Private places, p.18
Private Places, page 18
It had taken Jack three years to return home and fulfill that promise, but he was here now. Though he’d been serving in Washington’s army, it didn’t ease the guilt over how long it had taken him to return home so he could fulfill that promise.
Now that the war was over, nothing else would interfere.
Jack passed by a tavern, and he thought longingly of some ale, a bowl of stew, and warm, fresh bread. Something other than hard-tack and dried meat. He should have stopped earlier when he scented that buck. No soldier had fared well in the army, but shape-shifters had more trouble than the typical soldier. The foodstuffs available to them weren’t fit to keep a child well nourished, much less grown men. Or grown shape-shifters who needed to eat twice as much as a mortal male.
He wondered idly if the small cabin he had once called home was still standing. It wasn’t much, one room that served as both bedroom and kitchen. The house he had grown up in had been a bit nicer, but Jack had no desire to try and rebuild that home.
Jack murmured to his horse and the chestnut obediently sped up. The sooner he got home, the sooner he could rest. He didn’t give a damn if the building still stood or not, so long as he could find a place to lay his tattered bedroll. Just long enough that he could get a few minutes of sleep before he had to seek out Mercy Harper.
He only hoped that the past five years had improved her disposition a bit.
He was so tired that at first, he couldn’t quite make sense of what his brain was telling him. Out on a battlefield, fighting to stay alive and fighting to keep his friends alive, he hadn’t heard the call for help in months. The low-level burn settled within him and it hovered there, waiting for him to acknowledge it. Once he did, he forced the exhaustion out of his brain and tried to focus.
The scent of blood, sweat, and fear surrounded him, and the knee jerk response to the blood was telling. Too damn hungry. The response to the sweat was visceral—female, soft, scented female. A soft, clean woman was a pleasure he hadn’t had in months and if he had caught that scent anywhere other than here, under any other circumstance, he knew he would have acted on it.
But the circumstances were of the dire kind, not the sex and sport kind.
Her fear knotted inside of him and turned his blood to acid. It was like burnt flowers. Bringing his horse to a stop, Jack dismounted in silence and left the horse alone, following the scents on the wind. He heard the voices long before he caught sight of them and the genteel feminine voice didn’t seem to fit what Jack’s senses were telling him.
Courageous little thing, she didn’t sound afraid at all. She sounded madder than bloody hell.
“You worthless bastard.”
Her tone, her manner of speech, was so polite, so softly spoken, the speaker should have been reciting poetry, not swearing. He worked his way through the thick, concealing undergrowth and hoped the wind didn’t change. He could be as silent as death, but if the wind changed on him, his silence wouldn’t matter. He scented feral werewolves with that woman and if they became aware of his presence, all hell would break loose.
Jack hadn’t lived through Eutaw Springs, Camden, and God only knew how many other battles and raids, not to mention freezing his arse off all these winters, just to get taken down by ferals. Not yet, anyway. Not until he kept his promise.
One thing was certain: if he lived through this, the first thing he was going to do was send word back to Brendain. This was the second pack he’d encountered in the Virginia countryside in the past year. The Council needed more than a few random Hunters in the newly formed United States of America. They needed some sort of authority on this side of the world as well.
He only hoped the animosity between England and the colonies hadn’t filtered into the Council. Most of the Hunter’s Council may no longer be mortal, but most of them had been at one time and the discord among humans too often worked its way into the Council ranks.
Judging by the mocking voices he could hear just ahead of him, ferals had infiltrated the British ranks as well as the Continental Army. The first pack he had dealt with a few months back had been American, and they were using the battlefields as a feeding ground. Jack couldn’t figure out which bothered him more— werewolves feeding and terrorizing the enemy as they lay dying, or werewolves terrorizing a woman.
Damned fools, what are you doing around here anyway? The Treaty of Paris had called for the removal of all British soldiers, but then again, ferals had little use for political and government machinations. Most nonmortals sought to blend in, but ferals thrived on the chaos, fear, and despair their kind could bring. Blending in wouldn’t suit them.
They’d live to regret that, though. Jack hadn’t just been trained on the battlefields—he’d also been trained by veterans of a war so old, it predated England. Predated history. The battle between good and evil. The Hunter inside of Jack was furious that any feral would dare come this close to his home. He was dismayed and worried, as well. How long had they been around here and how much damage had they done?
Regardless, it stopped now. Cautious, he edged around one towering oak and peered into the night. It was dark. The only light was from a lantern that lay on the hard-packed dirt and the moon filtering through the trees overhead. Still he could see well enough. The redcoats were gathered around their fallen victim. At first, he thought perhaps his ears, even his nose, were playing tricks on him, because he saw no woman.
He saw a skinny lad, little more than a boy, lying on the ground. The woman he had expected was nowhere to be seen. One of the soldiers kicked the lad and the soft, feminine cry of pain aroused every protective instinct he had. His nostrils flared and he tested the air again. His eyes narrowed and he focused on the boy. He could smell the human over the muskier scent of the werewolves and that soft, delicate fragrance didn’t belong to any male. Women simply smelled different—granted, those who didn’t bathe often didn’t smell quite as enticing as this one did, but bathed or not, a woman did not smell like a man. Or a boy.
Another brutal kick to the woman’s unprotected body and the tricornered hat she wore went flying, along with the short, powdered wig. Under it, he saw thick, dark hair, braided and wrapped around her head like a coronet.
Shite.
Something about her scent teased a forgotten memory but he didn’t have time to chase it.
He studied the ferals in front of him then looked down at his rifle. The pistols he wore would be every bit as deadly as the rifle this close. He had silver bullets—no good Hunter left home without weapons of silver. Jack was no different. But the rifle wasn’t a good weapon for combat and the pistols, though fast and accurate, were loaded with regular lead, not silver.
Getting either of them loaded with silver in silence would be impossible.
It left him with only one choice.
He tossed his hat to the ground and propped the rifle against the tree, lay his pistols and several knives down as well. He sent one look toward the dark sky overhead and said a silent prayer of thanks. The full moon had been seven nights ago—long enough for the power to have waned. Although he was outnumbered five to one, those men were dependent on the moon for their strength to be at its fullest.
Jack, on the other hand, needed nothing but desire.
He stepped away from the tree and closed his eyes. The power built low in his gut, heating his belly the same way good whiskey, or a woman, did. It stretched his skin and flowed through him like water. His vision altered, going from the slightly-better-than mortal sight he had in his human form to the highly refined vision of a giant cat.
As his form shifted, he bent over. Jack pressed his hands to the dirt and the scent of it, ripe and earthy, filled his head. The sensation of the dirt under his hands changed as his bones reshaped and formed themselves into claws. Those claws, black and curved, dug into the earth. His vision cleared completely and he lifted a dark, sleek head. His black hide would blend with the night and he planned on taking down some of the English bastards before they even knew what was coming.
Under a gleaming black coat, muscles flexed and bunched. He threw back his head and roared. For the briefest moment, the ferals were silent. And then he lunged out from behind the tree, crossing the distance between himself and the closest werewolf in one bound. He took the startled feral to the ground, ripped out his throat and focused on his next target before the rest of them had fully realized what was happening.
Two jumped for him and he caught the glint of silver in the faint light. He twisted away with the liquid grace only felines possessed. He managed to avoid the blade, taking another feral down with his bulk. Under one paw, he felt a soft, unprotected throat and he flexed his claws, effectively ripping it out. Blood gurgled and sprayed. The man fell to his knees, choking and grasping at the gaping wound. Whether the feral lived or not would depend on whether he was strong enough to heal the wound before he bled out.
The man with the knife swung again and Jack darted under his arm and pivoted. He clamped his jaws down on the weapon arm. A scream of pain and fury filled the air. Jack shook his prey back and forth like a rag doll. Bone crunched and the man fell down, screaming as blood fountained from the stump where his arm had been.
Power danced through the air and alarm trickled through Jack’s killing rage. He saw the flash of gray fur just before a giant clawed hand swiped at him. Wicked, black-tipped claws dug furrows down his side. He backed away, growling low in his throat. He stared up at the wolf-man’s face, saw the hatred gleaming in glowing yellow eyes. “Mangy cur. I’ll teach you to interfere.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw the fifth and final feral moving, trying to circle around behind. Lightning fast, Jack shifted and turned so that he had both of them in his line of sight. He screamed defiantly as the fifth man, still in mortal form, lifted a musket at him. Hunters rarely went anywhere without silver on them—likewise ferals did the same. If there was anything other than regular lead in that bloody musket, Jack was dead.
A resounding crack echoed through the air. A smile spread across the wolf-man’s face but it faded as his partner was the one to collapse to the ground, missing half of his head. Well, that one is dead, Jack thought inanely. Then he lunged, using the distraction to charge for the wolf-man. He closed his jaws around a heavily furred, thick neck, working until he had the throat between his teeth. Big, clawed hands struggled to rip him away. Jack dug his claws into the furred pelt and held on. He clamped down. Blood filled his mouth but he didn’t let go.
There was another crack and a fiery hot pain tore through his side. Another crack and the wolf-man’s body slumped. Sensing the werewolf’s death, Jack dropped him. Blood flowed down his side as he turned to stare at the woman. Smoke was still drifting from the muzzle of the pistol she held in her right hand. The one in her left hand was held at ready. She was slender and the weapons she held should have looked bulky and unwieldy.
But she looked entirely too confident.
His surprise though died as he stared into familiar golden eyes. Mercy Harper.
She didn’t look much like her brother, dark where Richard had been fair, slender graceful curves where Richard had been big and broad, built like a battering ram. But their eyes were the same.
Mercy Harper—the girl he had returned home to watch over, had just pumped him full of silver.
THE big cat didn’t fall the way Mercy expected. No, she hadn’t shot him square in the heart, but that bullet should have had some impact on him. He gazed at her with eerie eyes that reflected back the glow of her fallen lantern. Her heart seemed to lift in her throat, choking her when the cat dropped low to the ground, powerful muscles coiling.
This is it—Mercy was staring into the jaws of death and she knew it. Oddly she didn’t feel the relief she had expected to feel as time slowed down to a crawl. It felt as though she had stepped outside herself to watch as she stood before the demon creature and waited for him to kill her.
All she felt was emptiness. Just a void. She felt nothing. No relief, no fear, no regret.
Just emptiness.
Then the cat lunged and time sped back up. Instinctively she jerked her pistol up. She tightened her finger on the trigger and then all but sagged to the ground as the cat dove for the underbrush instead of her throat. She heard barely a sound as he disappeared into the woods, leaving her alone.
Mercy sagged a little as the tension drained out of her body. It seemed a bit anticlimactic, this sudden, still silence. She took a deep breath and it sounded terribly loud in the small clearing.
In death, the demons reverted to human form. Clothes hung in tatters around their bodies. One of them was still alive but just barely. The man was missing his right arm, and even in the dim light, Mercy could see the pallor that came from blood loss.
She’d seen the unnatural acts these monsters performed, though. She’d seen them heal wounds that should have ended their lives, seen them take a chest full of lead and still survive. She wasn’t taking the chance. Drawing one of the pistols from her waist, she leveled it at the man’s face. He had probably been a handsome man. Now though his face was twisted with hate and his eyes were mad with hate. “. . . Bastard hunter . . .” he whispered as he stared up at her.
His rambling made about as much sense to her as his existence. Expressionless, she lifted her pistol and fired. She lingered only long enough to make sure he was well and truly dead.
Then she gathered her hat and her wig and took a deep breath. It made a sharp pain shoot through her side and she winced. Gingerly she pressed a hand to her side and probed the tender flesh. If she was lucky, the ribs were bruised and nothing more. But she wasn’t certain she would be that lucky, and come morning she suspected she wouldn’t feel the slightest bit lucky. Already, she ached all over and by morning, she would feel like one big bruise.
She lifted her fingers to her lips and whistled, hoping that Samson hadn’t been frightened enough to go home. A few minutes passed.
“Now why would I expect to be lucky?” she muttered. She was injured, alone in the forest, and running preciously low on ammunition—and her horse had deserted her, leaving her to walk home on foot.
It was going to be a long walk.
TWO
“Ohhhh ...”
Whoever it was banging at the door ought to be shot. She glanced at her window and saw a sliver of light had managed to penetrate the thick curtains and considering how warm it already was, she suspected it wasn’t as early as it seemed.
But she hadn’t fallen into bed until well past midnight. That made it far too early. A headache pounded behind her eyes and her body was sore from the past night. She’d been lucky, Mercy knew. As it was, she would have a few bruises, maybe a cracked rib.
She was alive, and even though her head felt as though it would split in two, the pain wasn’t as bad as she had anticipated.
“I don’t feel lucky,” she whispered. She had thought, for a brief moment, that perhaps it would finally be over. Then that cat had emerged from the woods. Big and gleaming black, it was unlike anything she had ever seen before. It had gazed at her with watching, waiting eyes.
Too intelligent, those eyes. Too human.
Another demon, Mercy knew. It had killed the other demons with an ease that should have made Mercy shudder with fear. Nothing frightened her though. Nothing excited her. Nothing seemed to truly affect her at all. Until last night, she would have believed the only thing that interested her beyond killing those demons was to have one of them finally kill her.
But when that cat had been so very close, the promise of death interested her about as much as that of life. Not at all.
Odd, that. She chased after death with the same determination that she had once used when chasing life. She would have expected a bit more enthusiasm.
But there was just this—emptiness.
Mercy rolled over so she could press her face into her pillow. The fresh, clean scent of lavender filled her head and the pounding there eased just a little. Only a little though and considering that her head still felt as though it would split in two, that small relief was just a little too small.
Distantly she heard voices and she knew that somebody had answered the door. Judging by the deep voice, whoever it was hadn’t gone away. Theo’s voice had a different cadence to it, soft, slow, and comforting. This new voice was deep, but that was where the similarities ended. “Whoever you are,” Mercy muttered. “Go away.”
It was most likely another would-be suitor. Ever since she had buried her husband a year ago, men had been presenting themselves to her in a display that was rather appalling. Theo, bless him, managed to keep most of them at bay. But every once in a while, some tenacious man slid past the big black man who had worked on White Oak since before Mercy was born. Theo had been one of several slaves being sold off at an auction nearly thirty years ago. Mercy’s father had purchased him, along with several others, and then he’d freed them. Slavery was something that had gone against William Harper’s deeply religious beliefs and those beliefs had been passed onto his children.
Theo had stayed and worked at White Oak as a free man and his daughter, Lydia, was only a few years older than Mercy. They’d grown up together. Lydia and Theo may have been servants in the Harper household, but they were also friends of the Harpers. When Richard left to serve in the Continental army, Theo had been a silent source of support as Mercy struggled with running the plantation on her own. When word came back that Richard had been killed, Theo and Lydia had cried with her. When Mercy lost her husband, it was Lydia who sat up and held Mercy while she wept.
For the past year, Theo and Lydia had been her only family. There were other servants in the house, but none of them brought back the safe, happy memories of Mercy’s childhood. Before she made the fool mistake of falling in love and before her brother had gone off to fight in a war that didn’t seem like it would ever end. A war that had killed him.
The crumpled, tattered letter telling Mercy of Richard’s death was tucked inside the Bible that lay beside Mercy’s bed. A Bible she hadn’t read once in the past year. God had taken her brother and not even two years later, He had taken her husband. She had no desire to pray to that God, or read His word, not after what He had taken from her. Not after she’d learned the sort of evil that God allowed to live.
