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Fucking nothing but a slew of bad decisions in my wake. Kissing two men who now followed me like puppy dogs. Though neither had puppy energy. Colton was golden retriever, and Dante… Well, Dante was a pit bull. Or hellhound.

Neither of those were suited for me.

I wasn’t suited for anyone. The hunt—that’s what I was here for. Not to get myself into some fucked-up love triangle.

The morning after the Black Annis hunt and the kiss with Colton, I slept late. Woke with agony in my hands, a pounding headache, and a renewed determination to find my wolf, kill it, then get the fuck out of here.

Angela was a good lead for the witch, especially since she appeared almost exactly at the same time the attacks started. My research focused mostly on her for the rest of the day, which rapidly drained my will to live. Her social media was vapid, narcissistic, and completely devoid of any dark, occult, soul-selling shit. If you didn’t count posting your entire life on a platter for the world to see as selling your soul—which I did. But if I suspected every woman in her thirties wearing Gucci belts and flaunting Pilates outfits for the masses as being a demon-blessed witch, I’d never sleep.

Her family did indeed found Salt Hill, and her father had a law practice there. I’d dug up what I could on mysterious deaths in that area.

Salt Hill bordered the same woods as Dreadwood Falls, and they were under a different jurisdiction, but there were enough animal attacks to make me suspicious. Though without access to forensic records, I couldn’t be sure of anything. My instincts screamed when I saw what I could, though. It was all connected. Bigger than I expected. Too many supernatural-style deaths for an area that size.

Donny was on it, breaking past firewalls, getting autopsy reports. She was of the same opinion, that someone with serious juice was pulling strings there. It spooked her enough to tell me to be careful.

Me? Careful?

It was laughable and borderline insulting to say that to me. Though it unnerved me, just a little, to hear that from the hunter, knowing what she’d seen. Something was spiking her own instincts, which she’d honed since she was a kid.

Even if this was bigger, more dangerous than even I’d expected, nothing was going to stop me.

I’d tail Angela, just to be sure. Break into her house. The usual stuff.

Though that would take a little more planning, which I intended on doing in the daylight. Yet here I was, awake in the middle of the night. Again.

I’d decided to stop fighting it.

And maybe find the source of my unrest.

I needed to visit my parents’ graves.

Maybe if I faced them, stood in the soil that had since been fertilized with their decaying flesh, I would be able to fucking sleep.

I operated on a scant amount of sleep as an occupational hazard, but even for me, I was running on fumes. My body ached all over from the fight with the Black Annis and ensuing lack of sleep. My palms looked gnarly and hurt like a motherfucker. But the skin was already turning pink, beginning to heal. It must’ve felt worse than it was.

Most people would be afraid to be in a cemetery at three in the morning. But they were probably some of the safest places you could be, supernaturally speaking. Too many dead humans, souls gone, nothing but bones and forgotten dreams.

Unless you were me, apparently.

Then you were attacked by a ghoul before you could even give your dead parents a rudimentary hello.

It was the scent that made it so it didn’t catch me completely unawares. It was sickly sweet, like overripe fruit mixed with foul dirt.

I whirled at the last second, my eyes landing on the creature that had possessed the last person buried there—ghouls liked the freshest dead; it gave them the most power. Which was why they didn’t usually hang around in graveyards. Murder sites, morgues, and funeral homes were where I was used to finding them.

The body it was using was not fresh. The skin was gray, falling off in large patches, the corpse bloated in the shredded remains of a sundress. Thin strands of white hair clung to its skull.

“When did this place become the mecca for all things non-human and fucking nasty?” I huffed to myself, dodging its swipe of claws.

The ghoul roared at me. Right in my face. The rank odor of decomposing flesh turned my stomach. I regretted eating a gas station burrito for dinner.

I reached for my dagger, then I roared right back. A really loud, feral roar. All of my frustration, grief, almost a lifetime of swallowed sadness, all encompassed in a body-shaking howl that scraped my throat.

It didn’t scare the ghoul, of course. But it made me feel better. Better enough to dodge another claw and use a headstone as a jumping off point to launch myself behind it. It collapsed onto all fours, scurrying toward me, hurling itself over headstones.

I rolled back on my heels, standing my ground as it moved through the air. I held my breath as my knife hurtled from my hand and hit true. Right in the eyeball.

The creature let out a horrid screech, dropping down into the dirt before rolling around, steam rising from its eye socket.