But she was. Slowly, she reached for the door and unlocked each lock with careful, steady deliberation. With that same careful, steady deliberation, she eased the door open and looked through the narrow crack down the porch.
She could see his arm now, could see that he was trying to sit up.
But she couldn’t see him. And she desperately needed to. She took one small sidestep through the door, followed by another. A third. His upper body was fully visible now, including his averted head. The shirt he wore was in tatters and she could just barely make out the glint of a gold chain through the smears of blood all over his chest.
A lot of blood, but she didn’t see any wounds.
Then he sat up—and she saw.
A huge, gaping wound in his left shoulder, gushing blood. It was huge. Fricking huge, like a-kid-could-put-his-fist-inside-it huge. And he was moving. Not just breathing and hanging on, but moving.
Moving…moving…he swung his head towards her and the sight of his face totally drained her strength. The full moon overhead cast silvery light down on him, revealing a face that haunted her dreams.
Angel sagged to her knees, staring at him in dumb, stunned amazement.
“Kel…?”
His lids drooped low. His voice, broken and ragged, drifted to her as he rasped, “Get in the house, Angel. Now.”
But she couldn’t have moved if her life depended on it.
And it did.
From the yard, she heard Blondie’s unmistakable voice as he swore. “Son of a bitch! Damn it, girl, get in the—” Abruptly, his words ended and a weird, muffled-sounding pop echoed through the air.
Kel lurched to his feet, moving with a speed that shouldn’t have been possible, considering he had a gaping hole—no. No, it wasn’t gaping…but it had been…right? He came towards her, reached down and grabbed her arm and without slowing, hauled her upright and shoved her towards the door. “Inside,” he rasped.
None of it made sense.
Not seeing him.
Not the way he pushed her towards the house.
Reaching up, she touched her fingers to his face and whispered his name. A tortured look passed across his face and he murmured, “God, Angel…”
For the briefest second, she thought he was going to… She wasn’t sure. But all he did was shove her. Hard. So that she stumbled into the house. His lids drooped and then he looked at her. In the depths of his sea-green eyes, she saw a screaming, endless hell. Then he blinked and it was gone. “If you ever loved me, you’ll stay in that house until dawn. You hear me? Don’t—”
“Oh, how my poet’s heart leaps at such an ardent plea.”
From where she sat on her ass in the doorway, she shifted her gaze and focused on the face of the man who had destroyed her life. Destroyed Kel’s life—or so she’d thought for twelve years. But the man turning away from her wasn’t dead like she’d believed for so many years.
In a voice that sounded too old for his years, Kel said, “Let’s finish this.”
“Hmmm. Indeed. Just you and me.” The other man—the thing—moved with a silken, boneless grace as he circled around Kel. “Finish it so I can get to dealing with her. I’ve already wasted much of the night.”
He slid her a glance and that alone made Angel feel so dirty, she wanted a bath. “If I’d known you were going to bring friends, I would have bought more of my little presents. You fool Hunters. I must give you credit; you have the most amazing knack for crafting weapons. Like silver nitrate. Even now it’s poisoning that stupid wolf. I’d planned to use it on you. A pity.”
His stringy black hair fell into his face, half-obscuring his pale features, but not enough to hide his gaze, that hideous dark gaze that somehow managed to gleam red in the night. There were dark splotches all over his clothes that made Angel think of blood, but she saw no obvious signs of injury. Even the bloodied marks on the man’s neck—was it even blood? If his throat was bleeding that much, wouldn’t he be unable to move?
Kel’s bleeding like that—and he’s moving.
Because of her. He was there because of her…somehow, through some bizarre quirk of fate or some divine miracle, he was here, again, to keep a monster away from her. The blinders that had hidden that night from her conscious memory shattered under that knowledge. Some of the night, she’d never remember—she’d passed out from blood loss, but for a few seconds, she’d come out of that black haze, long enough to see Kel struggling with a man.
That was all she remembered, but she knew that Kel had stopped this man from hurting her in the past. And he was determined to do it again—even when blood pumped from the wound in his chest.
Kel lunged. The two went rolling across the yard, fists flying, harsh curses drifting through the air. A laughing, mocking voice. “You’ve lost all your toys, Hunter brat. You can’t hope to beat me…”
Angel tuned out the voice. Tuned out everything but getting to her feet. The gray fog of shock was pressing in on her, but she made herself think through it, past it. Rufus appeared at her side, pressing his big body against her leg in support. Sinking her fingers into his furred neck, she stepped back over the threshold.
Rufus whined—something about the sound caught her attention and she glanced down at him. He was looking towards Blondie with soulful, dark eyes. Angel looked back towards Kel but when she did something else snagged her attention.
Something matte black.
Hurt him.
That was all Kel could focus on. If he hurt the bastard bad enough, he’d have to run away. Kel had done it before. He could do it again.
Angel was in the house and so long as she stayed over the threshold, she was safe.
Toronto wasn’t dead. Kel could hear his heart beating and his breath wheezing in and out of his lungs. Whatever kind of poison the feral had shoved into the shifter hadn’t killed him yet, so that was a sign it wouldn’t kill him. Toronto was strong. Strong enough to battle the effects of silver, provided he was given the time and not injured further.
All Kel had to do was hurt the feral enough that he ran away—give Toronto that time and then Toronto would take care of Angel. It didn’t matter if the feral managed to kill Kel doing it.
Didn’t matter—hell, probably better that way.
The feral struck Kel in the healing wound high on the left side of his chest, his fingers digging into tissues, sinew, muscle and bone. He grabbed, ripped, twisted. Raw pain shuddered through Kel and he just barely managed to hold his scream behind his teeth.
He let go of the feral, just for a second—it was a risk, but one he had to take. He had to… The world swum sickeningly before his eyes as the feral continued to tear into Kel’s chest wound. But Kel didn’t stop, didn’t slow, didn’t falter, as he reached for the final weapon he had.
A silver knife.
Not a K-bar this time, but a sliver-thin stiletto. He grabbed it and struck out, burying it in the feral’s neck. Hissing, the feral tore away and clawed at the blade until he knocked it free.
“Enough of this,” he spat at Kel.
Kel wasn’t the only one who’d come into this armed, he realized. The gun in the feral’s hand was a different make than the Hunter preferred. A Glock—and Kel had no illusions about what sort of ammo the gun carried.
“Enough.” A faint, eerie smile curled the feral’s lips and he flicked his glance towards the house.
Unable to keep from doing the same, Kel followed the feral’s gaze. But he didn’t just glance. He looked. And because he looked, he saw Angel rising from a crouch on the porch.
And in her hand, she held Kel’s Beretta.
His very-much-loaded Beretta.
“Yes.” Kel’s lips curled in a smile as she lifted the gun. He dropped the shields that had held them apart for twelve years and felt her calm, certain resolve as she squeezed the trigger. “Enough.”
He looked back at the feral just in time to see the feral turn his head towards Angel, just in time to see the very messy results as a specially
made bullet, hollow, silver-tipped little suckers, the head filled with silver nitrate, tore through flesh and bone.
The feral’s head exploded and brain matter, blood and bone littered the night.
“Enough,” Kel whispered.
And then, his head fell back onto the ground and his lids drooped.
Blackness wrapped around him in a comforting cocoon, thick, impenetrable. Warm. He hadn’t been warm since he’d lost her, but it made sense that now, he was warm one last time.
Death, he decided, wasn’t going to be that bad.
She was safe…and she’d be free of him. She could start to get over him. That was what mattered.
It was his last conscious thought as he slid into oblivion, the wound in his shoulder spilling blood onto the ground.
Chapter Eight
The clock’s ticking was abnormally loud. Or at least it seemed that way to Angel as she shifted on the floor and rolled her head to stare at Kel.
Her entire body ached from the chore of dragging him into the house. Even as she’d done it, she wondered why she bothered.
He was dead.
This time, well and truly. She’d never have answers for where he’d been, what had happened…why he’d left her. The ugly injury in his chest had long since stopped bleeding and when she’d touched her fingers to his neck, desperately seeking a pulse, there hadn’t been one.
After trying to feel one for a few seconds, she’d bent over him, listened desperately for the sound of his breathing. Anything. But his chest didn’t rise, his heart didn’t beat and even though it had only taken her seconds to get to him after she’d shot…the other…his body had already started to cool. Getting him in the house—had she wasted precious time? She didn’t know much about first aid, but if she’d stopped the blood flow sooner would it have helped?
Logically, her brain said no. There was so much blood. It didn’t seem possible somebody could survive losing that much blood.
He was dead.
So she sat there on the floor beside him, staring at his face through a veil of tears. Occasionally, she reached out and combed her fingers through his silken gold-touched hair, or traced the line of his jaw. If she’d had any doubt, the coolness of his skin, his absolute stillness would have destroyed it.
He was as cold as a corpse and he hadn’t once tried to breathe since she’d dragged him into the house nearly an hour earlier.
The tears continued to roll down her cheeks. She’d long since stopped wiping them away, long since stopped trying to come up with answers. There were none. No answers. No justice. No explanation for why she’d lost him, why he’d returned after twelve years only to die, truly die this time, right in front of her.
“Girl.”
She should have been afraid. After the hell she’d witnessed through the night, the sound of somebody speaking to her should have terrified her. Especially when she turned her head and saw that it was the blond stranger, swaying in the open door, naked as a jaybird and staring at Kel with wide, worried eyes.
There was an ugly, and she did mean ugly, wound in the guy’s belly. It was almost like something had tried to claw its way in—or out, perhaps. It was seeping red, wet blood, blood streaking down over his right hip, over his thigh. It wasn’t the only injury, either. There were bruises that looked days old, yet he hadn’t had them before he left the house, had he? He’d had the cuts from flying glass on his back, but he hadn’t looked like he’d gone a round or two with Rocky Balboa.
He did now, though. His body was liberally littered with injuries. Scratches, bruises, bleeding cuts.
“Sunrise.”
That was all he said, but it didn’t make much sense to her. She slid her gaze past his shoulder to stare at the eastern horizon at his back. The sun was rising and in a few minutes, she’d been able to see the results from last night in bright, vivid detail.
Instead of answering, she just turned her head and stared at Kel. At his still face. He still looked so damned perfect. Under the blood and the scrapes and bruises, she suspected he’d still look pretty much like he had then.
“Damn it. Sunrise.”
The man’s voice was imperative this time and it hit her shields with enough force to make her flinch. Turning her head, she said in a clear, level voice, “What the fuck do I care if the sun is rising?”
His eyes narrowed. He lurched inside, blood dripping from his side to plop onto the floor. He stumbled to his knees beside Kel, but when he reached out to touch him, Angel came off the floor and leaped for him. “Leave him alone!” she snarled, swinging out and clipping him on the chin.
He caught her wrists in a brutal, merciless grasp. “He can’t be here…” His voice broke off and he panted for air. “When the sun rises…it will kill him.”
Something about those words should have bothered her. If she had cared about anything. But she didn’t. In a dull voice, she replied, “He’s already dead.”
“Fuck.” He shoved her off to the side. Weak as he appeared, he had the strength to send her stumbling back onto her ass. He grabbed Kel’s body and slung him over a wide, blood-streaked shoulder in a fireman’s hold, like Kel didn’t even weigh fifty pounds.
“Leave him alone!” Angel demanded again, shoving upright and reaching out.
This time, he caught her wrist and jerked her against him. He bent down low and put his face in hers. “I didn’t live through this to watch him die now.”
“He’s already dead!” she screamed. So loud, so ragged—it hurt her throat, but she didn’t know how much of that came from saying the words or from her screaming.
But he wasn’t affected at all. He just pulled away, stumbled out of the living room, leaving behind him a dripping trail of blood.
“Not happening this way,” Toronto muttered, keeping one hand braced against the wall in effort to keep from falling forward on his face. “Not going to happen.”
The silver lingering in his system pretty much sapped what little strength he had, but sheer determination had gotten him to his feet, just like it had gotten him into the house, just like it had gotten him to pick up Kel—and it would get him into the kitchen because there was a door there that led downstairs. He’d seen it when he came in through the back door, and being the good little soldier he was, Toronto had taken two seconds to check it out. It led to a basement. Someplace dark where Kel could sleep safely, away from the daylight.
She was following along behind him and Toronto wished he had the strength to reassure her. To say something. But it was getting harder and harder with every step just to stay upright. By the time he’d stumbled into the kitchen, his legs were shaking and by the time he made it to the basement door, his vision was graying out. One step at a time. One step…
On the fourth to last step, his strength gave out and his abused, toxin-filled body went down. Kel, limp as a rag doll, hit the ground. Casting a quick look around the basement, Toronto reached out, grabbed Kel’s wrist and began to crawl. Crawl until the two of them were in the far northeast corner of the house, out the sight of the few windows and hopefully…away from the sun.
Stunned dismay was the only thing to describe what she felt as she followed the blond down the steps, watched as he fell. Kel’s body went flying and Angel stifled a scream. Her heart, already barely beating, died just a little more.
But the man wasn’t done.
No, it wasn’t enough that he’d grabbed Kel away from her and used his physical strength to keep Angel from getting to him. On his knees and one hand, the other hand holding Kel’s wrist, he dragged both himself and Kel into the shadows. She stood at the bottom of the steps now, staring as he settled in a corner and pulled Kel closer, kind of the same way a girl might hold a rag doll, with him tucked up against his side.
“Sunset.”
Angel blinked and tried to focus on the man’s face better, but all she could see was his eyes. Those pale blue eyes—blue…but in the darkness, they gleamed yellow. His lids drooped, shielding his gaze.
>
He muttered it again. “Sunset. You’ll see. It’s okay. ’sall okay.”
Then his head slumped to the side and he passed out.
“Sunset.” The word slipped out through numb lips. Angel shuffled forward, her limbs stiff. She knew from experience how very physical the pain from a broken heart could be—it was a pain that no medicine could ease, no doctor could fix.
Nothing could fix it. Even time… Time may dim the pain a bit, but nothing took it away.
But this guy seemed to think sunset was going to do…what, exactly? She swallowed the lump in her throat and crouched down by the two men. Blondie’s chest was moving up and down in a slow, steady rhythm, but Kel—he was still now as he’d been upstairs.
She wanted to cry, but her eyes were painfully dry as she reached out and trailed her fingers along his jawline. How could it be possible that he looked exactly the same? No signs that he’d aged, no physical signs of change at all.
So cold.
So cold.
The cold of his flesh seemed to seep into hers and she shivered, pulling away. The ugly, pitted wound in his chest caught her eye just before she stood and she frowned, leaned in a little. It…no. A trick of the light? Had to be. Something made that wound seem a little smaller.
“You can’t just stay here like this. You need to do something,” she mumbled. She needed to do something. Call the police. An ambulance for the crazy blond.
Slowly, she straightened, bracing her weight against the wall. If she hadn’t had something to lean on, she never would have made it upright. Once she was, she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.
She felt painfully, achingly ancient—as though she’d aged decades in the span of one night. Each step took far too much energy and by the time she reached the basement stairs, her legs were shaking with exhaustion. Still, she forced herself to climb and she didn’t once look back.
It wouldn’t help.
He was dead. All these years, Jake had been right to hope that somehow, Kel had survived whatever happened to him that night. He’d survived that night only to die now.
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