Endless fields stretched on all sides. There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
The hunters' voices rose, angry, aggressive. Then shots rang out. Amber jerked and jerked again, as though the bullets had pierced her body instead of Kai's.
She watched him twitch as they shot him, and to her horror, she cried out, not because of what his death meant in terms of her safety, but because with each shot, she felt it like an arrow to her soul. She didn't want him to die. She'd only just found him again. She didn't want him to die.
But Kai didn't fall. He didn't even stumble. His smile was feral, white teeth and threat of death, and when he moved, she barely saw him. All she saw was the surprise etched on the hunters' faces as he killed them, one by one, ripping free their hearts.
When it was done, he stood there, breathing hard, blood covering his hands and forearms, and a spray of it marking his face. And all around him, like fallen dominoes, the bodies of the dead.
His gaze raked her, then he strode toward her, eyes glittering, mouth hard. He stopped a foot away, and she could feel energy pounding off him in waves.
"What are you thinking?" she asked, as he shot a glance at the darksoul, then the bright band that held it, following the thin thread down to her hand. He stared at her hand for a long time. Too long.
Then he grabbed her, unmindful of the blood that slicked his hands and he dragged her against him, hard muscle and heat. Lowering his mouth, he kissed her, his lips opening on hers, his tongue sliding inside.
And, heaven help her, she let him.
No, more than that, she dug her fingers into the solid muscle of his shoulders, held him close and kissed him back.
Chapter Four
Pulling out his phone, Kai let his finger hover for a second before he chose a number and hit speed dial.
"I need cleanup," he said when Malthus Krayl answered. He figured that if he needed a favor, Mal was his best choice. He was high up in the ranks, one of Sutekh's sons. He was easy-going and always ready for anything. But he wouldn't ask the questions that Sutekh's second-in-command would ask.
Kai watched Amber as he spoke, noting the tension in her shoulders and the way she refused to look at him. She hadn't looked at him since she'd broken the kiss and stepped away. But she was still holding the tether of pure energy that held the darksoul Kai had harvested earlier. He wouldn't have believed that if he weren't seeing it with his own eyes, because as far as he knew, only soul reapers and Underworld lords could grab hold of that kind of power.
All soul reapers were male; hence, Amber wasn't a soul reaper.
And Underworld gods couldn't leave the Underworld; hence, she wasn't one of them.
So what the fucking hell was she? He had a feeling that if he could just answer that question, he'd know why Asmodeus was hunting her.
When he finished giving Mal the details of their location, Kai shoved his phone back in his pocket and approached her.
The way he saw it, he had two choices. Talk to her about that kiss. Or not. He went with not. For the moment, at least. She was strung so tight he thought the slightest stroke might make her snap like an overwound guitar string.
"I'll take that," he said, reaching for the darksoul and the pouch that held the heart.
Her gaze slid to the bodies that littered the road. They'd been lucky that no other cars had come along. It might be a bit difficult to explain away the carnage.
"Why didn't you do the same thing to them? Take their darksouls and keep their hearts?" she asked.
Kai measured his response and pared it down to the bare bones of the truth.
"The Underworld's divided up into Territories, sort of like crime syndicates divide up cities, I guess. All the gods and demigods hold sway in their own kingdoms. And they have Topworld grunts—"
"Like them." She looked at the bodies again.
"Like them," he agreed. "They run rackets Topworld. Drugs. Women. Real-estate fraud. Weapons. Anything that makes money, but really, they're all after the souls. That's the currency that matters in the Underworld, and the Topworld rackets are just a way to get them. But there's sort of an unwritten rule that we don't recklessly harvest from another lord's crew."
She waved a hand at the darksoul bobbing above them. "But you killed him."
"He had a prior debt to Sutekh. I was sent to harvest him." And to find out why Asmodeus had sent men to San Francisco. For a while there, he'd thought he'd only accomplish one of the two. But now he had a pretty damned good idea about the demon of lust's motives; he wanted Amber. Problem was, that knowledge put him in a damned tight spot.
Her gaze slid to his Corvette, squashed like a bug beneath the weight of the Hummer. He winced just to look at it.
"What now?" she asked, her voice subdued.
It was a loaded question, and telling her the answers all at once might not be the best plan. Instead, he asked a question of his own.
"The night I died, why did you send me to Pfeiffer Beach?"