Demon Hunting with a Sexy Ex

by Lexi George

  Before meeting Cassandra, he had been the same, emotionless and detached. Dead inside.

  Love had cracked him open and left him vulnerable. Because of Cassandra, he knew yearning and grief, terror and worry, but also laughter, tenderness, and joy.

  Laughter, Duncan had found during the long years of separation from Cassandra, kept the darkness and despair at bay, but his newly acquired feelings had set him apart from his brothers, who found his propensity for levity perplexing. Duncan did not care. Cassandra had brought him to life. He would not return to his former self, even if he could.

  He noticed the Kir’s quizzing gaze, and shrugged. “It seemed a good idea at the time.”

  “My sisters are seriously displeased. I fear they will denounce you to Arta. Perhaps even take their complaints to Kehvahn.”

  “In truth, they have reason.”

  He was too woozy to dematerialize, so he climbed down to join her, moving slowly from branch to branch. Gods, he was weak and dizzy. No more chocolate, he vowed. He was halfway to the ground when a bough snapped, and he fell. He landed on a protruding root. Staring at the sky peeking through the branches, he wondered if he’d broken his back.

  Taryn bent over him. “Tell me, was it your aim to fly? If so, you failed. Try flapping next time. In my observation, that is how the birds do it.”

  Duncan opened his mouth to retort and stopped. Something was dreadfully wrong with his belly. He staggered to his feet and pushed past the startled Kir. Stumbling behind the elm, he expelled the contents of his stomach. He straightened, wiping his streaming eyes, and found the Kir watching him.

  “You vomited,” she said with detached calm.

  “Your perspicacity is a marvel.”

  “You are a redoubtable warrior, dedicated to duty and the hunt. Your behavior is aberrant.” She frowned. “I would have the truth. Did that devil Evan trick you into ingesting chocolate?”

  “Oddly enough, the . . . er . . . devil did his best to dissuade me. I would not listen.”

  “You astonish me. What is it like?”

  “To be drunk? Not unpleasant. A sort of untethered euphoria.”

  Taryn’s gaze widened. “Untethered? I confess, the notion holds no appeal. To lose control seems to me of all things most disagreeable.”

  “The consequences are certainly not enjoyable.”

  “In truth? You did not enjoy hacking up your entrails?”

  What was this? Did the Kir have a sense of humor? Perhaps not so cold, after all.

  “Definitely not,” he said. “What brings you to Hannah, huntress?”

  “The rogue. I have tracked him across the mountains of Ardoth and through the Durngarian mire. The trail led me here.”

  At her words, Duncan’s malaise was forgotten in an instant. “The rogue is here?”

  Taryn nodded.

  A few moons past, the Dal had received the shocking tidings that a Dalvahni warrior had betrayed his vows, forsaking his brothers and his duty to consort with the enemy. Taryn—not one of the Dal—had been ordered to bring the traitor in. The knowledge galled, though Duncan did not doubt that Taryn was up to the task. She was an excellent tracker, tireless and determined, lethal with all manner of weapons. She would find the traitor and dispatch him with ruthless economy.

  Still, it rankled. Sacred vows had been broken, the brotherhood betrayed. The brotherhood, not the sisterhood. A Dalvahni warrior should have been named the rogue’s executioner, not a Kirvahni huntress.

  “Conall deemed it for the best,” Taryn said, guessing his thoughts. “’Tis no easy thing to kill a friend.”

  “You will do it.”

  She shrugged. “I am Kirvahni. The rogue is not my friend. Come. Let us wake our sleeping ogre.”

  Striding over to Evan, Taryn nudged him with her foot. “Arise, slug-a-bed. The night has run its course, and morning wanes.”

  Evan grunted and turned over.

  “Observe, he does not heed,” Taryn mused aloud. “What is to be done, I wonder? Ah, I have it.”

  Removing the water pouch from her belt, she dashed the contents in Evan’s face. He leapt to his feet, cursing and thrashing.

  Wiping the water from his eyes, he scowled at her. “Red? What the hell?”

  “Cover yourself, sirrah,” she said, giving him a cool look. “Your shortcomings are exposed.”

  “Cover myself with what, Tundra Twat?” Evan spread his arms wide. “Look around. I ain’t got no clothes.”

  “Hmm,” Taryn said. “I perceive your difficulty. Allow me to be of assistance.”

  Such was the melting sweetness of Taryn’s tone that the hair stood up on the nape of Duncan’s neck, and he took a hasty step back.

  She gestured, and—ping—Evan was dressed, though not in the modern mode. He wore a motley velvet coat with fringed tails and breeches. One leg of his breeches was black, the other red. Velvet slippers with curling toes and a multitude of tiny bells adorned his feet, and a large pair of donkey ears sprouted from the floppy felt hat on his head.

  Evan looked down at his ridiculous garb. “Not funny, Red. So. Not. Funny.”

  “You think not?” Taryn tilted her head, considering him. “I, for one, find it highly diverting.”

  Ping. The donkey hat was replaced by an enormous flowered bonnet. Ping, ping. The bonnet became a wide-brimmed shepherdess hat festooned with high plumes and virulent pink ribbons.

  “Stop it,” Evan said, glowering at her. “That shit is rude.”

  “Indeed? I find your vulgar language excessively rude, and I tell you to your face that I will not tolerate—”

  She broke off and stilled, listening. Sensing her disquiet, Duncan opened his mind and was flooded by a sense of evil . . . and something else, a jarring impression of bleak emptiness. Something stirred within the void, something grotesque and unrecognizable, something better left to slumber.

  “It is the rogue,” Taryn said. “He is on the move, and he brings the djegrali with him.”

  Duncan stared at her in shock. The sick and mindless creature he’d sensed was the betrayer? What perversion of body and spirit could have twisted a Dalvahni warrior in such a manner? The thought was unsettling. The Dalvahni were unassailable . . . were they not?

  “You are certain?” Duncan asked.

  “Aye. I have tracked him for months and recognize his aura.”

  Duncan could well believe it. Having encountered that warped presence but once, he would not forget it.

  The rogue did not live among them, as Conall feared, playing a double role as spy and traitor. Of this, Duncan was certain. The rogue’s very wrongness would betray him.

  “What is he about?” Duncan asked.

  “One can but guess.”

  A sudden and chilling premonition gripped Duncan. Cassandra was in peril. He felt it in his bones.

  Terror cleared the worst of the chocolate haze from his mind. He should not have left her defenseless, hieing himself off to bury his sorrows in demon chocolate. Despicable.

  It was irrational, he told himself, this unreasoning fear for Cassandra’s safety. Still, he could not shake the notion that she was in trouble.

  “I must away,” Duncan said, chilled to the bone.

  He reached for the cottage on the river and dematerialized without waiting to see if the huntress followed.

  Chapter Nine

  Cassie awoke the next morning, sandy-eyed and exhausted. Her churning thoughts and the unceasing tapping from Duncan’s property had kept her awake long past her usual bedtime. When she’d finally fallen to sleep, her slumber had been fitful and filled with tremulous visions.

  She’d dreamed of the dead werewolf. He’d been standing at the foot of her bed, his severed head in one paw, dripping blood on her floor and white quilt. “Burns,” he’d whined as he was swallowed in a white-hot glow.

  The dream had shifted, and the werewolf was Zeb, chasing Cassie across a nightmare landscape. “Your fault, healer. Your fault,” Zeb growled at her heels. “Mac
is dead . . . your fault.”

  His hot breath scorched the back of her calves, and she ran faster. Clawed hands reached for her . . . and she jerked awake, panting and sweating.

  Shaken, she’d risen to check the doors and windows. All was as it should be. Grabbing an ash staff from the rack in the hall for protection, she’d returned to bed, but it was a long time before she’d fallen asleep again.

  When she finally did drift off again, the dreams had returned, but this time it was Duncan who’d disturbed her repose. The harsh, beautiful planes and angles of his face tormented her. Firm mouth with a sensuous bottom lip. Chiseled jaw. High, broad cheekbones. Eyes the color of sunlight through scotch that were set beneath slashing tawny brows. Eyes that warmed when he was amused and darkened when he was angry . . . or aroused.

  She should not remember that. She did not want to remember that.

  Tossing and turning, she’d entangled herself in the sheets in her effort to escape him, but it was no use. His sexy, rumbling voice pursued her, his reproachful words echoing through her fevered thoughts.

  Alas, I have been casting my net at the moon . . .

  Duncan was gone, and judging from the look on his face when he’d left, he wouldn’t be back. Probably headed for a galaxy far, far away, never to return. Off saving princesses from dragons and slaying giants.

  Or in the House of Pleasure working off his “frustration.” She sat up in bed and rubbed her chest to banish the hollow ache. Good riddance, right? The thralls could have his sexy ass. She didn’t give a flying hoot in Hades what he did. She’d been fine before His Hotness showed back up, and she’d be fine now he was gone again.

  Liar. The knowing whisper was back. You’re consumed with jealousy.

  “Oh, be quiet. Nobody asked you.”

  She glanced at the clock on the nightstand and gasped. Merciful heavens, it was past six. Toby had said he’d deliver her message, and deliver it he would. Toby was reliable as daybreak. The Randalls could arrive at any moment.

  She jumped out of bed and hurried into the bathroom, her mind wrestling with the Randall boy’s death.

  Could a demon be responsible for the young werewolf’s strange behavior? The kith couldn’t be possessed, but Cassie had no idea if the same held true for werewolves. She rolled the idea around in her mind. If a demon had possessed Mac, that would explain a lot. Demons went through bodies like a hot knife through butter, and they controlled their hosts. Possession would account for the young were’s maniacal behavior and his diseased, half-formed appearance. Demons consumed their hosts from within, sapping them of vitality. Weakened by possession, Mac might not have had the strength to fully shift.

  The boy had certainly acted possessed. His eyes had been crazy and she recalled his labored breathing and the hot huff of his breath on her skin as he’d closed in for the kill . . .

  If Duncan hadn’t been there . . .

  Nope. Not going to think about that. Or Duncan. Most of all, Duncan.

  Atta girl, the squeam said with a bored yawn. You keep telling yourself that.

  Cassie took a quick shower and padded into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. While the tea steeped, she took Verbena’s clothes out of the dryer and folded them. Carrying the neat pile upstairs, she placed it outside Verbena’s door. Tiptoeing back into the kitchen, she stirred a generous dollop of honey into her tea and carried the steaming mug down the hall. She slid the lock on the door and stepped out onto the porch, bracing herself for the ceaseless knocking of hammers. To her delight, the early-morning peace and tranquility of the river was undisturbed. Duncan’s construction workers had finally taken a break. Glory be, and hallelujah.

  Silver mist kissed the mirrored surface of the water, and the trees on the far bank were blue-green in the pearly light. Birds rustled and sang among the greenery, and the herb garden on the side of the house perfumed the air with rosemary and thyme. It was a lovely morning, but Cassie hardly noticed. The mug in her hand dropped to the floor, unheeded, and rolled away, leaving a sticky puddle in its wake.

  Slack-jawed, Cassie stared at the statue of Jebediah Hannah sitting on her lawn.

  Jeb, a hero of the Spanish-American War, had saved Behr County farmers from ruination during the disastrous cotton blight of 1915. Grow goobers had been his battle cry, and his leguminous wisdom had won the day. Behr County farmers had survived the blight and prospered. In grateful recognition, the community had commissioned a statue in his honor, and Jeb’s likeness stood in the town square, a four-ton marvel of bronze brandishing a two-foot peanut like the sword of retribution.

  Cassie closed her mouth and swallowed. Apparently, Jeb had wearied of town life and decided to ruralize. He faced the river, giant peanut raised in challenge to any would-be interloper.

  As Cassie considered the ginormous lawn ornament, a thousand disjointed thoughts flitted through her head. Should she call the sheriff? And tell him what? What possible explanation could she give him that wouldn’t get her locked up? The sheriff would think she’d stolen it.

  Reason reasserted itself. No, he wouldn’t. Sheriff Whitsun was no dummy. It would take some heavy-duty equipment to move a statue that size, equipment she didn’t have access to.

  Which begged the question, who had planted Jeb in her yard?

  Someone powerful, for sure.

  Someone possessed of extraordinary strength and magic. Not a werewolf or a shifter. Whoever had done this was practically a demigod or—

  The answer to her conundrum dawned, and she stiffened. Oh, no, he didn’t.

  She marched across the porch to the top of the steps. “Okay, Duncan, you’ve had your little joke.” She glared at the woods on the far side of the river. “Now put it back where it belongs.”

  Her challenge was met with silence.

  “I mean it, Duncan. This isn’t funny.”

  A robin called hip hip hip, but there was no other answer.

  Seething, she started down the stairs, coming to an abrupt halt as a warrior materialized at Jeb’s sculpted feet. Tall, broad-shouldered, and powerfully muscled, the warrior had raggedly shorn golden hair and the face of an Adonis. Dalvahni, without a doubt—that much she knew at a glance—but he wasn’t Duncan. Or any other demon hunter of her acquaintance, for that matter.

  The stranger’s appearance shocked her to the core. There was something different about him, something horribly wrong. The Dalvahni were impassive—stoic and unemotional to a fault—but this guy was an automaton. His face was slack, his eyes blank and dull. Shoulders hunched, head down, he moved without the athletic grace of his kind. He was dressed in rags, shirtless and barefoot, the remnants of a pair of leather breeches clinging to his muscular thighs. Intricate black tattoos wound from the bottom of his left foot up his ankle and strong calf, disappeared beneath the tattered cloth that fluttered around his knees, and reappeared at his waist. The ink sleeved his left arm and torso, climbed up his neck and face like strangling vines, and vanished into his hairline.

  And the swirling designs moved, writhing across his flesh like worms, but if the warrior noticed, he gave no sign.

  The door opened, and Verbena stepped onto the porch, looking frail and willowy in Cassie’s nightgown, and impossibly young.

  She was young, Cassie thought, remembering her younger self at twenty. Gracious, she had underwear older than Verbena Van Pelt— much older—two vintage chiffon teddies, a silk bra, and tap pants were sacheted, tissue-papered, and safely tucked away in her closet for safekeeping. She had roared during the twenties—bobbed hair, hot jazz, fast cars, and illegal hooch. It had been the cat’s meow.

  The Great Depression that followed? Eh, not so much.

  Rubbing her eyes, Verbena joined Cassie on the steps. “Rabbit runned over my grave and woke me up.”

  The warrior’s head snapped up at Verbena’s sleepy murmur, and he stared at her, his eyes suddenly ablaze in his lean face.

  “Lord a-mercy, whozzat?” Verbena said with a hiss of surprise.

 
; “Dalvahni, but there’s something off about him,” Cassie said in a low voice. “Very off.”

  “Why’s he a-staring at me like ’at? I ain’t done nothing to him.”

  “No idea. What I’d like to know is what he’s—”

  Cassie’s voice trailed off as a cold wave of dread washed over her, a feeling of hopelessness and absolute evil.

  A pulsing black streak appeared over the sandy beach on the far side of the river and widened, and an oily, revolting smell poured out of the gaping hole.

  Like microwaved death, Cassie thought, gagging at the noxious stench.

  “We got trouble,” she told Verbena, backing slowly up the steps. “Demons.”

  “D-demons? What we gon’ do?”

  “They’re like bees. Don’t move, and try not to irritate them. If that doesn’t work, we go to Plan B.”

  “What’s Plan B?”

  “Run like hell.”

  Scores of undulating black forms boiled out of the portal. Screeching and gibbering, the demons flew across the river and circled the immobile warrior like a merle of frenzied blackbirds. One of the foul creatures noticed Cassie and Verbena, and shrieked the alarm. The flume of demons froze in midflight, then swept toward the porch.

  The warrior jerked, as though waking from a trance, and uttered a harsh caw. Answering in their loathsome tongue, the demons turned aside. Without a backward glance, the warrior lurched across the lawn in the direction of Cassie’s truck, and the demons fluttered after him.

  “They left.” Cassie heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank God. That was close.”

  Verbena shook her head. “Didn’t leave. He called ’em off. Why’d he do that, you reckon?”

  “Don’t know and don’t care. C’mon. Let’s get inside.”

  Cassie’s brain whirled furiously. She’d go to Conall at once and tell him what she’d seen. The demons. The portal. The warrior with the blank expression and the writhing tattoos.

  A Dalvahni warrior was running with demons. No way to spin that and make it look good. Conall was going to blow a gasket.