43. The Peppered Night Stalker
The Peppered Night Stalker
Rez
Ijerk awake, eyes wide open as I try to adjust to the darkness while I lie as still as possible. What the fuck just woke me up?
‘I did,’ the voice in my head snarls. ‘Get up.’
‘Why? What’s going on?’ I ask, carefully crawling out of the sleeping bag and trying not to make any noise.
‘We need to hunt the hunter,’ she growls, her voice deadly.
‘Ever think that you’re just over-reacting?’ I ask, still following her lead since she’s never led me astray before.
‘Never. Now head north into the trees,’ she orders me.
‘Away from camp?’
‘Yes!’ she hisses, but I respond by rolling my eyes.
I might as well follow her lead because she’ll never shut up if I don’t.
I step back away from the fire to blend into the darkness and move lightly on the balls of my feet.
Even though I’m sure I’m moving as softly as possible, I probably still sound like an elephant traipsing around a living room filled with bells.
As I move, my eyes pick up something slinking behind a tree against the moonlight.
‘That’s the hunter,’ the voice points out. ‘Render her powerless,’ she urges.
Powerless? How in the Hell do I accomplish that?
‘You will know.’
Yep, and I’m a fairy godmother. I shift around to put eyes on this so-called hunter and find nothing behind the tree. Fuck, where did it go?
‘Listen,’ the voice snaps at me.
Damnit, I really wish I knew her name. Fuck it, she is now called Bitch until she gives me her name. Maybe I’ll annoy it out of her.
Another voice whispers on the edge of my mind though, and I pause to focus on it instead.
‘...she can take what’s mine. In her dreams…’ The voice tapers off as if it moves out of range, and I inch around the tree, trying to stay in the dark and on the balls of my feet, to minimize my movement.
‘...he’s not marked, or at least not where he should be. So it’s one-sided. Easily rectifiable. He will be mine soon.’
The female chuckles in her head, and heat flares within me. Suddenly, I’m on the same game play as Bitch.
‘My name is not Bitch,’ the voice in my head hisses.
‘It is to me, until otherwise rectified,’ I spit out. Now, where the fuck is this other man stealer?
Screw this. Instead of tracking her, I already know what her bait is, so I carefully head towards Knox’s sleeping bag and hide behind a fallen tree to wait. There’s a slight breeze, and I smell a slight stench, making my muscles stiffen.
‘What is that smell?’
‘Her hormones,’ Bitch growls, ‘She’s trying to imprint on him.’
I don’t even need an explanation to know that’s not a good thing.
I roll to the right and quickly get behind another tree, spotting the dark purple netherwraith slowly stalking towards Knox, five feet away.
She’s low to the ground, mouth slightly open, her tail fractionally elevated over her back, and her two tentacles are reaching for Knox.
The tips of her tail and ears are faintly glowing a bright yellowish white, and all I want to do is stab a bitch.
Fuck it. Why not? Oh wait… I respect Devinyx. So I won’t kill one of her own, but I will rough a bitch up if she won’t leave my man alone.
‘Most females know better than to fuck with someone’s mate,’ I point out to the female, my voice cold and unnerving as I step out from behind the tree so the man stealer can see me.
My hands rest next to my glaives, but I don’t pull them yet.
I don’t want to seem aggressive right off the bat.
I want to see how far she’s willing to go and what she’s willing to do to get what she wants.
The Netherwraith freezes for a split second before looking over her shoulder and huffs in annoyance, but pulls her tentacles back and fully turns to face me, her yellowish white light dimming.
‘Ah. I see the little fake mate decided to crawl out of her hole after all.’ She lazily circles me and steps back into the wooded area, trying to lure me away from Knox.
‘What do you want with my mate?’ I ask, even though I already know and follow her away from my mates and protection.
‘Well, right now, I think we should talk so I can set a few things straight on how Netherwraith mating rituals work,’ she says simply, keeping an eye on me as we move out of sight of the camp.
There are a few trees off to the side where I think I spotted a white figure, but when I look again, there’s nothing. We’ve moved so far away that I now hear the insects, and we have found a semi-open field where it's almost a disadvantage for her, since she doesn’t have trees to climb up.
Then again, with those fish hooks glittering out of her tentacle pads, who needs to hide?
The higher grass up to my mid-thighs could help, that is, if I lie down on my stomach or back, but that’s not really a good offensive move at all, and something tells me, defense is not the way to fight this one.
‘She won’t stop until she’s claimed Knox and Slayer by right and clawed off Fluffer’s mark from your dead body,’ Bitch points out the obvious.
‘Thanks, Bitch. I didn’t think she was leading us out here for a mani/pedi session.
Or to have a girl talk,’ I deadpan as I look at our competition in a new light.
She’s a woman who thinks she deserves a strong mate, my mate, and she wants someone to take out her frustration on.
And I’m the fucking idiot who just walked away from backup, so maybe I should throw up a shield around myself.
Yep. No one said I was the brightest person in the world.
‘Slayer should be mine. I’m from a Royal bloodline and deserve a mate as magnificent as the Black Death. You are nothing but a weakling that hasn’t marked him properly nor deserves the honor,’ she snarls as she starts to circle me.
I let out a small chuckle at the audacity that has just come out of her mouth. “Right. So, being royalty permits you?” I ask, raising an eyebrow, stopping in my tracks, acting dumb.
She stops and stands up straight, and even her tail goes straight up in the air. It has to be a sign of superiority.
‘Yes. I am, and I will correct the mistake you have made with my mate.’ Her eyes flash a warning as she leans forward in a threatening stance.
I know she’s trying to intimidate me, but for some reason, a calmness washes over me as I catalog her weak points; her belly and throat below her mane of needles. She truly is a killing machine, a true assassin. No wonder the King of the Elves used them for his dirty work.
“Who said what Knox and I have is a mistake? We share a link, and the only thing you seem to have is beauty, and that fades, but being dumb lasts forever.”
‘Are you calling me stupid?’ she growls, showing her teeth.
“Pfft. Of course not. I wouldn’t say you’re the dumbest person in the world, but you better hope the dumbest person in the world doesn’t die,” I say with a smirk. I know it’s probably not wise to anger the razor kitty, but I can’t help it.
A tentacle whips out, and I duck, barely missing her barbs as they hurl past my head.
Shit! She sweeps out with her other tentacle, and I continue with a roll, pulling my glaives and activating them as I get to my feet.
She’s on me within seconds; I didn’t even see her move.
Dark purple, almost black leather, a complete blur until all I see is white teeth in front of my face, and all I can do is block with my glaives.
Her teeth gnash at my glaives like a wild beast, tearing at her own gums, making them bleed, trying to get to me.
I feel her barbed pads pull and whip against the back of my leathers as they try to take hold to rip me to pieces.
My shield is helping, but it’s not indestructible.
I can still feel the pulling that her barbs are doing, but it’s keeping them away from my skin at least.
Pain ricochets through my left hand as she slices through her own cheek to get to me.
‘You have more than just combat skills. You have magic. USE IT. Stop being useless!’ Bitch yells at me.
What the fuck? Useless? Anger swells within me. Did the PMS voice just accuse me of being incompetent?
I push with all of my might and kick back with my right foot to dislodge the disfigured razor pussy. As she stumbles back, I throw out my hands, palms out, and scream, releasing my PMS needles. It’s not enough to kill her, but she rears back and yowls in pain as I put my glaives away and flank her.
‘Ruin her,’ Bitch urges. ‘Make it so she can’t go after our mate ever again.’
This female obviously doesn’t care about boundaries, just like Axton.
I know it’s not just a shifter thing; they can be honorable and even sweet if they want to, so why does this bitch feel like she’s owed my mate?
Would she do this again to someone else?
I’m sure she would, so yeah… I’m on the same page with Bitch.
I don’t even question it; she needs to be spayed.
I need to secure my mating mark with Knox and Slayer.
I obviously didn’t get that far in my classes about mate marks, but at least from all the paranormal books I’ve read, they talked about both shifters marking each other.
Then again, those were fiction books… but I’m also in a damn realm where those fiction characters are fucking real.
‘Get your head in the game, woman!’ Bitch yells, pulling my attention back as one of the deadly tentacles whips out to impale me, but I spin into the purple netherwraith. Instead of being impaled with her hooks, it’s her vine-like stalk coming out of her shoulder instead.
I hold on for dear life as she raises her vines, and slide down as her snake from Hell tentacle jerks back and forth until I land on her back with a thump.
“Oomph.” On instinct, I grab ahold of the extra skin around her neck and quickly activate one of my glaives, slicing a motion across the top of her head, but only cutting through her tipped yellow glowing ears.