Stroke of Midnight (Nightcreature #1.5)(97)



"There you're wrong. Skinwalkers are superior to our werewolf kin. We can become anything just by a change of our skin. We exist beneath both the sun and the moon, and we aren't insane with the blood lust."

"Could have fooled me," I murmured.

"You've never encountered one of the bitten. The virus makes them mad. They think of nothing but the kill. A silver bullet is the best thing for them. Once I complete the ceremony beneath the red moon, nothing, and no one, can destroy me."

"Let's find out." Clay sighted down the barrel of his Beretta.

"You won't shoot me. You could hit her. Just like Serena."

Clay stiffened.

"I thought Serena was killed by…" I wasn't sure what. "Monsters?" I supplied.

"Ultimately. But only after Clayton shot her trying to save her. Then she was devoured while she lay screaming. Isn't that right?"

Clay lowered the gun. "How do you know so goddamned much?"

"I never leave anything to chance. I knew that as I searched for the chosen one, the unworthy would die. And the J?ger-Suchers would come."

"Aren't you supposed to be a secret society?" I muttered.

Jack's chuckle made the gun at my temple shudder. There was also an unpleasant scent rising from him that wasn't sweat but something worse.

"Secret to the world at large but not to the ones they hunt. Not anymore. We know J?ger-Suchers exist, only their identities are a secret—for the most part."

"How did you find out about me, about my past?" Clay asked.

"That's my secret."

Clay's eyes narrowed. I could almost hear the word going through his head, because it went through mine too.

Traitor.

Someone in the J?ger-Sucher ranks was selling information to the enemy. But I really didn't have the time to worry about that, and neither did Clay.

The sun was falling, which meant the moon was rising. Clay didn't have much time to do… whatever it was he planned on doing. I hoped Clay had a plan, because I didn't. I'd run out of ideas the second Jack had put a gun to my head. I seemed to be having that problem a lot lately, even without the gun.

"A skinwalker is a Navajo witch," Clay blurted. "You aren't."

"Appearances are deceiving. A skinwalker takes the shape of the skin he wears. Be it beast or man."

Suddenly I understood what the nasty smell was. And Cissy, the mule, had known it too. Animals can smell death long before humans. Cissy hadn't cared for Jack, because Jack was no longer alive. The skinwalker was wearing the skin of an ancient white man.

"You are Joseph Ahkeah," Clay stated. "I thought you were Mandenauer's friend."

"Friendship means nothing in the face of power. If Edward could feel what I feel when I run as a wolf, he wouldn't be so eager to kill me."

"He'd be first in line."

Jack… Joseph—hell, I didn't know what to call him except nuts—sighed. "Edward has a most annoying need to be a hero, and he can't help but hire people just like him."

"I can think of worse things to be than a hero," Clay said.

Ahkeah merely laughed at him some more.

"You were a hunter," Clay insisted. "You've seen the evil and destruction these things can bring to the world. How can you become one of them?"

"I've been tracking and killing monsters for years. There are always more. I got tired of fighting a losing battle. I wanted to be on the winning side. We will win, Clayton. It's only a matter of time."

"Not if I have anything to say about it."

"Sadly, you won't."

I'd been planning to point out to Clay that Ahkeah was being far too accommodating in answering all his questions. The villain only blabs his plans to those he intends to kill—it's in every bad movie. I wasn't the only one who would die tonight if the skinwalker had his way.

The spirits murmured, louder this time. The very air seemed to vibrate with their presence. Ahkeah took a deep breath, as if to drink in the dead.

Help me. I thought. Not him.

The spirits spoke at once in a hundred different languages. Dizziness washed over me in a mind-numbing wave at the same time my stomach rolled. I slumped, and the gun slid from my temple into my hair.

Jack struggled to hold me upright, but in this instance being a big girl was a good thing. He wasn't strong enough, and my knees slammed into the ground.

The moon, red and full, burst over the horizon. The earth began to shake, and a gunshot sounded.

I caught the scent of sulfur, right before agony burst across my cheekbone. I ate dust when my face smashed into the rocky terrain of the Canyon of the Dead.





CHAPTER 9


? ^ ?

I must have passed out because the next thing I knew I was staring at the huge red moon blazing in the sky above me. I heard whispers again—soft as the wind, though the air was cool and still.

Everything came rushing back, and I sat up too fast. My head spun, something warm and wet ran down my cheek. My palm came away slick with blood.

"Clay?"

"I'm right here." And suddenly he was. His dark gaze skittered over my face. "Damn, Maya, you're bleedin' like a stuck pig."

His accent was back. I must have looked even worse than I felt.

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