by Billi Jean
“It’s me, Hunter. Aubrey.”
“Get out,” she said harshly.
Aubrey shook her head and stepped forward as if to go to Hunter. He pulled her back just as Hunter struck. A blue shot of pure electricity hit the spot where Aubrey had been, exploding against the door frame and throwing splinters of wood outward.
“Hunter!” Aubrey gasped and the swirls of blue around her temples lightened as she slipped from his hands. “Donnae do that!”
“Get. Out. Now!” Hunter didn’t yell, but the snarl in her voice wobbled, indicating more than her trembling arms that she wasn’t in full control.
He took matters in his own hands, not willing to be fried between the two. He tackled Hunter as carefully as possible to the bed, holding her arms tight to her sides, and pressed to keep her under him.
It was like holding a child, but one powerful enough to kill him. And Hunter was furious enough to do it, too.
Lucky for him, she didn’t seem able to. Only as soon as he thought that, she wiggled an arm free and he got shocked with enough electricity to make his scalp feel as if his hair was standing straight.
“Hunter! Rick is human, stop! You will kill him!”
Great. That’s really helping. He couldn’t spare the energy or unclench his jaw enough to let Aubrey know how truly helpful she was. He had his hands full with Hunter. He finally captured both of hers, and she headbutted him—hard, adding to his miscalculation on the kid comparison.
They struggled then, much harder than he wanted to, but he finally won it back then immediately lost his grip on her other hand. She was slippery and clearly used to wrestling. She nailed him good with a knee, ending his chances of reproducing and terrorizing Little Rickie, who seemed to think Hunter being under him was the best thing since sliced bread.
“Enough!” He tackled her to the floor free of the broken mirror, rolling as he went to land on top. “Stop now and I’ll let you up,” he growled, shoving his bigger body down on hers.
The thing with Hunter that killed was that she possessed the most perfect porcelain skin, full, sexy as hell natural boobs and was soft in so many ideal places. Now wasn’t the time or place to notice, but he was first and foremost a guy. And she was one hell of a package of femininity. His abused groin responded with an interested, if somewhat lame attempt at proving itself still functional.
He moved his hips off to the side, not as stupid as most men.
“Hunter,” he repeated, “it’s me, Kincaid. You pulled my ass out of a warehouse in Washington. You said I was a baby, remember, because I had a booboo? Come on. You didn’t forget that did you? Nearly embarrassed myself crying, when I stubbed my toe?”
She slowly relaxed under him but he didn’t doubt for a moment she was ready to slam him if he let up.
“You did cry,” she muttered breathlessly. “Not nearly.”
“Yeah, maybe, shit hurt. You try letting some evil scientist slice you open and experiment while you watch, okay? Then get back to me.”
“Rick!” Aubrey gasped.
The sound of her friend’s voice seemed to take the rest of the fight out of Hunter.
“Get off me. You weigh like a ton and smell like you’ve not showered in years.”
He grunted at that, since he had worked out and not showered yet, but he thought he still smelled like good ol’ Old Spice. He got off. His momma had raised him right, too, so he hauled her off her butt so she could stand next to him.
“All good now? No more low blows or paybacks, right?” he said.
She drilled him with a hard stare, but when he opened his mouth again, she walked away without saying anything. She stopped at the windows, her back to them. Dressed in a simple pair of girly silk blue boxers and a matching silk top, she was so delicate he would have worried he’d hurt her, but knew better.
Someone else has done that.
The thought frustrated and pissed him off. That someone was a fucking god, of the Dead, if he was to believe Aubrey. Not Satan, not Lucifer, but some Celtic guy who trumped Satan.
Worse, everyone was still worried Lucifer, the fucking devil, wanted a piece of her.
And if that wasn’t enough, he knew several immortals who had her on their list to answer for charges of betraying her friends and spying on her team for the enemy. Oh, yeah, and excommunicate, or whatever they called it when you were a witch thrown out of the witchy stuff.
He shouldn’t feel a thing for Hunter, other than disgust.
Disgust wasn’t even close to what he felt when he couldn’t sleep at night and his brain spun in circles thinking about her. He wasn’t sure what to make of Hunter, the woman, so maybe that was it. She’d not only done most, if not all, of what she was being accused of, but she’d also taken a sword through her delicate, beautiful chest for Markee—saving him from a one-way ticket to hell.
“Hunter, how do you feel?” Aubrey asked meekly, snapping him out of his confusing thoughts.
“Feel? Why? Does it matter? Where is Trouble?”
“Circerran left you with us, to heal.”
Hunter hugged her arms crossways over her chest at Aubrey’s words. She glanced back, but turned around again quickly and stayed put. His guess was, Aubrey had shocked her. He could see where her slim arms were tight with something, nerves maybe. Or pain? Or maybe she thought everyone had deserted her.
“Do your wounds still hurt?” He folded his arms across his chest and watched her startle as if he’d shouted. She straightened her spine and said nothing.
So, she isn’t going to respond. He could deal with that. “I take that as a no. Do you want to talk about what happened to your face?”
“Rick!” Aubrey gasped.
He seemed to get that reaction from Aubrey a lot.
He spared her a quick questioning frown. “What?”
Aubrey tightened her fists—cute as hell—at her hips and literally growled at him. “She may no’ wish to discuss such things with you.”
“Good. I don’t want to either.” He focused on his number one concern.
The still silent Hunter.
“I do want to find a cure for the changeling voodoo, locate and save my men, and finally hit my downtime. I’ve been on this mission long enough. Shit gets old. Now, how soon can you be showered and ready?”
Hunter glanced over her shoulder at him—her clear side, he noted—and glared. “What are you babbling about?”
He lifted his eyebrows. Hunter was fine. Or would be, he guessed.
“Babbling is not my thing. We’re ready to go. We’ve had to wait while you got your beauty rest for five days. Now, after all that time with no shower, I’d want to wash the stench off, but if you want to go in your Barbie PJ’s, that’s fine by me. Just get your ass ready because we leave in…” He glanced at his watch. It was four p.m. By the time she showered and got dressed, she’d be ready to sit on her couch and cry about how her life had changed. So that was why they had to go and go now.
He wasn’t allowing that. Most women took hours to get ready.
“Half an hour. That’ll give us around six hours of daylight in Alaska. I’ll pack the truck. Aubrey, you get your kit together and come now or meet us at the terminal—makes no difference to me. But you, Sparky, are with me. Don’t forget to pack winter clothes. It’s cold up north.”
“Oh? Is that so? And who made you chief in charge?” Hunter asked, even more snappiness back in her tone.
Good. He liked her that way, not all silent, thinking who knew what about who knew what. That kind of self-study was a recipe for disaster. Look what it got her the first time around—dealing with the devil himself.
“Trouble.” He didn’t even bother to hold in his grin at her immediate scowl. “Yeah, I have her phone number in case you turned all chicken on me.”
At the word ‘chicken’, he worried he’d earn another shock of electricity, but she brought her anger down to merely staring steadily from him to Aubrey.
“Is this true?” she demanded. “He
’s in charge?”
“It’s true,” he said.
Aubrey winced. “Aye, I am sorry, but if you are better, we need—”
“Un-fucking-believable,” Hunter whispered. She stalked over and put her finger right under his nose. “Do that rock and roll with me again and I will not hesitate to fry you like an egg, human or not.”
His balls drew tight at that, no doubt smarter than he was, because he grinned and cocked his head to the side.
“Don’t make me have to, Sparky. Don’t make me have to,” he repeated and waltzed out of the room, broken mirror crunching under his boots. For the first time since he’d laid eyes on the woman, he breathed easier.
She’d be fine.
The immortals were just a bunch of overprotective mother hens. Hunter was—or had been—human, tougher in many ways then the immortals with their live-forever attitudes.
Chapter Four
Hunter stared at her reflection in the mirror. She wasn’t going to break this one, so she didn’t do anything else. Behind her, out in the hallway, Aubrey scolded Kincaid, but the big blond didn’t seem to respond—or not that Hunter could hear.
She remembered him. He’d been one of the five humans in the warehouse when she and Vik had gone in with Joey and Jaxon to try to find out what had happened to Evan, Joey’s friend.
Grayson had been the lead, but Kincaid had been his second. She had met him before, though, when he’d been in charge of the surveillance tapes the humans were filming at the bar in London. That was the place where she’d first been taken and thus gained access to the Immortal Council. Kincaid had seen the video footage. At one time his memory had almost been wiped clean. The Immortal Council had even discussed it. Instead, she’d been instructed to delete every single bit of information from their computers.
Kincaid was a smart guy. He’d recognized her at the warehouse, and even beaten and worse, he’d had the gall to give her hell for destroying all his equipment and the videos. She remembered him because even half out of his mind with pain, he’d complained to her about that, as if she’d taken away his entertainment or something.
At the time, his humor had struck her. She’d found him hung by his arms, in a cage where clearly he’d been tortured, but he’d still managed to joke around.
He hadn’t been lying or exaggerating about his torture.
The shit they’d done to him had been seriously sick. She’d been impressed he could stand, even with her help, when she’d finally gotten him down from the wall. He’d leaned on her, gasping in pain, but only for a few minutes before he stood on his own.
But that wasn’t what had really impressed her.
He’d been naked and for a human, he was one heck of a well-endowed man. Even flaccid, his penis had been long and thick against his thighs. He had a scar on his genitals too, but it was an old one, not a new one—almost a burn mark that marred the skin of his upper thigh and his heavy sac. She’d wondered at the time what had happened to him, but thought it probably best not to ask.
He’d then surprised her when he’d grunted he needed some pants because no way was he going to make all those immortals jealous with his package dangling in the breeze.
Shocked and impressed, even more with his ability to joke around, she’d tsked at him and informed him immortal men were twice as big.
He’d laughed then groaned at the pain, a second later smashing his bare toe against a cabinet. Tears had sprung to his eyes, but she could tell it was more in reaction to the shock, not from the pain of such a small thing.
She’d still given him shit for it, not willing to let the big man fall apart now that he’d endured so much. She’d told him not to cry like a baby over his boo-boo, and that she thought his package pretty hot, even with the scar.
Without missing a beat, eyeing her boobs, he’d said when he was all better, he’d show her just how hot his package was by giving her the wildest ride in her life.
She’d laughed and promised that if he could get his clothes on without crying, she’d definitely consider giving him a go. He’d said it was a done deal.
The memory was so fresh she could remember she’d helped him get dressed then checked his side and bandaged it for him. He’d grumbled after, when she’d helped him to his feet, that she was gonna make him fall in love if she could handle a quickie with as much attention to detail.
It was a good memory. She’d liked him, and could remember the happy burst of something she’d felt at his words, even in the midst of all the horror they’d been battling. Kincaid had been a fresh breath of something…good.
Now here he was, in her home of all places, ordering her to go with him to find his men and a cure to the changelings—as if she had one stored up her sleeve.
No doubt others wanted her to do things too.
Markee…Torment…Trouble, Agni, Moon… The list was pretty long.
She winced at her reflection and watched the way her milky left eye didn’t obey her as easily as her right. She was blind on the left side now. Already she’d walked into the wall and given herself a bump on her forehead. No doubt Kincaid would laugh his ass off at that.
There was no memory of getting the mark, and none after she’d been stabbed by the Rage Demon. She could remember every single, sickening thing that had been done to her since she’d screwed up her life, but there was no memory of someone—or something—ruining her face.
The stabbing in the chest that had killed her? She had that memory at her fingertips. The happy scar still showed between her breasts, almost in the exact center of her chest. Just thinking of it made her stomach roll. She clenched the porcelain sink and counted until the need to vomit passed.
There were so many things in her life that made her sick—getting stabbed in the chest shouldn’t have been a blip on her radar, but she could still feel the gross sensation of the blade slicing through her flesh and bone.
Think on something else. Something good.
A crazy sounding laugh choked past her lips. Something good? Like what?
She stared at her reflection and saw nothing of herself left. She’d not bothered with makeup. Cover Girl didn’t sell a product good enough to wash away what she had going on.
Touching the left side of her face, she winced. It was warmer than usual. The skin ached, much more than it should, she guessed, but then, what did she know? This was her first scar.
Lucifer. He did this, then what? Sent me back here to do more work for him?
“Can you tell me what happened, Hunter?” Aubrey walked up behind her.
Hunter shook her head, blinking back tears. She gathered her wet hair in her hands, twisting it all away from her face in a high ponytail. No need to try to hide what had been done because there wasn’t a chance anyone would miss it. Half her face was a freak show. And weird, her hair was longer. It reached the top of her shoulder blades, a length she’d not had since…a long time. She’d considered cutting it, but why bother since no one was going to care.
“I don’t remember, Aubrey. All I remember is the demon dragging me down…then waking here, in my room, to this.” She tugged her ponytail once to get it right then faced Aubrey. Her memory was fuzzy and full of bizarre dreams of green sunlit fields and warm, summery breezes and enormous gods with odd accents. But there was no memory to draw on, and really, she didn’t want to push too hard.
“Are you certain, Hunter? You recall nothing else?” Aubrey asked.
Hunter shrugged. “No. Don’t you think I’d love to not be like this? Besides—” She sighed at Aubrey’s wince and tried to console the other woman, “It’s not that bad. I’m alive.”
“But if you could remember who did—”
“Maybe I don’t want to remember, Aubrey. It’s enough I’m back. Besides”—she moved to her closet to find a jacket, but she owned nothing warm enough for where they were headed—“no one really wants to be around me anyway, right? So it won’t matter what I look like.”
Aubrey was waiting silently when s
he came back out.
“It matters, Hunter. I believe you are being punished, but by whom? We don’t know for sure, but I think it might be Arawn.”
“Who?”
Aubrey grimaced and walked to the bed then back, focusing on something maybe only she could see as she tapped her chin. Hunter stayed quiet. Aubrey worked at her own speed. That was cool. The witch was wicked smart. Too many immortals took her accent as a sign she was stupid, but Hunter knew better.
To give her friend time, Hunter got her boots, slipped them on, zipped the sides and tugged her black T-shirt into place. Black seemed to suit now, so she packed a few more shirts, some long-sleeved and another few pairs of comfortable black legging pants into the backpack Kincaid had left for her. Winter jacket and gear she’d have to get when they arrived, because she’d lost hers when she’d sided with her friends.
Don’t think on it.
Someone had cleaned the broken mirror while she’d been in the shower, she noticed. They’d even made her bed. She bet on Aubrey.
“Well?” she prompted, taking a perch on her blue-and-white bedspread.
Aubrey spun and her black hair billowed around her body as if Hunter had startled her when really, she’d only said one word. It seemed Aubrey was as on edge as she was. Not that it showed in any other way. Aubrey truly was beautiful, with such glorious hair it was hard not to be a bit insecure around her. She wore it kind of old-fashioned, with just two pieces pulled away from her face and clipped behind her head, while the rest hung down past her waist. It fell in loose curls at the bottom, but the whole of it was simply stunning.
Hunter doubted Aubrey thought on it at all. She was that cool person who just didn’t put much weight into how a pretty or handsome a person was, but who the person really was under it all.
It amazed her that Aubrey seemed to think she was worth having as a friend.
“I have to go. I think I should talk to Sorcha.” Aubrey faced her with a grimace. “I don’t want to leave you with him,” she whispered, as if Kincaid might walk in any moment, “but I think you’re fine. He can’t really hurt you. You’re immortal now and much stronger than him,” she added.