“You feel dead inside,” Sheila said. “There’s not a one of us that can’t see that. But Phoebe helped. You were a couple of broken souls and life got a bit easier when you two met. But that doesn’t mean that you should feel guilty because you didn’t love her. You couldn’t love her, Kel. You gave your heart away a long time ago and there’s nothing you can do for that.”
Finally, finally, that gentle compassion in her voice pierced the ice shroud wrapped around his heart. “That doesn’t make hurting Phoebe okay. That doesn’t make chasing her away okay.”
“You didn’t chase her away, Kel. She ran.” Sheila reached up and rubbed her hands up and down her face. When she lowered them, he saw signs of exhaustion, like sleep hadn’t come easy to her. And traces of anger.
Anger permeated the entire enclave. That a vicious, brutal feral with a taste for rape and murder was so close—or at least had been so close, and they hadn’t realized it until now, it weighed on the lot of them.
But it was crushing him. Destroying what little soul he had left. “She ran because of me.”
“She ran because of her,” Sheila countered. “I know you, Kel. You wouldn’t have led her to believe in any way that you might love her. Women…” She shrugged, a bitter smile on her lips. “We can usually tell when somebody loves us or not. Too often, even when we suspect the answer is not, we don’t want to accept that. You can’t fault yourself for not loving her, any more than you can fault her for falling in love with you…or at least fooling herself into it. Phoebe was a big girl, Kel. She’d made it in this world before Rafe set up territory here. She knew there were risks and predators—and she made the choice to leave. Nobody forced it on her.”
Neither of them heard the footsteps. Until Rafe’s voice cut through the tension in the air, they hadn’t even realized he was there. But as they turned to look at the Master, both of them felt something change…a subtle shift in the air.
Subtle—but it came with something icy and ugly. Something that filled Kel with dread.
“Don’t tell me he’s killed again,” he rasped. Disgusted and furious, his hands closed into fists and the refrain started to circle through his mind once more.
Helpless. Useless. Worthless.
The feral’s words whispered through his mind as he stared at Rafe’s impassive face.
“I’m going to rip your heart out of your chest and smash it. You will die this time.”
Kel’s own response… “Promise?”
Better off if the feral had killed him. Kel could be replaced. Rafe could get somebody besides Kel’s sorry ass in here, somebody who actually understood the purpose, somebody who cared.
“No, Kel. He hasn’t killed anybody yet that we know about.” Rafe glanced at his wife.
The look that passed between them didn’t do a damn thing to make Kel feel better.
Neither did the appearance of Dominic and Toronto emerging from the hallway to flank Rafe. Toronto wouldn’t have finished checking things out in Tupelo already—which meant he was back because Rafe had sent for him.
Dominic’s brown eyes weren’t quite as blank as Toronto’s or Rafe’s. Dominic wasn’t that much older than Kel, in both human and vampire terms, and he hadn’t yet learned the fine art of hiding every single emotion.
The look in Dom’s eyes was one of worry, one of caution—and it had to do with Kel. He could feel it.
In a hoarse voice, Kel asked, “What’s going on, Rafe?”
Rafe, his voice impassive, said, “It has to do with what you left behind.”
Startled, Kel blinked. “What I left…” Understanding came fast and hard.
Home.
Angel…
She was the only one he’d left behind that could still matter.
“What exactly are you talking about?” he demanded through clenched teeth.
“There’s a witch living a few miles away from Greenburg—moved there on my request.” A muscle jerked in his jaw and for just a second, Rafe’s emotionless eyes weren’t quite so emotionless.
“Why?” Kel demanded.
“Because of Angel.”
Kel didn’t even remember moving. One second, he was ten feet away from Rafe and then he was in Rafe’s face, his hands fisted in the smooth, buttery soft leather of Rafe’s coat. Jerking Rafe forward, he rasped, “Why?”
“Because she was bitten too.” Rafe glanced down at Kel’s hands and reached up, closing his fingers around Kel’s wrists. “Bitten…and fed.”
“She’s not…” Dear sweet heaven…no… The strength drained out of him and now, if he hadn’t been holding onto Rafe’s jacket, and if Rafe didn’t have a hold of Kel’s wrists, he suspected he would have gone to his knees.
“Kel.”
Blood roared in his ears, blinding him, deafening him. Something soft, cool, stroked his cheek and without realizing it, he let go of Rafe and turned towards Sheila. Lost, shocked, he stared into her eyes. Her hands came up, cupped his face.
Her lips moved, but he couldn’t hear the words. Not at first. When they finally did pierce the fog in his head, they didn’t even make sense.
But when they did, Kel did go to the ground, sinking to his knees and covering his face with his hands. Tears burned his eyes and the relief that washed through him was a sweet, sweet respite.
“Damn it, Kel…she’s not a vampire.” It was the third time she’d said it.
“I heard you.” Lifting his gaze, he stared at Sheila and nodded. “I heard you.”
“But…” He turned his head and stared at Rafe. “If she’s not one of us, why is she being watched?”
“For her safety.” Rafe sighed and turned away, pacing the room with a restless, caged energy. The two men at his shoulders fell back in unison but they didn’t move far. They kept a close eye on Kel and once more, the tension in the room began to climb.
Higher. Higher.
“Rafe, if you don’t tell me what the fuck is going on…” Kel swore and shoved himself to his feet. He planted himself in Rafe’s path and waited.
“You remember when you were going through your training?” Rafe said.
A weird light glittered in Rafe’s eyes and Kel’s skin went tight as a dark, ugly premonition began to whisper in his ear. Angel had been bitten—he remembered that, had nightmares about it.
There had been blood on her lips.
“We don’t generally want vamps feeding from one human in particular. Having a human as a regular feeding companion just isn’t the best idea.”
Kel’s lip curled in a snarl. “I know that. I don’t need a fucking ethics course or a refresher in postmodern Hunter psycho-shit.”
“Would you shut the fuck up?” Rafe demanded in a harsh voice. “I’m trying to make this a little bit easier on you.”
“I don’t want easy—I want to know why Angel’s being watched, and why in the hell you’re telling me now.”
“Because she’s vampire bait, damn it!” Rafe shouted.
His voice echoed through the room, bounced over the walls…and inside Kel’s head, growing louder and louder until it had the same deafening boom of a shuttle launch.
Vampire bait.
Vampire bait.
Vampire bait.
Kel hadn’t ever been faced with a human whose blood had been altered after a blood exchange. It wasn’t a common occurrence and the inherent risks had most vamps, Hunter and civilian alike, exercising caution to keep it from happening.
But he didn’t need the experience of meeting such a person to understand that this was bad, bad, bad… Vampire bait—what else could that be but bad news? From the horror stories he’d heard, the altered mortals basically became some kind of forbidden fruit—and Kel’s dad was a preacher. He knew what forbidden fruit led to.
That allure wasn’t something easily ignored, it wasn’t something the mortal could control, and it wasn’t something that all vampires could resist. The stories he’d heard, the allure was actually pretty damn hard to resist.
; There had been one story… Kel’s gut started to churn as he remembered it. He hadn’t thought about it in more than ten years, probably longer than that. Whether or not it was an urban legend the teachers at Excelsior had concocted to basically terrify the young vamps, he didn’t know. The young ones had next to no control and even if they were decent enough on the inside, their hungers were too seductive and the urge to give in to temptation was strong.
It sounded like something a bunch of kids would tell each other at a campout, something to freak the others out. But the gorier details were the kind of things Kel hoped no child ever had to know about. A young couple, recently married, back in the seventeen or eighteen-hundreds, was attacked—the man was bitten and fed, but not enough to induce the Change, but enough that his blood was altered. The woman, though, she had been Changed.
That far back, Excelsior hadn’t really been established and from what the instructors at the school claimed, the tragedy was one of the events that spurred things on.
The Hunter who found the couple ended up taking the woman with him—not to hurt her, but to protect the husband, because he recognized the change in the man. But the wife didn’t understand.
She went back to her husband—and ended up killing him. Then, driven mad by grief, she’d gone on a rampage that killed eleven other people. Her killing spree stopped after she set herself on fire—one damn painful way to commit suicide.
Kel didn’t buy into fairy tales that seemed told specifically to scare people, but something about this one had stuck with him, and now, he couldn’t get it to stop replaying in his head. Covering his face with his hands, he ground the heels of his palms against his eyes and swore. “Not happening,” he muttered. “This shit is not happening.”
An odd silence fell, broken only by Sheila’s quiet voice. “I have a feeling we haven’t heard the worst, Kel.”
Kel dropped his hands, looked from the three men to Sheila and then back. Ignoring the other two, he narrowed his eyes on Rafe’s face.
Shit. Something—something there. Kel couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Rafe wasn’t just a hard-ass bastard, he was an inscrutable hard-ass bastard. Unless he was with Sheila, he showed about as much emotion as a coat rack. Zilch.
But for a second, there was something in those eyes that looked like worry.
“Out with it,” Kel said, forcing the words through a throat gone tight.
Rafe blew out a breath. Slid the other two men a glance and as one, the two men came up to flank Kel.
Kel didn’t even spare them a glance.
“The witch near Greenburg called. There’s a feral moving towards her. He isn’t there yet—”
Kel didn’t hear anything else.
He rushed for the door, but four hard hands caught him and restrained him—or tried to. Blindly, he turned his head, snapping at the body closest to him. He caught skin, bit. Somebody swore. Another arm came around his neck, immobilizing him. Rafe’s voice came at Kel as if over some great distance, faint, indistinct. Even the command inherent in those words had little effect on Kel—some part of him recognized the command, but it didn’t matter.
It didn’t register.
Nothing registered.
Not even the fact that he’d managed to dislodge Dominic and knock him back. Not even the fact that when Dom came rushing back, Kel delivered a swift sidekick to the vamp’s gut that sent Dom flying through the air to crash into a wall.
Around his neck, Rafe’s arm tightened and it was a powerful enough hold that if Kel had been mortal, he would have long since passed out.
Rafe continued to talk to him, faster now, but it was like the Master was speaking some foreign language. None of it made sense. Nothing made sense. He reared back with his head, once, twice. Hearing bone crush, he kept at it and then abruptly, Rafe’s arm was gone and all he had to deal with was the shifter still attached to his side.
He reached for Toronto—and instead of touching man, touched wolf. No, make that big, brawny wolf-man that towered over Kel by nearly two feet. Kel didn’t even hesitate. He struck towards the wolf’s throat—vampires didn’t need to breathe.
But shape-shifters did.
Toronto jerked away just in time and the blow ended up glancing off the side of a thickly furred neck. A huge, clawed hand, the size of a dinner plate came up and caught Kel’s arm. “Calm down,” Toronto said, his deep, growling voice about as welcome as a fly buzzing in Kel’s ear—and just as annoying.
Kel jerked away, but Toronto didn’t let go.
Snarling, Kel automatically reached up, touching a hand to his waist, but he hadn’t grabbed any of his weapons. All he touched was bare skin—shit. Weapons. Yeah, needed weapons because when he found the feral this time, he wasn’t taking any chances.
A couple of knives, a Beretta? Not enough. Kel was thinking along the lines of rocket launcher. Explosives, maybe. A little flashier than the Hunters used, but hey, no such thing as overkill in this case.
“Toronto. Let him go.”
Kel was released so abruptly, he stumbled into a wall. Shoving away from it, he headed into the hall. There was a weapons room. That was Dom’s domain and the man did like his toys. Kel would just…
Sheila appeared in front of him.
It took a few seconds to register the fact that she was blocking him. He started to go around her and she moved with him. “Kel—”
She held out a hand and Kel cocked his head, staring at it, puzzled. Slowly, he lifted his gaze and focused on her face. She gave him a shaky smile. “Come on. Let’s just slow down…”
“No.” He reached out, picked her up and bodily removed her from his path—and then he kept going. Shoes. Needed some shoes. A shirt. And weapons—lots of them. Quick, though. Not too much time.
This time when the three men formed a barricade in front of him, Kel simply halted in his tracks and then turned, heading for the stairs. Clothes and shoes, how much did they matter? Weapons—some gas and a few matches would work. Anything.
Behind him, Dominic muttered, “Hell. This is going well.”
Rafe swore soundly.
Off to the side, Toronto stood watching the whole tableau with a smirk on his face. “Any suggestions?”
“Yeah. Some elephant tranquilizers.” Rafe scrubbed a hand over his face and then headed for the stairs. Kel hadn’t slipped out of the house yet. He’d stopped in the front hallway and was dragging on a leather jacket over his bare chest. The shoes on his feet belonged to Toronto. The butt of a gun peeked out of the waistband of his jeans and unless Rafe was mistaken, it was his gun.
The look on Kel’s face was blank. Disturbingly so. For the past ten minutes, it had been like trying to talk rationally to a shark caught in a feeding frenzy and Rafe was under no illusions that another attempt was going to be any more successful.
“Kel. You can’t go to Greenburg.” He kept his calm, hoped he had his emotions lashed down tight enough. Any sign of worry, fear or rage just might be what snapped Kel’s tenuous grasp on control.
Kel had already proven that when he was in a rage, it was going to take more than a couple of them to keep him contained. From the corner of his eye, he saw Dominic holding something over the ugly wound in his shoulder. The scent of blood was strong in the air and he sent a silent command to his lieutenant for him to leave.
Dom stilled, his eyes narrowed.
Through their silent communication, Rafe shifted his gaze to the sluggishly bleeding wound and then to Kel. Dom hesitated for a moment and then nodded, withdrawing from the room in silence. “Kel, before you go off half-cocked, you need to listen to me,” Rafe said. He focused on Kel’s mind, focused on the blood oath Kel had given him ten years earlier—focused hard.
Kel’s lids flickered. Then he blinked and when his eyes opened, he looked at Rafe with some measure of comprehension. “You can’t stop me from going,” he said, his voice harsh and low.
“I don’t have a choice, Kel. You can’t be around her. Ever. Your control is…�
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“My control…” Kel laughed bitterly. “Fuck my control. I don’t need control to find him and kill him before he hurts Angel.”
“And how are you going to find him, Kel?” Rafe demanded. “If you did find him before he got to her, are you willing to risk her life you’ll be able to stop him?”
The look that flashed through Kel’s eyes then was enough to have Rafe spinning away, shame punching through him. But it had to be said…right? Kel was strong, but he was young. It was entirely possible he may even become a Master. But…he wasn’t there yet.
Rafe had a responsibility to that girl, as well as to Kel. He turned back to Kel. “You need to stop and think for a minute.”
“I’m thinking just fine. I will stop him,” Kel said, the pain and horror Rafe had seen in his eyes gone, replaced by a careful, closed emptiness. He pushed past Toronto and headed for the door.
“Can you stop yourself?” Rafe shoved his hands in his pockets.
Kel stopped in his tracks. Without turning back to Rafe, he asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Rafe…” Sheila’s voice was soft, but he heard the censure in it loud and clear. He glanced at her and shook his head. He was doing what he had to.
“Just that,” he said in answer to Kel’s question. “Can you stop yourself? You haven’t ever been face-to-face with one of the altered humans, Kel. Coming face-to-face with that, it’s like coming face-to-face with an addiction you never knew you had, and one you can’t fight. You got the control to walk away from her?”
Kel’s shoulders slumped.
Finally—
Rafe edged a little closer, keeping his voice calm, level as he said, “I know you still love her, Kel. I’ll take care of her. I—”
Something inside Kel snapped. The tension in the wide, open hallway seemed to explode and Kel spun around and lunged for Rafe. The two vampires crashed into the wall.
Kel’s lips peeled back, revealing fangs that were dropped and ready. And that wasn’t all. He had a blade in his hand. Somewhere between the basement and the front door, he’d managed to pick up a knife. All of sudden, Rafe wished he’d listened to Sheila when she harped about how she hated weapons being left all over the house.
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