Misha: Lanning's Leap

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

WCP

World Castle Publishing
, LLC

Pensacola, Florida

Copyright © Kathi S. Barton 2014

Print
ISBN: 9781629891385

eBook ISBN: 9781629891392

First Edition World Castle Publishing, LLC, August 15, 2014

http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com

Licensing Notes

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.

Cover: Karen Fuller

Photography: Xie4to-graphy

Editor: Eric Johnston

Editor: Maxine Bringenberg

Chapter 1

He thought he’d lost it again. Backtracking to the last point he was sure he’d had it, Misha stood there for several seconds with his nose in the air. He felt his brother, Thomas, touch his mind. Misha spoke before Thomas could.

This is the stupidest tracking I’ve ever done.
Why the hell…? It’s been two fucking weeks. How the hell are we supposed to find anything now?
Thomas laughed then.
This is so not funny.

You mean the great and powerful Misha Lanning is stumped?
Oh my…shit. I should call the media. Hey, I know, I’ll call that cute little newspaper girl. The one that said she’d get lost so you’d find her. What was her name again? You think she’d give you some incentive to find her quicker?

Are you fucking finished?
Thomas just laughed harder.
How’s your luck in finding the other guy? Or are you too busy busting my chops to be looking very hard? Mother fuck, why are we even here?

Being a hunter was not all that much fun anymore. And the criminals? They were getting smarter and a good deal more violent. But these men…well, they were about the worst he’d seen. No rhyme or reason to what they were doing
, and each death was more brutal than the last.

Misha had come to the conclusion, as had
his brothers, that there were two men taking and killing the women. The case had grown cold only in the sense that there were no new leads to ending this spree of killings; they were still killing. Misha and his brothers had only been called in late last night, and after spending ten minutes looking over the police reports, they’d come to realize it was two that they were dealing with, not just a single man.

How do you suppose they didn’t realize it wasn’t possible for one man to do both
crimes on one day?
Thomas laughed, but this time it was not filled with humor
. Laziness? Stupidity? By the way, no, I’ve gotten a couple of scent markers, but nothing I can follow well.

Shit.
And both I would guess on the cops. Have you ever seen a fatter bunch of men in your life?
Misha found another scent and took it as deeply into his nose as he could.
I just found something. Let me scout around for a bit.

Misha started after the smell
. His cat snarled at him once when they came across the scent of another male who had pissed against a tree, but he didn’t stop. He moved further away from it rather than piss his leopard off more. He’d been pissy enough lately and he didn’t want to deal with him again.

He was restless
, both he and his cat. Lately it had been harder and harder for both of them to stay focused on any task, no matter the size. And the fact that his brother seemed to be having the same issues didn’t help. Maybe they needed to get laid more.

I found something new here.
Misha stopped running to hunker down in the grass when Andrew, his other brother, spoke.
It’s human, but I think I smell wolf, too. Could be it’s not human at all.

Misha asked if any of the others had run
into a wolf. No one had, but that could mean they’d simply missed it due to the age of the scent. He told them to be careful, then heard something just to his left. He froze in mid-step.

In an open field
it was hard enough to hide, but the dead of summer just made things impossible. He and his cat stood out like a sore thumb. Being a spotted leopard really hurt them at times like this. Misha slowly lowered his body down into the grass and watched as a man walked nearly atop him.

I have one,
he told his brothers. Misha slowed his breathing almost to a stop so as not to bring unwanted attention to himself
. Male, thirty to thirty-five. Dark hair with a sharp cut. About six foot, two hundred thirty or less.
Carter asked him the plan.
Nothing for now. He has a woman, but she’s already dead.

The wom
an was dead, that much was obvious. Misha couldn’t hear anything from her, and if that wasn’t enough, her throat was slit, like the others had been, as were both her wrists. She’d be drained, too, he’d bet, just like the last three victims had been. After she was killed and hung to bleed out, she’d be taken somewhere and displayed in a fashion that, frankly, made Misha a little ill.

When he’s
out of my sight, I’ll backtrack and see if I can get something on his mode of transport.
The others agreed that would be the best way to do it, but, of course, caution was to be used more than anything. He knew this and had to hold his temper not to snap back that he did.

I’m coming toward you
from the road. I’ll meet you at the far end of the last lot we passed.
Rider, Misha’s younger brother by only nineteen months, was a worrier. Not just a little, either. He was a bigger worrier and pain in the ass than their mom. He cleared his throat as he continued.
Have a care, big brother, you know his kind runs in packs.

Misha smiled. It was just like Rider to give him advice. And as the oldest, Misha took it with the seriousness that it was given to him.
Rider was nothing if not cautious.

Carter
, the third oldest, was the perfect middle child…happy, rarely serious, and never still. He was the most difficult to work with lately, too. His ability to get into trouble was famous: or, Misha supposed, infamous.

Thomas was…Thomas.
He was serious but not painfully so; organized to the point you wanted to brain him; and would tear you a new ass if you messed with his routine. Misha and the others would go into his room and move things out of their perfect order just to fuck with him. That was until he’d had a lock installed. But they had a plan to get in anyway.

Andrew was the clown of them all. His
idea of a good time was running naked across a crowded street, or painting the local cops’ cruisers a nice shade of puke green. He’d also been known to drop water balloons off the water tower when people were below him…usually only people who had pissed him off, which wasn’t all that easy to do.

Then there was Phillip.
Ah, Phillip
, Misha thought…the youngest, yet he was usually the one they’d go to for advice. It could be about anything, too, including women, which was sad but true. He went out more than all of the rest of them together, and had a way about him with the fairer sex that brought up the jealous streak in them all. He was thoughtful, friendly, and smart, too.

Not that they weren’t all smart.
Their mother had made sure that they knew three things in addition to having a good education. She would beat those things into their heads daily until it stuck.

One was to know how to treat a woman.
No matter what she did to them, women were smaller, usually softer, and rarely big enough to take them on. Misha thought his mom might need to get out more on that one. Women were a great deal stronger and meaner than she’d led them to believe. Also, they needed to take responsibility for their actions, even if they had to sacrifice something they loved in order to fix it. The third—and possibly the most important of them—was that family was all you ever had, so take care to keep them safe and near to your heart.

Where did you go?
Rider sounded impatient, and Misha laughed a little.
When you say you’re going to be somewhere, you should at least show up.
Misha felt his temper snap in less than a second.

Next time I find a man walking in front of me with a dead woman in his arms that he’d more than likely killed while I was looking for him
, I’ll make sure to expose myself. That way I can get to you in a timely manner and not fuck up your way of thinking.

I’m sorry.
Misha came into the clearing just as Rider apologized to him again.
I was worried about you, and when I didn’t see you…well, after last month, I worry more than I should.

Misha shivered. Last month. Last month he’d nearly
been killed, and still had bad dreams about it. Before he could go down that path again, Misha saw Rider drop to the ground suddenly.

A car pulled into the lot beside his brother.
Misha dropped down as well but was ready to move if Rider needed him. Neither one moved as the car just sat there with the engine off. Misha made a mental note of the plate number and told Andrew what it was so he could remember as well.

Rider was closer and more than likely had a better sense of what was going on.
But Misha moved around the tree line, keeping his brother in sight. When he was within ten yards of him, the car door opened and a man got out. Christ, he was fucking big, but not nearly as big as Misha was. Misha knew that if the guy attacked any of them he could take him, and would if necessary.

Wolf,
was all Rider said, and Misha moved faster. When the wolf moved to the other side of the car and opened the door, Misha stilled. If the wolf looked up or caught even a small breeze, he’d know that Misha was there. He was terrified that the man was reaching for a gun. He felt that way nearly every time he was in one of these situations now. Being shot once would do that to you, three times would make you insane with fear of it happening again.

The woman spilled out of the car and only just missed hitting the ground
before the wolf caught her with his knee. Even from a distance, Misha knew she was as good as dead. The woman had been worked over badly and her body was barely hanging on. Even if the ambulance was there with them, he doubted it would be soon enough to save her.

Should we follow him?
Rescue the girl? What?
Misha didn’t know and said as much. He explained that the woman was nearly dead.
Well, she’s alive now. I can almost bet she won’t be if we wait much longer.

Carter came up beside him and Misha told him what was going on.
The woman had been lifted and was now resting on the wolf’s shoulder. The scent of the wolf, his excitement over whatever he was doing, seemed to roll off him. Just as Misha had decided to attack, a human seemed to appear out of nowhere. The man carried the same scent Misha had found in the woods.

“I thought you’d have her there by now.”
The human lifted the woman’s head up by her hair and stared at her face for several seconds before dropping her back down again. “She’ll have to do.”

“You’d think of all the fucking humans around I’d be able to pick one that could
survive a few tests, wouldn’t you?” Carter looked at Misha when the wolf started bitching. “I mean, it’s not like we’re asking them to do all that much. Just lay there and let us see how long they can last. Fuck, and this one is heavy.”

The last
victim they’d recovered had been killed by mutilation, a great deal of it. After the men had cut her belly open, then her thighs, they’d broken both her legs and arms. She’d been hung upside down after she was immobilized, then her throat was cut. She’d bled out while she hung there. But this woman looked—

“So this time you started at the other
end of the process?” The wolf nodded to the human as they moved through the dense woods. “I don’t think it was any better. In fact, it looks like she lasted less than the others. We need to find a way to make her suffer before she dies. It’s what keeps me staying with her, knowing that she’s going to suffer.”

“You
sure we can’t just kill her now? The police have given up, yeah, but this is boring now. I want to play with men, too. Fuck them up like they deserve.” Misha and Carter followed the men at a safe distance. Rider stayed behind to wait for the other brothers and to have one of them go back the way the other man had come.

“She’s a fucking cunt
, but Christ, she’s driving me over the edge daily. Last night she….”

Misha tuned the human out and spoke to Rider.
Call the police. The woman is dead, but we need to end this. They are far from finished killing, and even if we never find where they were, we at least will have them behind bars.

I’m sending Andrew and Phillip
around in front of them to head you off. Thomas is on his way to find the other woman to see if he can get her before any animals do. He said he lost her scent when the man came around, but he’s sure he can find it now.
Misha thanked him.
Be careful. I can’t…please, just be careful.

After assuring him that
he would, Misha stopped by what appeared to be an abandoned shack. Misha told Andrew and Phillip to come back to it. The reports they’d read had never mentioned going into the shack, only that they’d seen it from the air, and that it was open enough on the roof that they could see inside.

They didn’t have to wait long to see what was going on.
The two men stood on either side of the building and pulled a large tarp, one that looked like a building had been painted on it, off to reveal a large, brand-new building. The stone walls were still pink, and the mortar was still a nice, pristine white. Misha could not understand why no one would have come out here to investigate. They would have found this much sooner and ended this.

As the men went
inside the building, Carter and he moved to the space just below the closed window. They had to be careful not to give away their position, as the men inside might be more than just the two. There was no reason to be stupid at the end of the game.