Prey (The Hunt Book 2)

by Liz Meldon

  He owed it to Moira to get her out, and once he did, he’d hold her to him, taste her, protect her, worship her as she ought to be worshipped—and never, ever let go again.

  Chapter Ten

  “Let’s go, Cordelia.” Severus glared at her from the front passenger seat of Alaric’s new SUV. His cousin hoisted her middle finger at him on the hand that clutched Moira’s bra, her eyes closed and her words flowing as she performed the location spell over the three-century-old building plans Severus had acquired for Mammon’s abandoned castle.

  It hadn’t been easy to dig them up, but he’d managed, touching just about every human in the Farrow’s Hollow city records department until he got what he wanted. They’d been locked away in a vault, along with plans to several other key demon structures—including a very accurate layout of the Inferno. Severus had taken that, too, and planned to hand it over to Verrier once they had recovered Moira.

  “Just let her do her thing, Sev,” Alaric muttered, ceaselessly drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as he stared out into the surrounding forest. Off the beaten path, they had put the vehicle—a gift from Alaric’s father after he’d discovered the other one had lost a mirror—to the test, forcing it over rocky, rough woodland terrain to reach their rendezvous point just north of the castle. Out here, they were officially beyond city limits, which had been Cordelia’s suggestion: many local witches were only human, imbibed with magic by a willing demon, and their reach was limited to Farrow’s Hollow proper. No sense in triggering any alarms before they had confirmed Moira’s location in the castle.

  From there, Severus planned to just wing it—storm in, fuck up anyone who got in his way, and get her out. Diriel’s whereabouts had already been confirmed: Dartanious had called about fifteen minutes ago to inform Alaric that the demon was trying to bully his way back into the Inferno. Thankfully, Verrier had been willing to settle the issue personally, though everyone knew he’d be in a foul mood after being pulled from his midnight meal at Rose’s Corner for something so petty. Severus almost felt sorry for Diriel—almost.

  The rustling of papers caught his attention again, and Severus watched as Cordelia’s blood shot across one floor’s layout and hopped over to the next. It scurried about, searching, searching, searching, until it finally sank into the last page of parchment. Cordelia tossed Moira’s bra aside, along with the rest of the castle’s building plans, then scrutinized the blood mark.

  “She’s two levels below,” the witch said, pursing her lips as she tracked her finger across the page. “At the end of a hallway…in a circular room.”

  “Alive?”

  “Her brassiere burned hot during the spell,” Cordelia told him as she moved on to examine her bleeding hand. “She lives.”

  “Then let’s get a move on,” Severus growled before hurrying out, resisting the urge to slam the door behind him. Alaric did the same, and the pair waited for Cordelia to take her sweet fucking time to join them, licking at the new wound on her palm as she sauntered through the underbrush, totally unfazed by the way the branches grabbed at her hair and the thorny bushes clawed at her dress. Severus rolled his eyes and grabbed her when she was close enough, dragging her along by her forearm until she delivered a well-aimed kick to his calf.

  “Fuck,” he hissed, releasing her with a glare. “What?!”

  “I just thought you’d like to approach under a cloak of invisibility,” his cousin remarked, a twinkle in her bright green eyes, the demon tucked back inside for now. “Or, if you want to ride up, cavalier and obvious as day, then I’m all for watching you get eviscerated from the sidelines—”

  Severus closed his eyes in an effort to compose himself. It wouldn’t do Moira any good to have him riled up and heated, his inner demon positively chomping at the bit to do some damage. He might be desperate to spring her from her jail cell, but he still had to be smart about it. “Just do it already. We don’t have time for this.”

  “What—your attitude?”

  “Cordelia.”

  “You should have a sweetheart more often, cousin,” she teased, tucking the rolled-up parchment into her skirt’s pocket before sliding her still-bleeding hand into a silky black glove. “You’re just too much fun like this.”

  His lips peeled back into a snarl, but before he could utter another threat, she grabbed his elbow and a sudden rush of cold washed over him. He shuddered, the brisk air burning with every breath.

  “Guys?” Alaric’s panicked gaze swept across Severus and Cordelia several times, looking but not seeing. He reached out with both hands. “This is my least favourite version of the plan. Guys?”

  Cordelia watched him flounder about with pursed lips, clearly delighted, then snatched his hand as Severus rolled his eyes so hard they nearly popped out.

  “Here, sweet boy,” she cooed, threading her gloved fingers around his. Dressed in all black, from his leather coat down to his ridiculously clean lace-up boots, Alaric shivered more visibly than Severus did under the illusion.

  “Cold.”

  “Very astute, Alaric,” Severus said with a sigh, watching as his friend’s breath fogged in front of him. “Invisibility usually is. Come along.”

  “Don’t let go of my hand, darling,” Cordelia instructed. “As soon as we three disengage, the illusion falls. So, hold nice and tight.”

  “Er, right.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Severus grumbled, half dragging the two behind him through the forest. They had likely crossed into the city’s limits by now, weaving their way around tree trunks, both fallen and upright, and avoiding animal burrows along the way. A faint spring mist had started, plunging through the overhead canopy and only making the chill of Cordelia’s spell worse. Some ten minutes later, the castle loomed ahead through the forest, its crumbling outline reminiscent of the old-world architecture in Hell’s capital city, Pandemonium.

  They had opted to charge in through the front door—there was no other point of entry on the main level, according to the layout. Severus could only hope the building plans for the castle were accurate; he had beguiled more humans today than he’d done in quite some time, and by the end of it he’d had the whole department clamoring to get their hands on him, each one enchanted by his touch.

  And Severus had taken every bit of human skin he could. He’d spent the day recharging his strength, and he’d been positively brimming with it when they had set out together a half hour ago. Cordelia might have been their element of surprise, a secret weapon, but Severus still wanted to be physically capable of overpowering his foes.

  While the faint glow of light inside the castle suggested it was still in use for one reason or another, it had certainly seen better days. Nearly all the small windows had been shattered, bits of stained glass crunching underfoot as the invisible trio skulked around the perimeter of the building. Severus led the way, taking in the crumbling turrets and the overgrown ivy. Diriel might have claimed this place for his own, but it seemed unlikely he’d actually live in it.

  Which only made Severus’s rage thicken.

  Because that meant he would be using it now for the express purpose of squirreling Moira away, doing fuck knows what to her in the meantime.

  “Slow down,” Cordelia scolded, stumbling into him when he stopped at the edge of the wall. “I’m wearing heels, for Lucifer’s sake.”

  “Well, that was your stupid decision, wasn’t it, cousin?” he sneered back, briefly glaring over his shoulder at her before peering around the corner. Sure enough, the front door was just where the layout had put it—and before it sat two chatting demons. Big lugs, sure, but he didn’t detect anything particularly special about them.

  The demon genetic lottery was a crapshoot, as Severus knew all too well, but most of the time it produced them: ordinary beasts of Hell who were strong, but hardly as influential as the rest.

  He had never understood why they didn’t make up the bottom of the demon hierarchy; there was nothing special about them beyond their physicalit
y and their ability to inflict pain, which was a gift all demons claimed to possess. Still, they were the majority: unspecialized but cruel, they ranked higher than Severus strictly because their strength wasn’t contingent on human life essence. Lucky bastards.

  “We can take ’em,” he whispered, then crouched low and shuffled around the corner. Cordelia and Alaric followed, but as soon as they were close enough to the leather-clad pair seated on the cracked front steps, one of them smoking, Alaric moved up beside Severus, which left Cordelia squished between them. Unfortunately, they needed to keep hold of her to maintain the spell, which meant Severus’s right hand and Alaric’s left needed to act as if they belonged to one body.

  He waved to Alaric, then counted down with his fingers—three, two, one, go.

  As Alaric kneed the smaller of the two brutes in the face, Severus wrapped his arm around the other demon’s head, latched onto his ear, and twisted with all his might. The force snapped the unwitting creature’s neck, his great big body sagging instantly. When he was through, Severus did the same to Alaric’s demon, who was swiping at nothing with his enormous fists, face twisted in rage. Alaric had hidden behind Cordelia in the meantime, the witch suddenly plagued with a serious case of the giggles.

  Severus huffed at them both, the demon inside severely displeased by how slow this was all going. “Can we try to be professional here?”

  “Oh, lighten up, cousin,” Cordelia teased, leading the pair up the stone steps to the front door. “There’s always time for a bit of fun when you’re committing murder.”

  “It’s not murder when they’ll heal.” Severus went for the rusted doorknob, scowling. “So try to maintain just a little decorum, a breath of dignity—”

  A piercing, skull-crushing alarm shrieked the second Severus forced the door open. Feeling as though someone was driving a drill into his temple, both in pain and in sound, he clamped his hands over his ears, staggering into the castle with a groan.

  “Magic,” Cordelia shouted over the racket, the only indication that it bothered her a slight wrinkle of her brow. “I’ll disable it.”

  With the alarm triggered, Alaric came stumbling in after her, fingers shoved in his ears too. However, before either could get a word out, he forcefully wrenched Severus around—just in time for him to spy the onslaught of demons barreling toward them. Down the stairs from the second level. Out a door in the back of the entrance hall, likely charging up from the basement. All in all, about fifteen incoming black-eyed men, each donning the flashy accessories he often associated with Diriel’s hang of partying halfwits.

  Perfect.

  Not entirely unexpected, but certainly not appreciated.

  As he prepared himself for the first wave, a gunshot rang out just over his shoulder, and Severus staggered off to the side.

  “Alaric!”

  “Come on, it was a great head shot,” his friend shouted over the din, grinning. “And you’re welcome.”

  Given the fact that Alaric’s demon refused to make itself known, they had all agreed to load him up with physical weaponry for tonight, whereas Severus would rely on strength alone. Luckily for him, Alaric was an excellent marksman, using the moonlight spilling in through the open door and the flash of each shot to pick off his attackers.

  And the sooner he took them out, the better. Not only was this magical alarm system driving Severus up the fucking wall, but all of Diriel’s thugs were roaring like this was the epic showdown of their lifetime. Was there not enough noise already? Must they contribute to it?

  “Cordelia, for fuck’s sake, shut it up!”

  “I’m working on it,” she bellowed back, her voice demonic and hands raised overhead, each pulsing with a soft red glow. “Just do your part, cousin!”

  As a pair of brute demons charged him, Severus unlocked the cage—and let the beast free. Eyes completely black, he fought with every skill in his arsenal, using his speed and his nimble footing to his advantage. Ducking, weaving, dodging—he skirted a flurry of fists before knocking one of his attackers off-balance with a well-timed kick to the knee. As soon as the creature went down, he pounced, snapping his neck just as he’d done the first of Diriel’s men. A broken neck was the surest way to keep a demon down, no matter their rank or ability.

  Besides a bullet to the head, of course. The only way to recover from that was for someone to dig the bullet out before decomposition set in.

  And since he wasn’t the one with the gun, a broken neck was in store for the next demon who charged him, and the next, and the next, and the one after that. Shots rang out, but Severus was forced to divert back to the hybrid when they stopped—there were only eight rounds in Alaric’s specially designed firearm. Out of ammunition, Alaric used the gun as a blunt instrument, even managing to crack one charging demon across the jaw before another slammed a fist into his face.

  Severus tackled the third demon encroaching on Alaric to the ground, then hammered his head, face-first, against the cobblestone floor until blood spurted everywhere. It was only as the liquid soaked his knees that he realized Cordelia had managed to shut off the magical alarm. The high-pitched ringing in his ears hadn’t dissipated any, and he stuck a finger in one, wiggling it about, all the while popping his jaw open and closed.

  “Sev,” Alaric grunted, a demon’s thick hand wrapped around his throat, “a little h-help…”

  Severus staggered to his feet, a little run-down and more than a little bloody himself, only to be knocked right back down by a whoosh of Cordelia’s power. It swept across the entire space, white and grey shockwaves pulsing out from around her. While the impact left him winded and wheezing, all of Diriel’s cronies vanished the moment it touched them.

  “That should buy us some…” She sank to her knees, blood gushing from each nostril. “Some time.”

  “Cordelia!”

  Much to Severus’s surprise, Alaric charged to her side, catching her before she toppled over. His witchy cousin grinned up at the hybrid, the pair bathed in moonlight spilling in from the open front door, then patted his cheek.

  “Don’t fret, pet,” she murmured. “Banishing incantations are always a little more taxing on Earth than they are in Hell. I’ll be on my feet momentarily.”

  With both the pile of bodies and any remaining drones gone, Severus quickly took stock of his injuries. All his knuckles were split open, the skin still tender from his run-in with the angelic light a few days prior. Someone’s ring had sliced a shallow gash across his cheek, and his body ached from the few hits that had landed—but he would survive. Just like Cordelia’s spellcasting, hand-to-hand combat and the injuries it wrought always hit him harder outside of the underworld. Unlike Cordelia, Severus wouldn’t feel it tomorrow. He’d be mostly healed, stuck with only the twinges of battle, whereas his cousin was scarred for life.

  “Oh, darling, they broke that very regal nose of yours,” Cordelia said, sounding stronger by the moment as she tsked up at Alaric. When Severus slowly glanced up, he found his friend beaming at her.

  “Yeah. Injury twins.” The banal comment was followed by nervous laughter, which Cordelia responded to like a wolf spying a stumbling deer amidst the fleeing herd.

  “Not to worry. I still fancy you,” she purred, her eyes flicking to full black. Alaric cleared his throat, then helped her to her feet, a hand on her waist to steady her.

  “Alaric, did she bake you something while I was gone today?” Severus snapped, unable to find another reasonable explanation for…that. He waved his friend’s stammering response away with a huff before standing once more and stalking across the circular foyer. “Where the fuck is the stairwell down?”

  “To the left,” Cordelia told him, and he heard the soft click of her heels on the stone as the pair followed him toward an iron door tucked away in the back left of the room.

  When it wouldn’t immediately open for him, Severus really threw his shoulder into it—only to have Alaric interject with a tentative: “I think it’s a pull, not a push.
”

  Frowning, Severus pulled—and sure enough, the damn thing opened without so much as a squeaky hinge.

  While all he wanted was to throw himself down the dark, winding stairwell, Severus had Cordelia lead the way—it was her blood on the map that would take them to Moira.

  So he followed, as much as it killed him, gnashing his teeth and scowling when they happened upon the mazelike corridors of the castle’s lower level. Dead ends aplenty, hallways that got narrower and narrower the farther one trod. Only a demon could have designed such a nightmare, and by the time they reached the second sublevel, the one Moira was supposed to be on, they had burned through an entire hour just mastering the maze. Severus’s inner demon was all but intolerable at this point, his esophagus on fire and his head throbbing.

  “Find the room,” he growled, shoving Cordelia out of the second supremely claustrophobic stairwell they’d encountered tonight. “Find it!”

  “If you push me one more time, cousin, I’ll banish you,” the witch snarled, fixing him with a withering look over her shoulder.

  “We’re running out of time!”

  “Hey, look—”

  “Well, better let me concentrate then,” Cordelia snapped, speaking over Alaric as she planted her hands rather dramatically on her hips.

  “Then fucking concentrate!”

  “Don’t get your knickers in a—”

  “The door!” Alaric shouldered his way past both of them, jogging down the dimly lit dirt corridor ahead. Severus shoved by Cordelia again, ignoring her indignant curses—because Alaric was right. Dead ahead, the only thing on this level was a giant metal door. Torches flickered on either side, and Severus hastily helped Alaric with the half dozen locks, his fingers clumsy and his heart hammering.