Masters of the Hunt: Fated and Forbidden

by Sarra Cannon

  “Stop!” she shrieked. “Don’t touch her!”

  Hallie ran from Matthew’s side to Christine’s, and she threw herself between Jacob’s next kick and Christine’s body. It landed instead on Hallie’s abdomen, and she cried out as her rib cracked. Then Jacob crouched beside her as she struggled to sit up.

  “Hello again, Hallie. It’s a shame you’ve come back. I was really hoping you’d stay gone… It was delightful to see Matthew so hurt, so broken, by the way you left him.”

  Her stomach churned with a mixture of revulsion and guilt.

  “What do you want?” she asked him, each breath labored and painful. “It’s a serious question… why can’t you let this go? Leave him alone?”

  Jacob angled his head.

  “I’ll tell you, but only because you’re damn clever, and I like that about you, Hallie.”

  He brushed her hair out of her face and she jerked away.

  “Here’s the thing,” he said. “Imagine you’ve been given a task by your boss. And it’s only one task but it’s pretty damn hard. You’ve got to make a sales quota, for example. And you’re doing great, making lots of sales. Which is good, because when you took this job, you had to give up a lot. You had to give up your whole life: the girl you loved, the child you’d made with her. Your future. Your grandchildren. Everything. That’s what you gave up to take the job.

  “But that’s okay, because you’re good at the job and what you’re selling is very, very important. Cosmically important, even. Until this little pissant comes by, and he seems like a good candidate. So you make the pitch to him, and everything’s great. Except that when you come back to collect your payment, he gives you a big giant fuck you. He steals your product. And he uses it in ways that are expressly forbidden. He uses it to get the same things you had to give up, years before.”

  He seized Hallie’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, baring his teeth in a merciless grin. “You think you’re special, in all of this?”

  Just then, Matthew started coughing. Hallie and Jacob both looked over at him, watched as he fought for consciousness and then felt the force of the pain radiating from the injury to his back. It hit him hard: his face contorted, and he gritted his teeth, roaring once, then twice, in agony. Hallie’s heart dropped into her stomach.

  “Matthew, I’m here,” she called to him, and his eyes found her, streaming with pained tears. “Try to breathe. Try to breathe.”

  Jacob chuckled. “Somehow I doubt that will help.” He stood up, then walked over to Matthew. “Hell, he might as well hear this, too.”

  He began pushing piles of leaves and wood and dried grass to the ground at Matthew’s feet.

  “So, as I was saying, Hallie, do you think you and Matthew are something special?” he asked.

  “I think we’re important,” she said. “I think we matter.”

  He shook his head. “No. What I mean is, would you die for him?”

  “Yes.” She answered without hesitating. “I would.”

  “Because you love him.” He piled more wood at Matthew’s feet.

  “Yes.”

  Just then, something cool and hard touched Hallie’s wrist where it lay pressed between her hip and Christine’s. She shifted, afraid to look down and call attention to their exchange: instead she lifted her hand slightly, and Christine pressed the handle of a knife against her palm.

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Jacob continued with a sneer. “You think you’re the only ones in the world, in the history of the Guard, who’ve ever felt this way? The only ones to find soul-deep, abiding love? To yearn for that love’s companionship and have to forgo it? You’re not. But you are the first to disobey the rules.”

  He pulled out a box of matches, and the terror that tore through Hallie was so powerful that it seemed to dissolve her insides, vaporize them. She was hollow, numb, as she struggled to her feet, clutching the knife behind her.

  “You make a mockery of the Guard,” Jacob said, lighting a match. “Of me, my work, and of every one of us who’s done our duty.”

  “Wait,” Hallie said. “Wait, don’t—”

  He tossed the match into the brush and it ignited, the smoke purling up toward Matthew, whose face was filthy, his upper body straining as he struggled to free himself. His lower half, strangely, didn’t move at all.

  Without thinking, Hallie launched herself at Jacob, pushing him to the ground, knowing that physically she was no match for him. But she did have the element of surprise, and she used it to slam the heel of her palm into his nose. It crunched and began to bleed. With a roar he rolled her onto her back, and she dropped the knife with a gasp as he pressed his weight onto her and forced his hand over her mouth and nose.

  She couldn’t breathe. His blood dripped into her face as she struggled, unable to scream or inhale, her head growing dizzy with pain and a lack of oxygen. While one of his hands pressed over her face, the other dug into her ribs, pressing on her cracked rib. Tears streamed down her cheeks—he twisted his fist into her a second time, and it hurt so bad she bit down on his hand.

  “Bitch!” He snatched his hand away, and she spat in his face. Her hands flailed wildly in the grass, in search of the knife.

  Then, from her left, Christine came running at them, wielding a heavy branch. She swung it into Jacob’s face, spraying more blood over Hallie’s dress and sending him reeling back. Hallie scrambled away, feeling in the grass for the knife, her tears making it hard to see, her ribs burning—she looked for the glint of sunlight on the silver handle—

  And then a pained roar from the tree sent her stomach into her mouth. The fire had caught Matthew’s clothes and she turned just in time to see his body swallowed in flames. Her fingers closed on the blade and she ran to the tree, circling it, then lunging forward and hacking at the rope that held Matthew to the tree. His yells of pain were all she could hear, all she could register. She could not let him die, this man who had held her, who loved her, who she abandoned when things got tough. She couldn’t give up on the boy who’d never once given up on her. Who was here now because he’d come searching for her.

  The rope broke and Matthew slumped downward into the flames; she reached in and dragged him away from the center of the fire, yelling in pain with him as the flames seared the skin of her forearms.

  Most of his clothes had burned away—she was thankful they had been loose, that most of the gasoline hadn’t seeped into his skin. She tamped out the flames with her hands, beating at his body, his jeans, the remnants of his shirt, and his red, blistering skin. He was burned everywhere—his face melted, almost unrecognizable. The palms of her hands were bloody and blistered, too, from her efforts.

  Finally, the fire that ate at him was gone. He lay on the ground, unconscious, his body raw and smoking. She looked up, and Christine was on her back beneath Jacob, as Hallie had been, and he had his hand up her shirt—Hallie’s stomach twisted at the sick, dark gleam in his eye, at the tears streaming down Christine’s face—

  She picked up the knife again and crossed the clearing. Jacob didn’t notice her approach, not with the tree still burning behind her and Christine fighting his every move. When she was very close, she leaned down and snarled. “Get the hell off of her.”

  Jacob glanced up, startled, and that was when they struck: Christine’s fist collided with his nose and Hallie pushed him backwards, sinking the knife into his chest, on the left side, over his heart. She didn’t want to have to do it more than once, didn’t want to have to force the blade past bone and sinews and organs again as she plunged it in.

  She followed him down, holding the knife in as he grabbed at it. Then, when he was flat on his back and she was kneeling beside him, she glanced up at Matthew’s immobile form and twisted the knife deeper. He roared in pain, and the knife seemed to hit something inside that turned the knife’s handle white hot—but not hot enough for Hallie to drop it.

  Then, something silver-white and shimmery began to seep from his wound, winding d
own the knife and toward her hand. She snatched her hand back, but the white stuff clung to her, blazing hot. Yet somehow this didn’t burn her skin, either. She wondered if the fire had burned away her nerve endings. As she pulled her hand farther back, she drew more of the gauzy white substance from his body, and he groaned in pain with each pull. When she was done, when it shimmered and rippled around her hands, enveloping them in an undulating white light, Jacob went limp, gasping. His breath rattled.

  “What is this?” Hallie demanded, trying to keep her voice from rising into hysterics. He coughed, unable to speak easily around the knife still lodged in his chest.

  “Put it back,” he pleaded. But she didn’t, instinct told her not to, even as the white stuff burned hotter and began to wind its way up her forearm. It moved like it was alive, like a sentient, ethereal swirl of sand whose grains were so fine only the most sensitive person would be able to feel them. She pushed the light back down to her hands, then held her arms outstretched, away from both of them.

  “Tell me what it is.”

  “Immortality,” he groaned, clutching his side. She stared down at him.

  “What?”

  But in that moment, he lunged for her, and she swayed backwards. The white stuff shot up her arms as she used her hands to break her fall. Jacob was no match for her, in this state. He clutched at the knife and tried to pull it out, to no avail.

  “It’s his immortality,” Christine said from behind her. She had pulled herself into a sitting position. “Your gift… Emmaline’s gift. This is what it is.”

  Jacob dry heaved on the floor beside her, and Hallie stood up, backing away from him and sliding the white gauze back down to her hands. It began to move faster over her skin, the white heat giving way to a tingling coolness. And then her skin began to shimmer, began to glow from within, and this—this she had seen before. The day of the Belleyre fire, when Matthew healed.

  The shimmery stuff became fleetingly opaque, and when it turned translucent again, her hands were healed. She stared at Christine, whose rumpled black hair had fallen into her face. Their eyes met, and Hallie knew what to do.

  She stood up, backing away from Jacob, whose wheezing was growing slower, more sporadic. She knelt beside Matthew, whose body shook, shivering, trembling, in the grass.

  “Matthew? Matthew, it’s me.” It occurred to her she didn’t have a pet name for him, the way he had one for her. “Angel,” she whispered. And now, she understood. Because he was her angel too, wasn’t he, in a way? Card-carrying member of some kind of divine club, with his power to heal. Sent to protect her, to watch over her, to love her.

  His eyes fluttered open at the sound of her voice, but they were red and wide and panicked.

  “Shhh,” she soothed. “You’re going to be all right. I promise… you’ll get through this.”

  And with that, she pressed her hands to his chest, concentrating her efforts on imagining that shimmery stuff enveloping him, entering him, filling every cell in his body with light and life and the promise, the fragile promise, of eternity. Please, please work. If this works I’ll be brave for him… if this works I won’t ever run.

  When she opened her eyes, the white stuff was gone. Matthew’s chest was warm, but still raw and bloodied. If anything at all had changed, it was that his breathing was marginally improved.

  She looked around, aghast, unsure where the white cloud—the Immortality—had gone. Christine caught her eye, then pointed to Matthew.

  “It’s in there,” she said. “But it’s not his. It’s imperfect… an imperfect fit. But for now, it will do.”

  She bit her lip. “He’ll be okay, though, right? He’s got to be okay.”

  She seized the less burned of Matthew’s hands and pressed a sliver of uninjured flesh to her lips. His eyes found hers again, but they had softened. Some of the panic, the pain, was gone.

  “You’re going to be okay,” she said, unsure if she was trying to convince him, or herself.

  And as his eyes drifted shut, his grip on her hand tightened, his thumb moving almost imperceptibly over her knuckles. Even now, in this moment, he was trying to comfort her.

  Christine knelt beside them.

  “I’m going to clean up, clear out, and then I’m going to call an ambulance. They will have questions: tell them it was an accident, that you were trying to barbecue. That he tripped while carrying a knife when the blaze went up. The police force in this area is inexperienced… They won’t ask many questions.”

  Hallie nodded.

  “And Hallie…” Christine touched Hallie’s bloodstained, but freshly healed hands. “You are a warrior,” she said. “You proved that here, today. But you are also a weapon. Prized by the Guardians more than any other gifted Mortal.”

  “I don’t want anything to do with them.”

  “And you won’t have anything to do with them,” Christine said fiercely. “We’re going to make sure of that.”

  When she was gone, Hallie settled in the grass beside Matthew, whose breathing was harsh but even. She laid her hand on the unburnt half of his stomach and closed her eyes, breathing with him, waiting for the sound of the ambulance sirens.

  Chapter Epilogue

  The day Louisa died was the day Dani woke up.

  I was sleeping with my face on her hospital bed when it happened—when she began to choke on the tube and Matthew and I both woke with a start. He ran for a nurse while I stroked her arm, trying to soothe her even though I was hysterical with laugher and tears.

  Matthew’s hands—mottled, now, like the rest of him, because his new Immortality is “imperfect,” or so they tell me—massaged my shoulders while they took her vitals, asked her if she knew her name, my name, what had happened. She had answers to all of these questions, and I leaned into Matthew with relief.

  Later that evening, we received a call from one of Louisa’s friends at Trellis Park, who told me they’d found her that morning in her folding chair, where she sat every day to watch the sunrise. Before she died, she called every day for updates on Dani… I only wish I’d gotten the chance to tell her the good news.

  Matthew had made a rapid, remarkable recovery, but it wasn’t nearly as seamless as the recoveries he’d enjoyed before. Still, as much as he regretted his new marred appearance, his flagging vision, the pain that lingered in his once strong, athletic body, none of those were the reasons I needed him. This is what I tried to explain to him, every time his sight faded and he needed me to be his eyes, to guide him around. That love was a choice, and I chose to love him as he was, scars and all.

  We returned to Abingford with Dani, who still doesn’t understand what I have with Matthew. How she could have gone to sleep for a few months and woken to find me tied to a lonely, guarded man with scars both inside and out. She still doesn’t see what I see, but she makes him laugh, and he teases her, and with time, I know she will understand.

  A month after we returned, Matthew drove me out to the fairgrounds. They were empty, but I think he just wanted to feel like his old self, without the burden of people pointing, staring, whispering. We climbed a great old oak tree in the middle of the grounds and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while the sun set.

  “You know what I was thinking?” he said, settling me back against his chest, thighs bracketing mine on either side of the broad tree limb.

  “Hmm?”

  “I was thinking I was ready for round two on the ferris wheel,” he said, and I burst out laughing.

  “Oh yeah? Sure you won’t cry? Or run away screaming, like last time?”

  He laughed, but his smile faded as he remembered the last time—the warnings he’d given me, telling me to stay away from him.

  I squeezed his knee.

  “Hey… no regrets, right?”

  His arm tightened around my waist as he leaned forward, tilting my head back with his other hand.

  “No regrets,” he murmured, and he angled his lips against mine.

  The sky faded to a dim pu
rple as he kissed me, hard, tender, sweet—with the force of a hundred years, a thousand hurts. I kissed him back, so intoxicated by the soft slide of his lips on mine that surely, surely we were falling…. But no. His arms held me tight and the tree held us both, and together, we were at once eternal and fleeting, breathing as one, in and out… the kind of kiss that could last forever.

  The End

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  To find out what happens next for Hallie, Matthew, Dani, Christine, and the rest of the crew, sign up for Diana’s newsletter! You’ll be the first to know when Book Two of the Immortal Chronicles goes live.

  Diana St. Gabriel is a New Adult & Paranormal Romance author who loves to write stories about strong, smart young women; the magical, mysterious men who fall for them; and healing power of love. She lives in Texas with her two dogs and a well-loved Netflix subscription.

  Follow Diana St. Gabriel online at:

  http://www.dianastgabriel.com

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  Demon Chaser: Skin

  By Charlene Hartnady

  Heat Level: Erotic (Violence)

  Paranormal Romance

  Demon Chasers… Protectors of humanity. Sworn to uphold the peace. Oath bound to keep the existence of demons a secret.

  Demon Chaser Gaby has lost her demon. Leaving her vulnerable and afraid. Thankfully, a delectable demon wolf is there to save her.

  After an all-night marathon of sizzling hot sex, Phoenix can’t seem to get Gaby out of his mind even though they’d agreed the encounter would be a once-only-no-strings deal. Four long months later, he decides to go after her. Little does he know he’s in for the biggest surprise of his life…one that will change him forever…