To Hell and Back (3 page)

The stranger didn’t answer. Instead he held his hand out.

Her own crept toward her belly and an overwhelming sadness leeched into her soul. “Who are you?” she asked, though her mind was elsewhere and she barely heard his answer.

“Priest.”

She glanced up. “What?”

He leaned down once more, his breath warm against her cheek. “The name is Priest, and right now I’m your only shot of surviving, because this town is crawling with otherworld. Their numbers have doubled in the last ten minutes alone.” He glanced at the window and scowled. “The air is rank with their smell.”

A sob escaped her lips but he went on, cruelly. “Winters is long gone and I don’t know if he’s coming back.” His eyes fell to where her hand laid, nestled against her belly.. Her heart was pounding so loudly she could barely hear her own thoughts.

“Are you coming or am I going to have to carry you from this room?”

Kira went cold inside. She closed her mind and let the canvas bleed out until it was blank and there was nothing. It was an old trick, one she’d used many times over so that her fragile mind would survive when she’d been in the hellhole that passed as a psychiatric hospital. She nodded, wiped away the few tears that had slipped from her eyes …

And without glancing back, followed the stranger from the room.

Chapter Three

P
RIEST KNEW HE
was in trouble about two seconds after they exited the bed-and-breakfast. Up ahead, just past the giant pumpkin display, stood a pack of blood demons. They’d donned their human guise, of course, but it did nothing to hide the menace they projected. A family of five gave them a wide berth as they traversed the sidewalk and he watched as the mother hustled her children past.

Smart humans.

The damn things looked like a bunch of thugs—all of them well over six feet in height, with thick necks, tree trunks for legs, and shoulders as wide as a Mack truck.

They were mean and strong, but dumb. Bottom-feeders who kissed the asses of most of the underworld. He wondered who they called boss.

Normally, Priest wouldn’t blink. As an immortal Knight of the Templar, he was used to dealing with all sorts of otherworld scum. In fact, it had been a few months since he’d flexed his muscles and connected his fists with demon hide. Normally he looked forward to this kind of shit because life, such as it was, gave him only a few moments to feel truly alive. Making love to a hot-blooded woman did that. Waking up to the smell of fresh rain did that. Killing a bunch of punk-ass demons did that. He glanced to his side.

But normally he worked alone.

Casually he leaned his tall frame against the brick wall, just outside of the coffee shop and kept Kira out of view. The woman didn’t say anything—she didn’t have to. Her pale features and large exotic eyes couldn’t hide her fear. But there was something else there, and it was that something else that was going to make all the difference in the world. Anger.

He reached his hand forward as if to caress her cheek while his eyes scanned the immediate area looking for otherworld. To anyone glancing their way, they appeared to be a couple deeply involved in each other. Lovers.

Priest ignored both her flinch and her quick recovery as his gaze swept along the street behind him. His liege—the Seraphim, Bill—hadn’t told him much about this assignment, but he knew enough. He knew where Kira Dove had been.

The gray realm.

It was a place he was all too familiar with and he had to give it to her, the little lady had spunk. Anyone who escaped purgatory in one piece was strong. He’d never met the hellhound Logan Wingers, but his woman had guts.

His eyes hardened when he spied a second pack of blood demons hunkered down near the bed-and-breakfast they’d just left. When he felt the unmistakable shift in the air that spelled real trouble, his insides twisted.

Lilith’s crew.

Just fucking great. His Harley was nowhere near where he needed the damn thing to be. He was in the middle of a large crowd of innocents and this little bit of woman had the very bowels of Hell on her trail.

A new scent drifted up his nostrils. Lilith’s pack hounds were here somewhere and their human disguise would be hard to penetrate. Those guys were pros.

Priest straightened and dropped his hand from her cheek, sliding his hand down until he was able to draw her delicate fist into his large palm. Damned if he was gonna let the queen bitch of hell get to Kira Dove. Strong white teeth flashed as he smiled and looked down at her.

“You ready to rock and roll?”

Huge eyes stared up at him, their dark depths hiding a hell of a lot more than pain and fear. There was strength there, determination and—he smiled—a
fuck you
attitude.

She nodded and whispered, “Let’s do this.”

Kira let the stranger slip his arm around her shoulders and turn her down the alley between the coffee shop and a bank. A cool wind slipped in behind them and she fought the urge to break into a run and to not stop until she was as far away as she could get from the danger she sensed.

And it was dangerous. There was no doubt about that. She felt it like an ache in her bones, and as her hands once more rested upon her belly, she tried to stifle the fear that filled her. Even now, life grew inside her. She felt it stir—felt the whisper of life—and Kira knew she would do whatever she had to in order to give her child a chance to live.

A child she’d created with Logan.

His name was like a whisper in her mind and as she and the stranger, Priest, emerged from behind the building, she pushed the pain that accompanied it away—she didn’t want to think about Logan or what he was going through. Where he was.

She couldn’t, because if she dwelled on it too much, she’d break, and there was no way she could falter. Not now.

“This way,” Priest nodded ahead.

Kira fell into step beside him as his arm fell from her shoulders. The mantle of cold, lethal warrior slipped over Priest as easily as water over ice, and she recognized the same kind of strength in him that lived inside Logan.

I will return to you, my love.

The whispered words echoed in her brain before she could stop them, and instead of dismissing them outright as a sign of weakness, she let them settle for a moment. She let them resonate and fill the empty well inside her. Logan’s dark eyes swam before her, eyes that glistened with love, desire, and need. They gave her strength. Hope.

The emotions burned in her chest so hard she gasped—and then she pushed them away. Kira wouldn’t think about Logan again until she held him in her arms. Until she could look in his eyes and know she was home. From this moment forward, her survival and that of her unborn child was all she would focus on.

She reached for the charmed dagger Logan had given her as her gaze swept the half-filled parking lot behind the buildings. Beyond the old cracked asphalt ran a railroad line, but from the looks of it, it hadn’t been used in years. Tall weeds and heavy brush lined the rusted rails and she saw glistening water in the distance. A small river ran through the town, and forest covered the landscape on the other side.

The forest was thick and silent, but a shiver rolled over Kira as she gazed into the multicolored stand of trees. The autumn colors were near blinding in the early morning sun, and though the warmth of reds and gold and oranges were abundant, the shadows that surrounded the trees were eerie. Mist rolled near the edge like long plumes of smoke and she shuddered, remembering the gray realm. Remembering what mist and fog could hide.

Something didn’t look right.

“Shit,” the man beside her uttered harshly.

Kira glanced up at him but his eyes were trained to where hers had just been. His brows furrowed, accenting the cold depths in his eyes, and she knew this wasn’t a man to be crossed.

“We can’t go that way. The trees are filled with Askula demons.”

Kira had no idea what the hell Askula were, but she didn’t like the sound of it or the feeling she got when she stared into the forest.

He glanced down at her, skimmed over the dagger in her hand, and nodded to his left. The parking lot ended behind the bank, and beyond that was the main street with a children’s playground on the other side. “We’ll go that way.”

Goosebumps rose on the back of her neck and Kira took off, Priest falling in behind her. Her heart beat rapidly, filling her body with adrenaline, and her legs flew over the concrete.

When she’d been confined at the Regent Psychiatric Institute many a night she’d lain awake in her prison, dreaming of the chance to stretch her legs and run as far away as she could. Of taking in great gulps of free air and leaving Mergerone and his awful hands, smelly breath, and wet mouth behind.

“Pick up the pace,” Priest growled, inches from her back. Overhead, gray bulbous clouds blocked out the sun and a cold wind scattered bits of debris into the air. Small stones hit her face hard, like icicles against glass. She gasped as pain rifled over her cheekbones and dug deeper for more strength as she ran across the street, narrowly avoiding a large SUV.

The driver yelled an obscenity at them as they hopped the guardrail and slid down a steep embankment that led to the park.

No longer was the town of Waterford quaint. It was teeming with otherworld, with darkness and evil. Fear clutched at her insides, and Kira wove through the metal playground equipment, pausing long enough to catch her breath before Priest pointed to a house set back from the road, a few hundred feet up.

“There,” he said, nodding. “We’ll take the car.”

They reached the driveway just as the clouds overhead began to seep heavy, fat drops of rain. The car, a small, silver Honda Accord, had more rust along its panels than steel, and Kira thought it would be a miracle if the damn thing actually worked. She looked back toward where they’d come from, her eyes narrowing as she tried to see through the gloom and thick sheets of rain that now fell.

“I’ll see about the keys.”

She heard Priest but couldn’t look away from the vision that now emerged from the rain and mist. A shudder wracked her body and she pushed long, wet pieces of hair from her eyes as the fear inside her tripled. Huge, hulking beasts—seven of them—walked through the park in slow, controlled movements. They were flanked by two animals nearly as tall as them—animals that looked an awful lot like Logan’s hellhound form.

Red eyes burned into the back of her brain and a steady, low hum began to navigate its way along the slick driveway, up her legs, where it settled inside her stomach.

Hurry!

The whispered word slipped through her brain and then she yanked on the car door, eyes frantically searching for Priest as he appeared from behind the two-story, white plank house.

“Hurry!” she shouted hoarsely.

Priest jumped into the car, cursing as he adjusted the seat to fit his tall frame, and when the engine roared to life, Kira exhaled, her hot breath misting up the window as she tried to see. The rain was now heavier, and the only thing her eyes could pick out were the two sets of burning red eyes—hellhound eyes. They terrified her more than the hulking beasts who accompanied them.

Images—smells and emotions—assaulted her. She’d been dragged down to the underworld so many years ago and yet it felt like yesterday.. Kira was ashamed when she squeezed her eyes shut and whimpered at the heaviness of it all.

Would they ever truly go away?

Her heart was beating so hard it was painful and she gasped, clutching at the door handle as Priest spun out of the driveway and turned right, heading away from the danger.

They drove in silence, the old car giving all it had to keep up with the relentless pressure Priest applied to the gas pedal. The only sounds in Kira’s ears were the tires humming along asphalt, the splat of rain against the windshield, and the roar of the wind as it buffeted them mercilessly.

Her chest constricted tightly and she had a death grip on the dagger in her hands as they blew through a stop sign and continued forward. She kept glancing in the sideview mirror but for the moment couldn’t see any sign of their pursuers.

They were on a rural road and when they came to the next intersection, they were forced to stop as a large blue tractor pulled a load of pumpkins along the road in front of them. The rain had stopped and warmth seeped through the glass windows, though it did nothing to penetrate the cold inside her bones. A long, slow breath fell from between her lips as she gazed ahead at the wagon full of pumpkins.

“That’s the slowest tractor on the planet,” she muttered.

Priest remained silent, his jaw clenched, his eyes on the rearview mirror.

Her fingers gripped the dagger and her foot tapped the floor nervously as the wagon finally cleared enough room for Priest to gun the engine. They zipped across the road and barreled ahead, the silver car’s engine making a grinding noise, no doubt in protest to the relentless pressure to move. Minutes later she relaxed slightly and turned to Priest.

“I think we lost them.”

Kira didn’t see the black SUV come from out of nowhere but she sure as hell felt the hit when it crashed into the back of the Accord. The car swerved crazily and slammed into a ditch, where it bounced on impact and went airborne.

Kira was tossed around like a puppet and for a moment everything went hazy. She felt pain. Smelled blood. She heard cursing—words she didn’t understand. They came from behind her, or maybe ahead of her.

She struggled to open her eyes but everything was heavy. Chaotic.

Kira didn’t give in and as the moments ticked past, eventually her eyes slowly opened. She shivered at the sight of three dark forms solidifying in the mist. They moved toward her, and even though Kira wasn’t sure if she believed in a higher power anymore, she said a soft prayer hoping someone would hear her…

But as the demons moved closer, darkness bled into the hazy red in her mind and a painful groan escaped her lips. And she slipped into oblivion.

Chapter Four

“L
OGAN, YOU KNOW
I don’t like it when you ignore me.”