WIN!
Guns were dropped and knives grabbed. This close together, bullets were simply too risky. Strider slashed. Someone screamed. He slashed again. Someone else screamed. A blade slicked through his wrist, but he maintained his grip and ducked, punching, tip extended. Contact. He hit all the way to the spine.
On and on the lethal dance continued. He was bleeding profusely but still energized. He was winning. He even managed to toss someone into the fire. Screams, grunts, groans and whimpering abounded. But by the time the last Hunter fell, Strider was losing strength fast.
He was also grinning.
He had done it. He had won.
“Who’s your daddy, bitches?”
Defeat chortled inside his head, jumping up and down, glorying in the victory. Heat filled his veins, pumped him up. In a little bit, he would feel the sting of every slice, the rest of his energy gone, but for now, he felt invincible.
“Strider?” Kaia stepped into his line of sight. Firelight licked at her, illuminating her beautiful skin. The makeup she always wore must have sweated off, because she glimmered with every color of the rainbow.
In seconds, his cock was painfully hard. It’s just the sexual high, he told himself. You don’t want her. Not really. Gods, her skin…his mouth watered for a taste.
Concentrate, he had to concentrate. He hadn’t seen her fight, but he had heard the results. Now her hair was in tangles, and blood was splattered over her cheeks and arms. “Well?” he demanded. “How’d you do?”
Frowning at his waspish tone, she gestured behind her. He wanted to curse when he spied the pile of men she’d defeated. He didn’t have to count to know she’d won their challenge. His stomach tightened with dread as he waited for his knees to buckle and acid to fill his veins, destroying the pleasure.
One minute passed, then another. Nothing happened.
“I didn’t kill any of mine,” she said, buffing her claws. “I just knocked them out. So feel free to do the honors yourself.”
Wait. What? She’d let him win? Surely not. That was as un-Harpylike as, shit, baking an apple pie with ingredients she’d purchased—with money she’d actually earned. “Kaia—”
“No, don’t say anything. The main guy, the one who wants you a lot more dead than even these guys did, isn’t here. I checked. I told you he was wily, so there’s no telling where he is or what he’s doing.”
“Kaia,” he repeated, trying again. What he would say, though, he didn’t know.
She spun away from him, as if she couldn’t bear to look at him a second more. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Goodbye, Strider.”
Before he could say another word, she was gone, the tiny wings on her back giving her a speed he could never hope to match.
He stood there for the longest while, peering down at the mound of unconscious men she’d left for him. He’d won, she had made sure of that, yet in that moment, he’d never felt more like a loser, and he didn’t know why.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
HAIDEE KNEW SHE WAS DREAMING. How else would she be seeing flashes of Amun’s life? How else would she hear what he was thinking? Currently, she saw him pacing through a sunlit bedroom she didn’t recognize, his hands alternating between scrubbing over his eyes and pressing into his ears as he fought to subdue the many voices chattering inside his head. Voices that whispered one human memory after another.
He could deal with them, he knew, but his friends could not. They had enough to agonize over and didn’t need to know the vile things people thought about them, the atrocities committed every day in the homes around them.
He shouldn’t have patrolled the city for Hunters tonight. Strider and Gideon could have handled the duty, no problem, despite their recent injuries. They’d offered; he’d turned them down, already sensing trouble on the outside and wanting to keep them safe.
Thankfully, he’d only found three enemy soldiers, and killing them hadn’t been a hardship.
The Hunters hadn’t planned to engage. Amun’s demon had sensed that right away. The men had wanted their female, their Bait, on the inside first. They thought she had succeeded, but they were waiting for confirmation. The moment he’d realized that, Amun knew he’d have to wipe one of the Hunter’s minds to find out who “she” was and when and where she would contact them. He’d have to absorb memories, perhaps even memories of mutilating his own friends. ’Cause yeah, he’d see through Hunter eyes, as if he was a Hunter.
“Amun, man,” someone called from outside his room. It was Sabin. “Chow time.”
He walked to the door and knocked, signaling he’d heard. Just as soon as he cleared his head, he’d join them. The memories were still unfolding, even though he’d already uncovered the information he’d wanted. The “she” belonged to Kane, keeper of Disaster.
The warrior rarely dated, too afraid of hurting those around him, but the human female had captured his interest. He’d have to be told. Amun would have to be the one to tell him.
Amun was always the one to break the bad news.
First, there would be denials. Then rage. Then sorrowful acceptance. But damn it, they shouldn’t have to live like this! They shouldn’t have to suspect everyone they encountered of using them.
For a moment, Amun’s image faded from Haidee’s mind and his thoughts quieted. She was shrouded in darkness and thought she might be lying down. What was that tickling her belly? she wondered.
Before she could discover the answer, those images of Amun returned, shifted. Now he was whaling on a human male, knuckles drilling into bone. The human was average height, on the thin side, and begging for mercy Amun refused to show.
Haidee didn’t have to wonder why. Like Amun, she somehow knew what this man had been doing to his little girl. And when Amun was done, when the man was dead, he used his demon to find the little girl a safe, loving home.
Images, fading again. Voices, quieting again. Seriously. What was tickling her belly? Whatever it was brushed whisper-soft heat over her sensitized skin. But again, before she could reason out what was happening to her, the images in her head returned, shifted and claimed her full attention.
This time she saw a shirtless, cut-up and bleeding Amun playing basketball with his friends. He was grinning, laughing silently and slapping each of his buddies on their backs between cheap shots.
The boys shouted good-natured insults at him. Insults he could only return with the lifting of a single finger. No one stuck to any rules, so there was lots of tripping, elbowing and even punching, and Amun loved it. No one could beat him because he knew every move everyone planned to make before they actually made it. Only, any time Strider went for the ball, Amun let him have it, even slowing his steps and pretending to stumble.
His past was as varied as hers, Haidee mused. But while she had always been a Hunter, driven by hate, he was so much more than a Lord of the Underworld. Which should not have been possible. A demon should be a demon. Evil, ruined. Amun cared, though. He uplifted.
He shouldered such a heavy burden. A burden he shared with no one because he would rather suffer forever than cause one of his friends to suffer a single moment more. That was love, not evil.
Love.
The word echoed through her mind. Maybe because she felt utterly connected to Amun just then, she couldn’t keep secrets, even from herself. She loved him, she realized. There was no denying it now, no questioning it. For all that he was, all that he’d been and all that he would be, she loved him. He was a warrior to his very soul, would always fight for what he believed in, would never buckle under pressure. When he cared, he cared deeply, intensely, and nothing and no one could shake that affection from him. Oh, yes. She loved him.