The Dark-Hunters (748 page)

Scowling, she looked back at Jess. “What is that?”

Sasha’s face blanched. “Wasps … a shitload of them.” He pointed down the street.

Following the direction of his arm, Abigail gaped at the sight of what appeared to be a thick, dancing cloud rolling toward them.

“Next plague.” Jess jumped to his feet and pulled her up. He met Sasha’s gaze. “Can you get the bike home?”

“On it. I’ll see you back in your compound.”

Jess inclined his head to him before he took her hand and ran with her back to the Audi. Abigail was still gaping as she watched the wasps draw closer and closer at an abnormal pace. The cloud rose and dived like some giant, lumbering, solid beast.

She ran to the passenger side while Jess wedged himself into the driver’s seat and moved it back.

“I really hope you didn’t damage this thing.”

She slammed the door shut, grateful she’d left it running, then buckled herself in. “You that attached to it, cowboy?”

He put it in gear. “Nope. Not mine. It’s Andy’s pride and joy. If there’s so much as a scratch on this thing, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Great. Now the Squire had another reason to hate her. “I can’t win for losing with him, can I?”

Jess didn’t answer as the wasps literally enveloped the car. They landed on the windshield so thick that he had to turn the wipers on to try and dislodge them.

It didn’t work. All it did was piss them off.

Disgusted and scared, Abigail hissed as she realized they were also crawling in through the vents.

“Close them quick,” Jess said, snatching his shut.

She complied and held them in place to make sure the wasps didn’t push them open again. “This is getting ugly.”

“Like my great-aunt’s underpants.”

She arched a brow at his strange and unexpected comment. Okay …

Jess tried to navigate the streets, but it was far from easy going. Cars were swerving everywhere, trying to avoid the wasps. Horns blared and people screamed so loudly that it was deafening. She’d never seen anything like it.

What were they going to do?

She sighed. “I’m getting a little tired of this.”

Jess flashed a fanged grin. “Not my fave thing either, I have to say. You wouldn’t happen to have a can of Raid, would you?”

“I wish. What else don’t they like?”

“Apparently us … and a little brown Audi.”

She shook her head. “How can you find humor right now?”

“Damned if I know. I must be one sick SOB. There’s definitely something in my noodle that’s shorted out.”

And how could she find that charming?

More than that, her entire life was falling apart, and the only comfort she had was him. Maybe he wasn’t the sick one after all.

Maybe it was her.

Yeah, there’s definitely something wrong with me.
And it wasn’t just the wasps trying to break into the car and sting them, or the demon that had made her eat a friend. “This is definitely one of those days when you’re praying it’s a dream. Only you never wake up from the nightmare.”

“I’ve had a few of those in my time. But this one here’s not so bad.”

“How do you figure?” she asked, flabbergasted by his words.

He flashed a fanged grin at her. “I might have lost some skin, but I got kissed by a beautiful woman who was happy to see me. I gotta say that’s pretty epic in my book. Definitely not a worst-case day here.”

Given what she’d seen of his past, she knew that for a fact. Still …

“Thank you.”

He frowned. “For what?”

Being here.

Being you.
Things she couldn’t say out loud without embarrassing herself to the deepest level. But she felt that gratitude so much that it made tears prick at her eyes.

After a few seconds when she didn’t respond, Jess looked over at her. She was staring at her hands as if they belonged to a stranger. A cloak of sadness enveloped her. “You okay?”

She nodded. And still she looked at her hands. “I killed a … Daimon tonight.”

“What?”

Swallowing, she glanced over at him. “You were right. They’d lied to me my whole life and kept that knowledge from me. I don’t know what to believe now.”

“Believe in yourself. Trust your instincts.”

“Is that what you do?”

Jess snorted as old memories burned. “No. Not doing it is what got me shot in the back by a man I thought was my brother. I like to think I learn a little as I go.”

But sometimes he wondered. Like right now, there was a part of him that wanted to trust her, and if ever someone should know better than that, it was him. She’d already proved that she was willing to hurt him to get what she wanted.

And she’d also run to him when he was hurt to make sure he was still alive.

After
she hit him with a car, of course. Yeah, okay, so that part sucked. But she
had
come back when she didn’t have to. It was more than a lot of people would do.

“We’re not going to make it back to your house, are we?” He heard the fearful undercurrent in her voice.

“Don’t get maudlin on me. We’re not dead yet … any chance those demon powers of yours have anything to help with this?”

“Not that…” Her voice trailed off as if an idea had suddenly occurred to her. “Don’t wasps hate bad smells?”

“I’m not fond of them, neither. Is there something you need to tell me? ’Cause right now, I really can’t open a window.”

She made a sound of disgust at his offbeat humor. “Whenever the powers surge, they put off an awful smell. I was thinking—”

“I prefer the idea of me driving through the worst BOB ever than having you smell up the car with demon funk to choke us down. No offense, my sight and hearing aren’t the only things my Dark-Hunter powers boost.”

“BOB?”

He loved that out of all that, she’d gotten only one word. “Baked on bugs. Or in this case, I guess I should have said BOW—baked on wasps.”

She started to laugh, but something slammed into them so hard, it snapped her forcefully to the right.

Jess cursed as he lost control of the car and they spun around. He wasn’t sure what had struck them, but it felt like a semi.

On steroids.

All of a sudden, there was a lone howl.

Coyote. He’d know that sound anywhere. The only question was if he meant it as a taunt or an order for his servants. When the car finally stopped moving, it ended up embedded against a pole.

“You all right?” he asked Abigail.

She nodded. “I think so. You?”

“Brain’s a mite rattled, but that’s nothing new for me.”

She jerked up in her seat as if someone had shocked her. “You hear that?”

He strained, then shook his head. The only sound in his ears was a bad inner buzzing and the wasps outside. “Hear what?”

“I can’t make out the words, but it sounds like someone whispering.”

He tried again, and again he heard nothing. “I only hear you.”

“You really don’t hear that?”

“Sorry. My medium powers are on the fritz, and I can’t channel spirits or bells right now. I’ll get them worked on later. For—”

“Shh,” she said, touching his arm with her hand. “The wasps are talking to someone. I hear them so clearly.”

Okay, time to get someone to a psych ward.

“It says to kill the buffalo.”

His scowl deepened. “There’s no buffalo in Vegas. At least not that I know of.”

“That’s what they’re saying, though.”

Maybe what she heard was that weird tendency people had to make ambient noise and other obnoxious things tolerable by incorporating them into understandable sounds and syllables. He didn’t know for sure.

At least not until he felt something else strike the car and land on the hood. It struck the windshield repeatedly.

The wasps pulled back enough for them to see a giant mountain lion. It was trying to break through the windshield to get them.

“Oh, this ain’t good,” Jess muttered under his breath. He put the car into reverse and backed up at a scary pace. Cutting the wheel, he sent the mountain lion flying. Then he put the car in drive and floored it.

Abigail held her breath as panic seized every part of her. She didn’t see any way out of this. “You think Choo Co La Tah can save us again?”

“Eventually, he can stop it. I just don’t know how long we have to hold out. Not to mention, the mountain lion is new. Man, what I wouldn’t give for some catnip right now.”

Cars were still running off the road as their drivers were swarmed.

As Jess passed a gas station, an idea hit him. It was lunacy, but …

It was all he had. He headed for another gas station down the street.

Abigail cringed as they pulled into the station and she saw the bodies on the ground of people who’d been caught outside by the wasps and who were now dead from their stings. There were others trapped in cars who screamed for help while the wasps continued to swarm, looking for new victims.

“Is there anything we can do for them?”

“Yeah. Stop Coyote.”

That was much easier said than done.

Jess took them to the carwash and pulled inside. She started to ask him what he was doing when all of a sudden the doors closed, sealing them in. The mountain lion slammed into the door, but couldn’t reach them through the tough plastic.

Waving his hand, Jess appeared to make the water come on.

The wasps around their car went crazy as they were sprayed.

Her heart lightened. It was a brilliant idea. They were going to drown the wasps.

Laughing, she turned to Jess and kissed him on the cheek. “You’re a genius!”

“Ah, now, don’t be going on like that. I might actually think you like me, and where would we be then?”

He was right. That was even more terrifying than being assaulted by killer wasps and angry mountain lions. And as that thought went through her head, she was struck with another realization.

“You have telekinesis.”

He nodded. “A little, but it’s not always reliable.”

“How so?”

“I’ve had a few mishaps with it. I used to try and control it more, but after an embarrassing incident, I learned to leave it be.”

This she wanted to hear. “What embarrassing incident?”

He actually blushed. “Really don’t want to share or relive it. Suffice it to say, it learned me a thing or two that I’ve never forgotten.”

All righty, then. She leaned back in the seat while the water and suds took care of their menace for them. It slid the wasps around and made a nice thick ick on the ground. And as she sat there watching them go down the drains and fall away, the horror of her actions hit her fully.

She’d killed a friend tonight.

And she’d lost her family.

I’m alone.
But it was so much worse than that …

Jess felt her sadness as if it were inside him. He watched her in the dim light while emotions flitted across her face and darkened her eyes. “It’ll be all right,” he tried to reassure her.

She shook her head in denial. “No. Everything I’ve ever known. Everything I’ve been told by the people I loved was a lie.” She held her hand up, grateful it was human and not demon, and yet she knew the truth.… “I let them mix me with a demon, and my adoptive brother did the same, too. I don’t know what I am now. I don’t know what he is. It was all so clear before. Kill you. Avenge my parents, and then protect my family and the Apollites and humans from the Dark-Hunters.” A single tear went down her cheek as she met his gaze. “I’m a monster, Jess. I’ve destroyed myself.”

Those words tugged at his heart and reminded him of the day he’d come to that same realization. It was so hard to see the truth in yourself.

Harder still to face it.

“You’re not a monster, Abby. Confused, I’ll give you. But not a monster. Believe me. I’ve seen those enough to know.”

“Yeah, right.”

He cupped her cheek and turned her head to face him so that she could see his sincerity. “Look at me, Abby. I know what it’s like to wake up every single day, angry at the world. Angry at God and humanity for what they’ve done to you and to want to make them pay for it. To feel like the entire world sees you as nothing but its whipping boy. Like you, my mother died when I was a little kid. She was the only thing good I had. The only one who’d ever made me feel like I was human. My father hated me, and he never hid that fact from anyone. He took his own anger at the world out on me, and it left a lot of scars, inside and out. To this day, I can still hear him and that hatred in my head, trying to poison my thoughts. Trying to poison me. I ran away from home after he almost killed me. Thirteen, I was. I tried to find decent work or someplace to stay and call home. What I found out was that people like to kick others when they’re down, even when they’re just kids. They get a sick thrill out of it. Makes them feel big and powerful while it destroys the heart and soul of their unfortunate victim.”

He swallowed as some of his harshest lessons resurfaced and he saw the faces of those who’d wronged him. But this wasn’t about him—it was about her.

“I learned human decency is probably the rarest creature out there. And I couldn’t find anyone who didn’t want to take advantage of me or hurt me even worse than my pa had. And it hardened me even more. By the time I was sixteen, that poison had rotted me from the inside out. It colored everything about me. I justified what I did to other people by reminding myself of how they’d treated me. They deserved whatever I did to them. Do unto others before they do unto you.”

“You became a killer.”

He nodded. “Until the day I killed a boy, thinking he was a man. He’d wanted to avenge his pa, and for the first time in my life, I saw someone else capable of love and sacrifice. Believe it or not, it was something I hadn’t seen except from my mother. And as stupid as it sounds, I’d convinced myself that it was unique to her and that no one else had it in them. But after that, I saw the difference between love and loyalty. Most of all, I saw what I’d become. What my hatred had turned me into.”

His dark gaze was filled with torment. “Don’t talk to me about monsters. I was one of the worst.”

A few days ago, she’d have agreed completely. Hell, a few hours ago, she’d have agreed. Now …