Hunter's Edge

by Shiloh Walker

  The theory was that those who ended up altered—or vampire bait—were mortals more likely to survive the Change, if a vampire made the attempt to bring them over.

  Rafe didn’t know, didn’t care about the science or the answers, unless it offered a solution. Because vampire bait was a problem. They took on an otherworldly appeal and it wasn’t one the weak could easily ignore.

  That was the danger. In the hundred plus years that Rafe had been a Hunter, there had been a few accidental deaths when one of these altered humans crossed paths with a vampire who couldn’t resist temptation. Draining them to true death, taking so much that the mortal died before the vampire even realized they’d taken too much.

  Couldn’t even try to Change them at that point—dead bodies can’t swallow the blood needed to jumpstart the Change. A vampire could kill in self-defense and while it was frowned upon, it wasn’t a violation of Council law. But if a vampire killed outside of self-defense, that was all it would take to trip the internal radar of whichever Hunter was nearby. Whether the mortal death was accidental or not, it ended in a death sentence for the offending vampire.

  Over time, most of the civilian vampires decided it wasn’t worth the risk. Blood sharing was seen less and less.

  Too damn bad nobody had bothered to inform the ferals.

  Angel’s life had been turned upside down by that attack in so many different ways. One fucked-up night. Violence so rarely affected just a few, but that night had been for the books.

  Because of that night, Angelica Pierson was permanently on their watch list. Not because she was a threat, but because too many of their kind might prove a threat to her. The feral that had attacked her probably intended to Change her, but he was interrupted before a full blood exchange was done. Instead, he’d forced enough of his blood down her throat that it had altered hers. She was now vampire bait and that pretty much painted a huge, glaring neon target over her head and now the vampire population, both the good and the bad, presented a threat to her.

  A threat she didn’t even know existed.

  Even Rafe, so in love with his wife he hurt with it, had felt a siren’s call when he looked at Angel. Just before she’d disappeared into the hospital for a voluntary commitment, he’d felt it.

  She was too damn thin, too damn weak, as pale as a ghost and what he should have felt was a need to protect her, a need to fix the damage he’d unwittingly allowed to happen. But instead…he’d felt hunger.

  Despite her weak, obviously unwell physical state, he’d looked and he’d hungered. She had a surreal quality, the scent of her blood was like ambrosia and even as laden as she was with grief, the pulse of life inside her was entirely too tempting. Entirely too sweet. She all but shone with it.

  Vampire bait. No vamp could possibly look at her and not have the compulsion to feed. Compulsions could be ignored, but walking away from Angel had taken an act of will. He hadn’t even understood the why of it until later.

  The next day, in fact, trapped inside a hotel while the sun burned overhead, he’d been beating himself up, half-sick with guilt and confusion and then it had come to him. Rafe knew himself. Damn well. He loved his wife. Full stop. All there was to it. Loved her blindly, completely.

  In all the years since they’d married, he hadn’t once felt tempted. Oh, he’d noticed women. His eyes worked just fine. But the urge to take something he had no right to take? That was new and until he’d laid eyes on Angel, he wouldn’t have seen it happening.

  He knew it wasn’t normal for him, craving something he couldn’t and shouldn’t have…so he’d made himself look deeper. At Angelica Pierson, and at his unexpected response. The following night, he’d figured it out. She’d been asleep, but finding her inside the hospital had been easy.

  It was almost like something had guided him there, and that in itself was another clue.

  Bait. It wasn’t the man who had responded. It was the vampire, that dark, surging force inside him, that craved.

  Any and every damn vamp who saw her was going to have the same visceral response and not all vamps were the nice type who would just admire, wish and walk away.

  So Angel was watched. Treated just like one of the kids the Hunters watched from a distance, the kind who possessed a latent power, the kind of power that called to the evil in the world.

  Watched and protected.

  Watched. Protected. Hell, just like her sweetheart. The sweetheart in question was still walking on, heading towards town with single-minded focus.

  Rafe sighed, shoved a hand through his hair and wished he’d sent Toronto after the kid.

  Kel stopped dead in his tracks and turned around to glare at Rafe. It was a moonless night and under the trees the darkness was thick and weighted, but they both saw the other fine.

  “If I tell you that I’ll feed before I head back tonight, will you leave me the hell alone?” Kel demanded, his voice harsh with aggravation.

  A familiar light gleamed in the younger vamp’s eyes, but Rafe wasn’t about to give Kel the fight he was so desperately looking for. “No. You want me off your ass, you’ll just shut the hell up and find somebody. After you feed, I’ll leave you alone.”

  Eyes narrowed down to slits, Kel said, “I can handle this on my own.”

  Rafe snorted. “Sure you can. But you aren’t. You never do. So tonight, I’ll make sure you do. And if I have to do this on a regular basis with you, fine. Until you get it in your head that you can’t ignore the hunger like this, I’ll just play babysitter.”

  The kid was looking for a fight. Even though he was weak from hunger, Kel was in the mood to brawl. Par for the course. Happened regularly enough that everybody in the enclave knew the signs. For some, they took them as a signal to give Kel a wide berth until he’d either fed or got the fight he was looking for.

  And the others had no problem giving Kel that fight.

  Better one of their own than having Kel look outside the enclave for a fight. When that happened, the cleanup got messy. He never went after people who couldn’t handle a pissed, heartbroken vampire, which meant he either went on the Hunt or searched out their own kind.

  He’d picked plenty of fights that he would have lost, and lost in a big, rather final way, if he hadn’t had others watching out for him.

  But Rafe was getting tired of making his Hunters play babysitter when Kel got into one of his moods. He was tired of doing it himself, and he was tired of dealing with the cleanup end when Kel’s inner rage took control. This shit seriously needed to stop.

  Kel took a step forward, his chin angling up. Rafe was tempted to just plant a punch right there, nip this mess before it started. But until Kel fed, he’d be hanging onto control by a thread. Could be that punching him would just delay the mess. Sure as hell wouldn’t prevent it.

  “What you going to do, spoon-feed me or something?” Kel gave him an obnoxious smirk.

  “If I have to.” Rafe looked at Kel, focused—watched as the younger vamp’s pale features contorted in a grimace, a muscle jerking near his temple as he fought Rafe’s control.

  Wasn’t too pleasant for Rafe, either, but Kel had to get a grip on reality. Had to accept his life for what it was. If he kept fighting it, it was going to kill him.

  Of course, maybe that was what he wanted.

  He maintained control over Kel’s mind for long, tense moments, forcing the younger vamp into a submissive silence that probably rubbed him raw. Self-disgust tangled with the need to do whatever was necessary to protect his territory, his Hunters.

  Including protecting Kel from himself.

  Slowly, he released the control and watched grimly as Kel staggered away, swearing at Rafe in a ragged voice.

  “I can make you feed, Kel. You know I can.”

  Angry eyes cut towards Rafe, anger, shame, misery. Did the kid ever feel anything else? Ever let himself? “You son of a bitch, you got no right doing that.”

  Shaking his head, Rafe said, “You got that wrong. You took a blood oath w
hen you decided to come here. You made vows. You signed onto a life where you protect people…and right now, you need to get it through your skull that we also have to protect them from us.”

  Kel slashed a hand through the air. “When have I ever hurt somebody innocent?”

  “It hasn’t happened…yet. But if you keep doing this, you keep starving yourself, pushing yourself to the edge of your control, it’s going to happen. All of us can break, Kel, especially when you’re hanging onto control by the threads.”

  Kel’s lips peeled back from his teeth. “I wouldn’t hurt somebody who didn’t deserve it.” His fangs glinted in the faint light, an indicator of just how ragged his control was. If he’d been in control, the fangs wouldn’t show unless he was feeding.

  “I hate this.” Kel turned away from Rafe but didn’t continue on towards town. Instead he paced.

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  Kel shot Rafe a dark look. “I don’t fucking want this. I don’t want to give some blood oath to anybody, least of all, you. I don’t want to live this life. I don’t want any of it.”

  “Again, you think I don’t know that?” Rafe sighed and passed a hand over his face. He circled as Kel paced, keeping him in his line of sight. “It’s a shitty thing that happened to you, I get that. I’m sorry for it. Even shittier is the fact that you can’t even make an attempt at a normal life because you feel the same damn drive I do—you’re a Hunter, whether you like it or not. It chose you and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Flat out, it sucks.”

  Kel stopped dead in his tracks and turned, staring at Rafe. A bitter smile curled his lips. “It sucks? Come on, is that the best you got? This goes a little deeper than sucks.”

  Returning Kel’s bitter, ugly smile, Rafe said, “Yeah, so does having to deal with a half-suicidal, heartsick Hunter who’s bent on self-destruction. But you’re under my watch and I’ll be damned if I risk the consequences that may result from that self-destruction.”

  Resentment burned through Kel, sizzled inside his veins, in his head, threatening to spark him back into one of his rages. He knew that was why Rafe was still trailing him as he headed towards Beale Street.

  It chose you and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Flat out, it sucks.

  Talk about being a master of understatement.

  But the bitch of it was that he knew exactly where Rafe was coming from, especially after the fucking weird deal that happened to him earlier when he was talking to Sheila. He hadn’t once looked at that woman like that.

  His heart was pretty much dead inside his chest, although his body hadn’t shut down. But he hadn’t ever come close to falling under his body’s control, falling under his hunger’s control—and it was because he hadn’t fed.

  Rafe didn’t trust him to stay in control. None of them did, but Kel knew he hadn’t exactly proven himself on that front. Every time he got like this, he told himself he wasn’t going to do it again. He wasn’t going to end up so close to the edge again.

  But the problem with that logic was the solution. Feeding. Regular feeds, from a living breathing human and for some fucked-up reason, Kel couldn’t stand to feed from a male. It filled him with a revulsion that turned his stomach. He knew from experience, puking up blood was a disgusting experience.

  So if he wanted to keep himself from going off on a hair-trigger rage, he had to feed regularly—from women. Feeding for a vamp was altogether too damn sexual and even if he didn’t give in, just the arousal left him all but sick with guilt.

  Sick with guilt because the woman wasn’t Angel. Sick with guilt because even after twelve fucking years, he was still so hung up on a woman he couldn’t have, hung up to the point of obsession.

  That obsession was killing him.

  As he got closer to Beale Street, the music became louder and louder. Soon, it was loud enough to drown out the near-soundless footsteps following him, but Kel knew Rafe was still back there. He bypassed the first three bars, looking for a little hole-in-the-wall that tended attract to a certain crowd.

  Memphis had a huge paranormal population. Witches, vamps and shifters flocked to the city. Whether it was because they knew it was under the protection of the Council, the governing force of their kind, or because they just liked the tourists, the nightlife, Kel didn’t know. Didn’t really give a damn, either.

  Hell, maybe they just really liked Elvis.

  The civilians fit in with the mortal population fairly well. They worked, they paid their bills, some of them even tried to marry amongst mortals, hiding the darker part of themselves from their friends, their family.

  But here, this was a place where none of them had to hide who or what they were.

  Although lights shone all around, spilling out of the clubs, from the streetlights over head, this part of the street was dark. Kel had no trouble finding the door, though. Some weird kind of magick colored the air and although Kel hadn’t ever asked, he’d pretty much figured out what purpose the magick served.

  It was a “go away” signal. On a subconscious level, it came through loud and clear to mortals. None of them wanted to approach this particular door and most of them would quickly edge by, as though they couldn’t stand to be too close.

  A pair of eyes gleamed at Kel from the darkness and he dug into his pocket, pulled out a twenty. It wasn’t accepted, though, and he knew why as Rafe edged a little closer. Narrowing his eyes, he glared at Rafe and then looked back at the big, broad bastard watching the door.

  Can’t go taking money from one of the Hunters, now can we? This wasn’t the first time it had happened and for the most part, it was something he didn’t give a damn about one way or the other. He could pay or not. Didn’t matter.

  But tonight, it dug at him, reminding him once more how set apart he was.

  Leaning forward, he shoved it into the guy’s shirt pocket and then stomped inside, ignoring Rafe, ignoring the people gathered near the door.

  Ignoring everybody and everything except the bar.

  One thing Kel could still stomach besides blood was alcohol and right now, he needed some. No. A lot. He needed a lot of alcohol to fog his brain and keep him from thinking about what he had to do.

  If he got drunk enough here, he might be able to handle what came next.

  Elbowing his way through the crowd, he focused on the bar. When he finally got to the crowded bar, he stood there less than five seconds before a couple of guys off to his left vacated their seats. He shot Rafe another sour look and settled down on one of the stools. Rafe joined him, propping his elbows on the stained, scarred oak.

  “Would you leave me the hell alone? Or go play Lassie on the other side of the bar?”

  With a smirk, Rafe shrugged and asked, “Why? You think me going away is going to keep people from looking at you and knowing what you are?”

  “Shit.” Tearing his attention from Rafe, and the truth of what he’d just said, he signaled to one of the bartenders.

  “This really what you need?”

  Instead of answering Rafe, he just watched as one of the bartenders headed his way. She was new. Slim, almost petite with dark, kohl-lined eyes and moon-pale skin. Her short cap of hair framed elfin features and when she smiled at him, her teeth gleamed white. She had ruby red lipstick on, the exact same shade as the closely fitted top she wore. It looked more like a corset than a shirt, Kel decided, cupping each small breast and elevating it.

  Tinkerbell does Goth.

  For some reason, he realized his mouth was watering.

  She leaned against the bar across from him and he tore his eyes away from her tits, made himself look at her face. She wasn’t the kind he wanted. He wanted—

  Angel.

  Can’t have her, he told himself bitterly. No. Couldn’t have her, so he’d settle for somebody he could pretend was her. Tink wouldn’t work.

  “What’s your pleasure?”

  She had a soft, breathy little voice that suited her Goth-Tinkerbell appear
ance.

  “Jack Daniels. Bring the bottle.”

  She turned, walked away, and Kel found himself staring at her ass, snugly encased in black leather. There was an energy shimmering in the air around her and he pegged her as a shape-shifter with no difficulty. Shifters were like that, throwing off energy so it was like the air around them was electrically charged. Vamps had a quieter feel, fitting, in Kel’s mind, since every damn one of them should be staked, burned and their ashes scattered to the winds.

  Including himself.

  Rafe remained silent as the bartender appeared in front of Kel, leaving the bottle and a glass. A smile curved her lips and she said, “I’m told there’s no charge.”

  Kel snorted. “Of course not.” Sending Rafe a sidelong glance, he wrapped his fingers around the glass but before he could reach for the whiskey, she was there, opening the bottle, filling Kel’s glass a third full. She lifted a brow and he tapped the rim of the glass. More splashed in.

  “You look like you need a drink or two,” she murmured, leaning in. The rest of the bartenders were rushing around behind her like a bunch of ants on a picnic blanket, but she looked like she had all the time in the world. With her elbows propped on the bar, she smiled at him, leaned in, treated Kel to a very nice view of her breasts. The corset was cut low, just barely hiding her nipples.

  His voice was rough as he murmured, “At least.”

  She dipped a finger into the whiskey and slid it between her lips. “Then maybe you should drink this,” she suggested after she licked her finger dry. Using the same one, she pushed the drink closer to Kel.

  Hunger, that hated hunger, flared to vibrant life. It burned inside him, turned every last inch of him from ice to flame. Desperate to chill it a little, he grabbed the drink and emptied it. She took the bottle, poured him another. He drained it just as quick. After the third one, she pushed the whiskey off to the side.

  Nobody in the place blinked as she hopped on the bar and swung around so that she sat spread-legged in front of Kel. The leather pants couldn’t quite hide the scent of hot, hungry female. She bent down, placed her lips next to his ear. “You’re not going to find what you need inside a bottle, handsome. But I can give it to you.”