There was also something in the man’s eyes, something all too close to pity, but Levi didn’t want to think about that.
Didn’t want to think about anything, not even what he had to do.
“Leave me alone,” he rasped, forcing the words out through a throat gone tight. “Just leave me alone.”
“You shouldn’t stay here, Detective. Come on…let me take you home.”
“Home,” he whispered. Shaking his head, he backed away. He couldn’t go home.
Owen was dead and it was because Levi just hadn’t been able to help his cousin, hadn’t been able to help his best friend. He hadn’t even been there when Owen died, torn apart by some wild animal. Torn into so many pieces that Levi hadn’t even recognized him.
“Fuck,” he whispered, stumbling away from the car, heading toward the road. His legs threatened to buckle under him with every step. But he kept walking. Turning back just wasn’t an option.
Chapter Five
For the first time in a long while, waking up wasn’t torture for Cori. She came awake slowly, stretching her arms overhead and smiling as slight aches in her body made themselves known. Sweet aches—not that screaming agony of a hunger too long ignored.
This she could handle.
Shoot, this was even kind of nice.
She blushed and then rolled out of bed. From habit, she made the bed, straightening the sheets, smoothing down the comforter and fluffing the decorative pillows. Her shower was quick—another habit. She spent as little time as necessary dealing with her hair or clothes. Whatever was easiest worked the best for her and easy usually called for a simple braid and simple clothes. If she was scheduled to work, she’d wear “business casual”, khakis and a sweater. If she wasn’t working, jeans and a T-shirt.
Today she had to work and if she didn’t move, she was going to be late, she realized, pausing to glance at the clock by her bed.
She’d overslept. That was unusual enough but no major surprise. It had taken a couple of hours to make her way back to Excelsior after— Crap, the car! She stopped in the middle of the hall and smacked her hand against her forehead. Damn it! How was she going to explain that? “I’m sorry, Kelsey, but I sort of lost one of the cars. No, it wasn’t stolen. It’s just that I was trying to avoid this guy I picked up. I was hiding from him and I thought he’d just give up but then he saw the car keys. He didn’t really strike me as a thief but he took the car…”
She’d planned on talking to Kelsey that morning when she got back to the school. Cori had gone over it in her head time after time—how she’d explain. Kelsey will understand, Cori thought. If anybody will, it will be Kelsey…right?
Except by the time she’d gotten back to the school, it had been getting late—or early, depending on how a person looked at it. A new vamp would look at it as very, very late, dangerously so, the sun just a whisper away from the horizon and it had taken every last bit of energy to stumble to her rooms. Talking to Kelsey would have been physically impossible. The sun breached the horizon and she was gone, dead to the world.
But now? She winced. How was she supposed to explain that she’d lost a car? Her first time using one of the school’s cars and she’d lost it.
She had to talk to Kelsey. She was going to end up being late for work after all because she couldn’t put this off another second. She veered back toward the administrative offices instead of taking the elevator up to the library. This time of day, Kelsey would probably still be there. Cori hoped she wouldn’t have to track the witch down at her home. Nestled in the woods a few hundred yards away from the main campus, Kelsey lived with her husband, Malachi. That man was definitely not somebody Cori wanted to have around while she explained.
Hearing a familiar voice, she slowed to a stop outside one of the staff lounges. Kelsey—damn, she was in luck. But just before she would have pushed inside, the tension emanating from the room caught her attention.
Something caught her nose, teased it—adrenaline. Her ears caught the sound of a quick heartbeat, racing away—fast, but steady.
Another voice…male. Grady. “Look, Kelsey, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t exactly make the guy come back, could I? He’s a fucking cop.”
“No, Grady.” Kelsey sighed. “I know. You did the best thing possible under the circumstances. Shit. This is bad. I can’t believe this happened so close to here. Richmond—what kind of psychotic feral is going to run around Richmond killing people? Don’t they know where we are?”
Grady’s voice again. Worried. “Kelsey, I didn’t get a feral vibe from the area. Something bad, yeah, but not the psychotic kind of bad that a feral throws off.”
“A man torn apart by a were sounds pretty damn psychotic to me.” Another voice—Duke. And his voice was grim, aggravated.
“It’s not just some bloodthirsty killer, Duke. I’d have felt it. All I felt there, well, besides the cop, was reluctance.”
“A reluctant killer is still a killer.”
“Enough, boys,” Kelsey snapped. “Enough, okay? Come on, what do we know? According to the paper, the man was found dead in his trailer four days ago, the victim of an apparent wild animal attack.”
“Why weren’t we informed?” Grady said, his voice confused. “I don’t get it. We’re supposed to get a heads-up any time something like this happens so we can make sure it’s not a problem we need to handle. Before the cops get involved.”
“Trust me, I’m going to look into that. I’ve got a man who monitors the area and he’s got some explaining to do.” She sighed. “Okay, Grady…run all this by again. How does this tie into the cop that came by looking for Cori?”
Cop? Cori’s belly knotted. Shit. Why was a cop looking for her?
“Cousins. I had one of the senior students help me do a search. The victim’s name was Owen Marcum. His cousin is in town to handle the funeral.”
Owen—anything else, everything else that Grady said was lost to the roaring in her ears. Owen.
Oh God.
Her knees buckled beneath her and she staggered. Slamming a hand against the wall, she locked her legs and forced herself to stand upright. Forced herself to open the door, to enter the room. Duke’s face was the first face she saw and she stared at him, dazed. There was an oddly expectant look on his face.
He’d known…he’d known she was standing in the hall.
Kelsey picked up on it too. “Damn it, Duke, why didn’t you say something?” the witch hissed at him.
Duke shrugged. “Hell, other than fucking the cop—”
Kelsey smacked him across the back of the head. “Would you shut up?”
“Why? Hell, so she left a car in town after she did the dirty with some city cop. Big deal. Doesn’t have anything to do with…” but his words trailed off as he stared at Cori’s face. He paled. “Shit. Shit.”
Cori wasn’t looking at him anymore. She could barely see Kelsey through the rage and pain clouding her vision. “What happened to Owen?” she demanded.
Kelsey’s eyes, a soft golden brown, darkened to black and she squeezed them closed, swearing. “Damn it, Cori…”
“What happened?” she asked, her voice thin, all but gone as her throat threatened to lock down on her.
“Cori, I was going to find you after I—”
Gritting her teeth, Cori repeated, “What happened? Damn it, what happened to Owen?”
“He’s dead, honey.”
Dead.
Kelsey said something else but Cori ignored it, her eyes locking on the mess of papers strewn on the coffee table in front of Kelsey. Newspaper articles, a file with her name on it. She curled her lip in disgust. They had a damn file on her. Grabbing it, she flipped through it, reading the article that had run in the paper the day after she’d been reported missing in her hometown of Reston. Neatly written reports, information on her funeral. Owen’s name was mentioned, as well a reference to Owen’s cousin, one Levi Marcum, who served on the Reston Police Department.
Something in he
r brain clicked—Levi. Cop. Other than fucking the cop—
Levi!
No. She couldn’t think about last night just yet, or whatever insane possibility Duke was referring to. She had to think about Owen. A knot formed in her throat as she skimmed the info in the file, info she hadn’t even been aware of. They’d watched Owen. While he lay in the hospital, struggling to recover from a vampire attack, they’d watched him. When he’d tried to tell the cops, tell the doctors what had happened the night Cori disappeared, people had thought he was crazy and the people who knew he wasn’t, hadn’t done anything but write up reports.
“When did he move to Richmond?” she asked, her voice gritty.
Kelsey swallowed. “I’m not entirely sure, Cori. Standard procedure after the first year is just for bi-annual reports for a few years, then we cut back to every few years as long as there are no issues. There…there wasn’t really any reason to keep watching him so closely, according to the information I received.”
“A wild animal,” Cori whispered, rubbing her finger over the grainy image of Owen’s face. He’d been her best friend—maybe not the kind of lover a woman might dream about. His touch had brought comfort to Cori, not heat. But she’d loved him. Adored him. He’d made her feel safe, accepted. It hadn’t been enough for her, though. No, she’d wanted more. She’d wanted to be in love. And look what had happened.
She shifted her gaze, staring at Kelsey through her lashes as she demanded, “He goes around talking about vampires and werewolves to the doctors, they recommend serious psychiatric evaluation but you don’t think there’s any reason to keep an eye on him?”
“We were keeping an eye on him. I had a man watching him and I was told that he was adjusting. After the first few months, he stopped talking about vampires. We had no reason to believe he wasn’t coping well.” Then she closed her eyes and reached up, rubbed her temple. “Unfortunately, what we were told and what was actually happening don’t seem to match up.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning he’s spent the past four years looking for vampires. Looking for proof, looking for evidence, looking for…”
“Looking for what?” Cori asked, her voice hollow. “Looking for me?”
“It looks that way,” Kelsey said, sighing. “I don’t know if he still thought you were alive or not but from what we can tell, at this point, is that he never stopped trying to find out what happened to you.”
Cori, hardly able to think past the pain, spun away. Duke and Grady were watching her with wary eyes. There was a scent on Grady, something familiar, but she wouldn’t let herself dwell on that. “He saw what happened—I told you that. When you came for me. When you brought me here. I told you about Owen and you said you’d take care of him. But you didn’t. You just let him live with it. For four years, you let him live with that.”
Kelsey approached from behind but before the witch could touch her, Cori twisted away. “Stay away from me, damn it,” she snarled, half sick inside. “Why couldn’t somebody tell me what this was doing to him? Why couldn’t somebody go to him and explain? Why didn’t somebody tell me?”
“Cori, we didn’t know. If we’d known, we would have tried to do something. I will not say I’m sorry you weren’t told. Hell, you’re having enough trouble adjusting. Four years and you still won’t leave the campus.”
“I left last night.” Lowering her gaze once more to the picture in her hand, she stared at Owen’s image for a long moment. “Tell me something, Duke…this cop I fucked—how is he connected to this?”
“Shut up, Duke,” Kelsey said.
“I want to know.”
“Duke, get out of here now. Grady, you too.”
Cori jerked her gaze up and glared at the woman she’d thought she could trust. Throughout everything—the hellish Change, the months of nightmares and confusion—Kelsey had been there, a strong, certain voice, quiet and steady. Somebody Cori had relied on. Now she felt as if she was being kicked in the stomach. She backed away from Kelsey, one slow step at a time. “It was Levi last night,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Wasn’t it?”
“Cori, come on, sweetie,” Kelsey said, her eyes soft and gentle. “Come on, let’s just sit down…”
Averting her gaze, she looked at Duke. He’d give her an honest answer. Grady thought too much along the same lines as Kelsey—soothe and stroke and comfort, that was a witch for you. Cori didn’t want soothing, stroking or comforting. She wanted the truth. “Duke?”
“Duke, keep your trap shut.”
Duke scowled, jamming his hands into his pockets. “You know what, Kelsey? I don’t much like having somebody order me around. I guess I care for it about as much as Cori likes having somebody trying to pull the wool over her eyes.” Then he turned his back on Kelsey and focused on Cori.
The sympathy she saw in his gray eyes had her wanting to slap him, hard. Her hand itched to do it. “I’m sorry, Cori. You got a right to know, but if I’d known you were tangled up in this, I wouldn’t have let you stand out in the hall and hear it like that. I just…hell, I didn’t realize you had any connection to this guy, Owen. I thought it was just—”
“The cop,” Cori filled in, her voice flat, wooden. “Who is the cop, Duke? How is he connected to this?”
“Levi Marcum—that’s the man you were with last night,” Duke said softly.
“Levi.” The news article fell from numb fingers and she sagged, swayed. Her gut roiled and she felt like she was going to puke.
“Cori…”
Cori evaded Kelsey’s hands. “Stay the hell away from me,” she whispered, backing away. She kept right on backing up until she plowed straight into Malachi. How long he’d been standing at the door, she didn’t know. She jerked away from him as though burned.
“Corinne.”
She shook her head, averting her gaze so she didn’t have to see his face, either. She didn’t want to see their sympathy, their pity, their understanding. She wanted to run. Had to get away from there. Had to.
* * * * *
Kelsey moved to the door, staring woodenly down the hall for long moments after Cori ran away. “Damn it, Duke, why couldn’t you say something?” she snapped, glaring at the shapeshifter.
He stood on the far side of the room and said nothing.
“What, cat got your tongue?”
“Kelsey.”
She looked at Malachi.
“This isn’t anybody’s fault,” he murmured, reaching up to brush her hair back from her face. “It’s not yours—it’s not Duke’s. It’s not Corinne’s. It’s nobody’s fault.”
“Yes. It is. It’s mine. Damn it, I’m supposed to protect her.” Cori wasn’t a Hunter like the rest of them. She was too kind, too soft…too innocent, even after what had been done to her. She was kept at the school because here, Kelsey knew she’d be safe. Here she could have a purpose, have some sort of life. “I’m supposed to protect her,” she repeated.
“From life? Love, you can’t do that.”
“Then what good am I, huh?” she shouted. Pain ripped through her heart, catching her off-guard. She’d let the girl down—a girl she liked, somebody she’d considered a friend. “What good am I if I can’t protect people like her?”
“You can protect her,” Malachi murmured, moving in and catching her arms, pulling her against him when she would have pulled away. “You did protect her. You saved her from the bastard who Changed her. You brought her here. You watch over her, make sure she feeds, make sure she’s as content as she can be. But you can’t control everything.”
“I should have been able to control this,” she said woodenly. “All of this happened because of the life she left behind and that is something I’m responsible for.”
Malachi cocked a brow. “Indeed. You’re responsible for setting a watcher on those she left behind. Pray tell, who is this watcher? I’d like a word with him.”
“Get in line.” Kelsey moved to the table, neatly gathering up the mess of papers that made up
Cori’s file. She rearranged everything and with the exception of the reports, she tucked the rest back into the file.
She studied the reports and then placed them back in the file. “I’m going to be gone for a little while.” The knot in her chest wouldn’t go away and her gut went tight as she forced herself to look at Duke. Cori was her responsibility. She was supposed to protect those left under her care at the school and she’d failed. But, however unwittingly, she’d added to the pain by trying to handle this mess before discussing it with Cori. Cori might not have what it took to be a fighter, but she wasn’t so weak she couldn’t handle a tragedy. She’d handled the Change without going nuts and that said something about her character. Still…
No, Duke had done what he thought was best. Taking a deep breath, she said, “I’m sorry—Mal’s right, this isn’t your fault.”
Duke didn’t reply but she hadn’t expected that he would. She slid Grady a look. “Give Cori a little bit of time and then go check on her. Make sure she’s okay.”
* * * * *
Get out.
She had to get out.
That was the only thought in her head as Cori tore through the halls to her rooms. She stumbled inside, gasping, unaware that she was crying. She crossed to her dresser and reached inside the top drawer.
There was a photo album in there, one she rarely looked at. The cover had a picture frame in it and the sight of the framed picture sent a shard of pain into her heart. It was of Owen standing behind her with his arms wrapped around her. They smiled into the camera, Cori with her big, horn-rimmed glasses and boring clothes, Owen with his wrinkled jeans and T-shirt. He’d always been more interested in finishing up a book, solving a puzzle, working endlessly, than worrying about how he looked.
Just off to the side, staring at Owen and Cori, was Levi. He held a beer bottle in his hand and he’d been teasing Owen while the picture was snapped. For the life of her, Cori couldn’t remember what Levi had said that had Owen laughing so hard.
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