Midnight Hunter (The Execution Underground Book 3) Read online

  Hunters of the supernatural,

  THE

  EXECUTION

  UNDERGROUND

  are an elite group tasked with protecting humanity…but can dark temptation destroy good intentions?

  Occult specialist and witch hunter Dr. Shane Grey is called upon to investigate a string of crimes that bear all the hallmarks of black magic. But he can’t take on this daunting assignment for the Execution Underground alone. He’ll need the help of Vera Sanders, a witch with a dark past—and a woman who disturbs him as much as she intrigues him.

  Vera is determined to ignore the dangerous chemistry between herself and Shane so she can prove her loyalty to his cause; otherwise she risks the wrath of the Execution Underground once again. If she can’t make Shane trust her, they won’t stand a chance in hell of defeating the evil that’s terrorizing their city. No easy task, considering old habits die hard…and Vera may be the very person responsible for luring Shane into a killer’s trap.

  Praise for Kait Ballenger

  and

  The Execution Underground

  “Newcomer Ballenger offers an extremely promising high-voltage start to her series.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review, on Twilight Hunter

  “Paranormal fans have a new voice to check out with the debut of Ballenger’s terrific first book in her Execution Underground series.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Twilight Hunter

  “Debut author Ballenger shows awesome potential and talent.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Shadow Hunter

  “Kait Ballenger is a treasure you don’t want to miss!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Gena Showalter

  “Non-stop action, pulse-pounding suspense, and red-hot romance… Kait Ballenger’s Execution Underground series delivers in spades!”

  —Jaime Rush, New York Times bestselling author

  Also available from Kait Ballenger

  and HQN Books

  Shadow Hunter

  Immortal Hunter

  Twilight Hunter

  For my wonderful, hardworking, dedicated agent, Nicole Resciniti, for always championing my work and for taking a chance on me when no one else would. Thank you for always believing in me, even during the times when I haven’t believed in myself. Nic, you’re amazing, and I feel so privileged to share this journey with you.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  RED AND BLUE lights flashed through the encompassing darkness, dancing across the mixture of elaborately carved Victorian and modern tombstones. The dead silence of Mount Hope Cemetery shattered with the resounding whoop of the Rochester PD car’s siren as it rounded the nearest grassy hill. Dr. Shane Grey swore. In two seconds flat, thanks to the police’s arrival, the night had transitioned from shit to supershit. Because as much as Shane hated digging up dead bodies, he hated getting pinched by the cops even more. From the looks of it, both were on tonight’s menu.

  He shook his head. “This cannot be happening.” He swore again.

  “Well, fuck me sideways,” Ash Devereaux drawled. Shane’s crazy Creole partner in crime shot him a “we’re fucked” glance as they both dropped their trenching shovels into the dirt of the grave they’d been excavating.

  “Freeze!” a deep male voice yelled.

  Both Shane and Ash obeyed, standing stock-still lest they be shot by a trigger-happy policeman. Damn. This was so not good, Shane thought. The feds kicking down his door for his database hacking, or getting the crap beaten out of him for counting cards in a casino, had always been his first guesses on his list of Things That Will Likely Lead to Me Being Shot or Put in Jail, not being busted for grave robbing. This wasn’t even in his usual job description.

  “Put your hands up,” the cop barked.

  Shane and Ash lifted their hands over their heads, doing their best versions of the Y in the Village People’s “YMCA.” Between Ash’s snakeskin cowboy boots and the cop behind them, all Shane needed was a headdress and they would account for at least half of the flamboyance.

  “Good. Now turn around—slowly.”

  Shane spun first, closely followed by Ash. Courtesy of the near-impenetrable darkness engulfing the cemetery, Shane could barely decipher the officer’s face behind the blinding light of the man’s flashlight. The silhouetted officer slammed the driver’s side door of his vehicle as...was that a second officer he heard getting out of the car? Another door slammed. Yep, two cops for the price of one. Double damn.

  They were so screwed.

  Of all the things he could get arrested and lose his teaching career over, helping his fellow hunter was going to be his downfall. A cruel twist of fate, if you asked him. He and Ash had enacted every precaution to ensure they weren’t caught during their nighttime visit to see the very dead Mrs. Jennifer Foley, who had tragically passed of an aggressive bout of breast cancer two years earlier. When Shane and Ash had arrived at the gravesite, they’d known straight away that all their efforts might be for naught. The recently disturbed dirt suggested Mrs. Foley’s coffin might have been moved. But they had to check to be certain. To make matters worse, the cops showing up to save the day—er, night—was just total shit luck. To the unknowing eye, their work to burn Mrs. Foley’s bones in order to put her murderous spirit to rest appeared to be little more than vandalism. But as a card-carrying Mensa member with an IQ of over one hundred and fifty-five and multiple PhDs, there was no way Shane was letting two overly nosy members of the Rochester PD screw up his plans. He would figure out how to get them out of this.

  “Evenin’, Officers.” Ash grinned, his Louisiana charm as thick as the syrup in any sweet tea south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

  “Grave robbing, boys? That’s a Class E felony.” The second cop sauntered forward flanked by his partner, who held the flashlight—and they both had guns. From the smug swagger in their walks, you would have thought they’d busted Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid rather than two men armed seemingly with nothing more than a pair of shovels in a historically insignificant subsection of the sprawling cemetery.

  “It’s not what it looks like, Officers,” Ash said, spouting the least original line Shane had ever heard.

  Really, Ash? You couldn’t come up with a better opening line?

  “Not what it looks like, huh? Do you know how many times I’ve heard that one, buddy?”

  Shane cleared his throat. “Thousands of times, I’m sure, Officer, but we have a permit to exhume the contents of this grave site. If you’ll check my back pocket, you’ll see we’re law-abiding citizens. No need for the gun.”

  The officer remained silent for a moment, examining Shane as if his face held the secrets of the Lost Ark. “Fine,” the officer said tersely. “But I’m patting you down in the process.” He glanced to his partner. “You take him.” He nodded toward Ash. The officer holding the flashlight clicked it off, leaving nothing but the headlights o
f their patrol car to illuminate the scene. After Shane’s eyes readjusted to the darkness, he eyed the cop who’d headed over to Ash. The officer had tucked his gun away. Perfect.

  Shane turned back to the officer standing in front of him.

  The man waved his hands at Shane. “Okay, arms up, bud.”

  Here goes nothing. Shane lifted his arms. “Sorry, Officer.”

  He head-butted the officer in the bridge of the nose. Stars swam in front of his own eyes. He blinked them away as he slammed his fist straight into the policeman’s face, a quick punch Shane hoped would be enough to subdue the man in blue. No such luck. The officer stumbled back, crimson blood gushing down the front of his uniform. The officer reached for his nine-millimeter, just as Shane tackled him. They toppled onto the frozen ground with an audible oof as the mucky taste of dirt coated Shane’s tongue. Without delay, Shane straddled the man’s chest and socked him in the face again. The officer swung, but missed, and Shane hit him one more time. A moment later the officer lay flat on his back, as unconscious as a sack of potatoes. Adrenaline pumped through Shane’s veins and he released a long breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Pain pulsed through his forehead.

  Humans were so much easier to take down than supernatural creatures. A small sense of pride rushed through him. Clearly, his combat training with the Execution Underground hadn’t been lost in the past few years as he’d worked less physical crimes. He worked out enough to keep himself in top physical condition, but his combat skills hadn’t been tested for quite some time. Not too shabby a job, he decided.

  Shane wiped off the officer’s blood on the thigh of his jeans before turning toward Ash. His friend was sitting in the dirt, shaking his head at the second officer, who he’d clearly just finished taking down. “Poor son of a gun.”

  Shane nodded despite the slight ache in his skull. The officers had only been trying to do their job and nothing more. Unfortunately, that job jeopardized Shane and Ash’s mission, and supernatural crimes were the royal flush to the PD’s full house—they trumped the day-to-day job in importance every time.

  “Was that a head butt I saw? I knew you were smart ’n’ all, always usin’ your head, but damn. I didn’t know you’d be so literal about it.” Ash brushed a few stray strands of blond hair from his face.

  Some of Shane’s own hair had pulled loose from his ponytail and was dangling over his eyes, but he didn’t bother shoving it out of the way. “I had to do something to get us out of that.” He pushed himself off the ground and walked over to Ash, offering his friend a hand and helping him up. They both brushed themselves off, but it was pointless. They’d already been covered in dirt from digging.

  “Bang-up job, my friend. I didn’t know ya had it in ya.” Ash grinned from ear to ear and clapped Shane on the back.

  Shane returned the grin. Yeah, he had it in him, but he would need a couple aspirin now for his head once they got out of here. But man, was he glad they’d gotten out of that. Now they just needed to get out of here. He grabbed the shovel he’d dropped a few minutes earlier. “Let’s hurry up and get this done before anyone else shows up.”

  Ash grabbed his own shovel, and they both resumed digging again. Shane jabbed the shovel into the frozen ground, heaving all his weight into the effort. The tip of the blade pierced the recently disturbed dirt over and over again, with a near-silent swish each time he drove it down. He frowned. Damn it. He kept hoping to hear the crack of his shovel against the wood of the casket anytime now. Digging up graves, then salting and burning the body to put a nasty spirit to rest? Not his forte by a long shot. Helping his fellow hunter was all fine and dandy, but he’d been ready for this monotonous task to be over before it had even begun.

  “Just about another foot,” Ash said. He stood on the other side of the grave, shovel in one hand as he wiped a sleek sheen of sweat from his brow with the other.

  Despite the chill in the early-April air in western New York, sweat was pouring off both of them like it was the middle of July in Vegas. Digging a six-foot-deep hole was tiring as hell. Period. Good shape or not, as far as Shane was concerned the task majorly sucked, especially with the thought of more cops showing up niggling at the back of his mind.

  He threw another pile of dirt over his shoulder. “The next time I agree to help you, remind me how much I despise doing this and how much trouble we almost got into with those cops.”

  Ash laughed as he continued to dig. “You know I really appreciate this.”

  Shane nodded. “You’re welcome.”

  Another jab into the dirt, followed by a loud thunk.

  “Bingo.” Ash raised his shovel over his head in victory.

  Shane chuckled. He brushed some of the dirt off the casket lid, revealing what was no longer smooth lacquered mahogany. “You take way too much pleasure in your job if you enjoy this.”

  Ash grinned before he lodged his shovel in the side of the casket to help pry open the lid. “When you’ve dug up as many graves as I have, you learn to take small pleasures where you can find ’em. I can’t count how many times I’ve dug a huge damn hole just to find the grave site was moved, and that seemed pretty likely with this one, considerin’ somebody had already been diggin’ here. I’m just ready to burn this sumbitch,” he said.

  Shane followed Ash’s example and lodged his own shovel into the crack of the casket opening.

  “On three,” Ash said. “One, two, three.”

  Together, they hoisted the lid open. A cloud of dust and debris billowed from the inside of the casket, sending them both into coughing fits. Shane stared down into the dirt, hoping to see the corpse, but when the dust cleared, both Shane and Ash remained silent for a long moment. The damp-wood smell emanating from the casket filled Shane’s nose, but the scent of the dead wasn’t there. He blinked several times. Was he seeing correctly? Ash swore under his breath, a confirmation of Shane’s conclusion.

  The casket was empty. No corpse, no half-decayed body, no bones. Nothing.

  After another long moment of silence, Shane cleared his throat. “Um, Ash, where the hell is Mrs. Foley?”

  Shane didn’t know all the details of Ash’s job as a ghost hunter, but the general training Shane had received from the Execution Underground before he’d started specializing in hunting witches and warlocks, but after he’d already earned his first PhD in religious studies—with a focus on the occult and pagan religions, of course—had taught him enough to know that generally corpses remained in one place, regardless of whether their spirit roamed the earth. And Jennifer Foley was supposed to be dead. Very dead.

  Ash shook his head. “I have no fuckin’ clue.” He stared at the open casket with a stunned look on his face. A glazed aura clouded Ash’s green eyes, as if he were dreaming while awake. Shane knew that look. Ash struggled with PTSD. Shane didn’t know from what, because Ash wasn’t a former military man, and he’d never had the heart to ask. That look said, I’ve seen a lot of bad shit in my life.

  “Ash, you with me?” Shane asked.

  “Huh?” Ash looked up, roused from his trancelike state. He shook his head as if shaking the memories off. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  Shane nodded before he tossed his shovel to the side. “I’ll give you a second. Don’t worry about calling Damon, I’ll do it.”

  “Thanks, man,” Ash muttered.

  Shane held up his hand. “No problem. I’ll handle it.”

  That seemed to have become his motto: I’ll handle it. Even though he was both the youngest and least experienced among his team members, who were all his senior by at least five years, he acted as the oil for the sometimes squeaky Rochester division cog in the massive machine of the Execution Underground. A covert international organization of elite hunters, the Execution Underground protected humanity from the paranormal creatures who, unbeknownst to the general populace, lurked around every c
orner. When his fellow hunters, his division team members, needed his aid, he obliged. Always.

  Earlier that morning he had read an article in the Democrat and Chronicle about the murder of Mr. Ted Foley. Reportedly, the deceased had been telling his close friends for several days before his death how his dead wife, Jennifer, the now-missing dead woman, was haunting him, threatening him. That detail had been enough for Shane, and he’d brought the article to the attention of the team. They’d all agreed it was best to take every precaution and ensure that the wife really went to her eternal rest. Aside from all the digging, it should have been an easy job for Ash, their resident ghost hunter, especially with Shane’s help with the hard labor. A very straightforward murderous poltergeist case. Easy to fix, if you had a corpse to burn. The case should have been dealt with tonight. Except...

  Shane called Damon Brock, their division leader, to break the news. While he waited for Damon to pick up, Shane let out a tired sigh. Damn it. The night had gone from shit to supershit to megasupershit.

  Missing bodies always complicated things.

  * * *

  VERA SANDERS SLIPPED out the heavy steel back door of Soft-Tails and into the damp alleyway. She wrapped her near-floor-length jacket around her, shielding her almost-bare legs. Despite her plaid miniskirt, fishnet stockings and stilettos, she might as well have been in the buff, given how the night air chilled her to the bone. She was used to it, though. Rochester had long winters and springs that often didn’t feel any different, and on nights like tonight, when she was slinging liquor behind the bar and working her ass off to fill her tip jar, she often found herself walking home in costume. And by costume she meant some barely there getup sanctioned by the strip club’s owner, her wannabe gangster sleazebag of an uncle. Thank goodness she was off work the next several nights.

  Home.

  The word skittered through her mind again.

  Home was where she should have been going. Instead, she was holding a one-way ticket for the trouble train, and she knew it. Nothing good could come from what she was about to do, but damn, deciding to just let go had been such a relief. The familiar itch niggled beneath her skin. She longed for this like a druggie needed a fix.