Night Falls on the Wicked - By Sharie Kohler Page 0,42
the point?” His voice fell cold and empty, and she was convinced this was a man who had never loved.
Maybe who never could.
“Hope is the point.” And love. She already loved this girl, and she wasn’t ready to let her go.
He shook his head once. “You’ve no idea what we’re risking. Keeping her alive until the next moon endangers innocent lives.”
So pragmatic. Where was his heart? “I’m not going to let you do this,” she bit out again, louder this time, reaching for Aimee, grasping the girl with both hands. “Give her to me.”
“You can’t win this.”
“Look. We’ll stay with you. We have a month to track this alpha. We’ll find him. We’ll kill him before the next full moon and she shifts. Then we can return her to her grandmother—where she was going with her mother in the first place.”
“It won’t be that simple.”
Darby shook her head. “She’s got a chance. We have to give her that chance.” She inhaled bitter cold air into her lungs and added, “If it doesn’t work out, I’ll do it myself. When the time comes.”
He stared at her for a long moment through narrowed eyes. Snow gathered in his lashes as he studied her. Then as if reaching a decision, he blinked and strode past her, still carrying Aimee. “Come on, it’s cold. Let’s get somewhere warm before we start tracking Cyprian again. I killed the others. There’s just him now. He’ll be desperate to increase his ranks. My guess is he’ll move into a larger population and try to lose himself in the masses—make it harder for me to sniff him out.”
She walked quickly after him, trying to keep up with his long strides, her heart surging inside her at his indirect agreement.
“You’ll do as I say. Exactly what I say. Without question,” he called over his shoulder. “Otherwise this ends now. Before it even begins.”
“Of course,” she agreed, panting to keep up, her boots crunching a steady rhythm over the snow. “How do you know so much about this Cyprian? Are you the one they mentioned? The one who’s been hunting them?”
His lips twisted as he walked, carrying Aimee in his arms as if she were nothing more than a feather. “That would be me. I’ve managed to decimate his pack. He, however, still eludes me. The bastard has nine lives.” They approached the Hummer parked alongside the road, not far from where she crashed the lycans’ car. He opened the back door and carefully laid Aimee on the backseat.
Jonah had mentioned lycan hunters before to her, a large, secret organization called NODEAL. “Are you part of NODEAL?”
He slid her a look. “You know a lot about lycans. No, I’m not. I do things solo.”
“Why are you after this particular pack? Did they do something to you?”
He motioned for her to get in the back beside Aimee. She slid in beside the girl but still looked up at him, waiting for an answer.
“They took my mother,” he responded flatly and then shut the door in her face.
She felt his announcement like a slap. She knew what it was like to lose a mother. Her mother had been unable to handle her life as a witch … the constantly appearing demons trying to steal away her soul. It tormented her only further when Darby’s gift ended up being something that had demons appearing all the time.
Getting struck with a vision at any odd time of the day became more than an inconvenience. It was dangerous when it tracked demons to her like a moth to flame—tracked them to her and her mother.
Her mother couldn’t cope. Not with any of it—but especially not with Darby. So she quit on all of it. She quit on herself and Darby. She quit on life.
Darby gawked at the back of Niklas’s head as he got in the front and started the car.
“How long ago was that?” she asked.
He lifted one broad shoulder, his gaze catching hers in the rearview mirror. “Ten years.”
“You’ve been hunting this pack for ten years?”
“Lycans haven’t been around this long because they’re stupid and easy to kill.” Defensiveness edged his voice. “So, yeah. I’ve hunted Cyprian and his pack for ten years.” His eyes hardened and she knew he was battling rage for having lost him. For having been so close only to come up empty-handed again. “I’ll hunt him forever, if I have to.”
She bit her lip and glanced down at the inert girl.