He knew what she was doing—he felt it, the calm she tried to project into him. Tried and failed. He was too fucking pissed. He had to force his hands to let go, had to force himself to step away. He dragged in a deep breath of air, but it did nothing to clear his head. The air was ripe with the scents of adrenaline, Neal’s anger and the lingering trace of Ana’s fear.
Neal, fangs dropped and his eyes half wild, glared at Duke. “What in the fuck is your problem?”
“Neal, I’m thinking you’re the problem,” Malachi said. “If I were you, I’d shut the bloody hell up.”
The big vampire had been utterly silent until just a moment ago. Now he studied Duke with curious eyes, his head cocked. He had dark blue eyes, and they were usually about as easy to read as a closed book, but right now, they danced with humor.
For some reason, Duke knew the humor was directed at him, but he really didn’t give a damn. “If you’re expecting me to apologize, you’re going to be waiting a good long while.” Then he circled around them and left. At the door, he stopped and looked at Neal. He curled his lip and growled.
Malachi and Kelsey watched as he left. “It gets annoying—how often you are right,” Mal said to his wife.
She just smiled. The smile died, though, as she shifted her gaze to Neal. “I believe it’s best if you left now.”
“IT’S for the best, Brad,” Ana said, sighing as she settled down on the bed beside Brad, draping an arm around his shoulders. She’d known the time was coming, but after the debacle with Neal a few weeks earlier, she’d finally admitted it to herself.
It was time to leave. “Look . . . I don’t really belong here, anyway. You know it as well as I do.”
“If you weren’t supposed to be here, they’d make you leave. Just like they made Neal leave.” He shrugged away from her embrace and climbed off the bed to pace the small room that had been her home for the past four years. “I don’t want you to go.”
For once, he sounded more like a kid than the miniature adult that he’d been all of his life.
“I know you don’t,” she said softly. “But . . . ” Her words trailed off and she looked away, licking her lips and trying to figure out how to explain.
She didn’t need to. Even with her shields up, even with his own, her younger brother could read her. His eyes narrowed on her face and reached out, grabbing her shoulder when she would have evaded.
That simple touch was all it took to deepen the connection and she winced as she saw the knowledge flare in his eyes. It was followed quickly by hurt. “You . . . you want to leave,” he whispered. “You want to?”
Sometimes, being gifted just plain sucked. “Brad . . . ”
She reached out to touch him but he jerked away, staring at her. Confused, unhappy and hurt, he shook his head. “Why? Why don’t you want to be around me?”
“Oh, Brad. Honey, it’s not you. You are the only person that’s made it tolerable being here.” This time, when he would have pulled back, she didn’t let him. She linked their hands, taken aback by how much bigger his hands looked next to hers now. Too quick—he was growing up too quick, most of his childhood lost to pain, misery and cruelty. “I love you, you know that. I’ve done the best I could to take care of you after Mom died. If you needed me, you know nothing would get me away from you. But you don’t need me, not anymore. I can’t teach you anything—as far as our gifts go, you left me in the dust ages ago. I’m not putting a roof over your head, I’m not putting food in your belly— they are.” She waved her hand toward the school and forced herself to smile. “I’m not jealous, although I wish I could have done half as much for you as Excelsior has done. But I’m useless here. I’m nothing but deadweight and I can’t keep being like that. I need to find something—”
She broke off, unsure of what she was trying to say.
Brad looked away, his body stiff and angry. “You can find something here.”
“No. I can’t. Brad, I have to find something on my own. Some place of my own . . . something that’s mine. Something I worked for, something I earned. I’m losing myself here, baby. You’ve got a life laid out before you. You belong here—as much as Neal doesn’t belong, as much as I don’t, you do. This is your life. But it’s not mine.”
“Maybe that’s because you won’t let it be.”
Ana shook her head. “That’s not it. I don’t have that kind of strength in me. I don’t have that drive, that need. We have it, or we don’t . . . and I don’t have what it takes to be a Hunter.”
Brad shrugged, a rough, jerky motion, but he finally looked at her. The hurt and loneliness in his eyes made her throat constrict and she could feel herself giving in. What could it hurt to stay a few more months . . . a few more years?
But then the memory of Neal’s anger flashed through her mind, sizzling against her shields. He hadn’t hurt Brad, and she suspected he wouldn’t have. However, she couldn’t say the same for herself. Neal looked at her and saw prey. She doubted he was the only one. If Neal had hurt her, what would it have done to Brad?
What would Brad have done? She had to leave, for Brad as much as for herself. Before his worry for her ended up making him do something he’d regret—or worse, something he wouldn’t regret. She’d be damned if she caused him problems. He needed to focus on himself now, needed to stop worrying about her so much. Hell, maybe if she was gone, he could enjoy what little was left of his childhood instead of trying to take care of her so much.
“This is for the best,” she said softly.
He swallowed convulsively, then nodded. “Will you come back? Ya know, to visit me? Can I come see you?”
“Yes. As often as I can, and as often as you want.”
“Maybe . . . maybe you don’t have to go far. I mean, maybe you could find a job in Huntington or something . . . ”
“Maybe.” But they both knew otherwise.
“I don’t want you to go,” Brad mumbled, ducking his head. There was a suspicious sniffle and when he looked back at her, his eyes were damp.
“I know.”
He wrapped thin, bony arms around her and for a minute, she let herself pretend they were younger. For a minute, she let herself pretend she hadn’t totally failed him.
“I’ll miss you.”
He hugged her tight and then stepped away. Smiling sadly, he said, “But you really want to get away from here, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do. And I think I need to. For both of us.”
Away from Excelsior. Away from Virginia. Away from people who didn’t know her every shortcoming. Away from people who kept looking at her and just waiting for her to screw up again. Away from people who looked at the siblings and judged them both based on what Ana had done.
Away from Duke . . .
She shied away from that silent voice, but not quick enough. A memory flashed through her mind—those dark gray eyes, staring down at her as though nothing, no one else in the world existed. The warmth of his body. The strength.
Yes. Away from Duke—away from just another reminder of how inadequate she was.
CHAPTER 2
THE air was cool, crisp with the scents of the coming fall. Although it was still mid-August, summer was fading, and fading fast. Already the long days had gotten drastically shorter, and it wouldn’t be too long before the summer sunshine was nothing but a vague memory.
Ana walked along the sidewalk in downtown Anchorage, pausing in front of a bookstore to study the display in the window. A lot of “Alaskana” books—tourism was a huge business in Alaska, something she’d figured out almost immediately. When she’d moved here a year ago, it had been in the middle of one of the coolest, wettest summers recorded, and still, tourists had been everywhere.
Just about every store, from the corner grocery to the mall on Fifth Avenue, had something for the tourists. Bookstores were no different. Most of these books, she’d seen before. The few that had caught her interest, she’d already picked up. She glanced over most of them, more interested
in a decent mystery or a romantic suspense than anything else. One cover caught her eye, though, and she found herself staring at the dark rainbow of colors with something akin to fascination.
Unsolved—Mysteries of the Far North.
The cover was mostly abstract, dark reds and blues, but the faintest image of a woman’s face, frozen in a horrified scream, was superimposed over the blur of colors. Something about it sent a shiver down her spine. Tearing her gaze away from it, she turned to go.
Her lunch hour was almost up, payday was still a week away—she didn’t need some nonfiction crime book to add to the teetering tower of books she’d yet to read.
She made it all the way to the stoplight before she turned back. Like a nagging itch between her shoulder blades, something was demanding she go back and buy that book. Buy it. Read it.
She didn’t want to buy it.
Didn’t want to read it.
And Ana kept telling herself that the entire time she was walking into the store, plucking a copy from the display by the window, shelling out the fifteen and change to cover it. Even as she pushed the book into her tote, she was trying to figure out why she was buying it.
It wasn’t like she’d ever want to read about a scorned lover taking his revenge, a burglary gone wrong—
“Spare change?”
She almost crashed into him—a man with long, unkempt hair, grimy hands, worn and threadbare clothes. He stood in front of her, staring at her with sad, sad eyes. Despair hung in the air around him, thick and clouded.
Her hand shook as she stuffed it into her pocket and pulled out a couple of ones.
“Ana!”
From across the street, she heard somebody yelling her name. Dimly, she recognized the voice, but she didn’t look away from the man before her. Couldn’t. Quietly, she said, “I don’t have much cash . . . I’m sorry.”
He smiled at her. It was a sweet smile, almost innocent, despite the wear of years on him, despite the sadness in his eyes. “Thank you.” He folded the money carefully and tucked it away. Before he walked away, he stopped in his tracks and did the weirdest damn thing.
He saluted her, back ramrod straight, shoulders back. There was something regal, something proud and confident about him in that moment.
“Ana!”
Glancing away, she looked across the street and saw Darlene Eluska, a coworker, glaring at her. Darlene glanced at the homeless man and then back at Ana, censure in her gaze.
Sheepishly, Ana shrugged. Then she looked back at the man, he was already turned, shuffling down the street with his head down and his shoulders slumped.
“Man, I can’t believe you,” Darlene said as Ana crossed the street. Together, they walked the block to their work. “How many times do I have to tell you? You can’t go giving them all money. Most of them aren’t homeless or even all that desperate.”
Unwittingly, Ana glanced across the street. The old man was lost to sight now, but the sadness in his eyes, the despair she sensed hanging on him. “Oh, he was desperate, all right.”
Darlene rolled her eyes. “That’s not the point—you go handing out money left and right, you’ll be the one who is desperate.”
“I think I can manage without the few dollars I had on me, Darlene. He looks like he needs it more than I do.”
Darlene shook her head. “You either don’t get it—or you don’t care.” Then she sighed and pushed her dense black hair back from her face. Her round face softened with a smile as she craned her head and peered back down Fifth Avenue. “But you’re right about that guy . . . he does need it more than you do. Money won’t do him much good, though. Nothing’s going to help him.”
Something about her tone caught Ana’s attention. “You sound like you know him.”
“Nah. Not directly. But he’s kind of a local legend. His name’s Paul Beasley—I think. He’s been around here since before I was born. Served in the air force, lived over at the base. Met this girl, fell in love with her—then she disappeared.”
“Disappeared . . . ?”
Darlene nodded. “Yeah. Some of her friends tried to say he killed her, but nobody was ever able to prove it and they couldn’t do anything. He . . . well, he kind of went crazy. Ended up getting discharged. I heard they shipped him back home, somewhere down in the Lower 48, but he made his way back up here again.” She shrugged. “I don’t know all of it, but he’s been around for as long as I can remember. It’s kind of sad.”
SEEING him became a regular occurrence, and it wasn’t one Ana was too happy with. Most of the time she only saw him from afar, the back of his head as he ducked into an alley, or that sad smile on his face as somebody pushed some money in his hand. But even those few, distant glimpses stuck with her.
As summer bled into fall and the nights got drastically shorter, it got to where she saw him usually twice a week. He rarely came in close contact with her, although there were times when she knew he saw her watching for him. It would earn her one of those sad, sweet smiles and then before she could decide whether to approach or not, he’d slip away.
Today, though, he was waiting outside the café where she’d gone to grab some tea and a scone. She’d planned on killing time at the mall, but as she caught sight of him, she lost interest in window shopping.
He stood there, staring into the window with a far-off look in his eyes.
“Hey.”
At first, she didn’t think he’d heard her. Then he glanced toward her, his eyes disinterested. He sighed and lifted a thin, dirty hand to the window, his fingers hovering just above the glass as though he was afraid to touch. “Marie likes pretty things.”
Marie?
Ana glanced into the shop and then back at him. “Who’s Marie?”
As soon as she asked, though, she could have kicked herself. Tears flooded his eyes and he started to cry. Ugly, wracking sobs that caught the attention of everybody around them. Her skin crawled as people looked from her to the crying man, then back. Attention—damn it, she hated having people looking at her.
“She’s gone. Gone . . . gone . . . ” he started to mumble, rocking himself.
A warning whispered in her mind and from the corner of her eye, she saw a couple of police officers glance their way. She didn’t know why. But she reached out and caught his arm, tugging him along with as she walked away. He fell instep beside as easily, as trusting as a child, still crying and whispering to himself.
Putting some distance between her and the crowd gathered around them made it a little easier to breathe. Granted, not much fun to breathe—the guy needed a bath, desperately. It didn’t make her pull away, though. She wanted to, but she couldn’t. Through her shields, she could feel his pain. Her shields protected her from the worst of the impact, but they were only padding—they could absorb some of the pain. They didn’t eradicate it.
Blocking it out, she patted his shoulder and said, “I’m sorry, Paul.”
“You know my name.” Like a switch that been thrown, he stopped crying and looked at her. Rheumy eyes blinked and then focused on her face.
Ana forced a smile. “Yeah. Somebody mentioned it to me.” Uncertain what to do, what to say, but unable to just walk off, she said, “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”
“Like what?”
Ana shrugged. “I don’t know. Is there anything I can do to help?”
Paul smiled, that slow, sad smile. Reaching up, he patted her cheek. “You’re a nice girl. Marie said you’d try to help.” Then he sighed, heaving out a harsh, heavy sigh. “But nobody can help.” Glancing off to the side, he said, “No . . . no, she can’t.”
Automatically, Ana followed his gaze to see who he’d spoken to. Nobody—not that she’d expected to see anybody there by him. But then, as she looked back at Paul, from the corner of her eye, she saw something.
There.
Gone so quickly all she could catch was a vague impression. Young. Dark-haired, round face—made Ana think of a native, but there was no way to know for sur
e because the second her lashes twitched, whatever she’d seen, or who, was gone.
A shiver raced down her spine. Dragging her gaze back to Paul, she watched as the man turned away from her and headed back the way they’d come. He kept glancing off to the side and over the distance, she heard his voice.
“No, Marie. She’s just a nice girl. She can’t help us. Nobody can.”
IF she hadn’t seen that flash, whatever it was, Ana could have written the whole experience off as a lesson in weirdness, and yet another lesson in why she shouldn’t go around handing out her money to anybody that appeared as though they might need it.
But she’d seen the flash, and as much as Ana wanted to discount it, she couldn’t. Her skin was tight, hot, itchy, the same way she often felt just before a heavy summer downpour back in Virginia.
That night, instead of going by the Alaska Club for a workout, she headed straight home, catching the bus back out to the apartment she rented in Hillside.
It was a quiet area, close to the bus routes—damn good thing considering she couldn’t afford a car just yet. More important to her, it was quiet and the landlord was a psychic null. She couldn’t get a damn thing off of him unless she actively tried, because he didn’t project.
Even ungifted people tended to project and it was a fricking nuisance for somebody like Ana.
The apartment, located above a garage and complete with Internet access and a small kitchen, was perfect. Quiet, private and hers. She needed the privacy and had been trying to find a place just like this when she stumbled upon the flyer advertising the apartment.
Her landlord, Carter Hoskins, a history professor at UAA, wasn’t home when she got there. The Harley was gone, and if his bike was gone in the summer, it was because he’d taken off for a few days. She was glad. He was a nice guy, but he liked to talk. Even in the best frame of mind, talking was not on Ana’s list of things to do. The encounter with Paul earlier definitely put her frame of mind on a downward spiral.
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