HunterUndone Page 12

  Tyler hit the floor as the freak crumpled like a house of cards. Moving quickly since the Latin had only been enough to stun it, he hunted through the living room until he found the duffel bag he’d left earlier. Without wasting time, he grabbed the holy water, and was halfway through the exorcism when the front door burst open.

  Deacon took one step inside and then drew up short. His gazed fixed onto the twisted creature on the floor. “Holy mother of God.”

  Tyler would have snorted if he wasn’t so goddamn pissed off.

  When he was finished, he jerked his chin at Deacon. “Find the broom and dust pan. We’ll need them in a minute.”

  Despite the stunned—and vaguely sick—look on Deacon’s face, he nodded and walked out of the hallway. Tyler crouched down next to the demon and, ignoring the body aches that were starting to set in, reached for the collar around the creature’s neck.

  He yanked on the chain until it snapped off. The spell that kept the demon leashed only lasted until it was dead and its soul sent back to hell.

  Reaching into his duffel for the last few items he needed, including the small cherry wood bowl. He tossed the chain into it, then added the other ingredients needed for the basic detection spell that would tell him who’d leashed it.

  It only took a moment before he had his answer—Jackson Fairweather. Son of a bitch, who was this fucker?

  By the time Deacon came back into the hallway, Tyler was so pissed off he was ready to annihilate something.

  Deacon exhaled slowly. “You look like shit, my friend.”

  Tyler sat against the wall, barely sparing him a glance.

  “Next time, you can kill the hellspawn and I’ll crack jokes.” Pushing himself to his feet, he grabbed the broom and started sweeping up the ashes the demon had left behind after disintegrating. “You got here quick.”

  “Apparently not soon enough.” Without a word, Deacon crouched and held the dust pan so Tyler could scoop up the ashes. “Where’s Shay?”

  Tyler ground his back teeth together so hard, he heard a molar crack. “Bathroom.”

  Deacon shot him a weird look as he straightened. “Is it safe to let her out?”

  Taking the dust pan from him, Tyler shook his head.

  “Give me five minutes, first.” He didn’t make it a step before Deacon grabbed his arm, halting him. Too pissed off to be friendly, he snarled. “What, asshole?”

  Deacon wasn’t intimidated. “Where are you going?”

  A smart ass reply was on the tip of Tyler’s tongue, but between the fatigue battling against the left over adrenaline coursing through his system, he didn’t have it in him to go another round with anyone at the moment.

  “To ward the place.” He held out one of his knives, handle first. “Take this. It won’t kill a higher-level demon, but it sure as hell will fuck it up long enough for me to get back here.”

  Deacon grabbed the knife, slipped it beneath his leather jacket at his lower back, and let him go.

  Tyler headed toward the back door. “Hey, Ty?” Deacon said quietly.

  Tyler halted, shoulders slumping. “What?”

  “Hayden.” Deacon cleared his throat. When he spoke again, there was just enough pissed-off worry in his voice to strike a sympathy chord in Tyler. “Is she safe here, on the property?”

  Glancing over his shoulder, Tyler met Deacon’s gaze head on.

  “I’ll ward hers while I’m at it.” Sighing, he pushed a hand through his hair. “I’m not a witch, Deke. I can’t guarantee whoever is behind all this shit isn’t stronger than any spells I know, but she’ll be as safe as I can make her. I promise.”

  Deacon shoved his hands into his pockets. “Thanks.”

  Tyler nodded and despite the war raging inside his system, he had to smile at the pure misery on Deacon’s face. Whether Deke wanted to admit it or not, the asshole was fucking gone over his woman.

  At least he wasn’t in the goddamn boat alone.

  ***

  It took Tyler longer than he’d expected. With Hayden and Ivy staying on the property along with Shay, it meant too many vulnerable spots if he only protected the houses. It left the spaces between the driveway and all doors wide open to attack, and that just made him uncomfortable as shit.

  For the first time since he’d gone to live with his sadistic uncle after his mother’s disappearance, Tyler didn’t hate the man for all the years of training he’d shoved down his throat. Whatever the hell was happening in Willow Creek, it revolved around Shay, and if Tyler hadn’t been here or known how to protect her, she’d be dead by now.

  Not that he wouldn’t still put a bullet through his uncle’s brain if given a chance. He may have given Tyler the knowledge to protect Shay, but it didn’t erase years of torture.

  He took his time walking the property line, not just to double and triple check his warding would hold, but because he knew he’d scare the hell out of Shay if she saw him right now. In just over twenty-four hours since he’d come back into town, she’d been attacked four times.

  Four.

  Fuck. He should have let Malia stay. While Tyler was good with his fists and knives, Malia was the part of their team that saw patterns and knew how to find a specific needle in a stack of needles.

  Deciding he didn’t have a choice, he dug his cell phone out of his back pocket and called her. When her everyday cell went straight to voicemail, he tried the back-up burner phone she always kept on her, and when she didn’t answer that, either, he leaned against the side of the house and called Leith.

  He answered on the third ring. “What.”

  Tyler rolled his eyes, not in the mood to deal with his partner’s mostly non-verbal form of communication. “Mal’s not answering her phone. Is she near you?”

  There was the sound of a door slamming in the background. “Why the hell would she be with me?”

  Anxiety wrapped its fist around his gut. “Leith, I’m not fucking around right now, and I’m not in the mood to decipher whatever weird relationship you two have going on. I just need to talk to her.”

  “She was with you yesterday, asshole.” Leith waited a beat, then two, before he snarled in Tyler’s ear. “You fucking lost her?”

  Shoving his free hand through his hair, Tyler turned in a small circle, half expecting to see Malia waiting in the distance, laughing at him. She always did shit like that—disappear for a day or two with a new guy she met, especially when the metaphorical ghosts of her past refused to stay dead. But she always kept one of her phones on. “She was on her way to you yesterday evening.”

  “Where are you?”

  Tyler didn’t question it. He didn’t believe in coincidences, and his gut told him something was way fucking wrong with this situation.

  “Willow Creek, Michigan.” He hesitated, then sighed. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

  “Fuck you.” The line disconnected.

  Comfortable with the temper in his blood, if not the raw fear that was grinding through him, he turned the corner toward the front of the house, the urge to see Shay with his own eyes outweighing everything else at the moment.

  Malia had grown up with him and Leith. He had to believe wherever she was, she could handle herself until they found her.

  ***

  While Deacon prowled the front porch behind her, his whole body braced against whatever attack came at her next, Shay sat on the top porch step, glaring out at nothing and thinking of ways to murder Tyler.

  He’d left her. He’d fought a freaking demon in her house, then instead of letting her see him with her own eyes to assure herself he was all right, he handed her over to Deacon and escaped.

  For the first time in her life, Shay wished she was bigger. Not just taller, but bigger, big enough he’d have to pay attention when she yelled at him or fought with him. Big enough he’d have to take her seriously.

  So maybe she knew why he was out warding her property. She’d seen the look in his eyes when
he’d thrown her into the bathroom, and it should have scared her. It had bypassed homicidal and gone straight into psychotic territory.

  She’d been attacked four times in the last few hours, and he hadn’t been able to stop any of them. The second before he’d shut the door on her, he’d looked crazy enough to tear the entire town of Willow Creek apart with his hands, decimating everything in sight that could be even a potential threat. To her.

  She got it. Something had built between them over the last day, and the emotions it caused didn’t show any signs of slowing down. Just the thought of him being in danger had rage and terror grinding viciously in her gut.

  Damn it, she was angry, too. She’d never hidden from a fight in her life, but nearly every fiber of her being wanted to run the hell away from this place, to get far enough away whatever was hunting her would never be able to find her.

  Then Tyler walked around the corner of her house, and a fist wrapped so painfully around her heart twisted so hard, she nearly cried out. He came to an abrupt stop, his brilliant blue eyes blazing at her with a mixture of emotion she thought would probably take her the rest of her life to untangle.

  She didn’t even realize she’d moved until she was across the yard and in his arms, holding on for dear life.

  He growled as he scooped her up and carried her back to the porch, one of his hands digging into her ass and the other one wrapped around the back of her neck, as if making sure her whole body was in contact with his. She wasn’t going to complain.

  He jerked his head toward Deacon, and then just sat on the porch with her in his lap, the crazy still in his eyes as he searched her face. “Are you hurt? Did it bite you anywhere? Scratch you?”

  Shay shook her head, her body giving one uncontrollable shudder at the memory if its mouth on her skin.

  “I’m fine, Ty.” When he narrowed his gaze at her, she frowned back at him. “What?”

  “You are not fine.”

  She snorted. “Of course not. My life has completely blown up in the last day. I’ve met this kinda sweet, stupid-hot demon hunter whose dead mother has decided to kill me, Jackson has gone farther off the deep end than should be humanly possible and oh, yeah. Two demons have tried to kill me.”

  Deacon cleared his throat behind them, but Tyler ignored him and brushed his thumb over her bottom lip. A cocky smile tugged at one side of his mouth. “I’ll give you stupid-hot, whatever that means, but I object to ever being called ‘sweet’.”

  “Yeah.” Deacon sat down next to them. “I second that one.”

  Shay chuckled quietly and wrapped her arms around Tyler’s neck, burying her face in his hair. “You’re a snuggler. That’s sweet.”

  He didn’t say anything for several long moments, and then he sighed and pulled her in closer. “Only with you, gypsy.”

  He’d said it so softly, she was almost convinced it was just wishful thinking on her part, but then she felt the erratic pounding of his heart. No matter what, she might just have to find a way to keep him.

  CHAPTER 17

  Tyler watched Shay head into the house, and while it set his teeth on edge to let her out of his sight, he wanted to talk to Deacon alone. This shit needed to end.

  “All right.” He turned to Deacon. “Who the hell is this Jackson Fairweather asshole?”

  Shoving his hands into the pockets of his faded jeans, Deacon leaned back against the railing. “I don’t know. And before you ask, I ran a search on him like you asked.” At Tyler’s unasked question, he shrugged. “There’s nothing on him, Ty. As much as I hate saying it, the man’s a fucking ghost. He doesn’t exist.”

  Tyler got to his feet, too restless to sit, and started to prowl the space in front of the house. “You’re the chief. You’re telling me you’ve never seen this guy?”

  “Of course I have.” He sighed. “Everyone in town knows of him. The problem is no one knows who he is or where he’s from.”

  “I don’t need to know where the hell he’s from. I just need to know where to find him.”

  Deacon turned to watch him, bracing his arms against the top edge of the porch railing. “I need you to listen to me very carefully, Tyler, okay? You cannot go after him. There is no evidence. You have nothing to prove he’s a threat to anyone, even Shay. Hell, I may be new to this mumbo-jumbo shit, but even I’m pretty sure someone could be using magic to set him up.”

  Grinding his teeth, Tyler stopped pacing and looked down for a moment. “You’re thinking like a cop, Deke. So maybe it’s time for you to leave.”

  He’d done a lot of fucked up shit in his life, but dragging a good cop into what he was planning wasn’t going to be one of them.

  When he looked up, it was straight into calm intellect and trust.

  “Fuck you,” Deacon said. “I’m not going anywhere. This is my town. Shay’s a friend, and she’s important to this town.”

  Stunned, all Tyler could do was snort. “You’re just worried Hayden will cut your balls off if you let anything happen to Shay.”

  “Damn fucking straight,” Deacon said without hesitating. “Doesn’t change anything. So what’s the plan?”

  Tyler rubbed at the migraine building in his left temple. Common decency told him he needed to shut Deke out, then handle this all on his own, but, logic said he not only could use the extra muscle, but his police connections, too.

  With a frustrated growl, Tyler started at the beginning and told Deacon everything that had happened that day, from his mother’s attack on Shay, to the apparition in the parking lot, and ended with the demon slipping past his defenses to attack her in her own bedroom.

  By the time Tyler was finished talking, Deacon looked just as ready to kill something as Tyler felt. Without a word to him, Deke turned and stalked across the porch to the front door, opened it, and then bellowed for Shay.

  When she came running, Tyler could have knocked Deacon’s head off his shoulders for putting fear into her eyes.

  Deacon lifted her off her feet in a giant bear hug. Tyler caught something in her eyes he couldn’t quite identify, before her perplexed gaze met his.

  Deacon shook his head at Tyler, though he wasn’t sure why, as she hugged him back.

  She kissed his cheek. “I’m okay, Deke. I promise.”

  Deacon hugged her a moment longer, and then kissed the top of her head. He set her back on her feet with surprising gentleness.

  As soon as her feet were back on solid ground, she squeezed Deacon’s hand and then turned to Tyler. Her smile didn’t come close to her eyes, and this time, he identified the shadows he’d seen in her when she came out—stark terror.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute, Ty?” Shay asked.

  Deacon glanced between the two, and then shrugged. “I need to go make a few phone calls. I’ll be back when I’m done.”

  Without another word, he jogged down the steps and headed toward his police SUV.

  Shay didn’t say anything until Tyler was directly in front of her, and Deacon was out of ear shot. Then the worry leached into her eyes. “The school just called me. Ivy never showed up to class after lunch.”

  The familiar sense of dread started to rebuild in his gut. “She’s seventeen. Maybe she ditched.”

  Shay shook her head. Reaching out, her fingers latched onto his “No. Not Ivy. She knows if she skipped a class Garret would be upset, and I’d ground her from seeing him. Those two haven’t gone a day without seeing each other in years.”

  He cursed under his breath. First Malia had gone MIA, and now Ivy? His brain wanted to automatically jump to worst case scenarios, but that would only serve to upset Shay even more, so he kept that worry to himself for now.

  “Hey.” For the first time that day, she looked close to panicking. She had to feel like her world was imploding, and he didn’t blame her one damn bit for wanting to cry. “We’ll find her, all right? Chances are, she’s with Garret making out somewhere and just lost track of time.”

>   “Ty— “

  “I know, gypsy.” He wrapped his arms around her and hauled her in, tucking her up against him until every inch of her soft, curvy body molded to his hard edges. “Nothing is going to happen to that girl. I promise, Shay. I’m not going to let you lose someone you love.”

  Pressing his lips to the top of her head, he breathed her in. But instead of calming him this time, her scent triggered every one of his over-protective instincts. She was hurting, and the only thing he knew was he needed to fucking fix it.

  ***

  Shay couldn’t sit still. School had ended hours ago, and there was still no sign of Ivy.

  After Shay had called him, hoping Ivy was with him, Garret had nearly torn the town apart looking for her. Now he sat on Shay’s couch, his face getting more drawn by the minute. As the clock rolled toward midnight, Deacon was nearly sitting on top of Garret to keep him from running out the door and tearing through every house in town until he found her.

  She knew the feeling well. While Tyler and Deacon were doing everything they could to put the pieces of her disappearance together, they weren’t moving fast enough.

  “We’ll find her, gypsy.”

  Her whole body stilled at Tyler’s rough voice, more growl than anything. Realizing that she was standing in Ivy’s room, and unaware of how she’d even gotten there, she turned to look up at him. Exhaustion tightened the lines around his mouth, but it was the edge of wild hunter in his eyes that worried her. He was shirtless, barefoot, and two thick strands of hair had escaped the small knot he’d twisted it into hours before.

  Despite the wild storm raging in her blood stream, and the fear that was desperately trying to eat her alive, she’d never been more grateful to see a face. “I need to go see Phoenix.”

  He blinked at her once, twice. Then he just snorted and shoved his hands into the pockets of his ripped jeans. “No. You’re not going anywhere.”

  She frowned up at him, too emotionally wrung out to appreciate the view of his shirtless chest. But the heat and safety of it beckoned her, and she took a step toward it before she even realized she’d given herself permission to move. Once she was close, nothing could have stopped her from wrapping her arms around his waist and holding on.