Hunter of the Heart: Moon, Magic, Madness, Book 1 Read online

  Dedication

  Raine Weaver, Joyce Holmes and Sasha White. Thanks for the critiques guys. You’re worth your weight in gold. Janice Franklin, I couldn’t love you more if we were blood sisters. Best friends always. Thanks for the support. Crystal Semple, man, what a one-woman fan club you are. Love you for it, and thank you. Last but not ever the least, Dayan—thanks for understanding all the times I zoned out on you while I worked out stories in my head. You’re a great son. What a fine young man you grew up to be.

  Chapter One

  From far off a solitary owl repeated its query, while closer by small rodents darted through the undergrowth. All seemingly normal, and yet…there was an odd quality to the woods tonight. The wolf paused on his way back to camp, ears pricked, snout raised.

  He parsed out the commingled scents of various prey, the damp musk of rotting vegetation and the bitter tang of the new. There was something else here…something faint and unfamiliar that almost blended with the rest—

  A sudden string of howls ripped through the night, destroying his musing.

  Beth!

  Nate sprang forward, racing deeper into the forest. He scrabbled down a steep ravine, claws gouging the earth, paws sliding over the bones of the weak and forgotten.

  Again, the agonized howls tore through the night air, each one more frantic until the cries broke off abruptly.

  Silence followed.

  Complete. Suffocating. Ratcheting the terror that strummed through his veins. He reached out telepathically, wrapping her pain in his love and strength, shielding her from his desperation. He should have never left her alone.

  “Beth, hold on, babes! I’m coming.”

  One crazed leap and he was over the cadaver of a fallen oak and powering his way up the opposite slope. Muscles coiled, stretched, then snapped in recoil as he covered ground back to his mate.

  “Nathan? I-I love you…”

  Their bond began to wane in the ebbing tide of her life-force and Nate stumbled, flipping head over tail, scrambling to find his footing.

  “No! Wait!”

  His yowl set off a riot of wings in the branches above and he sprung forward again, pushing himself until the wind knifed through his pelt.

  Up ahead in the moonlight, a large dark shape hunched over his mate while Beth’s foreleg twitched, splayed claws scratching feebly at the air.

  For Nate, an eternity passed before that ghastly tableau dissolved with a last trailing whine as her leg descended.

  Now there was only the insidious sounds of seeking tongue against warm flesh, the soft tear of muscle and sharp crunch of bones. They burrowed in his ear, mushrooming in his head. His sight went dark and instinct took over.

  Kill.

  With a final burst of speed, he leaped through the air, jaws open wide, aiming for the jugular. The creature looked up and Nate glimpsed hell in those eyes just before he sank his teeth into its putrid flesh.

  The thing bellowed, grasped him by the ruff and wrenched. In an instant, Nate went sailing through the air, in the next he slammed into an ancient tree and fell, stunned, bones snapping like twigs where he landed. Starbursts danced before his eyes and barbed agony embraced him as the transformation was triggered without warning. Not with the usual strong tide of sweeping change, but a tsunami that slammed chaos into every cell of his being. Bones stretched and reconfigured too fast for the joints to connect properly. Muscles shredded then gelled, too loose then too tight as they tried to fit his warping frame.

  The thing cocked its head. “So, you are like me. Her, also.” Its speech was guttural, but Nate understood.

  Her.

  He found Beth where she lay at her killer’s feet, little more than a heap of torn flesh, fur and bloodied entrails spilled onto the ground. The sight cored the heart from him. His stomached heaved and his voice cracked.

  “I’m not like you, you bastard.”

  “True. Not like me. For I am the hunter.”

  The monster started towards him and Nate forced himself to his feet then almost dropped again from the stabbing pain. The transformation was incomplete—he was suspended somewhere between man and beast, his body a twisted skeleton held up by two trembling hind legs—but he’d be damned if he let this murdering freakshow walk away alive.

  “Good, good,” the thing urged as it stalked forward, the stench of its carrion breath making Nate gag. Then it lowered its voice to a haunting caress. “Anger makes the blood flow stronger. Fear makes it run thick and sweet.”

  The last words, lovingly drawn out, ended in a shuddered inhalation as the creature’s pitiless gaze pinned onto Nate’s broken body. It licked its blood-smeared lips with a long black tongue, leaving a string of drool dripping from mouth to chin.

  “And to think I was going to stop at the drive-thru. Your mate was a nice snack but you, big boy, have the makings of a main course.”

  “Bastard.”

  “So you’ve said.” Its voice roughened. “Now say your prayers while I say grace.”

  Pure, primordial hate flooded Nate’s being and he braced for the fight, counting down with each labored breath as the creature came closer. That’s when he caught their scent. Non-shifters. Norms.

  Nate’s attention snapped towards the blade of light slashing through the trees in the distance. Seconds later he picked up on the humans’ voices—

  “I’m telling ya, Tom, I saw something out here. Now, com’ on.”

  “What the hell did you see, Vern, the Easter bunny? Or, or, I know…ya saw Big Foot. I bet you saw the big guy out here taking a whiz, and you wanted to get a closer look to compare sizes. Now why you want to go embarrass yourself like that, Vern? Heck-in-a-hand-bucket, even little Tom Jr. could show you up in that department. Just like his ol’ daddy.”

  “Shutdahell up, Tom. Bear in mind I’d be more concerned ’bout your interest in my johnson, if I wasn’t carrying this here shotgun— Hey, I think something moved over there.”

  The beam of light cut a swath near Nate and his enemy stopped in its track.

  “I’ll tell you what’s over there. Trees. Just like this tree right here and that one over—”

  “Will you shut yer shit-shootin’ mouth? Hey, what’s that?”

  The bobbing ray swooped and lit on the creature.

  “Holy sheeit! D-do you see that Tom? B-blow me!”

  “I’d rather n-not, Vern. Shit! I think I see someone. Hey Yenti, get away from that man!”

  A shot rang out. The thing shrieked, whipped around and came straight at Nate. Eyes screwed into puncture holes of hate, it clawed at him and five tracks of searing agony burst open across his chest.

  “You live to see another day, wolf. But I know you now.”

  Another shot rang out and the tree exploded inches above their heads in a spray of splintered bark.

  The creature cowered back. “Next time,” it snarled, then turned tail and careened into the darkness.

  Nate collapsed. He ran his tongue over his still-elongated incisors then smoothed down the bristle hairs that surrounded his mouth, tasting the creature’s blood. The hunters’ feet thundered closer, shaking the earth beneath his head, and with the last vestiges of his strength he completed the change from wolf to human.

  “What’re we gonna do, Vern? Do ya think he’s dead?”

  “How the hell should I know? Do I look like a doctor to you?”

  “Doctor of Doucheology, maybe.”

  “Just shut the hell up, Tom! Hey, guy, you okay?” A light hand nudged Nate’s shoulder.

  He would’ve laughed but it’d hurt too much. No, he wasn’t okay. An ache that ran beyond the physical throbbed deep
in his soul. He would never be okay again without his mate.

  Only one thing gave him bitter comfort. He licked the now smooth contours of his human lips, tasting again the creature’s corrupted flesh and fetid blood.

  He had its scent now. He would never forget it.

  I know you now too, asshole. And I will hunt you to the foulest depths of hell to make you pay for what you’ve stolen from me tonight.

  A chuckle, faint and malevolent, was carried back to him on the night breeze.

  South America, 8 months later.

  Nate reclined on the narrow cot with his back pressed against the cool whitewashed wall. Sweat sheened his skin and plastered his hair to his neck and brow. Even the baggy jeans he wore, ones that had fit snug months ago, stuck to his withered legs.

  A slight tremor ran through his hands as he rolled some cocoa leaves over a pinch of tarry lejia dulce before packing the wad into one cheek. The leaves gave him energy and made it easier to breathe in this high altitude.

  As the cocoa worked its magic, he blinked slowly, straining to focus on the single window in his spartan room. The view was dominated by the hacienda’s extensive lands, ringed by the jungle’s dark menace at its borders and beyond that the stabbing peaks of the Andes.

  On some level he knew the view was fantastic, but if he thought about it at all it was to question how something so breathtaking could exist in the same world that held so much evil. Not that he was seeking higher consciousness.

  To the contrary, Nate anchored himself in the morass of his all-abiding hate.

  A wave of exhaustion hit and he closed his eyes, letting his head loll back and his thoughts drift with the lazy drone of a fly somewhere in the room.

  But blessed oblivion was ripped away without warning as Beth’s sweet smile flashed in his mind, clear as if she stood before him.

  As if she’d forgiven him.

  As if.

  He let loose a purely animalistic sound, dropping his head in his hands as other memories flooded in—the desperate race through the woods, Beth’s cries, the bloody clumps of flesh caught between the creature’s teeth—

  No! Must forget! Please let me forget.

  His wolf whined and paced inside him while some other entity shadowed his animal, something foreign, dark and hungry. Something that wanted out…

  Nate gripped two fistfuls of hair and tugged, gritting his teeth so hard his jaw ached.

  A short rap from the hallway made his head jerk up. The knock came again before he could speak. He cleared his throat, rasped, “Come in,” and the door swung open to allow Alejandro, one of the shifters in charge of this sanctuary, entry.

  “You didn’t come for supper.”

  “I wasn’t hungry.”

  “You should eat, my friend. We can’t help you if you make no attempt to keep up your strength.”

  Nate eyed the covered tray his host placed on a small table by the window. “Some help. I spend half my time in the damn toilet, either puking or shitting my guts out because of your so-called help.”

  As quick as the anger hit, he clamped down on it, but even as he did a chill swept over him that had nothing to do with his illness. The very air around the other shifter suddenly charged with energy, lifting long black strands of the man’s hair in an eerie halo.

  Alejandro was purebred. An Elder. Born, not made. Their abilities never skipping siblings or generations, their bloodlines and power undiluted by interbreeding with humans.

  Elders were rare, and what little was known of them within the larger shifter tribes was cloaked in whispered tales of fantastical bullshit that couldn’t quite be disproven.

  Yet it was the rumors of their mysterious powers that had brought Nate here.

  With no change in his continued physical deterioration and no answers to his mystery ailment, the doctors of his Toronto tribe had referred him to New York for consultations there. Those specialists had no better luck than their Canadian counterparts.

  The next desperate step was witchcraft, Voodoo, herbal medicine—call it what you will. But his old acquaintance on the island of St. Stephan’s stopped Nate from flying down there, instead Templeton had arranged for Nate to go to South America, where a group of the mythical Elders lived.

  Now, clenching his jaw, Nate forced himself to lower his gaze and the tension eased.

  “Oh, come now. You were shitting and puking out your guts long before you got here, not because of anything we’ve done. But your infirmity, it causes you to be pissy, yes? I will make allowances.”

  There was a subtle edge to Alejandro’s voice, despite his vow to be patient. He straddled the chair beside the table and said, “Even miracles take faith, my friend. You’ve been with us six months now. Forgive me, it might be strange to ask given the circumstances, but do you want to be helped?”

  “No.” The word was a soft explosion. Until this moment Nate hadn’t even admitted the change to himself.

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Because…because I have nowhere else to go. Nothing left.” His voice hoarsened and to his disgust felt his eyes begin to sting.

  It wasn’t totally true though. He’d left behind family. Giselle, his stepmother and Sebastian, as close to him as if they were full blood brothers. He knew he should feel some guilt abandoning them both, not to mention the business consultancy he and Seb ran together. But to Nate’s mind he was sparing them the agony of watching him waste away, day by day.

  He’d also left behind an empty house, too big for just he and Beth, but there’d been plans for a whole passel of kids one day—

  Nate shoved those thoughts, those dreams, away and the nightmare images rushed in to fill the void. His next words tumbled out before he could stop them.

  “That thing that attacked us—it was straight out of a Cronenberg horror movie. Straight up Dr. Moreau shit. Like a rabid orangutan crossed with a mangy bear, crossed with fucking ugly and—”

  He swallowed, staring at his clenched fists. His voice dropped further. “And evil. It was pure evil.”

  Alejandro slid a hand-rolled joint from his shirt pocket as Nate spoke, now he took his own sweet time lighting it up, inhaling deep with his dark eyes narrowed to watchful slits.

  “So, you are saying this thing was a monster.” He blew a thin stream of smoke from the side of his mouth. “You know, the same could be said of us.”

  “Except we don’t feed on each other.”

  “No…”

  Silence fell, so complete Nate strained to hear the whisper of the smoke plumes as they rose to the ceiling.

  “Not usually.” It was said too quietly; he doubted his hearing.

  He studied Alejandro’s impassive expression and his stomach knotted. Nate removed the cocoa leaves from his mouth and dropped them in the bedside wastebasket.

  “The creature…you know who it is.”

  “Not exactly.” Alejandro rested the joint on the window sill and stood in one fluid motion. “But we do know what it is.”

  Before the words had fully left his mouth, he shifted. Nate slammed back against the wall in shock. It was his nightmare returned to flesh. The creature in all its demonic horror stood between him and the only point of exit from the room.

  Energy surged through him for the first time in eight months, it came as a darkness that welled up and flooded his being. And that other formless thing he’d sensed inside himself since the attack, took shape, growing claws that gouged his stomach in its rage. Nate ignored the surge of nausea in his gut, the suddenly blurred vision, and swung his legs off the bed.

  “Do not get up!” the thing that had been Alejandro growled. It stepped back slowly, almost reluctantly, claws curled into fists at its side, snout sniffing the air.

  Nate’s breath came in pants as he fought the transformation his body was on the cusp of attempting. He knew damn well he was too weak to complete a change.

  Unsure of even what that change would be…

  In the breadth of a heartbeat the
creature morphed into a heavily muscled tiger that eyed Nate balefully. Menace still charged the air but without the knife-edge sharpness that had been present mere seconds ago. Some distant part of his mind numbly registered the truth of the rumors regarding the Elders multiple shifting powers. But not in a fucking million years would he have suspected this. He felt himself in the grips of an urge to fight or run. Or puke—

  Nate jerked his head towards the wastebasket just in time as his stomach violently wrenched up its meager contents.

  When he looked up, Alejandro was back to human form, not a single strand of hair out of place and fully clothed again. Huh, another Elder trick.

  “A little demonstration. I guess we can agree on the type of monster you had the misfortune to run into. Yes? As you can see, we’re not all bad.” The Elder’s mouth tipped to one side in a parody of a smile, but something dangerous still glittered in his dark gaze.

  “You’ve known all along who it is,” Nate rasped accusingly.

  “No. You are incorrect on that point. If we did, he would be dealt with.” Alejandro’s voice went glacial. “Whoever he is, he’s been one of the most reclusive members of our kind before this rampage.”

  A phantom fist knuckled hard against Nate’s chest. “There’ve been more victims.”

  “Yes,” Alejandro hissed, finally betraying some emotion. “But you know him. You know his scent. And—” he cocked his head to the side, “—you are unafraid of the thing, if your reaction just now is anything to go by. So I ask again, what are you doing here?”

  “Dying?”

  Alejandro gave a shrug but clearly not a shit, and laughter burst from Nate’s throat in a fit of coughing. “Dude, you need to work on that bedside manner.”

  His spurt of energy drained away as he endured Alejandro’s scrutiny. He knew what the other man saw—the dark circles under his eyes, gaunt face and emaciated body.

  “We’re not doctors here. The creature that attacked you is a Pithcus, a form only the eldest of our kind can assume. And the wisest know not to. It takes great skill and power to control such a creature. It’s an animal of pure base instinct with a relentless need to kill and a vast hunger for flesh.