Vengeance Borne (2 page)

“
Pshshshsh
… You’re…
crrshshsh
… breaking…
blsssttt
... up, Finn. Gotta go.” She hit the end button before he could get a word in and turned off her phone. Let him try to track her with the GPS disabled.

Another baleful shriek rent the night air and she took off at a run. Her house wasn’t far from the highway, and from the sounds, she estimated her prey’s location to be no more than a few hundred yards away, in a vacant forested lot not far from the old tree nursery. The landscape company had abandoned the location a couple of years ago but most of the trees remained, leaving the perfect amount of cover for some nasty little creature to lie in wait of its next victim. She cut across Warren Wagon Road, slinking through a couple of yards—shortcuts were handy sometimes— before veering back onto the main highway, backtracking toward the town proper in the direction that she’d heard the Banshee’s cry. Finn was right. Going out alone wasn’t always a good idea, but she didn’t sense anything super dangerous so she wasn’t too concerned. She could take care of the situation herself; Jacquelyn didn’t need Finn and his magic emotion meter to help her tonight. Besides, she didn’t have time to wait for him to show up. The wail was more of a forewarning. Like a message meant only for her that said,
You’d better hurry your ass up, hunter, or someone’s going to die a horrible death at the hands of a monster
.

For centuries, Waerds and Bearers had teamed up as a force against the supernatural baddies that walked the earth. Jacquelyn never really liked the ancient term that described what she was: a warrior, protector, and weapon against evil. She tried not to buy into the propaganda, though it was pretty tough when she grew up surrounded by people who reminded her on a daily basis what her purpose was. Jacquelyn wasn’t exactly human, but she wasn’t one of the supernatural beings she’d been tasked to hunt either. According to the Sentry—the world-wide organization who owned her ass until the day some creature managed to put her down—Waerds were humans with a little extra kick. Hand-picked and blessed by Fate to protect innocent lives. Or something like that.

And yeah, okay, there were things about her that were a little off. Like the fact that her bones were pretty tough to break, she had a stellar metabolism, was stronger than your average NFL defensive linebacker, packaged in a five-foot-three frame, and she could sense the otherness in a supernatural being from a mile away. There were other things, her speed, reflexes, fighting skill… She wasn’t one of
them
, though. The things she hunted. Jacquelyn refused to think of herself as anything but human.

The Sentry didn’t fuck around when it came to recruitment and retention. They watch, wait, and collect Waerds straight from the cradle. For eleven years Jacquelyn was taught to fight, to use and manipulate magic, and to hone and rely on her senses before she was cut loose and thrown out into the field. But just because the Sentry let her leave didn’t mean they still didn’t own her. Once they get their hooks in you, you’re in for life. She doubted that any government in the world operated as efficiently, no military as diligent. The Sentry was a nation unto itself, super-secret, super-hardcore, and suuuuuper serious about their business. Conspiracy theorists would shit a brick if they could get their hands on just a sliver of the information in the Sentry’s possession. Like, for instance, who’d really been on that grassy knoll the day Kennedy was shot.

Jacquelyn veered from the main highway, deeper into the woods just outside of town. Her skin tingled, the air becoming dense, almost tight, with every step. If she’d pulled up her big girl panties and allowed Finn to come along, she would’ve found her quarry by now. Going out alone was her way of asserting her independence from their previous couple status. An “I don’t need a man!” declaration. She couldn’t deny now that it would have been handy to have him along, though. After all, he was the tracker. Sort of like a Garmin, but programmed to steer her toward evil instead of the nearest mall. But it was too late for coulda, woulda, shoulda. She was here now and Finn wasn’t. Whatever she stalked wouldn’t wait for her to gather the troops before it decided to kill.

A pungent tang burned her nostrils and caused her eyes to water, followed by a metallic tang on the back of her tongue that threw Jacquelyn’s taste buds into overdrive, like she’d sucked on a dirty penny. As if evil would ever taste anything but vile. From out of the brush, a body emerged and her heart sank into her gut. A Changeling. Which just so happened to be her number one
least favorite
evil doer. She shouldn’t have been so freaking impatient. Would it have killed her to act like an adult and wait for Finn?
Damn it
. This was the one entity she doubted she could take on alone. But if she didn’t at least try to stop the beautiful embodiment of evil smiling at her like a prom queen, someone would die tonight.

Hell, it might even be her.

Chapter 2

MICAH MARINESCU GAZED up at the soft blue light of the digital clock on the high-tech rearview mirror of his RV. If not for the
Now Entering Idaho
sign four hundred or so miles ago, he wouldn’t have even realized he’d crossed the Washington border. In the dark, he couldn’t make out much of the landscape. The last sign of civilization was a small community called New Meadows eight or nine miles back, but now the winding canyon road he traveled was nothing more than a dark blur. Shadows of tall mountains stood sentinel over miles of rolling hills, stands of pine trees and aspens, and a small creek that wound its way alongside the highway. But as the trees began to thin Micah noticed the speckled glow of lights indicating that civilization wasn’t too far ahead. Didn’t look big enough to be a respectable city, maybe a little bigger than the town he’d just passed. He was too tired to keep driving, though and he needed a stretch of relatively flat ground to park his motor home on. Blinking back the sleep tugging at his eyelids, he looked out as far as the RV’s headlights would allow, searching for a suitable place to stay for the night. Somewhere flat and quiet where the sound of semis as they roared down Highway 55 wouldn’t wake him.

From the corner of his eye, a flash of tan caught Micah’s attention and a burst of adrenaline shot through his bloodstream. He stomped on the brake pedal and the back end of the motor home swerved into the opposite lane of traffic. A frightened doe slid on the pavement, obviously as panicked as Micah, her hooves unable to gain footing. She stumbled away from the oncoming vehicle, jumping high and bucking once before she skittered off into the tree-line and out of sight.

The gas-guzzling monstrosity squealed to a stop, rocking back and forth like a rowboat teetering against gentle waves. Rowboat, yeah right, he might as well be driving a submarine. The highway canyon didn’t seem wide enough to accommodate two lanes of traffic, let alone a twenty-five foot motorhome. And if the steep grade was any indicator, he was willing to bet that if he’d drifted another foot to the right, his ass would be plummeting down an embankment with a hundred foot drop. High tech and fancy or not, he’d never get used to maneuvering the damn thing. Micah sat, his arms braced against the steering wheel in an unyielding, elbow-locked grasp. Thank God there hadn’t been any other cars on the road. He could have killed someone. Hell, he’d almost killed himself. His racing heart began to slow its frenzied pace, and the sound of blood rushing through his veins reduced to a low thrum in his ears. Legs, weak and jittery, barely held his feet down against the brake pedal as he let out a shuddering breath.

Damn it, he should have pulled over to rest hours ago. Micah rubbed his eyes and his vision cleared. In the crooked view of the headlights, a narrow lane jutted to the left of the highway toward the trees and away from that wicked drop off. He maneuvered the motor home off the highway and found a clearing at the end of the dirt road that looked like it was set up to accommodate campers. Perfect.

After a shitty parking job, he blocked the tires so the damned thing wouldn’t roll and headed back inside. Micah shuffled to the rear of the RV and flopped down on the bed at the back end of his new rolling residence. Though his eyes were scratchy and heavy with exhaustion, his mind was slower to settle. As he wandered toward full-sleep, his last conversation with his mother ran a loop in his mind. She always could get under his skin. But he refused to feel guilty for leaving. It was the only way he’d gain any sort of clarity.

“You can’t run from who you are.”

Again with the “embrace your gift” speech. Micah’s mother missed her calling. She should have been a motivational speaker. “Not so much interested in your opinion at this point, Mom.”

A string of angry Romanian assaulted Micah’s ears as his mother rearranged the cut flowers she’d brought in from her garden and added water to a tall vase. “So, what? You sell everything you own, buy ridiculous house on wheels and desert family? It won’t stop the feelings, Micah. Leaving will
not
end the dreams.”

Why did he even come here? He should have just left a note in the mailbox like he’d planned. Of course his mother would throw a fit over his leaving. And yeah, maybe it wouldn’t fix his problems. But one thing was for damn certain: staying in Bellevue wasn’t doing him any good. “I need to get away. I’m not abandoning you or Dad. I just need some space.” Family was important to his old-school Romanian parents. They lived within a fifteen-mile radius of Micah’s various cousins, aunts, and uncles. And even he hadn’t strayed too far, putting down roots just thirty minutes away from where he’d grown up.

“What you find out there,” Micah’s mother jutted her chin to indicate the world at large, “you won’t find here?”

Clarity? Focus? A peace of mind he’d never known? “You know how it is for me, Mom. I need to be away from people for a while.”

She sighed, turning her attention back to her flowers. He knew she wouldn’t argue with him on that point. For as long as he could remember, Micah had struggled in the company of others. He couldn’t explain it. He just
felt
too much. Knew too much
about the people around him, sensed their discomforts, happiness, anger… Their emotions were his, swirling around inside of him until he felt as though his body would burst at the seams from the fullness of it. Shit, he hadn’t had a girlfriend or even a causal relationship since college. Why bother when you didn’t need verbal confirmation to know
that she’s just not that into you. He sensed his partners’ emotions. Known when one girlfriend had cheated on him, knew the moment another had decided that their relationship wasn’t going anywhere, and it had still been three agonizing weeks before she finally decided to dump him.

Micah’s mother let out an aggrieved sigh. Great. She was about to play the guilt card. “Those pills you take won’t stop dreams, Micah. You’re
special
.
Embrace your gift, please don’t run from God’s blessing to you.” She sniffed as if about to cry. “If you leave it will break my heart.”

Oh, the theatrics! “Nice, Mom. And I don’t take the Ativan to get rid of the dreams.”
Yes, I do.
“They’re to help me sleep.”
They’re to knock me the fuck out.
“And they calm my anxiety.”
They keep me from ripping my beating heart from right out of my chest.

“They are
excuse
,” she intoned in her thick Romanian accent, pointing an accusing finger.

Whoa. According to Romany superstition, you only pointed your finger if you were cursing someone. Mom meant business. “It’s a moot point. I’m weaning myself off of them.” Sure he was.
Keep telling yourself that, buddy. Maybe you’ll make it true.

“Why fight the visions, Micah?”

Why? Micah shook his head. He couldn’t even form the words to answer his mother. Because they scared the ever living shit out of him, that’s why. Because when he closed his eyes, his mind was filled with visions of someone else’s life, and he had no way of knowing if what he’d seen was a portent of the future, or a highlight reel of someone’s unfortunate past. When he was eight years old, he dreamed that Jimmy Preston had been hit by a car. The next day, his mom told him that Jimmy was in the hospital with two broken legs and broken arm. Some idiot had run a stop sign and plowed
right into him.
And his freshman year of college, he dreamed about a woman who’d been killed in one of the dorms. Turned out it happened a couple of years back, she’d fallen from a fourth story window during a party.

His visions a
gift
? Micah didn’t think so.

“I won’t be gone forever, Mom.” That he knew of. He’d sold off everything he owned, closed his practice. Hell, maybe he wouldn’t be coming back. The only thing he knew for sure was that he needed solitude. Time to understand himself before he could begin to understand anything else.

“Make sure you’re not, son,” his mother said, sad. “Make sure you come back.”