The Hunted

Thirty-Six

Blake merely lifted her head from where she'd been resting it against the wall and said, "What the fuck do you want?"

"Hello to you too, Blake." The door closed with a click and Malachi leaned against it, broad arms folded across his chest. She took some grim satisfaction at seeing a few wounds along his arms and neck. All delivered by her.

"Come to kill me?"

"What would the point in that be? I told you the other day. You're a gifted hunter and there are too few of us that do this job. Killing you would be an inconvenience and a tragedy for us all."

Blake rolled her eyes. The voice he was using was his 'hunter recruitment' tone. She'd heard it a hundred times. Whenever Malachi tried to bring new hunters into the fold, often regular people who'd been affected by the Shadow World, he pulled out the voice.

It didn't always work and it certainly wasn't working on her today. Still, she said, "I'll always be a hunter, Malachi. I just have no plans to continue hunting with you or like you. I've had a lot of time to think in here and all I can wonder is how many of the hunts I've been on have been legit. I don't doubt that most of them are...But how many places did you send me to where I killed innocents just because they weren't human?"

Malachi's mouth pressed into a firm line. His pale brown eyes tightened and little crow's feet appeared around them. "All we're doing is trying to restore the natural order, Blake. That's all hunting is. These creatures...They shouldn't exist. They're a plague. They kill everything they touch."

"Maybe humans are the plague, Malachi. Did you ever think about that? Who's to say we're any better than a faerie or a werewolf or a warlock or a vampire? We shouldn't be hunting those who are innocent. Those that are willing and able to coexist peacefully with humans. I'm sure at one point, you used to believe the same. You must have."

"Perhaps," Malachi said with a shrug. "But you forget, Blake. I've been doing this job a lot longer than you. You've only seen part of the horrors this world offers. I've seen almost all of it. They're not innocent. Even the ones that are innocent...aren't."

Blake exhaled. "Then I guess we've come to an impasse. You don't agree with me. I don't agree with you. So what now?"

Malachi said, "I came to tell you that we're going back to Colorado tomorrow. That wall around the pack you've grown so fond of will come down. I've assembled a force big enough and prepared enough to eliminate that threat."

Horror washed through her but it wasn't entirely surprising. She'd known this was coming. It was why he'd sent her into Sanguis Ridge after all. Blake had only hoped that she'd be able to stop it. That was the reason she'd left Sanguis Ridge. Why she'd left Red behind. It wasn't just for the lies that Malachi had fed her or the life he'd forced her into but also because he'd killed Caden and had been planning this war. This was the hunt she'd been preparing her entire life for.

Even if she'd only realized it a week ago.

"You'll kill hundreds of innocent people," Blake told him.

"Yes. But I'll save thousands of human lives."

"You weren't concerned about human lives when you murdered Caden."

"Sacrifices must be made in war, Blake. I thought you knew that."

"Was that all Caden was? A casualty of a war of your own design?"