CHAPTER 5

AVA

Ava Morales let her head fall back into the bath pillow, and she let all her tension slip into the almost-scalding, soapy water. There was nothing quite so nice as relaxing in a post-hunt bubble bath. Not after she had spent hours canvassing the abandoned subway railways, searching for an outlet to the surface world.

The sky was already lightening when she finally returned to her apartment, but hunters tended to have strange hours. Shifters used the darkness to conceal their atrocities—at least the ones who hadn't completely lost control of their inner beast.

She had already sent Father Augustine a picture of the playing card, then shut the blackout drapes and turned on the taps. Aside from the chase and subsequent hike out of the abandoned railways, the hunt itself was fine. Luckily, he was a bad shot, and she had not followed any blood, hers or his, into her apartment.

She closed her eyes, enjoying the quiet—what there was of it in the city. There were the distant openings and closings of car doors, the sounds of engines and people taking advantage of the early morning sunlight. Under ordinary circumstances, she enjoyed the symphony of city sounds. She had called New York home for ten years, and she had gotten used to tuning in and out the background noise. Today, however, it grated on her nerves. Every unusual sound from outside seemed that much louder.

Maybe she should put on some music. The moment she thought of it, her mind went to a place she did not want it to go—Ethan Blackwood. His cabin had walls of jazz on vinyl. Not exactly her taste, but she had enjoyed the album he put on after they...

Dammit, Ava. He's a shifter, a monster. Whether he kept his inner animal in better check than any shifter she'd ever tracked, she knew the monster would eventually break free. She shouldn't fantasize like a moon-eyed teenager about a monster like the man who'd killed her parents.

Unbidden, images of their encounter at his cabin flashed through her head. While she had tried to shut out her developing feelings for the man, another part of her mind, a more primal part, pushed him back into her.

She knew why. If he wasn't a monster, he would have been the catch of a lifetime. Good-looking, successful, intelligent, with a body that could have been carved from marble, she would have to be dead or celibate not to be attracted to him.

Even though she attempted to shoo him from her mind, her hand inched down her belly and between her legs in the water. A little daydreaming is innocent, right? Maybe it will cleanse him from my system.

Who was she trying to deceive? Even the shifter she had just sent packing had sensed her arousal, though he had thought it was for him. During the hunt, when she needed all of her wits about her, Ethan Blackwood had stood in her way. She couldn't have that, not now that she had learned of the card. At least one shifter other than Ethan Blackwood knew her mission, and very probably more.

Just as her worries began to melt away, the opening guitar riff of "Back in Black" suddenly screamed out of the phone on the edge of the tub beside her head. Her hand sprang out of the water as if Father Augustine himself had burst into the room. Of course, she would get a call from a priest the moment she started to... The lyrics had overtaken the guitar by the time she answered the phone.

"Do you know what time it is, Father Augustine?" Ava groaned, letting her head drop back against the bath pillow.

"Watch it, young lady," he teased. "I'm not too ancient to give you a ruler to the knuckles."

"You haven't been my headmaster for years." Ava shook her head. "But, good morning, Father Augustine."

"Good morning to you, too," he said, matching her dripping sarcasm. "I might not be your headmaster anymore, but I'm still your boss, and this isn't a social call."

"No offense, but if it were, I'd hang up." Ava snorted. "It's too early in the morning, and I haven't even gotten to bed yet."

"Yes, I was a hunter myself when I was younger," he sighed, the teasing gone from his voice. "I remember the long nights."

"The freaks come out at night, and so do the monsters."

"Not always." The amusement in his tone fell flat, replaced by a cold gravitas. "Some roam in the daylight. We have to discuss that card. Did the shifter have any others on him?"

"No. I searched through all his pockets and found only a skimpy clump of bills. No ID, either." Ava shuddered, just thinking about it. How was it that something with such a keen nose could smell so bad? She was certain he had never washed the jeans he wore. She'd used half a bottle of hand sanitizer after searching through his pockets.

"That's good news, then. Because it was a playing card, I feared he had an entire deck." She pictured Father Augustine shaking his head. "It remains most troubling that even one shifter carried a photograph of you."

"A photograph of me?" She sat up abruptly, sending a tidal wave of water over the edge of the tub. "It's a caricature! And he called me the Huntress. It could be a coincidence. It's not like it's a nice nickname or anything."

"Yes, but it would be stupid of us to dismiss it. I'm going to send a picture of it to a few contacts who know the deal, but I'll tell you right now that it is a tarot card. The ten of swords, to be specific."

"Tarot? What's that supposed to mean?"

"The Ten of Swords card signifies a number of things, all bad. It represents betrayal, loss, and getting to the point of no return. You have the wrong name, for the wrong reasons." His voice was heavy, full of a deep-seated worry she had never heard from him before. "I'm not happy, Ava. Someone has found you."