Unreap My Heart (The Reaper Series) (13 page)

He grinned enough to show his fangs. “I’m going hunting.”

Chapter 13

NIMBY

N
OT
P
ISSED
O
FF
A
T
A
LL
. Not an ounce. And Balthazar had no idea why. He’d been prepared for Arianne to chew him a new one after what Granmare Baba did. Hell, he wanted to chew someone a new one, too. He’d been ready for any barbs Arianne would throw his way, ready to annihilate her. Connecting them like that was underhanded. He still wasn’t clear on what Granmare Baba had planned, but the tattoos were a part of it. Now Arianne invaded his head as he invaded hers…and he hated every second of it. Arianne called it convenient; he called it annoying. No one had any right to his thoughts but himself. Sure, she didn’t have to ask him questions anymore. He spoke the answers before she could breathe, but he felt whipped doing it, like she had all the control.

He left her open-mouthed at the top of Mount Deus. She’d be safe there so long as she didn’t leave the Dancing Pines. He needed to hunt and maybe even burn off some of the frustration the old hag had caused him.

Bringing Arianne to Mount Deus wasn’t about protecting her, or having a safe place to camp for the night. Only the hunt mattered. What he needed called the other side of the mountain home. He’d felt his prey even before they started the climb to the top. It took all his concentration not to leave Arianne then and there to satisfy his increasingly painful hunger. His chest crumbled into itself. If he let it go on any longer, he’d lose all control, and there was no upside to that for anyone within a hundred mile radius.

Light steps stopped the buckles from jingling. Not that he needed to be completely silent. Ogres were big, with brains the size of peas. Two or three would be more than enough to sustain him until he got to the Voyeur. She had prime hunting land. Balthazar could get anything he wanted there. He hoped he could persuade the Voyeur to let him poach on her land—or maybe she’d be so busy that she wouldn’t miss a demon or two. Right now, Ogres were on the menu. Saliva gathered in Balthazar’s mouth. His fangs lengthened as he swallowed.

He reached the bottom of the mountain in record time. The loud grunting masked any remaining noise he might have made. But he couldn’t be too careful. A branch snapping at the wrong moment would be most inconvenient. He hated playing with his food.

If his ears were correct, a nest of them lived in a cave at the bottom of Mount Deus. A softer grunt indicated a young one, no more than a few hundred years old. He swallowed again. The wet garbage smell that wafted at him like a hot wall of smoke confirmed what his ears heard. Balthazar breathed through his mouth. Just because he liked a little Ogre once in a while didn’t mean he appreciated their ripe aroma.

His scythe manifested without him having to call it. His anticipation and the urge to kill was more than enough. Balthazar gripped its staff in one hand and kept running.

About a hundred feet away Balthazar spotted a bald, knobby head. Ogres came in different shapes and sizes. This one had the snout of a pig and wicked elephant tusks. A hairy chest, beefy hands, and stubby legs completed the picture. It must have been twice as tall as Balthazar and three times as wide. Just the way he liked it. The Ogre grunted, chewing on something. Balthazar had no interest in finding out what it was. A second Ogre—this one with a full head of hair and a mouth filled with sharp teeth roughly the size of his forearm—hobbled toward the first. It handed over a leg of something big. Saber mammoth maybe. The behemoths didn’t come from the human world as the humans suspected. They were accidentally brought there when a demon thought he could play warlock. Caused a big snafu in the Nethers. Totally hilarious. Balthazar thanked his lucky stars he’d been present for that fiasco.

Balthazar counted, pretty sure there had to be another Ogre hanging about—the young one. He made a mental note to find it the second he finished with Dumb and Dumber. He licked his lips and raised his scythe. He jumped off the ground to strike at baldy when a whip wrapped around his neck and snapped him back. He slammed onto his backside, robbing his lungs of air. The crash alerted the Ogres. They turned to him and charged. Ogres killed first and didn’t ask questions later. To them he was food as much as they were to him. Balthazar struggled against the whip, but it wouldn’t budge. He used the blade of his scythe against the whip. The contact caused a grinding sound. Balthazar froze. Dammit. Why couldn’t it be an ordinary whip?

The ground shook from the charging Ogres. They were on him in seconds. He swung his scythe around and the blade connected with the arm of Baldy, lopping it off. Baldy screamed and green blood spurted out of the stump where his forearm used to be. The long-haired Ogre growled at its companion before returning its attention to Balthazar. Before it could move, he swept his scythe across its legs. The second Ogre fell to the ground, wailing in agony. The first Ogre finally came to its senses, now twice as pissed. It uprooted a pine and swatted Balthazar with it. An ugly snap filled the air as Balthazar’s body flew one way while his head remained where the whip kept it.

The whip finally let up, followed by a whistle. Balthazar dragged himself off the ground. It would take more than a broken neck to kill him. But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt like a mother f—

On his feet, he took his head with both hands and snapped his neck back into place. He groaned, disoriented by the pain for a second. He grabbed on to a tree trunk to stay upright. Whoever had whipped him better be ready to become the dessert to his Ogre dinner. When his vision cleared, he saw the creature with the whip finish off Baldy by snapping its neck. The huge body fell to the ground with a loud rumble. Balthazar glanced at the second Ogre who’d lost consciousness some time ago.

“Before I kill you, mind telling me why you interrupted my dinner?” Balthazar said to the lady demon with the nasty whip. The breasts tipped him off. But, then again, many things in the Underverse had breasts and weren’t necessarily of the female persuasion.

She—for the lack of a better word—coiled her whip and hung it on a belt around her hips. She flicked her leathery wings twice before folding them tightly behind her back. Then she focused yellow eyes on him.

“My mistress forbids hunting on her land,” she said in an echoing voice, like she spoke with more than one.

Balthazar quickly picked up on what the demon meant. “When did Mount Deus become Voyeur territory?”

“Since she killed the king of the Ghouls.”

That put a kink in Balthazar’s plans of passing through the Ghoul Woods. “And why would she do that?”

The demon picked dirt out from under her long fingernails. “She takes the prince for her lover.”

Another kink in the plan. Oh this was just peachy. The Voyeur collected lovers like jewelry. What she saw in the Prince of the Ghouls he had no idea. But before he could start figuring things out, first things first. He flipped two fingers up and the whip on the demon’s belt uncoiled and wrapped around its master. The demon fell to her side.

“I wouldn’t struggle if I were you,” Balthazar said, grinning.

She hissed at him, forked tongue flicking in and out of her mouth.

Balthazar closed his fist, and the whip coiled tighter, choking the demon into silence. “There, that’s better.” He raised his index finger at her. “One, I didn’t know this was Voyeur territory now. Two, I don’t give a damn. And three, you’re next.”

The demon’s yellow eyes widened. She shook now. Balthazar inhaled a lung full of her fear. If she hadn’t snapped his neck, he would have let her go. No, scratch that. He’d still eat her. The mercy was that he would save her for last. She could watch.

He walked toward Baldy and kicked the carcass until it lay on its back. Dead. The bitterness of the residual energy in the air stuck his tongue to the roof of his mouth. Grunting, he moved to the one bleeding out. He knelt down and sank his fangs into its neck—not for blood. Balthazar didn’t drink blood. He used his fangs to suck out the Ogre’s remaining life force. He called it recharging, and it felt damn good. He would have preferred the Ogre still fully alive, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, especially really hungry ones.

After draining the Ogre, he wiped his hand across his lips to clear the blood that came with the kill and spat out any that spilled into his mouth. Balthazar relished the heat of its life force. He felt so much better already. The hunger he’d been battling all day receded.

Done with the Ogre, he turned around and faced the demon. She trembled openly now, finally realizing what he was. She might not have recognized him, but his reputation did precede him.

Balthazar knelt beside her and sat her up. She snapped her teeth at him. Her struggle to live only whetted his appetite.

“Shhh. Don’t be afraid.” He smiled. “I can make this pleasurable for you if you like.”

She spat at him.

“I like them feisty,” Balthazar said in a deadly whisper. “Tastes better.” He sank his fangs into the demon’s neck without bothering to wipe the spittle sliding down his face. She jerked and screamed. She opted for the painful way, so Balthazar gave it to her. He wasn’t such a monster that he couldn’t make the experience the best of her life, but she spat at him. He didn’t tolerate insolence from his food.

As her life ebbed, Balthazar eased up a little. He’d been pretty much full about halfway through. But he wouldn’t waste the life force she provided, so he didn’t stop. He took his time. He loosened the whip the second he felt her go limp. At the last second of her life, he injected pleasure into the demon. She raised her hand and touched his cheek. Her heartbeat sputtered twice before it stopped completely. Balthazar unhooked his fangs from her neck and stared at her smiling face. She stared blankly at the dark gray sky. He swept his hand over her eyes, closing them.

He’d gotten his wish, a demon. The energy she’d given him would definitely help. If what he suspected about the Ghoul Woods was correct, he’d need every ounce. The tricky passage just got trickier. He’d been right—like always. He and Arianne had run out of luck.

Balthazar laid the dead demon back down gently. He got to his feet and took out his trusty Zippo. One lift of the lid and all three bodies burst into flames. He murmured the death rites as they burned. They’d given him sustenance. The least he could do was provide them with a decent burial. He wasn’t a complete barbarian.

Chapter 14

BRB

T
YPICAL
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A
RIANNE
H
UFFED
. Balthazar had left without further explanation. He’d said he was going hunting. For what? She didn’t need food. In fact, she hadn’t been hungry this whole time. She didn’t even need to go to the bathroom when normally a pee break would have happened by now. If she didn’t need food, then what was Balthazar hunting for?

Hands on her hips, Arianne surveyed their “camp.” How she wished for a tent right about now. The night was tolerably cold rather than freezing, so the fire didn’t make any sense other than to provide light. She looked up at the darkening sky and missed sunsets. Basically, in the Underverse, the sky went from light gray to dark gray. Just gray, gray, and an even more gray. No wonder the creatures she’d met so far had attitudes. If she didn’t see the sun at least once a day, she’d be all depressed and surly too.

Balthazar was the worst of them. He didn’t just have an attitude. He had the attitude problem of all attitude problems. His sarcasm and up to the minute annoyance of her went beyond being a simple defense mechanism. It seemed the guy liked to be in a constant state of grumpy sourpussness. If he didn’t shout at her or say mean things, he grumbled curses under his breath like she couldn’t hear him. Most of his favorite curse words she hadn’t even heard until now. The only reason she knew he cursed was because of the venom the words dripped with. If someone needed a big hug, the prize went to Balthazar.

“No point obsessing,” Arianne said to herself. She sighed. Let Balthazar be all mean and nasty. As long as he kept her safe and helped her find the Redeemer, she didn’t have a problem with him. Well, maybe she wasn’t entirely problem free, but she’d tolerate him. A little.

The wood feeding the fire popped, bringing her attention back to the camp. She glanced around. Balthazar said she’d be safe within the outcropping of pines. Might as well make herself useful and pick up more firewood.

In the human world, fire kept predators away. Maybe the same could be said in the Underverse. None of the information Granmare Baba gave her confirmed the thought, so she assumed. If fire was a bad thing, then why would Balthazar leave her with it?

With a mission, Arianne searched for fallen branches. She started in a circle around the clearing. Once her hands were full, she dumped her load by the fire and started all over again. She went into wider and wider circles until she decided she had enough wood to keep the fire going for the rest of the night.

Having time on her hands, and not sure when Balthazar would return, Arianne stacked the branches she’d gathered the way they did at the back of their house at winter time. An unexpected pang of loneliness hit her. Tomas said time flowed differently in the Underverse, so what could be hours here could be seconds in the human world. When Niko brought her to his Inbetween for the first time, they’d spent a whole afternoon there though when they returned to school, they’d only been gone a few seconds. But just because time flowed differently didn’t mean she didn’t miss her parents.