“And that’s why you’re still around? Because I’m a very interesting puzzle, and you’re old and bored? Or because I could be potentially useful to you?”
“No. I don’t think I care what you are anymore. Originally, it was a mystery, but I’ve discovered you are trouble no matter what you might be.”
“That doesn’t explain why you’re here now.”
“You’re smart enough to figure that one out. I’m not sure there are many reasons a man goes to hell for a woman.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Kase and I, we never talked. We didn’t admit anything. Where Troy liked to come out and say what he felt, and Hunter didn’t feel deeply enough for the need to have a conversation, Kase and I liked to exchange things in non-speak.
He didn’t say he cared, and I didn’t say I liked that he was there.
Even still…I couldn’t quite accept his words. I recalled Colter, remembered the coven house, and knew I had no idea where his loyalties really lay.
He might be a great piece of furniture, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill me if he needed to…
* * * *
I wiped my mouth after coughing and gagging some more.
As it turned out, werewolf and vampire physiology weren’t as affected by the smoke and ash as mine. Kase and Troy had no problem trekking along, mile after mile, while breathing in that junk.
Hunter lived here, so it didn’t bother him.
Grant coughed on occasion, but his immortality made him sturdier, which left me as the one who kept throwing up because the ash coated my esophagus and made me gag.
I wiped sweat from my forehead, already sick of hell.
Hunter passed a waterskin to me, the outside made of a leathery material that looked suspiciously like scales. I’d opened my mouth to ask Hunter what it was made of the first time he’d had it, but he’d told me it was better I didn’t know.
That seemed the general theme of hell. What was moving in the distance? What were those things flying above us? What was the shrieking?
Better not to know.
I took the water from Hunter and drank in large gulps, ignoring how warm it was.
Everything was warm. The breeze, the water, even in the shade, the rocks were hot to the touch.
Still, it was better than nothing, and the constant ash meant even warm water was helpful in clearing it away. Plus, he hadn’t tried to give me anything made of bone to drink from again, so I’d take the weird scale bag as a win.
“How can you figure out where you’re going here?” I handed back the waterskin.
Troy was far to the front, and Grant and Kase had taken up the rear. Hunter moved between the group, as if herding us all in the direction he wanted us to go.
“I feel it.” He pointed behind us. “That’s the way to the barrier, to the points between this world and the living world, and in the other direction, at the center, is Lucifer’s Court.”
“I thought you weren’t controlled by him.”
“I’m not. It isn’t his power that draws me, but the fact that it’s the center of hell, the draw point of the power in this place. It’s where hell connects to the other realms of the afterworld. Lucifer built his palace there because it was the center. It isn’t the center because he’s there, no matter what he’d like to think.”
A screaming echoed in the distance, died off to a whimper, then to nothing. I twisted to peer in that direction, even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to see it, and I probably didn’t want to.
Spindly trees rose around us in each direction, looking like dead things in the middle of winter, but they grew so densely they still obstructed the view.
“Relax,” Hunter said.
“How am I supposed to relax when things sound like they’re being eaten?”
“Well, they probably are being eaten.” He grinned when I offered him a shocked look. “However, the point is that they’re getting eaten because I’m not there to protect them. This is my home, Ava, and believe it or not, there isn’t much here I’m worried about. At least, not anything outside of the Court.”
“Forgive me, but you don’t look nearly as imposing as those things I’ve seen before, as whatever is eating that poor creature. You’re just a man and some smoke. I mean, a good-looking one, but I don’t think monsters are going to be like ‘he is sure handsome. Guess we won’t kill them.’”
“I still look like this because you won’t like me as much in my other form. Plus, no usable penis like that, and I’d really love to use mine on you, so I choose to keep looking like this.”
The casual way he said such things silenced me and made me think about how much I agreed.
Not about not liking him in another form, but about how I wouldn’t mind a repeat of our time together in the tent.
Or in my bed.
Really, so long as we were both naked, I wasn’t picky about the locale.
Another howl came through and woke me up.
We were in hell. That was not the best time for quickies.
He lifted his head and inhaled, slowly, tension filling him.
When Hunter looked nervous was about the time to panic…
I inched closer to him, unable to help it. I would much prefer to be nearer to him for reasons that had nothing to do with orgasms right then.
Well, other than I’d like to live long enough to have more of them.
“Fuck,” he muttered softly.
“What?”
Something in the distance came into view, but just barely. It wasn’t a shadow, not like the thing that plagued me, that we
