The Dark-Hunters (80 page)

“How many times can a person get lost in a city where she’s lived the whole of her life?”

The number seemed to be infinite.

Of course, it would help if she could stay focused, but she had the attention span of a sick flea.

No, actually she had the attention span of an artist who seldom stayed focused on the here and now. Like an out-of-control slingshot, her thoughts drifted from one topic to the next and then back again. Her mind was constantly wandering and sifting through new ideas and techniques—the novelty of the world around her and how best to capture it.

To her there was beauty everywhere and in every little thing. It was her job to show that beauty to others.

And that neat building they were constructing, two or three, maybe four streets over, had distracted her and got her thinking up new designs for her pottery as she wandered through the French Quarter toward her favorite coffeehouse on St. Anne.

Not that she drank that noxious stuff. She hated it. But the retro-beatnik Coffee Stain had nice artwork on the walls and her friends seemed partial to drinking gallons of the tar-liquid.

Tonight she and Trina were going to go over …

Her mind flashed back to the building.

Pulling out her sketchbook, she made a few more notes and turned to her right, down a small alley.

She took two steps, and ran into a wall.

Only it wasn’t a wall, she realized, as two arms wrapped around her to keep her from stumbling.

Looking up, she froze.

Ay, Caramba!
She stared into a face so well formed that she doubted even a Greek sculptor could do justice to it.

His wheat-colored hair seemed to glow in the night and the planes of his face …

Perfect. Simply perfect. Totally symmetrical. Wow.

Without thinking, she reached up, grabbed his chin and turned his face to see it from different angles.

No, not an optical illusion. No matter the angle, his features were perfection incarnate.

Wow, again. Absolutely flawless.

She needed to sketch this.

No. Oils. Oils would be better.

Pastels!

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you standing there. But do you know your face is pure eurythmy?”

He gave her a tight-lipped smile as he patted the shoulder of her red cape. “Yes, I do. And do you know, Little Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf is out tonight and he’s hungry?”

What was that?

She was talking about art and he …

The thought faded as she realized the man wasn’t alone.

There were four more men and one woman. All insanely beautiful. And all six eyed her as if she were a tasty morsel.

Uh-oh.

Her throat went dry.

Sunshine took a step back as every sense in her body told her to run.

They moved in even closer, penning her between them.

“Now, now, Little Red Riding Hood,” the first one said. “You don’t want to be leaving so soon, do you?”

“Um, yes,” she said, preparing to fight. Little did they know, a woman who made it her habit to date mean biker types was more than able to deliver a swift kick when she needed it. “I think it would be a really
good
idea.”

He reached for her.

Out of nowhere a circular something whizzed past her face, grazing his outstretched arm. The man cursed as he pulled his bleeding arm to his chest. The thing ricocheted like Xena’s chakram, and returned to the opening of the alley where a shadow caught it.

Sunshine gaped at the outline of a man. Dressed all in black, he stood with his legs apart in a warrior’s stance while his weapon gleamed wickedly in the dim light.

Even though she could see nothing of his face, his ever-changing aura was mammoth, giving him a presence that was as startling as it was powerful.

This new stranger was dangerous.

Deadly.

A lethal shadow just waiting to strike.

He stood in silence, looking at her attackers, the weapon held nonchalantly, yet somehow threateningly, in his left hand.

Then, total chaos broke out as the men who surrounded her rushed the newcomer …

Talon fingered the release for his srad and folded its three blades into a single dagger. He tried to get to the woman, but the Daimons attacked him en masse. Normally, he’d have no trouble whatsoever obliterating them, but Dark-Hunter Code forbade him to reveal his powers to an uninitiated human.

Damn.

For a second, he considered summoning a fog to conceal them, but that would make fighting the Daimons more difficult.

No, he couldn’t give them any advantage. So long as the woman was here, he was fighting with his hands tied behind his back, and given the superhuman strength and power of the Daimons, that wasn’t a good thing at all. No doubt that was why they’d attacked.

For once they actually stood a chance against him.

“Run,” he ordered the human woman.

She started to obey him when one of the Daimons grabbed her. With a kick to the groin and a whack across his back after he doubled over, she dropped the Daimon and ran.

Talon arched a brow at her move. Smooth, very smooth. He’d always appreciated a woman who could watch out for herself.

Using his Dark-Hunter powers, he summoned a fog wall behind her to help shield her from the Daimons, who were now more focused on him.

“Finally,” he said to the group. “We’re all alone.”

The one who appeared to be the leader rushed him. Talon used his telekinesis to lift the Daimon up, spin him head over heels, and slam him into a wall.

Two more came at him.

Talon caught one with his srad dagger, the other he kneed.

He tore through the two of them easily enough and was reaching for another one when he noticed the tallest of them running after the woman.

That momentary distraction cost him as another Daimon attacked and caught him in the solar plexus. The force of the blow knocked him back, off his feet.

Talon rolled with the punch, and shot upright.

“Now!” the female Daimon shouted.

Before Talon could catch his balance completely, another Daimon grabbed him by the waist and shoved him backward, into the street.

Straight into the path of a mammoth vehicle that was going so fast he couldn’t even identify it.

Something he assumed was the grill of it hit his right leg, shattering it instantly.

It pitched him forward, onto the pavement.

Talon rolled for about fifty yards, then came to rest under a streetlight on his stomach while the dark vehicle went careening down the street, out of sight. He lay with his left cheek against the pungent asphalt, his hands spread out beside him.

His entire body ached and throbbed and he could barely move from the pain. Worse, his head pulsed as he struggled to stay conscious.

But it was hard.

An unconscious Dark-Hunter is a dead one.
The fifth rule of Acheron’s handbook came to mind. He had to stay awake.

With his powers waning from the pain of his injuries, the fog shield began to dissipate.

Talon cursed. Any time he felt any sort of negative emotion, his powers diminished. It was yet another reason he kept such a stranglehold on them.

Emotions were deadly to him in more ways than one.

Slowly, carefully, Talon pushed himself to his feet at the same time he saw the Daimons fleeing down another alley. There was nothing to be done about it. He’d never catch them in his current condition, and even if he did, the worst thing he could do to them was bleed on them.

Of course, Dark-Hunter blood was poisonous to Daimons …

Shit. He’d never failed before.

Grinding his teeth, Talon fought the wave of dizziness that consumed him.

The woman he’d saved ran to him. By the confused look on her face, he could tell she wasn’t sure how to help him.

Now that he could see her up close, he was taken by her pixielike face. Fire and intelligence burned deep in her large, dark brown eyes. She reminded him of the Morrigán, the raven goddess he had sworn his sword and loyalty to all those centuries before when he had been human.

Her long, straight black hair fell in braids of all sizes around her head. And she had a smear of charcoal across one cheek. Impulsively, he brushed his hand over it and wiped it from her face.

Her skin was so soft, so warm, and it smelled strangely like patchouli and turpentine.

What an odd combination …

“Oh my God, are you okay?” the woman asked.

“Yeah,” Talon said quietly.

“I’ll call an ambulance,” she said.

“Nae!”
Talon said in his own language, his body protesting the gesture. “No ambulance,” he added in English.

The woman frowned. “But you’re hurt…”

He met her gaze sternly. “No ambulance.”

She scowled at him until a light appeared in her intelligent eyes, as if she had had an epiphany. “Are you an illegal alien?” she whispered.

Talon seized on the only excuse he could give her. With his heavy, ancient Celt accent it would be a natural assumption. He nodded.

“Okay,” she whispered to him as she patted him gently on the arm. “I’ll take care of you without an ambulance.”

Talon forced himself to move away from the glaring lamplight that hurt his light-sensitive eyes. His broken leg protested, but he ignored it.

He limped over to lean against a brick building where he could take the pressure off his damaged leg. Again the world tilted.

Damn. He needed to get to safety. It was still early evening, but the last thing he needed was to be trapped in the city after sunup. Whenever a Dark-Hunter was injured, he or she felt an unnatural urge to sleep. It was a need that would make him dangerously vulnerable if he didn’t get home soon.

He pulled his cell phone out to notify Nick Gautier he was hurt, and quickly learned that his phone, unlike him, wasn’t immortal. It was in pieces.

“Here,” the woman said, moving to stand beside him. “Let me help you.”

Talon stared at her. No stranger had ever helped him like this. He was used to fighting his own battles and then cleaning up after them alone.

“I’m all right,” he said. “You go do—”

“I’m not going to leave you,” she said. “You got hurt because of me.”

He wanted to argue, but his body throbbed too badly to bother.

Talon tried to move away from the woman. He took two steps and the world started to shift again.

The next thing he knew, everything went black.

Sunshine barely caught the man before he hit the ground. She staggered from the sheer size and weight of him but somehow kept him from falling over.

As gently as she could, she lowered him to the sidewalk.

Note, she said
as gently as
she could.

As it was, he slammed into the pavement rather forcefully, making her hurt for him all over again as his head practically made a dent in the sidewalk.

“I’m sorry,” she said, straightening up to look down at him. “Please tell me that didn’t just give you a concussion.”

She hoped she hadn’t hurt him even worse by trying to help.

Whatever was she going to do now?

The illegal biker-looking alien dressed all in black was huge. She didn’t dare leave him on the street unattended. What if their attackers came back? Or some street punk rolled him?

This was New Orleans where most anything could happen to a person while conscious.

Unconscious …

Well, there was no telling what the unsavory ones might do to him, so leaving him alone was not an option.

Just as her panic was getting the better of her, she heard someone call her name.

She looked around until she saw Wayne Santana’s beat-up blue Dodge Ram pulling up to the curb. At thirty-three, Wayne had a ruggedly handsome face that looked a lot older. His black hair was laced liberally with gray.

She breathed a sigh of relief at seeing him there.

He rolled his window the rest of the way down and leaned out. “Hey, Sunshine, what’s going on?”

“Wayne, could you help me get this guy into your truck?”

He looked really skeptical about that. “Is he drunk?”

“No, he’s hurt.”

“Then you should call an ambulance.”

“I can’t.” She gave him a pleading look. “Please, Wayne? I need to get him back to my place.”

“Is he a friend of yours?” he asked even more skeptically.

“Well, no. We just kind of collided out here.”

“Then leave him. The last thing you need is to get involved with another biker. It’s none of our business what happens to him.”

“Wayne!”

“He could be a criminal, Sunshine.”

“How could you say such a thing?”

Wayne had been convicted of involuntary manslaughter seventeen years ago. After he’d served his time, he’d spent several months trying to find a job. With no money, no place to live, and no one willing to hire an ex-con to do anything, he was on the brink of committing another crime to return to jail when he’d applied for a job at her father’s club.

Against her father’s protests, Sunshine had hired him.

Five years later, Wayne had never missed a day of work or been late. He was her father’s best employee.

“Please, Wayne?” she asked, giving him the puppy-dog look that never failed to bend the men in her life to her will.

As he left the truck to help her, Wayne made a series of irritated noises. “One day, that big heart of yours is going to get you into trouble. Do you know
anything
about this man?”

“No.” All she knew was that he had saved her life when no one else would have bothered. Surely such a man wouldn’t hurt her.

She and Wayne struggled to get the unknown man upright, but it wasn’t easy.

“Jeez,” Wayne muttered as they staggered with him between them. “He’s huge and he weighs a friggin’ ton.”

Sunshine concurred. The man was at least six feet five inches of lean, solid muscle. Even with the thick leather motorcycle jacket concealing his upper torso, there was no doubt just how well toned and muscular he was.

She’d never felt such a hard, steely body in her life.

After some doing, they finally got him into the truck.