Hunted, p.1
Hunted, page 1
part #3 of The Grey Gates Series
HUNTED
The Grey Gates - Book 3
Vanessa Nelson
Copyright © 2023 Vanessa Nelson
All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction.
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Reproduction in whole or in part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.
For more information about Vanessa Nelson and her books, click or visit: https://www.taellaneth.com/
For all my fellow caffeine addicts - tea and coffee have got me through more days than I can count.
Here’s to many more perfect brews.
Contents
1. Chapter One
2. Chapter Two
3. Chapter Three
4. Chapter Four
5. Chapter Five
6. Chapter Six
7. Chapter Seven
8. Chapter Eight
9. Chapter Nine
10. Chapter Ten
11. Chapter Eleven
12. Chapter Twelve
13. Chapter Thirteen
14. Chapter Fourteen
15. Chapter Fifteen
16. Chapter Sixteen
17. Chapter Seventeen
18. Chapter Eighteen
19. Chapter Nineteen
20. Chapter Twenty
21. Chapter Twenty-One
22. Chapter Twenty-Two
23. Chapter Twenty-Three
24. Chapter Twenty-Four
25. Chapter Twenty-Five
THANK YOU
CHARACTER LIST
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chapter one
Max saw a pair of startled faces staring out of the apartment window at her. A middle-aged couple, the man holding a mug halfway to his mouth, both of them frozen in surprise at the sight of a Robinsage monkey with a woman hanging onto its back going past outside their upper-level kitchen window. The couple was left behind a moment later, replaced by another window as the monkey continued to climb up the old building. Max could only hope that none of the people she was passing had a camera handy. It was all too easy to imagine the headlines. Marshal carried up building by giant monkey. She had had more than enough media exposure to last her a lifetime.
Max wrapped her arms more tightly around the creature’s slender torso. The monkey was moving without hesitation, using the gaps and texture of the stones for grip. Her eyes watered from the chill air and the stench of the sandy-brown fur pressed against her face. The stink was almost physical, as though the creature spent its life rolling in the worst-smelling substances it could find and never bathing. Not once.
This had not been her best idea. In fact, it was probably one of the worst ideas she’d ever had, a moment of impulse rather than rational thought. She’d arrived at the address barely half an hour before to find a scene of absolute chaos. The monkey had injured several of the building residents who had been trying to keep it contained. The monkey had been trying to fight its way out into the open. She’d emptied a full magazine of tranquilliser rounds into the creature. The drugs hadn’t even slowed the monkey down. She hadn’t wanted to risk it getting into one of the apartments in the building or, worse, running through the city. So she’d called for back-up and had hoped that wrapping herself around the creature would keep it on the ground where her dogs could get to it and keep it pinned until the other Marshals arrived. Instead, it had taken off up the side of the building and now she was just hoping that it didn’t fall off and take her with it plummeting the three - no, four - storeys to the ground. The surface far below was made of decorative stone slabs. At best, a fall would really hurt. And she didn’t want to think about the worst case scenario.
The creature turned its head, baring a pair of long, yellowing fangs at her. The fangs were almost as long as her fingers. Its yellow-green eyes with their vertical black pupils stared at her for a long, heart-stopping moment, as if the creature was wondering what she might taste like. Fortunately, it didn’t take a bite out of her, turning away, so she was left staring at the ragged, matted fur on the back of its head again. She couldn’t remember ever being this close to one of the Robinsage monkeys before, and it was not an experience she wanted to repeat. They were slightly smaller and far more slender than Seacast monkeys, but, as she was finding out, just as strong. The torso she was clinging to was wiry with muscle. She was tall for a human, weighted down by her equipment, and the monkey was carrying her with no apparent effort.
They had stopped climbing, she realised. They were on the flat roof of the building, the monkey still moving despite the tranquilliser rounds and her extra weight.
It stopped and she risked a glance up, past its shoulder, breathing a sigh of relief as she saw her dogs there, then almost choking as she got an extra-large dose of the creature’s stench. Cas and Pol had spread out to block the forward path of the monkey. They had shifted into their attack forms, a mass of long-haired shadows in the sunlight, their fangs descended along with sharp, elongated claws that made no sound on the matte roof material as they stalked forward.
The monkey chattered at her dogs in a series of high-pitched noises that grated on her ears.
Cas barked back, the sound deep and full from his great chest, teeth bared. Pol crept forward another two paces, body lowered, prepared to attack.
Max watched her dogs. They would not want to hurt her, but they were ready to jump onto the monkey and hold it for her. They had never done this before, as she had never been stupid enough to jump onto one of the creatures they were hunting until now, but she had an idea that if she let go, her dogs would pounce.
“Ready?” she asked her dogs, throat constricted from the foul air she was breathing.
The dogs’ response was to crouch lower to the ground. They were ready.
Max let go, falling onto the roof surface with a thump rather than the more graceful tuck-and-roll that she had intended, scrambling back to her feet and grabbing for her gun even as her dogs surged forward, grabbing a hairy arm each and pulling the monkey down. Her dogs growled, a savage and unhappy sound, as they took hold of the monkey. Her mouth and nose were still full of the awful stench of the creature and she imagined that it tasted worse than it smelled.
Max kept her gun pointed at the monkey but didn’t fire. She just had normal bullets, and even though the creature had caused plenty of injuries in trying to make its escape from the building, she still wanted to catch it rather than kill it.
Rapid footsteps sounded from behind her dogs and she looked up to find a quartet of Marshals arriving on the roof, all of them with shotguns ready. The lead Marshal halted a few paces from her dogs, staring at the scrawny, smelly form of the Robinsage monkey, then looking up at Max.
“Did you really hang onto that creature all the way up the side of the building?” Vanko asked. Ever the comedian, he was wearing a grin even as he held his shotgun level on the monkey. A compact man made of muscle and humour, his tousled blond hair stirred in the breeze.
“I did,” Max confirmed, grimacing. She could taste the smell of the monkey’s fur in her mouth. “I don’t recommend it, but I put a full magazine of tranquillisers into it, and it didn’t even blink.”
“A full mag?” Vanko asked, brows lifting. “Was it the normal stuff?”
“Yes,” Max confirmed. The Marshals’ science team supplied Marshals with a variety of equipment for the field. The tranquilliser rounds took down most things. Apart from, it seemed, Robinsage monkeys.
“I’ve got some of the heavy stuff,” Vanko said, lowering his shotgun and switching out the magazine for a spare he had carried next to his own thigh holster. There was a far more formal and technical name for the powerful tranquilliser that the Marshals’ science team had just released for use, but all the Marshals just called it the heavy stuff. Max thought that the term might have started with Vanko.
Max moved out of his line of fire. She trusted Vanko’s aim, but the monkey was struggling against her dogs’ hold and it might escape. She didn’t want to find out what a dose of the more powerful tranquilliser could do to her human body.
Vanko fired into the monkey, the bang of the shotgun loud in Max’s ears. He paused, watching the creature, then fired again when it kept struggling.
After the second round, its struggles grew weaker and it gradually went limp under Cas and Pol’s grip.
Max called her dogs back when it looked like the monkey was unconscious and held her own gun ready as Vanko took a step forward and nudged the creature with his foot. When the monkey simply lay there, its breathing slow and even, he nodded. His nose wrinkled.
“Lady above us, what is that stench?” he asked.
“The monkey,” Max said. “I didn’t know anything living could smell so bad,” she added, reaching into one of her pockets for a cleaning spell. Her eyes were still stinging from the stink. Cas and Pol were making faces as they worked their mouths, confirming her guess that the monkey tasted as bad as it smelled. When she had doused herself with a spell, she threw a couple of pieces of dehydrated chicken to her dogs. The tough chews should clean their mouths, at least. They snatched the treats out of the air and retreated, lying down on the roof surface to eat, taking far more care to chew the food than they normally would.
“Raymund is on his way,” Vanko reported. His nose wrinkled again. “Holy light, that smell just gets worse.”
“I didn’t get a chance to clear the building or check for its nest,” Max sa id reluctantly.
“Nest?” Vanko asked, sharp gaze landing on her.
“There were reports of something living in the building basement. Some of the residents went down to investigate,” Max said, nose wrinkling. They should just have called for the Marshals, but they had tried to take care of the creature themselves. “There are about half a dozen people injured. This thing attacked me before I got far,” Max added. She had also dropped her shotgun on the ground four storeys below, when she had leapt onto the back of the monkey, not wanting to let it get away. She just hoped that none of the building’s residents had picked the weapon up.
“Alright,” Vanko said. “Osip, Sofiya, wait here for Raymund and his team.” The named Marshals, a pair Max didn’t know all that well, nodded in response. “Zoya, you’re with me and Max and her dogs. Let’s clear the basement.”
“I brought your shotgun,” Zoya said to Max, holding the weapon out.
“Thank you,” Max said, taking it from Zoya, heat rising under her collar. Although she was relieved that the weapon hadn’t been stolen, one of the first lessons Marshals learned was to keep hold of their weapons, and she had voluntarily thrown hers down to grab hold of the monkey. She could only imagine what Faddei - her boss - would have to say about that. “I just have ordinary rounds, though, so it’s probably more useful as a club.”
Zoya grinned. Her head barely reached Max’s shoulder, but she was made of muscle, her pink-tinted hair in a thick braid over one shoulder, complementing her warm-toned brown skin. She handed Max a full magazine with a blue stripe down the side. “More of the heavy stuff,” the other woman said, and changed out her own magazine while Max did the same.
When they were armed, Vanko waved for Max to go ahead.
Going down the stairs under her own power was a much better experience than being carried up the side of the building on the back of a monkey, Max decided, even if her legs were protesting the effort by the time they had descended four flights and were at the door leading to the basement. It had been weeks since her leg had been torn open by another supernatural creature, and although she was now fully healed, she still hadn’t recovered the fitness she had lost. But at least she could move without pain. That was something. She glanced over her shoulder to check that Vanko and Zoya were ready. She need not have worried. They had their pen torches clipped onto their weapons already, waiting for her to open the door.
As Max swung the door back, she recoiled at the smell that rolled up the stairs to meet them. It was pitch dark down below. When she had gone down the stairs the first time, there had been a light switch at the bottom and the lights had been working. She relayed that information to the others.
Zoya cursed, wiping her streaming eyes on the sleeve of her jacket. “We do not get paid enough to deal with this,” she said.
Max silently agreed, but they all went into the basement anyway, Cas and Pol with them. It was part of the Marshals’ job to go into places most people would run away from. The dogs’ ears were flat to their heads, their bodies hunched over as if the smell was painful to them. Max wished she could spare them the experience, but the Marshals needed all the help they could get as she didn’t know what was waiting for them. Vanko took the lead down the stairs, the bright light of his torch showing nothing out of the ordinary for the first few paces. He found the light switch Max had referred to and flipped it.
Dull yellow light flooded the space. They had arrived in what looked like a storage room, with a series of lockers against one wall, and an open door at the other side from the stairs.
“I was told that door leads to the boiler and pipes room,” Max said. “It’s the only other open space in the basement. There’s another light just outside the door.”
Vanko nodded and headed for the door, flipping the switch and heading on into the boiler room, Cas and Pol moving with him.
The stench grew worse as they moved further into the boiler room. Even with the lights above, it was still a shadowed and dark space, and hot from the boiler and pipes. The building apparently used underfloor heating supplied by water pipes that ran through every level. The boiler also supplied the hot water to the building. Max was sweating under her jacket and could only imagine how unbearable the room got in the height of summer.
As they made their way past a tangle of pipes, she caught sight of a haphazard looking structure against the wall. Vanko and Zoya had seen it, too, the three of them turning as one, Cas and Pol going ahead again.
Robinsage monkeys were generally peaceful, despite the smell, but they liked to nest and birth their young in warm, dark spaces. Like boiler rooms.
As they approached the bundle of what looked like sticks and bits of cloth and cardboard, a flicker of movement caught Max’s attention. She turned, shotgun ready, in time to see another monkey drop down from the ceiling, its teeth bared, chattering loudly at her. She fired one round into its chest, the report of the gun loud in the confined space. The monkey dropped to the floor, Cas and Pol swarming over it, checking that it was truly asleep and not faking it.
“It’s a nest alright,” Zoya said from behind Max, her voice pitched loud after the shot. “There are at least two babies in there.”
Vanko sighed and shook his head. “Looks like Raymund will have his work cut out for him. They just work in pairs, don’t they?”
“That’s what Raymund told us, yes,” Max said. Unlike other types of monkeys, Robinsage tended to be solitary unless they were in a mated pair. So they shouldn’t find any more monkeys in the basement. Despite that, she also knew that they would all want to thoroughly check every floor just to be sure.
By the time they had cleared the building, making their way up and then back down the flights of stairs, Raymund and his team had arrived. The scientists were all clad in white coveralls with face shields, the outfits similar to the ones used by the police’s crime scene techs. Raymund Robart was a tall, thin, intense man whose scientific expertise was almost matched by his lack of social skills. No one complained. He was essential to the Marshals’ service, and occasionally even remembered to say thank you. He focused on his work while the scientists around him loudly protested the smell. Max couldn’t blame them. Despite the complaints, Raymund and his team were professional and efficient in gathering up the two adult monkeys and transporting them to the truck waiting outside, and also gathering up the two babies that Zoya had spotted. With the animals secure, the team dismantled the nest, making sure there were no other young there and no other unwelcome surprises for the building’s residents. The building’s owner would need to hire a cleaning company to get rid of the lingering odours, and Max didn’t envy the cleaning crew their task.
Cas and Pol made the most of the respite by heading to the ornamental water fountain outside the building and taking long drinks, shaking their heads as if still trying to get rid of the taste and smell of the monkeys. The fountain wasn’t big enough for her dogs to use as a bath, otherwise she thought they would have tried to get in. Max caught a few faces at the building windows looking down at the courtyard and her giant dogs using the water feature as a drinking bowl. She thought there were a few frowns, but as she and her dogs had helped rid the building of its unwanted guests, she didn’t call her dogs back. They had earned their drink, and the water would be pumped from the city’s supply, not some private source paid for by the building.
She found time to use another cleaning spell - just in case - and grab a snack from her pick-up while the scientists were loading the monkeys into their vehicle. There probably wasn’t anything else for her and the other Marshals to do, but they stayed anyway. Raymund was concerned that the monkeys hadn’t responded at all to the normal tranquilliser and wanted to make sure that the creatures didn’t escape. To her surprise, he seemed to think that Max’s leap onto the back of the first monkey had been entirely appropriate, in making sure that the creature didn’t get free and end up roaming the city.
Just as she was thinking she might need to go back to the Marshals’ offices and write a report, her phone rang, saving her from the dull prospect of paperwork. She answered.
“Max, honey, can you stop by the mortuary at some point?” the warm voice at the end of the line asked. Audhilde. The city’s chief medical examiner, and a vampire.
