The Hunted (Sleeping With Monsters Book 2) (13 page)

Karl was slower than I
remembered. He was older than me and easier to harry, I got in twice as many
blows on his doughy body as he did mine.

Whereas Syd was still one
muscular slab of a man, underneath seven years of softer living. There was a
reason he was still our alpha after all this time. The look in his eyes –
challenging him here – I’d taken my life into my hands, and but for the rules
of the pack he’d wring it out of me.

I was chipping away at him
though, one punch at a time. My wolf stirred, panicked and ecstatic in turns.
Could I beat him? If I did, what would that make me? Blood raced through me,
dripping out my broken nose, running out of cuts up and down my body, ringing
inside my ears. Blood – and hope.

And then JD, Mike, and Georgie
came through the door – enough to overwhelm me and carry me outside, one were
to each of my limbs.

Chapter Eleven

I thumbed through the
book by the light of the nearest oil lamp. I recognized all the names in it –
Vincent had told me everything, and reading his notes made it feel like he was
whispering to me again. There were deaths listed, the locations of bodies and
tossed guns, details that only someone on the inside would know.

And some of the pages
were dog-eared.

In all of Vincent’s
books – and he’d had a lot of them – he’d never bent the corner of a single
page. That was all me, I was the dog-earrer and spine-breaker, the one who put
things that weren’t bookmarks, like remote controls and coasters, into books to
hold my place.

I wondered if it were
some code. I wanted it to be – I’d take all the messages from beyond the grave
from him that I could get. I went from page to page carefully to see what they
had in common.

JD, Mike, Georgie, Syd
– there were nine of them in all, all of them bodyguards I’d run into more
than once. Syd practically lived with us, much to Vincent’s chagrin – although
I would admit to having been happy he was there that night with Philly the
Chicken Man. Him offering to let me watch him beat Philly to death had seemed
downright chivalrous at the time.

There were dollar
amounts and deals underneath all of their names, crossmatched with other names.
Were they…embezzling? Syd was in the tens of thousands of dollars – if they
were aggregate, a gang within the family, like some sort of internal parasite –
the family ought to know. I didn’t owe them any allegiance though – it was
their war with the Carminos that’d gotten Vincent killed. Or was it? Anyone
whose name was in this book had a reason to see Vincent dead.

I flipped through it
again and again, and it was like he was there with me, just a little. I could
hear his words in his voice and it was like he was holding my hand.

Comforted by him, I drifted
off to sleep.

#

There was a knock at
the door and I winced. This time of night, it had to be Ray – even the most
desperate of men were usually asleep by five in the morning.

“Go away,” Jesse
muttered, flinging an arm out.

Good. Let her get in
trouble, not me. I huddled underneath the covers. If he was just looking for
someone to hit on, he’d start in on whoever was nearest the door.

The knock was louder
now – and it didn’t stop. It wasn’t like the door was locked – Ray knew that. I’d
say it was a mind game, only Ray didn’t have a mind, just brute strength and
the will to use it.

“Said go away!” Jesse
muttered, twice as loud.

“Hey --” a voice on the
far side asked. Jesse sat up – so did Rae and Karen and I. The cops?

Cops didn’t knock –
they kicked. No matter – Karen had the window open and was already throwing her
belongings into the alley.

The voice had sounded
like – it couldn’t be -- “Sammy – are you in there?”

I blinked. “Vincent?” I
said, too quiet for him to hear me.

The door opened, right into
Jesse’s mattress – our private security alarm and barricade. She screamed in
terror, and I heard him sigh.

I hopped out of my bed – I was
still on the top bunk, the right of a ‘top earner’ according to Ray, but I
wouldn’t hold my place long – not without Vincent as a ‘client’ anymore. He
hadn’t told me why he’d stopped seeing me, and why the hotel room was up, but I
thought I knew why. I mean, there were no guarantees with us, right? I’d never
asked for any – there was no point. My choices had been to get my heart broken
then-now, or now-later. I’d gone with later and –

“Sammy, are you in there?”

“Vincent?” I asked again,
louder.

“Thank God –“ there was relief
in his voice, and he shoved the door harder.

I went to the door’s edge to
help him, stepping over a glaring Jessica, feeling silly in just a t-shirt and
underwear. “What’re you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m
doing?” he said with a grin, shoving a bag through the door to me. “Get your
things.”

I took the bag, staring at
him. “Why?”

“Because I’ve come to take you
home.”

I stood there, blinking.
“What?”

“Get your things.”

Had I heard him right?

He leaned against the door,
making as much space for himself as he could. “Come on -- let’s go.”

“But –“ I looked down at the
empty bag and then back to him.

“I know this isn’t like the
movies – and I’m sorry that I didn’t catch you all having a pillow fight or
something – but come on,” he said beckoning me with a hand. “Ray’s not going to
stay down forever, and I’d like to go to sleep still tonight -- after fucking
you senseless.”

He grinned recklessly at me
and the part of me I’d been trying to deny for months, that this past week had
shattered, was reborn and soared. I tossed his bag back to him – mine was
already packed. I got it and wedged it and myself out into the hallway. His
hand found mine and he started pulling me along.

“But what happened?”

“He wanted to charge more –“
Vincent said, as we reached the living room of our cramped apartment. Ray was
slumped on the floor, with a bruise the size of Vincent’s fist against his jaw.
“It was never you, Samantha –“ he said, reaching over to grab my hips and pick
me up over Ray’s comatose form. “He’s surprisingly well connected. It took me a
week to get permission to beat the shit out of him for overcharging – and as
for taking you – I didn’t ask.”

I snorted, looking around at
the small room – it was shitty, but familiar, with its faded couch and ashtrays
piled high with cigarettes. Outside the open door however, was unknown.

“So what now?”

“Now – you’ll come and be with
me.”

“At a hotel?” I guessed,
suddenly feeling my lack of pants and bra.

“No. At my place. If you want
to go. I – assumed –“ he said, and looked at Ray. “You’re not trading him for
me, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Then what are you offering?”
I asked, because I desperately wanted to hear him say it.

“Move in with me. Be with me.
All the time. I want to know what you’re thinking in the middle of the night. I
want to open my heart to you. No secrets between us. Can you handle that?”

“I can!” shouted someone from
the other room, and then there was snickering, and I was laughing and crying at
the same time and Vincent was looking pleased and I leapt into his arms.

“I can too,” I said, and he
grabbed my hand and pulled me out the door and into his car. I got into the
passenger side and he got into the driver side and as he drove away I honked
the horn to let everyone back there know what’d happened, to say good-bye to
that place and everyone in it, to let the neighbors know, the street know, the
sky know, that I was finally free.

#

I sat up in bed in the
cabin’s darkness, the sound of a honking horn still echoing in my mind.
Vincent’s? It’d sounded so real --  

Another longer honk
that wasn’t ending. It sounded like something had fallen against the steering
wheel and it didn’t stop. Oh no –

I put on my shoes, the
last thing Max hadn’t burned, and grabbed a flashlight. I walked back behind
the cabin, the flashlight’s beam spotting me, and saw Max’s truck parked below.

“Max?” I called out. No
one answered.

I got down the ridge as
fast as I could, almost taking the last third of it on my ass, as rocks
skittered out from underneath me. I reached the driver side door and opened it
up. He was slouched over – I used two hands to push him back.

What the hell had
happened to him? He was covered in blood, in bruises, things that looked like
bite marks criss-crossed his arms.

“Oh God, oh God –“ I
leaned in and tried to feel for a pulse in the sticky red beneath his jaw. My
finger pushed into a hole and I screamed without thinking, like a girl in a
horror film. His head fluttered at the sound.

“You’re alive?” I
whispered. He’d made it here somehow, barely. Shit.

I watched his chest
until I saw him take a breath – and heard half of it whistle out the hole in
his trachea.

“Shit-shit-shit.”

911 was not an option,
I didn’t have a phone, and I didn’t know how to tell them where we were if I
did. It was up to me or God at this point, and I didn’t give either of us very
good odds.

“It’s going to be okay,
baby,” I said, stroking his bloody hair out of his face. If he was going to
die, I didn’t want him to think he was alone. He’d gone out there looking for
answers and they’d done this to him. Who knew what they would have done to me
in his stead. “This is where you belong, okay? You’re home, baby. You’re home.
Just stay here.”

I took the flashlight
back up the ridge with me and into the cabin, and pulled out everything soft I
could think of, piles of sweaters and coats from his closet, and pulled the
sheets off of the bed. Then I threw or dragged them down the ridge with me, so
that I could make some sort of pallet for him on the ground.

“Come on. Let’s get you
out of there,” I said, the flashlight pinched under one arm, watching for his
chest to rise and fall. I pulled on his arm and prayed that it wouldn’t fall
off, holding tighter against the slickness of so much blood. He collapsed out
of the truck and almost onto me, as I tried to direct him to the pile of moth
eaten sweaters.

“Okay.” I talked for my
sake, not his, and was glad for the darkness, because if I could only see what
the flashlight was showing me, I didn’t know about the rest at that time. I
could look at an arm without thinking of how his leg looked ruined, or his legs
without thinking about that gaping hole in his neck. I tore sheets into strips
of bandages and tied off wounds that I thought were still seeping, knowing the
whole time that nothing I did was going to work, there weren’t enough sheets in
the world to keep his blood inside him.

I didn’t see his eyes
open, but I heard him whisper my name. “Sam.”

I moved up his body
with the flashlight and blinded us both. I dropped to kneeling by his bloody
head, where it looked like someone had tried to peel his scalp off with a can
opener. His eyes closed against the brightness of the light, and didn’t open
again. “Max – it’s Sammy. I’m here.” I looked for some part of him that I could
squeeze to let him know that I was all right, thanks to him. And that I’d watch
over him until this was over. He wouldn’t be alone when he died, not like my
Vincent had been. “I never should have lied to you, okay? I didn’t mean to. You
know how it is, for people like us. You assume you have to until you’re so used
to it you don’t even question it anymore, you know?” I leaned over him,
blotting at him with a wad of already blood-saturated cloth. “But its Sammy,
I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

I took his hand in mine
and turned the flashlight off since it wasn’t doing either of us any good. I
closed my eyes and listened to the sound of all the crickets and the whistling
at his neck.

Adrenaline kept me up
for what felt like an hour. I had no concept of time with only the stars slowly
spinning overhead and the crossing moon. The whistling sound beside me
lessened, fading gently like a train running off into the night. Max was going
away and there was nothing I could do. I let go of his hand and stayed with him.
I didn’t want any bears or mountain lions dragging him off in the night.

I’m ashamed to say that
somehow without meaning to I slept.

I woke up alone and covered in
blood.

“Oh. My. God.” The nest I’d
made was as covered in it as I was. Somehow a bear had to have gotten past me
and taken him and dragged him off into the forest to eat. How the fuck had I
slept through that? I stood, looking down at myself in horror. How was I going
to bury him? I’d hear the sound of his neck whistling until the end of my days
– I spun in the woods, looking in all directions, stunned and horrified, before
clambering back up the ridge to the cabin.

I had to get my head on
straight. Make a list. Do one thing at a time. Clean up. Get the book. Get out
of here.

But I’d as good as sent him to
his death, telling him we needed our revenge. What the fuck had I been
thinking, saying things like that to a man like him? The life Vincent lead had
always had an expiration date, but Max had been out of things until I’d pulled
him back. Oh God, oh God, oh God – no wonder Vincent had turned, if being
responsible for other people’s lives had felt like this.

I fell to my knees at the top
of the ridge, nauseous and out of breath – and I saw a rock clearly smeared
with blood.

I got my feet under myself
again, and saw a trail of it, leading to the cabin’s porch. I ran for its open
door.

He was laying on the floor,
sprawled out. Enough daylight filtered through the dirty windows that I could
see the dried smears of blood – and his chest rise and fall.

“Max?” I ran over to where he
was, looking down. How had he – he wasn’t whistling anymore – his neck – the
torn muscles of his arm that I knew I’d felt last night while squeezing on him
to pull – I took all of him in, my mind whirling, trying to figure out what’d
happened again and again, always coming up blank.