Demon Hunting In the Deep South (2 page)

“Did you touch anything?” Addy asked. “Please tell me you didn’t touch anything.”

“No,” Evie said. “But it was close. Something was in that office with me, Addy. Something evil. It wanted me to grab the letter opener.” She shivered. “I heard it talking inside my head. I was reaching for the letter opener when someone said my name.”

“Who said your name, the creepy whatzit?”

“No, this was somebody else. He called me Evangeline, not Evie, which is weird. Nobody’s called me that since Mama died.” Evie rubbed her temples. Her head was beginning to throb. Probably another migraine; she’d had them a lot lately. “The next thing I know, I’m sitting here. Oh, Addy, I don’t understand any of this. I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“Relax, Eves, Ansgar must have brought you home. I take back everything I said about him. Okay, maybe not
everything,
but the hemorrhoid part anyway.”

“But why would he do that? He doesn’t know me. And how did he get me home? I don’t remember being in a car.”

Addy snorted. “Who said anything about a car? We’re talking about the Dalvahni here. Ten to one, Ansgar teleported you here.”

“Teleported me?” Evie blinked in surprise. “Oh, my goodness.”

“Dalvahni woo woo, chicka. Demon hunters are loaded with it.” Her lips curved in a cat-in-the-cream-pot smile. “In more ways than one.”

Evie felt a pang of envy. The sexual attraction between Addy and Brand was so smoking hot you’d have to be dead not to notice. You could almost see the pheromones in the air when those two were together, which was most of the time. Brand Dalvahni loved him some Addy Corwin; that was for sure.

“I wouldn’t know,” Evie said. “Well . . . be sure and thank him for me. It was nice of him to get me out of there.” She shivered. “It was horrible, Addy. Just horrible.”

“Thank him yourself. Hannah’s a small town, you know. I got a feeling you’ll be seeing more of him.”

Addy got to her feet.

Evie grabbed her arm. “Where are you going? Don’t leave me! I need you.”

“Relax,” Addy said. “You’re going with me. We’ll go get your car and bring it back here. You can call in sick. No one will ever know you were there.”

“I’ve already called nine-one-one. The police are on their way.”

“Oh, man.” Addy sank back onto the step. “You are such a rule-follower, Evie Douglass.”

“I know.” Evie sighed. “But you love me anyway, right?”

“Shit, I reckon,” Addy said.

“Addy.”
Evie looked around. “Your mama hears you cussing and there’ll be h-e-l-l to pay.”

Addy’s mama, Bitsy Corwin, was a force to be reckoned with. Evie loved her to pieces, but the woman scared the bejesus out of her.

“You don’t have to spell it, Eves. The Bitser’s not here. She can’t hear me.”

“Huh. That woman has ears like an elephant when it comes to your potty mouth.”

“Don’t I know it?” Addy was silent. After a moment, she said, “You realize that voice inside your head wasn’t human.”

A chill ran down Evie’s spine. “Yeah, I thought about that.”

“And that there’s probably a demon involved? Maybe even that a demon killed Meredith?”

“Thought about that, too.”

It wouldn’t be the first time a demon caused trouble in Hannah. There was something very strange about their little town.

“The demon might come after you next. You’d better stay with me for a while until it’s safe.”

Evie snorted. “Me underfoot all the time? Won’t Brand love that?”

“Brand will have to deal. You’re my best friend.”

“Thanks,” she said, “but I’ll stay here. The fairies will warn me.”

Addy gave her a curious, almost hopeful look. “I thought you said you couldn’t see them anymore?”

A wave of grief washed over Evie. She’d been able to see fairies as long as she could remember, although she’d only recently shared her gift with Addy. Seeing fairies wasn’t something you went around talking about, not even to your best friend. Not if you didn’t want people to think you were a loon.

She inherited her ability from her mother. It was a special bond they shared, a connection she treasured, especially since her mother’s death. And then, inexplicably, one day not long ago, she couldn’t see fairies anymore.

She swallowed the ball of sadness in her throat. “I can’t see or hear them, but they rattle the wind chimes to let me know they’re there. They’ll warn me if something bad comes, and they’ll protect me.”

Addy grunted, but she sounded unconvinced. “Fairies and demons and demon slayers, oh my! Who would’ve thunk boring, little Hannah, Alabama, would turn out to be the supernatural Vegas truck stop of the universe.”

“Hannah’s never been boring, Addy. You just couldn’t see it.”

“Huh. Well, I see it now.” Addy straightened as two cars pulled up to the curb. “Here come Chief Davis and the sheriff. What are you going to tell them?”

“The truth. What else?”

Addy groaned. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

Chapter Two

A
nsgar stood beneath a sprawling oak near Evangeline’s front porch, listening as she conversed with her friend Addy. Evie could not see him. As a Dalvahni demon hunter, he could make himself invisible. But he could see her.

And hear her.

By the gods, he’d missed her. He stood in the green shadows and drank in the sultry sound of her voice. Each soft, drawling utterance from her lips played upon his senses until he thought he would go mad with need.

He’d met her but a few months past, when he’d come to Earth with his brother Brand in pursuit of a group of rogue demons. It had seemed an ordinary mission, like countless others through the centuries. He and Brand would execute their task with brutal efficiency, round up the demons, and remove all trace of their presence here. Afterward, they would return to the Hall of Warriors to await their next assignment.

Such was the way of the Dalvahni warrior.

Things had quickly spiraled out of control when Brand fell under Addy Corwin’s spell. ’Twas a thing unheard of in the history of the Dalvahni, Brand’s unseemly affection for the Corwin woman.

Ansgar had been baffled by his brother’s odd behavior. True, he had been charmed by Addy’s friend, Evangeline Douglass. But he was no weakling like his brother, who’d succumbed to this peculiar affliction called “love.” Bah.

He and Brand had completed their mission, capturing the djegrali after a battle in the town square. During the fray, Evangeline had been taken by a demon. Ansgar could see her still, white-faced with terror, beseeching him to slay her, less terrified of death than of demonic possession. And with good reason. A human possessed had no will, no choice. They were the demon’s plaything, under the creature’s control until their body was used up and the demon discarded them for fresher meat.

Hands shaking, Ansgar had nocked an arrow in his bow and shot Evangeline through the heart. The demon had abandoned her dying body as such creatures were wont to do—a demon trapped in death with a human dies also.

Ansgar had dispatched the demon with another arrow and, taking Evangeline in his arms, he’d saved her from death, infusing her with his essence. She’d awakened, fully healed and no longer human.

And with no memory of him.

’Twas for the best, he’d told himself. He left, with no intention of returning.

To his astonishment, the months away from her—what should have been a mere heartbeat of time in the life span of the ageless Dalvahni—had been an endless agony. He’d fought his feelings for her, losing himself in the hunt and the emptying embrace of a thrall, sexual creatures designed to sate a Dalvahni warrior’s physical needs and empty them of battle rage and lust. Both species found the relationship to their advantage. The Dalvahni, drained of unnecessary feelings, were unhampered in battle, and the thralls were strengthened and sustained by Dalvahni emotion.

But love? The Dalvahni did not
love
.

The Dalvahni were immortal warriors created for a singular purpose. To hunt the djegrali, demons that had slipped the confines of their own dimension, and return them to their proper place or kill them if need be. Left unchecked, the djegrali invariably wreaked havoc upon mortals.

But his struggle had been in vain. Nothing could erase his memories of Evangeline. She was always there in the back of his mind, beckoning; light in an eternity of darkness, warmth and laughter and hope after eons of bleakness and grim, unrelenting duty. She was fever and longing and need. The scent, feel, and taste of her a craving that could not be extinguished by distance, time, or the emotion-sucking clasp of a succubus sex slave.

He abhorred his hunger for her, but at long last he accepted it. He was a fool to think he could forget. Acknowledging his defeat, he’d come back, knowing she would not remember him or their brief, sweet time together. He’d told himself it was enough to be near her, to stand over her as she slept, listening to the steady sound of her breathing, each soft exhalation of air from her lungs music to his lonely soul. He appointed himself her unseen guardian as she went about her daily tasks, following at her heels like a lovesick boy.

Gods, he was pathetic. But he could not resist her. He had not the strength or the will to try.

But neither could he be with her. She was his exquisite torture, his bane, and his every desire. But she was beyond his reach. He had put her there.

She reached up and nervously tugged at a lock of her long hair, an unconscious gesture he knew well. He remembered everything about her, the arch of her slender feet, the sweet curve of her rounded bottom, the satiny feel of her skin beneath his fingers and lips.

She, on the other hand, remembered nothing of him, and it was better so. He had hurt her, brought her nigh unto death with an arrow fired from his own bow, and for that he could not forgive himself. Nor was that the least of his transgressions. He had changed her. She was Dalvahni now, although she did not know it. And because of him, because of the change he had wrought in her, Evangeline could no longer see her beloved fairies. This, too, he’d taken from her. She would hate him for it if she knew, and that he could not bear.

No, it was better this way, although keeping his distance from her was the hardest thing he had ever done. He was fated, it seemed, to spend forever longing for a woman he could not have. There was a certain irony in that.

A dark blue vehicle with the word SHERIFF inscribed in silver letters on the door eased to a stop in front of Evie’s house. Close behind it was a gray automobile with HANNAH POLICE written on the side. A distinguished-looking man with silver hair at his temples got out of the gray car. Carl E. Davis, the Chief of Police in Hannah. Ansgar remembered him from his previous visit here. Davis was courting Addy Corwin’s widowed mother, Bitsy. Ansgar felt sorry for the man. All of the females in that family were unmanageable, to put it mildly. And his brother, Brand, had
willingly
bound himself to one of them. Madness. Ansgar shook his head at the thought. Addy Corwin was the most annoying creature he’d ever met.

But that was Brand’s affair and not his, thank the gods.

A tall, broad-shouldered man Ansgar did not recognize climbed out of the other car. The metal badge on the front of his light brown shirt glittered in the sunshine. He was much younger than Chief Davis and moved with a predatory grace that marked him as a hunter. Ansgar frowned. This man might be clad in modern raiment, but he was a warrior nonetheless. . . and dangerous. There was something different about him, although Ansgar could not say what. His protective instincts aroused, Ansgar opened his senses. He did not detect the taint of the djegrali on the human. Still, something about the stranger made him wary, and he moved closer to the porch and Evie.

To Ansgar’s surprise, the man in the brown shirt turned and scanned the area as if sensing his presence. His eyes were hidden behind dark glasses, but the expression on his lean face was watchful. His gaze lingered on the spot where Ansgar stood for a moment and then moved on.

Ansgar’s warrior instincts shrieked in warning. The Dalvahni had many gifts at their disposal, including invisibility, unsurpassed tracking skills, and stealth. And, yet, this man seemed to detect something amiss. A formidable opponent, indeed, Ansgar thought grimly, and one to be watched.

Evie got to her feet as the two men approached her. Her hazel eyes were wide, her cheeks and lips pale. She was frightened. Something twisted inside Ansgar. The need to comfort her was a raw, physical ache. It was all he could do not to rush to her side.

She stood on the steps, her hands clasped tightly in front of her. Her lush body was disguised by a shapeless, cotton dress; her glorious red hair was partially hidden beneath a matching kerchief. She was all woman. Full, high breasts, a waist so tiny a man could span it with his hands, and curving, generous hips. But she could not see her own beauty.

To him, she was luscious, the essence of feminine beauty, but the cruel taunts of others and the repressive demands of her now dead father had convinced her otherwise. In their once-before, the precious days they’d spent together before he left, he’d coaxed her out of her shell. She had emerged a fragile, breathtaking creature, her burgeoning confidence as thin and brittle as ice in a spring thaw. But that brief rebirth was forgotten, wiped out by a silver arrow from his quiver and her brush with the djegrali and death.

“Chief Davis.” Ansgar heard a touch of relief in Evie’s voice at the sight of a familiar face. “I didn’t expect to see you.” Next, she met the tall stranger at the foot of the steps and held out her hand. “I’m Evie Douglass. I found Meredith this morning when I went in to work and called nine-one-one. Are you a deputy?”

“This is Sheriff Whitsun, Evie,” Chief Davis said.

Evie blushed. “Oh, I’m sorry. I guess I expected someone older.”

“And uglier.” The chief nudged the younger man with his elbow. “Dev gets that a lot. Ain’t that right, pretty boy?”

Ansgar watched the human called Whitsun. In his experience, human males often interacted with one another through mockery, whether good natured or derogatory. Whitsun, however, did not react to the chief’s jibe. His expression remained as impassive as any Dalvahni warrior. Most unusual and alarming.