Releasing the Hunter

“Look, bad blood, I don’t like the way—”

He slapped a hand over her mouth. “Shut up for a second.”

She was about to rip his hand away when she sensed the same thing he had.

The demon was nearby. She could feel it in the air. Like a horrific dream, like all the happiness in the world had been sucked out of the air. It was a cold clammy feeling on her skin. She shivered in response.

She nodded, and Ronan took his hand away. He pointed to his eyes, then to the house.

Ivy peered through the windshield to the small bungalow. No lights had come on, but she thought she saw movement at one of the darkened windows.

She leaned toward Ronan and whispered, “Is he in the house?”

He nodded without taking his gaze off the house.

“You take the back. I’ll go in the front.” She didn’t wait for his reply before she quietly opened the door and slid out of the truck. She carefully closed the door but didn’t click it shut. Demons possessed superior hearing.

She came around the front just as Ronan got out of the vehicle. They met at the front bumper.

“Don’t kill him. I need to talk to him first,” she told him.

He just nodded.

Ivy took out her lock-picking kit and headed toward the front door while Ronan crossed the lawn, passed through the side gate and headed around to the back of the house. She stepped up onto the stoop, opened the screen door and tried the knob. It was surprisingly unlocked.

Either the demon had been careless or this was a trap. Ivy went with trap. In her mind, it was always a trap. Nothing was this easy. There was always a catch or two.

She unsheathed one of her silver blades from her back harness, then as quietly as she could, she turned the knob and opened the door. Thankfully the hinges didn’t squeak, but she knew it didn’t matter. The demon could probably hear her breathing.

It was completely dark inside. She waited a moment just past the threshold for her eyes to adjust. She’d spent plenty of time in darkness so she had better-than-average sight compared to most people. When she could make out the shapes of furniture and other items scattered around the main living room, Ivy stepped forward.

There were no noises in the house. Except for the ticking of a clock nearby and the hum of the furnace, she couldn’t discern anything that indicated anyone was at home. But she sensed it. A creepy sensation of foreboding crawled over her skin and she had to suppress the urge to shiver. Someone was here.

As she moved across the room, she had to remind herself that Ronan could also be in the house. Maybe that was who she was sensing. But she had to admit she didn’t get a creepy vibe from him. It was another kind of vibe that she didn’t want to consider right now.

She moved into the kitchen, and that’s when she caught sight of Ronan. He was coming out from the back hall. He lifted his hand in greeting to her. Or to stop her from slicing off a piece of him. She loosened her grip around the hilt of her blade as he came along her side.

“Anything?” he whispered.

She shook her head. “Something’s here, though.”

“Yeah, I get that, too.” He lifted his chin and sniffed the air. “I can smell decomp.”

She peered at him curiously.

“There’s at least one dead body in this house. One day dead, maybe.”

Ivy swung around and searched the shadows of the kitchen. They were either dealing with Sallos’s latest kill or his latest creation. She hoped it was the former because if it was the latter, they could be in for a world of hurt.

Revenants were really hard to kill.

They were the undead given life by a demon’s black-magic spell. Unlike the zombie lore floating around, these creatures weren’t shambling, unintelligent bodies. They possessed speed, tenacity and an irritating lust to kill.

The only way to end them was to cut off their heads and stuff valerian root into their necks. Ivy had a big knife, so that was taken care of, but she didn’t have any valerian on her.

“I need to go to the truck.”

Even in the dark, she could see Ronan frown. “Are you joking? We’re in the middle of something here.”

“Watch my back.” She moved out of the kitchen before he could protest further. But she could feel him behind her doing as she asked.

She was halfway across the living room when she felt a stir in the stagnant air to her left. She turned that way just as the revenant sprang at her from beside the sofa. What she had erroneously mistaken for three lumpy throw pillows had been a reanimated corpse lying in wait.

It latched onto her left arm with its clawlike fingers and carried her backwards. With its substantial weight behind it—Sallos had killed and resurrected a Goliath—it took them both to the ground. But before it could rip a chunk out of her shoulder with its jagged teeth, Ronan was there kicking it in the head.

The force of Ronan’s kick sent it reeling off her and onto its back. Ivy scrambled to her feet but not before the revenant grabbed onto her right leg, trying to dig its fingers into her flesh.

Thank God for the thickness of her jeans, she thought. Never before had she wanted to plant a kiss on Levi Strauss more than she wanted to now.

As she shook her leg to get it off, Ronan shot it in the back. It instantly released her. The blast of his gun echoed around the room.

“That’s not going to kill it,” she shouted over the ringing in her ears.

“I know, but it got it off you, didn’t it?”

She didn’t grace him with a response, but turned and prepared for the revenant’s next attack. They never stayed down long. It was back up on its feet in a flash and rushing forward.

Ivy unsheathed a second knife and, using defensive holds, she crisscrossed her arms and sliced deep into the revenant’s gut. It grunted, stumbled backward, and then looked down as its insides spilled onto the rug. She had to bite down on her lip to stop from retching.

“That’ll keep it busy for a few minutes,” Ronan offered as he studied the revenant’s guts on the ground.

“I need to get the valerian from the truck.”

“Go. I’ve got this covered.”

Ivy sidestepped around the confused revenant and rushed out the front door. She ran down the lawn and to the truck. Her bag of herbs and roots was behind the cab seat. She unlocked the truck and rummaged around for her bag. She found it, opened it and grabbed a small plastic bag of the herb. Stuffing it into her pocket, she ran back to the house.

When she walked into the house, the revenant was in a few pieces on the living room rug. One severed arm still moved.

She shook her head. “A little overkill, don’t you think?”

Ronan shrugged. “Best to make sure.”

She stomped over to the headless torso of the revenant. She opened the plastic bag, took out a pinch of valerian root and shoved it down into the open neck wound. The squishy sensation on her fingers made her head swim and her stomach flop over unpleasantly. She wiped the residual blood and gore onto her pants.

Within a minute, all the squirming pieces of the revenant lay still.

“We should burn the body,” Ivy said as she prodded the torso with her boot.

Ronan nodded. “I know a good place to do that.”

“Yeah, I bet you do,” she muttered under her breath. But she knew he heard her and she didn’t care.

“I just saved your ass, lady, so I suggest you be nicer.”

She cocked one eyebrow. “Please. I didn’t need your help. I would’ve taken care of it by myself.”

“Before or after it had eaten your leg for a midnight snack?”

She smirked. “Whatever. Let’s just find a garbage bag, get the pieces together and get this done.” She looked around the room. “Obviously, Sallos knew we were coming. He might have other traps for us.”

Ronan disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a hefty orange garbage bag. “Found one under the sink.” He knelt down and started to fill the bag.

“We should hurry. That shot you took probably woke the neighborhood. Cops will probably be here soon.”

She picked up the arm and shoved it into the plastic bag.

“You can’t just say thanks, can you?” He stuffed another piece inside. “It’s obvious gratitude is beyond your intellectual scope.” When the bag was full, Ronan tied it off.

“Can we just move it along?” Ivy didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to feel gratefulness or anything for this cambion. The less she felt for him, the better.

“Yup, no problem.” He hefted the bag over his shoulder. As he walked it swung and hit Ivy in the side of the head. It had enough impact to send her sprawling over the sofa. she had no doubt in her mind that he’d done it on purpose.

Balling her hands into fists, she followed him out of the house, down the front steps and to the truck. After he swung the bag into the back of the truck, she rounded on him. She poked him in the chest with her knuckle.

“Listen to me. I told you this was my way or the highway. So either do what I say or you can get lost. I don’t need your running commentary about what I am doing or not doing.”

He regarded her with his lips twitching. She didn’t like how he was looking at her. As if she was an amusement to him. “Do you ever relax?”

“No,” she sneered. “Relaxing gets people killed.”

“You know what else gets people killed? High blood pressure.”

Grinding her teeth, she spun on her heel and jumped into the truck. Ronan got in on the other side. She started the truck, put it in gear and drove away from the house.

Under her breath she counted to ten slowly. When she reached ten she looked over at Ronan and asked, “Where are we going?”

“Inner East Bay, down by the harbor.”

“Once we do this, then what? What’s your next big idea?” She opened her window a crack. She felt like she was suffocating. Ronan’s presence was crowding on her. He was a big guy and took up a lot of the space inside the cab. “Sallos knew we were coming. How?”

Ronan rubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin. “I don’t know. Maybe because he knew what you would do next.”

“So this is my fault?”

“He obviously made you the second you walked into that club. You don’t exactly fly under the radar, Ivy.”

“What about you? Maybe he made you,” she suggested. “Or I know, how about, you’re working with him, so he knew we were coming because that was the plan.” She thought about his stolen car. Maybe that had been the reason, so it would be easy for him to hook up with her. Except as a hunter she’d stolen plenty of vehicles. It was part of the game.

Cocking his head, he regarded her. “I know there’s a brain in that pretty head of yours. So maybe you should use it. What you’re proposing is just ridiculous.” She hated the mocking tone in his voice.

Without a thought, she yanked the steering wheel to the right and pulled up onto the curb. “Get out.”

“What?”

“I said get the hell out of my truck.”

“You’re being overdramatic, don’t you think?”

That was it. She had enough of his lip and they’d been together for only two hours. She balled up her fist and punched him in the side of the face. The force was enough to snap his head back. She had the satisfaction of seeing him bump the other side of his head against the door.

He turned his head back to her, then rubbed at his jaw where she’d clocked him. “Feel better? Got it out of your system? Can we move on now?”

She nodded. “Definitely feel better.”

“Good, because we need to keep moving. A cop just pulled up behind us.”

Ivy glanced in her rearview mirror. He was right. A police cruiser had just pulled onto the street where they were parked. It would be very bad if he found their big bag of body parts in the truck bed. She suspected that even she wouldn’t be able to talk her way out of it.

She put the truck back in gear and pulled out onto the street. The cop car followed her. She kept glancing in the mirror, holding her breath, hoping she didn’t see the flashing lights come on.

After they drove another four blocks, the cruiser put on his signal and turned right. Ivy let out the breath she was holding.

Ronan rubbed at his chin again. “You punch pretty hard. Not like a girl at all.”

She swiveled in her seat to tell him a thing or two, but the smile on his face had her biting back the words. She couldn’t help the grin that lifted her lips.

“Aha, I knew you could smile.” His eyes sparkled in amusement. “There’s a running rumor out there that it would never happen. That it couldn’t.”

She shook her head, but she couldn’t help the laugh bubbling out of her. “Well, I’m happy to bust that rumor to hell.”

“Yeah, I wonder what other rumors we can bust along the way.”

Her smile faded then and she turned back to the road. “Keep dreaming.”

Although his words bothered her, it was the lusty gleam in his eyes that worried her more. Because truth be told, the butterflies in her stomach had not stopped fluttering since setting her eyes on him in the back alley. And that was always a sign of bad things to come.

Ronan made her body react in ways she hadn’t felt for a long time. Lusty thoughts finger walked their way through her mind when she looked at him. He had that dark and dangerous swagger about him that sent her libido into a tizzy. This job was going to be one of the toughest of her career so far. And it had nothing to do with the mark.

Chapter 4

Ronan directed Ivy down to the bay. He knew of a perfect spot to dispose of a body. He’d unfortunately had to use it himself a time or two.

She didn’t speak as she parked the truck near the water’s edge. She got out and went around back, pulling down the tailgate so they could get at the bag of body parts. Ronan slid out of the truck and then jumped into the back. He thought he surprised her with his agility because she looked at him with those wide blue eyes and a snarl on her lips.

Fog swirled around the tires of the truck. It gave the whole area a creepy vibe. The fact that they were dumping a body just upped that vibe to the nth degree. Moisture settled onto the back of his neck and the backs of his hands. A shiver rushed down his spine as he breathed in the cool night air.

Together they wrestled the bag out of the truck and onto the ground. From there, Ronan dragged it to the bay’s shoreline. He opened the bag and began to stuff it with rocks he found around the water’s edge. Once Ivy realized what he was trying to accomplish she helped out by finding big boulders to weigh the bag down.

“I see you’ve done this before,” she commented as she dropped a particularly large rock into the bag.

He nodded. “A time or two. Nobody that didn’t need killing, though.”

“Uh-huh.” She barely glanced at him.

He stood back and eyed her curiously. “Is it that you absolutely despise demons in any shape or form, or do you generally loathe everything?”

She didn’t give an answer, just took a step back and wiped her dirty hands on her pants.

Ronan tied off the bag and shoved it into the water. It buoyed at the surface for a second or two, then sank down into the inky depths. If it was ever found, it would be quite a ways down the shoreline.

He wiped his hands on his pants, and then looked at Ivy. She was watching the water ripple where the body had gone down. He couldn’t read the look on her face, but it wasn’t a happy one. Guilt, maybe. Remorse? Interesting considering her hard-assed reputation for slaying demons and the like.

“Now what?” he asked her.

“Regroup, I guess, and try to figure out where Sallos has gone to ground.”

“We could go to my place and—”

“Not likely. We’ll go to one of my safe houses.” She smirked at him. “You’ll be blindfolded, of course.”

“Well, of course I will.” The sarcasm rolled off his tongue.

She ignored it and headed toward the truck. Ronan followed her. “You don’t trust much, do you?”

“I trust only one person. And he’s unfortunately not around.”

Ronan knew she was talking about her brother, Quinn. He’d heard that Quinn had gone to ground a couple of years ago. No one knew where he was or why he was hiding. He wondered if Ivy even knew. And if she didn’t, why not?

Maybe this was why she had misgivings about everyone she met. The one person in her life she probably thought she could rely on had left her. Or at least, Ronan could speculate. There were rumors floating around about the Stroms and their lives and how they’d been born into the hunting community. He didn’t travel in those circles, just on the fringes, so he heard things now and then. Which is how he’d known where to find Ivy in the first place.

Ronan thought it was kind of a lonely way to go about life. Always looking over your shoulder. Always wondering who was going to stab you in the back. Never being able to let down your guard for one second just in case someone or something came calling to kick your ass.

He supposed his life wasn’t all that different. He didn’t always have to look over his shoulder to see if someone was sliding a knife into it, but he did have to be cautious. He survived by procuring things. Usually the hard-to-find type of things. Items that were not for sale on eBay. Things like ancient talismans and old lost documents written in Aramaic. And most of these things he had to steal. He was good at what he did. He moved like the shadows and had never been caught. And he never planned to be.

His career wasn’t perfect. Most of his clients were ruthless and manipulative and shrewd. People he needed to be wary of, or he would be the one always looking over his shoulder.

She started the truck and they pulled away from the deserted spot near the water. As she pulled out onto a gravel road, she glanced at him. “There’s a blindfold in the glove box. Put it on.”

“You’re serious?”

“If you don’t want to wear it, I can pull over and you can get out right here and now.”

He pressed the button on the compartment. It sprang open and he reached in and took out the black cotton blindfold. He ran it through his fingers. “You know the rumors didn’t say anything about you being so kinky.”

“Did they say anything about me killing you for talking too much?”

“Why, yes, yes they did.”

She turned her head to look back at the road, but he caught the little smirk on her lips. Interesting. Maybe she wasn’t so indifferent to him after all.

“I’ll play your game,” he said, wrapping the cloth over his eyes and tying it in back, “but only because I find you quite fascinating.”

“I should have brought a gag for your mouth.”

“Next time, we can experiment.”

He heard her little chuckle and smiled. He then turned his head to the left and listened to the sounds outside the truck—the gravel crunching under the tires, a blast from a ship’s horn, the thump of music from one of the dive bars nearby. He may not be able to see where he was going, but he certainly could hear it. Despite her fears about him, he wasn’t about to tell anyone where her safe house was located. He needed her trust. If he was to achieve his grand plan, he needed her more than she would ever know.

An hour later, the truck slowed, turned left up onto a cement pad then eventually came to a soft rolling stop. Ronan heard the telltale drone of a garage door closing. They were in a suburb somewhere to the north. Since pulling away from the bay he’d known what direction they were going and had adjusted his inner compass with every turn she took. It wasn’t an exact science, but he felt more secure knowing roughly where he was in the city. Just in case he needed to disappear in a hurry.

Once the door was fully down, his blindfold was yanked from his eyes. He blinked at Ivy and smiled. “Are we there yet?”

She shook her head at him, then opened her door and got out. He did the same. He looked around the garage, noticing the starkness of it. There was no lawn mower parked in the corner, or workbench with tools spread across it. No lawn furniture or boxes of past things stacked in a neat pile along one wall. There was nothing there. No memories, nothing to hold a person to a place.

It suited Ivy to a tee.

“I never pictured you as a suburbanite.”

“Which is exactly why this is the perfect cover.” she grabbed her bag from the truck and headed for the door to the main house.

As she approached it, a rush of adrenaline kicked in Ronan’s gut. He nearly doubled over from the shock of it. Something was off. Something was wrong. He could feel it crawling over his flesh like angry army ants.

Before Ivy could grab the doorknob, he grabbed the back of her jacket and yanked her backwards. He wrapped his arms around her, pinning her arms to her sides.

She struggled against him. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Something’s wrong. I can feel it,” he said between gritted teeth.

She looked around the garage. “Are you sure? I don’t smell anything. No sulfur, no brimstone.”

“Sallos has revenants working for him, remember.”

“Do you smell decomp, then?”

He shook his head. “It’s just a sense of impending doom.”

“Let me go and I’ll check the door for any signs of disturbance. I put wards on it before I left. I salted it, too.”

Instead of letting her go, he picked her up and carried her back to the truck. He opened the driver’s door and shoved her in, following right behind. He grabbed the keys from her hand and stuck them in the ignition.

“What the hell?”

Ronan started the truck and put it in Reverse. He didn’t even wait for the garage door to open. He busted through the metal, tearing the door off the frame, and screeched into the street backwards.

“Are you crazy? You just wrecked my place,” she shouted, balling her hands into fists, looking like she was going to wail on him.

But she didn’t get the chance. By the time he put the truck into Drive, there was the smell of hellfire in the air. It was acrid, like the odor of vinegar.

Ivy must’ve noticed it, too, because she turned to look out the side window just as a huge fireball erupted from inside her garage.

Chapter 5

Ivy couldn’t believe her eyes as Ronan raced down the street away from her soon-to-be destroyed house. Flames were licking the outside of the garage, engulfing it in an orange ball of light.

“Is there anything in the house that’s incriminating?”

She shook the daze from her head, and looked at Ronan. “What?”

“In the house? Are there weapons or illegal substances that will lead to your arrest? There’re going to be firemen and police all over that place in minutes.”

“No. Not in the house. I have a safe buried in the backyard, under the shed.”

“We can come back for that later.”

She just nodded, then turned around in the seat to face the front and the road ahead of them. Sirens could be heard a few blocks from them. Ivy saw flashing red lights coming from her right about two blocks away.

She remained quiet as they sped away from the scene. She chewed on her finger as the anger built inside. The house was a write-off. She’d spent three months cultivating that safe house. Signing a lease, under a false name of course, moving in, making friendly with the neighbors. Putting up a false wall for others to see. She kept it up so that nothing would seem out of the ordinary. That no red flags went up for the people living next to her. The last thing she needed was nosy people asking about her business.

Now it was all gone. Her cover was blown.

“How did you know?” she asked him without taking her eyes off the road.

“I can sense things. My sixth sense is more advanced than yours.”

“Maybe you knew ahead of time.” This time she did look at him.

He shook his head. “Jesus, woman. Get your head out of your butt. I am not the bad guy here. I saved your ass.”

She sighed, knowing she was just grasping at straws and lashing out at him because she wanted to destroy something. And he was the closest something, even if he did make the butterflies in her belly stir and the muscles in her thighs clench annoyingly. “I thought I covered my tracks pretty well. I didn’t think anyone could find that safe house.”