InsistentHunger

by Lyn Gala

  “Paige, we have a problem.”

  “Just one?” she stared at the plaster ceiling and laughed. “Oh Brady, we have more than that.”

  “We have one that’s going to turn into a disaster in about five minutes,” he said in a snippy voice. That was the voice he used when Veronica kept asking him about girlfriends. Then he sighed. “Then again, maybe you want a disaster.”

  “I want my old life back,” she said softly. Brady was silent for a good minute. “What’s the problem?” she asked wearily. She was so tired she was ready to just let the disaster happen if she got to sleep through it.

  “Two men are watching the house, talking in whispers soft enough that I can’t quite catch what they’re saying.”

  “Maybe some guys from the station are debating whether it’s worth their lives to bother me when I’m in a bad mood.” Right now, it wasn’t. Paige would love to verbally rip into someone.

  “I’d know guys from the station. I don’t know these guys and I think they’re going to come up here.”

  “Great.” Paige let her head thump back against the door. “Just don’t answer the door.”

  “Okay.” There was a long silence. “Paige?”

  “What?”

  “Are you going to spend all night in there?”

  “I’m seriously considering it,” Paige answered. Right now, she didn’t have the energy to get off the floor.

  “Do you need anything? A pillow?”

  “I’m fine, Brady. Go to bed,” Paige said. There was movement, shadows under the door where his feet crossed in front of the door and then more silence. Huh. He’d gone to bed. To her bed. Where they’d just had sex.

  Paige pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and tried to sort out her feelings. Under normal circumstances, she was the one who held it all together, even when other people fell apart. After her mother died, she’d figured out fast that you could fall apart or you could deal. She’d been ten, and she’d dealt. True, she had a half-dozen past therapists, all of whom suggested that her dealing had more than a little denial in it, but at least her denial hadn’t come from a bottle.

  And her denial was functional…useful. Her denial got things fucking done. Control was her mantra. She controlled herself. She didn’t do things like have sex with someone she really didn’t know. She didn’t get caught in her own lust or tangled in her emotions. She didn’t. Except when she did.

  Paige closed her eyes and rubbed hard enough so that she could see floating red circles behind her closed eyes. She just had to find her control again. Then she needed to figure out what she was supposed to do about Brady. If he really was the demon that had moved in, maybe she could get the demon to move out and Brady to move back in. Paige groaned at the thought of Brady moving back into his old house and remembering that sex. She was going to have to move to Siberia to escape the awkward.

  The front door bell rang, but Paige ignored it. If Brady answered, he was on his fucking own trying to explain why he was the walking, talking version of dead. The doorbell came again, this time followed by knocking. For a second, Paige had a fantasy of opening the door and flashing two Jehovah’s Witnesses. She could traumatize them for life. That might be fun.

  “Um, Paige,” Brady said in a hoarse whisper, “I think someone’s trying to break in.”

  “Someone’s what?” Paige reached for the doorknob and then froze. What if this was a trick? What if Brady just wanted her to open the door…and that didn’t make a bit of sense because Brady could already open the door just by ripping it off its hinges. She was losing her mind.

  “Shit…they just picked the lock on the front door. Paige, what if they see me? What do you want me to do?” Brady asked. It was his half-panicked tone more than his words that made her pull the door open. Brady stood there, the sheet with the little flowers wrapped around his waist.

  “Stay here. Close the door behind me and don’t open it. If it sounds like someone is coming in here, go out the window,” Paige said. Hopefully Mrs. Ackerson wouldn’t see a naked man climbing out her window. That’d be fun to explain. She pulled her drawer open and retrieved her weapon.

  “I can hear one in the kitchen, heading this way, the second is staying near the front door,” Brady whispered. Paige looked at him and frowned. “I’m sure…just the two,” he said.

  She nodded and decided to take him at his word. Turning off the light first, she opened the bedroom door and slipped out into the dark hall. She couldn’t hear anything, so Brady was getting points for superhuman hearing on top of everything else. It really was unfair the number of upgrades he’d gotten.

  A shadow seemed to grow and Paige brought her weapon up. “Oxbow Police Department. Freeze!” Paige held her weapon out and hit the light switch with her left hand. Unfortunately, she didn’t move fast enough and the shadow disappeared out the front door before she could see him. However, a new target put himself in the doorway between the living room and entry.

  “Silver?”

  “Jim?” Paige kept her weapon trained at him. “Unless you have a damn good reason for breaking into a cop’s house, you’re about to get an up-close and personal look at the jail system in this state.”

  Jim holstered his .44 and held his hands out. He was wearing those ridiculous fingerless gloves that Paige could never understand and he had on gray and black camouflage. He looked ready for some serious breaking and entering. “Calm down, Silver. I just came over to make sure you were okay.”

  “So you broke in my house? You brought a friend with you while breaking into my house? You can see why I have a problem with that, correct?”

  “Well, I never was good at doing things the conventional way. Luckily, I’m very good at getting things done. So, are you going to arrest me, shoot me or listen to what I came to say?”

  “Options one and three sound good, but I’m keeping option two as a possibility,” Paige said without lowering her gun. “Why are you here?”

  “I wanted to make sure your dead partner didn’t come find you.”

  “I thought you said these guys were mindless monsters,” Paige said as she sent up a quick prayer that Brady stayed in the bedroom.

  “I said the lower level ones were. I also said higher demons could sound very human and that some vampires seemed to take pleasure out of tracking down people they knew in life. You remember that, right?”

  “You did manage to make an impression on me.”

  “Good. I always like to know I’m making an impression.” He leaned against her wall and watched her with his arms crossed and a cocky grin on his face. “I also like to know that people aren’t doing anything stupid. I thought I heard voices. So, you aren’t doing anything stupid, are you, Silver?”

  “What I’m doing isn’t any of your business. I had a shitty day and unless you’re my father, my minister or the moral police, you don’t get to say shit about what I’m doing or who I’m fucking.”

  Jim smiled wider. “And here I thought you were going to use the old television excuse.”

  “I don’t have to make excuses for having a man in my room. Who was your partner?” Paige asked. Hopefully Brady would warn her if the man was trying to double back around.

  “Don’t know what you mean,” Jim answered without even trying to make his words sound honest.

  “Right.” Paige snorted. “Just get the fuck out of my house before I decide that arresting you would feel really good.” Paige held her breath. Obviously it wasn’t safe to keep Brady at the house anymore, but depending on how many friends Jim had, getting him out might be difficult.

  Looking past Paige toward the bedroom door, Jim asked, “He a cop?”

  “If he was, he’d be out here with a gun.”

  Jim nodded. “Fair enough. So, on to why I came. I think I have information on a nest. Since I know you’re not going to back off, I thought you might like a little first-hand training. Maybe seeing these guys in action will convince you that you’re out of your league, because right
now you have way too much bravado going, Silver.”

  “The nest?” Paige asked, ignoring the rest of Jim’s comment.

  “Nest, clan, pack—whatever you call it, I’ve found a whole bunch of the dead guys. So, you in?”

  “Definitely,” Paige answered. She glanced over her shoulder at the bedroom door. “Just…let me tell Rick.” Jim’s smile grew a little more salacious and Paige glared at him before lowering her weapon. “Rick, I’m coming in, so don’t hit me with a chair. It was just some idiot from work playing a really stupid prank. I’ll kill them tomorrow.” Paige slipped inside and closed the door behind her before Jim could see anything.

  Brady was standing in the middle of the room, his arms crossed and his body practically vibrating with anger—an image that really didn’t match the pink sheets wrapped around his waist. “You can’t be considering going with him,” he hissed in a rough whisper.

  “He thinks he knows where your killers are.” Paige kept her voice quiet, but she made her expression as hard as she could. She wasn’t taking orders from a trainee—not even an undead one.

  “Fine, then I’ll go with you.”

  “Oh yeah, that’ll go over well. Jim, vampire hunter, meet Brady, the vampire I just slept with.” Paige kept her voice to a low, fierce whisper as she grabbed jeans out of her closet. “If you think that’s feasible, I failed to teach you any logic at all.” That took a lot of the starch out of Brady.

  “I don’t trust him.”

  “I don’t either,” Paige said as she sat on the bed and searched for the shoes she’d kicked off when she’d first come home. “I’ll watch my own back.”

  Brady snorted. “Then who will watch your front?” He frowned. “Wait, that came out wrong, but you know what I’m saying.”

  Paige squirmed into her bra, twisting to get the snaps to catch. When she did, she walked over to Brady, her guts twisting and her emotions hopelessly tangled when it came to this man. Moving carefully, she rested her hand against his chest. “I’ll be careful. Promise. But I have to go now that I know what’s out there.” She needed information and Jim was the best source she had.

  Brady chewed on his lip and looked so much like the cadet that she wanted to believe that this was Brady…nothing more than Brady with one or two physical upgrades. She wanted to think he was Peter Parker after getting bit by the radioactive spider—that he had powers while staying the same. However, she just wasn’t sure anymore.

  She turned her back and grabbed a long-sleeved brown sweater from the closet. “I’ll be back soon.”

  “You’d better be.” Up until now, Brady’s eyes had been surprisingly clear. The white had returned to white with just a trace of red and the amber color really was striking with his dark looks. However, now the red veins started to swell and capillaries filled with blood until he looked like he had a raging case of pinkeye again.

  “Don’t threaten vampire hunters—not until you understand what’s going on a whole lot better than you do now,” Paige said firmly. “Actually, since vampire hunters are probably trying to do the right thing, it’s probably best to never threaten them.”

  “If he gets you killed, I’ll do more than hunt him,” Brady warned, his red eyes and his raspy voice sent a shiver of fear down Paige’s back. This wasn’t a young trainee who listened to her every word. This was a dangerous creature. Paige had no doubt that Jim was going to catch a serious case of dead if he let her get killed. And yet, this dangerous creature cared about her because Brady had. There was too much weird for her to figure out. She grabbed a belt holster and started threading her belt through the straps.

  “Just keep your head down. I get the feeling that Jim has enough experience at this to stay alive.”

  “I’m more worried about you staying alive. Last time you promised me to keep clear of these guys, you got out of the car and went in without backup.”

  “Technically I went in to back up Jim.” She could see Brady gathering an argument for that and she held up a hand. “No, this is not open for debate. I’ll be back by sunrise or I’ll call. Period. No arguing on this one.”

  For a half-second, she thought he was going to grab her. His hands flexed and the muscles over his chest tightened and bulged as Brady strained against some invisible force.

  “I’ll come home. Promise,” she said softly and that tipped the scales. Brady’s furious expression faded in favor of something closer to worry. “I’ve been doing this a long time—chasing down bad guys. This is my job.”

  “Not these kind of bad guys and not with a man you don’t know,” Brady said. His tone was still mulish, but she knew he was going to yield on this. He looked so miserable about yielding that Paige went over and reached up to cup his cheek in her hand. He looked at her, the red in his eyes still vivid. When she tilted her head up to him, he looked confused for a second, and then he leaned closer, his movement slow and tentative. Paige brushed her lips over his.

  “You have more of Brady than you think.” Paige still wasn’t entirely sure she had her emotions under control because her feelings for Brady were veering wildly out of control. However, he cared about her. One way or another, he cared about her. It was hard to ignore that.

  He didn’t answer her as he solemnly watched her leave the room.

  Jim stood by the front door. “Your man’s not coming?”

  “Rick hates you. He doesn’t even know you and he hates you, so I think we’ll avoid the drama.”

  “How can he hate me? Everyone loves me.” Jim gave her a cheesy grin.

  “He gets cranky about people breaking into my house and scaring the crap out of me. So let’s go.”

  “I scared the crap out of you?” Jim snorted. “Silver, if you’re scared that easily, you have no business being a hunter. And personally, I happen to think you’d be a damn good hunter.”

  Paige walked to the door and put her hand on it. “Either we’re going or I’m arresting you. Take your pick.”

  Jim shook his head. “You’re one cranky woman.”

  “You interrupted something important,” Paige said dryly. She didn’t point out that he’d interrupted her panic attack, so he could just make his assumptions about what he’d interrupted.

  “Sorry about that, Silver.” Jim actually sounded apologetic. “I just really was worried that if you were that attached to this partner of yours, there was a chance he’d come for you.”

  “I’ve never been close to a recruit in my life,” Paige said, warning Jim away from the subject through her tone. And she was mostly honest in saying that. Brady was dead before she got close to him, and according to him, he wasn’t even Brady. She really didn’t want to think about that. Paige headed for the door. “What’s your last name, anyway? I don’t like you well enough to call you Jim.”

  “Hunter.”

  Paige frowned. “Give me a break.”

  He shrugged. “I really am Jim Hunter. It’s a handy enough name given my chosen profession.”

  “Fine, Hunter, let’s move out.”

  “Ma’am, yes ma’am. I don’t suppose you were ever military, were you?”

  “Move.” Paige gave him a push and he let himself be ushered out the door so she could lock it behind them. It was time for her to see real vampires.

  Paige locked the door and then stopped two steps down the walk. “That your partner?” Paige asked. A man leaned against her neighbor’s car about halfway down the block, a tall man with a long, sharp nose and slightly horsey face. He definitely wasn’t a local. Not only would she remember that face, but around here, people just didn’t wear the sort of formal button-up shirt he wore, not unless they were heading for work, and it was a little late for that.

  “Who?” Hunter played innocent, but Paige could see how his back stiffened the moment he saw the other man. “No,” Hunter said flatly.

  “So, just a random stranger then? Maybe I should ask for some ID.”

  “Silver, we don’t have time for this,” Hunter snapped. For the first
time he showed some real frustration.

  “Don’t you want me getting your friend’s name?” Paige smiled sweetly, and started across the yard toward the guy. However, Hunter caught her arm.

  “First, that is not my partner, Silver. I give you my word on that. Second, we have some vampires to see to.”

  Paige frowned. Hunter might be lying, but she didn’t think so. “He’s not a local. Maybe we should check him out.”

  “Focus, Silver, you’re not on-duty.”

  “How do we know he isn’t a vamp?” Paige asked in a whisper. Hunter’s eyes went wide and he looked over at the stranger before he looked back to Paige and narrowed his eyes.

  “Well, shit. I never thought you’d be one of those idiots that started seeing vamps behind every tree. If that was a vampire, he’d be running after you trying to suck the life out of you.”

  Paige frowned. “I thought you said some were smart.”

  “Some are,” Hunter agreed. “But any vamp that could ignore us that well…that would be one of those old, powerful ones I told you to stay away from. However, that guy is someone’s brother-in-law who just lost his job and is couch surfing. Stop getting paranoid on me, Silver, or I won’t let you play with all the little vamps I found.” Hunter wiggled his eyebrows and made it clear that he planned to have some fun tonight.

  “Okay, that is more than a little disturbing. I’m starting to think I should worry about you.” Paige followed Hunter to the driveway. He enjoyed the thought of killing a little too much for comfort. Resting her hand on the butt of her gun, Paige nodded toward her car sitting in front of his. “I’ll drive myself.”

  “Suit yourself,” Hunter said with a smile before he headed for his truck.

  Chapter Ten

  “So, where is your partner?” Paige asked as she got out of her car in an old part of town that straddled one of the tributaries that fed the local swamp. The smell was enough to make people gag on bad days, but the night was cool enough to muffle the sharpest of the stench. Paige understood why some people had been fighting to drain the swamp and that extra special smell for years, but the Endangered Species Act was pretty much impossible to get around. Anyone who could afford better housing had moved out, leaving behind a number of ramshackle houses and badly leaning barns.