Stalker of Shadows (SPECTR Series 3 Book 1) Read online

  John did have Kaniyar’s personal cell number. But she’d made it clear that was for emergencies only, and John wasn’t stupid enough to call the head of SPECTR because he was bored. Not when he was already on damn thin ice with her.

  The door onto the balcony overlooking Saint Charles slid open, and Gray stepped through.

  “You know, you could use the stairs like everyone else,” John said, swiveling his chair around. The local district chief had helped arrange for an apartment on Saint Charles Street, right in the Garden District, complete with furnishings. It wasn’t nearly as nice as the condo John had owned in Charleston, but he told himself the cramped space and dingy walls were fine, because he was sharing the space with the two people he loved most in the world.

  “This is more fun,” Gray said, closing the door behind him. One of the perks of the apartment was the enormous live oak whose branches reached almost to the roofline. Gray could come and go unseen, or even travel a fair distance across the city without ever having to touch the ground.

  “How was your night?” John asked.

  “Filled with mortal nonsense.” Etheric energy lapped against John in waves, prickling his sixth sense like static on his skin. Gray’s eyes were black as oil slicks, but lightning flashed within their depths, as though a distant storm brewed on a far-off horizon. His long black hair slithered and thrashed in an unfelt wind, and fangs flashed from behind his lips as he spoke. “We could be hunting demons, but Caleb prefers to tell absurd lies to foolish mortals.”

  Then he was gone, and Caleb rolled his brown eyes. “You just have no sense of humor.”

  John shook his head with a grin. Caleb had taken to New Orleans like a duck to water. Not only had their stay given him the chance to start painting again, but he’d insisted on getting a job as a vampire tour guide the moment they set foot in the city, even though they had an expense account courtesy of SPECTR.

  “Some guy spent half the night trying to tell me there’s no such thing as vampires.” Caleb dropped down on the couch and unlaced his boots. “And I’m wearing the fake fangs, so of course I’m leaning hard into the whole ‘are you sure?’ schtick. It was priceless.”

  John abandoned the computer in favor of taking the couch beside Caleb. An ache shot up the leg Drugoy had bitten, and he winced. It had only been a few months; surely the wound would stop hurting eventually. “I’m glad one of you is having fun.”

  “This is literally the best job I’ve ever had.” Finished with his shoes, Caleb flopped back and stuck his feet in John’s lap. “Gray would like you to know I’m subjecting him to torment beyond measure, however.”

  John peeled off Caleb’s socks and began to rub his feet. “You know, there are subtler jobs you could have taken. You’re supposed to be dead, after all.”

  Caleb’s grin lapsed into a more pensive look, and John wished he’d kept his mouth shut. “I guess. But Caleb Jansen was a possessed force of nature, guaranteed to make experienced SPECTR agents wet their pants. Michael Caleb Gris is just a dumbass in a pair of plastic fangs.” He bit his lip. “There was a woman tonight…I think she half-believed. She asked us to bite her.”

  “Oh.” John’s hands stilled.

  They hadn’t talked about what happened back in Charleston for a while now. What happened with Ericsson, and John’s reaction to it, had been settled between them even before they left. No point in opening up old wounds.

  “I gave her a jokey answer about not feeding on customers.” Caleb stared pensively in the direction of their tiny kitchen, as though not really seeing it. “I don’t know. It just made us feel…weird.”

  “Right. Understandable.” John resumed the foot rub. “Anything I can do?”

  Caleb shifted one foot, nudging John’s crotch lightly. “We wouldn’t say no to a distraction. If you’re up to it.”

  “Oh, I think I might be.” John let go of Caleb’s feet.

  Caleb draped one leg over the back of the couch and let the other fall open invitingly. John crawled up between his knees and stretched out on top of him. Gray’s energy crackled just beneath Caleb’s skin as they kissed.

  John let his hands roam, pausing to tweak Caleb’s nipple through the thin material of the t-shirt he wore. “It’s been, what, three weeks since we had to buy you a new wardrobe?” he teased. “That must be some kind of record.”

  Caleb twisted under him, rubbing their growing erections together. “Feel free to rip it off.”

  “Tempting, but no. I don’t miss shopping that much.”

  John sat back and shucked off the hoodie he’d been wearing, then the t-shirt beneath. Caleb did the same with his clothes, and John paused to admire. The soft light brushed shadows over lean muscle and slender torso, vanishing in the inky spill of Caleb’s long hair. Fucking gorgeous, and no wonder some woman had been hitting on him. Caleb never mentioned it, but it was probably a nightly occurrence on the days he worked.

  And he was all John’s.

  Caleb arched a brow. “What are you thinking?”

  “How lucky I am.”

  “Damn right. Now get those pants off.”

  They finished stripping, and Caleb dragged him back down. Hot skin rubbed against hot skin, and John slid his arms tight around his lover. Lovers, he corrected, because he felt Gray flash briefly to the surface, a shock of etheric energy crackling along John’s nerves, before sliding away.

  John never asked for one of them over the other. That was for them to negotiate, and it wasn’t as if they weren’t both present and aware at any given time.

  He buried his face in Caleb’s shoulder as they rutted against each other, breathing deep. Caleb smelled of soap and skin, underlain with a trace of ozone from Gray. John closed his eyes, concentrating on sensation: Caleb’s hips pressing up from beneath him, the slickness of precome on their bellies, the sudden, unexpected prick of claws on his back as Gray surfaced, before they disappeared again.

  He muffled a groan in Caleb’s hair as he came, then pulled back just enough to wrap his hand around Caleb’s cock. Caleb grunted and shoved into his grasp, then stiffened as hot spunk spilled between them.

  They cuddled together, bodies intertwined. Caleb nuzzled John’s shoulder. A moment later, he was gone, and Gray’s immense energy wrapped around John like a blanket.

  “This was an improvement over the rest of the evening,” Gray rumbled, his deep voice thrumming in John’s bones.

  John grinned. “Glad to hear it.”

  “Will we hunt soon?”

  The question didn’t come as a surprise. Gray was a great many things, but human would never be one of them. He was an apex predator with the instincts of one, and found all the little things humans did to fill the days at best boring, and at worst frustrating.

  John had learned the hard way not to ignore that fact. And for the last few months, while they traveled, it hadn’t been an issue.

  But it might become one now, so John spent a few hours each night scouring local news articles. “It’s probably nothing,” he said, “but there was an NHE attack outside the city, in one of the bayous. SPECTR agents responded of course, but from what I could tell, they didn’t find anything.”

  In theory, he could call District Chief Fontaine, who headed up SPECTR-NOLA. She was the only one in the local office who knew John was in the city, on classified business for Kaniyar. But she didn’t know about Gray. If John suddenly took interest in a case, Fontaine might assume it was linked to whatever Kaniyar had stationed them here for, and start pressing for answers.

  “So the demon is still out there,” Gray said, laser focused as always.

  “Presumably. I’m sure there are agents out looking for it, but they’ll have finished with the site itself by now. We can go out there tomorrow, if you want.”

  The scent would be faded, and they were unlikely to find anything the agents hadn’t, but hopefully it would satisfy some of Gray’s instincts. Over the months, John had developed an all new appreciation for the zoo keepers whose jo
bs it was to keep tigers and lions from getting bored.

  “Yes,” Gray said happily, and pressed a kiss to John’s cheek. “We will hunt this demon, and succeed where the mortals failed.”

  The ancient rougarou watches the mortal stumble out of the house, and its lips draw back from its teeth in a hungry snarl.

  Long ago, this was a place of great trees and silent water, of birds and alligators. Only the occasional mortal came here: hunters, fishers, those fleeing the cruelty of other mortals.

  The rougarou cannot control their minds, just as it cannot control the minds of the young rougarous. But it can manipulate their perception, conceal itself from them in order to either flee or feed.

  Over time, more and more mortals came here: cutting the trees, putting in roads, raising levees, and building houses. Too many for it to manipulate, so it slunk away, farther into the vanishing wilderness.

  The great storm took most of the houses; only patches of concrete and the shattered stumps of docks remain to mark them still. It took the trees as well, when the levees held in the ocean that had overtopped them, the saltwater poisoning what the wind had not scoured.

  The mortals returned, of course. Someday likely all of this will be houses again. But for now, there is only this single, isolated dwelling, surrounded by scrubby trees and marsh grass. It had seemed a good place, a safe place, to blaze the trail the other rougarous would follow.

  But now this mortal is stumbling across the yard, its movements halting, strange. And its thoughts…

  The mortal host who summoned the rougarou so very many years ago had a great gift. He saw the thoughts of others, and his sister their hearts, and together they tried to help those around them.

  But those closest to them reacted in fear, not gratitude. In hatred. The words still linger in the rougarou’s borrowed memories: “Children of the devil…renounce Satan…unnatural…should’ve drowned them at birth…have to kill them now, turn aside God’s wrath.”

  Those same sorts of thoughts boil out now from the mortal approaching the edge of the woodland. From the outside, he looks so harmless: an old man, white-haired and ruddy-cheeked, blue eyes gone rheumy with age. But like an ancient tree infected by rot, darkness festers beneath his skin. Hatred for one of his own blood, shrouded in confusion and strange seemings.

  Old rage scalds the rougarou’s heart. It rises up, revealing itself in the moonlight, a snarl vibrating in its chest. The man’s eyes widen in terror, but his legs lock in place, as though he cannot run.

  He doesn’t scream; the only sounds are the snap of bone and rip of flesh. When the rougarou draws back, its fury abated, a tiny gasp escapes the mortal.

  The rougarou has not spoken mortal words in over a hundred years. But it remembers them. “I will not eat tainted meat such as yourself.” It leans in closer. “That would be too quick an end for you. Suffer.”

  It spares one last glance toward the house. A second mortal stands there, on the elevated porch, staring.

  The rougarou drops to all fours and continues on its way.

  Three

  John pulled off the side of Highway 90, along a chain-link fence overgrown with vines. A locked gate blocked a dirt road running off toward the water’s edge.

  Of course, in Bayou Sauvage, all roads led to the water’s edge. The land here felt more ephemeral than the slow-moving channels, nothing more than a low strip of dirt covered with grass, shrubs, and the occasional tangle of trees. On the drive down, they’d seen more than one small boat in the middle of such thickets, heaved up by Hurricane Katrina and left to slowly disintegrate.

  “Looks like we’re going to be trespassing,” Caleb said with a nod at the gate. “I thought you said Fort Macomb is a historic monument?”

  John unsnapped his seatbelt. “According to what I read online, it’s closed to the public. The ruins haven’t been kept up, so it’s not safe.”

  Caleb climbed out of the car. “You know, Starkweather, that’s what I love most about you. You always take me to the nicest places.”

  “And if we catch the NHE, it’ll be a dinner date.”

  “Way to play favorites.” Caleb snorted and shook his head. “Think anyone will care if we just hop the fence?”

  John glanced up and down the highway. No cars were visible on its cracked pavement, or on the bridge just ahead. Even if someone did come along, he doubted they’d pay much attention to the SUV pulled off the shoulder. “So long as we don’t actually get spotted breaking in, I imagine anyone will just assume we’re doing some fishing.”

  Though the chain-link was low enough to easily climb over, the top was lined with barbed wire. Caleb took off his elk hide coat and tossed it on top of the barbed wire, before scrambling over. John followed, and Caleb pulled the coat free and put it back on.

  The breeze off the water brought a chill with it, and John huddled deeper into his hoodie as they followed the road back to the ruined fort. Even though it was closed to the public, people clearly came back here fairly often. Park services, he assumed, or maybe security to make sure no one was trashing the place. An egret watched them from the tall grass, and John felt a sudden pang of homesickness for Charleston. New Orleans was similar in many ways, from the live oaks lining the streets, to the egrets and herons, to the history soaked in blood. But it wasn’t quite the same.

  “So where was the sighting?” Caleb asked.

  John pulled himself back to their surroundings. “I don’t have access to the actual report, but I managed to glean a fair amount from the various news stories. From what I could tell, a group of local kids thought the fort would be a good place to party without getting caught by their parents. They came in by boat and snuck into the ruins, then split up into couples for privacy.”

  “Hadn’t they ever seen a horror movie? That’s exactly how you end up getting your face eaten off by demons.”

  “And they almost did.” John shielded his eyes against the glare of the sun. A wild tangle of trees and vines covered the tiny spit of land. After a moment, he realized the trees were growing on top of crumbling brick walls. “Something came after one couple. They didn’t get a good look—just teeth and claws. It scratched one of the girls bad enough for her to need stitches. Her girlfriend managed to pepper-spray it, and they ran. Then their flashlights went out, even though they’d been working fine earlier.”

  “Not good,” Caleb observed dryly.

  “To say the least. There were enough holes in the ruins to let in moonlight, and they made it outside and back to the boat. Their parents called SPECTR, and a team of agents came out to look into it.”

  “And didn’t find anything?”

  “If they did, they didn’t share it with the reporters.” John tried to keep his voice light, but it bothered him not to have access to the actual case file. Fontaine might give it to him, but she’d want to know why he was interested in it, and he couldn’t exactly say, “Nothing to worry about, I just need enrichment for my drakul boyfriend.”

  “Sounds like a faust whose forty days weren’t up,” Caleb said. “When they attacked the girls, it shocked the poor bastard enough to regain control for a little while.”

  John nodded. “Good point. NHEs don’t like pepper spray, but it’s not going to stop them for long if they’re bent on slaughter.”

  “Gray’s going to be disappointed he doesn’t get to eat.”

  It was one of the first changes that Gray had undergone, shortly after possessing Caleb. Before, he would have eaten any of the possessed, even those who could still be exorcised. John had convinced him to spare those who could be saved. “Tell him we’ll go to a nice crypt soon, have some ghoul buffet.”

  “Wow, you really are playing favorites. I’m jealous.” Caleb cocked his head, then rolled his eyes. “It was a joke. John doesn’t like you better. Uh, no. Some people consider mortal foolishness a plus.”

  Sometimes John wished he could be privy to both sides of their conversations. “I love you equally.”

 
“Hear that, you smug bastard?” Caleb asked Gray. They’d reached the edge of the ruins, and he shifted his attention back to John. “Let us go in first, okay? If this place falls in on our heads, we can heal a lot faster than you can.”

  John wanted to argue, but couldn’t. “All right. I’ll be behind you. Signal if you sense anything.”

  Energy surged, unfolding like reverse origami as Gray manifested. Long hair lifted from his shoulders, thrashing like black snakes in the wind, and his posture shifted from Caleb’s loose-limbed stance to taut watchfulness. Not bothering with further conversation, Gray strode toward the ruins, coat flaring behind him.

  Gray sniffs the air; it smells of river muck and water, of decaying grass and wet brick. But not of demons.

  Disappointing. But perhaps there is still something to be found within the ruined fort itself.

  He pauses just long enough to check on John. Before he was in a living body, he did not concern himself with mortals. But now that his existence is tangled with Caleb’s, he has learned to fear for the safety of those he loves.

  Mortals are fragile. John is fragile. Gray always understood this, and yet he did not feel it on a visceral level. Until he saw John through the hospital window last summer, so still and quiet and pale.

  Living flesh heals, but with mortals the process is agonizingly slow. John still moves with a limp, though less of one than before. He approaches the fort behind them, wary, hand hovering near the gun and silver knife hidden beneath his hoodie. Wariness is good, but there are so many dangers…

  “Yeah,” Caleb agrees unhappily. “It was one thing when he was still hurt. But I don’t know how much longer he’s going to be content to let us go out and hunt solo, while he stays behind.”

  Other than Caleb’s insistence on telling lies to mortals in exchange for money, these last few months have been the best of Gray’s existence. They have roamed and hunted, free, and it has been so very good. They would spend the day with John, then hunt demons and feed while John rested his leg, then return to him. Sometimes they would have sexual relations after.