Kait Ballenger - Immortal Hunter

The nurse stepped toward her again. Her frown twisted into a look of frustration as she reached for Allsún. “Look, I only have so much patience. You need to—”

Allsún lifted her hand and made a throwing motion. A cloud of sparkling faerie dust emanated from her open palm, as if she’d thrown a handful of glitter straight into the nurse’s face. Immediately the woman crumpled to the floor. Her mouth gaped open as she fell into the best sleep she’d probably had in years.

Allsún blinked two times, the movement slow and sluggish from the weight still forcing down her eyelids. “Thass what you get for m...m...messing with a pi...pixie.” She was slurring worse than a college frat boy on a Saturday night.

Concentrating on keeping her balance, Allsún stumbled out of the room and into a long hallway. After what seemed like an eternity of thinking, she deduced that it had to be nighttime. The lights were dimmed, and no one was in sight. She inched down the hall for what seemed like hours before reaching the nurses’ station directly next to the elevators. Her escape.

A night nurse perched at her desk looked up from a mound of papers. “Miss, are you all right?”

Allsún didn’t answer. She walked up to the desk, made a throwing motion with her hand, and watched the nurse slump onto the desktop with a thud in response to her natural faerie dust. She shuffled past the now-incapacitated woman toward the elevator.

Allsún jabbed the blurry elevator button three times until the doors finally opened. Using every ounce of brain power she could muster through her drug-induced haze, she selected the star button for what she hoped was the ground floor.

The elevator closed with a high-pitched ding. After four floors the elevator finally reached the bottom, and as fast as she could, she stumbled out and booked her way through the sliding glass doors of freedom.

When the doors opened, a huge burst of cold air hit Allsún straight in the face, sending a chill racing through her entire body. She wrapped her arms around her torso in a useless attempt to keep herself warm. She needed to get home before she got hypothermia. Her bare feet stung from the light layer of snow still coating Rochester’s streets. The prickling sensation helped clear her head, like what she imagined a sobering cold shower after a long night of way too much drinking would be like. Not that she would know for certain, since she’d never been the partying type. Not too much to celebrate when you’re spending your days chasing after...

Demons.

The scent of sulfur hit her nose as she passed by an empty alleyway. All at once her senses came alive, and she could feel the natural instinct in her Fae blood calling her. She turned in the direction her instinct indicated, the instinct that told her where demonic activity was, the instinct she hadn’t used in years. Not since that night...

Since then she’d found herself capable of ignoring the call. She knew that the city would remain safe without her. Though David couldn’t be everywhere at once, he was the only human she’d ever encountered who was capable of exorcising demons back to hell instead of just killing them. He could save the victims in a way that not even she could.

But somehow this time was different.

The pull inside her, like a rope tugging hard at the center of her chest, compelled her forward. And how could she not listen to such a strong command? She took another step, and then her head began to clear. She was thankful for her supernatural metabolism. It was burning up the drugs nicely, but...

How had she ended up in her current situation? What had put her in the hospit—

She staggered as the memories rushed back to her in one overwhelming burst.

That thing, the monster that did this to her. The thought of his disgustingly handsome face twisted in a look of pure hatred and malice flashed through her mind. Robert. That had been his name, before the hunters killed him.

She’d been in the hospital because that monster had kidnapped and tortured her, left her for dead. And then David had saved her. The memory of his arms wrapped around her warmed her to her core.

No, she couldn’t think like that.

She shook her head, trying to erase both Robert and David from her thoughts. She shouldn’t be thinking this way. Robert was dead now, and she’d done her best to push David from her mind years ago. David had made his choice. When she’d left, he’d never come after her, so that was that. Sure, he’d saved her, but that was his job. Nothing more. She was certain of it.

Shuffling to the edge of the busy street outside the hospital, she waved her arms, hoping to flag down a taxi. Someone out there needed to be saved, her instincts told her that much, and after the torture she’d so recently been through herself, she couldn’t just leave them to that same horrifying fate. If she could just get a cab to stop, she could follow her instincts. The coldness in the air continued to seep into her body, and slowly her feet tingled to numbness. After several minutes with no taxis in sight, she ran into the middle of the street the minute she saw one barreling toward her. The driver slammed on his brakes and pounded the horn. The sound reverberated in her ears, pulling her further from her drugged haze.

The cabbie rolled down his window. “What the fuck are you doing, lady? Get out of the street.”

She inhaled a deep breath and called back to him over the busy sounds of the city. “I need a ride.” Rushing to the side of his cab, she fumbled her way into the backseat, apparently still slightly dizzy from the remaining Ativan.

The cabbie leaned back in his seat and sighed as he stomped on the gas pedal. “Where to, lady?”

“Listen, this is an emergency, and I don’t have any money on me.”

The cabbie glanced in the rearview mirror, eyeing the hospital gown. “Look, lady. I don’t give free rides. Either you pay or you get out of my—”

Before he could finish his sentence, Allsún shoved her hand in front of his face, releasing another swirling puff of faerie dust. She cleared her throat. “So, about that free ride?”

The man blinked as if in a haze before he said, “Free ride? Sure, I can do that. Where to?”

She smiled. “Head toward the south end of the city, and hurry. I don’t know where we’re going, exactly, but as we get closer, I’ll figure it out.”

The pull deep inside her chest increased with every mile, her senses sharpening the nearer they came to their destination. She marveled at how quickly she had burned off the drugs. Her head cleared more with each passing moment. No wonder they’d had her hooked up to the stuff. She’d probably needed a dosage more appropriate for someone three times her size.

When they reached the edge of the city, the tall buildings and industrial sprawl faded into quiet suburbia. Out here the bright lights of the skyscrapers shimmered from a distance, but the streets were dim, lit only by the occasional streetlight. She directed the cabbie through a series of turns until they were fully surrounded by rows of small brick houses. The view of the city disappeared. She would search all night if she had to. Because maybe, just maybe, she could save someone tonight.

* * *

DISPOSING OF A body was never pretty. The metallic odor of the doctor’s blood invaded David’s nose, and he fought not to gag as the scent mixed with the smell of rotting garbage. The open Dumpster smelled more like decaying flesh than the actual dead guy did. Better get this over with. Lifting the doctor’s corpse, he hefted the limp body into the trash. God forgive him. It went against every fiber of his conscience every time, but he always got the job done. A part of him wished he could call up the guy’s family or at least take him to the morgue, make sure he had a proper funeral, but unless he wanted witnesses, that wasn’t a possibility.