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

  “Where?” I gasped, belatedly realizing my lungs were heaving as Liam gestured to the front door.

  Liam turned to me and gestured with his fingers over his left wrist. I immediately understood, and covered Zach’s bracelet with my hand. Once again, I was flooded with images—and more this time. Zach’s calm, reassuring, almost mesmerizing voice sounded in my ears, as the images he saw flickered to life inside my mind.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he said, power crackling beneath the easy declaration. “Fight me, if you want to fight. Leave the girl alone.”

  I shot Liam a startled look as a guttural snarl erupted from deep inside the chapel. Liam nodded me forward, and together, we walked several careful steps toward the front door. It had been practically wrenched off its heavy hinges, and was now hanging open.

  “Oh, your fight is coming, boy,” Wendy said, only she didn’t sound like Wendy, certainly not the girl I’d met earlier today, bubbly and self-aware, the prettiest girl in the room. This Wendy was tortured, low, and angry. And a dude.

  “So I keep hearing. Maybe you should run back to your masters and tell them we’re ready.” We stepped quietly into the chapel, startling a brace of mice trying to make their escape. They reversed direction and scampered away, clearly terrified.

  “Like your daddy was ready?” Wendy sneered. “Because he wasn’t. He still isn’t. We know he’s run up here to warn you. So sad about Samuel. But there’s always a sacrifice. Just maybe not the sacrifice you want it to be.”

  Zach’s response lashed across the room, all the more unnerving because it was delivered in the same low, controlled monotone. “You will not say that name again, or I will rip you apart.”

  Now it was Liam’s turn to look at me with some surprise. Apparently, this type of declaration was unusual for Zach. I could only guess that Samuel was the name Zach’s parents had given to the baby who would have been Zach’s older brother. The unborn child lost when Reverend Williams had attempted to take on his family’s demons. I wondered if the demons knew about Zach’s younger brother, Jeremy, living a normal life, unaware of the family curse. If Zach failed…would his life be ruined as well, along with the lives of everyone he loved?

  Either way, we weren’t in some tent revival in northern Georgia. We were in Boston, Massachusetts. Demon possessions were not a good look for Wellington Academy, and they were in particular not a good look for Wendy Symmes, whom I could see through Zach’s eyes.

  Liam and I breached the side door of the chapel, moving slowly. And I got my first good look at Wendy, unfiltered by Zach’s perception.

  Zach could have a future in Photoshopping. In his view, even under duress, Wendy still remained the young, vibrant coed she’d been a few hours ago. But the reality, or at least the reality I now perceived, was vastly different. Where before her hair had been a bouncy rich ginger red, perfectly highlighted to catch the sun, now it was lank and greasy, her skin sallow as she stood with her feet planted wide, her shoulders hunched. She stared out at Zach with hooded, sunken eyes, her head rocking slowly, as if suspended from a string that was constantly being tugged to and fro.

  I took an errant step, and a board creaked beneath me. Only the slightest sound, but it was enough to draw Wendy’s attention. Wendy or whatever was inside her.

  She turned her head toward me, the crackling sound of her bones beneath her skin making my skin crawl.

  “So, it is true,” the demon within her sneered, delight threading through the words. “The harbinger has come. Oh, they’re going to love that.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Zach said again, only this time, his words were met with a hideous guffaw on the part of the demon, as Wendy threw her head back and laughed.

  “I don’t have to do anything,” she agreed. She smoothed her hands down her body, a grotesque caricature of a young woman assured of how good she looked. “A nice, fresh body like this one, unspoiled and unbroken? The things that I can do to a body like this, a mind so easily shattered.”

  In that moment, Wendy convulsed, her head snapping up as her eyes flew wide.

  “Mr. Williams!” she pleaded. “Zach, you have to—”

  She drew in a harsh breath. When she spoke again, the voice had changed completely.

  “I like it when they beg. Don’t you? Or, no, that’s right. Never have you taken of the flesh promised to you by your blighted birthright. Never have you dipped your bursting cock inside a right and willing well…”

  “Enough,” Zach said, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop by twenty degrees.

  “Zach…” Liam interrupted, his voice low and soothing. And I instantly got the impression something had gone wrong. “You’re good, man. You’ve got this,” Liam continued.

  “He’s got it, but he doesn’t know who he’s up against. Not really.” Wendy’s dark inhabitant smirked. “You’ve been dealing with the most pitiful of the horde up to this point, veritable children caught outside after bedtime, too dumb to know when to quit. Has that made you confident, Zachariah, like it did your father? Are you the Big Man now with all your academy training, too afraid to even enjoy the bounty of all that lies before you before it’s ripped from your grasp? Such a waste.”

  Once more the demon drew its hands down Wendy’s body, its fingers curling around her collar, dragging it down to expose her neck and collarbone, the soft curve of her breast. Tyler shifted on the other side of the room, but the demon inside Wendy only had eyes for Zach.

  “The rest of us are not so stupid,” she crooned. “We come prepared to use the chattel that has been given to us. It’s your time, Zachariah. Your time to give us what is duly ours. The whole of the horde knows it.”

  With that, Wendy tilted her head back, her mouth opening wide. Her peach-glossed lips parted at an unnatural angle, and then continued to stretch. Something shifted in the gloom, a puff of mist that seemed to emanate from her throat.

  “Look sharp,” Tyler said, and the guys all reacted, their hands going up, their stances widening. I had no idea what we’d do once we all assumed the jumping jack position, but I obligingly lifted my hands as well. Never let it be said I wasn’t a team player.

  “No,” Zach murmured, the word barely audible, but it seemed to resonate through the room, shifting the air in the space. “You cannot. You dare not.”

  “With all of us fixed on you now? You’ll find there is no end to the things we are willing to dare, preacher boy.” Wendy spat.

  No, seriously—she spat. From her mouth emerged a horde of flying creatures, each as big as a human hand, horned and winged and clawed, spewing out into the chapel in a rush of screeches and howls.

  “Scati!” Zach shouted.

  They attacked.

  13

  The tiny flying demons scattered to the four corners of the room and immediately attacked Liam, Tyler, me, and Grim. But even as I threw my arms up in front of my face, my mind spinning with the fact that I’d never fought a demon before, I realized the small creatures weren’t attacking Zach.

  I dimly registered how bad that likely was, then they were on me. I dropped to the ground, grabbing my knife, but Liam was right there, knocking the knife out of my hands and replacing it with a silver cross, only not your ordinary silver cross. This one had spikes sharpened on each of its ends, and I flipped it around, the long end serving as a blade worthy of Wolverine. Liam spared me only enough time to grin, then he whirled away, slashing at his own flying horde.

  I slashed and hacked as well, but I had to get to Zach. Because now Wendy had gotten much closer to him, and he stood stock-still, his hands up. A curious radiance surrounded his body, as if he were standing in a flicker of sunlight, though no sun had reached the inside of this building in generations.

  I’d barely made it through the first wave of creatures when Wendy leapt for Zach—something I’d never witnessed before. The battering array of the creatures fighting us was horrifying enough, but Wendy didn’t so much attack Zach as engulf him, flow
ing around him, her hands spreading, her arms lengthening, her body stretching out long and thin and flat to wrap him up in a mounting tide of darkness. In my fighting fury, I’d taken my hand off his bracelet, but now I hit the floor, rolling into the pews, and grabbed the bracelet tight. I needed to see what Zach saw. I needed to understand.

  What I saw rocked me back against a wooden kneeler. Zach still saw the Wendy he knew, but she hung as limp as a rag doll in the hands of a creature one and a half times her size. Great horns curled back from a broad forehead, and thick muscles bulged from neck to shoulders to beefy, corded arms to the meaty paws that held Wendy’s body. Held it and pierced it through, blood dripping down now, pooling beneath her.

  “This piece of meat is dead, Zachariah. She’s not enough to serve as a sacrifice. She hasn’t earned it.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Zach said for a third time, irritating the crap out of me. Seriously, that’s all he has? I scrambled up to see him, furious that this was all he was going to offer this creature, the sum total of his verbal game—

  A horrific crack sounded above us, and the demon jerked up his gaze, clearly surprised. Zach shot forward. His hands swept out, his face stretched into his own snarl, and with a vicious swipe, he reached out and yanked the body of Wendy Symmes out of the demon’s grasp, holding it close.

  As I watched in horror, every piercing in her body, every defilement, faded from her and reappeared on Zach. Suddenly, it wasn’t Wendy with sallow skin and matted hair and dozens of puncture wounds and bruises, it was Zach. She remained perfect and pristine, while he took on her injuries as his own.

  In that moment of surprise, the horde of flying demons scattered, and all three guys moved in perfect symmetry. Grim barreled into the demon from behind, while Liam and Tyler positioned themselves in front of it, their hands up high, gripping their weaponized crosses and driving them down into the creature’s upper chest.

  Another resounding crack sounded above us, and the demon howled. It staggered backward, only to fall over the beast that was Grim. As it sprawled to the side, Grim plunged his own cross into the creature’s gut, then wrenched it free, an arc of gore spewing up out of the demon’s belly. With a final furious snarl, the demon disintegrated into a pool of greasy ash and smoking entrails.

  Silence hung in the room, not even the mice daring to breathe.

  “That…I guess went well,” Tyler began as I lurched forward.

  “Zach,” I managed, falling to my knees beside his body, still wrapped around Wendy’s.

  “Hang in there, my man, hang in there.” Liam dropped beside me as Tyler disentangled Wendy from Zach’s grasp and pulled her away.

  Wendy’s eyelids fluttered, her lips parting as she finally gave voice to her words. A quick startled muttering of the Lord’s Prayer floated around us as Tyler stood, lifting Wendy easily in his arms.

  “I’ll get her out of here,” he said, and without another word, he turned and strode out of the building. I dimly understood that he was doing what needed to be done, that he was looking at the larger picture. But all I could focus on was Zach.

  Zach, whose wounds weren’t getting any better, whose breathing grew ever shallower, even as Liam put his hand over his forehead and started murmuring the Lord’s Prayer. But I knew it wasn’t enough.

  Grim crouched beside me, his mouth at my ear. “You don’t have to like it, but you know what to do,” he growled, the words low, reluctant, and feral, sounding like the last thing he wanted to say. “You want to help him? Then act. Now.”

  I turned to him, my eyes wide, totally confused. “What?”

  But Grim had already moved away from me, executing a sideways shuffle that looked almost animalistic and took him all the way to the pile of refuse that was what remained of the demon. He stuck his head close to the entrails, inhaling, that sight so disturbing that I wrenched my gaze away and back to Zach. His eyes were open now, but unseeing, and Liam’s voice had risen slightly, the only outward sign of his distress.

  Grim’s snarl echoing in my ears, I remembered the Apocrypha, the painfully awkward language hinting at the power I brought to the team as a female, a harbinger. Tyler had leveled up after we’d had sex—but I wasn’t going to jump on Zach as he bled out in a chapel. There had to be some sort of halfway point that would still be effective.

  I leaned forward and grabbed both sides of Zach’s face, then pressed my lips to his.

  Time stopped.

  14

  This time when we kissed, Zach and I didn’t end up on a barren plain, buffeted by sulfurous smoke. Instead, we sprawled in a sea of satin sheets, my hands going out from underneath me as I fell heavily over his trembling form, spread-eagled awkwardly on the enormous bed. He was on fire, but there was no longer a mark on him, and I drew in a shaky breath as I took in the full magnificence of his body. Everything was sculpted almost to perfection, lean muscles rippling down over his arms, chest, abs, and farther—

  I drew in a sharp breath as Zach’s shaft slipped free of the covering sheets, as perfect as the rest of him—but then Zach groaned, and I ripped my glance away to focus on his face. Definitely his face. His face was much safer.

  “Nina,” he managed. His eyes flared wide as he took in our surroundings—the bed, the sheets, the satin curtains ringed around us. “No, no, you can’t be here. We can’t be here—”

  His entire body seized, and I slipped again, face-planting into his chest. The scent of burning embers swamped me, and I scrabbled up, realizing belatedly that I was naked too. Then Zach’s arms went around me, hugging me tight as he flipped me over. It was the most natural thing to do for me to arch beneath him, my body lifting to mold itself to his. Heat arced around us, crackling with manic intensity, and Zach’s eyes blazed with purple fire as he leaned forward to plunder my mouth.

  Mine, he groaned, or I thought he groaned. The word seemed to manifest as a physical thing around us, ripped from the depths of his soul. I felt an answering fire leap up within me, and I gloried in the darkness of his cry, the fierceness of that single claim. I didn’t understand it, but I didn’t need to understand it. All I needed to know was that I could give Zach strength and he was willing to pull that strength from me, demanding it as if it was his birthright—as if I was his now, forever, and always, and no one would dare to suggest otherwise.

  He breathed a deep, ragged sigh, and I felt his shaft press into my belly. A wild, desperate need erupted within me as Zach fixed me with his wide and desperate gaze, equal parts need and horror.

  “I can’t do this,” he panted. “You’ll die.”

  “I’ll die if you don’t,” I heard myself gasp back, an undeniable need for completion filling me with a longing I’d never experienced before. This was wrong, this was dangerous, this was not the time—and none of that mattered as Zach groaned again, his entire body shuddering as he kissed me hard, sure, lifting his body away and shifting down those precious few inches—

  The room fell away.

  With a jolting thud, we were back in Bellamy Chapel, my heart racing, my body frozen, my lips still pressed against Zach’s. A chill raced through me as I jerked back from his bloody battered face, and I stared down at him as he lay on the stained and grimy floor. His eyes moved beneath his closed lids for a second longer, his mouth twitching.

  “Hey, that worked,” Liam announced beside me, way too loud. “He’s better. Do it again.” Ignoring him, I sat back on my ass, lurching to the side as Zach bolted upright. He pushed Liam’s hands away from his face.

  “I’m okay—seriously,” Zach said, peering around as I gaped at him. He exuded straight-up, normal Zach in the midst of wide-eyed confusion, with not even a hint of the fiercely intense guy who’d been damned near about to…wait, what had actually happened just now? Images converged in my mind, running together in a sea of heat and satin. Had I…had we…?

  “What happened to Wendy?” Zach asked, further scattering my thoughts.

  “Tyler got her out,” Liam info
rmed him. “She looks in way better shape than you do, for the record.”

  “Thanks,” Zach said drily. He lifted a hand to his forehead, and I realized it was still shaking.

  I cleared my throat, going for casual. “Ah…what exactly was all that? Like, what just happened? Here, I mean.”

  Zach didn’t seem to notice my confusion, though Liam shot me a curious glance.

  “That was two levels of infestation,” Zach said grimly. “Congratulations, you’ve passed the first half of your semester in one morning. The small demons, the scati is what we call them, those are generally place demons. They infest buildings, rooms, basements. They’re the creatures responsible for knocks in the walls, creaking staircases when no one is there, and that scattered tap-tapping of running overhead. Vicious little bastards, but they don’t really hurt you. They’re mainly there to distract you from what’s really going on, the deeper evil that’s leaching into a place. They’re sort of like flies and can sometimes show up that small. You ever walk into a house that’s teeming with flies, you know that’s probably not a good thing.” He shook his head. “I’m babbling, sorry. Bottom line, they were part of the problem, but not the big issue. The big issue was—”

  “The big scary horned demon that had its spikes in Wendy? That the big issue you’re concerned about?” Liam put in.

  Zach blinked at him. “You could see that? Normally, you see only the afflicted.”

  I held up my wrist and dangled the bracelet. “We all could see it if we were linked up to you. Did you recognize it? It seemed to know who you are.”

  “We’ve got company.” Grim’s sharp voice sounded from several feet away. He no longer hovered over the remains of the demon, but stood at the front door of the chapel.

  “Who?” Liam asked, moving to help Zach stand. He scowled down at the demon corpse. “Yo, this thing isn’t disintegrating fast enough. We don’t need anyone to see me get rid of it. Who’s out there?”