Hunter's Fall

by Shiloh Walker

  It was the worst pain he’d ever felt in his life and he went to his knees, unaware of Sheila, unaware of anything but her.

  It was the pain of a heart shattering into a thousand pieces.

  And then there was a very real pain—the pain of his own blade, cutting deep, deep into him. The pain of it was enough of a shock to force him out of whatever spell held him captive, and he stumbled backward and saw Sheila struggling with the wolf he’d neglected to restrain. Blood splattered across her face and her eyes glowed. As his blood gushed out of him, too much, too fast, he heard another whisper.

  Good-bye, my love . . .

  “So what did her voice sound like?”

  It was a full twenty-four hours later, and Dominic was still trying to get past the ache in his heart. It was worse than the pain from the slowly healing wound in his gut, worse than anything. Good-bye, my love . . .

  He’d collapsed into a healing sleep not long after the other Hunters had arrived on the scene, but even that had provided no respite from the haunting echo of her voice. Hell, even now, facing a very disgruntled Master, all he could think about was her.

  “Dom?”

  Dominic surged out of the chair with such speed it toppled back behind him, falling to the floor with a clatter. Shooting a dark look at Rafe, he ground out, “I don’t know—a woman’s voice. Sounded English. I’ve never heard it in my life.”

  At least not awake, he thought bitterly. Her voice was eerily, haunting familiar, but he knew, as sure as he knew his own name, he’d never spoken with this woman, never heard her whisper his name in the night, never held her in his arms while they slept.

  “Can you be more specific? Is she young? Old?” Rafe asked, his black brow rising. There was a certain amount of skepticism on his face.

  Dominic couldn’t blame him. Fuck, he’d all but ended up getting disemboweled because he zoned out right in front of a feral. He hadn’t bothered getting the bastard restrained, and the wolf had come to, seen Sheila staring at Dom, seen his chance. The werewolf had screwed up by trying to do a little more damage, by assuming Sheila’s preoccupation with Dom meant she was as fucked in the head as Dom had been.

  Sheila had killed the feral but not before the feral had all but laid Dom open like a gutted fish.

  He could still feel the cold ache of the silver, could still feel the itch and burn of healing flesh.

  And he felt like he losing his damned mind. The dreams . . . the dreams were bad enough, but this hadn’t been a dream. He’d been wide awake and on the tail end a fight, not exactly a safe zone. He could have gotten killed, Sheila could have gotten killed—innocents could have died if the feral wolves had managed to evade capture. They still didn’t know where the rest of the small feral pack was holed up, either.

  Rafe was skeptical? Hell, why wouldn’t he be?

  Shoving a hand through his hair, Dominic turned away and stared out the window. He’d only been awake for four hours, but he still felt weak. Despite feeding, he was already hungry. Exhaustion pulled at him, and he knew he’d have to rest again soon. Injuries caused by silver—shit, he’d heard they were bad, but this was the first time he’d taken more than a nick.

  “Look, Rafe, I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if she’s real, if I’m going crazy, or what.”

  Rafe leaned back in his chair and watched him with dark, intense eyes. “I don’t think you’re going crazy. But we need to figure out what’s going on. This could have been bad, Dom. Hell, it was bad. You almost got yourself killed. If Sheila hadn’t been there, you could be dead.”

  “I know that.” His voice sounded more than a little frustrated, more than a little pissed off, but he couldn’t help it. “You think I’m a fucking idiot as well as a nutcase?”

  Rafe sighed and said, “You’re not a nutcase.” Then, forcing a smile, he said, “And you’ve always been an idiot. That’s beside the point. Look . . . I want you to get some rest. You need another solid eighteen hours of rest and another good feeding before you’ll feel a little less like hell.”

  “A little less like hell?” Dominic passed a hand over the fading pink scar that bisected his middle. It was nothing short of miraculous that he was moving around at all, but this lingering weakness, the exhaustion, it pissed him off. Still, although he was tired, he was reluctant to believe Rafe was going to let it go as easy as that. “So that’s it? You want me to rest, feed? You’re not going to smack my hand or anything?”

  Rafe shifted his gaze away, a muscle jerking in his jaw. “I’m not going to smack your hand after you all but had your guts spill out at my wife’s feet, no. I’m tempted to beat you senseless for it, but I won’t.” Then he lifted his gaze and focused on Dominic’s face. “Go rest. And when you get up . . . pack.”

  That caught Dominic by surprise.

  He stilled and turned to face the Master. Rafe was more than just his Master—he’d been the one who brought Dominic through the Change, the one who’d helped him find a purpose after he’d found himself in a strange and fucking terrifying world where monsters really did exist.

  Rafe was also Dominic’s best friend . . . and he was sending Dominic away.

  Swallowing, he managed to force something out of his tight throat. “Pack . . . Master?”

  Rafe curled his lip. “Don’t call me that, and don’t look at me like that. I’m sending you to Excelsior—I want you to talk with Kelsey, or one of the healers. Somebody. See if they can figure out what in the hell is going on, so we can fix it.”

  He kicked his feet off the desk and rose, stalking around to stop just a few feet from Dominic. “I’m not dismissing you,” Rafe said, his voice edgy.

  Dominic looked away, staring out the window behind Rafe’s desk. The bastard knew him too well, read him too easily. “Sure as hell feels that way,” he muttered.

  “Don’t be any more of an idiot than you have to be, Dom.” Rafe rubbed a hand over his face. “You’re half out of your head right now. I don’t know what the hell the problem is, but as long as you are like this, I can’t have you out there, risking your life, innocent lives, the lives of my Hunters . . . you know that.” He blew out a breath and then added, “I came too close to losing one of my best friends last night—I’m not doing it again. We’re fixing this, you got me?”

  “Yeah.” The ache in his throat eased enough for him to force a smile. “Ever heard of one of us going crazy like this?”

  “Hell, no. But you were always a hard case.” With a cynical smirk, Rafe moved back to sit behind his desk. “You’re not going crazy. But something’s going on and we need to figure out what it is.”

  ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA

  The water was so blue, it hurt to look at it. Didn’t help that the sun was reflecting off it and causing it to sparkle as though millions of diamonds were scattered on the surface.

  Nessa lowered her shades over her face and leaned back in the hard plastic seat, ignoring the spiel of the tour guide.

  They stopped at the Old Gate and the guide went on, harping about how old the bloody structure was and what purpose it had served. It’s a bleeding gate, children—it does what a gate is supposed to do—it keeps people out.

  The trip went on and on, with stops here and there so tourists could take pictures of a church, an old tree, the oldest building left in the city.

  “Do those bloody Americans even know what old is?” she muttered.

  The woman next to her caught her eye. “I’m sorry?”

  Nessa forced herself to smile. “Pardon me. I’m just rambling to myself.”

  When the bus stopped at the Spanish Quarter, the tour guide gave her a brilliant smile. “Stretching your legs? Or are you going to check things out, miss?”

  “I’m going to walk a bit,” she said, drawing some bills out from her pocket to drop in the little coffee can he kept near the front. She gave him a decent tip—it was the least she could do since she’d been riding around listening to his tour talk for the past two hours.

 
Moving away from the small throng of tourists, she made her way to the Spanish Quarter.

  She liked this quaint little town, she decided.

  She liked the Irish pub, wandering along the beach, walking through the old fort, combing through the shops in the Spanish Quarter.

  And she adored the winery. That was her current destination.

  Right now, she was working her way through the wine list.

  She was trying a different kind every day.

  She already knew which kind she was going to try today and had plans that involved the bottle of wine, a new book and a bubble bath. She’d get her wine and head back to the little house on the beach. She was renting a room from a sweet couple there.

  Nessa would walk it, too, so as to spare the poor tour guides. After two days of riding around on various trams and trolleys, she had probably freaked out half the locals.

  She was walking down Orange Street when she sensed something. Stopping in the middle of the road, she closed her eyes, uncaring of the people bumping into her, unaware of the disgruntled looks.

  She felt . . . something.

  Cloaked. Whoever she was, the witch had cloaked herself. Clever little witch, Nessa thought. And a very talented one, at that. If Nessa hadn’t been close, very close, she never would have sensed this, she suspected.

  Avarice. Malice. Nasty, cloying hatred and pure, unadulterated evil.

  And joy. The kind of joy truly decent people couldn’t comprehend. After all, decent people couldn’t understand this sort of pleasure. It was the pleasure that evil found in causing pain. A unique, singular sort of pleasure.

  Nessa stood there a moment longer, soaking it up, breathing it in. Then, once she had the scent of the magic, she shouldered through the crowd fighting to get past the crush of bodies.

  Low in her gut, she felt something hot unfurl through her.

  One thing hadn’t changed—she still loved a good Hunt.

  SHE found the victim first.

  A young man—probably here on his spring break. He barely looked old enough to shave. Nineteen, perhaps twenty. He was stripped naked and sleeping the sleep of the exhausted, dumped in the narrow alley like so much garbage. Somebody had dragged some cardboard over him, hiding him from sight.

  But Nessa hadn’t needed to see him—she could feel him, sense him—the fading sense of magic led her right to him.

  Curling her fingers around his wrist, she lowered her shields and looked him over with a healer’s eye. She discovered a couple of things—he’d been drugged . . . and he’d been fucked so many times in the past few days he’d need a doctor to look him over. The witch, whoever she was, had gone and torn him a bit.

  “Puts a new spin on the idea of being fucked raw,” Nessa mused.

  The one thing that disturbed her the most though was his energy.

  While somebody had done him some physical damage, it wasn’t enough for him to be so very weak, so very close to death.

  His energy was all but gone. Siphoned away.

  Somebody had fed on his life force, the same way a vampire fed on blood.

  Her skin crawled.

  She’d had her share of run-ins with those who could tap into a life force like that.

  One of them was her hitchhiker. But witches with that ability were rare. Other than Morgan, Nessa had only encountered perhaps five of them in all her years.

  “I don’t like this. Not one bit,” she muttered.

  The fact that one had almost killed her would be enough to explain why Nessa suddenly felt so uneasy.

  But what really bothered her was the way she could feel Morgan unfurling inside her body. The eagerness she sensed coming from her hitchhiker.

  “Thank you, you old bitch,” Morgan whispered inside Nessa’s mind. “You finally did one thing right. You brought me home.”

  The words were like an icy cold blast and as Nessa forced Morgan’s presence back, she cursed.

  NESSA didn’t want to leave the young man there alone in that alley.

  But she didn’t have much choice.

  If she lingered, when the police arrived, she’d have to answer questions.

  She couldn’t spare the time. She’d already wasted most of the day playing disgruntled, unfriendly tourist. In just a few more hours, it would be dark.

  Plus, Nessa figured it would be best if she avoided mortal law enforcement. In life, Morgan Wakefield had lived to do as much wrong as possible. Before some enterprising souls had intervened, Nessa had been the inheritor of Morgan’s very long rap sheet.

  That rap sheet was gone now, along with any and all records that could have connected Morgan to Nessa. There were no fingerprints on file, no criminal records, no rap sheets, no mug shots.

  But they couldn’t do anything about the people who’d known Morgan, and if this was Morgan’s home . . . well, it just wouldn’t do to have somebody from Morgan’s life recognize her, now would it?

  “Don’t borrow trouble,” she told herself, leaving the man alone in the alley. He needed medical attention, but he certainly wasn’t going to die from his injuries. Once she was a few streets away, she called 9-1-1 from a pay phone, leaving the information anonymously.

  Then she continued to focus on that faint, almost hidden trail.

  IT was a Hunt that took her most of a day. It was closing in on midnight by the time she’d followed the trail to its end . . . a house. Hardly more than a shack, really.

  The cool night wind blew her hair back from her face as she studied her surroundings. The little house was back from the road, surrounded by grass that desperately needed the attention of a lawn mower and by stunted trees.

  Off to the left, there was another house, barely visible through the trees. It was nothing but a burned hull—a fire, the best Nessa could tell. The only other house was across the street and it was abandoned. Nessa could feel the utter desolation wrapping around the area like a smothering, cold blanket.

  Inconspicuous, quiet and rundown on the outside, it didn’t look like much.

  But staring at it made her gut roil. Breathing in the air that smelled of stale cigarette smoke, marijuana and booze made her heart clench. She didn’t understand why tears burned her eyes as she started toward the door.

  She was only on the middle step when the door opened.

  It revealed a girl—fourteen, maybe fifteen.

  She stared at Nessa and her eyes rounded. Then a brilliant smile split her face. Nessa sensed what was coming before it happened, and by the time the girl had her arms wrapped around Nessa, she’d tensed up, prepared to defend herself.

  But not against a hug.

  As the girl clung to Nessa, she whispered under her breath, “I knew it. I knew Mama lied. I knew you weren’t dead, Morgan.”

  Morgan.

  The young girl’s face was familiar—disturbingly so. A younger, more innocent version of the face Nessa saw in the mirror every morning. Softer, perhaps a bit less jaded.

  A sister, then.

  So Morgan had had a sister.

  “Well, well, well.” From the porch came a low, throaty murmur.

  The bottom of Nessa’s stomach dropped out at the sound of it. She made herself look up at the older woman.

  If the girl was a younger, more innocent version of Morgan, then this was an older, harsher version. Crueler, too, although Nessa wouldn’t have thought that possible. Well, precious, at least I know where you got it from.

  The woman smelled like the man Nessa had left back in the alley. Smelled of his skin, smelled of sex . . . and life. The boy’s energy all but crackled around this woman.

  There was little doubt what had happened to him.

  This malicious cow had stopped just short of killing him.

  And she’d killed others. Nessa could feel it—the stain of death clinging to the woman like an oily cloak.

  “Precious,” Morgan said, “I’d like you to meet my mother. You can call her Mommy, if you like. Or Isis. If you have time, before she kicks your ass s
creaming into hell.”

  Isis? Nessa smirked.

  A cold smile twisted the older woman’s lips and she said, “Jazzy, get the hell away from her. That isn’t Morgan.”

  “But . . .” The girl stared at Nessa’s face, confused.

  “I told you. Morgan is dead.” Isis grinned, a sharp-edged smile that revealed perfect white teeth. “And that would mean this bitch is your sister’s killer.”

  Staring into the girl’s face, Nessa watched the bloom of anger, the darkness of grief dance across her face. I’m so sorry, child. I’m so sorry.

  In the back of Nessa’s mind, she heard a cold, hard voice. “How do you like my mother, you old bitch?”

  “If you thought to surprise me, precious, then you’re in for a disappointment. I’d already figured that much out,” Nessa said to Morgan, but her heart wasn’t in it. She couldn’t give two damns about sparring with Morgan.

  “No,” the girl mumbled under her breath. “No. No. No . . . she’s lying. Morgan, she’s lying, isn’t she?”

  Unsure of what to say, Nessa peeled herself out of the girl’s arms. Pain and rejection turned the girl’s face pink, and Nessa felt a twinge in her heart.

  As she turned her head, Nessa could make out the healing shadow of a bruise on the girl’s cheek. Anger settled inside, hot and potent. She could handle anger.

  She caught the girl’s eyes once more, saw the plea in them. Saw the loneliness. The girl was walking down a troublesome road. Nessa could already see the darkness on her, but she wasn’t too far gone. Yet. She had only a fraction of her mother’s gift, of Morgan’s.

  She wasn’t that strong—ironically her weaker gift was probably what made it possible for her to hover just shy of going too far. The darkness craved power. The child didn’t have enough inside to appeal to it.

  There were tears welling in the girl’s eyes, and as Nessa stared at her young face, one broke free and rolled down her cheek. In the back of her mind, Nessa felt Morgan’s reaction to the sight of the girl’s tears.