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Sloan and Kris disappeared into the forest, covering distance with their speed in an instant. I lost them a couple minutes later and panned the empty space around us, suddenly alone with the man I thought about all day long.
“Earlier...” Phillip started, but I shook my head and adjusted the sword strapped to my back.
I walked on ahead, rolling my head and shoulders, and centered my thoughts. “This isn’t the place. I want to do what we came here to do. The longer it takes us to find this damn cave, the more people who are likely to die.”
“Fair enough,” Phillip agreed.
“So, what are we doing? Waiting until one of those bastards shows up to follow them?”
The Hunter beside me clearly wasn’t ready for my sarcastic question and laughed loudly. “In a way, yes. If we find one, we can trace its signature back to where it came from.”
“Sounds easy enough,” I joked, slowly marching ahead. “Let’s just go ahead and leave an entire evening up to chance. That’s what we powerful Hunters do.”
Shaking his head, Phillip matched my pace and scanned our surroundings. “Almost seventy percent of the job is left up to chance. We grow the odds by being tenacious and good at what we do.”
I tried not to look anywhere near his mouth, eyes, or body—really anywhere on the dude—to avoid being seduced back to the memory of our shared night together. To the life-altering sex and pleasure I was desperate to feel again.
Staying focused was necessary on a mission, and after a shit encounter with someone I thought I knew, I didn’t need to make my day worse with a possible decapitation.
I wanted to make heads roll, just not my own.
We stomped through wet mulch after several days of rain, and the floor shifted under my feet in a gross way. I hated the fact that mud would likely cover my favorite boots by morning, but it was inevitable. All part of a job I didn’t have any choice but to do.
Upside to a mission was they generally required some form of prolonged silence, so I didn’t have to force myself to converse with Phillip. It didn’t, however, put an end to the thoughts sure to resurface if I got a whiff of his fragrant mint scent, or caught a glance of his rose-pink lips in nothing but moonlight. Or gazed upon those tattooed hands that did wonders for bringing a woman intense pleasure.
I wiped my mouth and cursed under my breath, already thinking about sex before I knew it.
Focus, V. Focus like your life depends on it, because it fucking does.
“Can you smell magic?”
Thinking for a second, Phillip’s eyes lifted to the sky. “It’s difficult to explain, but yes. Magic disrupts scent and air flow. So, while you can’t smell it, the absence of scent is what gives it away. With a heavy concentration of magic in the air, the absence of scent and air flow also makes it recognizable.”
Phillip descended the hill, keeping his eyes on the bottom.
“It can be easily missed, especially when there’s not much of it in one area. It requires concentration and experience to pick up on it in small amounts, and you’ll get better about recognizing it the more you’re around it. For you and I, it’s far easier than it would be for other Hunters.”
Put the way he did, it made sense. But how did one notice the absence of smell? I honestly hadn’t thought about it, so it stumped me enough to keep my head occupied.
Until Phillip froze and swiftly kneeled. His eyes closed, and for seconds he didn’t move. When his eyes opened, they gleamed in the moonlight and he scanned the floor below. His sword was already out by the time Phillip yanked me down and I was forced to a knee beside him, straight into muck.
Gross.
“Feel that?”
I paused, focusing on the air around me.
The sensation was electric, and after I got over the initial confusion, I did sense something different—something absent. Like explained, the scents around me were gone. The air didn’t flow, like I was caught inside a vacuum.
All at once, both of us were evading a clawed hand. A shadow moved across the floor, not yet taking shape. I barely tracked it before Phillip swiped out with his long sword to slice off its arm as it reached out to me.
The beast finally came into existence, its arm already regrown, and it was like déjà vu. The transparent beast was neither solid nor mist. It moved like an illusion, horns the most noticeable shape on it. Its face came in and out of view, hard to distinguish outside of fangs and tar-black skin. But the way it crouched, preparing for another attack, was the same as the night we hunted down the other creature in town.
A Shadow Goblin.
I blocked another claw swipe with my dagger and retrieved the ultraviolet light stick from my thigh. I quickly aimed the beam at the thing’s eyes. The goblin made a sound much like a high-wind wail and Phillip cut his sword out, effortlessly decapitating its head.
The other Hunter’s movements were practiced and confident, not the least unsure he’d kill the beast, and I’d never admired the man more than I did in that moment. He made the killing blow look easy. I mean, I helped, but Phillip was on the ball with his attack.
