Twilight Hunter eu-1 Read online

“Captive, remember? That means you’re supposed to be quiet.”

  “I won’t shut up until you gag me.”

  “That can be arranged.” He puffed harder on his cigarette, filling the car with smoke.

  “Try it,” she taunted.

  Nothing he felt like trying, he thought. He would likely lose a finger or two in the process.

  She coughed again. “Could you roll down a window or something for hell’s sake?”

  He flicked the ashes out the window. “You’ve got a really big mouth, don’t you?”

  “The better to rip your throat out.” She smiled, and in the rearview mirror he saw her long canines. He ran his tongue across his teeth—he had a pair of his own.

  Sexy.

  The word ran through his mind before he could stop it, and he instantly hated himself all the more. He thought of his mother’s face: the purple and yellow bruises that marred her porcelain skin and the wrinkles around her eyes as she sobbed. That was the night he walked out, leaving her unable to provide for her rapidly growing son, and slamming Jace with a life-long curse. Damn. He wasn’t right in the head, fantasizing about sex with one those monsters.

  And as if his self-hate wasn’t enough, her voice taunted him, poking fun at his agony by driving him wild.

  “You know, I—”

  He stomped on the Hummer’s brakes, and the car jerked. Princess toppled halfway into the front seat, and only his death grip on the steering wheel stopped his forehead from colliding with the dashboard.

  “Ow! What the—”

  He turned to her, eyes narrowed in anger. Her mouth snapped shut when she met his gaze. As he spoke, his beast’s rage overtook him.

  “Enough. Let’s get something straight. Unless you want a forty-caliber lodged in your skull, I suggest you keep your mouth zipped up nice and tight. Got it?”

  She shook her head, the movement almost imperceptible, so it looked like she was trembling. Maybe she was. Shit. She peeled herself off the floorboard and retreated back to her spot without another word. He hit the gas again and sped toward the council’s warehouse four blocks away.

  The small sniffle he heard behind him ripped at his heart. He tried to ignore it and focus on driving. Another sniffle. He couldn’t help himself. He checked the mirror.

  Tears were streaming down her cheeks, staining her perfect face. Her legs were hunched up to her breasts, and she was staring at the floor. His heart ached, threatening to explode. She was naked and vulnerable, and he’d just issued her a death threat. A wave of guilt shot through him as he thought of how he’d roughed her up in the alley. He really was a worthless bastard. He’d sworn to himself that he would never be like his father, never hurt a woman, but in the end he was no better than his asshole dad. Did it matter that she was a werewolf? She was still a woman. The angel and devil on his shoulders duked it out. He wasn’t quite sure which one was calling him a jackass. Maybe both.

  Speeding around a final corner, he spotted the abandoned warehouse where the council held its meetings. He drove to the entrance and parked the H3, glad he had tinted windows. Before he chanced doing something stupid, he twisted the rearview mirror away from him, so her reflection wouldn’t tear him apart.

  He stepped out of the car and glanced back at her. “This car is alarmed. Open a door, shatter the glass, fuck with the wiring, and the noise will wake the dead. That’ll bring me and three other supernatural-hating sons of bitches running.” His gaze raked over her nude form. “Unless you want that kind of attention...”

  He slammed the door and walked toward the warehouse. Never in his life had he wanted to attend a council meeting so badly.

  * * *

  JACE STRODE INTO the rusted, run-down warehouse as he pulled yet another Marlboro from his trench coat and stuck it between his lips. Looking up from his lighter, he glanced at the three other hunters. Damon was sitting at the far end of the table, his hands folded together on his lap as he shot daggers at Jace with his ice-blue eyes. The usual warm fuzzy welcome.

  The massive building was empty save for the single table, several overhead drop lights and the mounds upon mounds of old crates they’d put in to make the place seem more like an actual warehouse. Someone would be hard-pressed to find the switch that opened the door to the hidden room that held the Rochester division’s headquarters, unless they moved a hell of a lot of wooden crates. Even if they located the keypad, they would still be faced with the code and the body scanner.

  Damon spoke. “You’re la—”

  “No.” Jace held up one finger, cutting Damon off. He took a long pull on his cigarette, exhaled, then glanced down at his watch with a smug grin on his face. “Now I’m late.”

  Damon’s face hardened into a frozen mask, but Jace knew the overwhelming anger that lay beneath that cold, impassive stare. Jace felt rage—it was in his blood—but Damon took angst and made it into a lifestyle. Head of the council and the fiercest vampire slayer Jace had ever seen, Damon Brock never smiled, and he sure as hell couldn’t take a joke.

  “Sit down,” Damon ordered.

  Jace flopped into one of the hard, metal chairs and propped his dirt-covered boots on the table. David sat at Damon’s right side with his large hand covering his black goatee as he snickered.

  Jace nodded in his direction. “How’s it going, Big Daddy?”

  “Not too bad, sugarplum.” A smirk crept across David’s face, reaching all the way to his black eyes.

  Jace had never seen a woman who didn’t give David the “look” as soon as she met him, taking in that dark hair shaved close to his head, near-black irises, golden skin and chiseled features, scanning up and down his tall, massively built body, lingering on his massive shoulders and irresistible grin. But the entire time Jace had known him, David had had only two things on his mind: toasting demons and banishing their sorry asses back into hell, and Allsún, a girl he would never have again.

  Jace and David exchanged smirks. David may have kept Jace in check and coming to meetings, but he wasn’t beyond goofing off a bit to grate on Damon’s nerves. Damon always responded as if they were undermining the entire division, making it almost impossible to resist fulfilling his paranoid expectations at least occasionally.

  A grim look crossed Damon’s face. “What have you two been doing in your spare time?”

  Jace fought not to roll his eyes at the predictable question. Damon was always suspecting him and David of conspiring over something. “Getting more action than you, that’s for sure,” he said. As a matter of fact, he could think of a very naked, gorgeous woman he would like to get some action with at that very moment. He shook his head. Now was definitely not the time. “Of course, none of us is getting as much as Shane over there. Ain’t that right, kid?” He winked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And if you mean sexual intercourse, then no.” Shane fiddled with the buttons on his dress shirt. Though he was dressed to a nerdy tee, as usual, behind his gold-rimmed glasses and shy attitude there was a fighter in there, and Jace knew that if Shane would just ditch the specs and let loose, his problems with women would be cured.

  “Come on, Shane. One of these days you’ll need to get familiar with the ladies.” David lightly punched Shane’s arm.

  Damon frowned. “If all of you would stop goofing around, we’ve got a bunch of mutilated dead girls to talk about.”

  Like he would ever forget that vicious mess he’d encountered in the alley, Jace thought, and pulled hard on his cigarette. “Mutilated dead girls—way to spoil the mood.”

  Damon’s eyes narrowed into thin slits, his permanent grimace still in place. “Mouths shut and weapons in the bin. You know the drill. McCannon, you first.”

  Damon grabbed a plastic bin from the floor, placed it on the table and pushed it forward. All weapons went into the bin before anyone was allowed to enter the HQ room. Standard protocol given the scanners they had to pass through in order to enter.

  Jace pulled out his gun and unsheathed his d
agger. He slapped both on the table and pushed them toward Damon.

  Damon shot him a glare. “All of it.”

  Jace frowned. He reached toward his ankles, feet still on the table, and removed two more daggers. “There.”

  “David, your turn,” Damon said.

  David stuck his hand down his shirt and pulled out a large Star of David necklace. He set it on the table before he emptied the contents of his pockets: multiple vials of holy water, a small collection of gold religious relics, several knives and finally a bag of salt. Rochester’s premiere demon exorcist, David Aronowitz, was more likely to be found wandering heavily armed through the city’s underground scene than wearing a yarmulke and keeping kosher. Unknown to the tiny ninety-five-year-old grandmother he adored, David regularly filleted demons Rambo style for a living.

  David leaned his elbows on the table. “That’s all I got, D.” He shot Shane a glance. “You next, buddy.”

  Shane pulled his basic nine-millimeter handgun from its holster on the side of his dress pants and carefully placed it on the table. He grinned for a moment, like he was finished, before he put his hand up. “Oh, sorry, I forgot—just one second.” Twisting in his chair, he unsnapped the flap of the messenger bag hanging from the back of his chair. With a loud boom, he dropped a massive book on the table.

  Jace chuckled, and David belly-laughed right along with him.

  David rested his head in his hand as he continued to laugh. “Shane, how many times do we have to tell you that a book is not a weapon? The scanner won’t even pick it up.”

  “I beg to differ. It’s actually a very powerful tool. This book contains mounds of information about the rituals of pagan religion. It comes in quite handy when...”

  He continued rambling while Jace stubbed out his cigarette. Dr. Shane Gray specialized in all things occult and studied the nastier ends of human society. But while his multiple Ph.D.s proved he had a lot of brains, he’d acquired jack shit in terms of street smarts.

  “If you look at this page here, it shows you the diagram of the—”

  Jace plucked his flask from his pocket and unscrewed the cap. “Come on already. If the kid thinks the damn book is a weapon, let him check it. He’s gotta have something other than a gun. It proves he’s got brains. That’s one hell of a weapon in my opinion.” He took a swig of the whiskey and felt the burn slip down his throat. With the way the evening was going, he would need a lot more alcohol to drown out the nightmares. Damn things had plagued him nearly every night since his dad left, and on the nights when his inner beast surfaced, it was nearly impossible to find any peace. That, combined with his thoughts continuing to wander to the divine woman in the backseat of his car, who happened to be a werewolf...well, best to start drowning the beast now if he had any hope of sleeping tonight.

  Damon banged his fist on the table. “Would you all quit chatting like schoolgirls and get a move on?”

  Jace dropped his boots off the table. “Why’re you in such a hurry?”

  “Efficiency,” Damon said. He slapped a stake, a crucifix, two daggers and a handgun on the table, before he unsheathed a short but sharp steel-bladed sword from a holster on his spine.

  Jace raised a brow. “Overkill much?”

  Damon shot Jace a look of annoyance. He quickly placed all the weapons into the bin, taking special care with the sword, the knives and the glass vials. Everyone stood from the table and walked, with Damon leading the way, to the far side of the room, where David moved aside several large wooden crates, revealing a small switch in the wall.

  When Damon flipped the switch, a small section of the metal-panel wall slid open. A small keyboard popped out, and Damon punched in the code. There was a swish as a compartment opened, and then Damon lowered the bin inside. Once the weapons were secured, the hidden entrance on the warehouse wall folded open. Damon stepped inside, then stood stock-still as the laser scanner ran over his body.

  “Cleared,” an artificial voice said.

  Damon moved past the portal, and the other men took turns following him through the scanner. When they finished, all four of them descended the basement staircase into the control room at the heart of their operation. Multicolors flashed across the array of screens connected to the computer database. The Execution Underground bosses never skimped on their tech budget.

  Damon’s expression was all business as he took his regular seat. “We need to focus our efforts on the case of these mutilated women.”

  Damon’s voice droned on, and Jace fought to pay attention. What if she got loose? He would be screwed. She would tell the local packmaster that he had moved into the area, and then all the damn monsters would be on the lookout for him.

  “Jace, get your head out of your ass and focus,” Damon barked. “This concerns you more than anyone.”

  Jace looked up and frowned, but he managed to keep his mouth shut. Someone needed to teach Damon a lesson in manners.

  After several long seconds of glaring, Damon turned back to the group. “As I was saying, the deaths started nearly three weeks ago, and that’s just here. It could’ve been going on in other cities around the state or even the country for months, even years. The frequency is escalating, which means we’ve got to end this, and soon. Not only for the sake of the victims, but to save our own asses, as well. We can’t have HQ breathing down our necks and finding out how infested this city is with supernatural scum. Four young women, mutilated and dead, means—”

  Jace sighed. “Five.”

  Damon closed his mouth and the room fell completely still. Jace stood and leaned against the nearest wall.

  “Right after David called me about the meeting, I found her in an alley. Same M.O.—ripped to shreds and then raped while she bled out.”

  Damon’s hands clenched into fists. “You’ve had three weeks. Three weeks to find this son of a bitch, and yet innocent girls are still being murdered on your watch.”

  The anger Jace directed toward himself and his rage at the killer combined with his current frustration and bubbled beneath his skin. Had the Mateba been clipped at his side, a bullet would already have zoomed straight through Damon’s smug face.

  David and Shane glanced away from the argument in progress, uncomfortable with the skyrocketing level of anger on display. They busied themselves pretending to multi-task. Shane started scribbling notes on his paperwork, and David fiddled with the items surrounding his computer as if counting paperclips was an extremely important task.

  Jace pointed straight at Damon. “You can’t pin this on me. You aren’t out there every night trying to track this monster down. I’m the only one working this damn assignment.”

  “Because it’s your area of expertise,” Damon said.

  Jace pushed away from the wall and straightened to his full height. “Just because the guy’s a werewolf, that doesn’t make it solely my problem.”

  “What if he isn’t a werewolf?” Shane interjected.

  Jace’s head whipped in his direction. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  Shane ignored his pissed-off tone and continued. Sometimes the kid had more guts than Jace gave him credit for.

  “I mean, have we really considered the possibility that this could be something else? Maybe that’s why you’ve had such difficulty catching him?”

  “Shane has a point,” David said. “Have we really thought about it? We need to keep our minds open. For all we know, it could be some bastard who likes to pretend he’s the new and improved Ted Bundy. He could be human.”

  Jace slammed his fist against the wall. “I know this is a werewolf, all right?”

  Shane piped in again. “But how can you be certain if—”

  “I’ve never been so certain in my damn life. The way this shithead rips open his victims isn’t possible with human hands or human weapons—or human teeth. So unless he’s siccing a pack of rabid dogs on these girls after he rapes them, then there is no damn way this is anything other than a werewolf attack. Everybody got
that?”

  David moved to stand at Jace’s side and slapped a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Why don’t you call Trent tonight and see if he’ll check it out? Maybe it’s some other kind of shifter. He’d know. We can talk to him and Ash when they get back from helping the Brooklyn division catch that ghost shifter. They’ll be at the meeting tomorrow morning.”

  Jace gritted his teeth together and kept his jaw clamped shut. He thought of the female wolf out in his car. What the hell was he going to do with her? He pulled at his sleeve and hoped to hell that the blood from his wound wasn’t seeping through his trench coat. At least the wound was starting to knit itself back together. He could feel it.

  “While we’re at it, why not have Shane take a look, too? Maybe this has to do with the voodoo stuff he likes so much,” David said. “I’ll go with you, Shane.”

  Shane smiled from ear to ear. He didn’t get to do much out in the field, and Jace could tell he was stoked. “I can examine the scene for any possible evidence of occult ritual activities. But you know, rarely is there actually a—”

  Jace let out a low growl. “The cops have probably stumbled across her by now. Though even the beat cops avoid those back alleys, so who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky and find her the way I did—legs spread, heart missing and organs thrown around like fucking confetti over the asphalt. So once you’ve all taken a good long look and made a spectacle of this poor girl’s corpse, why don’t you give me a holler so I can say I told you so?”

  Damon glared at Jace, his high cheekbones casting shadows across his features, hollowing him out like a dead man. “If this is a werewolf, you have one week from tomorrow before HQ takes over the investigation and I have to replace you on grounds of incompetence. They’re breathing down my neck as it is, and they’re not going to sit back and do nothing if civilians keep dying,”

  “That isn’t gonna happen. I’m the best damn werewolf hunter on the East Coast, and you know it, Damon. Don’t give me that shit.”

  “Please, Jace, no reason to use so much humility.” Damon wrenched open a drawer and pulled out a large stack of papers. “This meeting is over.” He turned away from Jace and glued his gaze to the pages. “All of you fill out your damn paperwork so HQ can have their damn signatures, then scan it into the computers and go home. David, I need the updated report on that Vetis demon possession, and someone call Trent and tell him to get his shit together and give me some notes on the influx of shifters. I want to know why the hell, on a regular basis, we’re being overrun with freaks who shift into alley cats. And while you’re at it, tell Ash I need a report from him on the haunting in that old psych ward.”