Stalker (The Hunt Book 3) Read online

  Not wasting a single second on the loss, Moira rolled over, narrowly avoiding the hellhound that would have landed on top of her had she stayed still, then pushed onto her feet.

  “Leave him alone!” she cried, clapping in the face of the charging beast.

  As soon as her hands collided, a spark of bright white angel light flickered between them. Moira stared down, stunned. Malachi had fallen quiet. And the hellhound in front of her blinked its red eyes furiously, then wiped at its snout with a snort. She looked up, quickly meeting and holding Malachi’s gaze, an unspoken plan forming between them. As he hid his face in the crook of his arm, Moira clapped again. Nothing. The hellhound facing her growled, its hackles rising as it stepped toward her—and the pack behind continued to rip into Malachi.

  They’re going to kill him. Do something!

  “I said, leave him alone,” she shouted, just as she had that night at the Inferno, the night she had tossed Diriel clear across the room with her white light. Moira clapped again, this time harder—and finally the light did as she commanded. A bright white beam erupted within her clasped hands, shooting out between her fingers.

  The hellhound yipped and turned tail the second the light touched it, skirting around the pack and making a beeline for the still open gate. Her light disappeared seconds later. Moira clapped again and again, each time temporarily bringing back the angelic glow, charging the hellhounds, ordering them back, ordering them not to touch Malachi. She wished she didn’t have to look like a clapping lunatic to make her powers work, but she’d take what she could get for now. One by one, the hellhounds fled, tails tucked between their legs, slinking low and fast for Diriel’s property beyond the wall.

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t much time to revel in her victory.

  “Get me out,” Malachi snarled as he sank to his knees, coughing up a mouthful of black blood, his shredded hands grabbing at the spear still embedded in his torso. “Get it out.”

  Moira rushed to his side as the demon somehow managed to stand upright again. The wound was bad—really bad.

  “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” she muttered under her breath as she examined it from both sides—the entry and exit point. “Oh my god.”

  “If you say that one more time—”

  “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  Malachi snorted, the sound forcing her to look up as she fiddled around with the hooks digging into his back.

  “When did human females get so mouthy?” He cocked his head to the side, as if considering it. “Have I really been gone so long that they— Fuck, woman!”

  Moira had tried to tuck the hooks into the wound so that maybe he could pull it out from the front—no dice. Malachi glared at her over his shoulder, the battle cries of the demons behind her growing louder by the minute. Out of the corner of her eye, she swore a demon shimmering with Diriel’s colors had charged her, but two of the Saevitia vassals dragged him back before he got close enough. She gulped, wishing she’d just stop shaking already.

  “It’s bad,” she said, hands smeared in black blood. “It’s… It’s really bad.”

  “I know, Moira. I can feel it ripping into my bowels.”

  She tried to bend the hooks around, to straighten them out, but she wasn’t strong enough. However, an idea sparked to mind, and she darted away to retrieve her discarded spoke.

  “Hold your side as still as you can,” she ordered, then tucked the spoke into the curve of a hook. A gargled protest came from Malachi as she planted her foot on his bloody upper thigh and pushed off him, tugging the spoke with both hands.

  The hook gave way—and soon straightened. With a victorious cackle, Moira worked through the others, eventually turning what had looked like a grappling hook into a pronged spear.

  “Pull it out on your side,” she ordered, giving him some space, the spoke falling from her hand. Exhaustion was starting to sink in; adrenaline had pumped her up, but she’d never done something like this before. She had never battled a pack of hellhounds, then rescued a skewered demon.

  She wasn’t sure she was cut out for the long-haul race. Sprinting. Moira had always been good at sprinting.

  With a roar that rattled between her ears, Malachi wrenched the spear out, slowly dragging it back through his body. Fresh blood splattered the wall, and he whirled around in a flash—only to embed the pronged end of the spear into the face of a charging demon. Moira screamed, staggering back against the wall as the spear sank deep into the demon’s skull; within seconds, the blue and silver hue vanished, and he crumbled to the ground as Malachi fell into her. She caught him with a grunt.

  “How you feeling, champ?” she forced out, struggling to hold his immense weight.

  “Better by the second,” he growled back, his hot blood seeping through her clothes, staining her skin. “You surprise me, half-breed. You’re good in a fight.”

  “Thanks.” I guess?

  “I didn’t think you’d help me—”

  “You’re his brother,” she told him, eyes wide at the sight of his wounds mending. The gaping hole in his stomach had already closed, the skin sealing itself together, but the blood hid the rest. Her gaze raked across his body, broad and rippling with taut muscle, her breath catching when she discovered him watching her—more than a little intently.

  “I am his brother,” he said softly, then cleared his throat. “Yes. Well. Try not to get yourself killed before we find Diriel, eh?”

  He pushed himself away from her, striding, strutting toward the bloody battlefield.

  “Oh,” Malachi glanced back and nodded at her, “and don’t get too close to the wall.”

  Moira leapt away from it, her heart racing. Malachi might have survived such a monumental spearing, but she had a feeling she wouldn’t be quite so lucky down here. Even if last night’s wounds had healed completely, she suspected it more due to Severus’s healing salve than her own innate abilities. She was only half supernatural. It wasn’t worth the risk.

  In fact, as she watched Malachi, a towering brute in tattered clothes, caked in his own blood, grab two blue and silver demons by the necks and slam them together, she realized what a risk she had taken coming this far out into the fray to begin with. Maybe she ought to go back. Maybe…

  Not until she confirmed Severus was okay.

  Arms crossed, she stood up on her toes, searching out his face in the crowd. Although two demons had already tried to charge her, the rest were too interested in beating the holy hell out of each other to pay her much attention.

  “Severus?” she whispered, eyes darting here, there, and everywhere, unable to focus on a single face for long. “Where are you?”

  A figure drifted by, dancing across her peripherals. Something about the way it moved, the familiarity of it all, had Moira’s gaze darting toward it. Her knees threatened to buckle—Diriel, in the flesh, just strolling along, flanked by a trio of armed escorts. Demon Diriel: leaner, gaunter, with a receding hairline and bright white horns. So different, yet Moira saw him, the face that stalked her dreams.

  Dressed to impress in a decadent black suit, dozens of pearl necklaces clattering against his chest, sans crosses this time, he sauntered toward the battlefield with a sort of grace and arrogance that made her blood boil. Her knees weren’t going to buckle. He didn’t get to win that way—he didn’t get to haunt her anymore.

  He glanced toward her, thin mouth suddenly twisting into the same sadistic smile he’d dazzled his eager audience with as he tortured her. Slowly, he brought a familiar jagged knife to his lips, kissing it, and then pointed it dead ahead. Straight into the fray—right at Severus.

  She saw him now, her incubus, his pristine jacket torn at the sleeve, his hands coated in slick black blood. Her breath caught when a demon threw an arm around his neck from behind, only for her to cheer silently as Severus flipped the creature over his shoulder and Malachi finished him off with a dagger to the throat.

  But they were distracted. There were too many of Diriel’s vassals
around them—they wouldn’t see him coming.

  Her gaze snapped back to Diriel. The demon winked as his escorts surged ahead, knocking demons out of the way like they were nothing. All three were roughly the size of Malachi, but she knew Diriel wouldn’t allow them to land the killing blow—he wanted to take Severus from her himself.

  “Not today, you black-eyed fuck,” she hissed. Diriel wasn’t going to touch Severus ever again. None of them were. Not when she was finished with them. Shoulders back, she thought of Severus, of saving him, of annihilating a common enemy, and her hands started to burn with angel fire. Slowly, she raised her right arm, fingers stretched wide, palm out, waiting for the light to wash across the field—to drown Diriel where he stood.

  She cried out, however, when a gloved hand clamped down on her wrist, instantly closing the tap. As lush, soft leather tightened around her, Moira looked back, panicked, to find another white-haired, grey-eyed, human-like creature gazing down at her. Her lips parted, her eyes drinking in the near-translucent skin as the being stared back, seemingly bored. He let out a huff, and in one swift motion forced her onto her knees.

  Moira winced, the ground unyielding as ever, and then cradled her throbbing arm to her chest when the creature released her. He looked exactly like her.

  Swathed in billowing black robes, he strode toward the battleground, and Moira crouched down, an arm thrown protectively over her head, as his entourage trailed after him. All white-haired. All with the same grey eyes that the hell-gate had given her. Their robes reminded her of priests’ black cassocks: long-sleeved and nipped around the neck, billowing to the ground; regal, yet mostly indistinct from one another. All that was missing were the white clerical collars.

  “Are you angels?” Her question tumbled out in an embarrassingly squeaky voice. The last of the group looked down at her in passing, his thin lips curved and his white brow creeping up. He answered with a laugh—a cruel, cutting sort of laugh, the kind that made her skin crawl, and she shrank back further. Every fibre of her being screamed not to cross them—not to get up. So she stayed down, spared by the new arrivals, and watched as the leader of the group, his robes the only trimmed in gold, dramatically plucked one of his gloves off and snapped his long, thin, bony fingers.

  In an instant, all the demons edged in glowing light, be it red and gold or blue and silver, vanished. Even the wounded, the fallen, the headless—gone. Only Severus, Malachi, Diriel, and herself remained. With some effort, Moira picked herself up and shuffled after them, careful to keep her distance.

  “Malachi,” the group’s leader purred, lips lifted into another cruel smile as he appraised the demon, “we’ve got to stop meeting like this. Wouldn’t this be your, what, third strike?”

  “Asmodeus, please, you must listen to me—”

  “I must do no such thing,” Asmodeus mused, his thin white brows shooting up, “but I am anxious to hear the cause of this… This…” He gestured toward the battlefield, the ground wet with black demon blood. The creature sighed, rolling his eyes. “This thorn in my side.”

  Moira stood out of the line of fire, holding herself as she studied the impassive faces of the new arrivals. Only Asmodeus seemed to get some sort of pleasure in listening to the onslaught of arguments that followed, all three demons clamoring to be heard. Severus pointing wildly at Diriel. Diriel thrusting an accusatory finger at Malachi, all the while watching Moira. Malachi’s arms flapping about like he was a headless chicken, his voice the loudest of the trio. It was chaos. Unbridled chaos—but didn’t Malachi deal in chaos?

  What little she could make of the clamor made her blood boil. Diriel had accused all three of them, Moira included, of disturbing the peace, butchering his vassals, and threatening torture. Ha. Diriel was one to talk. Malachi, meanwhile, in his shredded clothing and bloodstained skin, was snarling on and on about how this was his brother’s idea, and he was only here to defend the family honor, which Diriel had shit on in the first place.

  Severus could barely be heard over the pair.

  Enough of this. Moira slipped her hand into her pocket, clasping the polaroid she had carried around for weeks, and strode forward.

  “Diriel is working for an angel,” she insisted, positioning herself between the three demons and Asmodeus. She thrust the polaroid toward him, her heart thundering, the whump whump, whump whump of it vibrating through her entire being. “He was ordered by his angelic master—”

  “Why you little—”

  Diriel grunted noisily after what sounded like a fist colliding with his jaw. A quick glance back confirmed Severus had been the one to do it. Good.

  “He isn’t corrupting the angel,” she continued, knowing that, for some reason, was a big deal down here. “He’s doing his bidding. Diriel was ordered to kidnap and kill me, and when he failed, spending too much time on the torture, he ran back to Hell like a coward.”

  Asmodeus appraised her for a painfully long moment—what could only have been three or four seconds stretching on for an eternity. Her arm trembled, held out between them. The rest of his party remained impassive, until he finally waved his gloveless hand back at them; briefly, she noticed a large red smear across his palm, like a permanent bloodstain. She blinked hurriedly as the group of white-haired creatures fanned out, soundlessly encircling the group.

  “Let me see, little Nephilim,” Asmodeus murmured, plucking the polaroid from her with those long, spidery fingers. “And who is this angel you speak of?”

  “My dad,” she said, her breath catching. Curious grey eyes flickered up from the polaroid, and her cheeks burned. “I don’t know his name.”

  “He works for our local Seraphim Securities in Farrow’s Hollow,” Severus interjected. Out of the corner of her eye, Moira caught him moving forward, only to stop when Asmodeus fixed him with the same unflinching look. “Sire. We’ve been trying to find him. My theory is that he sent his dog Diriel after my…my…”

  “His woman,” Malachi offered. She figured he was just trying to help, that maybe the connection between her and Severus, or his perceived ownership of her, would have some sway in this backwards society. However, the burn in her cheeks only intensified when Asmodeus smirked and returned to appraising her photo. On top of the fear, the nerves, the panic about how this day had gone, about standing in front of Diriel again, Moira just wanted to rip the polaroid out of his hand. Hadn’t he gotten a good enough look by now?

  “Filthy, slanderous lies from the incubus and his whore—”

  “Enough.” Asmodeus raised his gloved hand, seemingly bored again, and returned her photo. Moira stuffed it in her pocket, then scrambled backward until she knocked into a solid body that she hoped belonged to Severus. Mercifully it was; his hand settled on the back of her sweaty neck, holding her firmly under her hair. A quick glance up showed he too was coated in blood, but beyond that, everything looked intact. From the two thick black streams under his nostrils, now dry under this relentless heat, she assumed he’d broken his nose at some point. One of his claws felt like it was missing on her neck.

  “Neither my brother nor I had any intention of going to battle,” Malachi said, and she couldn’t ignore the slight tremor in his voice when Asmodeus peered down at him. In fact, all the new arrivals looked down at them, pushing seven feet or more. Malachi cleared his throat, then finally shrugged off the tattered remains of his coat and shirt. “I merely requested a civilized discussion through his speaker when the coward speared me.”

  “And I summoned assistance when Diriel set loose his hellhounds on my otherwise incapacitated brother,” Severus added, his voice low and even. Both were trying their best to appear submissive and respectful. Moira leaned back into him; she had no clue who these guys were, but the fact that they frightened all three demons had to mean something.

  “I’ll hear no more,” Asmodeus remarked with a sigh. “A Truth Touch will be performed on both the girl and the Lutum—”

  “But, sire, please consider…” Diriel shut his mout
h as soon as Asmodeus shot him a glare withering enough to make even Moira’s blood run cold.

  “Nephilim.” Asmodeus snapped his fingers sharply, making her jump. “To me. Berith, take the Lutum.”

  As soon as those grey eyes returned to her, she froze. Instinctively, Moira knew she was supposed to move forward—go to him for whatever the hell a Truth Touch was supposed to be. But she couldn’t move. Her legs refused to budge, stick-straight and rigid. Mouth dry, throat like sandpaper, she just stood there, leaning back against Severus, the thunder of her heart growing louder the longer the creature watched her.

  “It won’t hurt.” Distantly, she heard Severus whispering to her, and still she couldn’t move. Finally, he gave her a little nudge forward. “Moira, go on. I promise it won’t hurt you.”

  Stiffly, she shuffled toward Asmodeus—only to gasp and reel back when Diriel started screaming. And not just any old scream either, but a deep, throaty, tortured cry that made the skeletal horses whinny excitedly in the background. One of the black-robed men, Berith, had a hand on Diriel’s forehead, the other pushed against his chest. The demon crumbled under the touch, his eyes shut tight and mouth twisted in terror. As he continued to scream, his back arched in an unnatural arc—any further and his spine would snap.

  Horrified, Moira looked to Severus for an answer, for reassurance, but he merely shook his head and mouthed a single word: Go.

  “You are neither demon nor hell-born,” Asmodeus stated over the racket. “There will be no pain. Come here.”

  Moira snapped into action at the sharpness in his tone; no longer did he sound bored, but noticeably annoyed, which couldn’t bode well for her. Moira crossed the space between them in a few long strides, standing before him a quivering mess.

  Yet she didn’t flinch away. Not as he closed in on her. Not when he placed an unexpectedly cold hand on her forehead, the other on her chest, and not when the light came.

  It flooded every sense, the light. All she could see was a pure white shine. Her mouth dropped open, and she imagined the glow flooding from every opening—her nose, her ears, her mouth, the seams of her eyelids. Warmth washed over her, as if she’d been submerged in a bubbling hot tub. Warmth and peace. How strange—to find them here, in Hell.