Hunter's Prey: Bloodhounds, Book 2 (16 page)

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.”

“If that thing is what I think it is, don’t get caught in the blast.” Emmett swung out the door and onto the metal ladder climbing the side of the car.

A man in a battered cap and blood-streaked vest reached for Hunter. He slapped away a grasping hand and planted his boot in the man’s stomach, kicking hard enough to send the body stumbling back. The metal canister in his hand rattled, and Hunter got his back to the door before sliding the long pin free and tossing it toward the center of the car.

Five seconds. He had five seconds, and he used the first one to swing out of the car and slam the door shut. Through the foggy window he caught sight of his latest attacker picking up the grenade. Hunter caught the bottom rung of the ladder and swung himself up, scrambling toward the top.

His mental countdown hit
two
when he saw Tobias on the ground, planting one of Satira’s modified rounds in the throat of a vampire. “Tobias,
get down
,” he roared, a second before a storm broke through the train car beneath his feet.

The explosion rumbled like contained thunder, shaking the compartment until Hunter had to drop to his knees. Light spilled from the windows as they shattered, sunlight in the midst of night. Ghouls’ screams echoed across the plains as silver-laced shrapnel tore through their bodies. For one grisly moment the train depot was illuminated by a false dawn, and Hunter saw the three vampires who’d been creeping along the top of the train under the cover of darkness.

Emmett pulled both of his repeating revolvers as he rose. Tiny flares of light burst forth from the barrels to find their targets, and two of the vampires fell back and pitched over the side of the car. The third fired his own weapon, and Emmett dropped to the car with a pained grunt just as Hunter swung his autofiring rifle.

One shot dropped the vampire, a second turned him into a writhing mass of burning flesh. Hunter scrambled to Emmett’s side. “Where are you hit?”

Emmett waved him away. “I’ve had worse. We’ve got to flush out the rest of ’em before they get away.”

Hunter rose to his feet and squinted down at Tobias. “You in one piece down there?”

“Ow,
fuck
.” The hound spat on the ground and cursed again. “Barely. I’m bleeding.”

“The explosive device was an unfortunate necessity.” Nate appeared from the back of the car. “We needed an expedient way to neutralize the threat the ghouls posed.”

“Yeah? Tell that to my face, you fucker.”

Shattered glass from the train windows caught the faint light from the moon and the depot’s electric lights as Tobias shook himself, sending shards tumbling to the ground. The cuts would hurt, but the bloodhound would heal from superficial wounds. “We’ve got two more passenger cars. Nate, have you got more grenades?”

Nate hefted his bag. “Emmett and I can handle the ghouls.”

Tobias was already halfway up the ladder. “And we can hit the freight cars.” He helped Emmett to his feet, then glowered at Hunter. “They’ll be under heavy guard. I saw at least four bloodsuckers make their way back there.”

Hunter stepped past Emmett and hopped to the next car. “Nate, toss me one of the grenades, if you’ve got a spare.”

The man complied. “Be careful with it.”

“You be careful with yours,” Hunter ordered in return. “We know the sun doesn’t hurt you, but we haven’t tried silver-laced shrapnel. I’m bringing you back in one piece so Satira will let me keep all my parts. You hear me, old man?”

Tobias paused to reload, his spent shells clinking on the car as he emptied them. Then he nodded toward the end of the train. “This way.”

Ophelia huddled under a wooden table in the corner of the basement, the closest thing she could find to a weapon clutched in her hand. A dull hunting knife—sad armament when an entire laboratory of deadly weapons lay beyond the far door.

Of course, fucking around with them might blow her up instead of Sheriff McCutcheon, and that would do no one any good.

She swallowed a hysterical laugh as the door at the top of the basement stairs opened with a creak.

“You’re starting to irritate me,” came his low voice. His boots thumped on the top step. “I wasn’t going to hurt you, you know. Maybe scare you a little, but when the vampire lords arrive in Iron Creek, they’ll want quality women. The kind that won’t scream and faint and make a fuss.”

Healthy women, with plenty of blood for the taking. Ophelia bit her lip and pressed back against the wall.

“You would have had a place after they finished interrogating you,” he continued, taking each step carefully, as if he expected a trap. “Your slut of a friend isn’t as refined as you are, but maybe she’ll understand the benefit of keeping her head. It’s your choice, Ophelia. Come out and be a lady, or fight me and be a lesson to the rest of the whores.”

At least one thing he’d said was reasonable. If she could stall him long enough—

Boots slammed against the floor in front of her, and Virgil bent down and grinned at her. “Boo.”

Ophelia barely managed to swallow her scream, and she eased the knife farther behind her back. “Y-you can’t blame a lady for trying.”

He thrust a hand under the table and sank his fingers into her hair in a brutal grip that brought tears to her eyes. “I reckon I can blame you for any damn thing that strikes my fancy,” he muttered, dragging her into the open. “Pity, because I liked you well enough, for all your airs.”

She didn’t know what was worse—that he’d given their interactions so much thought, or that he was speaking of her in the past tense already. “We never even talked, Virgil.”

“Sure we did.” He hauled her to her feet by her hair, then higher, up on to her toes. “Maybe you don’t recall, as I didn’t have enough money to be memorable.”

They’d exchanged pleasantries in the street, made polite small talk. Nothing of substance. It made her angry, that his imagined slights were somehow
her
fault, that having sex for money meant she belonged to everyone, whether she knew it or not.

The knife was heavy in her hand, the pitted blade grazing her skin where she had it tucked against her arm. “We can start over,” she offered quietly. “If you want.”

He hesitated, and something was off about the crazed look in his eyes. His pupils were black discs, swallowing the thin ring of brown, and his gaze kept flicking to the right, like he heard something—or someone—that she couldn’t. “I’m not supposed to take you for myself,” he muttered, staring just past her shoulder. “Yes, I know. The bloodhounds’ housekeeper could know all kinds of things.”

Ophelia shivered. A new ghoul was virtually indistinguishable from a normal human. It wasn’t until lack of nutrition or injury began to wear at the physical body that they started to look like exactly what they were—puppets being controlled from afar by their vampire masters.

Somewhere outside of Iron Creek, a vampire held Virgil McCutcheon in his thrall.

His fingers tightened roughly, dragging her head back to a painful angle. “Don’t look at me like that. I know what you’re thinking, and I ain’t no fucking ghoul.”

“Of course not.” Her voice broke, and she swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Because then you’d have to do what he says. But you can do whatever you want, right?”

“Yes.” His jaw clenched as his gaze flicked to the side again. “I’m
not
a ghoul. They’re brainless slaves. We’re more important. We’re
partners
.”

The shreds of hope Ophelia had been clinging to dissolved. “Partners in what?”

A slow smile curved his lips, wider and wider until he was staring down at her with a crazed grin. “It’s in the drugs. They make us stronger. Faster. Just got to keep taking them long enough, and I’ll be as strong as any fucking bloodhound.”

No, reasoning with him wouldn’t work. Ophelia turned the knife, clenched her fingers tight around the handle and thrust it up under his ribs.

He didn’t scream, that was the eeriest part. His hand clenched, tearing at her hair as he lifted his free hand to his gut and stared at her in stunned silence. Then his fingers slipped away from her head, and Ophelia ran for the stairs. His roar of pain ripped through the room behind her, followed by boots scrabbling against the rough floor and muttered curses.

She made it halfway up the narrow staircase before his hand closed around her ankle. She shrieked and grabbed at the handrail as he yanked hard, dragging her feet out from under her. “Treacherous little
bitch
.”

She reacted instinctively, kicking out as hard as she could. The pointed end of her slipper heel caught him in the eye, and he released her and tumbled down the stairs with a scream.

She crawled up the remaining stairs, slammed the door behind her and headed for the kitchen—and the back door.

Dropping a grenade into a closed car and letting sunlight do its job would have been too easy.

Not that they didn’t try. Tobias tore the ceiling hatch off the car in an impressive show of bloodhound strength, and Hunter launched the weapon, but the blinding flash of light illuminated hunched figures protected by heavy cloaks and the willing bodies of their newly turned ghouls. The heavy press of death remained, the weight of a half-dozen vampires beneath his feet.

And not just beneath them. Hunter straightened from his crouch as the first vampire rushed the train from the shadows of the depot. Others followed, swarming the ladder. “They’re coming up from the outside too,” he shouted to Tobias, lifting his rifle.

“You handle those,” Tobias growled, tearing at his vest. “I’m going in.” He only managed to divest himself of his shirt before he began to change, cloth ripping as his body began to mold itself into a more monstrous form.

For one heartbeat, the sight of it froze Hunter in place. He couldn’t have changed on command—wouldn’t know how and wouldn’t
want
to, but Tobias tore free of his human flesh with a terrifying speed, as if the pain of the transformation only fed into his power. As the beast he stood hunched over, half man, half wolf, a bulky body covered in thick fur and sporting razor sharp teeth and claws.

That frozen moment shattered as Tobias dropped into the car and Hunter turned seconds before the vampire slammed into him. Fangs flashed in the moonlight, and Hunter scrabbled for a smaller gun, tearing it free of the holster as his opponent bit at his arm, teeth pricking through the heavy fabric of his coat.

No room for finesse. Hunter jammed the revolver next to the vampire’s temple and averted his face as he pulled the trigger. Light and bits of vampire exploded around him, and the body slumped at his feet.

Screams and snarls rose from inside the car. Thunder rumbled again, along with a bright flash farther back along the train. Emmett and Nate, no doubt, cleaning out the ghouls at his back.

They’d have to manage any stray vampires too. Clutching his weapon in one hand, Hunter hopped over the remains of his enemy and dropped through the roof of the car.

A head rolled toward him and bumped against his boots. Blank blue eyes stared up at him from a woman’s snarling face, delicate fangs still slick with blood. Hunter kicked it out of the way and got his back against a wall just in time to see a vampire in an absurdly formal suit rush at Tobias.

The only other woman in the car lunged at him, and Hunter dropped the rifle as he slid out of her path. The revolver was dangerous enough in the confined space, and no guarantee Tobias’s fight wouldn’t bring him into the path of a stray bullet. Instead Hunter groped for the knife alongside his leg, a wickedly sharp blade edged in silver.

The vampire grabbed his face, her eyes alight with fury. “I’ll kill you, you bastard,” she hissed. Her fingernails dug into his skin as she twisted his head to one side. Curly red hair cascaded over her pale face, and for a moment she looked like someone else—like one of Thaddeus Lowe’s vampires.

Panic crashed into him, freezing him in place. If she got a taste of him, she’d know his blood was different. Untainted by the Guild, who’d tampered with their members’ blood until vampires couldn’t drink deeply from a bloodhound and hope to survive. She’d know his sheer
power
, why Lowe had kept him in a cage, why they’d fed from him day after day, drowning him in pain and pleasure that was so much worse—

So don’t let her drink from you, you blithering idiot,
drawled the quiet voice inside him, droll Matthew Underwood at his most caustic. Instinct overcame panic, and he smashed his arm up, snapping her jaw shut. The silver blade slipped through her body like her flesh wanted to part to escape the pain, and her nails pierced his skin.