by Moira Rogers
Now that they were no longer limited to the extremes of the moon, she felt more confident agreeing with him. “All the time in the world.”
Tobias was already in the stable when Hunter returned from his patrol the next night. After another long day of demanding townsfolk and another endless evening enduring the desperate stink of their fear and false gratitude, the prospect of exchanging verbal punches seemed like fun.
He swung off his mount and grinned at the other bloodhound. “Expected you’d be up to your ears in booze and Sylvie’s girls by now.”
Tobias smirked. “And I expected you to be up to your—well, whatever it was that had your lady screaming last night.”
A civilized sort of man might have felt a shred of embarrassment, which he supposed was proof enough that Matthew Underwood was well and truly gone. “Which time?”
“Now you’re just bragging. Some of us suffered a cold, lonely night in the sheriff’s office, you know.”
“Somehow I doubt you heard any screaming from the sheriff’s office.”
Tobias shook his head as he continued brushing his horse. “I stopped by to check in with Emmett and have a drink. I must have caught the early show.”
Hunter lifted the saddle from his mount. “Is he all right? Seemed a bit…tired last night.”
“Seemed a bit rattled, you mean. With what happened to Nate, can you blame him?”
“No, I reckon not. I suppose if the Guild found out, they’d take us both apart. Nate and me, since my blood’s what did it.” It was impossible to keep the edge from the words. The silent question.
But Tobias only shrugged. “Guild’s got bigger problems, if you ask me. Which you better not.”
It wasn’t the first hint of uneasy feelings, but it was the most blatant. Even Emmett had done little more than hint, and if he’d told Nathaniel more, the older man had kept his counsel. “Are you and Emmett among those bigger problems? Or is that something else I’d best not ask?”
“I wouldn’t have any earthly idea what you’re talking about,” Tobias answered.
Interesting. “If you don’t watch your step, someone might start to suspect you’ve got brains behind your pretty face.”
He grinned. “Hasn’t happened yet.”
“Maybe your face is a little too pretty. If you want to train tomorrow morning, I’ll see if I can break your nose. Give you some character.”
“Sure. Then maybe Ophelia will nurse me back—” Tobias cut off abruptly and tilted his head. “Fast rider on the way.”
The noise tickling at the edge of Hunter’s senses crystallized into the sound of hooves. A horse at a flat gallop, but only one. Not Wilder, returned with Archer and Satira. Even they wouldn’t have charged toward the mansion unless—
Trouble, whispered that inner instinct, and in the span of a heartbeat, relaxation slipped away. He felt like one of Satira’s inventions, wound too tightly and coiled to strike.
By the time he reached the stable door, Emmett had pulled his horse to a stop. “Better mount up, boys.”
Tobias cursed. “So it’s true?”
“Unfortunately.” Emmett eyed Hunter. “One of the working girls over on the dark side of town heard a rumor about a shipment coming in on the train tonight.”
The last word from Wilder had come the previous evening, a brief telegram stating they were still following the trail back to the source of the drugs, along with the order to keep an eye on the town.
Iron Creek was his to protect, for all that Tobias and Emmett were more experienced. “So we’ll meet the train. What do you reckon we’d better arm ourselves for? Men or vampires?”
“Vampires,” Emmett replied immediately. “They won’t take any chances on losing this shipment, so they’ll deliver it under heavy guard.” He hesitated. “Do you think Nate’s up to a fight? We could use another hand.”
“I’ll find out.” Hunter dug in his pocket and pulled out the battered timepiece Satira had pushed on him, an ugly, clunky thing that had the advantage of being nigh unto indestructible. Even better, the numbers and the hands were etched with some substance that emitted a soft glow, just bright enough to read without any danger of giving away his position.
It was nearly ten. “The last train of the night usually pulls in sometime around ten thirty. I can round up Nate and the weapons, if you two want to get there and see who might already be waiting.”
Emmett nodded. “With any luck, they won’t have counted on you having help.”
Hunter left the stable at a run, taking the front steps three at a time before crashing through the front door. “Ophelia!” He bypassed the elevator and went for the steps instead. “Where are you?”
She stepped out of the dining room into the hall, an open ledger in her hands. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
He jumped over the three steps he’d climbed and hit the floor hard enough to rattle his knees. “Trouble coming in. A shipment of drugs, probably with a vampire escort.”
Ophelia slammed the book shut and clutched it to her chest. “That sounds bad. You’re not going alone, are you?”
“No.” Even with tension trembling in his limbs, he wanted to touch her. He did it carefully, slipping his hand around the back of her neck and trusting himself not to hurt her. For the first time, he trusted himself. “Emmett and Tobias are on their way, and I’m going to round up Nate and his biggest guns.”
The ledger hit the floor, and she slid her arms around his neck. “Be safe.”
“I need you to be safe,” he whispered in reply, unable to stop the possessive way his fingers tightened in her hair. This had to be the danger. The reason the Guild didn’t encourage a hound to find a mate, despite the fact that her presence could soothe him. He was a tightly wound weapon, but his focus would always be divided now. He couldn’t unleash himself against his enemies until he knew she had none.
“There’s a room downstairs,” she murmured. “I can lock myself in if there’s trouble.”
“Can you go there now?”
She hesitated, but only for a moment. “If that helps you not worry, I will.”
He’d been braced for a fight—or worse, the knee to the balls that Satira would have undoubtedly delivered. Relief stole his breath, so he borrowed Ophelia’s, crushed his mouth to hers in a hopeless attempt to express his gratitude.
She bit his lower lip. “Later, I’m going to ask Nate if you were careful. If he even has to consider how to answer, there’ll be hell to pay.”
Hunter choked on a laugh and pressed his forehead to hers. “I don’t doubt it. You know, don’t you? That I don’t need this because I think you’re weaker than Satira. I need this because I’m still weaker than Wilder.”
“I’m not a fighter, Hunter. I’m a survivor.” She pressed her lips to his cheek. “Which means I’m more than willing to sequester myself in Nate’s safe room with no arguments.”
He bent to scoop up the ledger and caught her hand. “Might not hurt to teach you a little about fighting, going forward.”
Ophelia met his words with a smile. “I look forward to it.”
Warmth kindled, soft and quiet, and strengthened as he led her down the stairs. They found Nate sitting at his worktable, both hands placed flat on its surface.
He didn’t look up. “Is it time to go?”
Impossible to know how much the man had heard, or what he might know simply because he’d plucked the thoughts from thin air. “If you’ve got any clever weapons, like that sun sphere you and Satira used on Lowe, now’s the time to break them out.”
Nate rose and retrieved two large saddlebags from the corner. “I packed them last night. Something told me you—we might need them.”
Hunter hefted one bag, then caught Ophelia around the waist with his free arm. “We’ll be back soon,” he promised. “And safe.”
“I know.” She kissed him one last time and backed toward the large door at the other end of the room. “I’ll be waiting.”
He waited until
she stepped into the room and closed the door, then looked to Nate. “Are you ready for this?”
“No.” With that, Nate slung his own bag over his shoulder and began to climb the stairs. There was nothing to do but follow him, up the narrow staircase and along the darkened hall.
Nate led him through an unused sitting room Hunter couldn’t remember ever setting foot in before, then down a twisting corridor to a door he hadn’t known was there. More proof of the slapdash way the building had been constructed, with additions—and exits—tacked on with no rhyme or reason. A maze, even after a month of living there, but useful when it turned out this door spilled them out near the stables.
For a man who still seemed unsteady in most every way, Nate was resolute now, determined. They were mounted and riding toward the far edge of town in less time than it had taken to speak to Ophelia, and Hunter used those precious moments to let focus curl around him. He’d been splintered for so long that the pieces wouldn’t fit together neatly. Maybe they’d never slide cleanly into place. The edges between Matthew’s mind and Hunter’s instinct were sharp enough to cut, but he could use that edge.
He could protect the woman he loved with that edge.
Leaning low over his horse’s neck, he fought to block out the noise of pounding hooves, straining instead for the sounds that would mean a fight was already underway. As they raced past the darkened windows of the miller’s house, he caught a roared curse, and adrenaline shot through him, bringing the excitement of battle with it.
This was what he was now. A weapon. A protector.
A man came flying off the covered walkway in front of the depot. No, not a man—a vampire, judging by the sudden chill that punched through Hunter’s chest. Nate hefted a revolver and shot the snarling creature between the eyes, and the sick, crawling sensation faded.
Hunter drew up his mount and swung to the ground, already reaching for the saddlebag. “Can you sense them?”
Nate dropped down beside him before replying flatly, “No. I saw fangs.”
The half-hound was still. A puddle of calm that unnerved Hunter as he flipped open the bags and withdrew a heavy gun modified to fire chemical rounds in rapid succession. Nathaniel didn’t seem affected by the battle frenzy that pulsed beneath Hunter’s skin.
He didn’t seem affected by anything.
Hunter bit back a curse and scooped up the spare ammunition. “Are you with me, Nate? Really with me?”
“I’m not going to step in front of a gun,” he mumbled. “I plan to fight, and fight hard.”
“As long as you don’t—” Hunter was more prepared for the sick chill stabbing at his chest this time, or maybe instinct had finally taken over. He swung to the left and raised his weapon in one smooth movement, and was already squeezing the trigger when a figure darted from behind the building.
Too fast to be human, as if that cold pressure hadn’t already told Hunter otherwise. The sick press of death, and he fired off a modified round, aiming for where the vampire was about to be.
The gun was quieter than a regular pistol, but the result was spectacular. Even as the wide cylinder rolled the next round into place, the glass sphere hit the vampire full in the chest. Sunlight exploded in the dark alley, casting wild shadows that vanished as the vampire caught fire.
Tobias rounded the corner, a streak of blood smeared across his cheek. “The last of the guards,” he said absently as he watched the vampire flail before falling into a burning heap beside the railroad tracks. “What the hell did that, and do you have one for me?”
Hunter grinned, and it felt wild. Reckless. Danger or not, killing vampires felt good. Maybe not what he was born to do, but it was what he’d been transformed to do. Shouldering the gun, he dragged open the saddlebags. “Modified revolvers in here. Why don’t you trade up, and we can go kill some fucking bloodsuckers?”
“You convinced me.” Tobias listened to Nate describe each weapon’s capabilities and functions. By the time he chose one, the faint wail of a train whistle sounded in the distance.
Half past ten. With violence pulsing in Hunter’s blood, every second seemed to take forever. They could clean out the train, dispose of the drugs, and be back at the manor by eleven.
Chapter Eleven
After less than half an hour, Ophelia was ready to claw through the safe room’s heavy metal door with her bare hands. She didn’t trust a lot of the questionable technological advances Satira and Nate had implemented, but this was her first encounter with the small room in the corner of the basement.
It had already overtaken the steam lift as her least favorite tiny box in the house.
She forced herself to take a deep breath and direct her attention back to the ledger in her lap. The figures swam together under the lone but relatively bright light shining from the ceiling, though she supposed it wouldn’t be fair to blame her distraction on the setting.
Another silent prayer, and she closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall. Three bloodhounds and a vampire hybrid—not bad odds for a fight, really. Hunter would be fine.
Just fine.
The darkness behind her closed lids intensified, and she opened her eyes in time to watch the overhead light dim erratically and then die altogether, plunging the safe room into darkness.
Boiler problems had caused the lights elsewhere in the house to behave the same way, so it didn’t alarm her until she remembered the lock on the safe room door was wired to the same circuits. Would the door still open without power?
“Shit.” She shot across the scant space and scrabbled at the door. The handle refused to budge, and panic knotted in her throat, threatening to choke her.
Before Ophelia could give in to her rising hysteria, something inside the door clicked rhythmically, and the handle abruptly turned with a hiss. She pushed at the door with both hands, and it swung open with a loud squeal.
The basement had no windows, and therefore no ambient light. She had to make her way to the stairs by memory and feel, and every tiny noise and creak made her heart jump. But it wasn’t until she reached the top of the stairs and laid her hand on the knob that she froze.
The hair on the back of her neck rose. A thump, followed by another and then another, slow and steady. Deliberate. Footsteps in the hall.
“Pretty Miss Ophelia…” The words came as a raspy croon, the voice naggingly familiar. “Don’t hide, little lady. I know they left you here alone.”
Her fingers tightened convulsively around the doorknob. She released it, careful not to let it rattle, as she desperately tried to place that voice.
The boots moved deeper into the house, followed by the click of the sitting room door being pushed open. “I suppose it stands to reason you’d make a man work for it. You always were damn pretentious with your favors, for a rutting whore.”
Her blood chilled. There was something about the cadence of the words, a drawl flattened by time on the plains—
Virgil McCutcheon. It was the sheriff strolling down the hall, looking for her. The man Wilder had gone after, the one who’d been working with the vampires. Letting them pollute Iron Creek with their drugs.
She almost stumbled down the steps. He would most certainly know how to disable the steam converter and kill the electricity, and he’d been in the house often enough to get around easily.
Another door flew open upstairs, hard enough to bounce against the wall this time. “But making a man work for it isn’t your job. We pay and you work, isn’t that how it’s supposed to go?”
For all she knew, McCutcheon wasn’t even human anymore, which meant he would find her, no matter where or how well she hid.
Exits, exits. There had to be one in the basement, didn’t there? What if there was a fire or some sort of catastrophe in Nate’s laboratory?
“If you’re stalling, darling, it won’t do you any good. They sent me ahead to reclaim my town. It’ll be theirs, once the vampires on the train take care of your bloodhound. He’s going back into a c
age, where he belongs.”
Three bloodhounds and a vampire hybrid—not bad odds for a fight, really. The thought rose again at the sheriff’s words. Of course, he couldn’t know that Iron Creek wasn’t short on hounds at the moment, not at all.
All she had to do was stay alive until they returned.
Suddenly, Ophelia wanted nothing more than to be locked in that little safe room again.
The vampires on the train had been busy.
From the moment Hunter clambered onto the first car, he knew he was in for a long night. What had been a passenger car had become a nightmare. Blood covered the seats and the floor, but the passengers weren’t dead.
They were ghouls.
A woman in a torn dress lunged at him, her delicate fingers curved into vicious claws. Wilder’s voice thundered through his memory, a brutal lesson. Take them down fast and clean. It’s the greatest mercy you can show them.
Emmett intercepted the woman, his face set in a mask of stone as he snapped her neck. “They’re not vampires, but they can still rip you apart,” he muttered hoarsely. “Best remember that.”
Hunter dragged in a breath and stared at the woman’s limp body. “There’s no way of bringing them back?”
“If there is, no one’s found it yet.”
Then it was mercy, and Hunter ground his teeth together as the next wave of them charged forward, this one led by a blank-eyed man with crooked spectacles and a dull kitchen knife clutched in his hand. Hunter drew his back-up pistol and fired, driving a bullet between those unseeing eyes.
Mercy, no matter how it felt.
Nate emerged from the back of the train car, taking down two ghouls who turned their attention to him. Then he tossed a small metal canister high in the air over their heads. “Activate it and get the hell out!” he shouted before ducking through the door.
Sometimes Hunter still marveled at how fast he could move now. His gun slid smoothly into its holster before the can reached the zenith of its wide arc. He had all the time in the world to reach up and snatch it from the air, and he forced Emmett toward the front of the car. “Go up over the top,” he snapped as he slung the strap of his larger weapon over his shoulder. “I’ll be right behind you.”