Shadow Hunt Read online

  He felt warm moisture and realized Shadow had licked his face with her enormous tongue. Ew. He gently moved her face away. “Thanks, girl, but . . . wow.” No wonder Scarlett was so shook.

  Jesse sat there on the kitchen floor, feeling like a fool. He’d been so cocky, assuming he could help Scarlett with whatever was troubling her. But this was bigger than him. He should have trusted her decision to keep him out of it.

  Who was the father? Was Scarlett seeing someone?

  Abruptly, Shadow’s head whipped around to face the kitchen doorway, and a low growl rumbled out of her chest. “What is it—” Jesse began, but she was already racing out of the room, barking at top volume. The sound was deafening—and surprising. Had he ever even heard her bark before?

  Then Jesse wondered if she was trying to warn him that Scarlett had come back for something. He swept the garbage back into the can and replaced it in the cupboard, making sure the tissues covered the pregnancy test. As he hurried toward the front door, Shadow’s barks echoing around the house, he could just make out the sound of the doorbell ringing. Not Scarlett, then.

  “Shadow, hush!” Jesse said. His parents’ dog reacted the same way whenever the doorbell rang, but he hadn’t expected it from the bargest. Jesse nudged her aside with his leg and stepped up to the door, looking warily through the peephole.

  A young girl stood on the doorstep, her eyes red and puffy from crying. She was maybe twelve or thirteen, and her short summer dress was torn and bloodied. “Can you help me?” she said in a wavering voice.

  Jesse instantly reached for the dead bolt. Shadow snarled at him—actually snarled, with the full command of her deep voice and bright teeth—but Jesse didn’t even stop to process it. “She needs help,” he insisted.

  He’d flipped the lock and had one hand on the knob when Shadow lunged forward, knocking him to the side so he sprawled on the floor. She’d stopped barking, but a desperate whine was now coming from the back of her throat. Jesse looked up at her in shock. “Shadow? What is it?”

  She planted her feet between him and the entrance, teeth bared toward the door. He had never seen her like this. His cell phone was on the floor near his hand, and Jesse reached for it without thinking.

  Before he could dial Scarlett’s burner phone, the doorknob above him turned. Shadow lunged at the door, but she was too late this time. A shotgun blast exploded into the sudden quiet, striking Shadow right in the face.

  Chapter 4

  As soon as we left LA traffic behind, I squeezed my eyes closed. Eleanor may have been pretty, but it wasn’t exactly comfortable, on any level. The car—I was refusing to refer to it as “she,” no matter what Molly said—didn’t have modern shocks or padding or whatever the hell made normal car interiors so cushy, so the ride was very bumpy. And, since Molly was driving, it was also terrifying. She wasn’t a bad driver, necessarily, but she was sure as hell a reckless one.

  Which is probably why it took less than an hour for us to get pulled over. Molly practically giggled when she saw the flashing lights behind her. She pulled to the side of the road and looked at me expectantly.

  “Do we really have to do this again?” I said, but my heart wasn’t in it. The sooner we got to Boulder, the better.

  She held up a hand and snapped her fingers and thumb together like a lobster closing its claw. “You know the drill. Rein it in.”

  I sighed and pulled my radius in as small as I could, leaning into my door to make sure Molly would be far enough away from me. Even in the dim light from the dashboard and the city, I could actually see her change back into a vampire: her cheeks grew rosy and her eyes brighter, and when she tossed her head, perfect blonde curls seemed to float back over her shoulder. She winked at me, and I wondered what the effect of all this must feel like for poor, unsuspecting humans.

  The cop was a razor-thin Hispanic man in his early fifties, and he leaned down into Molly’s window with an expression devoid of personality. “License and regis . . . oh. Hello.” He blinked hard at Molly, who beamed at him.

  “Hello, Officer,” she purred. “We’re traveling on important government business.”

  I didn’t know of any government organizations that traveled by muscle car, but the guy was already gone by then. Molly wasn’t the most powerful vampire I’d met, but she was old enough to press a mind hard. “Yes, of course,” he said, eyes glazed over.

  “You will get on the horn to all your friends and let them know our vehicle is in a hurry,” Molly went on. “Tell them not to stop us, or make any official record of our presence.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the officer said eagerly. “Is there anything else I can do for you? Anything at all?”

  For a second, I was afraid she was going to mess with him. I’d once seen Molly make a state trooper tap-dance after he called her “honey.” The guy was terrible at it.

  But Molly just smiled at him. “No, I think that will do,” she said. “Go now. Make those calls.”

  The cop scrambled back toward his vehicle. I waited until Eleanor had roared back into traffic before I released my radius back to its normal size. “Just don’t kill us,” I warned her. “I couldn’t take the irony.”

  Molly scoffed, but she did keep the car below a hundred after that. She asked me a couple of questions about whether I was hungry (no) and if her driving was making the nausea worse (not really). When it was obvious that I needed to sort through my feelings, she went quiet.

  Which was good, because my thoughts were still whirling around my head fast enough to make me dizzy. I. Was. Pregnant. I almost burst into giggles, it was all so surreal. It’s gotta be the hormones, I told myself. Pregnant women in movies were always blaming things on hormones, right?

  Then I caught myself. Pregnant women in movies? That was my point of reference? If I did decide to keep the baby—which I couldn’t, because that would obviously be stupid and reckless and irresponsible, not to mention cruel to the child—I would have to read that Expecting book, take vitamins, go to the doctor, take birthing classes. Plus buy all that baby gear and figure out a place for the kid to sleep and eat . . .

  It was overwhelming. It would have been overwhelming for a normal human woman who didn’t have to worry about her baby being in mortal danger from her enemies.

  I suddenly felt a great crash of grief for my mom. When I was a teenager and I’d pictured my future, my mom had always been there to help me with my baby. And now my parents were dead. Jameson was dead. I was on my own. Another reason why I had no business keeping it.

  “So I have a question,” Molly said, breaking me out of my funk. “You know it’s going to be morning by the time we get to Boulder, right?”

  “Yes.” I’d looked up the drive. LA to Boulder was about fourteen hours, though Molly’s driving would take a sizable chunk out of that.

  “And sunset won’t be until seven or eight p.m.,” she continued. “Which means we won’t be able to see this Maven until nighttime. So what are we going to do all day?”

  “I have no idea,” I admitted. “Hipster stuff?”

  She nodded thoughtfully, as though I’d suggested we attend a reading of Proust followed by high tea. “I bet I could come up with a point system,” she mused. “Like, one point for an ironic fedora, two points for a man bun—”

  “Your system is already flawed,” I said, leaning back and closing my eyes. “At this point I think all fedoras are ironic.”

  Molly chattered on about Boulder, mainly just to entertain me. Eventually, the rhythm of the car and her comforting voice lulled me to sleep.

  “Scarlett. Wake up!”

  I sat up with a start, jerking myself out of a tangled dream that was instantly forgotten. Sunlight was streaming into the car through the windshield, warming my skin where it was exposed. “What? What happened? Cops?”

  Beside me, Molly smiled. “Nope. The sun rose around six; I had to drop down to the speed limit. Besides, I wanted you to get some sleep.”

  I blinked, still drowsy.
“Oh. Right.”

  “You told me to wake you up when we got to Idaho Springs,” Molly reminded me.

  “Yes. That is a thing that I said.” Yawning, I checked my watch. It had been a little after ten when we left LA, and we’d stopped twice to get gas—and so I could stagger into gas station bathrooms to pee and/or throw up. Now it was eight thirty in the morning. Damn, Molly drove fast.

  I reached down and fumbled on the floor of the car for the burner phone, which had fallen as I slept. Before we’d left, I’d had the presence of mind to program Lex’s number into it.

  After careful thought, I had decided not to warn Lex we were coming until we had crossed the Colorado state line. I’m a big fan of the “better to ask for forgiveness” thing, and delaying the call would lower the chances of her turning me away. Besides, it wasn’t like her boss, Maven, would be on vacation in Belize or something. The Old World is like the Wild West. If you own territory, you damn well better stick around to defend it.

  The phone rang several times before I heard Lex’s groggy voice say, “Luther.”

  “Lex, it’s Scarlett. I need a favor.”

  There was a pause, and I could picture her sitting up and rubbing her face. “What the hell, Scarlett? It’s morning.” Lex worked for a vampire and was dating another vampire. Like me, she was borderline nocturnal.

  “I’m sorry, but this can’t wait. Can we meet up?”

  Another pause, then, cautiously, she said, “You mean, like, in person?” She didn’t seem at all surprised that I was calling from an unknown number, or that I didn’t want to discuss things over the phone. We lived strange lives.

  “Yeah. I’m going to be in Boulder in—” I glanced at Molly, who mouthed an answer. “About an hour.”

  There was a beat, then: “Goddammit, Scarlett! You can’t just barge into my town—into Maven’s state—without permission!” She was practically shouting. At least she was awake now. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  I opened my mouth to say, “Man, you’re cranky in the morning,” but I swallowed it just in time, reminding myself I was about to ask for a favor.

  Besides, technically, she was right. “Remember the time you came to LA without going through channels?” I said in a quiet voice.

  Lex went silent. Years earlier, she had come to my city to find out what had really happened to her twin sister, Samantha. She’d learned the truth—that a rogue werewolf had killed Sam, and that I had destroyed the body as part of my job. She’d been really unhappy with me—okay, that was an understatement; she’d literally punched me in the face—but Jesse and I had gotten her back out of town before Dashiell or anyone else was the wiser.

  We had helped partly because Jesse was sort of Lex’s friend, and partly because neither of us could blame her for wanting answers. “There are extenuating circumstances this time, too,” I said gently. “Personal circumstances.”

  I hoped that bringing up her trip to LA would help her make the connection I needed: that in this case, personal meant family.

  In the background, I heard what sounded like a dog whining. “Ow. Get down!” Lex ordered, away from the mouthpiece. To me, she finally grumbled, “This better be so good. Meet me at Foolish Craig’s in two hours.”

  “Foolish Craig’s? Is that a restaurant?” I asked, but of course she’d already hung up. I sighed and looked at Molly.

  “I’ve heard Boulder has really good brunch!” she said brightly.

  Chapter 5

  When the shotgun blast hit her, Shadow let out a startled yelp and fell back, but Jesse wasn’t worried about her. He’d once seen her take a similar injury when she was close to Scarlett, who impaired the bargest’s speedy healing.

  He and Shadow scrambled to their feet at about the same time, but the door had swung all the way open by then, and the girl stood framed in the doorway.

  No, not a girl—a woman. She was slender and wispy, with long, sort of colorless hair, but she was definitely in her twenties. She wore the same beige summer dress, but there was no sign of blood now. She had transformed, and Jesse realized it must have been magic. She hadn’t pressed his mind, and werewolves couldn’t mess with your brain, so it had to be witch magic.

  The woman lifted a hand and wiggled her fingers at Jesse, her smug smile baring crooked teeth. She was obviously unarmed, in the thin dress, which didn’t explain the gunshot—or why Shadow was frozen next to him with her feet planted. “What the hell?” Jesse started to say, but then he saw the long barrel of the shotgun move out of the shadows next to the woman. The short, wiry man who appeared behind the gun had the same pale hair as the woman. He was about thirty, and wore jeans and a military-style olive jacket with bulging pockets. The shotgun was braced against his hip, with the muzzle pointed right at Jesse’s chest. Shadow had seen the gun before Jesse had. The few tufts of hair on her back stood straight up with anger. Jesse cursed himself for not bringing his own weapon in from the car.

  “I do not want to shoot this man,” the man said to Shadow. He had a heavy French accent that Jesse recognized from his high school language classes. Jesse still spoke a little French, but they didn’t need to know that. “Back up so we may enter.” His eyes flicked briefly to Jesse. “Both of you.”

  Shadow snarled again, a sound that would have made an ordinary man urinate on the spot. But the Frenchman just rolled his eyes and raised the shotgun to his shoulder, pointing the muzzle at Jesse’s legs. “Have it your way. I will cripple him first.”

  Shadow growled and began to step back. Totally lost, Jesse did the same. The man gestured with the shotgun, and Jesse raised his hands. The man stepped close enough to kick Jesse’s cell phone away, then retreated to a safe distance.

  “What do you want?” Jesse demanded, though he had a sinking feeling that he knew.

  “Kneel down,” the man ordered.

  Jesse slowly knelt down, trying to think of something. Why had he opened the door? Why hadn’t he listened to Shadow, goddammit?

  “Sabine,” the man said, not looking away from the bargest. He knew that Shadow was the true threat here. The wispy woman—Sabine—sort of floated toward him, pulling something out of the back of the man’s waistband. When she stepped aside, Jesse saw that she was holding a handgun, her finger resting casually along the trigger guard. That worried him. Most people, Jesse knew, were naturally a little wary of guns. In America, guns were a regular part of life, but that just meant everyone knew to be afraid of them, and treated them like they were practically otherworldly. This attitude usually extended into the Old World, where guns were considered not only alien, but also gauche and unnecessary.

  But this witch, as weird as she looked, held the weapon with almost careless comfort, like a veteran cop—which made Jesse’s stomach clench with fear.

  Who were these people?

  Sabine circled the man and came around to Jesse’s back, carefully staying out of the shotgun’s line of fire. Then Jesse heard the click of a safety, inches behind him. He started to turn his head to look at her, but the man ordered, “Stop. Look straight ahead.”

  To Shadow, he said in French, “What is this man’s life worth to you, Belle? If you want him to live, be very still.”

  Belle?

  The first ping went off in Jesse’s brain, but he didn’t have time to think it through before the man pulled something long and silvery from his jacket pocket. In a quick, practiced flick of his wrists, he turned and threw it at Shadow. “Shadow, run!” Jesse yelled, but the bargest just bowed her head as the heavy metal net flared out over her. She seemed resigned, as though it was something that had happened many times before.

  That was when Jesse realized who they were. The French, the net, the name Belle—these two were part of the Luparii, the witch clan that had originally created Shadow and used her to attack and kill werewolves. They had come back for her.

  Fear gripped him as the man crouched down and pulled a strand connected to the net, cinching it shut around Shadow. She yelped, flip
ping sideways, and struggled on instinct before forcing herself to go still.

  The man squatted down next to Shadow, pulling a capped syringe out of his other pocket. Jesse was taken aback—surely the Luparii witches would know that Shadow’s skin was all but impenetrable?

  But the man removed the cap and slid the needle into her open mouth, squirting in a liquid. Shadow allowed it—she’d obviously been through this before.

  “What is that?” Jesse demanded. “What are you doing to her?” Could a bargest be poisoned? Wouldn’t her healing abilities prevent that?

  “It is elephant tranquilizer,” the man replied, pronouncing it carefully. “No amount will kill her, unfortunately, but enough of it will put her into a deep sleep.”

  Sure enough, a few seconds later, Shadow’s eyes drifted closed. Through the net, her stiff body pressed against Jesse, as if for comfort, and then finally began to relax. She slumped onto the floor.

  Jesse’s heart sank. He had seen the bargest rip the throats out of vampires. It was horrible, seeing her get taken down by one asshole. And all to save him.

  The Frenchman turned to Jesse. “Now, where is Scarlett Bernard? Why did she and the vampire leave without taking their vehicles?”

  Jesse blinked. If these guys were here to steal Shadow back, why would they care about Scarlett? “I don’t know.”

  The man scoffed. “You are her best friend. You are watching the bargest for her.”

  “And I’m human, which makes me vulnerable to spells and vampires,” Jesse shot back. “She kept it from me on purpose.”

  From behind Jesse, the woman finally spoke, in French. “Shall I shoot him now?” She came around to stand next to the man, but kept the gun pointed at Jesse. His knees were beginning to ache. “Perhaps in the shoulder or leg, to make him talk?”