Hunter's Prey: Bloodhounds, Book 2 (9 page)

Not that the man looked old enough to be a grown woman’s guardian. Nathaniel had a full head of black hair now, and brown eyes that saw clearly without the spectacles he’d worn when his vampire captors had first spirited the old inventor from this manor. He’d been old. Too weak to survive the transformation to become a vampire—until they fed him Hunter’s blood.

Broken into a million pieces indeed. “Then we can be broken together, you crazy bastard.”

“No, no, no.” Nate ran his hand over the long table heaped with laboratory equipment. “This tomb is mine. You find your own—if you can let go of the living.”

Hunter frowned. “You know, the fact that you’re building your own tomb down here? It’s making your little protégé cry on her bloodhound’s shoulder.”

Nate reacted with a barely perceptible flinch. “We all mourn our dead.”

Lifting his hand, Hunter stared at his wrist. The puncture wounds had begun to knit up, a gift from his accelerated healing. He wiped the blood from his skin. “For a dead man, you’re mighty hungry.”

“Is that what Ophelia said to you?”

Hunter stilled. “Are you listening to Ophelia’s thoughts?”

“The easy way.” Nate snorted and shook his head. “You’d take it too, wouldn’t you? You’d sell your soul to know why she came to you. If she’ll do it again when she doesn’t have to.”

He clenched his hands into fists to keep from shaking the answers out of Nate. “You so sure I’ve got a soul left to sell?”

“Quite.” The word brimmed with certainty, and Nate leaned closer. “Would you like to know?”

No. No no no. No. “Yes.”

“Yes?” Nate straightened slowly, his eyes dull with disappointment. “Poor little Matthew Underwood, truly desperate for once in his bored young life. Never learned how to yearn for anything. How to fight.”

Hunter exhaled on a curse and unrolled his shirtsleeve. “It’s bad manners to play with your food, Nate.”

“I possessed atrocious manners as a human.” He bowed low. “Be glad the humble beast before you retains a rudimentary command of speech instead of pointing and grunting.”

“Uh-huh.” Hunter studied the cluttered table. “You want me to stay around until the blood wears off?”

“Come, now. You’ve better places to be.”

Working for something. For the first time in his bored, rich life. For a crazy bastard, Nate knew how to land a verbal knife. “Maybe, but you stayed with me when I was pointing and grunting in that cage, so I figure the least I can do is return the favor.”

Suddenly, Nate swayed and caught himself on the edge of the table. “I thank you for the concern, but you should go now. I’d like to be alone.”

As uncomfortable as it made him, Hunter reached out and squeezed Nate’s shoulder once. “I’m always here for you, no matter what crazy nonsense you spew at me. Satira and Wilder saved me as much as they saved you. I owe ’em.”

“And I—” He snapped his mouth shut and shook his head.

Hunter eased his hand away and took a step back. “You take care of yourself down here. I’m sure Satira will be along again soon enough.”

His answer was resigned. “Yes, I know. Good day, Hunter.”

With nothing else to offer, Hunter bypassed the elevator and took the stairs, his mind already turned to the puzzle of how to fight for the woman he’d already claimed.

Sometimes it seemed like Iron Creek came to life at dusk.

Hunter waited in the dusty street while Wilder checked in with Sheriff McCutcheon. It had seemed odd at first, the idea that the hounds were the final authority in Iron Creek. But Hunter supposed there were few more suited to keeping order than a man who could terrify miscreants into good behavior with no more than a scowl and his reputation.

Of course, that job came with its share of responsibilities. The sun had dipped below the distant hills, and lights flickered into being up and down Iron Creek’s main street. The line between wealth and poverty became razor sharp when the sun went down. Efficient boilers fed electricity to those with the money to maintain them. Those less fortunate made do with the cast-offs, contraptions that spit roiling smoke into the air above their buildings and were often shared between homes built close together for that purpose alone.

The poor had oil lamps and fire pits, and their part of town lay dim and dangerous, with cramped alleys cast in deep shadows. Their next destination, once Wilder was finished with the sheriff, and Hunter’s fingers itched at the prospect of a fight. If trouble was to be found in Iron Creek, it would most likely be among the rougher saloons and the shack-like cribs where the cheaper prostitutes plied their trade. All those dark places where desperation and resentment grew.

After what seemed an eternity, Wilder’s boots thumped on the hard-packed earth. “One of the deputies says they’ve had some trouble, last few days. Want to guess where?”

“I’ll bet on anything but a fool’s wager.” Hunter nodded toward the east side of town. “Are we going to finish our rounds, or head to the slum?”

“The perimeter can wait.” He climbed onto his horse and gathered the reins. “We need to head off trouble here inside town limits first.”

Hunter smoothed a hand down his own mount’s neck, and the horse didn’t protest. It was a welcome change from before the new moon, when he’d gotten thrown from the saddle as often as not. Maybe some of the festering wildness in his soul had been lanced by Ophelia’s willing acceptance.

Another debt he owed her, then, and one he was no closer to repaying. “Did they say what sort of trouble? Locals, or someone new?”

Wilder flashed him a look. “They spend the new moon with most of their attention on the borders, terrified that a group of vampires will take advantage of our distraction with an attack. They practically ignore everything else.”

It felt chiding. It
was
chiding, a stupid question he could have worked out the answer to himself, if he’d put what was left of his mind to the task. “So the humans know they can get away with trouble during the new moon. Full moon too?”

“During the full moon, they wouldn’t dare.” Wilder smiled viciously. “Just in case we catch wind of it and come after them.”

So only three days a month…but a man set on ill could do a lot of things in three days. Lord knew he’d fallen prey to one of those things not so many new moons ago. “I’ve heard vampires cultivate gangs of humans along the border. People interested in some sort of special drug the bloodsuckers came up with?”

“Concoctions like that are an easy way to lure humans across the border. Give them a ready supply and then choke it off. Damn idiots will walk straight into the Deadlands to buy or trade for more.”

Sometimes they did. Sometimes their reckless, foolhardy friends went with them. “Damn idiots,” Hunter agreed.

Wilder’s mount stepped nervously, and he crooned to the animal before urging him into a walk. “Trouble, Hunter. Can you feel it?”

At first he felt nothing. Hunter closed his eyes, trusting his horse to follow Wilder’s, and stopped thinking so damn hard. The whisper came a moment later, a tingling at the back of his neck, as if an invisible hand hovered there, ready to clamp down. Instinct, that gut-deep feeling he hadn’t been able to put a name on before. “I feel it.”

Wilder took off at a gallop, abandoning silence in favor of a fierce yell. They left the bright lights behind and plunged into darkness, weaving around wagons and weathered clapboard buildings. His charge scattered a group of men who had been gathering near the edge of the slum, and Hunter twisted his horse to cut off the one who’d fled toward the main street.

Adrenaline smashed through Hunter with the first gunshot, and he scrambled from his horse before the animal could throw him. Rage brought the beast to the surface, and the beast brought clarity. The world around him froze, humans moving so slowly he wanted to laugh at their ineptitude.

The man he’d cut off raised a sidearm as he spun, his slow-motion yell rising in the night. It was so easy to intercept him, to smash a fist into the man’s arm before catching his wrist, to listen in satisfaction to the sound of bones breaking.

The pistol fell to the dirt, and Hunter kicked it out of his way before tossing the man aside and plunging into the fight after Wilder.

Wilder swung one man into another and growled when they crashed against the side of a lean-to. The rest of the men scattered desperately, and Wilder kicked at a large, square crate that had been pried open on one side. “Do you see this?” He reached in and pulled out a burlap-wrapped bundle. “Do you fucking see this?”

A fraction of an ounce could buy a man a week’s worth of good meals and almost as much time with an expensive whore. The crate held enough to buy Iron Creek twice over. “It’s more than I’ve ever seen outside the Deadlands.”

Wilder spit in the dirt. “More than you could move in or out of a town without the law knowing.”

So McCutcheon would have had to know. A chill shook Hunter as he remembered the glazed look of the man who’d accosted Ophelia in the street, and the way the sheriff had murmured easy assurances as he’d swept him away. What if this had been the man’s problem, not an overindulgence of liquor?

Hunter crouched in front of the crate and pried the nails from the wood to get a better look at the remaining bundles. “Who told you there was trouble? The young deputy?” Christ, he was going to have to remember their names.

“Miller.” Wilder knelt beside him with a muttered curse. “Fairly new in town, and idealistic. The kind resistant to bribes.”

“The kind who’s going to end up dead on the edge of town if someone finds out he’s carrying tales?”

“The very same.”

“Fuck.” Eleven bundles nestled in the crate, the one in Wilder’s hands bringing the total to an even dozen. “What are the Bloodhound Guild’s rights here? Can we face down the law over something like this? Even the sheriff?”

“Conspiring with vampires?” Wilder rose, his expression one of angry resolve. “You bet your ass we can. But first we need to make sure Miller doesn’t wind up full of holes.”

Seemed like the best way was to drag the kid back to the mansion until the situation got resolved, even if it would mean another person underfoot. “Then let’s go get him.”

“Ride ahead.” Wilder smashed the crate, spilling the bundles in a circle around the splintered wood. Then he reached for the nearest gas lamp and tipped it onto the pile. The fire began to lick at the burlap and powder. “I’ll catch up.”

For once, his horse obeyed. Hunter swung into the saddle and barked a terse, “Move!” at the men gathering in the street to gawk at Wilder. The crowd parted, and Hunter bent low over his mount’s neck and urged her toward the center of town.

The fact that it was dusk on the border was all that kept the roads clear enough for his reckless pace. Women and children didn’t venture outside after sundown, and any men brave enough to step outside watched from the wooden sidewalks.

He was still too late. He knew as soon as he dismounted outside Iron Creek’s jail. Death had a smell, a scent that triggered the same instinct as danger. Hunter swung to the ground and strode through the open door, half-expecting to find Miller dead on the floor.

Instead he found the town’s doctor, bent over one of the other deputies. Dr. Kirkland’s gaze jerked up to Hunter. “I hope you can tell me what the hell’s going on.”

“Law’s gone over to the wrong side,” Hunter replied, crouching down. “Anyone else in the building?”

“Only a drunk sleeping off a bender in the back cell.” Kirkland nodded toward the sheriff’s office. “Judging from the blood trail I found on the way in, they left through the back.”

“Damn.” Wilder would have to untangle the mess of scents in the office. To Hunter, the place smelled like death and men, any clues so jumbled as to be useless. Leaving the doctor with the dead man, he followed the blood past the crude cells and through the back door.

Two horses shifted restlessly in the small stable where the deputies and the sheriff usually left their mounts, and one of them smelled like the corpse on the floor inside.

The other smelled like Miller.

A noise from inside drew him back, where Hunter found Wilder in whispered conversation with Dr. Kirkland.

The old man hissed a curse. “You sure, Harding?”

“Burned it up myself, Doc.”

“Goddamn it. In my town.
My
town. It isn’t right.”

“No argument here,” Wilder agreed, then motioned for Hunter. “Did you find what I think you found?”

“Miller’s horse, but no sign of him.” Hunter nodded toward the dead man. “I reckon they took Miller with them. Hoping for a hostage, if you followed too quickly.”

“Silly bastards,” Wilder muttered. “A hostage only works if I trust their goal isn’t to kill him, one way or another.”

It wasn’t experience as a man that offered Hunter an alternative, but his newly acquired appreciation for predators. “Or if they’re hoping you’ll think he’s alive and walk into a trap.”

“Also a possibility.” Wilder stared down at the dead deputy for a few moments, then sighed. “Archer and I will ride out tonight, see if we can’t pick up a trail. You’ll stay here.”

Of course he would. Nate couldn’t be left alone again so soon after he’d gone without. “And Satira?”

“She’ll come with me.” He turned away from Dr. Kirkland and lowered his voice. “She’s been working on some weapons better suited for use against humans than vampires. Just in case.”

“I heard that, Wilder Harding,” Kirkland snapped.

“Then, seeing as how I’m about to set out after a very corrupt
human
officer of the law, I should think you’d understand.”

The old man stripped off his spectacles and rubbed his fingers over his eyes. “Why your blasted Guild doesn’t just declare martial law out here, I’ll never know. They seem to want it badly enough.”

That, at least, was an answer Hunter could deduce all too well. How many hours had he spent bickering over politics with the rich sons of senators and judges? “Martial law takes manpower and money, two things no one’s eager to divert to the border.”

“A philosophical argument for another time.” Wilder clapped the doctor on the back. “Can you handle this here, Doc? We’ve got to ride if Miller’s to have a chance.”