Taming the Hunter

by Michele Hauf

  Snuggling next to his delicious warmth beneath the sheets and comforter, she stared up at the skylight. There was no moonlight tonight because of the clouds, but she’d seen plenty while making love to Dane. And Jean-Philippe. And Ivor.

  Ivor had been her original husband, sometime around the thirteenth century. It had been an amazing marriage. They’d loved so deeply. She had felt the emotions as if she’d been there. And in a way, she had been, traveling through time thanks to the enchantment of the spell.

  Dane could not deny now that they’d loved one another through the centuries.

  Chapter 19

  Over breakfast of blueberries and clotted cream sprinkled with hemp seeds, Dane played footsies with Eryss while she tried to check her emails on the iPad.

  “Just give me two minutes,” she insisted, but with a smile on her face. “I want to make sure everything is running smoothly at the brewery.”

  “Fine.” He was ready to go on his knees and take those cute bare toes into his mouth, but he controlled the urge. He would allow Eryss her two minutes. Besides, he could wait to discuss what had happened last night. It had been weird, wonderful and amazing.

  And he believed every moment of it because he had been there. Past and present, combined.

  His own phone pinged, and he reluctantly picked it up and read the news notification. “There was an accident involving a UPS truck. The highway was littered with the boxes.”

  “Bummer,” Eryss said, her attention on her phone. “At least it wasn’t bees or live animals.”

  “Eryss.” He set the phone aside.

  “What? Why so serious?”

  “I sent the dagger back to the lab via UPS.”

  “Oh. Really? Why couldn’t Harold have mailed the thing to you in the first place?”

  “I don’t know. The old man was weird about the thing. Doesn’t matter. I packaged it well. I’ve shipped many an ancient weapon before. But what if it was in the crash?”

  “Do you know how many trucks that company has? There must be hundreds in the Twin Cities alone. Are you worried?”

  He sighed heavily. “Should I be?”

  She met his gaze. It wasn’t as though the dagger hadn’t already achieved an immense task by finding its way to him. If it was attached to a witch hunter, then surely, over the centuries, it had a means to find its owner.

  “No need to worry,” she replied cheerily. “I have to run in to work.” She set down the phone. “But it’s not an emergency. So. We haven’t discussed last night.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you to bring it up.”

  She popped a blueberry into her mouth. “How do you feel about what happened?”

  “You’re assuming I saw things? Or experienced things?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  He let her off the hook with a nod. “I did. You were in my arms the whole time, and yet we were different people.”

  “Yet the same souls,” she said, laying a hand over his.

  He clasped her hand and squeezed. “Yes, the same through the centuries. I believe it, Eryss. We have been lovers before. And I don’t know how I came to find you again this time around, but I’m glad for it. Do you think we knew this in our other lives?”

  “I’m not sure. But did you see us as Ivor and Alexandra?”

  “Yes, I felt so much love in that moment. Do you think that was us...originally?”

  “I believe so. We were married. We were... I’m pretty sure we were trying to have a family.”

  “I know! I felt that. And you had red hair and freckles.”

  “I did? I didn’t see myself, only you. You were blond and built like a Viking warrior. Maybe you were one. I’m not sure. Didn’t see a lot of our surroundings. I felt as though it was medieval, though.”

  “We lived in a cabin of sorts. Near a village, maybe? It was winter.”

  She nodded enthusiastically.

  “This is so wondrous, Eryss. I want to know more now. To do research. To familiarize myself with the times. You’ve always known you’ve been reincarnated. Haven’t you ever felt compelled to know more?”

  “No. It’s always just a feeling I’ve had and known. We live many lives for a reason. The past is the past. We leave it behind us.”

  “Yes, but learning about that past might teach us about the present.”

  “Wow, you’ve really jumped off the science cliff, haven’t you?”

  “Don’t tell my colleagues. Of course, those in the Agency would probably just shrug. I wonder if I should report this to Tor. I’m not sure. It doesn’t feel necessary. It’s not as if this is a job.”

  “But you had intended to hand over the dagger, yes? What will you do about if it’s actually lost?”

  “I’ve got to track that package. I don’t want it to fall into the wrong hands. I never thought about it that way, but this personal quest for the dagger may have become a real job. But as for the dagger’s relationship to me...” He clasped her hand. “I didn’t see anything last night that wasn’t loving and kind. There was no stabbing one another, for example.”

  “Neither did I. And that’s a relief. I confess I had my worries you could be the witch hunter. I mean, the blade does act weird around you. But surely we would have seen evidence of violence last night.” She kissed him quickly and grabbed his empty bowl. “We’re good!”

  As she sailed over to the sink, Dane checked his phone, which had just signaled he had another message.

  It was not good.

  Eryss picked up on his sudden tension. “What is it?”

  “I just got a text from UPS telling me my package was on the truck that was in an accident. While some packages were recovered, mine was not. They apologize, and will be sending an email with insurance forms attached.”

  He set down the phone and caught his forehead in his palm.

  “That could be a good thing,” she said to him. “Everything does happen for a reason. So maybe the dagger was never meant for you, and the real owner now holds it.”

  “Sure, but then that means there’s a witch hunter out there armed with an enchanted dagger, determined to track down witches.”

  “Right. Not cool. But instead of a witch hunter it could just be someone who passed the scene of the accident and grabbed a package. Either way, we need to find that weapon.”

  “We do? I do,” Dane corrected her. “It’s mine. I know that. And I won’t deny it anymore.”

  “So are you saying you think the dagger was meant to find you?”

  He nodded tentatively, agreeing against his will. “I suppose. I haven’t given it enough thought and—”

  “And charted it out in graphs and pie charts?”

  “You tease, but...yes. But that still means nothing in the greater picture. Eryss, you mean a lot to me.” He clasped her hand over the blueberries and cream. “I’ve never met anyone who has made me want to move to Minnesota.”

  “That’s saying a lot.”

  “It is. And I mean it. You make zero degrees seem balmy.”

  “My kisses are rather hot.” She winked.

  “And your skin.” He leaned over to kiss her cheek. “And your body, and the way you move it. Now I’m horny.”

  “I’m feeling it. Sex before dishes?”

  “Do you see me arguing? Lead the way, oh witch of my heart.”

  * * *

  After sex, Eryss drove Dane to the hotel and dropped him off. Mireio had a slight emergency with a leaking fermentation tank and needed help mopping. While Dane had offered to help as well, Eryss had insisted she could handle it. They’d decided he would stop by in a bit, and they would do lunch.

  He told the receptionist at the front desk to keep his bill open. He wasn’t sure how much longer he’d stay. He kept telling himself just a few more days. He did have work to get back to.

  Of course, most of his work could be done anywhere. He needed to go into the lab only when he had a weapon to research. And he hadn’t received any new field assignments, so he’d st
ay on this vacation as long as he could. He didn’t even miss the waves. How was that for acclimating to new elements?

  Was he falling in love with Eryss? Could he imagine himself in a relationship with a witch? It was a lot to take in. But the idea of love appealed to him. And while he instinctually wanted to approach from an observant, cautious angle, with graphs and charts in hand, a part of him was nudging for the full dive. Just let it happen. Go with the waves, man.

  After pushing the key card into the lock, Dane shoved open the door and strolled to the window. He tugged off his coat, gloves and hat along the way—

  And then noticed that something was on the bed that hadn’t been there yesterday when he’d left. It had a note with the hotel logo attached to the familiar-shaped box. He’d had a delivery while he’d been out.

  Dane’s heart fell in his chest. He dropped the winter gear to the floor at his feet.

  The tattered UPS box containing the witch hunter’s dagger sat on the bed.

  Chapter 20

  With everything that Dane had learned since meeting Eryss and taking the baselard in hand, he could not be surprised now to see the box sitting on the hotel room bed. It frightened him, because it seemed to have a mind—a very mission—of its own. It also frightened him because that mission seemed to be inexplicably tied to him.

  And the worst part of that fear? He wanted to open the box and grip the dagger—because it was his.

  “I’ve wielded it through the ages,” he muttered as he touched the cardboard packing box. “Could I have been a witch hunter in a past life?” Which could only mean... “I killed Eryss.” Or Alexandra. Or...whoever she was.

  Catching his breath, he sat heavily on the end of the bed.

  “But if I killed her, that means...”

  That she had killed him. According to her visions, that was how it had always gone down. Both of them stabbing one another. Because she’d had to defend herself against him? That was the only imaginable way to explain it. Surely she had not gone after him with intent to murder.

  “What have I done?”

  And yet it was difficult to grasp on to a feeling of guilt. Because those murders had occurred in an entirely different lifetime. And he must have had his reasons. Of course, he’d been hunting a witch.

  “But in every lifetime? I’m not hunting one now.”

  Technically.

  Dane brushed his fingers over his jaw, his mind racing with wild scenarios and ideas. In his past lives, if he had been born to hunt witches, then that would facilitate his life choice of killing a witch. But could he have been born normal, just an ordinary man, and then turned into a witch hunter? For what reasons? Had a witch done him or his family harm? Had he been cursed as a witch hunter? Had he been less of a scientist and more of a true believer in his former lives? Not like those innocents his organization sought to hide the truth from, but a true knower of all things paranormal and otherworldly?

  In every lifetime? Always a witch hunter? That could only mean he was destined to become one now.

  He shook his head. He was a rational man who didn’t have a murderous bone in his body. The thought, the very idea, of doing harm to another did not fit right with his soul. He’d never thrown a punch unless in self-defense. He considered himself kind and considerate. He had never owned a gun. He armed himself only when necessary for a job, and had trained to fight defensively and against the supernatural. That was common sense due to the nature of the job.

  While his knowledge on witches was minimal, he was aware that fire brought their true death. “Why has a dagger sought out a witch hunter if only fire brings true death?” he wondered. “Why this dagger?”

  The box the UPS store had packed it in was damaged, but it wasn’t bent or torn too terribly. They’d packed it in an inner box, as well, surrounded by packing peanuts, which spilled out as Dane tore open the first box. If the box had fallen out of the truck during the accident, it must have bounced off the road, as it didn’t appear to have been crushed by another vehicle. But had it been stolen? How had the thief known to bring it here?

  There hadn’t been a thief, Dane decided. Because some greater supernatural force had delivered this dagger to the one person to whom it belonged. And whether or not he was the person who would ultimately wield the dagger, or the person who would prevent another from doing so, he had to accept that it was now his responsibility.

  He must take the dagger in hand.

  The inner cardboard box opened to reveal the rosewood box, which had been carefully swathed with a thick layer of bubble wrap. Dane peeled it away, and when finally the box sat on his lap, he drew in a breath. Because he could feel the dagger. Calling to him. Vibrating from within. It beckoned directly to him, he somehow knew. It hummed in his bones and made his heart beat faster.

  And when he opened the box lid, the dagger slowly rose before him until it hovered, hilt down, blade pointing heavenward—the perfect position for a hand to grasp the bone hilt.

  And Dane did.

  Blade in hand, he stood in the center of the hotel room. And then he was not...

  His vision changed, fading out and then focusing sharply on his surroundings and the scents of blood and snow. Chill air hit his face and forearms, dusting the wolf’s fur he wore across his body.

  * * *

  Ivor followed the crimson droplets in the snow. His calfskin boots crunched on the fresh-fallen snow. He tugged off his gloves as the droplets formed into a pool of blood. The toes of his boots stopped at the dark curls on his father’s head. The man’s chest blossomed with blood.

  He gasped, choked back a snort.

  And standing over his father, Alexandra clutched a bloody knife. Crimson colors spattered her white dress. A smear of blood streaked her cheek and her red hair.

  Ivor swallowed a scream. His heart lurched to the fore. He squeezed his fingers about the dagger he held. The woman he loved—his wife—had murdered his father. Rage deep within him pushed him to leap over his father’s body and plunge the knife into his wife’s heart.

  Alexandra did not cry out. She only looked down at her hand, which was pressed against Ivor’s chest, wrapped about the knife hilt she held. The blade had entered his chest and sliced his heart in two.

  Alexandra gasped.

  Ivor spit up blood and shook his head. “Why did you do it?”

  “I love you,” she managed to reply. “He was going to sacrifice you.”

  “No. He would never!”

  “I will always love you,” she whispered, and pressed her mouth to his forehead, “through the ages. Our souls will remain steadfast and true to one another. I will find you again. I’m so sorry, Ivor.”

  And she slid a palm over her belly, taking his hand to place it there, where he felt a gentle swell. He looked up into her eyes, which were glittering with tears. But before he could speak another word, his heart stopped and he fell into her arms.

  The couple collapsed, spilling thick, hot blood into the white snow until their bodies were surrounded by a flood of their own life.

  * * *

  A blink tugged Dane from the vision. He smeared a palm down his chest, expecting to feel the hot blood because he could still smell its metallic perfume.

  “She killed my father,” he murmured.

  Clenching the hilt, he straightened his shoulders and drew in a breath. “The witch must die.”

  Chapter 21

  Eryss grabbed the flattened cardboard box Valor handed her. The city didn’t have recycling, so she always took as much of the cardboard home with her as she could and stuffed it into her bin. It was late. The sun had set hours earlier, but a few bars were still open. The Decadent Dames closed at eleven because they liked to have lives that didn’t involve working until the early morning hours.

  Eryss’s car was parked beside Valor’s Jeep, the black paint job of which was barely visible due to the white road salt that covered it nearly to the tops of the doors.

  “We so need a forty-degree day so I
can wash this monster,” Valor said when she noted Eryss checking it out. “Uh...Eryss?”

  Eryss closed the hatchback and nudged up her thick scarf to block a chill from her neck. “What?” she asked, as Valor gaped at something behind her.

  “I thought you said you and that scientist guy were getting along?”

  “We are, very well—” Eryss swung around when Valor grabbed her, to face a determined man crossing the street less than fifty yards away. But the distance was decreasing quickly. And what she saw in his hand made Eryss recite a protection spell and put up a white light.

  Valor’s shield of protection, combined with Eryss’s, held the force in a pale violet glow about the two women as if it were an extended aura.

  Without slowing his relentless pace, Dane stepped onto the parking lot concrete. In his hand he held the dagger. And it glowed a subtle green as he spun it once and then raised it high, readying it to swing toward them.

  “This is nuts,” Valor muttered. “Can you repulse him?”

  “Of course!” Yet Eryss was so thrown by seeing Dane coming at her with a weapon, it took her a few seconds to realize she stood forced to defend herself. And when finally she did, the blade swept toward her and she thrust up a palm and cried, “Deflecto!”

  The dagger cut easily through the protection spell, but suddenly clinked and jerked back in Dane’s hand, as if it had hit a metal wall.

  “Dane, what the hell?” Eryss called as she backed toward the Jeep with Valor at her side. “I’m not a threat to you!”

  The man gripped the hilt with both hands and lowered it before him, blade pointing upward. It was such a deadly pose. He could strike in a heartbeat, swinging any direction that would prove most dangerous to her.

  “You killed my father.”

  “What? No! He died when you were young, Dane.”

  “The witch must die!”

  And in the faint glow put out by the green blade, Eryss noticed Dane’s eyes did not reflect the color of his deep brown irises, but glowed white. As if he was possessed or under a spell.