The Hunters Series

by Shiloh Walker

  Her mouth went dry. “Me?”

  Rising, the great pony-sized wolf padded over to her. “Yes… You. You’re strong enough. Your man has the skill. You, more than most, understand just why he needs to die. He wants to create more like him, but he can only do it through mating. His sickness may well bear weight on his young—that cannot be allowed. Would you see him do to others what he has tried to do to you?”

  “I can’t just kill somebody. That’s murder,” she whispered.

  “Is it murder to put down a sick animal?” the Wolf murmured, nuzzling her thigh with his head.

  Against her ear, Ben whispered, “It’s justice. That is what the Hunters do.”

  “I’m not a Hunter,” she whispered, hardly able to think of this near-mythical group of men and women who battled in the night.

  Ben cuddled her back against him. “Aren’t you?”

  The words from last night came to her, unbidden. But Shadoe has to do something.

  Lifting her eyes, she met the fathomless gaze of the Wolf. In that gaze, she saw an understanding, an acceptance that she had never felt before.

  She saw home.

  Chapter Nine

  Malachi stopped dead in his tracks.

  Bloody hell.

  Both Ben and Shadoe were frozen in the kitchen, eyes staring, as though gazing at each other in wonder.

  But the odd tingle in the air told him otherwise, even before he had thoroughly taken in their motionless stance. Sighing, he settled on the counter, drawing one knee up to his chest and resting it there. Long, long moments passed and still the two Inherents remained motionless, their eyes blank and unseeing.

  “You know, you blasted bloody mongrel,” Malachi said mockingly. “This could be so very dangerous for them, pulling them under like this, keeping them so unaware.”

  He sensed amusement filling the air around him. Then, shockingly, spoken words… “As if I would leave what is mine in danger.”

  Malachi grinned. A rare honor, having the protective spirit talk to one who wasn’t his.

  Nearly an hour later, a great sigh seemed to fill the room and the Inherents stirred, eyes blinking, bodies stretching, shifting around. Cocking a brow at them, Malachi said, “Have a nice chat?”

  Ben couldn’t actually claim surprise at Malachi’s apparent knowledge of the Wolf. He’d been around forever. If there was anything about the…not-normal shit that Malachi didn’t know, Ben would be surprised.

  Later, as Shadoe slept, her body still trying to adapt to the changes thrust upon it, he passed by the door leading to the basement.

  Malachi slept down there…or rested. Fortunately, the family room was down there, and the old couch she had would hold him better than the twin bed in the only other furnished bedroom.

  Another thing they still had to educate her about.

  Baby, I know we surprised you with the wolf thing, and you took it well. And I know you’re handling the witch thing pretty good, too. Yes, there’s also the Hunter thing, and the totem animal thing. But there’s one more surprise. Well, maybe just one, but it’s a big one.

  You know vampires? Well…they are kind of…real.

  But they aren’t all evil?

  Most of them are fucked up creatures, but they aren’t all evil.

  Yes, that was going to be fun.

  Although she had taken every surprise in stride, Ben was wondering if maybe she hadn’t realized, somewhere inside her, that she had never been normal, never been just like everybody else around her. The books he had been sending her over the years revealed more of the unspoken world and hopefully, she had absorbed some of the matter-of-fact images and language in which the books were written.

  Life had just been flopped on its head for her, though. How much more could she take without breaking under it? Plenty of others had over the years. It wasn’t like they had the easiest lot.

  Suicide was high among their kind, the Hunters, especially with werewolves and vampires. For the witches and the Inherents, it was less so, because they had been born into their powers. But that wasn’t what had happened with Shadoe. She hadn’t had a lifetime to adjust to this, and it wasn’t even done for her.

  Was he pushing her too hard? Forcing her to that limit where sanity broke and she ended up lost?

  Hell. He didn’t know. But he also knew he couldn’t let her remain in ignorance, either. Not with Marcus riding hot on their heels.

  It didn’t help that she was taking this so well, either. If she’d just freak out, he might feel better. Even the few minor freak-out she’d had…well, shit. She’d taken off running from him and who wouldn’t? The first time they saw a shapeshifter. She should have screamed, run, and kept on running. Once she got out of the mess they’d been in, she should have screamed and run, and run and screamed.

  But she just handled it and it worried him.

  Why, brother?

  Ben started as the Wolf woke and sensed his discomfort, his confusion. You have been preparing her for this, the best you can, since you first learned of her whereabouts. Part of her had already accepted that she was different, that something unknown had happened when she killed the cruel bastard who attacked her. You’ve just been guiding her down the path of knowledge.

  She will be fine, the Wolf assured him, whispering quietly, comfortingly into his mind.

  “How can a handful of books give her that confidence?” Ben asked.

  Not just the books…the acceptance. You already accepted her and the part of her that is mine acknowledged that. Your being here when she was released further confirmed that. She isn’t alone in this world. You’ve made sure of it.

  Ben dropped onto the couch, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. He closed his eyes, pressed his hands to his face with a ragged sigh.

  “It’s not that easy. It can’t be.”

  The Wolf chuffed with amusement. Of course it can. The harder parts are yet to come. The question is…who will it be harder for? Her or you?

  Before Ben could puzzle that one, the Wolf was gone, leaving Ben in the silence.

  “First, you are going to learn to fight…” Ben had told her when she woke with the knowledge that she would kill Marcus.

  She’d bared her teeth at him. “I sort of had this training. Years in prison saw to that, thanks.”

  “Different sort of world we’re talking about, baby,” he’d told her. “You fought humans and you probably kicked their asses without trying. But it’s time you fought your own kind. A soldier doesn’t go into battle on his first day in the Army,” he had insisted. “Later, we will hunt down Marcus…when you are ready.”

  So they walked the streets of St. Louis. Hours from home, but both Ben and Malachi had insisted. She’d find nothing in her hometown that would help her.

  “All the lesser monsters, human or otherwise, will flee when a badder bastard comes to town,” Malachi informed her. “There is nothing worth Hunting here. Marcus has seen to that. Those who aren’t his are long gone or long dead.”

  “Hunting…you mean, killing,” she said faintly as she walked between Ben and Malachi.

  “Some people are worth killing,” Mal said enigmatically. He gestured to the alley across the way. “Like there…”

  She heard it, an odd scrabbling sound that made no sense to her ears. But the soft strangled cry did.

  She didn’t even remember running but now she stumbled to a halt, frozen at the sight before her. A woman lay cowering on the ground, kicking at the hands that sought to restrain her. A bloody, dirty cloth had been shoved into her mouth, muffling her cries. That was what the soft, strangled noise had been, her fighting to scream around her gag.

  Shadoe saw red.

  Ben had to force himself to hold back as Shadoe lunged, her small, compact form hurtling through the air as she took down the man who wasn’t fighting to hold the woman still. He had been too busy unfastening his jeans and smirking at the woman’s distress and fear.

  Human monsters. Just humans, the kind of mo
nsters that walked the streets everywhere.

  “I told you not to go to the cops, bitch,” the man was saying. “I warned…oomph—” His words were broken off as Shadoe took him, snarling viciously, her pretty face tight with anger, her eyes flashing with it.

  Skin rippled and this time the change was quicker, from human to wolfwoman, and she snapped out with her teeth as the man started to scream in fear.

  “How does it feel?” she asked haltingly, forcing the words through her alien mouth.

  Malachi moved in, blocking the other woman’s eyes, catching her gaze and murmuring, “Sleep…” When her body went limp, he looked at the man holding her arms and said coolly, “Let her go.”

  “What the fu…” The man was paying no attention to Malachi, instead staring at the furred, lithe form crouched atop his friend’s prone body.

  “Don’t worry about her.” Malachi gave him an evil little smile. “Worry about me.”

  “You waste too much time talking,” Ben said absently, flicking his wrist as he gathered the wind elements in the air, directing them to the bastard who held the woman’s feet, eagerly shoving her thighs apart, unaware of the danger around them. Ben knew why. He could smell the stink of alcohol on him, smell the lust.

  He was jerked up and away, pinned to the wall by magic. Ben smiled at him, a nasty smile that made the blood run cold.

  Malachi said, “Are you going to fuss at me if I play with my food?”

  “Mind your manners, Mal,” Ben said drolly as he released the wind elements. Obeying him, the elements dropped the struggling man to his feet, some four feet below, and he landed with a crash, only to swarm back up, drawing a wicked six-inch switchblade from his pocket.

  “Now, you really want to put that away before you piss me off,” Ben murmured, nimbly moving out of reach as the man slashed out with the blade. “You shouldn’t play with things like that if you can’t handle them. You might hurt yourself.”

  Then he kicked out, driving his heel into the man’s unprotected belly, the blade narrowly missing Ben’s chest.

  The man hit the wall, struck his head, and fell to the ground, unconscious.

  Shadoe’s arm lifted but before she could hit the now unconscious man, it was caught and held firmly. “I think you’ve made your point, baby,” Ben drawled, cocking a brow at her.

  He was an unconscious bloody mess, air whistling in and out of a surely broken nose. His chest rose and fell fitfully.

  “Oh, shit. What have I done?”

  “Justice.”

  Shadoe looked up as Malachi slid out of the shadows, the woman cuddled in his arms, unbelievably sleeping. “They would have raped her, passed her around like a rag doll, and killed her,” Malachi said, rubbing his cheek against the woman’s tangled black hair. “All because she went to the police about this bastard selling drugs to children.”

  “All you did was stop them from killing her…you saved her life. It’s justice,” he reiterated, a dark look entering his eyes as he stared at the bloody waste of the man beneath Shadoe.

  She rose slowly. “How do you know what he has done?” Her eyes moved to the listless woman in his arms, her head slumped forward in the position of deep sleep, her skin pale, bruises ringing her wrists now, bloody scrapes marring the ivory flesh of her face and legs.

  “From her. She holds the knowledge in her mind, and when I touched her mind to make her sleep, I saw the answers,” Malachi said obliquely.

  “How can you touch her mind?”

  He smiled gently. “Haven’t you had enough shocks coming at you lately? You don’t need this one tonight,” he murmured. Studying the woman with unreadable eyes, he said, “I’m going to take her now…she needs medical care. There is a cousin of hers not far from here.”

  Shadoe hadn’t so much as blinked before he was gone. Her eyes met Ben’s, large, far too dark in her face, full of fear and confusion. “I almost killed him,” she whispered raggedly. Her eyes moved to the unconscious man, and she would swear she could hear his heart beating, the breath moving raggedly in and out of his chest, whistling through his busted nose and swollen mouth.

  His eyes were still closed, discolored and swelling, turning that deep blue-purple of a new bruise. Blood that had flowed from his nose in a gush was drying on his skin in a nasty maroon red smear, streaked with mucus. What bothered her the most was that it pleased her to see him like that. Hot satisfaction filled her and she couldn’t stop it, even though she knew it was wrong to have so enjoyed hurting a man.

  But this man was worse than an animal, less than human. She could sense evil in him, a desire to hurt, to prey upon the weak. She rubbed her arms, and saw with surprise that she was naked, the shreds of a shirt clinging to her arms, the rest of her clothes lying in tatters around her. From changing. The wolf form was so much larger, so much more powerful, it had torn apart the clothes she was wearing when she changed.

  But before she could even begin to puzzle out what to do about it, Ben shrugged a backpack off his shoulder and tugged out a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, his eyes hot on her body as he approached, holding them out to her. After she took them, he lifted one finger and traced it around a budded pink nipple in a slow circle.

  Then his hand dropped away and he clenched it into a fist, before turning away. “Get dressed before I start something we can’t finish,” he muttered. “This isn’t the time or place.”

  Heat pooled in her belly at the sound of his gruff voice, her nipples tightening to the point of pain, her cleft starting to weep with want. Tugging the shirt over her head, she shuddered as the cotton abraded her bare breasts. As she zipped the jeans, a weak whimper left her lips, because the seam of the jeans was rubbing against her naked folds, and each movement teased her clit against the rough cloth.

  Lifting smoky eyes, she stared at Ben as he walked through the tiny alley, collecting the shreds of her clothes and stowing them in the backpack before tossing it over his shoulder.

  Their eyes met and she felt the look like a caress, stroking over her unfettered breasts, down her torso, onto her belly, down to the apex of her thighs where she ached and hungered for him. Ached to feel the hard, hot drive of his cock inside her, filling her, fucking her until they both screamed at the pleasure of it, and then doing it all over again, and again until they collapsed.

  As one, they turned their gazes when the man on the ground started to shift, and move. He moaned, a choked, garbled sound and his lids started to lift, a slow struggle due to the pain he was in. Wrapping her arms around herself, she watched as Ben approached him, cocking his head and smiling a gentle, terrifying smile.

  “How does it feel?” Ben purred, crouching down until he was on level with the man’s eyes. The pain-filled, terrified eyes met Ben’s and in his stupor, he didn’t realize that Ben was the enemy.

  “Dude…hurts…fucking bitch… Is she gone? How…”

  Ben smiled and from her position, she could see it as his teeth started to lengthen, almost like a Hollywood-style vampire, a spine-tingling, frightening beauty that made him cower on the pavement even more. “What…what are you?”

  Ben ignored him as he asked, “Does it hurt? Do you enjoy how it feels to be at the mercy of something that is so much stronger than you?”

  “Help!” The shout was pitiful, choked, barely more than a strangled yelp. Turning his eyes back to Ben, he begged, “Don’t…please don’t.”

  Ben grinned, displaying that deadly, toothy grin and reaching up to stroke his chin with a hand that now displayed long, deadly hooked claws. “Don’t? You have the balls to actually beg me not to hurt you? To beg for help? Like you wouldn’t let her beg? And you laughed at her. As she fought, as she cried. You laughed.” His voice dropped to a low whisper and Ben murmured, “I won’t kill in cold blood, but you’re never, ever going to hurt another soul again. Not ever.”

  In a lightning quick movement, he reached out, seizing the man’s face in his hands and squeezing, as his lids drooped. A harsh whisper that Shado
e couldn’t comprehend escaped Ben’s mouth and the battered man on the ground screamed, arching his back up as his feet scuttled on the ground for purchase.

  Shadoe had no more than blinked when Ben moved away from the man and now stood at her side, a hard, grim set to his mouth. “He has an evil mind. Very evil,” he murmured. “His punishment shall be very, very long.”

  “His punishment?” she echoed, confused.

  Ben smiled. “He’s caught in a loop. For every wrong he has done, it will come back to him. Only in his mind, but it will seem so very real. And it will continue until he breaks it himself. That will happen when he admits what he’s done and tries to fix it, make amends for it. That’s all that can free him. I believe in repentance—if it’s real, we should all have a shot at it. But that will never happen. Not for him.”

  “So he will just live like that?” Shadoe asked, staring as the man tried to curl into his body, pleading and whimpering like a child one moment, then bellowing with rage as he threatened to eat the heart of some unknown assailant.

  “Hmm. Until he has had enough most likely, and ends it.”

  Shadoe suspected ending it meant ending his life.

  Yes, it seemed fitting enough. And part of her was desperately pleased. The other was still horrified.

  “Is this what I will do? How I will live?”

  Ben studied her with quiet eyes and simply responded, “You tell me.”

  She let him drive her home, or at least to the outskirts of town. But then she jumped out of the van, ignoring his voice and she left, walking away as fast as her feet could carry her. The confusion that filled her brain made an answer impossible. Ben didn’t follow her, and she no longer worried about walking the streets alone at night. She had become something more dangerous than any scumbag trolling the streets.