the love in their hands, and in their voices.

  “How could I have forgotten?”

  “You had to, Shadoe,” he murmured, holding still as she reached out with a shaky hand to touch the images locked within the orb.

  Her hand slid right through it and she jerked it back, clamping her lips together to keep from crying out in shock as the man turned his head and stared directly out at her, as though he could see her.

  The man had the bluest of eyes, pure, clear sky blue. Her eyes. She had her father’s eyes. “I have his eyes. How are you doing this? I know them.”

  “Your heart never forgot, Shadoe. Yes, you have his eyes. His eyes…some of his power, some of your mother’s,” Ben said quietly. “Ignore it if you have to, but it is what it is. You are what you are…and you’re a witch.”

  Hypnotized, she lifted her hand to touch the orb again, her fingers passing through, splintering it. She fought the urge to cry as their faces faded away. “No, I’m not,” she argued, shaking her head. She could accept her parents, wanted to, even.

  But the rest?

  Ben arched a brow and stepped through the shimmering bits of energy that still hung in the air after the orb had shattered under her touch. “You are,” he murmured, reaching down and taking her hand, locking their fingers together and staring into her troubled blue eyes.

  Shadoe felt something explode from her, as though leaping out to meet Ben, joining with his power. She felt it, a resounding hum that filled her very soul, flooding her from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. And her skin was gleaming again. A ragged gasp fell from her lips and she lifted her hands, staring at them, watching as the rich, gleaming flesh seemed to glow and shine. She turned her head and stared at her reflection in the mirror, seeing the deep, gleaming pools of her eyes.

  A harsh male groan echoed in her ears and she tore her eyes away from her reflection to stare at Ben, the muscles in her belly tightening at the hungry look in his eyes, etched onto his face.

  “I’d kill him again,” Ben whispered, reaching out and trailing one finger down her cheek. “The bastard who made you afraid. I want him dead, and then I want him alive again so I can kill him over again. I hate death, but I want to hurt him. I want to make him suffer.” A menacing growl, something that was totally not human, fell from his lips as he moved a little closer. “And Marcus—he’s going to die. I want him dead almost as much as I want…”

  Shadoe’s heart skipped as he lowered his head. She saw it coming. She could have moved. Should have moved. Even as fear slammed into her throat, though, and even as it sent her heart to racing, she stood there, unable to move, unable to breathe.

  It wasn’t terror that held her still though, as he cupped her face his hands. It wasn’t terror that kept her from turning away as he dipped his head and pressed his lips to hers. Lightly at first. So very lightly, his tongue tracing the line of her mouth, teasing the entrance before retreating. A slow, easy kiss…a seduction.

  And when he lifted his head, she whimpered.

  He looked down at her, hunger glittering in his eyes. Nervous, she watched him, but as he reached up to trace her mouth with his fingertip, she didn’t turn away.

  “I think I’d like to do that again,” he murmured.

  And she shocked the hell out of herself when she responded with, “I think I’d like to let you.”

  The next kiss wasn’t so light. Wasn’t so easy and gently. This time, he pulled her closer and hunger ripped through her as he took her mouth, greedy and demanding.

  She groaned as he pushed his tongue—hot, rough and seductive—into her mouth. One hand threaded through her hair. She trembled as he moved his body against her, bringing his heat, so seductively necessary that Shadoe wondered how she had ever lived without it.

  He held himself back, touching her with just one hand in her hair, his mouth on hers, his other hand gripping her hip, strong and firm. Shadoe gasped as a shudder racked that big body and she was pulled completely against him, his chest crushing her breasts, a flat, hard belly coming to rest against the softness of hers.

  He seemed to fill her, some intangible energy from him sliding inside her and filling all the dark, empty places she had lived with for so long.

  Ben’s mouth ate at hers, his tongue rubbing seductively against hers, before he pulled back. Nipping her lower lip, he let his lips cruise down the line of her neck. A big hand, firm and hard, came up to her breast and Shadoe whimpered when he pinched the nipple lightly, teasingly as he lowered his mouth to feast on the other.

  Cool air kissed her flesh and she cried out as she felt him tear the shirt away only seconds before the hot, wet silk of his mouth closed over her nipple. Drawing it deep, laving it roughly, he nipped at her again, rolling his eyes upward to stare at her face.

  His eyes—so intent, so rapt on her face. Shadoe felt her knees buckle and his big hands caught her, bringing her into the air as he licked and bit and sucked on her. Her head fell back and she arched against the hot length between her thighs, instinctively wrapping her legs around Ben’s waist and arching, rubbing against him.

  “Well, now… Not exactly what I was expecting to see when I showed up.”

  Ben groaned as he pulled away. Sweet. Shadoe was every bit as sweet as he’d thought she’d be. A mocking laugh filled the air. So damn caught up in the sweetness of her, in her unexpected fiery response that Leandra was able to fly into the room without him taking notice.

  Damn it, Malachi had pegged her as a flier, but Ben hadn’t really considered it, until the other witch appeared in the room in a blur of wind and motion.

  Leandra moved across the room, her eyes focused and controlled, and lowered herself lazily into a chair. Her pale amber gaze flashed.

  “Ever heard of knocking?” he asked drolly.

  Shadoe yelped, her eyes shocked, wide and watchful, on Leandra’s face. “Shit…where did she come from?” Then she stiffened. “How did you get in my house?”

  Leandra smirked. “Ask the wolfman. He’s the one who called me,” she replied, tossing the man behind Shadoe a sardonic glare. “Who in the hell am I taking to the Council?”

  “Leandra, lovely manners as always,” he said tightly, stroking his hand through Shadoe’s tumbled hair before setting her on her feet and stepping back. “This is Shadoe Wallace,” he murmured, still staring into her eyes, those clear, indignant eyes.

  The taste of her lingered in his mouth and he battled down the need to take…and take…and take…

  Swallowing, he turned his head away from her before his control shattered. “Ahhh… Well, she may prefer to be called Tiffany. She’s been known as Tiffany Morgan for more than twenty years.”

  The air was sparking.

  Three powerful witches in such proximity, though Leandra and Ben had their magic tamped down deep inside them, Shadoe’s was dancing in the air like dust motes.

  Leandra drew one long, black-clad leg to her chest and inclined her head. “Hello, Tiffany. Nice to meet you. Formalities done. Okay, Cross. Where is the wolf I’m babysitting? And why me? I’m no damn Hunter.”

  “That’s just because you’re too damn stubborn,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. He took a deep breath and forced the hunger down, forced the need down as he focused on the current problem. “They’d take you in a heartbeat, as I’ve told you…a dozen times.”

  As he faced Leandra, she watched him with blank eyes. “They don’t want or need one like me. I’m a killer, remember, Cross? Or are you that blind? That forgiving? The blood on
my heart doesn’t bother you?”

  “Oh, I’m neither blind nor forgiving. But you made mistakes because a bunch of monsters warped a child’s mind. You going to let it haunt you while you hide the rest of your life?”

  Her cat’s eyes glowed as she struggled with something inside.

  “How long will you fight what you are?”

  Leandra laughed, her eyes moving to meet Shadoe’s. “If they wanted me, they would have come after me ages ago. Like they did with her,” Leandra drawled.

  Ben gave a low bark of laughter. “Darling, they are probably scared shitless of you,” he suggested as he drew Shadoe to the bed, urging her to sit, resting his hands on her neck and rubbing with the balls of his thumbs.

  He wondered if Shadoe had even realized she was naked. Grabbing a sheet, he tucked it around her body, hiding it from sight—with regret.

  Swinging back around, he faced Leandra once more. She stared at him with a sneer on her face.

  “Some of them, maybe. But fear isn’t going to stop all of you.” A cool, humorless smile curved her mouth as she said, “I’m just another witch, after all. And not so impressive compared to this one.”

  Finally, Shadoe’s silence ended as she surged up off the bed, moving to stand with her back against an interior wall, as though being near the window disturbed her. She demanded, “Okay…now… I want to know what in the hell is going on?”

  Evil lurks around us. Shaking her head, the thought faded away. He could hear her chaotic thoughts as he tried to find the words to explain what was going on.

  But Leandra beat him to it.

  “He’s a Hunter. He kills all sorts of nasty creatures, like evil vampires, evil werewolves…evil witches,” Leandra said calmly. “And he hunts monsters. So why haven’t I died yet?”

  Shadoe frowned. “You seem to be in a big hurry to die.”

  Leandra’s lids flickered and she said quietly, “When you are left with the thoughts I live with, death would probably be a blessing.”

  Ben’s hands flexed, his jaw clenching as he stared at the exotic woman sitting there.

  They were losing her. Leandra was sliding farther and farther into her self-imposed exile. Although she battled the darkness inside her, she would lose eventually, seeking out her death willingly. If they didn’t stop it.

  No. Damn it, no. “If we wanted you dead, you’d already be dead,” Ben said flatly, drawing her gaze to him. “There’s a difference between a screwed-up woman and true evil. You have seen evil, Leandra. That’s not what you are.”

  Something moved in her gaze, and for a moment, he glimpsed raw torment before her eyes closed and her head fell back, the wooden beads on her braids clacking together. A sigh lifted her breasts as she laced her hands on her flat belly. “I do know what I’m, Ben. I have no place in this world.”

  Then her lashes lifted and she focused that uncanny stare on Shadoe. “But I’m not the concern here now, am I? There’s a stink of something nasty here, Ben. It’s all around this place,” she said quietly, her nose wrinkling as she breathed in the stench of the cowering were. “He is all around this place.”

  “Yesterday,” Shadoe whispered. “Yesterday, my life was normal.” Her heart was rabbiting in her chest and she could hardly breathe around the thunder of it. The woman sitting across from her was a total stranger.

  Leandra laughed softly. “Your life stopped being normal ages ago. If it ever was. The magic inside you saw to that.” The musical lilt of her voice, rich with the islands, was oddly soothing, even as her eyes started to glow and swirl. “Stop fighting that, stop fighting your magic and it will guide you better than any of us ever could.” Something sad moved across her face. “If I’d listened to mine...” Then she shook her head and looked away. “But it’s too late now.”

  The tension in the air thickened, building and building until the werewolf that Ben had secured in the hall started to howl and snarl.

  “He’s an uppity thing, isn’t he?” Leandra drawled, rising from her sprawl on the chair and moving over to the hall. She peered at the werewolf who was bound hand and foot with reinforced cuffs.

  “Bitch,” the man snarled at her as the fear inside him tried to induce the change. His face was lengthening, slowly, as though he battled it. Fur formed thicker and thicker on him.

  Shadoe wrapped her arms around herself, rocking back and forth on her heels as she stared at him.

  But he didn’t pay any attention to Shadoe, his eyes rapt on Leandra’s dark honey-gold skin. “Bitch. You’re no fucking Hunter.”

  Stroking it with one slender, red-tipped finger, Leandra purred, “Then you should be more careful, stupid wolf. I don’t fight fair, like they do. My rules aren’t the same as theirs, so maybe you shouldn’t fuck with me.”

  The spell Ben had wrapped around the werewolf splintered under the bastard’s fear as he stared up into the eyes of death.

  Shadoe swallowed, hearing the dry click in her throat just before the thick, wet popping sounds coming from the man drowned out all else. He bellowed, the enraged, painful shout changing to a long, echoing howl.

  Leandra’s eyes met Shadoe’s.

  Then the other witch looked at Ben and quietly said, “She really need to learn about the world this way?”

  Ben swore softly as he took in the pallor of Shadoe’s face, the haunted look in her cornflower blue eyes. But when he moved to block the shifting werewolf from sight, she pushed him aside. “That is what Marcus is,” she whispered thickly. “What Jimmy was. I really did see them changing.”

  “Yes,” Ben said softly, moving to hold her against him, stroking her hair as she watched the change complete, her eyes stayed rapt on the tightly bound werewolf, his ankles and knees forced awkwardly behind his back, robbing him of the ability to move anything more than his head.

  “And if I really saw them, then I really did burn Jimmy’s heart to ash,” she said, forcing out the words. “I’m what you say, aren’t I?”

  Ben stroked a hand down her back. “Yes. You are.”

  Across the room, Leandra sighed. “Now I have to travel with him as a damn wolf. So much for doing things the easy way.”

  “Maybe I’ll change him back. Now that is painful, I hear. Not a nice thing,” she mused. Then she slid her gaze back to Ben, a sly look there as she smiled. “Of course…since I’m not a Hunter, I don’t have to use a Hunter’s ways, follow his rules… A nice person would let the bastard rest a while and change back on his own.”

  A quicksilver grin lit her face as she drawled, “But I’m not a nice person.”

  Chapter Four

  Shadoe stared at the ball of heat and light that hovered over her head, panic in every line of her face. “Okay. I made it, but now how do I put it away?” she asked, fighting to keep her voice level.

  Ben laughed. “Just let it go. Stop thinking so hard and let it go. It’s easier than you think.”

  But she clung tenaciously to everything, including the magic, and it wouldn’t die. “Relax,” he ordered firmly, moving to stand behind her. “You don’t have to control it. Just let it exist, and it will come to your call when you need it. When you’re done, let it go.”

  Just days had passed since her startling revelations—too much had changed. And she was expected to control this… Ah, baby, not control. Let it exist… The words were just there, in her mind.

  Shadoe felt something inside her relax as the words reverberated through her. Not control.

  Watching the golden orb, she couldn’t help the smile on her face as it simply faded away. “That was easy,” she said, disbelieving. “How could it be so easy?”

  “That is the way it is supposed to be. You and I are going to skip the basics and go straight to the important stuff. You need to learn and I’m going to do whatever it takes to teach you,” he murmured from behind her.

  His breath was warm on her neck and a hot shiver raced down her spine.

  Her nipples tightened immediately and Shadoe’s breath skittered to a
halt in her throat, for a long second. Her skin heated and she could swear she scented her own need in the air. “What else do I need to know?” she asked shakily, trying to focus again on the magic.

  Ben laughed easily, and she wanted to turn to him and wrap her arms around him, lose herself in him as the sound rolled over her like a caress.

  “There’s a lot to learn,” he said. “A lot. The question is where to begin…”

  Ben could smell her, the hot, spicy scent of aroused woman and it punched him in the gut like a fist. Why it had come, he didn’t know, but damn it, she was going to drive him crazy.

  Cautiously, he laid his hands on her shoulders, waiting for her to move away, to throw his hands off. When instead, she leaned back against him, he couldn’t stop the hungry sound that left him as he lowered his mouth to her shoulder. She shivered as he raked his teeth across the skin exposed by her tank top.

  Sliding his hands down the length of her arms, he moved his grip to her waist and eased her fully back against him. “You feel perfect,” he murmured. “You smell like a dark autumn night, mysterious, wild, dangerous. And powerful. I want to taste it, taste you. All of you.”

  Shadoe gasped as he set his teeth on her neck with a quick, fast nip. “Can I?” Ben asked gruffly.

  She didn’t say yes.

  But when she didn’t say no, either, Ben slowly turned her in the circle of his arms and covered her mouth, cupping her chin with his hand and touching nothing else. Nibbling first at the seam of her lips, he listened to her shaky, trembling sigh, her racing heart, scented the rich, sweet taste of hungry woman growing stronger in the air.

  Hunger tore through him as her hands lifted to clutch at his waist. With a gentle tightening of his fingers on her chin, he urged her lips open and pushed inside, groaning deep in his chest at her taste. Like her scent—mysterious, powerful—but still somehow so…sweet, innocent. With his tongue, he flirted with her mouth, her lips, rimming it before thrusting deep. Her mouth opened wide under his as she gasped and her hands slid up his torso to grip his shoulders, the bite of her nails into his skin sending sparks of flame down his spine.