Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
Hunter
“Come on.”
Hunter had been at the rectory all night and into the following morning when Nathan finally reached him. With him were Ammon, Eli, Father McDonagh, and Rageball. All of whom had requested to leave. All of whom he’d growled at until they shut up.
They’d searched every inch of the house and hadn’t found a single clue to Bill’s location. Hunter was staring at a cupboard full of old dishware for the third time when Nathan made contact.
It was only a few seconds, but it was enough.
“What’s happened?” Ammon asked from the living room. Everyone but Hunter had holed up there. They’d stopped trying to wring more information out of Father McDonagh hours ago.
“Nathan came through for a second. I can track him. Let’s go.”
It only took a minute for the entire group to pile into the church van. The threat of torture persuaded Father McDonagh to hand over the keys.
During the ride, Rageball continued to plead for the hellhounds to allow him to kill the priest, but Ammon put him off. Hunter needed Father McDonagh. He was a bargaining chip, and not one Hunter would let slip through his fingers.
The direction was fixed in Hunter’s mind as he drove.
He didn’t really pay attention to where he was going, instead trusting his instincts to lead the way.
They left Purgatory and entered Ledbury, a similar small town, although one that had been economically depressed ever since the closure of the local mill.
When he pulled up to the sidewalk where the bond led him, a wave of confusion hit him. Something was urging Hunter to look elsewhere, to go elsewhere. Anywhere but here. As he tried to focus on the area beyond the sidewalk, his gaze kept wandering.
“It’s a glamour,” Ammon said, getting out of the van and encouraging the rest to do the same. As they stood on the sidewalk, the pack leader made eye contact with Hunter.
“Look.”
The word reverberated in his head until his attention finally fell on an enormous evergreen hedge the size of a large man, with a narrow opening in the center.
“He’s powerful, if his magic can affect us.” Hunter studied the shrubbery, but there was nothing indicating it was anything other than a typical row of plants. “This seems like a normal hedge.”
“Maybe the Stanley Hotel will be on the other side,” Rageball muttered. Hunter glanced over at the short man, who was staring daggers at the greenery. Ever since they’d rescued him, he’d been out for revenge.
Hunter was growing to like the angry human.
Nodding to Ammon, Hunter strode forward, making his way through the hedge to the other side. Squeezing through the narrow opening, he found himself facing the facade of a church. It was a simple structure, although it must have been lovely in its time.
Its time was long gone, however. What must have been a white stone facade had faded to gray, and the surface was pockmarked with chips and divots.
An ornate wrought-iron fence encircling the church was brown with rust. Just to the left of the entrance, a single statue of an angel, wings outstretched, must have been a welcoming sight at one time.
No longer. Now its visage crumbled, and one wing lay on the dead grass beside it. It practically screamed, “Go away.”
The desolation of it all only spurred Hunter on. His mate waited inside.
As he took a step forward, a loud crack of wood sounded as the front doors swung open, nearly flying off their hinges. Beside him, Ammon took a quick breath. Hunter’s skin crawled at the sight greeting them.
Two abominations, much like the one they’d fought in the bar. Well, alike in that they were a perversion of the human form, but their creator’s sick mind had taken them in different, equally horrific directions.
One was entirely human, a man in dirty, ragged clothes, except for above the neck. That’s where the head of a Rottweiler had been sewn on, replacing the human one. Its jaws were enormous, muscular and sharp.
The other figure was a spider, but Hunter’s stomach revulsed as he took in its distorted form. Its legs were human arms, hands intact, and the torso was perhaps a human one, although it seemed there was a mouth in there somewhere as well.
Hunter threw himself at the dog-headed creature, not wanting to give the two a chance to coordinate their attacks. As he hurtled through the air, he shifted his form, a sense of outrage surging through him at one of his canine brethren being used in this way.
He was fully hellhound by the time he reached the abomination, and although he knew it would be stronger than the typical human, Hunter wasn’t sure why the Forbidden One would choose this configuration. Other than the bite, what advantage did it give?
When he clamped down on the thing’s leg, he found out what made the creature special.
As he made contact with the monster, every muscle in his body spasmed, and a crackling sound echoed inside his brain. He growled in frustration at his inability to move, even as the living horror slammed his body against the outer wall of the church.
Thankfully, as it did, he became disconnected from the thing, his muscles releasing, although they burned angrily as they did so.
“He’s given them their own internal magic!” Ammon yelled. From the corner of his vision, the pack leader was circling around the spider, whose human hands dripped with energy shards in the shape of icicles. “How many people has he sacrificed to gain this much power?”
Recovering, Hunter spun back around to confront the dog-headed creature once more, only to find its jaws already descending upon him. He braced himself for the attack.
It never came. Instead, with the sick sound of metal entering flesh, a sword slid into the human back of the monster. Eli had attacked.
The thing spasmed and thrashed at the attack, clearly affected, but not dead yet. Which was unfortunate, because Eli was frozen, held in place as the electric current made its way through his human form.
Hunter swallowed, shoring up his courage to do what he must. Despite being unable to move, Eli had the thing on its back heel, and he had to finish the job.
It was going to hurt like a motherfucker.
He lunged, digging his claws into the thing’s torso, attempting to do as much damage as possible before the electricity stopped him.
This time, however, he wasn’t fully frozen. With both he and Eli absorbing the energy, its hold on him was weaker. It must have weakened for Eli as well, as his packmate was, slowly but surely, twisting the sword in the creature’s back.
Although the pain was an intense, cramping burn, Hunter moved his claws through the thing’s flesh. His sharp nails dug in deeper, pulling out the shreds of intestines and organs.
Still, the thing would not die. Not only that, but the electricity was doing a number on Hunter’s insides. His demonic healing was strong, part of who he was as a hellhound, but it was losing the battle.
He heard himself whimper, even as he continued to fight his way through the pain to disembowel the beast. Hunter wasn’t sure if they would manage to kill the thing before the shocking current took him out.
Then a savior came from an unexpected place.
Battered down by pain and vision clouded with the creature’s blood, Hunter almost missed it. Just a quick flash of movement. His battered brain struggled to understand what was happening.
Rageball had gotten ahold of a blade somehow, maybe—yes. It was one of the chef’s knives from the rectory’s kitchen. And in one fluid motion, he slashed the abomination’s throat, right at the seam connecting the Rottweiler head to the human body.
It was so quick, Rageball avoided the electric shock, leaping out of the way in time. And from the wound he had inflicted, a flood of fluid gushed out. Blood, yes, but also a black, viscous, tar-like substance.
The few drops that touched Hunter’s fur were deadly cold, and he quickly released his grip and stepped back.
The creature collapsed even as its Rottweiler head fell away. Both Eli and Hunter stared wide-eyed at Rageball, who stood there, posing like a combination superhero and serial killer, holding his kitchen knife aloft in victory.
“What?” he asked as he noticed their shock.
There was no time to debrief, though, because Ammon was locked in battle with the spider-thing. He was still in human form—Hunter wasn’t sure why—and his lips were blue with cold even as he wrestled all eight of the spider’s arms.
Eli grunted, rushing forward and, in an almost balletic dance, weaved his way around the creature, his sword slashing and cutting.
One by one, each of the spider’s arms fell off, flopping like gasping fish on the long-uncared-for lawn. As the last one fell, the creature’s torso tumbled to the ground, a black mound of flesh with a human mouth in the center.
With a brutal kick, Ammon’s foot came down on it, crushing whatever semblance of a nervous system the creature still had.
“That was fucking great,” Rageball whispered, knife still in hand.
“I don’t like the power this man wields.” Ammon’s voice was cold as he surveyed the carnage of the two dead monsters.
Hunter had no time for conjecture. He had to get to his mate. He shifted back to his human form.
“Nathan,” he grunted, running through the now-empty front doors into the lobby of the church. A vision appeared in front of him, visible even from the vestibule, one that filled him with rage but also stoked his desire.
His mate was bound tight to a marble altar, his head turned toward where Hunter stood, defiance showing on his face.
“It’s about fucking time.”