The Hunter's Curse (Monster Hunter Academy Book 2) Read online

  My lips twisted with chagrin as his Dad snorted something I couldn’t quite understand, then I edged forward again. My hip caught the side of the table, and I flinched as the books piled on the table shifted. I blinked, glancing down.

  Holy crap.

  The Apocrypha was right in front of me.

  Ignoring the conversation in the next room as it dropped back down to mumbling, I grabbed the second book down in the jumbled pile of texts, sliding it out and onto the table, my breath coming fast. The Apocrypha. There was no way I could read it all, especially with the freaking lights off, and the thing was way too big for me to smuggle out. Still, I had to do something.

  I flipped open the book and nearly hissed in dismay. Frost had said something about there being pages missing, but for fuck’s sake—the center of entire chunks of pages had been cut out of the book, leaving only the margins, as heavily inscribed as an illuminated Bible. While the book was closed, you’d never know anything was wrong with it, but once you opened it, the destruction was obvious—and devastating. I flipped through several of those excised pages, seeing nothing, until I got to a section that was still intact.

  I didn’t waste any time. I pulled my phone out and snapped picture after picture, page after page, only stopping when my eyes fell on the words sexual congress.

  Hello.

  “You cannot have any relationship with her, Zach. Any. Not if you don’t want her to—”

  Zach cut his dad off with a snarl of rebuke I couldn’t quite make out as I jerked my head up, but the pull of the pages in front of me was even more compelling than the argument next door. I angled the phone so I could read more easily and leaned close.

  Each sacred collective shall be formed with the express purpose of creating a unit stronger than the separate parts—and the key is the sexual center of that union. The flower from which all power blossoms. With her intimate touch, the collective grows and thrives. Without her, it shall wither. When the flower is also the harbinger, her gifts shall pour forth as a great river, flooding the fertile ground of all she touches.

  I grimaced so hard, I thought my face might freeze that way. Seriously, who wrote this? I scanned through more cringeworthy sexual references, then slowed when I got to a passage that ended at the bottom of a page.

  Each member who receives the blessing of intimacy—emotional, physical, spiritual—from the center shall surpass all previous strength. The blessed center shall gradually build in power as well, lifting all members of the collective until such time as she will destroy—

  I turned the page, and flinched.

  The next thirty or so pages had been cut out of the book.

  I groaned audibly. “Oh, come on…”

  “No!” Zach’s father cracked out the word so loudly, I leapt back from the book, the wall beside me practically vibrating. I swiped off my phone in a panic as a door banged open, and watched with wide, mortified eyes as the steamrolling locomotive of Reverend Williams left the station and pounded his way down the long stretch of the main library chamber. I didn’t know where he was going, but I was happy to not be in his path.

  Silence filled the space behind him.

  I glanced back to the book, then to the far wall. Was Zach still next door? Had his dad actually choked him to death? I closed the book as quietly as possible and returned it to the pile, then drew in a deep, shaky breath. I covered the bracelet with my hand, pressing firmly. Silence flowed back to me…but not complete emptiness. There was something else there, a presence in my mind I’d never felt before. It made my heart kick up a notch, my breathing go shallow and quick. I actually suspected my eyes were dilating. Still, there was no sound.

  “Zach?” I whispered, saying the word out loud, though I guess I didn’t need to.

  His response was immediate.

  “Nina? Where—oh my God, you’re here. You heard all that.”

  “I didn’t…” I began, but cut myself off as steps sounded from the room next door. A few seconds later, Zach swung into the doorway of the war room, his lean runner’s body silhouetted against the light from the main library chamber.

  “I’m sorry—” he began.

  “I didn’t hear much,” I insisted, stepping toward him as he shook his head.

  “Right,” he said with a rueful laugh. “How’d you get back in here anyway? My dad would have an absolute coronary if he knew you were listening in on all that.” He turned and gestured for me to follow him, looking impossibly cute even though his cheeks still burned with embarrassment.

  As I emerged from the war room, he moved ahead, walking quickly. His long, swinging gait showcased his athletic body, his fair skin perfectly contrasted his dark hair. Then he glanced back to me with those beautiful, purple-hued eyes, which now glinted with self-deprecating warmth as I caught up to him. “What’s your next class, anyway? Since I’m supposed to get you there in one piece?”

  I tilted my head, recalling the dizzying list of class titles and locations. “It’s in Cabot Hall, I think. And you better not tell me you’re student-teaching animal husbandry practices too, or I’ll drop the class immediately.”

  “From that, at least, you’re safe,” he laughed, then sobered as we moved into the hallway and approached the front door of the library. No one else was in sight, and he breathed out a slightly steadier breath. “Look, I’m sorry about my dad. And me. And all this.”

  I bit my lip. Probably not the best time for me to tell him I was a sexual flower that could give him superpowers. “You think your family demons got stirred up because I showed up on campus?”

  He waved that off. “Not so much you showing up as my reaction to you showing up. And that’s really what I’m apologizing for, I guess. My reaction to you. I thought I had it under control, but…apparently not. I’ll get it back under control, though.”

  It was a perfectly reasonable comment—especially since Zach having a crush on me might result in me becoming demon fodder—but I still felt stung. “Oh. Well, good. I guess I should get to animal husbandry. Because that seems important.”

  He snorted. “It apparently is to someone high up in the academy, anyway. That class is a standard requirement left over from the turn of the century. We all had to take it.”

  I slanted him a look. “Which century?”

  “The 1900s. Back in the day, there was a belief that some monsters could be rehabilitated, I guess for lack of a better word, put to good use as stock animals or whatever for humans.”

  We were off the steps of the library and moving toward the main campus by now, but I blinked at him in genuine horror. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “I’m not. It sounds ridiculous now, but a lot of the things we did in the early 1900s sound ridiculous today. Think of it this way—if you could, say, catch a griffin and use it for your personal hovercraft or whatever, wouldn’t you want to try?”

  “No. I generally prefer not to be eaten by my pony.”

  “Which is why the practice fell out of favor relatively quickly.” He chuckled.

  It was a nice laugh, different from Tyler’s. Quieter, a little sad in a way, almost a commentary on the need to laugh in the face of sorrow as much as an acknowledgment of the humor of the moment. I internally rolled my eyes at myself. Nobody spent this much time analyzing anybody’s chuckle, not even on a college campus where there were probably fifteen studies going on right now to get to the root metaphysical source of laughter.

  I tried to return to the relatively safe topic of Wellington’s syllabus. “But we still kept those farm-friendly classes around, just in case?”

  “Yep. They’ve proven to be some of the most popular and useful courses in the academy, especially when monster hunting fell out of favor. There are a whole bunch of animal owners who would like to enhance their livestock, cure the mystery illnesses of their favorite pets, and in general get along better with their four-legged friends. That class sort of allows folks to combine spell work and channeling with straight-up vet techniqu
es.”

  “Like you can become a real-life horse whisperer.”

  “Yep and donkey, and cow, and chicken. You haven’t lived until you’ve chicken whispered.”

  I couldn’t help myself, I giggled. It was such a ridiculous idea that I could see how it would gain favor. But we were almost at the main campus, which meant we didn’t have a lot of time.

  “So, um, back to your demon curse,” I began, and Zach shook his head with a sigh.

  “Yeah, back to that. Bottom line—you’re safe, Nina. I swear you are. The curse basically requires us to sacrifice the thing we love, and, well…” he gestured curtly. “You’re safe.”

  I rolled right past that tangled, knotted skein of a woman spurned. “But you love the team, though. So does that mean the guys are at risk?”

  “It could, but the guys—even you as part of the collective—I can handle. I mean, to Liam’s point, we’re all monster hunters. If some old-assed bunch of demons wants to come and try to take a piece of all of us, we can take them. Or at least…”

  “Or at least that’s what your plan was,” I finished for him. “That’s why you stayed at Wellington. You knew about the demons, that they would eventually come calling. You knew you’d have to face them.”

  “I knew,” Zach agreed. “I just didn’t think it’d happen before we graduated. Like, I thought that would be the trigger.” He trailed off as we came around the corner of Cabot Hall, then he stopped abruptly again in the middle of the cobblestone street. “Oh no.”

  I glanced over at him, instantly on the alert. “No way. They’re here? Already?”

  He shook his head. “I wish,” he sighed. “So, that mind reading thing? It’s got its downsides. Like a lot of downsides, especially right this second.”

  “What…?” I looked around, and then I noticed them. Three underclassmen girls, including the redhead from this morning, standing in a tight circle. They weren’t quite whispering and pointing, but even I could feel the flow of awareness rolling from them toward us, a tangible thing. In fact, I really noticed it, far more than I would’ve expected.

  “Is mind reading something you can catch?” I asked, then winced at the stupidity of the question.

  Zach shot a glance at me, momentarily distracted from his fan club. “What? Why?”

  “Eh, forget I asked. I don’t need to be psychic to realize those girls totally have the hots for you.” I watched as the flush crawled up his cheeks. It made him, if possible, even more attractive, and I fought the eye roll. Not a half hour ago, I had kissed Tyler with enough passion to rock the freaking trees. How was I possibly attracted to another guy so quickly? Even if he was a hot-as-blazes mind-reading demon hunter, with his tall, strong body, his dark, mysterious powers, and a mouth I wanted to—

  “See, this is why I’m glad you and I are teammates, nothing more,” Zach said, the husky assessment somehow urging on my out-of-control libido, not tamping it down. “It makes things a lot easier.”

  I met his glance, and heat sparked between us. Alarm bells didn’t just start ringing in my brain, they practically lit up my entire neocortex. “Yeah, right?” I hedged, struggling not to sound breathless. I darted my gaze to the canoodling couple approaching us from the side of Cabot Hall. Not helping.

  Zach pressed on, apparently oblivious to my mounting panic. “Like for instance, straight up. How do you feel about me? Because I bet I know. I bet I can tell you right now exactly how you feel about me. No mind reading required. So hit me with it.”

  I swung my gaze to his face again, my mind racing. He couldn’t pick up on my feelings, right? He said he couldn’t read my mind. Could he read my body movements? Were my pheromones pheromoning out of control in his general direction? Was I emitting some sort of weird emo energy I didn’t even know I was? I mean, I was going to school at a monster hunting academy. I’d been designated a sexual flower of power. My bar for normal behavior had gotten all jacked up in the past few weeks. But seriously?

  “I—I don’t really know how I feel about you,” I said finally. “I guess I just want you to kiss me.”

  The words were out before I could stop them, but that didn’t stop me from trying. I slapped my hand over my mouth in an impressive cartoon act of horrified dismay as Zach spoke over me.

  “I mean, like, we click, we’re friends and all, but—”

  He registered the disparity in our words a microsecond later. His eyes shot wide, and he turned to me, so surprised, it almost edged over into horror.

  “You what?” His words sounded less surprised than intense. Fiercely intense. I practically tripped over myself trying to walk my words back.

  “I mean nothing like crazy or anything, but I—I mean, it’s this totally random feeling I have, probably something that happened because of the, um, collective thing, but it’s nothing real, nothing serious, it’s just sort of crazy, and—”

  And then he did the one thing that I would never have expected from the son of a preacher. Particularly not in front of three underclassmen girls with obviously sexual feelings for him and barely twenty minutes removed from us all hanging out with my boyfriend, for God’s sake.

  He kissed me.

  9

  Kissing Zachariah Williams was nothing like kissing Tyler. The trees didn’t shake. The world didn’t tremble. I didn’t feel the urge to rip his clothes off and crawl inside his body. Instead, time stopped—and we were swept away.

  I blinked, stumbling back. Zach stood facing me no longer on the center quad of Wellington Campus, but on a flat and desolate landscape, broken only by a lone, twisted tree that hunched over us, its branches spreading like a spiderweb of shattered glass. A burst of hot, smoky wind flowed over me, through me. I stared at Zach, his impossibly beautiful face flushed and intense, his eyes like purple fire. As he lifted his hand for me, I flinched back.

  That only made his eyes burn more fiercely, and a moment later, I was blanketed by the heat of that fire. I gasped, sucking in the sulfurous wind, letting it fill my lungs, my mind. I had the sense of being taken, possessed, entirely consumed by a power so much bigger than myself, a power that held joy and sorrow, forgiveness and condemnation, life and death in its unforgiving grasp, spilling both out in equal measure.

  “Mine,” Zach whispered, and a fragrant darkness spread through me like billowing silk, reaching into the hidden places of my soul that I’d never known were crying out for the night. Above us, the sun flashed white around a pitch-black center, surrounding us in a corona of possibility, lighting us up like torches in the night.

  I jerked away, gasping, and Zach did too, and everything returned to exactly the same place.

  Exactly the same.

  The girls hadn’t moved from their position. The coed couple approaching us hadn’t edged forward. Zach and I remained in our original positions, staring at each other, as if time had clicked back thirty seconds. It was as if the kiss had never happened at all. Yet my lips still tingled with its heat, my heart still hammered.

  Something else had intensified too. Now I really did want to rip Zach’s clothes off and crawl inside his body, but my reaction was a half step too late.

  He stepped back, shaking his head like a bear coming out of hibernation.

  “I’m completely sorry I did that,” he finally managed. “No, that’s not true. I apologize for doing it. I shouldn’t have taken advantage.” He spoke in slow and measured tones, as if he was fighting to express himself clearly. His hands were clenched, his jaw set, and he practically vibrated with tension. He looked truly upset, and a pang of dismay swept through me.

  Hadn’t he just gone all lord and master fire king of the universe on me? Had I made all that up? Clearly, there’d been some sort of disconnect. Because my body and soul were practically vibrating with need for this guy, for his heat, his fire, his danger, his gothic-angel anguish, while Zach was…sorry?

  What the hell was wrong with me?

  Before I could say anything further, the pretty redhead lurched fo
rward, almost as if she’d been pushed by one of her friends. She lifted her chin and marched resolutely toward Zach.

  He went completely still, and I could practically feel his shields going up, phasers on stun before she got within six feet of him.

  “Mr. Williams?” the girl asked, glancing between us.

  “It’s Zach,” he said with an affable smile. “You’re Wendy, right? You were at class this morning.”

  “Wendy Symmes,” she said, nodding quickly. “I just wanted to tell you that you were really great. I don’t know that I necessarily believed in demons before today, it was more, you know, an easy course to add as an elective. But I sure believe now. And I believe you can help keep the world safe from them. I think that’s really awesome, and I wanted to make sure you knew it. And to thank you.”

  Zach smiled, and even if he didn’t have psychic persuasion in his tool kit, it was a very, very effective smile. It was also a smile that subtly but definitively put space between him and Wendy Symmes, creating a thick barrier of protection between them. But protection for him—or her?

  “That’s kind of you to share that with me,” Zach said smoothly. “A lot of going to college is about learning new things. Now, your friends are going to ask you about this, and I know it’s awkward for you to come right out and ask directly, but yes, I have a girlfriend. This is Nina, and she’s totally lit me on fire.”

  To my utter shock, he reached out his hand, twining his fingers in mine as he spoke, and then gave my hand a firm squeeze. It didn’t take a mind reader to know he wanted me to go along with the show. And strangely, almost horribly, I wanted to go along with it. I gave Wendy my most reassuring smile.

  “Oh,” she said, blushing prettily. “Oh, of course you do. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

  “You’re sharing your thanks with me, which is more than most people are able to do. Your grace is a gift, and you’ll go far in this life with it,” Zach cut her off, unperturbed. Which was okay, because I was perturbed enough for the both of us. “Thank you.”