Stalker (The Hunt Book 3)

by Liz Meldon

By telling her that the one man she had been thinking about her entire life, the man she had been searching for, wanted her dead. How did one even approach that conversation?

  “Well, do you think anyone else in Diriel’s inner circle will know the angel by name?”

  “Unlikely. He’ll play that close to the chest.” Severus pinched the bridge of his nose, knowing what he needed to do next—and loathing the very idea of it. “I’ll need to retrieve Diriel. I’ll need to…”

  Go straight to Hell.

  Severus closed his eyes and let his head thump back against the wall. Fuck.

  Chapter Two

  “This is messed up, Moira.”

  Moira studied the swirling patterns on the ceiling, eyes heavy from two hours of tears. When she felt Ella huff beside her, she reached back to pat at her arm. “I know.”

  “No. No. Really.” Her best friend kicked at the side of the couch, both of them lying with their legs dangling over the armrests, heads side by side in the middle.

  She hadn’t been on her back all that much these days, always thinking about the new feathered limbs on her shoulder blades. Even if she couldn’t feel her wings yet, knowing they were there, inside of her, growing, had left a psychological mark. She imagined them digging into her bones, stabbing her—imagined being the key word, as her wings had done neither. Sometimes, if she was in a good mood, a part of her just didn’t want to crush them. Neither extreme seemed plausible, and she could fully acknowledge that it was pretty much all in her head at this point.

  Ella huffed beside her again, her breath whiskey-fresh. “It’s fucked. Up. Fucked. Lemme see the picture again—”

  “No, no more picture time for you,” Moira said, trying not to grin as Ella’s grabby hands reached for it.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re too drunk.” Moira slipped the polaroid of her in Diriel’s torture chamber under the couch, hearing it whisper across the dark hardwood until it tapped against the wall. The rest of Severus’s fourth floor was quiet, but it hadn’t been. Not since Ella showed up nearly three hours earlier, suspicious and skeptical—and rightfully so. Moira’d had no clue if her best friend would even respond to her text, let alone agree to meet her. Something in her gut had told her that their friendship, their lifelong sisterhood, would be able to withstand all the purposeful distance Moira had put between them lately, but she wouldn’t have blamed Ella for turning her down.

  They had never been the kind of friends who kept secrets—and three weeks after being tortured by a psychopath, Moira was finally ready to share all of hers. In order to continue healing from everything, she needed Ella’s support. She needed her best friend’s advice, and her occasionally blunt, sometimes harsh perspective.

  After all, she only had Alaric and Severus for company these days. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate what they had done to help her heal and keep her safe, all the while tracking down Diriel to whatever hole in Farrow’s Hollow he had burrowed into. It was just—Severus was coddling her. She couldn’t blame him for that either; her ordeal had been traumatic. She’d had weeks of nightmares after she ran out of Cordelia’s sleeping draught. Moira knew she had been quiet, reserved, but she had needed the downtime to rebuild. No matter how angry she felt, how determined she was to fight back, a hot shower and a good night’s sleep after the rescue just hadn’t cut it.

  She still wasn’t fully healed. Physically, sure. Mentally? Emotionally? She was working on it, and for now, she was ready to finally bring Ella into the fold, trusting that Alaric and Severus would keep her best friend just as safe as they had been keeping her.

  “’M not drunk,” Ella argued, hands still reaching back for the photo. Moira giggled when they groped at her boobs, then slapped them away.

  “Drunk and grabby.”

  “I’m not…” Ella inhaled deeply, calming herself, hands back on her own chest—cupping the girls. “I am not…drunk.”

  Actually, she was classic drunk Ella. Fast-talking. Handsy. Stubborn. And Moira loved every second of it, though she could now admit that polishing off a bottle of Alaric’s bourbon together, straight, wasn’t the best idea she’d ever had. Living with an incubus and a fellow hybrid had made her forget about strictly human tolerance. Moira had finally found her new personal limit: a bottle and a half of whiskey, two bottles if she mixed it with something.

  Not that she had been drowning her feelings in alcohol, but three weeks in one building, aside from the daily sunrise trips she and Severus took together, meant she was always looking for something new to distract herself with. Drinking with Alaric, a downright lightweight by comparison, had just been one of those distractions. Severus usually joined in if he was home, but she’d yet to see him reach his limit.

  “Honey, you are drunk as a skunk, and it isn’t even three o’clock in the afternoon yet,” Moira insisted, “but I love your drunk little face.”

  Ella turned toward her, then pressed a hard, sloppy kiss to her cheek, hands trapping her in it. She closed her eyes and smiled; Ella didn’t need to hold her there—Moira wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

  And from the very emotional talk the pair had had over the last several hours, Ella wasn’t going anywhere either. Her best friend had been devastated to learn what had happened to Moira: changing into a hybrid creature; realizing her dad had probably known about her for her entire life, but had refused to reach out; and when he did, it was to hire a demon hit man to torture and kill her. Many, many, many tears had been shed during the conversation—hence the bourbon. Ella had needed it to deal with the subject matter, and Moira didn’t want her drinking alone.

  “So, what are we gonna do now?” Ella asked when she finally stopped smothering her. Moira shrugged, hands threaded together on her stomach.

  “Well, we have to find Diriel,” she said, knowing that was Severus’s sole focus these days. “Severus says that I won’t be safe until he’s dead, so we have to find him, and I want to know—”

  “Who Dad is,” Ella finished for her. She shuffled about beside her, the couch a tight fit for both of them. A quick glance told Moira that Ella was on her back again, tracing shapes across the ceiling—another classic drunk Ella move. “I get it. You wanna know the bastard’s name. Let’s get ’im.”

  “Now, remember, Severus and Alaric don’t know that Diriel was acting under his orders.” Moira hadn’t found the right time to share that horrific tidbit; she feared that if she did, Severus would back out of this completely. He had been so against tangling with angels before, and if he knew Moira was on an angel’s hit list, he might wash his hands clean of her completely.

  And the thought of him leaving was unbearable. Surviving all this wouldn’t have been possible without his support, and to lose him now—it would break her heart, honestly.

  “Right, right, right,” Ella muttered, waving her off. “Lips zipped, sister. What are you gonna do when you find this Diriel guy to make him tell you? Pull off his fingernails or something?”

  Moira’s jaw clenched, her teasing lightheartedness gone. She’d thought about it a lot—what she would do to Diriel if Severus finally caught him. Still no closer to making her angelic hand-lights work, she was currently at a loss about what she could do that would even hurt him.

  And the no-go on the angel light progress wasn’t for lack of trying. Moira was alone a good six to nine hours a day in this huge invisible house; there was only so much TV-watching, food-prepping, bookshelf-reorganizing, and dust-bunny-wrangling that she could do without going stir-crazy. She had tried to get her light going. She stood in front of the bathroom mirror daily for at least two hours, alone, staring at herself, searching for the key to unleashing the power within.

  So far, she had only succeeded in giving herself stress headaches from the exertion, and somehow managed to make her nose bleed twice. She had tried tapping into her anger, her fury, her hurt and her sorrow. She had tried pleading with herself. She had tried imagining Diriel’s smug face and all the things
she wanted to do to it. She had even tried praying—nada.

  So, what she could do to the demon when Severus finally caught him was still a short, mildly useless list.

  Alaric had a pretty nice firearms collection in his closet though—she could always just shoot him. Repeatedly. Still, searing him to a crisp with her angel light was still the goal.

  “Or something, I guess,” she muttered, unsure if Ella heard her. In fact, she hadn’t shared her struggles with conquering and commanding her new abilities yet; but just as she drew a soft breath, ready to spill, Moira heard the front door open and close, followed by the familiar dulcet tones of her roommates.

  She sat up quickly and grabbed her phone off the coffee table. They usually weren’t home from a day of demon torturing until six—this was way too early.

  “Moira?” The couch leather creaked as Ella struggled to get upright. “You okay?”

  “Uh… Sure.” She helped Ella up, arranging her legs neatly in front of her, then went to fix her hair. “So, the guys are home earlier than I thought they’d be.”

  “Oh. The demons?”

  “Well, Alaric’s a hybrid like me,” Moira said distractedly, attempting to redo the intricate work Ella had put into her hair earlier in the day. She had wrangled her mass of toffee-coloured curls into two fat buns on the back of her head. However, she’d been fiddling with her hair the whole time she and Moira talked, and since she’d lain down, plastered, it was all a giant mess. Moira pursed her lips, trying and only marginally succeeding in getting the giant balls back where they belonged. “Okay. Pretend you’re more sober than you are.”

  “Got it.” Ella rolled her shoulders, and Moira pulled her friend’s mustard-yellow crop top down after realizing it had hitched up on her bra. Trying to be helpful, Ella tugged at her shredded short shorts, as if to cover more of her thighs. It did nothing, but Moira appreciated the effort.

  At the sound of footsteps tromping up the first staircase, Ella cleared her throat and looked Moira dead in the eye. “Sober. Totally sober. Not made of blood and bourbon. Just blood.”

  Moira snorted. “We’re fucked.”

  She glanced back to the stairs as she heard Alaric and Severus’s hushed conversation carrying upward, moving from the second level to the third.

  “Okay,” Moira muttered, snapping in front of Ella’s face to get her to focus. “Be nice to Severus, too. I know he was a dick when he came to pick up my things, but he’s been kind of incredible since all this started. So. Just…try to be—”

  Ella waved her hand away, blinking hard and shuffling to the edge of the couch. “I got it, I got it. But I’m not keeping my mouth shut if he starts with me.”

  “Fair enough.”

  To Ella’s credit, she looked more sober by the time Severus’s head appeared through the metal bars of the nearby railing. However, as soon as the pair arrived on the floor, stopping dead in their tracks at the sight of her, Ella let out a less than sober, “God damn, Alaric is fiiiiiiine.”

  The hybrid’s eyes widened from where he stood slightly behind Severus—whose expression wavered between shock and disbelief.

  Well, at least he wasn’t pissed—

  “What the fuck is this?” he seethed, stalking across the room and pointing a noticeably rigid finger at Ella. Clearing her throat, Moira held up her hands and stood, hoping that if she stayed calm, he’d follow suit.

  “Alaric, Severus, this is Ella—”

  “And I’m Ella,” her best friend announced in her I’m-totally-sober-officer-I-swear voice, a voice that was never believable. She then shot to her feet, stumbling into Moira in the process. “Best friend and human.”

  Severus stared at her for a long moment, lips in a thin line and nostrils flared, then tore his charcoal-black gaze away and pinned it squarely on Moira instead. “Is she drunk?”

  Well. No sense in trying to hide it. Moira glanced at her best friend, lips pursed, and then nodded. “Uh, yeah. Little bit.”

  “You make an excellent bourbon, sir,” Ella said just a little too loudly, addressing Alaric with a sumptuous smile. “Top-notch excellent.”

  “Oh my god. Okay.” Resisting the urge to slap a hand to her forehead, Moira quickly got Ella settled back on the couch.

  “How’m I doing?”

  “Really good, totally natural,” Moira whispered back, quieter than Ella’s attempt had been. “Nobody knows you’re blitzed.”

  Ella winked—one eye, then the other. “Told you I got this.”

  “Fuck me,” Severus growled, his tone sharpening. “Moira, are you serious with this?”

  “Okay, so, Alaric,” Moira said, ignoring the incubus completely as she skirted around the coffee table, “can you grab Ella a glass of water? We polished off a bottle of bourbon—”

  “For fuck’s sake—”

  “Because she needed some help processing all the things that I’ve been through over the last two months,” she finished with a pointed look at Severus.

  Alaric cleared his throat, fidgeting with his phone. “Was it my top-shelf stuff?”

  “No, just one of the sample bottles.”

  “Oh, that’s fine. No problem—”

  “Don’t let her off this easily—”

  “And you and I,” Moira grabbed Severus’s arm and dragged him toward his bedroom, “can talk about this in private.”

  He resisted at first, dragging his feet like a child as Moira stomped across the room, but eventually he released a prickly exhale and picked up the pace.

  “Moira?”

  “I’ll be right back, honey,” she called, smiling at Ella as she shoved a grumbling Severus into his bedroom. “Alaric is going to bring you some water, and then you two can get to know each other better.”

  Ella hummed in approval, flopping back and stretching her arms out along the couch. “Sounds like a plan.”

  Alaric shot Moira a helpless look before hurrying down the stairwell, and she made a note to apologize to him later. Ella was harmless, but she was a handsy drunk. Pressing her palm to her forehead, Moira motioned to her best friend that she would just be a second, her smile somewhat strained, and then slipped inside Severus’s bedroom.

  The incubus slammed the door shut before she’d taken more than three steps in. Moira jumped at the crash, whipping around to find him about a foot away, towering over her and glaring.

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Severus—”

  “Do you have any idea the danger you’ve—”

  “It’s done,” she snapped, trying to keep her voice low—all the while knowing she and Severus were probably the last things on Ella’s mind now that she had Alaric to keep her company. So, she squared her shoulders, not backing down, and crossed her arms over her chest. “I told her everything, just like we agreed I would at some point. I brought her over to the house, just like we agreed, and I shared it all, so there’s no point in telling me off, because it happened.”

  His eyes flickered to all black. “Moira—”

  “So, unless you plan on having Cordelia, I don’t know, wipe her memory or something…” Moira pressed her lips together, forehead crinkled as she peered up at him. “You won’t… She can’t do that, right? Erase her memories?”

  “Cordelia has made it perfectly clear that she is on holiday,” Severus said tightly, slipping back into his anger-enunciating seamlessly, “and she is not to be disturbed unless it is life or death.”

  Moira let out a soft breath of relief, then took a step back, uncrossing her arms. “Okay. Good.”

  “But this could very well be life or death for Ella,” he continued, stalking into the narrow depths of his room, dragging his shirt off as he went. Moira’s gaze followed him, her head cocked to the side as her eyes roved along the swell of his shoulder muscles, the taut flex of his abdomen.

  Focus. He’s yelling at you like you’re a child—about something he’s already agreed to.

  But then again, he hadn’t exactly agreed to bringin
g Ella into all this now, nor had Moira asked. She had just assumed their plan still stood.

  “It isn’t that—”

  “It is, Moira.” Tossing his shirt in the hamper, the cuffs stained red with blood, Severus went for his closet and dug out a black T-shirt. “Why?” He dragged it over his head. “Why would you do this to her now?”

  “Because she’s a part of me,” Moira insisted. “We’re a package deal, Ella and me. We always have been, and I can’t… I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t leave her in the dark.”

  He swiped a hand through his hair, cheeks clean-shaven—it had been getting tedious for both of them to pick all the dried blood out of his scruff each night before he met with clients.

  “You’ve endangered her. And you didn’t even consult me about it.”

  Moira let out a long sigh; there it was, the real meat of this argument. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t talk it through with you before I invited her over. I kind of just woke up this morning thinking about her, and after you guys left, I went for it before I lost my nerve.” She fiddled with her nails for a moment. “You’ll help me keep her safe, right? You and I agreed she would have to come in on everything at some point. I’m ready now, ready to include her, to talk about everything with her. I need her help to…keep processing, to keep healing.” She softened her tone, knowing she was asking a lot of him when he was already doing a lot.

  “Yes, yes, fine.” Severus shot her a look before dragging the clean shirt over his head. “It’s difficult to stay upset with you when you say it like that.”

  “I promise she’s more palatable when she’s sober,” Moira told him, shooting a little half-smile his way. “I didn’t realize how much she drank. I’m sorry. And, again, I’m sorry for surprising you. Really. I planned to call before you got home, but you’re home early today.”

  He studied her for a moment, the muscles in his jaw twitching. “I just wish we had talked about… You know the severity of your situation.”

  Moira nodded; she deserved that. “But now that she’s here, she can stay, right? Just until we get everything sorted out?”