The Dark-Hunters (350 page)

The color faded from the older woman’s face. “How is that possible?”

Ravyn shook his head. “I don’t know. But they’re coming after us one by one.”

Patricia turned to the girl behind her, who was a younger version of her—obviously her daughter. “Alicia, start the calls.” Then she looked to the guy who’d met them on the dock. “Jack, I need you to make sure someone goes to Cael’s to warn him. Since he lives with Apollites, he’s probably in the greatest danger, and I’ve never known the man to answer his cell phone until the sun goes down.”

“Okay, Mom.” Jack took off immediately to obey her.

Susan was completely baffled by what the woman was talking about. Apollite? What was that? Some sort of diet soda? And what the devil was a Daimon? The only time she’d ever heard that term was when her e-mail bounced back with
mailer-daimon
attached to it.

Alicia handed her mother more bandages before she left to do her mother’s bidding.

As soon as they were alone, Patricia moved to grab a small doctor’s bag. “We’ll need to get those bullets out of you so you can heal.”

Sure, and why not just give the man a piece of leather to bite on for the pain, too, while they were at it? How backwards were these people?

“He needs a doctor,” Susan insisted.

Patricia ignored her as she started setting out her supplies on a nearby table while Ravyn sat down on a stool. “Are you sure she’s a Squire?”

Ravyn shrugged. “She said she worked with Leo.”

Patricia paused. “With … or for?”

“For,” Susan said.

That got Ravyn’s full attention as he turned those deeply annoyed black eyes on her. “You’re not a Squire?”

Before she could answer, the door opened again. “Mom,” Jack said. “We have a serious problem.”

“What?”

Jack held up a Sony portable TV monitor that had a breaking news story.

Susan’s heart froze as she saw the news cameras that were trained on her little Cape Cod house.

“According to police, three unidentified men and two local officers were just reported as slain while trying to apprehend two people suspected of murdering a local veterinarian, her husband, and a clerk earlier this afternoon in a local animal shelter.” Disbelief filled her.

The scene flashed to one of the men who’d chased Susan from her home. He was covered in blood and had a bandage wrapped around his head.

“I knew I should have ripped his throat out, too,” Ravyn snarled.

“It was insane,” the man said into the microphone. “We were just trying to sell magazine subscriptions and as soon as we knocked on the door, they pulled us in and killed my friend. I thought I was dead. I really did. If I hadn’t been pretending I was dead, they would have killed me, too. They’re crazy, man, crazy.”

The scene went back to the anchorwoman. “As you can see, this is quite an unsettling event. Authorities are posting a reward for any information that leads them to the whereabouts of Ravyn Kontis and Susan Michaels, the two suspects for the murders. If you see either of them, please do not attempt to apprehend them, as they are considered extremely dangerous. Call the special line at 555-1924 and let the police know where they are.”

Susan’s jaw went slack as they flashed an old photograph of her and a police sketch of Ravyn. It was followed by a shot of her leaving the animal shelter with the cat cage. Jimmy had been right. There was a police conspiracy.

Her sight dimmed as her heart started racing. This couldn’t be happening to her. It couldn’t be.

But as shocking as that was, it was nothing compared to the next picture they showed.

It was the animal shelter again with all the yellow warning tape that kept it sectioned off from a small crowd of people.

“We finally have the names of the couple who was killed … Angela and James Warren. James, or Jimmy as he was known, had been married to Angela for the last five years and was known to often visit his wife at her clinic.…”

Susan staggered backwards until the wall stopped her. Angie was dead? Jimmy?

And
she
was wanted for their murders.…

From the deepest part of her soul, deep, wrenching sobs overwhelmed her.

Ravyn cringed as he heard the sound of her tears—he’d never been able to stand the tears of a woman. They tore through him and reminded him of a past he’d just as soon forget. “We’ve seen enough, Jack.”

Jack cast a sympathetic look to Susan before he turned the monitor off and left.

Patricia moved toward Ravyn, but he brushed her off. “Give us a moment, okay?”

She nodded before she left them alone.

Ravyn’s heart ached for the pain he heard in those soul-deep sobs. Better than anyone, he understood that kind of agony. The kind of loss that reached so far down into your being that it was all you could do to stand still and not launch into a hysterical tantrum of rage.

He’d been bred to that kind of misery. A Were-Hunter’s life at best was one of burying family.

His had been even worse than that.

He wanted to tell her it would be all right, but he wasn’t heartless enough to hand her that lie. In life, there were never any guarantees other than the one that said when you were down and out, someone would definitely come along to kick you.

So instead, he did something he hadn’t done in countless centuries, he pulled her into his arms and held her. She wrapped her arms around him as she continued to sob. Ravyn ground his teeth as ragged emotions tore through him. Like her, he’d lost everything when he’d been mortal.…

Even his life.

She would need to cry this out. To let out all the rage and agony until she was spent from it. All he could do was offer her some physical comfort. As paltry as it was, it was better than nothing.

And it was more than anyone had ever offered him.

He leaned his head against hers and closed his eyes while she clung to him.

Susan wanted to scream as countless memories of Angie and Jimmy haunted her. They were her friends. Her
best
friends. Both of them. She’d known Angie ever since they were children, playing house and dress-up together. As for Jimmy, Susan had been the one to introduce them. They’d even made her the best man at their wedding as a goof.

How could they be gone now? Like this? Who could have hurt them?

“Why?” she sobbed, wanting some kind of solace. Some kind of answer.

But there wasn’t any. It was senseless and stupid, and it hurt so deep inside that she wanted to claw the pain out.

Why hadn’t she believed Jimmy? Why? She should never have left that shelter without both of them being with her.

Now they were dead.

And it was
her
fault for being so stupid!

From the deepest part of her soul, anger swelled as she remembered Jimmy’s earlier fear. That anger allowed her to gather her strength, and as it overrode her grief she became aware of the fact that she was clutching a complete stranger.

Pulling back, she stared into those obsidian eyes. “What the hell is going on here and don’t lie to me. I want the truth about what happened today.”

He took a deep breath before he answered. “You’re not a Squire, are you?”

Her frustration mounted. “You keep asking me that. What
is
a Squire?”

He looked ill at her question.

Her gaze fell to the bullet wounds in his chest, which were no longer bleeding. They were all over his arms, his neck, and the bloodstains on the black shirt betrayed all the places where he’d been shot on his chest and back. Yet he was acting as if they were nothing but a nuisance.

Susan touched the bullet wound on his arm that had torn straight through the muscle and tissue. It wasn’t makeup or some special effect, it was real and it was gory. “What are you?”

A tic worked in his jaw before he gave a clipped answer. “In short … the only hope you got.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Wiping her eyes, Susan pulled back from him and gaped. “Best hope for what, Catman? Death? Bankruptcy? You know, my life was going along…” She paused as she considered what she was about to say. “Well, rather crappily, to be honest, but at least no one was trying to kill me and no one was dying around me. Since I met you, my life has taken the high road to Shitsville with no off-ramp in sight. My best friends are dead. I’ve seen you kill a total of five people in—”

“Four,” he said, interrupting her. “You took the one out with the bat crack upside his head.”

Did he have to remind her of that? “And why was I playing Hank Aaron, huh? Because I stupidly took a stray cat home. Now I’m out the eighty-two dollars it cost to spring you from the shelter, my house is destroyed, my car has become Swiss cheese, and I owe my neighbor God only knows what for the little fence she keeps around her petunia bed. Thanks, Puss in Boots. Really. Thank you.”

He looked aghast at her. “I can’t believe you’re thinking about money at a time like this.”

“What am I supposed to think about?” she asked, her voice cracking, “The fact that the two people who mean the most to me in this world are gone and I can’t even go to their funeral because everyone thinks
I
killed them?”

She ground her teeth as grief and frustration overwhelmed her. “If I’d just listened to Jimmy and got them out of there, they’d be alive now. I should have
never
left them alone. They’re dead and it’s
all
my fault.… Yeah. That’s really what I want to dwell on.” She fought the tears that stung her eyes and her heart. She couldn’t afford to think about Angie and Jimmy right now. Not if she wanted to stay functional. That pain was too deep, too severe for her to cope.

She could see compassion in his eyes as he cupped her cheek in his warm, callused palm. “Look, I’m really sorry for what happened to them. But you’re not responsible for it. You hear me? They’re dead because Jimmy found out about the Daimons and was dumb enough to think he could run from them. Trust me, he wouldn’t have gone far before they found him and killed him anyway. With the information he was carrying, he was dead before you ever got there.”

She scowled at him. “If you’re trying to make me feel better, it’s not working.”

“I know.” And by the look on his face, she could tell he meant that as he stroked her cheek with his thumb. “You’ve had one hell of a shock today.” She saw respect in his eyes and something in there she couldn’t identify. “You’re entitled to a momentary meltdown, but believe me when I say that a momentary one is all you can afford. You are in way over your head and you’ve got a long road ahead of you.”

“And how is that?”

“You’re used to dealing with humans who don’t have psychic abilities. Well, baby, the world you know just got ugly. Everything Jimmy told you at the shelter is true. You just stumbled into a war that your kind isn’t even supposed to know is happening. Forget everything you thought you knew about physics and science, and now imagine a world where mankind is nothing but food to a whole race of people who want to subjugate you.”

She shook her head in denial. “I don’t believe in vampires.”

He opened his mouth to show her his vicious set of fangs. “If you want to live past tonight, you better learn to start.”

Susan wanted to reach out and touch his teeth just to make sure they were real, but she knew the truth. She’d actually seen them in action. “What are you? Really? You said a Dark-Hunter. What is that?”

Ravyn hesitated. Having spent three hundred years as a Dark-Hunter and taken an oath to never let those outside of their circle know anything about their world were deeply ingrained in him. But this wasn’t the usual set of circumstances. The Daimons had dragged her into this and if he didn’t give her the truth, she was defenseless against them. Whether she wanted to be in this or not, she was.

“No. Dark-Hunters are immortals who have sworn to protect mankind by hunting down the Daimons who prey on them.”

“And Daimons are?”

He took a deep breath as he thought about the easiest way to explain it to her. “Long ago, in ancient Atlantis—”

“Atlantis is real, too?” she asked, screwing her face up.

“Yes.”

She shook her head. “What next? Unicorns?”

Her spunk amused him. “No, but dragons are.”

She narrowed those blue eyes on him. “I really hate you,” she said in a voice that was laden with venom.

He offered her a kind smile while he let the softness of her cheek soothe the heat of his blistered fingers. He should be tending his own wounds and yet he wanted to soothe her first. That didn’t make sense to him. It was contrary to everything that came naturally to him, and yet here he was, explaining to her a world that she would no doubt consider preposterous.

“I don’t blame you. I’d probably hate me too if I were in your shoes. But back to Atlantis. There was a race of beings there who were called Apollites.”

“God, I was really hoping they were some kind of diet apple drink.”

He laughed, then cringed as a shard of pain went through him. “No, they’re definitely not that. Their name comes from the fact that they were created by the god Apollo. It was his plan to have them dominate the humans, but as with all best-laid plans, it blew up in his face. The Apollites turned on him by killing his mistress and son and he cursed them all to die at age twenty-seven. Slowly. Painfully.”

“I bet they loved that.”

“Yeah. Needless to say, it wasn’t to their taste, so a group of them somehow learned that they could kill humans, suck their souls into their bodies, and elongate their lives. Since that day, whenever Apollites near their twenty-seventh birthday, they have a choice—die or start preying on humans and become Daimons. The only problem with that is that the souls they feed on aren’t meant for them. As a result, the soul starts to die as soon as they pull it into their body. If it dies and they haven’t taken in another one, they die, too.”

She stepped back from him and ran her hands over her face as the horror of that sank in. “So they’re on a constant quest to keep killing in order to stay alive.”

He nodded. “And now it appears they’ve been able to get some of your people to help them.”