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 a
nd 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 cl
ear 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.
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