Hunter's Edge

by Shiloh Walker

  She started to swallow and immediately, she began to retch. Vomit rushed up her mouth, through her nose, but the man still had his hand over her mouth and she started to choke on it. Dimly, she heard him swear and then he threw her. She hurtled through the air and crashed into the railing at the head of the stairs. Gasping for air, she shoved up on her hands and knees and started to vomit. Blood, bile and the remains of the dinner she’d shared with kids came rushing out. She puked until she’d emptied her stomach and still she continued to heave.

  He made no noise but she could hear him approaching. On impulse, she cringed away but there was no place to retreat. The splintered wood of the railing cracked and groaned as she huddled against it. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and slowly looked up.

  Eyes that glowed red burned down at her. His hand shot out, grabbed the front of her shirt and hauled her off the floor. “That mind of yours is stronger than I thought,” he murmured. He trailed his fingers down her cheek, almost gently, and then said in a queer voice, “I’ll have you, though. Regardless. I don’t care if I need to drain you to the brink of death to do it.”

  He pulled her against him again and this time, she was so weak she didn’t have the energy to struggle. His teeth pierced her neck again, the uninjured side. It barely even hurt. The slide into oblivion was slow and easy this time and Angel wasn’t even aware of it as she drifted into unconsciousness.

  The low-level burn in his gut had Kel speeding down the expressway with the gas pedal pressed to the floor. His eyes kept straying to the digital clock on the dashboard and each minute that ticked by seemed to last an hour.

  All damn night, something had been driving him nuts. Edgy, anxious, itchy, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Then twenty minutes ago, he’d known. The itch had bloomed into a low-level burn and he’d known.

  Angel.

  Something was wrong with Angel. She was in trouble.

  He turned off the expressway, five miles to go. That low-level burn wasn’t low-level anymore. It was a high-octane explosion and he could feel Angel’s fear, her terror—and pain. She was in pain. She was hurt. His neck burned in sympathetic pain as he took a left on Mulberry and then sped down the street, veering onto the shoulder to go around a slow-moving minivan. The driver laid on the horn as Kel cut back onto the road.

  The Estates of Whispering Oaks took up several hundred acres of land along Deermont Road. The fourth and last street was the street where Angel had lived most of her life. Kel took it at a speed that had his tires squealing and as he hit the brakes in front of her house, he realized he couldn’t feel that fear any more, or the pain.

  He couldn’t feel Angel at all. Even when he tried to reach out, tried to sense her, he couldn’t feel her—it was something that had never happened. For a good eight years, from the time he was eleven—Angel had been in narrow strip of trees behind her house, playing in an old tree house built by the previous owners, and she’d fallen, broken her arm. Nobody had heard her scream but Kel had been in his room, grounded because of a C- he’d brought home on a project for science.

  Something had been wrong. He’d felt a burning pain in his arm, and he’d known instinctively it was Angel. From that time on, he’d always been able to reach out and just feel her—he knew when she was happy, when she was scared. But now, he couldn’t feel her and that scared him more than anything else.

  Logically, that drive took thirty-four minutes—he kept track of every last one. Those minutes were endless and when he pulled up in front of the old colonial house where Angel had grown up, he left the keys in the ignition and the engine running. Leaping up the steps, he knelt down in the flower bed and grabbed the little rabbit statuette, wiping the soil away from the false bottom and digging the key out.

  He got the door open and dimly, his mind registered an electronic beeping—part of him seemed to recall the alarm system, that he needed to reset it—it was weird the way his mind cataloged all those minute details even when his heart was rushing like an express engine and his breathing coming in hard, rough pants.

  As he passed by the narrow console table in the main hall, he grabbed a silver letter opener. It looked delicate but felt damn solid in his hand. The blade was thin and not meant for cutting, but the point if it was damn sharp. Not much of a weapon…

  Fuck.

  He saw her now, up on the landing between the first and second floors—at least he saw her hair at first, the long, pale golden sweep of it hanging down. The rest of her body was obstructed by a big, mean looking bastard who held her clutched against him.

  The man shifted a little and Angel’s arm swung into view. Kel saw red. Literally—and physically. Thin streams of blood flowed down her wrist, down her slack fingers to drip down onto the floor.

  Time seemed to freeze, yet speed by in an incredible blur as he tore up the stairs and rushed them. Angel was unconscious. Kel saw that almost right away as the man turned towards them, startled.

  His eyes—the dude’s eyes were seriously messed up. Glowing a funky shade of red and his pupils constricted down to mere pinpoints like he was drugged. He blinked, once, twice. Like he couldn’t quite understand the fact that somebody was charging towards him with bloody murder on his mind.

  He blinked a third time, kept his eyes closed a few seconds, precious seconds that allowed Kel to close the distance.

  “Let her go,” Kel snarled.

  The man’s eyes opened, and although they still had that weird reddish glow, the dazed, drugged look was gone. He glanced down at Angel’s slack body. She hung in his arms like a rag doll, eyes closed, her lips parted. “Hmmmm. But I don’t want to, boy. She’s quite precious. Go on now.”

  The words vibrated—rippled, flowed through Kel and over him and as they faded, Kel had to fight to urge to do just as he’d been told. But it didn’t take much of a fight—just a glance at Angel’s face, just the memory of the fear he’d felt coming from her—and his complete inability to feel anything from her now.

  Louder, Kel repeated, “Let her go.”

  The man cocked his head, narrowed his eyes as he studied Kel—kind of like he was examining a bug under a microscope. “How odd. Two of you. In one night.” He glanced down at Angel and then smiled, stroked her hair. “I’m not done with you, precious. But the rest of this will keep…for a bit.”

  Like she was so much garbage, he threw her on the ground and stepped over her, smiling at Kel. Blood stained his lips. “It’s too bad I’m only in the mood for one kind of sweet, boy. You’d be even more fun than she is—you’d fight harder.” He edged near Kel, but didn’t come at him head-on, circling around and away, that weird smile still tugging at one corner of his mouth. “All I had to do was mention the sweet little kiddies and she caved. A female’s soft spot, every time. You’ll fight, though, as long, as hard as you can, just hoping you can save her from me.”

  “Shut the fuck up. Get the hell out. Now,” Kel snarled.

  He laughed. With Angel’s blood staining his lips and her laying on the floor in an unconscious slump, the bastard had the nerve to laugh. Kel’s control snapped—he rushed him, fist closed tight around the letter opener. Lifting it high, he brought his arm down hard. The man jerked back but the tip of the letter opener caught his cheek, slicing him open.

  He hissed, pressed a hand to his cheek. Wide-eyed, he looked at Kel and then at the letter opener.

  For one brief second, Kel thought he saw fear in those strange eyes. The reddish cast grew stronger and the air in the house went cold. Kel could have sworn it dropped a good twenty degrees in five seconds flat.

  The cut was bleeding, but it wasn’t the rich, vibrant red Kel would have expected to see. It was darker, a strange reddish black. And—shit—the sliced flesh seemed to be smoking. Little tendrils of smoke curled away the man’s face in wisps.

  “That was a foolish thing to do, boy,” the man rasped. His gaze zeroed in on the letter open. “Drop it.”

  This time, the words didn�
��t wash over him, didn’t slide through him in a teasing, coaxing suggestion. They crashed into him, weighty with a command that didn’t want to be ignored. Kel almost staggered under it, but he didn’t drop the letter opener.

  Weird—it wasn’t some big, lethal-looking blade and it sure as hell wasn’t some kickass gun that could turn the guy’s brain into Swiss cheese. But the man continued to stare at it with his face bleeding and skin smoking. Kel tightened his fingers around it. He didn’t waste his breath talking. He just lunged for the man again.

  But the man was prepared. He slid away like oiled leather, moving silent as a whisper, quick as a snake, circling around. He moved quicker than Kel could even track and Kel spun around, trying to keep his eyes on the man. He felt like he was being toyed with, like some giant cat playing with a mouse.

  A hand came up between his shoulder blades, shoved him. He went flying face first to the floor. He just barely missed taking a header down the stairs as he landed on his hands and knees—the letter opener still clutched in his fist. Angel lay two feet away, her head turned from him. Her neck was exposed—he could see the ragged, ugly holes and the blood that hadn’t yet clotted up trickling down.

  “I don’t really want to bother with you now, boy.” Hard, steely fingers curled around the back of Kel’s neck and he lifted him, hauled him straight off the floor. “I’ve got something a bit more pressing to deal with now. So if you want to live…just drop that paltry silver thing and run on.”

  Instead, Kel swung out, caught the man’s neck—a shallow slice when what he’d tried to do was bury the silver inside the bastard’s jugular. But the cut, shallow as it was, made the man scream and throw Kel across the landing. Plaster and dust drifted down when Kel hit the wall and then slid to the floor. Spinning away, the man screamed.

  When he turned back, the narrow gash on his neck was smoking. More of that dark blood flowed. “Stupid human!”

  Head reeling, Kel pushed himself upright. “Damn straight.” He took one stumbling step towards the man standing at the head of the stairs, just a few feet away from Angel’s body. Kel tightened his hand around the letter open. Adrenaline began to pump through his body, numbing the pain, clearing the fog in his brain—and giving him the energy he needed to rush across the hall, tackling the maniacal bastard.

  The two of them went crashing down the stairs, Kel stabbing and slicing with his makeshift weapon while the man roared. The stink of burnt flesh filled the air as Kel managed to pierce skin again and again. Brutal, inhumanly strong fingers closed around Kel’s wrist and the man squeezed. Over his scream, Kel heard bone crunch.

  And the wail of sirens…

  “Shite!”

  The man shoved upright, wobbled as he shot a look upstairs and then at the front door. It was still open. Already red and blue lights were splashing and Kel heard footsteps as the cops came rushing towards the house, heard them with startling clarity.

  “Little fucker…”

  He grabbed Kel just as the cops appeared in the doorway.

  Kel thought the man had moved fast before but nothing could have prepared him for the speed he moved with now as he threw Kel over his shoulder and flew towards the back of the house. The man might not have wings, but he certainly seemed to fly, navigating the halls, the furniture and hurtling through the glass doors that opened out on the patio. Literally hurtling through them, the glass shattering as he lunged straight into it.

  Glass stung Kel’s eyes as he struggled. Weak struggles, though. His shattered wrist screamed with pain and his vision was red and blurry. Wind danced along his skin and he tried to see but the world spun by at breakneck speed.

  The sirens faded away into the distance and soon, the only sound he heard was his own harsh breathing.

  Then laughter, ugly, mean laughter.

  His head struck something hard as he was flung to the ground and automatically, Kel tried to roll upright, using his elbow and his good hand. Vicious pain exploded through him as he was kicked, once, twice, three times in the gut.

  “Little bugger. You had to interfere, didn’t you?” Steely fingers, ice-cold and brutal, dug into his neck and once more, Kel found himself dangling in the air.

  Pain blistered through him, a black veil threatened to drop over him as unconsciousness beckoned. Desperate, struggling for a breath, he clawed at the fingers wrapped around his throat.

  “Congratulate yourself, boy. You saved your little bitch. At least for now. No fucking way can I go after her any time soon—I don’t wish to draw that kind of attention to myself. But I wanted her—you got in my way. For that, I’m going to kill you, boy,” the man whispered, slowly lowering Kel until his feet touched the ground. “It’s going to be slow…and oh, so painful. Nobody interferes with what is mine.” With each word, he squeezed tighter and tighter. Kel’s oxygen-starved lungs felt like they’d explode—

  And then he went crashing back to the ground. He sucked in a breath through his abused throat, gagged, tried to take another breath. Dark, red-tinged rainbows danced before his eyes. Each breath was painful, but he welcomed it. He tried to get to his feet only to get knocked back on his ass. Another brutal kick to his ribs—this time, he heard bone break. By now, even adrenaline and fear couldn’t numb the pain, but he couldn’t manage to scream either. His throat felt swollen, his tongue thick.

  In that moment, Kel knew he was going to die. Too weak, hardly able to breathe, he couldn’t even find the strength to pull away when the man crouched down behind him, laid those icy cold fingers on Kel’s shoulders. Through the thin cotton of his T-shirt, he could feel those cold, strong fingers and that chill spread through him until he ached from head to toe with the intensity of it.

  “The Change is so very unpleasant. Your frail mortal body may not even survive it, but if you do…” The man’s words made no sense to Kel. Struggling to breathe, to see, to think past the pain, he wobbled on his knees and would have crashed forward onto his face if cruel hands hadn’t caught him and held him.

  “If you make it through, the sun will rise on your new body, you will burn. Suffer every bit of the pain…and think on how you could have just walked away.”

  Walk away…from what? Kel thought.

  With that inhuman strength, the man grabbed Kel and jerked him backward. Pain flared in Kel’s neck, ripping, burning, tearing—distantly, Kel realized the man had bit him and through the pain, Kel could still feel the man’s wicked sharp teeth, his icy mouth—and blood. Kel’s blood, hot as fire, flowing over his chilled flesh.

  The man rode him to the ground under his greater weight, crushing him. Face pressed into the dirt, unable to breathe, Kel was helpless.

  When finally the man pulled away, the gray cloud of oblivion beckoned but there would be no escaping into it. He was turned over. His uninjured hand grabbed at the dirt beneath him, fingers digging into it. As his fingers closed around something thin, rough, the man crouched by his side, lifting a wrist.

  “Your little bitch fought when I tried to bring her over—I wonder how much fight you’ve got left.” He sank his teeth into his wrist, tore the flesh and then fisted a hand in Kel’s hair, jerking him up and forcing Kel’s mouth to his wrist. “I’ll think of you when I get my hands on her—and she’ll suffer for it. Die knowing that.”

  Like hell. As the bitter, thick blood trickled down Kel’s swollen throat, he swung out.

  It was a scream that no mortal creature, man or animal, should be able to make. It echoed through the night, rebounding through the trees and as Kel slipped into oblivion, his last sight was that of a stick, not much bigger than a butter knife, protruding from one of the man’s eyes.

  “We’re too late.” It was a grim, angry voice, made all the more nerve-wracking by the fact that it came from a big man who carried a long, curved sword in his left hand.

  Rafe watched as his wife, Sheila, knelt down by the boy and touched him.

  “He’s cold,” Sheila murmured.

  In the air, Rafe could smell the
taint of a feral vampire, the rage and the violence. And the blood. “He fed him—just enough to start the Change, I’d bet, so the poor kid would die out here in the open as the sun came up.”

  Sheila’s soft blue eyes went wintry with fury but her hand was gentle as she wiped some of the still-tacky blood away from the boy’s face. “Rafe, he’s just a kid.”

  Stroking a hand down Sheila’s hair, Rafe said, “We’ll take care of him, Belle. Come on…we need to get—”

  His voice broke off abruptly, a breath hissing out between his teeth. His head went back, his eyes closing. “Damn it—bastard’s still close. He’s looking… Oh, shit. Ain’t that a son of a bitch.” He looked back at Sheila and his dark brown eyes had a weird reddish glow.

  Recognizing the look, Sheila sighed. Smiled. “Go on, slick. I can get this one to the car okay.” She narrowed her eyes. “You are going to have to leave me the car. I can’t carry him indefinitely.”

  Rafe turned over the keys to his ‘57 Bel Aire without batting an eyelash. That, all by itself, told Sheila how strong the urge was riding her husband. Rafe didn’t turn over those keys very easily at all—and never without a number of promises that she take care of his precious car.

  Okay—maybe Rafe didn’t call the car precious, but it amounted to the same thing.

  All Hunters felt these urges, an impulse that could drag them out of bed, drag them miles through the night to find whoever was pulling at them.

  In this case, it had dragged them quite a few miles. Hundreds, in fact. Rafe and Sheila lived in Memphis, Tennessee, and usually, they stayed in western Tennessee. Rafe hadn’t ever felt anything pull at him in such a way, at least not until now.

  Sheila hadn’t ever seen him under such a strong grip. Not once. It had scared her, bothered her enough that she had demanded he take her with him. He hadn’t wanted to, so she’d just settled her ass in the Bel Aire and refused to get out.