Wolf Hunt Read online

  Wolf Hunt

  Immortals Novella

  Jennifer Ashley

  JA / AG Publishing

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Excerpt—Immortals: Forbidden Taste

  Also by Jennifer Ashley

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Logan got the call while he was making an arrest.

  The vampire he cuffed in a West Hollywood club had been running a slavery ring of what was called “blood donors”—people who fed vampires a little at a time without the vampires draining them completely. Some had volunteered, others were kept quiet with drugs and the high that came with the feeding.

  “Septimus will hear about this,” the vampire snarled. Septimus was the kingpin vamp in charge of Los Angeles, and now the entire west coast.

  “Septimus gave me his blessing,” Logan said as he locked magically charged cuffs around the vamp’s wrists. “You’re embarrassing him.”

  The vamp started to snarl about vampire rights at the same time Logan’s cell phone rang. He passed the vamp to his partner, Tony Nez, and slid his phone out of his pocket. He didn’t recognize the number as he thumbed the pad to answer.

  “Yeah?”

  “Logan.” A female voice went breathless with relief.

  Everything in Logan’s world stopped. The dense beat of the music inside the club, the thick sound of traffic at the end of the street, and the continued arguing of the vamp Tony held receded into the background. Logan could only see her—Nadia, her black hair and dark eyes regarding him over a table while they shared pizza, before that, from a hospital bed.

  She’d been beaten down, exhausted, but she’d been brave enough to tell him everything about her ordeal. Her evidence of how demons were being kidnapped and slaughtered had saved others. Many others.

  Logan had seen Nadia twice more since she’d helped in his investigation, and each time they’d met, he’d vowed to never see her again. At the same time, he craved to be near her. Dangerously so.

  “Nadia? What’s the matter? Where are you?”

  “I don’t know.” Her words came breathlessly, as though she’d been running. “There’s lots of woods, and they’re coming.”

  “Slow down, slow down. Who’s coming?”

  “Logan . . . Oh, shit.” There was a harsh rattle, and then nothing.

  “Nadia? Nadia? Damn it.”

  The unfamiliar phone number with no name attached slid neatly to the top of Logan’s recent calls list. Logan started to tap it to call back, but he stopped. He pictured a phone ringing in silence, giving away Nadia’s location.

  The wolf in him growled, his fingers turning to claws, gouging the plastic of the phone. Everything Were in him wanted to sling the phone aside, shift to his wolf, and tear away to find her.

  Logan took a long breath, forcing himself to calm, to fight the shift. He’d get nowhere until he had some idea where Nadia was. Once he found her rough location, he could scent her, track her, hunt her . . . but until then, he was in the middle of Los Angeles, the polluted air foul to his predator’s nose.

  Nez and some uniforms shoved the arrested vamps into the paddy wagon. The one Logan had cuffed started yelling that it was nearly dawn, and they needed to hurry and get him inside. Wuss.

  Logan walked back to his unmarked car and punched the phone number of Nadia’s call into his police computer. Nothing. Growling in impatience, he called his favorite desk sergeant back at the paranormal division who was good at stuff like this. Experienced sergeants trumped computer searches every time.

  As soon as he finished talking to the sergeant, his cell rang again, same number.

  “Nadia?” Logan shouted into the phone. “Where are you?”

  “She ran away,” a male voice said. He sounded wrong, keyed up, filled with adrenaline and excitement. “More fun that way.”

  Click.

  Tony slid into the car’s driver’s seat while Logan remained staring at the phone. Tony was Navajo—Diné—with smooth brown skin, black hair he wore in a long ponytail, and eyes that held many stories.

  “Vamps today,” he said in disgust. “All they do is bleat about lawyers. How about a real paranormal crime for a change? Supernaturals out here are wimps. Hey, did I ever tell you about the time my cousins and me tracked a skinwalker up through Chaco Canyon? Now he was a fight worth having.” Nez started the car. “Where to, boss?”

  “Station,” Logan said.

  “Why?” Their shift was over, and usually after a bust this early, they’d go get breakfast. “What’s up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yeah? Who was on the phone? Something’s going down, isn’t it? I can tell. You look like I did the first time I saw a ghost.”

  Logan tucked his phone back into its holder, his heart hammering “A woman I know. Sounds like she’s in some deep shit.”

  He related what he’d heard in both calls, and Tony looked worried. “Hell. Guess we better find out where she is, then.” He turned on the siren, put his foot down, and zipped through L.A. traffic toward the paranormal division headquarters downtown.

  Logan knew that the second caller, the man, had been a shifter, a wolf. One riding on an adrenaline high in pursuit of Nadia.

  Worse, Logan knew the caller, though he hadn’t heard his voice in years. He was the Were who’d forced Logan out of his home, his pack, and his life, and why Logan had taken up a lonely exile on the streets of Los Angeles.

  The desk sergeant had succeeded in tracing the number by the time Logan and Nez strode into the paranormal division headquarters at Parker Center.

  “Payphone at a gas station in a place called Brookside,” the sergeant said. He was a small, spare man with a receding hairline and more know-how in finding obscure information than the youngest techno-geek in the department. “That’s a wide spot in the road on the California-Oregon border, according to the station owner. Guy on the graveyard shift said he never noticed anyone using the phone.”

  He wouldn’t have. A demon, even one being hunted through the woods at the crack of dawn, was stealthy enough to use a payphone without anyone seeing her. So was a wolf shifter on the prowl.

  Logan thanked the sergeant and went to his lieutenant, a small, black half-Sidhe woman, to ask for leave. He told her why, because he knew he couldn’t bullshit Lieutenant McKay.

  “I know you’ll go whether I like it or not.” Sheila McKay was half Logan’s height, but he’d seen her take down vampires three times her size. “I’d tell you to let the paranormal cops up there handle it, but they don’t have paranormal police in that part of California. Too remote, no funding.”

  “Their human police won’t be able to help,” Logan said. “This is definitely shifter and demon business.” Logan thought again about the elation in the wolf’s voice on the phone, and knew he’d be making the trip as a Packmaster, not a cop. This was already personal.

  “I know that,” McKay said. “Which is why I’m letting you check it out. But you keep me informed, all right? Every step of the way. Don’t make me come up there and extract your ass—or find you dead. I need you, Logan.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  McKay pinned him with a stare, no less intimidating though it came from his waist height. “Get her and come back. That’s all. Got it?”

  No personal vendettas, she meant. Too damn late for that. Logan left her office, making no p
romises.

  Nez stopped him on the way out. “You going after her?” To Logan’s brief nod, he continued, “The second you run into trouble, call me. I know people in the mountains, shamans and other interesting folks.”

  Everyone wished to help. Touching, even if they had no clue what was going on.

  “Thanks,” Logan said. “I’ll do that.”

  Logan had thought that when he left his pack in Minnesota, this would all be over. He’d walked away because that had been the only way to prevent others from being hurt, from dying even. Logan realized now that the problem hadn’t ended, it had only festered.

  He filled his duffle bag with bottles of water and extra ammo and let Nez walk him out to his Harley. Logan started it up and rode out of the LAPD Paranormal Division parking lot, watching in his rearview as his Diné partner lifted a hand in farewell.

  Eight hours on the back roads later, Logan pulled into the gas station in the tiny town of Brookside, a stop on the way to Klamath Falls. The morning attendant at the convenience store who’d talked to the desk sergeant had gone home hours ago, but his replacement knew that the police from Los Angeles had inquired about the phone call.

  “If I’d been here, I’d have seen her,” the kid said. He had greasy hair, a raw-boned body, and a face scarred with acne. “I see everyone and everything.”

  “Maybe she’s come in here before,” Logan said. He described Nadia as he remembered her—five foot six with short, sleek dark hair, and coffee-brown eyes. He didn’t add that she also had one hell of a body, and voice that gave him a hard-on in his dreams.

  The kid shook his head. “But if I do see her, I’ll let you know. You got somewhere I can reach you?”

  Logan left his cell phone number without much hope. Nadia had been out of breath, scared, running for her life. She wouldn’t be back here.

  Outside, Logan approached the two lighted payphones on the left side of the building. In this day and age, payphones were relics, usually graffiti-laden and forlorn under their plastic half-domes. But there were still dead zones where cell signals didn’t reach, and land lines had their uses.

  Logan knew which phone Nadia had used before he reached it. Her scent was all over it. He closed his eyes and took in the brimstone smell of demon coupled with a flowery fragrance that was Nadia’s own. That scent was overridden with fear and the heavy musk of werewolf.

  Matt had been here. Logan couldn’t tell from the smell whether Matt had captured Nadia or whether she’d gotten away. But he knew one thing—Matt had made the challenge, and Logan would meet it. And this time, Logan would win.

  Nadia kept running. Her feet ached, her bare body was coated with sweat and dirt, and her breath grated in her lungs. She’d been running for two days and two nights, with no rest. She’d shifted back and forth from demon form to human, the demon form giving her the advantage of stamina, the human of stealth.

  Though she’d had no sleep or food, she understood that her trackers would stop just short of letting her drop dead from exhaustion. Nadia dying wouldn’t be as much fun as Nadia fighting, running, or challenging them. The wolves enjoyed that she’d laid false trails and doubled back, had howled in triumph whenever they’d relocated her scent.

  Good prey, hard to bring down. Worth the price.

  Being able to call Logan had been an incredible piece of luck. Nadia had dashed out of the trees and found the convenience store in the middle of a crumbling parking lot, two lit phones turning toward her like friends.

  She’d morphed into her human form before cautiously approaching. She was naked after shifting, of course, and could only hope that no one would come around the building and spot her. But the parking lot had remained deserted, the only sign of life the hum of the ice machines next to the phones.

  Being without clothes and hunted meant she’d had no change handy, but Nadia had gotten an operator to take a credit card number and let her call Logan.

  She’d never told Logan she’d memorized his phone number. The few times they’d met socially, they’d kept the conversation neutral, mostly talking motorcycles, movies, and music. Logan had given her his number on the back of a business card. Nadia had never called him, though she’d often thought of doing it. Every day, in fact. She’d never been able to forget the wolf whose tawny eyes had burned with compassion when she’d lain, injured and shattered, in the hospital bed. Shifters hated demons. Logan was different.

  Far too much relief had flooded her when Logan answered. But she hadn’t had time to tell him anything, because the hunters had found her. She’d had to drop the phone and run.

  They were coming again. The shifters were in wolf form, running, tracking, but the human with them used an off-road motorcycle, its headlight slicing through the woods.

  Nadia scrambled up another hill and down its other side, keeping to the cold, deep shadows cast by the westering sun. She drew on the last of her strength to put on a burst of speed, as the wolves crested the hill then broke into howls when they spotted her.

  Chapter Two

  Logan found a motel not far from the convenience store, a single-story, rundown lodge with a few pickups in front of the blue-painted doors. A tired-looking woman at the reception desk told Logan the rates and handed him a key.

  Logan parked his bike in front of the room five and dumped his backpack and plastic grocery bags on the sagging bed. He locked the door and closed all the blinds, pressing a chair against the door’s blind to close the gap between it and the wall.

  He laid his police-issue 9mm on the bed and stacked the magazines he’d brought beside it. He’d picked up a fleece-lined jacket at a Target on the way out of L.A., knowing he’d have to start his hunt in the mountains, where he could run into snowstorms.

  Next to the gun he laid a sheathed knife his former partner Samantha Taylor had given him after she quit the police force. She worried about Logan, she said, and the blade, spelled by an air witch, would help him against demons and others resistant to conventional weapons. Samantha was a sweetheart, even though she was now a demon queen.

  Demon matriarch, Samantha would correct him. Only pretentious demons from the deeper hells make themselves out to be royalty.

  Right, Logan would say with a teasing grin.

  Logan had brought one more weapon with him, a Colt .45 revolver he’d bought from a shaman long ago. He’d never used it beyond target shooting at a range to keep in practice, and he always stored it unloaded.

  He loaded it now. Logan had to wear leather gloves to slide the bullets into the chambers, because the bullets were pure silver.

  When Logan had been Packmaster up in the wilds of Minnesota, he’d never had to put down a werewolf. They’d obeyed his every command because they’d known that if they disobeyed, Logan would take them to face the mercy of the pack leader. And if the wolves were afraid of Logan, they were downright terrified of Matt Lewis.

  Logan’s job had been to enforce Matt’s decrees as well as overall werewolf law. Logan had worn a sword with a silver blade, which he’d kept safely in its leather sheath—the quiet threat of the enforcer.

  He’d never had to use either the sword or the silver bullets. No wolf except Matt had ever challenged Logan.

  When Logan had left the pack, he’d turned in the sword, which would be handed to the next Packmaster. But he’d kept the gun and the bullets. Werewolves, no matter that they were life-magic creatures and perceived by the public at large as “good guys,” were still effing dangerous.

  Logan slid his collection of weapons into various holsters strapped to his body. He pulled on the fleece-lined jacket, tucked the sheathed knife into his boot, and left, locking the room behind him. He shoved the empty grocery sacks into his saddle bags, started up his bike, and rolled out of the parking lot.

  Logan returned to the convenience store from which Nadia had phoned, then followed her scent up a side road that led into the foothills, away from the highway. He turned onto a narrow dirt road, going slowly, the shadows under
the trees thick.

  When he decided he was far enough from civilization, Logan stopped the motorcycle and killed the engine. He concealed the bike behind a clump of brush, then he took a trowel from his saddlebag and dug a hole to hide his weapons, carefully wrapping them in the plastic grocery bags before he covered them with dirt.

  Logan straightened up and slid off his coat, flinching when the sharp cold cut through his shirt. He’d gotten spoiled in Los Angeles, where March could be merely cool, while up in these elevations, the mountains clung to winter.

  Logan stripped, folded his clothes into another plastic bag, and buried everything among leaves and branches. Before his shivering got too bad, he stood, stilled his mind, and willed the wolf to come.

  Legends said that werewolves changed only at the full moon, and at that time, they shifted whether they liked it or not. The rest of the time, Weres lived as perfectly normal humans, no teeth and claws.

  Those were fairy tales.

  Wolves did have to change at least once during the full moon or risk going insane—the theory was that fighting and mating instincts rose and ebbed with the moon’s cycle, peaking when the moon was fullest. If the wolf wanted to take over on nights of the full moon, it was best to let it.

  But Weres had evolved over the centuries just like any other species. The ones who could change at will, in whatever phase of the moon, had survival advantage, while those who changed only when their wolves compelled them to slowly died out.

  Logan’s body grew more powerful as his limbs changed, brute strength and instinct overtaking cautious intelligence. It was more than just the sensation of sprouting fur and claws—Logan felt his entire being disappearing into the beast, whose sense of smell and hearing far outstripped the human Logan’s. Logan didn’t lose his human thoughts and knowledge, but he tucked them away, keeping them from interfering with the wolf.