“What in tarnation? More water? Are you sure we aren’t already in Hell? Maybe we crossed the border back there,” he ground out, irritation lacing his tone.
The succubus shrugged. “Everyone has their own personal version of Hell. Just figures that a Hunter wouldn’t be afraid of flames and brimstone.”
He blatantly ignored her comment. “And what are those things?” He pointed to the placid figures in the water.
“Naiads, water sprites. The minute you touch that water, they’ll try to lure you in deeper. Don’t give me that superior I’m-a-Hunter-and-I’d-never-succumb look. Trust me, you won’t be able to resist.”
He turned his gaze back to the water, transfixed. “We’ll have to find a way around.”
“It could be a thousand miles,” Lilly pointed out. “Straight across will be quicker.”
He turned his head slowly to look at her again. “Across? What for?”
“That.” She pointed, and his eyes reluctantly followed her finger.
On the far shore, a small rock ledge jutted out of the cavern wall, extending just over the surface of the water. Above it was a black shiny door made of what looked like volcanic glass set into a rough wall of gray granite.
“Damn.” He shook his head, scrubbing his face with his hands. “You sure there ain’t another way?”
Now was her chance if she wanted to ensnare him. His guard was as down as it was ever going to be. She could take his will, bend it to her wishes, but then, then she’d never know if his response was genuinely to her or just to her succubus powers. Here was the risk, staring her straight in the face. Daring her to take the chance.
What’s it going to be? If she glamoured him, it would be easy as pie to hand him and the piece of the Book over to Rathe. If she glamoured him, he’d become just another of Rathe’s thralls and never be strong enough to help her fight the demon lord and become human once more. Choices. Choices.
Lilly took a deep, steadying breath and decided against glamouring him. He seemed to be a man capable of reason, and willing to keep his word. Those were few and far between, nigh extinct, in her experience, but she liked to believe a few still existed. It was one of the few things that kept her faith in humanity alive and well. “Well, it looks like if you want to get to that door, we’re going to have to find out how potent those naiads really are.”
Overhead the fireflies began to wink out one by one, until only the greenish glow of the water remained. Colt swallowed hard, pushing his toe up to the edge of the water but not getting it wet. He could do this. He had to do this. It’s just water. It ain’t gonna kill you. His gaze connected with hers.
“Do you want me to go first?” she asked. There seemed no guile in it, but Colt couldn’t be sure. Maybe she wanted to get to the door first. Maybe she was hoping that the naiads would simply drag him down and drown him as he tried to follow her.
He frowned. “No, I’ll go first. Just take care of my hat and my saddlebags. I don’t want them getting wet again.” He peeled off his Stetson and tossed it at her, then shrugged his saddlebags off his shoulder, letting them drop to the black sand.
Miss Arliss caught his hat and arched her brow. “What about your boots?”
Colt grumbled and peeled them off one at a time, dropping them into the black sand as well. “Happy?”
“You could keep going—if you didn’t want to get your clothes wet,” she replied archly, setting his hat down next to his boots and the saddlebags.
Colt rubbed his hand through his hair. “Don’t give me any fool ideas, woman. I’ve got enough to deal with.” He took three quick rapid breaths in and out, getting up his gumption to go into the lake, then stepped one foot in the strange water. The surface immediately broke into ripples of movement. Hell’s bells. This isn’t regular water. His whole form turned rigid at the contact as the naiads’ voices, light and musical, filled the cavern, echoing in harmony off the rocks.
“What do we have to do to make them stop singing?” he called back to Miss Arliss without taking his eyes off the strange water. Translucent, pale green feminine hands and fingers undulated along the surface.
“Get what you’re after,” she answered. “There’s nothing else.”
Colt swore under his breath as the long, tapered green fingers of several dozen hands shimmied up his foot, grasping and stroking at his calves, then his knees and thighs. It would have been erotic except that the pounding in his chest wasn’t the excited kind; it was born out of pure gut-wrenching terror.
Nothin’ hurts worse than losing. When Hunters lose, people die, he told himself, repeating the mantra his father had drilled into him again and again. He entered the water up to his knees with a jerky stride, pushing himself to ignore the warning bells clanging like an accompaniment to the naiads’ song. His knees suddenly seemed spongy and almost unable to hold his weight.
The skin on his face turned damp with sweat, and his heart swelled, filling his chest and his throat, making it damn uncomfortable to breathe. He could literally feel the naiads pulling on the stiff denim of his pants, pulling him deeper into the water. He hesitated, hand on his gun belt. But there was nothing to shoot at. Nothing to torch to a crisp. They were liquid, for God’s sake.
“I’m right behind you. Keep going,” Miss Arliss said, but he could barely hear her over the loud, insistent song of the naiads that was even now drowning out his own thoughts.
He forced his field of vision down to only one thing: the smooth sheet of obsidian ahead. Nothing else was there. Nothing else mattered. He willed himself to move one foot, then the other deeper into the swirling liquid, even as his logical mind rebelled as the glowing water pushed up farther, chilling him to the core.
The singing of the naiads became louder, a cacophony, drowning out the sound of even his own heartbeat in his ears. Perhaps dropping into the water, letting it wash over me isn’t such a bad idea.
Colt shook his head and blinked hard. No, that wasn’t his thought, it was the song of those damn water nymphs.
The bottom of the lake felt soft and insubstantial beneath his feet, like a thick layer of mud that gave way, but then sucked and pulled before it would release him. Colt was damned if he’d go under and concentrated on keeping his footing. No turning back now.
The cold hit his knees. His thighs. His groin. His waist—hell’s bells. He was doing it! Elation inflated his chest. A hundred feet and he’d be on the ledge.
The water lapped around his chest. Naiads pulled free of the surface of the water, their translucent faces eerie and beautiful. One grasped him with her liquid arms around his neck, pressing her mouth to his in a kiss.
The glowing waters slid around his lips, cool and intimidating. Colt tore away, his arm swinging through the naiad, turning her into a spray of droplets as his foot slipped in the silty bottom of the lake. The singing continued to swell. More naiads collected around him, pressing their bodies against his, their lips to his cheeks.
He suddenly lost contact with the bottom of the lake. Panic, white hot, raced through him. He thrashed, desperate to touch down, his arms colliding into the naiads gathered around him. He raised his hand to cover his ears, but a smooth, solid hand stopped him.
“Stand up.” It was the succubus’s voice in his ear, clear, strong, and decisive. Her grip on his wrist was sure. “You’re through the deepest part. The water is only up to your shoulders if you just stand up.”
Colt forced himself to ignore the slick, suffocating sensation of the water on his skin and pushed his feet downward. To his surprise they connected with something solid. Despite his spongy knees, he stood. The liquid retreated slightly, but not enough to rid him of the horrible sick swirling in his gut telling him he was going to drown.
His vision blurred as his lungs refused to function. An insistent pushing at his back told him Miss Arliss was still there with him. As long as she was touching him, the naiads’ hold on him was like a light current in the green water tugging at him, but not able to pull him und
er. But Colt had no illusions. If Miss Arliss weren’t there, he’d have been under the water long before he reached that door. So far the demon had proven herself far more of an ally than a handful of other Hunters he’d known. And that was saying something.
“Can you make it?”
Colt took his gaze off the black shiny door ahead just long enough to catch a glimpse of Miss Arliss. The ends of her flame-colored hair floated in the water, spreading out around her like fire on water.
His tongue was dry and almost too thick to speak. “I’m fine. You don’t need to baby me.”
She shook her head. “I know. We all have weaknesses. Water just happens to be yours.”
“Still ain’t right,” he grumbled. Inside Colt hated that weak part of him. Sure, normal people, even demons perhaps, had weaknesses, but not a Hunter. And so far, between the water and his attraction to Miss Arliss, he seemed to have two whoppers. But they were almost to the door. Once he got his hands on his pa’s portion of the Book, he’d be able to look at it and find out what he was supposed to do next.
The naiads turned feverish in their attempts to hold him and the succubus in the water. They undulated against him, their hands stroking every inch of him, but Miss Arliss’s touch was more solid, more warm and real. It didn’t just touch his skin, it touched something deeper inside him, making his heart pound not with fear or anxiety but with fierce determination.
They reached the outcropping of granite that formed the ledge before the door. Colt dug his fingers into the rock and pulled himself out of the water, laying his cheek against the solid rough surface and sucking deep, gasping breaths of air into his burning lungs as if he’d been under the water the whole time and the rock was his lifeline.
He reached down, offering Miss Arliss a hand to pull her onto the ledge beside him. Her small hand locked around his forearm as he heaved. There was a slap of wet cotton hitting rock as she lay on her back shoulder to shoulder with him, both of them breathing fast and heavy as if they’d run the distance rather than waded through it. Every muscle in his body burned.
“We made it.” Her words were simple, but the experience had been anything but.
Colt turned his head to gaze at her. Her cheeks were brilliant pink from exertion. “You make it sound like it was easy.”
Miss Arliss bent her arm, resting it on her forehead, her hair pooling in wet coils about her head. Colt reached over, removing one of the strands that stuck to her smooth cheek. “I don’t think I would have made it without you.”
Colt meant every syllable. He knew he wouldn’t have made it this far without her help, despite his training. No Hunter could have taken on those hellhounds alone. He couldn’t have challenged the strange lake full of naiads alone, and for that he owed her something.
She worried her full bottom lip between her even, white teeth. Desire stirred down deep. He knew what those soft wet lips felt like, how inviting and sweet they could be. He gritted his teeth and refrained from kissing her, but he was damned tempted.
A sadness filled her eyes he couldn’t quite figure out. Was she sad their partnership was almost at an end? The truth was, he had a hard time reading her. Up until now he hadn’t spent much time or effort to understand women. Enjoy them, certainly, but he knew he’d never be able to stay any one place long enough to make understanding a woman worth his time. Now it put him at a distinct disadvantage, which made his gun hand itch. He wanted to understand this unusual creature and make her understand that her efforts meant something to him.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is thank you.”
She shook her head slowly, the sadness seeping into her voice. “Don’t thank me yet.”
Colt struggled on the narrow ledge to stand without bumping her into the lake, then helped Miss Arliss to her feet. She gazed up at him as they stood chest to chest and toe to toe. “Colt, I hope whatever is behind this door doesn’t change things between us,” she said into his shirt, her breath warm through the fabric against his wet, chilled skin.
Colt knew better than to touch her. It would make him want things he couldn’t have—spending time with her, finding out what made her smile, being sappy and sentimental—things a Hunter didn’t have the luxury of doing with a woman, even if he wanted to.
Once they opened this door and he got his hands on those pages, everything for them would change. He’d get the Book and convince his brothers of the need to unite it. He’d find a way to free Miss Arliss from Rathe’s grasp. And she’d be human again, and he’d be ... moving on. Even if he didn’t have to overcome his reservations about her once being a demon, there was nothing he could do about who and what he was—a Hunter with a mission.
Colt spread his hands along the damp calico that wrapped her small rib cage, his fingers tracing over each dip and curve. Damn, for a demon she was delicate, but then she was tough as nails too. The soft feminine scent of her curled about him as her skin heated. He crooked a finger under her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “I made you a promise. I don’t do that lightly.”
Her hands fluttered at his chest. “I know. It’s just that no one’s ever escaped Rathe before.” The heavy sigh she exhaled pierced right through him, squeezing his heart. “I’ve wanted to get away for so long now I’d almost given up hope. No one in the Darkin realm was positive the Chosen would survive Rathe.”
Colt gave her a confident smile born not out of false hubris, but painful hard-earned experience. “Rathe’s already tried to kill me once. He sent one of your kind out to bring me and my brothers in when we were just kids. Damn demon nearly drowned me, and just about cost my brother Winn his life.”
“That’s why you don’t like the water.”
Colt didn’t trust himself to say any more. Admitting his deepest fears to her had been monumental enough for him. He just gave one curt nod.
She stood there, staring up at him with wide eyes, shining green and jewel-like, brimming with trust. “If there’s anyone who could get me away from Rathe, it’d be you. I just know it.”
A little bit of pride fired up in Colt’s belly, the warmth of it wiping out the last of the chill from his dip in the lake. “Well then, what are we waiting for? You’ve been curious enough to know what’s behind this door. So, go on, open it.”
Lilly peeled herself away from him. As a demon, she knew praying was useless, but some habits were just too hard to break. She sent up a silent prayer to the God who’d forgotten her that the Hunter beside her was strong enough to stand whatever Rathe would send in retaliation.
She took a deep breath, then reached for the door. The glassy surface of the rock had no handle and no hinges. It was held shut by the supernatural forces at the Darkin’s command.
She held her hand against the cool flat door, reciting an incantation that should have opened anything related to the Darkin realm. The smooth sheet of obsidian didn’t so much as shimmer.
Behind her, Colt grumbled. “What’s wrong? Why isn’t it opening?”
Lilly glanced back at him. “I—I don’t know. That should have done it.”
“Try it again,” he said, an edge of desperation to his voice.
She obliged him, knowing it was folly. Focusing her whole power on the door, she recited the opening incantation again. Still nothing. It simply would not budge.
“I don’t understand. That should have done something.”
Colt stared hard, the blue of his eyes dark and stormy as he concentrated. “There’s something we’re missing.”
Lilly felt the heat of his avid gaze the instant it shifted from the door to linger on her mouth.
“A bargain with a demon is sealed with a kiss,” he said. His tone was huskier than it had been a moment before. His rough fingertips reached out, brushing a light, tingling touch over her lips.
A white-hot spark of awareness arced out and downward from the point of contact, running along her nerves and racing all the way to her toes and fingers. Lilly gasped, everything inside her tightening like a clock
spring wound to the breaking point. Desire, dangerous and impulsive, swirled and eddied in the breath of space between them. Without another word, he pulled her hard and tight up against him. Lilly didn’t resist.
The first time they’d kissed there’d been surprise and suspicion. The second, he’d been so focused on his fear he’d been unable to block her and had responded more. But this time, this time when he kissed her, Lilly discovered something far more potent, more drugging in the press of his firm lips to hers. She tasted trust mixed with desire. The heady combination burned through her, heating her to the core like nothing else could.
“That was some kiss,” she said, the moment she could breathe again.
A light flared to life behind his eyes, making them glitter. “That’s it.”
“The last kiss?”
“No. But your kiss—”
“My kiss has opened the secrets of the universe?”
“No, but it may be what we need to open the door.” He put his hands lightly on her shoulders.
“A demon’s kiss?”
“Why not? It’s worth a try.” He gently spun her around to face the obsidian portal. Lilly took a deep breath and let it out slowly, sending up a prayer Colt was right. She pressed her lips, still hot and tender from his kiss, against the cool, smooth stone.
Like smoke in the wind, the black stone vanished in a shift of particles. Lilly yelped as she fell forward into the unexpected opening. Only Colt’s quick grasp around her waist kept her from falling face-first into the alcove.
The walls of the hidden room were studded with glittering crystals, making it look as if they had stepped inside an enormous geode. With the first footstep into the alcove, the crystals began to glow and sparkle, pulsating with green phosphorescent light. At the center of the little room stood a waist-high polished black marble pillar supporting a smooth wooden box.
The glossy surface of the age-darkened wood reflected the greenish light. The ornately filigreed golden hinges that resembled roaring lion heads and the clasp shaped like a triple cross glinted. All they had to do was reach out and grab it.
The Hunter Page 9
