Chapter Two #2
He’s seen us.
Seen what we are.
That alone signs his death warrant.
I step into the clearing, making no effort to mask my approach. I let him see me coming. I let him understand that stealth isn’t necessary when you’re an apex predator, and your prey has nowhere left to run.
His rifle snaps up, barrel tracking my chest with decent form. Military training, probably. Special forces, maybe. It doesn’t matter. All the training in the world means nothing when you’re hunting monsters that invented warfare before his species learned to walk upright.
“I k-know what you a-are,” he spits, his voice rough with pain and defiance.
Blood soaks through his jacket from where Calder’s fox-fire burned him, the wound still smoking faintly in the frigid air.
“Dragons, vampires, shapeshifters… you think you own these mountains, but you’re just parasites hiding in the dark. ”
Ice forms along my arms, translucent patterns racing across skin and muscle until I’m more frost than flesh. The temperature drops another ten degrees. His breath comes out in thick plumes, moisture freezing on his lips.
“These mountains are ours because we took them,” I growl, my voice sinking into that sub-zero register that makes human instincts scream ‘run.’ “Because we’ve held them for three centuries against every-fucking-thing that’s tried to pry them from our hands.
You’re trespassing. You fired on one of mine.
That’s two death sentences.” I watch his grip tighten, knuckles whitening around the rifle as panic leaks through his bravado. “Pick which one you want to die for!”
The hunter drags in a sharp breath and snaps the rifle up, fear tipping into something wild and reckless as he pulls the trigger. The crack of the shot tears through the forest, echoing off stone and ice as the bullet screams toward me.
I don’t move. I feel it instead, the intent, the heat, the split second where his decision locks into place, and I reach for the cold coiled beneath my ribs. Power slides free with practiced ease, flooding my lungs as I exhale, breath frosting thick and white in the air.
The space between us freezes. Moisture rips itself apart midair, layers of ice stacking and hardening in a heartbeat, a solid wall of frozen air forming just ahead of my chest. The bullet slams into it with a shriek of tortured metal and explodes on impact, fragments of the bullet bursting outward before drifting down through the trees like a fall of frozen steel.
I hold the ice barrier where it is.
Not because I need it.
Because he needs to see it.
His breath comes fast and ragged as realization creeps in, eyes darting between me and the ice that separates us, the forest suddenly too quiet, too still. I meet his stare and tighten my fist slowly, deliberately.
And with a sickening thud, the ice drops an inch.
A sharp crack splits the night as the barrier compresses, frost cascading downward in glittering sheets.
His rifle trembles in his hands.
I clench my fist, and with another loud thud, it lowers another inch.
Cold spills outward, crawling over his boots, frosting the ground at his feet, the temperature plunging hard enough to steal the air from his lungs. He stumbles back a step, breath fogging in frantic bursts.
Another clench of the fist.
It falls another inch, the thuds becoming softer.
The wall presses closer, not rushing, not threatening, just advancing with the inevitability of a glacier, the sound of ice grinding, filling the silence between his ragged breaths.
“Please…” he chokes, the word tearing free before he can stop it.
I don’t answer, I just let the ice drop again, close enough now that he can feel it leeching through his clothes, through skin and bone, fear freezing solid in his veins.
That’s when something heavy shifts in the shadows to his right.
Branches snap under sudden weight when Rhett steps into the clearing, his hellhound form unfolding from darkness and flame, massive and inevitable. Fire rolls off him in waves, steam hissing where it collides with the cold, eyes burning bright as he lowers his head and growls.
The sound isn’t loud.
But it vibrates through the ground, through muscle and bone, a promise felt deep in the chest.
“Demon!” the hunter screams, panic finally shattering him as he whirls toward Rhett, rifle swinging wide, aim gone, survival instinct screaming too late.
I let the ice stop falling.
Because I’ve already made my point. “Hellhound,” Rhett projects his answer with savage amusement into all our minds, then lunges forward with speed that opposes his massive frame.
“There’s a difference, but you’re about to be too dead to appreciate the distinction,” he sends, seeing as he cannot talk while in Hellhound form.
Bennett descends in a rush of wings and light, landing with enough force to crater the frozen ground. His hands grip the hunter’s shoulders with casual strength that could crush steel, and when he speaks, his voice carries the weight of divine authority.
“Judgment has been passed. Your crimes against the innocent—”
“Innocent?” I interrupt, letting frost crawl up my neck and across my jaw. “We’re many things, angel. Innocent is not one of them.”
Bennett’s expression doesn’t change, but something shifts in his eyes. “Perhaps not. But we are ours to judge, not his.”
The hunter struggles in Bennett’s grip, rifle forgotten, eyes wide with terror as he stares up at wings that shouldn’t exist, at a face beautiful enough to make mortals weep and terrible enough to stop hearts. “You’re… you’re an angel. You’re supposed to protect people. Stop them!”
“Divine protection extends to the worthy,” Bennett replies with the kind of serene conviction that makes my dragon want to burn him just to see if he’ll maintain that expression.
“You fired iron bullets at an unarmed being. You tracked and hunted those who wish only to be left in peace. Tell me, mortal… where in that equation do you find yourself worthy?”
Rhett circles closer, claws leaving deep furrows in frozen earth, sulfur intensifying until it’s almost visible in the air. “Can I eat him now? I’m starving, and he smells like bad decisions and hamburger grease. Two of my favorite things,” he projects.
“You’re not eating anyone,” I snap, approaching until I’m close enough to see the hunter’s pupils dilate with genuine terror. This close, I can hear his heart hammering against his ribs, I can smell the adrenaline flooding his system, I can taste the desperation and fear saturating every breath.
Perfect.
I press my palm against his chest, right over his frantically beating heart. Ice spreads from the contact point, racing across fabric and skin, burrowing deeper with each passing second. The hunter screams, thrashing in Bennett’s grip, but the angel holds him steady with effortless strength.
“Where are the others?” I ask conversationally, watching frost patterns bloom across his jacket like flowers made from death. “The ones who sent you here. The ones tracking our operations.”
He tries to spit at me, but his saliva freezes before it leaves his lips. Ice creeps up his neck, across his jaw, forcing his teeth together as his entire body begins to seize.
“The documents,” I continue, letting the cold burrow deeper. “The maps, the surveillance… who else knows?”
A distant scream echoes through the forest, human and agonized, cut off abruptly with a wet, tearing sound. Scar’s prey, probably. Or Wreck’s. Hard to tell when terror sounds the same regardless of the mouth it escapes from.
“Tell us before you freeze,” I warn, but the hunter’s eyes roll back as the cold finishes its work, ice threading through muscle and vein, sealing organs mid-function.
His heart stutters once, twice, then locks solid in his chest, stopped not by violence but by inevitability.
I step back as frost races across his skin, blooming outward until he’s no longer a man so much as a monument, his features caught in crystalline stillness, fear preserved with brutal precision.
Bennett releases him, the frozen body tips backward and hits the ground with a hollow, thunderous crack that echoes through the trees.
The ice sculpture explodes on impact, shards bursting outward in a violent spray, fragments skidding across stone and frozen earth.
Limbs shear away at unnatural angles, the torso collapsing in on itself as the statue gives up the lie of wholeness, breaking down into shattered fragments.
The forest absorbs the sound slowly.
Shards settle, frost drifts, and what’s left lies scattered at our feet, glittering in the low light, unrecognizable and utterly still.
“Efficient,” the angel observes with a nonchalant shrug.
“Brutal,” Rhett adds, sounding disappointed. “But effective, I guess.”
Another scream splits the night, this one lasting longer, carrying notes of absolute horror before dissolving into wet, choking sounds. Closer this time. The other hunters are being harvested, their terror and agony feeding something in my brothers that transcends mere hunger.
“Move,” I order, already heading toward the sounds. “We clean this up. All of it.”