“At least there’s only one of them.” Lilly scooted back, but kept her hand latched firmly on Colt’s forearm and her eyes keenly focused on the hellhound stalking them.
She really had only two options. A: she could help the Hunter send the hellhound back to the depths from which it spawned, or B: she could let it take him. The problem was, if she let it take him, she’d still have to find the door he was searching for herself and she’d be no closer to getting rid of her ties to Rathe and getting back to being human. Therefore, there was really only one option—beat back the hound. This was going to hurt.
“Watch out for its teeth.”
“You don’t have to tell me that.” His tone was condescending and irritated.
“No. It’s the venom. They aren’t just razor sharp. They’ve got a fast-moving acid that paralyzes the victim, but allows them to continue to feel all the pain.”
“Nice to know. Suppose that’ll leave you to clean up the mess when it’s done chewing on me.”
She glanced at him, daring to take her gaze off the hound for only a second. “It works on Darkin and mortal alike, lethal to both. So if you want my help, you’re in this fight too.”
Colt eyed her suspiciously, but she knew he was smart enough not to argue with her. “So how do you plan on getting out of this?”
“Any way I can.”
“So pretty much kill it or die trying.”
“Pretty much.” Lilly steeled herself for the fight and materialized a whip from thin air. Bright red flames licked down the length of the black leather lash.
Colt’s eyes gleamed in the flickering firelight. “Do I get one of those?”
She obliged, and with a shimmering of the air Colt held a twin to her whip. He tested the grip in his hands as he stared down the hellhound.
“Ever use one of these before?” She pulled back and let the whip snap. The gunshot-like crack echoed off the rock walls. The hellhound stepped back one pace and snarled.
Colt’s avid expression made her hope dwindle. “Nope. Guns are more my thing.” All eagerness and no experience meant he was likely to end up maimed or dead.
“It’s all in the wrist. Keep your elbow and wrist loose. Flick it at the last moment. Follow my lea—”
Colt pulled the whip back and let it snap. The end flew back, pulling a strip of shirt and skin off his shoulder. The rest of the pale blue cotton around the wound caught on fire, and he hastily patted it out as he cursed.
“Damn touchy, aren’t they?”
Lilly barely had time to mutter under her breath before the hellhound lunged, snapping at Colt. She pulled the whip around her, keeping her movement fluid and supple until at the last instant she flicked her wrist and let the flaming end fly. The whip curved through the air. Crack. It snapped across the beast’s three-foot-wide nose, stripping off a ribbon of black flesh. The hound howled and snarled, swiveling toward her, red eyes glaring.
A second later two more pairs of red glowing eyes appeared in the darkness behind it.
“Oh, this just keeps getting better and better,” Colt muttered. “Three of them?”
They closed ranks, the two hounds in the back right on haunches of the irascible lead dog, filling the breadth of the cavern, their mingled growls rumbling the cavern enough to send down a shower of rock dust from overhead.
“The more, the scarier,” she replied. Damn. Damn. Damn. If this was Rathe’s sick idea of a joke, it sure wasn’t making her laugh. Three hellhounds? Wasn’t that a bit of dramatic overkill, even for a demon lord? Lilly muttered a few choice curses underneath her breath.
“I’ll take the one on the right. You get the one on the left.” Colt shifted his stance, preparing to strike.
“What about the one in the middle?”
“Greedy, are we?”
“No. Just didn’t want you to forget we had extra helpings for dessert.”
Colt gave her a wicked grin. “Just the way I like it.”
Men. Always hungry for more. Lilly focused on the hellhound in front of her. She let the whip fly. The fiery lash made an orange arc in the air, striking the hound’s cheek and nearly taking out one of its glowing red eyes. The beast roared. Crack. She heard Colt’s whiplash echo in the air. Together they held the three hellhounds at bay.
“Try circling to see if we can get behind them.” Colt’s cool tone belied his focus. Together they lashed and drew back, a deadly duel with the three hellhounds as they adjusted their position so that the hounds were now in the direction of the waterfall, and the untried tunnel and unexplored second cavern at their backs.
The hellhound snapped at her. She jumped, avoiding the poisonous fangs. She pulled back the whip and let it fly again. But as it sailed backward, it struck an unintended target.
Colt cursed loudly. She glanced back to see his gun hand tucked beneath the pit of his other arm and his gun lying in the dust. He was glaring at her as hard as the hellhounds surrounding them were. “You might warn me before you strike.”
The hellhound he’d been fighting bit the whip, grabbing it like a toy, shaking Colt violently.
“Let go of the whip!” she yelled at him. He did and dropped fifteen feet to the dirt.
Momentarily preoccupied, she failed to notice that hellhound number three had joined up with the lead hound in the center and they were nearly nose to nose, mouth to mouth, with her in the center, a bone to be fought over.
“Oh no, you don’t.” Lilly pulled back the whip, hoping to lash them both, but the hellhound closest knew that whip and moved a split second before the lash connected with it. It snapped at the whip, catching it between its enormous teeth and ripping it out of her hand like a plaything. It shook the whip, striking the second hound and nearly striking her in the process with the swinging handle, then tossed the offending item across the cavern. It roared in irritation, then raised one massive paw in the air, moving to squash her flat.
She hit the dirt and rock floor of the cavern with a thud that shoved the air out of her lungs like a punch to the gut. There wasn’t time to think on it. A giant paw was coming down toward her. Fast. She rolled to the side, narrowly missing becoming ooze between the hellhound’s toes.
She shoved the curtain of hair out of her face and spotted Colt’s revolver in the dust and scrabbled for it. “Colt!”
He’d risen from the cavern floor and swiveled in her direction. She tossed the revolver in the air. For an infinite moment it seemed to hang suspended in slow motion just like her stomach, weightless and fluttering with uncertainty. The hellhound closest to her snapped at it, but missed. Colt caught the revolver and with long-honed reflexes cocked it and fired in one lightning-fast motion. The dead center of the hellhound’s head exploded with a fist-sized hole, splattering the wall just above her head with black ooze and chunks of hellhound gray matter.
“Duck!” He fired off two more shots in rapid succession, landing one in the center of the hellhound’s hip and taking down the third hound with a shot to the throat. The howl of pain from the giant beast rattled the rock walls. The beasts then erupted into a blaze of fire one after the other. She had to raise her arm to stave off the broiling heat. The mine shaft acted like a funnel. Fire shifted, moving with lightning quickness toward them, obliterating everything in its path.
There was no time to think. He caught her by the arm as he ran past her down the dark tunnel, and she pumped her arms and legs hard and fast to keep up with him.
The gnashing of giant teeth, agonized howls, and the crackle of the fire started to fade as the darkness consumed them. The stench of burned fur and flesh lingered thickly in the air, a noxious cloud making them gasp and wheeze. They both were out of breath and doubled over by the time they stopped. Clack. Clack. Clack. A feeble blue light emitted from the coil illuminator.
Colt stared at Miss Arliss with amazement, his chest still heaving. Her face was unnaturally pale and the demon glow of her eyes obvious in the bluish light. “You just helped me send those hounds back to Hell.”<
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Still breathing hard, she shoved back an unruly tendril of dark red hair that had come loose in the scuffle. “Well, I couldn’t let them take you to Hell when we were this close, now could I? Besides, I’ve never really liked hellhounds. They stink.” Her elegant nose scrunched up.
“But it was your own kind.” His tone echoed his suspicion.
“Darkin—yes, but not like me.” She folded her hands together, as if unsure of what to do with them. “I don’t want to be a Darkin any longer. I’ve never wanted to be one, but I had no choice.”
His brow bent. This was the first he’d ever heard of a supernatural who didn’t want to be one. Pa had never mentioned it was even possible. Perhaps it was a trick. “What do you mean? Don’t most demons become demons by choice?”
“More like by bargains badly made. We all think there’s a way out, until you find out there isn’t.”
“So what did you bargain for?”
“I saved my little sister from becoming a whore to support us.”
Colt launched into a coughing fit and pounded his chest with his fist. Hell’s bells. He certainly hadn’t seen that coming. “Can’t say as I’ve ever heard a lady be so blunt before.”
She gave a shrug of her dainty shoulders, but her eyes still held shadows of the past. “I haven’t had the luxury of being a miss with delicate sensibilities. Not when I was mortal, and certainly not now.”
If she weren’t a succubus she would’ve been damned near the perfect woman. Soft sensuality and feminine curves over a core of iron-hard determination and stamina—a woman who wouldn’t wilt every time a supernatural came near—a woman who could cope with the Hunter life.
His mother had been such a woman. But her steadfast loyalty and unyielding resolve hadn’t stopped the demon’s bullet that killed her. He’d been so young all he’d remembered were her soft kisses brushed against his forehead at night and her warm hugs and the cinnamon-sugar cookies she’d bake for him, always letting him have one before his brothers. Pa said there wasn’t another woman like her on Earth, and he believed it. But then Miss Arliss wasn’t a woman, she was something more. Colt had to admire her grit even though he was determined not to let her powers sway his better judgment any further.
“Let me look at that wound of yours.” Only now did Colt realize that his shoulder burned. He glanced down. The singed edges of his shirt were charred around the long, dark slice in his skin that was raw and blistered and bleeding sluggishly. He glanced up at her. “It’s fine.”
She arched one brow. “I didn’t think Hunters were supposed to lie.”
“Who says I’m lying?”
The look she gave him said he ought to ’fess up. It did burn worse than he wanted to admit. “If it makes you feel better, you can look at it.”
She stepped closer to him, that unique female scent of her drifting up and crowding out the unpleasant stench of burnt hellhound. Her long, tapered fingers pulled back the edges of his tattered, burned shirt with infinite tenderness. The tip of her pink tongue touched the center of her upper lip and Colt had the ridiculous notion that kissing her would make the pain go away completely.
“I may have something to soothe that, but I’m afraid it’s going to leave a mark.”
“Yes, ma’am. I think it is.”
She opened her palm, and a small blue glass jar appeared in it.
“What’s that?”
“Healing salve. It’ll take away the burning, but I’m afraid this is going to take a while to heal.”
“Sometimes injuries from supernaturals never heal.” Colt was thinking specifically of Winn and how the demon had crushed the will to hunt right out of him. It had left Winn with a scar on his thigh, but had messed him up worse on the inside. Colt had a sickening feeling that if he let himself get too attached to Lilly, it might happen to him too.
“So how’d you become a Hunter?” She opened the metal latch on the glass jar and dipped her fingers into the glistening white salve.
The question seemed so normal that he’d almost answered without thinking. He hesitated a moment. He had no business talking with her like this, and yet she’d fought back-to-back with him against the hellhounds. He owed her something. A little information about his past seemed harmless enough. “I was born into it. My family is part of the Legion. Has been since way back when.” The trail she left as she touched him was cool and relaxing, soaking into him like water into the parched desert sands. Something he’d needed desperately but hadn’t known he had until it was given to him.
“You’re famous in our world, you know.”
From the light throb, just below the black velvet ribbon around her throat, Colt could tell the touch affected her too. She glanced up at him, her green eyes bright and wide, shining with something more than just admiration.
“Hardly a hero, I’m sure.”
“But you’re part of the Chosen.”
“Isn’t that like the bringer of destruction to your Darkin world?”
She latched the top back on the jar, then waved her hand over it, making it disappear into thin air. “No. The Chosen are the bringers of balance. We need you as much as you need us. What would light be without darkness?”
Colt had spent enough time out in the desert to know exactly how that felt. The sunshine could seem unrelenting in its intensity. There were times where the darkness came as a blessed relief after a long day. “Monotonous,” he answered. His mind opened to the possibility that perhaps he needed her to be with him for longer than just finding the Book. Maybe there was more he could learn from this delectable demon.
Unable to resist any longer, he pulled her closer. His shoulder stung, but Colt didn’t give a damn. He just wanted to hold her for a moment before all hell broke loose again. “So what are you going to do once we find that door?”
She looked up at him, her eyes luminous, her chest pressed close to his so that he could feel her heartbeat against his ribs, just as real, just as rapid as his own. “That’s a silly question, Colt.” This time when she said his name there wasn’t any animosity in her tone, and her fingers slid along his jaw, testing the texture of his lips and making him ache with a longing that wasn’t physical alone. “When we find that door, I’m going to open it for you.”
Chapter 8
In every con there came a point where you had to take a risk. That point had just arrived.
Despite her promise to open the door for Colt, Lilly still hadn’t figured out precisely what she was going to do once he got his hands on the pages from the Book of Legend. Rathe had demanded it. Furthermore, he wanted Colt dead. Just how far was she willing to go? Certainly she could seduce Colt into giving her the Book, but was she willing to turn Colt over to the archdemon and lose her one chance at becoming mortal again because she feared Rathe?
“Where are we?” Colt cast the light from the coil illuminator, exposing the uneven rocky ceiling of the shaft, which had begun to widen and slope upward. The temperature had markedly increased, causing Lilly to worry some at the trickle of moisture between her breasts and the possibility that her state might be evidenced on the calico of her dress. The fetid, damp smell of stagnant water combined with the earthy scent of wet rock to saturate the air in the humid heat.
“My best guess is we’re nearing the second cavern.”
He shook the coil illuminator a few times, but it refused to produce any brighter light. “Could you snap us another oil lamp?”
“I can do one better.” Lilly balled up her hand, blowing on it until her palm grew warm and the flutter of small wings beat against the cage of her fingers. She opened her fist slowly and released the red fireflies into the air.
Their dancing lights scattered far and wide, soaring out through the tunnel opening and into the chamber. Lilly followed, with Colt quickly falling into step beside her. The fireflies seemed to multiply until there were thousands of them. Their individual light bounced in small dots of color off the rocks as they bobbed and bounced in the air, but combine
d they lit the space with a warm reddish glow.
“Haven’t seen fireflies like that before.”
She tilted her lips up in a coy smile. “Unless you go to Hell sometime, you never will.”
“They’re kinda pretty.” The way he said it made it obvious he wasn’t just talking about fireflies from Hell. He locked gazes with her, his pupils dilated a fraction, the dark nearly swallowing the deeper blue.
Lilly forced herself to remember that he was a Hunter first and a man second. “Not everything from Hell is horrible. Sometimes they just reside there out of circumstance.”
An eerie green glow filled the shaft in front of them, and Lilly pinched her nose at the increasing stagnant stench. She inched closer to Colt, unsure of what awaited them. The map in Colt’s hand seemed to come to an end with X marking the spot.
The floor of the shaft sloped upward enough that they couldn’t see over the rise, but based on the smell alone Lilly had an idea they were close to still water. Colt was going to balk. They’d never get the Book, not if it required him to swim. She slowed down, forcing Colt to lag in his steps.
“What’s wrong?”
She sighed. “Just how far are you willing to go for what you’re looking for? I know you are willing to kill for it, but are you willing to die for it?”
He eyed her warily. “If I have to.”
“What about swim?”
“Excuse me?”
“Swim. Are you willing to swim for it?”
Colt stiffened. “Why?”
They crested the top of the rise. The trail ended below them at the shores of a wide, acid green lake, which glowed with an unearthly phosphorescence that lit up the stalactites overhead in ripples of green light.
“Because you might wish you had died instead,” she said flatly.
They walked down to the shoreline of black sand, which ran in both directions until it disappeared in the darkness. It was impossible to see how big the lake was.
The light of the fireflies bounced and reflected off the water as ghostly female forms, transparent and as oddly green as the water, drifted with sightless eyes and placid smiles just beneath the surface.
The Hunter Page 8