Hunter's Salvation (18 page)

But the second the last word left her mouth, Dena started to whimper. Cringing, in fact. If the wolf-woman could have disappeared inside the yellowed bathtub to get away from Malachi, she would have.

Jess sort of understood why, too. Even though the guy wasn't looking at her, Jess had a sudden urge to cringe and hide herself. She even backed away, reaching out to wrap a hand around Vax's arm. He felt solid. Real. But she still couldn't get rid of the nasty taste of fear on her tongue.

“You vamps are handy bastards, but go easy on the bystanders, okay, Mal?” Vax shifted until he was standing behind Jess, but oddly, she felt a little more protected against that weird, irrational fear. Vax skimmed his hands up and down her arms, and with each slow, careful stroke, the fear bled away.

As the knot in her throat eased, Jess swallowed. Then she sucked in a lungful of air, staring at the man as he straightened over Dena's body. He glanced at Jess and shrugged. “Sorry.”

Something in the cabin changed—although the lights hadn't flickered, it had seemed dark, and the air had felt cold and harsh. But as the man turned away, it all faded.

“Shit.”
It had been coming from
him
. Once more, she started backing away, but as her back came into contact with Vax's chest, she stopped. “He's…ah…a vampire?”

“Yeah. An ornery, evil one, at that. Just ignore him.” Vax wrapped an arm around her in a gentle hug.

“Sound advice.” Kelsey smirked a little and glanced towards her husband as he left the bathroom. “Too bad nobody gave it to me.”

“Darling, nobody needed to give it to you. You already knew you should stay away,” Malachi murmured, backing her up against the wall. He caged her in place with his arms and lowered his head to nuzzle her neck. “You just didn't listen to yourself.”

“Malachi, dear, we do have a bit of problem here, might I remind you. Either contribute—or go get a room.” Nessa glanced at them with a bored expression, as though she'd seen this show before.

Malachi murmured, “Oh, I'd love to get a room. What do you say, wife? Can we get a room?”

He got an elbow in his stomach. He grunted and stepped back, rubbing at his belly. “Fine, play with the strange-looking creature.”

“She's not a creature, Malachi. She's a werewolf,” Vax said.

The laughter and easy lust Jess had glimpsed in Mal's eyes faded, replaced by a cool, clinical expression. It was disconcerting. Very disconcerting. Vax didn't seem bothered by it, though. He stared at Malachi and repeated, “She's a werewolf.”

“That's not like any werewolf I've ever seen, boy. And I've seen quite a few.”

Vax grinned. “Yeah, old man. I imagine you have. So you ought to at least recognize the scent on her. Even if she does look a little…strange.” Vax caressed Jess's back. He gave her a gentle smile—it looked so at odds on the harsh lines of his face. Vax moved into the bathroom and Jess held her breath, waiting for Dena's reaction.

She took a step closer. Then another. She kept walking until she stood in the bathroom doorway. Jess stared inside the bathroom, looking at Dena. The wolf just lay there. She was staring up at the ceiling, but there was an emptiness in her gaze, one that made Jess wonder whether Dena was seeing anything.

From behind them, Nessa spoke up. “It is safe, Vax. She is not going to try to take another bite or swipe any time soon.”

Looking back over her shoulder, Jess stared at the woman standing across the room. There was a weird look in Nessa's eyes. It made the bottom of Jess's belly feel like it was falling out from beneath her.
Dear God—what have I gotten into?

It was weird. Chasing after the man who had killed Randi was a hell of a lot less unsettling than being surrounded by witches, werewolves, and vampires. Oh my.

As Vax joined Nessa, hovering over Dena's body, Jess looked at the other two in the room. Kelsey was standing to the side, watching everything with her mild golden eyes. There was an odd look in them, though—a contained one.

Jess's gaze slid over to the vampire.

He was an unnerving bastard, that was for sure. Memories of that gut-wrenching fear she had felt swam back up to taunt her, and she felt her spine stiffen as she stared at him. Being scared pissed her off.

A lot.

As though he knew what she was thinking, Malachi looked up at her, a sly grin curving his lips. “Vax, are you certain this pretty blonde needs to be here?”

Vax just grunted, a sound that could have meant a million things.

Malachi smiled a little wider. A cold chill raced down her spine. He might be on the side of the angels in this game, but Malachi was a very,
very
strange character. He came forward, moving with the same liquid grace as a jungle cat. A knot found its way into her throat, and Jess had a hard time breathing around it. His eyes were a deep, hypnotic blue—Jess wondered if this was how a bird felt when a cobra was preparing to strike.

“What are you doing messed up in this, madame?” he murmured as he moved a little closer. His voice was low, almost soothing. “There's power inside you. I can sense it, feel it lying inside your skull, but it is nothing that keeps you from living the life of a normal woman. Why are letting yourself get pulled into this world?”

There was something mesmerizing about his voice. About him. Jess had a weird urge to turn to Vax and ask him to take her back home.
Home.
Jess squeezed her eyes closed and reminded herself of what waited for her at home.

Nothing.

No family.

No sister relying on her. No sister to share pizza and gossip with. No sister to go see a movie with or watch as the Kentucky Wildcats got clobbered on national TV. Nothing.

Because of William Masters and Thomas Fitzpatrick. And they were going to pay for what they did to Randi.

“I have my reasons,” she said. Her voice was stiff, stilted. She had a hard time forcing out the words, but she did manager it. That was something, considering how this dude made her feel like she was standing naked in front of her high school journalism class. Really, really exposed.

“Hmmm. Reasons. I see pain in your eyes. Such pretty green eyes. Such a pretty smile—there's little room for aught but pain and ugliness in our world. Is that where you want to be? Are you so certain this is what you want?” His voice was so seductive, and his words. She wanted very badly to leave it all behind.

Through the fog in her head, she had to force herself to think. Slowly, she shook her head. “You got a thing against green eyes or something?”

There was a soft laugh, and then Kelsey said, “It's not going to work on her, Malachi.”

The woman's voice was like a cold splash of water. Jess felt as if she had just been bitch-slapped back into consciousness. Her eyes narrowed as she realized that the vampire had been trying to pull some kind of vamp mojo on her. “You son of a bitch.”

Thick black lashes lowered, and he studied her with a hooded stare. “Yes. Remember that.” As he spoke, he uncrossed his arms, letting them fall to his sides. As he did, she saw the words scrawled across his chest.

BITE ME
.

In big, bold red letters.

Bloodred letters.

A faint, reluctant smile appeared on her face.

He turned away from her, and Jess started to pace restlessly around the room.

 

I
T
was almost comical, the look of stunned disbelief that came over Malachi's face. He had been standing in the bathroom, one hip propped against the rusted, dirty sink. He was standing a lot closer to the wolf-thing than Vax would have thought wise, and he wasn't paying much attention to her at all. Again, not too wise, in Vax's opinion.

But Malachi had done things a lot of people wouldn't consider wise, and he had come through all of them unscathed.

Very little surprised him.

Which made this that much more enjoyable.

If somebody had gotten hurt, Vax knew he wouldn't have been leaning back against the wall with a wide grin on his face. But since nobody had gotten hurt, he was going to enjoy every microsecond of this.

It wasn't every day somebody surprised Malachi enough to knock him on his big ass. A thunderous scowl came over his face as he rose to his feet. He crossed the distance between him and Dena in one giant step, one hand lifting. Whether he was going to grab her or hit her, Vax didn't know. But Mal never got close enough. He came to a dead stop a good three feet away from the tub, held back by something invisible to the naked eye.

Vax saw it, though. Witch sight gave the protective shield a faint, hazy glow. It was a containment barrier. Nothing in. Nothing out. It was what had kept Dena's fireball from hitting Mal, keeping it locked inside the shield. The were had ended up with singed fur and some nasty but superficial burns when her fire had, well, backfired, and ended up striking her in the torso, just a little to the right of her sternum.

“You'd think somebody as old as you would have learned some caution.” Nessa came closer so that she could peer down at Dena and inspect the burns.

“Did it occur to you to warn us?” Malachi growled. Unless Vax was mistaken, there was a faint bit of color on Mal's otherwise pale face. As though the vampire just might be blushing.

Nessa just shrugged. “We all knew. And, well…you usually pick up on these things on your own.” A grin tugged at her lips, and she didn't bother trying to hide it. “I wonder why you didn't this time.”

Malachi snarled at her.

Vax suspected he knew why. Malachi saw the were and didn't bother looking for magick. Nessa had placed the shields over Dena's body the moment she had set foot inside the cabin. Vax had felt them and breathed a sigh of relief. He could contain Dena's magick, but not indefinitely. Nessa, though—that was a different story.

It was possible that Nessa's presence alone dampened the feel of anybody else's magick. Would explain why Mal didn't sense it. The cagey bastard was almost as sensitive to magick as any witch would be. Mal felt it now, though. Vax knew it by the look on his face. It was slowly bleeding from fury to confusion.

“This isna right,” Malachi muttered.

Preoccupation had thickened Mal's accent. When the vampire wanted, he could speak with a complete lack of accent. But when he was distracted, angry, worried…the thick burr of Scotland came out.

The vampire's nostrils flared, and he breathed in slowly. “How in the hell am I seeing this? I
can't
be seeing this. It just isna possible.” He planted his hands on his hips and stared at Dena as though she were some lab specimen.

And that probably wasn't too far off, Vax mused. He glanced at Jess, thinking about what she had told him, the little memory flash she had picked up from the were. A syringe. A cell.

Then there was what he felt when he looked at this woman. She felt
wrong
. There was nothing natural about how she felt. Nothing.

There was a leaden weight in the pit of his stomach.

Vax glanced at Mal with sympathy. “Sorry, old man. You
are
seeing this.”

“But this isna possible.”

Vax lifted a shoulder. “Didn't think so, either.” There was proof lying in the bathtub of just how possible it was. The
how
of it was slowly coming clear inside his head, and it only made the uneasiness crawling down his spine get worse.

A lot worse.

“Jess, I think maybe you need to tell them about what you picked up from Dena.”

It didn't take her long. She explained in a flat monotone, as if she were some school kid giving a report on a book that hadn't interested her at all. She was nervous, though. He could tell. Whenever she was nervous, she had this bad habit of gritting her teeth, and when she finished speaking, she bit down so hard that Vax wouldn't have been surprised if the enamel cracked.

“What does this mean?” Malachi asked, shaking his head. “It makes no sense.”

But it did. It was making a sickening sense to Vax. He looked at Nessa and saw nothing but worry in her dark blue eyes. “How does her power feel to you, Nessa?”

She shook her head. Moving her shoulders in a restless shrug, she said, “Not old. But not young, either. She has been practicing a while—there is nothing uncontrolled or chaotic about her power.”

“Born with the power, or did she grow into it?” Some witches seemed to come out of the womb knowing magick. Not consciously, perhaps, but some of the witches that Vax had helped train before he left the school had been found levitating in their cribs or accidentally setting fire to their baby dolls in the middle of a tantrum.

For others, the power didn't come on them until they were in their teens. Some had it latent—the possibility of great power lurking inside them like a sleeping leviathan. The power might lie dormant for life, or it could came tearing out of them at some trauma.