The Wicked Kiss (Alexa O'Brien, Huntress #2)(35)

“Do you feel that?” I turned to Kale with a renewed excitement. “We have to go this way.”

I walked fast, a sense of urgency quickening my pace. Kale frowned down at me, his brow furrowed in thought.

“I feel it now that you’ve drawn my attention to it. I didn’t before.” The weight of Kale’s heavy gaze drew my eyes to his. “I can still just barely make out that Were’s energy. Your powers have seriously grown. And fast.”

I couldn’t be more powerful than Kale. He was older than Arys, for crying out loud.

Of course, many other factors played a role in it, such as the fact that Arys killed and derived a lot of pleasure and power from it, whereas Kale was doing the willing victim thing. I turned it over in my head; the realization, shocking. I don’t think I fully realized what Arys and I really had going on together.

The street was lined with apartment and condo buildings on either side. Additional side streets and alleys branched off between them. Though there were lights on in many windows, we didn’t see anyone. If I were a human living in this part of town, I wouldn’t be out at night either.

As we progressed from block to block, my senses began to burn like wildfire. The energy of the Were was strong, thick with the negative lashings of unrestrained primal fury. She was hunting. I could feel it. It caused me to quicken my pace; Kale, hot on my heels.

“This werewolf is hunting somebody,” Kale said, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb the silence around us. “Her hunger is so fierce. I hope she doesn’t already have prey in her sights.”

I knew the werewolf we sought wasn’t far. I allowed both my nose and my psychic abilities to guide me. Together, one sense seemed to complement the other so that I could almost see her in my mind’s eye.

My legs moved faster until I was almost running. I knew she was close, and I wanted to reach her before she caught my scent and ran. I could feel Kale beside me, moving with the stealth and grace that nothing living could ever possess. Now that we’d located our target, the urgency within us grew. The power inside me seemed to respond to the excitement of my wolf. It began to scratch at me like a dog begging to be let out.

“This way,” I announced when instinct and the sudden tangy scent of blood pulled me between two shabby looking apartment buildings.

As we slipped between the buildings, the pale glow of the streetlight behind us fell away. There was only darkness ahead. My eyes quickly adjusted, making out what lay before me. It was a parking lot with an alley running behind it. One single, dim bulb glowed in a streetlight near an overflowing dumpster.

Rounding the building, I already knew what I would see between the building and the dumpster: our werewolf and what was left of her prey. She hovered over the body of a man, tearing chunks of flesh from the bone with a ripping, squishing sound. She was so engrossed in feasting on the kill that it took a solid five or ten seconds before she looked up at us.

We were too late for this victim, but there wouldn’t be another. Her dark wolf eyes landed on us, and the vacancy within them struck me as eerie. She was completely out of her mind. Not a semblance of sanity remained in her murderous gaze. Her face and hands were smeared with blood, so much so that I couldn’t tell at first glance what shade her olive skin was. Her long, black hair hung in dread-like chunks to her waist, and her clothing was splattered with blood and gore.

For a split second, I flashed back, seeing an image in my mind of a time when I’d slaughtered a man just like this. After Arys and I had bonded, I’d lost control to the hunger and killed a human who was abusing his girlfriend. She had thanked me later. The gruesome images were never far from my mind. I lived with the fear of losing control like that again.

Then, everything seemed to move in slow motion. Even though it all happened so fast, it was like a slow moving sports replay before my eyes.

Kale launched into action in the same moment that the crazy she-wolf did. I hung back, watching and waiting with a flaming ball of blue and golden energy glowing in the palm of my hand.

She rushed him; her garbled snarl sounded all wrong as it came from between her human lips. He anticipated her blow and easily took her off her feet with one outstretched arm. In a flash, she regained her footing and slashed at him with both clawed, bloody hands.

The craving for blood and power grew inside me. I threw the power I held at the rabid she-wolf, and it successfully knocked the breath from her. She went down on her rear end, choking and gasping for air. Kale stood over her, unleashing blows that would have killed most mortals. It didn’t even faze her.

She came up scratching and biting, fighting for his throat even as he beat her back down again. I moved to shadow him in case she gained an advantage, but Kale stunned her with a blast of power at point blank range. It didn’t throw her like I expected, though it did knock her senseless for a moment. She stared with wide eyes, and a high-pitched wail filled the night.

I made the mistake of letting my guard down for a split second. I turned to Kale with a question on my lips, taking my eyes from her as her instinct kicked in, driving her to fight harder. Despite Kale’s reaction, he wasn’t able to block her and searing heat cut through me as three of her claws bit through the material of my sweater. The blood ran from the deep slashes.

“Alexa?” Kale asked, never pausing to look at me as he grasped the Were by the neck and dragged her close. “Are you ok?”