Hunter's Rise

by Shiloh Walker

  Yet each step got easier and by the time she’d made one circuit around the kitchen, that odd resistance began to melt away, like ice under the spring sun. As she slipped into a short hallway that led to a formal dining room, she just felt faint dregs, like something from a nightmare.

  “We need to find out who owns this place,” she said quietly.

  “I’m already working on it.” Toronto padded across the plush silver carpet, pausing by the big window that faced out over the backyard. Moonlight shone down, painting the world in streams of silver light.

  Room after room came up empty.

  Room after room, she smelled human. Just human. And the stink of blood, which had led them here. Although it hung in the air, she didn’t see so much as a drop anywhere. Considering the pale décor— all silver and whites— the blood would have stood out rather glaringly.

  “The smell of blood in the air is thick enough to choke on,” she said as they climbed to the third floor.

  So far, all of the rooms were empty. Not even appliances had been left. Only the shades and the curtains. She hadn’t seen so much as a stray eyelash, a scrap of paper.

  “Yeah.” Toronto grunted. “It’s all human, though.”

  She knew that. He might know scent, but she knew blood. And one thing was really, really weird. “If there was that much blood being shed around here… why haven’t we seen even a drop?”

  Blood and sex. That was what she smelled, and the two of them didn’t go neatly together. The smells permeated every damn room of the house. Blood would have spilled somewhere, she thought. They couldn’t be that neat, could they?

  Was it possible?

  She didn’t know.

  “Okay, we need to think it through,” she said, shaking her head. “If there’s something that’s covering the scent—”

  “It’s not covering it. It’s erasing it,” Toronto cut in.

  “Covering. Erasing. Whatever. You can’t track it. If it’s doing that to some of the scents, why not the human scent?” She frowned, hands on her hips as she studied the room.

  “Easy. Whoever it was that wasn’t human hasn’t been here in a while— they did this and then left and haven’t come back. The others have.” He continued to prowl the room.

  Eyeing him, she asked, “If you walk in enough circles, do you think the walls will start to talk or something?”

  “Wouldn’t that be handy?” He flashed her a toothy smile and then stopped, completely still. His lids drooped low over his eyes and his nostrils flared. “I smell…”

  They both heard it— a faint brush of sound, the scrape of a shoe over concrete. Yards away. But in front of this house.

  She dashed for the stairs.

  Toronto didn’t bother for the quiet approach. She heard glass shatter before she’d even managed to clear the first flight. And by the time she was outside, he had a man dangling from his hand, the mortal’s feet a good twelve inches above the ground.

  “Sylvia, can you grab his mind?”

  As the mortal struggled to get enough air to breathe, she glared at Toronto. “And if the answer is no, what are you going to do?” she demanded.

  Toronto smiled. “His smell is all over this place. What do you think I should do?”

  Slanting a look back at the mortal Toronto held, Sylvia eyed him narrowly. He stank with fear. Yeah, his scent was familiar. And recent— matter of fact, it was one of the stronger scents. Like he’d been inside the house within the past day or two.

  “Do you know something?” she asked him softly, moving closer.

  “Let go of me,” he squealed.

  Something massive and dark rolled through the night. Sylvia closed her hands into fists, her nails tearing into her skin. Blood— her own— scented the night air. Focusing on that, she ignored the fear Toronto brought to the night. It was something the high-level weres could do— inspire fear— mind-shattering fear.

  Shit. She’d faced that once before, but it hadn’t been from a wolf on his level. She really didn’t want to have that directed at her, she decided. Not at all.

  The human hadn’t stood a chance.

  He was sobbing, nose running, and as she watched, he pissed his pants.

  “Try asking him again,” Toronto said quietly.

  “Do you know anything about what happened in this house?” Sylvia said and this time, she pushed at his mind.

  His sobs quieted. The frantic struggles of his body eased and he whispered, “Yes.”

  Toronto flicked her a glance. “So you can grab his mind.”

  “I never said I couldn’t.” Mortal minds were often very malleable, and when they were afraid, much more so. Taking control of this guy’s mind was like taking candy from a baby. “We’re too easy to be seen here.”

  Toronto moved them into the shadows. “You’ll have to make this quick. We were probably heard.”

  “We?” She smirked. He had been heard— going through the glass like some actor in a B action movie. Still, he was right. They needed to be quick. “You listen for cars.” Focusing her mind and her attention on the mortal, she asked, “Where did the people who lived here go?”

  “Nobody lived here.” The man’s eyes were glazed and he stared at Sylvia like she was his world.

  “Okay, the people who owned it. Where did they go?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know who owned it.” With that rapt stare still on his face, he tried to pull away from Toronto’s steely grip. Unsuccessfully. So instead, he just stared at her. “You’re so beautiful. Your skin, it glows.”

  Sylvia ignored him. “What do you know? What happened here, and who was in charge?”

  “Sex. We fucked here. I don’t know who was in charge. I heard the name Kit— if you were enough fun, Kit might like you. Everybody wanted to be liked by Kit.”

  “Why?” She tucked that name away. Kit— male? Female?

  “Because those people got special stuff. Kit got the youngest ones, or the virgins. All the best.” His pupils constricted and he licked his lips, staring at her mouth. “I wanted a virgin. A young one who’d fight me. So I came. And I paid—”

  “A virgin?” Sylvia asked quietly. “How young?”

  “As young as he could get her. Are you one of Kit’s? Your skin… you’ve got the most beautiful skin.” He was panting now, staring at her neck, her cleavage, and she could smell his arousal on the air.

  It turned her stomach. “Do you know where Kit is now?”

  “Kit isn’t from here. Has a place outside of town, or north of here. I can’t remember. Nobody ever said. Kit’s got money and likes to play, likes to party. The rougher you play, the more likely Kit will like you. So I play rough and I pay a lot to do it. There was supposed to be another party here, but then we got the call that the parties were stopping.” He made a weird, rough sound low in his voice. “I don’t know anything else about Kit. I want to touch your skin.”

  She smiled and then closed the distance between them. “Did you hurt women here?”

  “No.” Staring at her, mesmerized, he licked his lips. “There weren’t women. I wanted younger… they were all teenagers. And yeah, I hurt them.”

  The rage inside her grew. As her fangs extended, Sylvia grabbed the back of his head. Still holding his mind with hers, she jerked his head back and sank her teeth in.

  “Sylvia—”

  Over the man’s rigid body, she stared at Toronto. Stop me. She dared him with her eyes. She wanted to rip the man’s body apart with her bare hands. A virgin— that was what he’d wanted. A young one. And so he could get what he’d wanted, he played rough. Paid to do it, even.

  Toronto stared at her and judging by the flicker in his eyes, he was mad about something.

  Sylvia didn’t drain the bastard, as much as she wanted to. They didn’t have time for that— it wasn’t a fast process, emptying a human body of blood. Lifting her head, she let him go and watched him hit the ground, weakened by the hold on his mind and the blood she’d taken.
>
  She sliced her palm and covered his bleeding neck. Healing it took only a minute, but it was a minute they could hardly afford.

  “The cops are coming— I hear the engines.” Toronto held out a hand.

  She accepted and rose, kicking the bastard in the kidney. He cried out. “You won’t remember this,” she warned him, slowly uncurling her psychic hold on him. “You’ll forget. But you’re going to tell the fucking cops what you’ve done here.”

  “Shit, that’s going to screw with Rafe’s investigation,” Toronto muttered.

  She arched a brow. Then, with a sigh, she kicked him again, hard enough to hurt, but not hard enough to break anything. “You’ll tell them in a week.”

  She didn’t know if it would hold— her mental hold was better than her other skills, but she wouldn’t bet the bank on it lasting. Looking at Toronto, she said, “That’s the best I can do. He can’t do this again, but we don’t have time to deal with him.”

  Toronto held something up. It was a wallet. “Oh, don’t worry. I plan on paying him a visit or two… that’s assuming Rafe doesn’t track him down first.”

  CHAPTER 14

  “I

  ’M surprised you didn’t try to stop me.”

  Toronto shot her a look as he pushed her bike out to the street. “Stop what?”

  “Stop me from biting him.”

  He snorted. “I don’t know why you’d want that fuck’s blood in you, but I’m not going to protect somebody like that. If we’d had the time, I would have turned him into a piñata and beat the shit out of him until his skin ripped and his bones fell out like candy.”

  “That’s… an image.” She smiled a little before she could stop herself. Thinking through what he’d said, she let the image she had of him realign a little. He wasn’t just about playing by the rules— and if he was, then the rules he had were so far pretty incomprehensible to her. Things to think about later, when they weren’t in the middle of moving quickly, quietly and calmly before any cops saw them.

  Pushing her mind back to the image he’d called up, she pictured him doing it. Thought about doing it herself— stringing up that son of a bitch who had dreams about raping a child. Yes. She would enjoy whaling on him like he was a piñata. “I have to say, I don’t think we could actually make his skin split and the bones fall out like candy, though.”

  “I would have fun trying.” He glanced down the street, although they couldn’t see the other house from here. “We need to go.”

  “Where are we heading now?”

  “Someplace where we might find some answers.” He gestured to the bike.

  It wasn’t until he climbed on behind her that she realized she hadn’t been tempted to take off without him.

  She told herself it was because she wasn’t interested in having a Hunter chase her down.

  But that wasn’t entirely true… she wouldn’t mind a bit if he decided to chase her. He’d catch her, she knew it. And she was starting to think that would be a hell of a lot of fun.

  Which only made things too complicated… they had no time for fun, and this definitely wasn’t the place for it.

  “W

  HY are we back here?” Sylvia stared at the club, her belly twisting as she thought of going back inside there.

  Her visit here before hadn’t exactly been fruitless, but she didn’t see herself finding a lot more information here. And going back in that place left her… uncomfortable.

  “Information.” Toronto sighed and pulled his hair back. After he did that, he pulled out something metallic and pink from his pocket.

  As the scent— sugary and sweet— drifted upward, he held out the mangled pack of gum toward her. She eyed it narrowly and then shook her head, watching him as he popped a piece in his mouth. A werewolf who chewed Hubba Bubba. Weird.

  “What kind of information?” she asked, making herself look back at the club.

  “The kind that might have to do with somebody who sells kids. This place sells the fantasy. I don’t like it, but it’s legal and it… fills a need.” He shrugged restlessly. “Some fucks have that need and as long as they don’t cross the line, we can’t do shit about it. But if these people know about the fantasy, maybe they’ve had a few people come looking for the reality.”

  He slanted her a look. “After all, somebody pointed you in the direction of that house. I’m figuring you found them here… you were here last night, I know.”

  Sylvia rolled her eyes at him.

  “So people here know something. We’ll see if we can’t get more.”

  “If the kid I spoke with knew more, I would have known more.” She thought of the young man, his anger. “He told me everything he knew.”

  “We aren’t looking for the kid. We’re looking higher up this time.” Toronto pushed the pack of gum back into his pocket and nodded toward the alley. “Come on. We’ll go in through the back. I suspect management will be more likely to cooperate if we aren’t seen.”

  “Management? We’re talking to management?” As they slipped into the alley, she pushed her hands into her pockets. “You looking for a new line of work, Toronto? You’re pretty, but I don’t think you’re young enough.”

  A thin smiled curled Toronto’s lips. “Probably not.”

  “How old are you?” She eyed him curiously.

  He shot her a look. “I’m not sure.”

  Caught off guard, she stumbled in her tracks. “You… you’re not sure?”

  “Yeah. I was changed more than a century ago, but I don’t know how old I was before I was changed, so, there’s no telling.” As they reached the door, he said, “Now why don’t you focus on that job you’re so worked up about?”

  Frowning, she went to glare at him. But all she got was his back— his very rigid back. He’d already forced the door open and was disappearing inside the gloom.

  Somehow, she’d hit a sore spot.

  Odd. She hadn’t thought he’d have them.

  He didn’t go far. The door he stopped in front of was plain and unassuming, unmarked, and if she hadn’t done this sort of thing in the past, she didn’t know if she would have thought to look here.

  But she wasn’t at all surprised when he opened the door to reveal a slick, posh office that would have rivaled the designs of some top-level executives. As the man behind the desk looked up, surprise flitting through his eyes, Toronto held the door open for her. She sauntered inside and made a show of looking around. “Wow. Selling little boys must pay well.”

  “Excuse me.” The mortal gave her a blinding, disarming smile. “Do we have an appointment, Ms.… ?”

  She just smiled and sat in the chair in front of his desk. It cupped her body like a glove, soft and comfortable. Crossing her legs, she propped an elbow on the arm of the chair and watched Toronto. This had been his call— how was he going to play it?

  As Toronto shut the door, the man’s eyes shifted away and if she hadn’t been used to reading mortals, she wouldn’t have seen it. He hid it well. But he knew Toronto. And he didn’t like him. His shoulders stiffened minutely, then relaxed. Something flickered in his pale brown eyes, but was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared. With a genial smile, he studied first Toronto and then Sylvia. “I’m afraid I’m at a loss. Did we have an appointment?”

  “Nope.” Toronto came farther into the room, long black coat swirling around his ankles, his blue eyes locked on the man’s face, and although that face should have been too damn pretty to look so fucking scary, he did it. Eyes like ice, a decidedly wolfish smile and an expression that said he was ready, willing and able to cause a lot of trouble.

  He sank into the chair next to Sylvia’s, his pose deceptively lazy, legs stretched out in front of him, hands linked across his belly. “But we have one now, Mr. Markland.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong man, my friend. My name is Ben Muccino. Benito, actually, but that’s a mouthful.” He smiled once more, that same winning smile. Although this time, it looked a little frayed a
round the edges.

  “No, it’s not. It’s Benjamin Markland— born in Chattanooga, 1975 to Beth and Charles Markland. Mom and Dad still live there— they are very proud. Think you are an executive.” Toronto glanced around and his smile took on a derisive slant. “I guess you are, seeing as how you run this joint. Running a strip joint still counts as management, right? And you make a pretty penny, selling fantasy and all.”

  A muscle jerked in the man’s face, and Sylvia watched as he took a deep, slow breath. “What do you want… money? I won’t be blackmailed. I’m not doing anything illegal here.” He curled his lip and shot both of them a dark look. “People like you, you see in black-and-white. Life isn’t black-and- white— it’s all shades of gray. If there weren’t places like this, then the people who need these fantasies? They’d go looking for their own— they’d make their own.”

  Toronto cocked a brow. “Is that how you see it?” He shrugged. “That’s fine. You say to-may-toe. I say to-mah-toe. You see this as all fucking kosher. I see it as a disgusting enterprise where kids who are barely old enough to be called adults act like kids so men old enough to be their daddies can sit in the dark and jack off while they fantasize. That’s fine. It’s legal… and nobody gets hurt.” He smiled thinly and added, “Trust me… I’ve been watching.”

  “I’m aware.” Ben leaned back, his eyes narrowed on Toronto’s face. “Hassling one of my customers. I saw. I wasn’t pleased. If you do it again, I’ll call the cops.”

  Toronto burst out laughing. “Oh, please. Spare me.” He leaned forward and said, “You go ahead and do that. They’ll come out here to look for me. And I’ll wait for them.”

  The smile he gave Ben was one that would have given grown men nightmares, Sylvia thought. To Ben’s credit, he didn’t look away, didn’t blink.

  “After all, I’m a law-abiding citizen. Can you say the same for all of your… clients?”

  A hiss escaped him. “I don’t think I like you, Mr.… ?”

  “Don’t worry.” With a friendly smile, he leaned back in the chair. “Not many people do. And as to your customer? You can say Bobby and I go way back, and he’s got… problems. I’m sort of his probation officer.”