Hunter's Salvation (4 page)

“Everything okay, ma'am?”

The voce was low and deep, too close for comfort, in her opinion, but she didn't edge away. But she wanted to. Badly. Lifting her lashes, she looked to the side and found a man standing there, wearing a suit that easily cost a couple of grand. He was good-looking, in a cold way, but he had dead eyes. Those eyes made something inside her start to hum, but there was no power coming from him.

A player in the game, maybe, but not one of the masters. She'd worry about pawns later.

Forcing a smile, she nodded. “Just fine, thank you.”

“This is your first night up here?”

“Yes,” she murmured, closing her hand around her glass of wine and shifting on her stool so that she could face the man in front of her—and get a better look at the other patrons. “Lovely place. So much more…elegant…than the scene downstairs.”

He arched a pale brow. His hair was so blond, it was nearly white. Very blond—even paler than her own. “Yes. Well, the scene downstairs is for those who like to play with our lifestyle. Up here—this is for those who actually want to live it. Does that include you, Miss…?”

“Ballard. Jennifer Ballard,” Jess supplied, smiling a little more. She hoped it looked coy and secretive. Probably did, though the damned smile felt ridiculous on her face. “Games have their time and place.”

“Don't they?” He held out a hand and Jess placed hers in its, maintaining her smile even when the chill of his flesh seemed to freeze her through and through. Definitely one of the pawns—he played his own sort of games, and he liked them. Games that involved a lot of pain, a lot of blood.

Her psychic sense wasn't that strong, but this was clear enough. There was a very real evil inside this man.

“My name is Nate. If there's anything you need…” His lashes lowered, and a smile curved his lips. “Anything at all, do let me know.”

He lifted her hand to his lips. The press of his lips to the back of her hand seemed to burn her like acid. She wanted to go wash his touch away. Preferably in a vat of bleach. Instead she lowered her head in a nod and murmured, “Thank you.”

Nate let go of her hand and looked at the man behind the bar. Jess had checked out the bartender earlier. Big and buff, with gold-streaked brown hair that looked a little too perfect to be natural, and muscles that gleamed under the soft lights. “This is Xeke, Ms. Ballard. Xeke, you take good care of Ms. Ballard, now. If you need anything or if you want him to show you around, just say the word.”

The shirtless piece of eye candy nodded and looked at Jess, his lips curling in a smile that promised a world of pleasure. But for some reason, she suspected he'd rather dole out pain. And not the sweet kind that happened when the line blurred a little between pleasure and pain.

No. He wanted to give out real pain, and the more his partner screamed, the more he'd enjoy it.

She wasn't letting Xeke show her a damn thing about Debach.

 

O
KAY,
that
one didn't belong here.

Didn't matter that she was wearing the right clothes. A tight black leather skirt that went down to her ankles, slit up the back nearly to her firm, round little ass. As she had taken a stool at the bar, the slit revealed more leather under her skirt, boots that went up and up. Her vest, yet more leather, zipped up the front, and she was either naked under it or wore a very low-cut bra. Vax was betting on the former.

She wore a thick band of hammered silver around her right upper arm, drawing his eye to the well-toned muscles and the pale skin there. The thick red hair was twisted into one of those funny knots with two sticks poked through it.

Nothing about her clothing made her stand out from any other woman there.

But her eyes did.

She looked too wary, too watchful.

And pissed. Although most others wouldn't pick up on it, that woman was riding on a wave of fury. She'd be lucky if it didn't get her killed.

Vax Matthews studied the redhead with cynical eyes for a long moment before he filed away her face. One of several, an innocent who was way out of her league—he'd have his hands full making sure they didn't get hurt while he took care of the problem here.

Okay,
problems
. Only a couple, though. And he was irritated as hell that he'd felt the need even to address them.

It had been nearly two weeks since Vax had felt the call that took him away from his home. After speaking with his foreman, letting Jackson “Buck” Buckner know he'd be gone an unspecified amount of time, Vax had tossed a few essentials into a backpack and hit the road.

The road had led him to Indianapolis, Indiana.

Indianapolis was smack-dab in the middle of no-man's-land, as far as Hunters went. No Master had felt drawn here, so it was without formal protection. It was patrolled by Hunters on an irregular basis, when one of them felt the call.

Like the call that had led
him
here. Except he shouldn't feel the damned call. He'd left the Hunters behind years ago. Now if he could just convince whatever it was that kept sending him on these little rescue missions, he'd be a lot happier. Left to his own devices, all alone out on his ranch where he didn't have to deal with anybody.

Well, the ranch hands were always around, but most of them had grown up knowing the Matthews bunch were a weird group of people. It was a rumor that Vax had started when he'd first settled in the area nearly eighty years ago. Every few decades, he disappeared and didn't return for years, long enough for a new “Matthews” to have grown up and matured, or for a long-lost relative to come home to claim the estate after the previous owner had passed away unexpectedly.

Wouldn't be too long before he had to disappear again for a while. Buck had been around nearly ten years. Vax was starting to see signs of age on his weathered face, which meant that sooner or later somebody might start to wonder why Vax hadn't done any aging.

But he couldn't even think about that problem until he'd solved this one.

Maybe he should just pass it on, tell somebody about the club and the general bad vibe he kept getting. It wasn't as if this was his life any more.

There were a couple of Masters in the general area. One in Chicago; one in Tennessee; and Excelsior wasn't that far. He could have just sent a message to any of those places, and the problem would be addressed. He could climb on his bike, and before he made it even halfway home, somebody else would be all over the club.

Except he couldn't ignore the burn in his gut any more than he could ignore the urge to breathe. “Should have just stayed home,” he mused as he stared into his half-empty tumbler of whiskey.

It hadn't been that bad a few hundred miles away. Vax knew he could have ignored the call. Sooner or later, the need would reach for another Hunter, a willing one. As he had drawn closer to Indiana, though, the burn in his gut had gotten worse. By the time he'd hit Indianapolis, the burn was so bad that it was almost making him sick, and he knew he'd done the right thing by answering.

Walking by this club had been like feeling the cold finger of death run down his spine.

People had died because of somebody in that place. More would die. Unless someone acted.

And that someone, it seemed, would have to be Vax. Time was running short for at least one person in there. The black stink of death clung to the place, and somewhere in there, death was ready to wrap her shroud around some innocent soul.

Or relatively innocent, considering what sort of club he was in.

It would happen tonight. He was the only Hunter close enough to act.

From the corner of his eye, he saw somebody staring at him, and he lifted his head, looking the man square in the eye. Muscle, plain and simple. Somebody hired to make sure no undesirables entered Debach. He wore a suit that cost close to two thousand bucks, easy, and Vax imagined that under normal circumstances the hired muscle was good at his job. He hadn't ever had to deal with somebody like Vax, though.

A slight smile curled his lips as their eyes locked. The guy had a head like a cinderblock, but still, it took only a minute to pierce through the dense shields. Vax wasn't psychic. He wasn't using psychic coercion to make the man walk away, and he wasn't brainwashing him the way a vampire would.

No, what Vax used was magick. Plain and simple. There was a flare of heat low in Vax's spine as he concentrated. The man's eyes glowed for one brief second. And then there was blankness. He turned around and walked away, his gait stiff, disjointed. He paused a few feet later, reaching up to rub at his temple. Some time late tonight, or early tomorrow, he would have vague memories of a dark-haired man who didn't belong in the club. He'd remember that he had been going to say something to him.

Just like the man at the door, and the woman who'd offered to get him a drink, a companion…Not one person would remember seeing Vax here until he was long gone. And not one of them would have a useful memory.

Once he'd taken care of whoever was in danger, Vax would make a quick stop by the security room and take care of the security tapes for tonight. It would be as though he'd never been there.

If his mark would just
move
.

So far he didn't know who he was here to save. He could sense power, but it was all tainted. Too often, places like these drew the young gifted. They often felt like they didn't belong, even if they didn't understand
why
. Eclectic lifestyles appealed to a lot of them, and usually they were safe outlets. But every once in a while, the darker things in the world used places like sex clubs or goth clubs as trolling grounds, looking for those gifted, unaware people.

But Vax sensed no young witch or shifter on the verge of coming into his or her power. He sensed no vampires, either. None of the people he'd seen so far had any unnatural sort of blackness lingering near.

Whoever death was looking for was hidden from Vax.

The only one that seemed to stand out to him was the redhead.

It could be her, he supposed. His eyes kept drifting back to her against his will. Could be her…

She wasn't exactly the kind of woman he usually went for. She was long and lean—he usually went for soft and curvy. Her eyes were cool and unreadable. For some odd reason, he couldn't feel anything from her, but he did have an odd, almost disconnected sense of grief. Something sad, angry, and full of pain.

Maybe it was that complicated mess that made him keep checking her out, or he might just be staring because he liked the look of her. Vax couldn't tell.

“Been out of the game too long,” he muttered. He emptied his whiskey and tapped his finger against the edge of the glass as one of the female servers walked by. She wore nothing more than a dog collar around her slender throat, a white leather G-string, and a sweet, almost vacant smile. She took his glass, returned with a fresh drink, and left him without saying a word.

As she walked away, he caught sight of faint red stripes across her buttocks.

The only thing that kept him from exploding was the haze of sexual satisfaction he could sense inside her. Whatever had been done to her had been consensual. So, as much as it bothered him, he would leave that one alone.

He was going to have his hands full dealing with the real problems. He didn't need to take ones on that were problems in his mind but not in the minds of those he'd try to rescue.

Damn, were there problems. Even after he dealt with the one in mortal danger, there were way too many victims in this place.

Vax had set one foot inside Debach, and that was all it had taken for his stomach to revolt. Visions had assailed him, women and men alike on their knees, blood running in rivulets down their torsos, whips slicing through the air, the heavy power that came from blood and sex.

And screams. People screaming.
Kids
screaming. Begging for help. Begging for release. Begging for pleasure. Begging for death.

It was warped, how deeply entwined pleasure, danger, pain, and death were inside these walls. Seeking one could mean attaining all. It should have had people running away screaming, but instead they were packed outside the door three and four deep, just
waiting
to get inside.

Most of them had no idea what they were getting into. Innocents came looking for some sort of thrill, and they got pulled into something too powerful for them to understand, and became so lost they might never find their way back.

Some of them had lost more than their innocence because of this place.

Some had lost their lives.

 

A
S
Nathaniel Metcalf passed the bar, he met Xeke's gaze. He glanced towards the redhead with a cocked brow. Xeke's only response was a flicker of his lashes, but Nate had complete faith that Xeke would watch the woman.

She didn't belong here. Oh, she might be fun for the entertainment the club provided, but she wouldn't be the kind they could pay to be silent. It was in her wide-set blue eyes, in the way she lifted her chin and met his gaze head-on.