Holocaust (The Deadwood Hunter Series Book 3) (2 page)

Chapter 1

A seemingly endless winter.

As brittle and cold as Maura’s heart.

Ice and steel.

Unforgiving and unmoving.

Long dark nights.

Forever alone.

Lost in darkness.

But with the thawing of winter.

Saw the first small cracks in her armor.

Vulnerability, weakness, hope.

Spring bloomed.

As delicate as the first flower.

And turmoil blossomed within her soul.

APRIL

She’d always known this day was coming; how could she not think it was?  Love. Love had no boundaries or rules. It did as it pleased but she at least thought she’d have more time.

For the past month, she’d been having these dreams, these nightmares. He’d found her, her panther. Just like she always knew he would.

Of course, Lincoln hadn’t really found her…yet. It was only a matter of time. She was his mate and as the first sign of light bloomed, so did the irrevocable bond between them. She may have shut off her heart, closed down all feelings, her humanity, yet it had always been there, below the surface, waiting, watching for its chance to be free.

Whether she was Maura or Lexia, she wasn’t sure. The one thing she was certain of, however, was the small, almost invisible sign of light inside of her. The light tortured her, put both her, and her panther at risk. With the light came emotions, and with emotions, came guilt. He couldn’t find her. If she was going to survive, she had to be Maura. She’d done too much; the guilt was too much.

“Maura, get up. We have a raid.” Over the weeks, the amount of raids she’d been on decreased, with most of South Dakota now shifter free.

Sighing, she sat up and looked at Derrick. He watched her from her doorway; he was the only person who dared enter her room. The other hunters feared her, as they feared death.

“Are you planning on standing there while I dress?”

He grinned a smile he only showed to her. “I’m avoiding your mother. She’s on a warpath this morning. A pack of wolves have being causing havoc.”

So much for South Dakota being shifter free.

Getting out of bed, Lexia padded over to her wardrobe. The problem was a few weeks ago she had not cared if he watched. She hadn’t cared about much, but since Lexia clawed her way to the surface, she cared, and
Derrick
knew she cared.

That’s why he does it.

It wasn’t as if he watched her in a sexual way. He watched her for a reaction; that was what Derrick did; he watched and prodded, just waiting for some kind of emotion. But she never gave him anything; well, tried not to. Derrick wanted to save her. Only he didn’t realize she was beyond saving; only death would save her now.

“So is that what we are sorting today?”

“No, can’t seem to get a location on them. We always get there too late.” She turned her back to him, smiling; she’d never had much love for wolf shifters, but this pack, she’d love to meet.

Meet and kill
.

Giving herself a mental shake, she pushed the thought away. This was the other problem she was having; she felt like she was split in two: good and evil. Two people living within one body.

Derrick still hadn’t moved. His gaze fixed firmly on her, waiting for that little sign she was cracking. Turning away from him, she dropped her robe, and dressed quickly.

Black leather, that was all she wore. She yearned for color and would kill for a red dress, just something that screamed,
I’m alive. Look at me.

Walking into the bathroom, she asked, “So what’s the job today then?”

He followed her. “Lex, what are you doing?”

Lex, Lexia, Lexi, how I miss my name.

“Derrick, what makes you believe I won’t kill you?” she snapped, needing some distance. “Why do you believe you can walk freely around my space as if it’s yours?”

Stepping into her space, his usually dead eyes held emotion. “Because,” his finger brushed her cheek, “you have always been Lexia, no matter how many times you call yourself Maura. I see you, Lexi.”

Lexi…

She sucked in a breath. The memory the name brought brushed her mind.  Sandy fur covered with a hundred dark eyes. Green. Green eyes as beautiful and wild as the forest she used to run in.

Caden…

A loud bang erupted in the room as Derrick slammed to the floor. The emotion in his eyes whooshed out with his breath when his back and head hit the hard surface. Against his throat rested the sharp heel of Maura’s black boots.

“Do not grow complacent with my tolerance of you, Derrick.  One word.  That’s all it would take for my mother to have you killed.” Every word came from the darkest reaches of her soul and for the time being, all that was good, all that was Lexia, vanished.

Maura left him discarded on her bathroom floor, his blood seeping around his head like a gruesome halo. How dare he cross her! She was Maura, a hunter;
the
hunter, she answered to no one.

After finding her assignment, Maura assembled a team. Escaping the compound before she saw her mother, Derrick wasn’t the only one who avoided her. Maura disliked her mother’s company just as much; the orders and lack of respect tested Maura’s patience. She knew it was only a matter of time before her temper slipped; it was best to just avoid her altogether.

As she drove out the gate, alone in the jeep because no one would travel with her, she sensed Derrick’s energy: a mass of black, with touches of grey, and the light at his core. He leapt onto the side of her truck, unlatching the door. Maura didn’t flinch as he climbed in with the speed only a hunter possessed and sat next to her.

“How’s the head?” She smiled.

“Depends who I’m talking too?” he grumbled.

“Pushing your luck today, Derrick.” Her tone dry, unamused, but still she couldn’t keep the slight smile from her lips.

They drove the rest of the way in silence as Maura made her way steadily through the forest. The compound was hidden deep within the Black Hills of South Dakota, and it took some time to reach the main road.  The raid she was heading to was on a house where a small pack of shifters lived, according to the intel. It would only take thirty minutes before they arrived, once they hit the road. Thirty minutes for Lexia to claw her way through the darkness that was Maura. Thirty minutes to decide if she could go through with
this
. Was this the day?  Was this the day she let Lexia out forever and turned her back on the hunters, on her mother?

The job was easy,
too easy
. It made her question Lucy’s intentions; her mother always had a reason for her actions. What was her reasoning here? Had Lucy noticed the hairline cracks, creeping over her façade? Was this a test?

As if Derrick read her mind, he interrupted the silence. “Hey, Lexia, are you going to be all right with this? It’s been a while since we’ve had a raid.”

You mean this is the first time you’ve been out on a raid with Lexia awake.
She mentally pushed the errant thought away. She couldn’t be two people; that was impossible, two people within one head…
Impossible.

She glanced at Derrick briefly. She had no idea how he knew her concerns, yet he was right. Uncertainty filled her every movement, her every thought. She wasn’t sure if she could do this; whether she could take the lives of shifters.

“I’m not sure. I have an uneasy feeling about this, Derrick. I can’t help but question why take them out? They’re not causing problems, so why send me for a job any other hunter could do?”

“These wolves, they’re messing with her head. Lucy’s not thinking rationally anymore. Stay in the car, Lex. I’ll go in with the others.”

“But… my mother… if she finds out… What if she’s testing me?”

“She won’t find out. I’ll make sure of it.  Stay in the car. Leave this one to me.”

Maura sat in silence for a minute, the road ahead of her blurring into smudged color. Derrick must truly be her friend; he was always there, always fixing her problems.

“How do you do it, Derrick? How do you pretend not to care? Not that I do really,” she added as an afterthought.

For a while, he was silent, and she thought he’d decided to not answer her. She turned her mind back onto the road, trying to block out her thoughts, of the pack they were on their way to slaughter.

“I suppose I’ve been doing this so long that I no longer feel anything, but in the beginning, it killed me. Every morning when I woke, I wanted to die.”

“That’s not true. You still feel. I can see it.”

“You make me feel, Lex. It was you that day… a kitten in the lion’s den.  You woke up something in me that I long ago buried to save my family, just as you buried, Lexia, to save, Lincoln.”

“Don’t say his name,” she whispered, forcing back the emotions just the bare mention of his name brought.

“But unlike me, Lex, you won’t survive.  The way you feel, the love you have for
him
, you can’t run from it forever.”

“I can’t run from my mother forever either… It’s this or he dies.”

“Don’t fool yourself. There’s a storm coming, and no one can escape it.”

Maybe not, but I plan on Lincoln escaping.
She’d felt it too, the growing tension, the whispers of unease. Lucy Hunter’s grip on the hunters was slipping, and when the leash slipped, the world would be plunged into war.

She stopped the car in front of the house, the two other jeeps parking beside her. They’d even stopped with the surprise attacks since she joined them. She’d made them arrogant. She’d made them indestructible.

“Stay.” Lexia looked over at Derrick as he shut his door, leaving her in the car in her safe bubble.  He walked with purpose toward the others. They glanced from him to her, but stepped into line. Derrick was a leader; no one questioned him.

Fighting started inside the house. She tried not to take note of the auras, yet she couldn’t help it. Call it a sick fascination or a habit of torturing herself, or maybe Maura liked to feel Lexia squirm and ache inside of her.

There were four in the house against five hunters. They had no chance.

One.  Two.  Each light went out like a fist to her gut.

Three. She clenched her hands around the steering wheel; her two halves at war with each other.

Four.  She let out her breath.
It’s over. It’s… Wait.

She’d made a mistake, missed a crucial part.  Lexia burst through the darkness. Out of the car, she ran across the lawn.

This wasn’t a pack. This was a family. A home.

The hunter’s head rolled from his shoulders as her sword sliced cleanly through his neck; thumping to the floor, it rolled to a stop in front of four children who the hunter had sought to kill.

Her knees wobbled as she looked upon the child who stood protectively in front of the others. The child willing to fight a hunter to protect them. Older than the others, he’d shifted into his animal form. He was a panther, a black panther.

Emotions swirled to life within her; dark against light, clashing together in chaos. She never sensed the hunter behind her, never moved as he thrust his sword through her back. She screamed in pain, her head falling back as she dropped to her knees. Maura, however, won the battle.

Her leg whipped out, knocking the hunter who’d crossed her to the floor. She wrapped her hands around his neck and took pleasure in slowly strangling the life from him. Watching as his skin turned blue, his eyes lost their fight for life.

Leaping from the floor, a wild cry rose from her lips. She flung herself at the female hunter who stood stunned behind her; Maura snapped her neck with ease, letting her drop to the floor with disgust.

Maura didn’t stop there, too caught up in her bloodlust. Derrick stood wide-eyed at the door, his hands up, palms forward as she marched toward him. Maura was furious; furious she’d been injured; furious she’d never felt it coming. She’d become weak and lost the battle with Lexia. Her fury unleashed itself on Derrick.