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I woke up in the middle of the night with Tessa tucked between my arms, her back against my chest, her fine ass against my hips. Her scent invaded my nostrils, and I suppressed a groan. Shit, this girl messed with me more than I should allow.

But I was powerless. When it came to her, I was powerless. I learned that well a couple of hours ago when my body was tangled with hers—the best place on the entire planet. I had never desired someone this much; I had never felt like that, like having sex with a pretty girl could become more, like I could actually fall for her.

Lasting relationships weren’t on the menu for hunters. The only way to have a family in this business was when two hunters got married, had kids, and introduced them early to the art of hunting. Yet, nothing was guaranteed. Even here in our little group, too many families had lost a father, a mother, or a son too early to demons, witches, and whatnot.

I didn’t want to fall for her and then lose her.

Besides, her father had gone to great lengths to make sure she wasn’t involved in this life. And here she was, involved in this life and wrapped around me in my bed. Shit, if Isaac were alive, he would kill me.

With a sigh, I pulled away from her and stood. My eyes traveled down her perfect body—her smooth back, her thin waist, her round ass. I groaned and turned my back to the bed. It was all I could do not to crawl back in there with her and hold her against me.

I put on my boxers and sat in the armchair in the corner of my bedroom. I leaned over the arm, toward the round table beside the chair, and opened my journal. I reread all my notes on the demon and his victims so far, and the things Lola and Liz had told me earlier today—all the while stealing glances to the angel in my bed.

There had to be something I was missing, something I hadn’t seen, something there to make a connection.

I put on my jeans and T-shirt and went down to Isaac’s office. I pulled opened the secret closet behind the painting on the wall, and among the hunting gear, I found the big, plastic box with all of his journals, his father’s journal, his grandfather’s journal, and his great-grandfather’s journals.

When Isaac had first adopted me and told me I would be a hunter like him, the first thing he did was sit me down beside this box.

“Now you read,” he said.

“Which one?” I asked, lost. I remembered hating to read back then.

“All of them.”

I thought he had been kidding. But in time, I realized he wasn’t. He would quiz me on the stories, the lore, the different kind of supernatural beings and how to kill them before we started real practice, which was what I really liked. If I got the answers wrong, there would be no practice, which meant my debut as a hunter would take even longer.

Even though I remembered wanting to read all of the journals, training had been more important, and I skipped quite a few. When Isaac asked something I didn’t know, I winged it, and most of the time, my intuitive hunter mind came through and I got it right.

Now I hoped I found the few journals I hadn’t read and the ones I knew by heart, and that one of them contained something about this demon.

I pulled the box to the center of the office, sat down beside it, and began my quest.

For at least two hours, I flipped through the yellowed pages, reading, skimming, searching. Shit, there was so much here that I didn’t remember. Reading it now, I knew I had read it before, but I had forgotten a lot of the passages. It was too much information for little use. Which meant it was time to reread and study all of these journals again. What if my next case was related to something I had read before but forgot? What if this case was like that?

Shit. I kept looking, reading, perusing.

Then, in the middle of one of the dozens of journals from William, Isaac’s grandfather, a drawing caught my attention. Often, we tried to draw the demons so we had a visual aid. And this entry had one.

Here, it looked more like a zombie, but I recognized it. Human figure, long limbs, dark marks around eyes and mouth, faint lines all over its body. One drawing had the demon standing as if posing for a picture, the other drawing had the demon holding the victim by his neck and something like light was coming from its eyes and mouth. The lines across the body were darkened, and the victim’s chest was darkened too.

Shit, this was it.

I quickly read the entry.

Sin-eater demon

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This demon is summoned when a person who committed a sin feels guilty, his mind and heart are too heavy, and he can’t deal with the sin. The sin-eater demon feels the person’s desire and is brought back from hell. Once the demon eats the sin of the victim, it kills the victim by burning his heart from the inside. Usually, the demon goes back to hell, but if the demon senses other people with similar sins, it’ll go from person to person, following the line of guilt that connects them all, and eating away the sins and killing the victims.

If a person not related to that sin gets in its way, the demon will attack, and if the person committed even the most simple of sins, like lying to a parent or stealing candy from a sibling, the demon will still eat the sins and burn the person’s heart.

That explained so many things.

Liz and her friends had accidentally killed Peter many years ago. Vanessa, Peter’s girlfriend at the time, felt guilty every time Lola came back to visit her parents because she probably saw Lola around town a few times. She must have summoned the demon by accident. The demon sensed the other people who participated in Peter’s death and followed the sin, killing them one by one.

Which only left Liz, since the demon didn’t kill her the first time, George Marsh, T.J. Dale, and Johnny Holt left.

But with T.J. and Johnny living in another town, I could bet all my money that the demon would go either for Liz or George next.

It isn’t easy to stop this demon. Demon traps work to hold it for a few minutes, but the demon is too strong and breaks through them easily. Silver bullets and demon daggers don’t work—they only slow the demon down.

The only way to kill the demon is related to the sin that brought it back. If the person’s sin was to steal, then the hunter has to steal something from the demon. That was my case when I faced this demon. I cut off its hand, stealing a limb, and then pierced my demon dagger in its chest, where its heart should be.

If the person’s sin was cheating, then I don’t know how to solve that. For a murder, I’m guessing the only way to kill the demon would be to replicate the murder—using the same kind of weapon and wound.

You’ll know it worked when the body of the demon shrinks and becomes a mass of pale dust.

Which meant I had to get a game hunting knife and impale the demon with that.

Could it be that simple?

Warning: the sin-eater can shapeshift into its previous victims and their sins, so it can shock its victims even more, and they won’t fight back.

I wasn’t worried about that, but it was good to know that I might have to impale a human-looking demon.

I rubbed my hand down my face. Could this be it? So simple?

I quickly pulled out my journal and wrote all my new discoveries, while pointing out Isaac’s grandfather’s journal, so I would know which one to look for if there was a next time. Which I hoped didn’t happen soon.

Then, I picked up both my journal and William’s journal and raced up the stairs. I went back to my bedroom, but once inside, I paused. Tessa was still in the same position, sleeping like an angel in my bed, wrapped in my sheets and comforter. My heart tugged, but again, I swallowed a groan and moved. I finished dressing with my usual hunting uniform—leather jacket and combat boots—picked up a small bag for my gear, took my journal and William’s journal, and shoved them in my bag. Then, I reconsidered and left the journals behind on the small table near the corner of my bedroom. There was no reason to take extra weight. I glanced one more time to the woman sprawled in bed.

Damn, it was hard to leave her.

But I had to.

I was going to avenge her father and keep her safe.

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Coldness invaded my hot dreams and I shivered. When I opened my eyes, it took me a second to remember where I was and what had happened. Hunters’ manor. Landon’s bedroom. Landon and me. A smile spread through my lips and heat warmed my core again. Damn, that had been fantastic.

I rolled onto my back and found myself alone in his bed.

I propped myself up on my elbows and looked around. “Landon?”

The bathroom and closet doors were open, and there wasn’t any light coming from there. I sat up, pulling the covers over me. For some reason, I felt embarrassed. Had he slept with me then left me? I couldn’t believe that. I wasn’t expecting more from him, not right now, but we had an agreement. He would let me help him with avenging my father’s death. Unless …

Holding the covers around me, I stood from the bed and went to the table in the corner of his bedroom where his journal and his hunting gear were. My heart sank when I didn’t find the bag with his things. He had left. He had taken his gear, and he had gone after the demon without me.

The bastard.

Rage simmered in my chest as I sat down on the armchair and opened his journal. I knew for a fact he wrote everything about the case down, like my father had taught him, and if I were to find him, the clues were somewhere in here.

I backtracked through the pages until I found an entry from the night my father was killed.

We still don’t know what we’re dealing with. Isaac thinks someone summoned this demon and lost control. But we also don’t know what kind of demon it is. The only thing we know is that it first sucks the person’s soul, leaving only a hollow shell. Then, the demon kills by burning the person’s heart from inside out—the skin dries out as if the demon sucked all the water from the cells.

As the details grew gruesome, my stomach revolted and I skimmed the rest, until the next entry.

Isaac and I have finally located the demon. We still don’t know what kind of demon it is, but we’re hoping our weapons and knowledge will be enough to send it back to hell.

A blank space filled most of the page until one last paragraph at the bottom:

Isaac was killed by the demon tonight. Even through my wounds, I tried to stop it, but I was too weak. The demon killed Isaac the same way it killed the other victims.

I don’t exactly know what happened after. I just remember Douglas arriving at the house before I blacked out. I only know that I woke up at the manor, surrounded by Douglas, Aidan, and Nathan … and that Isaac was gone.

I’m sorry I couldn’t save you, my friend.

I wiped a tear from my face.

Then, the next entry mentioned me.

Today, I’m going to tell Tessa about her father. This won’t be easy.

There was a little curly thing he did for separation, which I thought was to indicate some time had passed, but it was still the same day.

Telling Tessa wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Maybe it’s because she still hates me. Well, putting myself in her shoes, I think she’ll hate me forever. Why wouldn’t she? Isaac pushed Regina and Tessa away because he loved them too much, but he never told them that, not with words. For all Tessa knows, her father didn’t want her and only visited her out of a sense of duty. Which is far from the truth. If Isaac had his way, he would spend every weekend with Tessa, every day of the week, but he kept his distance from her, afraid demons, witches, or vampires would follow him and use her against him.

Anyway, she’s is here at the manor for the funeral tomorrow.

My heart shuddered. My father had loved me? And my mother too? That couldn’t be …

I could ponder and marvel at that, but I decided I would have to do that later. There were more pressing things needing my attention right now.

The next entry was about the day of the funeral.

I hope Isaac can forgive me. I can’t stop it. I can’t stop her. Tessa is a force to be reckoned with.

Tonight, she went to the place Isaac died. I hate to say I admired her drive, for about five seconds, and then I was mad as hell. She put herself in danger and almost died. If I hadn’t figured out what she had done and where she had gone … I don’t want to think about it. I can’t. It hurts too much.

Isaac, please forgive me for letting your daughter get involved in this life, after all you did to keep her away from it. Safe. And for the feelings that stir in my chest every time I think about her.

I sucked in a sharp breath, but once again forced myself to keep reading.

Then, he mentioned the investigations from the past few days.

It’s hard investigating the case with Tessa around. Not because she bothers me, far from it, but because I have to be careful what to mention to her. As much as I like her drive and need to help, I don’t want to see her hurt again. I can’t. I have to keep her safe, and to do that, I need to omit most of the case details.

She has no idea what I found while researching and interviewing Liz Morgan, who is still at the hospital, this afternoon.

So, Liz confessed a connection between them all. So far we have seven victims—one of them being Isaac, but he wasn’t a target, just like Vanessa and Josie’s husbands, which actually leaves four real victims. The four victims went for a camping trip many years ago with five other people. One of them, Peter Johnson, died in what the police called an accident and no report linking the victims was recorded. However, it wasn’t a complete accident. The teenagers were all drunk and playing and ended up killing Peter, Vanessa’s boyfriend.

Vanessa never recovered from the accident and each time Lola, Peter’s sister, comes into town to visit her parents, she looks for Vanessa. Vanessa feels terribly guilty about what happened.

There are four more involved in the incident, including Liz. However, since Liz is in the hospital under the care of a vampire, I’m not concerned about her. T.J. and Johnny don’t live in town, so the next victim can only be George, who lives in a ranch house a few miles out of town. Now, I just need a distraction or an excuse to leave Tessa behind, because I won’t take her into danger.

Son of a …

The last entry was a short one.

It’s the middle of the night and Tessa is sleeping. I couldn’t sleep, though, so I went down to Isaac’s office and unburied his ancestors’ journals. And guess what? I found our demon.

It seems we have a sin-eater on our hands. This kind of demon is summoned when someone who commits a grave sin can’t stop feeling guilty—the person often thinks about either confessing the sins or committing suicide. Vanessa summoned the demon by feeling guilty about Peter. That’s the only explanation.

If I’m right, then the demon isn’t sucking the victims’ soul. It’s eating the person’s sins. The lore I found says that the more sins the demon eats, the stronger it gets.

Though I hate leaving Tessa alone after last night, this is the perfect opportunity for me to go after the demon while she’s safe. By the time she wakes up in the morning, I’ll be on my way back. Hopefully.

Crap.

I couldn’t believe he had left in the middle of the night to go after a dangerous demon by himself. As he had mentioned, the demon was probably stronger now. I understood his hesitation about taking me; after all, I wasn’t a real hunter. I hadn’t been trained to kill demons, but the idea of him facing a demon alone …

I shuddered.

I flipped a few pages back in his journal and found a crude drawing of the town’s map—and Xs marking the houses of all victims, including George’s.

To the hell with it.

My heart sped up as I got dressed and raced to the underground garage to my car.