Midnight Hunter. Kait Ballenger
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the power only someone who wasn’t concerned about pain was capable of. He toppled to the ground with Mrs. Foley on top of him as she attempted to claw his face with her fingernails.
“Every time I cooked you dinner, you never appreciated it, Ted!” she shrieked into Shane’s face. Her breath smelled like death warmed over.
Shane punched her in the jaw. It popped out of its socket, only to correct itself a moment later. Shit. He was fighting a battle he just couldn’t win. Using all his weight, he flipped the two of them over until he was on top. He slammed his fist into her face over and over again. Blood spattered onto his shirt from Mrs. Foley’s nose. The bones of her face broke as he hit her with blow after blow, then healed moments later.
“Vera,” he grunted through the hits. “Get me a...” He looked up, only to find Vera had disappeared. Shit.
That brief moment gave dead Mrs. Foley the advantage she needed. She popped him in the jaw with her small fist as she writhed out from underneath him. Not a strong enough punch that he saw stars, but enough to give him pause. Mrs. Foley scrambled to her feet.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Shane kicked the monster’s legs out from underneath her, and she toppled to the ground again. Diving behind her, Shane wrapped his right arm around her neck in a choke hold. She struggled and bucked against him.
“I hate you, Ted. I hate you!” she screeched. “You never gave me everything you promised. You lied to me.” She kicked and flailed, fighting against his hold.
Vera burst into the room, a large carving knife clutched in her hand.
Thatta girl.
“Try her heart,” Shane ground out through clenched teeth. The dead woman bucked against him.
Vera stepped forward, positioning herself over the woman. “I don’t think I can do it, Shane.” Her hands shook.
“Give me... Shit,” he swore as the back of Mrs. Foley’s head collided with his nose. A warm trickle of blood poured from his left nostril. He extended his free hand. Vera held out the carving knife, and he snatched it from her. He stabbed the blade straight into Mrs. Foley’s chest with a resounding roar. Bright red arterial blood squirted onto the wall, but the corpse continued fighting.
Vera screamed. Shane wrenched the knife out of Mrs. Foley’s chest and plunged the blade in again, only vaguely aware of the pulsating purple light emanating from Vera’s palms. A moment later Mrs. Foley’s body seized. Then her dead weight slumped against his chest.
Shane looked up, clothes and face covered in blood. Vera was standing completely still, the light from her palms dimming to a slow burn. “I...I...only stunned her,” she gasped.
Shit. That meant Mrs. Foley would sit up again any minute now. Shane swore. Only one sure way to kill any supernatural.
“Vera, look away.”
Her eyes widened until she looked like a cartoon character while she stared down at him. “Wh-what?”
“Look away! Leave the fucking room, goddamn it!”
She scrambled for the door and out into the hallway. Lifting the carving knife to Mrs. Foley’s throat, he sawed the blade against her neck. Dead or not, the sight of the blood and the sounds of her gurgling seared their way into his memory like a blazing-hot brand. When he had finished, he dropped the knife to his side and collapsed in a tired heap on the floor.
He’d just decapitated an innocent woman who had clearly been spelled, brought back from the dead and turned into a veritable killing machine that had orchestrated the death of her husband—and nearly him—all by means of the worst type of black magic possible: necromancy. As he lay on the floor, soaked in blood that wasn’t his own, he swore to himself that he would personally destroy the monsters responsible for this.
* * *
ASH DEVEREAUX GAPED like a wide-mouth bass at the sight of Dr. Shane Grey. Drenched nearly from head to toe in dried blood, which clearly wasn’t his own, Shane sat in his usual position in the control room with deep furrows cutting across his normally smooth brow. What the hell had happened?
Ash let out a low, long whistle. “What the blazin’ hell happened to you, Doc?”
Shane looked up at him with glazed-over eyes that Ash knew all too well. “Necromancy. Necromancy happened.” The words tumbled from Shane’s mouth as if they were detached from him somehow, as if he spoke without really knowing what he was saying.
Ash dared a glance at his fellow hunters. Jace sat beside Shane, the front of his trench coat also blood-soaked. “You, too?” Ash drawled.
Jace shrugged. “Me, too. Shane called me to help him dispose of the zombie’s body.”
Zombie? Ash stood silent for a moment, attempting to process Jace’s words. His brain tried to connect the clear reality that somehow Shane had needed someone to clean up a body for him. In all their time working together, he’d never once seen Shane covered in blood, let alone leave a trail of corpses, supernatural or not, behind him. For a moment he wondered if he’d taken one too many shots of Crown Royal and was drunker than Cooter Brown.
“That’s why we’re here,” Damon said, interrupting Ash’s thoughts.
David Aronowitz, their resident exorcist, stepped into the room. “What did I mis—fuck me. What happened?”
Ash shrugged. “That’s what we’re all tryin’ to find out.”
Shane slammed a fist onto the desk beside him. “I told you all already. Necromancy. Necromancy happened.”
The look burning in Shane’s eyes sent a shiver down Ash’s spine, and that was damn well saying something, considering he spent most of his time dealing with angry ghosts. Seeing a bloodbath the likes of which Shane had clearly just experienced—especially when it was your first—made any sane man madder than a soaking-wet hen, which was pretty fucking angry if you’d ever actually seen a hen soaking wet.
Jace clapped Shane on the shoulder. “Settle down there, kid. Here.” He pulled a flask from his jacket, unscrewed the cap and passed it to Shane.
Shane took a swig of what Ash knew was Jace’s regular Bushmills Irish whiskey, swallowing the liquid fire down like a champ. He handed the flask back.
Jace slipped the flask into his jacket pocket. “All right. That’ll calm your nerves some. Now, tell us what the fuck happened.”
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