Hunter's Prey Read online

  Praise for the writing of Kit Tunstall

  Hunter’s Prey

  Agent Shaun O’Grady thought vampires were just beasts in need of extermination. Boy, do Armand and Foster prove her wrong! Those sexy master vamps proceed to show her a thing or three about their kind, starting with the fallacy that they’re definitely not cold-blooded. Steamy ménage scenes and a touching story make this one worth the read!

  -- Jet Mykles, author of Dark Elves 1: Taken (Loose Id)

  Hunter’s Prey is one of those books you pick up to read with plenty of cold drinks, an ice pack, and your toys at the ready. I was riveted from the first exciting page and closed the file with a satisfied smile. Shaun, Armand, and Foster were lovingly detailed and believable. I'll never look at my favorite dessert, Bananas Foster, without smiling. Kit Tunstall has done it again.

  -- Lena Austin, author of Sex World: Assassin (Loose Id)

  A riveting tale from beginning to end. Ms. Tunstall definitely proves that three's company in this steamy romance.

  -- Eve Vaughn, author of Blood Brothers: GianMarco’s Muse (Loose Id)

  HUNTER’S PREY

  Kit Tunstall

  www.loose-id.com

  Warning

  This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

  * * * * *

  This book is rated:

  For substantial explicit sexual content, graphic language, violence, and situations that some readers may find objectionable (multiple partners).

  Hunter’s Prey

  Kit Tunstall

  This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by

  Loose Id LLC

  1802 N Carson Street, Suite 212-29

  Carson City NV 89701-1215

  www.loose-id.com

  Copyright © May 2005 by Kit Tunstall

  Excerpt of Maslow’s Needs copyright April 2005 by Sheri Gilmore

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared in any form, including, but not limited to printing, photocopying, faxing, or emailing without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC.

  ISBN 1-59632-085-0

  Available in Adobe PDF, HTML, MobiPocket, and MS Reader

  Printed in the United States of America

  Editor: Jill Shearer

  Cover Artist: Scott Carpenter

  www.loose-id.com

  Chapter One

  “Nervous, O’Grady?” asked Torres, Shaun’s mentor and her partner for this mission.

  Shaun looked up from the sights of her rifle. “No, Torres.” She aimed for cool professionalism, but her tone betrayed a hint of a squeak. To distract herself, she checked the alignment of the sights once again. Was she really going in there with the sole purpose of eliminating the necros?

  Torres shook his head, whipping strands of dark hair over his olive-toned face. When he spoke, the toothpick clamped between his lips barely moved. “Listen, it’s normal, okay? This is your first time going on a real mission against the necros. Just remember to not let your fear interfere with your job.”

  “Yes, sir.” Shaun was more concerned with her doubts interfering than fear overwhelming her. For months, ever since one of her sisters joined a group fighting for the rights of necros and began haranguing Shaun about the Agency, the question of whether or not this was a noble way to spend her life had festered in her mind. Finally, she had decided the only way to put the quandary to rest was to go on a mission, surrender to training, and silence the voice in the back of her brain once and for all.

  He clapped her on the shoulder. “You’ll do fine. Aim for the heart, brain, or spinal column, and you’ll put ’em down.”

  Shaun forced a confident smile, wishing the nausea churning in her stomach would disappear before they entered the mansion. Three vans that had conveyed agents from the Necro sapien Containment Agency lined the high-walled perimeter and gate barring the walkway to the mansion. The lead van blocked the gate, keeping it from opening more than a few inches, allowing just enough room for the men and women to slip through the wrought-iron gate, but not allowing an easy escape for any of the necros who might be too young to fly.

  Once again, she checked the chamber of her rifle, reassured by the sight of the gleaming .50-caliber silver rounds. Silver wouldn’t kill a necro, but it slowed them down enough to allow an agent to make a second shot or lop off their head, if the first strike hadn’t hit a vital area. She repeated that crisply in her mind, reviewing her training.

  Six years of training, she realized with a start. Six years of her life had gone into becoming an agent, of working to be one of the elite who tracked down the necros and made the world a safer place for humans. Everything came down to tonight. It was her first live mission, and though she had been through countless simulations, Shaun knew it would be different once they were in the mansion. She hoped this assignment would be simple and straightforward, validating her career choice and dedication to the Agency’s cause.

  She cast assessing eyes upon the towering structure, reminiscent of some kind of spooky castle straight out of a gothic novel. After being hunted for so long, she was surprised the necros still clung to their old habitats and ways. The mansion, perched high on a bluff on the central California coastline, might as well have had a neon sign advertising it as a vampire haven. The crumbling façade, single remaining spire, and air of gloom gave it away as such, just as surely as the cold readouts on their thermal imaging pinpointed more than twenty necros holed up inside, waiting for sunset.

  “Move out.” Chief Gordie didn’t bother to keep his command quiet. Any necro older than a couple of decades already knew the squad had assembled outside. They could smell human blood from three blocks away, even if the team’s beating hearts hadn’t given away their presence. This mission wasn’t about stealth. It was about efficient extermination.

  She tried to shrug off her squeamishness now that the time was at hand to actually kill necros. They were dangerous and unpredictable, and they needed to be eliminated. Only then would society return to the way it had been once upon a time, before Dr. Stoker proved the existence of necros. Knowing that wasn’t much help to calm her nerves, because Shaun had never killed anything. That was a detriment to this job.

  “They’re already dead. You’re giving them eternal rest,” she whispered under her breath as she fell in line beside Torres. She double-checked the cinch at her waist. The lightweight nylon vest held all the weapons necessary for close-quarters combat with a necro: garlic spray, holy water, a crucifix, and a Beretta filled to capacity with silver rounds. The sheath on the side secured a lightweight katana sword she had opted to use for the unpleasant task of cutting off the heads once the necros were down. She had trained so long with the sword that it was an extension of her left hand when she held it.

  She followed the line of agents moving toward the mansion in a slow jog, the rifle a solid, reassuring weight across her arm. Shaun glanced at the sun, burning high in the sky, and took confidence from it. Only a master vampire would have no fear of the burning rays, and intelligence didn’t indicate there was an MP with this covey, so even if their team didn’t successfully eliminate all the necros, they would be forced
to stay in the mansion until another squad arrived.

  At the front door of the mansion, one pane of the French window was completely broken out. A spider had taken up residence and built an intricate web in the abandoned space. The ugly creature clung serenely to its web as one of the agents kicked the door, which revealed its age by splintering on contact with the heavy combat boot.

  As everyone else around her did the same, Shaun turned on the miner’s light on her helmet and activated the lights on each shoulder of her vest. The necros preferred pitch-black, and any illumination she could get might mean the difference between finding one before it found her first.

  Torres tapped her shoulder with his rifle, giving her a wide grin around the toothpick, now showing fraying from his teeth. “Kill ’em all, Rookie.”

  She grinned in return, ignoring the way her stomach turned over when she took her first step into the darkness sheltering the necros. The silence surprised her. Not the furtive silence of someone hiding, but rather the silence of a tomb. Truly, it felt like nothing living moved in the space, except for the agents.

  With cautious steps, she pressed onward, conscious of the others fanning out, each team following their assigned pattern of movement. Having Torres off to her left reassured her but didn’t hold back all her fear. Sweaty palms forced Shaun to hold the rifle in one hand while blotting the other hand against her vest. After repeating the process, she grasped the rifle in a secure hold once more.

  The darkness seemed to swallow her whole as she moved deeper into the house. The lights on her helmet and jacket did nothing to cut through the thick gloom. It seemed almost supernatural. Surely, the black shutters on the windows couldn’t account for this degree of obscurity?

  A scream from the opposite direction of their location broke Shaun’s concentration. It sounded fully human, and she had to resist the urge to turn around to flee. No way she was going to let fear ruin her career, not after spending six years training for this.

  A door appeared out of the shadows on Shaun’s right. Her stomach clenched, and sweat trickled down her back. With a jerk of his head, Torres indicated they would investigate. He held up his hand while communicating with operations. “Torres here. Do you get any readings from the room O’Grady and I are about to enter?”

  “Negative,” said the cool female voice on the other end. “The insulation in the rooms is preventing our portable scanner from operating optimally. We have a call in to the Agency to reposition the satellite, but it’s going to take thirty minutes.”

  With a shake of his head, Torres moved toward the door, gesturing for Shaun to keep close. In light of what they were soon to face, the rifle felt too flimsy as she gripped it firmly, falling back to allow Torres to take point. He tested the knob, and when it yielded, he shoved open the door quickly, falling back to the side of the doorway, rifle extended.

  Shaun surveyed the carnage of what had once been an elegant sitting room, decorated in Victorian style, hissing with disgust from what she saw in the illumination provided by a single Tiffany-style lamp on an ornate stand. Blood on the walls glistened like the grotesque medium of a madman painting in a psych ward. The dark crimson shade created a nauseatingly appropriate backdrop for the splintered furniture, broken in what appeared to be a feeding frenzy. A pile of remains on a colorful Persian rug weren’t easily identified, but strictly on instinct, Shaun knew they were human. Any elegance in the room had disappeared when it became a dumping ground for the remains of the necros’ prey. Finding some of her doubts squelched by proof of the bestial nature of necros, she forced down the bile churning in her stomach and followed her partner inside, knowing they had to clear each room before moving on.

  Her boots squelched when she stepped onto the carpet, and she looked down reflexively, gagging at the pool of blood she had stepped into. Pool, hell -- more like a lake. Since the necros wouldn’t have wasted that much, it could only have come from multiple feeding happening at once.

  Echoing her thoughts, Torres said in a low voice, “Must have been a feast.”

  “Their last meal.” Anger overwhelmed her fear as she recognized the remains of a pre-teen amid the pile of bodies stacked haphazardly near the fireplace when she moved closer.

  By focusing on her mental training, Shaun managed to ignore the rest of the bloodbath around her and concentrate on searching the room. She walked nearer the fireplace, aiming her rifle up, and firing off three shots. The narrow, dark space would have been a perfect hiding place for a necro, but none hid there. If one had, it would have crashed into the hearth the moment a silver bullet penetrated its flesh. The excruciating pain wouldn’t have allowed it to maintain its mastery over gravity.

  They finished looking in the rest of the nooks and crannies, and then Torres directed her toward the door. He followed behind her, pausing to sprinkle garlic water on the knob and spray paint a large red X on the door, indicating the room was clear. Should any necros try to take refuge there, the garlic water would be a nasty surprise. Thanks to Agency chemists, an added chemical would interact with the coldness of a necro should they touch it, turning the doorknob phosphorescent blue to let the agents know the room might have been compromised.

  They went ten feet before discovering another door. Torres again gestured he would take point, and Shaun didn’t argue. As a rookie, it was her duty to defer to his judgment. And she wasn’t eager to go blindly into the room. Having the scanners fail was a blow to their efficiency and placed all the agents in greater danger.

  He moved low and quick, checking the knob. Upon finding it locked, Torres used his rifle to blast the door. As it swung open from the kick he applied, he moved inside, hunkered into a crouch. Shaun was right behind him.

  An inhuman shriek pierced the air. Two necros rushed out of the darkness, fangs bared, and hands grasping with obvious need. They lunged, and Shaun grunted, falling to the floor under the beast’s impact. It slashed at her face, barely missing her eyes, and she screamed. The creature drew back, its strangely elongated fangs protruding obscenely.

  Upon closer examination, as she brought up her rifle to block the necros, Shaun realized the necro’s fangs weren’t extra long. The flesh on its face had shrunk, just as it had everywhere else. It looked more monster than human in its current state of starvation. Although she had seen victims of their feedings with her own eyes, this vampire’s emaciated state indicated it had not received blood for quite a while, or had subsisted on only a small quantity.

  The necro snarled at her, trying to wrench away the rifle, so it could tear into her throat. She forced aside her clinical examination, reminding herself a starving necro was even more dangerous than one who fed regularly and was in good shape. The scent of her blood must be driving it mad.

  Her fingers slipped on the rifle, and the talons of the necro dug into her hand. Shaun yelped and released her hold on her gun. The necro fell forward, unprepared for the slackening of her resistance. Even as it geared up to feast on her neck, she was reaching for the sprayer of garlic water. Her fingers were nimble, grasping the sprayer to bring it close to the necro’s eyes. The thing was oblivious, its fangs brushing against her carotid just as she let loose a steady stream. The creature’s terrible screams filled the room as it writhed in reaction to the pain. Distracted and in agony as the necro was, she found it easy to roll away from her attacker to gain her feet.

  Automatically, she scooped up her rifle and turned to look for her partner, freezing when she saw him battling a necro in better shape than her opponent had been. While scrawny, this one didn’t appear to have been starved to the extent of the other one.

  Taking a step closer, she leveled the rifle at the necro’s head, able to identify this one as female because she was in better shape than her companion, with enough meat left on her bones to reveal withered breasts and slight curves. “Let him go.”

  A cold laugh escaped through her gaping maw, but that was the only response she gave. Her eyes never wavered from Torres’s pulse pounding
steadily in his throat, and her hands remained firm around his wrists, holding him to the floor with what seemed like a minimal expenditure of effort.

  “Shoot it.”

  At his words, her finger tightened on the trigger. She made sure the red dot was centered on the necro’s head. Everything was in place, without the necro paying any attention to her. Now was the perfect time to shoot, before the woman pinning her partner to the floor conquered her bloodlust and came after Shaun.

  Shaun tried to depress the trigger, but her hand trembled. Her finger slipped off, moistened with her sweat. She blinked and repositioned on the guard, ready to fire. Except she couldn’t take the shot. Mouth dry, Shaun tried again, but found her finger wouldn’t cooperate.

  “What the fuck’re you waiting for? Kill this fucking cunt.”

  His harsh words shocked Shaun back into action, and she managed to fire the rifle, but didn’t compensate for the kick. The shot angled away from the necro, causing the bullet to lodge in her back instead of taking out the back of her head as she had planned.

  With a howl that was part rage and part pain, she reeled away from Torres, frantically scrabbling at the wound, as if trying to tear out the lump of silver that was no doubt burning through her skin.

  As if trapped in molasses, Shaun reacted slowly. Before she could reach Torres, he gained his feet and decapitated the necro with his sword in one smooth motion. For a moment, she stared at the head as it rolled toward her, stopping inches from her feet. The expression on the severed head was one of terror, and she turned to throw up on the carpet. Confusion filled her upon seeing its fear. If the necro feared death, was it really dead? Did the transformation mimicking death necros underwent classify them as dead if they still walked around? Would they be afraid of their existence ending if they weren’t alive, by some measure?