Pack

by Cassandra Chandler

His heart hammered in his chest. Vaughn had said the glasses had a special reflective coating that would obscure the gold color to Marcus’s eyes. If they didn’t, the evening was about to become even more dangerous.

  This hunter had incapacitated five Redcaps without lifting a finger. She must have some sort of weapon or device hidden on her body the likes of which Marcus had never seen. And he was certain it wasn’t the only one.

  He should search her body. Thoroughly.

  His hands were curling again, but not in fists. He couldn’t keep himself from imagining what it would be like to touch her, to taste her.

  Marcus took another deep breath of the alley, trying to sort through the scents. Death, rot, and…cut grass. That was unexpected for the middle of downtown. Even stranger, he couldn’t catch her scent at all.

  He shifted closer, bending toward her slightly. He wanted her scent. Needed it.

  For some reason, she didn’t feel like prey. Marcus had to know why.

  On some level, all humans felt like prey to him. They had ever since the attack that killed his family and left him changed. Marcus even had to be careful around Vaughn sometimes. The only exceptions were Dexter and Porter, and that was probably because Dexter was the one who had rescued Marcus—killing all of the deadly dwellers involved.

  Dexter was definitely not prey. Nor was his identical brother.

  The woman brought Marcus back to the moment, reaching out to put her palm on his chest. Her hand was colder than he expected, an odd energy to it.

  “You okay there?” she said. “Cause you seem to be listing.”

  Marcus wasn’t sure. He reached out and grabbed her shoulders, pretending he needed her help to stay upright, but really only wanting to get closer. She seemed human, but something about her was setting him off in multiple ways.

  She smirked up at him and stepped a little closer, letting her hands slide inside his duster and along his ribcage. Marcus sucked in a breath as his nerves lit up brighter than when he was about to change. Her grip was firm, her arms stronger than he would have expected at first.

  They were in an alley with five Redcaps. Five weirdly immobile Redcaps, but still… And that sultry smile of hers was all he could think about.

  He had the strongest urge to lean down and kiss her, but he didn’t think he’d be able to stop there. Scenarios were playing in his head that had nothing to do with patrol or training or anything he’d known for the twenty-some years of his brutal life.

  She was a few inches shorter than him. Her hips were round and full—a perfect fit for his hands. The fabric of his cargo pants chafed against him as he hardened for her.

  Would it be so bad to let go? He wasn’t thinking about hurting her. If she kept her jacket on, it would protect her skin from the brick walls while he did things he should definitely not be thinking about while on an active patrol.

  “Just this once. Just this one.”

  What the hell? His dweller asked Marcus to kill people all the time. It had never asked him to fuck someone before.

  “You’re just trying to get me to turn her.”

  His dweller laughed. “You have other hungers.”

  Marcus shook his head, then stood straight again. If he didn’t control himself when he was this worked up, things could go very, very wrong.

  But he didn’t want her blood. He wanted her body.

  Not prey. Not for feeding, anyway.

  A new hunger was rising within him. One he hadn’t dealt with before. One he had no idea how to fight against. But he’d be damned if he would let it win.

  Chapter Two

  Tall, dark, and derpy was staring at her again. Tessa felt like she was in one of those movies where the main characters kept gazing meaningfully into each other’s eyes.

  In another world, she would have been absolutely down with that. Barring his strange fashion sense, this guy was just the type to get her motor revving. But this was the world she was stuck in. She couldn’t afford to get sidetracked by…cosplaying hipster hotties? She hadn’t quite figured him out, with his nerdy glasses, long black duster, and muscled physique.

  “You have any drinks tonight?” she said.

  “No.”

  She shook her head. “That’s too bad. The first time you see something you can’t explain, it really pisses off your brain. I was hoping you could rationalize it away with alcohol.”

  “I don’t need to rationalize anything.”

  “Okay. The denial route is a popular choice.”

  Plenty of people refused to believe their senses when they saw their first dweller. After a while, they could come up with explanations for what they had “really seen”. It used to be that people would tell stories about demons and monsters. Nowadays, it was usually just stress or weirdoes running around on the streets.

  If they only knew the truth…

  This guy was taking what he’d seen a little too calmly. He might be bottling things up, only to freak out later. Sometimes people developed a nervous tic or habit. Sometimes they lashed out at others. If that was the case, Tessa wouldn’t be around long enough to do damage control. She did what she could in the moment.

  “I think you might be in shock,” she said.

  “I’m not in shock.”

  “Everybody thinks that when they see a monster for the first time. But trust me, you are. Do you have someone you can call?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  She didn’t have to feign her smile. She was glad to be reminded that people were still helping each other out. Not everyone was alone. Part of why she was a hunter was to help preserve that life for others.

  Sir Hipster Derpalot needed a plausible lie for a completely implausible situation. She looked him up and down again, and came up with just the thing.

  “You can regale them with your story of getting caught up in somebody else’s cosplay that was so realistic it freaked you out a little. If you tell it often enough, you’ll even start to believe it.”

  She pulled away from him—more reluctantly than she cared to admit—then cupped his elbow, hoping to gently lead him to the entrance of the alley. He wouldn’t budge.

  “Look, things are about to get really weird here,” she said. “Denial can only go so far and the human psyche is more fragile than you think. I need you elsewhere.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone with…”

  He glanced over her shoulder at the five paralyzed Redcaps. The five temporarily paralyzed Redcaps. She wasn’t sure how long the battery would last on the device that was keeping them immobilized, and she had a lot of work ahead of her.

  “It’s okay,” she said, even though it wasn’t. “And who says I’m going to be alone?”

  She craned her arm up behind her so she could reach one of the weapons she kept hidden beneath her jacket and pulled it out—a shortened baseball bat made of ash wood. She had sharpened the handle to a point and added electrical tape to improve the grip. It made a pretty good stake for vampires or she could go all cavewoman on things that needed squishing.

  In the end, Redcaps were just giant bugs.

  Giant space bugs.

  That was the punchline to the joke that was her life. Humans told stories about scary monsters as if they all had evolved in parallel. They had no idea the monsters under the bed or lurking in the closet were aliens.

  She spun the weapon like a baton, ending with the bludgeoning side at the ready. If Derpy saw that she could handle herself, maybe he’d go away.

  “Not many people would keep it together as well as you’re doing,” she said. “I appreciate you wanting to help.”

  When he didn’t say anything, she asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Marcus.”

  “I’m Tessa.”

  She switched her bat to her off hand and reached out to him in greeting. He stared at her hand for a moment before grasping it.

  His skin was warm and much smoother than she’d expected. He stepped closer again.

&nb
sp; The light was glinting off of his glasses, making it hard to see his eyes. She could tell his lashes were as dark and thick as his hair. The color of his eyes was hard to make out. A pale amber. Almost…gold.

  Her skin prickled as adrenaline flowed through her system, priming her body for action. She pulled her hand back, but didn’t step away.

  Maybe he was wearing contacts. Maybe he was deep into playing dress-up superhero. If his mind was rationalizing what he’d seen by telling him this was all part of some game, that would explain why he was refusing to leave. After seeing a Redcap open its mouth, anybody would have trouble figuring out what was real.

  He still should be freaking out a little. She didn’t get how he could seem so calm.

  Unless he’d encountered a monster before. Maybe something worse than Redcaps.

  If Marcus had…she wasn’t sure if he’d made it out human. Gold eyes—if his eyes were gold—only belonged to a few types of dwellers. Including one of the most dangerous.

  Werewolves.

  They were the result of yet another microscopic parasite that spread through the human body after it was bitten while the alien DNA was fully activated. Or, in layman’s terms, when the werewolf was in its hybrid form. The parasite would infect human cells at an incredible rate, transforming their DNA into something…else.

  Tessa wasn’t sure if the parasites knew what they were creating or it was just random chance that they made human-alien hybrids that resembled wolves. Maybe they came from a planet of wolf-people?

  It didn’t matter. What concerned her was the fact that the end results were utterly deadly. Werewolves were violent killing machines whose primary prey was humans.

  Marcus had said he had someone he could call. If he was a werewolf, he wouldn’t need a phone. All of his packmates would be able to communicate telepathically.

  But he couldn’t be a werewolf. If he was, she’d be dead already. And then he’d be in for a real surprise.

  Her right wrist began to itch. Squirming, wriggling, just beneath her skin. She could feel the disgusting things that infested her arm poking against the elastic of the wristband she always wore to keep them trapped.

  Not all alien parasites were microscopic.

  Her mouth went dry, heart pounding against her rib cage. She wanted to pull off her jacket and check her arm, to make sure nothing had escaped her makeshift containment system. But before she could do that, he needed to leave.

  “Make that call, Marcus.” She summoned her most commanding tone, let the threat of violence seep into her words. “Somewhere else. Now.”

  His shoulders hunched and his lips twitched away from his teeth as he bit out each word. “Don’t challenge me.”

  Shit, could he be a werewolf? Why would he be hunting alone? And in that ridiculous outfit.

  A werewolf wouldn’t need glasses. Or a duster. Their dweller nature would keep them comfortable in a huge range of temperatures and would have fixed any issues their human host had with their eyesight right after they were infected.

  She had a silver-infused knife in her left boot. Whatever planet werewolves were originally from, their parasites couldn’t handle any amount of exposure to silver. If Marcus was a werewolf, she’d only need to nick him to take him out. It sounded easy on paper but was much more difficult to manage in reality.

  There was no way she’d reach the knife in time if Marcus went for her. But he was holding himself perfectly still. He seemed rooted in place.

  She’d given him an order. There was no way a werewolf would have accepted that sort of challenge without doing something about it.

  Human, then. But messed up.

  We should start a club.

  She couldn’t cut him loose. He seemed more and more the type to go ballistic after being shaken up, and she wouldn’t have that on her conscience. The whole point of what she did was to protect people. It didn’t matter if the threat came from dwellers or a fellow human. She still counted herself as one of them. For the moment.

  They were standing close enough that she could easily reach out and touch him again. She tapped the pocket she had sewn into her jacket’s cuff to make a tracker fall into her hand. After activating it with a squeeze, she tacked it onto his arm as she grasped his bicep.

  His muscles were bigger than she expected. She could feel the tone and strength to them through his sleeve.

  Focus, Tessa.

  “I’m not trying to challenge you,” she said. “I’m trying to keep you safe.”

  He sucked in a breath through his nose. His lips were pressed together so tight, they were bloodless. She could feel him trembling beneath her hand and she upped her assessment to “severely messed up”.

  “You don’t need to protect me.” He managed the whole sentence through teeth that never once parted. A muscle on his cheek twitched.

  And he had given her the opening she needed.

  “Okay. I get that. You’re a…really big guy.” She looked him over again. Damn—it was true. If he wasn’t some kind of basket case, she’d enjoy their proximity.

  “You want to help me?” she asked.

  His head bobbed in a brisk nod.

  “Okay,” she said. “Then stand outside the alley and don’t let anyone in. Can you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  She didn’t dare allow herself to show her relief. If he thought she was manipulating him, she’d have five Redcaps plus an unhinged human to deal with. And the things living in her arm.

  She couldn’t think about that right now. She gave Marcus another order instead. “No peeking. I need some privacy to take care of these things. We’ll talk after, okay?”

  He nodded again, then stalked down the alley. As soon as he turned the corner and disappeared, she dropped her bat and tore off her jacket so she could look at her arm.

  The skin was smooth. She couldn’t feel the bastards wriggling under her skin anymore either. Whatever had set them off, they seemed to be calm now. Dormant.

  She took a deep, shaky breath, and let it out slowly. Her heart was still pounding.

  There was too much going on for her to calm herself down more. She didn’t know how long the battery would last on her sonic bug repeller, and she still had a Redcap nest to clear.

  “Get it together, Tessa.”

  She pulled her jacket back on and picked up her bat. Her hands were shaking. She took another deep breath and blew it out.

  This part she knew. This was her life. Tracking down dwellers and ending them before they could end others—or worse. Leave them with shattered lives like her own.

  Infect them.

  The familiar hate rose up in her. She used it. Fed on it. Her hands steadied.

  She checked her grip on the bat and took a few warm-up swings, humming the song her dad had taught her during family outings to baseball games. Hauling back the bat, she swung hard at the face of the nearest Redcap. The wood connected with a satisfying crunch.

  Its face caved in as the creature that was basically sitting on the corpse’s neck and driving it around was crushed under the blow. Tendrils that had connected to long-dead nerves and moved the body like a puppet streamed behind the thing as it fell to the ground.

  She stepped clear as the human body it had been using glowed with a pretty blue light. Like paper being consumed by a flame, it vanished, clothes and all.

  Not everything about dwellers made sense.

  Tessa waited, staring at the quivering thing left behind on the ground. Its sunglasses and bandana had been knocked off, revealing what was nothing like a human head.

  Two black globes protruded from its arachnid body, the feelers and limbs hidden in the hair of its “beard” twitching in its death throes. Its back was wrinkled and covered in a viscous red slime that made it look like a bloody brain.

  “Fucking Redcaps.”

  It was taking too long to die, so Tessa helped it along. Two more swings, and it stopped moving. The same blue light flowed over its body, leaving nothing behind.
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  The best part about these things was their self-cleaning systems. Humans didn’t usually find out about dwellers because they self-destructed when they were killed. Even the ichor on her bat glowed and then vanished as she swung it around a few more times.

  The worst part about them was their existence.

  Memories threatened to flood Tessa’s mind, bile rising in the back of her throat when she thought of all the times she’d been too late.

  Cleaning up human remains was a hell of a lot messier—and not just physically.

  She swung at the next Redcap. She had to take her mind in a different direction, had to stay focused on the current moment. This town was still infested, and until she killed the queen, more Redcaps would keep showing up. More people would die.

  She started humming, timing her swings to match the music as she hit another Redcap with crushing blows. She paused behind the fourth Redcap.

  “No one comes back to me. Ever.”

  The sound of her own voice startled her. She hadn’t meant to speak aloud, but had been alone so long, she’d started talking to herself. Besides, it was true.

  One of the things in her wrist squirmed, undoubtedly getting comfortable. Making itself at home under her skin.

  She wasn’t getting out of this alive. No one was. All she could do was take as many of these bastards with her as possible. She could spare other humans from a loss so deep it cut like shards of glass filling her insides.

  If she was very, very lucky, nothing would crawl up into her corpse and ride it around like a fucking marionette.

  She wouldn’t leave her destiny up to luck. When her time came, all she had to do was make it back to her van. It was rigged with so many explosives, there wouldn’t be enough of her left for anything to steer, copy, possess, or cohabitate. In her imagination, whatever managed to finally take her down would be blown up with her.

  Everybody needed a dream.

  Her last swing was strong and true. The Redcap flew from its host, splatting against the already disgusting wall of the alley and slowly trailing down the bricks before vaporizing.

  Tessa wished she could crack open the universe and make a sucking hole that would pull every single dweller into it and leave humans to just mess with each other. Wasn’t that bad enough? They didn’t need fucking aliens or alien-human hybrids ripping up families. Humans could mess up their lives fine on their own.