Killer (The Hunt Book 4)

by Liz Meldon

  His eyes ballooned to full black as she squirmed, her breath quickening, and Severus fought hard to stay in control—to not force the car off the road just so he could show her how much he didn’t want anyone else, human or otherwise.

  “It’s because I love you,” he carried on, his chest tightening as he said it, those three little words—words he had never said to another woman before. “And because I desire you, and I want to touch you and taste your sweet little cunt every chance I get.”

  “Severus—”

  “But if there were a human in your place,” he said, squeezing her neck just a little tighter, “and I desired her as I desire you, loved her as I love you, I would kill her. She wouldn’t have the time to regenerate. I’d take everything from her, and she’d die. It’s why my kind are called leeches, darling. We take from humans. Unchecked, we can take every last bit of them until they’re…” Withered husks. “Until they’re gone.”

  “Oh.” Moira licked her lips, mulling it over for a moment. “Right. I don’t know why I didn’t…think of that.”

  “My darling girl,” Severus murmured, shuffling to the edge of his seat so he could better stroke her cheek, pinch her chin. “I don’t need someone who feeds me. I want someone who nourishes my very black, bleak soul. You nourish me, Moira Aurelia, just the way you are.”

  Her expression remained unchanged—until finally it broke. The uncertainty splintered, broken by her smile, her laugh. She sniffled, clutching at his wrist as he cupped her cheek. While she kept her gaze on the road, he could see it now—the ray of light poking through the darkness.

  “My very black, bleak soul.” She giggled. “You’re such a drama queen.”

  Smirking, he leaned toward her. “Come here, you ridiculous creature.”

  Although she uttered a soft moan in protest, her lips soon succumbed to his, the car slowing as her fingertips tickled the underside of his chin. He couldn’t keep her there for long, as much as he wanted to. Well, no—Severus wanted to do a great deal more. Stop on the side of the road for a mid-trip quickie, where he’d have her screaming for him as he pounded into her. With his back well on its way to fully healed, sex had become far easier over the last few days, but they had an awful lot of time to make up for now that the worst was behind them.

  His mind danced with salacious fantasies as he kissed her, as he fought the urge to tighten his grasp and drag her across the car. In the end, he was happy just to taste her, to slip his tongue fleetingly between her lips and stroke her as her moans of protest lengthened to something more.

  “Eyes on the road,” he rasped when they finally broke apart. “Are you trying to kill us, Moira? Rather irresponsible…”

  “We’re going like fifteen on an eighty road,” she muttered, snapping her teeth at him before retreating into her seat. “We’ll be fine.”

  “Well, I…”

  Severus saw it at the last possible moment, when it was too late to stop it—the enormous black pickup truck hurtling toward them. It shot out from a dusty driveway, careening onto the road and slamming hard into Moira’s side of the car. She screamed on impact, her window shattering, the car crunching and folding as the truck plowed them off the pavement. As soon as the wheels breached the gravel shoulder, the truck’s engine revved, pushing them over the edge of a six-foot drop onto a grassy field. Severus slammed into the door on his side, the momentum tossing him about, and then braced himself on the roof as the shiny new BMW flipped over—and over, and over again.

  Stillness. The car had finally settled on its roof, window panes shattered and cracked. The deployed side airbags hovered in his peripherals. The radio drowned out his thundering heart sporadically, and while his head ached and his stomach roiled, he was relatively unharmed. His back—his back hurt more than a twinge, that was for certain.

  Severus shook his head, blinking hard as he processed what the fuck had just happened.

  Someone had purposefully run them off the road.

  “Moira?!”

  They both hung upside down; the seatbelt safety measures had restricted during the collision, strapping them to their seats. As Severus battled with his, Moira’s kept her there, her body limp, eyes closed, jaw slack. Just as he got himself unbuckled, the front airbags deployed suddenly, delayed, slamming into him, into Moira, forcing her unconscious figure back into her seat.

  “Moira!” He batted the bulbous grey bag aside before wriggling out from under it, righting himself in the small space. Severus reached for her, searching frantically for injuries. Blood gathered in her nostrils. The shattered glass had left minuscule scratches across her cheek. He fought with her seatbelt, fingers fumbling to reach the clasp. “Darling, wake up.”

  When he finally managed to stab at it hard enough, the buckle released, and Severus caught Moira’s lifeless body before her head hit the roof of the car. Carefully, awkwardly, he lowered her and moved her between the front seats, setting her in the gap above the back bench, still scanning her body for injuries, his head swimming—panicking. She wasn’t moving. Breathing, sure, but she wasn’t moving.

  No. She hadn’t survived Diriel, Hell, Asmodeus, and a squadron of warrior angels only to succumb to a fucking car crash.

  “Darling, try not to move too much,” he murmured, not knowing whether she could even hear him. “I’m here. Just stay calm. Just—”

  His car door was suddenly wrenched off its hinges, a gust of warm, humid air assaulting him. Startled, Severus looked over his shoulder, only to find fucking Diriel peering back at him. A giant, ugly red handprint marred the demon’s entire face, the mark swollen and angry, blistered—painful, hopefully—yet still the bastard managed to smile.

  “Hello, leech,” he drawled before reaching into the wreckage and dragging a snarling Severus out.

  Moira awoke to the smell of exhaust and leather.

  Groaning, she tried and failed to sit up, pain flaring everywhere with even the slightest movement. What the fuck had just happened? The last thing she remembered fully was Severus—his eyes widening, nostrils flaring. And then…crunch. She whimpered his name, staring at the ceiling of the BMW and wondering why it looked so strange. What were those things hanging down from it? Those…

  “Oh my god.” She squeezed her eyes tight upon realizing she was staring at the seats. The car had flipped while she was driving. Taking a deep breath, she did a quick body check, moving everything she could. Each limb responded. Her head burned, like she’d been sitting under one of those mammoth salon hairdryers for too long, and she pressed a hand to her forehead briefly before trailing it down her face. Only a bit of blood coming out of her nose. Her eyes snapped open to find airbags deployed—probably the culprit. Then there were a few sharp spots on the left half of her face—courtesy of the broken window. “Severus?”

  When he didn’t respond, she looked back, then tentatively sat up. Her surroundings spun for a moment, settling after a few deep breaths. Her side of the car had taken the brunt of the hit, her door crunched in, the window shattered, the windshield splintered.

  Alaric was going to kill her.

  Wait. No. Alaric was going to kill whoever hit her. Moira had been driving slow before the accident, wrapped up in Severus’s kiss, in his words, but also aware of the fact that she wasn’t looking at the road. She had eased up on the gas…

  And someone had hit her. Slammed into her.

  “Severus?” She called louder this time, then crawled to the front of the car, squeezing and contorting to navigate the confined space. Her door wouldn’t open when she tried, so she batted at the airbag on Severus’s side, forcing it out of the way, pushing and pushing against it until her nail punctured the material.

  Moira toppled forward with a squeak when it gave way, exhaling air and dust in her face. Coughing, she pushed through—only to realize Severus’s side had no door. At all. She paused, steadying herself.

  Had he wrenched it off to get out of the car—or had someone done that for him? Panic gripped her tight, c
lawing its way up her throat, strangling her as she called for him again.

  “Severus?!”

  Her breath hitched as a figure breezed by on her peripheral view, stalking along the outside of the car before crouching in front of the doorway.

  “Hello, daughter mine.”

  Moira reeled back, cold fear slicing through her, and she scrambled to get deeper into the vehicle, a vehicle that might have been upside down and squished, but at least it offered a modicum of protection. However, before she could so much as squeeze between the two front seats, Aeneas’s viselike grip clamped down on her ankle, and he hauled her unceremoniously toward him.

  Well, so much for flight.

  It was time to fight.

  Moira rolled over with a grunt so that he was pulling her along on her back, and once he had her halfway out of the car, she pushed up and used her core to propel herself at him. She shrieked as she went, tackling the startled fallen angel to the ground. He went down hard, landing on his back, Moira on top of him, the pair in a heap at the base of the steep grassy hill the car must have rolled down. Not wasting any time, she pushed herself up, kneeing him in the face along the way, and wrenched her ankle out of his grasp as she bolted around the car.

  “Severus!” Her heart dropped into her stomach when she found him some fifty feet away, wrestling with a knife-wielding Diriel—a scarred, marked Diriel, his run-in with Asmodeus in Hell obvious as sin and there for all to see.

  “Run, Moira!” Severus bellowed back. “Go!”

  She didn’t have time to run—not that she would have if she could, not away. Forward. She would have run to him. Instead, heavy footfalls pounded the lush green grass, and within the time it took her to blink she was tackled to the ground.

  Moira used her hands to keep from face-planting, slowing the fall as Aeneas pinned her down. The guy was heavy, but nothing like the weight of the angel in the prison—the one Ella had shot in the throat. It had taken Alaric, Cordelia, Malachi, and Moira to barely lift him.

  Aeneas felt human on top of her. Moira gritted her teeth. Fuck this guy.

  Gripping her arms, he rolled her onto her back, and she headbutted him hard in the face the first chance she got. Her hands slammed down onto his shoulders, holding him just long enough for her to knee him in the gut and throw him off. Moira rolled over and tried to push off into a run, but he caught her ankle at the last possible moment, dragging her back to the ground with a grunt.

  “Nowhere to run, daughter mine,” he sneered, his shadow stretching over her as he jumped to his feet. Moira reached out, groping across the grass for something useable. The first rock she found was too small, but its companion, a near-perfect pyramid in her hand, jagged point and all, would do.

  She let him grab her by the left elbow. She let him haul her up, their bodies facing one another, and then used the momentum to follow through with her right hand, the hand clutching the rock. Moira reeled back and threw her weight behind it, just like Malachi had taught her, and clocked Aeneas in the face, dead center, his nose yielding to the rock.

  Pain shot up her arm as he released her, and they both staggered away, chests heaving. Moira’s hands shook, and she could feel the rock’s jagged ridges biting into her palm, but she pushed past it, past all of it, to give Aeneas the haughtiest look she could muster.

  “How does it feel?” she asked, savoring every ounce of the shock on his face—his wide eyes, his parted lips, his gushing nose. Moira took a mental snapshot, tucking it away for harder days, and ignored the fact that her father didn’t look much older than her. Tall, lean, angular, youthful, dressed in a black tee and grey jeans. The stumps of his wings jutted out beneath the material of his T-shirt. The angel raised a trembling hand to his face, then swallowed hard at the bright red smear on his fingertips. She lifted an eyebrow when their eyes met, a ghost of a smile on her lips. “How does it feel to bleed like the rest of us?”

  Aeneas lunged forward with a snarl, but Moira was ready. Finally, she was fucking ready.

  Light and nimble on her feet, she danced backward, forcing him to follow, then smacked his groping hands away with her left and followed through again with her right. The rock combo slammed into his nose once more, blood splattering her pale skin, and this time he went down. Aeneas toppled backward, and Moira followed, not giving him a breath of reprieve before the next blow landed. He flopped onto his back, eyes wide. She struck him again, resisting the urge to do it again and again and again. It would be so easy, so freeing, to just let go.

  But Moira forced herself away when his body went limp, his gaze unfocused.

  Dropping the rock, she whirled around at the sound of Severus’s cry. He staggered away from Diriel, grasping his arm, blood oozing between his fingers. The marked demon followed, mouth twisted in a predatory smile, his knife dripping. Fuck this guy, too.

  She started off toward them, power-walking at first, slowly building up speed as her hands warmed. From the red staining Severus’s white T-shirt, the colour blossoming around a tear, Diriel had sliced across his abdomen; she wasn’t sure how bad his injuries were, but she wasn’t about to let them get any worse.

  “Severus, move,” she ordered, waving him off when their eyes met. His full-blacks held her ethereal blues, understanding her without needing another word. He turned and ran, limped away as best he could.

  “Aw, come on, coward,” Diriel called. He then circled around, as if to drawl some smug comment at her, but he flinched, black eyes widening—because Moira was already on top of him.

  Teeth gritted, she latched onto his exposed neck, hands humming with white angelic light, and he crumpled to the ground, screaming. As soon as he dropped the knife, Moira kicked it across the grass, not pausing, not yielding, not giving an inch. She burned him to the core, pushing herself, calm, focused, not stopping even when her light burst from his gaping mouth, his nostrils—from his eyes, splintering the black orbs, blood weeping from the sockets.

  Moira didn’t stop until there wasn’t a hair of uncharred flesh on Diriel’s body. She didn’t offer him any speeches. She didn’t make some big display of it. She didn’t monologue. No this is for Severus, this is for me, this is for all the innocent people you’ve hurt before, you fucking bastard!

  She just did what she had planned to do, what she’d imagined the night of her rescue: Moira held onto the demon until he was a blistering, oozing, bloody shell of himself. Long after he had stopped screaming, twitching, fighting. She had to be sure. She drowned him in light until she couldn’t see straight, until two strong arms wrapped around her waist and hauled her off.

  “Enough, darling,” Severus whispered heatedly in her ear, clamping her arms down at her sides when she flailed at him, fought him, momentarily imagining Aeneas holding her. Moira sucked in a sharp breath, her entire body shaking, her hands burning, and Severus hugged her tighter when her knees gave way.

  “Severus…”

  “You did it. He’s gone,” he murmured. “Save your strength.”

  They both jumped when a pair of gunshots echoed across the field, and Moira whipped around, panicked, scanning the incubus’s body—only to find nothing. Only to find him doing the exact same thing, but she hadn’t been hit either. Over his shoulder, she finally spotted the source of the noise: Ella, gun in hand, scrambling down the little hill at the side of the road, Cordelia at her heels.

  Wait. What?

  Moira blinked hurriedly, wondering if she was dreaming—if she had lost consciousness during the accident, and this was all a nightmare. What the hell were they doing here?

  Severus squeezed her arms before jogging toward Aeneas, who was only about ten feet from them now. On his knees, the fallen angel pressed his hands to his chest, but that couldn’t stem the bloodflow. He’d been shot.

  Ella had shot him. Twice. In the back.

  Moira looked back to the road, this time registering Alaric’s enormous SUV parked next to the black pickup with its front end smashed in. Malachi charged down the hi
ll after the girls, quickly bypassing them with his much longer legs. Just as Aeneas attempted to get up, taking an uncoordinated swing at Severus, Cordelia hit him with a dose of crackling red lightning shooting straight from her fingertips. His body seized up, and when the crackling magic vanished, Aeneas doubled over, hacking up blood.

  Somehow her legs managed to move. Moira stumbled toward the crowd, holding her hand up to Ella. Her friend slowed but didn’t stop, not until Moira said her name sharply. She had a gun, sure, but there was still no telling what Aeneas had up his sleeve.

  “Cordelia,” Moira said, clearing her throat when the witch’s name came out as nothing more than a hoarse whisper. By now, Severus and Malachi had Aeneas on his knees, forcing him upright. She took a deep breath. “Cordelia, whatever you’re doing to him—stop.”

  The witch pursed her ruby-red lips at Moira, her chin split from the middle of her lip down, bleeding, as her lacey black gown fluttered in the afternoon breeze. With a wave of her hand, Aeneas stopped vomiting blood. He sneered up at her, the farthest thing from grateful. Moira didn’t care. She didn’t give a fuck about his gratitude.

  She just needed one answer.

  “Did you make my mom sick?” Warmth rippled through her, twisting in her core as she waited, as the smell of Diriel’s corpse hit her with the next gust of wind. She arched a white eyebrow at him, waiting, watching as Malachi wrenched his arm harder behind his back, as Severus wrapped a tight arm around his throat.

  “I…” Aeneas struggled for breath, and she nodded for Severus to let up a little. The fallen angel shot the demon a scowl, and only then did she notice his eyes had changed. The blue was darker. Plainer. More human. Moira fought to compose herself as a rush of feeling slammed into her: she no longer had her father’s eyes.

  “Answer the question,” Malachi growled, “or I’m going to start pulling off limbs.”

  “I didn’t make your wretched whore of a mother sick, no.” Aeneas tipped his head to the side, looking Moira dead in the eye as he said, “Diriel, at my request, infected her with the devoratrix parasite, but I personally didn’t—”