Not Quite Dead (A NightHunter Novel) Read online

  "Not everyone has a skeleton that can choke the life out of them on a moment's notice," she observed.

  "Yeah, well, poor deprived bastards then, right?" Yeah, he knew she was digging for information, but he didn't want to talk about it. Instead, he reached into the back of his truck and pulled two flashlights out of his bag. He handed one to Jordyn as he climbed out. "I assume the electricity doesn't work anymore."

  "I think that's a safe assumption." She sounded grim. "It didn't work much when I lived here." She started to walk across the yard, and he kept close behind her, flashing his light over the surroundings.

  The light from a nearby house shone through the trees on his right, and he could hear voices laughing. To his left, he could just make out another house, one that was brightly lit and looked huge. "You lived next door to a mansion?"

  "It wasn't there when I was a kid. The neighborhood is being upgraded. No developer wants this property though."

  "Why not? Money talks, doesn't it?"

  "So do rumors. Supposedly, this land is cursed."

  He turned the light on her. "Cursed? As in a real curse?"

  "Yep. Everyone who has ever owned this property has died in a pool of their own blood." Her face was pale and glowing in his beam. "Guess who owns it now?"

  "You."

  "Me." She managed a smile that didn't reach her eyes, then turned away to flash her light over a small headstone. "The best dog ever," she said softly. "She bit my dad three times, once so badly that he couldn't use his right hand for a month. I loved her so much. She was part pit bull and part Rottweiler. She used to sleep with her head on my stomach, and once I got her, my dad never messed with me again." She laughed softly. "Well, it wasn't until the third time she bit him that he figured it out. After she bit his thigh, less than an inch from his crotch, he learned his lesson well enough to remember it even when he was so drunk he couldn't recall his own name. He threatened to shoot her, and I just told him that I'd get another one, and that maybe the next one would bite him in the throat instead of the thigh." She grinned. "And I might have taught her to go for his crotch as well. Maybe."

  "I can see you doing that." Eric couldn't believe the warm good humor in Jordyn's voice as she spoke of her dog. Clearly, her dad had been a complete piece of shit, and had probably laid a hand on her more than once, but she wasn't dwelling on that. Instead, she was telling stories about her dog and smiling. The woman was resilient and a fighter, no doubt about that. As he said...impressive. Riveting. Compelling. Sexy as hell. Every word out of her mouth heightened his attraction to her.

  She deserved a good guy, a better guy than he was even on his best day, but he had a bad feeling that after a few more hours in her company, he wasn't going to care. He couldn't get her out of his head. He couldn't stop picturing her as a skinny kid, hiding from her roaring drunk of a father, hunkering down in the swamp with just a dog to protect her.

  Well, that day was over. She didn't have a dog, but she had him. She'd come back to town to help him find Tristan, and there was no way in hell he was going to leave her unprotected, not from vampires or memories. No matter what. He glanced out at the woods around them, and sent a message to his brother. Tristan, don't you dare hurt her and make me have to choose. You hear me?

  Silence.

  After a lifetime of mental telepathy with his brother, there had been radio silence for a year, and he didn't like it.

  Apparently oblivious to the protectiveness raging through him, Jordyn ran her toe over the ground in front of the grave. "Such a good girl," she said, her voice tinged with sadness. "I left home the day after she died, when I was sixteen. There was no reason to stay once she was gone."

  Eric noted the heart etched on the old wooden headstone. Crooked, as if the hand that had carved it had been trembling with grief. Instinctively, he took a step toward her and set his hand on her lower back. He had no idea how to comfort her, but touching her felt like it made sense. "What was her name?"

  She leaned into his touch, just barely, but he noticed. So, yeah, right call then.

  "Molly." Jordyn shined the light around, and he saw a tattered tire swing hanging from a nearby tree. "David put that up for me. We used to swing out over the swamp and jump in. David, my friend Skye, and I."

  He studied the thick, swampy area. "Seriously? What about gators?"

  "The risk was part of the fun." She grinned at him, a sudden sparkle in her eye. "Aren't you a risk-taker?"

  He was surprised by the change in her personality. They were in a brutally depressing place, and yet she seemed to be vibrating with more life and energy than he'd ever seen before. How did someone shine when surrounded by such hell? But there was no doubt about it. Something about her had shifted, and she was more confident and more self-assured. Was it the memory of a dog that had kicked ass and taken names on her behalf? Or the friend that had built her a swing? Or the recollection that she'd braved gators and won on numerous occasions? He didn't know, but somehow, in this mire of hell, she'd found strength.

  And damn if that didn't make her even more attractive, which was great, of course, because he definitely needed to be even more into her than he already was, right? Not so much.

  Shit. He was going to have to get her naked, wasn't he? He was pretty sure he was.

  Jordyn walked across the junkyard, her flashlight skimming over the carnage. "You know," she said, "I didn't want to come back here. I avoided returning to the house when I came back for my dad's funeral, but there's something about being here that feels good." She crouched next to a flat patch of dirt and ran her hand over it. "It just feels like a piece of me that's been missing suddenly came back to me." She glanced at him. "It doesn't make sense, does it? This was a terrible place for me, but I feel more complete being here."

  He walked up beside her, still scanning his light over the woods around them. "It's home," he said. "It's your roots. It made you who you are today."

  She let some dirt sift through her fingers. "But it was a bad home."

  "With a loyal dog and a couple good friends, right?"

  She smiled at him. "True." Wiping her hands, she stood up. "Where's your home, Eric? Where do you and Tristan come from?"

  He shrugged. "We were dumped on the steps of an orphanage when we were three weeks old with a note that had our names and the fact that I was two hours older than Tristan. That's all we know."

  Her brow furrowed. "So, what about Tristan's powers of resurrection? How did you find out about that?"

  "The hard way. Little boys like to play in cemeteries." He grinned, remembering that day. "When that old man came out of the ground with a hatchet in his hand, I've never run so fast in my life. We were scared as hell. The dude was half-decayed and he disintegrated the moment Tristan starting running, but it gave us ideas, and after that, we started messing around. We did some cool shit, some really stupid shit, and a lot of stuff that ended up nowhere."

  She cocked her head. "What about you? What do you do? Can you resurrect bodies, too?"

  "Nope. I'm a spirit guy. Ghosts. Specters. That kind of stuff. I can summon the energy of spirits and use it to do things. It's kind of like magic, but my power comes from spirits. What I can do depends on the nature of the energy I harvest at that time. It can be a little dicey, but it usually works pretty well." He looked over his shoulder at the woods again. A faint layer of fog was rolling in. "Should we be moving on?"

  She followed his glance, and hopped to her feet. "No, I need to get some stuff. Come this way." She hurried past him, and he followed her as she headed off down a trail behind the house. It seemed to lead straight into the swamp, but at the last moment, the path curved to the right so it went beside the mucky water. The trail was overgrown so thickly that he wound up pulling out his dagger and cutting a path for them. The farther they traveled, the quieter Jordyn became, and the darker the swamp became...except for the mist sliding over the surface of the water.

  His hand on the hilt of his knife, he moved nearer to
Jordyn. "Tell me how we kill Cicatrice, if he shows up. Beheading, fire, and a wooden stake?"

  "No. Those won't kill him. They'll slow him down, but not finish him off." She shoved aside a huge branch, and suddenly they were in a clearing. He flashed his light around and saw an ancient wooden totem pole in the center of the clearing. Burn marks scarred the carvings, and the paint was old and faded. Bones lay in random designs around the base of it. Some of them were crumbling and gray, almost completely decomposed by the earth...but there was a small pile of them in a perfect pyramid, and the bones were gleaming white. Fresh and picked clean of all flesh. "Shit. Your grandmother didn't leave those, did she?"

  "Those are new," Jordyn said, pointing to the pile of white bones. "Someone's been here." She whipped around, shining her light into the woods. "My grandmother died when I was ten. She was the last gifted magi in our family. I'm the only other one who can work this site."

  "Apparently not." Tension slid down Eric's spine, and he dropped to his knee, shining his light on the earth. The ground was soft from the damp marsh, but there were no indentations. "No footprints," he said. "Do vampires leave footprints?"

  "If they're walking, they do."

  "And if they're...flying around like a bat?"

  She laughed. "They don't turn into bats. That's such a stereotype." She eased past Eric and into the clearing, giving the pyramid of bones a wide berth as she moved past it.

  "So, the bats are a stereotype. They're all just vicious, blood-sucking monsters who will rip out your throat while their soulless bodies echo with the emptiness of their lack of humanity?"

  She laughed again. "Something like that."

  He grimaced. "I was joking." Well, he'd hoped he was. Apparently not.

  He finally noticed the five-foot wide wooden shed that Jordyn was heading toward. It looked almost like a dilapidated outhouse, and an old, rusted padlock held it shut. A heavy spiritual energy surrounded it. There was a sense of warmth and safety, but it was intermingled with angry black jabs of pure evil. Something was inside that shed, something that was too damn close to being alive. "Jordyn, don't open that—"

  Too late. With a few quick twists, Jordyn had already unlocked it and pulled the door open.

  Chapter 7

  "Wait!" Eric grabbed Jordyn's shoulder and yanked her back just as she opened the door.

  She stumbled back as he jumped in front of her, his knife up. Thick energy clawed at her skin, and the hair lifted off the back of her neck. Eric was braced in the doorway, his body tense and ready.

  There was a sudden screech, a howl so loud that Jordyn clapped her hands over her ears and went down on her knees. A black shadow burst out of the shed, streaking right at her. For a split second, she thought she saw a jagged, tormented face screaming as it raced toward her. Its incisors lengthened, and she scrambled back, fear tearing through her.

  "No!" Eric shouted, and there was a sudden rush of wind. It tore through the clearing, grabbed the specter, and ripped the phantom away from her. It shrieked with agony as it was torn apart, its body dissolving into a thousand fragments.

  The wind died down, and she saw Eric was down on his knee, one fist pointed at her, his other hand clamped around his forearm, as if he were supporting it. His face was a silvery gray, and shadows seemed to undulate over his skin. For a split second, she froze in terror, staring at him. "What are you?" she whispered.

  Her voice seemed to jerk him back. He dropped his hands and stood up. Color flooded back into his face, and his eyes returned to their usual shade of brown. He strode over to her and crouched in front of her. "You okay?"

  "Um, yeah." She touched her throat, half-expecting to feel that it had been torn apart by the specter that had come after her. It was fine, though. No damage, at least to her body. Her nerves, on the other hand, weren't doing so hot. "What was that?"

  He brushed his hand through the air above her head, and her scalp tingled. "You're good. It didn't touch you." His face was grim. "What exactly was your grandmother into?"

  "Why? What was it?" The bigger question was, what was he? For a split second, he'd seemed like a ghost himself, a creature from the beyond, hovering between the corporeal and a fate worse than death. "What just happened?"

  He stood up and held out his hand to help her up. "Your grandmother trapped spirits," he said. "That was a bad one, and she'd trapped it between life and death. Being held in that place turned it into...something you won't want coming at you." He looked grim. "It used to be a form of torture reserved for those who deserved the most severe punishment, but the practice stopped many centuries ago when people learned it created a worse monster than they started with. It's not kind to do."

  She stiffened. "My grandmother was a good person."

  "Maybe she was, but I don't know many reasons that justify what she did to that spirit." He glanced over his shoulder at the shed. "It must have escaped its wards, but couldn't get out of the shed." He gestured with his fingers. "Come on. It's gone now. I'll check and see if there are any more."

  She hesitated, almost afraid to take his hand, suddenly remembering that moment in the jungle when he'd said that he wasn't a man, not really. "What are you, Eric?"

  His face was cold and hard. "You don't want to know, Jordyn. No one wants to know." He leaned over and grabbed her hand, hauling her to her feet.

  His hand was warm and reassuring around hers, and she swallowed at the unexpected surge of comfort she felt from having her hand in his. "You're not human."

  He pulled her toward him with a sudden jerk that knocked her off balance. She fell against him, and sucked in her breath at the feel of his hard body against hers. That same surge of desire cascaded through her, but this time, it was laced with the fear of the unknown, apprehension about the man behind the mask that she now knew he was wearing. Her fingers dug into his chest, and she wasn't sure if it was to push him away or bring him closer. "Eric—"

  His fingers slid through the hair on the back of her head, gripping lightly. Anger shone in his eyes. "I don't give a shit what anyone thinks of me," he said softly, his tone edged with flint. "I really don't. But I just learned that I don't like it when you look at me like I'm a monster. Turns out, it matters what you think of me."

  She swallowed. "I don't think you're a monster."

  "That's the thing, Jordyn. I am one." Then he bent his head and kissed her.

  It was more than a kiss. It was a sensual assault meant to throw her so off balance she couldn't even think straight. His mouth was demanding and hot, his tongue a sinful temptation, his breath a whispered seduction as it feathered through her.

  It wasn't the kiss of a monster. It was the kiss of a man so sexual that his very essence as a male plunged right into her soul and wove desire through every inch of her body. She slid her hands up his arms, over his shoulders, and then locked them behind his neck, unable to do anything but respond to the fires that he had so ruthlessly stoked inside her.

  A sensual growl sounded low in his chest, so deep that she felt it reverberate through her. He palmed her waist, his hands spread across her hips like he owned her body. Her skin felt like it was on fire, a blazing trail marking everywhere his hands touched. He gripped her butt, lifting her against him so her belly was crushed against his pelvis. She could feel his cock against her stomach, so hard that her body clenched in response.

  God, yes, she wanted this man. This arrogant, beautiful, tormented man with secrets so terrible she'd seen them in his eyes when he'd driven off the specter. He was a man without a history or roots, a vagabond who had forged his way through life playing in cemeteries with a brother who could raise the dead.

  He was every bit as dangerous as Walter, who had killed everyone who mattered to her. Eric was more, and worse, because she didn't understand him or even know what he was capable of. He was a man she should fear, a man she should shun, and yet all she wanted was to feel his hands on her body and lose herself in the sheer power of his presence.

  "Jordyn," h
e whispered her name into the kiss as he grasped her thighs and lifted her up. Her legs went around his hips as he took two steps. Then her back was against a tree, and he was crushed against her, driving into her through their clothes as the kiss turned from hot to deadly.

  She couldn't get enough of him. The fire burning through her was unlike anything she'd ever experienced. It was heat. It was lust. It was need. It was an insatiable craving for more, more, more, but she couldn't even articulate what it was that she needed from him.

  He slipped his hand beneath the hem of her shirt, and palmed her bare back. She gasped as his fingers spread across her, a sensual caress of skin against skin. He locked one arm around her back, protecting her from the bark of the tree. He anchored her against him as he slid his hand over her ribs, tracing each bone as he moved his hand higher. He deepened the kiss, overwhelming her senses in a thousand different ways.

  Then his hand closed over her breast. She gasped as desire rolled through her, a need so visceral she couldn't even breathe. He pinched her nipple, making her writhe as tendrils of wet heat coiled through her, like the flashes of lightning bisecting the sky on a hot summer night. She tugged at his shirt, frantic for more as she jerked it up, exposing his chest. His body was so hard and warm beneath her hands, and he sucked in his breath as she ran her hands over his muscular torso.

  "God, that feels good," he whispered as he broke the kiss and began to trail his mouth hungrily down the side of her neck. "I want your hands all over every inch of my body."

  The image of his naked body at her mercy leapt into her mind, and the sexual tension that had been gripping her so fiercely seemed to explode. "Eric." She flung her arms around his neck and hauled him against her. The kiss was feral and dangerous, unleashing passion inside her that she didn't know existed.

  He groaned again, a growl so deep and unearthly that it sent chills racing down her spine. Not a ripple of fear. It was more like pulsing, sensual anticipation of the wildness of the man in her arms, of what he could do to her if he stopped holding back.