Page 58
Chiseled. Yeah, that was it. Damn.
He turned back and gave her a sleepy smile. “Coffee?” he offered softly, the low rumble of his voice sending heat radiating up from deep in her belly.
“Yes, please,” she said dreamily. “How long was I asleep?”
“In total? A night, a day, and another night. It’s ten in the morning.”
“Shit. Coffee. Definitely coffee.”
12
Under his hands, the steering wheel whined from the pressure of his tightening grip. Vann eased off so he didn’t snap the thing.
If he backed off now, would it change anything?
Maybe the attack was a warning?
He slammed on the brakes and took a deep breath.
In his decades of demon hunting, he hadn’t backed down from a fight. Not once. Even when the fate of the world was on the line.
Fuck. If he walked away now, and Eryn died anyway?
He set his foot back on the gas and started up the narrow road.
Something clever enough to train wyverns was unlikely to live in the wilderness. It had to be an intelligent enough demon to train them. If he could find the aerie, he might be able to track the mastermind. A lot of fucking ifs and maybes.
The campground that had hosted the latest attack was locked down and quiet as a ghost. He drove past and took the next turn. A mile past, there was a road with a dozen wood-carved addresses and surnames stacked on a handcrafted sign. He turned in.
Gravel crunched under his tires, shooting off to the side as he took the corner too fast. Definitely time to get four-wheel drive with high ground clearance. Rural hunting wasn’t new territory, but solo rural hunting wasn’t his usual gig.
The road steepened as he climbed, past long, winding driveways leading to farms and mansions tucked into the mountainside.
As the number of houses tapered, the road narrowed and wound with less order.
He pulled over to the side of the road. With the size of the houses, all gated and secured around here anyway, his car wouldn’t be questioned. Just another local.
Recon too often turned into more, so he popped the trunk and slid his sword out from under the spare tire cover, added his torn vest, and strapped the sword to his back. He grabbed his camera with the long telephoto already loaded and swung it over his shoulder. No poking the bear today.
He sprinted up the slope, winding out of sight of the houses.
Near the top, he found a rocky outcrop and ducked behind a boulder.
A hazy fog coated the crease between hills. The clearing where he’d taken out the wyverns was empty.
He propped his camera on the boulder and cradled the long lens in his palm.
Nothing obvious from a basic visual.
Steady, through the viewfinder, he scanned the area.
He still couldn’t believe Lexi had gone back for the wyvern’s bodies. Stupid as hell. She could have been killed. After what the wyverns had done to him, and then whatever the fuck had attacked Eryn, and Lexi insisted she was… immune?
No one was immune to wyvern claws.
The hillside was scarred by an old trail, and a landslide had taken out a chunk of it. With the growth of shrubs and trees on the landslide scar, the trail must have been abandoned years ago. Beautiful spot, now overgrown and forgotten.
He zoomed in on the landslide, snapped some photos, and kept scanning. The slope didn’t look steep enough for a landslide. Hopefully Lana could remember enough from her studies in geology to make sense of it.
