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CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

JAXON

C harlotte goes to bed early that night, disappearing upstairs after the dinner I make for her. I can sense her sleeping—her slow heart rate and steady breathing, and I admit I creep up there when she’s really under and watch her. I don’t touch her, though. Just watch her, and worry.

I didn’t lie to her about the Occult Underground stuff, but I didn’t tell her the whole truth, either. No, Hunters aren’t demons, but those occultists know that we aren’t human, and they’ll trap us for their own purposes. They’ll try to trap our gods, too. And I suspect that’s why the Unnamed and my Guardian sent me to kill Randall and Raffia.

I’ve killed for my gods for so long that I don’t question why. I give them the blood they want. The violence. I collect the body parts for my own purposes. But now I see it all through Charlotte’s eyes, and I can understand why it worries her—why her heart’s jumping around in her chest as she sleeps, why she’s no doubt having dark dreams she’ll forget when she wakes.

I slip through the shadows and sit carefully on the edge of the bed and run my fingers over her hair, wondering if this touch— not sexual, not invasive—will calm her. She murmurs a little and shifts beneath the blankets. But she doesn’t wake up.

“ Guardian ,” I whisper softly, the gods’ language curdling on my tongue , “ Should I be worried?”

The air in the room stirs. The shadows gather. The hairs on my arms stand on end, and cold, deathly fingers trail across the back of my neck—a touch more familiar to me than my mother’s.

“ You are a Hunter ,” it whispers. “ There’s nothing for you to fear. ”

“ Why—”

“ They were sacrifices. ” It’s the Unnamed who answers, and its presence is so sudden and so forceful that even Charlotte feels it in her sleep, moaning and shivering beside me. “ The first a request, the second a payment. ”

I stroke Charlotte’s exposed arm, her skin soft against my fingers. So that’s why both victims were connected to the ULS. Some human in the Occult Underground is making deals with my gods, and the gods asked me and Charlotte to be their weapons in this world.

It’s not the first time I’ve been asked to kill on the gods’ behalf, and it won’t be the last. But I can see how it would be overwhelming for Charlotte to go so long thinking she’s human and then, when she finally learns she’s a Hunter, to get thrown into some divine chess game.

“ Are there going to be other requests? ” I ask softly, watching Charlotte breathe in the dark.

“ Perhaps. ” It’s my Guardian again. “ But for now, your task is her. ”

“Charlotte?” There’s no way to say her name in the language of the gods.

“ Yes. ” The Unnamed answers the question, and it circles closer, winding around me like a snake. Constricting my chest, making it hard for me to breathe. I like it though. I’ve always liked it. “ Her binding broke, but the magic poisoned her. Find a way to leach it out . ”

“How?” I stroke her cheek with the back of my hand. Her eyes flicker behind her lids. I wonder if she’s dreaming of the gods. If she’s dreaming of me.

“ We can not see it ,” says my Guardian. “ But she can’t exist like this, in two states at once.”

“Make her a Hunter ,” snarls the Unnamed, as if that wasn’t what we did two nights ago.

And then, like an exhaled breath, they’re both gone. The room feels empty without their presence, but at least Charlotte is here. Still breathing, still dreaming.

The magic poisoned her .

She doesn’t seem poisoned, at least not physically. But her resistance to what she is—her guilt, her sorrow. It’s hurting her. That’s what’s keeping her from becoming a Hunter.

She spent so long thinking she’s human that she can’t give it up.

Some unfamiliar emotion surges through me. I think it’s empathy. Or love. Maybe both. All of it is directed at Charlotte.

I lay down beside her and wrap my arm around her waist and bury my nose in her hair and breathe in her scent. I don’t do anything I shouldn’t. Don’t grope her breasts or slide my hand between her legs. Don’t grind my quickly-forming erection into her soft, warm ass. But I do hold her. I wish I could take my knife and cut open her chest and carve out the poison desperately trying to keep her human. Maybe I should. Maybe she needs the initiation of death.

No. That’s too drastic. But I have other options. I should call Ambrose?—

Or Sawyer.

The thought hits me like a punch. That is one gift I can give her, isn’t it? The thing she came to Louisiana to find.

I press closer to her, breathing her in, considering the possibility. All I want is to make everything right for her.

And maybe taking her to Edie is the best way to do it.

I’ll see what Ambrose says. But for now, I just hold Charlotte in my arms, listening to her heart.

Ambrose lets his phone ring three times before he answers with a gruff, “I’m busy.”

“Then why did you answer?” I stretch my legs out, propping them up on the coffee table.

“Thought it might be an emergency. Did you take that woman on her kill yet?

“Her name’s Charlotte,” I snap. “And, yes, I did. Figured you’d be watching the news for it.”

Ambrose grunts. “Been busy. Haven’t had time to keep an eye on the news. Did it work?”

I lean back and sink into the couch cushions, my gaze fixed on the light fixture overhead. It’s loose, hanging a little crooked, and it reminds me of Charlotte still clinging to her humanity.

“Kind of,” I say.

“The fuck does that mean?”

“Well, she did it,” I tell him, and the memory makes my cock stiffen and my whole body turns hot. “She did it, uh, really well. I had to trick her into getting started, but once she did—” I grin. “It was something, Ambrose. I got to tell you.”

“So it did work.” Ambrose gives a short little laugh. “Guess there’s something to your gods, after all.”

“Shut up, preacher.” I take a deep breath, trying to figure out how to tell him the rest. The Texas wind howls on my phone’s speaker, sounding like static. “Here’s the thing, though. She was magnificent in the moment?—”

“Magnificent?” Ambrose laughs. “Oh, no, I’ve already got to deal with one lovesick asshole. Not you, too.”

I scowl, cheeks burning at the word love . “She was magnificent,” I snap. “Like she’s been killing all her life. But that was all while it was happening. As soon as she was done—” I shake my head. “She reacted like a human. Now she feels guilty. She keeps moping around. The gods, they told me the charm broke, but she’s still poisoned by it, and she can’t stay like this, half-human and half-Hunter. And I don’t?—”

“Calm down.” Ambrose cuts me off, his voice firm. “Losing your goddamn mind isn’t going to help anyone. There’s a reason you don’t just want to initiate her?”

The question kind of hangs there between us. I appreciate him phrasing it like that—initiating Charlotte, not killing her, even though they’re the same thing.

“She won’t let me do that,” I finally say. “And I don’t—” I stop myself, but I can tell from Ambrose’s disapproving mmhmm that he knows what I was going to say.

I don’t want to kill her without her permission. I hope he doesn’t ask me why because I don’t feel like explaining it to him. Partly, it’s because I don’t like killing other Hunters unless they’re a threat. A show of respect, you know. But I feel bad about what I did to her after our first dinner together, how I licked her to orgasm without asking. Killing her feels the same way. Especially since I know I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from playing with her dead body.

But Ambrose doesn’t ask for an explanation. “Here’s what I think,” he says. “Some Christian magic forced her to live as a human for what? Thirty years? She’s the same age as Edie, right?”

“Yeah, more or less.”

“Okay. So she is a Hunter. The binding broke. She killed. She was good at it. But she still sees herself as human, and it makes sense, because that charm was telling her she was human for thirty years. She’s got a huge disadvantage.” He pauses, and I know I don’t want to hear whatever he’s going to say next. “Dying and reviving would undo that, and you know it.”

I scowl, hating that he’s right. “But she’s not gonna let me kill her because she thinks it would actually kill her.”

“Right.” Ambrose clucks his tongue. “So you’ve got to find some other way to help her understand that she is what she is. You know how humans see us. That’s how she sees herself right now.”

I slump deeper into the couch and concentrate until I sense her, my Hunter who thinks she’s human. She’s calm right now, and I know it’s because she’s sleeping. When she’s awake, she seems to exist on a knife edge of panic. I’m not sure she even realizes it, but I do. Because I know what she feels like when she isn’t hating herself.

And gods, does it break my heart.

“So what do I do about it?” I ask.

“You need to make her think like a Hunter,” Ambrose says. “No Hunter sees themselves as evil, but I guarantee that’s what that woman is thinking about herself.”

He’s right. I know he’s right.

“If you can get her to stop that, maybe it’ll help.” A pause, filled with the whistling static of the wind. “Maybe.”

I stare ahead, rolling Ambrose’s suggestion around in my head. I don’t disagree. But I know if I try to tell her she’s fine, she won’t believe me. But maybe she would believe it from someone else?—

And then, like that, I know what I’m going to do.