Hunter's Salvation

by Shiloh Walker

  Bu she didn’t return his smile. Her hand fell away, and she stepped closer to the CT images. “You said fifteen percent. That, to me, seems a rather low number. What happened to the other eighty-five percent?”

  “They died.”

  For a moment Naomi just stared at him. “You mean to tell me that this insane project of yours will kill the vast majority of the fools who agree to it? With the odds so stacked against them, why would any sane person agree to it?”

  With a slight smile, William said, “I did not say that it was the process that killed them. Roughly forty percent of all participants do have fatal results. The remaining participants do successfully make the transition. However, they are…flawed.”

  Naomi’s lips curved up in a cool smile. “Please explain what you mean by flawed.”

  Thomas stepped forward, resting a hand on William’s shoulder. “Some have suffered slow mental deterioration, similar to Alzheimer’s. Others had ministrokes that eventually culminated in a massive one.”

  “We do not have strokes.” This came from Maurice. A diminutive vampire, he stood barely five feet tall, and he spoke with a faint lisp. With his too-pretty features and slight form, he looked more like a doll than like a creature of the night. But William knew just how bloodthirsty Maurice was. He had seen him in action. “Shifters and vampires are not human, Thomas. We do not suffer their weaknesses. Perhaps the witches do, but not us.”

  “On the contrary, Maurice.” Thomas’s eyes went vague, and William knew he was sifting through all the information he kept stored inside his computerlike mind. “Our immune systems repair injury too fast for most maladies to slow us down. However, for those who undergo the process and live, they seem also to have slowed immune response after the Change. Additionally, it affects the circulatory system, slowing the flow of blood and the speed of healing. This, I believe, is why some are having strokes. Those who fall victim to brain disease, I’m having a harder time pinpointing why.”

  “Because you are messing with nature, you fool.” Naomi gave William and Thomas a mocking smile. “So, it can either kill them or turn them into vegetables. Tell me, Thomas, who does the diaper changing when they lose control of their bowels?”

  Thomas glanced at William. William shrugged. “The end results of our research, regardless of success or failure, are too sensitive to risk letting them fall into the wrong hands. Successful transitions can handle this threat. Those who cannot are eliminated.”

  “So you kill them.”

  “I’d rather be dead than have to have some nurse wipe my ass.” William shrugged. “Besides, we did have one creature who escaped the labs. She was a witch, and the process augmented her power. She hadn’t learned to use it very well, and she did not tolerate the Change at all. When she escaped, we went after her, but she fell into trouble before we could bring her back and dispose of her. She was killed—we believe by Hunters, but we were unsuccessful in tracking her movements, so we cannot be sure. Her escape endangered the entire project. Now, when we see that a result is not what we would wish, we simply dispose of it right away.”

  “It. Like they are just pieces of garbage,” Naomi said with distaste.

  William didn’t respond, just smiled faintly.

  Naomi saw the smile and shook her head. “You are a cold, crude bastard, but, then…you always were.” She took one long, last look at the scans. “It has possibilities, William. Too bad the risks outweigh the benefits.” She left without saying another word. William didn’t bother watching her go. He had known she would not want to try this new game. Naomi was an unusual creature, for a werewolf.

  She acted with caution instead of haste, and she never let her arrogance get in the way of rational thought. Naomi would never be one to assume that her power as a were would see her through any and every obstacle.

  But just as William had known he wouldn’t be watching Naomi through a piece of bulletproof glass as she transitioned, he also knew that there were a great many shifters and vampires who would count on their strengths to see them through.

  The door had just closed behind Naomi when Paulo stepped up. He had a cocky grin on his face, although the yellowed teeth in his mouth did detract a little from that smile. “I have seen centuries come and go. You do not live through six centuries if you are weak or a fool. This…project will not kill me or drive me mad.”

  William suppressed his own smile as he looked towards Thomas. “Excellent.”

  Paulo would count on his strength, but what he didn’t know was that the less desirable effects seemed to impact the older creatures. The higher success rates were with werecreatures still in their twenties or thirties, and vampires who had only been dead a few years. The younger the creature, the more likely the chances for success.

  Paulo was looking at a death sentence.

  CHAPTER 5

  IT was the soft scent of her skin that signaled to Vax he was no longer alone. He heard her footsteps a heartbeat later and turned to watch as she made her way down the alley towards him. She hadn’t bothered putting the red wig on. Although she was still wearing black, it was no longer the fuck me if you dare getup. Instead she wore a pair of black boots with sturdy soles, slim-fitting black jeans, and a black shirt, topped off with a short black leather jacket.

  Irritated, Vax turned his focus back to the club across the street. “I thought I told you that this was no longer your concern. The club isn’t going to be open much longer, and the owners will be dealt with.”

  He saw her out of the corner of his eye and could see the determined look on her narrow face. It was dim in the alley, but he could still make out her soft green eyes, and there was no denying the low burn of rage simmering in them. “That’s not really up to you, is it?”

  “You’re out of your league here, blondie,” Vax said, his tone curt. Turning to face her, he jerked his head towards the club. “People in there get hurt, sweetheart. Hurt bad, and it’s not the kind that a couple of days in the hospital will heal. I don’t know what the hell your problem with the place is, but believe me, I’ll—Oomph.”

  He looked down as she slammed something into his stomach. It was one of those expandable plastic file folders, and it was full. “You want to know what my problem is, look inside.”

  Automatically, he caught the file in his hand. He snapped the stretchy band that held it closed, and scowled. “I don’t have the time or the patience for recreational reading, darlin’.”

  “My name is Jess. Don’t call me darlin’, don’t call me sweetheart, don’t call me blondie. Jess.” She curled her lip at him and gestured to the file. “I’ll give you the Cliff’s Notes version. In the past three years, there have been seven women abducted. None of them related by race, body type, hair color…nothing, except that they all attended that club in the months prior to their disappearances. Abducted from different parts of the city, different times of day. They are missing anywhere between six months to a year before the bodies turn up. The bodies are discovered within a day of death, or less. There are signs of brutal rapes before they are slowly and methodically beaten to death. Whoever held the women made sure they were cared for. There are no signs of starvation, no signs of abuse that took place over the months they were missing.

  “There are, however, some very, very odd things. Needle marks, tracks, on their arms. They were practically turned into pincushions. But whatever was injected into them is something that can’t be traced.”

  She stood there staring at the club, her arms crossed over her chest. In the faint light, he could see the silvery tracks of tears rolling down her face. When she turned to look at him, the grief he saw there was like a sucker punch straight to his gut. “I’d been working the story, off the record, since the fourth victim. When the fifth victim was found, my editor gave me the go-ahead to start on it officially. The fifth victim was the mayor’s daughter.”

  She held out her hand, and he saw that she was holding another file. This one was slender, and he took it, tucking t
he other folder under his arm. He opened it to find a couple of crime-scene photos and a coroner’s report. He didn’t have to look at anything but the first picture to know that the girl had been brutalized.

  Her face was left untouched and there was just enough of a similarity to make dread start a slow march up his spine.

  “She’s the latest victim, although the police don’t entirely believe it. Her name was Randi. She was my sister.” Jess’s voice was husky and soft. “Randi didn’t fit the profile at all. She had never been to the club. She wasn’t kidnapped and held for months on end, but I know they killed her. The why of it is what I don’t understand. It wasn’t like I was even close to uncovering anything. But they didn’t like my asking.”

  She turned away, walking halfway down the alley and stopping. She took a deep breath, her shoulders lifting and falling. Then a second one, like she was having a hard time breathing. The long ends of her hair brushed the base of her spine as she tipped her head back to stare up at the sky. “There was no warning. I had no chance to try and save her, because I didn’t know they had grabbed her until it was too late. If…” Her breath caught in her throat, hitching a little. “Do you know that if I had even a tenth of Randi’s gift, or my mom’s, I would have known in time. I could have gotten to her. I could have saved her. I would have felt it in time to stop it, you see. But by the time I knew what they were doing to her, it was too late. She bled out while I was trying to find her.”

  Jess’s head turned, and she held out a hand. Vax watched as a rock lifted off the ground and drifted over to her. “I can make rocks float. I don’t ever have to get a ladder to get something down off a tall shelf. But I couldn’t save my sister.” She closed her hand around the rock so tightly, her fingers went white. A half sob escaped her, and she turned, the rock still levitating. Her hand fisted, and when it did, the rock hurtled through the air, slamming into the wall with a force that made the brick crumble.

  When she looked back at Vax, there were tears in her eyes. “Her body was found in the park where we used to go with our parents. The night after she was found, I went home to find a note on my pillow. Leave it alone or you can join her. We had a great deal of fun with her. There was also a tape. They recorded it. Her rape, her beating, her murder. Now there’s a snuff film out there with my baby sister on it.”

  “Fuck.” Vax blew out a soft breath. “God, I’m sorry.”

  “So far the police have recovered dozens of copies, but they’ll never get them all.” Her green eyes shifted to a point over his shoulder, and he knew she was staring at the club. “The only face that ever showed up on the tape was my sister’s. The guys, all you could see was their bodies. But I know who was behind it. I know. I want all of them dead, but the bastard in charge? Death isn’t enough. I want him to suffer.”

  “Bloodshed won’t bring her back,” Vax said quietly. “It won’t make it any easier for you to sleep at night.”

  “No.” She reached up and pushed shaking hands through her hair. The eyes staring back at him were desolate. “But if I can find out why they were killing the girls, and stop them, all of them, then maybe I can live with killing my sister.”

  Looking into her haunted, heartbroken eyes, Vax said gently, “You didn’t kill her.”

  A sad smile curled her lips. “Didn’t I?”

  Finally Vax felt a flicker of emotion from her. Pain—but it went too deep for such a simple word to describe it. By the time he’d acknowledged it, it was gone, and she’d locked her emotions down tight once more.

  “No.” Closing the distance between them, he waited until she looked up into his eyes before he finished. “You did not kill her.”

  Lowering her lashes, Jess turned her head aside. “Why don’t we agree to disagree on that one?” She reached inside the jacket and drew something from an inside pocket. A picture…no, two of them. She rubbed them together between her hands as she started to pace.

  “There’s no real connection among the girls who’ve been killed, other than the fact that they hung out at Debach.” She licked her lips, staring down at the two pictures in her hands. “The police couldn’t find anything there, and the owners seem pretty much clean.”

  Vax glanced over his shoulder at the club. Clean, my ass, he thought idly.

  Jess’s next words mirrored his thoughts. “They may not look dirty, but something is up with those two, I’d bet my life on it. I don’t have much information on the owners. There are two—there’s a silent partner, Thomas Fitzpatrick. He immigrated over from Ireland fifteen years ago.”

  She handed him the first photograph. The blond man in the photo didn’t looked familiar to him. There was a keen intelligence in his eyes, paired with an utter lack of conscience. Never a good combination. He also had that death white pallor common among vampires.

  “He owns the club jointly with his partner. He seems to have the money in the operation—the other partner handles running the club itself.”

  As she handed him the second picture, she continued talking. Part of him wanted to tune her out, do something to make her go away. Even if it required something less than polite. He wasn’t going to hit her again, but he had other weapons at his disposal. His magick hadn’t worked on her before, but there had to be something, some sort of weakness in those thick defensive shields.

  But another part of him remembered what it was like to lose somebody you loved, the gut-deep need to do something. Weary, he dragged a hand through his hair. There were reasons he didn’t Hunt anymore. Reasons he preferred to be left alone. But he couldn’t totally silence what was left of his conscience, no matter how hard he tried.

  Physically, the guy in the second picture wasn’t quite as nondescript at the first. His head was bald and he had a neatly trimmed goatee. Eyes of an indistinct color, average height, stocky build. It was the eyes that made him stand out, something that would make people remember him.

  His eyes were cruel. Soulless and cruel. This guy walked down the street and, Vax bet, people cleared a path for him. He had that look about him, the kind that said, You don’t want to mess with me.

  Slowly, a grin curved his lips. A good old-fashioned dirty fight might just be the thing he needed. He could take out this guy and blow off some steam. Both problems solved, nice and easy. Flipping the picture around, he tapped it with his finger and asked, “Where can I find this one?”

  For a second, Jess just stared at him. Then she fisted her hands on her hips and demanded, “Hell, if I knew that, you think I’d just be standing here? He’s the one I’ve been trying to get to. And I might have been able to if you hadn’t interrupted. He’s not the easiest person to track down. He seems to come and go like magick. His name is William Masters. His face never showed in the tape, but he’s the one who was using a knife on my sister. He was one of the ones who raped her.”

  “And you know that…how?”

  Her voice shook with resolve as she said, “I just know.” She reached out and took the picture back from him. She stared with hatred at the man in the picture. “I was going to try following him home. Then you showed up.”

  In a mild voice, Vax said, “You were going to follow him home.” Like he was some guy that had sideswiped her, and she wanted to get his license plate. That alone could get a woman killed. But she was talking about following somebody she suspected of raping, beating, and murdering her little sister.

  For a split second, he was surprised. It passed quickly, though. This woman had absolutely no survival instincts. “Darlin’, it’s a good thing I showed up. Sooner or later you’ll get that through that pretty head of yours.” He held up the second picture. “Mind if I keep this?”

  She made no comment, so Vax just shrugged and tucked it into his pocket. He was quiet for a moment as he tried to think of the words he needed to make her understand that she had to let him handle this. He didn’t want to see those pretty green eyes staring lifelessly up at the sky.

  “I understand how much it hurts, losing somebody
. I’ve lost more than I care to think about. It hurts, and nothing will ever make that pain go away. But putting yourself into their hands? That’s no answer. There’s no reason for it.”

  “No reason?” she whispered. He started to walk away, and Jess stood there for a moment, staring at him, dumbfounded. He turned the corner at the mouth of the alley, disappearing from sight, and Jess was spurred into action. Running after him, she caught his arm in her hand. Her palm on the bare, bunched flesh of his bicep. His muscle jerked under her touch, and Jess felt as though she were trapped in a torrent of emotion.

  “No reason?” She snarled it at him. “You have no idea what they did to her.”

  Vax stood there, staring at her with unreadable eyes. “I’ll deal with the club. If he’s part of it, I’ll handle him. But he’s more than just a rapist.” He reached up as if he was going to touch her hair, and Jess batted his hand away. “He’s something you can’t handle.”

  Her eyes narrowed down to slits. Her head buzzed from that brief contact with his skin. And she felt like crying, screaming, or both. “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t handle. Don’t tell me you’ll deal with it. If you don’t know what they are doing, you can’t deal with it.”

  “That’s my job.”

  “Screw your job.” Jess closed the distance between them and reached up. She braced herself for the jolt as she snapped, “Deal with this.” Then she cupped his face in her hands and dropped her shields. She knew enough about Empathy to know that his gift would do the rest. All she had to do was lower her shields—and think about what they’d done to Randi.

  “See what they did to her, and then tell me there is no reason.”

  The images that haunted her endlessly were no longer just hers. She knew he was seeing them as his body stiffened, contorting as though he was trying to pull away from her. Tears streamed down her face. She couldn’t make him feel her pain without her feeling it as well.

  Randi had only been dead for a few hours when Jess was called in to identify her, and her sister’s spirit had hovered for a couple of days before she passed on.