Nightmare Hunt, page 18
She yelled back, “And you can’t explain any of that to me after I told you and showed you stuff about myself that could get me strapped down in a government laboratory?!”
A pause, and then, “No.”
“Go away, Liam!”
He protested and with a final blow that sounded like he landed a heavy fist against the door, he departed, but only after telling her, “This isn’t over, Belle. You’re my girl.”
So now, in an utterly sour mood, she lay wrapped in the sherpa blanket with her head on the living room couch’s arm, staring blankly at the TV, vaguely following Zack and Kelly’s escapades in Las Vegas.
She was wearing the Jane Austen shirt she’d won in her t-shirt comebacks battle with Eddie in Annie’s Antiques. She had completely forgotten about it. She’d discovered it in her backpack in class after Q’s birthday lunch. Eddie must have snuck it in there when she wasn’t looking. She paired the shirt now with comfy black pajama shorts imprinted with silver constellations of the night sky, and with fuzzy black ankle socks sporting little green aliens and silver spaceships. Her hair was comfortably loose, cascading in all its soft twists and curls down her back.
While her eyes were trained on the TV, her mind was a chaotic whirlwind that she tried to ignore. Liam popping back into her life without explanation. Literally. That confounding relationship status he’d claimed, and then that kiss.
She sighed deeply just thinking about it.
But then another embrace replayed itself, and that one plagued her even more. Eddie hadn’t even kissed her, and just being in his arms had set her very molecules aflame in a way she’d never experienced before. It felt unnatural. Was it because of that Jäger pull he feels toward her? He’d said he felt what she felt when they...did whatever that was that they did. Did that go both ways? Had she felt what he felt? It would explain that tsunami of desire that had bowled her over until she fell into that lost memory.
She squeezed her eyes shut against the tears that still managed to leak out. She’d killed her family. Lost control somehow, until Violet herself took possession of her. The whole scenario was her worst nightmare.
Gratitude for the Fae welled up inside her. They’d given her another chance to get it right. Even her killer-turned-savior was helping her.
She pulled the rosary out of her shirt and held it in both hands, her fingers tracing over the intricate swirls etched into the cross. There was a tiny inscription on one of the edges: 1 Corinthians 13.
She blinked. She remembered that chapter in the Bible. It was one of the most renowned for its message about love and truth. Eddie was a walking contradiction. A trained assassin, yet also a priest bearing a token symbolic of pure love.
She suddenly hoped that Eddie hadn’t taken that leave of absence he said he was going to take. She still had so many questions. He was starting to feel like a necessary part of any solution she could come up with for freeing her mother and stopping Violet.
Her doorbell sounding interrupted her thoughts. For a fleeting second, she hoped it was Eddie. I’ve got unfinished business with the man, she stoically reminded her fluttering heart, but a quick glance at the clock told her it was Sergio with the usual.
She went to the door with her blanket wrapped around her shoulders. When she opened it, a gust of cold wind blew in, and she shivered deeper into her blanket. The temperatures had been dropping lately.
“Hi, Sergio.”
Sergio stood there in the black Elmridge police uniform, which looked more Special Forces than cop. He gave her a tight smile, not the usual wide grin, as he presented her with the covered dish, “Beef stroganoff, and please don’t say again it’s not necessary. It’s always a pleasure.”
Belle thanked him and took the dish. “I owe you and your wonderful wife a week’s worth of amazing dinners.” When he only frowned as if preoccupied with something else, she asked, “Sergio, what is it?”
“An incident in the peacock field. Just happened. I’m on my way there now.”
“What happened?” Her heart pounded in alarm.
“So far, what’s coming in over the radio is that there’s a bear or a large mountain lion that’s gotten over the eastern wall somehow by Wychblack Forest. There are some peafowls slaughtered out there on the field.”
“Oh my goodness!”
“So the word’s going out tonight to all Elmridge residents to stay indoors until the animal’s caught or we give the all-clear. So, please, do not step outside the house tonight.”
“Of course.”
After he left, she retreated to the couch again in a daze. Sergio’s dish sat untouched on the side table.
Could things get any weirder in Elmridge?
It wasn’t until a Friends marathon began running from its very first episode that she started paying attention to the TV. Soon enough, a God-sent distraction of bellyfuls of laughter and rooting for Ross made her forget her worries.
It was just after midnight, Belle had just finished wiping away tears of laughter when Joey was fired for over-acting his role as Al Pacino’s butt double, when she heard a laugh. It was a high, unnatural laugh, and it very clearly came from somewhere off in the formal dining room.
She turned her head to look, but the room was steeped in shadows from her view in the living room. She stared towards the area, waiting.
Cold sweat dotted her skin. The adrenaline coursing through her body pounded loudly in her ears. She held completely still. Only the laugh track of the TV show could be heard.
“Eddie?” she called out timidly. Maybe he’d taken his stalker-level up a notch. If that was true, she was going to zap him until his Teflon skin finally cracked.
But still. She hoped it was him, and not some unknown intruder. Or a ghost.
“Not Eddie,” came a hoarse whisper. The shadow of a thin man stepped into the light from the dining room.
Belle screeched as she flew off the couch. She raced to her bedroom, her blanket fluttering like a cape behind her. She slammed the door shut, locked it, and dove for her phone. With trembling hands, she dialed the only person who she knew could help her.
After one ring, he answered.
“Eddie!” she whisper-shouted.
“Siren? I’m on my way, luv. Stay on the phone.” He was in British-mode. She heard what sounded like feet pounding heavily and quickly against the ground. And the rush of wind. “Talk to me.”
“It’s a sh-shadow man. In my dining room.” She shivered again and anxiously watched her bedroom door. “It laughed.”
“Cheeky bugger,” he muttered. “They’re called Shadow Spawn.”
“Shadow-what?!”
“I’m at your front door.”
Whoa, that was inhumanly fast.
“I-I’m too scared to leave my room,” she admitted, embarrassed.
“No worries, luv. Open your window then. I’ll let myself up.”
She threw her window open and stepped back, wrapping the blanket tightly around her shoulders as the biting cold whooshed in. Eddie’s form soon crawled in through the window.
“Why are you dressed like that?” she asked, eyes wide, assessing him from head to toe as he closed the window and faced her. He had on black boots and gloves, black camouflage tactical pants and jacket, a black beanie, and his face was covered in black camouflage paint. The only bright color were his eyes, a fierce gold that pinned her where she stood.
The intensity of his focus on her shattered all thought as she simply waited for his next move. But the seconds ticked by, and he continued to hold her in his predatory gaze. The room suddenly felt like it was too small for them. With a tremor in her voice, she asked, “Eddie? Why are you just standing there?”
Slowly, he lifted his hand toward her and opened his palm, as if asking for something.
The rosary. He needed it back.
She slipped the beaded necklace off and approached him slowly, feeling like she was under a lion’s feral stare set to pounce on a hair-trigger. Her eyes never leaving his, she dropped the rosary into his waiting palm.
As his fingers closed over it, the light in his eyes dulled, and the tension in the room retreated as well.
Slipping the rosary over his head, he answered her first question as if they were having a lunchroom conversation and he hadn’t just been staring at her like she was dinner. “I’m assuming you heard about the wild animal on the loose?” She nodded. “I was doing some tracking in that peacock field before the police showed up. I thought it was a bear at first because the prints were so large, but it has the fifth digit of a wolf, so it must be an abnormally giant wolf. I tracked it into Wychblack Forest. I have to go back there and finish tracking it when I’m done here.” He pulled off his beanie and gloves and started unzipping his jacket. “May I?”
“Be my guest.”
He continued talking, without the accent now, something about finding other small animals’ mutilated carcasses, more pawprints, and not finding the wolf, and then warning some campers he’d run into in the mountains beyond the wall.
She heard but didn’t really listen. Not when the jacket slid off revealing a tight black tank that did nothing to disguise the cuts and swells of his muscles. His very manly presence in her room felt forbidden, and her whole body flushed under the weight of that sensation.
He draped the clothing over her desk chair, which creaked under its new load, and looked around her room.
“You look like Rambo,” she said. But hotter, waaay hotter.
He laughed. “I bet he smelled better than me, though.” He plucked the front of his shirt for emphasis. “I hope you will forgive my...presentation tonight.”
What an old, proper thing to say, she thought, pleased. And he did smell. But his scent held an inexplicable attraction for her and seemed amplified now with his sweat. She inhaled deeply.
He smells mouthwatering.
“Mouthwatering?”
Her eyes snapped open. Curse her fanciful brain and unfiltered mouth. He was staring at her, his eyes glowing, and his mouth slightly agape, as if he couldn’t quite believe what she’d said.
There was no recovering from that, so she reached for a distraction. “W-Why are you not hunting in your Jäger form?”
But he was not going to be deterred. He approached her slowly, his eyes never leaving hers, the temperature rising substantially in the room. He reached out and touched the blanket she still had tightly wrapped around herself. “What are you wearing, siren? I hope it’s more than just those ridiculous socks, or the most dangerous creature in this house is going to be you.”
He was so close. She had to tilt her head back now to look at him. Without thinking, she reached out and touched the black paint on his face. A silly idea came to her, and she went with it. Her index finger traced a happy face on his cheek. She smiled up mischievously at him when she finished.
His heated gaze had softened into amusement. “Did you just draw on my face?”
“What are you going to do about it?” she challenged playfully.
He stared at her, all sorts of ideas running through his mind that tilted one side of his smile all the way up. Then with one finger, he rubbed some paint off one of his cheeks and dragged the smudge down her nose.
“Fair enough,” she said, her smile matching his now. “Why did you say I’d be the most dangerous creature in the house?”
A slight blush colored his cheeks at whatever he was thinking. He exhaled and took a long step back. His voice was deeper when he spoke again, “Because when I go Jäger, he’ll come for you, not the Shadow Spawn.”
“And do what to me?”
“Break my prophecy.”
A beat passed as a rush of warmth swept through her. She turned away and sat on the bed. “You never answered my question. Why didn’t you hunt the wolf in Jäger form?”
“Jäger is only for supernatural hunts. If I’m hunting an animal in the wild at night, then...” He gestured to his outfit to finish the statement for him.
A thump was heard outside the bedroom.
Belle squeaked as Eddie’s head swiveled in the direction of the noise.
“And now it’s a cocky bugger.” He turned to Belle. “Stay here.” She nodded vigorously. He let himself out of the room, locking the door before closing it behind him.
She stood stock still. Listening.
After a good ten minutes that felt like an hour of imagining all sorts of silent Jäger-Shadow battles—because there was no sound out there—she heard a soft knock on her door. “It’s me.”
She rushed him in. “Did you get it?”
He walked past her and sank into the desk chair, worried. “No.” She waited for him to explain. “It hid. And there are two of them.”
A pause as she tapped her chin. “I think I can convince Ernesto it’s time to move out of this house.”
“I can tell how long the Shadow Spawn have been lurking by how deeply they can hide from me.” He rubbed his jaw, thinking. “These two have been here for over a month. I can still sense them, but I can’t fish them out.”
“Definitely moving out.”
“We’ll have to trick them to draw them out.”
“We?”
“Yes, we.” He rose from the chair and approached her. “I’m going to need your help on this one, siren.”
“Really?” She definitely hadn’t expected that. “Why?”
“It only took me a minute to assess the situation outside.”
She frowned. “So then what took the other nine minutes?”
“I-I couldn’t get rid of my Jäger form. I stood outside your door, and...it wouldn’t go away when it should’ve.”
“Why not?” she asked softly, but she suspected she already knew why.
“It wants you, siren. Remember, inhibitions are almost non-existent with the Jäger.”
“Would it hurt me?”
“No,” he said quickly, assuring her. He huffed out a breath before speaking again. “But it’ll hurt me.”
“Because of your prophecy?”
He nodded, his eyes trained on her face.
“Would that be so bad?” she asked in a small voice.
He caught the confession behind that question. Her face warmed as she realized she’d just admitted she wanted him to kiss her. His eyes became hooded as he slowly closed the distance between them. Swallowing visibly, he raised a hand toward her lips, and with two fingers, traced the contour of her mouth. When her lips parted on their own, he pressed against them, and she planted a soft kiss on his fingers.
He sucked in a breath and stepped away, facing the window. With the ragged rise and fall of his shoulders, he looked as if he was struggling to control his breathing.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
After a minute, he seemed steadier. “Don’t be, siren. You’ve done nothing wrong.” He turned to her again, his eyes still glowing like two suns. “I just hope you can understand. If my prophecy is my own, and it’s not switched with your uncle’s, I don’t want to fade away. My instinct tells me I have an important part to play in Dommedag and a lot of lives will depend on me. So I can’t allow my prophecy to come true until Dommedag passes.”
She nodded. A heavy, sad weight settled in her chest, mixed with an ounce of pride at her noble friend’s self-sacrificing nature. Did she really consider Eddie an actual friend now?
“Now, back to the most pressing concern: I’d like to avoid using the Jäger tonight.”
“But then, how will you—”
“I have a theory that I’d like to test. I think because your dream-seeing ability is a type of telepathy, you’re able to see into my mind sometimes, which leaves you open to me being able to draw on your electrical powers.”
“And this helps us with the Shadow Spawn, how?”
“I’m going to use you to zap them.”
She was quiet for a moment. “So, I’ll be like a supernatural weapon in your hands.”
“It sounds bad when you put it that way, but yes.”
“You think my electrical power can take them out?”
“It’s worth a shot.”
“And if this works, then I can actually be, like, a Shadow Spawn hunter?”
He nodded as if considering that for the first time. “Yes, you could. I’ll even train you, if you like.”
Something sparked to life inside her. “Then, let’s go zap those suckers!” She threw her blanket on the bed and propped her hands on her hips, Super Girl style.
His eyebrows flew up. “Hold on, siren,” he said with a wide grin. “Before you get all gung-ho—and I like this, by the way—I said it was just a theory that I wanted to test. I’m hoping it works. If it doesn’t, and I have to go Jäger again, you lock yourself in your room until I give you the all-clear.”
Right. Because the Jäger might try to kiss her senseless.
She liked this Jäger.
He focused on her shirt and smiled. “You wore the shirt.” And then his smile faded, and his eyes widened as he noticed something else. He dragged a hand down his face as he turned away and groaned, “You’re killing me, siren. At least, put on a brassiere, please.”
She hid a laugh behind her hand.
He cocked his head. “And what is so funny?”
“You said brassiere.”
He rolled his eyes. “Very mature.”
She brushed past him as she headed for her walk-in closet. “Well, my apologies if I’m not as mature as you,” and just before she shut the door, she stuck her head out and added, “old man.”
She heard him mutter, “Lord, help me.”
He washed the black paint off his face in her bathroom, and when they finally stepped out of the bedroom into the hall, she found herself pressing close to his side.
They moved into the living room. “They’re hidden right now.” He pointed toward the TV, the Friends marathon still running. “Is this what you were doing when you heard the laugh?”
“Yes. What exactly is a Shadow Spawn, and how did they get in here?” Answers. She needed answers.
He prompted for her to sit on the couch, while he moved to a spot by the door that led to the ground floor. He looked down at the spot, as if deep in thought.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
