Kait Ballenger - Midnight Hunter

Vera nodded. “Yeah.”

Trista scanned Vera up and down again. Her nose scrunched and her nostrils flared, as if she’d just put something distasteful in her mouth. “You have the look of a black-magic witch.”

The look? Vera frowned. Whatever the hell that meant. Whether insult or compliment when coming from the gatekeeper of a black magic coven, she wasn’t sure. She contemplated a weak Uh, thanks , but opted instead for silence. One thing held certain with black-magic witches: no matter what, any advertisement of your own weakness meant exactly that, you were weak. Taking a half insult to heart, or expressing an opinion of it in any way, fell straight into the category of things that might make her appear weak. She couldn’t allow that. She held Trista’s gaze. The woman might have had eyes that could cut, but Vera was no spring chicken in the world of black magic. She wouldn’t be easily intimidated. She was a powerful witch, more powerful than she looked.

Trista raised an eyebrow at Vera’s obvious lack of intimidation. Vera stood just the slightest bit straighter, eye to eye with the woman. She almost expected Trista to make a halfhearted threat, but the woman surprised her when she took a step back, gesturing for Vera to follow her down the dark wooden hall. As they approached the last door on the left, the sound of chanting filled Vera’s ears, and the familiar buzz crept into her veins. This was it. This was what she needed. Trista waved her forward, and Vera pushed open the door.

Black-magic paraphernalia—from Santeria-like candles to nightshade herbs to animal blood and bone-filled pestles—lined the walls of the dim candlelit room. In the center, eleven people sat in a circle, hands clasped together as they chanted in a tongue Vera didn’t recognize. As she and Trista entered, a pair of cold blue eyes snapped open. The leader of the circle broke his trance and fixed his gaze on Vera.

“Who are you?” he asked quietly. His voice cut through the ongoing chanting. The lit candles around the room flickered, as if a swift breeze had rushed through.

A chill shivered down Vera’s spine, though the room was comfortably warm. Aside from her own father, who had once been thought of as the most powerful warlock of the past century, this man, this warlock, was powerful beyond anything she had ever encountered before. That thought sent icy adrenaline through her veins like a well-placed IV.

“My name is Vera Sanders.”

“Sanders?” He rolled her name around on his tongue as if it was a sweet candy that could melt in his mouth. “You bear a striking resemblance to Johnathan Summers. Are you sure Sanders is your last name?”

The chill racing down Vera’s spine hardened to numbing ice. She froze. In all the time she’d been practicing black magic, no one had ever recognized her as her father’s daughter before. She had tried very hard over the years to keep that association buried. Her father had been a powerful warlock with plenty of friends and supporters, as well as enemies. She wasn’t sure she wanted to cross paths with either side.

“No relation,” she said, lying worse than Nixon during Watergate. She held his gaze. Though she was generally a fantastic liar, he’d caught her off guard, and if he didn’t recognize that, he wasn’t nearly as powerful as she’d originally believed.

“My mistake.” He gave her a crooked grin, and she knew, despite his words, that he didn’t believe her for a second. From the spark behind his eyes when her father’s name passed his lips, she knew he must have been either friend or foe, and there was a very, very thin line between love and hate. She wasn’t prepared to walk that tightrope. “My name is Nathanial.”

He held her gaze, and the tension escalated. Several long seconds passed. Finally, she forced herself to look away, even though it grated against every feminist fiber of her being.

His eyes...they were so predatory and unforgiving.

“Well, Ms. Sanders...” Her last name sounded like a hiss and made his disbelief clear. “What are you here for?”

“I’m just here for the magic, that’s all.”

He grinned again. Something about his stare and his crooked smile made her feel as if she were a small animal cornered by a gun-wielding hunter. “So would you care to know what spells we’re executing today?” The sounds of the chanting had become less than background noise to her, a humming against the quiet threat of his voice. He didn’t have to speak loudly for his words to be powerful and all-consuming. Her father’s voice had been that way.

An internal war waged deep in her chest. The little voice inside her head screamed she should care to know exactly what she was getting herself into and what spell her power would be assisting, but another voice reminded her that she was already in too deep, that it was too late to back out now. Was ignorance bliss? The third and most dangerous voice, the voice of her addiction, reared its ugly head, making her skin crawl. God, she wanted it. She knew it was wrong, but she did. She’d been too weak to stop herself from coming here, and now, with it dangling right in front of her as if she were a starving person staring at her first bite of food in days, she found herself incapable of resisting.

When she’d refused to don the mantle of her father’s black magic legacy, he’d called her weak for her addiction, for caring more about the high than about the power she could wield. She certainly felt weak now.

You’re stronger than this. You’re worth more than this, Vera. You deserve better. She repeated the mantra over and over again in her head. But as she looked into Nathanial’s eyes, all she saw was the scared little junkie girl her parents had accused her of being all those years ago. The same scared little girl who would never amount to anything more than a trashily dressed bartender at a sleazy strip club, whose mind was always clouded by wondering when—or if—she would be able to get her next fix.

She sat down at the edge of the circle and joined hands. The voice inside her head fell silent, and as Nathanial smiled at her, she knew her father had been right.

* * *

IF ONE THING truly scared Shane out of his ever-loving mind—and rightfully so—it was the thought of being on the receiving end of his division leader’s wrath. He watched Damon, silently waiting for a response to the story he and Ash had recounted. Nothing incurred the wrath of Damon Brock, their leader and resident vampire hunter, more than two things: 1) having Execution Underground headquarters breathing down his neck, and 2) allowing civilians, particularly the Rochester PD, to get any inkling of their operations.

Someone in the division was usually on the receiving end of Damon’s anger, since it was his task to keep the ragtag group of alpha-male hunters in line. Shane just wasn’t accustomed to that person being him.

Damon’s voice remained eerily calm, easily filling the Rochester division’s small underground control room as he spoke. “You mean to tell me that the two of you allowed yourselves to be cornered by the Rochester PD, leading to the possibility of your faces being identified, just to dig up a grave with no body?” He examined them with blue eyes so cold they could make a man’s balls shrivel just by staring into them for too long. The tension in his stance indicated to Shane that the man would transform into a ballistic missile in about ten seconds if they didn’t manage to explain themselves first.

“Yep. That’s ’bout how it went down.” Ash crossed his arms over his chest and his legs at the ankles as he leaned against a desk.

Clearly, Shane thought, Ash’s balls were not quite as shriveled as his own at the moment. He couldn’t decide whether that was courageous or stupid. He was erring more on the side of stupid. Pissing Damon off was never a good idea, and part of being a good hunter was choosing your battles wisely. This battle was not wise.