The Hunter

by Theresa Meyers

  She pressed in against him, her breasts warm and soft against his back. A pleasant buzzing started at the base of his skull growing louder and filling his ears, drowning out the sound of the moving water that terrified him, making him think about how he’d like to sample just one more kiss from Miss Arliss before he sent her back to wherever she’d come from. He inhaled the cinnamon rose fragrance of her. So different. So much better than sulfur.

  “Perhaps we took a wrong turn.”

  His vision snapped back into focus. The sound of the water grew louder as they continued walking down the slope.

  They rounded the bend to find the tunnel through the rock led to a natural underground cavern more than fifty feet tall. The light from the coil illuminator was too weak to reach to the vault of the cavern, but it did well in picking out the giant stalagmites jutting up from the floor like a ridge of teeth and stalactites that dripped down in giant stone canines from the ceiling. At the far end of the cavern a wall of water cascaded from thirty feet above, flooding their path.

  “Looks like we’re going to have to go through the waterfall to keep going.” Her tone was so blithe it pissed him off.

  Beads of sweat popped out on his skin. Just the sound of the running water had him in a lather. The thought of having to drench himself for who knew how long under thousands of gallons of water pelting down on him, obliterating his air, left his stomach queasier than a greenhorn after an all-night party on white lightning.

  He gripped the map in his hands, making the paper snap taut. “We’re going to have to find another way around.”

  Chapter 7

  Miss Arliss swiveled, looking around the cavern. “Unless you know a clever trick to walking through the rock, I suggest you plan on walking through the water.”

  He deliberately ignored her. “Maybe you were right. Maybe we took a wrong turn.” He turned to go in the opposite direction of the waterfall, back up the slippery, steep path.

  He damn well knew they had to go through that waterfall, and he’d rather be whipped on his bare back than do it. Colt stopped dead still as her hands feathered in a light, skimming touch up along his arm. “You don’t have to do this alone. I’m right here with you.” The silken, sultry quality to her voice made his mind fill with thoughts of tangled sheets and sweet female warmth. More than that, it lulled him into wondering what it would be like to be with Miss Arliss if she were human.

  She led him by the hand into the mist coming off the waterfall. It roared as it fell, far more feral than any supernatural beast he’d ever encountered. Every sensation he’d experienced underneath the surface of that water trough when he was fourteen came back with a vengeance. The burning in his lungs, the clammy, cold sluicing over his skin, reaching in and numbing him to the core. It wasn’t something he could control, dammit. His breathing became shallower, faster as his heart rate sped up and his lungs started to shrink in his chest. Her grip on his hand tightened.

  He pulled back. “You don’t understand.”

  The demon didn’t hesitate. She stood up on tiptoe, her soft curves pressing against his chest, and wrapped her arms over his shoulders and around his neck. Her lips were dewy soft and warm as she kissed him. A shock, like something from a sting shooter but far more pleasant, arced through him, energizing every cell, making him feel invincible.

  He liked women. A lot. He liked how they smelled, how they tasted, and how they felt. Her sensual assault was like giving a drinking man a bottle; he simply couldn’t resist.

  Colt threw his arms around her waist, pulling all her warmth closer until it filled his senses. Damp heat steamed off them. The tip of her tongue slid along the seam of his mouth, slick and warm, and he couldn’t resist the temptation to taste her. She was sweet and spicy, cinnamon and honey. She ground her hips against him. Colt couldn’t think straight. Hell, he couldn’t think at all past the thrumming pulse of sensual heat she was wrapping around him.

  In the next instant water poured down, drenching them both, streaming over his hat. He broke their mind-numbing kiss with a startled intake of breath and found they were on the other side of the waterfall.

  They had passed straight through.

  Colt blinked in astonishment.

  “See, that wasn’t so bad.”

  He gazed down into her eyes. Droplets of water sparkled in her long, dark eyelashes. “You did that on purpose.” His voice was rough with longing and need. For an instant he was insane enough with desire to want to plunge back under the water just so she’d keep kissing him.

  Her lips, slightly swollen and rosy from their kiss, tilted into a sweet, sexy-as-hell smile. “You’re welcome.”

  Now Colt was rattled for another reason altogether. In the space of a heartbeat she’d taken over his ability to think with the touch of her body and the heat of her kiss. Hell, she’d overridden a fear that went straight to his gut. Not to say that he hadn’t enjoyed it, but if she could do that, then exactly how much power did she possess and how deep in trouble was he?

  The air on this side of the waterfall was noticeably warmer. Wisps of steam curled in white mist off her clothing as well as his. For a second Colt was grateful for the reassurance that it wasn’t just his overactive libido causing the heat he sensed.

  He tried to right himself by gently, but firmly, unlacing her delicate fingers curled into the hair at the nape of his neck.

  “Don’t worry so much, Colt. I’m not going to let anything happen to you on this venture. You’re safe with me,” she said.

  He very much doubted that. He was anything but safe with her. A beautiful woman was a weakness for him, but a woman who could make him forget himself, forget his deepest fears, his darkest memories, that was a force to be reckoned with.

  Resorting to a glib smirk, he tried to cover his discomfort and put some distance between them. “Maybe I did that on purpose just to get you to kiss me again.”

  The succubus gave him a knowing smile in return that said maybe I wanted you to. His stomach dropped to his shoes. Damn. She was testing him, and there was only so much a mortal man, Hunter or otherwise, could bear.

  She reached up and pulled the pins from her hair, letting the dark, wet, red tresses curl down along her back. She ran her fingers through it, separating the curls with her fingers, where they dried instantly into spirals of flame-colored silk.

  Damn, it was hot in here. Colt swallowed down a thick lump hard. His fingers were itching to follow the same path as hers, but he forced his hands to stay at his sides and instead rubbed the butt of the revolver in the holster at his hip.

  “So where do we go from here?” The sweet lilt to her voice started to suck him in all over again. His brain spun with visions of having her naked beneath him. Of waking up with her, slumberous and soft, tucked in beside him each morning.

  Stop it. Get hold of yourself, Colt berated himself. Letting her kiss him like that had been a mistake. There was no denying that having her kiss him in the heat of the moment had been damn near the hottest thing that had ever happened to him with all his clothes on, but it was still a mistake. And if he didn’t watch himself, next time it could likely be a soul-stealing mistake. He’d forget himself. Forget who he was and why he shouldn’t want her. Next thing you know he’d be thinking about nights by a warm fire and a cozy bed. Home-cooked meals and how it’d feel to be welcomed into her arms each night. Things a Hunter had no business thinking about. He had to be careful from here on out if he wanted to find Pa’s piece of the Book and forgo a one-way train ticket straight to Hell.

  “There should be a second large chamber up past this stretch of the shaft.” He stalked past her, deliberately not looking back to even see if she followed. He could tell by the soft, lingering feminine scent that overpowered the dank, damp, swampy smell of wet earth and the stench of sulfur in the mine that she was still right on his heels.

  “So this door. What’s it supposed to look like?”

  Winn hadn’t known. He’d never seen it, merely repeated wor
d for word what Pa had told him. Leave it to Pa to leave out the waterfall, unless that had come later. Who knew? Things underground could have changed in the last twenty years. But one thing would never change. They were closer to Hell than he’d ever been before, which made him damned uncomfortable.

  “Not sure. All I was told was that we’d know it when we saw it.”

  The coil illuminator didn’t like being wet. Clack. Clack. Clack. It refused to work, so Colt shook it harder. Clack ClackClackClack.

  “Let me.” She held out her hand, and in it materialized an oil lamp. She lifted the glass on the lamp and blew on the wick, making it light.

  Colt had realized her kisses were hot, he just hadn’t realized she could actually create flame with them! “Well, aren’t you handy?”

  She gave him a sly grin. “On occasion.” She started walking and he took a moment to admire the sway of her hips beneath the damp calico still clinging to her. She paused, glancing back over her shoulder at him. “Are you coming?”

  “Not yet, but give me time,” Colt muttered under his breath. How he could find a demon so damn captivating, when he’d spent years destroying anything from the Darkin realm, was beyond him. What was it about this one demon that had him tied into knots like some green boy fresh off the farm?

  He should be planning how he was going to send her back to Hell, not admiring the way her creamy skin glowed in the lamp’s light. They might be united for the moment in their search, but he hadn’t a single doubt in his mind that Miss Arliss would turn on him the moment she’d gotten what she really wanted.

  Water dripped off the cavern ceiling, plunking in the damp rocks at their feet as Colt tried to analyze the situation, discover where his weakness lay. True, she was an incredible combination of unusual beauty and sensual appeal, but certainly it had to be more than that. He wasn’t that easily led astray, was he?

  ’Course, he’d never been up against a succubus before. Vampires, certainly. Shape-shifters, demons, chupacabras, even a fire wraith, and now Scoria soldiers, but never a succubus. It was a bit unnerving to realize that perhaps he did have a weakness. Well, if it was a weakness, best to find out how to challenge it and reinforce his defenses. He had a duty to humanity that outstripped any of his own personal interests.

  He caught up to her side in a few fast, long-legged strides. The damp, swamp-like smell of the mine shaft was replaced by Lilly’s distinctive floral-and-spice scent that tugged at his gut. Colt did his level best to ignore it. Maybe if he just inhaled deep enough he’d get used to it and wouldn’t be able to smell it any longer. He inhaled as deeply as he could. The scent dug deeper into his soul, causing an eddy of need to wash through him. Damn. That wasn’t working.

  Maybe he just needed to talk to her, find out she was no different than that scheming shape-shifter China McGee. But before he could speak, she turned those unnaturally bright green eyes on him. They bored straight through him, stealing the breath right out of his lungs, making the words on the tip of his tongue fade into nothingness.

  “Have you killed every child of the night you’ve met?”

  Her question shocked a little sense into him. He tore his gaze away from hers and stared straight ahead into the dark tunnel ahead. “Almost every one.”

  “So, one escaped the great Colt Jackson?”

  He shrugged, thinking of how he’d narrowly wriggled out of the rubble at the bank, leaving China behind for the authorities. Better they put a shape-shifter in jail than him for trying to steal Diego’s safety-deposit box. “I wouldn’t exactly call it an escape, and neither would China McGee.”

  “A woman?” Her brow arched.

  “I wouldn’t call China McGee exactly a woman. She’s a shape-shifter.”

  “So you’ve had a relationship with a supernatural?”

  “I wouldn’t call what China and I shared exactly a relationship.”

  “Well, obviously you are intimate enough to call each other by your first names, and she was helping you.”

  “More like helping me by helping herself.” Diego had been a Hunter in the same generation as Colt’s pa. His safety-deposit box supposedly held a clue to the location of a map, which would lead to another piece of the Book hidden south of the border. China had brought the information to him in exchange for payment. He’d told her he would pay her when he got hold of Diego’s safety-deposit box. Not that it was his problem now. He had his pa’s part of the Book to track down. Remington could get the box from China, decipher the clue, and find a way to get hold of that map, and it would probably be a whole lot smoother and more legal than blowing a hole in the back of the bank.

  “And you left her behind?”

  Colt locked his unflinching gaze on hers. “Absolutely.” He held no illusions about China. Anything she did was for her own benefit. And while attraction had flared between them, it had always been tempered by wariness and distrust. He’d yet to meet a Darkin he could trust. They’d screw you every single time. His chest ached as he thought of how often his family had suffered at the hands of Darkin, and Colt grew irritated with himself at how his common sense seemed to dissipate around Miss Arliss’s considerable charms.

  He had to be better than good as a Hunter. If he was going to bear the name Jackson within the Legion of Hunters, he had to be just as good, just as sharp, as both Winn and Remy. Being the youngest wasn’t any kind of excuse for being softheaded around a female Darkin, no matter how tempting she seemed.

  He’d already given his brothers a reason to taunt him when he’d been bested by China. He sure as hell wasn’t about to listen to them tell him Pa had wasted his training on him because of another Darkin who seemed too good to be true. The shaft narrowed, forcing him to walk close enough to brush shoulders with her. She slowed her steps, causing him to slow too.

  She turned into him, setting the oil lamp down beside them and placing her dainty hand over his heart. The heat of her touch seeped through his shirt, making him break out into a sweat. “Am I mistaken in thinking there’s a heart in that broad chest of yours?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, his voice solid, despite the increased pace of his heart beneath her hand. “I’m a Hunter through and through.” His groin throbbed with a beat that matched his pulse. Hell, he didn’t need a heart to want a woman, did he? But this wasn’t a woman. This was a succubus, he sternly reminded his libido. Duty. Honor. His family name among Hunters, he recited in his head.

  She stepped in closer to him, the flare of her hip grazing his erection. She made a sound deep down in her throat, almost like a purr. “Hunter you may be, but you’re human too. So was I, once upon a time. I wish I still were.”

  Everything around him seemed to fade out as her sweet face filled his vision. Her bright eyes turned sultry as she slowly blinked, looking up at him through her lashes. Her breath smelled sweet, like a cinnamon roll. Colt got lost in the moment. Damn, he just wanted a taste. Just one more taste. The tips of her curls tickled the side of his neck as he leaned in to kiss her.

  A low, feral growl issued from behind him and brought reality back into sharp focus. Sulfur suffused the air. The hairs on his head all tightened, making his scalp prickle and itch almost as hard as his gun hand. He gazed into the darkness over his shoulder, unable to pick out anything except a glowing pair of red eyes, chest height, tucked in tight against the rock, but approaching them slowly, black against darker black.

  As the dark beast entered the edge of the yellow oil lamp light, Colt could make out the massive shoulders and ridge of raised black hair along the hellhound’s back. More importantly, he could see the grizzly bear–sized mouth full of bared, glistening dagger-like teeth just beneath the scarlet eyes, which flickered with the glow of red-hot coals in a campfire.

  The thing was the size of a buffalo, black as night and as angry as a pissed-off mama bear. Its sides bellowed in and out, its breath a stinking wind that reeked of sulfur. It stalked them slowly and deliberately, laying down one massive paw in front of the other, d
ark curving nails clacking against the rock floor.

  Normally hellhounds came after you when they were guarding something, an entrance to Hell, something of supernatural significance, or hunting down a soul bound for damnation. He’d never fought off a hellhound before, but based on the description he was pretty damn certain the creature eyeing him like a prime cut of steak was one. He knew of only one Hunter who had fought a hellhound and managed to survive. That was if you called missing both legs and having half a face that hung in limp chunks survival.

  Without hesitating he whipped out his revolver and pulled the trigger. Click.

  Nothing happened. The Colt revolver had misfired.

  Shit. His stomach shriveled into a tight, uncomfortable knot as his brain spun searching for options to defend them against the beast. “Dammit. Must be wet. Any suggestions for dealing with a hellhound?”

  “No.”

  He threw her an incredulous look. “You’re the Darkin here. I thought they’d at least give you some idea how to deal with your own kind.”

  Her brows knitted and mouth hardened. “Normally we don’t have to. They only sic the hellhounds on people they want brought back dead or alive, but preferably dead. You could try to bargain with it.”

  “Bargain with it! Are you insane?”

  She shrugged. “Good dog. Nice dog.” She materialized a thick-cut raw hunk of steak and shook it.

  The hellhound shifted its glowing red eyes in Miss Arliss’s direction, but flattened its ears tighter against its buffalo-sized skull. She tossed the steak into the darkness behind the hellhound. It snapped as the steak sailed past, but didn’t go after it. Instead it growled low and deep. The vibration of it reached right through Colt’s gut and rattled his spine. “Not interested in steak.”

  “Really? Hadn’t noticed,” she said dryly.

  “No reason to settle for an appetizer when you’ve got a full course and dessert sitting in front of you, I suppose.”