Stalking the Others hi-4

by Jess Haines

  “I’m not joking, Shiarra. I made a deal when I was first diagnosed. His blood is all that’s kept me alive this long. I’m bound to him, just like you were.”

  A loud noise from behind startled me. Nikki had kicked a nearby box into a wall and stalked into the back rooms. I turned back to Jack, wiping any lingering mirth off my face. “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

  “Neither do most of the other White Hats,” Jack confessed. “It would tear the organization apart. Only a select few know. Once I told Devon, he didn’t want to take over. Nikki is too hot-tempered to lead, even if she wanted to, and Royce won’t abide Tiny’s taking my place. He wanted someone he could control to take over for me. It’s why he thought you might be a good fit. I’m running out of time, and we need someone sympathetic to his cause who will still hunt vampires or other dangerous Others under his direction.”

  I considered this. The White Hats were supposedly against all things with fangs or fur, the more active of the bunch going so far as to actively hunt them down, so if it got out that one of their leaders was bound to a vampire, the whole situation would turn into a clusterfuck of epic proportions. Jack either trusted me more than I had guessed, or he was so far gone in his illness that he no longer cared about the potential consequences of telling me his secrets.

  Royce always had a million and one plans roiling in that devious mind of his. It wasn’t unlikely that my becoming a member of the White Hats was some kind of backup plan, or maybe something he’d been considering using me for all along. My potentially turning Other must have thrown some kind of wrench into his plans. Who knew what he wanted to use me for now. Or how he would have broken the news to me if he really had wanted me to take over the White Hats’ New York chapter.

  That the vampire had his fingers in so many pies was unsurprising. What worried me was the possibility that he might use his connection with the White Hats to keep tabs on me. Or maybe force me back to his side.

  The possibilities and second-guessing were making my already aching head hurt worse than ever.

  Maybe the belt was right. I should consider getting Royce out of the way before he dragged me into something even worse than what the Sunstrikers had started.

  Or maybe this little hunting trip of mine had been part of the vampire’s plan all along.

  “Listen, Jack, I’m sorry—very sorry—that you’re ill. But I’m not leader material. Even if I don’t turn, I’m not the person you need to run this kind of outfit. And I’ll never answer to Royce. Being bound to him once was enough. If you tell him I’m here, I’ll leave and find some other way to deal with this problem. But if you’ll have me and keep my involvement secret, I could use your help. And I’ll do what I can to help you, too—at least until I know what’s going to happen to me.”

  Jack regarded me steadily, stubbing out the cigarette on the table. “I wouldn’t expect any less from you. And don’t worry. He doesn’t know. He won’t be able to drag it out of me unless he asks me directly. I’ve figured out how to play some of his games.”

  I started to relax, but he leaned forward, holding up a single digit.

  “But—here’s the deal. You owe me. Us. You owe the White Hats a favor. One we can call in at any time. In return, I’ll give you a safe place to stay. I’ll make the others help you hunt. It’s something we might have done anyway, but at least we’ll have good reason now.”

  Despite my worries, this was the best shot I had at bringing down the Sunstriker pack. I reached across the table to take his cool, dry hand and shake on it. A compact with the devil wasn’t new to me, but I had the feeling I wouldn’t live long enough to pay Jack and his White Hat buddies their favor back. If I did, I’d just have to bite the bullet and pay the price, because there was no way I could get my revenge working alone.

  “Yes. We have a deal.”

  Chapter 4

  Jack and Nikki had work to do, but there were some cots set up in the basement. They offered to let me catch up on sleep for a few hours until it was time for them to go back to their headquarters. I gratefully accepted.

  After taking an age to get back on my feet and an exceedingly painful millennia to limp down the stairs, I collapsed into one of the cots in the storage area and slept for a while.

  Nikki woke me with a rough shake some time later. All that kept me from punching her was the protesting ache in my muscles. Even so, I felt better, not quite so sore, and followed the two hunters to a black SUV parked a couple blocks away from the shop. The sun was still out, but the end of the workday was approaching and the streets were quickly becoming packed with traffic. I dozed again on the ride, the sounds of a low, droning announcer on the radio lulling me into a groggy stupor.

  By the time we reached Jack’s hideout, a spacious house in the exclusive community that made up City Island, I was too hungry to sleep and desperately hoping they would let me raid the fridge once we got inside.

  “I need to make some calls,” Jack said as he pulled into the garage next to another car, a beaten up Jeep that looked out of place next to the sleek lines of the Suburban. “Nikki will show you to a room and find you some clothes. After you shower, you remember where the kitchen is? Come down and we’ll discuss who it is you’re looking for over dinner.”

  I followed Nikki up the stairs (God, not more of those!) to a guest room that was warm, furnished, and showed signs of prior habitation. Somebody had left a stack of magazines touting the joys of hunting, big guns, and barely clothed biker babes on an end table next to a window with a fabulous view of the bay.

  “Sorry,” Nikki said, not sounding sorry at all. “Bo must have left these up here. Make yourself at home. I’ll see if I have anything in my closet that would fit you, but there should be some men’s sweats in the drawers that you can wear until we can get you some of your own clothes. Towels are in the cabinet across from the sink. See you in a few.”

  She shut the door behind her without bothering to wait for me to respond. From the looks of things, the upcoming month spent in close quarters with Nikki was going to be full of sunshine and rainbows.

  With a great deal of groaning and pain, I shed my jacket, my weapons, and the body armor that clung in a way reminiscent of leather to bare skin. Once I managed the contortionist acts necessary to get the clingy material off, I gingerly settled the pile of dirty clothing on the dresser and tucked the weapons, extra ammo, and Amber Kiss perfume into an empty dresser drawer.

  The shower was one of the most heavenly experiences of my life. The pipes rattled a bit, and the water took an age to get hot, but it was a real shower. The warmth of the water sucked the aches right out of my muscles, and I used the crappy bar soap to scour the filth that had collected from my hands and face. I didn’t stop scrubbing until the water spiraling down the drain was clear instead of a dingy gray.

  By the time I finished, I was feeling relatively human again. With my hair lying in a damp tail down my back and the grossly oversized sweats rolled up over my wrists and ankles, I plodded downstairs to join Jack and Nikki again. The scent of steaks and veggies wafting out of the kitchen made me feel a little less awkward about wandering around a strange house in someone else’s borrowed clothes.

  I wasn’t expecting the grumpy siblings to have invited company, and paused with a hand on the door as a few voices drifted out into the hall.

  “... and I don’t see how you can assume the leech didn’t plant her. You have an obsession with this woman, an unhealthy one, and I guarantee you she’ll bring trouble to our door just like she did last time.”

  I didn’t recognize the voice, which was male and edged with aggression. Another unfamiliar voice chimed in.

  “I agree. We cannot trust that she is what she says. Why don’t we kill her now and get it out of the way?”

  I backed up a step, pressing a hand to my mouth. Jack spoke up next, and I wasn’t quite certain if I was thankful that it was in my defense.

  “We don’t know for sure that she’s been infected, and we
have literally dozens of better uses we can put her to while she’s still alive. I never said we should trust her, only that we should go along with her little scheme for now, because it might present a better opportunity for us later.”

  A yelp was forced out of me as someone shoved me through the swinging door, sending me stumbling into the room to meet the startled, distrustful eyes of half a dozen hunters. Nikki strolled in behind me, dusting her hands off, and I shot her a dirty look she soon returned in kind.

  Then I had to face the hunters.

  “Uh,” I said.

  Jack kicked out a chair beside him at the table, his eyes narrowed and jaw clenched. I shuffled over to it with as much dignity as I could muster, mumbling something that I hoped passed for a greeting so I wouldn’t have to meet their probing gazes. Nobody said a thing as I gingerly lowered myself into the chair, or as I cast surreptitious, longing looks at the piles of steaks, veggies, and other trimmings placed around the table. No one had filled their plates yet, so I didn’t dare reach for anything, and I wondered what the heck they were waiting for.

  Nikki brought a couple of bottles of red wine to the table, popping the corks and pouring. At this point, I was too hungry to care about the awkward silence; I just wanted the wait to be over so I could dig into those heavenly-looking steaks. Once everyone had a full glass, she took a seat, and then we all started filling our plates.

  “Shiarra,” Jack said, startling me so badly I almost dropped the salad bowl on my lap, “I believe you remember Dr. Morrow and Bo, yes? If you haven’t been introduced, I’d like you to meet Jason, Patrick, Adam, and Keith.”

  The other hunters gave me sparse nods as Jack said their names. Patrick, Adam, and Jason were watching me with mixtures of speculation and dislike. They looked vaguely familiar, and they all had the bodies of men who pumped iron and probably hid tattoos of things like barbed wire cuffs and flying hearts with “Mom” banners on them under their long-sleeved shirts. Keith, a skinny kid who reminded me of Arnold the mage, gave me a disinterested once-over before digging into his steak.

  Dr. Morrow and Bo seemed to be the only people who didn’t loathe me on sight. Dr. Morrow had treated me a few times when I’d been in scrapes before. I hadn’t known until I was suffering from severe blood loss after a vampire bite that he was working for the White Hats.

  A group of them, including Bo, had saved me from the clutches of a vampire bent on revenge. Why Max Carlyle had thought Royce cared enough about me to think that I would be useful as bait was still beyond me. Though I was grateful to the White Hats for saving me, I’d never considered becoming a member of their crazy organization. Bo had badly injured his leg in some fight or another (maybe in the process of saving me from Max?), and we’d spent some time together in the infirmary. Judging by the wink he gave me, he didn’t begrudge my walking out on the White Hats to go back to Royce’s side the way Jack and Nikki did.

  “Still waiting for that movie night, chica,” Bo said, giving me a flash of white teeth against dark skin. “Got any plans after dinner?”

  “Sure, I owe you one,” I replied, returning his smile in kind.

  Patrick kicked Bo under the table, not so subtly that I missed it. Bo shot him a look before returning his attention to his meal. Jack sipped at his wine, not touching the small portions of food Nikki had put on his plate, earning a frown from her.

  It was probably the most awkward dinner I’ve ever attended, even counting the time Chaz and Arnold came to my parents’ house for my younger brother’s birthday. Every time Bo would try to strike up a conversation with me, someone else would cut him off. Dr. Morrow was as disinterested as could be in anything but his food. Jack, Nikki, Patrick, Jason, and Adam seemed as if they couldn’t care less whether I lived or died.

  Keith surprised me by being the first to show interest. He finished his second helping before anybody else, and swirled the wine in his glass while he stared at me from across the table. He had to lean slightly to one side to peer around a vase of flowers Nikki must have put there as a centerpiece.

  “So, you’re looking for somebody, right? Is that why you’re here?”

  I glanced up, fork halfway to my mouth, uncertain if he really was talking to me. Everyone else but Bo feigned disinterest in the conversation.

  “To hunt, right? Some Weres?”

  “Yeah. Yes, I guess Jack must have told you. I had a run-in with the Sunstrikers. There are a few of them I need to find.”

  “Good,” Keith said. He was surprisingly eager, leaning forward and setting his glass aside. “I’m the resident computer nerd, so it’ll be my job to track them down. You have their full names? Addresses, places of work, anything like that?”

  Though I knew my face was burning red, both from embarrassment and anger, I didn’t hesitate. “Yes. The pack leader was my boyfriend. I can give you everything you need.”

  That earned another round of awkward silence. So, Jack hadn’t told them everything. I was quick to cut into the quiet before they could start jumping to the wrong conclusions.

  “I know where to find him. Plus, I’m a private investigator, so I can probably help you search. I’m not after the whole pack, just a few specific people.”

  “Oh,” Keith said, his eyes aglow with excitement. “Oh, this is good. This is very good. Lady, forget your after-dinner movie. I’m going to need to pick your brain.”

  “Hey,” Bo protested. “That’s not fair.”

  Jack pushed his chair back, leaving his food untouched. “Fair? Who said anything about fair? We’ve got a month before we might have a new shifter on our hands, gentlemen. We move fast on this, or not at all.”

  Though his words turned my blood cold and killed what was left of my appetite, I nodded and firmed my resolve. With Keith’s skills, and my knowledge of Chaz’s haunts and my talent for skip tracing, it shouldn’t take long at all to find the Sunstrikers.

  I hoped.

  Chapter 5

  (Days left to full moon: 19)

  “Stop that.”

  For the umpteenth time, I did my best to put a cap on my nervous fidgeting, but even Patrick’s growled command couldn’t scare me into being still for long. Soon the grip of one of my stakes was squeaking again as my fingers tightened on the leather.

  We were waiting in a van parked outside of some skeezy-looking place called The Tease in northern Jersey. Nikki was in the bar wearing clothes that made her look like she might be one of the featured strippers taking a night off. How she expected to fight a werewolf in those heels and with that much skin showing was beyond me, but I had problems of my own.

  Sitting in the van doing nothing was torture. The belt kept yammering about its violent urges and sending surges of adrenaline through me. If not for my worry about hitting innocent—okay, maybe not innocent, but human—bystanders, I might have charged in with guns blazing.

  Keith hadn’t been paying me much mind. His attention was focused on the panels in the back, and on listening in on Nikki’s conversations through headphones that must have led a former life in a sound studio. Their equipment had drawn my interest for a while. Any P.I. worth their salt would have been drooling over the high-resolution video feeds, listening devices, and GPS tracking systems. Judging by the quality, I had to guess that some of the stuff was military grade.

  If the belt hadn’t been a constant earache—and if I weren’t feeling so paranoid about whether or not I’d survive to return to my job as a private investigator once the month was out—I would’ve been far more interested. As it was, the van was too overcrowded and I was too irritated to do more than fidget.

  We hadn’t had any luck until yesterday digging up any information on where the Weres had gone to ground. Visiting Chaz’s, Dillon’s, and a few other Sunstrikers’ homes a few times a day hadn’t yielded anything of use, other than noting cops staking them out, too. Somehow the Weres had known, and found, places to hide where even I couldn’t find them.

  Finding out about Vic had been a stroke
of luck. I’d been so frazzled by Chaz’s disappearing act that I hadn’t thought to search for one of the lower ranking Weres to interrogate until after two fruitless days of hunting for my ex. Jack didn’t want to waste time and had used his network of contacts to find one of the thirty or so werewolves high enough in the pack who might know where Chaz and Dillon and the rest of the dominant wolves were hiding. Even then, it took some time to dig up the info.

  Somehow, through whatever connections the White Hats had and some legwork on Keith’s part, they’d tracked Vic Thomasian to this crappy neighborhood just a few miles southeast of the Newark airport. Nikki was supposed to lure him out. The stink of a nearby wharf and the surrounding industrial buildings only added to the charm of the sagging brick shithole. The place was cradled between two abandoned warehouses, centered in a cramped parking lot that had long since had the lights burned or shot out. The only illumination came from above the entrance in the form of a flickering neon sign depicting a dancing naked woman, and one other sign advertising Budweiser dimly seen through a dirty window.

  The Were was in there, somewhere. His car, a rust bucket that might once have been a blue Geo, was parked at the far end of the lot. According to whomever it was Jack had contacted, Vic spent a good portion of his paycheck here on his nights off. So far, Nikki hadn’t had any luck. Unless you counted nearly breaking the hand of the guy who tried to feel her up. It raised my respect of her a notch. She’d since settled at the bar, facing out so the tiny video camera hidden in the big gem in her necklace would pick up whatever was going on in the room. As much as it might have engrossed the boys in the van, I wasn’t interested in the floor show.

  “There he is.”

  I glanced up at Keith’s announcement. He was pointing at a figure on the screen who was coming out of a back room toward the bar. The Sunstriker pack tattoo—a stylized sun pierced by a spear—was visible on his upper arm. Vic’s stringy black hair looked greasier in the video than it had in the picture we’d found on the Internet. He slicked it back when he spotted Nikki, giving her a toothy smile. She must have returned it, because he took it as invitation enough to make a beeline to the empty seat beside her.