Wild Hunt (4 page)

I
wasn’t keen
on hanging around for the next police officer to come and berate me for loitering in places I wasn’t meant to. I headed for home. It would have been easy to get a cab or catch the subway, but I needed the time to clear my head and walking was one of the best ways I had for doing it.

I took the long route home; my feet carried me forward as my mind fought to come to terms with all the things I’d learned. I didn’t need Dex threatening to spill my secrets to the world, but after everything he’d been through, how could I blame him for holding me responsible?

I hadn’t possessed him but I also hadn’t stopped it from happening. At the end of the day, the best of intentions didn’t really cut it.

Dragging myself free of my thoughts, I peered around at my surroundings, my stomach flip flopping as I recognised the area.

Sonia and Steve had been buried two days previous and I, being the coward that I was, had hung in the background watching the proceedings take place from afar. The second it was over, I’d hightailed it out of there like all the demons in Hell were chasing me. And perhaps demons were chasing me, but they weren’t from Hell, at least not in the biblical sense.

Pushing open the cemetery gate, I followed the path that led up through the new sections, following it around until I found myself in the old section, the graves there dating back far enough that the writing was no longer legible.

Steve and Sonia’s double plot sat in the middle, the makeshift grave marker causing my stomach to clench uncomfortably. Someone had even put a tiny cherub next to the cross, probably one of the family members….

Crossing the soft dew damp grass, I crouched down next to the grave and read the plaque in front of the cherub.

“We never had the chance to meet, but know you were loved….”

The words brought tears to my eyes. It had all gone so wrong. If the shifter hadn’t followed me home, Steve would still be alive, Sonia, and their unborn child. As it was, they were all gone, and I would have to live with the memory of the expression in Steve’s eyes after he’d murdered Sonia.

Closing my eyes, I pressed my hand to the top of the grave, but the earth was cold beneath my fingers and I could feel nothing of the people who had died. What was in the earth now was nothing but the shell of who they had been.

The hairs on the back of my neck lifted and I jerked my hand back from the grave. I wasn’t afraid of cemeteries; I’d learned from a young age that there wasn’t anything worth being afraid of in them. The dead were just that; dead. The only way they could pose a threat was with a helping hand from the living. And from my cursory glance around the graveyard when I’d first entered, I was the only living soul within the walls.

Something shivered down my spine and I turned, pushing up onto my feet as I made a slow half-circle turn.

The woman stood on the other side of the cemetery, her dark eyes watching me with an intensity that set all the hairs on my body standing on end.

The second she realised I was staring back at her, she jerked as though I’d slapped her.

Cemeteries weren’t haunted as a rule. Ghosts had no business inside them; it was simply the place where their physical form rested and unless they were bound to it, there was just nothing for them in a graveyard. Of course, bound ghosts were just that.
Bound
meant they couldn’t even move from the cozy confines of their coffins, forced to wait for the complete decay of their bodies. “Dust to dust” had more than one meaning.

The ghost took a trembling step forward, the dark gaping holes where her eyes should have been staring at me as though she could peer straight through me and into my very soul.

And maybe she could. I wasn’t exactly an expert when it came to ghosts.

Between one blink and the next she was gone and I sucked a breath in through my teeth. There was something about her, something terribly familiar that made me think I was supposed to know exactly who she was. But no matter how hard I tried to force my brain to grasp the faded edges of the memory that whispered through my mind, it refused to.

Instead, I was left standing in the cemetery, alone, with the hairs still standing on the back of my neck as the sensation of being watched refused to fade away.

T
he second I
made it home, I peeled the blue dress off my body. It wasn’t exactly how I’d hoped the night would end but then maybe it was for the best. I liked Nic, but if I was honest with myself, the depth of my feeling for him frightened me.

We had no idea if we would even work out and at the rate work kept on throwing obstacles in our path, we would never get the opportunity, but I felt as though I’d known him my whole life. It was a lie my heart told my head to make me simply accept the way I felt for him.

Dragging on a sweatshirt, I stared down at the plastic-covered mattress and the pile of bedding I’d left in preparation three days previously. Working late nights didn’t exactly make me a fan of housework and even when I had a day off like today, I still wasn’t interested in cleaning house. My mother considered me a slob.

The plastic crackled beneath me as I climbed onto the bed and dragged the still-unused, clean sheet from the pile of bedding. Drawing it over my body, I stared up at the ceiling and the headlights that passed by.

* * *

S
omething shifted
in the darkness and I jolted awake. Holding my breath, I strained to listen my heartbeat echoing in my ears. How long had I been asleep?

Someone took a deep, sighing breath and I froze. The darkness was absolute and panic crowded my brain as I realised my hands were stuck. Less stuck and more bound. The second it occurred to me that my hands were bound, I could feel the silk bonds wrapped around my wrists; every time I struggled the bonds grew tighter and my panic increased.

“Who’s there?” I called out.

“Don’t you remember me?” The voice slid across my skin drawing up the memory of the voice in my head from just a few short hours ago.

The panic turned to stark terror as his hand slid up over my foot and onto my ankle, the same ankle that had been bitten by whatever creature had killed those people at St Anne’s.

“You’re a deep sleeper. I worried about waking you when I slipped the silks on your wrists—”

His words were cut off as I drew my knees up toward my chest and lashed out. I felt my feet connect with his chest—or at least I was certain it was his chest, but without actually seeing him, I couldn’t be certain. The sound of him crashing back across the room at least told me I was still in my bedroom.

Resisting the urge to pull at the silks, I drew my magic up from my core, allowing it flow through my arms and up towards the bonds holding me down. The smell of burning silk met my nose and my hands were suddenly free.

Something snarled on my left side and I rolled to my right as I scrambled to tug the blindfold off my eyes. Strong arms wrapped around my waist, flipping me onto my back once more as he climbed up over me, his bulk pressing me down into the plastic covered mattress.

Lashing out with my hands, I struck his face, and he laughed as though I’d done nothing more than tickle him. Dropping over me, his weight crushed the air from my lungs as I stared up into his bright violet eyes, his long golden hair framing his face.

“Little pig, little pig, won’t you let me come in?” he whispered, his breath warm against my cheek.

Power edged along my own and I fought to push it back. The last place I wanted him was in my head again. He’d been able to control me once before; if he got into my head again, what would I allow him to do?

The panic was enough to spur me into action.

I felt his magic dampen my own just as it had before and I let it, the metaphysical version of going limp in his grip. It made him cocky and I let him believe he had me in his thrall once more.

It took all of my willpower to slow my breathing down to a believable rate as I searching inside for the demon mark. It had worked before; it would work again.

The demon mark was a lot more difficult to find, its thick, black, vine-like tendrils wrapped and threaded through my own magic. But once I touched it, it was easy to follow it back to its core.

Bleak darkness pulsed at its core and for a second, I faltered. This was what lived inside me; the demon had done this to me and I still hadn’t found a way to get rid of it.

The Fae holding me down onto the bed smiled above me, one hand sliding down across my cheek….

“You’re very pretty, almost as pretty as my daughter,” he said, and at the mention of his daughter, I heard the sharp change in his voice. Pain swirled around me as his magic changed and clawed at me.

Gasping, I bucked up from the bed as his power threatened to smother me.

“She made one little mistake and they killed her for it,” he said, anger and sadness marring his voice.

“What did she do?” I asked, trying to focus his attention.

“Told a lie. The Fae don’t lie…” he said, and stared off into the distance.

Warm, panting breaths tickled along my arm and I carefully turned my head to the left and stared into the ruby red eyes of the largest black dog I had ever laid eyes on. “Dog” was probably the wrong word to describe it; the beast was closer to a wolf than a dog, but it was the pulsing red of its eyes that filled me with fear.

As though it could sense my terror, it whined, its long pink tongue lolling out of its mouth as it scented my skin. The intelligence in its eyes told me that it knew what I was doing.

Grasping the demon mark’s essence which twined itself around my core, I tugged it into the fore. The dog’s whine turned into a growl and before I could jerk my hand back, it lunged.

Pain seared through me as it sank its long and wickedly sharp teeth into my arm. Instantly, I was reminded of the vision I’d had back at the crime scene; the pain was the same, only this time it was all too real and no amount of crawling away from the creature would cause this bite to heal.

The Fae shifted on top of me, his violet eyes peering down into my own, and I could feel him sifting through my mind.

Fighting past the nausea and pain that threatened to wash over me and take me with it into oblivion, I grasped the thread of demon essence within me a little more firmly. It was eager and responded quickly, spreading up through my chest and outwards to the rest of my body. I visualised it as a web, coating me in its sticky darkness and forcing the invading Fae out of my head.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his magic pushing against me harder than it had before.

“Mine.” The voice that left my mouth was not my own, but I didn’t have time to panic. The phrase
better the Devil you know
sprang to mind, and it was true; the demon essence was a part of me, but this Fae was not, and I was not going to allow him to swallow everything that made me myself.

Lifting my arms off the bed took a strength I hadn’t believed I possessed, but I’d heard of demon possession giving people abilities and strength they couldn’t possibly have, so it wasn’t a huge leap. Either that or the demon mark was doing much more than helping me overcome my opponent, but that was something I would have to worry about later.

Grabbing his face, I stared into his violet eyes. The smile I felt curl my lips wasn’t my own either but it was what I needed to frighten him. “I will kill you, drink of your blood, and taste your flesh. You are not as strong as I am,” my demon half said.

“And you are not a true demon,” the Fae answered, regaining some of his arrogance from earlier. “I could purge it from you,” he said, slamming his hand against the mark on my shoulder.

The second his hand connected with the mark, several things happened, all of which left me more than a little confused.

Power so bright it was blinding erupted where the Fae touched me, the pulsing of his violet veins making the demon half of me hungry. The black dog lunged for me once more, but my hand whipped out and wrapped around its throat, crushing it beneath the strength in my grip. I watched the light in its eyes fade before returning my attention to the creature sitting on my chest.

Fae magic coursed in my veins, so much of it that I couldn’t fight the feeling of almost being drunk on the stuff. My demon side delighted in the feel of the magic but there was no doubt in my mind that it was a trap.

Jerking my hands down to the Fae’s chest, I thrust my hands hard against his chest, shoving him off my body and sending him sprawling away from me for a second time.

“The sorceress is mine.” The demon’s voice erupted from my mouth with a roar that I knew would leave my throat sore in the morning.

That was, if I even had a throat in the morning.

The Fae caught sight of the dead creature on the floor and a low, keening moan escaped him. He crossed the room fast enough that my eyes refused to follow him and then he was gone. The body of the dog remained where it had fallen against the wall.

“Mine,” the demon’s voice whispered in my head, and I struggled against it.

“Not while I can still fight,” I said aloud, gritting my teeth and forcing the power back with my own.

But once the genie is out of the bottle it’s impossible to completely put back, and I could feel the demon essence within me, stretching against its new, larger confines.

All it needed was time; the more I used it, the more it would claim. And the day would come when there wasn’t anything left of me to fight it back, and then….

I cut my thoughts off and stared down at the body of the black dog. At least I was still alive.

The bite mark on my wrist started to itch and as I stared down at it in the dark, I could see the red blistering of my skin that was beginning to slowly spread outward from the place where the beast had sunk its teeth into me.

Great, that’s all I need
. I thought as the room began to spin violently.