The hunt a wolf shifter.., p.1
The Hunt: A Wolf Shifter Romance, page 1
THE HUNT
ALLISON TELLER
Contents
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Part II
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Part III
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Also by Allison Teller
Afterword
Dogfight
Copyright © 2017 Allison Teller
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-1539329886
ISBN-10: 1539329887
Created with Vellum
Part I
Chapter One
The woods hummed with quiet. No animal, no wind, only her heartbeat loud in her ears, her breath barely a whisper. All around, darkness closed in like a black lake. She was drowning in the dark, the quiet, the wait—the hunt.
He was close. It was near midnight and she had been tracking him since early evening, after the police found yet another body. She closed her eyes now, remembering the smell of blood, the way that poor woman’s insides had spilled onto the cold dirt. Opening her eyes to the dark did not help to rid the image from her mind. The woman’s face swam before her, eyes staring wide at nothing, mouth frozen in a permanent scream that no one could hear.
It had to be him. This was the third body in as many months the police had found and the third time she caught him hiding near the body, watching the police, watching as her brother, Officer Cole Jager, discovered the claw marks, the puncture wounds made by fangs. He watched as Cole made the call to Lydia Jager, his sister and a hunter. Every time Lydia arrived, Cole showed her the bodies, torn apart, and in the shadows she saw movement. Each time she tracked him for miles and then lost him, usually in the woods.
That was part of the problem, in New Hampshire, as far north as they lived, the woods were just too large, too easy to get lost in, to lose someone.
But now she felt him nearby.
Crouching against a tree, the rough bark pinching through her black, leather jacket, she could feel someone else, someone watching her. She held her gun; a 9mm loaded with silver rounds, and listened. But, no matter how quiet she stood, no matter how softly she breathed, he would hear her. He would hear her heartbeat, he would be able to see her in this pitch darkness, he could probably see her now.
She couldn’t compete. But she would try. It was her job. Her mission.
The softest brush of cloth against foliage broke the silence. Lydia stilled, safety off, breath held.
The air shifted. In the dark she couldn’t see the gun she held by her face, but she knew he was close. She closed her eyes, relying on her hearing and her instinct. Nothing moved. And then, he did.
She felt him in front of her, his body large, and her heart leapt. She dropped her gun into position and fired. The sound exploded in the silence, deafening. Birds screeched and took flight. Her target roared in pain, hit, but where? How bad? Fatal?
And then a hand was around her throat. She tried to take aim again, but he grabbed her wrist and slammed her back against the tree. Her head smacked, and small lights danced before her eyes.
The hand around her throat squeezed. The fingers wrapped around her wrist tightened and her gun hand started to go numb.
She could smell blood. His blood? The woman’s?
She felt him lean closer, his mouth by her ear. Lydia tensed, expecting the pain of two-inch fangs to pierce her skin.
But then he groaned, in pain.
Lydia fell to the ground, coughing and gasping, drinking the air like a man overboard. He had let her go. She looked around in the dark seeing nothing but dark. But the animals had come alive again, an owl hooted, crickets chirped, something furry began to rummage in the roots nearby.
He was gone. Save for the harmless animals, she was alone.
Lydia pulled the flashlight from her belt and shined it around. Tree trunks. A raccoon, which ignored her. Dead leaves. Not even footprints to track. She opened her cell phone. Five missed calls, all from Cole.
She didn’t feel like talking, admitting her failure out loud. Instead, she sent him a text saying she had lost him and would meet Cole at the station.
The station was a mad house. It was almost two in the morning when Lydia walked through the glass doors to a chaotic symphony of phones ringing, computer keys clicking, people yelling, two K9s barking, and a man in the holding cell was singing loud and banging his fist against the bars.
She wove through the desks, the bodies, the printers and fax machines, and found Cole at his desk, hunched over his computer, his phone pressed between his ear and shoulder. She sat while his eyes zipped from side to side, reading whatever was on his screen. While she waited for him to finish she glanced around, and then wished she hadn’t.
Eyes found her and darted away. Whispers floated amid the noise, carrying her name, her title. Although she had Cole’s support, and her brother called her in for cases like this one, cops didn’t trust hunters.
It was a mutual distrust, though. Cops didn’t like hunters catching their bad guys, and hunters didn’t like how rigid and by the book most cops were. You couldn’t catch them that way, you needed to think like them, and they didn’t use floodlights and K9s.
Lydia’s boss and fellow hunters often came down on her for working with the police. She wasn’t though. Cole gave her the scent, but she followed her own trail.
Feeling anxious with all of the eyes flitting over her, Lydia focused on the posters and notes taped to the back of Cole’s computer monitor. Police sketches of men with fanged snouts, women mid-transformation, people that looked like cartoons and monsters from old B movies.
Lydia snickered.
This is why the world needed hunters. Lydia’s group had caught and killed five shifters since she had joined them two years ago. Five was a lot considering how easily shifters could escape. It used to be a lot harder; until her boss found a place he could buy silvers without the cops knowing.
Lydia hadn’t personally caught or killed a shifter. She had helped fellow hunters track and capture, but nothing that would earn her the respect that a lone kill could get her.
But she would. She was so close with this one.
Her boss, Mr. Highland, was letting her take point on this case. She could call for back up if needed, but otherwise she was on her own.
Which is why she needed Cole. Why she waited in the hostile environment that was the town’s police department. Why she put up with the stares and the glares. She realized weeks ago that she couldn’t find her shifter without help.
Cole finally hung up and ran a hand through his deep auburn hair, a color they shared. Besides that, their likeness ended. Lydia’s eyes were brown, and Cole’s were a bright, piercing blue. Cole was tall and broad, barrel chested and square-jawed. He exuded power and demanded respect simply for looking the way he did. Lydia, on the other hand, barely crested five foot six, and though taller than the average woman, her body was defiantly thin. She worked out, ran, lifted weights, drank disgusting protein shakes, but somehow she only managed to become slimmer. Strong, yes, but she didn’t look it.
Closing the file on a photo of the dead woman from earlier, Cole gave Lydia a once-over, and then he blanched.
“What the hell happened to your neck?”
Lydia touched her throat and found it was sore. “Nothing. He got away.”
“You should have that looked at.”
“I got him. Shot him with a silver, but he took off. Don’t know how badly he’s wounded.”
Cole glanced around and then lowered his voice. “You’re not supposed to have silvers, Lydia. At least don’t mention it in a police station, Jesus.”
“How about, ‘Nice job, Sis. You did what we can never seem to do no matter how many times we try.’”
They held each other’s glare. Cole blinked first. “I’ll send a team to search the area.”
“Thank you.”
He nodded. For a moment, they sat together, quiet, eyes unfocused, minds elsewhere. And then he shook his thoughts away and met her gaze. “Anything new happening in your life?”
She shrugged. “Met a guy the other night, owns a bar.”
His face lit up. “A guy as in a boyfriend?”
She laughed. “No. Just a lay. Not a good one, either.” She sniffed.
Cole’s face fell, and Lydia felt a twinge of guilt for causing it. “If you’re going to sleep with every guy you meet, can you do me a favor and not tell me?”
“Just because you’re a prude doesn’t mean I have to be.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Two shitty relationships with shitty people and you’re done? At least I’m putting myself out there.”
He frowned. “Screwing around isn’t putting yourself out there, Lydia. I swear if I don’t find you eaten by shifters, it’ll be murdered by some psychopath.”
“Think I can’t handle myself? Thought you had more faith in me.”
He blew hard through his
Lydia rubbed her eyes. She had been up for almost thirty hours.
“Go home and sleep. I’ll call you if we get another lead.”
“Another body, you mean?”
Cole sighed. “I’ll call you.”
Her walk out of the police station left her more anxious than when she came in. Eyes blatantly watched her, some openly glaring, others merely curious. Her throat burned now, and her legs felt like she was walking in iron boots, but she kept her pace steady, her head high, shoulders strong.
If a vicious shifter didn’t shake her confidence, she wasn’t going to let a bunch of bitter cops either.
When you worked odd hours, your sense of time was thrown off. Lydia woke suddenly, her heart racing. The sun shone through the shades, throwing window shaped boxes of light onto the hardwood floors. She didn’t know how long she had slept, or why she had woken up.
She glanced at the clock hanging crooked on the wall. Four o’clock. So it was afternoon, and she had slept for nine hours. Falling back against her pillows, Lydia rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and stretched.
Might as well get up and get ready for tonight’s hunt.
Showered, dressed in her usual jeans and black tee shirt, Lydia ate a slice of cold pizza, threw a couple of chunks of wood into the wood stove, and jiggled the mouse to wake her computer.
The woman last night had made the news. Her name was Alicia McCully. Twenty-six years old, a graduate student in Boston visiting her family for the week. Lydia closed out of the article. She began a search for anyone checking in to nearby hospitals for bullet wounds.
Nothing.
She checked clinics, walk-in emergency centers, and even veterinarian offices. Her group had once caught a shifter getting stitched by a local vet.
Still nothing.
Maybe he had died. Bled out and died in the woods somewhere. That would have made him her first kill, but she couldn’t prove it unless she had the body. The police would have found him if he died in the woods.
She called Cole.
He sounded tired. “All we found were a couple of blood splotches on the ground and a spent silver. He must have dug it out.”
“DNA match anyone missing?” Sometimes when someone was bit, they left their family behind unexpectedly. The family called in a missing person, and once in a while that person turned out to be a shifter.
“No, nothing. Lydia,” he sighed, the sound sad, overwhelmed. Lydia braced herself. “They found another body while they searched. It was a little girl. Maybe eight years old.”
Lydia felt the blood leave her face. She leaned back in her desk chair.
“She had red hair. It’s not a coincidence anymore. This shifter is targeting redheads.”
She blinked at the wetness in her eyes. “Where?”
“I don’t want you out there—”
“Where was she?”
“Out by the family hiking trails. She’s not there, Lydia. Don’t go—”
Lydia hung up. That was it.
They hadn’t found his body, which meant he was still alive, still killing innocent women, innocent little girls.
Lydia pulled her leather coat on, her belt with flashlight, silvers, a hunting knife coated with silver, and her 9mm.
That little girl would be the last to die at the hands of this monster.
Chapter Two
Cole called her seven times before she finally shut her phone off. She had been scouring the hiking trails for hours. Dark had fallen, and with it came the night sounds. Crickets chirruping, owls hooting, wolves howling far off. She was close to the family camping grounds, so the sound of laughter, the crackle of fires, and random, joyful screams had to be filtered out in order to listen for the sounds of someone creeping in the woods.
The area where the little girl had been found wasn’t far from the campground. She could see the light from the various fires from where she stood. Aside from the caution tape roping off the area, it didn’t look like anything had happened there.
Part of her was angry that Cole hadn’t called her out to inspect the body since the killer was her target. The other part of her was thankful he hadn’t. How do you sleep after seeing that?
She crept through the woods, getting farther from the campground, deeper into darkness, but the animals chattered on. Bats flicked past overhead. Nothing larger than a bobcat came near.
Feeling like she had lost her most important lead, Lydia turned, ready to head back to her truck. That’s when she heard the snap of twigs, felt the shift in the air. She pulled her gun from its holster and braced her back against a tree. The shifter must be hurt badly the way it was stumbling around, making all kinds of noise.
She took a breath and pivoted.
Her finger glanced past the trigger. She yelled. A flashlight blinded her. And Cole ducked, his hands flying up to protect his face.
“God damn it, Lydia!” Cole grabbed his chest and used a tree to hold himself up. “You’re near a campground for Christ’s sake.”
Shaking, her adrenaline wearing off, Lydia holstered her gun.
Breath caught, Cole stood, reaching his full height, and grabbed Lydia by the arm. He dragged her down the trail, and she let him. She had almost shot her brother.
Cole didn’t say a word the entire walk back to her truck. He snorted and grumbled, but he didn’t speak actual words until he had sat her in the driver’s seat and pointed a finger in her face.
“Go home. If I catch you out here again I’m arresting you.”
“For what?”
“Your silvers. You don’t have a permit.”
“You need a warrant.”
“Lydia, I swear to God, I will throw you in a cell and leave you there all night.”
Lydia glared because she knew, angry as he was right now, he would do it.
“Fine.”
“Turn your phone on. Call me when you lock your doors with you inside.” His face softened. “This shifter is after redheads, Lydia.”
“I know.”
He stared at her a moment longer. “Be safe.”
Cole climbed into his cruiser and waited. Lydia drove by. In the rearview she watched him follow her. In town, at an intersection, Lydia turned right, heading for her cabin on the lake, and Cole went left, toward the police station.
Lydia did as Cole asked her and went home. She turned her phone on and texted him as she walked up the beaten down dirt path to her front door. The cabin was small, one large space with no walls inside to mark off separate rooms, and through its back windows she could smell the lake some distance away. Not the lake by the campground, but a smaller lake surrounded by widely spaced cabins. It was a place for people who liked solitude.
Cole sent a text as she opened her front door. Lock up?
She realized something was off the moment she could smell the air inside her cabin. It was warm and tinged with the scent of blood.
She reached for her gun too slowly. In the space of a heartbeat, one hand was around her throat and the other had ripped her belt from her waist, throwing it across the cabin. He yanked her inside, slammed the door, and pressed her against the wall.
It was too dark to see anything more than his silhouette. He was tall and slim, but strong.
She grabbed his wrist, the hand tight around her throat, cutting off her air just enough that she had to struggle for breath, but not enough to make her black out. He patted her down, searching for more weapons.
Her phone was still in her hand and it buzzed.
He snatched it. The blue light lit his face for a moment while he read the text on the lock screen. Dark eyebrows. Stubble along his jaw and throat. Bright eyes.
