Twilight Hunter (The Execution Underground) (22 page)

* * *

“I’
VE
NEVER
TORTURED
a member of the Fae before, though I’m very excited to play with these iron weapons. It’s fun to experiment.” Robert examined the hot iron poker. “I think this needs more heat, don’t you agree?” He placed the poker tip back into the inferno he’d built. “I’ll get this all warmed up for you.”

The glowing orange metal pulsated in the dim light of the warehouse. The pathetic woman closed her eyelids.

“Open your eyes,” he demanded.

He towered over her as she lay chained to the warehouse floor. The iron shackles around her wrists and ankles slowly peeled away her skin as she shied away from their scalding touch. Oh, how sweet this torture session had been. One of his best yet.

“Now tell me, what is a faerie doing with a pack of werewolves?”

She bit her lower lip.

“I said, what are you doing with the werewolves?”

When she still didn’t respond, he carefully nestled the poker against the sensitive skin of her stomach. She writhed as the iron burned another bloody hole into her flesh. The sounds of her screams echoed off the warehouse walls. He savored the sight of the hot iron eating away at her body, the skin peeling back in wavy curls.

He let out a low, feral growl. “Answer my question.”

Gasping for air, she stammered to reply. “I’m just an affiliate. I’m the only faerie in the area, so Frankie let me join the pack to be around other supernaturals.”

A devilish grin spread across his face as he twirled the poker in his hands. “That’s better.”

She gritted her teeth and stared at the weapon, shivering. Her terror got him off. He let the blazing iron linger over her, promising repeated pain if she didn’t cooperate.

He reexamined the tip of the poker. A small piece of burned flesh remained. Perfect. This was coming along nicely. He stoked the fire. “So you know Frankie personally, yet she hasn’t come after you?”

Despite the shackles holding her in place, her hands clenched into fists. He grinned. He would make sure every ounce of fight she had in her was gone before he was through with her.

“Over twenty-four hours, yet she still isn’t here. You must not be very important to her.”

“You’re lucky Frankie
isn’t
here. She’d rip you to pieces.”

He smiled. “I beg to differ. The last time the bitch and I met, I gave her a lovely beating.”

“You’re a sick freak.”

He ignored her comment as he fiddled with the poker, admiring the glowing end as if it were a rare piece of art. “I guess she hasn’t gotten my message. Perhaps I’ll have to go with a more direct route. If Frankie won’t come for you, I may have to bring her here myself.”

Robert set down the poker and walked toward the exit.

“What do you want with her anyway?” she yelled.

As he reached the door, he turned and grinned. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m not after your packmaster.” He pushed open the exit door. “I want the hunter who’s protecting her.”

* * *

D
AVID
CHARGED
THROUGH
the doors of K9’s, ignoring the pain in his leg as his heart pounded in his chest. Despite the cold, sweat poured down his back from the heat of his rage.

Frankie was standing on the platform in the middle of the room, Jace crouching beside her like he was some sort of animal.

“What the hell did you do?” David demanded as he reached the edge of the stage.

Jace looked toward him. “David, what’s up? Are—”

David turned on Frankie as he fought for control. “What did you do? Where is she?”

Jace stood and grabbed David’s shoulder. “Whoa, David. Back off. Where’s who?”

David snarled, a noise that seemed far too animal to belong to him. “Maybe you’d know if you answered your phone. Allsún’s missing, and it’s your fucking fault.” He jabbed a finger at Frankie.

Her eyes widened. “Allsún O’Hare?”

David glared. The anger coursing through him was white-hot. He would murder that bastard Robert. He would tear him limb from limb. He would gouge out Robert’s eyes with his thumbs for even looking at her.

“What happened?” Frankie’s jaw fell open.

“That’s what I want to know.” David stepped toward her. “Why was there a message to you on the wall of her demolished apartment—written in blood?”

All the color drained from Frankie’s face until her skin looked ashen. “I don’t know where she is, David. I had nothing to do with this.”

“I swear, if I find out you caused this, I’ll force you to shift and then skin you for your—”

“David!” Jace grabbed him by the front of his jacket. “Frankie’s been with me the whole time. She didn’t do this. It’s Robert, and you know it. It’s Robert, man. It’s not Frankie’s fault.”

David panted hard, each breath so heavy it strained the leather of his jacket.

“We’ll get her back, David,” Jace promised.

“I’ll call Alejandro. I’ll have him gather the pack. We need to select who’ll go after her—our best fighters. And we’ll need to find out where she’s been taken,” Frankie said. She met David’s eyes. “We
will
find her, David. Faerie or not, she’s been one of us for a long time.”

“I will
not
wait around while you decide who is going to save her,” David growled, turning his anger on Jace. He stared down into his fellow hunter’s face. “If it wasn’t for you and your damn werewolf shit, I could go save her myself. But now look at me!” he yelled. “Between my fucking leg and the fact that Damon’s marked us both as traitors, I can’t even fucking save the woman I love, all because I had to try and help your sorry ass.”

If Jace were angry, he didn’t show it. He stepped back, though he clearly wasn’t intimidated. “I know. I shouldn’t have drawn anyone else into this, and I never should have let you fight my battles for me. It’s my fault your leg is fucked to hell and back, and I’d take it back if I could, but I can’t. I promise you I will save her, David. I swear it.” He met David’s gaze head on.

David snarled. “That’s not good enough. We have to do something
now
. Whether you like it or not, I will
not
sit around while he has her.”

He turned his back on Jace and began to walk away.

“David, if you go after her now, you’ll get her killed,” Jace said.

David stopped in his tracks but didn’t look over his shoulder. He heard Jace step toward him.

“If you go in there injured like you are, you’re both going to be killed, and how will that solve anything?”

David’s whole body trembled as he fought down the rage growing inside his chest.

Jace placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “I swear to you on my life, I’ll get her back. But you know we can’t go out unprepared.”

David’s hands clenched into fists. Jace was right, and he knew it, but his anger refused to subside. He should have been able to save her. He should have been able to track that fucker down right now, and murder him slowly and painfully. A loud, angry scream sounded in the air, and it took David several seconds to realize it was his own.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

F
RANKIE
PACED
AROUND
the platform with her cell phone at her ear. The ringing seemed to echo on a never-ending loop. Finally an automated female voice instructed her to leave a message at the beep.

She growled into the receiver. “Pick up your phone, Alejandro.” She hoped he heard her on his answering machine.

A small beep sounded. “Hello?”

“Allsún O’Hare’s been kidnapped.”

Alejandro cursed under his breath. “Do you want me to assemble everyone?”

“Yes. You know the drill.” Without another word, she hung up the phone, then turned back toward David and Jace. “They’ll be here within forty-five minutes.”

Her heart dropped into the pit of her stomach as she watched David clutch his head and squeeze. She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “I’m sorry, David. Jace is right. We’ll get her back. I swear.”

He circled the platform, swearing and cursing under his breath like a madman. So this was the man Allsún loved. Not long after she’d first encountered the petite, half-blooded faerie and agreed to let her into the Rochester pack as an associate, Allsún had confided in her about how she was running from a relationship, a healthy, good relationship that she was convinced she would destroy.

Frankie thought of Allsún’s face: the sweet smile that rarely left her lips and her pixie attitude. Allsún was a fighter, but when Frankie imagined her in Robert’s clutches, she nearly vomited all over the floor.

The time that passed before the pack assembled stretched on for what seemed like days. With each passing second, the dread in Frankie’s chest built and her sympathy for David deepened.

At one point she leaned up to Jace’s ear to whisper, “Jace, is he going to be okay?”

They turned together to watch David continuing to pace the room, despite his injured leg, as if he could wear a hole in the ground that would lead him to Allsún.

Jace shrugged. “He’s in love with her. Always has been. He’ll do anything to save her.” He looked Frankie in the eyes. “He won’t be okay until she’s safe again.”

When all of the pack members finally arrived, Frankie stood in the middle of the platform with her head held high but her morale quickly sinking. She should have expected Robert to come after the people who mattered to her and kept a closer eye on her pack members. She should have made sure that even the strongest females were escorted by men or moved in groups. She’d shirked her duties as packmaster, and now Allsún was paying the price.

Once the pack quieted down, she launched headfirst into the problem.

“Allsún O’Hare has been kidnapped.”

A roar of angry conversation erupted among the crowd. She held up her hand to try to silence them.

“We need to move in and locate her, and we need to do it fast. From what we know, she’s been missing since the night of the pack meeting.” She paused to gauge everyone’s reaction. The faces staring back at her were a mixed bag of emotions, but there was one common denominator: they were all eager to retrieve Allsún.

“I know it’s custom to vote on which warrior will save her, but I think this case calls for special circumstances.” She fought hard not to show any sign of weakness. “As we discussed before, Jace is the only one of us who has any possibility of destroying this bastard, because this killer isn’t just a normal werewolf, he’s something else. We’ve already approved Jace to hunt him down, so now let’s approve him to save Allsún in the process.”

Small murmurs cropped up around the room, mostly among her warriors, the highest-ranking males. After briefly conferring with several of them, Alejandro stepped up to the stage.

“If you expect us to let a non-pack member do our job, then he needs to prove himself. He needs to show us that he’s stronger than all our warriors.”

A loud growl sounded as David climbed laboriously onto the platform. “That’s a waste of time. We should be out looking for her right now. A whole search party could be out there if we weren’t too busy standing here scratching our heads like a bunch of dumb-asses.”

Alejandro frowned. “It’s pack policy. Only one male and one female will go, so we don’t risk multiple members for the sake of one. Frankie is the strongest female here, no one doubts that, so it’s a given that she should go, but Jace is not a member of this pack. He’s a temporary ornament.”

David’s mouth tightened into a thin line and a look of anger crossed his face. His temper visibly shot up. Frankie interrupted before he said something that turned the pack against him.

“Let’s also remember that Allsún is an associate member of the pack. That means only some of the pack rules apply to her.”

Alejandro shook his head. “True, but this rule stands firm whether she’s a full pack member or not—one male, one female, to retrieve her.”

Frankie’s hands balled into fists at her sides. “Alejandro, you’re combating my every move just because I—”

“I’ll do it,” Jace said.

Everyone looked at him.

“I’ll pass your little challenge and beat all your asses to a bloody pulp if that’s what it takes to save Allsún.”

Alejandro met Jace in the middle of the platform, and the two men stood face-to-face.

“You’ll fight my warriors and you’ll fight me, and you’ll prove you’re as strong as we are?” He leaned in so close to Jace’s face that their noses nearly touched. “You’ll prove you can shift
and
fight?”

Jace matched Alejandro’s glare. “You bet.”

From the confident tone in Jace’s voice and the way he stared Alejandro directly in the eye, if Frankie hadn’t known better, she would have thought he had shifted a thousand times before. He didn’t even blink as he stared Alejandro down.

But she knew the truth. Jace had scraped the surface of shifting with the slight transformation of his hand, but he was nowhere near ready to shift into complete wolf form. And even without being aware of the specifics, Alejandro had to know that Jace couldn’t yet match the skills of a seasoned warrior when it came to transforming. He’d set up Jace for a battle he couldn’t possibly win.

She grabbed Alejandro by the elbow and tugged him away.

“We need to talk
now,
” she whispered to him. Then she released him and stepped back to address the crowd. “I want eyes and ears on the street, everyone trying to figure out where this bastard has gone to ground with Allsún. Use every available resource.” Stepping off the stage, she gestured for Alejandro to follow her as the crowd began to disperse. It took every ounce of restraint in her to ignore David’s furious screams of dissent.

* * *

A
FTER
BRIEFLY
ATTEMPTING
to calm David down and realizing it was a battle he couldn’t win, Jace followed Frankie and Alejandro the Prick out of the main room of the club. The two strode down a nearby hallway until they reached an office at the end, the sounds of David’s curses still carrying from the main room. The man wouldn’t rest until they’d found Allsún, and Jace couldn’t blame him for being furious at the delay, but he couldn’t focus on David’s rage right now. Not when he needed to beat Alejandro in order to save David’s woman.

Frankie threw open the door to the office and marched inside, with Alejandro close on her heels. When the door shut, Jace jogged the length of the hallway and pinned his ear against the wood. He needed any advantage he could get, and listening in on the conversation would provide more information than he would be getting out there with David.

Frankie’s voice carried through the closed door. “What’s your problem, Alejandro? Ever since I got back, you’ve been trying to block my every move. You’re my head warrior. How do you think that makes me look to the rest of the pack?”

“No worse than you made yourself look.”

Jace’s jaw clenched. He already he wanted to march in there and teach Alejandro how to respect his leader.

He felt pressure on the door and realized that one of them was leaning against the wood.

“What the hell does that mean?” The pitch of Frankie’s voice escalated. She was pissed. Royally pissed. Jace smiled. He hoped Princess hit the asshole where it hurt.

Alejandro scoffed. “What? Do you think no one noticed that you disappeared just in time to miss our mating ceremony?”

Jace heard a low growl, and he wasn’t sure whether it was Frankie or Alejandro—or maybe both.

“He took me captive, Alejandro.”

“Yes, but for how long? How long before you switched allegiances? Because you brought him into our home as if he were one of us.”

Frankie let out a loud huff, and he could hear her walking away from the door. “He
is
one of us, and you know it.”

Alejandro banged his fist on what was probably a desk. “He
hunts
our kind, Frankie. He’s not one of us.”

Jace pressed his ear closer to the wood, listening hard. Who ever told that bastard he could talk to a woman that way—and his leader, for God’s sake?

Frankie’s voice escalated to the point of yelling. “He’s our only hope of finding and beating this sadistic son of a bitch. You weren’t there. I’ve seen what this sicko can do, and Jace is the only one of us who even stands a chance against the guy. We need him.” Her breathing was audible by then. Alejandro was pushing every button Princess had, and like a bomb, she was about to detonate.

“
We
need him? Or
you
need him?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Her tone was filled with venom.

“You were with him the night of your mating cycle, Frankie. The night you were supposed to be married to me, and he held you captive. Do you mean to tell me that he resisted the Call and that you didn’t sleep with him before you returned? Or were you lying when you told Marshall that you and Jace had mated?”

A long moment of silence passed before Frankie answered. “That’s none of your damn business,” she said in a tone that would have frozen lava in its tracks.

Alejandro raised his voice to match Frankie’s in volume. “Like hell it’s none of my business. You stand me up at the altar and then bring a hunter home with you to join the pack, and you think it’s none of my business? You’ve been my arranged mate since we were children.”

“Exactly, Alejandro,” Frankie said. “
Arranged
. Do you understand that word? Arranged, meaning it was set up. I never wanted to be with you. I never
chose
to be with you.”

“So because you neglected your duties as packmaster and chose not to mate with the designated warrior, the highest-ranking warrior, I must pay the consequences?
I
must find a different mate than the one I’ve been waiting on before I even became a warrior? Is that what you’re saying?”

Frankie’s words were garbled, as if she were holding back tears. “What do you want from me, Alejandro? I can’t give you what you want. You’re my friend—a very dear friend, despite the fact that you’ve been acting like a complete asshole lately—and you know I love you.” She paused. “But I’m not
in
love with you.”

A long silence passed, and even through the door, Jace felt the heavy tension in the air. For a moment he wasn’t sure who he pitied more.

“I will act as your mate, even though I’m already bound to Jace—if that’s what you want from me,” Frankie said.

Jace stopped breathing, waiting for her next words.

“But you deserve a better mate than that, and I think you know it.”

Jace exhaled the breath he hadn’t planned on holding.

“I don’t want any other woman, but I won’t force you to be with me. I’d rather be alone. But what about you? If not me, who will your mate be? It can’t be the hunter, even if he is bonded to you now. As soon as this is over, he’ll resume his job, Frankie.”

After a long silence she finally answered, her voice barely above a whisper. “He was there during the Call. I don’t know if it...worked or not. I think the mating was one-sided.”

Jace’s stomach flipped. She didn’t want him?

A mix of anger and frustration filled him. He’d managed to get himself hung up on a female werewolf. A sharp pain hit his heart like a Mack truck, and he thought of the warm feeling that shot through his veins whenever he saw Princess.

It took every ounce of control he had not to punch his fist through the wall. Mother Nature had tricked his darker side into a mating ritual he’d never wanted, and all he got was a damn T-shirt that read
Mated Moron
. A woman he couldn’t stop thinking about who didn’t want him for a mate—he
was
screwed.

He forced his anger inside and tuned back in to the conversation.

“Please, tell me you’ll be reasonable and call off this challenge, then,” Frankie said.

“No. He needs to prove himself worthy. If he proves himself, he’s fit to be your mate and he can be the one to go after Allsún. Though either way, you know he won’t stay once this is over.”

She groaned in frustration. “But you set him up. You know there’s no way he’ll be able to shift quickly enough to win.”

“Let your mate fight his own battles. He accepted the challenge.”

Jace could practically see the smug look on Alejandro’s damn face.

He heard Frankie stride to the door and grip the knob, and he quickly moved down the hallway to escape notice, but not before he heard her stick it to Alejandro.

“I hope you know that when you can’t kill Robert, the blood of all the women he killed and all the women he
will
kill will be on your hands. You need Jace. You’re just not man enough to admit it.”

* * *

J
ACE
WALKED
INTO
the shambles of his apartment. The door lay splintered in large pieces from the hallway all the way to the kitchen, left over from the fight. The screws from the hinges had scattered across the floor, and dried blood dirtied the floors. The place looked like shit. Not that he’d expected anything different. The super was too lazy to get off his couch unless someone dragged him off. In this building, if you wanted something done you had to do it yourself.