Immortal Hunter

by Kait Ballenger

  His loyalties clashed—his duties as a hunter to protect the innocent, and the loyalty and devotion he felt for the woman who’d once been the love of his life, even if she no longer returned that love. David gritted his teeth.

  Shit.

  He shoved the Star of David harder against the demon’s forehead and recited Psalm 91 in Hebrew as fast as he could. Three times. That was all he needed. Just three recitations, and then the ritual would be finished. Allsún would want him to save the doctor if he could. He knew it, but how could he knowingly place her in danger again? And would the doctor already be dead by then anyway?

  The demon gasped. The doctor’s face cleared for barely a second. His eyes flashed to their normal shade. The red disappeared as he fought against the demon. “Kill it! I don’t care if you kill me, too!”

  For a moment David hesitated. Then, without thought, he plunged the blade into the doctor’s heart. The man’s body seized and shook beneath David’s hold. Blood gushed from the wound in thick spurts. The veins darkened beneath the doctor’s skin as the demon fought unsuccessfully to hang on to its existence. A pulse of energy emanated from the doctor’s body, a signal of the demon’s death. The doctor’s veins faded. The red of his irises transitioned into his normal brown color. His body went limp, but the light hadn’t left his eyes. He coughed up blood, the red liquid oozing down his chin and face.

  He opened his mouth to speak. “H-he already told the others,” he rasped. “About...h-her.” The doctor’s body jerked one last feeble time before his eyes went dark, and the muscles in his face slackened.

  Blood poured on to the cement as David lowered the doctor to the ground. He stared at the man’s limp form as guilt rushed through him. Shit. He’d wanted to save the doctor. Damn. In situations like this, he always knew it wasn’t his fault, and that he needed to get the job done, which he had. But it didn’t matter. He always blamed himself anyway. Damn it all. Following his first instinct, he clutched the Star of David at his neck and muttered the Mourner’s Kaddish. As the last words fell from his lips, he released his necklace and stepped away from the body.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THIRTY-SIX HOURS of torture wasn’t exactly easy on the body. Neither was waking up after nearly a month in a trauma-induced coma. Allsún O’Hare found that out the hard way. A pulse of energy shot through Allsún’s body, and she jolted upright, gasping for breath. Every inch of her body ached with a dull throbbing pain. The smell of too much sterilization and cleaning agents assaulted her nose. An incessant beeping sounded like a siren inside her head. She covered her ears as she stared at a white-washed room, her vision blurred.

  Shite. Where in Morgana’s name was she? She blinked several times until her eyes cleared, then she took in the scene around her.

  “Paging Nurse Robson to the labor and delivery unit,” a female voice echoed over nearby loud speakers. Labor and delivery? She knew there was no way in hell she was in labor and delivery, that was for sure. The last time she’d been there had been when... Oh, God.

  Her head spun, and she clutched the sheets over her. Labor and delivery...that meant she was in a hospital, right? Her vision blurred again. Holy faerie dust. No. No hospitals. She hated hospitals. She needed to get out of here. Now.

  Her vision spun again. Boy, was she feeling loopy or what? What the hell had they given her? She glanced down at her arm and saw an IV sticking out from the back of her hand. Her eyes followed the tubing up to a clear bag. She squinted at the small printed label on the side of it. Ativan. What kind of drug was that? Nothing she was familiar with from the humane shelter, that was for sure.

  She flopped back on to the not-so-fluffy pillow propped behind her head. Why was she in the hospital anyway? Slowly her eyes drooped, as if the lids weighed more than her muscles could bear to handle. How had she gotten here? She...

  The image of David’s handsome face flashed through her mind.

  With a fresh round of determination, she sat upright in bed again. Though it felt as if she’d lost all muscle control in her hands, she pawed at the IV. She grasped at the tubing in desperation, until finally she ripped it from her hand. She let out a sharp yelp at the pain. A heavyset nurse walking by her room paused at the sound, then turned to see Allsún fiddling with the IV.

  She hurried to Allsún’s bedside. Clara, as her badge read, sported platinum blond hair up to the two-inch roots at her scalp, which showed a dark, sharply contrasting brown—clearly her natural color. She smiled with lips that had a little too much burgundy lip liner and placed her hand on her hip. “Oh, no, you don’t. You have to leave that in, honey.”

  Allsún shook her head. No way was she letting that human poison run into her veins for another second. Clara left her bedside for a moment, searching a nearby cabinet for supplies. Supplies she wouldn’t need. Scooting to the end of the bed, Allsún swung her legs over the edge. She dangled on the side of the hospital mattress until finally her tiny feet touched the cold, hard tiling of the floor. Still clutching the bed, she stepped forward. Her knees wobbled beneath her and...shite. She crumpled to the floor, her legs so weak she couldn’t even support herself. How was she supposed to escape like this?

  At the sound of Allsún hitting the floor, Clar...Clarese?—Allsún’s mind went fuzzy. What was the nurse’s name again? Before Allsún could think about it much longer, the woman was at her side, hooking her under the arms and hauling her to her feet as if she weighed no more than a doll. Maybe she did weigh that little...she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten.

  “All right, honey. Let’s get you back in bed, okay? We don’t want you falling again. I’m already going to have to fill out a nice big pile of paperwork just because of that little spill. So let’s take it easy, okay?” She eased Allsún back toward the bed.

  Allsún planted her feet as firmly on the ground as she could. With every ounce of strength she had, she pulled against the woman’s hold. “No, I’mmm not ssstaying here,” she said, suddenly very aware of her slurred speech.

  The nurse frowned. “I know you don’t want to, but you really need to lie down and rest.”

  Allsún pulled against the nurse’s hold again, trying her hardest to make her voice sound firm. “No.”

  The woman grabbed hold of Allsún’s left wrist, gentle but commanding. “You have to—”

  “I said no.” Allsún wrenched her arm away from the nurse. She stumbled several steps sideways, away from the woman’s hold.

  The nurse stepped toward her again. Her frown twisted into a look of frustration as she reached for Allsún. “Look, I only have so much patience. You need to—”

  Allsún lifted her hand and made a throwing motion. A cloud of sparkling faerie dust emanated from her open palm, as if she’d thrown a handful of glitter straight into the nurse’s face. Immediately the woman crumpled to the floor. Her mouth gaped open as she fell into the best sleep she’d probably had in years.

  Allsún blinked two times, the movement slow and sluggish from the weight still forcing down her eyelids. “Thass what you get for m...m...messing with a pi...pixie.” She was slurring worse than a college frat boy on a Saturday night.

  Concentrating on keeping her balance, Allsún stumbled out of the room and into a long hallway. After what seemed like an eternity of thinking, she deduced that it had to be nighttime. The lights were dimmed, and no one was in sight. She inched down the hall for what seemed like hours before reaching the nurses’ station directly next to the elevators. Her escape.

  A night nurse perched at her desk looked up from a mound of papers. “Miss, are you all right?”

  Allsún didn’t answer. She walked up to the desk, made a throwing motion with her hand, and watched the nurse slump onto the desktop with a thud in response to her natural faerie dust. She shuffled past the now-incapacitated woman toward the elevator.

  Allsún jabbed the
blurry elevator button three times until the doors finally opened. Using every ounce of brain power she could muster through her drug-induced haze, she selected the star button for what she hoped was the ground floor.

  The elevator closed with a high-pitched ding. After four floors the elevator finally reached the bottom, and as fast as she could, she stumbled out and booked her way through the sliding glass doors of freedom.

  When the doors opened, a huge burst of cold air hit Allsún straight in the face, sending a chill racing through her entire body. She wrapped her arms around her torso in a useless attempt to keep herself warm. She needed to get home before she got hypothermia. Her bare feet stung from the light layer of snow still coating Rochester’s streets. The prickling sensation helped clear her head, like what she imagined a sobering cold shower after a long night of way too much drinking would be like. Not that she would know for certain, since she’d never been the partying type. Not too much to celebrate when you’re spending your days chasing after...

  Demons.

  The scent of sulfur hit her nose as she passed by an empty alleyway. All at once her senses came alive, and she could feel the natural instinct in her Fae blood calling her. She turned in the direction her instinct indicated, the instinct that told her where demonic activity was, the instinct she hadn’t used in years. Not since that night...

  Since then she’d found herself capable of ignoring the call. She knew that the city would remain safe without her. Though David couldn’t be everywhere at once, he was the only human she’d ever encountered who was capable of exorcising demons back to hell instead of just killing them. He could save the victims in a way that not even she could.

  But somehow this time was different.

  The pull inside her, like a rope tugging hard at the center of her chest, compelled her forward. And how could she not listen to such a strong command? She took another step, and then her head began to clear. She was thankful for her supernatural metabolism. It was burning up the drugs nicely, but...

  How had she ended up in her current situation? What had put her in the hospit—

  She staggered as the memories rushed back to her in one overwhelming burst.

  That thing, the monster that did this to her. The thought of his disgustingly handsome face twisted in a look of pure hatred and malice flashed through her mind. Robert. That had been his name, before the hunters killed him.

  She’d been in the hospital because that monster had kidnapped and tortured her, left her for dead. And then David had saved her. The memory of his arms wrapped around her warmed her to her core.

  No, she couldn’t think like that.

  She shook her head, trying to erase both Robert and David from her thoughts. She shouldn’t be thinking this way. Robert was dead now, and she’d done her best to push David from her mind years ago. David had made his choice. When she’d left, he’d never come after her, so that was that. Sure, he’d saved her, but that was his job. Nothing more. She was certain of it.

  Shuffling to the edge of the busy street outside the hospital, she waved her arms, hoping to flag down a taxi. Someone out there needed to be saved, her instincts told her that much, and after the torture she’d so recently been through herself, she couldn’t just leave them to that same horrifying fate. If she could just get a cab to stop, she could follow her instincts. The coldness in the air continued to seep into her body, and slowly her feet tingled to numbness. After several minutes with no taxis in sight, she ran into the middle of the street the minute she saw one barreling toward her. The driver slammed on his brakes and pounded the horn. The sound reverberated in her ears, pulling her further from her drugged haze.

  The cabbie rolled down his window. “What the fuck are you doing, lady? Get out of the street.”

  She inhaled a deep breath and called back to him over the busy sounds of the city. “I need a ride.” Rushing to the side of his cab, she fumbled her way into the backseat, apparently still slightly dizzy from the remaining Ativan.

  The cabbie leaned back in his seat and sighed as he stomped on the gas pedal. “Where to, lady?”

  “Listen, this is an emergency, and I don’t have any money on me.”

  The cabbie glanced in the rearview mirror, eyeing the hospital gown. “Look, lady. I don’t give free rides. Either you pay or you get out of my—”

  Before he could finish his sentence, Allsún shoved her hand in front of his face, releasing another swirling puff of faerie dust. She cleared her throat. “So, about that free ride?”

  The man blinked as if in a haze before he said, “Free ride? Sure, I can do that. Where to?”

  She smiled. “Head toward the south end of the city, and hurry. I don’t know where we’re going, exactly, but as we get closer, I’ll figure it out.”

  The pull deep inside her chest increased with every mile, her senses sharpening the nearer they came to their destination. She marveled at how quickly she had burned off the drugs. Her head cleared more with each passing moment. No wonder they’d had her hooked up to the stuff. She’d probably needed a dosage more appropriate for someone three times her size.

  When they reached the edge of the city, the tall buildings and industrial sprawl faded into quiet suburbia. Out here the bright lights of the skyscrapers shimmered from a distance, but the streets were dim, lit only by the occasional streetlight. She directed the cabbie through a series of turns until they were fully surrounded by rows of small brick houses. The view of the city disappeared. She would search all night if she had to. Because maybe, just maybe, she could save someone tonight.

  * * *

  DISPOSING OF A body was never pretty. The metallic odor of the doctor’s blood invaded David’s nose, and he fought not to gag as the scent mixed with the smell of rotting garbage. The open Dumpster smelled more like decaying flesh than the actual dead guy did. Better get this over with. Lifting the doctor’s corpse, he hefted the limp body into the trash. God forgive him. It went against every fiber of his conscience every time, but he always got the job done. A part of him wished he could call up the guy’s family or at least take him to the morgue, make sure he had a proper funeral, but unless he wanted witnesses, that wasn’t a possibility.

  Boy, how much fun would it be to explain to the police that he’d killed a man because the guy was possessed by a demon? That one would really go over well with the cops—about as well as fat-free doughnuts and decaffeinated coffee.

  After closing the Dumpster lid, he pulled an old black bandana from inside his jacket and wiped down everything he had touched. He couldn’t leave his prints around. Once he finished, he slipped down the alley, hobbling through several back passageways until he reached his parked motorcycle. A sharp pain shot down his leg with every step, and he winced. Damn it.

  He let out a long breath and unlatched the saddlebag on his black 2011 Harley-Davidson Dyna Super Glide, a piece of perfect machinery, if you asked him, and the one beauty who never failed him. He dug around the inside of the saddlebag, then frowned as he uncapped the bottle of hydrocodone. He shook two of the white horse-sized pills into his hand and dry-swallowed them, then placed the prescription bottle in the saddlebag once again. He hated taking the pills, but they were the only way he could operate with his leg as jacked up as it was. At least the doctor insisted the limp and the pain were only temporary, and he’d be healed soon.

  Every four to eight hours, depending on his level of pain and the amount of strain he’d put on his muscles, he was reminded of his most recent failures and misgivings.

  Robert, that sadistic skinwalker, had tortured the only woman David had ever loved. Kidnapping and torturing Allsún had been pure fun and games for Robert, and because the sicko had torn up David’s leg, leaving him with a limp, David had been humiliatingly unable to save Allsún himself and had been forced to watch as his friend and fellow hunter Jace McCannon did it for him—but n
ot before Allsún had incurred the kind of physical and mental damage she might never recover from. Sure, he’d been the one to actually get Allsún out of the building and to safety, but Jace had been the one to kill Robert.

  If only David had been stronger, a better fighter, he could have bested Robert to begin with, and Allsún would have remained safe. He would never forgive himself for all the pain she’d endured. Her suffering was his fault for not protecting her.

  He knew nothing good would come from blaming himself, but it didn’t matter. The guilt was enough to hurt him until the day he died. But hell, he had already failed her in so many other ways, what was one more thing added to the list?

  A muffled buzzing noise broke his train of thought. His phone was vibrating in the pocket of his jeans. He slipped his hand underneath the edge of his leather bike chaps and pulled out the sleek new phone—courtesy of his fellow hunter Shane Gray. The name “Damon Brock” flashed across the screen. His division leader calling could only mean one of two things: either there was another bitch-fest meeting he would have to attend or a demonic possession had been reported.

  Having grown up in Rochester, David had the advantage of knowing all the rabbis in the city, so once he had grown old enough to begin his work as an exorcist, the rabbis had introduced him to the pastors, the priests and the imams, until he had an entire network of holy men aware of the work he did. When people figured out a family member was possessed, their religious leader was always the first person they called. Any time a parishioner reported a possession, someone in the network called Damon or reported it directly to David.

  Sure, the system wasn’t perfect, but it definitely helped David find the monsters. He had been called in a few times for some druggies who had taken one too many tabs of the brown acid and were spouting all sorts of demonic bullshit, but for the most part the system worked.