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  HUNTER UNDONE

  Eden Ashe

  Hunter Undone © copyright 2016 Eden Ashe

  Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Cover by Fiona Jayde

  Hunter Undone

  Choosing him could cost her everything.

  A psychic gypsy. A demon hunter living in the shadows.

  Tyler Wade’s entire life revolves around hunting down and killing the things that go bump in the night.

  Shay Evernight embraces everything Tyler fights against. She talks to ghosts, she has terrifying visions of his future, and she’s determined to help Tyler's mother. His long-dead mother.

  When the truth of his mother’s disappearance comes to light, demons start popping up around town, and Shay’s visions get more terrifying. Can two people who have spent their lives in the shadows of their secrets come into the light together a war clouds gather?

  Chapter 1

  Twenty years after clawing his way out, Tyler Wade was crawling back inside the belly of the beast.

  In the passenger seat next to him, Malia lowered her bare feet from his dashboard and sat up straighter, pushing her sunglasses to the top of her head.

  “This is it? This is the hellmouth you’ve been avoiding for two decades?” She lowered her window and peered at the quaint Michigan lakeside town. “It looks like a forgotten Gilmore Girls set.”

  “I don’t know what that means.” Pulling his truck to a stop at one of the town’s three stoplights and leaned forward, deliberately ignoring the people on the sidewalk staring at them. The sun was setting, which didn’t give him and Malia much time to get their shit done and get the hell out of dodge.

  Malia twisted in her seat to look behind them, before shaking her head. “Everyone’s waving at us. That can’t be normal.”

  “Like I said. Hellmouth.” Sighing, reached over her to open the glove box, pulling out a piece of pink folded paper and his handgun. He shoved the note into his front pocket and the weapon into the waist of his jeans at his lower back. Popping his door open, he lifted his brow at her. “You know what you’re doing?”

  She blew a bubble before shoving her feet into flowered—for fuck’s sake—combat boots. “Of course. Sweet talk the case file off the record’s clerk.”

  She hopped out of his truck and bounced around it until she was next to him on the sidewalk. Thanks to the sheer amount of energy in her, he’d developed an eye twitch two months into their working together. Four years later, he accepted the twitch was here to stay.

  She planted her hands on her hips and looked up at him. “You sure you want to open this particular can of worms?”

  Hell-fucking-no he wasn’t sure. He didn’t like a goddamn thing about this, but the note in his pocket may as well have have been an anchor for the difficulty it caused him. It had been three months since he’d first seen it, and it had been weighing him down since.

  Tyler,

  My name is Shay. You don’t know me, but you need my help. I live in a town called Willow Springs, Michigan. I was recently…contacted by a deceased woman who says she’s your mother. She said you’re too stubborn to find peace until you solve her murder, so you need to come home. She has made me promise to help you.

  P.S. Just so you know I’m not cracked, because she is certain you will think I am, she said to tell you that Wilfred is buried underneath the back porch steps. He’s still there, waiting for you.

  P.S.S. I am really hoping that Wilfred isn’t a dead dog or cat or something. Or a person. Because deal’s off, then.

  Shay Evernight

  For three months, the name had convinced him the woman was just off-her-rocker bonkers. He didn’t even care how she knew about Wilfred. And then, in the end, it was the name that had driven him crazy with doubt. The Evernight family were crackpots, had been for centuries. But that knowledge didn’t make that one little niggle of doubt that continued to gnaw at his brain every day go away. He didn’t have time for this shit. While the authorities had searched for his mother, and the other women who’d gone missing around the same time, they’d never found anything to indicate her death.

  The annoying cracking of Malia’s gum brought him back. He sighed in frustration. She was capable enough, but four years into their partnership her irritating quirks still made him want to lock her in a closet somewhere until she finally—fucking finally-ran out of words.

  With a shake of his head, he turned and headed in the other direction. “Jail is that way. I’ll meet you back here in an hour.”

  He made it twenty feet before a little, gnarled old lady with a pouf of lilac-colored hair stepped in his path and crossed her arms over her chest.

  Before he could move around her, she lifted her cane and nailed him in the gut with it. “I don’t know you.”

  Obviously. He lifted a brow. But while he’d been raised and living in fighter mode for the last twenty years, he still had an ingrained sense of respect for his elders. Mostly.

  “No, ma’am,” he said, “you don’t.” He nodded his head and took a step around her. “Have a nice day.” When she simply moved with him, blocking his escape, he sighed. “Can I help you?”

  Her wrinkled brow furrowed as she continued to study him.

  “Welcome to Willow Creek.” She shook her head. For a moment, he worried the sheer amount of hair on the top of her head was going to break her neck with the movement, but she didn’t seem fazed by it. “Can I help you?”

  Deciding not to point out that he’d just asked her the same thing, he started to tell her no, and then thought better of it. Because she was here, there was no point in dicking around. He wanted to get the hell out of this town before he got sucked back in. So he nodded instead. “I’m looking for Shay Evernight. Do you know where I could find her?”

  The friendly look disappeared, and she narrowed her eyes at him. Her spine snapped as straight as her old bones would allow, putting her at a full four-and-a-half feet tall.

  “I don’t know you,” she said again.

  She had to be fucking with him. He crossed his arms over his chest. Fuck, he hated this town. “No, ma’am.”

  She canted her head and sized him up.

  “In that case,” she said, nodding once, so firmly he was a little afraid the motion would turn her brain to mush, “I don’t know where she is.”

  He lowered his head toward her. “Are you sure?”

  “Wait a minute.” Her cloudy blue eyes studied him. “Are you sure I don’t know you? You look familiar all of a sudden, and I never forget a face.”

  “I’m sure, ma’am. Shay?”

  Her brows drew together. It took her a moment before she finally scowled at him and stepped back, pointing toward the end of the downtown area. “You could try the…”

  She moved in closer and peered up at him. Realization sparked in her eyes.

  He caught the faintest hint of baby powder and roses.

  “And you say you’re looking for
Shay?” she asked.

  For the love of bacon. “Yes, but I’m not—“

  She cut him off by batting at the air. “Yes, she’s definitely in the body shop. Try there.”

  Before he could figure out why she was being so helpful when her eyes were full of mistrust, she glared up at him before she turned and walked away, her head held high.

  Swearing under his breath, he jogged across traffic—what the town considered traffic, at least—and headed toward the body shop he’d passed on the way in. He played what he knew of the Evernight family in his head. Phoenix Evernight, now in her eighties, was a ‘psychic,’ in the most absurd form of the word. Convinced as a child that she had magic powers, she’d never outgrown that belief, and still flaunted her abilities. Raven Evernight, her daughter, rumored to have been a black magic witch, had been the town’s one murder casualty, while her daughter, Shay, was an enigma. He’d found nothing on her outside of school transcripts, a credit report, and an arrest record longer than his arm.

  None of which made sense. She’d gotten straight As in school, apparently brilliant enough to graduate at sixteen with honors, her credit report was flawless with not even a single contested doctor bill on it, and despite the mile-long rap sheet, he couldn’t find record of a single charge ever being brought against her. He didn’t understand how a woman who got arrested on what looked like a monthly basis for disorderly conduct and assaulting an officer never spent more than an afternoon in jail.

  It didn’t matter, really. The woman had been raised by her bat-shit crazy grandmother, and after reading the charges that had been brought against her mother before her murder, which were pretty freaky, he expected nothing other than a flamboyant, obnoxious shrew of a woman.

  Who was not in the town’s only body shop. Not that he was surprised. But with nowhere else to look, he stepped up to the counter, anyway. “I’m looking for Shay Evernight. I was told she’d be here.”

  Young, with the name “Garret” sewn onto the breast of his dirty gray coveralls, the kid at the desk gaped at him. “Someone sent you here? To look for Shay?” He grinned. “Yeah, man, I don’t think that’s ever happened. Shay being here, I mean.”

  Gritting his teeth, Tyler braced his arms on the Formica countertop. “Do you know where I could find her?”

  Garret’s smile disappeared, suspicion darkening his freckled face. “Who’s asking?”

  Tyler decided to go a different route this time and forced himself to smile. “A friend.”

  “Nah, I don’t believe you.” The kid said it easily, like Tyler’s six foot five frame, which put him a good eight inches over the brat, meant nothing to him. “You said a nosy woman with purple hair and blue eyes sent you here?”

  Tyler’s jaw started to ache from clenching his teeth. “I did not say she was nosy, but yes. Short. Gray-purple hair. Blue eyes.”

  The kid shrugged, and then offered him a smile. “Okay, then, if Celia sent you here, I’d check her grandmother’s place. She’s probably there.”

  Tyler studied him for a moment, before he raised a brow. “You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Fine.” He didn’t believe the kid for a heartbeat, but having her grandmother’s address couldn’t hurt. “Where does Phoenix live?”

  “Go to the south edge of town. If you hit the river, you’ve gone too far.”

  That was helpful. “Yeah, thanks, kid.”

  Garret grinned at him. “No problem, man.”

  Tyler shot him an irritated look on his way out the door. He had no doubt this Shay chick was anywhere in this town but at her grandmother’s. It wasn’t even in him to be amused by their obvious loyalty to the woman. He was here because she’d contacted him, not to make her life hell.

  On his way out of the body shop, he pulled out his phone and did an address search for the grandmother. It was at least a place to get information. In his experience, most grandparents lived to talk about their grandkids, and he was hoping Phoenix Evernight wouldn’t be an exception. His grandparents were, but that was its own story.

  “Do I know you?”

  He staggered to a stop at the soft, feminine voice that came from directly in front of him. Not in the mood for any more games, he looked up from the cell phone, a sneer already tugging at his mouth.

  He almost didn’t see her. A good foot and a half shorter than him, she stood in the middle of the sidewalk, oblivious to the pedestrians that dwarfed her.

  Gypsy was the first word that came to his mind. A thick mass of pure black hair was pushed off her face, tamed by a sapphire hair scarf. A bright purple tank top clung to her like skin and showed off a hint of flat, toned belly, and the olive green skirt sat dangerously low on the gentle flare of her hips and covered her feet, except for the blue-tipped toes that peeked out.

  His brain went fuzzy. He slowly raised his gaze up her drop-dead body, pausing at her generous breasts for a heartbeat too long, before he met her eyes.

  Yeah, she was gypsy. It was in the dusted gold of her skin and the pure chocolate of her exotic eyes.

  His mouth watered, and the longer he stared at her, the more beautiful she became. Despite her barely five-foot size, she was all earthy, raw sexuality.

  As if reading the intention in his head to touch her, which he had no plans to do, she reached out and slapped a hand on his chest, the multi-colored bracelets that covered half of her forearm twinkling in the sunlight.

  “Who are you,” she asked, those dark eyes wary and steady as they searched his, “and why are you looking for me?”

  He stared down at her hand, which had flexed against his pecs like she enjoyed what she touched, before he lifted his gaze and narrowed his eyes at her. “Shay Evernight?”

  She dropped her hand and stepped back, putting enough space between them that she didn’t have to give herself a neck ache to stare up at him. She crossed her arms over that perfect chest.

  “Who are you?” Her cell phone beeped before he could answer, and she held up her hand to hold him off as she dug it out of her boho bag. She glanced at the phone screen, and then laughed while leaning to the side and waving at Garret in the body shop. “Got it, thanks!”

  Tyler turned to glare over his shoulder at the kid who’d obviously sent her a warning text telling her he was looking for her, before returning his attention to her. She was back to staring up at him, waiting for an explanation.

  “Tyler Wade.”

  When her eyes went wide, he nearly smiled. He didn’t miss the way she was trying to nonchalantly check him out, and he recognized attraction when it sparked in the air.

  “Do your friends always send people you invite to town on a wild goose chase just to find you?”

  She smiled. “Yes. Actually, I’ve asked them to stop, but that’s kind of like asking the wind to change directions. It can be done, but it’s usually not worth the effort.” While he just blinked at her, she tucked her phone back into her purse, her face turning serious. “We were beginning to think you weren’t going to come.”

  His body jerked. “We?”

  “Yes.” She moved in closer, her hand coming up to rest on his bicep. “I know you don’t want to hear this,” she murmured, “but your mother is dead, Mr. Wade. You know that, right?”

  He took a step toward her, suddenly furious. Twenty years of repressed grief and rage clouded his vision. “Really? How do you know this? How do you think you know anything about my mother?”

  She didn’t flinch back from him. Like she’d expected his temper and had already braced herself for it. She simply lifted her chin and held his gaze. “Did you go by the house? Did you find Wilfred? She—your mother—said he was still there.”

  “Really?” Tyler had no idea where all this temper had come from, but he hadn’t talked about his mother out loud since he’d been ten. It had either been lock it down, or go down a path of violence he’d never be able to pull out from. Then he’d been sent
to live with a monster, and the violent path had become his only option.

  “My dead mother has nothing better to talk to you about than a stuffed animal I lost when I was nine?” He dealt with demons and ghosts on a daily basis, but people like her—people pretending to be psychic when it was all bullshit to make money—pissed him the fuck off.

  “Oh, we have a lot to talk about, actually,” she countered, her slightly husky voice even, “but I didn’t think leading with the star-shaped scar on the inside of your left thigh would be polite. Or the small scar on your right butt cheek from when you fell out of a tree when you were seven.” Her delicate dark brow winged up. “I wouldn’t want to embarrass you on the street or anything.”

  He leaned forward, the urge to intimidate and back this woman off nearly overwhelming him. It wasn’t a feeling he was comfortable with, but he’d underestimated what being back in this place would do to his well-being.

  He bared his teeth at her instead. “Honey, trust me, it takes a hell of a lot more than talking about my ass to embarrass me. You don’t have what it takes.”

  A knowing look flashed over her exotic face before she shrugged and stepped back. Somehow, Tyler was aware it wasn’t a surrender or an admission of defeat, but a postponement of the battle she had every intention of winning.

  “There’s a bed and breakfast on the outskirts of town. Take Main until it Ts, take the left fork, and it’s down the broken pathway on the right. I’ll be around if you decide to take me seriously and stop being an ass.”

  As quickly as she’d appeared, she turned and started to walk away, weaving effortlessly through the traffic. He had just realized he’d cocked his head to watch her ass when she stopped and looked at him over her shoulder.

  “Word to the wise, Tyler,” she called back at him. “Don’t challenge me. I don’t back down easily, and I always win.”

  She was lost in the crowd before he could even think to form a response, and he just stood there on the sidewalk, shaking his head. Yeah. Coming back was a bad idea all the way around. He hated small fucking towns.