Wolf Hunter

Wolf Hunter

TVB Publishing

2013

I wouldn’t have finished
Wolf Hunter
without the regular support and encouragement of everyone mentioned here. My early readers Melanie and Sheri helped me see the good and keep going, not to mention avoid third grade math errors. Additional gratitude goes to Sheri for editing this book and letting me call her and read sentences aloud. Author CJane Elliott’s early critique helped me improve the main character.

My cover designer Nelson Yan. He’s talented. You should all check him out.

BJH because.

Angela for talking me through this in the middle of many nights and expressly forbidding me from ending this the way I’d originally intended.

Everyone I roped into helping me with the blurb, AKA the hardest part of writing a book. Brian, Melanie, author Carolyn Gray, and Kara. Thank you for not killing me when I kept tweaking. Kara again for keeping me on track that one time.

Finally, I want to thank all the readers of this and my past books. If ever a book can be said to be self-indulgent, it’s probably this one. But I think self-indulgency can be a good thing. If you please no one else, you’ll at least please yourself. Hopefully, it will please some of you as well.

CHAPTER ONE

TOWN NAME: LA MER-SUR-PLAINES. Size: 3.00 sq. mi. Pop. vocation(s): Farming, 18%; Factory/Blue Collar: 32%; Finance/White Collar: 8%; Coal Mining, 13%; Small Business (owner/employee): 20%; Other: 6%; Unemployed: 3%. Terrain: 100% flatland, of which: 20% in-town residential, 40% farmland, 30% woodland, 1% lake/bodies of water, 8% prairie land. Population: 3500, of which werewolf population: approx. 5%. Male population: 44%, female population: 56%. Crimes reported 2000-2010: Murder (4), Sexual Assault by unknown (5), Non-sexual assault by unknown (157), Domestic Battery/Assault by known (51), Theft/Non-Assault (544), Missing Persons Reported (57, of which 39 recovered). Median income: Males, $35,252; females, $24,781. (Margin of error for survey: +/- 3%).

AT AN HOUR past dawn, Jaylen parked his ancient junker on a residential side street a half-block from the road he’d driven in on. He stretched his legs as he levered himself up and out, holding the door in one hand and his phone in the other. Turning to face the car, he rested his elbows on the Beetle’s dented roof and pretended to stare at his phone’s screen. Anyone looking would think he was checking messages. In truth, he was willing the nameless drug that ran through his blood to hold off on making him scream with pain for a few more hours. It had a 24-hour time limit from injection to “hand me a gun so I can euthanize myself,” and he was pushing it close.

He made his way into the town square on foot, following along sleepy dew-kissed sidewalks toward a coffee shop he’d seen, shuttered, on his drive into La Mer-sur-Plaines at dark o’clock the night before. It was open now, the pink and orange neon curlicue sign shining cheerily in the glass storefront. It was a small enough town that the teenaged girl behind the counter greeted him and asked for his order before the door had closed behind him. She started prepping his coffee (black, large, as hot as she could make it), as he moved toward her. He walked slowly, trying to shake his joints free of his fourteen hour road trip and the drug’s promised revenge on his already embattled body. He glanced sidelong at the Curlicue Coffee Shop’s only other patron, a man in his fifties with a round gut pushing the buttons on his pale blue checkered shirt. The guy tightened his grip on his “Come to Curlicue’s” mug and didn’t look up from his
La Mer Morning Herald
.

“
Here you go.” The girl’s pink hand shook when she put Jaylen’s lidded paper cup on the counter between them. Jaylen stared at it, thinking of the ceramic mug in the other guy’s hand, and smiled. Smart girl, giving him a hint that he shouldn’t stay. Maybe she’d seen the blood on his knuckles or didn’t like the way he tried to walk like he didn’t have a limp. Hell, situation reversed, and Jaylen would kick himself out, too. Beat up brown leather jacket, RIP Tupac T-shirt, torn blue jeans (from snagging them on a nail as he fell down a mineshaft, not from paying $500; the nail had saved his life) that had seen their best days five years before his fall, ass-kicking black combat boots, and a face that kept a glare as its default expression.... He was a suspicious-looking m-f’er. Of course, take that all away, put him in a suit, and he’d still be a six foot plus black man walking into an almost empty establishment at ass o’clock. Still might scare her because of that. He put his money down; she didn’t meet his eyes, and he didn’t give a shit if his grin looked threatening to her.

The Alpha was here, or nearby—Jaylen was surer than he’d been in months of dead ends and fruitless leads—and once Denton was gone or dead, he’d make himself scarce.

“Thanks, kitten,” he said. He kept his voice a low growl because even though he expected her fear, it didn’t mean he enjoyed it. When she didn’t respond, he headed for a table near the door—the better to see out the picture window.

“
Excuse me?” The other man lumbered up from his chair. He stood, the same height as Jaylen but twice as wide. “What’d you say, stranger?”

Jaylen’s veins tingled, the drug in him keen on the sensitivity that allowed him to know wolves from humans, itching for a fight. That was what this nameless drug did; why he tolerated the pain, why he injected it like clockwork, all so he’d know who to kill. He’d ignored the signals since he’d stepped into the little shop, wanting coffee first, but it wouldn’t wait any longer. The drug acted on him, dried his tongue, told him, “Monster.” He waited for its move, kept his eyes downcast. “Nothing to you.”

“That so?”

Jaylen glanced up, saw the yellow behind its pupils. “That’s so.” He pulled his knife and lunged. The monster sputtered, grabbed at him with a newly furred hand, and collapsed. Jaylen slit its throat, wiped his knife clean on the semi-wolf’s shirt, and put it away. He looked up to see the barista backed against the wall, her mouth open and working like she couldn’t summon any sound out.

“Sorry about your floor.”

“
He’s, he’s—” From her distance, she gestured at the snout and fur the wolf had summoned up before Jaylen laid him low.

“
A werewolf,” Jaylen said. He moved his coffee to another table. “I’m going to suggest you shut down for a few hours so I can clean this up. You need to call your boss and get permission?”

She shook her head, lips pinched.

“You sure?”

“
That was my boss.”

Jaylen glanced down at the corpse. Its blood colored the front of its shirt so dark the criss-crossed pattern was indiscernible. “Huh.” He stepped closer to the girl. Now that the other one was dead, he could sense her secret too.