by Lyn Gala
“Good idea,” Paige said, a little relieved to get back to a subject she could understand. “The other vamps might be coming back now that the sun is down.” Paige frowned as something occurred to her. Either the sun killed lower-level demons or it hurt bad enough to force them into the shadows. So why didn’t Hunter attack during daylight? Hunting at night seemed stupid and Jim Hunter was not a stupid man. Manipulative and arrogant and annoying, but not stupid.
“Paige?” Brady looked alarmed.
“We should watch for Hunter,” Paige said, even though her logical mind told her it was stupid. She loved to preach about trusting the gut and her gut kept sending up thoughts of Jim Hunter.
“Hunter?” Some of Brady’s alien body language had returned. “I’ll check the other windows.” Before Paige could offer to check some herself, Brady was out the door.
Looking out into the yard, Paige could see the vamps, each sluggishly pursuing some amusement. Thinking of them trapped in the world Brady had described—it didn’t make her feel any better about killing them.
Jim Hunter might think he had a right to kill demons, but Paige wasn’t so sure. While she’d kill any demon who came after her, she wasn’t in a rush to send anyone home to a version of hell that terrified her. Reverend Ward’s hell with fire and brimstone didn’t scare her nearly as much as the idea of being jammed in some space where she would never escape other people or find a moment of peace.
If Jim Hunter tried to send Brady back there, she would do whatever she needed to in order to protect her partner.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Paige,” Brady called. His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried urgency. Paige left the window where she had been watching the moon rise and darted into the hall, her hand on her weapon. It took her a moment to figure out which room Brady was calling from. When she did find him, he stood next to the window with his back to the wall as he looked out.
His caution immediately put her on edge and she moved out of the line of sight. It was dark in the house. The only light came from the moon, but she didn’t want to risk someone or something seeing her shadow.
Moving to the far side of the window from Brady, she checked the yard. At first everything looked normal. A vamp sat on the ground, his head tilted up to the sky. It took her a second to realize that there was only the one. She looked over at Brady with a confused frown.
“By the well,” he said quietly.
She looked and a half dozen vamps crouched near the well, their fingers tangled in ribbons as they poked at something on the ground. “Shit.” Paige backed away from the window. “It has to be Hunter.” That was exactly the sort of thing he taught her to do.
“Or another hunter,” Brady pointed out. For some reason, Paige had never really stopped to consider the fact that there were a lot of demons and a lot of demon hunters wandering the world. She tended to think of Brady and Jim Hunter and Monagas and then her imagination faded away and she imagined the rest of the world as normal. Not that normal was normal. Clearly, normal included a lot of demons. She really needed another word for normal.
Paige shook her head. “I don’t believe in coincidence. Do you really think there would be another demon hunter in town?”
“Do you really think Hunter is the only one who knows about this demon woman and her entourage?”
“You really need to stop being logical,” she said with a sigh. “It’s annoying.”
He grinned at her.
“Look, unless we want to deal with getting stuck in a burning house, we still have to deal with Hunter.”
The cold expression that settled on Brady’s face frightened her. “Oh no,” she said. “There will be no killing of humans unless the humans are actually bad guys. Hunter is not a bad guy. He’s a jerk, but a lot of people are jerks. If I killed every jerk I’ve met, there would be a lot fewer human beings of this world and I’d be in prison.”
Turning her back on Brady, Paige headed for the stairs. If Hunter followed pattern, he would put some sort of bomb on the front porch and then leave it to blow up. She intended to stop him.
“Paige, wait,” Brady called behind her. Paige kept going. The bottom of the stairs ended in the large entry with old double doors that led to a large veranda and Paige paused. If there was a vamp near the door, and it saw her, she didn’t have much room to retreat.
She looked up at Brady who stood halfway down the stairs. “You got my back?” she asked her partner.
“Always,” he agreed, even though he didn’t look too happy. He hurried down the stairs and took up a position to the side of the door. Paige had a clear line of retreat straight down the hall if she needed it.
She smiled at him and then reached out for the front door knob. Rusted hinges squealed as she pulled at it. Moisture had swollen the wood so that she had to pull hard. She wouldn’t be able to slam it closed fast, that was for sure. Moving warily and keeping a hand on her gun, she checked the veranda. The north end was clear, but when she checked the south end, she could see a solid shadow moving among the dappled light created by an overgrown trellis.
“Hunter?” she whispered. The shadow stopped.
“Silver?” Hunter moved toward a slice of moonlight that fell across the veranda. “That you?” His voice sounded friendly, but he had his gun pointed at her head.
“If you shoot me, I will find a way to come back and haunt you to fucking death, Hunter. Jesus Christ, what the hell are you doing?” Paige fell back a step so she could use the door as cover. Brady moved closer to the door, his lips pulled back in a feral snarl. Paige held up a hand toward him palm out before he could move close enough for Hunter to see. She wished she could just telepathically tell him to cool it because de-escalation was not a skill he possessed. She wasn’t the best at it, but he just plain sucked.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Hunter’s eyes darted around the house, checking all the potential ambush spots.
“Trying to not end up dead, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t fucking shoot me.”
Hunter’s gun dropped a fraction of an inch, but he was still prepared to pull the trigger. Paige could feel her palms sweating and Brady practically vibrated with anger. “How did you get in that house?” he demanded.
“Oh I tracked down someone’s car.” Paige crossed her arms. “And when I couldn’t find a certain someone, I thought he might be in trouble. It turns out that creating a distraction near a vampire house is probably not smart.” The last part was true. And if Hunter wanted to assume that the man she was looking for was him, she wasn’t going to disagree. Not when he had a gun pointed at her.
He pulled back a little. “You created a distraction?”
“Fireworks, sparkles, pretty little toys and hollow point bullets. It was a pretty good distraction, if I do say so myself.”
“Okay.” Hunter said that slowly, as if he was trying to process her words. “So how did you end up in the house?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea. It might have something to do with the hit to the back of my head and potential concussion.”
“They captured you.” His voice went flat and the weapon came up again.
“Stop jumping to conclusions, Hunter. Well, actually the conclusion where they captured me was right, but you’re assuming that I’m now a demon. I’m not. However the two demons who were fighting over this house created enough chaos for me to get out of my little basement prison.” She rushed to tell a highly edited version of the truth.
“Two demons?” Hunter took another step closer, which would seem to be a good sign, only the gun was still pointed at Paige’s head.
“A woman and a man,” Paige agreed. “There were more, but they’re upstairs dead, and a human servant’s dead in the basement. That just left me with a big mess of vamps outside and I really didn’t think I could make a run for it.”
Hunter snorted. “You didn’t do half bad last time.” Shaking his head, he dropped his weapon to his side. “Shit, woman, you are just
a walking, talking trouble magnet. I don’t know how you’ve managed to avoid a good case of death.”
“If you start telling me how you like trouble magnets, I’m going to knee you in the balls. I’ve had a very bad day,” Paige warned him.
With her hand hidden by the door, she gestured. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched as Brady’s face contorted with anger. He shook his head, but Paige gestured again. Brady fisted his hands and shook his head more vehemently. Paige didn’t dare look his way. Hunter was too observant to miss that kind of clue. So instead, she flipped Brady off and then gestured for a third time for him to get out of sight.
From the thunderous expression she could see out of the corner of her eye, she figured she’d be hearing about this later, but he fell back into the drawing room. With the multiple doors, he could avoid Hunter easily as long as he stayed downstairs and kept ahead of the man. No one needed to die.
“You’ve had several bad days, Silver.” Hunter moved toward the house and Paige fell back to allow him in the door. “So, any vampires left?”
Paige shook her head without answering verbally. It was like a half-lie. Hunter still hesitated at the threshold and Paige kept her own hand near her weapon, so clearly there was more tension than either of them was willing to acknowledge.
“I can’t believe you’re not dead. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m happy about it. I just can’t believe it.” He gave her a good long look and Paige let him. She was guessing that there were ways to tell if someone had turned, even if the weak moonlight didn’t let him check her eyes. Eye color would give Brady away in two seconds if any of his old friends saw him. That and the fact he’d left six pints of blood behind in his apartment. No one could survive that.
“Where’s your partner?” Paige asked.
Hunter chuckled. “He’s a trainee, not a partner, but he told me you blew his cover.”
“He blew his own cover. Besides, it’s not like I stood in the middle of the police department and accused him of being a vampire hunter.” She might have threatened to do that, but she didn’t follow through.
Hunter gave her a long, amused look. “No, but the cops aren’t too happy with him. He helped them catch their killer and they still hate his guts. You see, their beloved fellow officer came up with this theory that Monagas had a partner or a copycat. And then their beloved fellow officer got in some pissing match with the profiler. And then their beloved fellow officer vanished on them. You can see why the cops in this town are not throwing him a parade. And Kent can’t exactly explain that you had a falling-out over vampires.”
“So where is he?” Paige asked, refusing to get sidetracked. Hunter threw out a lot of information and she was interested, but she wanted her question answered first.
Hunter finally holstered his gun and leaned into the door to push it closed. “He’s trying to smooth things over with the locals. He didn’t come along this time.”
“So who is playing bait? Or maybe this time you brought backup. You know, someone you actually warned before taking them into the middle of the nest and using them as a distraction.” She gave him a vicious smile.
“Are you still holding that against me? Silver, there are rules to this world you found. You don’t get to walk in and ask for the really juicy secrets on day one. So if you really want to be a hunter, I can help with that. I think I’ve made it pretty clear I’ll train you.” Hunter crossed his arms. Paige wondered how many people he had actually offered to train. She got the feeling it wasn’t that many.
“There are too many unanswered questions for me to consider the offer.” Paige couldn’t even count the number of inconsistencies in this case, so she wasn’t getting in any deeper with Hunter or whatever organization of hunters and their rules that he might represent.
He shrugged. “So ask your questions. We’re here until daylight unless we want a really messy exit.” Hunter leaned back against the door.
His body language signaled his complete openness, but something in Paige told her that it was a feigned emotion. He might give her information, but he wasn’t going to be open. Reality was, she couldn’t even blame him for that. She was a cop. She understood the concept of confidential information. She just sure as hell didn’t like being the one cut out of the loop.
“Okay,” Paige said, willing to play his game long enough to get a little information, “what happened with Monagas?”
Hunter gave a self-deprecating snort and shook his head. “You and I both proved exactly why the world can’t know about demons. Something bad happened and we were quick to assume a demon did it. I’ve been in this game long enough that I shouldn’t fall for that shit. At least you can claim that as a rookie you had a right to make a rookie mistake.”
“You mean it wasn’t— But it was Monagas’ MO.” Paige had been certain that the man had committed the crimes. “His body vanished!”
“Yeah, the disappearing body convinced me. I guess I’m not as infallible as I like to think.” Hunter scratched his neck and made a face at his own stupidity. “Turns out John Monagas had a little brother who had a few loose screws and a penchant for stealing things out of morgues. He’s a real winner. I’ve seen vampires I like more than him.”
“They found him.” Paige felt like the breath had been stolen from her body. It was weird. This wasn’t her case. It wasn’t like she was a detective. Still, it somehow felt fundamentally wrong that she hadn’t been part of the final arrest. “Was anyone hurt?”
“Little Monagas took a few too many hits to the head,” Hunter said, mimicking a fist to his own head, “but no sense, no feeling, so I’m not sure he felt much. The twerp had big brother’s body in a barrel he hauled around in a panel van and he used his brother’s MO for the rapes. He kept screaming that his brother told him to do it, so I’m guessing he’s going for a psych defense. Hell, he might even be telling the truth because he sounds crazy as all fuck.”
“So it’s over.” Paige didn’t know how she felt.
“The victims are talking now and some of them said that some well-dressed woman would come along and watch from the shadows, that she seemed to feed off the pain. It seems she freaked them out as bad as Monagas, so the case is still technically open. I think we both know they’re never going to find the second suspect. Are they?” Hunter gave her a sharp look.
Paige sucked in a breath. She knew as well as anyone that women could be just as evil as men. She still didn’t want to think that a woman would have anything to do with these rapes. More than that, it didn’t make sense. Brady had said she was the same kind of demon he was, so she should need sex or death to feed. Watching a human rapist attacking human woman was just…just disgusting. Paige would take about a hundred of the guys out front over one bitch lady and her twisted kinks.
“She’s downstairs in a slightly disgusting pile,” Paige said absentmindedly. “You can tell it by the hair.”
Hunter’s smile was cold and so very pleased. “Good. Bitch.”
Paige turned and moved to the stairs so she could sit down. Her knees felt weak, and she didn’t feel like falling on her face in front of Hunter. “Bitch doesn’t cover it. She watched? She fucking watched?”
For the first time, Hunter’s body language seemed to actually loosen up as he moved a little closer. “Silver, vamps feed on life. Some feed on life force or chi or whatever new-age name you have for the shit. Others feed on blood and some feed on sex. She wasn’t watching. She was feeding by being there when sexual desire peaked.”
“During a rape?” Paige’s voice slipped and her last word came out with an undignified squeak.
Hunter shrugged. “Peter Monagas was probably putting out enough sexual energy to feed an army. That’s what she wanted. I can’t figure out how he avoided getting drained. I guess she was careful with the golden goose.”
Paige thought about the victims that had flinched back from her and turned to Brady. They’d known the woman had been the real abomination. At least she was the larger ab
omination, because Monagas still had a first-class ticket to hell. “It’s sick.”
“They’re vampires, Silver. They’re unnatural monsters that consider us food. That is pretty fucking sick.”
Looking up at Hunter, she could see that he completely believed that. All this would be so much easier to accept if she could just bring herself to believe that, but she couldn’t. The creatures outside could kill her in two seconds, but they wouldn’t do it because they were evil or monsters. They just wanted energy.
Even more importantly, Brady had shown her that he had the same ability to be either good or evil, and in his case, he wasn’t even particularly good at being evil. The bitch, however, had a real talent at evil—she and the human Peter Monagas were both in some special version of hell.
“You need something to eat? You’re looking a little puny, Silver,” Hunter said.
Paige pulled herself out of her useless thoughts long enough to glare at Hunter. “Shove it,” Paige suggested.
Hunter laughed. “For a woman half my size, you have a lot of pissiness in you.” Hunter pulled out a power bar and offered it. With as much grace as Paige could muster, which was not much, she snatched the bar from him.
“So, you sure you cleaned out the place?” Hunter looked up the stairs.
“I’ve only been a cop for fifteen years, but hey, if you think I can’t clear a scene, feel free to look around. Have fun in that west bedroom.” Paige slid to the side of the step so Hunter could get by if he wanted.
He looked at her with horror. “Aw shit. You killed recently dead vamps up there, didn’t you?”
“I wouldn’t call them recently dead,” Paige said as she thought about the state of decomp. Even now, the scent was starting to creep out into the house. “I’d say they were old enough to get a little ripe.”
“Then they’re recent,” Hunter said with a sort of weary resignation. “Silver, if you’re going to get into the business, get this rule in your head—avoid killing vamps that are younger than a decade. They leave a God-awful mess when they die.”