To Hell and Back (Hellcat Series Book 4) (11 page)

“
So, tell me, Mr Maclary—” Gabi began.

“
Call me Mac,” he interrupted her. “I don’t do the whole Mr
thing.”

Gabi smiled. “All right, so tell me, Mac, how is it that you
know who I am?” Her best guess was that he had to be a Magus who
hadn’t taken up his powers, or was from a Shape-shifter family, one
of those who the ability to Shape-shift had skipped, but it was
unusual for her to not have any kind of inkling of his
race.

Her puzzlement must have been written too clearly on her face,
as he grinned slyly and said, “You’re trying to work out what I am,
aren’t you?”

Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t like that he was avoiding her
questions.

He quickly put his hands up in mock surrender. “Now, now,” he
chided, “I’m not trying to piss you off.” He sat back in his chair
a little, and his eyes made a quick circuit of the room, checking,
Gabi assumed, if they had any unwanted attention. She already knew
that no one was paying them much heed; she’d just scanned the room
herself. “I’m plain old human,” he said, surprising her, but she’d
made a point of putting on her best poker face.

“
So back to my actual question, then,” she prodded.

“
Well,” he drew in a breath, “though I never met the man, knew
him only by reputation, I’m thinking I’m a lot like your
daddy.”

Gabi’s poker face disintegrated as the implications of his
words hit her. Surprise, shock, anger, then understanding. Her
father had been fully human, but he’d also been a Hunter of all
things supernatural and nasty.

Mac gave her a few seconds to digest his words before he
continued. “Well, I didn’t start out like your daddy. I wasn’t
particularly discriminatory; I simply hunted anything that wasn’t
human.” It was clear he didn’t mean he hunted animals.

“
You didn’t care if they’d actually done something to warrant
a death sentence or not?” Gabi asked.

“
I thought every single one of them
had
done something to warrant a
death sentence,” he corrected.

“
You assumed
all,” Gabi did another quick sweep of the people close enough to
overhear them, “non-humans were intrinsically evil.” There was no
judgement in her voice; she knew how easy it would’ve been for her
own father to have had the same idea had Caspian not stepped in to
save her mother from a rogue Vampire attack.

Mac nodded. “I was but a lad when I saw the evil for the first
time.” They both fell silent as the waiter returned with their
coffees. The fragrant scent of the coffee set Gabi’s mouth
watering.

“
So you trained yourself to hunt?” It was more of a question
than a statement as Gabi took her first sip.

“
I had some help along the way,” Mac admitted, but didn’t
elaborate.

“
So what changed?” Gabi pressed.

Mac smiled as he turned his coffee cup around, staring into
it. The smile was sad. “It’s a long story,” he said at last, “one I
think you, of all people, would understand.” He looked into her
eyes at last. “The short version is that I met, and fell for, a
beautiful woman.”

For a second Gabi was confused, and then the answer came to
her. “This woman wasn’t human.”

Mac nodded, his eyes going distant as he sipped his coffee.
“No, she wasn’t, and she sure did open my eyes,” he confirmed. “So
to answer your original question, that’s how I know who you are,
and who your father was. When she was trying to make me understand
what I should be doing, she used your father as an example. She
knew of your Master Vampire, but she had something of a personal
relationship with his predecessor. I’ve had an ongoing interest in
this place ever since, and followed your…career, through the
‘otherworld’ grapevine.”

Gabi assumed this grapevine was a lot like the Community,
their own local version of a supernatural grapevine.

“
You speak of her in the past tense,” Gabi noted.

“
She’s gone,” Mac said simply, his tone making it clear he
wasn’t prepared to discuss her demise further.

Gabi gave a small nod of understanding. “And you still hunt?”
she asked, thoroughly intrigued by this man and astounded that he’d
survived as a human hunting supernaturals.

“
No, I gave up that game several years ago. I was getting too
old for it, and,” he drained the coffee cup, “I didn’t have the
heart for it anymore.”

Gabi cocked her head, studying the man who called himself Mac,
a man who could say so much with so few words. “So what do you do
now?”

He smiled without mirth. “A bit of this, a bit of that,” he
replied evasively.

She raised an eyebrow, making it clear she wasn’t going to let
him get away without elaborating this time.

He sighed. “I keep myself busy,”
he said finally. “I sometimes take on some carpentry and
maintenance work, but mostly I do private investigation, missing
persons cases mainly. I can still call on some of my previous
contacts for information if I think there’s a supernatural reason
for the disappearance. Oft-times the person is no longer human. I
try to come up with plausible explanations to give the families
some closure.”

“
What are you
doing in the City?” Gabi asked, a light bulb flicking on in the
back of her mind.

Mac frowned, obviously wondering at her sudden intensity. “I’m
following a lead on a missing person,” he answered, “one I have
reason to believe is no longer human and has been brought to the
City against their will.”

A sudden chill raced down Gabi’s spine as her intuition made
some disturbing connections. “If I helped you solve your case,
would you have some spare time on your hands?” She tried to keep
her voice calm, but her mind was taking large leaps forward in
multiple directions.

He narrowed his eyes, not fooled by her apparently mild
question. “There’s something running through that pretty head of
yours,” he said, his expression shrewd. “I may not look like the
most able person around, but I don’t need anyone trying to fix up
my life.” His voice had gone unexpectedly cold.

Gabi shook her head with a wry twist to her lips. “You
misunderstand. I’m not trying to fix
your
life, Mac; I’m trying to fix
mine.” Gabi watched the emotions play across his face in silence.
When he eventually inclined his head to her to put forward her
proposal, she let out a breath she didn’t realise she’d been
holding. Another check of the norms around them and her eyes fell
on the clock behind the host station. Shit, it was getting late,
and she was way overdue for her appointment with her accountant.
She retrieved a pen from her box of paperwork and tore the edge off
a piece of paper. Scribbling down her phone number, she pulled some
money out of her wallet and shoved it under her coffee mug. “I’m
late. I really have to run. Call me later,” she told Mac, handing
him the scrap of paper. “I have something I’m pretty sure you’ll
want to see.”

He gave her a solemn nod and stowed the paper in one of his
pockets. “Thanks for the coffee,” he rumbled as she scooped up her
box and hurried out of the café.

CHAPTER 8

Gabi had used what little
remained of the day after her trip to the City centre to do some
background checking on Mr Joshua Maclary. It was awesome having a
best friend who happened to be a computer hacker and expert at
digging up information on people. Trish had been working as a
computer programmer when she’d been infected with Lycanthropy.
Returning to normal life would’ve been hard for her, and
interacting with all her old colleagues would’ve eventually have
just highlighted her altered appearance, appetite and personality.
At the same time Julius had been looking out for a replacement
computer whizz, as he called them, and Trish fit the bill
perfectly.

A few weeks ago Gabi would’ve been reluctant to ask Trish to
do work for her personally, but since she was now Julius’s official
Consort, she decided it was time to make some practical use of her
title. She put a call in to Trish on her way home, and Trish had
called her back in less than an hour with her findings.

Mac seemed to be on the level.
If he wasn’t, he was a brilliant covert operative of some kind,
with an impenetrably deep cover. As it was, he hadn’t left a
terribly large online footprint; he had an email address, a
driver’s licence, two bank accounts, one credit card and no
criminal record, though some warnings had been issued by his local
police with regards to civil unrest and impeding police
investigations. There was an interesting government file on him, in
which they flagged him as a possible civilian vigilante. His known
associates were a professor of anthropology and a martial arts
weapons master. He made a modest income from a slightly better than
modest investment account in his name, and he was a registered
private detective, which brought in an additional modest income.
Other deposits and his tax returns proved he also did occasional
work outside of the detective stuff. He owned a ten-year-old Ford
pickup and had no known living family. He’d done some military
training when he left college and had spent a couple of years
serving in a special forces unit. He was honourably discharged, but
there was no record of exactly why he’d decided to move on. He’d
run a security detail for a chain of jewellery stores for many
years before leaving that job. After that, he’d drifted between
jobs until he qualified as a PI. Since then, he’d mostly kept his
nose clean and developed a reputation for solving missing persons
cases. Trish’s research backed up Gabi’s gut instinct; he was an
enigma and a straight arrow all at the same time.

If Mac called her back and
agreed to meet with her, he’d have one final test to pass. Julius
and Kyle. It was an incredibly rare human who could lie without
giving themselves away to a Werewolf or a Vampire. There were
simply too many telltale signs and automatic, uncontrollable bodily
reactions when a person was lying. And a supernatural lie detector
was far more foolproof than a mechanical one. A mechanical one
could be deceived, especially by a human who’d convinced themselves
of the truth of their own lies, but a Vamp or Were could see
through even those lies, apparently it was all in the body
language, and not even a pathological liar could keep control of
all their body language all the time. They would meet somewhere
neutral before heading to HQ to see if Mac could identify either of
the bodies.

Joshua Maclary did call her shortly after she’d finished
reading Trish’s electronic dossier on him. His first words made her
smile.

“
So, did I give you enough time to find out what you wanted to
know about me?” His slow drawl came through the phone.

“
Your timing is perfect,” Gabi replied, allowing the smile to
colour her tone. A man who could read her next move should’ve
annoyed her, but she had a feeling that she and Mac would be on the
same wavelength more often than not.

“
Any questions you still want answered?” he drawled. “Not that
I’m promising to answer them, mind you.”

Gabi snorted. “Several hundred, as a matter of fact, but
they’ll have to wait until we have time for a beer in a
bar.”

Mac barked a short laugh.
“It’ll be a cheap round,” he told her. “Not that I mind sharing a
drink with a lady at a bar, but I’m a teetotaller, so I’ll just
join you for a soft drink.”

Now that surprised Gabi, and she filed the snippet away for
later consideration. “How about a steak dinner, then?” Gabi
suggested. “I know a great restaurant.”

“
I don’t really have anything to wear to a fancy-shmancy
restaurant,” he warned.

Gabi laughed aloud. “Don’t worry. I know the owner; he’s not
terribly strict on a dress code. As long as you pay on your way out
and don’t break too many things while you’re there, you’ll be
fine.”

“
I promise to be on my best behaviour,” he assured her
seriously, but she knew there would be a teasing twinkle in his
eye.

“
I’ll be bringing some company, just two,” she told
him.

“
I wouldn’t have expected anything different,” he said wryly.
“Let me guess—the Wolf and the Master.”

Gabi shook her head. He was one step ahead as usual. “The Wolf
and my Consort,” Gabi corrected, with emphasis on the last word.
She was rewarded with a moment of silence and felt an idiotic
little thrill of triumph.

“
Well, now,” Mac drawled, “there’s a thing for you. You got me
on that one.”

Gabi chuckled, suddenly hoping
he was as genuine as her gut was telling her. Mr Joshua Maclary was
one of the most interesting humans she’d ever had the pleasure of
meeting. She gave him the street address for Olivella’s and set a
time of eight p.m. She never passed up an opportunity to eat at her
Shape-shifter friend Shawn’s fine establishment.

Gabi’s BMW hadn’t been delivered yet, so she drove the McLaren
to the Estate and left it there, joining Julius in the Aston for
the drive to the restaurant. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy
driving the new car, it was faultless in her book, but the recent
spate of horrid luck where her cars were concerned was making her
cautious. Kyle and Alexander already teased her mercilessly about
killing her cars; she was determined not to have another expensive
vehicle written off for at least the next few weeks.