Stalker (The Hunt Book 3)

by Liz Meldon

  But he also knew how that conversation would end. He wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. So, he stalked out the door toward the stairs, trying and failing to ignore the sounds of Moira’s cries. He needed a breather. He needed a moment to think, to process—and perhaps to nurse his wounded pride, maybe even seek out the rationale behind her decision.

  And he couldn’t do that from inside this house.

  So, he blitzed down all the stairs, grabbed the key to the SUV, ignoring Malachi’s booming voice from the kitchen, and stormed out the front door.

  All the while, inside his head: coward, coward, coward.

  Run away like you always do. Run, you fucking coward. Run.

  Chapter Twelve

  Well, that hadn’t gone according to plan—at all.

  Moira stood in front of Severus’s bedroom door, her fingertips still tingling from when she’d last touched him. The look in his eye—the hurt, the anger. She hadn’t meant for any of that. On the way home, a giant pile of Monroe’s takeout boxes on her lap, Moira had rehearsed what she’d need to say to him. She’d wanted to tell him that her mom’s journal had made things startlingly clear, and that if it was true, and Aeneas would go to such great lengths to silence her, then he would hurt Moira’s loved ones too. He would make her suffer by making them suffer, and then he’d take her out. It was the one way to keep his secret. Aeneas couldn’t bribe her like he’d done with her mom; she didn’t want money. She wanted the truth.

  And it seemed like he would kill to keep the truth dead and buried.

  The conversation was supposed to be honest and open, logical and forthcoming, but as soon as she’d sat down in front of Severus, she’d choked. All the carefully constructed speeches disappeared, and she had just been rambling, not choosing her words as thoughtfully as she could, not expressing herself as clearly as she would have liked. In short, it had been a disaster, and now Severus was gone—gone with the opinion that she didn’t want him.

  Which couldn’t be farther from the truth. Why was it such a ridiculous idea that she would want the space to keep him safe? Moira loved him. Distance wasn’t an insult—it was a protective measure.

  Drawing in a shaky breath, she pressed a hand to her forehead. She had known Severus wouldn’t go down without a fight. He wouldn’t step back from this unless she hurt him, but she hadn’t wanted to take that path—she still didn’t. Make them hate you, then it’s easier to say goodbye. No. She didn’t want to become a tired cliché. That hadn’t been her intention. They could do this, together yet apart, without breaking anyone’s heart.

  But maybe it was too late for that. Maybe she had already done it.

  Adrenaline coursed through her, and her hand shook as she tossed her mom’s journal onto Severus’s bed. She had to make this right. She had to fix it before he spiraled into thinking she didn’t want him, trust him, love him. Wiping her tears, she took a few deep breaths, noting how cold the room had become. No frozen eyelashes this time, but it had taken days of crying for those to form. If she sorted this out right away, there would be no more tears this morning.

  She had heard the door slam earlier, so it didn’t surprise her to hurry downstairs to a Severus-less first floor. Alaric was still in his bedroom, which left Ella and Malachi, both of whom were in the kitchen. Ella looked up sharply from where she had been unpacking the takeaway boxes at the breakfast bar, Malachi hovering just a few feet away. That golden lion’s mane, his thick wild hair connecting with a thicker, wilder beard, looked just as ridiculous today.

  “Hey,” Ella said as she crumpled up a few plastic bags and set them aside. “Are you okay? What happened? He just left.”

  Moira nodded; she had already noticed the keys for the SUV missing as she passed the front door.

  “We… I don’t know. I screwed it all up.”

  Ella’s faced shifted to something more sympathetic than Moira thought she deserved. “I know. We kind of heard. Everything.”

  Moira exhaled sharply and pulled her phone out of her pocket. Tapping around on the screen, she found Severus’s contact page and pressed the call button. It went straight to voicemail. She bit the insides of her cheeks and tried again as Ella continued to slowly, tentatively unpack all the breakfast crap they’d bought. Voicemail again. Tears blurred her vision, but she swept them away. He was doing it on purpose—rejecting the call. Severus had never had a dead cell battery in all the time she had known him.

  “Oh, honey, I know you meant well. I’m sure he just needs to cool off a bit.”

  “Yes, this is a trying time,” Malachi said, pushing off the counter and strolling to Ella’s side. He then had the gall to wrap one burly arm around her shoulders, his hand dangling dangerously close to her boobs. “But I’m sure we will all get through it…together.”

  Moira pressed her lips together, the incredulous look on Ella’s face plain as day and objectively hilarious. Her best friend met her eye briefly, then picked up a decidedly not plastic bread knife from the sea of Styrofoam takeout boxes—and stabbed it into the top of Malachi’s hand.

  Moira gasped, gawking at the pair. Malachi’s howl of pain startled her, but Ella remained unfazed as he staggered back, demon eyes aglow, wounded hand clutched to his chest. Moira hurried forward, not liking the way the chaos demon was staring at her best friend—like he wanted to eat her, or fuck her, or maybe both. He lurched for her, lips lifted in a snarling sort of smile that should have sent Ella running.

  “Oh my god, what?” Moira hissed, grabbing her best friend by the elbow and dragging her away. She shot Malachi a bewildered look over her shoulder, but Severus’s big brother appeared utterly transfixed on Ella, his teeth bared and his smile dark. When Moira finally stopped in front of the staircase, using it to block Malachi’s line of sight, she rounded on Ella, her eyes growing wider by the second. “What?!”

  “He just needs to learn about personal space—”

  “So you stab him?!”

  Ella arched an eyebrow, her arms crossed and her face flushed. “Yeah. Moira, he’s a demon. He’ll survive. Alaric said I need to set firm boundaries.”

  “Oh my god.” Moira pushed her palms into her eyes, ignoring the slight headache developing behind the left one. “I cannot handle another demon drama today, Ella. I’ve got enough of my own to deal with—”

  “You don’t have to take care of this. I’m fine.” Her friend’s hands wrapped around her wrists, tugging. Ella wasn’t strong enough to move Moira if she didn’t want her to, but she conceded, letting her hands fall to her side.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.” Ella glanced toward the kitchen, in which they could both hear Malachi snarling and growling to himself. “I’m good. There are plenty of other knives to stick in other places if need be.” She raised her voice a little for that last bit, then lowered it again as she asked, “What are you going to do about Severus?”

  Moira stared at her, mouth hanging open, trying to figure out who was this woman standing before her. Ella had always been the louder, braver, brasher of the pair. She’d faced down many a schoolyard bully back in the day, despite being half their size, and while Moira loved her protective bestie, she had a mouth on her—a mouth that could get her into trouble, especially with demons. Without Severus, there was no one to keep Malachi in check.

  No one but Ella, apparently.

  What the hell had this day become? It had started out so simple.

  “I…I don’t know.” She shook her head, finally breaking under Ella’s unflinching stare. “I don’t know if I want to leave you two alone now—”

  “I’m fine,” Ella insisted. She spoke a little louder again as she said, “Right, Malachi? We’re cool?”

  “We… You… We are most certainly… You,” came the demon’s eloquent response. Ella waved it off, shrugging.

  “We’re cool. Seriously. What are you going to do? He took the SUV and left. Slammed the door. He seemed pissed.”

  “He was upset,” Moira agreed, her adrenal
ine spiking again at the thought of their last conversation. “I didn’t get my point across like I should have. I told him that I needed space and distance, and I tried to tell him that it was because I want him to be safe, but I kind of just rambled. I fucked it all up.”

  Ella grabbed her arms and gave her a little shake. “You didn’t fuck it all up.”

  “I could have. I don’t know. We’ve never fought like this before. He misunderstood everything, and I was just crying because…because I don’t why, but I was, and it was a mess.” She sniffled, her frown deepening—but her resolve firm as ever. “I don’t want us to fall apart because of some stupid misunderstanding. I need to find him and talk about this. He needs to know I’m not, I don’t know, abandoning him or leaving him. I don’t know why he would think I—”

  “Ah, yes, one of the universe’s great mysteries,” Malachi mused from the kitchen. Both Moira and Ella peered around the stairwell, and Moira winced when the chaos demon finally yanked the knife out of his hand, blood gushing all over the takeout box lids. His demon eyes remained as he glared at them, tossing the knife behind him. It landed noisily in the sink seconds later. “Why, oh why, would my little brother misconstrue something as innocent as a bit of space as something worse? Imagine, spending your whole immortal life loathed by your own kind and repeatedly rejected by your parents. No, I can’t possibly fathom why he’d be so sensitive to this. No idea.”

  “Okay, peanut gallery slash brother of the year.” Moira held up a hand to silence him. “I get it. Thanks for the commentary.”

  “And stop bleeding all over breakfast,” Ella added. Malachi’s glare sharpened.

  “Then don’t stab me.”

  “Well, stop touching me when I don’t want you to and I won’t,” she fired back. He held up his wounded hand, blood running in twin streams down his forearm, and sputtered at her. Ella rolled her eyes. “Go run it under the sink. You’re fine.”

  “Ella, don’t antagonize him.”

  “Moira,” her friend met her eye, “I got this. Go find Severus. He took the SUV. Do you know where he’d go?”

  “I have an idea,” she said, watching as Ella dug out a pair of shoes from the closet and deposited them at her feet. She slipped her feet into her flats, offering a half smile when Ella handed over her purse. “Seriously though, I don’t know if I want to leave now. Should we wake up Alaric?”

  “In my very limited experience, demons just need to know you don’t put up with shit,” Ella told her, arms crossed, fingers drumming on her bicep. “But if it makes you feel better, I’ll grab Alaric.”

  “Dearest, I promise we don’t need a chaperone,” Malachi drawled, and Ella’s blush worsened. With the keys to Alaric’s Lamborghini in hand, the white monstrosity still parked out front, Moira looked between Ella and Malachi, not even a little bit sure what to make of them. She hesitated, not wanting to leave her best friend in a tense, possibly dangerous situation, but then there was Malachi at the sink, running his hand under water, grumbling to himself—and smiling.

  “Right, we’ll unpack this,” she gestured between the pair, “later.”

  “Nothing to unpack, but okay,” Ella said with a quick smile. “Good luck. I’m sure Severus will understand once you explain a little better. Even if you two pretend to separate to fool Aeneas, at least it’s something, right? Make him think you don’t care about Severus anymore, so then he’s off the guy’s hit list. Possibility.”

  “Yeah, on a TV show.”

  “I’m just spitballing here.”

  “I know, and I love you.” She kissed her best friend’s cheek, then shot Malachi a warning look when he glanced their way. “I’ll be back soon. Everybody behave. Save us some breakfast.”

  “I’ve already got the oven preheating to keep your stuff warm,” Ella insisted, all but shoving her out the front door. “Go find him. I know you two can work it out. Maybe try not to cry. Kind of muddles the whole thing for guys when you’re crying. Kind of unfair.”

  “Noted.” But no promises, of course. Moira had never been this emotional in her entire life. It was like once her mom got sick, all bets were off—the tears were ready and waiting to fall for every little thing.

  Not that she saw the conversation with Severus as little by any means, but she could acknowledge that she’d cried a lot lately. Too much. Time to put on her big-girl pants and talk this through the right way.

  Purse thrown over her shoulder, she hurried outside, closing the door firmly behind her, and then beelined for the Lamborghini. As she climbed in the driver’s seat, terrified of driving such a prestigious car, she heard Gibson calling her from across the street. She glanced up, and, through the traffic, she could see him shaking his head and mouthing no. Apparently the SUV was up for grabs, but the Lamborghini was not.

  “I’m not waiting for a taxi, Gibson,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t hear her anyway, and then slammed the door. Once she got the sleek sports car revved up, she checked her blind spots and quickly merged with the morning traffic. It took a few minutes to get a feel for how the car handled, but soon enough she was whizzing between lanes, bypassing slower-moving vehicles like she’d been driving the Lamborghini her whole life.

  Still, by the time she shifted the damn thing into park in the football stadium parking lot, she was shaking like a leaf and sweating like she had actually stolen the car. The only thing that calmed her nerves was the sight of Alaric’s enormous SUV parked in the spot Severus usually chose. Her gut had been right—he’d come here to think.

  She climbed out of the low car with some difficulty, weak-kneed and desperate to find him. When he wasn’t sitting in the SUV itself, she jogged toward their secret entrance at the back, jiggling the handle a few times to get it open. By the time she raced up the back stairwell and into the stadium seating, her heart was pounding between her ears, and despite not being out of breath, she found herself panting.

  Gripping her purse strap tight, she whirled around and scanned the wall behind the last row, the one they usually sat on to watch the sunrise. And Severus—wasn’t there. She frowned. No. The SUV was in the parking lot. He had to be here.

  Worried, she scanned the stadium, following the wall all the way around the first curve—until she found him. He was on the field. Smoking and staring down at his phone, right there in the middle of it. Her heartrate slowed, relief washing over her. Relief and mild annoyance at the confirmation that he was, in fact, screening her calls. But she probably deserved that, even if it did nothing to help their situation.

  Dragging a hand through her hair, Moira started her slow descent down the wide metal stairs of the stands. She thought about what she needed to say and how she needed to say it. How she needed to be sensitive to his history of rejection—and how she needed to make it perfectly clear that she didn’t want him to go away permanently. She didn’t want this to be over—even if she had used that awful word earlier.

  Moira nibbled her lower lip, studying him. She should have made that part way more obvious the first time around.

  Halfway down the stairs, something caught her eye—six somethings, actually. Six balls of light flickered to life around the football field, each one hovering some twenty feet from Severus. Encircling him—and warping from shimmering orbs into men in finely tailored suits. Men with white hair. Six of the ten faces she had memorized from Severus’s sketchbook.

  Her eyes widened. Angels.

  “Severus!”

  Her panic echoed across the stadium, infecting him the second he looked up. Dropping both his phone and his cigarette, Severus looped around, searching for a way out, as Moira sprinted down the steps. The angels moved in on him steadily, a pack of wolves advancing on the lone elk they’d separated from the herd.

  She pushed her new body to its limits, not thinking—just doing.

  “Get away from him!” she cried. “Leave him alone! He didn’t do anything!”

  His black eyes sought her out between a pair of angels, wide and frightened
, arms up. She shook her head ever so slightly, flying off the last step and charging over the cement barrier that separated the field from the crowd. No. They aren’t taking you. I won’t let them.

  Severus tried to find an out, but every step back he took was another step closer to a different angel. The six had started to glow again, a pure white halo humming to life around them.

  “Stop!” she shouted, her throat raw and her hands burning. “Stop! He didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “Moira—run!” Severus bellowed back at her, his voice tight—and scared. He looked terrified. As the angelic glow intensified, he was forced to shield his eyes, snarling. Her feet pounded the turf. Nearly there, but so were the angels.

  “Don’t touch him!” She could hear him screaming now—screaming like Diriel had when they’d left him to face the wrath of Asmodeus. It cut through to her marrow, a sound she would never forget. Her hands throbbed with heat, with light, and she lifted them, ready to fight for the man she loved. “Leave him—”

  She gasped when the nearest angel turned, their eyes meeting. Blue eyes. Like looking in a mirror. The glow of the six was overwhelming now, even to Moira, but she saw those eyes—and she knew instantly.

  She’d had her mom’s eyes before all this.

  Now, she had his.

  Moira reeled back, hoping her angelic light would do something, hoping she hadn’t brought a knife to a gunfight. Ten feet away. Five. Just before she could reach Severus, grab him, his agonized screams filling the stadium, Aeneas lifted his hand, palm out, expressionless.

  And with a lazy flick of his wrist, like shooing away a fly—he blasted her clear across the field. Moira’s white light had lit up the Inferno, but the light of a true angel could illuminate a city. She shrieked the moment it hit her, drowning her in heat as it hurled her over the field and into the barrier. Her new body, the kind built to withstand pain, broke through the concrete, forcing the air from her lungs as she barreled back into the stands.