Chapter Five

Kel awoke feeling it.

Two days after things with Phoebe went straight to hell, Kel woke to feel something pulling at him. Strong, demanding and determined to be obeyed.

He dressed hurriedly. Most of the Hunters had adopted a uniform of sorts, sturdy cargo pants done in basic black, close-fitting black shirt—long sleeved to keep as much skin concealed as possible, and sturdy, thick-soled boots. The shoulder holster went on over his shirt and then he put a jacket over that to conceal his weapon.

Tucking extra ammo clips into one of the pockets on his pants, he grabbed his gun, checked it and then slid the modified Beretta into the holster.

A couple of knives, one in his boot and another sheathed at his waist. After snagging a pair of reinforced cuffs, he was ready.

Slipping out of the room, he left the basement and headed to the main floor. A quick glance around told him that none of the other Hunters had felt it.

But he did. That low-level burn deep in his gut, one that would get stronger and stronger until he obeyed. Until he listened. Until he Hunted.

He was tired. His daytime slumber had been restless. Although he couldn’t fight the urge to sleep yet, he didn’t always sleep well. Normally, it wasn’t so bad. Dreams of Angel, which really sucked, but at the same time, they’d soothed him. Made him feel a little closer.

But this time? Instead of falling into that deep, mostly restful sleep, he’d kept feeling something pull at him. Like he wasn’t supposed to be asleep.

That totally fucking pissed him off. If it was the only time he could be close to her, watching her without her knowing, drifting through her subconscious mind while he slept, then damn it, he wanted those dreams.

Odd—he’d spent twelve years waiting for something to reduce the in-living-color intensity of those dreams and the one day something did intrude? He woke resentful, tired and pissed.

Usually once the sun was nearing the western horizon, his body forced him into wakefulness, tearing him from the dreams long before he was ready. The vampire instincts took control, though, and sleeping once the sun had set was all but impossible. His body wouldn’t let him.

Tonight, different story. If he could shut down a deep, basic instinct and just stay in the bed, he knew would have slept. His body needed it, craved it.

But that low-level burn was there. That primal urge that no Hunter could ignore, pulling—like something had wrapped an unseen rope around his gut and was jerking on him.

Ignoring it wouldn’t do much but bring him pain and stretch his control.

So he didn’t ignore it.

He slid out of the house without speaking to anybody, although he knew both Rafe and Toronto watched him leave. He took the bike. Usually that was one thing that would ease the restlessness in him. Tonight, the powerful rumble of the bike didn’t do a damn thing to help.

The restlessness wasn’t just restlessness—it had grown into a full-out frenzy and if he didn’t find it…

No.

Not it.

Her.

He could feel that much now. Hear a woman’s scream as though he was right next to her. He kept going and going, following that internal summons all the way through town, heading for the Mississippi state line. There were no formal lines to Rafe’s territory—Rafe and his Hunters followed urges into other states plenty and Kel was evidence of that. The calling a Hunter heard wasn’t anything clear and defined and Kel wouldn’t know where it was going to lead him until he was there.

In this case, it led him into Mississippi and along Highway 78 towards Tupelo. He left the bike in the parking lot of a crowded bar and continued on foot, following that summons. It led him to an industrial area that had definitely seen better days.

It was clearer now, that summons, coming from a big, sprawling warehouse that looked abandoned. But that was deceptive.

Kel felt something moving in there. Something living and hungry…

His skin crawled.

Foreboding choked him.

The scent of blood and pain colored the air around him in vivid, dark shades. The scent of blood didn’t call to him at all, the stink of fear and pain drowning out what might have once been appealing.

Under the sour, bitter stench of violence, there was something disturbingly, distressingly familiar. It tickled his memory until Kel had no choice but to work past the abhorrence and make himself focus, make himself drag in a deep breath of the fear-tainted blood.

He went cold and for just the briefest of moments, he couldn’t move. Denial wrapped itself around him, followed by some futile hope he wouldn’t even allow himself to cling to. Hope was such a bitter, ugly disappointment.

Instinct took over, instinct that hadn’t existed until twelve years ago. It wasn’t just the instincts of a vampire—the fear coming from that place was enough to have the typical civilian vamp backing away damn quick. Definitely not vamp instinct—it was the instinct of a Hunter and while he’d do damn near anything not to have it, ignoring it hadn’t ever been an option.

It pushed him into action. Without consciously realizing it, he slid into the shadows and cloaked himself within them. He pulled the darkness around him and used its cover as he made his way inside the warehouse.

He heard a broken, tortured moan.

It was a pitiful, faint sound and as it faded into the air, there was a laugh—icy and amused, so damn evil it made Kel’s skin crawl. The part of his brain that wasn’t controlled by instinct was screaming to get the hell away. That kind of evil wasn’t anything he wanted to look at, anything he wanted to face, anything he wanted to fight.

A fucking failure, that was Kel. Hunter instincts, Hunter drive, and he still didn’t want this fight. But he didn’t turn around. He didn’t leave.

There was no way he could, even when he heard her heartbeat falter, heard the rattle of her breath. It was the sound of death edging closer and Kel could even feel the chill of it looming near.

A man’s voice broke into the silence, underlined by a dry edge of humor. “I told you that it was pointless to fight, darling girl. And yet…still you fight. Why is that? Unless it’s to amuse me.”

Kel’s lips peeled back from his teeth as he heard a familiar sound, a wet thwack as a fist struck flesh. The only sound she made was a distant, almost non-existent moan.

He emerged from the shadows just as the feral bent down and fisted a hand in her hair.

“Let her go,” he said in a flat voice. As he spoke, he also released his control on the shadows, an illusory talent some vampires had. It was all a trick of the mind, but it came in handy—muffled his presence, could cause an aversive effect where people avoided something without even realizing why.

And apparently, it worked on this one, because when his brown eyes cut towards Kel’s, there was surprise in his gaze. His eyes widened and the faint, bored smile on his lips widened. Dropping his victim to the ground, he stepped over her…like she was so much garbage.

Something about the feral’s features, the way he moved, was disturbingly familiar but Kel didn’t know where he had seen this guy before. Hunters didn’t let ferals live—if this was one Kel had fought and not killed, then Rafe would have sent another Hunter to do the job.

But he’d seen him before—

No time to worry about the past though, because the present was bearing down on him, hard and fast. Kel wasn’t about to go hand-to-hand with a vampire that probably had a good century on him. Shit, if he’d known he was going to be dealing with a feral this strong, he would have enlisted help.

For vampires, strength came with age and in relative terms, Kel was just a baby compared to this fuck.

As the feral circled around him, something about the man’s moves, something about that ugly sneer on his face, kept tickling at Kel’s memory.

“A bit young to be out here trying to tangle with me, aren’t you, boy?”

He slid a hand inside his shirt and closed it around the Beretta. Drawing it, he leveled it at the feral’s brow and smiled. “I’ll manage.”

The feral paused, cocked his head as he peered at Kel. Something flashed in those brown eyes, curiosity. “Hmmmm… You’re a cocky one, aren’t you, boy?”

“Yeah, I keep hearing that.”

“The Council really should be more careful.”

Something cold slivered through the air. The temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees. But it didn’t affect Kel. The fear that might have had some sway over him was one Kel had been trained to resist. As the temperature dropped and fear rolled through the room like a river, all Kel did was tighten his finger on the trigger.

The feral lunged to the side. Kel moved with him and when the vamp tried to circle around behind him, Kel echoed his moves.

Deja vu…

I’ve done this before, he thought. The feral across from him stilled, narrowed his eyes as he peered at Kel. Something measuring…

They both figured it out at the same time.

Kel snarled and his finger tensed on the trigger as he stared at the feral that had forced the Change on him.

And the sick fuck laughed. That icy, cold laugh that Kel heard in his nightmares.

“You made it through the night.” Abruptly, he stopped circling around Kel and tucked his hands into his pockets, rocking back on his heels. “That damn Hunter—should have guessed he’d find you and feed you. Should have just killed you, you pathetic waste. Of course, you did slow the Hunter down a bit.”

“Shut up.”

The feral laughed. This time, instead of icy cold fear, the laugh seemed to emanate hot, ripe fury, stabbing into Kel’s ears like little knives.

“Oh, so angry. Boy, you should thank me. Don’t you get what you are now?”

Shoot the bastard, his common sense screamed. But he didn’t want to shoot this one.

He wanted to gut him. Peel the skin from the bastard’s body and then rip out his tongue.

“Put the gun away, boy.” The command came flying through the air, hitting Kel with leaden force.

But Kel had been able to resist twelve years ago as a human. Now? There was no way the bastard’s mind tricks would work. Still…feigning dumb, dazed obedience, he holstered the gun. The feral laughed again and this time, it was warm and soft, like silk.

“That’s a boy. You didn’t really want to use that on me, did you?”

Honestly, Kel replied, “No.”

The feral gestured to the woman laying a few feet away. Her face was awash with blood, her entire body bruised and battered. There were ugly, telltale bruises on her thighs and bite marks all over her body.

“There’s not much left, but do you want a bite?”

The weight of it hit Kel a little stronger this time, a little harder. It was almost like a hand coming up between his shoulder blades and shoving him while a low, internal voice urged…Go ahead, do it… You need it, you know that.

He moved towards her and the rage that rolled through him almost made him snap. But he didn’t turn and pounce the way he wanted—the way he needed. He edged forward a bit more, eying her face, the way her chest rose and fell in erratic stops and starts. The pallor. Her neck looked like she’d been chewed on by a pack of hungry, angry rats and her face was so battered, she couldn’t even open her eyes.

But he recognized her…even under the bruises and the blood, he knew her. He’d know her anywhere.

“Go on…”

The voice wasn’t internal this time. It was right over Kel’s shoulder, murmured directly into his ear. The feral’s evil beat against his skin like a cold, angry wind. He took a moment to look at her face once more, storing the memory of it in his head.

He’d need that memory to fuel him in a minute, he knew it.

He slid a hand into the belt at his waist and drew the knife, slowly, so slowly the silver-forged blade didn’t even whisper against the leather. The feral’s hand came up, wrapped around Kel’s neck, fingers digging into flesh with cruel intent.

“Come on, boy…”

Wrapping his fist around the hilt, Kel jerked away from the restraining hand and slid in close. As he shoved the knife deep into the feral’s side, for one moment, their eyes met. They stood so close, Kel could smell her blood on the feral’s breath, see the tiny little striations of black in the hazel eyes.

“I stopped being a boy the night you attacked me, bastard.” Jerking his knife free, he used his other hand to deliver a swift upper cut to the feral’s jaw.

The feral’s feet left the floor and he went sailing back but the moment he hit the ground, he was back on his feet, moving with smooth, sinuous grace. “That was a foolish move, Hunter whelp,” the feral snarled, his lips peeling back from his teeth and revealing the sharp glint of fang.

“Pretty sure you said that to me once before.” Kel’s voice was flat, emotionless. Memories from that night, the ones he’d tried to hard to forget, surged through him. The feral moved and Kel remembered the eerie, inhuman grace from twelve years earlier.

It was still there, but Kel was no longer a nineteen-year-old boy trying to protect his girlfriend with nothing but a sterling silver letter opener. The silver knife he carried now was modeled after a K-bar, wicked sharp, and made especially for the Hunters. The metal alloy wasn’t pure silver, but it didn’t need to be. A wound from a silver blade wasn’t going to kill unless it destroyed the heart—and a non-silver weapon would do the same.

But a silver-wrought wound hurt a hell of a lot more than the typical blade and it healed almost as slowly as a normal wound would. The feral’s gaze slid from Kel’s face to the blade in his hand and then back. “You don’t really think you can kill me with that toy, do you?”

With a mean grin, Kel shrugged. “I wouldn’t write the idea off. I did you a decent amount of damage with nothing but a letter opener, if I remember right. And a twig—hey, how’s that eye feeling? Damn, I have to admit, I’m impressed. I wouldn’t think an eyeball could regenerate quite so well.”

A muscle in the feral’s cheek twitched and his left lid flickered, almost like he was remembering the pain. “I’m going to rip your heart out of your chest and smash it. You will die this time.”

Something sad, almost wistful moved through Kel and he smiled faintly. “Promise?”

There was little warning, but Kel hadn’t spent the entire twelve years doing nothing but brooding. The lessons, the drills, the training, he’d taken it all in. He sensed the attack before it came and his body had him sidestepping before his brain recognized it. He slashed out, but missed.

Another lunge and this time when Kel slashed with his knife, it caught flesh. The scent of burned flesh filled the air and when Kel faced the feral once more, he saw a long, ugly slice that went downward, from brow to chin. Even the eye didn’t escape unmarked—already blood was flowing.

The feral howled.

Hot, savage satisfaction flooded Kel and he smirked. “Better be careful or that eye of yours is going to end up getting ripped out.”

Blood painted gory streaks across the feral’s face. He wiped it out of his eyes and looked down at his hand. It was dripping with dark red blood. Hellfire glinted in his eyes as he looked up at Kel and roared.

He moved, quicker than a snake, quiet as death—but not for Kel. Kel spun around and ran to her, but it was too late. The feral straightened and flung the bloody wet mess in his hand at Kel’s feet. That savage fury obliterated everything for Kel, even the desire for revenge. All he wanted was that fucking monster dead. Without blinking, he dropped his knife, drew the Beretta once more and sighted, so quick it seemed like one smooth move.

The scent of gun smoke stung his nostrils and the feral’s screech was loud enough to shatter glass—but he didn’t fall. Kel swore, squeezed the trigger. But the vamp slid away. He didn’t disappear into the shadows the way Kel had, he simply took off, running at a speed that should have been impossible considering Kel had just plugged the bastard’s chest with silver and lead.

“Missed the heart,” Kel whispered.

The instinctive rage screamed at him to follow.

He couldn’t though.

Her breathing had stopped.

Sinking to his knees besides her, Kel stared at that still face. Her throat was one raw, gaping wound. The silence seemed to echo, viciously loud.

No heartbeat.

No breathing.

“Phoebe, I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

 

 

Angel awoke in tears.

They ran down her face, soaked her hair and her pillow. Her throat ached from the sobs trapped inside.

The vague, fleeting memory of a dream slid away even as she tried to reach out and catch it. Nothing there…nothing but a crushing weight of guilt and grief.

Useless.

Worthless.

The words seemed to whisper themselves in her ear and vaguely, so vaguely, she had some distant understanding that she’d failed. Failed somebody.

Kel… Yes, she’d failed him. But that was twelve years ago and although she hadn’t moved past her grief or guilt over it, that wasn’t what this was about.

This pain, it felt too fresh. Too new. Rolling onto her belly, she buried her face in her pillow and let the storm of pain take her.

There was no sense to it, no reason…and it seemed, no end. Without knowing why, without having any control over it, she lay there in her bed and sobbed. She sobbed until her throat was raw and sore, until she had no tears left to shed, and still the grief wouldn’t release her.

The sun was rising when the storm finally eased. It didn’t disappear. It was a weight in her chest that pressed down on her as she fought her way free from tangled sheets and blankets, a weight that it made seem impossible to stand.

When she finally did make it to her feet, she swayed. Darkness pushed in her. As hard as it was to get moving in the morning, she’d always managed.

But today…? She couldn’t even make herself take a step or two forward. Her brain didn’t want to function and her limbs felt heavy and weighted. The knot in her throat was made so much worse by the hours of sobbing and when she swallowed, it felt like somebody had stabbed her with a knife.

Groaning, she tried once more to make her body move. But then she fell back on the bed and reached for the blankets, drawing them around her. Huddled under them, she lay shivering and shaking. Sleep pulled at her.

She was almost asleep…almost there—then music blared from the nightstand and hit her ears like an ice pick. She swung out with her hand, but when she hit the iPod, nothing happened.

It wasn’t her alarm, she realized.

But the phone. Ringing…and ringing…and ringing… A niggling sense of responsibility made her grab it as she snuggled deeper into her nest of blankets. Shit. The yard sale.

Ronda Pickard, Jake’s neighbor, was helping her with the yard sale to get rid of the stuff from Jake’s house that Angel didn’t want to keep or donate to the church.

With clumsy fingers, she grabbed the phone and croaked into the handset.

“Angel, sweetie, is that you?”

“Yeah.”

“Girl, you sound like hell.”

“Sick,” she lied. She dodged a few questions, croaked out a refusal for some lunch delivered.

“You sound terrible. Can I bring you anything?”

Angel convinced Ronda that she just needed some sleep and as she tossed the phone into the general direction of the nightstand, she muttered, “Yeah. Bring me a knife. Something to get rid of this ache. Anything…”

That was her last coherent thought before she escaped into oblivion.

But it was little escape, because even there, the pain waited.

 

 

He heard the soft knock at the door, but Kel didn’t answer. For the past three hours, he’d lain on his bed, recalling the events from last night…everything from waking to feel that call, to burning Phoebe’s battered, broken body.

Science made it necessary. There were physiological differences in a werewolf and too many curious souls had ended up with a dead non-mortal before them. Too many questions had already been asked.

Once, Kel was told they had buried their dead just like humans preferred. But as science evolved and both mortal and non-mortal alike began to research, it became clear to the non-mortal population that they had to protect their presence from mortals.

If there was no safe, certain way to transport their dead, then they had to burn the body. Kel knew there wasn’t any way he could get Phoebe’s body back to Memphis, not on a motorcycle. Instead of tracking the feral, Kel had seen to Phoebe’s remains, standing beside the flames until little but ashes remained. He would have liked to burn the whole damn warehouse down, but there were too many other buildings close by, too big a risk.

With a terse call to Rafe, he told the Master what had happened and where. Rafe would get somebody out there for cleanup, and damn was there cleanup needed.

Kel had walked out of the warehouse a dazed, bloodied mess. Some of the blood was his, but most of it had come from Phoebe as he sat on the floor and held her lifeless body.

There was another knock and then the door opened. Closing his eyes, he averted his head. Sheila’s footsteps were silent on the floor but he knew she was in here. The bed dipped beneath her weight as she sat on the edge and reached out, laid a hand on his arm.

“Wanna talk?” she offered, her voice soft and sad.

“No.”

She sighed. “I don’t imagine you do. But maybe you need to.”

Laughing bitterly, he turned his head and glared at her. “Why? What the fuck will that do? It won’t help me find him. It won’t help her. It won’t undo what that monster did…” Vivid images flashed through his mind, images he’d seen in his dreams through the long daylight hours.

“I didn’t love her.”

Abruptly, Kel couldn’t be still any more. Jackknifing out of the bed, he stalked towards the dresser and grabbed a pair of jeans, dragged them on over naked hips before he turned and faced Sheila. “I spent the past year with her, fucking her whenever the hunger got too bad. I didn’t love her—I knew I never would. But I cared about her and I was too damn blind to see that she was feeling something for me I couldn’t return. And then he got ahold of her.”

Sheila smoothed a lock of hair back from her face and licked her lips. Rising from the bed, she moved across the floor until she stood just a few feet away. “Rafe sent Toronto out to investigate, see if he could figure out what happened to Phoebe. She didn’t show up at work the night after the fight. Told a friend she was taking off. Her stuff is gone. There’s a civilian shifter, works as a cop in Tupelo and he sent word to Rafe about a car that was found outside a bar early this morning. It was Phoebe’s. The shifter recognized a werewolf’s scent…” Sheila’s voice faded away and she turned her head.

“Tell me.”

After taking a deep breath, she looked back at him, her blue eyes soft with compassion. Kel didn’t want compassion—he didn’t deserve it. But damn it, he needed answers.

“There was blood in the car. A lot of it. He also thought he scented a vamp. Since Rafe’s the closest Master, he sent word. Toronto headed down there after we got that information and he’s been there since. There’ve been some weird deaths, looks like the feral had himself a little playground down there.”

“And Phoebe walked right into it.”

Because of me.

“Kel.”

He looked back at Sheila. “I didn’t love her,” he repeated quietly. “Not at all. But she must have thought I did—or that I could. When I made it clear she was wrong, she ran. From me. From Memphis…where it was safe. And because of that, she’s dead.”

“You can’t blame yourself for not loving somebody, Kel.” She turned away from him and started to pace the floor. “Look… Phoebe filled a need you have. It’s a biological thing, it’s part of what we are. She knew vampires, Kel. She knew that sex for a vampire is practically a need. How many vamps do you think went to the club on a regular basis just to get laid? Not because they necessarily want it, but our bodies push us to it. Just like—”

Abruptly, she cut herself off, clamping her lips shut as though she’d almost said something she shouldn’t. The look on her face was one of discomfort and there was a weird light in her eyes.

“Just like what?”

“Shit.” Sheila crossed her arms over her chest and hunched her shoulders. “Look, Kel…I didn’t know Phoebe, not personally. But Rafe and I make it a habit to know what goes on here. Rafe has to—and what affects him affects me. Phoebe had a reputation for…”

Now Kel had a good idea what she was getting at. If he wasn’t so hollowed out inside, if he wasn’t so cold and sick with guilt and grief, he might have been a little embarrassed.

But he just didn’t care.

“Reputation for liking mean, rough sex?” he offered, his voice flat and emotionless.

Frowning, Sheila said, “I wouldn’t call it that. And it’s not what I was getting at—at least, not exactly.”

Kel shrugged. “Don’t know why not. What else do you call it when two people get off on seeing who can make the other bleed more?”

Her voice gentle, she replied, “I call it dealing with a pain in the only way you know how. Kel, most of us don’t come to this life that easy but we adjust. You’ve never been able to do that.” She crossed back to him, reached up to lay a hand on his cheek.

Unwilling to accept her touch, unwilling to accept any kind of comfort, Kel jerked away. Sheila’s blue gaze followed him as he slid away, moved around her.

“You feel dead inside,” Sheila said. “There’s not a one of us that can’t see that. But Phoebe helped. You were a couple of broken souls and life got a bit easier when you two met. But that doesn’t mean that you should feel guilty because you didn’t love her. You couldn’t love her, Kel. You gave your heart away a long time ago and there’s nothing you can do for that.”

Finally, finally, that gentle compassion in her voice pierced the ice shroud wrapped around his heart. “That doesn’t make hurting Phoebe okay. That doesn’t make chasing her away okay.”

“You didn’t chase her away, Kel. She ran.” Sheila reached up and rubbed her hands up and down her face. When she lowered them, he saw signs of exhaustion, like sleep hadn’t come easy to her. And traces of anger.

Anger permeated the entire enclave. That a vicious, brutal feral with a taste for rape and murder was so close—or at least had been so close, and they hadn’t realized it until now, it weighed on the lot of them.

But it was crushing him. Destroying what little soul he had left. “She ran because of me.”

“She ran because of her,” Sheila countered. “I know you, Kel. You wouldn’t have led her to believe in any way that you might love her. Women…” She shrugged, a bitter smile on her lips. “We can usually tell when somebody loves us or not. Too often, even when we suspect the answer is not, we don’t want to accept that. You can’t fault yourself for not loving her, any more than you can fault her for falling in love with you…or at least fooling herself into it. Phoebe was a big girl, Kel. She’d made it in this world before Rafe set up territory here. She knew there were risks and predators—and she made the choice to leave. Nobody forced it on her.”

Neither of them heard the footsteps. Until Rafe’s voice cut through the tension in the air, they hadn’t even realized he was there. But as they turned to look at the Master, both of them felt something change…a subtle shift in the air.

Subtle—but it came with something icy and ugly. Something that filled Kel with dread.

“Don’t tell me he’s killed again,” he rasped. Disgusted and furious, his hands closed into fists and the refrain started to circle through his mind once more.

Helpless. Useless. Worthless.

The feral’s words whispered through his mind as he stared at Rafe’s impassive face.

“I’m going to rip your heart out of your chest and smash it. You will die this time.”

Kel’s own response… “Promise?”

Better off if the feral had killed him. Kel could be replaced. Rafe could get somebody besides Kel’s sorry ass in here, somebody who actually understood the purpose, somebody who cared.

“No, Kel. He hasn’t killed anybody yet that we know about.” Rafe glanced at his wife.

The look that passed between them didn’t do a damn thing to make Kel feel better.

Neither did the appearance of Dominic and Toronto emerging from the hallway to flank Rafe. Toronto wouldn’t have finished checking things out in Tupelo already—which meant he was back because Rafe had sent for him.

Dominic’s brown eyes weren’t quite as blank as Toronto’s or Rafe’s. Dominic wasn’t that much older than Kel, in both human and vampire terms, and he hadn’t yet learned the fine art of hiding every single emotion.

The look in Dom’s eyes was one of worry, one of caution—and it had to do with Kel. He could feel it.

In a hoarse voice, Kel asked, “What’s going on, Rafe?”

Rafe, his voice impassive, said, “It has to do with what you left behind.”

Startled, Kel blinked. “What I left…” Understanding came fast and hard.

Home.

Angel…

She was the only one he’d left behind that could still matter.

“What exactly are you talking about?” he demanded through clenched teeth.

“There’s a witch living a few miles away from Greenburg—moved there on my request.” A muscle jerked in his jaw and for just a second, Rafe’s emotionless eyes weren’t quite so emotionless.

“Why?” Kel demanded.

“Because of Angel.”

Kel didn’t even remember moving. One second, he was ten feet away from Rafe and then he was in Rafe’s face, his hands fisted in the smooth, buttery soft leather of Rafe’s coat. Jerking Rafe forward, he rasped, “Why?”

“Because she was bitten too.” Rafe glanced down at Kel’s hands and reached up, closing his fingers around Kel’s wrists. “Bitten…and fed.”

“She’s not…” Dear sweet heaven…no… The strength drained out of him and now, if he hadn’t been holding onto Rafe’s jacket, and if Rafe didn’t have a hold of Kel’s wrists, he suspected he would have gone to his knees.

“Kel.”

Blood roared in his ears, blinding him, deafening him. Something soft, cool, stroked his cheek and without realizing it, he let go of Rafe and turned towards Sheila. Lost, shocked, he stared into her eyes. Her hands came up, cupped his face.

Her lips moved, but he couldn’t hear the words. Not at first. When they finally did pierce the fog in his head, they didn’t even make sense.

But when they did, Kel did go to the ground, sinking to his knees and covering his face with his hands. Tears burned his eyes and the relief that washed through him was a sweet, sweet respite.

“Damn it, Kel…she’s not a vampire.” It was the third time she’d said it.

“I heard you.” Lifting his gaze, he stared at Sheila and nodded. “I heard you.”

“But…” He turned his head and stared at Rafe. “If she’s not one of us, why is she being watched?”

“For her safety.” Rafe sighed and turned away, pacing the room with a restless, caged energy. The two men at his shoulders fell back in unison but they didn’t move far. They kept a close eye on Kel and once more, the tension in the room began to climb.

Higher. Higher.

“Rafe, if you don’t tell me what the fuck is going on…” Kel swore and shoved himself to his feet. He planted himself in Rafe’s path and waited.

“You remember when you were going through your training?” Rafe said.

A weird light glittered in Rafe’s eyes and Kel’s skin went tight as a dark, ugly premonition began to whisper in his ear. Angel had been bitten—he remembered that, had nightmares about it.

There had been blood on her lips.

“We don’t generally want vamps feeding from one human in particular. Having a human as a regular feeding companion just isn’t the best idea.”

Kel’s lip curled in a snarl. “I know that. I don’t need a fucking ethics course or a refresher in postmodern Hunter psycho-shit.”

“Would you shut the fuck up?” Rafe demanded in a harsh voice. “I’m trying to make this a little bit easier on you.”

“I don’t want easy—I want to know why Angel’s being watched, and why in the hell you’re telling me now.”

“Because she’s vampire bait, damn it!” Rafe shouted.

His voice echoed through the room, bounced over the walls…and inside Kel’s head, growing louder and louder until it had the same deafening boom of a shuttle launch.

Vampire bait.

Vampire bait.

Vampire bait.

Kel hadn’t ever been faced with a human whose blood had been altered after a blood exchange. It wasn’t a common occurrence and the inherent risks had most vamps, Hunter and civilian alike, exercising caution to keep it from happening.

But he didn’t need the experience of meeting such a person to understand that this was bad, bad, bad… Vampire bait—what else could that be but bad news? From the horror stories he’d heard, the altered mortals basically became some kind of forbidden fruit—and Kel’s dad was a preacher. He knew what forbidden fruit led to.

That allure wasn’t something easily ignored, it wasn’t something the mortal could control, and it wasn’t something that all vampires could resist. The stories he’d heard, the allure was actually pretty damn hard to resist.

There had been one story… Kel’s gut started to churn as he remembered it. He hadn’t thought about it in more than ten years, probably longer than that. Whether or not it was an urban legend the teachers at Excelsior had concocted to basically terrify the young vamps, he didn’t know. The young ones had next to no control and even if they were decent enough on the inside, their hungers were too seductive and the urge to give in to temptation was strong.

It sounded like something a bunch of kids would tell each other at a campout, something to freak the others out. But the gorier details were the kind of things Kel hoped no child ever had to know about. A young couple, recently married, back in the seventeen or eighteen-hundreds, was attacked—the man was bitten and fed, but not enough to induce the Change, but enough that his blood was altered. The woman, though, she had been Changed.

That far back, Excelsior hadn’t really been established and from what the instructors at the school claimed, the tragedy was one of the events that spurred things on.

The Hunter who found the couple ended up taking the woman with him—not to hurt her, but to protect the husband, because he recognized the change in the man. But the wife didn’t understand.

She went back to her husband—and ended up killing him. Then, driven mad by grief, she’d gone on a rampage that killed eleven other people. Her killing spree stopped after she set herself on fire—one damn painful way to commit suicide.

Kel didn’t buy into fairy tales that seemed told specifically to scare people, but something about this one had stuck with him, and now, he couldn’t get it to stop replaying in his head. Covering his face with his hands, he ground the heels of his palms against his eyes and swore. “Not happening,” he muttered. “This shit is not happening.”

An odd silence fell, broken only by Sheila’s quiet voice. “I have a feeling we haven’t heard the worst, Kel.”

Kel dropped his hands, looked from the three men to Sheila and then back. Ignoring the other two, he narrowed his eyes on Rafe’s face.

Shit. Something—something there. Kel couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Rafe wasn’t just a hard-ass bastard, he was an inscrutable hard-ass bastard. Unless he was with Sheila, he showed about as much emotion as a coat rack. Zilch.

But for a second, there was something in those eyes that looked like worry.

“Out with it,” Kel said, forcing the words through a throat gone tight.

Rafe blew out a breath. Slid the other two men a glance and as one, the two men came up to flank Kel.

Kel didn’t even spare them a glance.

“The witch near Greenburg called. There’s a feral moving towards her. He isn’t there yet—”

Kel didn’t hear anything else.

He rushed for the door, but four hard hands caught him and restrained him—or tried to. Blindly, he turned his head, snapping at the body closest to him. He caught skin, bit. Somebody swore. Another arm came around his neck, immobilizing him. Rafe’s voice came at Kel as if over some great distance, faint, indistinct. Even the command inherent in those words had little effect on Kel—some part of him recognized the command, but it didn’t matter.

It didn’t register.

Nothing registered.

Not even the fact that he’d managed to dislodge Dominic and knock him back. Not even the fact that when Dom came rushing back, Kel delivered a swift sidekick to the vamp’s gut that sent Dom flying through the air to crash into a wall.

Around his neck, Rafe’s arm tightened and it was a powerful enough hold that if Kel had been mortal, he would have long since passed out.

Rafe continued to talk to him, faster now, but it was like the Master was speaking some foreign language. None of it made sense. Nothing made sense. He reared back with his head, once, twice. Hearing bone crush, he kept at it and then abruptly, Rafe’s arm was gone and all he had to deal with was the shifter still attached to his side.

He reached for Toronto—and instead of touching man, touched wolf. No, make that big, brawny wolf-man that towered over Kel by nearly two feet. Kel didn’t even hesitate. He struck towards the wolf’s throat—vampires didn’t need to breathe.

But shape-shifters did.

Toronto jerked away just in time and the blow ended up glancing off the side of a thickly furred neck. A huge, clawed hand, the size of a dinner plate came up and caught Kel’s arm. “Calm down,” Toronto said, his deep, growling voice about as welcome as a fly buzzing in Kel’s ear—and just as annoying.

Kel jerked away, but Toronto didn’t let go.

Snarling, Kel automatically reached up, touching a hand to his waist, but he hadn’t grabbed any of his weapons. All he touched was bare skin—shit. Weapons. Yeah, needed weapons because when he found the feral this time, he wasn’t taking any chances.

A couple of knives, a Beretta? Not enough. Kel was thinking along the lines of rocket launcher. Explosives, maybe. A little flashier than the Hunters used, but hey, no such thing as overkill in this case.

“Toronto. Let him go.”

Kel was released so abruptly, he stumbled into a wall. Shoving away from it, he headed into the hall. There was a weapons room. That was Dom’s domain and the man did like his toys. Kel would just…

Sheila appeared in front of him.

It took a few seconds to register the fact that she was blocking him. He started to go around her and she moved with him. “Kel—”

She held out a hand and Kel cocked his head, staring at it, puzzled. Slowly, he lifted his gaze and focused on her face. She gave him a shaky smile. “Come on. Let’s just slow down…”

“No.” He reached out, picked her up and bodily removed her from his path—and then he kept going. Shoes. Needed some shoes. A shirt. And weapons—lots of them. Quick, though. Not too much time.

This time when the three men formed a barricade in front of him, Kel simply halted in his tracks and then turned, heading for the stairs. Clothes and shoes, how much did they matter? Weapons—some gas and a few matches would work. Anything.

Behind him, Dominic muttered, “Hell. This is going well.”

Rafe swore soundly.

Off to the side, Toronto stood watching the whole tableau with a smirk on his face. “Any suggestions?”

“Yeah. Some elephant tranquilizers.” Rafe scrubbed a hand over his face and then headed for the stairs. Kel hadn’t slipped out of the house yet. He’d stopped in the front hallway and was dragging on a leather jacket over his bare chest. The shoes on his feet belonged to Toronto. The butt of a gun peeked out of the waistband of his jeans and unless Rafe was mistaken, it was his gun.

The look on Kel’s face was blank. Disturbingly so. For the past ten minutes, it had been like trying to talk rationally to a shark caught in a feeding frenzy and Rafe was under no illusions that another attempt was going to be any more successful.

“Kel. You can’t go to Greenburg.” He kept his calm, hoped he had his emotions lashed down tight enough. Any sign of worry, fear or rage just might be what snapped Kel’s tenuous grasp on control.

Kel had already proven that when he was in a rage, it was going to take more than a couple of them to keep him contained. From the corner of his eye, he saw Dominic holding something over the ugly wound in his shoulder. The scent of blood was strong in the air and he sent a silent command to his lieutenant for him to leave.

Dom stilled, his eyes narrowed.

Through their silent communication, Rafe shifted his gaze to the sluggishly bleeding wound and then to Kel. Dom hesitated for a moment and then nodded, withdrawing from the room in silence. “Kel, before you go off half-cocked, you need to listen to me,” Rafe said. He focused on Kel’s mind, focused on the blood oath Kel had given him ten years earlier—focused hard.

Kel’s lids flickered. Then he blinked and when his eyes opened, he looked at Rafe with some measure of comprehension. “You can’t stop me from going,” he said, his voice harsh and low.

“I don’t have a choice, Kel. You can’t be around her. Ever. Your control is…”

“My control…” Kel laughed bitterly. “Fuck my control. I don’t need control to find him and kill him before he hurts Angel.”

“And how are you going to find him, Kel?” Rafe demanded. “If you did find him before he got to her, are you willing to risk her life you’ll be able to stop him?”

The look that flashed through Kel’s eyes then was enough to have Rafe spinning away, shame punching through him. But it had to be said…right? Kel was strong, but he was young. It was entirely possible he may even become a Master. But…he wasn’t there yet.

Rafe had a responsibility to that girl, as well as to Kel. He turned back to Kel. “You need to stop and think for a minute.”

“I’m thinking just fine. I will stop him,” Kel said, the pain and horror Rafe had seen in his eyes gone, replaced by a careful, closed emptiness. He pushed past Toronto and headed for the door.

“Can you stop yourself?” Rafe shoved his hands in his pockets.

Kel stopped in his tracks. Without turning back to Rafe, he asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Rafe…” Sheila’s voice was soft, but he heard the censure in it loud and clear. He glanced at her and shook his head. He was doing what he had to.

“Just that,” he said in answer to Kel’s question. “Can you stop yourself? You haven’t ever been face-to-face with one of the altered humans, Kel. Coming face-to-face with that, it’s like coming face-to-face with an addiction you never knew you had, and one you can’t fight. You got the control to walk away from her?”

Kel’s shoulders slumped.

Finally—

Rafe edged a little closer, keeping his voice calm, level as he said, “I know you still love her, Kel. I’ll take care of her. I—”

Something inside Kel snapped. The tension in the wide, open hallway seemed to explode and Kel spun around and lunged for Rafe. The two vampires crashed into the wall.

Kel’s lips peeled back, revealing fangs that were dropped and ready. And that wasn’t all. He had a blade in his hand. Somewhere between the basement and the front door, he’d managed to pick up a knife. All of sudden, Rafe wished he’d listened to Sheila when she harped about how she hated weapons being left all over the house.

Kel snarled, pressing the tip of the blade into Rafe’s throat. Flesh sizzled and smoke drifted up as the silver pressed into his skin.

Voice dripping with derision, Kel repeated, “You know I love her? What the fuck is that…love? Love doesn’t touch it. She was my fucking life—the only thing that made the past twelve years bearable was knowing that what happened to me didn’t happen to her and I will be damned if I risk it happening now.”

Alerted by either the noise or the obvious change in the air caused by Kel’s rage, every Hunter in the house came rushing in. Toronto went to block two of the younger vampires who went to grab Kel. Dom, his wound no longer bleeding, emerged from the gathered bodies and managed to block a shifter and another vamp. But there were six vamps and four shifters in the enclave, not including Rafe, his lieutenants or Kel.

Four of them went for Kel even as Rafe barked out an order to stand down. All the years of them worrying that Kel’s control would snap had them reacting out of pure instinct and they took Kel to the ground. Rafe grabbed one by the neck and dragged him off, went to grab another.

The air went tight, like it did right before a vicious storm. Tight and heavy, pressing down on them, but Rafe was so ticked off, he barely noticed it. “That’s enough,” Rafe snarled. He didn’t bother trying to control his own temper and as the innate power rolled out of him, two of the younger vamps pulled out of the fray—most likely without even realizing why.

But the other two were older—Josiah was older than Rafe and Charlie just a few years younger. And—shit.

Kel had managed to use the K-bar on Josiah and the older vamp was beyond pissed. The wound, although not lethal, was going to bleed like a bitch and hurt like hell. It went from the right upper part of Josiah’s chest and slashed down diagonal across his torso.

Dominic and Toronto managed to get Charlie away, leaving Rafe to deal with Josiah who was busy smashing Kel’s knife hand into the floor with a force that would shatter mortal bone.

Rafe didn’t quite believe his eyes when it happened.

One second he was reaching for Josiah, mad enough to throw both Kel and Josiah through a wall—repeatedly. There was little warning—that weird tension mounted in the air and then his skin broke out in goose bumps. His hand closed around the back of Josiah’s shirt.

His eyes saw what was happening, but his brain didn’t process what he was seeing until it was already done, until Josiah dropped downward, crashing into the floor.

Crashing into the floor—because Kel was gone.

Josiah swore and scrambled backward, a look of dumb amazement on his haggard face. His graying beard was kept cropped close and his long hair always pulled back away from his face. He rubbed his hands over his face, unintentionally leaving smears of his own blood on his cheek.

In his mortal life, Josiah had been a bounty hunter and it wasn’t a stretch to picture the man in the Old West, chasing after wanted men and dragging them back to the hands of the law. He was rough, he was often too short-tempered, as quick to laugh as he was to fight and it wasn’t easy to catch him off-guard.

Rafe was pretty sure he hadn’t ever seen that look of utter surprise on his face.

“Fuck me… Tell me I didn’t just see that!” Josiah muttered, shaking his head.

Charlie sent a scathing look at Josiah but it seemed more of a habit than anything. Before he’d been Changed, Charlie had been a Baptist minister in South Carolina—a bit of an oddity altogether, not just because he’d accepted his new life with a grace most people wouldn’t expect coming from a man of God. A bit of a pacifist, most of the Hunters had expected the man to be dead within a year—a Hunter that advocates peace seemed like he’d be easy prey for those who didn’t much buy the peace bit. Except Charlie had an intolerance for those who inflicted suffering on others—and it showed in his work.

Josiah ignored Charlie, focusing instead on Rafe, his eyes disbelieving. “I didn’t just see that, did I?”

Abruptly, Sheila laughed and Rafe sent her a narrow look.

“This isn’t funny, Belle. This is bad. Hell-in-a-fucking-handbasket bad.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Her laugh faded, but the smile on her face didn’t. “Rafe, sweetie, a baby vamp just dematerialized right in front of us. He’s only been a vamp for what…twelve years? I’ve been doing this three times as long as he has and I can’t dematerialize. You have been a vampire for more than a hundred years, and you can’t do it. And then poor Kel—everybody feels sorry for him, none of you trust him any farther than you can throw him…” She broke off, winced. “Okay, you can throw farther than you can trust. Kel, a vamp twelve years—and he dematerialized. He’s not a Master, he can’t do that very cool mist thing and he doesn’t feed enough to keep an anorexic teen alive—and he just dematerialized.”

Through gritted teeth, Rafe said, “I know what he just did, Sheila. I also know this is beyond bad news.”

A sad smile curled her lips. “I don’t think you’re giving Kel much credit at all. I don’t see him hurting her.”

“As a decent guy, I give him plenty of credit. But his control? It sucks,” Rafe said, his voice flat.

Sheila lifted her gaze and glanced at the mass of bodies crowding the hall. She said nothing, but as one, they all withdrew until only Rafe, Sheila and his lieutenants remained. She ignored Dominic and Toronto, coming forward until she was close enough to reach out and cup Rafe’s face. “Rafe…what if it was me?”

A muscle jerked in his jaw and the immediate blast of instinctive, protective rage had him reaching for her, dragging her soft body against his. “You think I haven’t thought of it that way? You think I don’t realize this is killing him? But he’s got too little control for this, Belle. You know that.”

“Actually, no, I don’t.” She slipped her arms around his waist, lifting her face to his. “What I know is that he’s pissed off, he’s hurt—I know it’s because of her. I know he hasn’t allowed himself to go back there even just to see her one last time, because he doesn’t trust himself. But that’s caution, Rafe. That is control. More, it’s love. He won’t hurt her.”

“Is it control or the only way a weak man can resist temptation?” Sighing, he dropped his head down and pressed his brow to hers. “Belle, I know he loves her. But…”

Reaching up, she pressed a finger to his lips. “No. There’s no but in this, not for me. He won’t hurt her, he’ll die to keep her safe, and you know that. You’d do the same for me. Besides, if he doesn’t go, and something does happen to her…” Her voice faded away, but the look in her eyes spoke volumes.

“If that happens, he’ll break,” Rafe finished, closing his eyes. Shit, he was such a screw up. This was happening under his watch. He was supposed to protect the men and women who chose to serve under him.

Not let them go off half-cocked. Not let a feral slip so close to his territory and kill a woman who was sleeping with one of the men.

“Rafe.”

Lifting his head, he met Dom’s eyes across the hallway.

“What do you want us to do?”

He lingered in the warm comfort of Sheila’s embrace for another heartbeat, and then he eased back. “We have to go after him.”

Sheila shook her head. “Bad idea, slick. You’re so worried about Kel’s control, but you want to put two dominant vamps in close proximity to his woman. What do you think that will do to his control?”

“I’m aware of that,” Rafe snapped, his voice harsher than he’d intended. “Damn it. I’m sorry.”

He turned away and pinched the bridge of his nose. Vampires weren’t immune to headaches any more than they were immune to heartbreak and the pounding within his skull had grown to massive proportions. “I’m sorry. But Sheila, I don’t see much choice. If we don’t go after him, and he gets hurt—killed, Angel is going to need protection. If he does somehow manage to kill the feral, then she will still need protection.”

He turned in time to see her mouth firm into a flat line. She shook her head but before she could speak, Rafe said, “I want to believe he could control himself, too, Belle. But if he can’t, an innocent woman gets hurt—I can’t take that risk just because I want to trust one of my men.”

And there was another if. None of the scenarios had much appeal but this one was the worst. “Sheila, I also have to think about what will happen if he can’t save her. We both know what will happen. He will break. He’ll shatter. I can’t have a walking time bomb out there among a bunch of innocent, unsuspecting mortals.”

“I’ll go.”

Sheila, Dom and Rafe all turned as one to look at Toronto, watching as he shoved off the wall. Vamps, shifters, they all had ways of measuring each other’s power and Toronto was a damned powerful shifter, but he was also the sort that usually thought, If it doesn’t affect me or the job… He rarely made an action or offer he didn’t absolutely have to.

“One of us might not be enough,” Rafe said.

A faint smile curled Toronto’s lips. “Depends on which of us is the one.” He went quiet for a minute and then, almost like he’d made an internal decision, he nodded. “Kel’s the main reason I’m here, Rafe.”

Rafe blinked. Squinted his eyes and studied Toronto’s pretty-boy face, trying to deduct the meaning of that statement, but he couldn’t. “What exactly are you talking about, Toronto?”

Toronto reached up and pulled out the leather thong restraining his hair, toyed with it in an absent, unconscious way as he started to pace. His hair, that long, silvery blond hair, hung loose around his shoulders, falling halfway down his back. It shielded his face from Rafe until the shifter lifted his head and faced the Master. “I was sent here. Told I might be needed.”

“Sent.” Rafe’s voice was flat and disgusted. He didn’t have to ask who had sent him.

There was only one answer.

The Council.

“You want to tell me why?” he asked, an edge of anger making its way into his voice. “Why in the fuck the Council sent somebody into my territory?”

If Rafe’s anger bothered Toronto in the least, it didn’t show. His pale blue eyes reflected nothing of what he was feeling or thinking. His voice, when he spoke, was calm, almost bored. “Because the Council was informed it might be necessary. Don’t get bent out of shape over this. It has nothing to do with you.”

His brows dropped low over his eyes and he stalked forward, putting his face in the shifter’s and snarled, “Since it has to do with one of my Hunters…”

Sheila pushed between them, literally had to wedge her body between them. Toronto fell back with a smirk, hooked his thumbs in his front pockets and rocked back on his heels.

“Your Hunters—yeah, but theirs, too. This is your pond, Rafe, but you don’t control all of them. You aren’t in charge of all Hunters. When the Council learns there may be something that can have destructive consequences to some or all of us, they do what needs doing.”

“How can a pissed-off vampire with a broken heart have destructive consequences that could affect all of us?” Rafe demanded. His hair tumbled into his eyes and he shoved it back before folding his arms across his chest. It was that, or punch the shape-shifter in his pretty-boy nose. “And exactly what are you supposed to do about it?”

“Considering what Kel’s heading into, I’m surprised you have to wonder what the consequences would be.” Toronto shrugged restlessly. “There’s a chance this woman could get hurt—could die. I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen. I don’t doubt Kel’s ability to handle the feral, not this time, not on this. Not when she’s involved. But the possibility is there that she could die. And we know what that would do to him. He’s been on the knife’s edge of sanity since he was Changed. He doesn’t need that push over the edge. If it happens, do you really need to ask why that could have destructive consequences?”

“You’re thinking he’d go rogue,” Sheila said with a scowl.

It was a possibility. It was one Rafe had been aware of for a long time, and it was why he watched Kel so closely. “And if he slips, what do you plan to do?”

The look on Toronto’s face said everything.

“Just like that.” Disgusted, Rafe turned away. “Just like that? He’s one of us—damn it, he never asked for this.”

“No. He didn’t.” Finally, some sign of emotion worked its way onto Toronto’s face. “You think this is easy, Rafe? You think I want to think about pulling a bullet in his chest? I like him. I feel bad for the shit he’s gone through and I hate that none of us were there to save him. I respect the hell out of him for joining us even when it’s clear he doesn’t want to be here. But if he goes rogue, other innocent people will suffer…and my responsibility is to them. Before anything else, before everything else, my responsibility is to them.”

“You’ve been here all this time, waiting to see if you’ll have to act as a Hunter’s executioner.” Dom finally spoke up, staring at Toronto with scathing contempt.

“It’s what I do.”

“Who appointed you judge and jury?” Dom demanded.

“The Council.” Sheila answered when it was clear that Toronto wouldn’t. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

“Hell, I don’t even have to ask.” Rafe shook his head, swearing under his breath. “You trained with the Select, didn’t you? As a fucking assassin.”

Toronto’s lids flickered. But if Rafe expected to see some sign of remorse or regret, he knew he’d be waiting a damn long time. The Select, a hand-chosen unit of Hunters, weren’t chosen for their people skills. Or some lingering trace of humanity. They were chosen for their ability to do what needed to be done—things that most Hunters would hesitate over.

“Right now the only thing I’m here for is to watch him.”

He slipped past them then, walking away on silent feet, moving with the eerie, sinuous grace of a shifter. He disappeared from view and Rafe cursed.

“Did things just get better or worse?” Dominic muttered. “What in the hell is the Select?”

“Our version of Internal Affairs—a rat squad basically sent in on the jobs that are even ugly for us. Like when there’s a Hunter perceived to be a threat,” Sheila said.

Dominic hadn’t spent years being trained at Excelsior. Rafe had taken over that responsibility. It happened sometimes, if there was an established Hunter willing to step in and oversee personal training for a new were or vamp. But some of the formal education, mostly boring academic crap Rafe hadn’t messed with, was missing from Dominic’s education.

“So I get that somebody has decided that Kel could be a threat. Hell, we think Kel is a potential threat. But if Toronto thinks it’s necessary, he just kills him? Just like that?”

Disgusted, Rafe said, “That’s the way it works.” Unable to stand still, he turned away and stalked into the living room off to the side of the hall. By the windows was a bar made of gleaming mahogany. Generally, Rafe wasn’t much for drinking but right now, he needed it.

Dominic followed him. “That’s the way it works…and we just sit around and let it?”

“Dominic, we can’t interfere,” Sheila said, following them.

Rafe splashed some Jack Daniels into a glass and tossed it back, watching as Dominic wheeled around to stare at Sheila. “Why the hell not?”

“Because the Select act on the orders of the Council. They don’t give these orders lightly but when they do, they are carried out. If we tried to get in the way…” Sheila’s voice trailed away.

Rafe emptied his glass. As he refilled it, he finished her sentence. “The Select won’t stop, Kel. Not until the job’s done. If one of the assassins isn’t enough, they’ll send ten. Ten isn’t enough? Fine, there will be a hundred of them pouring out of the woodwork.”

Dominic’s jaw dropped. Then he snapped it shut and shook his head. “This ain’t right, Rafe. They don’t know him. They can’t make a judgment like that without even knowing who in the hell they’re talking about.”

“They do know who they are talking about.”

Whether they were too caught up in the rather harsh discoveries of the night, or just too damned exhausted from them, they were caught off guard as Toronto emerged from the hall, a duffle bag hooked over his shoulder. He didn’t come into the room, just stood in the doorway and looked from Dominic to Sheila to Rafe. “That’s why I was sent. To watch him, get to know him. If they were just going to make a rash judgment, they would have taken care of him before he even finished training. It was made damn clear at Excelsior that Kel’s hold on control left a lot to be desired.”

“We don’t like doing this.” Toronto reached up and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, sighed tiredly. “I don’t like this. But I like the alternative even less.”

He turned to go but then abruptly turned back to face Rafe. “I don’t plan on letting anything happen that would force me to act. I know what I’m doing… I’m good at it. Trust that even if you can’t trust me.”

 

 

“What the…”

Kel’s head was spinning. One second he was trying to free his hand, his head full of the scent of blood and his gut churning with the need to get to Angel—

And then he was flat on his ass in a field with silvery moonlight the only illumination. Off in the distance, he could hear the sounds of traffic and through the trees, he saw the headlights of cars and trucks.

Slowly, he sat up, stared around him and tried to figure out where in the hell he was. And how he’d gotten there. The busy interstate in front of him didn’t offer any clues, not from where he was. Nothing around him looked familiar—hell, the air even smelled different then it did in Memphis.

So obviously he wasn’t in Memphis.

Check.

The exact where, and the exact how…? Kel had absolutely no clue to those. He shoved to his feet and turned around. His head—fuck, his head was pounding like a bitch. Muffled and foggy, too, like somebody had slipped him a couple of sleeping pills without his knowledge.

It was cold. Might be spring, but it felt like snow was in the air. The cold, while it didn’t bother him much, was enough to clear the rage from his thoughts even if it didn’t totally dispel the clouds.

He smelled blood and it wasn’t his own. Lowering his gaze, he stared at the K-bar in his hand, stared at the drying blood on it. Drying—not dry. The blood came from Josiah. He’d been fighting with the other Hunter, focused on nothing but getting away, getting to Angel.

The sight of that tacky blood made him aware of a hundred clues that made little sense.

There was blood on him.

He was wearing a jacket that wasn’t his, a pair of boots that weren’t his. The K-bar in his hand wasn’t his and neither was the gun he pulled from his waistband.

Vaguely, he remembered grabbing the gun and knife from a narrow table in the main hallway as he headed for the front door. The shoes had been in the foyer and that was where he’d grabbed the jacket too.

Under the jacket, his upper body was naked.

He hadn’t thought about grabbing a shirt, lacing up the boots, nothing. Angel was pretty much it as far as his thought process went.

But now, with the pain churning in his head, he was excruciatingly aware of some things. Like the fact that he’d used the knife in his hand on a fellow Hunter. Like the fact that he hadn’t been able to stop the feral from hurting Phoebe—how in the hell could he protect Angel?

“Shit.” Bile churned in the back of his throat and he swallowed it down. He slid the K-bar into the sheath at his waist, then pushed the Beretta into his waistband at the small of his back, making sure the jacket covered it. Not that it mattered. Any damn person saw him, they were going to call the cops. Even if the bruises from the scuffle back at the enclave healed before somebody saw him, cops would be called. Blood streaking his chest and face and Kel had no doubt he looked every bit as wild as he felt.

Covering his face with his hands, he took a deep breath and made himself think. It hurt—his fricking brain ached, the way muscles did after a hard, brutal workout. The answer was there, lost in his aching, clouded mind and once he started to focus, he found it with relative ease.

But it didn’t make much sense. That seemed to be par for the course tonight, though.

He had dematerialized.

That was the only answer that made sense. He’d been thinking about Angel, nothing but her and getting to her, protecting her. Even the men struggling to immobilize him hadn’t mattered beyond the fact that they were in his way.

But where had he dematerialized to—that was the next question. Probably somewhere between Memphis and Greenburg and that could any number of sites in the 400-some odd miles separating the two towns. Kel decided it was most likely a halfway point. He had no clue how he’d managed that little vamp trick and even if he could figure it out, it wouldn’t help him much right now.

It was the reason for the fog in his brain, he knew it. The reason for the ache. And it probably wasn’t a stunt he’d be able to pull off again anytime soon.

Didn’t matter. He was that much closer to Angel—and he was away from the enclave and Rafe. None of them knew where in the hell to find him—right? They knew where he was going, but tracking him, hopefully, would take a little more work.

Crouching on the ground, he tied the boots and then glanced towards the highway. Walking alongside it would be an invitation for trouble, but he needed to figure out where he was and that was the best way to do it.

Mind made up, he headed towards the strip of trees, moving at a quick jog. The tree line edged right up to the road and once he got close to see through them, he started moving along a parallel path, keeping his eyes out for some sign of where he was.

It might have been a mile or two before he got one. The I-20 East. A little outside Birmingham if he remembered right. Okay…so about 200 miles from Greenburg. No way he could travel that far in one night—so he needed a ride.

His internal clock assured him there were hours left before sunrise but he needed to get someplace where he’d be safe from the sun and it needed to be a hell of a lot closer to Angel. He wouldn’t have much time to act before the feral made his move.

Getting the ride was actually the easiest part. The brightly lit oasis cast light into the sky from a long ways off. The scent of exhaust and the rumble of truck engines clued Kel into what it was even before he saw it through the trees. The truck stop was busy, even if it was edging close to midnight. Keeping outside the lights, he circled around until he found a lone man standing outside his truck as he stowed groceries.

Vampire compulsion was something Kel hated.

Forcing his will on somebody else was just wrong. But he didn’t bat a lash as he slid out of the darkness and approached the man. The trucker glanced up, startled. Kel made himself smile as he focused.

“I need a ride to Georgia.”

The man blinked. Looking confused, he glanced from the truck to Kel and said, “I’m heading towards Atlanta.”

“Maybe you could offer me a ride.”

His lids lowered and as their gazes were cut off, Kel felt the man’s own mental blocks trying to reassert themselves. Kel pushed harder. A little too hard, the poor guy flinched and swore as he reached up and touched his temple. Easing back, Kel repeated, “Maybe you could offer me a ride.”

“Why don’t you climb on up in the cab?”

 

 

The feral’s name was Martin.

He’d been a vampire since 1804, the most important year in the history of the world as far as Martin was concerned. It was the day he’d truly begun to live.

Before that, he’d been a private instructor for the daughter of a disgustingly rich earl in England. Hours upon hours trying to educate women who were more concerned with bonnets, dresses and soirees than learning. A useless existence and Martin had been quite happy to be done with it.

In all the years since he’d been Changed, he never once regretted it.

In all the years since he’d been Changed, he had never once came up against the Hunters, although the woman who had Changed him had made him very aware of their presence. Martin, being an intelligent man, was careful to avoid any one place that had a large non-mortal population. It was only wise. Too many vampires or shape-shifters in one place was going to have the attention of the self-important Council and their fool Hunters. By avoiding such places, he wouldn’t attract much notice.

He was also careful in selecting his victims, taking those who society was unlikely to miss—the indigent population was a particular treat. So many young runaways—and Martin did like youth. It had been that affliction that had caused his few brushes with the Hunters but he had managed to elude them with little difficulty and it had lulled him into complacency.

Which was the root of his current situation.

He was careful never to feed from any of the non-mortals, civilian or Hunter. It was merely common sense. The non-mortal population had its share of loners, its share of those who were unlikely to be missed—but it wasn’t as prevalent. If too many of them disappeared, somebody would take notice.

But the pretty little brunette had been too sweet to walk away from. Fury, grief, jealousy, pain, the emotions had colored the very air around her and that misery had drawn him like a moth to flame.

She’d been outside a bar, leaning against her car and crying. Like so many of the desperately lonely, she’d been all too willing to accept an offered shoulder and hadn’t once tried to look beyond that. By the time something inside her had whispered an alarm, it had been too late.

Martin selected his playgrounds with care. That near miss with the young blonde a few years back had taught him a valuable lesson and he believed in taking lessons to heart. His hunger had gotten the better of him. He’d been watching that girl for weeks. He might never have learned of her if it hadn’t been for the mother. A whorish bitch, but a very fuckable one, had come on to him and taken him home and that was where he’d seen the girl.

He spent close to a week watching the pretty young woman, waiting for the best time to move on, the best time to toy with her before he took what he wanted. Several times, he’d almost lost interest, but in the end, that power simmering inside her had been too hard to resist.

Banked power, but it had called to Martin like a siren’s song. That power had caused him to make one of the most foolish mistakes of his life—he’d wanted her, he’d gone after her, and he had ended up alerting a Hunter to his presence.

Martin considered himself a practical man. Knowing that the girl would likely have Hunters checking on her from time to time after his thwarted attack, he’d made the wise decision to cut his losses.

But he’d made a tactical error in judgment. The boy… Shite, he hadn’t thought of that little fool in years. He’d recovered from the wounds the boy inflicted on him within a few days. Even his injured eye had fully healed and Martin had been concerned about that. As his injuries faded, Martin forgot about the boy. The Change from mortal to vampire was brutal and easily half died. A boy, weakened from the beating Martin had given him, wasn’t likely to survive. And he’d been left in a place where the early morning sun would quickly find his body. Even if the Change did start, the sun would kill him.

Martin hadn’t counted on somebody helping him.

That was the only logical explanation. It hadn’t been the Hunter trailing after Martin, that much he knew. That bastard had spent most of the night on Martin’s arse, so there must have been another.

The boy had survived—and not only had he survived, he’d become one of the fucking Hunters.

Martin’s lapse in judgment had landed him hot water twice, the pretty blonde mortal in Georgia, and the sleek little werewolf in Mississippi. Now there was a Hunter who knew his face and that just wasn’t to be tolerated.

The plan itself took only a bit of time to develop. He had to kill the Hunter whelp. That boy had gone too far, and considering that he’d become a Hunter, he was a risk to Martin. The whelp had seen Martin’s face. Tracking him down would be a bit harder, because there were no active Hunters in Tupelo, Martin had made sure of that.

He had come from elsewhere, but Martin wasn’t sure where. However, that bit of information wasn’t needed.

He knew how to get the boy’s attention.

Through the girl.