Beloved (Heart Hunter Series Book 1)

Chapter 6

Through her worn socks she could feel every groove along the tired wooden steps that lead to the basement. The dust displaced with their movements, settling below on the cement foundation of her grandparent’s home.

“When was the last time anyone was even down here?” Megan coughed as she jumped from the last step onto the basement floor.

“I have no idea. We never came down here as kids.” Kara stood on her tip toes and grabbed the chain for the single bulb. It flickered to life, swinging back and forth making shadows dance. “It’s creepy.”

“I know, it’s awesome.” Megan grinned, looking around the canvas covered boxes and items. “Let’s get cracking. I’ll start in this corner.”

Kara’s stomach churned as Megan headed into the dim light. There was little welcoming about Demon artifacts and antique furniture that hadn’t been touched in thirty some odd years.

“So, what’s your deal with James? Is he your boyfriend?”

Kara glanced at Megan as she began to rip apart a crate. “N-no.”

“He’s sure into you though.”

“I don’t know about that. We’re just friends.” Kara swallowed, not really wanting to talk about it and definitely not with Megan.

“Okay.” She laughed. “You two slept together or anything?”

“What? No!” Kara dropped a box on her foot and swore.

“So, you’re not into him at all?”

Kara grunted as she moved the box off her throbbing big toe. “I just want to find my brother.”

“Fine, but I bet a guy like that is a bad boy in bed. Yum. ” Megan taunted, throwing back a sheet and catching a mouthful of debris. “Though he’s older than us, hey?”

“How old are you? And he’s only twenty-two.” Kara shoved aside an empty wooden crate full of fifty years of dust.

“Only. I turn twenty next month.” Megan chuckled. “Is he as rich as he looks?”

Kara rolled her eyes as she dug through a box. “Hey, if I ever met someone that’s been fed from a silver spoon, it’s him. You’re how old again?”

“Eighteen,” Kara breathed while hating the way her heart had begun to hurt. If Megan, a complete stranger, put together James Dray was too good for her, it only solidified the fact they were not meant to be. Ever. “Can we just start looking through all this junk, please?”

Megan nodded and they got to work, ripping apart the basement in search of the textbook that might hold some answers. Hours went by, Kara ignoring most of Megan’s humming and hushed whispers of Metallica. The search became endless as she dug through another crate to no success. Before she could move on to the next dust trap though, heavy footsteps on the stairs stopped her mid-reach. James stepped off the last step, changed and showered with his hair still wet. It was the first time he looked a bit tired or that she was noticing it. He took a deep breath, followed by the wrinkle of his features. Megan smiled at him. “Feeling fresh?”

“Nearly, aside the jetlag.” He walked over to Kara as she continued to dismantle boxes. “Anything?”

“Not unless you need a Demon horn or a maybe a claw?” Kara huffed, standing up and putting her hands to her hips. “There’s nothing.” Her eyes caught the slight ease in the bruising along his face from the attack only twelve hours before. Perhaps he hadn’t been as injured as she’d originally thought.

“What didn’t you look through?” He glanced around to the dismantled boxes.

“Most of it.” Megan’s cough grew to hacking. “God, I need a drink. All I taste is dirt, be right back.”

Kara watched her walk up the stairs and spun toward James. “I think I need to talk to Kyle again.”

“He won’t be of any help.” James pushed aside some dust on a trunk, revealing what was written on the top.

“He was before.”

“And what makes you think he’ll talk again?” James squinted to read the writing. “I think that says books. Need I remind you, Megan beat his head into a wall.”

Kara huffed. “But he’ll talk to me.”

“I think he’s a lost cause, love.” James grabbed the locks but they stayed fixed in place. “Did you look here?”

“Not yet.” Kara huffed. “I’m going to call him.”

James tried to flip them up.

“It needs a key.” She pointed out as all her patience was lost.

He took his hands, readjusted them and the locks busted open under the good shove he gave them. Kara stared at the way the hinges had let go and now hung broken.“Cheap locks.”

He gave her a glance. “ Mm.” Then opened the lid and they both peered inside as the dust settled. “This could be promising.”

“Oh.” Her heart sped from anticipation and Kara dropped on her knees to dig through the array of items and books.

“Here, I’ll help.” He reached for the same big text and their hands bumped together. The air in her lungs left from the electric charge of his fingertips withdrawing out of the way.

“I got it.” She grabbed it and lifted it out of the truck, eyes now on him. His dark umbe r stare poured warmth into her and she liked the way it felt being that close to him. However, if they were just an inch closer, she’d be kissing him.

“Hey, there’s lunch up!” Megan called from the top of the stairs. “And it smells tasty!”

Kara pulled back, looking down to the old book in her lap that had a very fancy word written across in peeling lettering. Lycanthrope. She flipped it open, starting at the middle and flipping through till she got to the drawing of a man standing and it’s progressive line drawings demonstrating the leap into an abnormally large sized wolf.

She swallowed the bit of fear that image created, remembering all too well the night her ex-boyfriend had demonstrated his ability to change just like the drawing after she’d tried to break up with him. She’d ran. He’d chased her. She’d got away but she still felt him near—all the time. It was part of the reason she’d upped her drug intake and stopped going out at night the past few months. Nothing screamed nightmare like having large wolves stalking you.

“Kara?” James questioned her and her eyes flashed to his. He eased the book from between her hands and shut it. “Do you want to eat? You didn’t this morning.”

“No.” Kara gave her head a shake and got back on the mission to find the information they really needed. She pushed away silk cloths to reveal old newspaper clippings from a time long before her birth. James took them from her as she lifted them out. “They don’t write things like this anymore in papers.”

“Nope. Not very interesting for mortal humans when you can just move to any big city and pretend the darker side of the world doesn’t exist.” She huffed. “I wish.”

“Right.” James stopped her by taking her wrist. “It’s not a privilege. It’s ignorance.” She stared at him through the dim light. “It still must be nice to live in ignorance instead of here.”

He let her hand go and she returned to the trunk only to come up with nothing - again.

She felt the frustration as it burned through her veins and sputtered from her mouth. “This is so stupid.”

“It’s worth looking for this information. If we can figure out how to beat them or at least, outsmart them - it’s better than going in blind.”

“The more time I waste looking for a dumb book, the more time I’m giving them to hurt my brother.”

“Kara…” James called after her as she jogged up the stairs to find her cell phone. She’d left it in his car. As she walked toward the front door she snagged his coat and slipped it on, hearing the jingle of the keys while she was at it. When she opened the door, the stormy wind blasted her face. She hurried the steps, unlocking James’ car and finding her cell phone in the center console, completely dead.

“Shit!”

“What are you doing?”

She turned from where she was crawled inside the vehicle as James stood just feet away watching her. The wind blew against him but he was stone-like in comparison.

She got out and fought to shut the door in the howling wind.

“I needed my phone but it’s dead and I don’t have the charger.” She folded her arms around herself in his coat, it was muc h warmer than her own jacket.

“I’ll go get you one from a store.” James held out his hand for the keys.

Kara swallowed. “No, I don’t have any mone y to pay you back.”

He stepped into her and took the keys from around her finger. “I’ll take a trade then.”

Her heart fluttered from the proposal. “W-what kind of trade?”

“I want you to eat.” He walked with her back to the house but took her hand before she could climb the steps. “Do we have a deal?” He stepped into her so close she could feel his warm breath on her freezing face.

“I guess. Sure.”

“May I.” He lifted his hands near her face and she froze, staring up at him.

“What?” She squeaked.

“…have my coat?” He finished.

She shrugged her arms out of it as he guided it off her, trying to hide how red her cheeks had gotten.

“I’ll be back soon,” he promised as a sudden gust of wind iced her exposed arms. Her feet moved about as fast as her brain, like slow motion, she made her way up the porch steps and stopped to watch the black car reverse toward the roadway. A fucking trade. Did that really just happen? She blinked out into the storm and he slowed the vehicle on the road, as if waiting for her to go inside.

She shivered from the relentless weather and stepped inside the foyer. Her feet squished about in the tennis shoes and her soggy clothes clung to her limbs. The cold of the outside had made her want to curl up from utter exhaustion. No matter how muc h she begged her brain to work, to find an answer to where her brother may be, it failed her. She walked into the kitchen, her grandparents muted conversation became a murmur of more noise in her head.

“Kara?”

She had stopped to stare out the tiny window by the sink and in that moment, had got lost in her own thoughts. “Is there anything left to eat?”

“Yes, lots still.” Lauren pulled open the cupboard next to Kara. She grabbed her granddaughter a bowl and started to fill it with the rich homemade tomato soup. “How much? ”

“Oh, that’s enough.” Kara took the bowl before it reached half-way.

“Thank you. Did Megan go back to the basement?”

“She said something like that… have you known her long?”

Kara sat to the kitchen table while shaking her head. “No, we only just met her.”

“She seems driven.” Her grandfather dog-tagged the ear of the page he’d been skim reading.

“Also code for insane,” Kara muttered.

“She has real Hunter instincts. It’s nothing to joke about.”

She sighed and decided to eat her soup instead of talking about Megan anymore. She would rather have done anything besides listen to her grandfather point out again how her Hunter abilities lacked. I will find Josh though. I don’t care how incapable I seem to everyone.

“And what about the boy following you around?” Her grandfather flipped a page of the old textbook laid out in front of him.

“Hardly a boy, John.” Lauren scooted around the table and sat. “He holds too much power.”

Kara wrinkled her nose at whatever that meant but she shook off the normal oddities of her grandmother quick. “He’s a… friend. That’s all.” It took most of her mental power left to admit that aloud. Are we friends again?

It made her stomach churn at the thought. “He shouldn’t even be messed up in this, but somehow he is and now he wants to help.”

“Mphm.” Her grandfather cleared his throat. “Did they look like this?”

He turned to book toward her and snapped Kara away from her thoughts of James.

She studied the picture of the Demon, gangly limbs and pointed features, it just wasn’t quite right. “No.”

“That doesn’t leave us with many options.” Her grandfather took the book back and shut it. “You’re going to have to find out what you can tonight. Use any connections you have.”

Kara sighed. Once James got back with the charger, she’d make the call to Kyle and hope he’d give her another lead worth chasing. Aside the drug dealer Demon, she really didn’t have much else to go on in that town other than climbing back up the mountain blind.

She finished the cold soup sometime before James returned and that left her avoiding the basement and the presence of Megan. The stained glass window in the foyer filtered shadows across the walls and she stared at them for the thousandth time. The black car finally drove in to pull her away from it. She unlocked the door and stepped out onto the porch as James got out of the car with his phone to his ear. She stayed in the shadows, backed pressed against the rotting slat board siding. When he looked up to the porch, he noticed her standing there and stopped on the steps.

“I’ll call you later,” he said into the phone and took it away from his ear as his thumb swept across the screen. “I hope you weren’t waiting out here.”

“No, I was inside.”

James walked up the stairs, taking a little shopping bag from his coat pocket and holding it out for her. “Did you eat?”

“Yeah.” She took the bag and peered inside to the brand new packaged cell phone charger. “Thanks.”

“Anything new found?”

She shook her head. “Looks like I’ll have to rip the town apart tonight.”

He glanced behind them to the lashing weather. “I was listening to the radio… some areas are flooded.”

“It’s just a storm—”

“It’s verging a hurricane.”

“Let me call Kyle.” She went to turn when he stopped her by stepping closer. The nearness caught her off guard.

“I just don’t see why that thing would give us any more reliable information.”

Kara rolled her eyes and turned away from him. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Kara.” He followed her inside, stripping his jacket and hanging it on the rack to drip dry. “I want to find Josh, don’t think otherwise.”

She huffed and waited for him to face her. When he did, he looked exhausted by her.

“I’m trying to prevent anyone getting hurt.”

“Megan doesn’t care if she gets hurt and neither do I, welcome to the Hunter way of life.” The words left her lips with a vile taste and she regretted speaking them as soon as they were said. James stared her down. Their eyes sparked wicked fire between them, making it hard for her to breathe. About to open his mouth and speak, Megan’s whooping interrupted as she came running up from the basement.

“I found something cool!” She held a large book above her head in victory. The cracking leather that bound the yellowing pages dusted her dark hair in particles of fine dirt. The Hunter swung the book down on the near mail table. “You gotta see this!” Megan flipped it open halfway to a page with an accurate drawing of a very similar amulet to what the Demons in the woods had.

“That’s it!” Kara’s heart leapt through her chest with hope.

“Yeah.” Megan grinned. “And this is how you use it.” She pointed to the blurb about winding it up like a clock.

“It says you only get a small window of travel before it closes and… Survival odds within aren’t good,” Kara sighed from the deflation of her sudden hope.

“Are you sure that’s the same thing?” James looked it over carefully and both girls sneered back. “Right, clearly you’re both sure on it.”

“I have a photographic memory when it comes to things that should have been mine.” Megan picked up the book to study the amulet drawing closer. “Or perhaps, it’s all the dust going to your head.” James wasn’t impressed and he pulled out his ringing cell phone. “I need to take this call.” The girls watched him leave the house for the porch and Megan scoffed as soon as he’d shut the door. “Sometimes he’s really boring, isn’t he?” She put the book to the table.

I’d still take boring over my life… Kara groaned. “He just isn’t used to our world.”

“You sure about that?” Megan lifted an eyebrow. “He appears very well versed about all these things he should not. Humans don’t act like him about this stuff. They tend to freak out and get weird.”

“It’s cause he’s known me for too many years. He’s used to it.” There she was being reminded of all the time she’d spent talking to him on the phone and building their relationship up all to have him reject her when it

came down to it the year before.

Megan flipped the book shut, tapping the top. “Is there a bed I can crash in for a few hours? I think we have all the information we need. Just have to get our hands on one of those amulets.”

“Yeah… up the stairs there’s another narrow staircase to the attic. Take your choice on beds.”

“Thanks.” Megan turned away. “I’ll be up before it’s dark!” She jogged the stairs, leaving Kara to stare down at the book. It exhausted her to even think about going back down into the basement and being disappointed again when she found nothing.

She leaned her back against the hallway wall and her eyes went to the dining room. A place she never remembered eating in due to the stacks of unworldly items her grandparents stored there but it had been a decent spot for hide and seek.

A tree branch smacked the single pane glass as the storm continued to lash and she watched the shadow of the twisted limbs retreat and return for another hit. Of all the things going wrong, the weather wouldn’t make it any easier. A loud crack and rumble of thunder followed the flash of lightning and she took an uneasy breath as the vibration moved through the floorboards beneath her feet.

On the next bolt of lightning, the front door opened and James stepped inside.

Her eyes went to him and she gulped. “What if they killed him already?”

The door shut behind James with the help of the wind and he stared at her. “Don’t think like that.”

“But it could be true.” She felt her lungs collapse. “I’ve really screwed up, James. I know it.” She cracked under the pressure of her life the past six months. “I’ve been screwing up for a while. I made a lot of really bad choices and now this.”

He came towards her after what seemed like an eternity. “I left him in the car, Kara—”

“But you followed me! I went in there because…”

James waited for her to finish her sentence. “Tell me.”

“I went in there to buy…” she lowered her voice so her grandparents wouldn’t hear. “ To buy pills.” She prepared herself for whatever reaction he may have. His stare bore craters into her soul and he adjusted his stance enough for her to feel his unease. “What sort of pills?”

She twisted her palms together and realized just how noticeable it was when his eyes darted down to them. “ Oxy. It’s a downer—”

“That’s a heavy pain reliever,” he corrected.

She sighed. “It just switches me off.”

“From what?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “Life? I need something strong like that to shut my mind down, forget what I am.”

His brow creased with his confusion. “Have you taken any today?”

Kara swallowed hard. “Not today…”

“But you did yesterday?”

She sighed. “Yeah. I did.”

His pause got heavy with disappointment. “You should go see a doctor. I’ll take you.”

Kara stiffened at the suggestion. “Now?”

“I think that’s best.”

“No way.” She stumbled to find an excuse, there was no time for her when Josh was on the line. She’d made a mi stake confiding in him, that was clear. “Anyway, I can’t afford that—”

He stared at her. “I’ll pay for it. Get your coat on.” He went to grab his own jacket and she panicked, grabbing his arm and stopping him from moving.

“No, I can’t.” She repeated, when he winced she let go of the grip she’d put him under. “I don’t matter until we’ve found Josh.”

He let out a frustrated breath. “You matter to me.”

Kara gulped, looking away and letting all her guilt trickle in. “I shouldn’t.”

He stepped in so near to her, she felt his cheek on hers as he spoke, “but you do.” When he stepped back, her eyes went to his and she tried not to choke on her emotions.

“How can you help your brother if you’re not okay yourself?”

“Going to the doctor won’t save Josh any more than it will me right now. I’ll be fine.” Breaking the tension between them, she walked away into the dark living room and sat to the couch. The thought that he’d let her off the hook that easy, proved she could be dreaming—it could all be just a stupid nightmare. She hoped.

He stood in front of her. “You’re ridiculously stubborn.”

“Try being me, you’ll understand why—”

“That’s the issue, there is no understanding any of this!” His burst of agitation startled her and she stared up at him in a silence that wrapped both of them in a shroud of its destitute. He gave his head a quick shake and came

toward her to crouch down at her lap. “How often do you take them?”

“As much as I need to.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s hard to explain.” She shut her eyes for a moment and tried not to cry.

“Try to explain.”

“Once, twice…”

“A week?”

“Sometimes more if I’ m… if I need it.”

His expression became a mangle of discontent. “This is serious.”

“It’s not more serious than my brother missing.”

“In an entirely different way, it is.” He moved onto the couch next to her and they sat in another cruel silence.

“Don’t hate me,” she whispered after what seemed like many painful minutes.

“I don’t hate you. I want to help you.”

She turned to face him and the worn cushion sunk her a bit closer than she expected. Her hand reached out to stop herself from slipping into his lap and she gripped his thigh to do so. That didn’t seem to bother him but what did were her tears.

“If I could just go back and redo last night, I would.”

He swallowed.

“I can’t believe this is happening. Honestly, I can’t.” The tears left her eyes and she swiped them away as they fell.

“Come here.” That’s when his arms came around her and pulled her into his chest. She collapsed into him, turning and pressing her tearing eyes into his solid shoulder. He held her tight as she felt one of his hands move over the back of her head. “Hush.” She cried harder when he comforted her and laid a single kiss on her forehead.

Her eyes lifted up to his and the silence enveloped them. Her hand on his chest slid up and she took his cheek, now covered in a budding stubble from possibly going a day or so since he shaved. She gulped and put her forehead to his, but he didn’t make a move to kiss her, even with their lips so impossibly close. Their eyes shut from the emotion.

“I missed you,” she whispered to him.

“I won’t leave you again.” He breathed as she crawled closer.

“Ever?”

His hands on her tightened, wrapping her waist. “No, not ever.”

She pulled back only inches to stare at him. Her fingertips traced small lines back and forth over his jaw line. It all made her heart ache. It should have been a moment of happiness within her bleak existence but all it did was make her want to cry again. Her eyes welled and her lips failed to close from the emotion bubbling just across the surface.

“Kara.” He pulled her into him and she collapsed under the warmth of his arms. “We’ll find him.” The ugly tears came and she sobbed into his soft cotton shirt. “I promise.” He held her so tight the world and her problems almost vanished. She would have given almost anything to be held like that every day. Spoken to and cared for the way he did for her. There wasn’t a price that could be put on it, aside her baby brother ’s life maybe.