Dragon Hunter Box Set: A Dragon Shifter Serial

by Carina Wilder

  And it was true, of course. Umbra should have hired one of them, rather than a Hunter to do the job—particularly a Hunter who’d never killed a shifter in her life.

  “Yes, I’ll admit that his reasoning is odd at best. But money is money,” said Neko. “So you haven’t seen this silver dragon, then?”

  “No. And I don’t suppose I’d forget him if I had. He’s probably amazingly gorgeous in his human form, too.”

  “True,” Neko said, her mind once again returning to the face she’d encountered the previous day. “I can pretty well imagine how gorgeous.”

  “Listen, I’ll tell you if I hear anything. Meanwhile watch your back. If the Kindred are real, they’re strong. They can do more than just shift, so it’s quite possible that your weapons won’t help you against one of their kind.”

  “So I’ve heard. But I always thought all their added powers were just mythology.”

  “They might be. From what I understand, though, when their kind was around hundreds of years ago—that is, if they were around—they were an impressive lot. Magic users, and skilled ones at that. They say that some could vanish; others could move objects with their minds.”

  Neko scoffed. “You don’t actually believe any of that shite, do you?”

  “I don’t know, Neko. You’ve seen stranger things,” said Bertie, her tone earnest. It seemed that she was willing to come around to the idea of the Kindred. “You’ve seen the Lapsed. There are Dragons in the skies above town, for God’s sake. You know what’s out there.”

  Neko didn’t reply. Bertie was right; she was choosing to outright deny anything that she hadn’t yet seen. But the fact remained that anything was possible. And a part of her hoped above all that the Kindred did exist.

  But how she could ever bring herself to kill one was beyond her scope of imagining—particularly if her intended victim was the man she’d met, who’d somehow woven himself deep into her soul.

  As she slipped out of the office, slowly descending the long spiralling staircase that led to each of the tower’s rooms, a male voice halted her in her tracks.

  “Well, isn’t this a pleasant surprise.”

  Just below her stood Vail, one of the Syndicate’s Hashes. An odious man; the sort of person who made one wonder if he’d become an assassin because he was a psychotic nutjob, or because he needed the money so desperately. Neko could only assume the former; that he was a born shithead, destined to make others’ lives miserable until the day he died.

  But he was also good at his job. A skilled killer and an efficient one. So the Syndicate kept hiring him, in spite of his sleazy exterior and his off the charts ego.

  “Vail.” Vile, disgusting pig of a man.

  “Neko,” he said, grinning that smarmy, duplicitous smile of his. “Sexy, stealthy Neko. Off to stalk one of your little undead shifters, are you?” He extracted a sharp titanium blade from his sleeve, employing it to clean his nails. “It must be so nice to earn your living by wandering London’s streets aimlessly.”

  “And it must be nice to earn yours by being an unrelentingly heartless bastard.”

  “It is.” He smiled, his features scrunching to render him even less attractive than usual. “By the way, I just acquired a new client. You’d like him; he’s very handsome. Not to mention rich.”

  “Yes, well, you know how much that sort of thing matters to me.”

  “I do. For instance, your fondness for handsome men is the reason you can’t stop staring at me at the moment.”

  “Not quite,” she replied. “The reason I can’t stop staring at you is that I wonder how on earth genetics managed to assemble such an unappealing combination of skin and bones into one walking, talking scrotum.”

  Vail leapt forward, blade in hand, expertly and rapidly pressing it to her throat. He probably wouldn’t kill her; not here in the Syndicate’s offices. But he was just kinky enough to want to draw a little blood and to make her squirm under his touch.

  His mistake was in not securing Neko’s hands. Immediately she drew a long dagger that was concealed in her sleeve-sheath and, fisting its handle, pressed it into his crotch. With the pointed tip she tore a few of the stitches on his jeans to let him know that she meant business.

  “My neck gets cut,” she whispered, “And your balls get punctured like a fucking pin cushion. It’s your choice.”

  Vail let up after only a moment of consideration, his teeth slamming together in a tight clamp as he pulled back.

  “Enjoy your five-pence jobs while I collect a fortune for doing the difficult ones, you utter twat,” he muttered as he strode by her towards Bertie’s office.

  “I will. And you enjoy those testicles while you still have them.”

  Good lord, he was a raging crap-weasel.

  Dragonman

  “Another.” Lumen lay the pint glass down, remnants of light froth slipping down its sides as Aegis slapped him hard on the back, letting out a chuckle.

  Both men had been in the pub for a few hours, and neither was showing the usual human signs of inebriation: red cheeks, vacant eyes, a staggering gait when moving towards the bathroom.

  Lumen, if anything, had been invigorated by the endless stream of lager, his eyes bright and keen, his spine long, stretching him so that he looked enormous in the wooden chair. Normally his size alone was enough to draw attention to him, but on this particular night a football match was the focus of most pub-goers, their eyes locked on the various screens around the interior of the establishment.

  Both men were beyond handsome; in fact on the rare occasions when a woman managed to make eye contact with either of them, she generally found herself backing off, a mess of signals shooting outwards from her brain. No man should look like that; it wasn’t natural. And no woman would know what to do with such a man. It would be like trying to make love with a god, and that would be terrifying. Though probably quite splendid.

  Part of the men’s inclination to drink while in public locations was to mask their scent; if they weren’t careful the bouquet that swept about them on the air could stop humans in their tracks with its erotic musk. The beer in their systems offered them at least a little respite from having to mask those moments, enough to make most people walk by in a state of confused arousal.

  “Well done, Chief,” said Aegis. “You can still down a pint faster than anyone I know.”

  “That’s nothing. You should see me fly in a straight line after eighty pints or so.”

  “You can’t fly straight sober.”

  “Exactly. Beer improves my mind and coordination.”

  “The mark of a true Dragon.” Aegis clinked his glass against Lumen’s before taking a swig.

  The round wooden table that occupied the space between them was marked, generations of revellers’ scratches covered over by copious layers of varnish. On the walls around them were black and white photographs of London through the decades: horse-drawn carriages on sepia-toned paper, Winston Churchill looking solemn, this and that museum, impressive against the backdrop of smaller buildings. World Wars and the destruction they’d left in their wake.

  But the only Dragons present were in the form of a painted crest hung above the fireplace. Little did the bartender know that he had two genuine ones in his midst.

  The pub itself sat at the end of a cul de sac in central London, and was normally occupied to the brim with drinkers of every age who frequented it as a hiding spot. An escape from work, family or obligations of any sort. At the moment, a herd of young men sat flocked around a series of televisions, letting out brusk cries of “Aaaugh!” and “Waaaarrrh!” whenever their team managed to score on the football pitch. This distraction, of course, suited the Dragon shifters fine; they were there to remain inconspicuous and not to let out loud, anguished cries. Leave that to the human folk.

  “So there are rumours,” said Aegis, “that a Controller is in town. And that he’s been in contact with Hunters.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Lumen replied, accepti
ng the beer that the bartender laid down before him. “I met up with one of them yesterday, you know. A Hunter.”

  “Did you now?” Aegis didn’t seem remotely agitated by the thought. Amused, if anything.

  “Yes. A woman. Saved my life, she did. Well, she thought she did, anyhow. A large kitty was bent on ripping my head from my shoulders.”

  “A large kitty with a deathwish, you mean.”

  “Yes, well, the Hunter didn’t need to know that.”

  “Did you speak to her?”

  “Yes. Rather, she spoke to me. I told her nothing of myself.” Lumen thought of Neko’s face for a moment; her eyes, staring into his, fighting off his arsenal of distracting weaponry. The tactics employed by his ilk to extract information, to weaken the strongest human.

  He’d known her expression, one of shock mixed with something far more palatable: Desire.

  But what had made the encounter unique in his experience was his own reaction. He’d felt it too, that aching want, pulsing through him even as he’d turned away from her for the first time. It had only increased throughout their conversation, so that leaving had been more than a little difficult. Never had he met up with such a reluctant departure from a human.

  “She was beautiful,” he said, his mind wandering. “Seriously beautiful.”

  “I’ve heard that they can be quite lovely creatures.” Aegis was examining his friend, assessing him for symptoms of the sort of crippling effect that such a woman could have.

  “Yes, they can. At any rate, we said our farewell after a brief conversation. I didn’t want to reveal myself. The more we show ourselves, the more we’re perceived as a threat by humans and Hunters alike.”

  “Yes, but we haven’t got much choice, have we? The reason we’re so fucking conspicuous these days is the Lapsed. It’s easier to spot them from above. Easier to attack in our déor form.”

  “Sure. But it’s all absurd. The Lapsed are here to take us down, and we’re trying to take them down, and meanwhile, the numbers are growing on both sides. But I’m not so concerned about those soulless wankers as I am about their leaders.”

  The Controllers were the real threat, the Lapsed merely their obedient puppets. The former were hateful, malicious creatures, their senses intact even though their bodies weren’t entirely whole. Bending the Lapsed to their will, silently ordering them to take on the Dragons and any shifters who wielded too much power.

  “It’s easy to control the mindless,” said Aegis. “But the Hunters have minds, and it seems that the Controllers have learned to use them. You heard about Conlon last week, I’m sure.”

  Conlon was a Dragon shifter who’d been found in his human form, dead in a remote alleyway, his throat cut by what had most likely been a Hunter’s blade. It had been a skillful kill; though he hadn’t been a Kindred himself, taking down any Dragon was no easy task.

  “Yes.” Lumen’s face turned grave, the beer having little positive effect on his current mood. “The Hunter was female, no doubt, just as so many are. And they’re skilled in more than simple slaying—they have the art of seduction on their side. Don’t forget that Conlon was caught with his shirt half-unbuttoned. Someone had no doubt worked her sexual magic on him.”

  “Poor horny devil.”

  “We have the power to band together, to take down the Controllers once and for all. I think in going after the Lapsed, though, we’re only fighting symptoms of a greater illness. We need to destroy the source. Turn the Hunters on their clients. They work for money, and we have the funds to pay them more. The Dragon Guild is wealthy.”

  “Agreed. But in the meantime, they’re out there, these Hunters. And difficult to locate. It’s hard to negotiate with someone who’s invisible.”

  “Hard, but not impossible. And something tells me that I’ll be seeing my Hunter again before too long. A feeling deep in my gut, in fact.”

  “And we all know what that means.”

  “Gas?”

  “Idiot,” laughed Aegis. “You’re never wrong when it comes to your instincts. But if you’re likely to run into the same Hunter twice, it can’t be for a good reason. Watch your back or you’ll find her blade stuck in a vertebrae.”

  “I will. Though truthfully I’d sooner watch her back. Or her front. Or possibly both. While naked.”

  Aegis’s face went serious. “Do not let yourself be drawn in to a Hunter’s world, Lumen. She won’t be looking for you to give you a hug and a kiss. They’re as inhuman as the Lapsed.”

  “Or as we are? We’re not exactly bastions of humanity.”

  “No, but we do good, whether the world sees it or not.”

  “And so do the Hunters.”

  “Some of the Hunters are cold-blooded killers. Not far off from murderers.”

  “But some save strangers on the street for no reason but to render a generous service.”

  “And something tells me that you really would like to find your way into that one’s bed, to see where else she might be generous.”

  “Not necessarily her bed. I’d happily enjoy her company on any number of other surfaces.”

  “You’re fucking hopeless. But don’t forget—if the Controllers get their paws into a Hunter, taking someone like you or me down would be the greatest trophy imaginable. The Kindred are the ultimate bounty.”

  “Well, the nice thing about being one of the Kindred is that we’re not so easily taken down, are we?” Lumen chuckled. “I have a few tricks up my sleeve. Evasive manoeuvres, if you will.”

  “No amount of evading will defeat a blade at your throat in the hands of a beautiful woman.”

  “So the key is to avoid the blade—if not the hands of that woman—in the first place. And if it should come down to it, I’ll just have to seduce her.”

  “Take one for the team, you mean.”

  “Yes. For the team.”

  “You randy devil. So what’s the plan? How do we find the Controllers? You know as well as I that they stay away from situations that might reveal them, just as we do.”

  “Well,” said Lumen, fingers stroking the edge of the table, “As you said, they’re hiring the Hunters. So I must find my Hunter and extract the information I need.”

  “Lumen, you just said that you intended to avoid the blade.”

  “I’ll avoid the blade. But the woman will be my prey. Something tells me that it will be enjoyable to turn the tables on the likes of her.”

  “Right. I’m just going to assume that you know what you’re doing and hope for the best, though I fully expect to find your severed head at the bottom of a bin in a few days.”

  Lumen grinned, his light eyes flashing in the warm glow of the table’s candles. “If you do,” he said, “Mount it on a wall for me, would you? I’d like to be a trophy, I think.”

  “It’s a promise.”

  After several more pints, the two men said a cheerful good night. Lumen headed out to the street, while Aegis headed for the not-so-little boys’ room.

  * * *

  Stalker

  A light rain misted the air, rendering Lumen’s hair a little soggy. He rarely carried an umbrella, insisting that human flesh was impermeable, after all, and that Dragon skin was resistant to all elements. A little water had seldom hurt anyone.

  Besides, an evening such as this one only seemed to enhance the scents that flitted through the air. It was best to keep all physical barriers down to facilitate his keen sense of smell.

  And he could scent them all around him: the humans, making their way hurriedly down broad sidewalks. The only ones who ever grinned at him were tourists, whom he could identify immediately by their clothing. Foreigners never knew what to wear in London, either dressing far too warmly, in parkas and fur-lined boots, or far too stupidly. Sandals in November; sunglasses in the evenings.

  The beer hadn’t affected him at all in the end, and if anything only served to make him focus on his route. A straight line for some time, his eyes looking ahead, assessing the street for anyone wh
o didn’t belong.

  Damned light eyes. His only true giveaway in human form. His scent could be covered up as he’d managed in the pub, and normally was—unless he wanted to unleash it as he’d done to the Hunter the previous day.

  He hadn’t entirely intended to be cruel and manipulative, but rather to let her in on a part of his secret. To convey the message that he was hard for her, that everything about her had filled him with heated desire. But it had proven too much, rendering her frustrated, confused. He’d have to remember next time to hold back.

  His eyes moved around as he walked, curious to see if any more Lapsed would try and impede his passage home. The attempts on his life were becoming a common occurrence; a few days earlier, one of the nasty creatures had come upon him in the middle of Hyde Park. The beast, a tall, lanky male, had shifted into something resembling a mangy bear, thrashing towards him in a gallumphing canter. And Lumen had shifted, torn as to whether to bother hiding his déor from the general public. A great silver Dragon in the centre of the park, barbecuing his attacker in plain sight. Leaving only black soot on the ground below him as he took off into the air above the treetops.

  That was the weakness of the Lapsed. They weren’t clever, to say the least. There was no tactical thinking to their actions; simply the hope that they would succeed at their kills. And the Controllers saw them as disposable units; if one failed, another was sent. And so on.

  So far, however, this night was quiet. No Lapsed, no attacks.

  He strolled along slowly, the tips of his right hand’s fingers scraping lightly along the stone wall flanking him on the right. Thoughtful. Aegis had been right; Lumen was a prime candidate for a beheading. The question was whether he would be stalked by a beautiful woman before an attempt was made on his life, or if he’d encounter another of the vile Lapsed.

  “Perhaps it’s time for a holiday away from this life,” he muttered as his fingers met the corner of the wall; he’d come to the end of the block. He stopped at a red light, waiting for an angry taxi driver to pass by.