Hearts of the Hunted (2 page)

"It doesn't sound like
it," I said, meeting her stricken eyes. From the corner of my
vision I could see her breasts rise and fall with her breath, and a
sense of heat settled in my belly. I shifted uncomfortably in my
seat and sipped my lukewarm tea. "He actually controlled you. You
couldn't make me back off; you just made me want to be nice to
you." I shrugged. "It's subtle, and maybe it's all in how you use
it, but I don't think it's exactly the same." She looked
unconvinced and that sad expression grabbed me by the guts and
pulled. An idea struck me. "Try making me drink."

I held up my tea and
waited, and she concentrated on me. Her eyes slowly paled out, and
I shuddered as I watched them change. It was beautiful, but a
little scary. "Drink the tea," she said. I glanced at my mug, but I
didn't feel any particular pull to drink it. She tipped her head
thoughtfully. "You should try the tea. It's quite lovely," she
said. I didn't realize my hand had moved until the warm liquid
flowed over my tongue. I startled, and the tea sloshed across my
lap. When she blinked, her eyes were normal.

"That's... creepy,"
Janelle said, her own cup lowering from her lips.

"I'm sorry."

"No, don't be," I said. "I
don't think you can control people, you just sort of... make them
want to please you. It's interesting. I knew a siren a few years
ago who could do the same thing with desire." I didn't add that
said siren hadn't known I was gay, and so she hadn't been shy about
using it on me when she'd been trying to out a spy. I shuddered as
I remembered how I'd nearly fallen to my knees in front of her to
beg her to take me. "What this guy does sounds more like some kind
of mind control."

"Well, we have a lot to
think about, Hannah. I'll show you to a room, and you can rest,"
Janelle said, standing. "You just lie down for a while. I'll make
us all some sandwiches for supper in an hour or two."

Hannah's ass swayed
alluringly in tight jeans as she followed obediently after Janelle.
I muttered to myself as I sank back in the chair, thinking. It
wouldn't be wise to let her go after this, or she could tell anyone
who and where we were. But I didn't think she would intentionally
violate our trust, either; as much as she hated that she had been
Changed, she held it more against the rapist than against the rest
of us. Our real problem was the mystery man who'd attacked
her.

"One of us will have to
stay near her until we're sure," Janelle murmured as she came back
into the room.

I nodded. "I know. But
she's not what really worries me."

"A rapist... it's
horrible. And, Camille, if he attacks the wrong person, the
Humanists and groups like them won't have any trouble recruiting
legitimate spies against us."

I shuddered and curled up
tighter around my empty mug. One of the most important things we
had going for us was that almost every Transformed person had
chosen the Change, or at least wasn't against it. The Humanist
Corps couldn't recruit any of us to work against our fellows, so
asking someone to prove their Transformation was a relatively safe
way to test whether someone was a genuine refugee or a spy. But if
this criminal attacked a Corpsman's sister or wife or something...
we were lucky that Hannah wasn't out for revenge on the entire
Transformed community, but that luck wouldn't hold if we let this
guy keep hurting women.

"I'm going to take some
stupid risks, Janelle," I said quietly.

She nodded. "Yeah, I
figured."

"I can't involve you." I
met her eyes. "You're too important to the Railroad. You have the
money, the houses, the contacts... If I'm killed or captured,
someone else will need your resources to keep all of this
going."

"I know." She sighed and
took an idle sip of tea from her mug, then grimaced when she
realized it had gone cold, or maybe bitter. "Where are you
going?"

"I think I'm going to take
Hannah and stay at her place. Beyond that, you probably shouldn't
know."

She nodded one more time,
thoughtful, and collected the three mugs. "No. Probably
not."

Chapter 2

All I'd needed to say to Hannah was that I wanted to stop
this creep before he hurt anyone else, and she was in. We left
after supper, and I made her wander a few blocks at random before
we called a cab to pick us up at a public park. She kept silent
during the trip, but I could see her itching to question me. The
dam burst as soon as we were alone in her apartment.

"How are we going to do
it?"

I smiled tiredly. "I have
no earthly idea." I had expected panic or despair from her, but she
took it in stride, and I took pity on her. "That cop was probably
Jack Freeholm. He's a bit of a reluctant ally, but he owes me for
looking out for his sister when she Transformed, and the whole
thing gave him a little extra sympathy for us. I'll email him; ask
him to meet me for coffee tomorrow."

"Okay. Can I come? I start
work at nine, but if we can do it early..."

"About that. This is sort
of awkward, but Janelle is very important to the Railroad, and we
can't risk her. You should never have been given her address, and I
can't really let you out of my sight until we trust
you."

Her eyes flashed clear and
then back to green as she took a deep breath, and I felt goosebumps
prick my skin. All she had to do was ask me politely to look the
other way, and I was fucked. "So I'm attacked, my life is turned
upside down, I might get hunted down if anyone finds out what
happened, and now
you
don't trust
me
?" I half-expected her hair to start flying up with the
energy that charged her expression.

My voice was quiet but
steady. "Hunted down... or used against us. Janelle is normal, yet
she risks her life to help people like us. This is for her
sake."

Her anger left in a flash
of confusion. "Normal? But why...?"

"She's just a very decent
human being, trying to do what she can to help her fellow man," I
said. She rolled her eyes at the standard explanation, so I
shrugged and added, "She hasn't sought out the Change, but I don't
think she'd reject it if she fell in love with the right guy, and
he happened to be Transformed."

Hannah blushed, and my
stomach fluttered. I tried to ignore how cute her rosy cheeks made
her, or how sweet looking. "I never really thought about it one way
or the other. I always thought of In—of Transformed people as
'elsewhere', you know? Living in those coastal cities. But I would
never have chosen to sleep with one. Some of them turn into
animals! It's not normal..."

"My life was saved by a
man who could turn into a wolf, and he might have been the least
scary of the group. And like it or not, you're one of the freaks
now, so maybe you should try for some fucking empathy," I
spat.

She stood and glared down
at me. Her blush was gone, and her skin looked as white and soft as
cream. "I'll call in sick for a few days, but after that, no
promises," she snapped, and then she whirled and vanished into the
only bedroom, and the door slammed behind her.

"Guess I'm sleeping on the
couch," I told the empty room. There was a laptop on the table with
no password protection. I used her Internet to email Jack, and then
curled up with a decorative pillow and a thin throw and tried to
get some rest.

I was jolted awake a
couple of hours later by a hair-raising scream from the bedroom. I
tried to jump to my feet, tangled in the throw, and went down hard.
Hannah screamed again, and I struggled to my feet and kicked the
throw free. Her door wasn't locked, and I tumbled through into her
bedroom. She thrashed around in bed, her eyes screwed shut tightly.
When she twisted and screamed again, I realized she was
dreaming.

"Hannah!" I climbed onto
the bed and pulled her close to me, stroking her arm. "Hannah, wake
up. It's a dream; you're safe." Her skin was as soft as I had
expected, and her hair smelled faintly of flowers and something
dark and sensual. It would have been easy to get distracted from my
purpose of comforting her. So easy for the comforting stroke of her
arm to become an erotic exploration.

I nearly jerked back from
her in shock at my own reaction, but her eyelids fluttered, and I
bent over her. "Hannah, you were screaming. You're home and safe.
Okay?"

Her eyes met mine for a
long moment, and then she wrapped her arms around me and curled
into my side. This time there was no way to escape the tears and no
one else she could turn to for comfort. I did my best, patting her
back awkwardly and trying to make soothing sounds. I was intensely
aware of her face pressed against my breasts and the tingles that
shot up and down my spine whenever she had a new fit of tears,
clutching the back of my shirt, her nails dragging over my
skin.

She pushed away from me as
abruptly as she'd flung herself into my arms, and I breathed a
little easier when she moved away, even though I wanted to grab her
back. I really hate it when girls cry; it confuses
everything.

"I'm sorry," she said, her
voice that rough honeyed texture again. "I’m sorry, I didn't mean
to—" She broke off and started crying again, this time curling up
in the bed and covering her face with her hands. I sighed and felt
lost.

"Is there anything I can
do to help?"

"How did it happen to
you?"

"How did what
happen?"

"You said you were young
when your family had to send you away. How were you Changed?" she
asked, peeking over her hands. Her eyes were still liquid and full,
but the curiosity seemed to be overpowering the night terrors or
the grief for now.

"Oh. Well, it's not really
much of a story, actually. I was sixteen, and there was this
girl—"

"Girl?" She sat up
straighter in the bed and yanked the covers up between
us.

I rolled my eyes. "Yes,
I'm a monster
and
a lesbian. But I don't go around raping people, so you can—"
I instantly realized how far out of line I'd gone. I couldn't
believe I'd forgotten. "Wow, I'm really sorry."

"You should be." She stood
up and scooted forward off the bed, and since the covers were
clutched to her chest, she forced me off ahead of her. I backed
away until she had moved me outside her bedroom door. Her eyes
shone with anger, and I thought I could practically see green
sparks shooting out of them. She was a little scary like this—a
goddess of vengeance. "Thank you for waking me," she said
curtly.

I expected her to slam the
door. What I didn't expect was to be pulled forward, for her lips
to meet mine in that beautiful, sensual way that only two women can
kiss. Her lips were as full and soft as the rest of her, and her
tongue swept out over my lips so that I shuddered and opened my
mouth to her. A moan caught in my throat and came out as a whimper,
and my hands reached up to curl into her gorgeous waves of hair
without asking permission from my brain first.

Which was when she stepped
back and finally slammed the door. "Are you
that
determined that I not sleep
tonight?" I grumbled, heading back to the lumpy couch. It was the
middle of the night, but I tossed and turned until dawn made the
apartment rosy and new. I heard her shower start and got my next
brilliant idea. I stripped out of my clothes and hid them under the
couch cushions, and then found paper and a pen and left a note on
the table:
Gone for a run. Back before
meeting.

I let myself blend into
her apartment, and found an out of the way corner to
wait.

She came out twenty
minutes later, dressed sweetly to accent her gorgeous body. I had
to actively focus in order to hold still and not wander toward her.
Did she have any idea what an effect she had on me? Especially
after whatever that kiss had meant last night. A tease? A
punishment? Or something more?

I gritted my teeth and
held my ground as she glanced around, found the throw folded over
the back of the sofa, and furrowed her brow in confusion. The note
finally caught her eye, and she read it silently. If she were
working for the Corps or some other group, now would be the perfect
time to alert them to our plans or report on what she'd found at
Janelle's. Instead, she poured some water over instant oatmeal and
popped it in the microwave.

I was contemplating
whether to try to get my clothes and sneak out a window or just
reappear naked, when she finished the oatmeal, dropped the bowl in
the sink, and went for the phone. Finally! I practically quivered
with anticipation, but she let me down once again when she made
pleasant small talk with someone on the other end, and then
informed them that she was taking sick leave to care for an ill
relative. It was going to be very hard to continue to mistrust her
if she kept behaving herself.

When she plopped down on
the couch and turned on the television, I officially gave up. She
jumped about two feet in the air when my head and shoulders shifted
into view between her and the television. Or, based on the angle,
probably hovering above her view. "What the fuck?" she shouted. I
made a placating gesture before I remembered that my arms were
still invisible, and she blinked hard at the resulting blur. It can
be a bit disconcerting, I've been told.