by Harley James
Dark Huntress
Harley James
CLAIMED BY THE DEMON HUNTER
Copyright © 2019 by Harley James
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is coincidental.
This book was formerly published by Misty Dietz. This book has been modified from the original, and Misty is now going by the pen name Harley James. All rights to this book are owned by the original author and copyright infringement is NOT being done to Misty Dietz.
Cover Design by Cover Couture: www.bookcovercouture.com
Email Harley for a list of photo credits.
Mature audiences only. 18+.
Contents
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
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Dark Hunter Sneak Peek
About Harley James
For Amy Bohanan
For your beautiful mind
& the secrets that do us bind.
Chapter 1
Aqua nightclub, Waikiki Beach, Hawaii
Death, darkness, demons. It was getting so damn old.
Katherine Evangelista breathed deep and stalked toward the Possessed. This one was a wild-eyed brunette who hadn’t stopped talking since an evil spirit had shoved itself into her human body four hours ago.
Katherine stopped several feet away from the possessed chick, going over the best method to subdue her.
Step one: Force her into the massive Devil’s Trap in the center of the dance floor.
Step two: Exorcise the evil within.
Step three: Wipe her mind and send her on her way.
Step four: Erase the episode from the non-possessed, human witnesses’ memories and get everyone the hell out of the club.
Same shit, different day.
Chatty Brunette lunged. Katherine’s body flushed with heat as she thrust her arms out to block the attack. The brunette snapped her teeth, spittle flecking from her lips as she spilled question after question, her voice two octaves lower than it should have been.
“How much money do you make? Do you put out on the first date? How many people have you killed?”
The Possessed’s teeth ground together, narrowly missing Katherine’s throat.
Their scuffle backed them into a table, knocking it over along with several drinks and a hurricane candle.
“Ignesco,” the brunette roared, and the table burst into flames.
“Stark!” Katherine shot to her feet and yelled over her shoulder for her lead security specialist. The Possessed charged forward, clawing at Katherine’s face.
Konani, the club’s most popular human mixologist, sprinted into the room. “Stark’s out on the pool terrace rounding up the other crazies. Hold on.” She grabbed an empty spray bottle and rapidly refilled it with holy water at her bar station, her gaze darting between the table fire and the possessed woman.
“Hurry the fuck up.” Katherine slammed a rosary against the brunette’s cheek, stunning her and giving Katherine time to direct her water element at the nightclub’s emergency sprinklers.
Crystal chandeliers and champagne buckets rattled with the sudden power surge. Bone-chilling water doused Kat’s face, her biomagnetism failing to shield her like it usually did when she used her water powers. I am one hundred and eighty percent done with today, and at least forty percent done with tomorrow.
The fire was out, and the brunette was temporarily docile, but this final call for energy had consumed the last bit of Katherine’s power. She was too tired to even turn off the emergency sprinklers. She’d never have enough energy to mind wipe the non-possessed humans cowering in the club’s dark corners witnessing all this crap.
She’d probably need to call another Guardian for help, goddammit.
A dark corner of her mind sprang open, flash-burning her with heady images of a tall, golden Guardian.
Ari.
The only man who’d ever made her hunger, crave, beg. The only one she’d ever truly—
No.
She pounced on the memories, locking them away, deeper than before. One of these days, she’d find a way to eliminate them once and for all.
Aut viam inveniam aut faciam. Find a way or make one. Her favorite motto.
If people labeled her a bitch because she was assertive and goal-oriented, that was their prerogative. She had more important things to worry about. Like dealing with the rest of the fiends running amok in the club, courtesy of one of Satan’s daughters.
Katherine shoved the brunette into a chair inside the Devil’s Trap until she could be exorcised. The Possessed roared, staring down at the mystical sigils arranged between the five points of the pentagram.
Pursing her lips, Katherine studied the fingernail gouges on her wrists and the blood-stained cuffs of her soaked, white suit jacket. She wiped water out of her eyes, and her hand came away smudged with gray eyeshadow. She held it up to the possessed woman. “You see this? You’ve made today a colossal waste of makeup. Congratulations.”
The brunette shook her long, wet hair, then turned and sank her teeth into the other Possessed inside the Devil’s Trap. Just everyone’s luck the male happened to be a fingernails-down-the-chalkboard shrieker.
Ugh. A person’s reaction to demonic body invasion was as varied as the range of human personalities. Katherine turned to another member of Aqua’s security team. “Maddox, get the iron chains soaked in holy water for this one. She’s a biter.”
The haunted look in the black man’s eyes vanished with his assignment. Katherine had found Maddox homeless and delirious on Detroit’s mean streets last year. He was human, but a powerful telepath who could hear the thoughts of others. Uncontrolled for years, the ability had nearly driven him insane.
Every week, she pushed him to delve deeper into his psychic nature. To gain mastery over it instead of turning to high dose anti-anxiety meds. Inhumane? Maybe, but she was a hard-edged bitch who didn’t like the easy way out of anything.
And some day, she’d celebrate—privately—when those tormented shadows no longer darkened his eyes.
Maddox’s tall, athletic form vanish into the storage locker, and Katherine wished she was anywhere but here right now. Guardian leader Alexios would flip his shit over how damaged these humans were before she got them exorcised, but right now she didn’t give a damn.
She turned from the Devil’s Trap to identify her next target in the nightclub’s blue and white interior. But instead of finding another human ravaged by evil spirits, her gaze landed on the wet, white tank top plastered to her distant-relative-turned-best-friend’s chest.<
br />
Jade Matson’s honey-brown arms made the sign of the cross in front of every possessed soul. She swaggered toward Katherine as though the emergency sprinkler system going full blast was the norm.
“I leave you alone for a couple hours to get some shut-eye, and the whole place goes to pot. This has gotta be a new record.”
Katherine rubbed her temples. “Wow, aren’t you disgustingly jolly?”
Jade pulled a rosary out of her pocket and flashed it at a foaming-at-the-mouth man running full throttle toward her. He dropped dramatically, then convulsed. “We’re saving lives, Kat. It’s a great way to start a Saturday.”
“Morning people are so annoying,” Katherine muttered. She grabbed the seizing man’s arms, while Jade pocketed the rosary and scooped up his legs. Katherine blinked water out of her eyes, yelling over her shoulder, “The first person to shut off these sprinklers gets a five-hundred-dollar bonus.”
As they lugged the writhing man into the Devil’s Trap, Katherine felt Jade’s gaze on her back. Too bad she wasn’t in the mood to talk. They left the possessed dude in the trap and backed out.
“Kat.”
It was that tone. She’d never enjoyed a single conversation when Jade used it.
“Shh, no one cares right now, Jade.”
“Lady K!”
Katherine shook soggy hair from her eyes and looked toward the second-floor balcony, receiving a series of hand signals from Stark. She nodded at him, then glanced back at Jade. “The crew rounded up the last of the Possessed from the upper balconies and pool terraces. Stark says there’s five, maybe six more to go on this level.”
“Okay, we can handle that, but first, I gotta tell you something…” Jade trailed off, and the expression on her face made Katherine’s skin prickle.
“What did you do?”
“Don’t freak out.”
Katherine’s pulse jolted, but she kept her features composed. “You know hysterics aren’t my thing.”
Jade hesitated. “I called Ari. He’s on his way.”
Chapter 2
Weightlessness rushed through Katherine. She sank toward the plush white leather of the nearest bench. Jade reached out to help her, but Katherine smacked her hands away.
“You did what?” Ari Grimmson was her Achilles’ heel.
No, her Achilles’ Hell.
Jade crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I called him. But, look, don’t be mad because I’m looking out for your best interests.”
“My best interests? Oh girl, I may like shopping, but I’m not buying that bullshit. You, Jade. You of all people know our backstory.”
“I know. I know.” Jade put up her palms. “But he was already planning to come after his assignment with the Dalai Lama.”
Katherine pressed a hand to her stomach. “Seriously. That’s your excuse? After everything I’ve told you?”
“Kat, you guys love each other. Hell, you belong together regardless of how pigheaded you’ve both been for the last three years. Ari’s your soul mate, so he was bound to feel your growing weakness. You had to know he’d show up here one of these days.”
Katherine shook her head repeatedly. “No. No, no, no. He’s only a potential soul mate. I have a choice in this. Besides, he’s the one who left.” Even when she’d begged him—pleaded with him—to stay. As a free agent, Ari wasn’t part of the Unholy Inc network of Guardian nightclubs. He could easily go—or stay—wherever he wanted.
He’d chosen to leave her.
She’d never known such soul-stripping humiliation.
Katherine’s whole body trembled. She needed to hide. In a cave maybe, fetal position and all that.
Fetal. Oh God.
She swallowed hard. Her mouth felt coated with sawdust. Speak slowly, don’t stutter. “You’re fired if you don’t call him back and tell him to stay away from me. From this whole island.”
A stream of water from the overhead sprinkler slid down Jade’s face, her blonde buzz cut as perfect as ever. “Fire me then. I don’t care, but you need his help. You can’t do these exorcisms alone anymore.”
You can’t. YoucantYoucantYoucant. Heat fired through Katherine’s chest. You can’t save this baby was what they’d told her as she lay in the ER, bleeding and crying for the life dying in her womb.
Helpless to stop it and the joy ebbing from Ari’s eyes.
She pushed up from the bench, anger making her legs steady again. Konani moved past her, wrangling another possessed man into the Devil’s Trap with a sterling silver crucifix and frequent streams of holy water from a spray bottle. “Can somebody please turn the sprinklers off? They’re diluting the holy water.”
Katherine was now juiced enough from Jade’s ‘you can’t’ comment to shut them off with a mere thought. Konani hollered a quick thanks, maneuvered her target into the Devil’s Trap, then raced to the pool cabanas for her next mark.
Katherine scanned the club, the DJ lights rolling red, purple, and blue across the copper dance poles and white leather furniture. Stark, Maddox, and Konani’s brother Makoa were tag-teaming the last of the possessions. But even with everything going on, Katherine couldn’t prevent thoughts of Ari, that loathsome Viking—tall, muscular, and bronze all over—from escaping that locked vault in her mind.
Just the mention of him made her dizzy.
He would eat that up, arrogant, booming-laugh swashbuckler that he was. And she would go to hell before ever admitting she had a swooning bone in her body.
An unnatural wind swept through the club, shifting the diaphanous bolts of gauze that separated the dance floor from the outside pool terrace. The ground rumbled and shook, clinking the crystal chandeliers and raining chunks of wet plaster from the ceiling. Goose bumps broke out across Katherine’s arms as she dropped into a crouch.
This was no earthquake. A manifestation of these elements meant the Archangel Michael was here. Great. Deep power filled the space behind her so that it seemed all the molecules in the room had compressed into a volatile state.
Katherine tried to swallow back her fear. “I apologize for the Hell comment, Michael, but you should know by now that sarcasm is my native tongue,” she said to him, telepathically.
“And you should know by now that sarcasm is indicative of passive aggression, which illuminates a flawed moral compass,” he replied aloud, rather than with his mind.
She stood and turned slowly, noting with alarm that he’d frozen everyone in the club but her.
Oh, Lord, how could she forget how overwhelming the leader of Heaven’s army was? Midnight hair, fathomless dark-blue eyes, dressed in black from broad shoulders to boot-clad feet… Michael had created the Guardians from piss-poor examples of humanity more than two millennia ago. And, beginning with Ari Grimmson in 847 AD, the archangel had structured the Healer class of Guardians to exorcise possessed humans.
“Yeah, well, if you didn’t want your Guardians to be morally flawed, maybe the Big Boss should have chosen humans who’d lived exemplary lives instead of picking those of us who were bitches and assholes.” Katherine crossed her fingers that the archangel wouldn’t smite her with the power vibrating in the room.
Then again, being laid low by a celestial being might be better than having to face Ari in her current gutless condition.
Michael’s dark eyes flashed with something that could have been humor. Which had to be a trick of light because the archangel had been nothing but somber in the hundred and forty-plus years since he’d given her this second chance at redemption.
Or rather, this Purgatory.
If I only knew then what I know now…
Michael raised an eyebrow.
“Oh quit it, you know I’m joking. Well, not about the bitches and assholes part, but that bit about Purgatory…” She paused, wondering how tolerant he was feeling today. “Kind of.”
“Most humans who have endeavored to live a good and peaceful life do not have the necessary disposition to battle demons. That job is best reserved for those who
are a hair’s breadth away from the pits of Hell themselves. Those who know how to fight dirty when the situation demands it.”
Nice.
It was fabulous to know she would’ve become one of the black-eyed fiends if not for the final decision she’d made as a twenty-five year old human being. A single act of selflessness—an exclamation point at the end of her cold, egocentric existence. Katherine still didn’t understand why she’d done what she’d done in those last few minutes of her life.
“You chose well at the time it mattered most. There is honor in that,” Michael said.
“Jury’s still out on me. My actions were probably a bout of temporary insanity. I doubt I’d make the same choice again.”
She wanted to get a rise out of him, but Michael’s expression remained inscrutable. “You hide your broken emotions behind bravado, Guardian. You will fail in your duties if you do not find a way to surmount your grief, despair, and loneliness. Failure is unacceptable, for the battle will soon arrive at your door.”
Grief, despair, loneliness.
Her heart pounded, but she forced her mind to go blank so the archangel wouldn’t see how close to home his words had hit. “Such apocalyptic commentary, but you don’t scare me, Michael. If the End Times were near, you’d be polishing your weapons and strategizing with Gabriel, Raphael, and the rest of the God-squad instead of popping in at my lowly club. So spare me the lofty prose. This is obviously about Ari, and I’ll have you know, I still don’t—” She was going to say “want him,” but Michael would pounce on that lie faster than a babysitter’s boyfriend running out the back door when the parents’ car pulled up. “I still haven’t changed my mind. I refuse to bond with him.”