Midnight Hunter (The Execution Underground Book 3)

by Kait Ballenger

  She nodded. The fact that Shane had turned out so amazingly well in spite of all that hardship spoke volumes about his character. A professor with multiple PhDs, a hunter for a top-secret clandestine organization who fought to protect humanity and a caring person to boot. Any parent would be lucky to have a son like him.

  “Well, regardless of your parents, I know your grandmother is tremendously proud of you, despite her illness.” The bang of a pot from the kitchen signaled that the grandmother in question was still fiddling around in the cabinets.

  Shane smiled, but the sadness in his eyes was palpable. “My grandmother was a lifesaver. Once she realized how bad the situation with my mom had gotten, she convinced my grandfather to send me money when I was a kid so I would have food. Because of them, I never had to work and could just focus on my studies. My mom was too stoned to realize how food was ending up in the house or how we were being supported. My grandparents tried to convince me to come live with them plenty of times, but like I said, I didn’t want to leave my mother.”

  She understood that; she really did. Despite everything her parents had said and done to her, even all these years later, in some ways she remained loyal to them, like her father’s pendant she still wore around her neck, even though he’d disowned her. “I understand that loyalty to your mother in spite of her addiction.”

  At first Shane didn’t respond. Several moments later, he chuckled. “This certainly has been a confessional sort of night, hasn’t it?”

  “No kidding.” Hell, she’d spewed her story harder and faster than a drunk full of cheap tequila at 4:00 a.m., which, come to think of it, was pretty much a regular occurrence at the bar. Gross.

  “Can I ask something else?” Shane glanced down at her tentatively, as if he were uncertain he wanted to proceed. She’d already spilled a huge chunk of her story tonight. What was one more bit?

  She nodded. “Sure.”

  Shane chewed on his lower lip for a moment, until he finally asked, “Can you tell me about when you were detained with the Execution Underground?”

  Vera’s blood ran cold.

  * * *

  THE LOOK IN Vera’s eyes when Shane asked about her time with the Execution Underground was one of abject horror. She stared up into his face, eyes wide and mouth pinched together so tight he was certain she could use it as a Christmas nutcracker. And even though nutcrackers and any part of the male anatomy should never, ever be considered together in the same sentence, the raging hard-on he sported courtesy of the feel of her body curled against his side was somehow enough to turn that association into something vaguely sexy. He’d never been one for anything kinky, but with her pressed against him like that, pretty much anything sounded good. Because he was ready with a capital R in a way he’d never been before.

  He tried to force himself to focus on the fact that, clearly, whatever had happened between her and the Execution Underground terrified her, and the last thing he should be feeling was sexual arousal. The memory of what she’d gone through sent a shiver running through her body. Somehow he managed to ignore that fact and focused instead on the feel of her ample breasts pressed against the side of his arm. Sweet Jesus.

  He wasn’t right in the head. She was his student, and she shouldn’t be pressed against him. And he certainly shouldn’t be thinking about her like this. But the sadness in her eyes when she’d begun to cry had been enough to nearly kill him, and he knew if he spent a second longer watching her tears without comforting her, he would hate himself for eternity.

  He stumbled over his own words. “I-I’m sorry I asked. I was just curious, but if you don’t want to...”

  She shook her head. “Don’t be sorry. It’s okay. That was just a really dark time in my life, and I don’t know if I’m ready to share all of it yet.”

  He opened his mouth to say he understood, but her next words silenced him.

  “I was only eighteen when they picked me up for black magic.”

  “Jesus,” he swore. “Regardless of eighteen being considered a legal adult, I’d never haul someone in at that age for black magic unless they were hurting others. You needed someone to help you, not punish you.”

  She buried her face farther into his shoulder. “I wish the hunter who locked me up had felt the same way.”

  The nuzzling movement of her snuggling into him sent a shiver all the way down his spine and straight to his cock. Man, he wanted her something fierce. He tried to recognize the feeling for the craziness that it was, let it go and move forward. It didn’t seem to be working.

  “I was taken away from my home, from my job. Not that I had the greatest of either of those things at the time, but it was still something, you know?”

  He understood that completely. As tough as things had been when he was living with his mother, it had still hurt to leave that life behind, and that had been his choice. Imagining the nearly unbearable pain of being dragged away, suddenly and against his will, seemed impossible.

  “The detention center they threw me in was awful. It was like jail, not rehab at all, which was what I needed and what they claimed it was.”

  He was almost afraid to ask how long her sentence had been. The thought of her being locked up nearly all day long in one of those cells at headquarters made his stomach clench. He’d seen the detention center before and it was far from the most humane conditions. Still, he asked, “How long was your sentence?”

  “Sixteen months, ten days, eight hours and twelve minutes.”

  “Jesus,” he swore again. Talk about an exact calculation... Knowing she’d been counting her time practically to the second made it even worse. Instinctively, he pulled her the slightest bit closer. The softness of her breasts pressed harder against his side, and immediately he regretted it.

  “Yeah, I spent nearly a year and a half of my life in that godforsaken hellhole. All I could think about while I was there was getting out, but then, once I was out, piecing my life back together was in some ways the worst part. I came here to Rochester because my uncle was here. Since my parents had disowned me, there wasn’t really anywhere else I could go. I needed a place where I could get on my feet. My uncle, sleazebag that he is, only agreed to do that if I worked at the club. That’s how I ended up there. It was only last year that I decided I’d finally go back to school.”

  “Where were you living before?”

  “The suburbs of Detroit. They took me to the detention center in DC, though. Kellan wasn’t the hunter who dragged me in, but it was his name and signature all over the paperwork. Detroit was and still is my home. It’s where I grew up.”

  That didn’t surprise him. True, she was gorgeous in a natural way models only dreamed of being, but there was a toughness beneath her features that could only come from growing up somewhere far from apple-pie small-town America. Detroit, with its rusting assembly lines and blocks of abandoned buildings, fit that bill. He read what she’d been through in the lines of her face and the world-weary sharpness of her gaze.

  “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

  Vera shrugged. “It was my own fault. I was young and stupid and got involved with the wrong crowd. Then I was dumb enough to get caught. The whole ordeal was no one’s fault but my own, and I know that, but that didn’t make my time in the detention center any easier.”

  “We all make mistakes,” Shane said.

  She sighed. “Yeah, but mine are pretty plentiful. I got thrown in prison for the stupidest thing, too. It wasn’t long after my parents had kicked me out, and I was basically living on the streets until I found the group I was hanging out with when I got nabbed. We all lived in this big house in a ghetto section of a suburb, Taylor. Everybody called the part of Taylor we lived in Sin City, and the nickname says it all. We were all flat broke, so we took to burglary via black magic to support ourselves. I got busted when we were robbing a pl
ace called Gibraltar Trade Center, which was basically like an indoor flea market. You know what I stole? Food.” She glanced up at him then. “I told you, my mistakes were plentiful.”

  She began to look away, but he placed his hand on her cheek, cradling her chin in his palm. They locked eyes. Tiny flecks of gold interrupted the vibrant emerald green of her irises like small starbursts, beautiful enough to make his breath catch in his throat.

  “When I look at you, I don’t see all your mistakes. I see all your triumphs. I see the woman who, despite a rough start in life, has made it on her own, a woman who recognizes her mistakes and wants to get better, someone who chose to go back to school, despite how hard it is, because she wanted to improve herself, someone who is both resilient and strong. I don’t see your mistakes when I look at you, so be kind to yourself. When you look in the mirror, look for your triumphs, too. My biggest wish for you is that you could see yourself the way other people do, the way I do.”

  Vera’s eyes glistened with tears, which quickly began to fall.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to...”

  She cut him off by placing a single finger over his lips. “No,” she said, “don’t be sorry. I’m not crying because you offended me. I’m crying because no one has ever shown me that much kindness before.” She wrapped her arms around him then and snuggled her head into the crook of his neck.

  He knew they shouldn’t remain tangled in each other’s arms like this. He knew it was inappropriate, but somehow as he cradled her against him, he couldn’t find it in his heart to care.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ASH DEVEREAUX WAITED for the proverbial other shoe to drop as he kicked the graveyard dirt with his snakeskin boot. It wasn’t the waiting that bothered him. Au contraire, he had all the time in the world. What really grated his nerves like cheese was the feeling of anticipation balling deep in his gut.

  “You’d think you’d be right at home in graveyards by now,” Trent said. His fellow hunter and closest friend was sitting on the ground several feet away, staring at the graves before them. “I mean, you spend enough time here, don’t you think?”

  “It’s not the atmosphere makin’ me antsy, it’s the damn anticipation. We know one of those eight sons of bitches is gonna rise out of their grave, but where and when is a different story.”

  Trent leaned back, using his arms to support the weight of his upper body. “Cool your jets, man. May not even be us tonight. Could be Jace and David, or Damon and Mr. Highlander Romance Cover in his lady-killer kilt.”

  Ash laughed. Highlander romances? That was a thing? Well, slap him silly and call him Sally. A man learned something new every day. Needless to say, they’d all been a little surprised when the visiting hunter had shown up in a kilt. Ah, well. Ash had his Bowie shirts and snakeskin boots. The Scotsman had his kilt. To each his own.

  “Knowin’ the luck between the two of us, I’m placin’ my bets on us.” Ash kicked his other boot through the dirt. “Anyway, one of ’em’ll rise eventually, whether it’s us or them.” Still didn’t mean he had to enjoy the wait.

  As if on cue, the bushes at the edge of the cemetery rustled in warning. Ash took up a defensive stance. Slowly, he walked toward the noise, prepared for the zombie to emerge. Trent jumped to his feet, hand on his weapon. A moment later, a small opossum hobbled forth from the bushes. It looked up at Ash with wide eyes and froze.

  “Go on, you vermin. Git.” Ash shooed the animal away. He watched as the now-terrified creature scampered off into the bushes. “Damn piece of road meat.”

  “Uh, Ash,” Trent said from behind him.

  Ash turned around, only to find the grave beneath Trent’s feet heaving up and down like a breathing chest, as if it had suddenly come to life. And, well...maybe in some way it had. He didn’t need to tell Trent to step back, because his friend was already carefully backing away. When the corpse emerged, they would both need to be as quiet and unassuming as their surroundings, because at the moment their goal was simply to follow the thing until the right time came to execute it.

  Like something straight out of a B-grade horror film, a single arm shot up from the dirt, reaching and grabbing as it clawed its way forth from its earthen prison. Ash and Trent watched the monster struggle in silence for at least ten minutes, occasionally exchanging glances. Finally, after all the writhing, the zombie emerged. It stumbled out of its grave covered in dirt and gave an annoyed-sounding groan.

  Ash shook his head. Why the hell were so many people scared of a zombie apocalypse when the things came out of their graves at the speed of a snail? If he had a mind to, he could’ve killed the thing before it even fully rose, but that wasn’t what he was there for, unfortunately.

  Continuing at the same incredibly slow speed, the zombie hobbled through the graveyard toward the exit. This particular zombie—one Howard Sternman by name—appeared to have eaten one too many Twinkies in its lifetime. The incredibly large man moved with all the grace of a three-legged ass. As he and Trent had agreed, he pulled out his phone and silently texted Lucky us. Howard Sternman’s awake to his fellow hunters. Not that he felt lucky being stuck with zombie babysitting duty, but he wanted to help Doc Grey find the necromancer responsible for all this, so he would do his job and keep the bitching to a minimum.

  As Howard descended the three stone steps at the exit—Ash was surprised there wasn’t a loud thud with each step, considering the man was literally all dead weight—the hunters followed at a comfortable distance. After about twenty minutes of silently following the slow-moving corpse toward downtown, Ash cast a glance toward Trent. If the look on his friend’s face was any indication, they were both already bored out of their ever-lovin’ minds. Why couldn’t the task be kill the zombie or fight the zombie? Did it really have to be follow and babysit the zombie? And kill the monster only when things started to get interesting?

  “This is boring, and I need to take a leak. Can’t we just kill this thing already?” Trent whispered.

  Ash let out a sigh. This was going to be a long night.

  * * *

  WATCHING DR. SHANE GREY research was what Vera imagined it would have been like to watch Michelangelo paint. The intensity of his focus was evident in the concentrated way he furrowed his brow, how his gaze never faltered from his work and how an overwhelming passion for the subject matter radiated from him. His glasses slid down the bridge of his nose, and she watched him use a single finger to nudge them back into place. Hot damn, he was perfection. She had thought he was gorgeous before, but that was nothing compared to what she now knew lay underneath his button-down shirts and slacks, not to mention the kindness in his heart. That little towel-only show, along with his kind words, had done unimaginable things to her libido. Handsome didn’t even begin to cover what she thought of him now.

  On top of all that, he was also brave, intelligent, quick-witted, funny and boy, oh, boy, was it hot in here or what? She waved a hand at her face to cool herself off, just as he finally glanced up.

  “Having trouble with the material?” he asked.

  For a moment she allowed herself to imagine that the material he was talking about wasn’t her homework but instead the hem of her blouse as she stripped it over her head before he did awful, dirty things to her. Whoa, Nelly...was she turning into just another one of his student groupies? It had killed her when, after a solid hour in his arms, he had finally broken their contact, saying he needed to get back to work on the case. The absence of his warm body against hers had been like cruel and unusual punishment as they waited for any news from his fellow hunters.

  She tried not to stutter as she answered his question. With his gaze on her like that, and the way his spine arched as he leaned over the small coffee table in front of him, it was enough to make any grown woman drool. That paired with the strand of long hair that had escaped from his ponytail and fallen into his face... The heat betwee
n her legs pooled faster than she cared to admit.

  “Uh, just trouble concentrating, that’s all.”

  “When I have trouble concentrating I find it helpful to take a break for a while. Often, the time away from the material helps give me a fresh perspective.” The way he imparted that particular sage advice was so teacherly it made her feel like a naughty schoolgirl. She had to stop herself from laughing. At the moment she was a bit of a naughty schoolgirl, wasn’t she?

  “You don’t seem to have an issue with concentration. You seem so focused.”

  He shrugged. “You’d be surprised. I actually have trouble focusing sometimes, especially when...” His voice trailed off, and his eyes widened as if he’d already said too much.

  “When what?” she probed. He shook his head, but she wasn’t going for it. “When what? What were you going to say?” she insisted.

  He ran a hand over his ponytail, brushing the stray hair back from his face. “I... I have trouble concentrating sometimes when you’re around.”

  “Me?” He couldn’t be serious. Staring at him in wide-eyed amazement, she wasn’t sure what to say. Hell, she wasn’t even sure if that was supposed to be a compliment or an insult. In the end she did what any woman in her position would to do and blabbered like an idiot. “I’m sorry if I was distracting you. I didn’t mean to...”

  “No,” he said, cutting her off. “It’s not anything you do. It’s just...hard to think straight when you’re around, because I find you...intriguing.”