The Hunter

by Theresa Meyers

  Lilly sat up a little straighter, flipping her long hair over her shoulder, ignoring the persistent itch. Hunters were bad news. Especially for demons. They could permanently send a demon to Hell. No furloughs to the surface world could make for one cranky demon.

  “Sounds dangerous. What’s my incentive?”

  “Your incentive is I let you exist another day. Untouched.”

  When Rathe said untouched, what he really meant was untortured. There wasn’t a forgiving morsel in his body.

  “What exactly did you want me to do with him?”

  “Seduce him, find what his father left him, take his soul, then kill him, of course.”

  Lilly shrugged. “Easy enough.”

  Rathe reached out a long pale hand, his fingernails pointed and sharp like talons, and brushed a finger along the outer edge of her cheek, then down along her neck and along her sternum, flicking the nipple that was barely covered by the edge of the black silk negligee she wore. Her skin shriveled in response. “His particular weakness is women. That’s why I picked you. Who better to bring down that Hunter than an incredible succubus?”

  Lilly turned away. A shiver of disgust started from where he’d touched her and wormed its way down deep into her belly. As much as she despised Rathe, he wasn’t one to be argued with. As an immortal demon, she had no choice but to obey his summons or suffer however long he chose to make her suffer. After all, it wasn’t like she’d ever die from his torture.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Colt Ambrose Jackson.”

  For a second every sound in the room was amplified a hundredfold as her heart stopped beating. Then Lilly couldn’t hear anything as the rushing sound of her own pulse pounding fast and furious filled her ears.

  “The Colt Jackson? As in one of the three brothers of the Chosen?”

  Rathe’s gaze bored into her as if the question were complete idiocy.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” Rumors of the Chosen ran rampant among the children of the night, like a scary bedtime story told to scare little demons straight. In the Darkin world, now her world, everyone believed the Jackson brothers could be the Chosen. Three brothers who were merciless, determined Hunters unlike any that had been seen in generations.

  She could see now why Rathe had chosen her and not just any succubus. For the last twenty-five years she’d been studying the legend, looking for any loophole that might get her out of her ill-conceived bargain with Rathe so she could return to her sister, maybe live a normal human life. Lilly was sure there wasn’t anyone but one of the Chosen who could possibly undo what Rathe had done in capturing her soul. In her efforts to learn all she could about them, she had become somewhat of an expert on the Chosen, and on Colt in particular.

  “Where can I find him?”

  “Bodie.”

  Lilly laughed, the sound light and musical, like chimes in the wind. “That’s easier than I thought.” Perhaps Rathe did have a sense of humor. Going after a Hunter who liked women, and who was already in Bodie, was like offering a drunk a bottle of whiskey—the chance of refusal was nil. And she already knew enough about Colt to know precisely what to offer him to gain his cooperation.

  Rathe’s mouth broke into a wider reddish slash in his pale white face. Revealing two rows of pointed teeth with slightly longer canines, it was as close as he’d ever get to a smile. “You have three weeks. Good hunting, Lillith Marie Arliss.” He vanished in a cloud of dark particles. At least she was alone in her room once more.

  Lilly sighed. She pushed back her thin curtains and glanced out at the moon. In three weeks it would be new with an eclipse—the darkest a night could get, and a powerful time for endings and beginnings. She let the curtain drop, then flung off the covers and got dressed. There was no point in going back to sleep. Rathe might have found a sense of humor, but he’d still be impatient.

  She blew on the wick of the candle in a brass holder by her bedside and it flamed to life, casting the room in flickering light and dispelling the sulfur stench Rathe had left behind. Nothing else bore evidence of Rathe’s visit, not even the worn wooden floorboards covered by a braided rag rug where he’d stood, or the washstand with its chipped white porcelain pitcher and bowl. Capturing a Hunter’s soul was no easy matter. If he were a normal man, she could materialize in his dreams and steal away with his soul after she’d killed him with the biggest orgasm of his life. A Hunter would never give her the opportunity. No, she’d have to make him believe he wanted her, needed her, as much as any mortal woman before he’d let himself go with her completely enough to snare his soul. And that would require gaining his trust.

  The way to a man’s mind was first through his eyes, then through his britches. But the way to his trust, to taking his soul if he was an experienced Hunter who knew demons, that was through his family. And in the case of Colt Jackson, specifically his older brothers.

  She waved her hand, materializing three small books on the faded thin quilt on her bed. All of the books were bound in black leather that had grown shiny through wear, and each was intricately tooled with the gilded name of a Jackson brother. When she’d studied the legends about the Chosen, the three brothers prophesied to bring about the opening of the Gates of Nyx and control all Darkin, she’d never dreamed she’d ever meet one, let alone have to seduce him.

  Instinctively she reached for the book with the name COLT emblazoned in gold across the black cover, caressing the familiar leather. She’d already read this book more than a hundred times from cover to cover. She knew more about him than anyone, if it was possible. Truth be told, while she had never met any of the brothers in person, she’d developed a kind of fascination with them, in particular Colt. It wasn’t hero-worship, exactly, more like looking for the best chance to escape Rathe’s grip on her soul. The Chosen looked like her best bet.

  Lilly bade the book to disappear with a snap of her fingers. If Colt was indeed after his father’s third of the Book of Legend, she knew him well enough to know there was no need for her to search for him. He’d be calling for a demon soon enough.

  Chapter 3

  Colt scanned the array of wooden buildings in the booming mining town of Bodie looking for the local jail. It sat in the shallow bowl of the valley among the sagebrush, a small, peaked building with a lean-to addition sagging off to the right side of it like a child off the hip of a worn-out frontier wife.

  The last place Colt ever thought he’d go willingly when he was in trouble was to the local jail. But that’s where his oldest brother Winn was, being that he was sheriff.

  Colt trod up the sagging wooden steps in front of the door. The black iron knob was cold in his hand as he opened it cautiously, just a crack. Click. A gun cocked on the other side of the door, right about level with his left temple and just below the brim of his brown Stetson. His whole body tensed, waiting to see if he was going to dodge a bullet. What if Winn was out to lunch and there was some bored deputy on the other side just itching for something to shoot?

  The doorknob yanked out of his hand. A large man with a head full of slicked-back black hair, a slightly crooked nose, and pair of dark blue eyes, far darker than Colt’s own, stared back at him over the barrel of a revolver.

  “Damn, Winn, you went and growed a mustache.” Heavy and thick, the thing was as dark as Winn’s hair, twisted into sharp waxed points at either end and leaving only a bit of his bottom lip exposed. It made his brother look far older and fiercer than Colt remembered.

  Winn grunted. “I’ve had it for two years.” He glanced over Colt’s shoulder in both directions, then uncocked the gun and slipped it into a worn hip holster. He turned his back on Colt.

  “Shut the door,” he said in a low voice over his shoulder. He sat down in the chair behind the battered wooden desk that served as the sheriff’s office. Behind him was a wall littered with curling, yellowed wanted posters and an iron nail holding up a leather back holster filled with a Winchester rifle. The smell of wood smoke from the small pot-bellied
stove burning in the corner under a huge copper boiler cut the smell of unwashed male and the sickly faint odor of vomit coming from the cells that lined the far wall, making it bearable. “What brings you to Bodie?”

  Colt took the only other chair in the place and swung the wooden ladderback around to straddle it, resting his arms across the slender back. “Well, it sure ain’t the churches in town.” Colt snickered. Bodie’s well-deserved reputation as one of the roughest towns in the state of California meant Winn was fairly busy. “Do I need a reason to visit my brother?”

  “Hell yes. You’d never come otherwise.”

  “Not very charitable of you.”

  “Not feeling in a very giving mood.”

  “See? You need more churches in this town, would help give folks more to think about bein’ charitable. Hell, you about shot me without even seeing who was coming through the door.”

  Winn glanced out the window, a longing look flitting across his face. Maybe bein’ respectable wasn’t all he thought it was cracked up to be. Maybe that tingle in Colt’s palm wasn’t just about a supernatural after his ass this time. Maybe it was because Winn was ready to go back to hunting.

  He turned his piercing dark blue eyes back on Colt. For a second Winn looked so like their pa that it made a little shiver shake Colt’s insides way down deep. Colt wished he’d taken a slug of the whiskey Marley had given him.

  Winn grumbled something underneath his breath about little brothers as he rolled his thick shoulders. “Look, I got a murder a day to contend with, sometimes more. I don’t need the trouble you trail in your wake, Colt.”

  The truth stung. Being around normal people just wasn’t something a Hunter could do. Inevitably they’d get sucked into the troubles that followed like a dark cloud of dust. “Spoken like a true big brother.”

  “Spoken like the town sheriff.”

  Colt’s gaze flicked to the cells. Of the four, three were empty. Behind the black iron bars of the last cell, spread out on the robe bed and olive green wool blanket, the squatter lay facedown, his back raising and lowering in deep rhythmic breaths.

  Winn followed his gaze and waved a hand in dismissal. “Don’t worry about Billy. He sleeps it off in there every other night. He’ll be out until daybreak. It’s safe to talk.”

  Colt feigned a sigh. He hadn’t been planning on a reunion either, but he still needed Winn’s help. “I got marshals on my tail for killin’ a saloon girl out in Arizona Territory.”

  Winn slumped back into his chair and rubbed his hands over his jaw, a small vertical crease forming between his brows. “Ah, hell. Why’d you go and do a fool thing like that for?”

  Colt’s shoulders stiffened at the rebuff. “She was about to sink her fangs into my neck.”

  Winn grunted with understanding and sat forward, bracing his elbows on his wide, scarred desk. “Still hunting, then, are you?”

  Colt stared his brother down. “If you’re lookin’ for me to apologize, it ain’t gonna happen, Winn. It’s in our blood, far back as we know. And there ain’t nothin’ gonna change that. It’s what we’ve been trained to do.”

  “No, it’s what Pa trained you to do.” Winn pointed a thick index finger at him, the crease between his brows deepening further, the ghosts of the past flickering in his eyes. “I’m not interested. I’ve chosen a different life.” Winn had never gotten over that demon attacking Colt when Colt had been fourteen. Winn had dispatched the demon, nearly gotten killed in the process, and never done another day of hunting since, something Colt couldn’t fathom.

  “You ever wonder how many murders in this town might be caused by something supernatural prowling around Bodie?”

  Winn huffed and stared out the window, refusing to meet Colt’s gaze. “I try to stay the hell out of anything unnatural. It’s hard enough to get a conviction from the crooked judge in this district without introducing a lot of hocus-pocus into the trial.”

  “But you know it’s a possibility.”

  Winn glared at him. “Doesn’t mean I want to wallow around in it like a pig in mud.”

  “Still trying to be shiny clean, the perfect gentleman, ain’t you? Well, I got news for you, brother.” Colt leaned forward, tipping his cowboy hat slightly off his forehead. “Marshals are the least of my worries. Hell is coming to Bodie, if it ain’t followed me here already.”

  Winn’s eyes narrowed, his bottom lip flattening into a taut line beneath the level of his dark mustache. “What’d you do?”

  “Seems that saloon girl weren’t no ordinary vampire. ’Course I didn’t realize it until later. She was Rathe’s girl. His baby girl, to be precise.”

  “Sweet Jesus on a shingle,” Winn breathed. He rubbed his palms back and forth through his slicked-back hair, making it stand up in awkward black spikes and tufts. “He’s gonna want your head for his collection.”

  “And he’s going to do some damage getting it.”

  Rathe was evil incarnate. There was no need to compare him to Lucifer. The archdemon Rathe was more like Lucifer’s ugly badman big brother—the one you didn’t mess with. No Hunter with half a brain beneath his hat would be stupid enough to go against Rathe alone and believe he could survive.

  Usually there wasn’t enough left of his victims to bother with. But Rathe liked trophies. In particular he had a penchant for keeping the severed heads of his most important victims and shrinking them down into macabre watch fobs he gilded and kept strung on a fancy gold watch chain. Winn rubbed his hands over his face and sat forward in his chair, pinning his penetrating blue gaze on Colt. “Tell me you’re not still searching after Pa’s damn part of the Book.”

  Colt just stared hard at his eldest brother. There was no use in repeating the words that had passed one too many times between him and Winn. His older brother couldn’t see any point in risking his life for the Legion. But Colt knew different. Pa had confided in him, and his old man’s journal was part of something bigger and more important—the Book of Legend—the guide that could help him and Hunters like him ultimately defeat the darkness creeping in upon the world.

  At least he hoped like hell it was. He’d believed it for so long now, he couldn’t be absolutely sure it wasn’t just his eager imagination, spoon-fed Hunter legend and lore from the time he could toddle, but hadn’t really known what it all meant until the day Winn had saved him.

  “Supernatural beings aren’t just goin’ to disappear because you and Remy stick your heads in the sand. They’re goin’ to keep coming, bigger and badder, and if the uptick in what I’ve seen lately is any indication, all Hell’s gonna break loose soon. ’Sides, I think I know where the Book is—for sure this time.”

  Winn groaned, rolling his eyes. “Dammit, Colt, you say that every time.”

  “Yeah, but this time is different.”

  Winn leaned his head back over the top edge of his chair, closing his eyes. “How?”

  “I want you to tell me the truth.”

  His brother cracked open an eye. “What the hell are you talking about, boy?”

  “I know you know where Pa’s portion of the Book of Legend is, and what I have to do to get it.”

  Winn was staring hard at him now, blue eyes blazing, lightning in a dark, stormy sky. “How’d you figure it out?”

  “I’ve followed every clue I had, and it all leads to you, big brother. I think Pa’s Book is hidden in the mountains around Bodie and you’ve been protecting it. It’s in the Dark Rim Mine, ain’t it?” Colt pressed.

  Winn stood up from his chair, making the wood creak with protest as it skidded back hard on the wooden floorboards. He scowled. “Even if it was, you’d need a demon to open it for you. Pa made sure nothing human could open it and nothing supernatural would want to. And don’t you even think about bringing a demon to my town.” Winn pointed an accusing finger in Colt’s direction.

  “So now that I’m hunting here, instead of somewhere else, it’s a problem?”

  Winn’s fingers on his opposite hand snaked down his si
de, fingering the holster of his pistol. “Hell yes. A big problem. I don’t need to be dealing with any demon possessions. It’s bad enough here with the drunk miners going after one another and shootin’ each other for the slightest offense.”

  “Then they’d probably be too soused to notice it anyhow. ’Sides, I’ll keep it right by my side, and if it steps a toe out of line, I’ll send it straight to Hell.” Of course, that’s where all supernaturals ought to be. There wasn’t one he’d met yet who’d convinced him that there was anything worthwhile or decent about them. They were monsters. The whole lot of them. And once he was done with the demon, he’d send it back to Hell just on principle alone.

  “Why don’t you come along?”

  Winn snorted, and sat back down. “Look. I’m not going on any fool errand for some dusty old pages the old man thought held the secrets of the universe. I’ve got the afternoon steam stage coming in at one. We’ve already had it held up four times in a month. The Black Gulch Mine’s entire payroll is on that stage.” He unconsciously rubbed his left thigh, which still bore the rope-like scar of the axe blade. “I’ve got real responsibilities here.”

  And real fears, Colt thought, but he kept his teeth clamped shut and the words to himself. Winn had never been the same after the attack. Colt tugged his hat down tight around his forehead and stood up, swinging the chair back around to prop it against the wall where he’d found it. “Suit yourself.”

  He glanced back at his brother and saw his face had gone all sternlike.

  “Just be careful. You know you can’t trust a demon.” Winn’s words were simple enough, but Colt could hear his brother’s real concern underneath. They’d lost every male member of their family to hunting through the ages. It wasn’t a legacy he liked to ponder on too much.

  Colt shrugged. “Who said anything about trusting one? I just need to find one and use it to open where Pa’s part of the Book is hidden.”

  “It’ll want your soul,” Winn warned.

  Colt grinned. “That’s just too damn bad. I don’t feel in a very givin’ mood.”