Ahead of the Pack

By Luna Howell

The forests of Vermont are many, and dark, and places where shadowy things roam and shadowy dealings are done. When a redcap is nearly abducted and three men are murdered, the trail grows hot on a case Hunter Agent Randal Barclay has been working for months, tracking disappearances of faeries all over the northeast. But Barclay's vacation is tragically timed, the crimes happening right outside of his hometown, leading Nick Walker to be called in to fill his shoes. Soon enough, Nick stumbles into an operation far larger than anyone in The Conclave of Monstrous Affairs had expected, sending himself, Barclay, and their handler Agent Itoi barrelling down the interstate to get to New Jersey, racing against a rampaging dullahan bent on revenge, before their friend, Bucky Hirsch, meets a horrible fate. If only Nick hadn't met that friendly monster in the woods, sitting for the five hour car ride wouldn't be so agonizing. Meanwhile, Bucky makes a few very good friends as he tries to gain intel for The Conclave. Can they reach Bucky in time? Will they crack the case? What about the sexual tension between Nick and his friend and crush, Randal?

The fourth entry in The Conclave of Monstrous Affairs series, Ahead of the Pack is a novel-length story of crime, lust, loss, love, more lust, and a good cup of coffee.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Luna Howell
• Release date: Jul 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370977840

Luna Howell

Luna Howell is a 30-something part-time butcher and director/propmaster of the western New Jersey-based larp, Waerloga. She's a life-long Pennsylvanian, and lives in Easton with her husband, Ken. Pansexual and genderfluid, she has been a hobbyist queer romance writer for more than half of her life, and has been a prolific author of transformative stories in recent years, now stepping into the professional realm of smut-peddling. With her signature blend of more plot than you would expect from porno books, she hopes to entertain as much as arouse.

Book preview

Ahead of the Pack

Part Four of The Conclave of Monstrous Affairs series

Copyright 2017 Luna Howell

Cover art by Moofrog

Published by Luna Howell at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Special Thanks

Ahead of the Pack

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Epilogue

About the Author

Other Books by Luna Howell

Luna on Social Media

Special Thanks

Infinite gratitude to my dear friend Yas, who helped me unpack what I was doing and figure out where to go when I got stuck with a vicious case of writer's block. Bless you, bby. You're a dear friend and an inspiration.

Thanks to my friend Scrunchy, for also giving my early draft an eyeball and offering a bit of commentary.

Thanks to my husband and friends for cheering me on. This is the longest continuous piece I've ever written, and for good or ill, I'm proud of it.

And thanks to you, the reader, for continuing to be interested in my silly, largely self-indulgent porny stories with too much plot. I hope to continue to amuse and arouse.

Ahead of the Pack

Chapter 1

March 20, 1985. 2:00 am.

The forest was dark. Trees, laden with fresh spring greenery, clustered together, invading each other's space like a perfectly still mosh pit. Branches arched overhead, tangling and netting to create a canopy that blotted out the light of the moon, which hung bright and round in the cloudless sky, flanked on all sides by billions of stars now unseen by the three figures that trudged through the brush below.

Two men, clad in black, looking entirely out of their element by how they picked their way gingerly across the forest floor, led a small, gnarled man in iron-shod boots who dragged his feet and struggled in the ropes that held his arms and wrists. He stood only to hip height on the human men, a redcap whose hat sat stiffly atop his head, a dark reddish brown in colour. He slouched, his breaths heavy, the rapid footfalls of the impossibly swift creature had slowed to a crawl as he grew ill under the watchful, uncaring eye of his captors.

I can't, I can't keep—, he panted, voice hoarse, half drowned by the noisy tromping of the humans trying to negotiate their way through the woods.

Keep moving, one man barked.

My hat is almost dry, the redcap tried to explain not for the first time since he had been taken. He would die once the blood that soaked it had completely dried, but his suggestions that he be allowed to freshen it had rankled his captors, who seemed disgusted with such a waste of perfectly good blood on an old woolen rag.

Then you better move faster, the human replied with a sneer.

It had been at least an hour since they had left the car, headed for some obscure point in the middle of the forest, leaving them crawling all over some damned mountain. The terrain had been uneven at best, jagged and full of snares and fallen trees at worst, the woodland laying long untouched save by local hikers and forest-dwelling cryptids. Neither of which had been anywhere to be seen for the duration of their trek. When finally they arrived at a small break in the heavy canopy, they came upon a man sitting on a stump, dressed less finely than the redcap's captors. He wore boots, smartly, and clothing more suited to a man who had to pick through the backwoods of Vermont in the middle of the night to accept the transfer of a kidnapped faerie, if such a fashion were able to be quantified in a mere flannel shirt, worn jeans, and a heavy canvas jacket. He nodded in greeting as the redcap and his captors approached, standing from his seat and brushing off his jeans. About time.

You try hiking an hour in oxfords, one of the men complained, shoving the redcap at him and sneering as the exhausted faerie hit the ground. Might wanna help this one out. Keeps sayin' he's dying.

I figured you idiots wouldn't know the first thing about redcaps. Got some beef blood in the car, should keep 'im going until I get to the dropoff, the new man replied with a shake of his head. Alright, get goin'. Tell Stefano his package is en route.

Good. We'll be in touch for the next delivery, the suited man replied, turning on his heel. He motioned to his companion, and the two of them headed back the way they came, disappearing into the green.

The redcap wheezed, curling his legs up under himself. He couldn't lift himself with his arms bound, and was too tired to try. His vision began to sway and blur, growing fuzzy and indistinct. Wherever the flannel-wearing man's car was, with his supposed supply of blood, the redcap doubted it was close enough. His breaths grew shallow, rapid as they were in his increasing panic. He could barely focus on a thought, the undercurrents of horror washing beneath his racing mind. Here was where he would die. In the middle of nowhere, manhandled by mysterious humans who had taken him in the middle of the night, on his way home from work.

He'd tried so hard. He obeyed the humans' laws. He lived like a cryptid was supposed to in this modern age, at peace with humans, no longer adversarial as their mutual histories had been for so long. He had a home, a job, a life—though the last part he was unsure how much longer would last. These mysterious men had plucked him from the street, thrown him in a trunk, hid him in a basement, kept him in the dark, alone, confused, and now forced him to march with a drying cap through the middle of nowhere to die at this other stranger's feet. What had he done to deserve this? Why were they doing this?

He had asked so many times, only to be greeted with silence at times, violence more often. He wondered if the old gods even heard his prayers.

Come on, the man grunted, bending to lift his captive to his feet. You're worth nothing to me dead.

They marched, the man supporting the redcap by holding his ropes, keeping him in place as much as holding him upright while their feet crunched through brush and dirt. With every step, the redcap could feel himself grow colder, the magic seeping from his body with every movement, every fiber of wool that dried stiff with old blood in his cap. His chest burned, his mouth grew dry, and he wanted to weep, but found he could not. His ancestors had been terrors. Murderous, human-hunting and violent, capturing and soaking their hats in the blood of anyone foolish enough to enter their territory. He was not his ancestors. He was a butcher at a local grocery store. He mostly filleted fish all day. He was not a man of violent, terrible fae malevolence, just an old faerie trying to make his way and enjoy his life.

It was half an hour later when the redcap couldn't stand at all. His legs could no longer support him, shaking and faltering. He hit the ground with a groan, his face in the dirt. The man cursed and kicked him.

They brought me a damned corpse! Those sons of bitches! The two suited men were at least an hour away by now.

A scream ripped through the night, making him go stock-still. A wind began to shake the trees, the sussurrus of leaves seeming a deafening hiss on the quiet mountainside. But there was no mistaking that sound: the sound of a man in abject terror, far away. There was another, then another, and a final one cut short. The man in flannel stared off in the direction from which it had been coming, eyes wide.

Hoofbeats.

They approached with terrible speed, clomping into the soft loam of the forest floor, cracking twigs and branches as the wind whipped the trees into a cacophony. The man did not wait to see what approached, stooping to scoop the redcap up and throw him over one shoulder before bolting. He ran, ducking and dodging through the brush as he went, begging wordlessly for a clear flight from whatever was behind them. The hoofbeats grew louder, louder, louder still, closing in with unnatural swiftness. The man stumbled as wind swept up, crashing into him like a wave, and nearly buffeted him into a tree, sending him tripping and rolling to the forest floor. His captive hit the ground and crumpled, barely even aware.

The wind died abruptly, the hooves silent, and every ambient sound of the forest ceased. There were no birds, no crickets, no frogs and toads. It was complete, engulfing silence. The man climbed to his hands and knees and looked on in horror as his mysterious pursuer stepped out of the darkness. The first thing he noticed was that the creature before him had no head.

Short and broad, he had the body of a man clad in some sort of old-fashioned uniform. Olive wool with green cuffs and large, round, brass buttons, it was belted across the chest and waist in old, worn leather. From the collar of his jacket protruded a neck with pale white skin, which ended abruptly with not a ring of gore and open throat, but instead a dark void that began exactly at the edge of his flesh and seemed to be as deep as infinity. The light of the moon pierced the trees here, but seemed to bend around the headless man, bathing him in darkness like tendrils that crawled and clutched about him. There was no sign of the source of the hoofbeats. The headless soldier walked on well cared-for boots, and in one hand, he held a burlap sack, which was soaked and dripping with fresh blood.

So those were the screams, then.

You work with these two. Are you a thrall too, then? a voice seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, heard less with the flannel-clad man's ears and more with his mind. It had a thick Irish accent, gruff and harsh like a man who had spent his entire life yelling and chain smoking simultaneously.

The flannel-clad man jawed at the air in terror, his eyes flicking back to the bag in the creature's hand. You killed them!

The headless man dropped the bag, reaching inside. You know what happens when a dullahan stops ridin'? He withdrew a long lash, what looked like a human spine stretched with leather between each vertebrae. Somebody dies. He cracked the lash against the ground, then whipped at a tree, scarring a huge gash in its trunk from the strange weapon. The dullahan stepped forward, menace clear in his posture as he closed in on the flannel-clad man. Nobody ever said anythin' about it only being one person.

The scream roused the redcap from his fog, fading in and out of consciousness. He recalled hoofbeats, he recalled wind, he recalled hitting the ground, and now, a scream and a smell. Human waste, the excretions of a body void of muscle tension. But atop that: iron. Blood. Its rank, stark scent overtook everything else to the redcap, and opening his eyes, beheld the forest floor in front of him pooling with the stuff as it poured from the red, jagged stump that was once his captor's neck.

The hat was lifted from his head and dropped in front of him, into the fresh blood, soaking in the liquid. A red-stained hand placed it back on his head, and like wiping mist from a window, his vision cleared and his lungs breathed deeply, vitality restored to his small form. He looked up with crimson eyes at his savior, the uniformed headless man, who inclined his neck as if to nod, then hefted up his burlap sack, now laden with yet another head. Thank you...

Sop up some more blood and get out of here, fast. Keep hearin' this is werewolf country, the dullahan replied.

Full moon's tomorrow, the redcap replied, bewildered.

Then you better get out of the woods by then.

The dullahan tossed a half-hearted salute and trudged off into the darkness, which seemed to swallow him up as he left, moonlight and carnage left in his wake.

Chapter 2

March 21, 1985. 5:30 pm.

So that's all? He just walked off?

That's what I said, isn't it? The redcap squinted at the man sitting across the cold, brushed-steel table from him. When he'd gone to the police, he'd expected The Conclave to get involved, but he'd always pictured the shadowy organization to be the black suits and ties and earpieces sort. This fellow—Agent Nick Walker, he'd introduced himself as—looked as far from law enforcement as possible. His dark brown hair was messy and sticking up, he had a wrist full of enchanted bracelets a third of the way up his forearm, and he had a damned Hawaiian shirt on, for the gods' sake!

Nick reeled back a bit in his eat, taken aback by his witness' sharp tone. Redcaps were always a little hard to read. Sorry, I didn't mean anything about it, Mr. Byrne. It just sounds like a very confusing event you went through.

Confusing is right, the redcap, Byrne, huffed. Just up and left, and I couldn't find a damn trace of him once he'd went. So I soaked my cap a little longer to get my strength up and high-tailed it out of there. Bread Loaf wasn't far off, and these feet of mine're fast as anything, so it wasn't too much of a hike. Found a diner open, used their phone to call the police, and I been in this damned building since about an hour after that.

Thank you very much for your time, Mr. Byrne. I know this has to be a very trying time, and The Conclave appreciates your cooperation. With the information you've given us and the evidence from the crime scenes, we're going to do everything we can to track down these men who've done this to you, and that dullahan.

He saved me.

Nick took a deep breath. This part was never, ever easy. He killed three people.

He killed three kidnappers, who'd have done who knows what with me if I even lived! Byrne slapped his hands down on the table, rising to stand on his seat and meet the hunter agent's eyes. It's not like I'm the first faerie taken like this! Thanks to that headless bastard I might be the last! Just last month there was that nixie girl in New Hampshire! And before that, those elf twins outta New York! And a bunch more I haven't heard of, I'm sure! What's The Conclave been doing about it? A whole hell of a lot of not freaking much!

The faerie disappearances were not news to Nick, nor The Conclave. Several agents had been tracking threads since the first report of kidnapping. Leads had been scarce, with faerie cryptids taken under cover of night, never with witnesses, rarely with any evidence left save for signs of a struggle. Theories had been thrown around, but without anything to scry or divine being left at scenes, with such thorough cleaning and stealth, The Conclave had yet to find a solid foothold on the case. They'd been swatting at ghosts—ghosts being a rather popular theory being kicked around the office, in fact.

I'm going to be honest with you here, Mr. Byrne. You're the first witness we've ever had on this case. These crime scenes are the first evidence we've found. These men, whoever they are, are very, very good at what they do, at least when it comes to taking their victims. He might have information that we can use to crack this case wide open. But on top of that the fact remains that murder is a crime. Nick ran a hand through his hair and sighed, sinking in his seat. But The Conclave is big on second changes. They're not just some cold faceless entity. We're here to help people. It's entirely possible that these killings will be found justifiable, because he was saving your life. But unless we can find him and talk to him, we don't know.

Byrne eyed Nick, frowning hard. You sound like you know about this 'second chances' business.

A small smile crept across the hunter agent's lips. You have no idea, he chuckled.

The redcap sat back, crossing his arms. We done here, Agent Walker? I'd like to go home now.

We're done. I'll ask the officers to get you an escort home. Thank you for your help, Mr. Byrne, Nick announced, standing. He picked up a clipboard he'd been scrawling notes on, pocketed the police pen that he had no intent on returning, and left the interrogation room briskly.

As soon as the door closed behind him, Nick let out a sigh, only to have his personal space