Somewhere inside him, without even seeing her, he knew. He slipped forward, just where the trees gave way to grass and there, he crouched, one hand resting on the trunk of the tree, the other clutching the ring at his neck.
Hiding in the shadows, he watched, spellbound, as the truck came to a stop and the door opened. There was a fist wrapped around his throat, around his heart, and it wasn’t going to ease up anytime soon.
It was her.
Angel.
Tears stung his eyes but he couldn’t move to wipe them away so they just fell down his cheeks unchecked. Angel…
She slid out of the truck and moved through the maze of headstones and aboveground crypts. She came to a halt in front of one… Close, so close. He could smell her now. The cool breeze brought the scent of her to him and he closed his eyes, lost himself inside it.
Her hair was shorter than he’d ever seen it, the ends just barely brushing her shoulders. The silky blonde curls gleamed silver in the moonlight, blowing in the breeze. A stray strand blew into her eyes and she reached up to brush it back.
Even though she was a good thirty feet away, when she spoke, he heard the words as clearly as if she murmured them into his ear. “But for how much longer?” Her voice was soft, sad…despondent. Oblivious to his presence, she reached inside her pocket and pulled something out.
His ears heard a faint rattle, but he couldn’t see what she held. Whatever it was, it caused a look of bitter anger to cross her features. She tucked it back into her pocket and then crouched by the grave.
His heart didn’t beat often, but it did still beat. But when he heard her next words, he thought it might just stop altogether—stop, crack and then wither up and blow away just like so much dust.
“I’m a mess, Kel, you know that? I’ve been like this ever since you left, but it’s getting bad again. I don’t even know who I am right now.”
Kel…shit. Yeah, he knew logically his parents would have had some sort of funeral, however it was done without a body. Logically, he knew he probably had a headstone or something out there somewhere with his name on it.
But logically knowing that couldn’t have prepared him for the sight of his woman kneeling by the side of his grave. She shifted and sat down, pulled her legs to her chest. The grief on her face made a knot form in his throat.
“I miss you. That’s one thing I do know. But it seems like the only thing. I ought to be able to make a bit more sense of my life than that.”
He clenched his jaw shut to keep from speaking out loud, but he couldn’t keep himself from answering her silently. Dear God, baby. I miss you too.
The wind picked up and he watched, helpless, as she started to shiver. He wanted to go to her, wrap his arms around her and offer her some warmth. But how could a vampire offer her warmth? He had to steal it when he wanted it for himself, through blood or sex.
“Twelve years, baby.”
Twelve miserable years.
What would have happened if that night hadn’t ever come to pass? He would have married her, he could have spent the past twelve years sleeping next to her at night, rising to make love to her before they left the house to go out and do whatever in the hell normal people did…in the daylight.
Her voice, harsh and broken, came again. “This isn’t fair.”
The sound of the tears thickening her voice had his hand tightening and he didn’t realize he’d torn the bark from the tree.
Shit, this was killing him. He’d been bleeding and dying inside bit by bit over the past twelve years. Now, face-to-face with her, he saw that she was suffering just as he was.
“I’m so tired of it.”
As she started to lay back onto the grass, Kel shoved to his feet. Fuck, he couldn’t sit there and watch as she lay down to cry over an empty grave. Couldn’t—
A hard hand closed over the back of his neck. “That’s not a good idea, kid.” Toronto’s voice, deep and gruff, was sympathetic.
Caught in the spell of seeing her again, Kel hadn’t realized he wasn’t alone until Toronto grabbed him and physically kept him from approaching Angel.
Rational thought encroached on the need to go to her and he swore. “Let me go,” Kel said woodenly.
He was prepared to listen to more rants and rambles on control, much like what Rafe had doled out last night. But Toronto let him go and said nothing, just moved to stand by Kel’s side and watch as Angel rolled onto her side and smoothed her hand down the grass covering the empty grave.
“I’m so tired, Kel.”
Kel closed his eyes as her voice, weary and sad, drifted to him over the distance. “Where’s the rest of the cavalry?” he asked sourly, glancing at Toronto from the corner of his eye.
“I’m it.”
“It?” Startled, Kel turned to the shifter. “You’re it?”
Toronto laughed softly. Keeping his voice pitched low, he murmured, “You make it sound like you don’t think I can do much on my own.”
Kel shrugged. “It ain’t that. I just don’t see Rafe letting it go that easily.”
Smirking, Toronto replied, “He wouldn’t have, but you sort of took the matter out of his control. Last thing we need is a couple of vamps, already on edge because of a feral, sniffing around some pretty mortal who just happens to be vampire bait.”
Without thinking, Kel reached out, grabbed the front of Toronto’s shirt and hauled him closed. “Watch how you talk about her,” he snarled, flashing his fangs.
Toronto’s hands came up, slowly prying Kel’s fingers off his shirt. He shot a narrow look in Angel’s direction and muttered, “Keep your voice down, damn it.” He moved back a few feet, keeping his hands lifted, palm out, like he was trying to calm a wild animal. “Chill out, Kel. I wasn’t insulting your sweetheart. Just stating a point.”
Kel turned away and shoved a hand through his hair. He tugged sharply, trying to clear his head, but it didn’t do any good. He couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. Getting a few feet between himself and Toronto, he leaned against a huge oak and looked back at Angel.
“So nobody else is coming?”
Toronto shook his head. “Not a good idea.” He slanted Kel a look and added, “Stick another vamp around her, it’s going to be just asking for trouble. Especially if you can’t keep that temper of yours under control.”
Control…
Rafe’s words came back to him, a ghostly whisper, You can’t be around her. Ever.
“What if he’s right?”
Toronto didn’t need to ask. “I don’t think he is. You’re a walking time bomb but I don’t see you hurting her.”
“Shit.” He stared at her face, watched as she reached up to wipe her cheeks. She was crying. Laying on his grave and crying. It wasn’t ever going to end, Kel knew. The pain inside him wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t ease. “You can’t see it, can you? I’m already hurting her. She’s laying on a pile of dirt and grass and crying over my sorry ass.”
“Kel, she’s crying over the guy she should have been able to grow old with. You aren’t responsible for that.”
“Aren’t I?” All those dreams…the ones where Angel would lay in his arms, her weight warm and soft against him. This feels so real… She’d said that to him so often over the past years, he’d lost count. And he’d never let himself think about how those dreams might be affecting her. If it was the only time he could be with her, he’d selfishly wanted it.
And the feral—shit, Kel had no doubt it was him coming here. Possibly already here, searching for her. “If I could have made myself let her go, maybe she could have had some kind of life.” He flicked Toronto a glance. “We dream together. I’ll dream of her and for a little while, she’s there with me. Even if she’s asleep and I’m not, or I’m asleep and she’s awake, our dreams merge. I can feel her thoughts and if I don’t work to keep my shields up, I know she would feel mine…and she thinks I’m dead. How can she let go of me with all that going on inside her?”
Blowing out a breath, he added, “An
d not to mention the fact that I couldn’t kill that monster.”
Toronto took his time answer, like he wanted to think through each and every word before he spoke. “You’re talking about killing a vamp that’s been around for a lot longer than you. That’s not an easy task and you, as well as anybody, should know that’s not a reflection on you.” He gestured towards Angel and this time, when he spoke, his voice was soft, gentle. “And seriously, Kel, what I see out there is more or less the same thing I see when I look at you. Somebody who loves so completely, letting go would probably be about as easy as willing your heart to stop. That love, it’s a part of you, both of you.”
He sighed and leaned back against a tree, resting his blond head against the trunk and staring up at the sky. “If things were different, it would be a blessing for you both. As it stands, it’s become a curse.” Toronto looked at Kel. “That’s not on you, Kel. That’s on the mean bitch of fate.”
“I don’t believe in fate,” Kel said. No. This wasn’t some pre-destined twist—it was payment. Penance for something Kel had done wrong. He was paying for something, he had no clue what, but he knew it just the same. Maybe it was for failing to get to Angel in time that night.
And speaking of payment, that mean bitch of fate was sending one wickedly mean bill collector after him. He could feel it.
It was faint.
A cold whisper in a cool night. A darker shadow lost in a world of them.
Kel straightened away from the tree, distantly aware that Toronto had done the same, moving closer. As one, they looked at Angel. She continued to lay by the grave, stroking her hand up and down the grass like she was petting a cat.
“Fuck,” Kel muttered under his breath.
“Double-fuck.” His lips compressed down in a narrow line, Toronto slid Kel a sidelong glance. “Heard a rumor or two this lady is gifted.”
Unsure of what Toronto was getting at, Kel said, “Yeah. Psychic. Why?”
“She strong enough to resist vampire compulsion?”
Eyes narrowed, Kel said, “If you think I’m going to…”
The shifter reached out, grabbed the front of Kel’s shirt and hauled him forward. Face to face, Toronto growled, “Damn it, stop thinking like a protective, lovesick kid and think like a damn Hunter. Can she resist compulsion?”
Fury started to surface, that ugly, consuming rage. Thinking like a protective, lovesick anything pretty much defined him when it came to Angel. But thinking like a Hunter would do her more good than anything else. “If she’s gotten stronger over the years, then she probably can resist the typical vamp. Master level? I doubt it.”
With a short, decisive nod, Toronto muttered, “Good. I don’t want to do this here. Let’s get her home.”
Kel snorted. “And we do that…how?”
Cracking a smile, Toronto replied, “Have a little faith, Kel. Give me your hand.”
Kel blinked. Looked at the outstretched hand, and then back at the shifter.
“Come on, kid. We don’t have all day.” Toronto reached out and grabbed Kel’s hand—a second later, the storm hit. It was like nothing Kel had ever felt, an ugly, gut-clenching storm of fear that rolled out of Toronto—towards Angel.
Kel couldn’t see it, but he felt it. Snarling, he jerked away from Toronto but the shifter wouldn’t let go. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Getting her to leave. We want her home, remember?” Toronto replied impassively. Even as the words left his lips, Angel was sitting up, then shoving to her feet, glancing all around. There was naked fear on her face and confusion in her eyes as she started back towards the truck.
“You vamps aren’t the only ones who can pull the fear trick,” Toronto said, glancing at Kel. “Fear’s emotional, not mental. If she stopped to think about why she was afraid, might be different. If I made some attempt to compel her to leave, it wouldn’t have worked so well. But people get the spooks all the time and it’s instinctive to get away from whatever’s freaking them out. You would have felt the brunt of it too if you hadn’t been touching me. Fear’s not overly selective.”
They watched as she climbed into the truck. Toronto reached into a pocket and tossed a set of keys toward Kel. Moonlight filtered through the trees, highlighting his face as he started to strip. The clothes came flying towards Kel and in under thirty seconds, Toronto was bare-ass naked. “Car’s on the road just outside the cemetery.”
Kel didn’t bother asking what he was supposed to do with the clothes or the car. Toronto shifted and in seconds, he was racing across the cemetery in full wolf-form.
Faster than a speeding wolf, Kel thought inanely. Clothes tucked under one arm, he ran through the cemetery, the cool wind a rush against his face and the moonlight illuminating the darkness under the trees.
Toronto’s car, a classic Mustang, was almost always in a state of rehab, but the engine ran as smooth as silk. It purred like a big cat when Kel started it up. Following Toronto’s illusive scent, he hit the road.
Chapter Seven
Halfway home, Angel’s mind started trying to think past the fear suffocating her. She had no idea what had happened—one second, she’d been laying by Kel’s grave, drifting closer and closer to sleep. It wasn’t the first time she’d drifted off at Kel’s grave. Even knowing that he wasn’t in there, something about the cemetery comforted her.
Then, abruptly, that comfort had vanished and Angel was jerked in a cold, hard awareness. Unsure why, she’d been filled with a sense of fear that had jump-started her instincts. Single woman, at night, alone in a cemetery—shit, it sounded like some kind of B horror movie.
The more she tried to think past the fear, the easier it got and by the time she was five miles away, she wondered what in the hell she was doing. She’d been half-asleep—had somebody driven by? Had there been somebody else at the cemetery?
She didn’t know.
But she wasn’t going back there tonight, that was certain. She glanced in her rearview mirror and although it was nothing more than her mind pulling tricks on her, it seemed as though darkness chased her.
Darkness… That was all it took. That one thought passing through her mind, and the fear was back. Seriously back and trying to think past the fear wasn’t helping this time because the more she thought about it, the more afraid she got.
“Then don’t think about it. Your imagination is going to be the death of you,” she muttered. Five minutes later, she turned onto the rutted, winding road that led to her house. When she pulled in front of her house, the motion-activated floodlight came on and she breathed out a sigh of relief as it managed to dispel some of the gloom.
For some reason, the sight of the light, of her little house badly in need of repair, made her feel better. Beyond the front door there was safety.
She grabbed her purse and keys, striding up to the door. The skin along her shoulder blades went tight. She almost paused long enough to look back—somebody was watching her. She felt it.
Her body was screaming a warning at her. That vague sense of fear was back, magnified, and now it had a focus. She didn’t just feel fear.
She sensed malice, something evil. Something ugly.
Human nature—it could make a person hide under the covers to avoid seeing the monsters or it could make them turn around when to do so was death. Never made sense.
But Angel would be damned if she played into that B-movie mindset by slowing down to look instead of getting someplace safe. No—not someplace. In her house, across the threshold with the door shut behind her.
Angel got the door unlocked in record time and slid inside, shutting it with a bang. She turned the locks, the one in the doorknob, the deadbolt and the chain.
Something brushed her leg and Angel yelped, tearing away, only to realize it was Rufus. The big ugly mutt stared at her, his head cocked. He went to nuzzle her leg but then he froze, his hackles rising and his lips pulling back from his teeth in a snarl.
That illusive fear was pushing in on her again,
choking her.
She checked each of the locks.
Wasn’t enough. A scared, high-pitched voice kept whispering through her mind. Not enough, not enough, not enough. Rufus came to brace his warm body by her leg and she reached down, buried a hand in his fur.
The calmer, rational part of her mind told her to chill out. She was inside the house. Inside the house was safe. Inside the house was a big, mean dog that would rip any burglar to shreds and he’d also sound a warning if somebody was trying to break into the house…right?
This ain’t no home intrusion, she said silently.
And Rufus wasn’t exactly throwing out the welcome mat, either. Not with the way he began to pace stiff-legged back and forth in front of the door.
Angel had no idea which voice to listen to. Bad things happened to people in their own houses all the time—she knew that from experience. Closing her eyes, she pressed her brow to the door, pressed her shaking hands flat to it and just breathed. In. Out. In. Out. Concentrating on the feel of the air moving in and out of her lungs, the way her chest expanded.
After five seconds, the shaking in her hands subsided. After ten, the cloud of terror wrapping around her mind cleared. Rufus paused in his guard-dog duty long enough to nose her leg and whine softly. Angel reached down, scratched him behind the ears. “It’s okay, boy.”
Once more able to think on her own, she straightened away from the door and edged over to the window. She looked through the gap in the curtains, staring down the drive.
Darkness.
Just darkness.
“You’re not afraid of the dark, Angel,” she told herself. As little sense as it made after the attack, she was more at home in the dark than in the light. Whatever was going on, whether her mind was playing tricks on her or whether it was trying to warn her of some impending threat, she wasn’t going to cower in the dark.
Deep breath in…deep breath out…deep breath…
Shit!
The deep breath lodged in her throat like a lump of ice. She reached up, rubbed her eyes and squinted, focused on the drive. Something had moved.
Something big. The faint, indistinct shadow made her think dog, but it was too damn big to be a dog. Way too big. Unless the dog was the size of a pony.
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