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CHAPTER TWELVE

AMbrOSE

B y the time night falls and the campus tucks itself in for the night, I’ve managed to turn my attention back where it needs to be—getting into that bunker.

I still don’t know how I’m going to do it. In some ways, seducing Mercy again seems my best bet. I can draw her into me, get her addicted to the pleasure she’s been denied, and convince her to extract the code out of Gunner.

There are a couple of problems with that, though. It’ll take too long, for one. The longer I’m here, the more likely it is that people will start looking me up and get suspicious—the Internet and social media have made my old schemes impossible in the long term. Worse, getting Gunner to give up the code would probably involve her having to fuck him, a thought that sends rage boiling through me, not dissimilar to the rage I felt when I spoke with Sullivan this afternoon. And thirdly?—

Well, I run the risk of getting addicted myself. I’ve already jerked myself off twice since I got back, my head filled with an escalating kaleidoscope of depravities: Mercy on her knees so she can worship my cock instead of God. Mercy bent over a pulpit while I ram into her tight asshole. Mercy naked while I open up the throats of any man who’s ever touched her against her will, their blood streaming over her lush body as she touches herself like I showed her last night.

But she’s a fucking human, and my obligation is to other Hunters. It’s bad enough that I kissed her this morning when I said I was going to leave her alone. But I gave myself a taste of something sweet and it was too hard to resist the temptation.

So no, I won’t use Mercy. Instead, I put on some dark clothes and head out to the bunker on my own. I’m strong. Maybe I can pry that door open.

I leave Roxi and Max at the cabin—if there’s trouble, I’d rather they not be involved—but I do take my hunting knife with me, a big mean blade that fits neatly in the holster on my hip. Then I slip out onto the compound, moving quietly through the shadows. It’s like last night, except when I take a quick detour by Gunner’s house, the room where he was fucking her is dark and empty.

Thank fuck for that. Maybe now I can focus on the actual task at hand.

I make it out to the bunker easily enough. The night is cloudy, with a new moon and hardly any starlight, but I’ve got a predator’s night vision so I don’t have to announce my entire presence to the Church of the Well with a flashlight. I go up to the door and crouch down so I can study the keypad. It’s mechanical, not digital, which means I might be able to break it. I’ve got the strength and I’ve got a knife. It’s worth a try.

Like most Hunters, I’ve picked up some basic lock-picking skills over the years—enough to know that this isn’t a standard lock that can be cajoled open with a few strategically placed hairpins. However, I also have a general idea of how to crack open a standard keypad lock, and I suspect the general principle applies here. I start by trying to wedge my knife behind the keypad, hoping to pull it away from the door so I can get to the innards inside.

It doesn’t budge.

“Fuck,” I mutter, standing up straight so I can get leverage on my knife handle. I wrap both hands around it and brace one foot against the big steel door and pull with every ounce of my strength.

The knife whips upward. The lock remains unbroken.

“Dammit.” I try again, gritting my teeth at the metal-on-metal screech. I’m fucking up my knife blade, doing this.

I step back, studying the lock. There’s got to be something else I can do. Maybe if I can find a sledgehammer or something over in that training area on the other side of the field?—

Something stirs in the grass behind me.

Something human .

I whip around, putting my senses out. The intruder is behind the big metal gym in the training area. I can hear the steady pace of their heart, and I catch a whiff of male pheromones.

“Who’s there?”

A flashlight shines around the corner, bright as the sun. I only have a few seconds to consider my options, which boil down to two choices: hide or kill.

And then the flashlight sweeps across my face, and a man shouts, “You’re not supposed to be out here!”

Kill it is, then.

My blood immediately surges at the thought. All that sexual tension with Mercy has left me hungry for destruction. Seeing Sullivan this afternoon didn’t help, either.

“Sorry!” I call back, pulling the knife behind my back. The flashlight bobs toward me, its owner barely visible behind the glare, even to me. But I know other things about him. He’s not particularly scared. His heartbeat is slow and steady, so he’ll probably put up a decent fight. There’s a faint whiff of metallic smoke from a gun that is, presumably, resting on his hip. “Sorry, I was going for a walk.”

“All the way out here?” He comes closer, close enough that I can see his face above the sphere of light. He’s older, a little grizzled. “You’re that traveling preacher, aren’t you?”

“I am. I like my night walks.” I amble toward him, fingers tightening around the knife handle. I can leave it alone if I spin a pretty enough lie. But he’ll probably report to Gunner that I was sniffing around the bunker, and that’ll make getting access harder than it already is. Assuming Gunner doesn’t run me off the campus.

“It’s not safe out here.” We meet in the middle of the grass, and the guard lowers his flashlight out of my eyes. “Not with what happened to Raul.”

“He was killed on the campus?” I inject a touch of fear into my voice, hoping I can get this man to talk while I work up my plan of attack. I’ll need to do it fast. This isn’t exactly a pleasure killing, even if my cock hasn’t gotten the memo. Right now, it’s as hard as it was for Mercy when she was in the throes of the first orgasm of her life.

“We don’t know where he was killed.” The guard frowns, and his emotions shift; suspicion wafts off him. “All we know is the devil has come for us. It’s better not to come to the outskirts. The protections are thinner here.”

Devil this, devil that. It’s not the devil these people need to worry about. It’s me.

“Of course.” I take a step toward the guard, and his suspicion curdles into a little burst of fear, delicious in the balmy night air. “I’ll make sure to stay closer to the center.”

And then I dive toward him, swinging my knife out so it’s the first thing that makes contact. I sink the blade into his upper back and press my hand up against his mouth, muffling his shout of surprise. It takes him a second longer to realize what’s happened, and by then I’ve yanked the knife out and sank it into his flesh again, a little lower down, right at the base of his rib cage. His blood gushes over my hand, and I groan at the release of it.

He struggles against my grip, trying to pry my hand away from his mouth. I shove him, hard, and he flies across the field and lands with a hard thud on the dried grass. Then I leap on him before he has the chance to sit up, pressing the blade up against the bottom of his chin to force him to look into my eyes.

“Deceiver!” he rasps, blood bubbling up between his lips. “Satan! You will be struck down! You will be?—”

I slap my hand over his mouth.

“Wrong on both counts.” I leer down at him, dancing my blade through the dark night. “No one’s coming for me. And I’m not the devil.” I lean close, like I might draw his soul into my body. “I’m the boogeyman.”

The guard whimpers, bucking beneath me, his fear pungent and thick. I breathe it in deep, then run my tongue along my blade to taste the fear in his blood. It’s fucking delicious. Pity I can’t carve him up and take him back to my freezer.

His eyes go wide, and he bucks against me. But I’m stronger than any of the men in this place.

“What should I do to you?” I ask in a soft sing-song, pressing the blade against his cheek. He trembles beneath me, his lips desperately trying to move against my hand—to pray or protest, I’m not sure which. Honestly, I know exactly what I should do—kill him fast and hide the body.

But the idea just feels so damn unsatisfying. And I keep thinking of Mercy’s beautiful scream when I first saw her by the river. I want to hear that scream again. I want to lick the terror from her skin.

The man bucks beneath me, his blood pulsing out of him in spurts. “You’re just making it worse,” I tell him.

He lets out a wet, choking sob. I lean over him and breathe in his last, panicked breaths. A scene, I realize, just like I’d been planning to do with Raul. I’ll use him to set a scene in the residential area, where she’ll be sure to see it.

No, not just the residential area. Reverend Gunner’s house.

“You’re going to frighten her so beautifully,” I murmur.

And then I plunge my knife straight into his heart.