Page 7 of Hunted on Halloween

They’ve cursed my people. And every thirty years, they lose their mind. They become what the necrotechs thought they should be.” His eyes closed, and she saw his body swell and then return to normal.

“The wolves, the vampires, the ghosts, and even the demons. This curse was designed to break my people down to what they may have been hundreds of thousands of years ago. It stripped their civility from them and left them nothing but the memory of ravaging beasts. Then they come over here to kill. That’s all my people want.”

She felt her heart break for him. The sadness coming from him mixed with the righteous anger touched her.

“They just want to kill, but this isn’t my people.” He looked at her, imploring that she heard him and didn’t just see nightmares come to life. “They can’t revel in the joy of being back in their land, of connecting with it.” The joy in the feel of the breeze on their skin, the tang of the ocean in their noses, the beauty of the mountains, and the trees, all of it should be giving them the strength to carry on. Instead, they’ve reverted to something that they may have been millions of years ago but are no longer.” Hepulled her closer as if she held all the answers or just the answer that he needed.

“All except for me. And this year I decided that I too would commit treason and become something I was never meant to be, do something I never wanted to do. And you were the target.”

She noticed that he never said that he hadn’t killed before, simply that whoever he killed wasn’t innocent. Never had she been with a male who had killed, and she thought she would shrink away from that very idea. Knowing whoever he killed hadn’t had clean hands made it a little easier for her.

“And now my target is sitting on my lap in a towel. And I find her to be the most irresistible female I’ve ever seen in my life.”

How could she be turned on and scared at the same time? Because that’s exactly what she was.

She desired him. She wanted to strip him naked, see what he looked like. Yet, she felt scared because he was obviously different from her.

He wasn’t human. There was no if, and, or buts about that. And what was she going to do about it? She didn’t know.

She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how to do it. Everything felt strange. Was this a test? Her hands went to her hair, then she started pulling. One hand started rubbing her eyes. And then, before she knew it, she hugged herself and rocked on his lap.

Tia was hugging herself close because she was scared and aroused at the same time. And as much as she knew he could hurt her, she had a feeling, and it was so stupid. She felt, no, she knew that he wouldn’t hurt her, which made her wonder how many women had had that feeling before, and now they were no more because they hadn’t run.

“Now you understand what I could do to you, but what I’m not doing to you, what I won’t do to you.” His deep voice startled her out of her thoughts and made her focus on him. She felt at peace.He was a man who she wouldn’t want to run into in a dark alley if she’d done him wrong. If she’d never done anything to him, he was the only one she would trust to get her through that same alley.

“Why won’t I hurt you? It could be because of who you are, but I’d rather think it’s because of who I am. Because no matter how hard I tried, there was no way I was going to commit treason.” He smiled at her and for the first time, she really saw his teeth. Her heart fluttered with knowing what he was.

“I won’t kill someone who is innocent. That’s who I am. Tell me, Tia, who are you?”

There were so many things he could have asked. Why this one? She could hear the howls and the growls in the air, and she hated it.

She saw the fear on her people’s faces as they locked their doors and hunkered in place, and hoped that by the end of the night, they would still be alive.

“I don’t know who I am, but I know this. I’m not going to let this continue to happen. Something has to change.” She looked at him, daring herself to do the one thing she’d wanted to do since she saw him.

Tia wrapped her hands around his neck and pulled his head down. She whispered in his ear before she kissed him.

Chapter Four

Tia’s stomach dropped whenTieran stood with her in his arms. Off to one side, in the corner of her eye, she could see her blue front door hanging from the hinges.

She saw it, but it didn’t register. He carried her through the living room, past the bathroom door that was lying half in and half out of the bathroom. She could see her bedroom close to the bathroom. That door, fortunately, was intact.

When they walked into her bedroom, Tieran used his foot to kick the door shut. He took her to the bed, lying her down on it like she was precious. He treated her like she was gold and silver, or diamonds, something that you couldn’t get easily on this planet. The planet that she used to think was hers.

But now she knew it wasn’t really hers. Someone had tricked the original inhabitants into giving up their land.

“Beautiful, Tia.” His voice was deep.

She loved how it made her tremble on the inside. Her blood flowed faster, and her heart beat in a staccato she wasn’t usedto. She wanted this, the man, this monster, the survivor of a holocaust he didn’t create.

He was a monster to everyone except for her. And she wondered, is this how other people felt? Is this how people felt who loved men who were mobsters or other things that people called monsters? Is this how they felt because they knew that the rest of the world may see the man or the male as one way, but they saw them as something totally different and desirable?

His hand reached down to caress her cheek, and she thought there was a slight shake to his hand.

And just that shake made her want him even more. She wanted to touch him. She wanted to devour him while he was devouring her.

“I don’t understand this feeling that I have, this desire to be close to you,” she confessed, wanting to know if she was going crazy or imagining things.

---