CHAPTER 22
More than a dozen calls and twice as many texts and she still hadn’t responded.
Asher paced the house like an animal in a cage, his glyphs writhing all over his skin and his eyes burning like hot coals in his skull. His fangs filling his mouth, he snarled and cursed as he wore a hard track in the living room rug while Sam stared anxiously from his position nearby.
Asher wasn’t angry at Naomi. All of his self-hatred and futile rage was directed entirely at himself.
He never should have let her go today. They could have found another solution for the boy stranded at the doctor’s office—anything but the one that had sent Naomi back to Las Vegas without him. But even as he thought it, he knew she’d never stand for shirking her responsibility to a child who was counting on her. Hell, even Asher wouldn’t have suggested it.
And none of that would have changed the fact that Michael Carson was dead.
Murdered in cold blood.
He could hardly believe the kind, smiling young man was gone now.
Asher blamed himself for that too.
He should have known Slater wouldn’t take such a big loss at his casino in stride. He would have been scrutinizing Michael with laser focus, sniffing around for any cause he could find to renege on the payment or snatch it back before it was fully out of his grasp.
Killing the winner was certainly not the smartest way to go about that, but if Slater thought he had another way to get his hands on the money . . .
Fuck. Where the hell was she?
He took out his phone again and started to hit her number when he heard the crunch of gravel in the distance. Finally.
It was just after noon with the sun shining high overhead, but he didn’t give a damn. As Ned’s old truck bounced on the narrow dirt lane out front, Asher practically yanked the latch off the screen in his haste to meet Naomi as she pulled to a stop at the house.
The light seared his vision and the rising cloud of yellow dust gathered in his throat like cinders as he raced to the driver’s side of the vehicle and tore open the door.
“Thank God you’re okay. I’ve been going fucking crazy here.”
She didn’t answer. She hardly looked at him as she stepped down from the seat and onto the ground. He gathered her close, ignoring the sharp sting of the sun’s deadly rays on his exposed skin. Relief rocketed through him to be holding her again and seeing for himself that she was still in one piece and not a mark on her.
“Naomi.” He didn’t want to let go, but she was wooden in his embrace. Her breath was shallow, her expression blank. “Baby, are you all right?”
He could feel that she was—his bond to her blood told him she hadn’t been injured. But she was awash with a shell-shocked quiet that shredded him inside. He knew that look. He had seen this kind of numbness before, in other Hunters back when he was a boy. He’d felt it himself after he’d completed his first kill order from Dragos.
A shock and horror so deep it hollowed you out.
Touching her now gave him a jolt as a new and awful memory flowed out of her to take root in his mind and senses. Naomi’s grief and horror as she discovered her friend slumped in his bedroom, his face almost unrecognizable for the awful color and swelling the leather garrote around his neck had caused.
He ran his hands over her face, smoothing her slack ebony hair out of her eyes. “What happened after you left Michael’s? I’ve been calling and texting all this time. Why didn’t you respond? Have you been out there looking for Tyler or the other kids?”
She swallowed and shook her head, her gaze still vacant. How she managed to make it home in her state of shock, he had no idea and he didn’t want to consider.
He glanced past her and saw something odd on the floor of the truck’s cab.
A tourist-style tote bag emblazoned with a glittery Las Vegas slogan. The bag was filled with cash. Lots of it.
What the fuck?
He searched her face, dread snaking up the back of his skull. “Naomi, no. Tell me you didn’t go to see Slater . . .”
But no, he rationalized. If she’d done that, she wouldn’t be alive and standing in front of him now.
She blinked dazedly, and a frown pinched her brow. “You’re burning, Asher. You can’t be out here.”
He didn’t even feel the pain of the angry red patches sizzling on his bare forearms and face. All of his focus, all of his concern, was on her. “Let’s go inside.”
Grabbing the tote in one hand and her in the other, he shut the truck’s door and brought Naomi into the house. Sam immediately trotted over, showering her with affection she barely seemed to notice.
“Come on,” Asher said, leading her into the living room and sitting her down on the sofa.
He put the tote bag on the floor then sat beside her. When her eyes met his again, he felt a withdrawal from her that had nothing to do with Michael or her ordeal today.
Something else was wrong here. If her wounded eyes hadn’t told him so, the stab of anguish that pierced him through the bond left no doubt.
“Talk to me, Naomi. Tell me where you’ve been.” He looked back at the tote full of large denomination bills and cursed under his breath. There had to be tens of thousands of dollars stuffed into that bag. “What are you doing with all of that money?”
“I was leaving Michael’s house after I talked with the police,” she murmured, her voice sounding rusty and unused. “I got a call. Michael’s number. Only it wasn’t Michael.”
“Slater.” Asher practically spat the name.
“He told me he wants all of his money back. Not just the money Michael and I took the other night. All of it. Everything I’ve ever stolen from him.”
Asher recalled the steep figure Cain had tossed around. “You don’t have that kind of money in that bag,” he said, dread coiling inside him when he realized where this conversation was going. “Tell me you didn’t plan on doing what Slater asked. You aren’t planning to go bring him that money, are you?”
“I’m not planning to,” she murmured. “I already did. Tried to, that is.”
He vaulted to his feet on a savage curse. “Holy fuck. What do you mean, you tried?”
She gazed up at him, a bleakness in her expression. “I ran into someone you know. I was on my way to find Slater at Moda and Cain was on his way out. Quitting and leaving town, according to him.”
Asher would consider that surprising newsflash later. Right now, the only important detail was the fact that Naomi had evidently come face to face with the former Hunter.
“What else did he have to say?”
“A lot of things, Asher. Mainly what he said was that I needed to be wary of you.” She stared at him, her soft sherry-colored eyes leaving him nowhere to hide. “He told me about your past. About the fact that you were part of the Hunter program, all of it. He warned me that I should leave Las Vegas and you and never look back.”
His chest felt as though it were being cracked open from the inside. He didn’t need to know the specifics of whatever else Cain had told her. The details didn’t matter. Everything between them had changed because of her conversation with the other Hunter.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why did I have to learn it from someone else, Asher?”
He took a step away from her, unable to hold her accusing expression. “I didn’t want you to know.”
She exhaled sharply. “I guess that’s understandable. Hard to sell me on the fact that only you can protect me from a man like Slater, or even Cain, when it turns out you’re more dangerous than either one of them. Is that it? Don’t you think I deserved to know?”
“In the beginning, I saw no reason to tell you. And then . . . it wasn’t long before I hoped you’d never find out.”
She stood up on slightly shaky legs, then turned to head out of the room. Asher told himself he should let her go. She was right. He was worse than Slater and Cain combined. The things he’d done. The deaths he’d dealt at Dragos’s command. Scores of them, each one seared into his memory in total, vivid detail.
If Naomi left after learning all of that, he could blame no one but himself.
But he wasn’t ready to let her go.
God, he would never be ready for that.
Moving faster than her eyes could track him, he blocked her path. “You do deserve to know. As much as I wish you’d never find out all the things I’ve done, I owe you the truth. Even if it does make you leave me and never look back.”
“Is it true? Were you not only part of that awful program, but its executioner too? Did you really kill little boys and men—your brothers—for Dragos?” Her questions came rapid fire and hitching, a barrage of ugly truths. “Asher, my God.” Her breath caught sharply as her stark gaze studied him. “Did you really enjoy it so much that you used your gift to revel in their pain?”
So, Cain hadn’t spared a detail about his past. That came as no surprise. His Hunter brethren had plenty of reason to despise him, but Cain had one thing wrong.
“No. I didn’t revel in my duty. I hated every second of it. But I did it because I wanted to survive . . . and because if I didn’t carry out Dragos’s orders, someone else would. Or he would do it himself, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, least of all my brothers.”
He saw her struggling to accept what she was hearing from him. He felt her recoil emotionally through their bond. But she didn’t turn away from him. She wasn’t trying to leave and never look back. Not yet, anyway.
“Cain said you made a point of touching the ones you—” She broke off, briefly closing her eyes. “He said that before you executed another Hunter, you used your Breed ability to feel their fear as they begged you for their lives. He said you wanted to feel their agony before you killed them.”
Asher slowly nodded. “That much is true, yes.”
“Oh, my God.” Revulsion seeped through their connection, oily and bitter. “Oh, shit. I didn’t want to believe him . . .”
She was repulsed by his admission, he could see it in her stricken expression as much as he felt it in her blood. She drew back from him, but Asher caught her around her nape.
“It’s true that I laid my hand on every Hunter I had to execute. I did want to feel their terror and their anguish.” He spoke over her strangled moan, forcing her to hold his gaze as he bared the blackest pieces of his soul. “I did it, Naomi, because I never wanted to forget them. I wanted to remember every face, every pair of fearful or defiant eyes that fixed on me as the last thing they saw. I never wanted to let myself forget the brothers I killed in order that I could keep living. That was my penance, to never forget.”
She relaxed in his loose grasp, only the slightest bit. Her body sagged with the weight of her heavy exhalation. When she spoke, her voice was almost too soft to be heard, her eyes turning tender on him, even pitying. “How many, Asher?”
He shook his head. “Too many. I was selfish, even then. And without honor. If I hadn’t carried out Dragos’s edicts I would’ve been the one to die. I made certain that when I delivered death it was swift, even when Dragos called for suffering.”
“I can’t imagine how terrible your life was,” she murmured. “All of the Hunters’ lives.”
No, she couldn’t. He wished no one could be able to imagine that kind of brutal, bleak existence. But he and Cain weren’t the only Hunters walking the Earth with memories of those years, and sins to be reconciled.
There were others. Scythe in Italy now, along with Trygg, another former Hunter serving the Order over there.
Countless more scattered to each corner of the globe in the two decades since the program, and Dragos, were destroyed.
Asher smoothed the pad of his thumb over Naomi’s slackened lips. “As awful as my life was back then, I didn’t want to die. For a long time, I didn’t know why it was important to me to keep going, to keep living.” He stroked her cheek. “Now I know what I waiting for.”
She wept softly, but kept her arms down at her sides, refusing to touch him.
“It was unfair of me to drink from you before you knew who I was . . . what I’ve done. I don’t deserve your bond, and I know I won’t ever be worthy of it. I’ll never be worthy of your love, if I haven’t already lost that.” He held her face tenderly in his palms and searched her bereft, hurting gaze. “I love you, Naomi. All I want is a future with you at my side, but I don’t know if you can ever look at me the same way as you did before.”
“No, I can’t,” she admitted softly. “But I can’t blame you, either. I won’t blame you for doing what you’d been born and trained to do, Asher. What hurts the most is that you didn’t give me the chance. You didn’t trust me enough to be honest about your past and how it shamed you. Instead I had to learn it from someone else. I’ve never felt like a bigger fool.”
“I know,” he muttered, his own self-loathing like acid in his throat. “I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry for so much where you’re concerned.”
She eased out of his reach, her voice constricted. “It doesn’t matter right now. Michael’s dead, Asher. Because of me, my best friend is dead. And Tyler and the other kids could be anywhere in the city now with no place to go.”
“We’ll figure that out,” he vowed. “And as soon as the sun goes down, I’ll take care of Leo Slater.”
“No.” She shook her head, wearier than he’d ever seen her. “He’s taken everything he can from me now. I’m finished fighting him. He won. He doesn’t matter anymore, only those kids do.”
She stepped away from him, bringing her arms across herself. Then she turned and headed down the hall to the master bedroom and closed the door, quietly shutting Asher out.
He stood there, knowing she wouldn’t want him to follow. Not this time.
He felt her sorrow in his veins as she broke down in private behind the closed door and mourned her friend alone.