Hunting Ground (Alpha & Omega 2)

Arthur was pale and sweating, his skin chill to the touch. His body twitched, but he remained unconscious.

It would take a while before his man could track the phone. Hacking a system without leaving a trail took time. He could have done it, given a computer, Internet access, and a few days-his man was better. But time was not Sunny's friend.

Twenty minutes passed, maybe twenty-five, before his phone rang.

"Charles?"

"Yes?"

"That phone is about a quarter mile from yours, and it isn't moving."

He looked at Angus. "I have to check this out. You'll watch over her for me?"

The Emerald City Alpha nodded. "I, my pack, Isaac, his Omega, and the fae, we all will watch."

THEY found Sunny just outside the fence, a hundred yards from the locked gate: naked, broken, and dead. Just in case they didn't spot the body, a sky-blue Jaguar that he presumed was her car was stopped a couple of body lengths away, with the driver's side door hanging open.

Sunny's body was still warm, and her eyes were open, fogged with death.

A spirit knelt beside her, one of the forest folk. He seldom saw them, though he could tell when they were about. The spirit's slender brown hands petted Sunny's cheek as it crooned to her-so he knew that Sunny had been alive when they dumped her here. The spirit was a shy thing, slipping away as men, who didn't notice its presence, surrounded the corpse. It brushed against Charles, and he felt its sorrow pull his own spirit.

Poor thing, it told him. She was so scared, so scared. Alone. She was all alone.

Distracted, Charles barely remembered to stop the others before they could touch her.

"Let me catch the scent," he said. "So I'll know her killer." It wouldn't help to question the spirit. They told him what they wanted to, whether he wanted to hear it or not.

The other wolves backed away, and he set his nose between her neck and jaw, where scent would linger. And he smelled, not unexpectedly, a familiar villain. How many things could there be running around in the night targeting werewolves and their kin?

He didn't touch her as he moved from one pulse point to the next. Where the vampires had fed, the flesh was torn, but there had been no time for bruising. And they had fed everywhere.

He smelled her fear, her suffering, and stood her witness. He was thorough, making sure they hadn't added to their hunting party. But he found no surprises: there were just the four vampires who'd attacked Anna.

Brother Wolf went wild as he understood that this could have been her, this could have been their Anna lying here.

Charles closed his eyes and forced his body to stillness. Long, cool fingers stroked his face and sang to the wolf-which didn't help. What a forest spirit was doing out here in the middle of the city, he didn't know-and he seized upon the distraction of the mystery it offered.

He opened his eyes and looked around. There were any number of abandoned warehouses nearby-and blackberries, the infamous weed of the Pacific Northwest, were taking over their empty parking lots, creating a sanctuary for those who didn't mind their thorns.

One mystery down. Charles let the sound of one of his grandfather's songs run through his head, bringing clarity and peace-despite the spirit that patted and petted him. If he'd been alone, he would have knocked the spirit away-Brother Wolf didn't like to be touched by anyone except Anna. But no one else could see it... and he had enough of a reputation for oddness. He didn't need people to know that he saw things no one else did, too.

When he could be reasonably sure that Brother Wolf would allow him to behave in a civilized manner, he stood up.

"Vampires," he said. "Bring her into the warehouse for Arthur." It wouldn't help the British wolf-except as confirmation that she was out of the vampires' hands.

FRUSTRATED, Anna looked at the bag dangling twenty feet over their heads, up one of the long shafts that occasionally perforated the ceiling of this level-after their near disaster with the airless room, Anna was pretty sure that the shafts were useful.

As she stared at it, a wolf snatched victory out of their reach.

It was too dark to be sure who it was, even if she had known all the other wolves in their furred form. The wolf leapt out of an opening a story above the bag, snatched the prize, and disappeared into another opening a floor lower, still well over Anna's head. Watching helplessly as their prize was stolen out from under... okay, above their noses, was maddening.

Isaac snorted in disgust.

And Brother Wolf was... surrounding her, his anxiety, his fear and love making her stagger against Isaac-which Brother Wolf did not like at all.

Something was wrong. But when she asked, Brother Wolf couldn't or wouldn't tell her.

She had to get to Charles. Now. The problem was, Anna didn't know precisely how to get back-oh, she could have backtracked, but they had wandered all over the place and would have had to go through the narrow tunnel again.

Up would be good.

She was running full speed ahead when a white wolf pushed in front of her. A second wolf was hard on her tail-Isaac and Ric.

It was Isaac who found the first set of stairs headed up. They emerged on the ground floor of the smaller warehouse, and when they made for the door, a werewolf in human form stopped them.

"If you cross the outer door, you are officially done," he said.

The Alpha wolf stared coldly at him and the man dropped his eyes, throwing up his hands as he backed away. "Just saying what I'm told, man. You go outside, that's out of bounds."

They ran past him and out into the fresh air. Ric, his fur gray in the light of the yard, sneezed his pleasure at leaving the underground labyrinth behind. Anna took in a deep breath and smelled-vampire.

She stumbled to a halt, examining their surroundings for the enemy. At last she saw him standing on the other side of the chain-link fence a hundred yards away.

It took a moment for her eyes to link the spiffily dressed older man to the vicious killer she'd last seen sitting on top of Tom. But her nose had already made the connection. She'd gotten two good strides in when she hit the side of the white wolf, who'd run in front of her to stop her, his attention on the vampire as well.

The dead man laughed and motioned with his hand. A blue minivan drove up, and he climbed in. It took off before he'd finished closing the door.

Isaac growled low in his chest, an echo of the noise she was making, too. He'd known what that one was, all right. Ric gave them both a puzzled look-but Anna had never run into vampires before yesterday either.

There didn't seem to be much point in sticking around here, so Anna turned and made for the main room of the bigger warehouse, where the lights were blazing, Brother Wolf's presence an ache in her chest.