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Even as I said it, it sounded incorrect. My instincts—never wrong—tingled, knowing this was something different. Something supernatural.

“Or a Black Annis.” Dante looked thoughtful as he chewed.

I gaped at him. “A Black Annis?” I echoed. “I’ve heard about maybe … three in the past decade here in the US.”

“Two,” he corrected. “Virginia and Rhode Island. Killed by yours truly.” He practically puffed up his chest.

I rolled my eyes. “So modest.” Even though my tone was dripping with sarcasm, I was impressed, and also intensely curious. I’d heard about them, researched them, but I’d never seen one in the flesh. They were on my bucket list.

He passed me a sexy—no, not sexy—smile. “I’ve never pretended to be modest, Hadley.” He finished eating, his fork clanking against the now empty dish.

“What evidence do you have that it’s a Black Annis?” I leaned against the counter. “They’re native to the UK.” Throughout the years, I had heard of cases of them popping up around the world, as far as New Zealand, even.

“So were forest wights,” he pointed out.

Touché.

I scrambled for what I knew about Black Annis. A gaunt hag with decaying skin, yellowing teeth, and long claws. Iron through the heart would kill her. Fire too.

My head spun as I racked my brain for more knowledge. I’d considered them in a couple of other cases, so I’d done rudimentary research before ruling it out. You could ward homes with chalk, iron nails, or blue paint to keep one out. But no civilians would do that because they didn’t know she existed. Before we all became so skeptical, people used to ward their homes against them.

Apparently, the first known Black Annis originated in a small town in the UK, working as a nun who cared for the poor but killed disobedient children. The legend said that in her early years, she punished those children severely until one in her care died.

Based on what I read, she was created from godly women who sinned against children in their human life, their spirits darkening and mutating into a Black Annis upon their death.

Though there was contention on that too. I liked the idea of people who hurt children being transformed into something horrible, but I didn’t love them; they still had the power to hurt children. Shouldn’t they be toiling away in hell somewhere?

That was the thing about this world… Sometimes, bad people turned into worse monsters upon their deaths. No rest for the wicked and all that.

“How can you be sure it’s a Black Annis?” I asked him, fiddling with the knife at my belt.

“Seven victims. Seven years apart.” He put the Tupperware in the dishwasher after rinsing it. “Taken from bed. Interviews from the parents of the last victim said he was having trouble at school, staying up later, talking back to his parents.”

“And Black Annis target ‘disobedient’ children,” I mused.

Dante nodded. “Which is all children, since I’ve never met one of the little fuckers who actually did what it was told.”

I barked out a laugh, though it was darkly ironic. He was right; no child, even the best behaved—though I had yet to receive proof that well-behaved children existed—was safe from the Black Annis. Technically, any kind of defiance made them a target. If they had the bad luck to live wherever one hunted. In one period of the seven years, it fed.

I considered Dante. His messy hair fell over his brow, no bun today. He’d shrugged his jacket off to showcase muscled, tattoo-covered arms. His fingers were stacked with silver rings. There was a gun at his belt.

He was a dark smudge in the light, classic kitchen. I liked that. Him being here to replace memories of the present, to stop making me feel so out of place.

Furthermore, I was beginning to almost like Dante. At the very least, his company was not offensive. Although my pussy sometimes throbbed with hunger when he winked or smiled at me.

I had not forgotten about the kiss in the hot spring, at the way my body had come alive for him, beyond mere attraction.

Working with him while searching for the wolf was a bad idea. It was an even worse idea to completely sideline the wolf hunt in search of the notoriously hard-to-track Black Annis.

Though I needed to kill something. And there were no other hunters in the area. Yet. If it were a Black Annis, we needed to kill it before it struck again, drawing in other hunters, making this whole thing more complicated. I was curious to see one, kill one, and to ensure that Dante didn’t add a third to his list, making his ego even bigger.

“I get the kill,” I told him after mulling it all over.

“You get the kill if you earn the kill, like a good girl,” he returned with a glint to his eye.

I was across the room in a few strides, hand into his holster, removing his gun to place the barrel at his crotch.

Dante didn’t even flinch. He kept eye contact with me, his orbs dancing with amusement and a healthy dose of sexual hunger. It sparked a hunger of my own, but I kept my scowl in place.