Once Bitten
Page 21"Let's get out of here.” I started back the way we'd come.
Nathanial grabbed my arm, stopping me. “Who will you feed from if we do not reach the park?"
I shook my head and the movement triggered a shiver that reverberated though my body. I wrapped my arms around myself to still the quaking, to keep myself from shaking apart. I couldn't just bite someone. I had to reach the park, but the hunter...
Gil tugged on her coat sleeves. “Why are you sure every shifter's scent we cross must be a hunter?"
Bobby's attention was on the street, so I answered—after all, I wasn't good for much else currently. “There are two types of shifters in the human world, the illegals and the hunters. Shifters here illegally run away from the scent of other shifters, not toward it.” Or at least, that's what I'd done. The memory of the stray I'd been fighting the night Nathanial had found me popped into my head. He hadn't avoided my scent—he'd tracked me. He'd referred to Haven as his city and seemed damned determined to dispose of me for trespassing. How many other strays had claimed territory in the human world? I'd never heard of it happening before, but if he was the example of a territorial stray, the safest course was still to avoid any encounter with other shifters.
Bobby's nostrils flared again, his gaze sweeping the street. “The hunter's trail smells recent, and the wind's in his favor, so he might have already picked up my scent."
His scent, right. I'd forgotten I didn't smell like a shifter anymore. Bobby was the only one the hunter would track.
I blinked. Without a scent, I could, theoretically, walk into the park as unnoticed as a human. Just not with Bobby by my side. I looked up at him. “We need to separate."
His shoulders hunched, his head dropping, but Gil cleared her throat. “I think it's too late."
A man in a long trench coat rounded the corner several blocks up. He strode toward us, his eyes locked on our huddled group. His path never wavered, his steps picking up speed. The trench coat struggled to cover his long gait, gaping to reveal flashes of a tailored suit, an expensive tie.
I stumbled back a step. Oh crap. The world was still washed in grey, but I didn't have to see the color to know his tie was red and his eyes wolf-amber.
I had to get out of here. The street of brownstones offered little cover, unless I wanted to break into one of them, which might not be such a bad idea right now. The wrought-iron gate surrounding the nearest house reached almost to the sidewalk, and I grabbed hold of it, ready to hoist myself over it if my shivering arms would agree to hold my weight.
Bobby grabbed my shoulder, pulling me off the gate. “What are you doing? He can't smell you!"
"I've run across him before. He was the hunter I crossed when I first arrived in the city,” I whispered and then looked at Nathanial. “He'll recognize me, even if he can't smell me. Do the shadow thing."
"Shadow thing?” he repeated, his eyebrow lifting. I didn't have time to explain, but he apparently realized what I meant, because he shouldered Bobby aside and stepped into my space. “Too suspicious. I have a better plan. Trust me."
I didn't have much choice with the iron gate pressed against my back and the hunter only yards away. Nathanial leaned close, his heat filling the breath of space between us. I put my hands up to push him away, but his heat pulsed through my palms. It was all I could do to keep myself from pulling him closer, wrapping him around me.
He tugged my scarf away, his fingers dancing along my jaw and leaving trails of warmth in their wake. Those long fingers moved to my hair next, brushing the tangled strands away from my face and deftly twisting them into a bun. His hands glided down to my waist, and my stomach flipped in a way that had nothing to do with hunger. He moved without hesitation, each motion efficient, like this was a dance he'd practiced. His hands slipped into the pockets of my coat, pulling out my hat. He tugged it over my hair, then spun us around so we were both facing Bobby and Gil, my back nuzzled along the front line of his body.
"It might be the perfect yard for a snowman, love, but what would the owners think?” He announced the question loudly, ending it with a chuckle.
I gaped at him. He's lost his mind.
Bobby was staring at me, his brow knotting as his clenched fists fell to his sides. He didn't glance away from me, even as the hunter stopped directly beside him.
"Excuse me. Do you have the time?” The hunter asked, his eyes sweeping over us. “I seem to have left my watch at home.” To prove that fact, he lifted his left coat sleeve, flashing his watchless wrist. But his wrist wasn't empty. The silhouette of a swooping hawk marred the skin over his pulse. The mark of a hunter.
Bobby blinked, ripping his gaze off me. “Uh ... sure.” He pulled up his coat sleeve. “Oh, I must of lost my watch, too.” An identical hawk marked Bobby's wrist.
I tried not to stare, not to make it overly obvious I'd caught the significance of the exchange, but I'd never seen a hunter mark before. I'd heard of them—every shifter had heard of them, but the mark was pressed into a hunter's skin only moments before he crossed the gate and removed every month when he returned. No ink tattoo could mimic the mark—shifting would purge ink from the body. The hunter mark was something only the elders could give. In the back of my mind I'd realized Bobby would have one, since he was here legally, but seeing it still surprised me.
The hunter nodded after he'd had a good look at the hawk. “Anyone know the time?” His nostrils flared as he glanced over Gil, who was completely absorbed in jotting something in her scroll. Then the full weight of the hunter's attention fell on me. I squirmed under the scrutiny, and Nathanial held me tighter.
"It is a little after nine,” Nathanial said.
I didn't meet his eyes, but stared at his shiny black loafers. He stepped closer, and his gaze focused on my neck, hesitating there several heartbeats too long. I chanced a glance up in time to see the edge of his mouth quirk, and then he turned, walking back the way he'd come.
"Thank you for the time,” he called over his shoulder before turning down the next street.
As soon as he was out of sight, I wrenched out of Nathanial's arms. The loss of his body heat sent a shiver wracking through me hard enough to make me stumble. He caught my arms, keeping me standing.
I rounded on him. “What the hell kind of plan was that? He recognized me!"
Nathanial only smiled, shaking his head.
"Kita?” Bobby's fingers hesitated inches from my face. “You look ... how...?"
I frowned at him. ‘How’ was the wrong question. ‘Why’ was much more pertinent. Like why hadn't the hunter pulled me off the street? Did he think Bobby, as a fellow hunter, had the situation under control?
Gil moved closer, her quill scribbling fiercely as she examined me. “This is highly irregular. How did you do that to her?” She glanced at Nathanial. He didn't answer with any more than his continued enigmatic smile. At my puzzled look Gil said, “Your appearance is different. It is—"
"It's not you.” Bobby bent to look at my face at another angle. “Not you at all."
I lifted my hands to my face. It felt like it always had, nothing altered as far as my fingers could tell. I stepped further away from Nathanial and his smile slipped.
"If you move too far away you will...” He shook his head. “Break the illusion."
Gil gave a little gasp, and Bobby's shoulders relaxed like a great weight had been removed. Nathanial looked less pleased.
I nodded, but as my steps dragged down the sidewalk, I couldn't help thinking of the small smirk I'd seen catch on the hunter's mouth. Had he simply been satisfied we weren't strays, or...? My hand crawled to my throat. Between the loose ends of my scarf, my fingers traced over the corded black leather of my necklace.
Crap.
I must have said it aloud because everyone stopped. I curled my finger around the cord and lifted it away from my skin. “During whatever you did a minute ago, was my necklace visible?"
Nathanial's gaze dropped to my throat. Gil didn't say anything, and I looked at Bobby. His eyes told me what no one else said—it had been visible.
Double crap.
Nathanial reached to touch the necklace, and I stepped back, letting it fall against my skin. The small bones woven into the cord clattered.
"Someone important gave that to you. Someone from Firth,” Nathanial said, his voice distant, as if he were trying to remember a dream.
"Yeah, someone important. Now stay out of my mind.” I wrapped my arms around my chest and tried to still my shivering. At this point, I wasn't sure if I was shaking from the cold or fear or, as Nathanial would probably insist, from needing blood. It wouldn't matter that my scent and face were different. If the hunter saw my necklace—he'd never believe I wasn't from Firth. My hand crawled to the throat again, my finger tracing the ten small bones, careful of the small hooked claw on half of them. Ten bones, a number worn only by the clan's Dyre. Bobby's necklace only had two bones.
Crap, Bobby.
If the hunter realized we were both from the Nekai clan ... what was the punishment these days for helping a stray avoid capture? I glanced at Bobby. He looked worried, but not worried enough. As a child, I'd met a stay who'd been dragged back to Firth, and he'd never spoken about the months he spent at the elders’ mountain following his capture and return. But he hadn't been a hunter, hadn't taken their oaths—or broken them. Bobby should have been terrified.
My fist closed around the necklace. The five small claws pricked my flesh. We had to get away from here. “Are we waiting for the hunter to pounce out at us? Let's go."