Page 39 of The Fire Went Wild (Hunter’s Heart #2)

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHARLOTTE

B y the time Jaxon’s electric fence appears up ahead, I’m bleary-eyed from driving and ready to sleep. Actually sleep , too, not just be Jaxon’s plaything—even if the idea does make me squirm in my seat. I don’t want the strange dreams, for one. I can tell that he really believes that one of his gods came to me last night. I’m not sure I do.

It’s just a dream, fragments of my day thrown in a blender and whipped up by the five— five— orgasms he delivered while I was sleeping.

The fact that the image I saw, his dad slicing his throat as a teenager, that it really happened?—

I shiver. No. I can’t dwell on it.

“Stop,” Jaxon says sharply. “Now.”

“What?” I slam my foot on the gas, the car screeching to a stop on the long, twisting driveway that winds through the swamp. Lights glimmer up ahead. The porch lights. The fence.

“Someone’s here.” His voice is low and dangerous.

Fear shoots through me, my skin prickling with electricity. “What? How can you tell?”

Jaxon gives me a withering look in the dark. “I’m a Hunter, cher, and so are you. Concentrate. You’ll feel them, too.”

I still have an instinctual urge to protest, but it only lasts a second. Still, when I do try to concentrate, I don’t feel anything. Just a tight, trembling fear.

“Cut the engine.” Jaxon unlocks the passenger door.

“And then what?” I do as he says, though, and the sudden silence rings in my ears.

“Get out. Come with me.” His voice is low and commanding and deathly serious. “They don’t know we’re here yet. We can surprise them.”

“How can you possibly—” I start, but one violent glare from Jaxon silences me.

“ Listen ,” he hisses, and I swear his eyes refract the light back at me, making him look strange and inhuman. When he speaks again, he’s calmer, like a teacher explaining something to a student. “Listen for their breaths. Their heartbeats. That’ll tell you what they’re feeling.”

He pushes the door open, letting in the damp air of the swamp. I wish, with a sudden fervent clarity, that we were still in Florida, kissing on a chilly beach in the middle of the night. Instead of doing—whatever it is we’re about to do.

Images flash through my head. Blood. The sudden yielding pressure of a knife going through skin. Screams. Moans.

I slide out of the car, biting back my fear, and ease the door closed the same way Jaxon did. He’s just barely visible in the dark, a silhouette on shadow, except for his gleaming eyes.

He’s not looking at me, though. He’s listening.

So I listen, too. Or try to. I close my eyes and breathe out and let the sounds of the swamp surround me. They seem louder than usual, even though it’s still a little too cool for frogs and insects. But then I hear a constant, swirling susurration. It’s not frog song at all. It’s not wind, not trees rustling, although I hear those things, too. It’s something?—

Something else.

My eyes flutter open and I stifle back a shout of surprise. Jaxon has somehow moved right beside me.

“How did I not hear you?” I whisper. “I was listening .”

Even in the darkness, I see him smile like he’s proud. “You were hearing something else, little Hunter. Now keep quiet and follow me.”

So I don’t have time to dwell on that , then. Jaxon takes my hand, his palm smooth and warm and dry, like he’s not even worried, and leads me off the driveway and into the thicket. I press close to him, trying to step where he steps, trying to avoid the puddles of muddy, stagnant water lurking in the dark.

Still, it’s easier than the last time I did this. Probably because I’m actually moving with him and not trying to escape. He slides serpentine through the dangling vines and thick overgrowth, almost like he’s part of the swamp, like it’s opening up a path for him.

“Almost there,” he breathes into my ear, and I hear the quiet hum of the electric fence. Lights flicker up ahead. Not just the porch lights, I realize when we step out of the swamp’s thick growth. Windows. Half the windows of the house are illuminated.

“They’re inside,” I gasp.

“Yeah, and there are at least three of them,” Jaxon whispers back. “But this is good. Makes it easier for me to get to my weapons.”

Weapons . The word sings out on the cool damp night.

“Who are they?”

“The magical wizard mobsters, as you call them.” Jaxon’s voice is grim. “Or at least, that’s my best guess.”

“They’re going just to keep sending people?” I whisper furiously.

“It’s not a big deal. We’ll just keep killing them.” Jaxon looks at me, his eyes gleaming a little. “It’s what our people do, cher.”

My head buzzes. My heart pounds.

I’m not just afraid, though.

I’m excited .

We slide along the fence, the shadows wrapping around us. I keep sneaking glances over at the house, trying to listen the way I did by the car. I do hear something, a sound like the ocean. Like breaths rushing and out, or heartbeats beating out of sync with each other.

“Holy shit,” I whisper.

Jaxon glances over at me, a smile curving on his lips. “There’s my girl.”

We come to a second fence gate—not the primary one, at the driveway, but a smaller one, tucked away behind some overgrowth. Jaxon punches in the code and the electricity disappears. The fence is just a fence. He shoves the gate open, nods at me to go through.

We’re behind the house now, with the shed across the yard. The house rises up like a beacon.

“We need to get to the shed.” Jaxon’s mouth is on my ear, his fingers tangling up in mine. “Stay out of the light. Move fast.”

I nod, my breath tight. Jaxon tugs me forward, and we skitter back the way we came, only this time we’re on the right side of the fence. Inside this strange dark world Jaxon created.

The world I want to share with him.

Something moves across one of the house’s windows, and I yelp. Jaxon squeezes my hand, his message clear. Stay quiet .

We do make it to the shed, though. Jaxon moves quickly and efficiently like he’s done this a thousand times before, as he unlatches the lock and eases the door open. Actually, he probably has done it a thousand times before.

“In,” he whispers, and I don’t protest, just duck inside.

It’s cold. That’s the first thing I notice. It’s cold, and it smells distressingly sterile. Jaxon shuts the door behind him, cutting off what little light we have. But that doesn’t stop him; he moves effortlessly around the space, the sound of metal against metal following behind him.

“You can see?” I whisper.

“You can, too,” he says. “You’ve got to stop clinging to your humanity, Charlotte. It’s keeping you from realizing your abilities.”

“ Abilities ?” I squeak. “What are you, an X-man?”

He ignores me in favor of rustling around in the darkness. I can just make him out—he’s combing through a drawer, and the more I look at him, the more I feel like I can see him. A shadow lighter than the other shadows.

You can see, too.

He pulls something out of the drawer, and for a moment it seems to literally glow, like it’s drenched in moonlight. He turns and hands it to me, and I know instantly what it is.

A knife.

The knife, actually. The one I used in Houston. Even in the dark I can see it, but I also feel it, a black thread that tethers the knife to me, and me to the knife.

“I don’t know how to fight,” I whisper, because he and I both know that I do know how to kill.

“You don’t have to fight,” he says. “Just protect yourself.” He looks at me, and for a second, I see him as clearly as I would in daylight. His killer’s face. His flat blue eyes. The coy, vaguely excited smile on his lips. “I won’t let them have the honor of your first death.”

My breath lodges in my throat, and an image flashes through my head:

Me sitting in Jaxon’s kitchen as he draws the knife across my throat, my blood gleaming in the sunlight.

I want you to have that honor , I think, every muscle in my body tightening in some kind of strange anticipation. But I don’t say it aloud.

Jaxon’s adorned himself with blades. Three of them hang from his belt. He has what looks like a machete strapped across his back, and a hooked meat cleaver clutched in his hand, and I feel like I’m going to faint, my blood is pumping so fast through my veins.

I swallow against my dry throat. “You’re not going to wear your mask?”

Jaxon looks at me over his shoulder, his hair falling into his eyes. “This isn’t a kill for the gods,” he says. “And I want these stupid, persistent motherfuckers to see my face before they die.”