Hitting the Target Read online

  Taking a deep breath of fresh air, Mia set off through the trees to the public part of the park. It was a gorgeous day with the late afternoon sunshine pouring through the leaves and the warm, rich scent of growing things filled her senses. She thought of how different it was here—how balmy the days were and how she never had to wear so many layers of thick, ugly, padded clothing just to keep warm.

  And there was a feeling of freedom too. The feeling that you were all alone with no one watching you, no one spying or listening to every word you said, looking for the least infraction to charge you with…

  Her thoughts cut off abruptly when she heard a rustling sound in the bushes and underbrush to her left where the forest was thick and wild. What could that be?

  The rustling stopped as soon as she noticed it but when Mia started walking again, she heard it once more. It sounded almost like whatever was making the noise was keeping pace with her—following her through the bushes as she walked.

  Mia started walking a little faster. But again, the sound kept pace. By now she wanted to go back to the ship, but she was actually closer to the entrance of the park where the station was.

  “It’s nothing,” she told herself uneasily in a low voice. “I’ll just keep walking—it’s probably just a wild animal. Probably just—”

  “It’s not nothing,” a deep, menacing voice said.

  To Mia’s horror, a man rose out of the bushes, glaring at her.

  “You…who…?” She couldn’t get the rest of the words out—her throat was too dry. She didn’t recognize the man, but he was big—not nearly as big as Trey but much bigger and stronger than her. He was wearing nondescript, dark gray clothing and he had black hair slicked back from his forehead. The expression on his face was cruel…and anticipatory.

  “You’re in trouble, sweetheart,” the man said with an evil grin. “So much trouble.”

  With a shriek, Mia’s paralysis broke and she ran.

  Trey actually smelled her fear before he heard the shriek.

  He’d been on his way from the transport station, arguing silently with his beast, which was becoming very impatient to meet Mia.

  “It’s not fair,” the beast was arguing. “You get to hold her and touch her all the time! Last night you comforted her when she was upset. I should have been the one to give comfort! I am covered all over in soft, warm fur. I could have wrapped myself around her and eased her pain.”

  “If you didn’t scare her half to death first,” Trey countered. “Look, I know you want to meet her, and you will. I’m just waiting for the right time. Besides, at least you got to taste her when I did.”

  “This is true—her honey is very sweet,” his other half admitted with a soft growl of pleasure.

  It was at that moment that a stray breeze from the forest came drifting past his nose and he scented the familiar, bitter odor of fear—Mia’s fear.

  Immediately his adrenaline spiked and the beast was much closer to the surface.

  “Where is she? What’s going on?” his other half demanded.

  “I don’t know but we’re going to find out,” Trey muttered.

  And that was when they heard the faint but piercing shriek—a cry of pure terror and it had come from Mia—Trey would have bet his life on it.

  “Now!” his beast roared, and Trey raced into the park in the direction of the shriek, following the scent trail of fear.

  The nearness of his beast and the speed it loaned him meant he was supernaturally fast. He was inside the canopy of trees so quickly that he would have seemed to be merely a blur if anyone was watching. Thankfully, they weren’t—not many got out for a stroll in the park so late in the day since it officially closed at sunset.

  Along with Mia’s fear scent, he smelled something else—another odor, this one filled with malice and hunger. It was the smell of a predator on the hunt for prey—prey it intends to devour.

  Trey ran nearly noiselessly through the trees, both scents getting stronger in his nostrils all the time, his beast roaring to be let out, saying he would kill whoever was menacing Mia, that he would rip them limb from limb…Trey could feel his hold on his other half weakening but he couldn’t worry about that now—they had to get to the woman they both loved—had to save her.

  At last he came around a copse of trees and saw her. She was backed up against one of the ancient old bota trees—the ones that lived a thousand years and grew a thousand miles, as local legend put it. The vast canopy of the tree’s branches spread out, blocking most of the dying sunlight that tried to filter through the broad leaves. But even in the deep gloom, Trey could read the terror in Mia’s face…and the hunger on her attacker’s.

  He had her shoved against the tree trunk with one big hand around her slender throat and his face was pushed into hers—so close their noses were almost touching—as he said something low and menacing that Trey couldn’t quite catch.

  Not that he was concentrating on what the attacker was saying. He was too filled with Rage—the state of berserker fury a Kindred warrior goes into when the female he loves is threatened—to focus on anything else.

  “Treygar,” the beast inside him growled. “You said you were waiting for the right time to let me meet Mia. That time is NOW!”

  And with a tremendous roar it burst out of him like a laser blast from a pulse pistol. Trey felt his body change…felt the fur flow over his skin and his limbs elongate while his teeth sharpened into fangs and his hands and feet became paws tipped with razor-sharp claws. Then he was a passenger in his own head, being carried along by the beast’s great strides as it sprang at Mia’s attacker.

  Mia saw the beast first. Her eyes grew wide and she gave a breathless, choked scream—all she could manage while the bastard was cutting off her air supply. Her attacker turned his head, following her gaze and his eyes widened in shock and awe as he saw the huge, tawny beast bounding towards him through the gloom.

  The beast opened his mouth in a roar that shook the forest.

  “Mia is mine—ours—and we protect what is ours! You will die—die—for daring to touch her!”

  Trey heard the words in the roar, but he doubted anyone else could. His beast was difficult for an outsider to understand even when he was calm and collected and right now he was in Rage.

  It was clear from the attacker’s face that he understood the intent, if not the words. He let go of Mia and stumbled backwards, his eyes getting wider as he tried to get away. But even if he had started sprinting at top speed instead of fumbling and bumbling around the forest in fear, he still wouldn’t have been able to win his freedom.

  The beast was on him in two bounds. Trey’s other half lunged at the attacker, bearing him to the ground with heavy paws as big as the man’s head. The beast stood on him, letting all his massive weight rest on the choking, gasping man’s chest and roared again, straight into his face.

  “You dare to touch her? I will kill you—kill you—for even coming near her! You will die this day—make peace with your God if you have one!”

  “No…no, please!” the man choked, terrified. Trey smelled the rank odor of urine as his bladder let go in the sheer extremity of his terror. “Please!” he gasped. Please, no! Pl—”

  And then the beast lowered his massive, shaggy head and bit the man’s throat out with one lazy crunch.

  The pleadings turned to gurgles and the gurgles to silence after that. The beast nosed at the attacker, making sure he was really dead, and then spat out the chunk it had torn from his throat and wiped his mouth on the grass, getting rid of the traces of blood around his muzzle. Trey’s other half had no taste for sentient beings, preferring to hunt only mindless animals on the rare occasions they went hunting.

  Now that the threat was neutralized, the red curtain of Rage that had fallen over his vision began to clear and Trey began to come back to himself. A soft, terrified sob behind them reminded him that Mia was still out here and probably scared to death.

  At once, his beast turned to go to