Alpha's Hunt

by Aimee Easterling

  “Bounty hunting today?”

  I nodded then took a sip. “You could come with us.”

  As predicted, Bastion shook his head. Never mind that he’d regained his pelt and could run in wolf form just like I could. He and Justice had divided me and Grace between them like children splitting up Halloween candy. He wouldn’t grab out of his brother’s stash.

  He wouldn’t grab...but he just might tattle. I lowered my voice. “How’d it go last night?”

  While Grace’s internship still didn’t pay any bills, she had finally reached the level where a creation she’d helped design had hit the big time. A model had worn her black-lace confection down a runway the previous evening. If I understood which websites were worth reading, I would have checked on its reception first thing this morning. Instead, I went straight to the source.

  Bastion’s smile was all the answer I needed. “Pretty excellent. She...”

  His mouth snapped shut as both doors on our level swung open in tandem. On one end, Justice emerged, clad in his I’m-now-officially-a-lawyer black suit. From the other end, Grace glowered out at us, her diaphanous nightie accessorized with a knife clutched in her right hand.

  “Do you intend to talk all night?” she demanded.

  I shook my head in lieu of an answer even as Bastion yawned and reached up to hand off his mug to my angry twin as a peace offering. “It’s decaf,” he promised.

  Grace took a dainty sip, her anger deflected. Rage would return if I lingered, however. I knew that from hard experience.

  So I rose and wrapped my pelt around my shoulders. The magnetic closure Bastion had bought for me last week clicked together at my throat, turning the pelt into a hooded cloak...with dangly claws and tail, of course.

  Not fashionable, but thoroughly functional. I turned to Justice.

  “Let’s hunt.”

  Chapter 8

  “You don’t have to come,” I felt obliged to say as we jogged down into the subway station together.

  My cousin shrugged just as he had every morning. “That’s what she said.”

  Apparently Justice was now punnily awake...awake and ready to dive into my business. Because he speared me with that look ten minutes later as the train neared our destination. “Four months. No word from the skinless. And still you’re spinning your wheels.”

  “I’m spinning my wheels?” I raised both eyebrows. Sometimes I preferred Justice when he was sleeping. “You’re the one who passed the bar yet shows no signs of setting up a legal practice.”

  He shrugged. “So I guess we’re both spinning our wheels. Doesn’t mean you’re any less stuck in the mud.”

  Justice was impossible. But I was saved by the subway door hissing open to reveal a man I recognized from his picture.

  John Young was right on time.

  Looking our target over, it was hard to guess what the police were trying to nab him for. He could have been Justice’s doppelganger, only a decade or so older. Well groomed, well dressed, well mannered to the woman he brushed up against as he made his way into the subway car.

  He was also right in front of me, so I could have taken him down easily. Cuffed him and dragged him to the station. Used the easy money to pay rent.

  But this job hadn’t come in through official channels. It was better to collar our target somewhere dark and quiet where the police wouldn’t intervene. My contact had suggested Central Park.

  Plus, I was curious about the paper bag tucked under John Young’s arm and about the way he slid into the subway car with a glance back over one shoulder. He looked ordinary, but he was hiding something. In tandem, Justice and I turned to face the window, watching Mr. Young’s reflection as he grabbed an eye-level hand hold and swayed with the train’s motion. When he released his grip two stops later, my cousin and I stood and followed him toward the exact destination we’d been warned John Young would choose.

  At this hour, with night not quite ready to turn into morning, there were homeless people sleeping on every one of Central Park’s benches. A few joggers and dog walkers traversed the perimeter, but crevices and crannies of the green space were still empty. The bag in Mr. Young’s hand took on ominous overtones.

  “I can’t get any official dirt on him,” the cop contacting me through the Bounty Hunter’s Forum had written two days earlier. “He sheds charges like a greased duck sheds water. He has a source on the inside. I need someone outside the Department to catch him in the act.”

  So here Justice and I were trailing—what, a potential terrorist? Mr. Young’s gaze caught on us and we stopped to toss a penny into the fountain to deflect his attention. Then we split up, Justice staying on his heels while I veered left to form the hidden prong of a pincer. The instant our target was out of sight, I broke into a run.

  The park was already busier than it had been just a few minutes earlier. Bicyclists flew past. A dog stopped to mark its territory. Faceless figures huddled in sleeping bags, many starting to sit up and wipe the crust out of their eyes.

  More people should have meant less interest in me. Still, the sensation of being watched made the hairs on my nape prickle. My fur cloak was mildly outlandish, but I’d traveled this way dozens of times without attracting attention. Something was wrong....

  Swiveling, I caught a child waving from his carriage while a harried nanny offered a half-friendly chin jerk. I was spooking at shadows. Or, rather, at toddlers. Good thing my cell phone chimed and got me back on track.

  Justice’s update was terse yet informative. “By the pond. He’s slowing.”

  Well, that was easy. It was almost as if our target wanted to be caught. “Guide him to the bridge,” I suggested.

  “No guiding necessary. I think he plans to feed the ducks.”

  To feed the ducks? Not likely. A bridge, however, would be a perfect hiding place for incendiary devices.

  One minute later, I stepped up onto the half-moon bridge while Justice loitered at the opposite end. Was that why Mr. Young was dropping bread crumbs into the water? Had he realized he was being followed and....

  “Mr. Young?”

  “Yes?” Behind thin glasses, the man’s eyes were faintly befuddled.

  “May I....”

  Before I could finish my sentence, my furry hood squeezed tight against my cheeks to boost subpar human senses. Distant traffic grew from a hum to a roar and I clapped my mouth shut around a mouthful of skinless-scented air.

  A WOLF STEPPED OUT onto the end of the bridge I’d come from. My sword rang as it cleared the scabbard.

  Justice was wrong. I hadn’t been spinning my wheels. This was precisely what I’d spent the end of summer and beginning of fall training for.

  The wolf was unimpressed by my en-garde position, but Mr. Young flinched at the sight of my sword combined with the threat of a huge, unleashed canine. “Take my money!” Slices of bread slapped the wooden bridge planks as he scrambled for his wallet.

  “Go,” I told him. Because his paper bag had spilled all of its contents, revealing a total lack of incendiary devices. Mr. Young wasn’t a terrorist. He was an innocent who’d been used as a decoy to draw me into an ambush.

  It was mildly insulting that this wolf thought I’d back down in the face of a single enemy. I glanced over my shoulder, raising my eyebrows at Justice. His lips pursed but he nodded. He’d follow Mr. Young out of the park just in case there were other skinless hiding. I only needed to cover their retreat.

  And...I should never have taken my eyes off the enemy. Because spice-scented air warned one second before lupine paws slammed into my shoulder. I tumbled over backwards, my sword slashing upwards at the same instant. The blade sliced through fur...then I yanked my arm back before metal could pierce the underlying skin.

  Cinnamon. The wolf’s signature scent had been instantly familiar; it had just taken my neurons a little longer than it should have to make the connection.

  Not apple-pie-and-mulled-cider cinnamon like Luke. This aroma was wilder, furious. That plus
the pale lines clearly visible on her muzzle pointed to—

  Ruth. Luke’s sister. I hesitated, unwilling to harm her...

  ...And she bit into my arm so deep I yelped and dropped my sword.

  In reaction, my pelt pressed against my skin, seeking entry. Lupine, I could protect myself without causing mortal wounds I’d regret afterwards. Lupine, the worst I’d leave behind on Ruth was one more layer of scars.

  But I wasn’t about to shift and reveal my woelfin nature if Ruth had brought pack mates with her. Instead, I used my greater human mass to bat her lupine body off me, holding on as she tumbled sideways so I ended up on top.

  And now my pelt helped rather than hindered. It wriggled down until it lay between me and Ruth’s strong hind legs, squelching her motion as she kicked upward in an effort to tear into my gut. Immediate danger averted, I stretched my fingers as far as I was able and was gratified when they struck the cool steel of my sword.

  “Shift,” I demanded, finger-walking up the blade toward the hilt while maintaining my grip on Ruth’s chest with my other arm. I wouldn’t use the sword to harm her, but who in their right mind would keep fighting with three feet of sharp metal pressed against their neck?

  Only, I didn’t quite get to the stage of menacing her with the sword blade. Ruth’s front paw kicked out so fast it flung my hand into the sharp edge I’d been flirting with. The blade cut into my palm and I recoiled without meaning to.

  Then Ruth was human beneath me. She was human...and she was the one with my sword in her hand.

  “You need to learn that pain is your friend.” Ruth’s eyes were wild, lupine. I got the distinct impression I’d just failed a test.

  The pain in my gut that followed, however, wasn’t the psychosomatic sort. I froze as my own sword bit into my shed skin.

  Did Ruth realize that piercing my pelt there would be just as bad as running the blade through my physical belly? Or was she just menacing me the way I’d intended to menace her?

  “Ruth,” I started.

  Justice cleared his throat above us. I looked up into the muzzle of a gun.

  Chapter 9

  His voice was as gritty as the darkness beyond the glow of the nearest streetlight. “I suggest you release my cousin.”

  Ruth bared her teeth. “I suggest you look into New York City gun laws. How long do you think it’ll be before good old Johnny calls the cops?”

  So she had set me up. I shifted my weight onto one knee in preparation for rising, and the second pinprick of pain struck dead center, right below my belly button.

  “Are you as fast as me?” Ruth purred. “I wonder....”

  Her voice trailed off as she arched up beneath me. Our bodies pressed even closer together in a gesture that was oddly intimate...until I realized she was smelling my neck.

  To my surprise, Ruth’s eyelids drifted shut as she took in the same scent I woke to every morning. “You idiot,” she breathed. “No wonder they don’t believe I’m the sword maiden.”

  I craved further information, but this was my moment. My foe was distracted....

  Justice and I had worked together long enough that we didn’t even need a signal. I rolled. He kicked. My sword sparkled as it spiraled through the air.

  I might not have been as fast as a skinless, but I was underneath waiting as the weapon descended. The hilt thudded into my hand with the satisfaction of coming home after a long night’s hunt.

  “I think Ruth’s trying to suggest we’ll need a good lawyer,” I told Justice as he pocketed the pistol he really shouldn’t have had in his possession. “Do you have any idea where I might find one?”

  My cousin snorted, about as much reaction as my joke merited. And Ruth—unfazed by lying naked on the ground between us—disagreed with me.

  “No. Nothing so prosaic. I’m telling you that Honor’s failure is harming my brother. It’s time for her to make it right.”

  “MY FAILURE?”

  I was hooked and Ruth knew it. Her smile was more feline than lupine as she reeled me in, never mind that I towered above her while she lay flat on her back.

  She inspected her fingernails before answering. “Did Luke tell you what happened last week?”

  If I didn’t count dream-visions, Luke had told me nothing. There’d been no texts, no emails, no phone calls between us. I assumed the silence had a purpose so I maintained it on my end the same way he did on his.

  Ruth responded as if I’d spoken. “You poor thing.” Her voice was fake-sweet, like sugar-free candy. “Of course he didn’t tell you. Didn’t mention the fact we’re hiding in the forest so the neighbors won’t catch wind of our weakness. Didn’t mention the fact we’re not even safe among our own kin.”

  She rose to her feet then and I didn’t stop her. I needed to hear this. Her voice lowered and I leaned in closer.

  “Did Luke mention the way he ran right into a bear trap in the woods two days ago? The way he shifted and dragged the metal jaws open with his bare hands then limped home on an ankle that looked like it’d been spat out by a shark?” She paused, raised one eyebrow just the way Luke would have done. “He told the pack that he stepped in a hole.”

  Ruth took a step closer. My sword rested at my side, one hair shy of forgotten. Justice was the only one able to speak.

  “Who set the trap?”

  Ruth shrugged. “Who knows? It was out there so long the scent faded. On a path Luke follows often...but he’s not the only one.”

  She leaned in closer. There were new cuts on her skin, interspersed with old scars. As if today’s fight was far from the first she’d embarked on since I’d seen her.

  “I tried to do my job as sword maiden,” she continued. “They should have come to me, trying to steal a token. They should have demanded a Hunt if they weren’t happy. Instead, they resorted to subterfuge. Father was right. The pack is starting to rot.”

  I took a deep breath. “That has nothing to do with me. Luke told me to leave. I left.”

  “You left,” Ruth agreed, “but you didn’t do what I told you to. You kept the bite. I’m here to bring you to the pack so you can correct your mistake.”

  For a split second, I considered it. Considered providing the backup my gut said Luke needed.

  Beside me, Justice waited in silence. He was willing to go along if I asked him to—I knew that. Between us, we could hold our own amid any number of skinless.

  Ruth’s patience didn’t last long in the face of my silence. “Did you ever wonder how I found you?” Her lips widened into an almost-smile. “Luke goes to town once a week for supplies, but he has no reason to drop by the library. He does, though. Logs onto a computer, checks up on a certain forum. Follows the threads of one user alone.”

  So that’s how Ruth had known to use the Bounty Hunter’s Forum to reel me in for this meeting. The entire time I’d thought Luke was avoiding me, he’d been reading my social-media postings. Now I was the one smiling.

  Still...Luke had asked me to leave. Had sent me away not just once but repeatedly. I had to trust that he knew his own needs better than Ruth did.

  I shook my head. “If Luke wanted me there, he’d call me.”

  I thought it was a good argument, but Ruth snorted. “Right. My big brother? Ask for help? Not a chance.”

  The sky was gradually brightening above us. Skyscrapers loomed above the park in the near distance. A chatter of voices suggested strangers would soon interrupt our tête-à-tête.

  So I shut things down. “This conversation is over. If you haven’t noticed, we’re in a city, not a nudist colony. Tell Luke I’ll come if he wants me to. Until then, good luck.”

  Of course, it wasn’t that simple. Ruth’s hands flew to her hips. “Is that your final answer?”

  I wasn’t sure how to be more clear than I’d been already, so I went for one-word clarity. “Yes.”

  “Too bad.” Ruth pursed her lips. “We could have done this the easy way.”

  Which made no sense. I held a sword. Justice
possessed a gun. Ruth had nothing other than her lupine teeth, and even those weren’t in evidence at the moment.

  “Son of a bitch.” Justice slapped his neck one second before a sweat bee stung me.

  No, not a sweat bee. This was October rather than July.

  The last thing I saw was a tiny feathered dart falling from my cousin’s limp fingers. Then everything went dark.

  Chapter 10

  The space I woke into was small and dark and reeked of spilled lubricant. My ears rang too loudly to hear tires against the road.

  But I could guess where I was. In a car’s trunk. Ruth had drugged me.

  Or, no, an accomplice must have been the one wielding the dart gun. Ruth’s nakedness made it impossible for her to have hidden a weapon on her person.

  “Justice?” My voice was lost in the darkness as I reached out, expecting my cousin to be crammed in beside me. But my chilled fingers found nothing living. Just felted carpet and the empty plastic clamps that should have secured a tire iron. The emergency-release handle had been cut off so close against the metal that only a whisper of softness was evident at the rope’s fraying tip.

  Predictably, my phone and sword had been removed also, although my pelt still wrapped warm around me. Ruth wouldn’t have forgotten what I was, so she’d open the trunk fully expecting me to emerge furry and foul-tempered.

  The question was—where was she taking me? Back to Luke the way she’d proposed, or somewhere else entirely?

  My pelt wriggled closer, pressing warmth into my body. Its touch soothed the pounding in my temples, clearing my ears until I could hear wind whipping past the car’s fenders.

  Ruth was an aggressive driver. The floor slung sideways beneath me, pressing my hip up against the unpadded back of the bumper. Right, then left. We weren’t on a highway...which meant I’d likely survive the tumble if I managed to open the trunk and jumped out of the moving vehicle.