Page 57
“Go ahead,” he mutters, eyes squinting into the dark trees. “Say it.”
“Dude, say what?”
“Something about how I almost hurt her. How I completely lost control.”
“Well, yeah, there’s that.” I tug on the piercing in my lip with my teeth. “Last I knew, she was in the shower alone. I went in to check on her and found you choking her out on your dick.”
He winces. “I don’t even know what happened. One minute we were making out and the next–”
My eyebrow lifts, though I doubt he can see it in the dark. “If I hadn’t walked in–”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Hunter snaps, voice raw. “I just fucking blacked out.” He turns to me fully, eyes wild in the moonlight. I see real fear in them–not for what’s out there–but for what’s inside of him. “Just keep me away from her,” he implores, almost begging. “Please. Lock me in the fucking crypt if you have to. Chain me up. I don’t care. Just keep me away from her–she deserves better–especially after everything she’s been through.”
Hunter’s still hung up on what Billy told him before he died.
“Staying away from her is not a solution,” I tell him, shaking my head. “She wants to be with you. All of you. Even the dark parts.”
Hunter lets out a bitter, broken laugh. “Well, that’s not happening again. Ever.”
“You’re not abandoning her,” I tell him. “She’s already dealing with Timothy taking off for fuck-knows-where. You’re not bailing on her also.”
He drags a hand through his hair, pacing a few steps before stopping. “I haven’t even fucked her yet, you know that? Can you imagine? Actually being inside her? I’d probably choke her out and not even realize it until she stopped breathing.”
No. I don’t want to imagine it.
The image alone makes my stomach turn. Arianette underneath him, trusting, vulnerable. Hunter lost in that violent headspace that always seems just below the surface. I clench my jaw and look away.
Hunter calls out again, sharper this time. “Ares! Komm!”
For a moment, there’s only silence. Then we hear rustling in the dark woods beyond the tree line. Ares emerges from the shadows, trotting toward us with something clamped in his mouth.
“Drop it,” Hunter commands in German. “Aus!”
Ares hesitates, then reluctantly drops the object at Hunter’s feet.
Hunter crouches down and picks it up. “What is it?”
He holds it up, and I turn on my phone’s flashlight. It’s a small, black drawstring bag–heavy, made of thick, worn canvas.
“It’s a charm bag,” he says, lifting it and sniffing. His nose wrinkles.
I look over his head, toward the direction Ares came from. There’s a lot of Baron land out there. Spots where the group has held rituals over the years. “Is it one of ours?”
Hunter turns the bag over in his hands, jaw tight. “Not sure. I’ll have to open it up and see what it’s for.”
We both go quiet. The argument about Arianette, about what almost happened in the bathroom, suddenly feels smaller. Important, but secondary to this.
“If it’s not ours–”
I cut him off, voice low. “Then they’re closer than we thought.”
Hunter opens the bag carefully, like it might bite him, and carefully removes the items inside, laying them out on the long oak table in the library. Dried herbs tied with black thread. A few small bones and a folded piece of parchment with fresh symbols drawn in what looks like dried blood.
He holds up the bone between two fingers. “That explains why Ares zeroed in on it.”
“Any idea what it’s for?” I ask, leaning forward.
Hunter rests the bone with the rest of the items and crosses the room to the restricted bookshelf in the back corner. He pulls down a heavy, ancient-looking tome and flips through the pages until he finds what he’s looking for.
