Chapter 21

 

Exactly who did he think he was? Sending her off like that, as if she were nothing but a nuisance to be disposed of! As if he were any better!

It had been fine, for a little while. Better than she could have expected, anyway. Once he got going on his demonology lesson, he turned into somebody completely different. She would never have thought him capable of talking so much, or for so long. He was clearly enthusiastic about the subject, too—after only a few sentences, his voice had gone from dictating to just …conversational. She tried to listen as well as she could, especially since some of the things he was telling her really were interesting, but the soft rumbling of his voice had finally lulled her to sleep.

Apparently, though, he had remembered who he was talking to, and he was back to being the same old jerk. Heaven forbid he be nice to somebody on purpose.

He was probably sitting there, smug as hell, wondering why he didn’t get rid of her sooner.

He probably didn’t even care that she had to walk back almost a mile through the forest at night. For goodness’ sake, it wasn’t as though she were a helpless human girl, maybe a bit afraid of walking through a demon-infested forest at night, and completely incapable of defending herself.

Oh wait.

She was.

Jackass.

She made it back, though. Her nerves were humming and her stomach was in her throat by the time she did, but she made it back. She actually felt oddly indignant that nothing had happened. She was entirely too damn jittery for nothing to have happened.

The next evening, she told her mom that she needed to work on a project for school. Ryan didn’t press the point.

The evening after that, Thursday, Talia got to her too soon. After a very entertaining row with her brother, she finally sent the two of them back into the woods to watch the stupid feeders again.

He even managed to talk to her some more. Aleda quickly realized that he would talk longer, and tell more interesting stories, with just the right amount of provocation. This had two benefits: one, she wasn’t quite so deathly bored, and two, he wasn’t quite so much of a jerk. The only real question would be exactly how much he was going to expect her to remember.

It was the stories he told that stuck with her more than anything, when he finally did start to tell them. He had obviously traveled quite a lot, and seen more than anyone—even a hunter—could hope to see in a lifetime. It was almost enough to make her forget her perpetual irritation at him.

Of course, just when she was starting to rethink her opinion of him, he’d go off on a rant about the people he encountered in his travels. It seemed as though everybody he had ever met was out to get him, or at least out to get in his way. He never mentioned other hunters, but he had plenty to say about mortals.

“If you hate them so much, why do you go to so much trouble to help them?” Aleda asked at one point.

“I don’t hate them,” Ryan said. “They’re b******s, most of them, but that doesn’t mean they deserve to be slaughtered.”

“And you’re going to save them all by yourself, is that it?”

“I don’t see anybody else stepping up to the plate.”

“What are you talking about?” she demanded. “Every hunter hunts! My parents hunt, every night! You don’t think they’re doing anything?”

“Not if it took them this long to even consider clearing out a single nest. To be fair,” he admitted, “They do have child to raise.”

Why, that…! He…! Stupid, son of a…!

“Oh, yes, very fair of you,” Aleda growled sarcastically at him. “So very fair. And for your information, I am not a ‘child’!”

Ryan raised his eyebrows and regarded her with a cool stare. “Yes,” he said dryly. “You’ve been doing such a fantastic job of convincing me.”

Aleda had to bite her tongue to keep from shouting at him. She could feel her face getting hot, and hated that he could easily see how red she must be getting. Even her ears were burning.

“And just how many nests have you cleared, if you’re so great at this?”

“One thousand, four hundred twenty-seven,” he said softly.

Aleda gaped at him.

“You…”

“Yeah.”

“…How?”

He shrugged. “It took a while,” he said, “But it’s not as if I had anything better to do.”

“Oh, please. You would have had to spend every waking minute hunting! There’s no way you could have done that. How many, really?”

Ryan narrowed his eyes at her. “I told you. One thousand, four hundred twenty-seven. This will be the twenty-eighth. I’ve been single-handedly clearing out nests for almost twenty years now, and most of them were in severely infested areas. So don’t tell me what is or isn’t possible, thank you.”

“So very, very sorry.”

He gave her a quiet snort.

“Hey, what time is it?” she asked.

“Ten-fourteen,” he snapped.

“…I guess I’ll go, then.”

“No, you’re staying.”

“What?”

“If you can manage to sit here for another hour without whining, you’re staying. I’ve had enough of Talia yelling at me for not playing the proper professor.”

Aleda stifled a giggle.

“What!” he demanded.

“You! Afraid of a little twig like Talia!” She had to clap her hands over her mouth to keep herself from making too much noise.

Ryan growled irritably and turned away from her, staring fixedly at the nest.

“It’s funny!”

He grunted.

“You really need to lighten up, you know that?”

“Now you sound like my sister.”

“Uh oh, does that mean you’ll be afraid of me now, too?”

“You… Quiet… Now,” he hissed through a tightly clenched jaw.

Damn it, now he was back to being a jerk. Aleda didn’t mean to provoke him so much, it just sort of happened.

In her defense, he really was way too grouchy. She could probably irritate him just by breathing wrong when he was around.

By the time Ryan had to leave for work, he had calmed down again. Not enough to teach her anything else, of course, but enough that he wasn’t growling at her under his breath anymore. Despite herself, Aleda found the walk back practically enjoyable.

Probably because she wasn’t terrified for her life this time. Somehow, having a giant of a hunter walking alongside of her took the edge off of walking through the woods at night.

It was only a matter of course, then, that this happened to be the night that she forgot how to walk. She stepped casually into what she thought was just another pile of dead leaves. Unfortunately, the leaves were concealing a twisting root, coming up out of the ground at just the perfect angle to snag her toes. She lurched forward with a curse. Ryan caught her before she hit the ground, but white-hot pain was already shooting through her ankle.

She carefully disentangled her foot and tried putting weight on it. She stumbled again, but Ryan already had his hands under her arms and she didn’t go anywhere.

Crappity crap.

“You probably twisted your ankle,” he said. “You have to look out for those leaves—they like to collect in holes like that.”

“…Ow.”

He sighed. “Come on,” he said. “You can make it. I’ll help. Just don’t put any more pressure on that ankle than you have to.”

There was no use protesting. They still had nearly half a mile to walk, and there was no way she’d be able to make it without support. She leaned into him, all the while attempting not to lean too far into him, but she finally let him take most of her weight when she realized he had no trouble holding her up. They slowly made their way back to Aleda’s house, him walking and her limping along on one foot. After a few minutes of walking, fortunately, the pain began to subside. By the time they made it back to her house she was practically walking on her own again.

“I guess it wasn’t as bad as I thought,” Ryan commented when she made the last few steps on her own. “I think you’ll live.”

“What about you? Won’t you be late? I’m sorry…”

“Not your fault. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.”

“Thanks for the help,” she said grudgingly.

He nodded slightly to her and sped off on his motorcycle.

As soon as she was sure he’d gone, Aleda hopped up on her good foot, cursed loudly, and limped awkwardly up to her front door.