Now I’m seeing red. I take slow, calculated steps down the hall, straining my ears to hear everything I can.
“Last but not least,” a gruff voice says.
“No, please, no more,” the woman cries. Her voice sounds familiar, but I can’t recall where I’ve heard it before.
A man laughs, and another deep voice says, “Last one, precious curse. You’re doing so fucking well. How I wish I could lick up those beautiful tears, though.”
“When I find out who you are, I’m going to kill you,” the woman says, venom dripping from every word.
I stop just outside the door where the voices are coming from. It’s cracked just enough for me to peek inside, and I watch as a man, naked from the waist down, thrusts into a nude woman. She lies completely bare before him, her hands tied and held by another man positioned above her head.
Her scream pierces the air, and before I can stop myself, I’m shoving the door open. I rip the man raping her away and throw him to the ground. Fury courses through my blood as I approach him. But he transforms before me, a black shadow taking over to make him larger than he’d been.
A demon.
Which I’ve never dealt with before.
The door behind me is thrown open again, slamming hard against the wall, and all I see is a blur of movement entering the room. A woman stops before the demon at my feet, the visible bits of her skin literally rippling like water. She reaches directly into the center of the demon’s shadowy depths, pulling out something that glows an odd green from the area where his chest should be.
His body slackens—he’s already dead.
Across the room, another man I hadn’t noticed whispers, “Oh, fuck.”
He moves just as fast as the black-haired woman beside me, but she’s catching up to him in an instant, jumping onto his back, and sinking her teeth into his neck. Reaching over his head, he grabs her hair and then stumbles, knees hitting the floor, although he recovers quickly, jumping back to his feet. As he does this, one of the woman’s hands digs into his shoulder while the other wraps around his throat. The man screams, but it turns into a gurgle when the woman rips out his trachea, and he falls face-first onto the floor. The woman jumps off before she joins him. Blood streams down her chin onto her clothes, and I finally realize who she is.
The hunter—Avyanna.
Her eyes are pure black as they meet mine. “Find her some clothes or a blanket. Quickly.”
My eyes dart around the room, taking in my surroundings for the first time since I entered, while Avyanna takes off toward the remaining man, who’s just staring at us in shock. The woman on the bed lies there limp. I have the urge to check on her, but I know Avyanna will do so when she takes care of the last threat.
I return my attention to looking around the room. Just beyond where Avyanna downed the second man, I spot what looks to bea walk-in closet. I don’t pay the dead man any attention as I step over him and begin my search for something to wrap the woman in. Numerous blankets sit nicely folded on a shelf, so I grab a couple of them and head back into the room.
As I walk through the doorway, the last man screams. Avyanna has him on his knees, her hand in his hair, forcing him to look up at her.
He begs, “Please. I was just doing what they told me to do. They threatened my family.”
Avyanna’s voice resonates through the room as she gets in his face. “Your family is already dead, Lyall. I know everything there is to know about you. I know everything about all the men who were tasked with watching over her. And still you failed because you’re a pathetic excuse of a man. I can see right through you. I know what you’ve done, and I know you enjoyed touching what ismine.My only wish is that I had more time to make you suffer.”
The man starts begging again, but Avyanna snaps his neck, the sound echoing through the room. She lets his body fall to the floor and returns to the woman on the bed, who lies eerily still. I approach, holding my breath as Avyanna removes the cloth sack from the woman’s head.
It’s Roxi.
Avyanna checks Roxi over, her skin doing the weird rippling thing the closer she looks. Bruises already dot Roxi’s ankles, hips, and wrists, but some have started to develop on other parts of her body. What the hell did they do to the poor woman?
Ripping a blanket from my hand, Avyanna says, “I need to get her to my apartment. She can’t be here anymore. I’m not letting her out of my sight again. Ever.”
“It’s not your fau—”
After laying the blanket over Roxi, Avyanna rounds back on me. “Itismy fault! I didn’t make sure she got home safely. I wasfrustrated about what happened in the alley, so I tried to walk it off. But I felt deep down that something was wrong, and I came straight here. When I heard her screaming, I lost it. I should’ve kept at least one of them alive so I could question them. Fuck!”
Her hand runs through her hair, and I’m itching to try to calm her down. “It was her choice to leave you in the alley. You were just trying to give her some space. What matters most now is that you’re here.”
“You’re right, but I don’t feel any better about it. I knew I should’ve followed her until she was safe.”
“The past is in the past. Let’s leave it there. We can’t change what happened, but we can definitely influence what will happen next,” I say.
She paces back and forth in front of Roxi. Then she stops abruptly and turns to where Roxi lies. “How did they even know where she was?”
