Hunting Ground

Charles rounded on his father, his resolve to quit fighting Bran on his decision to go to Seattle all but forgotten. “The Beast is coming, and you ask me that?”

“Who?” A

“Jean Chastel, the Beast of Gévaudan,” Charles told her. “He likes to eat his prey-and his prey is mostly human.”

“He stopped that,” Bran said coolly.

“Please,” Charles snapped, “don’t mouth something you don’t believe to me-it smells perilously close to a lie. The Beast was forced to stop killing openly, but a tiger doesn’t change his stripes. He’s still doing it. You know it as well as I do.” He could have pointed out other things-Jean had a taste for human flesh, the younger the better. But A

Bran conceded the point. “Yes. Almost certainly he is. But I’m not a helpless human, he won’t kill me.” He looked at Charles narrowly. “Which you know. So why do you think it will be dangerous?”

He was right. Take the Beast out of the picture, and it still made him ill to think of his father going. The Beast was the most obvious, provable danger.

“I just know,” Charles said, finally. “But it is your decision to make.” His gut clenched in anticipation of just how bad it was going to be.

“You still don’t have a logical reason.”

“No.” Charles forced his body to accept his defeat and kept his eyes on the floor.

His da looked out the little window where the mountains lay draped in winter white. “Your mother did that,” he said. “She’d make a statement without any real support at all, and I was supposed to just take her word for it.”

A

Bran smiled at her, then raised his cup toward the mountains. “I learned the hard way that she was usually right. Frustrating doesn’t come close to covering it.”

“So,” he said, turning his attention back to Charles. “They are on their way already, I can’t cancel it now-and it needs to be done. A

Relief flooded Charles with an abruptness that had him leaning against the countertop in sudden weakness, as the all-consuming sense of absolute and utter disaster slid away and left him whole. Charles looked at his mate.

“My grandfather would have loved to have met you,” he told her huskily. “He would have called you ‘She Moves Trees Out of His Path.’ ”

She looked lost, but his da laughed. He’d known the old man, too.

“He called me ‘He Who Must Run into Trees,’ ” Charles explained, and in a spirit of honesty, a need for his mate to know who he was, he continued, “or sometimes ‘Ru

“ ‘Ru

“Too stupid to fly,” murmured his father with a little smile. “That old man had a wicked tongue-wicked and clever, so it stuck until he dinged you with your next offense.” He tilted his head at Charles. “But you were a lot younger then-and I am not so solid an object as a tree. You’d feel better if you-”

A

His da smiled at her. “If you and A

“Yes.” Charles paused because there was something more, but the house was too busy with modern things for the spirits to talk to him clearly. Usually that was a good thing. When they got too demanding, he sometimes retreated to his office, where the computers and electronics kept them out entirely. Still, there was something in him that breathed easier now that his father had agreed not to go. “Not safe, but better. When do you want us in Seattle?”

TWO

“I love Seattle.” Krissy folded her arms around herself and spun in a circle. She looked up with a practiced little-girl grin, and her lover smiled down at her.

He reached out and tucked a gold curl behind her ear. “Shall we move here, princess? I could get you a condo that looks over the water.”

She thought about it and finally shook her head. “I’d miss New York, you know I would. No place has shopping like New York.”

“All right,” he said, his voice an indulgent purr. “But we can come here to play now and again if you like it.”

Krissy tilted her head and caught the rain in her mouth, a quick snap like a bat taking a bug out of the sky. “Can we play now?”

“Work before play,” said Ha

“Ivan,” Krissy coaxed, putting a hand on either side of his shirt and tugging him down so she could lick his lips. “Can’t we go play? We don’t have to work tonight, do we?”

He let her take his mouth, and when he raised his head, his eyes were hot. “Ha

It was raining again, but Jody had been raised in Eugene, where it only rained once a year-from January to December. Besides, he was a Pisces; water was his element.

He raised his face and let the rain wash down it. Practice had run a little late and the sun had set before he’d gotten out. The music had been good tonight; they’d all felt it. He pulled the sticks out of his back pocket and beat the air in a rhythm only he could hear. There was something he should change in that last measure…

He took the shortcut to his apartment-a dim little street barely wide enough for a car and a half. It wasn’t late, but there was no one around except for an older man and a girl who looked about sixteen. They were both drenched and hurried toward him.

“Excuse me,” said the man, “We’re visiting and seem to have gotten turned around. Do you know where the nearest restaurant is?” The coat he wore was expensive-wool, Jody thought-and he had a bright gold watch on his wrist that looked like it cost a bundle. The girl-as they got closer he was pretty sure that there was more than a generation between the old gent and the girl; maybe she was his granddaughter-was wearing four-inch heels that made her feet look tiny.

She caught him looking and enjoyed his admiration. He couldn’t help but smile back. She put her hand on his wrist, and said, “We need to find some food.” And her smile widened a little more, and he saw fangs.

Strange, he thought, she didn’t look like she belonged in the groups his ex-girlfriend had hung out with, where they all wore fangs and played that stupid game… not D &D, which was cool… something with vampires.

This girl wore a ponytail and looked more like Brit ney Spears than Vampirella. Her shoes were hot pink, and there wasn’t a piece of her clothing that was black.

He didn’t like it that his throat tightened in fear because she was wearing acrylic fangs.

“There’s a place a few blocks away,” he told her, twisting his wrist gently to get her to let go. “Serves Italian food. They have a great red sauce.”

She licked her lips and didn’t let go of his wrist. “I love red sauce.”

“Look,” he said, jerking his wrist free, “cut it out. That’s not fu

“No,” breathed the man, who had somehow gotten behind him while Jody had been talking to the girl. “Not fu

“Where is someplace private?” the old man asked after a little while. “Someplace we might play together for a while without anyone seeing us?”