The Hunted (Sleeping With Monsters Book 2) Read online

  He sat down beside me, and spoke without preamble. “What on earth were you thinking, meeting here?”

  I wasn’t the only one who knew who he was – a few people got up and moved away, like they had other places to be at midnight. “How do I know you are who you say you are?”

  He opened up a wallet and flashed me a badge plus ID. I’d never seen a Marshall’s badge before – but if Vincent had trusted him – I nodded.

  “You have it, right?”

  I nodded again.

  “On you? Can I see it?”

  It was the only leverage I had. I stared at him, and he at me.

  “I’m sorry about your man. He was trying to do some good at the end. I wish he’d come to us sooner – and that we’d been able to protect him.”

  His admission of culpability, right or wrong, was kind. And despite the fact that I knew as a cop he was using me with that kindness, I decided to share the book anyway. “Okay.” I pulled it out of my pocket and handed it over.

  He unsheathed a flashlight and bit its far end, so that the light beamed down onto each handscrawled page. It took all my strength not to hold onto the book’s other side – I reached for my locket and chain instead. They were the only things I had left from him now.

  He thumbed through page after page, grunting. “Shit yeah,” he said around the flashlight. “This is perfect.”

  “You can use it? The whole thing?” I tried to be circumspect.

  “A lot of people are going to be facing a lot of time, thanks to your man.” He carefully put the book into a suit pocket.

  “Good.” I stood up, shouldering my bag.

  Marshall Bren stood as well. “My chivalrous nature won’t let me leave you here alone.”

  “I got in fine, I’ll get out fine.”

  “I’m not worried about tonight. It’s tomorrow, and the day after that -- you’re not going to be safe in town ever again. You need to come with me.”

  I took a step back. “I can’t.”

  “You realize you’re in danger, right? Or did you just get by this far on luck?”

  “I know – but –“ I couldn’t go anywhere until I saw Max tomorrow morning.

  Marshall Bren advanced a step. “The book’s useless to me without you. They’ll say we made everything up if we don’t have you there to testify.”

  I shook my head – this was one reason we’d met in the park, so I’d have space to run. “I just need one more day –“

  He growled. “I can’t let you leave,” he said, and he lunged for me. He caught me because I could see what was behind him.

  A grey wolf appeared out of the park’s shadows. It was the size of the Marshall, paunch and all. It came forward, limping, gobbets of meat visible on his right foreleg, and he started snarling at the sight of me.

  I knew that it was Syd. It had to be.

  Which meant that Max – something in my soul crumpled like a crushed box.

  My jaw dropped, in horror, and with his hand still firmly on my wrist, Bren turned.

  To his credit, he put himself between me and the wolf, unholstering his gun with one hand. “Get back!” he commanded – me? Syd? – and he shot the wolf once, twice, but his bullets weren’t tainted with silver.

  Syd crouched, and I could see huge muscles bunching taut beneath his skin. He threw himself up into the air and it would’ve been so graceful to watch if it hadn’t been meant to kill me. I screamed and cowered, dropping to the ground and throwing my arms overhead, expecting the worst, when I heard the sound of flesh impacting flesh, and fresh snarling.

  I glanced up through my hands. A black wolf, out of nowhere.

  “Max!”

  Bren had control of his wits again, and fired three more shots.

  “No!” I ran into him bodily, making him stumble against the fountain’s cement side. He dropped the gun into the water, and started searching for it frantically, while simultaneously trying to push me back.

  The water was dark, and he looked up at me. “Get out of here! Run!”

  But I couldn’t. All I could do was watch the wolves fight. The clouds moved again and moonlight shone down on the night’s children. Max was standing between Syd and us, and there was a strip of flesh hanging from his cheek where Syd had almost popped his eye, and I could see red tears where teeth had raked through muscles on his haunch – while Syd favored one weak side, and I was guessing he’d yanked his foot out of a trap.

  Max growled deeply, and Syd barked defiance, and then they met again. Fur twined with fur, moving too fast for me to see who was winning, each pressing any advantage that they had, trying to kill the other one.

  A high pitched squeak of pain. Max had one paw down trying to crush Syd’s face – but Syd’s teeth were latched into the thinnest part of Max’s neck. One of Syd’s eyeballs was hanging free, but his teeth – his teeth –

  “No!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. I ran towards them, ripping Vincent’s necklace off my neck. The locket went flying off the chain as I raced to Max’s side. He made a strangled noise at me, his eyes wide, warning me away – Syd could’ve let go of him and killed me in that instant, I knew it – if only Syd could see me. But he couldn’t and –

  I wrapped my arms around his neck and lassoed the silver chain between them. Then I took the loose ends of my silver chain and pulled.

  Syd hissed – either his mouth, or his neck, something hissed, it was a strange sound like a shaken nest of wasps. I pulled the chain tighter, and heard high, alien sounds of pain as I sawed the chain up, imagining it cutting through fur, skin, muscle, cartiliage. Warm fluids leaked out and covered me, like the center of a hundred blisters, and the scent of something foul burning rose.

  Syd made one final sound and let go of Max’s throat, whipping his head around, dislodging me, sending me spinning to one side. I could see the mess my silver garrote had made of his throat, where it’d sliced and burned deeply, and I didn’t think the edges of any of his blackened skin would heal. He snapped at me. There was murder in his good eye, the other still bouncing against his gray-furred cheek – and Max bowled him over. He splayed Syd’s jaw up with a paw, and reached in and bit the depth of his neck that my necklace had exposed. Carotids severed, and blood spilled out of Syd like oil, a slick spreading pool in the night. His chest took in two harsh breaths and then exhaled a final time.

  Max’s wolf turned to look at me. Beat to hell and limping and his golden eyes narrowed at something behind me –

  The crack of a nearby gunshot. Marshall Bren. I whirled, hands to my ears, nearly deafened, as Max twisted and raced away.

  “What the sweet fuck was that?” Bren shouted.

  I put my hands on my knees and leaned over, dizzy. I felt like I was going to throw up. “I don’t know.”

  We were swarmed an instant later. Bren hadn’t come alone – he’d only pretended to, for my sake, but yeah, I should’ve known that no cop would come into Rider without back-up. They’d started running in with guns out the second they’d heard his first shot – the whole fight had happened so quickly and there was nothing to show for it.

  Syd’s body was gone. Not a wolf nor human remained. But I knew I’d watched him die – and there was a muddy pool of blood left behind, mixed in with splashing water from the fountain. No way anyone would get an uncontaminated sample now – and they wouldn’t believe it if they did.

  Just like no one would believe the rest of us. I played dumb and said I wasn’t sure what I’d seen, only that I’d seen it, and how lucky was I that Bren was there to scare the bear-mountain-lion-monster off. And since the homeless witnesses they’d rounded up told even stranger tales, everyone was inclined to blow it off. Without a corpse, no harm, no foul.

  But Bren knew – and he knew I knew. He’d question me later, alone, no doubt. I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t the kind of girl who was easy to break.

  After that, I couldn’t get away. I was rushed off to a safehouse on the outside of town. No one put anything past the famil
y, not even hiring a killer dressed in a bearskin rug, apparently.

  I had to admit I liked being back in civilization. Taking a shower that night and then laying down in a real bed – it suited me, as did a smattering of People magazines and late night TV.

  But I didn’t dare sleep. Not when I had to get out and make sure that Max was all right. Syd might not have been the last of them – what if he stumbled into one of his own traps, going back?

  The officers watched me with a combination of disgust and pity. Even as I was willing to help them, I could see the natural penchant for hating snitches in their eyes. I’d played for the other team too long. I was untrustworthy.

  But I was also just a woman, and I was also very tired, and I’d spent some time crying over Vincent really loudly in the bathroom, so loud that one of them came in to check on me while the other was off at the vending machine – let’s just say it was a trick that Syd would never have fallen for, and I found myself outside a non-descript hotel just after dawn.

  Without cash or keys it was going to take me awhile to hitchhike in, but as long as Max was waiting for me when I got there I wouldn’t mind.

  I couldn’t actually order coffee at the coffee shop, which made me feel like a heel. I’d bunned my hair up and I figured the generic clothes the marshalls had given me to wear, ones that weren’t covered in gore, would have to be disguise enough – it was worth the risk to be here.

  I walked in and looked around. Everyone else was looking at their phones or staring into their coffee, waiting to wake up. I took a few more steps, trying not to look like I was getting into line because I wasn’t, but --

  “Sammy,” a low familiar voice said. Hidden in an alcove by a cement pole, Max was lounging behind what looked like a latte.

  “Hey,” I said. My heart thrilled. We’d done it. We’d really done it.

  “You alone?”

  “For now. Probably not for long though.” I sat down across from him, the cement post at my back.

  He nodded. “That’s good. I want them to keep a close eye on you. After this, you have to let them keep you safe. Promise me.”

  I opened my mouth to protest. I knew he was right, but I didn’t care – I hadn’t gone through all this just to leave him behind.

  “I killed the pack, not the family,” he reminded me.

  “I know.” I looked into his eyes for answers. What were we now, other than strangers who’d spent the past week intensely? What did we have to talk about that wasn’t the past? Did people like us ever get to have a future? “So are you king now, or what?”

  The corner of his lips lifted in a rueful smile. “So to speak. Only one other wolf survived. Tony. I hate him.”

  I vaguely remembered knowing him. Some low-level grunt who wasn’t smart enough to be involved in any plans.

  “Is one follower a pack?”

  He shook his head. “Not hardly.”

  “Then what’s alpha without a pack?”

  “Just a man.”

  His voice was low and honest and I felt myself pulled to it like it had gravity. It was completely irresponsible – unless he felt it too.

  “I got you something.” He leaned over and pulled a box out of a back pocket and handed it to me. I took it and slowly opened it up.

  Inside there was a gold locket on a gold chain. I knew what I wanted to be inside the locket without opening it. “Is this what I think it is?”

  “If you want it to be. Or it can just be a good luck charm – or you can sell it at the cash for gold place down the street.” He watched me take it up with shaking hands. “Hope you don’t mind that it’s not silver.”

  “I don’t,” I said, fastening the clasp around my neck as he took back the box. His locket fell almost where Vincent’s had, and I tucked it inside my shirt and pressed it against my chest with one hand. “Max -- I don’t know what’s in store for me. They need me to testify that the book’s real – and so many trials could take forever –“

  His eyes searched mine. “I’m good at waiting. If you want me to, that is.”

  I knew what he was offering – was I brave enough to take it?

  Who else knew what we’d been through? Who else had our shared history? I’d never find anyone else in the entire world like Max – or his wolf.

  I nodded helplessly.

  He stood up abruptly and pushed the table between us aside. It scraped on the ground and I was sure people turned to look but I didn’t care – he stepped toward me as I stood up, and then the column was pressed against my back and he was kissing me, hard. One hand wound into my hair, the other pulled my hips close, and everything in me matched him, like we were meant to be together, like this was right. The way he held me, the way he smelled, the fierce intensity in his eyes before I closed mine and he kissed me, the way his lips covered me and his tongue moved against mine. He pulled back before I was ready and I sagged, held up in his strong arms, as he set his forehead against mine.

  “Just wait till you’re safe.”

  “I will. But I won’t make you wait a second longer than you have to.”

  “Good,” he growled, I felt it echo in my chest.

  Someone began coughing pointedly behind us. Max’s eyes glanced over, and his gaze darkened. I turned quickly – had the family found me out so soon?

  But it was Marshall Bren, drumming his fingers on one thick thigh. “Samantha Carter are you, or are you not, coming with me?”

  I gave him a sheepish look as Max subtly pushed me over. “Yeah, I am.”

  “Good. After you,” he said, pointing to the patrol car parked illegally out front.

  I looked back to Max. We’d already said everything we needed to say and more but – I put my hand to my chest where the locket was, and he smiled, wolfishly.

  I turned around, fairly sure that I was grinning wolfishly too, and followed the Marshall out the door.

  “Done with whatever you had to do?” Bren asked, after settling himself in the driver side of his car.

  “Yeah. I’ll be good from here on out.”

  “Somehow I doubt that, but I’d appreciate you trying.” He hit the gas, lurching us into traffic as he reached into a pocket of his sportcoat. “I got this for you off of some homeless guy.” He tossed me a plastic bag. It was Vincent’s necklace, still discolored with gore and fur. I’d tried to inconspicuously look for it last night but I hadn’t been able to find it – now I knew why.

  Oh, Vincent, baby. I love you. I’ll always love you. But the chain was broken and from here on out silver was going to be no good.

  “Thanks, but I don’t need it anymore.” I handed it back to Bren.

  “You sure?” he pressed. The sun was up now, blinding us both.

  I flipped down the sunvisor and caught sight of Max’s necklace glinting in dawn’s light. “Yeah,” I said, smiling up at my reflection. “I am.”

  From the Author

  The Hunted is the second book in my Sleeping with Monsters series, about women who love dangerous creatures. The Haunted was the first Sleeping with Monsters book, about Daphne Vance and her time in an estate haunted by a domineering ghost. You can find it here.

  The House, a Come Find Your Fantasy adventure book, was my first erotica release, if you’d like to go back and see where it all began.

  If you’d like to be notified about giveaways, appearances and new releases, please sign up for my mailing list here.

  Reviews help other readers find books. I appreciate all reviews, whether positive or negative, so please let me know what you think by reviewing the book at Amazon and/or Goodreads!

  Before Tales from The House or Sleeping with Monsters, I wrote the Edie Spence urban fantasy series, about a nurse working with supernatural creatures on a secret hospital floor. All five books of the series – Nightshifted, Moonshifted, Shapeshifted, Deadshifted, and Bloodshifted – are currently available on Amazon.com or through your local bookstore.

  If you’d like to follow me on social media, check out my we
bsite at www.cassiealexander.com, follow me on twitter at @CassieY4, or like my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/CassieAlexanderAuthor.

  Thank you for reading The Hunted. I hope you enjoyed it!

  The next book in the Sleeping with Monsters series will be called The Hated, and it’ll be my take on vampires. I can’t wait for you to read it!

  ~ Cassie