Hellhound (23 page)

I practically laughed at his audacity. He took a step
toward me. I was not in the habit of backing away, so I held my ground, which
placed us in very close proximity.

His voice dropped when he continued, “You are
attracted to me, aren’t you?” His question came out as more of a declaration.

I didn’t answer. I simply stared at the man to show
that his words had little effect on me.

“I’ve desired you for a very long time, Selene.”

There wasn’t anything new or surprising in that
statement.

“I never bothered with you because you were destined
to marry Nathanial. When the tracker took you as a mate, I realized that I had
a real chance because you don’t mind breaking the rules.”

“Your point?”

Angel pressed into me. I could smell every ounce of
earthly aroma in his skin. I could even detect which shampoo he’d used that morning.
Along with these, I sensed an elevated level of pheromones.

I wasn’t sure why I didn’t push him or move away.

He lifted an arm and placed it on the tree trunk
behind me. Angel leaned into my neck and sniffed. He muttered in my ear, “Don’t
you smell that?”

“What?” I asked in a flat tone.

“Your scent, you’ll have the need to mate soon.”

He exhaled. His breath caressed my skin, and his nose
stroked my earlobe. Was this what animals did to entice potential mates?

He went on, “You relate me to an animal because I can
shift into one, but we all falter beneath primal needs, and you’re no
different. You’re more animal than you give yourself credit for.”

I looked away, exposing my neck to his fangs without
thinking. I felt his heart rate increase through his chest, which leaned
against mine. He was on the warm side, and the heat seared through my clothes.

“Mating is not something in my near future.”

“Yet, I haven’t heard you say that it
isn’t
something that you’re interested in with me.”

I wasn’t going to lie. Once Demetrius was dead, and if
things ever settled in my world, I would continue fighting arranged marriages
with other future Elders. I would, when my heartache subsided, take a man who
was as dark and menacing as I was. I would succumb to a man who was insistent,
as Demetrius had been. As of this moment, Angel fit the bill, but he was a
shifter, a sentry, a common worker beneath me.

Angel scoffed and pushed away. He walked off, but
paused to say, “You’ll cave to the need to take a man again, Selene, and I’ll
make sure that it’s me.”

With that, he shrugged, and transformed back into
whatever creature he chose to be today to roam the premises.

Pressure built around me. Everyone expected me to
bring in Demetrius. Tempers cracked. People anticipated that I would ascend to
the throne to fill the missing link. Males of all sorts were clawing to get to
me.

As I walked on, images from the cerebral chamber
clouded my vision.

Agh! I pressed my fingers into my temples and wished
that I could perform the memory retrieval on myself. I wanted to draw out these
memories that weren’t mine and let them scatter in the wind to be forever lost
like they should’ve been.

Mortals had it nice. Memories died with them. No one
waited for them, enforced with the obligation to keep the memories of strangers
as their own.

I walked through the parted mist of the keepers. Did
humans ever wonder why there was a perpetual fog surrounding this area?

I didn’t return home once I left the compound. Instead,
I drove out to the next city with many downtown skyscrapers. By the time I reached
them, the sun would be on its way down. I grabbed a bite to eat, a burger since
I was in the mood, and undercover of the darkest hour of night, crawled up the
tallest building.

Demetrius used to take me to this metropolis all the
time before I agreed to move in with him. We bought burgers at a twenty-four
hour American diner downtown, and he flew up to a slanted nook where we sat for
hours, eating, conversing, and watching the rest of the world until the sun
threatened to rise.

Though he never said it, I knew that downtown was one
of his favorite places in the world. Sure, he had many likes such as the Eiffel
Tower, the Seattle Space Needle, and the Statue of Liberty, but this metropolis
was much closer.

I gripped my bag of burger, fries, and a bottle of
water, and crawled up the twenty-five-story business structure. I climbed as
fast as I could, which sometimes was a blur, but this building was made of
sleek glass, making the crawl difficult. My pace couldn’t slow down or I’d slip,
so I didn’t stop until I reached the top.

Clutching the angled roof, I swung up and landed on a
narrow perch, moving back until I leaned against the slanted remainder. After
catching my breath, because that was quite a climb, I pulled out tepid fries
and nibbled, looking out at the sleepy city in its grand splendor. I admitted
that mortals had a few nice things.

As I ate, I absorbed the energy from the night. The
new moon, which we referred to as the dark moon because it couldn’t be seen, had
waned into a waxing crescent, so the celestial body was now partially visible.

I crushed the empty water bottle, stuck it inside the
paper bag, and crumpled up the items, setting them aside. I tilted back,
stuffed my fists into my trench coat pockets, and watched the clouds surrender
to the breeze.

They were dark gray, long, and thin tonight. Not many
were out, but they lazily floated by. None of them moved close enough to hide
the moon from my view. As I lay there, my chest and fingers tingled with
excitement. I felt as if I could pull down the crater-laced ball of rock into
me. I desired power from the moon badly. I wouldn’t care if it flattened me.

My eyelids were hooded, my breathing tranquil, deep,
slow, as the groups of air water particles teetered and waivered as a thick,
black cloud rolled right through them. I took notice instantly, but didn’t move
and requested my heart to remain calm. The way it moved, so thick and out of
place, challenging the wind that blew in the opposite direction, I knew what it
was, although I couldn’t tell who it was.

I had a connection to Demetrius when we mated, but
since I renounced him, that bond died. I could no longer feel him coming, but I
figured if that tracker in the sky was Demetrius, he knew I was somewhere near.
I half hoped that it was him, and I half hoped that it was Ashton.

Once the cloud passed and moved so far into the
distance that I could hardly detect it, I growled. I licked razor-sharp fangs.
I lusted for him, bloodlust that was. I wanted him dead. I wanted this to be
over with so I could move on, and move away.

I pulled my feet beneath me and crouched on the lip of
the roof. Looking down, it was a considerable drop that could kill even the
strongest of Mythians. After a bold breath, I lurched from the perch, flew
through the air, and landed on my haunches on the adjacent rooftop. The length
between buildings was the breadth of a street and two sidewalks. I stood, ran
on the flat roof, and lunged until I hit the next building. I kept going like
this until I crossed the city in bounds, moving from the tallest skyscrapers
downtown to those of moderate heights, and then to those that were only a few
stories high. When I reached residential neighborhoods, I jumped to the street and
ran.

I dashed like a black smudge, this I was sure of because
everything around me became a blur. I wasn’t fully used to this. I thought
minions who ran this fast were able to stay alive, avoid getting hit, because
things froze around them, because their eyes adjusted and saw everything.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t learned that trade and was almost hit by a semi-truck. I
almost ran straight into concrete objects, too. That would’ve hurt.

When I saw the tracker in the sky some several miles
away, I slowed down, climbed up a tree, and hid beneath the canopy. I kept my
eyes locked on him. The tracker kept moving in the same direction, toward the territory,
but I couldn’t be sure of what his final destination was. The speed at which he
flew amazed me. He was in a hurry to get somewhere fast.

If the tracker were Ashton, he might land at the domicile,
and I could corner him and make him speak. If the tracker were Demetrius, he
wouldn’t stop at or near the domicile, so I wondered where he rushed off to.
Hopefully, I wasn’t chasing a nameless tracker who wasn’t any good to me.

When the cloud disappeared into the horizon, I took
off and ran, silent, stealthy, and deadly. It went on like this for many, many
miles, and I found myself halfway back to our territory.

Chapter Eighteen

My energy quickly abated. I should’ve driven, but that
would be conspicuous and slow. Imagine that. I was now faster than a speeding
car. I continued to follow the swiftly moving black cloud in the heavens above
as he whisked through other clouds and bypassed the moon every time I appeared
below it.

The cloud wafted across the night sky, and I watched
from a distance for as long as I could, cloaked in shadows. Just when he
drifted on the verge of disappearing from my vision again, I raced through the
forest as if flying. My feet sparsely hit the ground. Rocks, leaves, and debris
swirled beneath me, but didn’t make a sound. I didn’t stand on them long enough
to make a crunch, therefore, they remained intact as if I never crossed the
area.

I followed him for hours like this. He circumvented
the domicile’s location. Where was he headed? Was he keeping a lookout for
someone, perhaps an accomplice from the clan? Or, did he plan on attacking?
There I went again, assuming that the tracker was Demetrius.

I approached the domicile’s location to my right. I
probably ran right past sentinels who were so marvelous at blending into the
environment in their animal forms that I wouldn’t have noticed them otherwise.

A growl ripped through the silence, and I skidded to a
stop to face a panther. He snarled at me, lifted a paw, and then sniffed the
air. The sentinel recognized me, but it was his job to stop anyone who looked
suspicious, and I was just that in the form of a black smear.

My chest heaved, and though I was annoyed from the
stop and search, I didn’t mind the moment of rest. I glanced up, hoping not to
gather the sentinel’s attention to my focal point. The cloud kept moving,
barely within view.

The panther cautiously crept up to me, sniffed around
my feet, my hands, and then licked them. I pulled away. Gross.

The panther took a step back and quivered. His body
rolled in waves and made a twisted, crunching sound as his flesh and bones
contorted. When he rose to his feet, standing arrogantly rigid and proud, he
grinned.

“Where are you off to in a hurry?”

Men seemed less shy about nudity and exhibiting their
man parts. I kept my eyes locked on his face. My fists hung tensely at my sides,
and I forced myself to appear normal, though out of breath.

“Nowhere in particular.”

“Never seen you run that fast, thought it was someone
else.” Angel flashed his eyes. I’d never seen a man smile and look menacing at
the same time. What could I say? Angel was a shape-shifting, aggressive,
violent man. He was the type of person one wouldn’t want as an enemy.

“What are you doing out here?” I changed the topic.

He shrugged, which looked odd considering that he was
naked. “Sentinel duty.”

“I didn’t know that sentries shook things up like
that.”

“It’s nice to be in a clean, air-conditioned
environment, but sometimes we need to run wild. Getting cooped up all the time
makes for an antsy shifter, you know?”

“And what happens then?”

“I could snap. It makes me more aggressive to stifle
my true nature. Shifting and hunting helps, as does other things.”

“All right there, put that thing away and get back to
work.”

“I’d love to go back and forth with you, Selene, but
duty calls.”

He grinned again and winked. Then he pulled his lips
back, exposing his fangs, and slipped back into the shrubs where he shifted back
into a panther. I hoped that he took a woman soon, because having him sniffing
around me all the time could get dangerous. He was too insistent.

I moved along, climbing up a tall tree, and spotted
the cloud from a high branch. I jumped down and resumed to stalking the
tracker. I passed the domicile, maintaining a distance, and came to a stop when
the cloud curled in on itself and loomed in the sky. I didn’t want to be caught
by sentinels again. Angel was fine because he recognized my scent well enough,
but others might not. They would try to eat me alive if they thought I was up
to no good.

I kept jogging, more normal-like now.

Like a meteor falling from the skies, the tracker’s
blackness coiled and plummeted to the earth. I ran hard. The only thing that I
could think of being out here so deep in the woods, but in the near vicinity of
the domicile on the territory, was the catacombs. When my people were respected
and died without fault of a crime, their corpses were laid to eternal rest in
the tombs. My father and Nathanial would be in there. One day, my mother and I
would be in there, as well.