Chapter One: If It's Too Good to be True…

I had pulled closing, again. It's not that I don't mind the cleaning up and sweeping out, but it's the clearing of the bar that makes me cringe. Don't get me wrong. I could take any one of the bruisers that attempted on a weekly basis to pick me up, but I choose not to. I have a few rules, rules that have kept me alive since my mate and our pack was butchered, and I like to stick to them. First: Never Attract Attention. It seems simple enough, but when you go all furry at least once a month, it can be damn hard. Second: Don't Let Others In. This one was for self-preservation. When your mate, your other half, is killed along with the rest of your family, you tend not to let others in… not that I had let others in too much before, but there is always the chance My third and final rule is this: If It's Too Good to be True, Run… and run fast. It was the third rule that I forgot.

With Heart crooning softly on the jukebox about being alone, I worked my way around the large, open room, wiping tabled and slinging the chairs up on top. I was singing under my breath, or I would have known he was behind me long before I smelled him. Thank god he hadn't bathed in nearly a month and was human, or I think he would have gotten far closer before I swung around, brandishing the buck knife that I had neatly tucked into a very secret place on my body.

"Whoa, little lady," he drawled, a hint of Oklahoma or maybe North Texas, but I was guessing Oklahoma, coming through in his speech.

"Name's not 'Little Lady'," I scowled back, lowering the knife a hair but not completely. "We're closed. Come back tomorrow."

"But I waited all night to talk to you… alone."

The last was what got my hackles up. True, I could change into a ravenous beast, but that change took a long time, about fifteen minutes longer than I had time for. I contemplated my options, and saw few. I could attack now, disable him with first my rag to his face and then a chair to his head. That would eliminate him as a problem, but then he would be all suspicious on why I attacked and left him to the wolves, so to speak, on the floor of Racks Cubed. I could also ask him what he wanted to talk to me about, but I'm not too big into small talk. I decided to go with the later, and only because I could always beat him up later.

"Well you have me." I gave him my million, mega-watt smile and hitched a hip onto the table behind me. Lowering the knife to my side, I oozed relaxation.

Oklahoma grinned and relaxed his stance a bit as well. "So," he began slowly.

"So," I repeated back.

"You the person they call the Huntsman?"

"Who's asking?"

This was an old game I played. Someone would come in, looking for my particular set of skills and I would deliver, for a small sum of course. I would ask who was asking and they would reply in some ambiguous way, and end with a creepy assed smile.

I was not disappointed with Oklahoma. He grinned, the left side of his mouth hitching up further than his right, and drawled, "Oh these people and those."

I nodded. "Who?"

"How much first."

This was also part of the game. But this was my best part.

Shoving myself gracefully off of the table, I paced around him, slow and stealthy like. "Now, now, now. I can't give you an estimate until I know who my prey is. I'm not going to charge you a deadbeat price for killing a senator, now am I?"

"Guess not," he conceded. His head followed me as I finished my round. "The name is Mikael Zimmerhaus. He's a… well not really human, but not really fae either."

"What is he then?"

"We'll go with mostly human. He has a bit of fae and we think a bit of witch, but they are both generations back. And we need him and everyone at his address taken out."

Half fae half witch and diluted with human. I wasn't liking the profile, but I did my quick thinking and sighed. If he was as harmless as the human before me thought he was, I could take him out relatively easily, a quick one two stab stab. But there was the little problem of the 'everyone at his address' detail.

"How many people would be at this address?

I got a shrug. "A few, but they won't be hard to take out. I can assure you of that."

His cockiness bumped up my price. I named the sum and grinned to myself as he blanched. "Highway robbery!" he sputtered.

"Do you want me to take it or not?"

"Fine," he muttered. Reaching behind him, he pulled a duffle bag towards him – I had missed that detail when he arrived, but saw it when I did my little circle thing. He pulled out the stacks of bills and gave me half. "You'll get the rest when they're dead."

"Aye, aye Capt." I scooped up the stacks of bills and placed them onto the table behind me. "I assume you know the way to the door?"

"Little bitch," he muttered, storming away.

I let out a laugh and called at his back, "Again, not my name!" before returning to my chores of cleaning up the bar.

Two days of stakeouts and three evenings later, I was reasonably certain of Mr. Zimmerhaus's activities. There was him and another man who seemed to reside in the home, and to my acute observations, they were not gay. Roommates, I assumed, but both stereotypical red-blooded males. Zimmerhaus had a faint scent of fae and witch, but like Oklahoma had said, the blood was thin. His roommate was one hundred percent human. Yay me! The kills would be easy – in and out in no time.

I rolled my shoulders and settled back into my waiting hole, which was literally a hole in the ground. There was a rock digging into my left thigh, but there wasn't much I could do about it. I had tried to pull it out, but alas, the rock was in deeper than wide.

I shifted my weight again and waited for the last light to go out in the house. There was no way I was rushing into a house full of wide awake men when I could slip in silently and slit a few throats. I was nothing if not efficient in my time. Why create more work for yourself – that was something Hugh had always said to me… I pushed the painful memory of my lost mate away rolled my shoulders once again.

Nearly three hours later the last light had been flicked off for over an hour. "Time to roll," I muttered to myself, stretching out my legs as I stood up. My bones crackled a bit, the kinks working their way out as I swayed back and forth, before settling on the balls of my feet.

The lawn leading up to the side of the house that led into the office, something I had checked out on my many hours of stakeouts, was long and gently sloped towards the house. The grass was cut golf course short, something I thanked the gods for, and meant I would be leaving no tracks. The window I had chosen to go through was cracked open with only a flimsy screen to block my way. I loved trusting people, but kind of felt bad for them when I came a knocking at their front door.

It took less than five minutes to enter into the house, pausing to let my wolf scent out my surroundings. I knew there were only the two men home, both of them upstairs, but something felt off. You know the little tingle that runs up your spine when something isn't right? Well I got one of those bad boys as I began to walk out of the office and into the rest of the house.

A board squeaked under my weight in the hallway and a draft from the now open window was gently tapping something wooden against something cloth, perhaps a door against a curtain, but the sounds were light enough to blend into the nighttime sounds that naturally penetrated the walls.

Something shifted upstairs as I began my ascent, causing me to stop like an idiot playing freeze tag. One foot was up, one was down, my left hand was gripping the banister and my right was wrapped around the hilt of a wicked looking dagger. The shifting stopped, I waited a beat and then another before continuing on my way upstairs.

The landing at the top of the stairs was tidy in a way that stated people lived in the home. A little table was pushed against one wall and a phone, vase of flowers, and picture frame was placed on its surface. I didn't take the time to look at the photo, and later wished I had – the surprise that awaited me was not something that I liked.

I opened the first door in the hallway and smiled. Zimmerhaus was sound asleep, sprawled diagonally across his bed. His breaths came in quick little huffs, rhythmic and soothing. I crossed the room, said a silent prayer for the soul I would be releasing into the world, and slit his throat. He was dead before he knew what had happened to him. Quick and efficient. I said another prayer and crossed myself, better safe than sorry, and reminded myself to go to Confession on my next day off.

I exited Zimmerhaus's room and crossed the hall to the second closed door. With the only other door being open and leading into the bathroom, I was certain that the door I was standing in front of was the roommate's. I slowly pushed the door open and cursed when the scent hit me. There wasn't just one person in the room. No. There wasn't one, or even two, but there were three people sleeping in the second bedroom.

There was a family in that room. I knew it from the scent, the feel, and the fact that there were two adult sized lumps on the bed and a bassinette in the corner.

Fuck me. That was the only thought that crossed my mind as the next piece of information came to me. The woman lying next to the human man had the blood of a witch. Double fuck.

I snuck across the room and peeked at the child. It couldn't have been more than three or four months old, and it was awake. The only good thing about it was the fact that it smelled only of human. That could change, I knew that from experience, but for the time being, the child was of no danger to me.

The shifting sound came again and the breathing on the bed changed. I slowly turned and stared at the man.

"What the-?" He began his sentence, but never finished it. I was fast, I was efficient, and there was a hell of a blood spray. The two bodies were slumped over one another, blood turning the sheets from white to crimson, and making my wolf side beg for a tiny taste.

I shoved down the impulse to feast and turned back to the child. It hadn't made a sound as I killed its parents, only looking at me with those big blue eyes of the young. I had to kill it. That was my job and I never backed down from a job, but as I stared at the baby, something came over me, an almost fuzzy feeling that encircled my heart and made me want to gather up the child and never let go.

As I reached for the child, intending on placing it next to its parents before I did the final deed, a rush of power descended onto the house. Fae. My wolf told me that with absolute certainty and a flutter of panic filled me.

I had the child in my arms and I let the wolf take over. Letting my wolf rule wasn't one of my favorite things to do, but it did have its upsides. I didn't have to think and my instincts took over.

By the time I came back into full control of my body, I was back at my tiny apartment, clutching a baby and covered in blood.