Hearts of the Hunted
Read Hearts of the Hunted Online
Authors: Storm Moon Press
Tags: #urban fantasy, #crime, #suspense, #lesbian
Hearts of the
Hunted
Kathleen Tudor
Published by Storm Moon Press LLC at
Smashwords
Copyright © 2012, Kathleen Tudor. All rights
reserved.
Publisher's Note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents either are the product of the authors'
imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely
coincidental.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal
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other people. If you would like to share this book with another
person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you
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respecting the hard work of these authors.
Cover art by Nathie
http://www.creationwarrior.net/
ISBN-13: 978-1-937058-70-8
ISBN-10: 1-937058-70-0
Table of
Contents
Chapter 1
I was naked on the city streets, but thanks to my particular
skills at camouflage, no one gave me a second look—or even a first
one. The Transformation takes us all differently; I've seen some
people who grew horns or fangs or turned awesome colors, but while
those things may be useful in their own way, they don't help with
blending in. And in the Midwest, where bigotry and fear rule the
day, blending in with the normals is usually a matter of life or
death.
That's what makes me a
perfect agent of the Underground Railroad—I can blend in anywhere.
I slid down the sidewalk slowly, hugging the walls to avoid being
touched or bumped as I moved invisibly through the city. I have
never been able to figure out if my skin refracts light or changes
colors or something else I haven't even thought of, but what I do
know is that when I want to hide, no one can see me unless I move
too quickly.
When I got to the fire
escape on the back of the building I wanted, I let myself pick up
the pace. Even when I'm moving at normal speed like this, I'm just
a blur, and even if someone happened to be looking at the fire
escape as I was going up, they weren't going to do anything about a
little blur in their vision across the street.
Once I was on the roof, I
grabbed my waterproof backpack from where it had been stashed on
top of a maintenance shed, chinning myself up on the edge to reach
it and scraping my elbow on the way down. I thought of how Riley
would have scolded me for the way I take chances, but Riley was
long gone, retired to Canada three years ago, and I'd taken up the
job he'd left behind.
I hurried into my clothes
and reappeared as I carried my backpack with me down the stairs and
into the building.
Janelle Thomas was the
wealthy young widow of some banker, and was generally assumed to be
an idler who spent her days puttering about her string of
apartments and condos, wasting her money and her time. My friends
and I knew her as a supporter of the Underground Railroad that
helped moved Transformed people and families across the border to
Canada, where they would be safe.
"Camille!" she exclaimed,
jumping up as I let myself in. I could pick her lock almost as fast
as I could use a key, but she'd given me one anyway as a matter of
courtesy. "Where have you been?"
I sighed and dropped onto
the couch. "Meeting with a bait family," I grumbled.
"Oh, God! Were you
followed?"
I gave her a look but
declined to comment, and she blushed. "I showed up half an hour
early, which was obviously way more than they were expecting,
because they actually drove this little family to the meeting point
and gave them one last briefing right there in the parking lot." I
rolled my eyes, but it was this level of sheer stupidity that was
why the Railroad hadn't been crushed already, so I owed them some
gratitude.
"I'm sorry, Camille, but
this is just going to happen sometimes. It's not like we can put an
ad out in the newspaper." There were certain people out there who
didn't care one way or the other, or who just hated violence, and
they could be paid to keep an eye and an ear out for anyone trying
to get away, and pass their names to us. But it was hard to find
the ones who needed us, and there were plenty of people who had
been Transformed but who had no intention of ever moving away from
the places they'd lived their entire lives.
"I think we may need to
stop operating here, or at least take a break. We got a few
families out last year, and things seem to have settled," I said.
There were other places to play hero. Or maybe Riley had been
right, and it was time to just mind our own business and let people
take care of themselves.
Janelle opened her mouth
to answer, but a knock on the door distracted both of us. I glanced
at her, and she shook her head slowly—not expected. Okay. I waited
a few seconds, peeked through the peephole, and saw a goddess. Her
hair was strawberry blonde and fell in red-gold waves just short of
curly, framing clear green eyes and a pale face that glanced
nervously up and down the hall.
My mouth went dry, and my
stomach did a highly annoying flip as I opened the door. "Can I
help you?"
"I'm, uh... I need some
help with the..." she lowered her voice, "with the
Railroad?"
I pulled her inside,
slammed her against the wall, and kicked the door shut in an
instant, my hand flying to bolt the door before I slammed the woman
against the wall once again, keeping her off balance. I pressed one
arm across the beauty's throat and heard the click behind me that
meant that Janelle had chambered a round in her Glock.
"Who are you with?" I
demanded, my voice too cold and hard for only twenty years. It made
me sad to hear myself like that, but not sad enough to let up on
the lovely spy. And she was lovely. Just a hair shorter than me,
she was probably at least fifteen pounds heavier, curvy and soft in
all the right places, where I was rail thin.
"You can put that down,"
she said, gesturing weakly to Janelle. Her already-pale green eyes
went almost transparent as she spoke. "It's okay; I'm not here to
hurt anyone. You can let me go." She looked so harmless and
innocent, and I felt bad for pinning her like that. I hoped I
hadn't left any ugly bruises on her beautiful skin. I felt myself
ease back from her and almost dropped my arm before instinct kicked
in and panic seized me.
"What are you doing to
me?" I demanded, shoving up against her again. It was harder to
concentrate, and I wanted to be gentle. Suddenly, I was unable to
ignore the way her body pressed against mine, and how soft her
breasts felt against my arm. I wanted to shift and press my body
closer to let her full breasts brush against my small ones. "Shit.
What are you doing?"
"I'm—I'm sorry. I guess...
I can make people trust me." Her eyes went back to light green, and
I lost the urge to hug her instead of throttle her. "I didn't mean
to. You scared me."
I sighed and stepped back.
She'd proven herself to be Transformed, and now that the whammy was
off, she did still seem relatively harmless, at least physically.
"My brother jumped out and yelled 'boo', and I vanished right in
front of my parents and the neighbor. They had to send me away to
save my life," I said.
"That's
terrible."
"That's being Transformed
in the Midwest. He had no way to know. How did you find us? This
place is supposed to be a secret."
She looked panicked and
choked. "I was raped, and he was—now I'm Infected."
I may have snarled. She
jumped and said, "Transformed. Sorry. I'm fucking new to this,
okay?" And then she started crying.
I turned helplessly to
Janelle, and she tossed me a look, and then put her gun away in a
lockbox in the end table drawer and came to lead the woman to the
couch. "I'll get you some tea," she said, setting a box of tissues
in front of the weeping girl. I shuffled uncomfortably until she
gave me another look and turned for the kitchen. Right! The old tea
ploy...
In the kitchen, she put a
kettle on and turned to me. "Thoughts?"
"She's definitely been
Transformed. I saw her eyes change, and she made me drop my
guard."
"Mine too. She must have a
range. Voice, maybe? I lowered my gun, and I swear I was two
seconds from pulling you off of her when you made her stop. How did
you break through it?"
"I was just scared. I've
been scared so much the past few years, and I have this instinct of
fighting or hiding. I guess it overrides pretty much everything.
But I still almost let her go. It was like... I wanted to protect
her."
"I don't like that she
found us." Janelle set out three mugs and dropped a tea bag in each
one.
"I don't either, but we
definitely can't just toss her out to tell everyone. They've never
been able to subvert one of us, Jan. Never. We just have to be
careful. If you see her eyes change, run, okay? Don't try to hurt
her; you'll never be able to. Just run."
The kettle whistled, and
Janelle poured the hot water over each teabag. I grabbed one and
let it sit for only a few seconds before pulling it out. I like my
tea weak and my coffee strong.
Back in the living room,
the weeping goddess seemed to have calmed down a bit. Janelle
pressed a mug into her hands, and she curled around it. She was
apparently one of those lucky women who didn't turn red and blotchy
when she cried. Instead, her cheeks seemed to brighten in her pale
face, and her eyes seemed like a darker shade of green, changing
like the sea. I sighed. She didn't even have to use her ability to
distract the fuck out of me.
"All right," Janelle said,
sitting back on the other end of the couch, "start from the
beginning. What happened to you?"
I took a seat on an
overstuffed chair facing them both and pulled my legs up under me.
The girl took the tea bag out of her mug and glanced around
helplessly before Janelle slid a coaster over for her to set it on.
Janelle gave me a mystified look, and I grinned; at least I wasn't
the only one who refused to let the tea steep.
"I'm Hannah," she said,
and her face wasn't the only thing undamaged by her crying. The
tears had left her voice deeper and just a touch rougher, like
black velvet over iron. I wanted to put my head in her lap and
close my eyes and listen to her forever. For a minute, I was afraid
that it was her ability, but her eyes were that same shade of
swirling, sea green. Shit.
"I was at the movies with
my best friend and her boyfriend, but they were making out the
entire time, and it pissed me off, so I made some excuse and
decided to walk home myself." She'd been talking fast, tripping
over herself, and she paused and took a deep breath, squeezing her
eyes shut. She took a sip of tea and started over, more slowly. "I
was walking home from the movies, alone. It was late, maybe 11?
This guy just stepped out in front of me and told me to stop. And I
did. It was so crazy. Then, he told me to come with him, and he
pulled me into the alley..." She looked up, tears falling again. "I
just did everything he told me to do. I was in a fog, and nothing
made sense until after he was gone.
"I went to the police, but
they couldn't even agree that it was really rape, and I couldn't
tell them anything anyway because it was all so fuzzy, and they
finally just told me to go. But there was this young cop; he caught
me before I got to the sidewalk. He slipped me this address and
told me he thought he knew what had happened and that the
Underground Railroad could help. I didn't want to come and see, but
it's been a week and strange things have been happening. People
listen to me when I'm focused on something, and they—they trust me.
Like you did. Do I—am I doing what he did to me?"