A Hunter Born (Hired Hunters Series Book 1)

by Kimberly Forrest

  Noticing that the sculptor had even used what looked like might be rubies to represent blood from numerous wounds, Morgan was about to touch one of the frost-coated gems when she heard Kane shout her name, followed by his pain and rage-filled wail. Morgan raced out of the freezer, the dragon sculpture forgotten.

  Kane had found Jamie and Morgan stumbled to a halt as she saw her friend’s head sticking out of the ground, lolled to one side, unconscious. Jamie’s eyes looked like they’d been cauterized shut, her lips sewn together with heavy black wire, her face swollen and bruised nearly beyond recognition.

  “Death is too good for that son of a bitch,” Kane snarled, rising from his crouch in a murderous rage, his eyes demonic red and his fangs fully elongated in preparation to kill.

  Morgan felt the same but she somehow managed to push her rage down deep. Revenge would come later, but only once Jamie was safe. “We need to get her out of the ground. She’ll need to feed immediately so she can heal.”

  They had only managed to dig a quarter way down when Jamie came awake and attempted to scream, the effort only serving to tear at her sewn lips. Kane quickly wrapped his arms around her, his big hand petting the lank and dirty strands of her hair as he whispered soothing words in her ear. “We’ve got you, Jamie. We’re here. We’re going to get you out of here, I promise.”

  It took longer than Morgan would have liked, but they managed to finally move enough earth to pull Jamie free. She was naked, filthy, her body covered in seeping knife slashes where the bastard and his thugs had bled her before putting her into the ground.

  “Take the SUV, get her out of here. Go to Travis’s apartment, you’ll be safe there.” Giving him the address, Morgan added, “And feed her with your blood, Kane. Human blood might be too weak. She’ll heal fastest if she’s fed from a Born.”

  “What about you?”

  “I need to go get Travis, he’s searching the house. We’ll be right behind you.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The property was lit with flashing blue lights as New Orleans finest descended on the scene. How this mess was going to be explained, Morgan had no idea, but if Rodolfo had managed to survive the encounter with Jourdain, she was sure he’d be using his compulsion and whatever other tricks he had up his sleeve to make this little disaster disappear.

  Utilizing her preternatural speed to avoid detection, Morgan made it into the villa and quickly called Travis. “We found Jamie,” she assured him as soon as he answered. “Kane is bringing her to your place here in the city. Where are you?”

  “Rodolfo’s trophy room,” was snarled with disgust. “He is one sick bastard let me tell you.”

  After seeing the horror of the greenhouse, Morgan wasn’t surprised, yet she still felt a shudder race down her spine. “We need to go. The police are here.”

  “I am the police,” Travis reminded her. “And I can’t leave yet. Sophia…”

  “Understood,” Morgan quickly cut in. “Rodolfo’s office. If we have to, we’ll take everything he has in there and bring it to your place to go through. I’ll meet you there.”

  It didn’t take long for Morgan to reach the office and while the locks on the door were heavy-duty, intended to keep out nosy vampires, a couple of well-placed kicks with a booted foot had the door crashing open. The brute force method was a little noisier than she would have liked, but she didn’t have time for stealth or subtlety. Cops she could easily avoid with her speed, Rodolfo or any of his thugs was another matter entirely, and right now, she had no idea how many might still be lurking about.

  With her gun at the ready, she entered the dark interior to find it unoccupied and immediately moved to Rodolfo’s desk to begin rifling through the drawers. Travis joined her a minute later and though they had a mission to complete, she took a moment to grab the back of his head and pull him down for quick, hot, much-needed melding of their mouths. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she murmured against his lips and felt his answering smile before he whispered, “I’m glad you’re okay too.”

  A heartbeat later, they were back to business, Travis moving to the file cabinets to wrench them open, his fingers skimming over the files inside. “Some of this I’ll leave for the responding officers to find,” he commented, “though I doubt there’ll be much in here that’s incriminating. Rodolfo doesn’t strike me as being that stupid.”

  “We’ll take his computer, though,” Morgan added, crouching under the desk to unplug the tower and disconnect it from the components, silently wishing Rodolfo had a nice, lightweight laptop rather than this heavy desktop unit.

  The scent of blood hit her nose, and not just any blood, but the blood of one of her kind. Everything that followed, happened at seemingly lightning speed. Morgan drew her gun and came up from under the desk in a flash, but Rodolfo, his face a sunken, hideous, bloody mask of sadistic delight already had Travis in his grip, her angel’s head tilted at a hard angle to expose his throat, the Born’s teeth buried in viciously deep to feed on that powerful blood.

  Travis’s eyes shifted to glowing yellow striated with black, his pupils narrowing to reptilian slits as they met hers. His bellow of “Run!” barely registering in her brain as she searched for an opportunity to shoot.

  An unholy roar filled the air, Travis’s skin darkening, his face transforming, reshaping as a layer of dark green iridescent scales began to cover him. A wing broke free from his back, but instead of the feathers Morgan would have expected to see, the appendage was leathery, bat-like, and spike tipped at the joints. Before her eyes, her lover’s body began to pulse and grow.

  Another wing ripped out of his back, the force of it throwing Rodolfo away before he’d released his teeth, the resulting tear in Travis’s throat gushing blood for a moment before the wound sealed over with scales and the unexpected transformation was complete. Travis had told her he was no angel. She had assumed at the time that he’d been teasing, letting her know that his character was far from angelic. How wrong she’d been.

  A prehistoric screech shook the house, the windows shattering as his wings spread to their full impressive span, knocking out walls and a section of the roof as if they were made from nothing more substantial than tissue paper.

  Morgan took cover as debris began falling around her and a creature long thought extinct took flight to hover menacingly over the villa, the scales covering his long neck beginning to glow with an internal fire. Shit. He was going to light the place up. About to make a run for it, Morgan was suddenly grabbed from behind as Rodolfo attempted to use her as a shield. Fucking coward. Closing her eyes, she held her breath as she let her body break apart into a cloud of bats knowing that Rodolfo couldn’t do the same. With a bellowed, “No!”, the Born’s arms closed on nothing but air as she flew upward to join her dragon in the sky where she watched with satisfaction as the first stream of fire let loose from her love’s fearsome jaws onto a screaming Olivier Rodolfo.

  For Jamie, Morgan thought, and for Sophia.

  ∞∞∞

  Lying naked on the ground in his human form behind Rodolfo’s blazing villa, Travis’s senses came back to him in a rush. He quickly turned to look at Morgan, who was sitting behind him with her arms around him and checked her for injuries. “You’re all right?” he asked, nearly breathless with worry. Since he wasn’t able to shift with any sort of regularity, when his beast did get released, it was hard to control, the dragon driving more than he consciously did.

  “Not a scratch,” she promised before getting to her feet and offering him a hand up. “But now, after that show, we really have to get out of here. The press is going to have a field day.” Her eyes moved over him and her mouth quirked up on one side with amusement. “I wonder which headline they’ll feature? A gunfight, a fire-breathing dragon, or a naked man streaking through the Garden District?”

  Travis was dumbfounded. That was it? She wasn’t going to berate him for lying to her? Not that he’d intended to deceive her, yet by allowing her to keep her misconceptions, he s
upposed he had. He hadn’t exactly encouraged the lie, but he hadn’t corrected her assumption either. Being one of the last dragon shifters, caution had been instilled in him since his infancy. Like vampires, dragon shifters were immortal, but not invulnerable, and they had been hunted to near extinction with less than fifty known dragon shifters currently remaining worldwide. Yet, with Morgan, he’d known he could trust her, for Christ’s sake, he had fallen in love with the woman, was planning to spend the rest of his hopefully long life with her and still, he hadn’t shared the biggest part of himself with her. He deserved her fury, so why wasn’t she bringing it down on his head?

  Sirens wailed, and horns blasted as firetrucks rushed to the scene. Morgan grabbed his hand and pulled him into a run. “Let’s not press our luck any further,” she yelled over her shoulder as they sprinted for his truck. Somehow, they managed not to be seen and once inside the dark, relatively quiet space of the cab, they both exhaled their breath in a whoosh. Not from the exertion of the run, rather from the sheer magnitude of the events that had unfolded that night.

  A look of concern filled Morgan’s eyes as she lifted gentle fingertips to his neck. The area was burning, felt raw, and he knew it probably looked much worse than it was thanks to Rodolfo chewing on his neck. “The bleeding’s stopped,” she told him.

  He nodded, lifting his own hand to feel the damage. “Good thing the wound wasn’t too bad or I would have crusted over.”

  Morgan released a little surprised laugh that warmed his heart as she blurted, “What?”

  He nodded. “When a dragon shifter sustains a significant injury, our bodies encase themselves in stone so that we have an opportunity to heal. It’s a defense mechanism. Only once we’re safe and strong enough to do so will we break out.”

  Her face seemed to freeze with the exception of a single slow blink of her eyes before she grabbed his arm and excitedly told him, “I think I know where your sister is.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  He had wanted to head straight back onto the property to see for himself. Only Morgan’s restraining hand and her common-sense lecture had held him back. As she had rightly pointed out, he was naked, the place was crawling with police and soon to be overrun by firetrucks, and Sophia was currently a statue of mammoth proportions that they had no way of moving by themselves. They needed to take a beat and come up with a plan, not run around – as she put it – with their dicks out.

  She was absolutely right, of course. With a fire to battle, the police would step back and let the firemen do their jobs, coming in only once the blaze was contained to investigate. Anyone who saw Sophia would assume, as Morgan had, that she was a piece of art, a sculpture in Rodolfo’s collection, and while the wait hurt his heart, he needed to be smart and have patience. Not to mention clothes. Clothes would be good.

  Forcing himself to put the truck into gear and vacate the area, he drove them to his apartment in the city. Kane, armed with one of Travis’s own guns, met them at the door. The vampire’s steely look quickly morphed into one of horror before he covered his eyes and laughingly declared, “You need to cover that shit up, man,” before backing away to allow them in.

  Once the door was shut behind them, Kane asked “Why are you naked?” and then to Morgan, “Why is he naked?”

  Morgan shot Travis a quick glance asking for permission, and Travis nodded. Her look, one of pride as she declared, “My boyfriend is a badass dragon shifter,” thrilled him down to his bones and made him want to grab her into his arms and kiss her breathless.

  “No way,” was Kane’s excited response. “And I missed it? Shit. Please tell me you mounted that sick fuck, Rodolfo, on a spit and roasted him.”

  “Extra crispy,” Morgan returned with a grin only for that smile to collapse a moment later when she asked, “How’s Jamie?”

  Kane’s own expression noticeably dimmed. “I fed her and patched her up as best I could,” the vampire returned, shaking his head. “But she’s going to need time and definitely more blood. Those bastards smashed all of her fingers…” He trailed off with a snarl, unable to finish for the moment under the weight of his anger. Running a hand through his hair, he swallowed hard. “The only good thing is that they sewed her mouth shut rather than cutting out her tongue.”

  “You were able to remove the wires okay?”

  A sharp nod. “And splinted her fingers. Luckily, she was unconscious for most of it.”

  “We’ll bring her to my place in the bayou,” Travis said. “The wolves have a healer there, not to mention more space to move around and fewer humans to ask questions.”

  That had Kane raising an eyebrow. “Last I checked, shifters didn’t exactly get along with vampires and the last thing we need is to be fighting off a pack of wolves.”

  “They’ll allow it. You don’t snarl at them, they won’t go for your throat.”

  The vampire eyed Travis a moment longer and then shook his head. “I can’t talk to you when you’re naked, dude. Put some clothes on.”

  ∞∞∞

  Morgan approached the bed carefully, trying to keep her rage contained as she looked upon the unconscious body of one of her best friends. Jamie’s eyes had been loosely wrapped with gauze, the white stark against the blackened flesh that was now shiny with ointment. A thick coating of the same was also smeared around the woman’s mouth from nose to chin to assist in healing where the wires had torn through her skin when Jamie had attempted to scream. What blood Kane had managed to get into her had helped bring down some of the swelling and minor bruising, but he’d been absolutely right that she would need more – more blood, more time. The beating Jamie had endured had been brutal.

  Her hands were propped on pillows on either side of her, each finger now splinted and tightly wrapped with bandages so that the bones would mend. Kane had done his best, but the Born was far from a medic and Travis’s plan to bring her to the pack healer made sense. A human doctor was out of the question, but if Jamie ever wanted full use of her fingers again, she’d need more than just a patch job for the bones to knit back together properly.

  “This is my fault,” Kane said, his voice riddled with guilt as he came up alongside Morgan. “If I had been with her…”

  “Then Rodolfo’s thugs would have found another opportunity to grab her. She obviously stumbled upon something they didn’t want her to see or share.” The specificity of the injuries clearly pointed to that.

  “When that redhead showed up at my door, I should have known, should have guessed. She was too desperate to keep me there but I ignored the signs. I was thinking with my dick,” he growled with a disgusted shake of his head. “And Jamie paid the price.”

  Nothing Morgan could have said just then would have alleviated Kane’s guilt. Only Jamie would be able to do that when she woke. So, instead, she changed the subject. “We need to get her into the SUV and out to the bayou. The dawn’s coming quick.”

  Kane nodded, his eyes still on Jamie. “I heard your man talking to someone named Archer on the phone. I assumed he was either talking to the pack alpha or the healer to let them know we were coming in.”

  “Archer Langley is alpha.”

  Another nod. “I’ll get her ready to go.”

  Morgan blew out a tired breath. A Born had died tonight. One who held a large territory. And potential witnesses could have seen that he was killed by a shifter after an attack initiated by the leader of the Order of Witches. Should the Elders hear of it – when the Elders heard of it – war was inevitable. She would have to report it, but the Elders could wait. Her team came first. Always.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Upon reaching the swamps, Jamie had immediately been taken into the healer’s cabin where the pack had gone to the trouble of covering every window with heavy blankets to keep the sun out. Their thoughtfulness, their efficiency, and care despite the animosity between their two species touched a chord inside Morgan. She wouldn’t forget this. They didn’t know it yet, but this pack had just managed to
secure a place on Morgan’s decidedly short list of people to whom she owed her loyalty.

  “She’s in good hands,” Travis whispered into her ear as he pulled her tight to his side.

  Morgan nodded and leaned a bit heavier into him, grateful for both his support and the heat of his body, especially after seeing the mangled mess the healer had revealed when the woman had unwrapped the bandages to inspect the damage done to Jamie’s hands. Morgan had a pretty strong stomach, but still, it had rolled in protest of what she had witnessed.

  Needing something else to focus on, Morgan cleared her throat. “Any ideas on how we’re going to get Sophia off Rodolfo’s property?”

  “Archer and some of his men are coming with me tonight.”

  Morgan’s forehead crinkled with confusion. “Shifters are strong, but not that strong. I don’t think he has enough men to lift her. She looked heavy. Rodolfo probably used a whole crew of vamps to get her in there.”

  “These shifters happen to work in construction. We’ll be using some heavy-duty equipment to get her out safely.”

  Morgan imagined a scene of bright yellow trucks, flashing lights, and loud beeping as they backed up to retrieve Sophia. “Not very stealthy,” she warned. “And won’t that get you in trouble with your chief or whatever if you get caught removing things from an active crime scene?”

  Travis shrugged, “It won’t matter since I won’t be staying with the force.”

  “Oh?” Not wanting to get her hopes up, Morgan waited with bated breath.

  His hand tightened on hers as he whispered, “This sexy vampire I know offered me a job and I’ve decided to take her up on it.”

  Morgan’s grin was wide as she turned and wrapped her arms around Travis’s neck. “Oh, really?” she teased. “And does this sexy vampire have a name?”

  His eyes went fiery yellow, striated with black, his pupils contracting as his dragon made its presence known a moment before he tipped his head to kiss her.